| FoxTrot | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Bill Amend |
| Website | FoxTrot.com |
| Current status / schedule | Sundays-only; daily until December 30, 2006 |
| Launch date | April 10, 1988 |
| Syndicate(s) | Universal Press Syndicate |
| Publisher(s) | Andrews McMeel Publishing |
| Genre(s) | Humor, Family, Satire |
FoxTrot is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Amend. As of December 2006, FoxTrot is carried by more than 1,000 newspapers worldwide.[1] From its inception in 1988 it was published daily until December 31, 2006, when Amend switched to a Sunday-only format.[1]
The strip revolves around the daily lives of the Fox family, an American family composed of two parents and three children: the parents Roger (father) and Andy (mother), and children Peter, Paige and Jason. It covers a wide range of subject matter, including spoofs of pop culture fads and popular consumer products.
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FoxTrot was first published on April 10, 1988, under the syndication of Universal Press Syndicate.[2][3]
The FoxTrot comic centers on the daily lives of the Fox family,composed of father Roger, mother Andy, and their three children: Peter, Paige, and Jason. Additional minor characters include Jason's pet iguana, Quincy; Jason's friend Marcus and classmate, Eileen Jacobson; Paige's friend Nicole and her classmate Morton Goldthwait; Peter's friend Steve and girlfriend Denise; and other friends and classmates of the children and Roger's co-workers. Jason is 10 years old and is basically the smartest and nerdiest kid on the planet. Paige is 14 and is obsessed with her looks, but cannot get a boyfriend. Peter is 16 years old and is almost always eating food or driving like a maniac.
The Fox family lives in a suburban setting. Several storylines in the strip have focused on summer vacation trips to various places. Early on, the Fox family spent summer vacation at "Uncle Ralph's Cabin".[4] Later vacations by the Fox family have included trips to Hawaii, Washington D.C., the desert, various amusement parks, and campgrounds. In a sereis of strips though, where the father Roger has to fly to Boonhurst, it claims that they live in Chicago.
Early in the strip's run, FoxTrot often dealt with societal issues such as drug abuse.[5]
In addition to family humor, the strip has many stories built around fandom and popular culture. The characters—primarily Jason, Peter, and Paige—frequently have new obsessions or interests which reflect the time period at which the strip was published. At least two FoxTrot strips have directly mentioned Wikipedia. They also show Jason playing games like Warhammer and Dungeons and Dragons, or at least variations of the game. For example, he was playing chess with his friend, but the game was tweaked into being a modified Dungeons and Dragons.[6]
Amend majored in physics at Amherst College,[7] and his knowledge of physics is sometimes reflected in FoxTrot's frequent inclusion of complex mathematical or physics formulae, usually written by Jason. Jason is also used to express Amend's knowledge of computer languages.[8]
The strips have been printed in thirty-seven different books, all by Andrews McMeel Publishing. Of the 38 books, 27 are collections and 11 are anthologies. The anthologies are composed of the two or three previous collections, and include Sunday strips in color.
During the late 1990s, the character of Jason Fox was licensed to Wolfram Research as a product spokesman for its Mathematica software package.[9]
In a 1990 article which reviewed various then-current comic strips, Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly gave FoxTrot a B rating, calling it "the most idiosyncratic [comic strip] to debut since Calvin and Hobbes" and describing the Fox family as "believable."[10]
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FoxTrot is a daily American comic strip by cartoonist Bill Amend centering on the daily lives of the Fox family. Syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, it began syndication on April 10, 1988, and is now carried by over 1,000 newspapers. Twenty-seven FoxTrot books have also been published and have sold over two million copies to date.
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(Note: "Aroma del Baño" translates to "smell of the bathroom" in Spanish.)
...
The Foxtrot,[1] or Slow foxtrot, is an English ballroom dance which developed from American band music.[2] It is now one of the international standard ballroom dances. All ballroom dance competitions controlled by the World Dance Council include the Foxtrot.
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All the standard ballroom dances had their origins abroad, but were adapted and modified by English dancers into their modern style. The Waltz came from Germany around 1810. The Tango came from Argentina. The Foxtrot and Quickstep were greatly influenced by American music.
An American dance called the Boston arrived in England about 1903.[3] This had fairly slow, gliding steps. It is a characteristic of the Foxtrot that in the basic steps, unlike the other dances, the feet slide past each other rather than coming together. The Boston seems to have been the first dance to move the feet in this way. The Boston also was the first ballroom dance to be done with feet parallel (rather than turned out, as in ballet).[4]
The Boston, like much else, was finished off by the First World War. Crowded dance floors in wartime left no room for it, and new musical imports arrived from America.
Ragtime and jazz came to Europe, and were great sensations. Both the music, and the many 'craze' dances contributed. After the war the big bands of Paul Whiteman took centre stage. He played 'arranger's jazz', meaning, the band played from charts rather than by ear. Whiteman's bands were hugely successful (there were several).
"The decade between 1910 and 1920", said one writer, "was the period in which America went dance mad".[5]p369 "From 1912 through 1914", said another, "over one hundred new dances found their way in and out of our fashionable ballrooms".[6]p76 These are a few examples: The Shimmy, The Grind, The Turkey Trot, The Bunny Hug, The Texas Tommy, The Cakewalk... Almost all these dances originated in the black community in the United States, and some moved over into white society.[7]p95
During the 1920s, English professional dancers and dance teachers set out to find ways of dancing to the new music. In their opinion, what was needed was separate dances for different tempos. So what happened was that the Foxtrot, which had started off as a mid-tempo dance, gradually split into two dances, a Slow foxtrot and a quick foxtrot. The difference in tempo allowed the dances to become, in time, different in style as well as music. The Quickstep (as it was soon called) was influenced by the Charleston, and the Slow foxtrot by ideas from the Boston.
Where did the name 'foxtrot' come from? It is often said that Foxtrot took its name from its inventor, the vaudeville actor Harry Fox; however the exact origins are not clear.[8] The dance was premiered in 1914, quickly catching the eye of the talented husband and wife duo Vernon and Irene Castle, who lent the dance its signature grace and style.
W.C. Handy's Memphis Blues was said to be the inspiration for the Foxtrot. The Castles' music director would play the Memphis Blues during breaks from the fast paced Castle Walk and One-step. The Castles were intrigued by the rhythm. They introduced the 'Bunny Hug' in a magazine article. They went abroad and in mid-ocean sent a wireless to the magazine to change the Bunny Hug to the 'Foxtrot'.[9]p226
For the International or English style foxtrot[10]
Basic Figures
Standard Figures
   | Bill Amend's Homepage - Bill Amend's Web Page |
| | Universal Press Syndicate FoxTrot Page - Universal Press Syndicate: Feature Detail |
| | Foxtrot.com - FoxTrot by Bill Amend |
| | Biography of Bill Amend - Universal Press Syndicate: Creator Bio |
| | FoxTrot comics - FoxTrot — UCLICK GoComics.com |
| | FoxTrot Comic Page - FoxTrot — UCLICK GoComics.com |
| | Wolfram Research - FoxTrot's Jason Fox to Promote Innovative Educational Calculus Software |
| | here - The FoxTrot Comic Strip Store |
| | here - Amazon.com: FoxTrot: 2006 Day to Day Calendar: Bill Amend: Books |
| | Amazon.com - Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more |
| | Doomulus Prime - Item: Doomulus Prime :: World of Warcraft :: Allakhazam.com |
| | Streetswing's Dance History Archives - Foxtrot Dance - Streetswings Dance History archives - Main Page |
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