No matter where they live exactly, Leroy and Loretta have extremely powerful Downscale Suburban Tri-State Area energy
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The Lockhorns, 2/13/21
Based on their relatively modest tract home and Leroy’s rail commute and his Jets and Mets fandom, I’ve long assumed that the Lockhorns was an inhabitant of Long Island. However, today’s panel makes me think that perhaps they actually live in the part of New Jersey just across the river from Manhattan, as the Garden State is one of the few that have statewide elections in odd-numbered years; they could also live in New York City itself, which is gearing up for a mayoral campaign this year, although their suburban lifestyle woud only make this likely if they lived on Staten Island or maybe in outermost Queens. Anyway, the best thing going on here is that Loretta has made the mailman stand in the doorway while she assesses her mail in terms of what it means for her marriage, and his numb, resigned facial expression tells us that this is definitely not the first time this has happened.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/13/21
“What do you think the answer to that question is?” is a stereotypical bit of therapist-speak because much of the point of talk therapy is to get the patient to really self-reflect and understand their own mind and emotional state. I feel like when you’re a nutritionist, though, your job is really to just deliver straightforward information about what patients should and shouldn’t do? Just tell him not to eat an entire 1,600 calorie fast food meal in one sitting, lady! That’s what he’s paying you for!
95 replies to “No matter where they live exactly, Leroy and Loretta have extremely powerful Downscale Suburban Tri-State Area energy”
RMMD-“Now, Buck, tell me about your mother.”
MW-No actually they want this story to move on.
MT-I long for the days when Rusty was still depicted as a demonic looking wooden boy. The snark in the last panel would be amazing.
FW-“I never knew how big my hands were before.”
FC-“Actually I think that is a very good copy of a Jackson Pollack.”
Funky Winkerbean : when talking to Crazy Harry “Man, I don’t know about this ‘corrective eye surgery’ I got. I don’t think my vision’s ‘improved’, I think the surgeons only changed my vision. And I think it’s for the worse, actually.”
Funky Winkerbean when talking to Les Moore “Hey, four-eyed lame-o! Guess who got CORRECTIVE EYE SURGERY and now has more-than-perfect vision! You may be able to run a marathon better than I do, but at the end of the day, or rather the START of the day, you have to put on glasses to even be able to see the tip of your nose while I can count the hairs on a fly’s leg from across the street now!”
******
The Phantom : Hey, Trusted Man, are you expecting the other two guys to just wait around to be tagged in before they start attacking you? And even then, as far as you know, “Towns Ellerbee” left you to storm the prison alone, so you don’t have anyone to tag out to, and a 1 v 3 handicap is a pretty steep hill to climb…
Psst, nutritionist! Has it occurred to you what a unique position of power you’re in here? Go ahead and tell him to eat as much junk food as he possibly can. No one will ever know. That’s the beauty of a diabetic coma. Think how much better a Buck-free world would be. You’d be a hero!
The Lockhorns: Loretta may not expect a big Valentine’s Day gift after all this time, but I don’t think a simple card would be too much to ask. Still, getting Leroy to shell out an extra 55 cents to snail-mail it to his own house? That’s too crazy even to think about.
Rex Morgan: I think Buck would be a lot more willing to follow his nutritionist’s advice if she used that Zoom filter that turns you into a cat.
Fumbly Circus: “Quit trying to steal my job from me, PJ!”
The Funky Munky: This strip is a terrible eyesore.
Rex Morbid, Missing Daily: “Define ‘a while.'”
Rex Snoregan, Mighty Dull: “Try not to cheat, Buck. Amputations mess up my schedule and I simply loathe autopsies.”
(canonically the strip was originally The Lockhorns of Levittown)
@matt w: Yes, and Zippy the Pinhead was also inspired by life in Levittown.
At least Zippy is in a better marriage.
RMMD: Tiny hands! Such tiny hands! TINY HANDS! Is she related to Kristen Wiig’s Dooneese?
Phantom: Damn! I’m giving up the pole dancing lessons and taking up Lucha Libre as my next hobby.
Buck’s nutritionist seems positively delighted by the thought that he’s going to commit Suicide By Whopper, so she’ll finally be rid of him.
Leroy’s Valentine to Loretta says “Go fuck yourself because I won’t.”
RMMD: This is gonna end with Buck loosing some fingers to diabetes, isn’t it?
RMMD – “Also, I’m sorry to say you’ll never play the piano.”
“Because of the diabetes?”
“No, because you have the stubbiest fingers I’ve ever seen!”
love is… dressing up for Halloween as Sexy Advent Calendar.
@Peanut Gallery: Buck will never achieve his dream of becoming a great blues saxophonist, either. That pinky would never reach the low Bb key.
Lockhorns: Originally the comic was called The Lockhorns of Lahaina, but depicting a wealthy couple living in an island paradise became at odds with having them bicker all the time for laffs, because logic would dictate they just each take on one or more lovers and not interact more than they have to any longer. The cartoonist opted to have them move to the miserable East Coast.
The Lockhorns: Loretta still gets a card each year from Bill Clinton. How she misses that cigar.
Pluggers: Loretta is stalling while waiting for the mailman to make his move. “Say, nice mustache you got there. Haven’t I seen you in movies?”
Don’t know why I wrote pluggers there. Roo and bear are well past the introduction stage.
In the early 1960s during the heyday of teevee Western dramas and adventure shows, they had a short stint as The Lockhorns of Laramie. Leroy was a handsome young roving cowpuncher and Loretta a shapely beauty who worked in the cookhouse making flapjacks (running joke: she always burned them!)
As readership declined and the rural TV series were canceled one by one, Hoest got them married and moved them to Levittown, when they eventually turned into the cranky big-nosed blobs we love so much today.
@Peanut Gallery: love is… dressing up for Halloween as Sexy Advent Calendar.
Indifference is… giving her your dick in a box anyway, even though she specifically requested candy.
@Ukulele Ike: Good one.
RMMD: go ahead Buck. Go back to the drive-in. This time order a triple butterscotch malt, cheeseburger, fries and this time add a fried cherry pie. You know you want to. I want you to. YOLO Buck. YOLO.
Mary Worth: “Just having to walk Greta gets me out of my smell. I did no housework when my wife was still living. I still don’t.”
MW – Back when I had Bella, I would just leave training pads around the place for her, and never went out if I could help it.
Schlockhorns – The mailman is hoping the Grim Reaper will harvest him for Valentine’s Day. Tomorrow – tomorrow – I love you – tomorrow – you’re only a day away….
RMMD – The chin stroking says the message from the talking head on Zoom is being trumped by the visions of sugar plums (well, probably Ho-Hos and Twinkies) dancing in his head. Yes – they’re really dancing. I think it’s the Virginia reel….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
FC: Now you’ve gone and done it, Jeffy. We all know what happens when you reject struggling artists. Let’s see if you think PJ’s thousand year reich is scribble-scrabble, too.
FC: “At least it’s MY scribble-scrabble, Jeffy! I didn’t take one of Dad’s old Valentines and sign my name to it!”
RMMD: First Oprah gave up her talk show. Then she gave up the print version of her magazine. Now she is reduced to giving nutrition advice to Buck on whether he can eat a pound of jelly beans every other day and still be ok.
“You get some insulin! And you get some insulin! And you get some insulin! Buck, you go to Dunkin and get a dozen glazed everyday. We can’t wait until you die!”
9CL: Shared hallucinations mean your love is true. I guess?
Pearls Before Swine: Is Pigita an Amazon? She has only one breast.
L’horns: I’m not sure why Loretta would expect a Valentine from Leroy to come in the mail. Or at all.
RMMD: So the consequence of Buck’s fast-food binge is the nutritionist telling him (not even “telling,” really, more like “obliquely hinting”) “Yeah, you really shouldn’t do that.” Rex Morgan has become the limbo champion of low-stakes plotlines.
9CL: Ah, nothing like Catholic guilt-infused sexytimes!
C’shaft: Remember, no matter what you do illness, misery and death will find you! Hilarity!
FW: Wow, Funky is managing to out-smug Les in today’s strip. That takes some doing.
GT: “A little good ol’-fashioned white privilege never hurts, though.”
MT: Hey Intern, you got those Lovebugs lined up and ready to go tomorrow for the Sunday spread? Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be them … remember those death scenes on the windshield, all that buzzin’ around, even got mentioned in the narrative! Who else *could* it be?
Well, that Frog only got one panel, and he’s already been featured. And yeah, we did have those Ticks in the grass one day, but I don’t think many people even saw ’em. That was a
pisspoor presentation on the director’s part, if ya ask me. I hope they don’t try to stiff us on the fee.Waitaminute, waitaminute! You haven’t seen Plant Guy hangin’ around, have you? Don’t tell me he’s struck a deal for …. Peanuts!
Rex Morgan, M.D.: Having been through this in the past couple of years, I can tell you that the way this usually goes is that the clinic or hospital calls you in for a seminar to teach you how to eat, exercise, etc., in a way to manage the disease. A multi-part seminar. A seminar that is, unbelievably, too dull even for Rex Morgan, M.D.. Love the nutritionist’s unconcealed glee at Buck’s n00b idiocy, though!
Bill and Bunny Hoest resided in Lloyd Neck, Long Island, which is an unincorporated village within the town of Huntington. (Bunny Hoest still lives and works there.) According to Wikipedia, the median income in the Neck is $380K, so apparently the Lockhorns and the Hoests must not in fact have been neighbors. If the Lockhorns had lived in Lloyd Neck, though, their neighbors (at one time or another) would have included the Bee Gee’s Robin Gibb, Twister Sister’s Dee Snider, Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, Angelina Jolie, and Fox News loudmouth Sean Hannity. It would have been nice had all those folks shown up in the strip and exhibited the same feeling of ennui that all the Lockhorns’ neighbors show whenever they have to share a panel with Leroy and/or Loretta.
“I think the answer is yes! Thanks!” *ends call*
For some patients, this nutritionist might reply, “Sure, as long as you mostly stick to the meal plan, a small occasional indulgence is fine.” But she knows that when Buck says “cheat day” he’s imagining a butterscotch malt that could fill a bathtub. This lady has got. His. Number.
FC – It’s better drawn and more comprehensible than Six Chix.
9CL – Wandering around in a void, wearing clothing she put on in New Hampshire, she now runs into her parochial school teacher. Makes perfect sense.
Crankshaft – Why wasn’t this story arc pulled and destroyed?
Six flu shots? Speaking as someone who has been trying unsuccessfully to get an appointment for the COVID vaccine: fuck you, Batiuk.
Zits-Uh, Walt, I think your wife slept with Dagwood.
GT: Next week: Doug gets warned, again, to “take it easy, okay” as the EMTs load his gurney into the ambulance and the wrecker drives away empty, his Jeep now existing in too many pieces to winch up to the flatbed.
‘horns: This mailman’s problem is that he stops at every house on his route and waits for them to open and read the mail. It takes him forever.
RMMD: I don’t think this outcome — Buck getting sensible advice from his nutritionist — will satisfy the vengeful narrator. He wanted Buck to die or at least be hospitalized so he could gloat some more.
RMMD: Well, she didn’t say “no”, did she?
Come on, let Buck eat himself to death. He’ll be happier. You’ll be happier. We will all be happier.
RMMD I had honestly thought that, against all odds, Terry Beatty was going to have something exciting happen, like Buck going into a diabetic coma. But no, he feels mildly bad, gets his numbers down through exercise, and asks his dietitian a common question.
The commitment to a boring outcome is kind of stunning.
Nutritionist: “Well, Buck, at least we can agree that I’m the only one with any authority in this relationship. Now, I’m not going to answer your straightforward nutrition question as I’m presumably paid to do, but how about I sneer at you a little bit and then make you confess your ignorance? Would that be appropriate? Say ‘yes.'”
Lockhorns: Did we see enough political ads from last year?
RMMD: That lady sure looks like Michelle Obama to me.
Ziggy: Zig should like these basketball players because they, when off the court, like to…”PUT ON SOME PANTS AND SHOES!”
The evening is going to take quite the turn when Eve trips over the dogs.
It was all a dream, see? Edda is only dreaming she can still fit into a school uniform and that it was actually that short, which we all know is not true as we can see in 9CL classics (when it was funny). That explains the void, because her dreaming mind dispenses with details to concentrate on what is essential.. It also explains why her old headmaster nun can just pop in from nowhere, Edda wanted to tell her off, so she conjurers her up just to give her a piece of her mind. But Amos, always the good little boy, then practically ruins the whole thing.
RMMD panel 1: Kudos to the artist, who has refined his “punchable” facial expressions to Pavlovian levels. I know, consciously, that Buck is a harmless doofus who’s only hurting himself…but I still want to smack him one. It’s amazing.
@I speak Jive: “It’s better drawn and more comprehensible than Six Chix.”
Arguable. Particularly if it’s Thursday.
Rex Morgan – One cheat does not a diabetic coma make. Buck has had one foot in the grave, one foot on a banana
splitpeel for decades. Buck will spend the rest of his life swinging wildly between spree and austerity. What that timeframe entails is just a matter of dumb luck.You know, I once read somewhere that “nutritionist” is not a real medical profession. That real medical professionals in the field are called dietitians and that anyone who calls themself a “nutritionist” is no more a real expert than the “infusium” they print on the shampoo bottles is a real element. I looked it up just now to double-check, and one of the top results was a rundown of the differences that wasn’t quite that critical but did include this choice quote:
Oof. Well, good luck with that, Buck.
Pibgorn: Without reading the text, one would think that Edda has just discovered that practicing can-can dancing in shallow water may not be the best idea.
@Steve the Pocket: You’re right. He needs a dietician, or a certified diabetes educator who is a health professional with specialized training and credentials. “Nutritionist” sounds like someone selling products online that “your doctor doesn’t want you to know about.”
Also Mindy and probably Corey should be involved here. Diabetes is a family affair and they need to be educated, too.
@Ukulele Ike: Don’t forget the live-action Disney movie, The Lockhorns Go To Le Mans, where everyone’s favorite bickering couple stumbles into secret agent intrigue and winds up driving Herbie the Love Bug to victory! Starring Dean Jones and Sandy Duncan!
FUNKY WINKERBEAN: I can now see your obnoxious smirk in fabulous crystal-clear 4K-resolution!
MARY WORTH: Um…you had a dog before. And you were a grumpy recluse asshole then. You only “came out of your shell” because Mary kidnapped you and forced you to get another dog against your wishes. (Mary: “Hey I think I know how to solve Eve’s melancholy….”)
ZITS: Walt: “Oh it looks like the changed the design of the store and the kitty litter is in aisle 13 now. Oh well, a request is a request….”
BABY BLUES: Because otherwise Hammie would have to go in the bucket…and wear it.
The Lockhorns-How sweet. That lovely Dr. Frankenstein wants Loretta’s heart.
REX MORGAN M.D.: I do find it amusing that the only thing a dull schlub like Buck can “cheat with” is pie.
It’s always been assumed that the Lockhorns live in Huntington since many real-life businesses in that town are mentioned there like Arthur’s Bar.
love is... a Busby Berkeley production.
Crankshaft: TMI! Crankshaft is crappy enough without him talking about his crapping experience.
Baka Gaijin! “Dustin” has shown me what paint by number set to get you for your birthday!
Zits: Well, duh! He better know the layout of the grocery store. He’s been working there a while now.
Crankshaft-Sadly the stick is still lodged up there.
The Fusco Brothers: Sounds right to me.
If Jeffy is this critical of PJ’s art, he’s sure not going to appreciate “Faecibus exturbandis opitulatur on Mattress, No. 2” that now adorns his room.
@Tom T.: Remember the short-lived afternoon game show from the mid-70s — Lockhorns Family Feud?
Competing families vied for valuable prizes by enacting such lovable domestic scenes as “Play the piano badly and sing off-key;” “Ogle enormously tall bikini babes at beach;” “Shop all day and coming home carrying dozens of wrapped parcels;” “Burn the roast again;” “Get drunk at party and dance wildly with enormously tall miniskirt babes;” and “Emasculate your husband.”
Luann: it would be awesome to learn that Jack is gay and is boning Ben.
It’s Luann though, so nothing like that will happen.
@Truckosaurus:
And then blame his death on jet trails.
@68 Ukulele Ike:
And don’t forget in infamous “Smashing the fender of the car into something.”
@69 brendancalling:
I’m sure he’s called “Jack” for a reason but being Luann it is lost on the writers.
@Sequitur: It WOULD expalin why his arms are so big….
@Sequitur: Damn! “Smashing the car” was one of my first choices, but I forgot about it by the time I was writing the post.
LUANN – So, is Jack the only survivor from alll the characters they invented for the college years? Dez seems to be on the way out. Hair and Sun and Nil never caught on. Piro became a trademark long term storyline that never resolves any of the plot points and just suddenly ends.
Jack aka Jock survived and became almost a main character, although his friend Nil dwindled away to … nothing. And Tara Star, the afterthought invented to close the Piro story has persisted long after Piro’s flame has burned away to nothing.
@Tom T.: Needs…more…nephews.
@Rube: Come on, you knew they weren’t going to kill off a fan-favorite character like Buck, so filled with licensing / multimedia potential.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: No, there’s also Bets. And…was Mr. Gray introduced then? And several animals.
Why would Loretta even think that Leroy is sending her mail if they live together? Either (1) Leroy moved out and he and Loretta finally got a divorce, which would be an extremely rational decision and would solve a lot of their problems, or (2) they’re still married and the fact that they don’t need to send mail to each other was overlooked in the name of searing political humor.
@75 Calvin’s Cardboard Box:
I hope Mrs. Horner’s ghost comes back to haunt (taunt?) them all.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: We just saw Tara this month, when Luann decided to have Tara sleep at the Fuse. She hasn’t been forgotten, or at least it’s too soon to say the character has been forgotten when we saw her so recently.
RMMD: That nutritionist looks positively giddy hearing Buck’s willingness to risk death for a butterscotch malt. And to think the other nutritionists at DiPreta’s scoffed when she suggested making them triple thick.
@Joshua K.: LUANN – That’s what I was trying to say, the character invented as a way to end the Piro/vending machine thief storyline with a single panel -“oh, it was someone you’ve never heard of called Tara Star, case closed” ended up with a big role, while Piro, who we spend months inventing little hints at a backstory for, just suddenly vanished without a trace one day and hasn’t even been mentioned ever since.
@Ukulele Ike: Jazz piccolo is still a possibility.
@Avoiding the Madding Crowd: 54. I meant Luda, not Edda. Although, with Edda’s propensity for frolicking around in rustic ponds, and backround as a dancer, she may yet try a wet can-can.
@Sequitur: 66
Or, in Buck’s case, a nail gun hole.
9CL:. Maybe Edda died in childbirth and this is the images from her dying consciousness.
@Avoiding the Madding Crowd: Nine Pibgorn Lane – I don’t see how you could confuse them? One is an oversexed leggy blonde with a hook nose and no chin who lives in Manhattan and spends most of her time swimming and boinking in the lake, and the other is an oversexed leggy blonde with a hook nose and no chin who lives in the woods and spends most of her time swimming and boinking in the lake. Other than that they are both special snowflake musicians with violent tempers and a fetish for dweeby beta males, I don’t see any similarities at all.
@Just Jim: 9CL – Making a year plus of strips which become increasingly unmoored from sanity and then ultimately revealing it all to have been a fever dream during childbirth would be way too awesome.
The retconning started before the childbirth, though. Backgrounds disappeared long ago as everyone moved into the Void. He gradually erased the idea that Amos had ever not been her sexual thrall via flashbacks to them as tweens, until one day he apparently just decided to rip off the bandaid and had a strip where Amos was an infant in a crib next to Edda’s crib and Narrator informed us that she had always made him feel tingly.
However, he has passed on the opportunity to retcon Seth out of Edda’s fantasies or to rewrite the sequence where she fucked him then ran out and finally let Amos propose to her the next day, without her performing the traditional ‘fleeing like a gazelle’ ceremony to avoid him.
MT: What this about the University of Florida’s inventions being more…gator-adjacent? What’s Mark holding there?
MW: “Yesterday doesn’t exist anymore”?! Gad. Moy has the same general notions about psychology that my mother has. “Which kind of animal are you?” she asked me once. She was referring to some sort of pop-psychology test in which everyone is one of four different animals.
Speaking of which…is the moral of this story really that pets can help one “live in the moment”? Gad again.
(I refuse to make fun of anybody named Daniel Mangena. He’s suffered enough.)
FW: For years I’ve poked fun at Boomerization, and my own advancing years (I’m GenX though), by asking “Kids today still like the Fonz, right?”
Today the main theme of Jules’ tweets is that she hates white men. Yesterday was mainly about how she hates Joss Whedon. Oh, and she’s big into “Animal Crossing.”
(I read this stuff in much the same spirit that I read the comment sections of Collapse websites–to see what weird mind-viruses are floating around out there.)
9CL: I guess that explains why they always do it in public.
Luann: I think this is illustrating C.S. Lewis’s “The Six Loves.”
Panel 1 of today’s “Luann” should be on one of those CC fundraising banners. But what should the text say?
“Lie back and think of the Comics Curmudgeon!”
“Leave the money on the dresser…for the Comics Curmudgeon!”
“Feign normal interests…with the Comics Curmudgeon!”
There are too many specifically named businesses in Bunny Hoest’s No Exit for the Lockhorns to live anywhere but Huntington, NY. At a stretch, Oyster Bay.
Personally, I would be all for Beatty pruning down the RMMD cast a bit to teach his readers an important lesson about diabetic ketoacidosis. Truly, this would be hoping for Buck’s life to be given to serving a noble cause, and not just because of how happy I would be to never see his face again.