Monday quickies
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Mary Worth, 4/29/24
Nothing but respect for this old man, who continues to mentally use some truly obscene epithet to refer to Wilbur even while acknowledging he saved his life. He knows Wilbur wasn’t trying! He’s still a @&^$!
Hi and Lois, 4/29/24
The way Hi is gingerly holding just the corner of that tape between his thumb and forefinger tells me that it contains the most vile pornography that you can possibly imagine.
Dennis the Menace, 4/29/24
Dennis, those words both rhyme with “grumpy?????” If your goal was to menace me by sending me into a spiral of extreme bafflement, congrats!
190 replies to “Monday quickies”
Mary Worth Mashups: I seem to be thinking about parallel storylines. Which is do you like better?
“Golden”?! “Oldie”?!?! So the pee tape was real!
H&L: This might be the video they shot when they conceived Chip — you know, when they still had joy in their lives.
MW: I guess hearing the guy behind the wheel of the car calling Wilbur a “@&^$!” would be redundant at this point.
Phantom: Phantom: “On cat’s toes amongst our foes”
Kit: [Looks down and sees Phantom is wearing cat-skin boots]
Phantom: “I learned that was a figure of speech after I found how good these feel”
GT: If I had to bet, these two are up to no good. Sunglasses are the backward hat/tank top of Gil Thorp world.
H&L: Whatever is on that tape, both will lose interest well before it is fully rewound.
Mary Worth: The SUV driver’s dead, but, oh well. %#@% ‘im.
MW: Please let the SUV driver be a relative of Aldo Kelrast.
MW: I hope we don’t get copycats. “Your honor, I pushed him in front of the speeding car expecting that it would swerve onto the sidewalk where he’d been standing, so you see, I was trying to save his life. That it didn’t work is entirely the driver’s fault.”
Crankshaft: Oh, don’t be so modest, Cranky ol’ boy. We all know you did it on purpose to win some inane competition with your partners in annoyance back at the depot, probably so you could cause an even bigger traffic backup getting the band to the right place.
JP: I just had a thought. Was the guy who got eaten by the bear on Helena’s take too? Could this whole storyline have been avoided if that guy had just watched where he was driving and Pavel’s dump could have been blown up months ago?
RMMD: ‘….or I’m wishing the whole world into the cornfield!’
Pluggers: If a woman is wearing a hardhat in her obituary photo, she’s definitely a stripper.
—And a tip o’ the hat to Lynn “Pasties” Bailey of Buffalo Gap, TX
MW: What is the culmination, here? Is an adoring throng going to gather at Wilbur’s door, pinning medals on him for knocking them down? Or is it up to the reader alone to appreciate the delicious irony?
9CL: I was going to say that Father could use some stud lessons from Amos, but it might be the other way around.
DtM: Martha is always glad when Dennis spells her in the torturing of her husband, so she can have a break to bake cookies.
@Baja Gaijin: #3. I will not be taking further questions at this time.
MW: With any luck Moby and Brigman will keep Wilbur in this perpetual state of self-pity saving lives left and right perhaps escalating with each new hapless turn. At such, within a few months Wilbur will have unwittingly caused a cure for cancer, peace in the Mideast and the end to global climate change—all the while muttering how worthless he is! We as readers couldn’t ask for a better turnout.
MW: The stream of obscenities from onlookers only increases as Wilbur, caught up in his romantic fantasies, continues his walk while playing pocket pool.
MW: Pretty sure the driver only swerved and crashed because Wilbur pushed the old man onto the street in the first place.
Also, are we just going to not check if the driver is okay? Pretty sure Wilbur is liable for any injuries or fatalities if he caused the accident. But I guess he could always blame his daydreaming in court and be declared insane.
H&L: I know legacy strips like these are old-fashioned and behind, but I still sincerely doubt that the Flagstons would still own a VCR, since they stopped making them 8 years ago, and movies haven’t been released on VHS for even longer than that.
Dennis the Menace: “Allow me to educate you, Dennis,” Martha said as she reached for the bone saw under her sink. “Have you ever heard of ‘stumpy’?”
Mary Worth: The most fantastical thing here may be the truly astounding amount of lipstick Iris is pasting on the side of Wilburman’s face. I mean, does he just stand there grinning like an idiot while she reapplies it between smooches? (Who am I kidding? He absolutely stands there grinning like an idiot trying to cover up his boner.)
MW: You could also say that the car careened into the sidewalk because there was a old guy in the street WHO GOT PUSHED IN BY WILBUR !!!
GA: This has been a Shaggy Dog Story of two months. Now tell us how Walt has lived so long.
DtM: It’s too bad Dennis the Menace hasn’t acknowledged the Comics Curmudgeon, or this strip could’ve featured a cameo by Uncle Lumpy
MW – Those paled-out *&^@#s in the background know they better hurry if they’re going to beat Pottymouth Mc@#$@#$ to the dumpster diving.
Hi and Lois: Nah, it’s too easy to suggest it’s their sex tape. Better to imagine it’s a video Chip found on the side of the road and brought home in hopes he gets the house to himself some night to investigate. After discovering it’s a bootleg of CHUD, he’ll recognize the wanting is better than the having, a truism Hi could have laid on him anytime.
Hi Flagston was on the bleeding edge when he bought that Urotsukid?ji: Legend of the Over-Fiend OAV direct from Japan.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Dennis the Menace: “Allow me to educate you, Dennis,” Martha said as she reached for the bone saw under her sink. “Have you ever heard of ‘stumpy’?”
This one hits close to home for those of us watching The Jinx.
And (no spoiler alert, I hope) last night introduced me to Chinga Chavin, who had such country hits as Asshole from El Paso and Cum Stains on My Pillow. I realized I lead a sheltered life, but I had not been familiar with his repertoire before.
Hey Honey, did you ever hear about Traci Lord? Possessing this tape is technically a Class A felony but I kept it for a night just like this.
MW: Trying and failing to maintain my sanity in the face of the non-Euclidean nightmare geometry of that car wreckage. Did it hit the wall so hard that it disintegrated into a vapour gently wafting away on the breeze?
H&L: Look, I know “Modern technology bad and complicated, old technology good and easy” is one of Hi & Lois‘s staples, but trust me – these days you need to be way more of a tech-savvy hipster to maintain a VCR and connect one to a modern smart TV than to just press the “Netflix” button on your TV remote.
MW: God, I hope this is one of those waking dream scenarios where Wilbur’s fantasy melts away and he realizes it’s the old man kissing him.
H&L: “And by ‘watch’ I mean just look at the actual cassette, because we don’t have a functioning VCR, obviously. Popcorn?”
DtM: Lumpy. stumpy, schlumpy, the list of fitting rhymes goes on and on, Frankly I’m embarrassed for you Dennis.
MW: Eh, it was one of those driverless cars, and they do that all the time.
HnL: “I recorded this off Cinemax before they made it impossible to tape stuff off their channel.”
DtM: I’m going to assume Dennis doesn’t know what rhymes are, rather than whoever wrote this (and Dennis forgot “lumpy” among other things). I’m going to further assume Dennis meant he couldn’t make an anagram from “grumpy,” and he’d be right about that. “Rum Pyg” is maybe the best one.
Again with the Mary Worth: [Extremely Ringside Announcer Voice] You’ve heard of Mary, the Most Blessed Mother of Jesus, the Amazareth of Nazareth, but get ready to rumble with Wilburman, the one and only Virgiiinnnn Faaaatheeerrrr!
Frazz: “The hypothermia-induced brain damage really helps me forget my troubles.”
Luann: Holy crap! This thing is still going! At least Tiffany got some sleep, or at least a change of clothes. She definitely missed her math class, though.
CS: This is Wilburian heroism I can appreciate.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:Well, FWIW, I’ve never heard of The Jinx, but I’m always happy to creep somebody out. And I’ll check out Chingo Chavin, thanks for the tip. (That’s what she said.)
9CL: Awwww, twu wuv!
“Chwaer?”
“Tad?!”
“Mae’n rhaid i mi ymddiheuro i chi.”
“Rwyt ti yn?”
“Am roi fy llaw o amgylch dy ganol.”
“Nid oes angen i chi ymddiheuro. Fe wnes i anghofio bod gen i ganol hyd yn oed.”
“Mae’n waist fendigedig. Ac mae gennych chi wên felys.”
“Ond dydw i ddim yn gwenu.”
“……………….. Nawr rydych chi.”
@Joe Momma: Omelas would have fewer defectors if its perfect utopia was entirely dependent on the suffering of Wilbur Weston.
@taig:
On Luann : remember when this storyline started, april first was “next week”? And now it’s STILL going on, but april first was LAST MONTH
MW: Wilbur Weston may not be the hero that Charterstone needs, but he is the hero that Charterstone deserves.
Zits: Hey, Connie, teenagers’ brains aren’t fully formed, so it might take them awhile to notice “obvious” things.
FC: Perfect encapsulation of Jeffy. No notes.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: What did the leper say to the prostitute? Keep the tip.
While on that subject:
Why did the leper fail his driver’s test? He left his foot on the brake.
Why did they stop the hockey game in the leper colony? There was a face off in the corner.
MW: I can’t believe I sat through a month of “dogs are great!” and two straight weeks of “SoNiA’s NoT mY dAuGhTeR!” only to potentially quit reading because of a Wilbur story line. Does Moy not understand that the appeal of Wilbur is in seeing him suffer, not in seeing him be inexplicably rewarded while he has gross sex fantasies?
@Anonymous: Oh, yeah! They really blew the due date for this assignment.
@Baja Gaijin: They’re all pretty great. I can’t choose.
9CL – The tale of the priest and the nun who got married and had a dozen babies, because Catholic and horny equals population explosion, was from before I started reading this strip.
Still, I just can’t imagine being interested in it.
They are already madly in love and sneaking around together. And we know how the story ends – it’s exactly like the Amos and Edda story where they fall instantly in love and then stay like that forever, which cuts down on the intrigue.
I’ve seen cartoonists go on extended vacations. Sometime they never return. Sometimes they just rerun old strips. Sometimes they completely change the premise of the entire feature overnight.
I’ve never seen this “I’ll travel back in time then wank around the old storyline a bit, without adding anything to it”.
I don’t understand why he won’t use any of his half dozen paired-off couples anymore. They haven’t been killed off, they could just show up at the diner and (this is critical) have NEW! adventures. Or he could invent new chinless dweeby musicians and oversexed female musicians who duet with them!
This is an “I’m too poor to retire but too lazy to put any effort into this, so I’ll just coast on crap until I can’t get away with it anymore” installment.
Hi and Lois: If the writers aren’t going to give us a joke, they might as well share what’s on the tape (porn?) with us.
Just saying…
H&L: The movie must be some terrible 80s-90s direct to video schlock that nobody bothered to convert to DVD and/or Blu-Ray. Maybe Hi is trying to start his own Best of the Worst knock-off.
MW: I’ll admit to being caught up in my ADHD daydream world from time to time, but never so much that I would be completely oblivious to a loud, spectacular car crash that happened right behind me. That level of self-centeredness takes commitment.
DT: “X marks the spot,” eh? Oh, Scardol, you are such a wiener.
The tape is their cosplay of Princess Leia being seduced by Jabba the Hutt.
Sorry, you old @&^$, but I think the fall to the road gave you massive head trauma. The only reason the car swerved into where you were standing on the sidewalk was to avoid where you were collapsed on the street. I’d say you should go to the hospital to see to your severe concussion, but you’re in the comics and even Rex Morgan MD prefers to avoid medical drama these days.
***
I know you want something recognizable to your Boomer demographic, Hi and Lois, but if you’re not going to have a joke you might as well try to be more impressive and have fun baffling people by still having Betamax tapes instead.
MW – It looks like a purple people eater to me….
H&L – I hope this takes a Japanese horror turn….
DtM – Martha would add stumpy….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Hi and Lois-So something from the 1989s then?
RMMD-“She’d better be or I’ll send that vet to the cornfield,” Sarah says.
MW-And running into a simple trash can totaled the car killing the driver.
Mary Worth: Wilbur is daydreaming about his ex from two relationships ago. Apparently he has given up on Estelle and is not jealous of Dr. Ed but thinks he is a suitable replacement for Zak and that he “deserves” Iris.
Moy has clearly forgot when Wilbur and Zak bonded over a mutual love of soccer. The more Wilbur-focused this strip becomes, the less I want to read it. Wilbur has went from making appearances every 2-3 years to 50% of the storylines beings about him. And we are supposed to find him lovable and sympathetic?
DtM – Castle, hassle, and tassle almost rhyme with asshole, if you feel like adding a second stanza.
MW: Perhaps this old man is suffering from a case of sudden and severe dementia brought about by Wilbur’s shove which caused him to be so bewildered by the car due to forgetting just what a car looks like. That’s the only plausible explanation why he thinks that Wilbur saved his life. Someone should really take him back to the home before he gets lost. And the old man too.
Joking aside, this Wilbur story is making me legitimately angry. We don’t know if that boy wouldn’t have seen the vehicle that hit his ball, and there is nothing to indicate that the car didn’t swerve to avoid hitting the old man that Wilbur shoved into the street. Even if, say, the driver had a heart attack and was going to crash onto the sidewalk anyway, that doesn’t take away from Wilbur committing assault while lost in his fantasies. He still needs to be arrested and spend time in prison and/or a mental health facility, and I say this as no fan of the carceral system (especially in the US).
C’shaft: Game recognizes game (note: the “game” in this case is self-centered assholery.)
DT: So he buried it under a large tree in a public park on a busy metropolitan street? I’m just saying, it’s not exactly Kit Williams’ Masquerade, you know?
GT: Great, Rubin’s been binge watching Reservation Dogs.
JP: How long does Rurik think he can keep this up?
“But there was a large fireball!”
“It was just lightning hitting a tree.”
“Aaaaah, my dad’s arm just fell on our windshield!”
“Probably dropped from an airplane carrying a shipment of mannequins.”
Luann: Someone who’s boring, annoying, and discontented? Pretty sure Gunther is free this afternoon.
Phantom: “I’m proud of you, son. You’ve learned the first lesson in being a Phantom: always take the credit and never, ever admit to being wrong.”
RMMD: “…Or I’m blaming you!”
MW: I’m worried about Wilbur’s mental state. There’s “daydreaming” and there’s “going into a fugue so strong you don’t notice yourself shoving people and a horrible car crash right next to you”. One of these things ends in a murder-suicide and it AIN’T daydreaming.
@Tabby Lavalamp: Battery, actually, but rest assured that California law will keep the schlubby schmuck off the streets for about 2-4 years if convicted. You only get about a year for kids but elder abuse is serious business.
Nothing brings home just how much all the streaming services have come to fill the exact same function as thousands of TV channels used to than this joke, that would not need a lot of tuning to work just as well in about 1985. I know Hi and Lois here is just trying to make fun of a thing for being new, but it works really well as a symbolic gesture announcing the collapse of the streaming bubble. It’s a whole thing, not to get into the tangled web of investment loans coming due and Hollywood unions catching up with the technology meaning they can’t keep underpaying creators, but it’s definitely a bubble that’s going to burst and the concept of digital distribution may be in for some fundamental changes. It may just be an accident but newspaper comics looking like they have figured this out is hilarious to me.
Hi basically found the 2 Girls 1 Cup of the 1980s and is fully intending to traumatize his wife.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Are you transcribing from Blanche Knott, or quoting from memory?
Phantom: “Isn’t that right, Devil?” (wink, nudge)
“I own you now, punk.” (throaty growl)
H&L: It’s the tape Hi made when they conceived Chip. Thirsty was the cameraman and fluffer.
DtM: Considering Mr. Wilson is a red hatted MAGA, you could go with Trumpy.
This week: Dr. Ed wanders away from MW and into RMMD’s veterinary clinic and absent-mindedly euthanizes Rex’s dog.
@Baja Gaijin: Aldo, I think.
H&L – “I’ll stand here and delicately hold the tape while you get the VCR out of the garage and hook it up. And be sure to set the correct time. I hate it when it just blinks 12:00. Damn, I can hardly wait to watch Revenge of the Nerds. Robert Carradine is a comic genius!”
CS: Let me get this straight. Ed Crankshaft is making excuses for being a bad bus driver, and Harry Dinkle is warmly remembering a time he was kept from conducting a band performance. Who are these people?
MARY WORTH: Hey, old dude? The @^$& would notice what he did if you showered him with kisses and caresses. Just a hint
@Ukulele Ike: Not that the family of sociopaths would notice a random doctor deciding to take their dog from them. Candy is pretty much another toy to those brats with how much they care about her getting treatment for their negligence causing her to get sick.
H&L: So, were the young Hi Flagston and Lois Bailey among the pioneers in the field of home-made boudoir video productions? If they were in fact the first in their group of friends to own a video camera, is that apparent fondness for new technological gadgets why they named the child whose conception is depicted on this tape “Chip”?
Mary Worth – Wilbur feels like some sort of tragic Greek hero (minus ever having been a great king and/or warrior) whose hubris offended the Gods, leaving him to actually do the great deeds of his imagination, but never knowing it. Personally I am interested in listening to the missionaries from whatever religion claims their deity is responsible for this form of justice against Wilbur.
Hi and Lois – That’s clearly not a VHS case Hi is holding, being too thin and not the right ratio. That is a publication for hardcore collectors of the format. If you want to understand the weird world of hardcore collectors, there is a 2013 documentary Adjust Your Tracking. If you want the Cliffnotes version, just know that one of the key interview subjects does his interview from a ball pit.
Dennis the Menace – They say that the way to get an answer on the internet isn’t to ask the question, but give the wrong answer, as people’s urge to correct and be right is far more motivating than simply being helpful.
The same goes for a lot of accounts on social media that farm engagement by posting wrong answers, or incompetent version of activities.
The creators of Dennis have finally gotten the message, and now English teachers will be sharing and debating the wrongness of this strip, driving up digital engagement with this comic so it can transition out of the dying newspaper format.
Dennis – I’m writin’ a cartoon about Dennis the Menace, but I couldn’t handle logic. So I went with illogic.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Here comes the boss back from the vet”
“Hi, Don Abundio! Did they patch up the dog’s tail?”
“Yes, they did…”
“But I should’ve changed out of my hunting gear first!”
DtM: Thanks to Mrs. Wilson, by the end of the day Dennis knew all the lyrics to “The Humpty Dance”.
The real menace is that both those words apply more stereotypically to old women than old men. When the light dawns, Dennis is going to be wearing that cookie jar.
@taig: well you’ve never had to pry gum off the bottom of Dennis’s desk.
@6 nescio: Did you happen to look at the mashups in comment #1? You might be pleased.
SFx: Come on, Missus Beaver, that’s a working firepit. Reeky wasn’t burning birdhouses for kicks — a rat’s gotta eat.
YOU could always have invited him over for a hot dinner, an hot bath, and subsequent hot rat action.
@Baja Gaijin: The second one is only a fantasy because even if Wilbur is a consenting party, he will never be a proper prison bitch. That’s why they call him One Tap.
@matt w: Ah! Good one!
“I’m writin’ a poem about Mister Wilson and I was really stuck on the rhyme scheme until I saw that glass bowl you’re carryin’!”
Bacön: Maybe not as much fun as you thought.
HI AND LOIS: Given that the VHS era is in fact considered the “golden” age of pornography, it really does looks like Hi’s “golden olden” is something that has “Does Dallas” at the end of it’s title (Er…I’m guessing. Of course I wouldn’t know because I don’t watch utter filth like that. No siree bob. (Trails of in nervous laughter))
@Ty: The Flagstons learned that day just how much Thirsty would do for a six pack.
reFoob — today’s rerun has some of the best dialog I’ve seen in ages.
@Sequitur: Yikes! They were allowed to publish that?
Is one of the lesser known side effects of a near death experience seeing everything in pink or iis the vehicle that tried to kill him trying again with toxic smoke fumes? You decide.
Slylock Fox: I thought the answer would be “bird bones”.
@Tabby Lavalamp: MW: maybe Wilbur can be a hero to his 350 pound cellmate who has MOTHER tattooed on his arm. Seriously KM can’t possibly believe anyone feels sympathy for Wilbur.
GIL THORP: Ok, I’m calling foul here. Small-town Milford has a “Rez” that’s far enough away from the school to be noticable, but is still within the city limit? Imaginatively called the “Milford Rez” rather than something steeped deeper in the culture? Come on l, now!
GIL THORP (2): Well nevermind all of that and let’s concentrate on something important….like why the Blue Brothers are after Leo.
@Ukulele Ike:
Put some Frank Zappa on the stereo to set the mood…
@Professor Well Actually:
Smash cut to Marry baking 12,465 muffins….
MW: I’m genuinely disgusted. Nothing Wilbur has done could be remotely described as heroic and even delusional Wilbur should realize Zac is better looking than he is.
FG: Quit dancing around the truth, Fria. The real reason is that Arborian men have big wieners. And speaking of which, notice that Dale and Ronal (or Ron as Dale calls him) have been left behind in the palace together.
CS: The two biggest assholes in comicdom are meeting face to face. Maybe they’ll achieve critical mass and subject the Funkyverse to nuclear annihilation.
CS: Dinkle, why are you even giving him a book? We all know Ed can’t read to save his life.
Phantom: Liar, liar, stripey pants on fire, Junior.
DtM — For at least the last seventy years, only children and poetasters have believed that poetry has to rhyme. Menace level: Archaic!
@2+2=7: Instead of folding 10,000 paper cranes to wish for a friend to get better, Mary Worth bakes 12,456 muffins to try and convince Santa Royale that Wilbur’s destructive rampage is just another one of his “endearing quirks.”
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: May is coming up soon, and the saps are running.
Phantom; Folks, I think the Candy Caper of last week in Rex Morgan showed us the folly of Animal talent workin’ without an agent. And we’re still not *sure* she’ll be okay.
But today … I gotta admit… Devil has done pretty well for himself negotiating his own contracts! He’s now being written as the absolutely smartest and most likable character in the Phantom universe! Yeah, he’s got ’em, especially Junior, right where he wants ’em. I may need to hire him as a consultant….
It’s a good thing Dennis never read Roger Ebert, who occasionally used the phrase “rumpy-pumpy”.
Well, if anyone would have a functioning VCR, it would be the Flagstons
MW-This is going viral.
The Yankees hired Stump Merrill as manager in the 1990s, and someone in the organization was asked how he got his nickname. The reply: “I dunno. I never saw him in the shower.”
Regarding H&L’s porn video (isn’t it great that we no longer have to write p0rn to get it by the modbot?), I’m reminded of the University of Minnesota’s husband-wife gymnastics coaches, Katalin and Gabor Deli. In 1990, after a meet, they taped themselves doing the dirty. They did it on a videotape of the match held that evening. The next day, forgetting that they had taped over part of the meet, they gave the tape to the gymnasts to watch, complete with their post-meet gymnastics performance. Gabor got fired over it.
@Baja Gaijin:
Number2: If loving you is wrong.
FC – If you ever thought, “Jeffy is so stupid that he’d eat mud pies,” congratulations. It’s just been confirmed.
Rhymes With Orange – Wait until he wants to emphasize what’s on the whiteboard and gets the laser pointer out.
Frazz – Of course, I’m so fit that the cold doesn’t prevent me from doing 10,000 laps. You don’t, do you? See you later – I have to find Caulfield so we can cut you up behind your back.
Mary Worth – Seriously, is this story going to be endless repetition of Wilbur mindlessly shoving people, then being oblivious when he accidentally saves their lives? Moy has a strange idea of heroism.
9CL – Unusual. This couple are different in that both are emotionally stunted milquetoasts. It’s different because the female is always a narcissistic viper who dominates the male. This is like a breath of putrid air.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Chinga Chavin – holy cow! Sounds… sketchy at best, that murder trial must have been something, had to be almost as confusing as the current Gil Thorp “plot” line.
CS: @Banana Jr. 6000: Cranky & Dinkle are behaving oddly because Lillian fell asleep in the garage below with the engine running, and the fumes are starting to seep upstairs. Or at least I hope that’s the reason.
Mary Worth: So while the comic strokes off Wilbur for “saving” this old fart, the dude in the car is totally dead, right?
Hi And Lois: I’m someone who vastly prefers analog “made-to-last” media over digital “disposable” media, such that I still have a large collection of VHS tapes and a VHS player, and even I think this is labored. Get it together, Hi.
Dennis The Menace: Beginning to think that Dennis is less of a menace and more just kinda dumb.
@I speak Jive: I don’t have high expectations for a woman who writes about a meddling old hag who thinks her word is God because her
peonsfriends use her “sage advice” as a substitute for psychological treatment.I’m impressed that they have a working VCR.
Fortunately(?), Wilbur’s story takes an abrupt turn starting tomorrow.
Unfortunately, we’ll never find out what happened to the driver of the crashed car.
Gasoline Alley: Idiots shoving people is not just for Mary Worth anymore.
MW:
There are red marks all over Wilbur’s face even though Iris isn’t wearing lipstick. Maybe he has the Andromeda Strain. Fingers crossed.
MW:
Do purple cars emit purple smoke? Is that how that works?
FG: Where’s Bok? If I were venturing into a frozen wasteland inhabited by marauding giants he’d be my first choice to ride shotgun.
CS: Interesting. I’ve commented before that a focus on specific terrible characters is sometimes enough to make me miss other terrible characters, but apparently, even a steady diet of Lillian, Harry Dinkle and Batton Freaking Thomas isn’t enough to make me think “Oh good, Ed’s back!”
DT: So … I guess Ettinger just really wanted to draw the 1960s live action Batmobile, and Curtis was all “Why not? If there’s one thing this strip’s about, it’s self-indulgent pop culture nostalgia! That’s certainly a better use of our time than progressing this story!”
FC: The early Peanuts strips currently being repeated as Peanuts Begins did it better. Too often, perhaps, but better.
JP: Today in the mysterious time-and-space bending dimensions of the Cavelton Triangle, Rurik has driven far enough away that he can pass the entire house blowing up as thunder, in the time it took Helena to say “Now that we’re done, I’m just glad both our children will be safe.”
GT: “Why would Leo live this far from school?” asks the guy behind the steering wheel, who apparently had no idea where they were going.
SH: Boy, I can’t wait to learn how this leads absolutely nowhere.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: And thanks to Meg Ryan, that marked only the second time within a few years where you heard orgasmic moans coming out of a Deli.
@Guillermo el chiclero: My guess is that Fria is looking forward to a little alone time with Flash. Note the absence not only of guards, but of a Royal Chaperone.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the palace, Dale and Prince Ronin are already naked and between the sheets.
@JamesBont: At the risk of exposing my Pluggerdom, we have two VHSes. One of them is theoretically connected to the flatscreen in the living room, although I’ve never actually figured out how to get them to communicate, but the other is built into the CRT in the kitchen, and it still works fine! There haven’t been any new VHS releases in over a decade, sure, but the tapes I already had didn’t stop existing! (Well, okay, most of them didn’t stop existing. Some of them have had unfortunate snarling and snapping incidents.) If nothing else, we need it to watch Muppet Family Christmas every year, or at least to watch it with the Muppet Babies singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, as God and Jim Henson intended.
Monday Squickies
Mary Worth: “That low down dog-humping, glue-huffing, piece-of-shit, window-licking diseased son of a cuntlapping dicksucking motherfucking whore saved my life and he doesn’t even know it, the jerk.”
Hi and Lois: “I can’t decide what to watch.” “This snuff porn?”
Dennis the Menace: “Now how about some humpy-humpy in your rumpy-rumpy, old lady? Too bad I’m young, so I’ll use your dildo-wildo.”
Everyone is going on and on about how Wilbur is a hero because he “saved” an old man suffering from both Tourette’s and senility but what happened to the driver? Apparently nobody cares because there’s apparently better things to focus on like Wilbur’s daydream going into filler.
@Guillermo el chiclero: I wonder if there are chickens on Mars. It might explain Bok’s incredible skills in close combat if everyone he’d every known made a ‘Bok Bok Chicken” joke at him.
MT: “Plain fire”?! That’s weirder than “plains fire” a couple days ago. It’s a grass fire, Narrator, or maybe grassland fire, cheatgrass fire, desert fire, or whatever term is being used for fires that happen when cheatgrass invades dry western ecosystems. Maybe, to quote MW, “@&^$ cheat fire.”
I can’t tell if Mary Worth is 100% earnestly trying to tell a story about accidental heroism or if they make the comic in the old Marvel Style and the artist hates Wilbur but the Writer has an unfounded love for Wilbur. I swear, if the word balloons had been taken away, I would have been completely convinced that this vignette was about Wilbur accidentally shoving someone into the street because he was too distracted to know what he was doing and a car swerving to miss him; Wilbur almost got someone killed.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Thanks, that anecdote was interesting. I skimmed the linked content. Reportedly the husband taped the sex without his wife’s knowledge. Reminds me of that old column that used to regularly appear in some magazine, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?”
@Poteet: Just a plain fire, nothing fancy.
CRANKSHAFT: I’ve reached the point where I hope something really awful will happen to some people in that bookstore that will illustrate how the bookstore is out of compliance with local zoning, the ADA, and common sense, just for a start. I don’t really care who the victims are, but with Harry and Ed there now, spouting stupid dialogue, this seems like a golden opportunity.
@120 Myrtle: Agreed. This is a fire without jimmies, sprinkles, mini gummi bears or even whipped cream.
@Myrtle: HAR! Yeah, forget about spotting, crowning, and flare-ups, this was just plain flames.
Beetle Bailey-That’s not a cupcake. That’s a kegcake.
@Baja Gaijin: But also without olive eyes, gelatin, or “sauce.”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I think that it is a nice touch the the court’s opinion called the proponents “Relators”.
Luann: Speaking of Shaggy Dog stories…. one month of “Cheerleader BAD! Influencer BAD! Inner Beauty GOOD!” and counting
MW: Tomorrow, Wilbur meanders into an arcade and accidently bumps into a claw machine that the Grim Reaper is at and tipping it over, enabling all the souls to escape.
1 minute agoDetails
“That @$$ just saved my @$$ and he doesn’t even realize it! What a Frazzhole!”
Chorus: “Frazzholeman, Frazzholeman, does whatever a Frazzhole can! Pushes people any size, supersizes all his fries, here comes the Frazzholeman!”
Pull back to reveal Sarge and Beatup Bailey watching their favorite Sat morning cartoon on the rec room tv.
@K. Ivan Ruppert: Conspiracy theory that Moy adores Wilbur and can’t get enough of him while Brigman wants to draw him being ripped apart by wolves so she purposely makes Wilbur look like an unattractive slob.
H&L: We’re all joking that the tape that Hi wants to watch with Lois is some kind of porn video, but please remember that this is H&L, for Pete’s sake. Hi has probably borrowed Ted Forth’s copy of The Star Wars Holiday Special.
@Needless Exposition: I’m willing to believe this. Pass the tinfoil.
MW: still thinking this is a takeoff on It’s a Wonderful Life.
Luann – “We need a more miserable client.”
Yeah. Good luck with that.
Pluggers: Does this mean that the Wilford Brimley plugger beastman is now officially dead?
Pluggers: If the first section of the paper you go to are the obituaries to see if anyone you know died, you’re a plugger.
FG: So Fria and Flash leave behind some perfectly good transportation in the form of snowbirds and go on foot the rest of the way?
GT – “We’re here. The reservation, Dan!”
“What! We were supposed to call ahead and reserve time just to see this guy? I sure didn’t make one! Now you’re asking me for the printout? Seems awfully high and mighty, if you ask me!”
@Guillermo el chiclero: They found out the snowbirds were Pluggers.
Luann:
“We need a more miserable client.”
Got a feeling Lez is soon going to get a knock on his door.
love is… making the TSA screening super-easy.
@Professor Well Actually: #133
“MW: still thinking this is a takeoff on It’s a Wonderful Life.”
I have deep pity for Wilbur’s guardian angel…
@Needless Exposition: #130
I think that would be the only way June could keep her insanity having to illustrate such ridiculous stories…
Oops!!! I meant “sanity”!!! (…or did I…)
@Guillermo el chiclero: Fria must be a fan of the 1912 Robert Falcon Scott polar expedition.
“Are we going to use skis, Captain Scott?”
”NO! Skis are for PUSSIES!”
”Dogsleds, then?”
”NO! We’re going to haul everything over hundreds of miles of ice through blinding snow by foot and sheer manpower!”
”Well….congrats in advance, Captain Amundsen, wherever you are. I just hope we don’t all starve and freeze to death on the way back, a mile from the fuel-and-provisions depot.”
@Ukulele Ike: #142: Well, Scott did have those tundra-dwelling ponies, which were quite delicious when they ran out of canned bully beef.
@Ukulele Ike: The last thing she told her regent was ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’
@Guillermo el chiclero: Scott and his party disdained the Norskis because they planned to eat the sled dogs that got injured, but they themselves ate their ponies. I always thought the English were horse-lovers as well as dog-lovers?
Scott also dispatched a British Naval officer to buy the ponies in New Zealand instead of Captain Oates, the Army man who actually KNEW HOW TO CHOOSE HORSES. Navy dude came back with a bunch of awfully sick ponies.
@Voshkod: “OH, CAPTAIN OATES!!!!” What was the Brit comedy show that used that as a continuing punchline? (It had a series of skits that kept putting Titus Oates into bizarre situations where he could be noble and self-sacrificing. “Will you take the last potato, Captain Oates?”)
@Ukulele Ike:
The Lee and Herring series Fist of Fun featured a recurring sketch which portrayed Oates’s sacrifice not as heroism, but as an act of passive-aggression. This behaviour would continue in other situations, such as Oates at a dinner party (in full Antarctic expedition gear) refusing the last roast potato in a way obviously designed to elicit sympathy.
— wikipedia
@Daisy: how would Charterstone be different if Wilbur had never been born?
@147 Professor Well Actually: The apartment complex would be buried underneath uneaten muffins and salmon squares.
@taig: Authentic Welsh!
My name really happens to be Sheila E. Chadwell. My mother is a verbally abusive psycho, my husband Ned is a punchable man-child, my daughter Hailey is a hyper loon who doesn’t seem to age beyond 13, and almost all the neighbors hate us.
But I can grow carrots, so fuck you, Forths!
@Sheila Chadwell: You can’t punch Ted Forth! It would be like stomping on a hamster.
The Family Circus Spanish to English.
@Buck Ripsnort: Well…as authentic as Google Translate can make it.
@Professor Well Actually: Without Wilbur, nobody would have a baseline reference for somebody totally outside Mary’s sphere of meddle except maybe Ian
ex Organ, V.D.: “She better be…or my friends will make Dr Ed an offer he can’t refuse!”
@Daisy:
It’s a Wilber-filled Life “Teacher says, ‘Whenever a Weston burps, an angel gains his wings.’ “
Today’s Shoe ruins the joke by using broader category “dentists” instead of “orthodontists”, not that it’s much of a joke.
@Daisy:
Oops!!! I meant “sanity”!!! (…or did I…)
___________________
“Boss, I know there ain’t no sanity clause!”, Chico Marx.
Late Thread Cuisine: Again with the fish, but with no red stuff! Or visible eyes staring at you. Or olive eyes staring at you. The goblet in the background is a bit sus.
@Sheila Chadwell:
But I can grow carrots, so fuck you, Forths!
___________________________
Bugs Bunny quote from the rarely screened short “Fudd You, Warner Brothers!” (1937)
@159 Baja Gaijin:
Has it come to this? Eating bait fried in lard?
@159 Baja Gaijin: The Devil made them do it.
@Ukulele Ike: $146: All of this talk about the Scott Expedition makes me think of Monty Python’s “Scott of the Antarctic” sketch where Scott has to wrestle a lion.
Blondie the Neighborhood Bumstead: Of course, Dag would pick the superhero that gets his powers from food.
“Popeye’s not a superhero, Mr B.!” “Maybe not, but he’s owned by our syndicate, Elmo.”
MW: without Wilbur Mary would be bored and weigh 50 pounds more because of all the muffins she’s had to eat.
MW: no Wilbur would mean no Dawn, which would mean an epidemic of blue balls at the college.
@Garrison Skunk:
That’s a fucking lot of angels.
@Baja Gaijin: Mmmmmm. Mound’o’fish.
MW: I’m imagining a Family Circus-style “dotted line” comic, instead of depicting one of the Keane kids wandering about their neighborhood, we follow Wilbur’s path of jerky inattentiveness and accidental rescues all about Santa Royale.
@161 Sequitur: Yesterthread was actual full sized fish. Everyone carped. This thread it’s a pile of small fish. There’s just no satisfying some people. [/s]
@162 seismic-2: Mmm, devil’s food cake.
@164 Garrison Skunk: Popeye the Sailor Man or Popeye of the Spicy Chicken Sandwich fame? I lean toward the latter.
@168 taig: You got a choice of fish there. One has to be appetizing to you.
@Baja Gaijin: I’ll have to get back to you on that.
@Baja Gaijin: Gotta go with Aldo.
@Baja Gaijin: I might be able to deal with the lard, but not the cayenne. If there’s an angelic version, I’d try that.
love is… getting on the plane naked making sure, that in the future, no one will want to ever sit in your seat.
@Baja Gaijin: OH MY GOD DEVILED WHITEBAIT IS DA BOMB!!!!!
I you are in London or Edinburgh or anywhere in the U.K. or the Free Irish State near the water and you see WHITEBAIT on the menu ORDER IT.
The closest you can get to these delicious little fuckers in America is at a Greek seafood place that grills sardines. Those are good, but they are NOTHING like WHITEBAIT!!!!!
@173 Poteet: I knew he’d be popular.
@174 Poteet: The cayenne and black pepper are sprinkled on the fish after they’re been taken out of the fryer. Your or whoever cooks it could easily leave them off.
@176 Ukulele Ike: Um, what he said.
Tomorrow’s Mary Worth tonight!
It’s mayo time!
@178 Sequitur: Are you tempting me into doing a mashup on tomorrow’s Mary Worth? Because it’s working.
“You see, I couldn’t think of ONE word that rhymes with grumpy; I could only think of TWO words that rhyme with grumpy. Get it? It’s a very bad and dumb joke, and might not even make sense linguistically.”
@179 Baja Gaijin:
Do it! Release it after the new thread comes online. We’ll all be waiting for it.
@Pinky: Stumpy and Lumpy. Hmm. This could help us TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
@181 Sequitur: It? Them! I hope they get more comments than today’s set.
@183 Baja Gaijin:
Sorry for not commenting on your mashup. I like Aldo.
Here’s a imgur extra for your effort. Maybe it can be a late thread cuisine.
DtM: Mrs. Wilson, everything I say is a lie! Therefore, this statement is also a lie! Which means it’s true! But how can it be true, if I always lie? Riddle me that, Mrs. Wilson, riddle me THAT!!!
@The Brain: Narf
MW: All this time, and Wilbur never discovered his actual superpower: The ability to slow time to an excruciating crawl for everyone else whenever he’s daydreaming.
So now it’s the 7th duplicate strip in a row. At this rate Wilbur will reach the street corner in about June.
I guess it’s good that Wilbur is so unconcerned with his baldness or, you know, the rest of his face that even in his most ridiculous power fantasy he feels no need to get rid of his chins. It’s nice to see someone with healthy self-esteem, but uh, I wonder if crippling insecurity isn’t the more rational response to being Wilbur.
MW: “That @&^$ saved my life.” I assume @&^$ stands in for “son of a bitch.” But when you scroll through your brain’s list of dirty epithets the strip gets funnier and funnier. I like to think the old man is thinking, with a Ving Rhames accent, “that motherfuckah saved my life.”