Big developments, for certain definitions of “big”
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Shoe, 5/7/24
A classic Shoe bit is to use the structure of a test question at Skyler’s school to deliver a bad joke, even though the result is a test question no teacher, no matter how outlandish their pedagogy, would ever write. Anyway, I appreciate that today’s strip is mixing it up by changing the bad joke delivery mechanism to a pub trivia event, which is a fun and exciting new concept, if you’re a Shoe reader. I love that Roz hasn’t bothered to actually hire a trivia host and is just kind of reading questions off her phone. She’s not really trying very hard, so why should this guy actually try to come up with the right answer, when he could just deliver a gag calculated to delight 80-year-olds everywhere?
Judge Parker, 5/7/24
Remember “Declan”? I barely do, having mentioned him on this blog exactly once, and while a wine-drunk Abbey hinted during that appearance that maybe someday he and Neddie would get married, apparently Sophie is less enthused. I’m excited that this might be how we get back cold, calculating Sophie, who’s crunched the numbers and determined that Neddie and Declan have not put in enough love-hours to adequately establish a pair-bond worthy of being validated by the state government.
163 replies to “Big developments, for certain definitions of “big””
FC: Billy carefully considers his standing in the family before arriving at this subtle but effective critique of his father’s newspaper comic strip.
JP:
“Isn’t ‘Declan’ Elvis Costello’s real first name? Wait a minute — are you marrying Elvis Costello?”
“Roz … is just kind of reading questions off her phone”.
Come on now Josh, you are outing yourself as a young person. Clearly she’s reading off an index card, as we all did in the 1970s! None of Shoe’s regular readership would even understand the concept of reading questions off a phone.
Judge Parker: I think what we’re seeing today is Lockhorns: Origins.
MW: I was going to say that Stellan owes Willa $5.00, but I realized that neither fish would bet that Wilbur would score.
RMMD: There’s only one solution here: self-flagellation.
9CL: If all future dialogue in this strip were left to the readers’ imaginations, how happy the readers would be!
JP:
Are characters in this strip capable of making any comments that aren’t smart-alecky to one another?
Judge Parker : Is it just me, or does Declan have BIG “caricature of a real person based on a single photograph, so his head is always in the same position, and his face has roughly always the same expression, regardless of how little it fits” energy?
**************
Luann : there’s a lot to unpack about Luann becoming a litteral clown, but I wonder WHERE exactly this is taking us.
a) Luann goes to Italy to study
being an EVILSCARYCLOWNcircus arts. expect an exciting journey the likes of her trip to New York! ;b) Luann goes to Italy to study circus arts, this completely writes her out of the comic
indefinitelyfor a ltitle while;c) Luann, who can’t afford to travel to Italy for her studies, goes to the Pittsville Circus School instead, which is taught by Crystal and Knute, and where Luann is relentlessly bullied by her vastly superior classmate, Shannon.
d) This whole thing is unceremoniously, abruptly dropped by friday, and never spoken of again.
Shoe: All right, I’m just going to say it because this is going to piss me off all day otherwise: “Anna One, Anna Two.” That’s your punchline, Shoe team hacks. You completely blew it and you should feel bad.
JP: DRAMA! Oh, they’re going at it now, folks! Why? Because!
Luann: Leave it to Tara, the desperately poor young woman who casually buys fleets of recreational vehicles and expensive event tickets she doesn’t even bother to use while paying her way through college, to suggest that Luann spend thousands of dollars on a whim to go to Italy to study circus welding. And why not? As the saying goes, you’re only 19 for two or three decades.
MW: Scenario – you’re a writer, and you want to communicate that your protagonist is feeling lonely and rejected after getting abandoned during his date. What do you do? …No, Ms. Moy, put your hand down.
H&L: The only people who actually like this comic are sentimental grandmothers who never get tired of how much the baby likes the sun, but even they need occasional palate cleansers to reset from all the saccharine. That’s where the endless marital problems of Mr. Drunk Shitbag and Mrs. Domestic Violence come in.
DT: Remember how there was a recent bank robbery that Dick Tracy was assigned to solve, among several other active crimes like the Fata Morgana murders? Mike Curtis doesn’t! So now Dick is leaving work for the day at 9:45 in the morning for no reason other than to gawk at some acquaintance’s gimmicky new car. Oh, and through sheer stupid coincidence this is going to help him capture the bad guys, because how else could that work? Dick Tracy only investigates people before they’re suspected for crimes.
Today’s Shoe isn’t wunnerful.
Luann: ‘Good thing I’m white and have endless supplies of money from mommy and daddy and don’t have to worry about things like student debt or future career skills!’
RMMD: Does the little brat WANT Rex to punish her or something? If she keeps up this ‘iTs aLL mY FaULt’ shtick, I’m sure he’d be happy to oblige.
JP: This guy has to be a plant from Pavel’s mob, or Norton’s former mob, or SOME type of mob. We’ve had ‘Lev’ and ‘Rurik’ and so on. I mean, ‘Declan’?? He’s a phoney and not long for this world because April/Yelich/Blythe Danner is going to have to kill him.
Mark my words, in a few weeks (heck, maybe a few DAYS) we’ll be right back to the cloak-and-dagger crap.
Judge Parker‘s casting call for “Declan” attracted one 45-year-old with a widow’s peak, who came for the wine.
JP: Even with Palestinian/Israeli protests roiling NYC, Sophie feels safe in her bubble of WASPness.
Shoe – And he had two Mexican penises….
JP – Sophie’s notes for wedding toast – 1) Only dating a year 2) Groom has tiny penis 3)….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
MW: Trapped in the watery prison of their aquarium, Willa and Stellan are unable to follow not-Kristy’s example of abandoning Wilbur, but do the next best thing by turning tail and swimming to the back wall of the tank.
@Hibbleton: Hey, it’s not like she has to care about any of that particular international buzzkill if April’s not involved.
MW: This is two times in as many weeks that we’ve had these surprisingly jarring scene shifts. First Moy cheats us out of the Dawn storyline everyone has been clamoring for, then she can’t even give us the fan service of the return of the ‘AAAUUGGGHHH’!
@The Quiet Man:
#10. JP:. Oh my gosh, and I thought I’d be snide just to suggest Abby thinks he’d be an appropriate first husband.
Lawrence Welk had one child — a son named Larry. Damn you, Shoe, for making me waste fifteen seconds looking that up.
NATIONAL TEACHERS APPRECIATION DAY.
Frazz and Caulfield motivated me to find and read our president’s declaration. You still have time to send each of your students off with sn apple Ed or bottle of perfume. Better yet, a team of paper or gift card to Office Depot.
CANDORVILLE:. Why we must vote given even 2024 options.
MW: Convincing portrayals that Willa and Stellan show their feeder. Now for the Mary Muffin Meddling™ technique.
LUSNN:. Lu’s following same plan as I did. Get core courses out of the way, then explore interesting parts of life. I took fencing, art, acting, engineering, organic chemistry, religion, writing. Made me a competent part of the world.
Judge Parker: I remember “Declan” because he’s only the second person in history named “Declan” after the stand-in for Jabba the Hutt.
Slylock Fox: The difference is that the wizard on the left made a deal with Belial while the wizard on the right made a deal with Beelzebub.
Shoe: Well, it was an awkward set-up, but at least it was in service of a mediocre punchline about a TV show that went off the air over 40 years ago. Sometimes I feel like this whole strip is operating on a whole other humor metalevel where the medium is the joke and the joke is on us.
JP: I love that stunned face of Declan as he imagines the first thing coming out of Sophie’s mouth.
Judge Parker: Yes, Neddie and Declan have only been together a short while. That’s why he’s getting a head start on the central activity of his marriage. Drinking. I mean drinking.
(Alt joke: Declan, singing softly in the background: “For I kept the wine and threw away the Ro—no, wait, you’re Neddie, right?”)
Phantom: Wake up and smell the “POK” stick!
DtM: Banging on pots and pans is more of a toddler thing and not someone Dennis’ age. I gotta believe that Wilson’s chicken dinner is in that pot but George refuses to take the bait and blow his top. Menace level: standoff.
Shoe: I spent several minutes doing the research to understand that joke, and I feel qualified to say: it doesn’t work. Lawrence Welk said “And a one, and a two”. He did not say “And a one, and and a two”. That extraneous and turns this from a joke about a bandleader with a famous catchphrase which he rendered in his distinctive accent to a joke about a man who was just not very imaginative when he named his children.
@15 The Quiet Man: on Mary Worth: I considered making a mashup to include the Wilbur Scream. Maybe if I keep thinking about it, inspiration’ll arrive.
@18 Activist 1234: on Luann: A few contrasts between you and Luann: 1. You purposely arranged your studies to allow some meandering. 2. You have actual motivation to bring things to completion, such as graduating within a respectable timeframe. 3. You’re not a barely-functioning human.
MW – Coming up next – Wilbur discovers Megan is a porn star and spends the next six months mournfully watching her have sex with other men.
Shoe – The creative team behind Shoe finally learned about pub trivia, something that no doubt goes back a long time, but was very popular pre-COVID among Millennials. Now if only they could do a musical references from this century*
*I make this statement fearful that there is a Lawrence Welk revival by Gen-Z on TikTok that I am unaware of and Shoe’s creative team has their finger on the pulse of.
Rex Morgan – Jeez, Sarah, your dog just did a little counter surfing. It’s not like you went against your parents’ directive, wandered down to the creek to play, fell in and had to be rescued by Candy, who subsequently died of shock from the cold water because she was old and her heart just couldn’t take it…
Too soon?
JP- Declan? I thought that’s what Tattoo was yelling when a bunch of guys in white robes showed up at Fantasy Island.
MW: Oh, Wilbur, Wilbur, Wilbur. You don’t *feel* lonely and rejected. You *are* lonely and rejected.
Shoe: The 1950’s era Jack Benny Show comes on at 5am where I live and two weeks ago the guest star was Lawrence Welk and they did a “anna one anna two” joke. If you want to keep updated on cultural references in this strip you might want to start getting up a little early, just saying.
Shoe: That must be the third or fourth terrible joke this guy has uttered, considering how the other three have decided to crowd together as far away from the guy as possible.
JP: Randy(?) looks like he’s about to spill his drink on himself while figuring out what foul thing Neddie said.
CS: WHAT? Lillian’s got ANOTHER talent? What’s next, she’s going to host a talk show while painting a portrait and selling enough band candy to save Europe? And win then the Nobel Peace Prize for physics?
The pedant in me is annoyed that the setup for the joke in Shoe is bad trivia because Welk didn’t have twins. The realist in me is proud of Shoe for not even pretending that anyone born this century is reading newspaper comics.
Shoe: While the varied Bird-People do their stupid reaction shots to that terrible pun, the Perfesser looks into the audience’s soul as he suddenly becomes aware of what lies beyond the fourth wall. “I CAN SEE YOU”
Judge Parker: It’s too bad that Pavel is dead or Sophie would’ve been able to call a favor in to him and take care of this Declan problem. But alas, it was not meant to be, and so Sophie prepares to do it herself as she prepares her gear.
Crankshaft – So Loathsome Lil is going to be a jizz singer?
Frazz: I’m surprised the little jerk isn’t openly wondering why there isn’t a Student Appreciation Day.
Luann: You are no Jennifer Beals, and you’re way to bland to be a maniac.
CS: “OK. What I’m saying is we need someone really bad at singing to hide the fact that these idiots can’t play their instruments.”
9CL: Their enforced virtual conjoining has caused the Overlook Twins to develop scoliosis.
Luann: Ah, we just found out the topic of the next Luann supplemental illustrated novella e-book.
Shoe – You say “gag calculated to delighted 80-year-olds everywhere.” I say “joke I heard when I was a kid.” Tomato, tomahto.
MW: Wow, those fish are accomplished actors, Sid! They really look like they’re showing empathy for Wilbur.
Zits: I’ve got to say my conscience has never pulled on my ear like that.
FC: “I think my shoes are going to have more diarrhea.”
@41 taig: on Zits: Your conscience isn’t Carol Burnett.
MW-Poor Wilbur. He’s a mess without his daughter around for him to creepily watch.
Shoe-Just wait until the last generation who watched Lawrence Welk finally passes away. Comic writers will have no idea what to do.
Luann-You’re in community college, Luann. It’s only supposed to last two years not two decades.
Luann: Luann’s going to Clown College! Luann’s going to Clown College! Honk!
MW:
“I feel as if I am being held back by the reins on a horse…’Whoa‘ is me!”
LUANN – Oh, good, she can learn to weld her legs together. Not that it will make any difference.
A decade in college and she still doesn’t even have a major. Working on that General Studies degree, maybe she envisions a career in the Army working as General Halftrack’s assistant.
9CL – The twins’ hands are zip tied together behind their backs as they are frog marched, slouching, towards Gomorrah.
The Empty Void is a strange place. Amos was just here, but then he spoke to Edda and instantly vanished. Then Xiulan suddenly wandered by, disproving the theory that the void is infinite, but raising the question of why she just happened to walk by, let Edda whisper in her ear, and then vanish as well. Is the Void Monster feeding? Or did Edda accidentally bite her head off when she closed her maw?
JP: On one hand, I think a year is a decent time frame for a pair of twenty-somethings to start considering a long-term relationship. On the other, Declan hasn’t been seen much at all in this strip so for all I know Neddy met him at her lesbian friend’s wedding, invited him to Christmas with her family, and that’s it.
Shoe: Is Lawrence Welk even a Pluggerish reference at this point? Even when I was a kid he was a punchline for “lame outdated stuff your grandparents are into.”
Declan appears to be rapidly aging, his life force sucked away into the maelstrom that is Neddy’s life. He prays for a quick end and escape, which in Judge Parker time might be eight years or one splash panel saying ‘Seasons change’ and a follow-on panel of Neddy complaining how hard the frozen dirt is, and asking just how shallow can a shallow grave be?
Why is that poor farmer bird sitting by himself when Shoe, the Perfesser, and the other bird have their own trivia team on the other side of the bar? Couldn’t they have lent him one of their members, perhaps the unnamed and never-before-seen (?) bird so the teams would be even? Of course the farmer bird has to resort to bad puns, it’s just him against three!
Luann: the parental Degroots have as much or more reason to be frustrated with Luann as Dustindad has with Dustin. Luann doesn’t contribute a dime to the cost of her endless, aimless education.
Shoe-Doing Lawrence Welk jokes. We’re really stretching for the laughs.
JP — Uh, Sophie, you say “Best Wishes” to the bride. Didn’t you learn anything in that fancy finishing school?
The fictional Declan I’m most familiar with is the drug dealer from the later seasons of Breaking Bad. I can totally see a few weeks of marriage to Neddy turning him down that path. . .
Archie-Yet Archie doesn’t complain about all the men Veronica has spread her legs for.
Trivia night would imply the existence of non-trivia nights, i.e. nights in which meaningful stuff happens. Given this is the Shoe universe, this is absurd
Today’s Shoe is icebox worthy.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: I think the Void is infinite, but it can manifest things at Edda’s whim. Xiulan was probably plucked from “Hong Kong” to materialize here, so Edda can whisper “reality is a lie” to Xiulan. Then the Void whisks Xiulan away. Was it to “Hong Kong?” Edda doesn’t care, so the Void doesn’t either.
Sophie confirms that this strip is called “Judge Parker” because everyone linked to the Parker clan is very judgemental
C’shaft: Lilian is as baffled by the concept that anyone would want to hear her sing as I am. She has “warbly church choir soprano who can’t really hit the high notes” written all over her.
Dustin: Soooo, we’ve just given up pretending this strip is anything other than a Two Minutes Hate against the title character and through him everyone under the age of 40, huh?
GT: Here we see the importance of being careful when choosing names for your universe’s copyright friendly product names. While “Mike” is instantly recognizable as a Nike analogue (and possibly a reference to Mr. Jordan), the reader is just going to read it as the first name rather than as “my-kee” as is most likely intended. I would have gone with “Vike” because it sounds a little like “viking” or maybe something like “Tyche” in going with the obscure Greek god theme.
Luann: Once again, I’m faced with the problem of a viewpoint I generally agree with (ie. higher education shouldn’t be exclusively about preparing for a career path but about exploring broader interests and learning as well) being put in the mouth of a character who makes me want to disagree with them on general principle.
MW: Even the world’s smallest violin isn’t small enough to play the amount of sympathy Wilbur generates, or deserves.
Pluggers have so many scratches on their lenses.
RMMD: “Whatever, honey, go process your feelings of guilt somewhere else, okay? Daddy’s reached his parenting limit for the day.”
@taig: “the Void whisks Xiulan away. Was it to “Hong Kong?” Edda doesn’t care, so the Void doesn’t either.”
That’s still an unfinished storyline. Gerald and Ginger took over the airline and would boink every day in front of a window overlooking downtown Hong Kong.
But then Xiulan blackmailed her father into writing a check for “One Billion Laundered US Dollars” and moved to America. And then she worked a scheme where she would make Gerald move to America, but then fail to procure him somewhere to stay, so she could force him to live with Ginger and get married. But then he got distracted by legslegslegs and we never went back to the story. Maybe Edda is telling Xiulan that she recently saw Gerald, sleeping on a piece of cardboard out by the void.
Fucking hell. I laughed at Shoe.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: It’s clear that Brookeworld operates not according to the rules of our reality, but much like the classic Twilight Zone episode is dictated by the petulant whims of an omnipotent yet childish being. Most of the evidence indicates this being is Edda herself, as everything seems to revolve around her, and yet if this is the case one wonders why she hasn’t upgraded Amos to the Seth character model.
MW – “I feel lonely and rejected…maybe if I weren’t such a complete asshole.”
@59 TheDiva: on Crankshaft: I thought Lillian had “Jealous Ugly Hateful Horrible Loathsome Haggy Harridan” written all over her.
Don Abundio, translated:
“If you spoke English you’d know this meat is insulting you”
MW- Kinda disappointed. The speed at which Megan and the waiter were hitting it off, I was expecting them to get busy in the restaurant all while Wilbur kept wondering where she went.
Belated thanks to everyone who chimed in on the banana split discussion last night. For the record, I agree with @Baja Gaijin: The whole point of this dessert is being a sugary mess slowly melting together as you spoon it in.
JP: Declan looks blitzed. Hey, buddy! Go easy on the brown gravy!
JP: Declan ordered a sandwich au jus and now he’s drinking the beef drippings right out of the glass. No, Declan. That’s Wilbur Weston’s schtick.
Luann: Tara, you’ve known Luann long enough to know she follows the same career philosophy that Homer Simpson once advised Bart. “If you’re not good at it from the start, quit!”
FC: You can’t just take your shoes off and leave them outside, you stupid little shit?
Crankshaft: Loathsome Lil has some cheek thinking any man would have any interest in her dried up wrinkly leathery lady bits. I mean, other than as a substitute for saltpeter.
@68 Guillermo el chiclero: on Family Circus: You think Billy’s smart enough to notice his filthy shoes are removable? It took how many spankings before he realized he shouldn’t walk on the clean linoleum after mucking through the septic tank? My bet is at least quadruple digits.
@cheech wizard: I like it!
JP – Back when I was a young lad, I had a slight acquaintance with some guy who was a bar-band rock musician and heavy drug user. Most of the time that I knew him, he’d been in a sexual relationship with another guy, though I’m not sure how many other people knew that. Anyway, the last time I saw him was at a party with a bunch of people who I believe were mostly his circle of friends. At one point he stood up, with a woman I’d never met before at his side, and announced either that they were getting married, or having a child, or both, I forget. The reaction of literally everyone at the party was “Ummmmmm….” After a while he said, “Well, don’t everyone rush to congratulate us at once!”
Luann – Look, we’ve all had the “join the circus” fantasy in our 20s. I tried to join Cirque du Soleil repeatedly. Granted, for a marketing and education position, and mainly because I wanted to be in Montreal.
Is this a bad time to mentioned that if she had aged in real time, Luann would be in her late 40s/early 50s. And Puddles would be dead.
@taig:
#37. FRAZZ:. You know, on a couple Mother’s or Father’s Days we wondered why there was no Kids Day. Now we understand.
MW: Oh, boy, another Wilbur Pity Party. Gee, I wonder why your date “abandoned” you. Maybe because you used a different profile picture to catfish her into a date? Or perhaps you dominated the conversation about your ridiculously mundane life? Or could it be when you “conveniently” forgot your credit card and not only made a jackass out by turning out your pockets but still ordered things on her dime?
Who could just walk out on a catch like you, Wilbur?
@Activist 1234: Every day is Children’s Day.
@75 Needless Exposition: Not-Kristi walked out on a catch like Wilbur for a better catch.
JP: Look at the expression on the face of the actor playing “Declan.” He’s not even trying to stay in character. He’s trying to figure out how his life went so extremely wrong as to land him in JP, where he’ll almost certainly meet and be forced to interact with April The Seriously Bad-Tempered And Violence-Trained CIA Agent. (Yeah, I know, she’s supposedly done with the CIA. We’ll see how long THAT lasts.)
@Baja Gaijin: I can’t believe you just did that to us again.
@Baja Gaijin: It’s terrifying and possibly will trigger some sort of medical condition…still better than a date with Wilbur.
FC – Jeffy never has this problem, because he’ll pee and/or take a dump anywhere. Outside, in the kitchen, in church, anywhere.
Aunty Acid – I see that Aunty knows Frazz and Caulfield.
Crankshaft – Ye gods. This loathsome hag supposedly plots and writes murder mysteries, but she can’t understand a simple conversation.
Brewster Rockit – Nice job on those cicadas.
MW: “I feel LONELY and REJECTED. Also, my chin just got bigger for some reason. This is not a good day!”
@Banana Jr. 6000: On the positive side, neither Loathsome Lillian nor Tom Batiuk was awarded a Pulitzer Prize yesterday.
RexMD: Sarah is really determined to put herself in the doghouse, isn’t she…
@I speak Jive: With Harry and Lillian close to each other and interacting, the Extreme Loathsome Vibes are building up and up to the point that St. Spires might collapse.
Also, if it should somehow turn out that Lillian is suddenly a good singer, on top of suddenly writing best-selling murder mysteries, the CC Projectile Vomiting Epidemic Of May 2024 may be long remembered here.
@taig: Yessiree, Willa and Stellan are giving a thespian tour de force today! Just look at Stellan in that first panel – the empathy he’s showing! “Yeah, we’ve all been there, Big Guy!” And then he’s joined by Willa, also in sympatico with Wilbur’s plight! I think you see why these two have made it to the big time of Aquatic Show Biz!
I think it says a lot for them that they agreed to reprise their signature roles here – they are so much in demand it would have been understandable had they taken a pass. But through extensive negotiation to ensure their safety and personal comfort, we came to an agreement that was mutually beneficial to all parties. And we also got an off-panel gig for Ol’ Rex, who’s in charge of the security detail. Win for everyone! Except maybe Wilbur- he’s on a pretty short leash here, but where else is he gonna get a gig?
Who needs a Dog for companionship? Goldfish are Good!
@nescio: #9
…Ish Kabibble…
@Poteet: I’m totally expecting to see the phrase “voice of an angel” accompanied by at least one smirk.
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: Goldfish are great, and I hope we never see them in a Late Night Cuisine post.
Luann: If this strip was true to itself, Borenice would be leading the student takeover of the administration building.
“ How dare they take away taco Tuesdays? WHAT DO WE WANT? TACOS!! WHEN DO WE WANT THEM? TUESDAYS!!!!” she will be screaming into her bullhorn.
JP: Colin Farrell’s transition from hunky leading man to quirky character actor, including his much-praised lead in The Banshees of Inisherin, somehow seems to have led him down the road to bit parts in comic strips. Gotta pay the bills, I guess.
@Baja Gaijin: #77
Good heavens…that is a grinning nightmare.
“Dewclaw?!!? Cool, Nutty, you’re marrying into the largest family owned internet provider started by a Flemish Giant rabbit???!!! This IS big news, no matter what Josh says, just don’t invite him to the wedding! Congrats!”
MW: You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!
No one can hold a candle to Declan.
@79 Poteet: It’s better than the runners-up I could have used. The fishes with their heads still attached, so repuslive you’ve repressed their memories. One even with green olive slice eyeball.
@80 Needless Exposition: Exactly!
@89 taig: Nope, won’t happen. No goldfish or bears starring in the Late Thread Cuisine. Sid would feed me to Ol’ Rex.
@92 Daisy: Someone thought THAT was an appealing presentation of mayonnaise, flaked fish of some kind, and gelatin.
@ld: “Luann: If this strip was true to itself, Borenice would be leading the student takeover of the administration building.
“How dare they take away taco Tuesdays? WHAT DO WE WANT? TACOS!! WHEN DO WE WANT THEM? TUESDAYS!!!!” she will be screaming into her bullhorn.”
The strip is afraid to go there, but it is pretty clear that Bernice can only get off by chowing down on a big, pink taco.
@ld:
#90. LUANN: Excellent point, 1d. Now would be a perfect time to reintroduce their friend who went to Howard, where she had organized a college-wide student campaign.
OTOH, writers wisely avoid contemporary events both to avoid alienating half their readers and to avoid dating the reruns. The characters will n3ed to date themselves.
Delta, that’s her name.
CS: A story arc about Lillian singing with Dinkle’s jazz band sounds atrocious, but at least it keeps Crankshaft away for another week.
@ld:
“ How dare they take away taco Tuesdays? WHAT DO WE WANT? TACOS!! WHEN DO WE WANT THEM? TUESDAYS!!!!” she will be screaming into her bullhorn
_________________
And thus was born the after show Luann/Funky Winklebean strip “TOXIC TACO TUESDAYS” The Comics Kingdom description: Join all your favorite cast-off characters as they work together to out-toxic Montoni’s Pizza not just on Tuesdays, but every day of the week!
Judge Parker: Ah, stuff it, Sophie. Mrs. Sequitur and I dated for ten months before we got married and we will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary in a couple of months.
@TheDiva: “9CL – one wonders why (Edda) hasn’t upgraded to the Seth character model”
The Seth character model is still Ambiguously Gay and, worse, does not have the same standard features as the Amos model. For example, obsequiousness, timidity, complete subservience, and male genitalia not ravaged by years of heavy steroid abuse.
Amos may not have much, but like a sixty year old man, what he does have is still good for two hot minutes a day, just like when he was a teenager.
@Activist 1234:
Delta, that’s her name.
_______________________
What’s her last name?Berk, Dawn, or Quadrent?
@taig:
No one can hold a candle to Declan.
____________________
He’s very flammable, he’s covered with WARNING! stickers.
@I speak Jive: What about Judge Alan Parker’s fascinating new mystery novel, The Case of the Corpse That Was Murdered to Death in the Chambers Affair?
@Activist 1234: LUANN:. Lu’s following same plan as I did. Get core courses out of the way, then explore interesting parts of life. I took fencing, art, acting, engineering, organic chemistry, religion, writing. Made me a competent part of the world.
You also took Art 101 six times in a row? And I’d disagree that Luann is a competent part of the world. Remember two days ago where loading a dishwasher was just too much for her to handle?
The Family Circus Spanish to English.
@Garrison Skunk: Delta Mississippi.
Crank: Loathsome Lillian will turn out to have the powerful pipes and majestic phrasing of Ma Rainey and the blues feeling of Bessie Smith. Just like any other white broad from the Ohio suburbs.
MW:
Willa: Get a grip, man.
Stellan: Yeah. You’re talking to two fish.
@Ukulele Ike: The Case of the Corpse That Was Murdered to Death in the Chambers Affair
…In The Bookstore.
Luann-This is going to lead to the inevitable crossover where Luann is sent to ‘Mary Worth’ for Mary to take care of her isn’t it?
@ld:
Bernice (through bullhorn): “How dare they take away Taco Tuesdays! WHAT DO WE WANT?
Students: TACOS!
Bernice: WHEN DO WE WANT THEM?
Students: (confused murmuring)
Crank: Oh, I see, we’re not getting Lillian be harassed by Harry because we’re setting up Lillian being harassed by Mort. Can’t wait.
GT: I realise this is supposed to be a No Brands Were Harmed version of Nike, but it really does sound like Milford U has an exclusive deal to get shoes from some dude named Mike. “About once a month, Mike shows up in an unmarked van with a big sack of shoes. Most of them pair up. We don’t ask where they came from.”
JP: “Really? That’s the first thing that came out of your mouth?”
“Yeah, I was too polite to say ‘You mean the guy who’s gone a whole year without displaying any personality traits?'”
OTF: Holbrook: I’ll show how cutting-edge my cryptocurrency story is by shoehorning in a recent meme!
Narrator’s Voice: It was not a recent meme.
RMMD: Beatty drew a whole two living room backgrounds yesterday, and on Sunday he had to do the inside of a car and an angled shot of a tiled floor! So time to banish the characters back to the pastel void!
@Pozzo: Wikipedia says he also had two daughters. It doesn’t say if they were twins, but I eventually found out they weren’t, after wading through far too many search results that were this same dumb joke (which, by the way, Shoe, doesn’t even require them to be twins).
@Baja Gaijin: Memory retu — Arrrrgggh!
@Garrison Skunk: “Delta, that’s her name.
_______________________
What’s her last name?Berk, Dawn, or Quadrent?”
Brace yourself for the excitement, and I’ll wager that nobody guessed right: Delta James
“What was Lawrence Welk’s first band known as?” “The Hotsy Totsy Boys” and “The Hawaiian Fruit Orchestra.”
also not a joke, so it fits into the Shoe format.
@Old School Allie Cat: The thing is, it actually feels like Luann should be in her early fifties. I also follow ZITS, and while ZITS is not the greatest strip on earth, I still like Jeremy even though he’s been fifteen years old for a few decades now. It is possible to keep a young character young and still keep that character reasonably likable. It’s just that the Evansii can’t do it. Or if they can, they are keeping that skill a deep secret.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: “James” is both my little-used first name, and the name of the British pop band with hits such as “Getting Away With It (All Messed Up)” and, of course, “Laid”:
“This bed is on fire with passionate love
The neighbors complain about the noises above
But she only comes when she’s on top
My therapist said not to see you no more
She said you’re like a disease without any cure
She said I’m so obsessed that I’m becoming a bore, oh no
Ah, you think you’re so pretty
Caught your hand inside the till
Slammed your fingers in the door
Fought with kitchen knives and skewers
Dressed me up in women’s clothes
Messed around with gender roles
Line my eyes and call me pretty
Moved out of the house so you moved next door
I locked you out, you cut a hole in the wall
I found you sleeping next to me, I thought I was alone
You’re driving me crazy, when are you coming home?”
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box:
#117 LUANN:. Gosh, James, is right. Thanks. I was thinking along lines of Delta Frat House, which is a popular name in my neighborhood.
@taig: #95
…even *lanced*, he is exemplary.
The name “Declan” is thought to mean “man of prayer” or “full of goodness.” Neither of which seems fitting for “Judge Parker.”
@Activist 1234:
Delta James cannot return to the strip because they/them have changed. A lot. And the introduction of the polycule they live in that includes all of Luann’s former boyfriends (face it introducing new characters would require artistic work). Luann’s mind would be blown.
Lawrence Week’s licence plate was A1ANA2 I learned that from a trivia encyclopedia book my parents gifted me with in my tween years. This means he never started with “And a 1 and a 2” Oh LORD! I can’t remember what happened to me yesterday, but THAT I remember off the top of my head.
@Comicsgrl: Welk
Call me old fashioned but if you’re going to use a quiz as the framing for your joke then the setup should, if not be a plausible question exactly, at least refer sensibly to things which exist “where did Washington keep his armies” and what not. Lawrence Welk had two daughters and a son but none of them were twins.
MW: I am slow on the uptake. It finally clicked that Wilbur is a dead ringer for “Dirty Berty,” the animatronic doll from The Office.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPN53tDi0AU
“Really? That’s the first thing that came out of your mouth?”
“I worked hard to self censor. You didn’t want to hear the filth-laden thing that was my first thought.”
@BananaSam:
“where did Washington keep his armies”
In his sleevies?
@Anonymous: Now I need to make a joke about Mary and Dr. Jeff at the Bum Boat inquiring about the new celebrity-inspired dinner specialty, the “Lawrence Whelk.”
Heck, no. Farley died April 17. For that matter it wouldn’t have been too soon if you had made this comment April 18.
@131
WayTooLongScratchy Scrotum LXIX:Actually, Farley died YEARS ago.
Shoe is to be lauded for keying on its target demographic, given that the last “Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians Fan Club” member died in 1990.
@Daisy: Good one!
I agree that neither of those interpretations of Declan fit in Judge Parker.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
WHAT DO WE WANT?
A CURE FOR TORETTE SYNDROM!
WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
CUNT!
@Old School Allie Cat: Heck no. And your comment reminded me that April was only four years old when she was expected to obey the directive to stay away from that obviously-tempting river, so come to think of it, hell no.
Shoe–I started attending the Penn State Behrend campus in Erie, PA in the fall of 1987. You could set up intramural sports teams if you wanted to. A bunch of guys from my dorm, Lawrence Hall, named their team the Lawrence Welks. Another bunch of guys from Perry Hall named their team the Perry Comos. (Poor Niagara Hall had no such material to work with.)
I remember thinking that those jokes still worked, but in a few years, they probably wouldn’t. If I needed any evidence, today’s Shoe just provided it. Thank you, Shoe, ‘at’s wunnerful, jus’ wunnerful!
@Larry McAwful: #137
…meanwhile, a small but vocal group of science undergrads with a specialized interest in mollusk biology wanted to name their group the “Lawrence Whelks”…
I’m sorry but the funniest thing in either of these two strips is Declan’s face being severely downcast as he listens to the conversation on speaker mode and drinks.
Dennis Minus Menace: “Give me credit, Mr. Wilson, I didn’t make any noise at all when I urinated into that milk carton.
Late Thread Cuisine: No strawberry sauce, no bananas, no ice cream, green olives.
@Baja Gaijin: That’s normally something I associated with breaded chicken or steak, but I suppose it works with ham chunks and hard-boiled eggs.
@MKay: MW: I was going to say that Stellan owes Willa $5.00, but I realized that neither fish would bet that Wilbur would score.
You’re not wrong. Stellan had “through the bathroom window” and Willa had “snogs the first not-Wilbur she sees.”
@Sequitur:
Actually, Farley died YEARS ago.
_________________________
…and Saturday Night Live hasn’t been the same since.
@141 Baja Gaijin:
Looks festive! That being said, I wouldn’t eat it.
Shoe: The trivia night was so cringe that the trivia night sign gained sentience and snuck away.
@Pinky: That’s not helping taking over the world.
@Garrison Skunk:
Nor Mad Magazine.
@aen: But they’re really socking it to that Spiro Agnew guy again!
@Baja Gaijin:
#141. Ive made something like that! It was pretty good, aside from fact cornbread was a bit dry. Sounds like others have also used cornbread as a base.
Game is what’s the weirdest thing we’ve put on cornbread. For me, it’s creamed asparagus.
@150 Activist 1234: What’s the weirdest thing put on cornbread? Wilbur’s ass. The waiter schtupping Not-Kristy placed a loaf on Wilbur’s chair while he went to the bathroom.
@Activist 1234: Make Italian polenta, substitute for cornbread. Faster, much easier. Wetter.
But the “Anna” is supposed to sound like “and a” and Lawrence Welk didn’t stutter. Aaaargh!
@Poteet: I think we better stock up on barf bags just in case.
You’re right about the Extreme Loathsome Vibes. Harry Dinkle alone can out loathsome anyone, and then Lillian is there, too. I don’t see how so much loathsomeness can be contained.
@taig: Google Star Gazey Pie.
@Ukulele Ike: Is that about the critic who panned the first book? Maybe it’s the book Alan wrote over one weekend. Pulitzer material for sure.
@Baja Gaijin: Substitute dried beef for the ham and white bread for the cornbread, and you have SOS.
So! Everyone here is totally excited about the upcoming release of The Garfied Movie, right?
Did you know he hates Mondays? But he loves lasagna!
@Larry McAwful: #137: Speaking of Perry Como, if you go down to his hometown of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, just south of Pittsburgh, they have a statue of him in the town square with loudspeakers playing non-stop Perry Como songs in a 24 hour loop.
@Ukulele Ike:
#152. Easier. Faster. Wetter. Yeah, Wilbur would like that.
@151 Baja Gaijin:
Wilbur does NOT have cornbread ass.
Shoe: 80 year olds? My 80 year old mother definitely did not watch Lawrence Welk – her parents did. I think the target demographic for this joke is 105+
@160 JustSomeGuy:
Walt Wallet used to curse Lawrence Welk because he never had Rudy Valée on his show.
Wednesday
Mary Worth: Never take advice from an advice columnist.
I love that the three non-speaking characters in that Shoe strip have the same look of suffering and degradation my kids do when I make a terrible dad joke