Century Boulevard … we love it
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Blondie, 11/2/24
The Blondie creative team is usually very locked in to whatever big calendar full of real and fake holidays that’s clearly hanging up in the writer’s room, so today’s misstep is actually kind of surprising to me. Sure, it was possible, weeks ago when this strip was written, that game six of the World Series might’ve been played on November 1, but it was also possible that one of the teams would wrap it up in five games or less, as one of them in fact did (go Dodgers!). Anyway, I get why you’d risk it though, the glaring error is absolutely worth it to deliver this tight, flawless joke about a mailman streaming the baseball game from the night before, so his trainee has to talk to one of the mail route customers, like the regular guy usually does, about something that we don’t need to bother explaining, you know, the usual customer-mailman conversations we all know and love and have every day.
Marvin, 11/2/24
Of the weird holdover jokes from an entirely different era of gender relations that routinely pop up in newspaper comics, I have to say that “haha, it’s women’s job to cook but this particular woman is really bad at it!” are my absolute least favorite. The particular woman in question could be the speaking character’s mother, wife, or (as in this case) daughter, each possibility carrying with it its own specific unpleasant vibe. That said, I do think today’s Marvin is kind of funny because usually you think of “runing your appetite” as something you do with snacking, but Roy is just straight-up eating a whole actual meal here. Like he knows Jenny’s cooking is terrible, he wants no part of it, and he’s just made his own dinner early, because he’s fully self-sufficient.
Beetle Bailey, 11/2/24
Some days I think I’ve left the snickering sexual innuendo I was prone to in this blog’s early days behind, but then I encounter a strip like “Lt. Fuzz decides to horn in on General Halftrack’s threesome,” sigh heavily, and realize I will simply not be able to help myself. Anyway, here’s today’s Beetle Bailey, in which Lt. Fuzz decides to horn in on General Halftrack’s threesome.
112 replies to “Century Boulevard … we love it”
Mary Worth Mashups
Family Circus: Oh, Dolly, never change. Your effortless sacrilegiousness is so delightful.
RMMD-Uhmm how old are you again?
MW-“Such a shame that there aren’t more bridesmaids at this wedding for me to hit on,” Wilbur thinks to himself.
FC-If your wish is to be excommunicated from the church and ducked into a pool full of holy water then yes.
Family Circlejerk – Just remember, Dolly, sometimes the answer is no. (No snark there, just a jab at people who expect their prayers are answered only if it’s a yes.)
The whole “She’s a terrible cook” joke, really in my opinion, only works if it’s from a meddling mother-in-law, like Marie Barone from “Everybody Loves Raymond.”
If it comes from the cook’s own Mother, it just comes off as petty and abusive. I mean, yeah, it’s petty and abusive coming from anyone, but really mother-in-laws, that’s their territory…
Blondie – I’m still going with my initial interpretation of panel 1: Mr. Beasley is attempting to discreetly warn Dagwood that Jack is in fact a convicted serial killer on work release. “Run! Run! if you know what’s good for you…”
Blondie – When I read the first panel, I figured Beasley was urgently telling his trainee to run away from Dagwood before it’s too late and he gets drawn into one of Dagwood’s endless inane conversations. I still think they should’ve gone with that.
@Roscoe: That also works!
Is Dagwood’s question: “Why do you look exactly like my neighbor who’s also my colleague, my carpool partner and apparently my only friend? Like, you don’t share a name or anything, so are you related? Did one of your parents remarry or have an affair? Are you in witness protection? Are you actually the same person, ashamed of having to deliver mail to make ends meet? I mean, this comic has been running so long that I don’t expect any new revelations at this point, but maybe the lore was all explained in a strip back in 1936.”
Marvin – “I mean, just look at this iced coffee she made. It’s so thick the ice cubes won’t even sink.” “That’s not coffee, that’s tea.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Abundio, your dog used to jump all over me”
“Why is he being so aloof all of a sudden?”
“Because he just got back from the groomer”
“And now… he’s out of your league!”
Marvin Alternative Caption:
“If you keep eating, the food will become shit and you’ll defecate your adult diaper.”
“That’s the idea”
“Oh… right, I briefly forgot what comic we’re in.”
Look at the look on Lt. Fuzz’s face in panel 1. Sure, he heard the phrase “tee time” and knows what General Halftrack is really talking about, but even so, for one fleeting moment, he thinks there’s some don’t-ask-don’t-tell action going on he can get in on.
@Roscoe: See, my initial interpretation of Panel 1 was that he was warning Jack about the dangers of starting a conversation with, or just getting too close to, Dagwood. But that wouldn’t make an entertaining comment.
Marvin’s grandma has a secret life as Gearhead Gertie
My first thought of today’s Blondie, was that maybe he was playing “Super Mario Run” or something like that. But that would actually be modern and relevant, can’t have that.
I’m just going to ask this about Marvin.
The implication is that Roy cooked the meal himself.
It seems to be a plate of peas and mashed potatoes and meat (?)
This doesn’t feel realistic to me, it seems to me that Roy (or really anyone) for a snack, would have just made a sandwich or microwaved something, not go through the trouble to cook a full-blown meal just for himself.
Unless:
-It was leftovers from the previous nights’ meal
-It’s one of those “Hungry-man” microwaveable meals.
I hate it so much when I try to tear apart the logic of a terrible comic, and end up figuring out ways to justify the scenario…
Blondie: Making a tired “Don’t interrupt me when I’m watching the big game” gag is setting the hurdle as low as you can without burying it underground, and the Blondie team still managed to trip over it in ten different ways.
Marvin: Why Grandma is upset at Roy for eating between meals? Seeing as he has to use a fork and spoon simultaneously to eat mashed potatoes and peas and he’s missing his plate six inches to the left, he clearly needs the practice.
BLONDIE: Shouldn’t Beasley’s first lesson to an intern be to stand to one side, for when the congenitally tardy-for-work Dagwood explodes out the door?
MW: Better looking…
Better job…
Better in the sack…
Having overthought the matter, a despairing Wilbur collapses face-first into Mary’s culinary creation.
BB: They could have gone to the trouble of drawing the other two guys (Major Scabbard? Captain Greenbrass?) in the last panel. Looks like Halftrack is going to have to settle for some hot General-on-Lieutenant action. At least he might get a hole in one!
MW: I actually polled my friends today as to whether the officiant was Walz or McCain. The vote was split.
Beetle Bailey: There are few things as disorienting as Lt. Fuzz in mufti. I’m pretty certain white shirts with differently-colored collars went out with Gordon Gecko.
It’s been at least 30 years since a new character was introduced in Blondie (the nameless carpool partners) and now we’re seeing TWO within a few months? I foresee Jack and Maya finding true love in each other’s arms, in the classic romantic Mailman/Baker scenario.
MW: Estelle clearly prefers men with necks.
Marvin: has Grandma always been in the strip? Can’t say I’ve seen her before.
H&L: Pouring the sugar into his beer, Thurston shows why he’s at the forefront of degenerate but legal addictive tendencies.
MW: Okay, Moy traced a photo of Dan Walz for today’s strip. He almost looks like that ‘He-Man’ meme.
BB – Even with the verbal (tee time) and visual (golf bag) cues, I wasn’t certain that this strip was dealing with golf. Fortunately, the three flags in close proximity to one another tipped me off. Four would have been too many; two wouldn’t have been enough. Kudos, Walkers.
All the other ways Blondie isn’t making sense are just cover for the way “twenty more seconds” makes no sense. It’s not twenty seconds till the inning break because the seventh-inning stretch is an inning break. It’s not twenty seconds till the end of the game because there are two innings left after the seventh-inning stretch. It’s twenty seconds till the end of the song I guess? Beasley is streaming the entire World Series game on his mail route so he can sing along with “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”? I hope Dagwood’s question is “What is wrong with you?”
Blondie – At least Beasley isn’t jerking off to it….
Marvin – The morale is – tastes the same, going in or coming out….
BB – Fuzz is disappointed it wasn’t the sexual tryst he was hoping for….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Mother Goose and Grimm: I know Disney made Will Smith the genie in that terrible Aladdin movie and there was Shaq in Kazaam decades ago but I still find it weird making the enslaved obsequious servant Black.
Zits: I thought the joke was going to be that the cash Jeremy’s dad gave him was malodorous because it was in the back pocket of his pants but it seems to be just that Jeremy is a freeloading leech and also an idiot.
Baby Blues: If he wanted an apple he would have just got himself an apple. It’s a house you share and you are married with 3 children. I could see this working if one of the ungrateful children were complaining they want a snack but I hate when the joke is just that the husband is incapable of being self sufficient even though he’s the one with an office job.
Dennis the Menace: This works because Dennis is an ungrateful brat who would passive aggressively say something like this to his mother.
Pluggers: Arguable. Many pluggers are quite familiar with the runs.
GT: I don’t remember/care where Beth lived before, but if Milford is an interesting place, it must have been a corn silo.
MW: It’s hard to believe that Mary sanctioned a marriage ceremony that was not officiated by a man of the cloth. Who’s this guy, the local bank’s notary public?
@The Quiet Man: Skeletor for President!
DTM: It’s really important that the caption verified that Dennis is supposed to be looking in the refrigerator because that drawing doesn’t look anything like it. First of all why is the handle so far up and when was the last time anyone had a refrigerator in their house that didn’t have a freezer? Also why is Alice almost always hand washing dishes? I’m certain it’s been established they own a dishwasher. Is she obsessive compulsive?
Beetle Bailey: Is it more or less depressing to think that the Beetle Bailey Braintrust doesn’t understand the extremely common double-entendre at work here? No, seriously — grandparents around the nation are trying to solidify the a prioris structuring their experience before their eggs get cold.
Marvin: I devoutly hate, hate the way comics depict grandparents. Marvin’s grandparents would likely be in their 50s and still working. Instead they’re in their 80s and long retired. And don’t get me started on Crankshaft, who should be a great great grandfather but is presented as a grammar.
Curtis: How old is Barry supposed to be? Is he a toddler? He wears overalls which are fine for children still in diapers but once a child starts using the bathroom the overalls are impractical because it is too difficult for a child to manage independently. He seems to have constant screaming meltdowns and runs to his mother but he also watches PBS documentaries and he knows detailed facts about specific species of penguins? Is he emotionally stunted because his mother infantalizes him?
@UncleJeff: Should have had Arabs playing the Genies, I mean… where do Genies come from? Ireland?
@The Rambling Otter: But then why do I question these things?
King’s Quest 6 had the villain “Abdul Alhazred” (obviously) Arabic yet the genie under his command was white and Jewish(?) … huh?
@The Rambling Otter:
It’s a comic about an elderly goose woman who owns a dog and cat but then there are arbitrary times when characters are human. Mike Peters won a Pulitzer!
@UncleJeffers: “He wears overalls which are fine for children still in diapers but once a child starts using the bathroom the overalls are impractical because it is too difficult for a child to manage independently.”
This raises so many questions about Dennis the Menace.
Blondie: like most New Yorkers, the writers assumes that the Yankees could field the ball. Oops!
I love LA.
Some Chix has discovered Morning Thunder tea.
@The Rambling Otter:
I’ve speculated before that Dennis isn’t toilet trained. Hank Ketcham wrote one time that Dennis looks like he has a load in his pants. He’s what Marvin aspires to be.
Blondie: Out of curiosity and a lack of anything else that caught my attention in this strip, I timed a standard rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and the full song took about half a minute. So assuming Jack started speaking after Mr. Beasley sang the first line, then yes, at the end of his statement there would be roughly twenty seconds left in the song. Blondie got the math right, even if everything else about human behavior and interactions is completely wrong.
Marvin: Like Josh, I loathe the “women who cannot cook, amirite” gag with the burning heat of a thousand suns, but it’s especially stupid coming from the mother. The dated, patriarchal notion of domestic responsibility the joke hinges on dictates that she would have been at least partially involved in teaching her daughter to cook, so disparaging the daughter’s skills is either a) deflecting blame for her own failures, b) cruel contempt for the perceived inadequacies of her offspring, or c) disparaging the value of another woman in order to elevate her own, a nasty technique in any case but particularly creepy coming from a parent.
“…as one of them in fact did (go Dodgers!)”
Spoiler warning, Josh! My mailman and his young trainee are coming over to stream the World Series with me today. Now what will our threesome do?
BB: Horn in, LOL
@Little Blue Bicycle: All right-thinking New Yorkers root for the Mets, and we constitute the forefront of loathing the Yankees.
@Baja Gaijin: The last one. (I couldn’t work in a Menards joke)
Will there come a day when the artists of newspaper comics will draw scenes so realistically that the reader cannot distinguish it from real life? Perhaps. Then we can get on with our lives.
Pluggers: I did not need to see a Plugger dripping green mucus this morning. (Thanks, colorist!) We would have gotten the “joke” if he had been holding a tissue to his nose.
Beetle Bailey: Y’know, Camp Swampy not being a real boot camp, just a bunch of guys with a military roleplay fetish hanging out for orgies and such would explain a lot.
C’shaft: My theory of “The Pizza Monster is Batiuk’s poorly disguised self-insert character Batton Thomas” gains credence.
DT: So…the antagonist in the current Dick Tracy arc is a crime lord who oversees the public transportation-related offenses of the German immigrant community? I guess?
Dustin: You would think that if you were drawing art for a joke about a too-small sweater, you would draw that sweater in a way as to indicate it is a poor fit for the character. You would be underestimating the laziness of traditional comic strip creators, but you would think that.
GT: Beth, you’re the live-in trophy girlfriend. Your role in “raising” the kids mostly involves attempting to ingratiate yourself to your sugar daddy’s offspring by being “cooler” than their biological mother and by buying their love with expensive gifts.
JP: I will forgive everything bad I ever said about this strip if it turned into Neddy adjusting to life as a subsistence hunter-gatherer in a cabin fifty miles outside of Fairbanks.
Luann: Should just rename this comic Pick-Me Girls and have done with it.
MW: I mean, who would be a worse man than Wilbur? Adolf Hitler? Jeffrey Epstein? The guy who designed the seats on a Spirit plane?
Phantom: “Wait…so you’re telling me computers can be connected to one another and share information? Like some kind of…interconnected network? Or a web encompassing the wide world?”
Pluggers are disgusting.
Blondie – Mr. Beasley is actually watching the winning game of this year’s World Series. You see, Blondie is carried in the LA Times, which due to press deadlines did not mention the Dodgers World Series win on Thursday morning. In honor of the largest newspaper still carrying their comic (Well, it was before the mass unsubscription over a presidential non-endorsement), they delayed this comic as well. Comedy is all about timing, and they are locked into the timing of the dying newspaper industry.
Marvin – The “wife/mother who is bad at cooking” joke also overlapped with the “weekday breakfast for a family of four is feast of pancakes/waffles/toast/croissants/butter/jam/honey/eggs/bacon/sausage/fresh fruit/milk/orange juice/coffee, but kids and husband take two bites and one big sip and leave” jokes on television and in comedy films.
The bad at cooking trope in media no doubt dates back to the 19th century (and probably earlier in baudy bar songs), but the large and ignored breakfast trope feels like it came into being when Boomers started taking over Hollywood and really showed how much they took for granted the postwar prosperity their Depression surviving parents and grandparents made possible.
Beetle Bailey – On dating apps it’s not uncommon to see women stating “Not looking to be a third” due to the number of heterosexual couples looking for a threesome. Thanks to Lt. Fuzz, the military golf course will have to start instituting rules to keep status-thirsty officers like him from trying to invite himself to the threesome, foursomes, and other groupings of superior officers. He’ll also be banned from the club house for sending two colonels drinks from across the bar with the message that “he loves their vibe.”
FC – Next: A lightning bolt vaporizes Dolly. Jeffy becomes the undisputed moron of the family, and – what a coincidence! – his prayers were answered.
Rex Morgan – I have seen more Christmases with no snow than white Christmases, especially in the past decade.
Beatty can’t draw children, and he can’t write them either.
Frazz – Even though she just learned it, she’ll still manage to be smug about it.
It pains me to have something in common with Frazz, but I just learned that about Day of the Dead in the past few days, too.
Pluggers – Yuck! The one time the color monkey got it right.
9CL – I don’t know what Brooke is going for here. If he thinks that this is charming, sweet, endearing, or realistic, it isn’t working. If he’s trying to set up the new generation as the same narcissistic, loathsome characters as their parents, he’s almost there.
@I speak Jive: re: 9CL: No one in the previous generations — Bill “Blarney” O’Brannigan, the Singing Vienna Nazi, Juliette’s Boring Professor/Thrall, Amos, Tall English Piano Player Who Owns One Turtleneck Sweater, Seth, Seth’s Disappeared BF, even the Evil Edda-seducing Juilliard Austrian Violist — ever announced to the world that they’d sprung an erection.
Brooke is getting worse.. Lolly and Tall Korean Piano Player’s sons are just going to run around naked all the time, shaking their tallywhackers at random Upper West Side passersby. (And they will all play the cello, world-class style)
FC: In twenty years Dolly will be a massively popular televangelist on TikTok or BikBok or the Holographic Church of Tomorrow. Candle sales will surge exponentially around the world as congregants chant nonstop “Blow the Flame – you’ve got Game!”
BF: “There’s nothing standing between us now, Benoit.”
“Uh, Maeve, there’s something I need to tell you. Yesterday, after we said goodbye,.. I met someone new at the airport.”
@Baja Gaijin: #1
Every single one of those is perfect. Just perfect!
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: #3
Absolutely right!
@The Rambling Otter: #4
True! It’s a stereotype for sure, but rings true in many families.
P.S. Not *everyone* loved Raymond…they were one of the most annoying TV families I ever saw. Disliked every one of them…although I did feel sorry for Robert at times.
@Roscoe: @Peanut Gallery:
Poor trainee Jack will find out soon enough why Beasley always stands to the side when making the morning mail delivery at the Bumstead home; he knows Dagwood will come tearing out the door in a mad rush to catch his carpool to work and will mow him down.
JP: Neddy runs off to Alaska, to find former flame Hank with a wife and houseful of kids. You’re saying you ‘moved on’? How could you be so inconsiderate?”
@MKay: #16
Yes!
Blondie: Maybe this strip needed to run on a Saturday, when Dagwood wouldn’t be rushing out the door to catch his ride. Not sure why they didn’t do it last Saturday, when there definitely would have been a game the evening before.
@Myrtle: Ha ha! You should be writing that strip!
FG: I’m glad to see that at least ONE of these Mongovian royal fucks is friendly toward Our Heroes. I was beginning to worry that maybe Earth people smelled really bad to everyone on the planet, like ripe ginkgo fruit, or poop.
As someone who doesn’t watch sports live, let alone stream them the next day, are they usually available online from legal sources or is this being done without the express written consent of Major League Baseball?
@Baja Gaijin:
#1. MW:. Both 2 and 4– when pleasantly surprised, I laugh. Baja, thanks for two chuckles. And I LUV tater tot hot dish!
Blondie: It’s surprising that MLB hasn’t trademarked the term “World Series” and we’d need to refer to the Worlds Eries.
@Baja Gaijin: Mashups – They’re all great, but I have a special fondness for Muddy Boots and the Tater Tot hot dish.
@TheDiva: Re Marvin – Amen to the final sentence.
@Daisy: I agree about Raymond and his obnoxious family. We started out enjoying the show, but it wore out its welcome. His parents were horrible people, although Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts were so talented that I couldn’t help laughing. My biggest complaint about it was that Raymond was allegedly a well known sports writer, but he spent all his time hanging around the house and, worse, could barely put two sentences together when he spoke.
FC – Dolly, if you blow out all the candles it will become dark and the devil will get you.
Of course five minutes with Dolly and the devil will throw her back.
Curtis: As his punishment, Curtis must read the diaries of the Scott Expedition, where he’ll learn that they don’t, really. As well as some other interesting facts about Adélie penguins that probably weren’t in Barry’s documentary.
JP: I don’t say this very often … in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever said it before … but well played, Ces. Eight years is a heck of a long time for a call-back, but the idea that running off to Alaska is still Neddy’s go-to move is the first time in a while that I have laughed at this strip for what I think are intended reasons.
Having said that, has Ces been having trouble with his layout software, because wow those speech bubbles are a mess! I’m pretty sure Neddy isn’t meant to be saying “run” at the end of her sentence in panel 1, and how did he manage to get the lettering in panel 2 out of focus?
MW: Oh, hey, it turns out Wilbur being all “I’m a terrible person who doesn’t deserve happiness” is somehow even worse than “My life is a mess for reasons that can’t possibly be my own fault”. Can we just never, ever see his thoughts ever again?
OTF: I realise the gag is meant to be “Ms Trellis doesn’t understand how naming rights work”, but it doesn’t entirely work if the explanation from the “voice of reason” character makes even less sense than her idea. Sure, getting naming rights to the Internet of Things would mean taking on the warranties of all those things, just like William Hill bookmakers have ultimate responsibility for everything connected to the Scottish Premier League because their name’s on the logo. That’s just common sense!
Phantom: “So … I guess that means Avarice really is an autonomous AI vehicle with no human control, just like Diana said and I completely dismissed! What a strange coincidence!”
RMMD: Michael is sad that he put so much effort into dressing up as a kid in a green hoodie and nobody saw.
@UncleJeffers: I don’t know exactly how old Barry is meant to be, but as far as his fondness for nature documentaries goes, I believe he’s meant to be a child genius, that much-loved comic strip trope that’s never incredibly irritating in any way (cf. Edison Lee, Caulfield, etc.)
Bizarro: A rare Manatee appearance today! Mandy Manatee is doing a whimsical play-on-words scenario to raise awareness of these lovely Sea Maidens and their threatened status.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that Manatees are not what *we* would consider “conventionally attractive” but remember, in times past they were considered by sea voyagers to be beautiful “mermaids” or “sirens”. Yes, there were some very long voyages back in those days before eyeglasses.
Mandy is bringing a quiet dignity to this role, hoping her understated performance will inspire the audience to learn more about the plight of her species – their loss of habitat and the danger of boat collisions. Even Mark Trail knows about that…
@Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: Sid, did you know manatees control their floatation by the use of farts?
Sherman’s Lagoon: This week’s strips are quite good. I’m only here to snark on the colorist who consistently gives the crab one orange claw and one brown one, but keeps switching which is which. Also, that cat is totally stoned.
9CL: The strip is doing a crossover with Boner’s Ark.
@Baseball Biff: Yes, but we were trying to keep it tasteful.
Just wanted to send kudos to Josh here for his perfect reference from Randy Newman’s classic song “I Love L.A.” — in the context of discussing comics that mostly takes place in random clean, safe suburbs. It’s a bright, sunny tune that’s played at Dodgers games and is considered Los Angeles’ unofficial anthem (a schmaltzy song titled “L.A. Is My Lady,” which Frank Sinatra and Quincy Jones released in the ’80s as a sort of companion piece to “New York, New York,” is a nowhere-near-close second). But as was customary for Newman — who was the nation’s most cynical and sarcastic pop singer before turning his attention to Disney soundtracks — its cheerful-sounding lyrics also get into the city’s darker side (“look at that bum over there, he’s down on his knees!”), including mentions of what were at the time dangerous urban corridors (“Century Boulevard? We love it!”), and downtown’s skid row (“Sixth Street!”). Meanwhile, Dagwood carpools to work in his local big city every day — but apart from his cavernous office building and the greasy spoon he frequents for lunch, we hardly ever see an urban location or city-dweller in “Blondie.” (Still, Newman’s line about Northeastern city residents, “all the people dress like monkeys”? If that isn’t a direct reference to Dagwood, I don’t know what is.)
Pluggers: Considering a plugger’s prodigious eating habits we should consider ourselves lucky the artist didn’t show us what runs out of their other end.
@Tabby Lavalamp: That is a question that is horrifyingly complicated to answer. The short version is that legal sports streaming has all the same problems as other types of content streaming and several more on top.
As regards Mr. Beasley, he could watch this game legally the day after with the MLB’s own streaming service, available at $150 plus tax for 2024. However, this service has tons of restrictions, especially for live games. For example, if you live in the same geographical region as the team you like (as most fans do), you cannot watch their games because of blackouts to encourage stadium attendance (even if that team is playing away, for some reason). And if your team is playing on a network or service like ESPN or Apple that night, you can’t watch them unless you pay for their services as well. And if your team plays a regional team, you can’t watch them because of the region blackouts. And so on and so on.
And God help you if you’re the kind of person who wants to follow more than one sport and league (i.e. every sports fan ever), because you’re going to have to pay a sizable amount for each of them individually, and face all kinds of restrictions with each. And of course little of this will overlap with any non-sports content you might also want to watch.
It’s all extremely anti-consumer and prohibitively expensive, and it’s not hard to see why so many people increasingly feel more favorable towards piracy.
@Horace Broon: Re: Curtis: Thank you for those links. Why am I not surprised that Captain Scott and his merrie crewe of Polar Doofuses spent several hours a day lingering over ten-course meals of soup, roast beef, poached penguins, almonds, Champagne, etc.? Meanwhile Amundsen and his men, one glacier over, took short breaks to consume jerky, pemmican, and ice water before returning to their intense research into How Not to Die Miserably in the Antarctic Wastes.
re: JP: Perhaps Neddy realized that getting to her Alaskan hunky ex-lover would entail multiple legs of jet, boat, ferry, small-prop plane, and snowmobile travel, whereas visiting her sister meant a nonstop flight to LaGuardia and grabbing a taxi.
@Baseball Biff: Yeah, like that old Spongebob cartoon where The Flying Dutchman took Spongebob away, I guess to Hell. Then brought him back within minutes because Spongebob was so ungodly annoying.
Beatup Bailey: Teabag time!
BB: When a comic strip character talks about wanting to wrap up early for their tee time, you know that someone is taking the “Write what you know” advice to heart.
Marvin: Shared contempt for your daughter-in-law and her cooking is certainly one way to keep a marriage alive.
C-Shaft: Incredible mismatch between what Mopey Pete says and the visible reactions of all non-Pizza Monsters. If you could harness the ennui in this room you’d have an energy source for years to come.
Curtis: If anything ever made a China-style One Child policy look tempting it’s the thought of being raised in the same house as Barry. But go ahead, give Curtis the big speech about how “in this family we don’t joke about eating birds.”
DT: Figures that saboteurs would hit the police station when one guy is eating a Big Mac and the other is rehearsing an aria.
Dustin: The quest to be Cathy for middle aged dads continues apace, I see.
JP: But then she found out that the salmon fishing boat didn’t have a manicurist on call, so that was out.
MT: *Crowd giggles, thinking that Mark said “erection”*
MW: Not to tell Wilbur how to live his life—I sure don’t want to take responsibility for that—but if he’s going to passive-aggressively thought-balloon with scare quotes and all, he should remember that the phrase is “You’re a better man than I.”
RMMD: Yeah, damn shame that everybody didn’t see you as—spitballing here—the Jolly Green Giant’s little friend Sprout. Better luck next year when you’re Captain Birdseye.
GA: I know it’s starting to get really bad when I start wishing for another scrapbooking story instead.
JP: Look up the word “defenestration,” Sophie. And think about it. The dorm rules probably don’t allow extended visits anyway.
CS: “Well, this has certainly been a Halloween we’ll never forget. It’s the one where we stupidly waited until Halloween night to ask our friends to come help decorate the restaurant.”
GT: Looks like somebody was right yesterday when they said Trophy Girlfriend’s Halloween costume was Coat with Nothing Underneath but what is Coach Hernandez’ brain surgeon wife supposed to be? A rotting zombie? My god this new artist stinks.
Believe It or Not has that saw about how there are more stars than grains of sand. Fine, but have you ever tried to make beach sculptures out of stars?
Today we got through the entire Flash Gordon strip with the characters actually speaking to each other instead of a narrative box telling us everything.
@Baja Gaijin: All of the mashups are good, and, as usual, are more delightful than the original strips.
The writers of Beetle Bailey knew exactly what they were doing with the word “threesome”
It’s like certain old ads, such as a fish boning knife called a “Wonder Boner” or a slip-in slide called a “Wet Banana”
The writers of Beetle Bailey want to draw attention, but still without actually being funny in any way.
Although those ads were still pretty funny.
BREAKING UP is hard to do
– BF:. But sometimes it works out. For a while.
– FBoFW: goodbye does not mean forever
– LUANN:. A break need be only 30 sec. to get a change in attitude.
FALL. BACK. TONIGHT, MUDGES
GT – Have you ever seen photos of people who had botched plastic surgery and you find out they used construction grade silicone caulk and whatnot? No reason. Definitely nothing to do with the last panel today.
@Poteet: re GA: Please wake me when the singing animals return. I’m even a fan of Chef Meowrice. Don’t hate me.
@Baja Gaijin: Tater tot hot dish for moi!
@Arabella: By the time this…saga…ends, I may be longing for the return of Chef Meowrice myself.
Curtis: Maybe Barry is a@Horace Broon:
Barry is a circus midget that was adopted by the family so they could reenact episodes of Diff’rent Strokes.
Blondie-“Oh no. Oh no! OH NO! Someone’s going to take my knees away,” Mr. Beasley cries out.
@The Rambling Otter:
A man’s got to stand for something in this crazy world of ours.
I like what I’m seeing from you Baseball Biff
Luann: How many weeks has it been since we last saw Luann DeGroot?
@Daisy: I felt sorry for Robert’s girlfriend (later fiancée) Amy, she was a pure and innocent before she got caught up in the insanity and drama that is the family Barone.
Debra even told her she was just like her before she married into the family, eventually becoming just as crazy as the rest of them.
@Poteet: Take heart; from the look of today’s strip, the Earth is about to be destroyed in a cataclysmic smashup of all the Solar System’s planetary bodies. Then it’s just a matter of time until Arty goes nuts and messily slays all the girls after hearing them exclaim “Hee! Hee!” just one time too many.
What’s the matter with The Phantom? Don’t waste your breath bandying words with a machine! Blow its face off and move on!
@Dennis Jimenez:
…yet.
CS: “Yes, what an unforgettable Halloween this has been! We had a power outage, which led to exactly zero customers, which led to us sitting around concocting extremely stupid fantasies and completely ignoring the fact that we should have scrambled to find some way to save all the meat, cheese, and other perishables in the refrigerators! And now most of our inventory is spoiled! Ha ha, the joke’s on us! What a great Halloween trick!
@Inspector Gotcha: I hope they ate all the ice cream before it melted.
@The Rambling Otter: The whole “She’s a terrible cook” joke, really in my opinion, only works if it’s from a meddling mother-in-law, like Marie Barone
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And with those words, Rambling single pawedly brought Sonya “Momma” Hobbs back from the dead..beat that ghost story! Garrison hands you the flashlight!
Gassed up Alleycats: Flying by the light of the silvery 11/2
@The Rambling Otter: The writers of Beetle Bailey want to draw attention, but still without actually being funny in any way.
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The writers of Beetle Bailey can’t even draw flies, let alone attentions, but you really can’t blame them, they’re writers,not artists.
@White Rabbit:
#101. PHANTOM:. Just read today’s episode for first time. It sounds like Avarice’s programming is in some almost literal “cloud”, so it can enter any form available to it at any location. Hope it doesn’t enter Kits body before he finds a way to make it self destruct. Maybe he can just tell it, “I always lie.”
@Activist:
#108 cont. So to destroy it, you’d have to destroy either the program or the server. Both should still be in Ian Mollusk’s control. Or maybe I’m taking this too seriously. (OTOH, have you seen how closely his real life counterpart is emulating this cartoon character?)
BB: Imagine Fuzz’s disappointment when they all play 18 holes and everybody leaves, and he realizes that golf was all there was.
@UncleJeff: You had to ask.
@Anonymous:
Curtis: Maybe Barry is a@Horace Broon:
I mean, I’m not saying I wasn’t an irritating know-all kid, but still, how dare you.