Did anyone really call him Steve “Guitar” Miller or was that just my dad
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Blondie, 5/30/25
Here’s a joke for you: a guy with a master’s degree in ancient history and a guy with an MFA in poetry were coworkers once, back in the late ’90s. The punchline is that they were coworkers as office temps doing filing at a professional association for orthodontists. Obviously they chatted to occupy their overeducated brains while putting resumes in alphabetical order, and the guy with the ancient history degree (me) somehow got onto the topic of the Steve Miller song “Take The Money And Run,” and how it’s a crime that in one verse it rhymes “Texas,” “facts is,” “justice,” and “taxes.” The university-trained poet, to be contrary, insisted this was (in a phrase that is burned forever in my brain) “a slant rhyme, like Emily Dickinson would use.” I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now, so sorry, Elmo, it’s a good try but “screens” and “memes” don’t quite rhyme either. Also, are teachers actually showing angry memes to children? I was going to argue this point too, but you know what, a lot of teachers are pretty young, and as an old person, I have decided that any conflicts between Zoomers and Gen Alpha or whatever we’re calling the children now are none of my business. I’m holding the line on the rhyme thing, though.
Mary Worth, 5/30/25
After finally catching Belle in an act of total madness, Wilbur has now decided that she should leave, actually! How is he going to make that happen? Well, he’s not sure about that one. He’s mostly an “ideas guy.” Maybe Dawn can fill in the details.
Family Circus, 5/30/25
I love that we get a good look at the other kids outside, just vibing and enjoying the Jeffy-free lifestyle. Once Jeffy deliberately hid from their sight, this became the best day of their whole week!
194 replies to “Did anyone really call him Steve “Guitar” Miller or was that just my dad”
I have often cited that verse as some of the worst lyrics ever written, so I am in total agreement.
So, do you think Dagwood was into Alice Cooper?
Second verse of the original is pretty bad too…
FC:
If perfectly green leaves are falling off a tree in the middle of a temperate season just because Jeffy happens to be concealing himself among its branches, Dad had better go consult an arborist.
FC: I feel sympathy for Jeffy today. That’s just the kind of douche move a big brother would pull to get rid of you.
@Pozzo:
Alice Cooper, no; Blondie, yes.
Sorry, Josh, you’re wrong on this one, slant rhymes are legitimate rhymes.
MW: Tell her to get out? Tell her she needs to stay in a hotel for the rest of her indefinitely long visit and then lock the doors and windows? Send her off to get something, put all her luggage in the hall, and then lock her out? Call the police? You’ve tried nothing and you’re out of ideas.
This man writes an advice column.
FC:
Billy and his two little friends in the background have some serious cognition issues if they’re in the middle of an open field looking for someone during a round of “Hide and Go Seek.”
@Pozzo: Dagwood has gone from “Alice Cooper isn’t real music. The youth today have no taste” to “I think my dad listened to Alice Cooper” without aging a day. What a weird thing it is to be a legacy newspaper character.
FC: Today’s caption was hastily rewritten after the syndicate rejected the original, gritty exploration of Jeffy waking up in a ditch after a three day bender.
Dagwood: I dread to think what these kids rhymed with “texting”.
Phantom: “Hey, Dad, like my new moustache? I call it ‘Granthony’.”
@Lauralot: On the plus side this will be another great instalment for I Shouldn’t Be Alive But I Am (or whatever it is he writes)
FC: Now that Jeffy thinks about it, Hide-n-Seek is the ONLY game the other kids suggest when he shows up. It’s gonna be a long life, Jeffy!
MW: Dawn is content with only one “I told you?” She’s a better woman than I am; I’m petty and immature enough to keep it going FOREVER in a situation like this.
RMMD: Hello, back child support, goodbye, wedding reception!
MW: Things could be far, far worse. Instead of “home office”, it could have been “lap”, “bed”, or “beefy embrace”—I feel like we dodged a bullet.
MW: The story comes to its logical conclusion when Wilbur and Belle put drain cleaner in each other’s food and they both fall ill. Kind of a slant take on Romeo and Juliet.
MW: Wilbur’s still under Belle’s influence – look how casually he says “get rid of her.” Sadly, I doubt we’ll be treated to a father-daughter bonding experience as the two of them bury Belle’s body in the woods.
RMMD: Kite flying ahead! I was hoping a couple of ex-wives would show up, but a long-lost son works too.
Wrecks Moregone:
“I’m a hitman. Varla told me to tell you that if she can’t have you no one else will!” (Pulls out gun)
Wary Morth:
Easy! Wilbie Hon should just let Bats In The Bellefry see him with Mary. Bats will then attempt to eliminate Mary. Should she succeed, she’ll be done for murder, should she fail, she’ll still be done for attempted murder. Either way, two birds, one psychopathic stone.
Blondie: Slant rhymes are totally valid. Do you know how hard it is to find exact rhymes? And then do that over and over and over again for decades? Don’t you realize how fragile and desperate we poets already are?!
That being said, while I love the “taxes/facts is” rhyme, “justice” and “Texas” are really, reeeeallly stretching it.
FC: I didn’t wake up this morning expecting to see a stark, Hemingway-esque portrayal of the existential anguish of loneliness and isolation inherent to the human condition in Family Circus, but here we are.
MW: Wilbur needs a guy who knows how to get things done. Call in Morgan Freeman! I wonder what he’s doing… oh right, in the Worthy-verse he’s a minister (who did Iris and Zak’s wedding)
Dude, some languages don’t distinguish between the “n” and “m” sounds at all. It’s really nitpicking, not to mention old-fashioned, to cry foul on the screens/memes rhyme. Despite what your English teacher may have told you, rhyming is more about the sounds being made, particularly the vowel sounds, than the exact combination of letters.
MW: Dawn’s mom shows up and promptly throws Belle’s things out into the street and tells her if she ever shows her face around her daughter again she’ll twist her face worse than her wrinkled panties.
She glares at Wilbur and says through gritted teeth; “You’re pathetic.”
The Blondie writers seem like the kind of folks who would pull out some 2012 meme like Overly Attached Girlfriend and smile smugly about how they’re with it. As opposed to me, pulling out Overly Attached Girlfriend and smiling smugly about how I’m ironically dated. They annoy me!
Blondie – Texting, Sexting and naked pix; All to the tune of some AI prick….
MW – Two words…Scott Peterson….
FC – So I made like a tree and left….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Blondie: Writing from experience, in the novel I’m writing (which takes place in present day) students in grade-schools still use pencils and paper.
I’ve been writing this book for over 20 years, honestly and I can’t be bothered to update that, as I feel it has heart.
If anyone asks or complains, I’ll just say that it’s an alternate reality (which it already blatantly is)
Crankshaft: “…so instead I asked to see his penis, which was also a legend in the industry. It was the ’70s!”
@Morgan Wick: I feel like that could have been said in a less assholey way.
@Dennis Jimenez: The tree was made like a pencil and write.
Ehhh, that’s all I have today.
RMMD: Did anyone else think at first glance that June was approaching Truck’s table? Don’t tell me I’m the only one.
Rereading the lyrics in the cold light of day, the issue is not the rhyme, it’s that we get a whole quatrain about Billy Mack and then he doesn’t do shit to catch Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue! Who does he think he is, Rex Morgan?
MW: Again, the story is missing information that would make it work. There needs to be a real reason why they can’t simply throw Belle out. For example, she’s stayed there long enough to establish residency in California, and has to go through the eviction process. And Belle knows this, because she researched it long before she showed up. This would also justify the weeks-long stay of someone who was once called “devoted to her job.”
@Banana Jr. 6000: I was going to say that maybe Wilbur is just too polite to kick her out directly….
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Maybe tomorrow Wilbie Hon and Dawnie will finally discover that Bats crossed out the latter’s eyes in the photo weeks ago.
So is Dagwood’s carpool just waiting outside his house thinking he’s going to come running out late as usual and he’s plum forgotten or have they had enough of his BS and now he has to take the school bus to work?
@matt w:
Steve Miller: “He ain’t gonna let those two escape justice.”
Billy Mack: *lets those two escape justice*
Family Circlejerk – Looks like they threw Jeffy a blanket party.
Somehow I completely missed that Josh had riffed on Family Circus until… thirty minutes later.
Meta implications aside… once Jeffy deliberately hid from my sight, this became the best day of my whole week!
Mr Allora could get rid of Bats in a moment. Get one of his Mexican cartel cousins to eliminate her, then wheelbarrow her corpse into the sprawling Charterstone parkland, where she can be easily turned into fertiliser. ¡Ay!
“Teacher’s angry memes” is Elmo’s subtle hint that his teacher is flooding the class with hateful 4chan shit, and won’t stop nicknaming the kid after the teacher’s hero Elon.
“Billy and his friends put me into a shallow grave again.”
@Veronica!: My take on this is that it’s easier to get away with “justice/Texas” because those are the first and third lines, it’s almost an ABCB rhyme scheme. My real considered take is that in recorded music, delivery determines a lot about what you can get away with as a rhyme, which is why Lil Wayne can pull off “purple/circle/curfew/surf you/commercial.” Elmo is even pulling off a secondary assonance that wasn’t in the original with “keyboard/teacher’s.”
I’m still mad at the Blondie writers.
“Take the Money and Run” is guilty of more sins than just lazy rhyming. It has the basis for a decent story song but it doesn’t go anywhere, sounding almost like a bad AI summary. It’s not fit to clean the big iron on Marty Robbins’ hip.
FC: “Dammit Thel, who moved Jeffy to the Pet Semetary?!?”
(sighs heavily, cocks rifle)
Steve Miller’s lyrics, much like the ones in Blondie, Blondie itself, and gold hubcaps that spin, can be described as “functional,” “serviceable,” or “legitimate,” yet still “ill-advised.”
Blondie – That university trained poet? They now work as a freelance writer for Blondie.
Mary Worth – Wilbur is going to have to make a “Sophie’s Choice” about Willa or Dawn, and my money is on the fish.
Family Circus – Cuts are coming to the cast of the Family Circus, and in several test markets Jeffy was erased from comics for the past six months, to see if any readers would write in and wonder where he went.
None did.
@Tabby Lavalamp: Dammit, I was going to use that joke! </Captain Obvious>
“How can we get rid of her?”
“Maybe we can repel her?”
“She can’t, Dawn, she can’t! She’s dating me!”
MW will probably take the easy way out – while Wilbur and Dawn are out, Belle would accidentally eat one of her own poisoned cupcakes.
Mary Worth reworked as a moody A24-style horror, where the murderous house guest is a metaphor for Wilbur’s (waves hand dismissively in Wilbur’s direction) whole deal, and they can’t get rid of her but also nobody ever quite dies, everyone just lives in terror of the next awful event.
(Also, I know him mostly as Steve Miller x’67 because he’s mentioned relentlessly as such in my University of Wisconsin alumni magazine.)
@Dan: So, Belle (who is trying to kill Wilbur) is the physical manifestation of Wilbur’s past sins/crimes?
I for one never expected to come to a “Mary Worth/Silent Hill” crossover, but now I’m all for it!
FC: The other adult Keane children nod silently, recognizing that Jeff has hijacked the comic to flog his lifelong persecution complex.
Not defending the Steve Miller Song, which I hate, but the slant rhyme justice / taxes is objectively better than the true rhyme of I laughed at all of your jokes / My love you didn’t need to coax in Rod Stewart’s Maggie May.
Mary Worth: The narration box’s reminder that Dawn and Wilbur are in his home was unnecessary, really. I would have known instantly by the featureless void that this conversation was going to go as far as Wilbur’s next column and have exactly as much intellectual depth.
For years I misheard “Fly Like an Eagle” as “Shoot the children” and “How’s the people.”
@matt w: Good points all. Miller sounds like he’s trying to make the words not rhyme – which was a deliberate creative choice, I’m sure, but one that I question.
Contrast that with “The Joker,” in which Miller rhymes “love” with… “love.”
@Nine Poets in a Spenserian Stanza: Oh, that I could write a Spenserian stanza on the many ways that delightful earworm should be buried in a shallow grave along with Jeffy.
@Nine Poets in a Spenserian Stanza: I agree, even bad rhymes are better than awkwardly twisted phrases that force a rhyme. (Despite that, “Maggie May” is a far better song than “Take the Money and Run.”)
@Veronica!: I personally found the Fatboy Slim cover of Joker much easier on the ears.
I’ve often cited Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” for the best line of lyric in rock music history: “We got no class, and we got no principles…we can’t even think of a word that rhymes!”
That’s how it’s done, boys and girls.
Blondie-Dagwood sang that perennial Alice Cooper ode to the end of school, “Caffeine”.
FC: This being Jeffy, I assume he walked up to the kids who were already playing a lively game of tag, announced it was hide and go seek time, and didn’t even notice that they hadn’t heard him.
@The Rambling Otter: While there are many screen-based learning activities, this week my kids are bringing home backpacks bulging with papers, workbooks, and notebooks – there is still a lot of pencil & paper stuff at elementary schools today.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – That looks like the same kid who said Wilbur was his dad.
I just hope that when W/Rhonda arrives, the kid blurts out, “Mom!”
Wait, is Dagwood actually EARLY for his carpool? I hate when a strip violates a fundamental character trait just to set up a one-off gag. What’s next? A happy Monday for Garfield? The Lockhorns having a civil dinner? Rex Morgan MD practicing medicine?
@Liam: She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie – caffeine….
@CanuckDownSouth: Thank you so much for that reassurance!
Rap lyrics would be absolutely nothing without slant rhymes. In the early days of hip-hop, you got garbage like “Throw your hands in the air, and wave ’em like you just don’t care, and if you’re not a square from Delaware and you got on clean underwear…” and on and on, ad nauseum.
Just to grab a random example off the top of my head, compare that to the flow of Ye’s “Ghost Town”: “Someday we gon’ set it off, someday, we gon’ get this off, baby, don’t you bet it all on a pack of fentanyl. You might think they wrote you off, they gon’ have to rope me off, someday, the drama’ll be gone and they’ll play this song on and on.”
More slant rhymes than you can shake a stick at, and rap’s all the better for it.
Wilbur saying you were right means he knows you told him, Dawn. You need to tell him that after he forgets…so like, twenty minutes from now, or the next time he makes any decision that isn’t about the safety of his fish.
What do people have against the humble slant rhyme? Everyone I’ve brought it up to has denied them too. See, rhyming can sound really cheesy so often part of the goal when writing poetry is to make them subtle, so much that you barely notice they rhyme. You can do this with full rhymes but slant rhymes helps make it easier.
For the record, I’m no poetry major, but it did take taking a poetry class in college for me to appreciate them. When a poem has rhymes, rhythm, and other literary devices in it but still manages to sound natural, that’s what makes them impressive.
Suddenly, the door to Wilbur’s apartment slams open, revealing the silhouette of a massively built man. He steps into the light as Spanish guitars thrum.
Wilbur, shocked: “Carlos Allora!”
Dawn, dreamily: “Carlos Alora!”
Carlos Al(l)ora: “I hear you might need . . . The Groundskeeper.”
Smash cut to opening credits. The Groundskeeper sprays a rose for aphids, then leaps aside as a catamount charges. He jumped from a burning helicopter with a lawn mower to cut some tall grass. Theme music shifts to a minor chord as The Groundskeeper digs a shallow grave near the golf course as Mary Worth supervises.
Title Card:
THE GROUNDSKEEPER
An A(a)ron Spel(l)ing Production
Starring Pedro Pascal as Carlos Al(l)ora
Featuring Angela Langsbury’s corpse as Mary Worth
Tonight: “Fish or Foul.”
Anyway, I’m pretty disappointed Wilbur was convinced so easily. The final showdown with Belle better be pretty damn climactic or I’m gonna– oh who am I kidding, I bet Wilbur’s going to do something ~totally wacky and inappropriate~ that Belle decides he isn’t worth it and runs off.
The easiest way to get rid of Belle and his hooking up with her in the first place proves Wilbur loves easy, is just set up cameras, let her kill Dawn, and then call the police. Win-win with the added bonus of no Dawn anymore!
So, we’re just ignoring that Mary absolutely has the power and the ability to just make Belle disappear? The strip’s called Mary Worth! The solution to every problem is Mary.
@Veronica!: “FC: I didn’t wake up this morning expecting to see a stark, Hemingway-esque portrayal of the existential anguish of loneliness and isolation inherent to the human condition in Family Circus, but here we are.” – No that’s more Peanuts territory.
Tomorrow, Belle threatens a cowering Wilbur and Dawn with her giant kitchen knife, and Mary barges in and pelts Belle with her vile muffins until Belle submits.
RMMD-“I’m an attorney. Consider yourself served.”
MW-Let’s go ask Mary Worth how to get rid of unwanted people!
FC-Hide long enough and some police dogs will seek your corpse.
Blondie-Second verse same as the first. A little bit faster and a little bit worst.
Regarding slant rhymes, I don’t like “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, I don’t care if I ever get back” because, as we all know, it’s Cracker Jack, not Cracker Jacks.
At least my fraternity got it right with its version:
Take it out at the ball game,
Shake it out at the crowd,
Stick it in peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don’t care if you give it a whack,
And it’s beat, beat, beat for the home team,
If you don’t come it’s a shame,
For it’s one, two, you’re covered with goo,
At the old ball game.
“… and that’s the situation, Mary. How do we get rid of Belle?”
“How old is she?”
“I don’t know, middle-aged?”
[Wistfully] “Too bad. I know how I would deal with AN OLD STALKER”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
That’s awesome!
@Rosstifer: All you have to do is look into a mirror and say her name three times.
MW- I can’t imagine neither one of them sang “50 ways to leave your lover” at karaoke.
FC:
“Mom? Mommmmm?”
(minutes later)
“Oh, I didn’t hear you, sweetie. I had to dust out the air vents, set rat poison in the crawlspace, and polish the TV aerial.”
GT: As a soccer geek I’ve seen enough “oopsies” about cleats up, or clear-out elbows finding skulls around heading the ball. Idon’t know how much the big “crash” yesterday was supposed to represent the threat of a real injury.
Pluggers: This is cute and all, but only the Patreon supporters will get the hard stuff. “My name is Carl and I’m an overeater.”
H&L: Ooh, looks like Chip has learned to play the guitar left-handed–that ambidextrous talent will come in handy if he finds himself without his favorite “axe” and the only one there is left-strung.
Who am I kidding? It’s just lazy drawing.
Family Circlejerk – By Jeffy saying “nobody would go seek me,” he is indicated that he calls the game “hide and go seek” rather than “hide and seek,” which got me wondering about how I heard it both ways when I was a kid. With nothing better to do, I googled the question and got this:
Why do Americans say “hide and go seek”?
Some Americans might add “go” to hide and seek because it is a sign of excitement and urgency, as it signals the start of the game. It also adds an air of anticipation, making the game more exciting.
@Steve McBeezlebub: In the back of Wilbur’s mind in this scenario is whether conjugal visits are still a thing.
FC: Even Barfy wants nothing to do with Jeffy. Mainly because he just peed on those leaves.
MW-“How did Mary make that nice Aldo Kelrast disappear?”
MW: “Hmm” thinks Wilbur. “I wonder if Mr. Allora keeps a wood chipper in his toolshed.”
MW: Wilbur’s gone to the right place. If there’s anyone who knows how to get out of a dangerous relationship, it’s Dawn.
I take the middle position: slant rhymes are legitimate rhymes but “Texas,” “taxes,” “justice,” and “facts is” aren’t even slant rhymes.
MARY WOERG: To be fair, if Wilbur had any idea of how to get rid of “unwanted pests”, Dawn would have tossed on her ass a long time ago.
@Veronica!: My favorite terrible clean rhyme comes from the musical Wicked:
Like some terrible green blizzard*
Throughout the land she flies
Defaming our poor Wizard
With her calumnies and lies
You can just see the corner Stephen Schwartz painted himself into when he realized there are a limited number of words that rhyme with “wizard.”
And I’ll jump on the “slant rhymes can work” bandwagon, especially when dialect or sheer flair can pull it off. I’d rather hear a reasonably clever near rhyme than the fifty-thousandth iteration of “strife/life.”
*For a long time I heard this line as “terrible green lizard,” which honestly makes as much sense.
@Pozzo: “We can’t even think of a word that rhymes!”
RMMD: It’s obvious that going to be Truck’s son by Varla but I smell a classic rom-com plot coming up. Truck and Varla’s divorce was never finalized so technically he’s still married and can’t marry Wanda. Hilarity ensues as Varla makes him jump through hoops before she’ll agree to sign off on the divorce. Varla might even entertain thoughts of getting back together with Truck. Truck might decide he had it way better with Varla and ditch Wanda at the altar. Lot’s of possibilities, and I can’t wait for the preacher to get to the object now or forever hold your piece part of the ceremony.
@Voshkod: Pedro Pascal as Carlos Al(l)ora is perfect! How about Drew Carey as Wilbur?
@Banana Jr. 6000: MW: Again, the story is missing information that would make it work. There needs to be a real reason why they can’t simply throw Belle out.
I assumed the “real reason” is that she’s a murderous psycho and they can’t figure out how to ask her to leave without getting hacked to pieces.
Blondie-Verse three is about sexting but no one ever sings beyond the first verse.
@Bob Tice: #4
…or an exorcist…
FC: “Well, try hiding harder.”
@Liam: Speaking of, I once played an old Prison Simulation videogame.
I was supposed to go back to my cell before lockdown, but instead I hid in a locker in the shower room. So I could then sneak around after hours in order to find a way to escape.
Me (thinking): “Hahaha I’m so clever”
Then the dogs come running in barking at the locker I’m in and I’m caught moments later.
MW: Wilbur needs to “Ask Wendy”…
FC: The standard read is that the kids told Jeffy they were playing hide and seek as a means of getting him out of their hair, but I think it’s funnier and more on-brand if we assume that Jeffy just showed up, yelled “Hey, let’s play hide and seek!” and then went off to hide while the others ignored him.
MW: This past week has reminded me of the Damon Runyon story “Lonely Heart,” the source for the Guys and Dolls character Nicely-Nicely Johnson (Jones in the original). In it, Nicely-Nicely answers a personal ad for a life companion and finds himself married to a nice widow who keeps him in three squares a day and he’s perfectly happy with the arrangement until he realizes he’s hitched to a black widow who offs her husbands for the life insurance. Having noted her interest in spiritualism, he pretends to have a conversation with one of her dead husbands and freaks her out until she runs out in a panic and falls into the pit trap that had been set up for him. I doubt this is how the Belle story line will resolve, if only because it’s too clever and interesting.
It’s easy to write bad poetry.
But writing “good” bad poetry is an entirely other level.
Bad poetry but to the point of entertaining.
Like the Vogons.
@Voshkod: I’d watch the hell outta that.
@MKay: Dawn is just trying to get past the crisis. Once Belle’s gone, she’s gonna be like “remember that time you stuck your dick in crazy and nearly got carp surprise for dinner because you wouldn’t listen to me?” at least once a week until he writes “I shouldn’t be alive, and I wish I weren’t.”
@John Plugger Mellencamp: Then Wilbur can call the police and have them remove her. I suspect that evicting trashy ex-girlfriends from the homes of middle-aged schlubs is a day-to-day job for the police in condo-ridden California suburbs.
The Mary Worth of yore (1950s) would march right in and kick Belle to the dumpster. But, like everyone else in that complex, she is flaccid and impotent and thinks that grey muffins solve all problems.
@Charterstoned: And whoever played Velma in any recent version of Scooby Doo as Dawn.
@Guy Nerdlinger: It’s part of ABC’s Thursday Night Lineup, right after Luann and Sally Forth, two light-hearted comedies about ditzy dames and their families, and followed by The Funky Winkerbean Cancer Hour, a medical drama in which everyone dies. And yet, for some reason, ABC can’t figure out their ratings issues.
@Charterstoned: #15
“…beefy, sweaty, hairy, smelling of stale Old Spice and fish flakes” embrace… :-p
@Ken: #17
…but it might earn Dawn extra credit for her elective course in forensic science at Santy Royale Community Ollege…
Blondie: The rhyme may be imperfect, but it’s an improvement over the first draft. Try finding a rhyme for “microaggressions”.
@Ukranazi Stepan: #20
I’m honestly hoping we’ll see a confrontation between Belle and Mary. I bet ten minutes of Mary’s meddling and muffins will send Belle racing to take the next flight out of Santa Royale.
@Ukranazi Stepan: You think Bats would survive an attempt to kill an Ancient One?
@Bob Tice: Too easy.
@Anonymous: “Tycho transgressions,” but then you’re stuck explaining the Third Lunar War in poetical form.
Blondie: As a philosophy major, my first post-college job was in the indexing department of a legal textbook publisher, and I also spent every day arranging cards in alphabetical order. It was a task any computer could have done, but apparently I was cheaper to maintain. Anyway, I suppose young people will be doing that sort of thing again once the Calamity comes and wipes out all higher technology. (Maybe that’s why they call kids gen alpha.) Of course, without Spotify, they’ll have no idea who Steve Miller was — but I guess their parents can teach them about how weird it was when Katy Perry rhymed “firework” with “worth” and “burst,” “boom” with “moon,” “oh” with “sky,” and “holds” with “rainbow.”
@The Rambling Otter: #27
I would love to read a story about school kids using honest-to-gosh tools like pencils and paper and chalkboards! Oh, those were great days…
@Anonymous: Microaggressions make me mad every session, people be messin’ putting me in depression.
MW: Meanwhile, Mary is hunched over her laptop using her hi-tech investigative skills to find out the True Crime background of Belle. I checked back and Dawn *did* give Mary the full name of Belle. So Mary has already notified “the authorities” who are on their way to arrest Belle as she makes a final threat (fill in your own option) against Willa and/or Dawn. Easy peasy!
@Ukranazi Stepan: 335
“Chekov’s picture”…has Karen Moy not heard of the concept?
@Daisy: Ack! Should be comment #35!!!
Time for the Mary Worth Posse to tell Belle “You’d better not!” (Remember Aldo?)
C’shaft: Self-deprecation can be a valid form of humor–there’s a whole subset of stand-up comics who’ve made a career of it. But Batiuk’s attempts always come with an underlying insincerity and smugness that make the whole routine insufferable. Battom doesn’t want Skip to laugh about what a pathetic fanboy he was, he wants him to be impressed by his honesty and humility. At least Harry Dinkle is honest about his overbearing ego.
DT: It’s a pen. You use it to write.
Dustin: Shut up, kid, you think Dustin is the one who has to worry? You’re the one who will be toiling in the cadmium mines to provide energy for your computer overlords.
GT: And just like that the conflict we’d completely forgotten about for the past month has been resolved.
JP: “So, the usual?”
“Yep, I’ll hang out here for a half-hour, then go back to Abby and pretend we had a long heart-to-heart and it seemed to do you a world of good. That should keep her off your back for a few weeks.”
RMMD: “Say, you look quite a lot like I did when I was your age! Your eyes are different, though…come to think of it, Varla had eyes like that. Anyway, what was it you wanted to talk about, total stranger who I’m sure is not connected to me in any way?”
@Voshkod: You could also have the fun task of describing the rebelliousness of astronomer Brahe.
Blondie: I don’t think any other strip featured on this blog has ever reached this level of “out of touch, socially isolated old person struggling to understand anyone even slightly outside his age range”. Congratulations, Blondie!
Mary Worth: It would be really funny and clever if Moy spent a week or so on Wilbur and Dawn trying to concoct an elaborate plan to get rid of Belle only to than just walk up to her and say “please leave” and she did. But that would require Moy to be funny on purpose which has never occurred in this comic to my memory.
Family Circus: “Also the dog bit me.” *turns to reveal the back of his skull is missing and than falls over dead*
RMMD: The guy’s an adult. What does it matter if Truck’s his father or not?
@Arabella: #121: Yeah, I’m suspecting it’s going to be a deus ex machina like that. In the play “Tartuffe”, which Moliere probably wrote to stroke the ego of King Louis XIV, the king’s official shows up in the knick of time to arrest con man Tartuffe for past crimes. Like you said, easy-peasy, and Mary gets her two week victory lap for phoning it in.
@Tonio: Microagressions,
From Tycho’s transgressions
Led to a Keplerian punch in the face.
He refers to himself as “Stevie ‘Guitar’ Miller” near the end of “Gangster of Love” (on the early “Sailor” album), so yes.
MW: Dumbass and Lardass put their single braincell together and come up with nothing. Way to put those 20+ years of college to work, Dumbass.
GT: The Pops Ghost Story was just an excuse to get Luke off the canvas so that he’s not screaming at Keri to stop playing nice with members of the other team, so, of course, all is well.
“Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas
You know he knows just exactly what the facts is
He ain’t gonna let those two escape justice
He makes his livin’ off of other people’s taxes”
And you gobs still get on my arse over “In this ever-changing world in which we live in”.
Shiite.
MW – “I’ve got it!” says Wilbur. “We could take her on a cruise and dump her overboard!” Dawn rolls her eyes. “I tried that with you once, Dad. After a couple weeks you came back.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Let’s play poker for kisses”
“That’s fine for you, but I should get something good if I win”
“Ha! I always win! Because I cheat!”
“Such a gentleman”
“But did you know that you’re breaking out in kiss-shaped hives?”
Y’know, you can sing the lyrics of “Take the Money and Run” to the tune of John Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane.” Not that anyone would want to.
♪ Little ditty ’bout Billy Joe and Bobby Sue…
@Guillermo el chiclero: As the cops lead Belle away, Wilbur and Dawn at the same moment see the defaced picture. They stare at each other in astonishment as screen fades to black…
@Peanut Gallery: And you can sing most Emily Dickenson poems to Yellow Rose of Texas.
Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
The Carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.
Pluggers – I waited longer than I did at the pawn shop when I hocked my TV.
Rex Morgan – I have to give Beatty some credit, because I did not see that coming. Obviously the guy is Truck’s son that he didn’t know existed. He can be the ring bearer! I hope he has cowboy boots.
Crankshaft – Crappy, annoying characters eating crappy, annoying pizza exchanging crappy, annoying dialogue in a crappy, annoying story. Batiuk manages to be consistent.
@Charterstoned: Drew Carey has lost a lot of weight. How about Danny DeVito?
Blondie: “No more keyboards, no more screens!” Ah, yes, when the kids today at long last reach the halcyon days of summer vacation, the first thing they want to do is get away from their screens. They want to run out into the sunshine, play baseball at the park, sit down with their colored pencils or a good book, and in no way engage with the extensive entertainment and communication activities available on their various screens.
Also, texting. “No more school, no more texting!” Elementary school coursework requires a LOT of texting, and the kids can’t wait for their chance to take a break from texting over the summer.
@Peanut Gallery: Purple Haze and the theme to Green Acres….
@Voshkod: Micromachines and Transformers acting out….
@I speak Jive: Danny DeVito has experience in playing revolting people while actually being one of the nicest people in the business. If anyone can play Wilbur, it’s him.
@Mark Jackson: Some people call him Maurice!
@Hibbleton: To be fair though, given the sordid Weston backstory, we’re assured that Mom is certainly someone who knows how to throw people out of the house.
@Dennis Jimenez: Was he a Space Cowboy?
@2+2=7: I’m surprised that she let Wilbur stay long enough for her to birth his dimwit spawn.
@Astroboy: You are one fly mutha, you know? :-)
MW – Dawn: “Why don’t we just throw her out?”
Wilbur: “You don’t understand. We’ve got to get rid of her in such a way that she’ll keep having sex with me.”
@Peanut Gallery: Amazing Grace and the Theme From Gilligan’s Island are also interchangeable…
I’m experienced in writing failing songs and did learn the lines rarely have a perfect Rhyme. To avoid dissonance most popular songs rely on assonance. Catchy, eh?
BETTY: religion 1- i used to sing four upbeat hymns to myself while running. Great how easily Christianity is condensed.
FG: religion 2- oh no, the Margrave is going to destroy my understanding of the duality of free will and predetermination. Well, it was nice while it lasted.
@Needless Exposition: Somebody give me a cheeseburger!
FRAZZ: heck, that’s nothing! City Museum in St Louis fas a five story slide and a ten story slide. Only kids go down the ten story one.
LOLA: listen up, your Honor. Necessity is a defense, and she had to outrun that swarm of bees she heard when her hearing aids malfunctioned
JUMP START: so Dexter isn’t lazy like Peppermint Patty but is a bored genius like Edison and Caulfield.
PPHANTOM: Is it just me, or is #21 actually more concerned with his son than the Phantom legacy?
@Needless Exposition: I heard the same about Tony Jay, he was usually cast as villains due to his DEEP MENACING VOICE… but I heard he was an absolute sweetheart.
@Guillermo el chiclero:
#96 RMMD: we know trouble’s on the way when a new character’s name begins with same syllable as “varmint.”. And this strangers haircut is too nice for his eating in a diner. Kick the bum out, Wanda. Then tell Wilbur how you did it.
Blondie: Things I never expected to say in this space: Crankshaft did it better. Not well, but better.
(I’m sure Josh covered the strip I’m thinking of, but I can’t seem to find it in the archives. Anyway, it was something like “No more schoolwork, no computers, now it’s sun and vodka shooters.”)
Crank: This, on the other hand, is not something Crankshaft is doing better. Other strips are doing “transparent stand-in for the cartoonist rambles about his early career” much better by not doing it at all.
HtH: Okay, I reluctantly accepted it when Hägar met Dracula, because the historical Vlad Tepes, while not actually around during the Viking Age, is at least within the Generic Medieval Period that Hägar uses because why would you do research for a fricking comic strip? But Frankenstein? Hard nope, we are well into the Early Modern period there.
MW: Wilbur may have shelves of books he’s never read in other rooms, but for his home office he keeps things minimalist. That bare wall is what he stares at blankly when he has no idea what advice to give someone. It’s blue so he can say it’s “blue sky thinking”.
Phantom: “He’s stalling. Who does he think he is, Tony DePaul?”
RMMD: “Mom never talked about my father, but I worked out the dates and realised I must have been conceived when she was married to you.”
“Well, ain’t that just the biggest shock I’m gonna get today. What’s your name, son?”
“Fergus. Fergus M. Lawson.”
Frank & Ernest – Where Uncle Lumpy shops.
Strangely enough, today is the first time I’ve noticed that Steve Miller, the rock n’ roll guy from The Steve Miller Band, has exactly the same name as Trump’s deputy chief of staff (currently cuckolded by Elon Musk).
The latter Steve Miller is never called “Guitar,” because his regular nickname is “Evil Little Nazi Fuck.”
SL – Two punchlines. (A medium one, followed by a topper.) This is why Sherman’s Lagoon is one of the best strips around.
MW: Wilbur – “…but how” Dawnie “quick, get me your bowling ball, I have an idea”
DT: Our tipster is filling out some application to see DT?
GT: We want more Coach Martinez!
RMMD: Please let this be a new scam by Rene Belluso – hiring someone who has a resemblance to Truck to con him out of more money.
Why is Dagwood’s zipper suddenly next to Elmo? His BRIEFCASE zipper, you perverts!
@Horace Broon: Crankshaft did it better.
_____________________
Crankshaft did it better/makes me feel bad for the rest/after all,how would you feel if Crankshaft did it better than you?/Baby, baby,baby the Crank’s the best”-Carly Simon theme from “The Frazzhole Who Ran Me Over”
@Dennis Jimenez: @Peanut Gallery: Purple Haze and the theme to Green Acres….
_______________________
It’s really something to hear Mr. Haney hit those high notes!
@Mark Jackson:
I never refer to him as anything other then with the full ‘Stevie “Guitar” Miller’ to this day, not that he comes up that often anymore
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening to the tune of Hernando’s Hideaway (“whose woods/these are/I think I know”)
FC: Assuming that this is original artwork Jeff Keane has really developed a talent at drawing his own young face in hilarious states of misery.
MW: Yeah, nothing like a suddenly unwanted houseguest who’s so nuts you have to whisper when she’s in the house. Let me guess, the first step to getting rid of Belle is putting a bell—ha-ha—around her neck. But who will bell Belle?
Steve Miller was one of those rock n roll guys that you never knew what they looked like.
@The Rambling Otter: The majority of actors/actresses who are cast as villains are often some of the nicest people in reality. An example is Debi Mazar who played the villain in the Beethoven sequel who not only took in one of the St. Bernard puppies but also apologized to every one of the dogs when she had to be mean to them.
9CL: Or disgusted bystanders for that matter.
C-Shaft: Yeah, I’m sure Skips readers—all three of them—will be rapt by the story of how Batton Thomas went to visit Roger Bollen and didn’t see his studio.
DT: I guess I’d be annoyed by forms too if I always went out in gardening gloves that made it hard to hold a pen.
Dustin: For obvious reasons Dustin can’t tell Hayden to go fly a kite, so he’ll have to settle for “Fuck you half-pint.”
H&L: Band practice was so loud that it knocked Ditto’s bangs out of his eyes.
Phantom: This is Kit Jr.’s way of easing into the subject of who does and doesn’t give him wood.
RMMD: It’s about 200 pounds of your genetic material come back to haunt you, Einstein.
I have to disagree with Josh, slant rhymes are fine, the whole point of a poem is just to have a good time, if you need the rhymes to be exact go read Dr. Seuss.
I like that they didn’t even attempt to render what the interior of Wilbur’s “home office” looks like. What does a guy need if his job is a joke and he has no particular inner life?
@JeffMcm:
Agreed, but you need something that slant-rhymes with “Seuss” here.
Mary Worth Mashup.
@8 Lauralot: No one said he gave good advice.
@75 Rosstifer: Take a look at comment #174.
@96 Guillermo el chiclero: Have you even read Rex Morgan? You wrote an exciting storyline. Need I say more?
@Baja Gaijin: Just in time!
@Artist formerly known as Ben: #171: re-CS: No one will be seated during the pulse-pounding Batton sees the inside of Roger’s studio scene.
@Marlin Perkins: #169: You’ve seen him, but don’t remember because he’s one of those bland, non-descriptive guys, brown hair, medium height, neither fit nor fat, neither handsome nor ugly. If you saw him rob a bank you’d swear he was wearing a mask.
@GarrisonSkunk: #165: Get Neil Young to sing it. He sings like Pat Buttram talks.
Rest In Peace, Major Hoolihan.
@Needless Exposition: He’s older than Wilbur is, but I think he could do it. I especially liked him in Taxi.
@Needless Exposition: another example is Jack Gleeson, AKA Joffrey from Game of Thrones. He actually quit acting for a while so he could focus more on charity work.
There was a Matt “Guitar” Murphy, who’s in the Blues Hall of Fame, performed with Memphis Slim and Howlin’ Wolf, and appeared as himself in The Blues Brothers (1980) —playing Aretha Franklin’s husband and the short-order cook in their restaurant during her number. (Louis Marini was in the same scene, playing “Blue Lou,” the dishwasher and alto sax.) And Dire Straits’ Guitar George, who “knows all the chords,” from “Sultans of Swing.”
@GarrisonSkunk: Bernie Kerik died, too. And went straight to Hell, I expect.
RIP Loretta Swit.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: Ah, Garrison Skunk beat me to it, but cannily used the character name.
@Ukulele Ike: Who gives a rat’s ass!
@NYPD: Just hoping he’s keeping a seat hot for Giuliani. At the rate Roodles is declining, he’s on his way down there soon.
@Ukulele Ike: Who gives a rat’s ass!
@GarrisonSkunk: #179:
@Artist formerly known as Ben: #185:
One episode of Dick van Dyke’s whodunit series, “Diagnosis: Murder” had practically the whole cast of MASH guesting. They even had both Major Houlihans, Loretta Swit and Sally Kellerman. William Christopher (Father Mulcahy) played the victim. Spoiler alert: Kellerman did it.
@Guillermo el chiclero: I haven’t seen that as of yet. I’ve seen an episode of Ironside where she was the honeypot.
@Ukulele Ike: Ah yes.
9/11 made Rudy “America’s Mayor” and Kerik the nation’s most famous police executive for a while.
Then, people started asking questions.
Such as, why was the emergency response coordinating officer for the largest city in the USA located in the biggest target in NYC, the World Trade Center?
Blondie: These kids today, with their “texting” and “headphones” and “rock and roll” and “Rubiks Cubes”!
FC: I remember that over the decades, there were widely-varying portrayals of the landscape surrounding the Keane house. Tall fence, no fence, shrubs, no shrubs, flowers, no flowers, swing set, no swing set, suburban, rural, whatever. That is one reason I stopped following the strip. No wonder little Jeffy’s mind has been scrambled. Object permanence is a joke in the outdoor Keaniverse.
MW: Wilbur really needs to remember that old advice never to sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
Wait a minute…