Oh, it’s OK to punch a guy in the throat, but this goes too far somehow
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Hi and Lois, 4/7/26
You know, if, before today, you had asked me which Walker-Browne character would have been the first to declare themselves a sovereign citizen, I would’ve guessed Rocky from Beetle Bailey. I can’t say that it’s a huge surprise to see Thirsty winning this particular race, however.
Judge Parker, 4/7/26
OK, so, when I said that this thing was maybe a fraternity paddle yesterday, I was joking, because where would they get a fraternity paddle? But Randy as an ex frat boy suddenly makes a lot of sense, honestly. He went to Harvard Law but Harvard doesn’t have a Greek system, so where do we think he did undergrad? Duke? Feels like a Duke guy, right?
Gil Thorp, 4/7/26
FORESHADOWING! Which Mudlark golfer will lose an eye when a sudden gust blows a chip shot right back in their face? Who will be found liable when courtroom testimony about this very conversation results in multiple diverging interpretations, Rashomon-style? Stay tuned to Gil Thorp to find out!
161 replies to “Oh, it’s OK to punch a guy in the throat, but this goes too far somehow”
GT: School buses don’t have seat belts.
JP:
“Y-you’re me, with a different hairdo!”
MW: Is there a reason Mary isn’t giving the very pertinent scam information? Did she decide to punish Hart for storming out on her by doing only the bare minimum? Or does she get some sick delight out of being the only one with all the facts?
Is anybody else hearing the old Alfrd Hitchcock theme song looking at Thirsty in panel 2, today? Begin your evil scheme that ends in tragedy, Thirsty. Or, more likely, at the bar of an Applebee’s at 11:16 AM.
GT: Does Dorothy’s tongue always protrude from her mouth like that, or is she blowing bubble gum, or WHAT?
@Lauralot: Actually most do these days.
@Charterstoned: That’s her lower lip. Her upper lip is dark because it’s in shadow. Below her lower lip is its shadow.
What the Hell is going on with the wheels of that school bus? Does it only have four seats? Or does it have a double set in back like Hitler’s car? Or a set in the middle of the bus, like no competent artist this side of Dr. Seuss would draw, ever? It’s that one, right?
GT: “A little wind won’t hurt anyone, heh heh.”
Coach Thorp is seriously injured when he backs into the rapidly spinning windmill on hole three of the mini-golf.
“AAAAH! Hoist by my own petard!” He cries.
Oh, I saw Ann P. hitting Santa Claus
Underneath the bristled woe last night
He didn’t see her creep —
Frowns and stares – to have a peep
He thought that she was mucked up in her bedroom, gassed but cheap
Then I saw Ann P. pickle Santa Claus
Underneath his beard, so showy white
Oh, what a gasp it would have been
If Randy had only seen
Ann P. hitting Santa Claus last night.
GT: “Seatbelts! I love their theme song for Cowboy Bebop, Tank! Everyone join in!
I think it’s time we blow this scene
Get everybody and their stuff together
Okay, 3 2 1 Let’s jam”
MW: Hey, didn’t Mary have a SON in the before time? Slim…? And a grandson named Dennie? Maybe she could spend her time trying to find and RECONNECT with THOSE guys and leave Harv and Sharon the hell alone.
@Powers: And still I can’t unsee it.
JP:
“Of course, Bogdan here is up a creek without a paddle — so to speak.”
Gil Thorp:
“With lips like those, Dorothy, you should be on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills!”
Dustin : “You see, the way it was explained to me, I’m only supposed to lie or say nothing to THE POLICE. I can tell YOU what REALLY happened, because it’s YOUR job to LIE me out of this situation.”
**************
Heathcliff : “Nah, I ain’t feuding with him.”
**************
Hi & Lois : is written by people who DON’T know that people CAN incorporate themselves for tax purposes.
…Which is weird, because I thought being a cartoonist is the EXACT kind of freelance, self-employed job where you can write off EVERYTHING as a business expense, so incorporating yourself would be the first thing you do.
**************
Judge Parker : Alternate dialogue “WHAT DID YOU DO!?” “Come on, Neddy, you punched him in the throat and he was suffocating to death. This was a mercy kill. Also, I just made sure that now, the autopsy will pin his murder on me, you’re welcome.”
**************
Luann : Look at Piro’s siblings in the first panel. Look at how they’ve ALWAYS been portrayed as well-behaved kids who quietly sit down reading instead of using screens, or worse, wreak havoc all across the place like horrible hellions.
And then remember that Piro ran away from home because he didn’t want the hassle of being in charge of these perfect angels that take care of themselves anyway.
…The Evansii have made Piro into someone who’s worse than Toni’s brother Jonah, and I’m not sure they realise they’ve done this?
************
Safe Havens : It turns out that Alex, who told us he is an orphan with amnesia who doesn’t remember ever being a kid, was ALWAYS a Saint-Bernard dog that had somehow assumed human shape. That retroactively makes it okay that the main characters IMMEDIATELY took him into their confidence and revealed all their DNA shapeshifting secrets to him!
GIL THORP: “And even if a gust does blow a chip shot back in our faces and causes the team to lose an eye, with our art style, who could even tell the difference anyway?”
H&L: Let’s see…the Citizens United decision was in, what, 2010? Guess that’s a relatively contemporary reference for Hi & Lois.
JP:
“What did you do?!”
“I asked him politely to pose for my re-rendering of ‘Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe,’ and he demurred — so I had to take matters into my own hands!”
Gil Thorp:
So…is Ms Wolfe’s name actually Dorothy, or was Gil making a Wizard of Oz joke?
JP – Slowly, Bogdan struggles to his feet. “Thank you, ma’am, may I have another one, ma’am!?”
GT: SEAT BELTS EVERYONE!
*Please* let this be a normal comic strip!
With the Thorp? NO WAY!!
GROAN!!!
Judge Parker: Randy went to Ole Miss, and you know it. We all know it, in our hearts.
Gil Thorp: When Dorothy chooses to leave rather than take part in an unsafe sporting competition, will we have a Dippin’ Dot, as the kids most assuredly do not say?
@Charterstoned: According to Wikipedia, they’ve been MIA since the Carter administration or thereabouts. She could conceivably have great-great grandchildren she doesn’t know about. Now there’s a storyline that’d get people picking up the paper!
HI AND LOIS: Everybody run! Hi and Lois is trying to make relevant social commentary! Mayday, mayday! Code red! Our only saving grace is that they’re not all that good at it yet (so…like any Twitter denizen then).
Pickles – Isn’t Nelson a little young to be asked by his grandpa if he jerks off?
@Bob Tice: Dagwood hears Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe,’ and thinks that lunch is on at his neighbor’s.
@Comically Challenged: It would at least hold Jeff’s interest over dinner at the Bum Boat.
Hi and Lois: Hi is torn: does he suggest that his best friend/coworker create a Limited Liability Corporation, or does he explain that mixing alcoholism, sloth and money owed to the federal government can result in hefty fines and a lengthy prison stay? It’s that one, right?
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: [With apologies to Bob Tice]
H&L — Sure, Thirsty, tell everyone about how you’re going to write off your alcohol consumption as “research.”
“Hi & Lois” decided to mine that endless source of laughter: the transitive property
Is “Dorothy” Ms Wolfe’s first name or is Gil making a joke about tornados and the Wizard of Oz? I can’t tell whether it is a joke because it’s not funny anyway
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
Judge Parker: Randy went to Ole Miss, and you know it. We all know it, in our hearts.
That would track. So, then, probably an SAE or KA. Maybe Phi Delt.
I may have been involved in SEC Greek Life as a young person. We still made paddles for our big sisters at that point. Now, in a kinder, gentler era, I think the girls, at any rate, decorate some sort of wooden version of a symbol – squirrel, anchor, dove… what have you.
I can’t imagine that at the KA house, though.
@Comrade Gordon: That’s what I thought, too. And will a wind reference from Dorothy bring us to a twister in the ensuing days?
Dorothy reference (1939 movie), Let’s Boogie (Chuck Berry 1972 song). Gil is slowly crawling towards more recent references. Tomorrow: a millenium bug joke
MW Everyone’s putting down Mary for being oblique, nobody’s considering how difficult it is for her to maintain a conversational train of thought while (ugh!) having to touch a _smartphone_ with the tiniest possible bit of her skin in a pinch grip, because a lady doesn’t use _speaker_ mode!
JP What did she do? Well, brain damage on top of the throat injury if we were being *realistic* about loss-of-consciousness blows to the head…
Phantom And now the Unknown Commander communicates telepathically with Worubu in Panel2… or the artist couldn’t be bothered to get the thought-bubble tails drawn properly.
BF: I’m pretty sure we’ve moved on to reprints for the daily strip and by golly, they’re worse than the new ones we were getting a few weeks ago. Saturday’s big reveal — Joey is a kangaroo.
6Chx: Oh, hi, Bianca, got a joke for us today? No? Bye, Bianca.
Phantom: Mansplaining.
DT: For a bunch of goons, these three are not complete saps. They can tell this is a set up with them as a fall guys.
GT: PLEASE get a guest artist back! The sagging melting faces like molten wax, and these vehicles that defy basic geometry!
JP: Down goes Bogdan! Down goes Bogdan! In his mind, his manager is screaming at him, Get up Bogdan! Get up, Get up, you bum! … and when Neddy and Anne realize that Bogdan has gone for the Big Sleep, they have to find a place to inter the body.
MW: Has Mary dropped the $200k bombshell?
RMMD: OK – lazy story telling now will have this mustachoied guy see a story on TV mentioning Lorna Starr or a movie is on with her as the star.
Hi & Lois: I’ve never noticed it before, but Thirsty looks like a disheveled, hard-boiled detective when he’s in his work clothes! Or, in silhouette, a cartoon bear. Ooh! And if I imagine both things are true, the strip gets better!
@treetown: re: RMMD: He’s a wholesale vendor of Lorna Starr memorabilia and autographed photos. When he figures out who the waitress is he is going to feel SO stupid.
Hi isn’t an accountant, but that look on his face is one of someone who doesn’t want to tell Thirsty he doesn’t make nearly enough money to not pay taxes, even if he was a corporation.
***
Someone is lying on the ground with severe brain trauma? Sounds like a fraternity hazing to me.
Gil Thorp: Ah, Milford! Where you can tell women are women from their long hair and bee-stung lips! The bees are expensive, but evidently everyone thinks they’re worth it.
GT – Gil is telling someone named Dorothy that a little wind won’t hurt anyone? He’s obviously not familiar with The Wizard of Oz.
Josh notices the same thing in Hi & Lois that I noticed in Dilbert – a shallow pretense of class consciousness that, at its core, is libertarian self-centeredness. A desire to stick it to The Man? No, a desire to simply take The Man’s place instead.
Josh notices the same thing in Hi & Lois that I noticed in Dilbert – a shallow pretense of class consciousness that, at its core, is libertarian self-centeredness. A desire to stick it to The Man? No, a desire to simply take The Man’s place instead.
JP: Police standing over a body they just pulled out of a dumpster.
“Looks like the fraternity paddle killer has struck again.”
LUANN: Boy Piro sure caught a lucky break. Bernice is so enraptured in her own sexual fantasies (this is what people in the Luann-verse think “sex” looks like) that Piro doesn’t even have to bother making up an excuse for why he can’t pick up the little wiener. (“Sorry Bernice, I can’t take Alan home on account of the fact that I’m too busy not wanting to spend any time with him. Thanks for understanding, doll!” Meanwhile, Bernice heard nothing but the “doll” part and is now experiencing what she thinks his her first orgasm.)
LUANN (2): Also, note that Piro isn’t calling Tara, his cousin, for this favor. Maybe he knows she already has so many important things to do today (“Sorry, cuz, but Les is claiming to be an expert scuba diver so I have to spend the whole afternoon watching him drown”
MW-“Oh and also this online girlfriend scammed your father of $200,000.”
FC-Dolly, go outside catch and pluck a bird.
RMMD-This is Fred Garvin Male Prostitute.
Dolly is no Ernie Anastos: Ernie Anastos & Keep Fucking That Chicken Viral Video
But maybe Jeffy is.
JP – “He went to Harvard Law but Harvard doesn’t have a Greek system…”
Even if it did, law school students don’t usually join the kind of frats with wooden paddles (and keggers and hazing). They might join a professional fraternity like Phi Alpha Delta, though.
Today we learned that the bus drivers in the Gil Thorpiverse have a very bad union, as the driver today has all the signifiers of the living dead – blank white eyes, post-mortem bloating, an apparent broken neck, and the ability to moan only a single word – ‘seatbelts!’ Rise up, living bus drivers, before the cost-effectiveness of using zombies becomes all too apparent. That said, if they want to replace Crankshaft with a corpse, I’m OK with that, and I’m pretty sure no one will notice. Hell, the smell might improve.
GT: Everyone in this strip could take a golf ball to the lower lip and no one would be the wiser.
MW: What’s with the ambiguity? Is Mary afraid that there actually MIGHT be a Trixie, who could sue her for slander?
H&L: Learning the sovereign citizen handbook seems beyond Thirsty’s attention span. He could just declare himself a church.
H&L: I am going to be disturbed all day by the second panel’s revelation that Thirsty’s nose is a spherical lump that’s barely attached to his face. I don’t know if he has a “good side”, but this view sure ain’t it.
FC: Dolly wants to get it right when she gives Jeffy the finger at dinner time.
H&L – Corporations gotta be free! My favorite Young Rascals song….
JP – So…we’re black balling Professor Cameron?
GT – …and to celebrate – lip implants for everyone!
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Lauralot: Is there a reason Mary isn’t giving the very pertinent scam information?
In-universe? No.
The real-world reason is that this conversation has been storyboarded to last all week, so it can be recapped (or more likely, repeated) for the Sunday readers.
GT: Is that bus weirdly small, or are Gil and Dorothy like eight feet tall? And who designed the interior, a Time Lord?
JP: I’d like to know how Randy’s fraternity paddle was the best impromptu weapon Ann could lay her hands on. I’m guessing that most of the other blunt objects have been carefully hidden away due to Alan’s “issues.”
@Charterstoned: And still I can’t unsee it.
One of the marks of great art is that it provokes the viewer to novel interpretations which linger in their minds.
That’s not what’s involved here, obviously, but I finally got some use out of that undergraduate art appreciation class.
Dustin: This is probably where an actual lawyer would recommend seeking a plea deal, but Dustdad is only thinking of the donuts in the break room.
Luann: We’ve all heard about Self-Proclaimed Nice Guys; it looks like Bernice may be the world’s first Self-Proclaimed Nice Girl.
MW: Ugh, Mary’s going to use this one vague phone call as justification for her claims that she solved everything, isn’t she?
JP: I guess we’re supposed to think that Ann was suspicious of Bogdan, so grabbed Randy’s paddle and stalked Bogdan through the woods — rather than confronting him and ordering him off the property? I guess it works, for certain values of “works.”
JP – “Stop answering my questions with more questions! Do you have any idea how annoying that is?” “What’s so annoying about it?”
GT – On The Fatheads, the cartoon-within-the-cartoon on Rocko’s Modern Life, one of the absurdist running gags was that every so often someone offscreen would yell “PINEAPPLES!” and the characters would be pelted with pineapples. In Gil Thorp, it’s “SEATBELTS!”
@A Grave Mind:
They go round and round.
“What do you know? Randy’s old fraternity paddle was good for something apart from playing ‘naughty judge’ on Friday nights.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“The boss always borrows cash from the Admiral when they go out drinking”
“Yeah, and it’s like pulling teeth to get the boss to pay him back”
“I know”
“And yet, somehow he finds a way”
@Lauralot: #1: All special education buses have seatbelts. The regular sized ones, not so much. Most school districts now require coaches to get a commercial school bus operators license, so they can ferry their teams to events, so that’s one part they got accurate today.
MW: Oh, how the world has changed. In the not too distant past, back to back strips showing Mary stroking her pussy would have caused a national outcry. Mary Worth would have found herself banned from most newspapers.
GT: Wind? There will be a lightning.
Gil Thorp is engaged in reckless foreshadowing next to a bus that’s been subjected to reckless foreshortening
Thirsty should take a few accounting classes at the local community college if he thinks corporations don’t get taxed.
GT – When I was a kid, i used to dream of becoming a syndicated cartoonist, but my complete and total lack of artistic talent prevented it. I should try again, because apparently that’s no longer a requirement.
Hi and Lois-Thirsty needs all his available money for booze.
@But What Do I Know?: Alcohol is fuel. That’s what they tell me down at the drag strip. Thirsty needs alcohol to avoid ‘the shakes’ as he zips through another productive day at Foofram.
And he can write off the services of his accountant and lawyer.
Maybe Thirsty is onto something. YMMV
@Situation Normal: I don’t think the heavy stuff is gonna come around for a while.
@Acacia: #72: Plus, he’ll be double-taxed on Social Security, once for himself and again for his employer’s matching contribution.
@Anonymous, Luann: Yeah, but Piro doesn’t have any ambitious delusions of grandeur, like being an actor. He just likes his art and hope a lot of people like his art.
MW: I figured that after Apartment 3G ended it’s run the prop department let Mary have the girls collection of dowdy turtlenecks and cowled tops. Kind of like Robin William’s space helmet from “Mork and Mindy” was worn by Michael Ansara in an “Outer Limits” episode or Bob Crane’s leather bomber jacket from “Hogan’s Heroes” was the one worn by Frank Sinatra in “Von Ryan’s Express”.
You might think that the big advantage of fraternities was to allow the old elite to dominate the distribution of economic, political, social and cultural power by coopting on their terms young promising people, disarming the power of meritocracy — which would be more revolutionary than most revolutions if carried out to the logical consequence — except as a ideological façade to hide the continuous domination of existing powerholders. But I guess “getting a cool paddle” is also a nice plus
@Ken: If it provokes the viewer to novel interpretations which linger in their minds, it’s Culture. If it matches the sofa, it’s Art.
If you read today’s “Judge Parker” without reading yesterday’s “Judge Parker”, you’d assume that Bogdan was spanked into unconsciousness — meaning that reading yesterday’s strip was not just useless but detrimental!
Probably the IRS would not mind Thirsty evading income tax, since they already get the bulk of his money through excise taxes on alcoholic beverages
GIL THORP- The bus is, of course, specifically used just by the golf team, which explains why it has only 6 seats, is extremely tall (room to practice swings) and has seat belts. Unfortunately, the high profile will cause it to be overturned by the mild winds, killing the entire team, ensuring them immortality on a special “in memorium” page in the yearbook.
The title on that page? “They boogied.”
Gil Thorp: I’m trying to see what kind of perspective would make that building seem so off-kilter, but I think it’s actually diagonal. They’re not doing The Wizard of Oz — they’re doing Harry Potter.
@TheDiva: Nah, Luann’s “inner beauty” act has cornered the market on Nice Girl-dom.
Also, I don’t think doing a favor someone asked you to do makes you a Niceguy(TM). If Bernice had called Piro and offered to give Alan a ride when he didn’t need it, that would more of a Niceguy(TM) act. The M.O. is to do unwanted favors for people you’re attracted to, so you can cash them later in like they’re coupons for nookie. At worst, Bernice is being opportunistic, like Les and his rock-climbing adventure.
JP: Randy’s got a fraternity paddle…Alan’s got booze stashed all over the place. So this where all the college students go to get hazed.
That’s gotta be the most boring frat paddle I’ve ever seen.
FG: I can’t wait for them to go down into that library and be greeted by a dowdy, bespectacled, spinsterish librarian who’ll constantly shush them whenever they talk too loud.
FG: Oops, wrong floor. This one’s just full of rotting corpses.
JP – The surprising thing about this is that Randy didn’t take his youthful possessions with him when he left home. The Parker basement is filled with cardboard boxes of his stuff. At least he organized it and labeled the boxes, because Katherine or Ann or whoever that is found it right away.
However, the raspberry haired brat is back in the basement going through the box. She found the baseball cards (well, the ones Randy didn’t clothes pin to the spokes on his bike), and now she found the Playboy magazines hidden at the bottom.
FC – Learn to draw seatbelts and flat screen TVs if you hope to take over the comic strip.
Mary Worth – Mary will spend more time on “I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen” than on the $200,000 when she finally gets around to that part.
Pearls Before Swine – And they’re always blessing his heart! That’s so sweet.
Rex Morgan – The Glenwood Motel hasn’t upgraded to key cards yet.
Crankshaft – The twins are going to turn Loathsome Lillian into an influencer. She’ll influence her followers to ruin someone’s life.
Ooo! They’re clearly foreshadowing a bus accident on Gil Thorp! It’s a shame that it’ll be a boring accident with a minimum of gore since their school district is rich enough to buy a fancy bus with seat-belts, but still, they might kill off the adult driver. We can all enjoy that.
GT: “But Coach, the wind blows away her sweet and refreshing fragrance!”
@A Grave Mind: Fun fact: The title of that music is Funeral March of a Marionette.
@Ukulele Ike: Re BF – The strips do appear to be reruns, and you’re right about how terrible they are. I’m on the verge of dropping this, at least the weekday strips. I think that the Sunday strips are new, so I’ll continue following them.
Nancy Classics – Pity the poor deprived kids of today; you can’t even buy television magnifiers anymore.
Pluggers – The plugger paradox: Pluggers keep getting bigger even though they’re constantly having parts removed.
If Thirsty became a corporation, he would be a business, so he would require a special licence to serve himself alcohol, limited to specific places and times. He will soon regret it!
Hi and Lois – Comics Kingdom is stuttering again. Makes it rather poignant.
H&L: Sudden brainstorm: Hi and Thirsty form a 1980s ska band. Lois disapproves, but Irma is weirdly into it. They’ve already got the clothes.
JP: “I’ve resented that paddle for years, taking up space without serving any actual purpose. Many is the time I’ve wanted to destroy it, perhaps cast it into a fire and watch it burn. And now, irony of ironies, that paddle — that pathetic talisman of Randy’s long-gone youth — has become the instrument of my greatest triumph. Funny old world, isn’t it?”
GT: Seatbelts? On a school bus? When did they start doing that? The one thing — the one thing — I liked about school buses is that the lack of seatbelts suggested a certain level of lawless anarchy. And now, even that has been squelched.
Even a heavily foreshadowed bus crash has got to be more exciting than a golf story line.
After a long talk with a lawyer who was up for a challenge, Thirsty Thurston became TSquare Industries. It enjoyed corporate existence for about a year before hostile takeover by Conagra Brands, who quickly broke the corporation apart in various sales. The brains were kept by Conagra for use in scarecrows, the heart went to Rio Tinto Mining, and the ineffable courage to Amazon Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. The liver was bought at a steep discount by Brown-Forman to be used as a filter at the Jack Daniel’s distillery.
FG: Kind of surprised Mongovian civilization developed Earth-style cemeteries. “What’ll we do with all these dead bodies? Devote acres and acres of arable land adjacent to population centers to boxing ‘em and planting them whole, then erect expensive carved stone markers and statuary on the surface?” “Nah….makes a lot more sense to burn ‘em and use the ashes to fertilize food crops.”
JP: “And just who are YOU, wandering around with my orphaned niece? Part of the Russian kidnapping ring? Since I have the fraternity paddle handy, let’s see you drop trou and bend over the fence, missy.”
JP-Let’s hope you do a better job of cleaning the blood off it than Randy did of cleaning it of other fluids.
@Joe Blevins: I presumed the lack of seat belts on school buses was because they were really only to prevent people from flying through the windshield in the case of an accident, which on a bus would be sort of improbable seeing how long a bus is, unless it was the seat directly behind the driver but even still.
Gil Thorp: If the bus did get swept up in a tornado and flung into some fantasy realm.
The whimsy wouldn’t salvage it, if the art is too horrifying.
@The Rambling Otter: #103: In case a bus has to be quickly evacuated, like an engine fire or stuck on a railroad crossing with an oncoming train, the seatbelts would actually become a hinderance. On special needs buses the drivers and aides are issued a special knife to cut the seatbelts. Plus, a seatbelt buckle wielded like a mace makes an excellent weapon.
MW: from an Associated Press article about the Thai army seizing a scam operation on the Cambodia border:
“There’s 157 buildings, 29 of which were buildings that housed the scam companies and their offices. The rest included massive dorm complexes, and more luxurious accommodations that included apartments and three-story villas. The military officials said that they estimated at least 10,000 people were living there.”
The article says an estimated 300,000 people involved in scam operations in East Asia.
MARY WORTH: STORIES RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES!
@Ukulele Ike: And if the carpet matches the drapes…..
@Banana Jr. 6000: Also, you generally have to at least appear “nice” for that classification to work and Bernice barely even fakes it in the best of times. She’s generally too busy being condescending and anal-retentive to appear “nice” to people. Indeed the whole “punchline” of this weeks’ strips is that Bernice is so flustered that, tee-hee, a boy is calling her, that she isn’t acting like her normal snippy self (except for being a necrotic drama queen about it. That part’s still business as usual.)
Also the one being opportunistic is Piro here. I know, judging by yesterday’s comments (including the blog’s proprietor) don’t read Luann (and missing out on all the contrived “Wackiness they can handle!) because a startling number of people thought Piro was Niecy’s ex/booty call/”friend-with benefits” but nothing could further from the truth. This call right here has pretty much been the extent of their relationship at this point. He stops “ghosting” her every six months or so when he needs her babysitting services. That’s it. Piro is basically just a brooding, mopey Jonah (complete with his own obnoxious brat he fosters off on people with very little notice.) This is what Bernice is basing her entire erotic indulgences on!
@Charterstoned: She’s a hootin’ holler exchange student?
H&L With the silhouette nose of a Goofy or Mickey, Thirsty’s giving off a poignant “why can’t I be a real boy” vibe in Panel 2 – really, why can’t he be something else, he’s clearly nothing the resembles a human!
@2+2=7: LUANN: She’s generally too busy being condescending and anal-retentive to appear “nice” to people.
You’re forgetting Bernice’s blatant toadying to anyone she perceives as an authority figure. She’s so obsequious it’s like watching one of Trump’s Cabinet meetings.
@Guillermo el chiclero: @The Rambling Otter: School buses are also *massive*. They’re going to win in any accident involving the *vast* majority of vehicles on the road. Part of that is that the bus’ momentum will change less than a car’s in the collision’s momentum transfer , so the acceleration experienced on the bus will be a lot less than the acceleration of the smashed-up car . Therefore you theoretically need less protection to spread out the time for the collision shock (the “impulse”) even more than the bus already does for you. The padded high-back seats help in a bus but you would smash into them horribly in a car (never mind the hard dashboard), so the seatbelt is much more important in a car. And yes, in an emergency 50 little kids trying to get out of seatbelts is an absolute nightmare
Crank: Huh, this is shaping up to be one of those “interesting” stories which I don’t buy in two radically different directions simultaneously. Like, as I and everyone else said yesterday, I don’t buy that Loathesome Lillian, who has written an undetermined number of moderately well-selling crime novels, and over the course of this has appeared at book fairs, and given talks, and been interviewed on podcasts, is suddenly all “You expect me to advertise myself? Like a common whore?”
But also, the more I think about it, how often would you expect a novelist to release a newsletter? “Week 7: Still writing.” “Week 85: Let me tell you all about the argument I had with my editor.” Most writers I’ve seen with regular blogs talk about other stuff most of the time because 90% of writing is really boring if you’re not the actual writer. (Unless you’re actually going to tell your readers the whole plot, which you aren’t, especially for mysteries, because you want them to read the book.) But Lillian doesn’t have anything else going on in her life, except maybe her bird-feeder war with Crankshaft. If you’re just selling your books, well, Terry Pratchett wrote two a year, and he was unusually prolific. Annual sounds about right.
Then again, this is the world where a newspaper is eagerly writing down the life story of Battom Thomas, rather than ignoring him and forcing him to shove it in his strip as the life of a barely-disguised author avatar, so maybe Centervillians don’t get bored with this stuff. Maybe it’s down to the same stuff in the water that stops them realising Crankshaft is a danger to himself and everyone around him.
DT: Doublemint wasn’t paying attention when Solly explained this last Friday. Last Friday!
GT: Okay, this is edging closer to “stylised” than “deadlines are hard”. I mean, if Dick Tracy looked like this, I wouldn’t think it had deteriorated much. Let’s see if Merrill can keep it up!
JP: “Oh, heck, have we traumatised the kid? Now, Charlotte, when Auntie Anne hit the man with the stick, she was just…”
“Mommy has better technique on the swing, so you probably haven’t killed him. And Grandma Bower says never leave witnesses unless you’re certain they’re too scared to talk. Are you going to push the handle of the paddle through his windpipe now? That’s what Grandma would do.”
Phantom: I love that Woboru and Stripey are both impressed by Patrolwoman Han’s modesty in downplaying her big fight with General Chuma, while apparently not noticing that she’s also downplaying the part where she acted without orders, forcing the Jungle Patrol to scramble after her before they were ready. Still, they can’t bring that up too soon, because they have to pad things out so the fake-out and forgiveness beats happen at the end of the week.
Hi and Lois – Thirsty succeeds in becoming a corporation, only to find out private equity has bought his now-corporate debt and own him as an asset that is more profitable to liquidate than keep going.
Judge Parker – Fraternities are about brotherhood, academics, and a lifetime of having a blunt force object that can be used in self-defense.
Gil Thorp – Coach Gerads, hiding in bushes watching Gil, will die by errant golf ball. Thorp is done with mild storylines, time for some Dick Tracy like gruesome and ironic deaths.
The school buses in Gil Thorp are even shorter than the school buses in Gasoline Alley. That’s not foreshadowing, it’s the sad, simple truth.
@Philip: Chester Gould once killed a nice old lady with a golf ball in a Dick Tracy strip. Crashed through a window and did the old bonkus on the conkus. If you don’t believe me, you could Look it Up.
Luann – The reason that Bernice and Piro are not together is that the one time they kissed, she was unimpressed. But asking the Evansii to remember their own lore is a bridge too far.
Gil Thorp. I’d criticize the art for the length of the school buses, but considering the overall quality of the illustration I have to assume the artist has only ever seen a short bus.
Hey Ann, while you were back in the attic rummaging through Randy’s old stuff, you didn’t happen to run across a sweet Walther .380, did you? Or are we gonna have to wait another fifteen goddamn years for that thing to finally go off?
REX MORGAN M.D.: “I’ve got it! She’s the town’s other waitress, Wanda, in a cheaper-looking wig.”
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): “I have to suss out her true identity before she found out I’m really rockabilly Ned Flanders.”
@Ukulele Ike: #116: Wasn’t she the Tracy’s old housekeeper who later turned out to be Junior’s biological mom?
@CanuckDownSouth: #112: School buses are actually one of the most survivable vehicles in an accident. Since they never had the mileage requirements imposed on them by the Federal government like passenger cars, which had to be built lighter, they still build them like Brinks trucks, with lots of reinforced steel.
@2+2=7: #120: Let’s slip Mae Mae in bed in place of Wanda, and see if Truck notices.
JP: fraternity paddle? What is that?
@Uncle Lumpy: Hey Ann, while you were back in the attic rummaging through Randy’s old stuff, you didn’t happen to run across a sweet Walther .380, did you? Or are we gonna have to wait another fifteen goddamn years for that thing to finally go off?
Randy’s not even as competent as Barney Fife. As a result, he not only can’t keep his bullet in the gun, he can’t keep it in his pocket. The dry cleaner has to hold it for him.
@Professor Well Actually: JP: fraternity paddle? What is that?
Google/YouTube search “Animal House, Thank you Sir, May I have another scene” And, yes, that’s a young Kevin Bacon.
GT: There’s a character named—I guess—Dorothy, and a reference to wind, maybe tornados. So if this storyline veers into Coach Gerads vowing to “get you and your little dog, too” it won’t exactly come out of left field.
JP: See, if this were like the movies, Bogdan would say, “Thank you, sir, may I have another.” Instead he just lies there, maybe breathing, maybe not.
@2+2=7: Regarding Tara: that, and the last time Piro had her take charge of his siblings, she probably came *this* close to murdering one with an arrow.
JP: In my admittedly limited experience, these paddles are invariably painted with the frat’s Greek letters.
BB: Nothing to complain about there. Sarge’s scented alarm clock is letting him sleep in past 0700, almost halfway to lunchtime in the Army, so the men under him are getting a break, too.
C-Shaft: It’s not a Christmas card, it’s something for Batiuk to fall back on whenever he runs out of ideas.
DT: Doubleup sees awfully eager to be made obsolete by technology. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to work for a guy who keeps losing his mustache.
Dustin: Deconstructed Shaggy Rogers looks like he thinks he deserves to be in a better strip, and I’m pretty sure he’s right.
Luann: Rare is the day when I’m willing to give advice to a Luann character, but Bernice is being called on to give a ride to the annoying preteen genius who stalked her earlier. Yeah, there’s some owing here.
MW: So far, Sharon Hart hasn’t appeared on-panel at all. Is she an AI phantom too, hooked up to a text-to-speech generator? What level of Black Mirror are we dealing with here?
Phantom: I like to think that Patrolwoman Dai left a 5-second pause after “exposesd themselves”, just to give the Unknown Commander something salacious to think about.
@Gil Bates: Nice, and it makes sense most school buses in the US do not have physical seat belts!
@Peanut Gallery: It means the Matrix is being reset.
@White Rabbit:
You’re right; Randy’s says “βλάκας” on the back.
@Where’s Rocky?: I got that reference.
@The Rambling Otter: I presumed the lack of seat belts on school buses was because they were really only to prevent people from flying through the windshield in the case of an accident, which on a bus would be sort of improbable seeing how long a bus is, unless it was the seat directly behind the driver but even still.
If by chance the driver were to have seen Tarantino’s Deathproof, you’d want seatbelts and any other restraints you can think of, up to and including the slapdash installation of as good a roll cage as you can muster, in advance of the school bus demolition derby about to take place. Gil Thorp thus morphs into Crankshaft so quickly that everyone notices.
6ix Chix: 27 is the old age of youth, according to this. Except I’m pretty sure Xunise is older than that herself, so WTF.
@Maude R. Fawker:
After Fawk’t-checking my post too late, I see that the movie’s title is rendered Death Proof. Mea fucking culpa.
@Just John: The wording of the strip (“born in the 1900s”) makes it sound like she’s 120. Still a little young to be dating Walt Wallet, but older than Xunise probably is, unless there’s something weirder than usual happening in Chixtown.
Late Thread Cuisine: Let’s break the trend of desserts from the past few Cuisines.
RMMD- When MuMu was starring in action movies, was there ever a scene where she punched some guy in the throat? Maybe clobbered him with a board? Just curious.
@Lauralot:
#3. MW: in case no one has yet replied, Mary has the legitimate reason of hoping Susan cares about her father and that she’ll assert herself because she cares, not because she is a gold digger
@Baja Gaijin: It looks like the menu photo for a McDonald’s burger. You know, not even close to what you get when you order from McDonald’s.
@Baja Gaijin:
That looks way too plastic to be a real burger. How about some wax fruit for desert?
@White Rabbit: Ah, but you forget that Randy was a member of Bland Whitey Bland, the only fraternity that finds Greek letters to be ‘a bit too ethnic, don’t you think?’
@Just John: 27 is that nasty age that killed Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and, many years later, Kurt Cobain. Bad rock n’ roll mojo.
@Just John: Given that Bianca’s personal style is mired in 1970s-80s punk and goth, I’d say she’s about 66….
@Baja Gaijin: That looks like what you’d get if you approached the head chef at one of the Mongovian capital city’s finest restaurants and described an Earth cheeseburger because you figured that would be the smoothest move to get into your date’s pants.
If she were one of the Vassar or Wellesley debutantes Flash swanned around with when he was a Yale man, he’d have attempted something fancy. But Dale kinda seems like a cheeseburger gal.
Cheap n’ greasy. Yum.
@141 taig: Other than the lighting, that’s what an eat-in burger at Mos Burger looks like. I was totally surprised when they set the tray containing my burger and fries on the table and it looked like that, right down to the curly green lettuce. It tasted great, too. The patty is a mix of beef and pork. Yummy.
@142 Deadly Goon Bugs: Nope, real. I think the top bun gets an egg wash.
@146 Ukulele Ike: Um, yeah, OK.
@147 Ukulele Ike: I wish you could taste a Mos Burger. Damn they’re great. Now I miss lliving in Japan.
Good evening fellow Mudges,
I just wanted to get off my chest that dragging myself through work today while keeping one eye on world headlines left me feeling more emotional than normal, to the extent that I’ve just spent the past hour messaging several people around the world that I deeply care about, because I felt that to wait until tomorrow might be too late*. If you’re of a mind to and have people of your own that you care deeply for, I’d recommend doing the same.
And now back to our Late Night thread, thank you.
*Yes, I know that in the past hour/90 minutes there was something resembling a reprieve, but if you think that’s going to hold, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, dirt cheap.
@Baja Gaijin: If I had ever lived in Japan, I probably would most miss Babysan.
@The Quiet Man: Chill. I was tense for some hours, but it turns out to be TACO Tuesday after all.
@The Quiet Man: Context? What’s this about?
@151 Ukulele Ike: Of course.
@Ukulele Ike: 27 is that nasty age that killed Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and, many years later, Kurt Cobain. Bad rock n’ roll mojo.
Probably because “everything hurt” by that advanced age and they just gave up.
@The Rambling Otter:
#153 I think Quiet Man’s concern was for world politics. Some news sources made it sound like Armageddon was around the corner.
My concern is that someday those threats won’t be idle, that bloviating will be followed by action.
@Activist: You and I are on the same wavelength tonight, Activist, thank you.
@Ukulele Ike: After a decent dinner and watching a classic silent movie, I have. Somewhat…
@Ukulele Ike: And you go to all that trouble only to find yourself cockblocked by a power outage and a side quest to a library. Think Bok is a good enough guy to give them some quiet time in the stacks?
@Ukulele Ike: Amy Winehouse added herself to that list, too.
H&L: Citizens United established that “corporations are people” in 2010. Congrats on Hi & Lois being politically relevant only 16 years late.
A&J: Oh dear. Apparently the baby really is going to look like that. Ouch. Oh well, no doubt she has an absolutely delightful personality.