The whackest place to live in America, maybe
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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/11/26
OK, there’s two things that could be going on here. The first is that we’re meant to understand that Hootin’ Holler is one of the proposed wackiest places to live in America, which, no! No!! It’s poor and depressing and violent! That’s not wacky at all! The other possibility is that the gag writer just thought of the idea of a “wackiest places to live in America” list to serve as a counterpoint to the well-trod territory of the best places to live list, and decided that Snuffy hearing about this idea that certainly isn’t a joke and can barely be called a premise was good enough for a Saturday strip and then moved on with their life. Honestly, I respect the second one more.
Mary Worth, 4/11/26
“Mary has immediately begun to use her new pet to serve as a sounding board for her to workshop what she thinks is the best possible spin on her meddling,” is, I guess, not a huge surprise. Anyway, I just want to say now and for the record that it’s possible for an older man to have a perfectly good relationship with his children and to fall in love with a fake internet babe and send her lots of money! I feel like sending lots of money to a hot girl you met online is not necessarily something you check in with your kids about, even if you love them and speak to them regularly! The correlation here is not causation!
Family Circus, 4/11/26
The movies? Why would Billy want to do that when he could keep reading about The City of Brotherly Love, America’s silliest town! Eagles fans pelting Santa Claus with batteries … the MOVE bombing … that innocent robot they murdered … it’s all very silly and Billy simply can’t get enough!
39 replies to “The whackest place to live in America, maybe”
Perhaps he meant to say the “Whackest,”…yo? The “Wiggety Wiggety Whackest” can follow next week!
FC:
“Give me that ‘Silly Philly’ book!”
“No way! — you can read ‘Rantin’ Scranton,’ ”Leery Erie,’ or ‘Dreading Reading’ !”
Even the cover doesn’t look silly at all, it looks like this book should be all about oats. Which seems kinda highbrow for Billy.
MW:
“They can find their way back to each other again! — well, until she founds out that he blew most of what would otherwise be her inheritance on that ersatz Jezebel!”
“Muffin, I was trying to help!” straight-up sounds like Mary got called to the carpet on this. So Muffin is sentient. And disapproving. This tracks. Now she just needs to use her telekinetic powers to fix football games, as sentient cats do.
RMMD: My theory right now is Mr. Mustache from the diner (who may or may not be Rene Belluso) is involved in some nefarious business. Gun running, drug running, counterfeit jeans running, take your pick. Anyway, Fatso here is going to uncover it and be forced to use all the athletic skills she learned being an ‘international action movie star’ to put them out of business so they no longer threaten the new home she’s made for herself as a simple, down-home diner waitress.
Mr. Mustache will say ‘NOW I know where I’ve seen you!’ as he gets a roundhouse kick to the face.
The trouble is, Beatty hadn’t figured out what that nefarious business was before he went in for surgery and thus couldn’t leave those instructions for the guest artists, hence this wheel-spinning about ‘You two grew up in the same town?! A-MAY-zing!’
DT: Mr. Tare, you realize that BB Eyes was a run of the mill bootlegger, Mumbles a failed musician whose shtick was he managed to drown twice, and I don’t know what the hell Double Up’s deal was. You ain’t exactly dealing with the Dirty Dozen here, or even the A-Team.
GT: Well, I guess nearly seeing the world come to an end last week stiffened the spine of the syndicate sufficiently to let these strips which were clearly held back and nearly canceled run.
@A Grave Mind: On MW – hey, I got that reference! Yeah, where’s General Harry Morgan when you need him? He’d whip Har-vee into shape right quick!
FC: Billy doesn’t quite understand it but he finds the whole brotherly love thing intriguing.
Snuffy Smith: I’m pretty sure that TV signals move through the air exactly the same way as radio signals do, so Snuffy could just as well be watching a sitcom as listening to some morning-zoo disc jockey’s “weird news” on the radio and wondering what happened to The National Barn Dance. Heck, he could probably sell his antique radio on eBay for the price of a big-screen TV — assuming wifi signals could reach Hootin’ Holler as well.
Family Circus: Surely these kids have the Disney Channel. They could see all the “doubleheaders” they want to for $12 a month — although they’d probably just watch Zootopia 2 over and over until Mommy considered taking a bat to the TV screen.
FC “But wouldn’t it be more fun to read up about the 10 wackiest cities to live in the USA? I’m already at #6 – Philadelphia!”
@The Quiet Man:
Oh, thank God, there’s one at least, I was NOT looking forward to trying to explain that.
Aaaaaand NOW I read the headline. Shit, way to steal a joke, self. It’s gonna be a bad day.
Snuffy Smith : “And a surprising, tantalizing fun fact : it is the first time in several decades that Walla Walla, Washington is on BOTH lists!”
*************
Dick Tracy : Yeah, sure, a full frontal assault on a police station that occurs AFTER they’ve been put on high alert by a clearly coordinated attack on the city. Using only three guys. Who’s skills are “good at using a whip (because squeamish pacifist)”, “can’t speak clearly” and…. Whatever the hell B.B. Eyes can do. “Be forgettable”?
************
Family Circus vs Heart of the City : Another Silly Philly bit : anime fandom is so rabid there that the reaction to Not-Sailor Moon’s english dub voice actress is such that a little girl says “Wow! When *I* become a famous actress, I’m hiring at least two dozen bodyguards to follow me at all times!”
I wonder if there is a significance to the fact that Heart seems to be dressed as Not-Jupiter and Kat as Not-Mars. The former would be “I’m a tough, tomboyish brunette who wears her hair in a ponytail, and also I’m the same height as she is canonically (I checked), I assume.***************
Mary Worth : Speaking of huge surprises, it was sure nice of Mary Worth to soften the blow by not telling Sharon how much money her father had blown being taken in by a scammer. And by “soften the blow”, I mean “if you were trying to build a crescendo to make the reveal all the more upsetting, you wouldn’t do anything differently”.
BGSS: The overuse of contractions suggests that the broadcast is coming from Hootin’ Hollar itself, but does anyone in town actually have a transmitter? The other possibility is that that’s Lukey in the next room, yelling through a hole in the wall and into the back of an old radio Snuffy found by the creek.
MW: So I guess that it’s not enough for Mary to recap every storyline with Dr Jeff at the end, we now have to pause mid-plot for Mary to summarize events to her cat. I know that the median reader for this strip isn’t young, but it feels a bit rude to assume they’re in the mid-stages of dementia.
FC: Oh Dolly, you know that Billy can’t enjoy the movie theater since they put his head on backwards.
MW Muffin, I was trying to help! Why didn’t you tell me you were running the romance scam business and didn’t *want* Harv’s family to come investigate?!
RMMD: “Truck’s finger scare was front page news!”
LOCKHORNS: Did Loretta look into obtaining an AI punching bag?
FC: Is a silly town the same as a wacky town or is another list required?
MW: Mary is somehow intimidated by Senor Cravat. She was terrified when he blew up, and now she’s seeking validation from the cat. Is the old girl losing her moxie?
FC – we must assume that this is a recycled joke from many decades ago. First, I don’t think I’ve seen a double feature offered for a very long time. I think they went out with Dennis’ saddle shoes. And second, given that Daddy Keane isn’t that fond of his progeny’s antics, it seems unlikely that he’d want to deal with them for the minimum four hours of squirming and chattering this will take.
Silly Philly is a cartoon character Bil Keane created, pre-Family Circus. “What the heck–kids love legacy characters or IP or whatever you call them.”–Jeff Keane
MW: Should we be concerned that Mary thinks a father/daughter relationship is a more than equivalent substitute for a sexual relationship?
RMMD – “we’ve had some locals here make a headline or two. Not long ago some wag swapped out the motel’s regular pillows for corduroy ones. SO MANY headlines. Plus it tanked our TripAdvisor rating…”
RMMD: motel guy is clearly stoned. Will Mae Mae find the cannabis garden?
MW: Gotta say, in this situation Mary’s FORMER cat—the gray one—wouldn’t have been so complacent as just to cosy up adoringly and give out with a MEOW of understanding agreement. That gray cat would have taken a principled stand and scratched her, but good.
I feel like the art here was originally used for a different joke (or rather, a joke at all), considering Dolly is holding out her outstretched hand with her fingers separated as though she was originally saying something involving the number five.
@lynn: MW: Should we be concerned that Mary thinks a father/daughter relationship is a more than equivalent substitute for a sexual relationship?
No. We should be concerned that MOY thinks that.
RMMD:
“My goodness — you’d need a sherpa guide to help scale that pompadour, Doug!”
MT “Surrender your claim” to the land? Do you mean “sell at market rate to the company that will make its own profits from the land? Or does Mark Trail exist in a world where the territory-incorporating land rushes never stopped??
That sounds like a really interesting project. I’ve always been fascinated by the history of newspaper comics.
Innocent, my foot. Hitchbot was a narc who got what it deserved.
FC: “Silly Philly,” subtitled “Oh, Behave” a book about the flamboyant quakers of early America.
@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: If Doug is into headlines, he should visit the family in Six Chix. Each one is reading their own personal copy of How to Make Your Legs Go All Stripey.
@A Grave Mind: I have a deep fondness for that movie. Col. Blake and Col. Potter in the same film.
Family Circlejerk – I hope the Silly Philly book mentions the Fuck Millie sign.
Spam alert #26
Phantom: “As you can see, she’s a mouthy little twit. I was hoping to get her murdered.”
RMMD-“Rex Morgan Kills Again” isn’t something you should be proud of.
MW-Mary, did you tell Sharon that her father was scammed?
FC-“Alright,” Billy exclaims, “I’m finally old enough to see an adult film.”
MW: “…trying to help! …not even be real!”
MEOW!
“…misses her father! …back to each other again!”
MEOW!
Seems that Muffin has brought home a nasty case of “bangorrhea” from the pound.
Pickles – Is Earl saying his daughter is plenty moist?
MW: It’s times like this, that I’m glad that my elderly Uncle does not have a mobile phone nor the knowledge of how they work. (Living in a rural podunk in the middle of nowhere helps too)
Because he would fall for every scam that comes his way.
The Far Side today has my all-time favorite – Washington crossing the street.
I’m surprised to learn the Smiff’s got ‘lectricity at home.