A dog’s life
Post Content
Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/26/26
The Goofy/Pluto paradox is a situation many comics and cartoons that feature sapient animals find themselves in, whereby some animal characters (like Goofy) are clearly supposed to be standins for people while others (like Pluto) are clearly supposed to be standins for animals, even if the animal-animals seem to be a lot smarter than real animals are. Mother Goose and Grimm has a truly baroque case of this, where Mother Goose (a bird) clearly has an owner-pet relationship with Grimm and Ralph (dogs), in that she wears clothes and drives a car and is in charge of the house while they go around naked on all fours and drink out of the toilet, but also they have conversations with her in English and call her “mom.” Anyway, today’s strip is particularly unpleasant when you think about it in those terms, as it features a bird with human-like levels of intelligence, authority, and prestige taking two dogs who are also sapient but kept in a subservient “pet” role to watch their enslaved (?) kin race around a track, and then the bird says “These dogs aren’t that fast, you know who’s fast? The dogs in Alaska, because there aren’t many places where they’re allowed to go to the bathroom. Their poor bladders! Their lives are agony!”
The Phantom, 8/26/26
Hey, remember how Ignis Vindicta sent a bunch of armed drones to free, and also control, the Python? Well, the Ghost Who Shoots shot the drones with a couple of handguns and, uh, that seems to have worked, I guess. Tip to anyone fighting in one of several ongoing wars where drones are playing an increasingly important part: just shoot at them! You don’t even have to use particularly fancy guns, it turns out!
163 replies to “A dog’s life”
RMMD “He wanted to stop you from making a huge mistake – making faces and having it freeze that way. But I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing, we could finally tell you youngsters apart, yes, keep up the drama, good clutching, annndd … freeze!”
We’re posting these early now?
Having a hard time getting over “The fastest dogs in the world *are are( in Barrow, Alaska.” How in the world does something like that slip past everyone? The answer, of course, is that they couldn’t care less and simply want to get the strips out as fast as possible.
Check out the medieval-style halo around Ralph. You know, I’ve long said, if there’s one wretchedly neglected piece of source material for a truly excellent triptych, it’s Mother Goose & Grimm.
CS: Only three more days of “yep, it’s a robot allright.”
Luann: I interpret this entire week as Ms. Fogerty being sarcastic as hell. “After years of aimless wandering, you finally found your way thanks to my Career Paths class! Let me guess: flight attendant! You’ll only need to retake 11 more classes!”
Pluggers: This entire comic strip seems to be upper middle class people cosplaying as working class.
Mary Worth: Ever wonder where Wilbur Weston goes when he’s not on panel? Surprisingly, he’s not at the Hellmann’s/Best Foods plant. He’s here.
@Jonathon Pernisek: Did you ever see “Attack of the the Eye Creatures?”
MG&G: I’m somehow reminded of Woodstock eating turkey at the end of “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.”
Phantom:
BEEP…BEEP…
“Oh, no! I shot the Roadrunner!”
MW: “What an incredible man. I’m lucky to have him in my life.” Fiddles with cyanide capsule containing earring. “As long as he behaves himself.”
Phantom: Did anyone else look at the second panel and think he was dual-wielding maracas for a minute?
Mother Goose and Grimm:
“Why’s that?”
“Didn’t Juneau that already?”
“And this here is a tattoo of the Phantom, from the newspaper comic. Just loved the pose, he’s a two-handed ass-kicker, just like me, man! Anyway, I’m gonna need a photo I.D. for the Steel Reserve.”
FC: Dolly’s stealing Jeffy’s schtick again as the family moron. Here’s the family dynamic:
Big Daddy Bil is the suppressed homosexual cuck.
Thel is the drunken slattern.
HTT Grandma is the sanctimonious scold.
Billy’s the bully.
Dolly’s the narc.
Jeffy’s the village idiot.
Phantom: Those guns in Phantom’s hand look so weird. It’s like like they were drawn in later, as if he was originally meant to be hold something else. I think this panel is edited from the classic storyline where the Ghost-Who-Walks buys himself two big cones of ice cream. He’s frowning because he’s just realised he just got sorbet instead by mistake.
@Jonathon Pernisek: In Mother Goose’s defence, she’s very drunk.
MGG Ok, so this is bothering me. Is the implication that dogs have to pee on multiple trees during a single emission, or are the trees so far apart in Alaska that they have to run marathons to get to the next one? For that matter, do dogs always have to pee on different trees, or can they return to the same one after a certain period? Maybe I find it confusing because I’m a cat person..
@Schroduck:
It IS a dog track. No one with a BAC below .08 allowed.
Phantom:
“Beep beep. Beep! Beep!
Beep beep. Beep! Beep!
The drone went beep beep beep.”
— The Playmates, “Beep Beep” (1958)(adapted)
MG&G: I thought that Ralph was a jowly cat. My apologies for my anthropomorphic animal insensitivity.
GT: There are strips that trap you in week-long dialogue that should have taken a day. Then, there’s “Gil Thorp,” which makes you think you’re having blackouts and missing whole days.
MW: Oh, so Jeff PURPOSELY limits their dates, so Mary doesn’t take him for granted. And here, I was thinking it was just a silly, frigid relationship.
Beetle Bailey : What DOES “bespoke” mean, anyway? Other than being the third thing after “broke” and “woke”?
**************
Crankshaft : Last week, I thought that Pepper’s debut would be it being revealed as what surprised Crankshaft so much, as Crankshaft sure wouldn’t have expected his order to be delivered by a robot, much less a sassy talking one!
Instead, Pepper’s actual debut features no big dramatic surprise, everyone’s just standing around talking about how getting Pepper is actually a bad idea, and there’s been no indication Pepper can even move.
*************
Frazz : Isn’t Mrs Olsen’s car the last memento she has of her dead husband? And Caufield just repeatedly insults her for keeping it?
*************
Heathcliff : Wait, the strip can reference that? I thought there were rights issues, or that the strip didn’t WANT to acknowledge that happened!
*************
Luann : Nice list of all the classes Luann has taken so far. Except I remember her taking “Archeology”, and don’t remember her ever taking “Biology”. Is it me, or is it the Evansii who are remembering wrong?
************
Phantom : …didn’t the Bandar manage to take out a couple of these things using BOW&ARROWS and THROWN SPEARS? Granted, two of the warriors fighting them got killed, but still, they put up a fight with THAT level of weaponry!
You’re a Plugger if you were laid off 20 years ago, but still pretend you’re going to work every morning.
MW: In a movie or TV soap, Mary’s thoughts today would be the setup for Jeff breaking up with her. Or maybe dying in a car crash on the way to their date. Either way, the rest of the story would be how Mary would cope — or not — with this event.
But I’m sure we won’t get that, just another victory lap and another recap, after she and Wilbur spent last week telling one another things they already knew.
Alaska: Bereft of fire hydrants, street signs, fence posts, or any other thing dogs will use to mark their territory. But hey, at least that barren wasteland has a name that works as a pun.
“Why does Mother Goose think that dogs only ever pee on trees?”
“I don’t know. Alaska.”
The Phantom: As it turns out, one of the Ukrainians’ most effective anti-drone weapons is a good old shotgun, just like you’d use for hunting. By the time they’re in pistol range, it’s a bit too late. Source: the dozens of Facebook reels I use to rot my brain instead of reading The Phantom.
@Anonymous: Also as it happens, one of the most effective Anti-Cthulhu weapons is a humble site cookie.
Mother Goose and Grimm:
This is the sort of joke that’s come into vogue semi-recently under the name of “dad jokes”, which are designed to solicit groans rather than laughter. Still, people more or less enjoy them, and yet Mother Goose looks absolutely fucking miserable as she delivers hers. I assume that she just lost her life savings at this dog track, and is using humor in a futile attempt to hide her feelings as she waits for the loan shark’s enforcers to come cut off her thumbs.
I was sorry to hear that Dolly Parton died.
The Phantom:
I don’t know about you, but I think there’s a lot of pathos in today’s strip, with the drone emitting sad beeps as it lays dying. It may have been on the side of evil, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have feelings! I hope tomorrow’s installment features the Phantom staring at his guns in shock before throwing them away and shrieking “WHAT HAVE I DONE!?”
MG&G — A dog doesn’t pee anywhere other than by a tree? Then what are all those animals on leashes people are walking by my lawn?
The Ghost Who Money Shots — The Phantom’s next move will no doubt be to examine the memory chips to determine the source of the–oh, who am I kidding? He’s going to drag that destroyed drone back to the Skull Cave so that centuries from now his animatronic ancestors can read a bedtime story from the Phantom Chronicles
MG&G: I finally understand the motivation behind Perry’s first words upon reaching the north pole. “Man, this thing stinks.”
I’ve never fully understood how zebra camouflage works. Their stripes break up their outline? If so, is that why The Phantom’s trunks are striped? Is that why drones have never shot The Phantom in the crotch? Inquiring minds want to know!
MG&G: Squatting female dogs (AKA ‘bitches’) be like “who’s laughing now? Penis boy.”
MW-If Jeff is so wonderful then how come we don’t see him more often.
Archie-Veronica, you don’t go down on the person when you’re driving.
Crankshaft-“Robots are filling the jobs that nobody wants.” Well they don’t want to work in your restauarant.
DT: Oh dear, looks like it’s going to be some sort of hi-tech homicide. I was hoping Fat Villain was just going to sit on Skinny Henchman for an hour or two. At least we’ve finished up the past several days of intense NCPD ratiocination.
JP: ”Let’s get it out in the open. Wave it around in the fresh air.” They mean his dick, don’t they? Is this Katherine speaking behind the closed door, or a highly-paid professional?
I got so many laughs out of the Mother Goose and Grimm dog-bird breakdown. Thanks!
Zits: It would be funny if Jeremy went off like that scene in the 40 Year Old Virgin where he’s having his body hair waxed and just shouting out the dumbest profanity he can think of. Kelly Clarkson, Fuck, Bitch, Tits, Fuck!!!!
DT: So they still don’t have enough evidence? I guess DT wants to be careful since in the past he’s usually just killed the suspects before they were charged.
Luann: The Evans team like to balance things out. The counselor is not that helpful but does know the basic requirements and Luann has just be meandering around as if she were a trust fund kid “exploring” different fields. Luann sadly exemplifies a type of student who really should NOT have gone to post high school education – without having some definite plan.
JP: Another time skip? Is it a few days later, weeks, or months?
Phantom: Those poor drones were just sleeping and the mean Phantom just shot them dead.
RMMD; Becareful Uncle Lyle! These two are total psychopaths and now you’ve declared you know everything. You are nothing to them and they will bump you off without hesitation.
Attila had to take the set up line in Panel 2 of MG&G because Grimm was trying to handle “ARE ARE” when he knows dogs are supposed to say “ARF ARF”
MG&G: In 2016, Barrow’s name was changed (or rather, changed back) to Utqiagvik, the indigenous name for the area. There are several possibilities for why today’s strip hasn’t caught up with the times:
1.) It’s a pre-2016 repeat that nobody bothered to update;
2.) The writers were unaware of the name change, or believed (not unreasonably) that their readers would be unaware of it;
3.) The writers are aware but refuse to acknowledge the change, considering the restoration of indigenous names for places to be the same kind of “woke revisionism” that takes Confederate generals’ names off of high schools;
4.) The writers didn’t want to get a lot of letters demanding to know how to pronounce “Utqiagvik.”
@Guillermo el chiclero:
…Jeffy’s the village idiot.
Perhaps he wants to let up on his village idiot role to concentrate on pants shitting.
Pluggers carry a lunchbox filled with the illegal narcotics they are going to sell.
Mother Goose and Grimm – Two things:
The city formerly known as Barrow is now Utqia?vik.
Utqia?vik is above the tree line. That means it has no trees.
Get it right, you twat.
@Emerson Bigguns: Same here. Dolly was a saint, but you have to admit that 80 years is a pretty good run. See cult film Harold and Maude.
Now, Laura Nyro dying at 49 and Jerry Garcia at 53….THAT’S sad. Lot of great songs left in them.
Hell, Franz Schubert at 29! Who among us has not rocked out to “Der Erlkonig?”
Curtis: Who carries significant amounts of cash in a wallet anymore unless you are specifically going to buy something where you need cash? I only bring cash with me when I’m going to the church flea market and that is because I know they are one of the few places that don’t take any of the many types of electronic payments. I do think it’s pretty funny that Curtis dad’s reaction to somebody not immediately running off with a wallet when they witness someone drop it is to immediately give them all his money, especially since he’s a notoriously cheap tight ass.
REWARDS
– CURTIS: Generous of Dad to give all his cash ($35?) and he still gets to keep his driver’s licence, credit and debit cards. (But do men still carry them in a wallet?)
– FG: Generous of Flash to go ve his main tool to f protection to someone who’s afraid of him. Dumb, but generous.
Hagar still hasn’t learned what “marginal tax rates” are. Can’t figure out if this is satirical or the writer means it.
Wizard of Id: Sir Expendable’s armor is made of tin? At least he has a full suit of it, unlike Lucky Eddie and his funnel hat.
MW: I’d say “First time readers will be disappointed by the zero payoff, in two weeks, to this hot date”, but who am I kidding? There are no first-time readers.
FC: Dolly will shortly add a goldfish to what now looks like a fishbowl. In three days she’ll have succeeded in killing at least one of each form of life.
DtM: Yes, Dennis, make yourself look good by bringing the eminently less bothersome friend into the Wilson’s house.
RMMD- “But Gramps, we got kicked out of school for making faces behind the teacher’s back!”
Mike Peters is 82 years old and still doing this comic as best he can so I feel like he deserves some slack for not knowing 10 years ago this place arbitrarily changed its name to Utqia?vik. He’s definitely using jokes he found in old issues of Readers Digest or Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader or some other lame publication, but there’s still something to admire that he’s actually putting in the effort to draw the comic with more than the absolute bare minimum. He didn’t have to show that they are visiting a greyhound dog track but he did because he cares. Also he bothered to draw Grimm standing there even though he doesn’t say or do anything. He knows if he didn’t show Grimm people would be wondering if he was sold to a dog track?
C’shaft: “Jobs nobody wants” translates to work that is underpaid, involve working in unhealthy conditions or with toxic materials, and are generally regarded as humiliating and shameful socially. So yeah, “Montoni’s waitstaff” definitely fits the conditions.
DT: I like how Dick seems so resentful saying that. “I could be breaking down a door and shooting people for ‘resisting arrest’ right now, but nooooo! Our hacker has to have ethics!”
Dustin: Well for starters, Dustin, you’re asking for employment assistance from a woman who not only blatantly does not want to assist you, but won’t even look up from her screen while she insults you. You get that kind of treatment every day at home from your own sister; you don’t need a temp agency to do it for you.
GT: Being the Immortal God-King of Milford, Gil knows that no mere vehicular homicide can kill him.
Luann: Isn’t the reason a lot of students start at a community college is to get those core classes out of the way while they figure out what kind of professional track they want to take, so they can maximize their time at a more expensive four-year university? If Luann just wanted to futz around with different hobbies she could have gone to the YMCA and saved her parents a ton of money.
MW: Tone it down, Mary. I’ve seen eulogies for Dolly Parton that were less effusive in their praise.
WC: Knowing just how many common flowers are toxic to cats, this strip had dark implications for me that I’m sure the writers did not intend.
@Activist:
Curtis dad is perpetually stuck in the mid 1980s where parents who were born in the 1960s were bewildered by the new trends of rap music and video games. He probably just watched the PSA with the fried egg “this is your brain…on drugs, any questions?” and it has blown his mind.
MW- Gag…me…with…a.. canoe paddle. You know, Dr. Jeff does deserve some props for his incredible sense of timing. He knows that if he calls Mary right after she’s had to deal with Wilbur, he’s sure to seem like the sexiest man alive.
Luann-How could you have gone to community college for so long and not bothered to take the core classes?
Hagar the Horrible It’s 1099 income because you’re in 1099.
GT: Gil Thorp leaves me somewhat addled with the jumping around, the atrocious artwork, the storylines that begin in the middle sometimes and go all over the place. I guess it’s just me.
MW 2- But he’s still not gonna score.
@TheDiva:
On Luann : the thing is, I think that Luann DID go to college with a plan; this very plan, in fact! She STARTED wanting to be a drama teacher to little kids, and I was under the impression that’s why she had the Assistant Assistant Daycare Worker (later “tutoring”) job, and that Prof Zebo’s “drawing class” was meant to be some kind of “Art 101” prerequisite she was taking.
I dunno why, but to me, it seems that when faced with the criticism of “Luann seems like she’s not making any progress in college, like she’s just taking a bunch of hobby classes in a directionless manner”, the Evansii decided to not only AGREE, but double down on portraying Luann as a childish, frivolous idiot wasting her time chasing an academic dream her sheer stupidity makes totally impossible to attain.
(meanwhile, the same criticism levelled at Bernice gets a “SHE’S A GENIUS WHO’S GOING TO GET A DOCTORATE, ALSO HELPING BALANCE THE FUZE’S BOOKS COUNTS AS A HAVING A PART-TIME JOB”)Wrecks Moregone:
“He wants you to go to school so you can do top level scamming instead of this low grade penny pinching stuff. If you’re really successful, you can even be like Wrecks and open your own hospital and rake in the moolah for doing nothing at all!”
Believe it or not, but one of the most common ways of eliminating drones is by shooting at them. And one of the most effective weapons used to shoot them down is….. the very non-fancy shotgun. The pellet spread does an excellent job.
MGG: Can we all be so certain it’s a typo? The cartoonist is clearly channeling Robin Williams from his role as as Mork. “Earth humor, are are.”
MG&G – Most people aren’t aware that both Goofy and Pluto were equally sentient, it’s just that whoever most recently pissed off Mickey is the one who ended up naked and chained to the doghouse. And Pluto’s temper was worse than Donald’s.
Edge City (GoComics) – Abby, you can “accidentally” break that lamp when you move or dust it. It’s fra-gee-lay.
Between Friends – I bet he can justify the expense of his own daily minor treat.
Pluggers – That should be a Transformers lunch box. Or, if he’s still plugging away at age 75, Davy Crockett or the original Mickey Mouse Club.
Mary Worth – Mary is really looking forward to the hour of praise for whatever it was she did in the latest meddle.
Gil Thorp – I love how the guy grilling is balancing the hamburger on his thumb and hand while the plate hovers a few inches below.
@Baja Gaijin: It’s a good thing that place has refrigeration.
MG&G Fun Fact:
There are only 2 greyhound racing tracks still operating in the U.S.
Parimutuel dog racing is banned in 44 states.
As a reporter, I covered the planning for a dog track, its construction, its opening, its operation, its closing and its demolition.
All in a period of less than 25 years.
You fear the insidious technology of nerds? Fear not, it can be defeated by a muscular man wearing a skin-tight suit using the gun as an obvious phallic symbol! Gender studies is the most vindicated discipline ever!
Dogs must only piss on trees and hydrants. This obligation is as strict as if they were fae. This is perfect child’s logic, but no one understands it because no child reads Mother Goose and Grimm
Pluggers: Perhaps the most perfect “Pluggers” song was “One Piece at a Time” — written by Wayne Kemp and sung by Johnny Cash.
The narrator works for an auto factory and decides to steal a Cadillac, sneaking out parts in his lunch box (and a buddy’s “mo-beel home”).
“What kind of car is it? Well…it’s a ‘49, ‘50, ‘51, ‘52……”
I always taught of Goofy and Pluto as different kind of monkeys. Some monkeys are sapient and wear clothes (humans), other monkeys are kept as pets (chimps). So Mickey is just an eccentric asshole with an exotic pet
Mother Goose: Panel three is just panel one zoomed in on a little bit. Yet more proof of my recent arguments that the majority of newspaper comic artists are sleepwalking through their jobs, and frankly, more power to them.
The Phantom: This comic is so averse to showing bloodshed despite the inherently violent nature of it’s premise that even the robots don’t show any visible signs of damage as they “die”.
“The fastest dogs in the world are in Barrow, Alaska”
“Why’s that?”
“An ex of mine lives there, he’s a premature ejaculator”
MG&G – And everybody’s into home brewing….
Phantom – Devil Dog…could you do something about that fucking road runner….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Daddy Daze: I’m not a car mechanic but when someone has an engine fire with large flames coming up through the hood isn’t the car usually beyond repair?
@Bob Tice: “I shot the Roadrunner!”
“But I did not shoot no coy-o-te.” – Bob “Phantom” Marley
The Phantom: I think the implication is that he’s about to be swarmed by the drones (that we’re seeing more coming down after he killed the first one. Maybe. Either that or it’s a drawn out dramatic death scene with accompanying art showing the drone flailing and stumbling is its extended death throes.
@UncleJeff: In happier times, my family and I used to travel to the States a lot. One of thing we enjoyed in Florida was going to the dog races before they were banned. I still wonder what those tiny jockeys found for work.
@Anonymous: Daddy Daze: I’m not a car mechanic but when someone has an engine fire with large flames coming up through the hood isn’t the car usually beyond repair?
I’m not a car toonist but I think that’s how you indicate the Check Engine light just came on.
@Ettorre: That’s probably the only answer to this kind of thing that isn’t hilariously horrifying, and I’d say its implicitly what most creators go with, when they think about it at all.
@UncleJeff: I’m curious as to why that is. Is it because of animal welfare groups and laws/regulations cracking down on the “sport” for whatever reason? Is it shifting attitudes and people’s feelings towards dogs making it untenable as a business? Is it because the activity got to be too associated with organized crime and anyone with their head screwed on right began avoiding it?
@Anonymous: Frankly, I think part of the issue is just that the Evansii REALLY don’t like moving their ostensibly serialized story forward chronologically with any kind of speed but also want to preserve some sense of forward momentum. So we get a ton of “fakeout” progression that quietly resets to a status quo until the day the Evansii decide they are ready to actually move the characters to a different state of life. Stuff like this of Luann constantly starting, stopping and restarting her college plans or acting like she’s gonna be moving in with her boyfriend only to sputter out of it last minute.
Frankly, it’s amazing they actually let Luann age up into college adulthood; she spent the first thirty years of the series as a high schooler (albeit the Euphoria/Dawson Casting/Hollywood idea of a “teenager” who looks and acts more like a twenty-something woman who’s attending a college-like high school). Chances are, Luann’s academic dreams won’t make real progress until something like 2035 or 2040, assuming the comic is still around by then.
God damn it. Now Tim Curry has died, also at age 80.
I was hoping that he and Dolly would collaborate on an album, though it would have been a lot more fun if they had done it in 1975.
“The fastest dogs in the world are in Barrow, Alaska.”
“Why’s that?”
“Experiment DOD electromagnetic catapult. Can launch a dog into near-Earth orbit. Can’t bring them down alive, though.”
“My God. That’s terrible!”
“Terrible? It’s downright barrowing!”
@BlueBeetle: It is not you, it’s just that most of the community here has long gotten used to Gil Thorp’s weird “channel-flipping” storytelling where any given strip can jump to something totally unrelated and the comic is constantly clumsily juggling a dozen plotlines at once. However, even for us, it’s been getting hard to follow recently; the artist change made all of the strip’s issues so much worse than they already were.
@ValdVin: You joke but I’m pretty sure the only first time readers that Mary Worth gets these days are new arrivals on this blog who learn of it’s existence the first time they see Josh making fun of it.
@TheDiva: 5.) The Iñupiat people desperately petitioned to have the comic to NOT use the name because they do not want any association whatsoever with a lame comic like Mother Goose And Grimm. “The least we ask is that we get to be associated with something actually funny, like Pearls Before Swine,” noted a spokesperson for the tribal governments.
MG&G: As with most comic strip conversations, I will assume that this one was preceded by at least 20 minutes of icy silence. Mother Goose didn’t tell Grimmy or Ralph where they were going or why. They were surprised and a bit confused when they ended up at Greyhound Downs Dog Track. Once they got there, they looked nervously to their mistress for some kind of explanation. Too timid to ask questions, they waited for her to speak. But she just stared out into the middle distance and said, joylessly, “The fastest dogs in the world are in Barrow, Alaska.” What was she up to?
Phantom: “I wish someone were around to see that. Why do I always do my coolest stuff when I’m alone?”
Mother Goose and Grimm: Interestingly enough, the term “downs” originally referred to grassy rolling plains in south and southeast England. Today, it’s much more often used in the names of American horse racing (and sometimes dog racing) courses — despite the fact that most were constructed on flat pieces of land outside growing cities. That’s because we want to think that we somehow came across these animals frolicking in the countryside, rather than forcing them to train and compete for our amusement (and legalized gambling). Being both an animal and an animal lover, Mother Goose seems to understand that the name “Greyhound Downs” is really an ironic burn on the dogs who race there, and who probably never actually get to, say, frolic in an open field. She’s apparently also aware that the dogs in Barrow, Alaska (now officially named Utqia?vik) have traditionally had their own problems — i.e., having to pull heavy sleds for long-distance expeditions, starting in the northernmost town in the U.S. That’s why no one is laughing or even smiling at her joke — not the ones hearing it, and certainly not the one telling it. Or the ones reading it, but that’s another story.
@Victor Von: Theoretically it works like dazzle camouflage. It doesn’t hide the zebras, it just makes it difficult to judge important details (how fast it’s going, which direction it’s heading, where the vitals are, etc.) when seen from a distance. It also makes individual zebras hard to distinguish when they’re in a herd together. Some people think it might also help regulate body heat. But the reality is all of this is just the best guesses and biologists still aren’t really sure why zebras are colored like that.
@But What Do I Know?: Or maybe he’ll nurse the drone back to health and choose it to be his successor so he can finally retire. Then the criminals of Bangalla will live in fear of the Ghost Who Buzzes Around In The Sky Obnoxiously!
@Ken: This is the most outlandish comment today because it suggests that Mary would actually show any significant emotion about Dr. Jeff dying.
@ectojazzmage: The stripes really do work to dazzle insects, though. They did experiments painting patterns on cows and counting biting insect landings, zebra stripes were great at reducing them. Whether or not “confuse the insects” is the main reason for stripes, it is a measurable useful effect, journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223447
Mary’s Worst: In “1776” John Adams* sings about being Obnoxious and disliked by everyone around him, I suppose the musical that plays in Mary’s head goes on and on about how she’s appreciated and loved by everyone around her.
*Famously played by William Daniels
@Ukulele Ike:
No matter how crappy the movie he was in, you were getting 200 proof Tim Curry in any part he played. Gotta love that. RIP.
So sad to hear Tim Curry has died. He had a stroke in 2012 and has had severe health problems ever since
@Just John: @Anonymous: Daddy Daze: I’m not a car mechanic but when someone has an engine fire with large flames coming up through the hood isn’t the car usually beyond repair?
I’m not a car toonist but I think that’s how you indicate the Check Engine light just came on.
__________________________
Time to stick out your thumb and hail Benny the Cab.
Love Tim Curry but wow did he lend his talents to a lot of trash animation. He was in a lot of Nickelodeon cartoons, a Barbie movie, Scooby-Doo, Captain Planet? I know he had to take work where he could get it but you would think someone who was in The Hunt for Red October could do better than Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius
MAD MAGAZINE PRESENTS ….FRAZZHOLE SCENES WE’D LIKE TO SEE…..
written by Chevy Chase (yes THAT Chevy Chase)
What A Frazzhole!: “Trust me, Mrs. Olson, I’m an expert on ‘stinky’,I run around in my bare feet and go to Dr. Goldfoot, Foot Doctor, I know stinky! You husbands car is stinky! There! I just talked behind his back!”
“Not exactly,Caulfield, my biker husband is standing behind YOUR back,welding a heavy wrench. Bye, bye Caulfield.”
@Anonymous: You would like to think that, but we live in a world where Sir Patrick Stewart took money to be the voice of the poop emoji.
What is Mother Goose planning? a “Call of the Wild” scenario where she sends Grimmy and Ralph to be “free” in Alaska and they become sled-dogs, gradually more and more aggressive as they lose their “humanity”
Nah… that’s only canonically allowed to happen to Snoopy (even if it was just a dream)
@The Quiet Man: Everyone thinks Patrick Stewart is some sort of posh, refined, stuffy individual.
When in reality, he’s pretty chill and laid back (one of his favourite shows is Beavis and Butthead…)
@The Quiet Man:
The last movie actor Jimmy Stewart was in was Fievel Goes West where he played a cartoon dog named Wile Burp
@The Rambling Otter: I think it’s great that he’s a laid-back fellow and doesn’t take himself *too* seriously, but taking a job in something as soulless and vapid as the “The Emoji Movie”?
@Anonymous: True enough, and perhaps it’s childhood nostalgia talking (I saw Fievel Goes West in the theaters and our family owned the VHS) but I have a soft spot for that movie. I wonder if in some way it primed me to become the lover of classic films I am today by having him in it. The character’s name aside I could think of worse final roles. He arguably gave that character more dignity than it deserved.
@Anonymous: Fievel Goes West also had John Cleese playing Katt R. Waul. I understand Cleese passed on the role of Cogsworth in ‘Beauty & the Beast’ to play Waul. One could make the argument that this was a mistake and perhaps it was from a notoriety aspect (if not a financial one) but the way I see it why play a stuffy, whiny second banana to Jerry Orbach when you could play a scenery-chewing villain (much as Tim Curry often got to do)?
Now, passing on Zazu in ‘The Lion King’ in order to do an extended bit playing his ‘Holy Grail’ French soldier as a frog in ‘The Swan Princess’? That I’m having a harder time reconciling…
Famous actors with embarrassing final movies:
Elizabeth Taylor last movie was 1994 The Flintstones
Orson Welles was in Transformers the Movie
Gene Kelly was in Xanadu
Paul Newman was in the Disney “Cars” Movie
Gregory Peck was in Other People’s Money
Jack Nicholson is technically still alive but his last movie seems to be The Bucket List.
The worst thing done to any actor who suddenly died has to be when they made Game of Death and used actual footage from Bruce Lee funeral service and showed his open coffin
@marymaryk:
#75 PHANTOM: If he doesn’t get i..mediately blasted be other drones, Kits first issue will be Python — should he capture him as there is no place to hold him? Has Python already torn off monitor, thinking it’s all good? Only Kit knows there still a man behind it all
@marymaryk:
#75 PHANTOM: If he doesn’t get immediately blasted by other drones, Kit’s first issue will be Python — should he capture him as there is no place to hold him? Has Python already torn off monitor, thinking it’s all good? Only Kit knows there still a man behind it all
@Anonymous: Famous actors with embarrassing final movies:
River Phoenix: How Do I Get People To Stop Mixing Me Up With My Brother (1993)
Crank: Oh, Pepper. It’s not that people don’t want to work in a pizzeria, it’s that they don’t want to work in this pizzeria. Since you don’t have a sense of taste, you wouldn’t understand!
JP: I don’t know about anyone else, but the Talking Door and his sidekick the Talking Doorframe are my new favourite characters! I just love the way they’re not any of the existing characters (and less wooden than most of them)!
MW: It’s absolutely hilarious that Mary is talking about Jeff being a great humanitarian leader. Presumably, she’s thinking of the time he was running a children’s hospital in Vietnam, until she went over there to drag him back to Santa Royale where he belonged.
OTF: Yes, Guy, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable achievement to put on your resume, and an accurate summary of the skills it demonstrates. Is there supposed to be a joke here at all?
Peanuts: But … we have seen Snoopy practicing law. Possibly more often than we’ve seen anyone in Judge Parker doing so!
Phantom, meta: It probably also helps to be the Phantom, of course. Like, in How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems by Randal Monroe, he uses statistical data to work out the chances of taking down a drone with various sports equipment. He can’t find any stats he can use for hitting a tennis ball at one, so he gets Serena Williams to try. (This genuinely happened; there’s probably video somewhere.) She takes it down with her third shot, but that’s because she’s Serena Williams.
S4th “Okay, these are usually mildly amusing, please don’t turn into meta nonsense about them noticing the title captions again.” – Me, on Monday.
Phantom – Man, I hate car alarms too, but shooting them seems kind of extreme.
Don Abundio, translated:
“I wish we hadn’t invited Abundio”
“Me too! He refuses to follow the rules”
“Everyone knows that catching an undersized bluegill is a two-stroke penalty!”
@ectojazzmage:
There was a Mary Worth gag one time on the Simpsons where the class is touring a newspaper.
They see this one room with a guy sitting at a big drafting table.
Guide: and this is who draws Mary Worth! Who reads Mary Worth?
(Artist leans over all interested)
(Nobody replies. Class leaves. Artist hangs his head in shame)
@Anonymous: Tim Curry was of a class of actor I admire greatly, those who will do absolutely any job they can just for the sheer love of the game. (Christopher Lee and the aforementioned Patrick Stewart are also notable representations of this category.) This means that he did a great deal of crap in addition to many genuinely good movies, but he was obviously having so much fun doing it that his mere presence elevated the material. There’s his now-memetic turn as a Soviet commander in the video game Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 where he declares he’s “escaping to the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism…SPACE!” while visibly trying to hold back laughter.
@A Grave Mind: Curry underplayed very well in the BBC production of Victorian cult comedy classic Three Men in a Boat (1975, same year as Rocky Horror). He co-starred with Stephen Moore and….Michael Palin in an early non-Python role.
@The Quiet Man: I’m not defending that ^^;
@Horace Broon:
That should be a test for professional athletes in support with a ball, racket or bat. Can they throw or drive a ball and hit a drone?
@The Rambling Otter:
From what I’ve seen of him, “delightfully batshit” might also work. He sounds like a blast.
@TheDiva:
Kudos on picking Lee. I toss in Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. Maybe the movie’s a shit sandwich, THEY will be great.
@Ukulele Ike:
I’ve seldom been so intrigued by a 70s flick I didn’t already know of. The book, I do. Seriously, they made a movie?
@The Rambling Otter: And he reprised his famous role in an Adult Swim Star Trek parody: “What’s that, Beverly? You want Wesley to watch? Make it so!”
@TheDiva: I read Curry’s memoir Vagabond, which was published last year. No literary masterpiece, but a fun read. It confirms that he had that attitude you’re talking about — enthusiastic about taking on lots of different roles.
@A Grave Mind: Several movies: silent, talkie, in multiple 20th century decades.
The 1975 BBC film was made for teevee, and only an hour long, so the narrative is severely cut. Possibly no hedge maze, or Uncle Podger hanging a chromo, or getting the girls to do the washing up in their Boating Costumes. But hey, Palin and Curry. You can probably watch it for free on YouTube or InternetArchive.
@Ukulele Ike: You know, I actually read Three Men in a Boat because I’d read Connie Willis’s time-travel novel To Say Nothing of the Dog, where the time travelers briefly meet the protagonists of the former.
@Bob Tice: “I’ll show him that a DJI is not a drone to scorn”
Crankshaft: Once Cranky starts humping Pepper, it’s gonna be so worth it.
MG&G: I’m grateful for the dog track sign in the background. Without it, these would look like Ma Goose’s last words to her dogs before being led to the gallows.
Phantom: Lot of “Elvis shooting his TV set because he doesn’t like Robert Goulet” energy here.
PEANUTS; Indeed. In the positive, the social contract says individuals will forego some rights in order to receive the benefits of community. In the negative, the social contract implies that if the community supplies no social benefits, individuals are free to do what they will. Fishing license? Hah!
@Ukulele Ike:
Right? I would watch Curry and Palin shop for breakfast cereal.
Which was consumed after the fruit bats and sloths. And I know Curry wasn’t a Python, but he sure coulda fit.
C-Shaft: “Robots are filling the jobs that nobody wants.” Batiuk comes as close as any cartoonist has to admitting that he lets AI write the strip.
Dustin: I mean, I’d suggest signing with another employment agency. It couldn’t hurt.
Garfield: So of course the colorist makes the ice cream chocolate brown. Be patient, Garfield. He needs some time to figure out which flavor is poisonous to cats.
GT: If Gerads could see this glimpse into what it’s like to give in and join Team Gil he’d be more determined than ever to stay vengeful and insane.
Luann: Stupidity upon stupidity. Moony takes people with high school diplomas. It would be better for Luann to leave this school with an AA, and someone should’ve kept an eye on that, but it’s not a requirement.
MT: Okay, the cave is supposed to be ultra dangerous, since its name is Spanish for “dangerous.” But it looks better lit than phones and headlamps could account for. I think it’s wired for electricity and boho artists are already living there.
MW: Mary thinks to herself that her boyfriend is “a great humanitarian leader”? Is she expecting to run into the Nobel committee at the Bum Boat?
RMMD: “That’s what he said, ‘making a huge mistake’, those very words. He’s been working on his Will Arnett and by this point it’s uncanny.”
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: He voiced Picard in that, which automatically makes it canon ;-)
I recall someone make a joke about Tim Curry.
In “The Muppet Christmas Carol” Michael Caine pretended that the Muppets were members of The Royal Shakespeare Company.
And in turn, Tim Curry working on “Muppet Treasure island” saw himself as a Muppet and everyone else as humans.
Not to change the subject, but Michael Caine in Muppet Christmas Carol was such a delight, especially as he played the role of Scrooge dead seriously
(after all, he’s not surrounded by silly puppets, he’s surrounded by members of the Royal Shakespeare Company)
His dedication to the craft was one of the reasons that movie was such a classic. (One of…)
@The Rambling Otter: Don’t know if you saw this, but the official Muppets Instagram account declared Tim Curry to be an honorary Muppet today.
@Dr. Larry Erhardt: Awww, that’s sweet :3
@A Grave Mind: Kudos on picking Lee. I toss in Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. Maybe the movie’s a shit sandwich, THEY will be great.
Other distinguished actors in that category were Vincent Price and James Mason.
@Dr. Larry Erhardt: Very early on in The Muppet Show, at the end of each episode, they would give the guest stars their very own personalized Muppet look-a-like to take home.
I don’t know why they stopped that, but it was cute.
@Anonymous: I read a story about “Camp Hole in the Wall” — a summer camp for children with serious illnesses and disabilities started by Paul Newman.
Adults were asked to refrain from talking with Newman about movies but there were no limits on the children.
Newman played with the children and when they were playing with toy cars, Newman would break out his “Doc Hudson, the Hudson Hornet” voice.
The kids loved it and they knew Newman as ‘the guy who could imitate Doc Hudson’.
@ectojazzmage: re: dog racing.
The answer to your question is: a little bit of everything you mentioned.
Especially the animal welfare part. It was hard to place retired greyhounds in homes after they were “retired” (usually after about a dozen races) so many healthy dogs were simply destroyed.
I also have to think with the proliferation of casinos….the clientele (mainly older people) just found it easier to grab the slot machine handle than try to fill out a betting form and wait a half hour between races.
@Rube: What happened to the tiny monkeys?
Elon needed drone pilots.
@Baja Gaijin: He’s here.
__________________________________
Thats also the place Depressed Chick goes for her Sex Sandwhich lube.
@treetown: Yoda had Luke Skywalker try to take a drone out of the air with his light saber.
@Dennis Jimenez: Phantom – Devil Dog…could you do something about that fucking road runner….
_____________________________________________
You’d be better off asking Fruitpie The Magician™ for help, Phantom. Or maybe Twinkie The Kid® can lasso it for you.
@The Rambling Otter: NIGHT CAPTAIN! Beer me, you glorious bastard!
–J.L. Picard
@UncleJeff: #131: Strange how greyhound racing is considered animal cruelty but we’re ok with horse racing. Any objections to paramutual horse racing in states where it’s still illegal is mostly based on objections to gambling by moralists and not on animal welfare.
@43 Anonymous: Are you implying Wilbur Weston isn’t as appealing as this?
@Guillermo el chiclero: There was a very big lobbying effort against horse racing a few years ago after a slew of horse deaths at Santa Anita.
@Majicou: Three Men in a Boat influenced a LOT of pop culture. As a big fan of recently-deceased British mystery author Peter Lovesey, I plan on getting hold of the Cribb/Thackeray Victorian era crime novel Swing, Swing Together, the plot of which he based on the Thames trip.
@White Rabbit: James Mason was in a bad movie?
I admit I didn’t like him as Rupert of Hentzau in the 1952 Prisoner of Zenda remake, but that was mostly because he looked ridiculous in that Technicolor bright blue outfit. And Doug Fairbanks, Jr., totally OWNED the role in the 1937 version.
@54 Liam: “How could you have gone to community college for so long and not bothered to take the core classes?” It’s Luann deGroot you’re talking about. Her brain is transparent to knowledge.
@84 ectojazzmage: on zebras: Zebras have stripes because otherwise they’d be horses. Duh. :)
@133 GarrisonSkunk: Ha ha ha ha ha, ewwww.
@Ukulele Ike: As I recall, even the publisher of Three Men in a a Boat didn’t understand its popularity, and theorized that people were buying it to eat.
@Baja Gaijin: That looks like something from The Salvador Dali Cookbook.
@144 Peanut Gallery: Guess the protein!
@Ukulele Ike: And yet, the only adaptation of Three Men on the Bummel listed in Wikipedia is “Hugh Laurie read the book as a Book at Bedtime for the BBC in 2001.”
@Peanut Gallery: The Salvador Dali cookbook (if one even exists) had better have a parody of “The Persistence of Memory” (but with melting fried eggs instead of clocks) on the cover.
@ectojazzmage: One thing I never figured out about Zebras.
Why the natives never domesticated them as riding animals.
Are they just too wild?
@Peanut Gallery: Well, that book would have gone off much better if Jerome had not chosen a title which conjures up 3-way pounding anal mansex. I mean, consider how disappointed the typical English gentleman of 1900 was when he turned the last page and there had been no 3-way pounding anal mansex.
@The Rambling Otter:
They did try. Very aggressive animals. Responsible for more zoo keeper injuries than big cats.
@UncleJeff: @Rube: What happened to the tiny monkeys?
______________________________
They got jobs as dash board See No, Speak No,and Hear No Evil statues.
@The Rambling Otter: @Peanut Gallery: The Salvador Dali cookbook (if one even exists)
_____________________________________________
The police indicated Hanibal Lector had a good recipe for Salvador Dali (if one is into that kind of thing).
@Ettorre: Goofy has some equine features too. I don’t know what animals are interfertile in the Classic Disney Animationverse, but there may have been some clandestine barnyard lovin’.
@Baja Gaijin: I’d guess some unholy form of cooked-till-rubber squid
@Hibbleton: some info points out that some zebra individuals were able to be trained for cart-pulling or a bit of riding, but it was so rare as to be a curiosity. The article pointed out that they evolved with a *lot* of large predators, are *constantly* alert, jumpy, and have a huge reactivity to being caught. They can lash out and kill a lion with a single kick.
@154 CanuckDownSouth: Filet of sole and mussels. Surprised?
LUANN: Luann passed biology???!! Oh wait, of course. This is Dimwit Community College, where the drawing class never goes beyond stick figures. Of course Luann passed biology. Her tomato plant in a cup grew the required four inches.
@Ettorre: (Well, that escalated quickly xD)
There was a “College Humor” one-shot parody comic of The Magic School Bus I saw years back.
Miss Frizzle is overweight, unkempt and has a cigarette hanging from her mouth.
Arnold: What whimsical adventure are we going to go on today Miss Frizzle?
Miss Frizzle: (Says something horrific that she’s going to do to her ex-hushand involving shrinking…)
While that itself I didn’t find funny, one of the comments “The one day where Arnold goes to school and everyone else stays home sick” made me crack up.
(I don’t think the site College Humor exists anymore and all of its content may be in limbo now…)
@CanuckDownSouth: @Bob Tice: Phantom:
BEEP…BEEP…
“Oh, no! I shot the Roadrunner!”
_______________________________
Roadrunner! The Phantom’s after you!/Roadrunner! If he catches you you’re through!
That Phantom is really a crazy clod!/Wears purple spandex just to do his job!
Poor little roadrunner never hurt anyone/running through the jungle’s just his way of having fun!
WB PRESENTS THE ROADRUNNER/PHANTOM COMEDY SHOW
Saturdays at 12:30 following THE CBS CHILDREN’S FILM FESTIVAL hosted by Kukla, Fran & Ollie
Mary Worth – Why do I feel like they recycle the same tired strips of Jeff inviting Mary to the bum boat with the same dialog just different colored clothes at least once or twice a year. I mean they also reuse panels from past strips, just changing the colors of the person clothes or the color of a car or appliance. It’s so lazy
@GarrisonSkunk: @The Rambling Otter: @Peanut Gallery: The Salvador Dali cookbook (if one even exists)
_________________________________
Tonight on “Rambling Otter Meets The Honeymooners In The Twilight Zone”
When serving Salvador be sure to address the main course with, “HELLO, DALI”!
@Baja Gaijin: @144 Peanut Gallery: Guess the protein!
__________________________
With your host John Daily after a word from our sponser Stoppette™
The Phantom: Did he really shoot, though? There are no muzzle flashes, no BLAAM-like sound effects. I think the Ghost Who Holds Water Pistols just got lucky and the drone crashed all on its own.