Also, why is it a mansion, seems overly grandiose to be honest
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Blondie, 9/26/26
I very much accidentally read Blondie’s dialogue in panel one as “that restaurant we swore we’d never go back to” and, you know what: Mama Chowabunga Manicotti Mansion would absolutely be on a list of restaurants to never go back to. Honestly it feels like it should be at the top of a list of restaurants never to go to in the first place. They took “cowabunga,” first coined as a fake Native American word for the Howdy Doody show, and turned it into a fake Italian word, in a move that could get groups that usually fight with each other about recognizing Columbus Day to unite against a common enemy, which I honestly think is kind of beautiful, but I wouldn’t eat there.
Mary Worth, 9/26/26
I know it would never happen, but the absolute funniest denouement of this storyline would be if after weeks of gossip Toby was like “Ian and Mary? I don’t think so” and it’s just never addressed again and there’s a new plot on Monday. Are they or aren’t they? None of our business, frankly! Toby doesn’t think so and that’s good enough for me!
109 replies to “Also, why is it a mansion, seems overly grandiose to be honest”
MW: It sounds reasonable until you realize Toby’s inner monologue is in the voice of a parrot.
Blondie: I assume years ago a doctor told Dagwood to keep a food diary to help fight his eating disorder. Instead, he uses it to further sate his psycho-sexual eating binges. Blondie, who fears that one day he’ll go full Jeffrey Dahmer, instantly regrets picking at that scab.
Blondie: “Mama Chowabunga Manicotti Mansion” feels like a compromise solution of the world’s most dysfunctional corporate committee. “Ok, to review: our market research says that the most successful restaurants in our target area are luxury bistros, cozy Italian eateries and Chuck-E-Cheese. Now, since we can’t seem to agree on one clear option, I’d like to propose a radical solution…”
GT Keri, Keri, Keri… I know you think that calling CPS will result in Dorothy being immediately whisked away despite not having _any_ signs of abuse. And you _would_ be right! Because it’s Milford, and it would be on Word From A Thorp! But your dad said no and given that your rebelliousness level has been set at: “bonfire teen party with beer – ROOT beer”, face it, not gonna happen
Blondie:
Now, we all know Dagwood loves food to a truly disturbing extent, but we’ve finally found something he loves even more, something he’s willing to restrict the restaurants he goes to in order to express his adoration for: alliteration.
Bizarro : “Actually, yes. I *DO* mind a lot, I’m happy you actually asked for permission. But it’s no, you can’t.”
***********
Blondie : Kathy’s Kabob ALSO used to have an alliterative adjective to be a three-word name (like the other two), but it got them into a lot of trouble so they eventually dropped it.
…Too far?…***********
Luann : Either the Daytona-DeGroots are so stupid they can’t see into the next room (of a canonically TINY house) to see the food they came over to eat, or TJ’s food is THAT gross that despite SPECIFICALLY originally coming over for dinner (and thus hungry), they all skipped on it.
**********
Mary Worth : And Toby immediately walks in on Mary and Ian having one of their “Haha, how interesting” exchanges in 3… 2… 1…
**********
Shoe : “And by lower level of consciousness, I mean none. As in, he’s dead. I poisoned his drink.”
MW:
“Tommy Beedie hand-picked these fresh stalks for me! — I sure am glad he’s a celeried employee at Freda’s!”
Phantom Let’s see, before the cameras went out due to Phantom shooting down all the drones Masky McMaskface was _saying_ their adversary was near. Masky _ought_ to be assuming Phantom can overhear anything shouted from the drone speakers and shouldn’t be revealing the whole darn plan. Not that much about this plot _ever_ made sense, but I was hoping we’d get to the Python/Nomad team-up turning on Masky before it all fell apart
MW:
“I’m going to take my mind off that empty nonsense and think about international affairs instead! — I see that the president of Communist China actually came to the United States to visit. I mean, Xi whiz!”
Luann: Ok, all you whiners, there’s the damn food you’ve all been demanding. Not TJ’s fault those morons didn’t touch it. Too bad TJ didn’t do a crossover and invite Dustdad over. No worries about what to do with the leftovers.
Dustin: Ed, I’ve heard there’s a bunch of uneaten food over at Brad and Toni DeGroot’s that’s begging not to go to waste.
MW:
“Then again, maybe the two of them ran off someplace, leaving me here holding the bag! “
Mary Worth:
Note that Toby actually thinks “ha ha!”, just like Ian and Mary sat in a car and actually said “ha ha!” Clearly, this is foreshadowing a threesome.
@Anonymous: not just can’t see, also couldn’t smell the food! and nobody said “hey, let’s celebrate – sit down for dinner!”.
The alternative was that TJ made food _and_ ordered pizza (like someone suggested he do instead of the menu) and frankly, given the proposed dishes, I’d probably skip his stuff and devour the pizza
MW:
Was Toby perhaps a little overenthusiastic with a botox treatment on her lips? — she looks to be rocking a little rictus sardonicus in today’s second panel.
Blondie: I would assume Disney would be more litigious if the restaurant’s name were Michaelangelo’s Chowabunga Pizza Palace.
Blondie, you work in food preparation yourself! Don’t you keep track of the competition?
@CanuckDownSouth:
But he has to—it’s, like, Chapter One in the villain book!
Blondie: The most in-character thing about Dagwood here is that he claims to be a great gourmet, yet the only places he ever eats seem to be off-brand versions of TGI Fridays and Chuck E. Cheese.
That’s not an official comic strip grocery bag without a baguette poking out of the top.
Toby has to have another bag of groceries in the car as we see no bottle of wine sticking out of the bag she is carrying.
Blondie:
Thesis: Daisy functions in this strip in the same role as the chorus in an ancient Greek play, offering commentary, perspective and context on the unfolding events, albeit through nonverbal, facial expressions. Discuss.
MW-:Toby seems unconcerned because if Ian is spending time with Mary, he’s not spending time with her.
DT: Eric Costello left a comment on today’s strip thanking Charles Ettinger for his work on the art. Say what we will about the story (and goodness knows we’ve said a lot), I don’t think anyone can say Ettinger was phoning it in on the art. Very classy of you to do, Mr. Costello.
JP: Randy hears ‘explode’ and thinks “Of course, that’s IT! I need to explode her before she explodes me! I wonder if she has any of that C4 from the prison break left…”
S4th: Woulda been funnier if the two neighbors had already gotten drunk on their Kroger-bought wine before realizing that not only is the furniture going in and not out, but typically families don’t move house using UPS or FedEx trucks.
@CanuckDownSouth: You forget the Keri Corollary to the Word of A Thorp Law: Anything Keri the Malcontent says must be dismissed as the ravings of a ‘Woke’ teenager simply looking to stir up trouble and distract from sportsball.
Daddy Daze is still on that same arc about the car breaking down.
Hi and Lois: I honestly saw some stores that began stocking Halloween inventory at the end of June. Everyone knows that as soon as the back to school sales end that stores jump into Halloween.
@Y137 GarrisonSkunk: “Always wondered what happened to the Freakies™ after Ralston stopped selling their cereal.” They moved to Count Weirdly’s castle in the Slylockiverse.
Maybe Pluggers wouldn’t have such horrible spinal issues if they weren’t spending large amounts of time sleeping in hammocks,
DtM: The Wilson series of terminators was a total bust.
FC: Bil is too distracted by the knowledge that his ill-fitting aftermarket seatbelts won’t stop Jeffy from flying through the windshield in the event of an accident to notice his raised hand.
@6 Anonymous: on Luann: I have to admit TJ asked me for my list of rejected Late Thread Cuisine recipes. Sorry, deGroots and Daytonas.
MW: Toby and insoucience are seldom seen together. Did she indulge in an edible before shopping?
@20 TK: Toby has a subscription at BevMo! for daily deliveries of her favorite merlot by the case.
MW: I think Josh has got it right. Moy has taken a page from RMMD, and Monday we’ll see a narration box with “And so Ian and Toby get on with their lives, completely unaware of Nelly’s vicious gossip campaign. But let’s see what’s happening to the other residents…”
Aaaaand it’s another @#$& Wilbur story.
Sally Forth: I love the neighbor’s look of rage in the final panel. True, unfiltered loathing.
@Gil Bates: I’m a little slow on media, so I’m not certain if it’s because
1- Did Disney buy the Ninja Turtles property from Nickoledeon?
2- Or because there is a Lion King character named Bunga?
MW: Nice try, Mary Worth, but you got to work a lot harder (less?) if you want to match Rex Morgan’s lack of drama.
C’shaft: “This one is, though. Hell, he’s probably even dumber than he looks, if that’s at all possible.”
Dustin: No, Dustmom, don’t tell them that! Don’t you know that the secret to getting children and manbabies to eat something healthy is by letting them think it’s not?
GT: On one hand, it’s basically Keri’s MO to latch on to a cause and get way too worked up about it. On the other, both Gil and Emily are mandatory reporters, so if they’ve seen indications of abuse and haven’t said anything that’s on them. Either Keri is overreacting or their parents are underreacting, and honestly both of those options are extremely plausible.
Pluggers are very diligent in their laziness.
Blondie-It doesn’t matter what the place is because it has long since gone out of business and there is now a vape shop in it’s place.
MW-Toby is right to scoff. Mary and Ian together is as absurd as Toby and Wilbur being together.
@Baja Gaijin:
That’s how she maintains her trademark soucience!
@TheDiva:
On Dustin : DustinDad is the kind of guy who would NEVER notice his cheese was switched to lactose-free soy cheese if you didn’t tell him, but would react like Chris Farley in that one SNL sketch if you DID tell him after the fact.
@39 Anonymous: Yeah, he’d notice. When lactose-free soy cheese is heated for a while, it puts out an unmistakable stench while cooking.
What if the whole sequence detailing how every member of the community learns of the scandalous Ian/Mary rumors was just setup? The next week will follow Toby hearing about it from different people every day until she gets concerned enough to investigate, and then we spend the next two weeks with her tracing the source of information backwards. . .actually, we could stretch it out to three weeks as she hunts everybody down. And when she finds out it was all just Nelly making the wildest possible assumptions from seeing them together for several seconds at a distance, we play back today’s strip and she lets the whole thing go. Toby makes some general observations to Mary about how easily evil rumormongers can be defeated by the truth and Mary eats a muffin with a quiet smile, picturing a crushed Nelly in her mind cause of course she planned it that way when she let Nelly see them.
I’d struggle to remember a restaurant too if most of the ones in my city were [Owner’s First Name] [Alliterative Food] [Alliterative Building Type]. Though good call on skipping that last one and not adding a third K word to Kathy’s Kabobs. That would be a memorable one.
***
“Ha ha! Ian doesn’t have sex!“
Family Circlejerk – Is Jeffy raising his hand because he has to go potty? (Undoubtedly, yes.) So what will he do when Bil ignores him? (Undoubtedly, shit his pants – that’s a given.)
We’ve seen some half-assed updating from Jef, but this seat belt instead of a child safety seat may be my favorite.
@TheDiva: “No, Dustmom, don’t tell them that! Don’t you know that the secret to getting children and manbabies to eat something healthy is by letting them think it’s not?”
Peter Griffin: These cheerios taste delicious.
Lois: And they’re good for you too.
Peter: (pushes the bowl away)
Blondie—That last panel really missed an opportunity to attempt some crazy restaurant names. No offense to Brett, Paul, and Kathy, those anodyne names just don’t cut it in a strip that has a storied tradition of making up wild names for people, like Boopadoop, Fiffenhauser, and Dwitzell. Why not Brett’s Flying Hindenburger? Paul’s Wash, Rinse, Repizza? Kathy’s Nattering Kebabs of Shwarmism? I’m not saying these are all winners as jokes, much less as restaurant names, but then, neither is Mama Chowabunga Manicotti Mansion. I mean, sure, Mama Chowabunga is a clinker of a joke, but I do respect the effort. Why not keep it up in every panel?
Forget it, readers. Sorry I asked.
@Amelie W: That’s one problem with Mary Worth, is that the comic pads out the boring stuff, while skipping on the potentially interesting stuff.
Like when Ian confronts Helen Moss for “bullying” Toby and… it immediately skips to the aftermath.
Ian and Helen had a past together and if that arc was written 50 years ago we’d get weeks of juicy dialogue of them dramatically discussing said past and issues (as you know… a soap strip would do?)
FG: Queen Desira toasts the new day in with a fresh Tropican Fog Cutter, or maybe it’s a Mai Tai. Something in a coconut shell, anyway; should have a little paper umbrella but they may not have any in this part of Mongo.
Queen Desira seems to have a wee bit of a drinking problem.
@43 Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Jeffy not being in a child seat for a reason: so he’ll fly through the windshield at the next sharp stop.
Blondie: Why do all the restaurants list their owners’ names in their titles? Is this a list of eateries or suspects?
The Howdy Doody show has a lot to answer for.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Don Abundio, this is perfect for your living room”
“But I didn’t order another painting, Van Dol”
“I’ve told him before that this sort of thing is not art!”
[On canvas:
SHOPPING LIST!
ONE CITY COUNCIL MEMBER $50,000
BREAD FOR THE POOR $20,000
COAL TO ROAST A FATCAT $7,500.00
TOTAL $77,500.00
VAN DOL]
6Chx: Woot! Hasenpfeffer dinner ta-NIGHT!
Mary Worth: No, you know Toby’s about to fight Mary Worth because they just switched to her buff stunt double.
Blondie: “Honey, why don’t we go to Dave’s Salads?” “THAT’S NOT EVEN ALLITERATIVE! I WANT A DIVORCE!”
MW: Yep, pack the oranges right on top. Great job, grocery store!
Archie – It’s not every day that you can catch the uncut version of Abel Gance’s Napoleon on cable.
Blondie: Blondie is hinting that she’d like to dine in a nice restaurant with good wine and fancy place settings, like the French bistro she enjoyed on their anniversary. “The restaurant we swore we’d go back to” is cartoon wife-talk for “the restaurant you swore you’d take me back to, you cheapskate!” But Dagwood, true to form, is pretending not to understand this — so instead he lists his favorite cheap Italian chains and fast-casual spots, where the atmosphere is as basic as the portions are huge. Blondie responds “Forget it, honey… sorry I asked!,” which is less funny when you realize that’s the tenth time she’s said that this month, and the “honey” part is definitely sarcasm.
Mary Worth: “Of course Ian isn’t having an affair with Mary Worth!,” Toby thinks. “And to prove that I’m not mad, I’m going to make him my special buttered orange celery tonight!”
Blondie-“It was Mama Leon’s across from the medical center.”
Mary Worth
*thinks to self: “ah! ha!”*
Wouldn’t it be funny if Toby came to the conclusion that Ian and Mary Worth (because who doesn’t think out both the first and last of their best friend?) were planning a surprise party for Toby and instead were actually plotting how to unalive Toby in order to get the parrots out of Charterstone?
Because that’s the only way Toby will let those birds go – out of her cold, unalived, claw-like hands.
*thinks to self: “ha? ha?”*
Mary Worth
*whew!
And to think I was concerned that the Charterstone Inmates didn’t get enough mental stimulation.
Oh, wait-
ew.
MW-No, Toby, no! That is the wrong reaction. You need to massively jump to conclusions and believe that your husband is cheating on you with Mary Worth.
@Joe Blevins: Eggs on the bottom, right? Then Toby can serve up a big platter of a dozen scrambled to accompany the buttered orange celery. Try to pick the shell bits out, Ian.
Blondie: Blondie, you willingly married a man who eats Scooby Doo-style giant sandwiches every single day and defines his life with lame “bits” about how much he loves eating. I think you long ago forfeited any right to get huffy about him engaging in said bits.
Mary Worth: In a funnier world, there would be a third panel of Toby walking in on Ian blasting a load onto Mary’s tits.
At first, reading today’s Blondie, I thought that there is no suspension of disbelief strong enough to make me believe Dagwood doesn’t know exactly what restaurant his wife is talking about and when they went there, what they ate, what the waiter was wearing, etc. But then I figured that in his obsessively-detailed online list of restaurants, he must have rated every single restaurant he’s ever been to, no matter what it serves or what the quality of the food, as a “A++ 5-star must return.”
@Guillermo el chiclero: It IS the Evans fault though for pulling a manipulative bait-and-switch on both the other characters and the audience. When I went back to check (last Saturday for the people playing at home), everyone was sitting around the dining table asking where the food was. With TJ slyly answering “It’s not about food, it’s about family” (No you grinning nitwit, it is still about food because you invited people to dinner!) So TJ hid the food away and didn’t serve anyone, despite being the one who invited them to dine, and then told people he brought them here for a completely different reason other than dinner, and yet he’s surprised that no one ate his food? (Of course last week Brand and Toni were iffy of his “exotic” dishes and would have rather had pizza, and now there super excited that they have TJ’s stone-cold green-bean casserole to themselves, so consistency was definitely not on the menu for this storyline)
@ectojazzmage: To be fair to Blondie, she that Dagwood’s insatiable appetite to “eat everything” would mean her “womanly needs” would be properly satisfied for once, but alas to no avail.
@Baja Gaijin: Amy Poehler is ENRAGED that the Forths aren’t moving!
@The Quiet Man: The Keri Collorary is a fine example of Gil Thorp’s approach to being “the woke comic”. The comic is constantly paying lip-service to politics leaning left of the typical newspaper comic, but in superficial or outright backhanded ways that ultimately serve to fellate the conservative’s wet dream main character. Keri is “representation” of nonbinary people and politically active youths… and portrayed as an obnoxious, attention-seeking soap-boxer who blows nothing situations out of proportion, bordering on being a walking stereotype. And the issues they’re portrayed as being a whiny, overreacting idiot about are such “silly” things as believing their best friend’s father is physically abusive. Keri exists for their WASP dad to roll his eyes at.
@ectojazzmage: And to be clear I misspelled Corollary on purpose. I swear.
@Anonymous: #25: And before Halloween is even here the stores will be putting up the Christmas decorations.
Mary Worth – Toby will change her tune when the parrots weigh in. “SQUAWK! The pompous axx is sitting in a car with the meddling biddy! They’re not eating muffins, if you know what I mean! SQUAWK!”
9CL – The readers who yelled, “Barf!”
Gasoline Alley – Most people would be in a sterile environment and wear cotton gloves while handling a document signed by Abe Lincoln. These morons are in a diner and just ordered gooey cheeseburgers.
FC – @Hibbleton: and @Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: beat me to the after-the-fact seat belts and the lack of a child safety seat. I bet the head restraints were just added to those bench seats, too. Today’s strip proves that Jef Keane has no shame.
@Larry McAwful: “Nattering Kebabs” is wonderful.
@Joe Blevins: @Ukulele Ike: Also at the bottom of the bag: the loaf of bread.
@I speak Jive: I’m guessing that drawing a child safety seat is hard. We should recognize the hard work that Jef puts into this.
And congratulations on the number.
COTW.
Reminds me of The Social Assassin episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with the woman who would say “LOL.”
Crank: On the other hand, some of us are so dumb we’re still reading Crankshaft…
DT: Thank you for the past however long it’s been, Mr Ettiger. I don’t think any of the problems with this strip have ever been your fault. (Not even that the superchair just looks like a nice but unremarkable office chair, because what else was it going to look like? It’s the writing’s fault for overselling it!)
Phantom: “Since the drones are down and the Tokolshe has proved unreliable, you may need to make your own way here. Let me tell you the exact coordinates where we can be found!”
RMMD: Look, it’s beloved tertiary (quaternary?) character, Red! I’m sure that’s great news to the one person who cares! (The one person who cares is Terry Beatty.)
S4th:“Wait, didn’t we move? Aren’t we the couple who got replaced by the Prestons when Ces got bored of jokes about how the Forths’ neighbours hate them?”
“Who knows? You’ve seen how he with continuity in his actual continuity strip!”
@TheDiva: Gil and Emily are mandatory reporters, so if they’ve seen indications of abuse and haven’t said anything that’s on them.
Pretty much the first thing Barajas established when he started on the strip was that Gil’s reaction to learning one of his team had mysterious bruises was to reassure said student that he wasn’t a snitch. We learned this when the student in question was presenting it as a heartwarming story at Gil’s Coach of the Year presentation. Every part of this sounds like I’m making an exaggerated parody of what Gil Thorp is like, but I’m not!
@ectojazzmage: Yeah. I mean, I would not claim Rex Morgan MD as particularly progressive, but at least Beatty’s nonbinary kid has a personality trait beyond issue-of-the-week-ism. That personality trait is ridiculous, but that’s not the point. Gil Thorp sometimes reminds me of a critique I saw of Chibnall/Whittaker era Doctor Who, which was superficially ticking woke boxes by having a female, possibly gay Doctor, but was doing actual stories like “What if Amazon’s the real victim and it’s the people complaining about its employment practices who are the bad guys?”
@Liam:
I thought it was down on Sullivan Street.
But eatin’ too hard can give you
A heart attack (ack-ack-ack-ack-ack)
@I speak Jive: #69: re-GA: In Britain’s Imperial War Museum there’s a pattern room where a mint specimen of almost every military sidearm ever issued is kept. On certain days visitors are allowed to handle them but they must wear white cotton gloves while doing so, and these things are made of steel, not a brittle 165 year old piece of paper.
Blondie: The word “Chowabunga” in the name makes me think they’re trying to expose Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans to Italian cuisine outside of pizza. Baby steps.
MW: “Ridiculous”? “Crazy”? “Absurd”? Glad to see Toby is getting good use out of the Roget’s Thesaurus Ian gave her as an anniversary present.
C-Shaft: And of course by “them” Pepper means “intellectual property lawyers.”
DT: It looks like this is about the end of the road for artist Charles Ettinger, going by the Daily’s Fourth Wall insert. I’d like to think that drawing a hacker with a terrible mullet and inadequate gun knowledge was on his bucket list.
GT: Hey, it looks like the autumn bonfire is back, although this time they waited until after football season was underway. Keri must be kicking herself that she didn’t bring in Dorothy’s stepdad as a human sacrifice.
JP: Hats off to Ann Parker for making the longest and most erudite fart joke seen in the comics this week.
Luann: Probably because they got your evite when you were still planning to make unappetizing glop that even Mary Worth wouldn’t serve?
Marvin: Sorry, but all the vacuuming in the world isn’t going to help you with Marvin’s seat. You need an autoclave at the very least.
Phantom: “Haha, can you picture the look on the Phantom’s face when he sees you two working together? I’m just glad there’s no way he can find out ahead of time.”
MW: I know CC readers sometimes (rightly) mention how bad 9CL females look in profile, but Toby here looks downright frightening in profile today.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Hey! Nobody told me about THAT room!
”Psst, Algernon — Yank alert. Don’t show him where we keep the guns.”
@Artist formerly known as Ben: re: JP: Ann is kicking herself for letting Randy order the pinto bean and cabbage Neapolitan special, and is planning on increasing the yardage between them before it works its way through his digestive system. Things will be getting quite loud and nasty before too long.
Blondie: “It’s number nine on my dining history list. You know, sexually.”
Mary Worth: “Ha ha! Absurd! You know, sexually.”
@Guillermo el chiclero: We went to the museum in 2015, and I don’t remember that room. I wish we’d known about it. Mr. Jive would be interested in it.
That’s a great museum. The exhibits on World War I were fascinating – we spent a lot of time going through them.
@Rover Berkeley: That is a poor view of Toby. I think it’s because June Brigman drew her in profile but at an angle looking up at her jaw. She’s a good artist otherwise. I shudder to think of what Brooke’s drawing of one of his females from that angle would look like.
Mary’s Worst : Sunny will start squawking something like “Oh., yes! Oh God, yesss” and Toby will put two and two together and get five. “Maybe its true”.
CURTIS: Still no one writes “BUGS” to warn neighbors. Think eggs hatching.
JUMP S: Im new to this too, should eine cellars be built near a hot water heater. What could go wrong?
MANDRAKE: Humor for last two days– criminals too must learn new tech.
The Familliar Mucus: Quick,Bil, before Jeffy spoils the station wagon’s Fine Corinthian Leather™! – again !
CS: Ah, Sarah starred in “The Exterminator “, a film I never watched. Cartoon almost makes sense.
Late Thread Cuisine: I’m pretty sure this wasn’t served at Mama Chowabunga Manicotti Mansion. Pretty damned sure.
Mama Chowabunga Manicotti Mansion is the home of Teenage Mutant Ninja Dagwoods™.
How long has this Mary Worth storyline, in which things are just barely happening, been going on? At least two months, right? Six?
@Ukulele Ike: #81:
@I speak Jive: #85:
My bad. The pattern room may be at the old Royal Small Arms factory at Enfield Lock. Either way, there is a pattern room full of antique military guns and it is accessible to visitors, though you may have to prove you’re doing some historical research.
You’re lucky you got to the museum when you did. It’s been closed for remodeling since last year. The powers that be decided that younger tourists can’t relate to the Great Wars periods so they’re going to concentrate more on post WW2 conflicts, though they’re drawing a lot of criticism.
“Come on down to MAMA CHOWABUNGA’S MANICOTTI MANSION! That’s right, ALL we serve is MANICOTTI! Those big fat pasta tubes stuffed with cheese and meat and coated with tomato sauce and baked in the oven! Yes, MANICOTTI, the Italian-American dish last fashionable in the early 1970s! HAMBURGER manicotti! CHICKEN manicotti! EGGPLANT manicotti! Don’t forget to try our manicotti dessert cart — manicotti stuffed with ice cream and pie!”
Incidentally, shouldn’t it be “Paolo’s” Pizza and “Yusef’s” Kebabs, or is Young commenting on the hideous white bread-and-mayonnaise WASP suburb the Bumsteads call home?
@Guillermo el chiclero: That makes a lot of sense. Next, the art museums should purge all those musty, out-of-date Leonardos and Rembrandts and Manets and Rodins and replace them with fresh new 21st century painting and sculpture. The kids today need stuff they can relate to!
As a Great War wonk, I’ve been to the military history museums in London, Paris, and Berlin to ogle the gas masks and mortars and machine guns. Not to the one in the U.S., because we keep it in Kansas City for some reason.
GIL THORP: Methinks a certain author learned a new buzzword-of-the-day in his Big Book of Woke Cliches (I could be wrong. Maybe our esteemed creator found “generational trauma” under the “example” section of Tv Tropes “You Keep Using That Word” entry.)
@Guillermo el chiclero:
@Ukulele Ike:
Good grief. So they think that a world war isn’t important enough to learn about?
I’m embarrassed to admit that I knew only a bare minimum about World War I before I visited the Imperial War Museum. The exhibit on trench warfare blew my mind. There was a reconstruction of what the trenches were like, and it was very different from what I expected. The conditions must have been horrific.
The exhibits also included cultural background, what life was like at the home front. It was all fascinating.
Blondie – When Dagwood dies, his collected papers and artifacts (notes, saved menus, journal entries, receipts, food-stained work tuxedos) will be donated to the Smithsonian as the largest research collection of restaurants frequented by the middle class in the 20th and 21st Century.
Mary Worth – If this strip was Machiavellian Mary, the titular character would long ago have turned the credulous rubes of Charterstone into her own cult to rival the Manson Family
@Baja Gaijin: Obviously not going to be everyone’s cup of bubble tea, but if you do steak that’s certainly a way to do steak.
@2+2=7: I often think back to when some of us on this site–myself included–said, “Hey, Gil and Mimi Thorp have kids? Why don’t we ever see them?” I didn’t know how good I had it.
Blondie: Dag is acting like he’s some kind of goumand yet he eats daily at Lou’s greasy spoon hash house.
@I speak Jive: GA: I’m just guessing, but I feel pretty safe in saying that the letter Rufus and Joel are reading was written by someone who was not President Abraham Lincoln.
@I speak Jive: Oh, you should stream Stanley Kubrick’s early 1957 classic Paths of Glory, starring Kirk Douglas. Anti-war WWI story that will bring tears to your eyes.
Also Rudyard Kipling’s “The Gardener” (short story available online).
@Joshua K.: Yeah, you’re right – it’s undoubtedly a fake. However, they seem to think that it’s real but are handling it very carelessly.
@Ukulele Ike: I watched Paths of Glory in the past year or so, and I agree. Very unsettling and moving film. I read somewhere that Kirk Douglas was determined to make that film.
I recently read that Kipling’s son was killed in World War I.
@Baja Gaijin: Now the wife really wants me to take her to Japan.
GA: “We don’t want th’ gooey t’ drip all over it! You know, sexually.”
@103 Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: Now’s a good time to go to Japan: the exchange rate means the dollar goes farther than it had a few years ago. So much to do, so much to see, so much to eat. I wish I could go back.
Curtis: “Someone left a perfectly good Roxxx™ sex chair out in front of the building. Just has a few blood stains on the head rest, and some nacho cheese stains on the arms.”
Curtis: “Someone left a perfectly good Roxx™ sex chair out in front of the building. Just has a few blood stains on the head rest, and some nacho cheese stains on the arms.
MW: “But what if…” I bet Toby is into it.
@Ukulele Ike: I became interested in WWI when I read a little of the poetry. Wilfred Owen and Dulce et Decorum Est got the message across even to a naive teen.