Tuesday diatribes
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Blondie, 10/27/26
I know I complain about Dagwood a lot as a character in this strip, but I have to say that one of my absolute least favorite Blondie running gags is when some tediously zany characters come in to Blondie’s catering business to request some wacky theme banquet, and Blondie just taps away on her keyboard like an idiot while they do their little routine. It’s all just depressingly by-the-numbers and unfunny. And, as today’s strip makes clear, these people apparently launch into their little routines rather than just explaining what they want in plain English, which is even more depressingly stupid.
Hi and Lois, 10/27/26
A frequent topic of chatter in the comments of this website is that Chip Flagston looks very little like Hi and very much like both like Hi’s next door neighbor and best friend “Thirsty” Thurston and the garbage man (named either Abercrombie or Fitch, and I refuse to look up which one the blond one is). I have taken the high road and ignored this salacious gossip, instead simply taking it as evidence that Hi and Lois has a single character model for “slovenly slacker type,” but today’s strip, in which Lois admires the garbageman’s physical prowess and asks him if he works out while they both smile broadly, is kind of hard to ignore.
Mary Worth, 10/27/26
“Yeah, he’s the one who I heard it from! So I guess talking to you has been a huge waste of time as per usual, Saul.”
29 replies to “Tuesday diatribes”
MW: I should be angry that Moy is going to waste at least a week having Mary trace the gossip back to its source. But I’m not, because Mary will also learn that every last one of her friends will gleefully spread lies about her behind her back. Will she make them all suffer or just leave Nelly’s corpse in the community garden as a warning?
“Was it that obvious? I was hoping for a circular conversation that went nowhere for a couple of hours while we all got frustrated and eventually agreed to just go our separate ways so we can justify a bad review on Yelp.”
RMMD: How about Leopold & Loeb?
Dot and Ditto’s carcasses are in those bags. Now WE’RE the ones who are smiling!
MW:
Yeah, I normally put on a suit and a tie when I take my dog out for a casual walk.
MW: Good move, Saul. Throw Wilbur under the bus. Let him be the one Mary waterboards.
RMMD: How about Burke and Hare?
I must believe, in these dark days, that along with walking the dog, Saul puts on a full suit to trim tree branches and return his “broken” cell phone (it’s turned off). Live your bit, Saul.
Wary Morth:
“And whom did you hear the real rumour about Ian and me from?”
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Popeye:
NOW PoppedOutEye is thinking about the possible monster origin of the egg, after weeks of spinning wheels championing his sluglike adopted son’s “motherhood”?
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Hägår thé Hørrîblê:
I remember the good old days when Hågär actually used to spend his time looting everything his wife wanted instead of just being Dagwood Bumstead in the 9th century.
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Wrecks Moregone:
Did Beatty bet someone he could commit the perfect mass murder: by boring the entire readership to death?
Which is creepier: that Baseball Couple conceived these lyrics at home, on free time, getting ’em just right, or that they’ve done this so much, they improv them on the spot? Join me on this journey into darkness!
MW: Tucked in her right hand and behind her hip in panel one is Mary’s Mauve Lady Snub-Nosed .38 Special, brought out only when she feels meddling may not be persuasive enough.
Gosh i wonder who started the rumor? Will it be the person who mysteriously appeared in Charterstone at the beginning of the storyline despite presumably living there the whole time? You’d think an omniscient god-meddler like Mary would have worked out this pattern by now.
More like Abercrombie and Fit, amirite? or [squinting at garbage truck] Aber an Fit. That one’s Abercrombie, by the way.
Blondie:
“So it’s root, root, root for the foamed cream —
If whey don’t skim, it’s a shame
For it’s one, two, three bites you’re out
At the old ball game!”
MW: Mary needs a dog she can dress in a purple cowl neck collar.
MW:
From the looks of his avoirdupois in today’s first panel, Saul will be going as fellow cartoon “Baby Huey” for Halloween this year.
Blondie: Umm…we’re already three games into the Series, and Milwaukee’s a game away from wrapping things up. Better have this little shindig pretty darn quick.
Hi and Lois:
“You have such strong arms.”
“Oh, that’s a lot of garbage.”
MW: Turns out that rather than a daisy chain of misinformation, the rumor has entered the star system created by Mary and centered by Wilbur Weston where instead of spreading word of the greatness of Mary’s advice and muffins it has been corrupted by the Nelly virus. Mary’s hardware reboot will involve a real boot and a rather unpleasant part of Wilbur’s body.
Abercrombie and Fitch? Wouldn’t a more apt name for garbage collectors be Abercrombie and Filth? Just sayin’. . .
RMMD: Are Wilson and Keppel obscure enough? You can throw Sarah in as Betty.
MW:
Saul’s facial features look a little fuzzy around the edges in today’s first panel. Perhaps it’s a Hazy Shade of Wynter.
Blondie : Nelly Kelly was sure some fan, she’d drink and swear just like any man, beat up the fans of the opposite team and the umpire too (if she was drunk enough). When the score was just two-to-two, Nelly Kelly knew what to do, she turned to the boys and she took off her shirt and she started to sing this song (tadadada) Take me out to the ball game~
Sorry, I just like pointing when songs that are known mostly by their chorus have VERSES (even though I’m pretty sure I got it wrong here)*****************
Crankshaft : ….I was willing to defend Batiuk yesterday, when I thought he was going to simply reprint an old series of FW strips about how he feels about America (the week before voting day), letting it speak for itself… But he’s not letting it speak for itself. So no defending.
…Oh well, I like how Bat
iukTON THOMAS’ “essay” is a single sentence written in crayon. Speaks very well of the quality of Ohio’s secondary education!*****************
Mary Worth : the thing is, IIRC, Eve was not told the rumor by anyone else, but came to the same conclusion by seeing Mary and Ian hanging out and laughing. So I wonder if this interlude is to resolve;
a) Eve Lourd must also be punished for her lack of faith in Mary Worth, because she doesn’t have the excuse of having been misled by gossip;
b) Mary Worth should probably explain why there was that much hugging and giggling over planning a vacation trip.
Blondie: My favorite part of this exchange is that its not a World Series watching banquet, its just a World Seroes themed banquet. You know, just a regular banquet but with a baseball theme? I mean, not the food, but.. something?
H&L “I pump garbage bags” is one of those phrases thats going to be rattling around in my head for far longer than I want it to.
MW It’s might seem weird for Mary to double back in her little gossip search, but the Mary Worth readership just can’t get enough of Wilbur! More! More of that weird little man! More, we say!
Andy Capp: What was it Nobby Watson was doing at Flo’s work that he could be replaced by a photocopier? Taking photographs of documents and developing them in a dark room? Copying everything by hand?
DT: Dick looks pissed this is looking like a real accident. Don’t worry, Dick! I’m sure the toxicology turn up something suspicious, maybe something to drop the blood pressure and cause an “invisible push,” like nitroglycerin mixed with Viagra.
JP: I am somewhat worried that every time Neddy has a setback in life, she enters a deep, weekslong depression. Like, this isn’t “poor little rich girl sulking” stuff—this is a seriously mental health issue I hope this strip addresses, but only in between the traffic law I was promised!
Pluggers: Chicken-lady should really have those tumors checked out, what with chickens not having actual breasts in the mammalian sense and all.
Wilbur has been a vassal of Mary’s sphere of influence for quite some time now (did you really think that his foray into advice column writing was organic?), but after an over reliance on his connections, Mary is coming to learn that she allowed him too much leeway. Either he’s getting reined in over the next few weeks or, in the unlikely event that he realizes how much of Mary’s power he has consolidated into his own control, the Weston Rebellion may begin.
H&L: See, some people will be loving the earthy sexual tension in the second panel. But for me, the piece de resistance is panel 1, where Lois tells the garbageman “You have such strong arms” while both look blankly on each other with mixed sorrow and horror. It has the same energy as an Ingmar Bergman film, except more depressing.
Blondie: Sure, being a Disney Adult but for baseball is annoying. But Blondie has come to work in full Barbara Bush cosplay. At least the baseball fans seem to be aware that they’re a bit weird.
DT: Hear me out — If we had a mysterious death, with a collection of odd and bizarre suspects, and we find out it isn’t murder, I’d be onboard.
High and Lower – Fitchercrombie follows up Lois’s comment about his strong arms by telling her what he likes to pump. Well played.
MW – Who but a major narcissist says “I was happy to help” to a comment on how nice something was. “That Neil Armstrong really did a good moon landing.” “I was happy to help.” This could probably apply to any situation.
And Charterstone residents are not just a bunch of gossip mongers, they are all a bunch of narcs. Years ago, I had to tell a woman in HR that I was sorry that I had passed on a rumor that she was pregnant with the HR director’s child. She asked a few people where they had heard it from, and it got traced back to me and beyond. But rather than tell her where I had heard it from, I said I didn’t remember. I may be a gossip monger, but I’m no narc.
@Lauralot: Less in anger and more in sorrow, Mary will realize that despite its pool parties and community gardens (and all of the the other things she seems to be the sole organizer of), she has no real friends and life in Charterstone is an empty, soulless vanity. She will embrace her roots, move to Santa Royale’s skid row to sell apples from a cart and dispense wisdom to the vagrants, junkies, tweakers, bums, drunks, hobos, and tech bros. This Christmas: The Return of Mary Apple
@Gil Bates: I LOLed