Simply refuse to believe that Hi Flagston has a satisfying social life. It doesn’t add up
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Sam and Silo, 1/28/25
You know what would be awkward? If you were a corrupt city official taking kickbacks from a local sporting goods supplier, and one of the things they produced was “rebounders” for soccer practice, sometimes referred to as “kickbacks,” and you pitched them an idea for a small version. That’s pretty much the only circumstance where you’d ever say “Where’s that little kickback we discussed? No, I am not talking about football” to someone on the phone, which would also require you to be using “football” in the non-American sense even though you’re an American. It’s a vanishingly rare scenario, which is why it’s kind of amazing to see it captured in today’s Sam and Silo.
Blondie, 1/28/25
As I long ago noted on here, as a child I read Peanuts anthologies obsessively, and I knew what the context of a sigh was because the characters were always sighing, but I didn’t realize what physical noise was being described so I would just say “sigh” aloud at times when one might sigh, and no adult corrected me for years, presumably because they found it very funny. In my defense sometimes Peanuts would just drop the word in word balloons, so I’m not sure what I was supposed to think. Anyway, in today’s Blondie, I guess Mr. Dithers is supposed to be smacking his lips as he enjoys a delicious donut, but I’d prefer to think he’s saying “Smack!” with the implication being that this delicious donut is taking him to the same state of euphoria that a junkie experiences after injecting heroin into their veins.
Hi and Lois, 1/28/25
A thing I feel very certain saying about Hi Flagston is that he has exactly one friend, and it’s Thirsty Thurston, which means that either (a) they’re on a two-man bowling team and Hi showed up tonight and Thirsty, probably drunk and belligerent, demanded to be captain of the team, and Hi sheepishly backed down, or (b) he’s on a team with a few acquaintances or maybe just people that the bowling league arbitrarily assigned together, and the rest of them decided Hi was a drip and a loser and pulled off some sort of coup, much to his humiliation. I think either of these scenarios would’ve frankly been a more interesting comic strip than this little “oh no, Lois briefly thought the family’s finances were in crisis” switcheroo.
145 replies to “Simply refuse to believe that Hi Flagston has a satisfying social life. It doesn’t add up”
MW-Time to go to Mary Worth for advice.
FC-Jeffy then wacks Dolly with the flyswatter. “Fly landed on your nose.”
H&L: There’s a small town near me called East Palatka. There are a lot of similarly named “East” towns throughout the United States. When I consider Hi’s dynamic personality, I just assume that’s the Eastern Sales team Lois is talking about.
“OMG, for a second, I thought you lost East Lansing.”
Blondie: Apparently the meeting was about how the floor at the company office was turned into ice as in a skating rink, which Dagwood obsessed about his eclairs hasn’t noticed yet.
H&L: I swear, I saw this one on “The Flintstones.”
MW: Of course, Mary is going to be the conquering hero, but one has to wonder; WWWD? (That’s “What Would Wilbur Do,” not some wrestling thing)
I’ve known a lot of sales managers, and Hi Flagston is breaking new ground: whining to his team about their expense reports, and staring bleak-eyed at the national director when he inevitably whiffs his quarterly target. Again.
Blondie: Mr. Dithers could be saying “Smack,” thinking it’s the same as “Snap!” Misuse of more-or-less modern slang kind of tracks with him, actually.
MW: Dawn is upset because Dirk’s latest insult on his way out the door this morning was, “You screw like you eat.”
CS: “I can still hear his words vibrating in the air: ‘For God’s sake, Sonny Bono, get a haircut and lose the mustache. You look like a complete dork.’ ”
GT: A free Marty Moon shot glass to the first person who can figure out what the hell panel 3 is supposed to mean.
S&S I’m not sure when ir in wheat context this strip is supposed to take place, but I have a hard time believing that a straw hat with a tuxedo was ever in style.
The advice Mary Worth *should* give to Dawn: “Dawn, you have a history of placing good looks over character, just as you did with Hugo. Beauty is only skin-deep. You need to reconsider your priorities and look for someone who you truly like, deep down, and not just on a superficial level.”
The advice Mary Worth will *probably* give to Dawn: “Dawn, Dirk’s behavior is the result of the breakup of the marriage of his successful pharmacist parents. You need to stop being so selfish and embrace his quirks. Think of them as “endearing” quirks. Work on bettering yourself and be more supportive of Dirk. Now, have a muffin. And remember to wipe your mouth.”
@MKay: my exact reaction. My next was to start thinking about the hijinks ensuing as Hi’s resentment grows, leading to a showdown at the stag party held by the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes, an event that must be kept secret from the wives… but the wives have gone through their husband’s wallets and have raced to the store shouting “charge it!” and now dinner is late. At least Walker-Browne still hasn’t hit the creative wall that requires desperate Great Gazoo-style cast additions.
Josh, Josh, Josh. As the world’s foremost Dark Hi and Lois connoisseur, I… God this is literally true. I should rethink my life. Anyway, look how unhappy they are! This rocks!
Blondie:
This strip has been running for more than 94 years now, and I’m still waiting for them to embrace “business casual” at the office.
Wary Morth:
Love you *again*? Dusk, surely you jest. Imagine anyone loving you once.
Hi learns the hard way not to join a bowling team made up of Somali pirates and They Might Be Giants.
Wary Morth 2:
Cut to Dusk Weston lying on the sofa, staring at the telly. “Life is brutal.”
H&L: It’s a shame when a legacy strip misses its mark. Where’s the tear stained telegram telling Hi of his demotion?
S&S: A big problem organised crime has is that gangs will come up with code names for illegal goods – like smuggled weapons might be “toys” – but the rank and file are stupid enough to write things like “We’ve just got a shipment of untraceable semi-automatic toys for you to shoot people with” on record. Anyway, I feel like even the dumbest mobster probably knows you shouldn’t explicitly exclude the innocent explanation of your illegal quid pro quo. “I’m not talking about football, I’m talking about you bribing a public official in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 201(b).”
Blondie: Anyone else find it unlikely that there are still eclairs in that box? I doubt they’d last the trip from the bakery, much less sitting on Dagwood’s desk for a couple of hours.
Blondie: Is an eclair a donut? Is a taco a sandwich? Is Blondie funny? These and many more philosophical questions may never be answered outside of freshman dorm rooms.
Dagwood looks so stunned at Dithers stealing the whole case of pastries. Is it like a “Eating way too much is my thing” identity crisis or did he somehow never imagine the possibility one on man trying to shove down [squints at art, making optimistic estimation] eight? eclairs while they’re still hot?
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Were the eclairs baked by Blondie’s “kooky” new assistant? Why does my browser spell-check have “donuts” but not “donut” in its dictionary? The list of mysteries grows…
Or, you know, this re-run from 1997, when it still didn’t make sense.
Judge Parker: we’re into year 70 of randy yells at his sister while slowly transforming into a goblin. Maybe an orc.
Mary Worth:
MW: I am uncomfortable with the level of attention Brigman put into drawing Dawn’s chest in this abuse plot. Am I insane, or is there a hint of nipple here?
Hi and Lois: The team is just hi, thirsty and thirstys DTs
MW: Once again, Moy disappoints. I was hoping that today we’d get a repeat of Dirk’s foul language and Dawn demanding he remove himself from the premises. Dirk then says ‘I ain’t goin’ nowhere, #$@&%! This is MY place now!’ and it’s revealed he’s been squatting in his car since his ‘successful pharmacist parents’ threw him out of the house.
Happy to have found a girl dumb enough to fall for his transparently evil plan, Dirk then makes Dawn a prisoner in the Weston apartment, turning it into a squalid pigsty that would make even Wilbur blush (but still presenting rainbows and unicorns whenever he steps outside). However, when Dirk kills Willan in a drunken rage (don’t panic, Sid, I know you’d never let Willan do the scene themselves), *that* is when Dawn finally grows a spine and…. has Mary call Mr. Allora/Keith Bellend to throw Dirk down the stairs and out the door.
But sure, let’s just fast forward to the Muffining… *SIGH!!*
The Boondocks strip in the linked post, including the phrase “the Puffy strategy for getting out the youth vote,” has very much not aged well in 2025.
Kickbacks and rebounders? When I was a kid, baseball device for this was called Pitchback.
Made me look.
And I concur.
H&L: Hi is in sales? He is the dourest sales guy ever. He’s the opposite of Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross: A B C—Always Be Crying.
Luann: A character literally and unironically refers to *SEX* in this strip.
(My punctuation indicates that you’re supposed to hear that word in Grandpa Simpson’s voice).
MW: You should never change yourself or who you are for anyone be true to yourself.
Except you Dawn…you…well, you should at least CONSIDER it….
MW: Dawn answers her cell. “I thought I told you to wait in the closet until I got back!?” She complies.
Luann: Evansii finally acknowledged sex in-universe.
Unfortunately, they thought they were timing it for a Bills/Lions Super Bowl….
Luann: Wait, did Tiffany figure out Kip is into pegging?
JP: Ann accuses Randy of only visiting to call her a bad daughter, failure, and murderer to her face.
Randy protests; “And a bad dresser. That orange outfit is very tacky.”
I’m trying to gauge how big Hi’s responsibilities are. Is he tasked with sales in the eastern part of the town? The eastern part of the state? The East Coast? Or the East, meaning all the realms outside Christianity that the Pope assigned to Portugal in the Treaty of Tordesillas? Because these things are very different!
For no good reason I got curious about former Tuesday Chik* Martha Gradisher and wound up at her LinkedIn, and under “Articles by Martha” I found this:
An exciting hook for an article, I thought! It turns out “article” means “post” and she’s just asking for someone to take down the late Marcia Witte’s information. Oh well.
*The singular of “Chix” is “Chik,” right?
Sam and Silo – Josh lives in Los Angeles, which has seen a number of high profile FBI investigations for corruption among its elected and appointed leadership. So much so that they need to recruit new agents with strong skills in deciphering coded language used by the targets of investigation.
Already impressed with his ability to find the flaws in Slylock Fox’s ratiocination, the Feds set up this strip as a bait to see how well Josh would lay out the flaws in a small town mayor’s corruption. Having succeeded, the FBI will now work to get a new story of local corruption in Mary Worth after the current Dawn storyline wraps up in April.
Blondie – Given that this strip has been running since 1930, there is a good chance at Mr. Dithers is saying “Smack!” is some long-forgotten Jazz Age phase from the strip’s origins with Blondie as a flapper.
Hi and Lois – Long before the Surgeon General announced that America is suffering from a loneliness crisis, political scientist Robert D. Putnam wrote Bowling Alone . which used the drop off in bowling league participation as one of many indicators about the decline in community engagement.
Hi knows that his eternal 50s lifestyle is already at risk due to declining newspaper sales, now his status is dropped in one of the few remaining bowling leagues. As much as we make fun of him and this strip, Hi was always secure in the fact that he never wanted for company or activities to do outside the house. Now he might be brought down to Earth with the rest of us, wasting his time doomscrolling on his phone while toxic algorithms slowly suck out the joy of life.
I was going to make a joke about Millennials not bowling so Hi was probably kicked out for being a whippersnapper, but I like my bon mots to be factually accurate so I did a little searching and it turns out Millennials bowl. Huh. Learned something new. I also learned they don’t eat cereal because then they’d have to clean up the bowl because Google doesn’t understand context or grammar so “do Millennials bowl” brought up little to do with what I was asking.
***
Dithers took food away from Dagwood and still has both hands? Respect.
A Plugger has all day to stand out in the cold, scraping the windshield with a tiny “charge account” card. Or he could purchase a device with a long handle and a 6-inch blade that is specifically designed to do that. But that would cost money, so nevermind.
Does he pay a fee for that card whether he charges on it or not?
Also discovered that the Six Chix Wikipedia article has one of those awesome bar graphs like they have for the changing personnel of rock bands, showing which Chik has been on which day throughout the run of the strip. Isabella Bannerman and Stephanie Piro have been constants, like the drummer and rhythm guitarist keeping touring under the same band name with new singers.
(This is unfair to Bannerman and Piro, who don’t show up that often here because their strips are pretty good.)
“How can I make Dirk love me again”? Dawn, he never loved you in the first place.
Blondie: I love the look on Dagwood’s face in panel three–a combination of bemusement that this excuse actually worked and dread that Mr. Dithers might be the only one who truly understands his insatiable appetite.
H&L: I refuse to believe Hi is head of any sales division. Look at this guy–he couldn’t sell a live preserver on the Titanic.
GT exists in a world where HS wrestling is broadcast on the radio, and someone listening needs to be told that a Milford Mudlark is wearing red.
The third panel cuts away from having to draw more wrestling, while the announcer’s “Inma gets her three” leaves us looking up whatever that means.
Barajas and Merrill are so not ready for Milford’s new cricket team to begin play in March.
Who’s going to tell Hi that Eastern Air Lines went belly-up in (checks) 1991 and he hasn’t actually had anything to sell since then?
“Speaking about you getting replaced…”
“You’re having an affair?!?!”
“With a man? Ah! I can replace you with just an electric massage wand!”
@Lawyerbob:
Hi opened his mouth before he knew what the shot was. Mitch and Murray will not be pleased.
C’shaft: “His words were still vibrating in the air”–dial it back, Mills and Boon. You’re describing your first crappy comic strip job, not a torrid encounter between a high-borne yet spirited lady and a darkly brooding highwayman.
JP: “You’re right, Randy, I should have just trusted in my supportive family and the objective, unbiased police to uphold my inn–I’m sorry, I can’t finish that sentence without throwing up in my mouth a little.”
Luann: “You want someone who devote their every waking moment to you and have no personality or baggage of their own. Yeah, that sounds like a healthy relationship goal.”
MT: “Alternative facts”? That’s so 2017.
MW: ‘I just want to go back to the happy days when he called me names and ignored my requests to stop!”
Phantoms; Huh, I didn’t know the Phantom’s stripey underwear was an homage to his family coat of arms.
Pluggers know a lot of things that aren’t true.
RMMD: “I know, I’ll ask this couple to reenact the ‘Distracted Boyfriend’ meme with me! We’ll do amazing numbers on Instagram!”
@matt w: True, Bannerman and Piro are the best. The rest are either passable or just fodder for comment section’s snark — or rage
Beetle Bailey apparently keeps a dream journal of his homoerotic fantasies and he’s not shy about sharing it with his buddies.
The box is fresh, the eclairs are days-old
6Chx: (fingertips to temples) I’m….I’m having a premonition about the next Tuesday Chik strip….yes, a definite vision….mail me ten dollars and I’ll reveal all.
GT: Inma is acing all her matches because she insists on only fighting nine-year-olds. (Is there no such thing as weight classes in high school girls’ wrestling?)
GT – Damn, I wanted to see Irma leave the wrestling mat, go next door to the gym, grab a basketball, and sink a three-pointer. Come on, guys. Show, don’t tell.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Polonio, the way you played out there was not only an embarrassment, it was dangerous!”
“I’ve never seen such antics on a golf course!”
“Oh, I see the problem now”
“I thought we were playing badminton!”
@astroboy: This is the real problem. With anyone else, this could be a good opportunity to educate. But I assume Karen Moy will find a way to defend poor Dirk.
@ValdVin: The hockey team disappeared after a week so who knows.
Did Hi go bowling in his shirt and tie? Or did his bowling team call him at his job in the middle of the day? Or did they specifically summon him to a formal meeting, Salazzo-style, to depose him as humiliatingly as possible? I’ve already spent too much time mulling Hi & Lois, but God, I hope it’s the third option.
Six Chix – … Funnier.
If there’s one thing Luann and Mary Worth do well, it’s remind me how many toxic and pointless things I subjected myself to in the name of what I thought was love.
Haha! It’s funny! Trauma is fodder for humor!
Although, Tragedy + Time = Comedy, so – I have that going for me!
@matt w: There was a discussion here a little while ago, about various expressions for saying someone is dead. For awkward weirdness, I don’t think you can beat “The death of [fill in name here] happened last year.”
@ValdVin: GT: Back in the 80s, I worked for a radio station that would broadcast from conference, regional, sectional and state wrestling tournaments.
It was time and labor consuming but it brought in listeners and revenue,
Then, the Internet happened.
S&S: “Kickbacks” — soon to be called “TIPs” as part of executive compensation packages and IRS forms.
S&S – Now, ordinarily this strip isn’t known for its prescience….
Blondie – The success of capitalism is assured….
H&L – And insult to injury…I was replace by Thursty….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Arabella:
Worse, this in a Pennsylvania Plugger, not some Plugger living down south that got hit unprepared by a polar vortex.
Being a Plugger is basically taking a few workable strategies to survive a worst-case scenario and not only normalizing, but ennobling them as day-to-day living customs.
Zits: They are emulating senator John Fetterman. I hope they are hospitalized with severe frostbite and pneumonia.
Dustin: She knows that with the end of DEI she’s soon going to be on the same level as Dustin and I can understand why she’s upset.
Mother Goose: I like that you can tell this was written by someone very old who has heard of something called Uber but doesn’t really understand it. They must send you a physical bill in the mail, how else would they ever collect payment for their business?
High & Lower – Too bad Hi’s bowling team wasn’t there the same night as Dawn. Would have been exciting, especially since, as Lauralot pointed out, Dawn has the hi beams on.
Really, Sam… or Silo… I don’t know which you are or really care enough to look… the boss ain’t never gonna respect you until you catch dem Duke boys.
Curtis: This is a valuable life lesson. Never actually admit to being in the wrong about anything. Curtis will have a strong political career ahead of him.
H&L: Another brick in the wall of Hi’s emasculation.
Phone calls can be wiretapped, so it is not a safe way to do illegal activities. Still better than leaving a paper trail of text messages
Family Circus: Jeffy has just murdered one of the beloved “California Raisins” and the look of complete apathy confirms that he is an unrepentant sociopath. I can’t wait to see his transformation into the next Michael Myers.
@UncleJeff: Okay, that’s a good point (and I’ll pretend that Gil Thorp takes place whenever it wishes to.) Just curious: Was this in Iowa or Nebraska or someplace where college wrestling has been popular for ages?
FC: Don’t worry, Dolly. Jeffy will eat both of them.
JP: Wait a minute, when did a gun come into play? When Randy ran into the woods looking for Ann he heard her scream in the distance before encountering Don’s body but he didn’t hear any gunshots. Wasn’t it already established that after several weeks the coroner still wasn’t able to establish the cause of death? I’m no forensic guy but bullet holes are usually a pretty good indicator.
Low and Hi-less: “That annoying Sheldon Cooper in R&D made me change our team’s name to The Westley Crushers!”
Until fairly recently I thought that to scoff [at something] was to express skepticism about that thing or its value or somebody’s claims about it — expressed in any of several possible ways, from discursive speech in explanation down to gestures or facial expressions.
But when I began turning on subtitles for television and streaming whenever offered, I noticed that subtitles would say “[scoffs]” just when a character would make a particular throat sound, like a suppressed cough or minimal throat-clearing. This is a familiar kind of gestural sound, which indeed I would associate with one way of expressing a scoffing reaction.
But this subtitling practice seemed to go further, and made me wonder if, all along, to scoff meant at base to make that sound, and had come to be extended metaphorically to all the other ways of scoffing I had grown up thinking were direct parts of the meaning.
@Tabby Lavalamp: I found presumably the same article as you and this is just nonsense?
Yes, the reason millennials tend to eschew cereal in favor of breakfast bars is that cereal must be eaten out of a bowl. With a spoon. And then washed.
It is 100% possible to eat cereal straight from the box. There was a short-lived cereal Fingos based entirely around the idea of eating it from the box, with a cartoon cereal box mascot who was so annoying that now that I’ve reminded myself of it, I need to track it down and punch it.
Pluggers’ credit cards are always declined anyway.
@ValdVin: Actually in Wisconsin.
And each gym we visited was packed.
(Of course with 8 to 30 schools involved at one level or another, there were a lot of fans and participants who stuck around for the entire day of competition).
@Mitch: You know, I have recently got the idea that “scoff” primarily means a particular sound instead of any expression of derision, the way I (like you) always used it. But I just looked it up in the OED and there’s no support for that at all. Like in 1530 Palsgrave’s French dictionary translates a couple things as either “scoffe” or “jest,” interchangeably.
Which means you’re all good, and now I’m curious how the subtitles and whoever I got it from came to treat “scoff” as meaning a particular sound. Maybe they thought it was onomatopoeia?
FC – “help meeeeee help meeeeee”
JP – Look on the positive side. Ann doesn’t get food all over her face when she eats.
6Chix – Sure, she’s stretching out a non joke over several weeks, but at least she’s not making out with a sandwich or a rotten pumpkin.
Pluggers – I call BS. Pluggers don’t have hifalutin credit cards. They pay cash for everything, like God intended. He should be scraping that windshield with a quarter.
Sam And Silo: The Mayor will regret his criminality when Dick Tracy shows up to subject him to a comically gruesome and ironic demise, both as punishment for his corruption and (more importantly) to decide whose yellow fedora is cooler.
Blondie: Dagwood and Dithers have gotten to the point where Dagwood no longer even bothers with the pretense that his boss will fire him like any sane one would, so these confrontations are mostly just for the sake of appearances and Dithers getting his weekly bribes.
Hi And Lois: *Cue Big Lebowski opening credits*
@Old School Allie Cat: Tragedy + Time = Comedy, so – I have that going for me!
Also too, as a corollary, Time = Comedy – Tragedy. So if you ever find yourself short on time, pop a DVD of the Three Stooges in your video player and toss one of Hamlet in the trash. To be or not to be? Neither, wise guy. Nyuk nyuk nyuk!
@I speak Jive: 6Chix – Sure, she’s stretching out a non joke over several weeks, but at least she’s not making out with a sandwich or a rotten pumpkin.
“But do they call me Bianca the cartoon maker? No they do NOT!!! …. but you fuck ONE sandwich….”
@TheDiva: LUANN: “You want someone who devote their every waking moment to you and have no personality or baggage of their own. Yeah, that sounds like a healthy relationship goal.”
I mean, that’s exactly what Luann expected from Quill, and him insisting upon having a life of his own outside of being Luann’s Abstinent Boyfriend is what led her to dump him. So of course the Evanses think this is a healthy dynamic.
@Hibbleton: We always laughingly call it “Best Palatka” when we drive through.
@Cleveland Mocks: GT: A free Marty Moon shot glass to the first person who can figure out what the hell panel 3 is supposed to mean.
It means that Marty Moon’s replacement can’t count past 3.
@Bob Tice: I’m sure that will come rigt after “servant leadership.”
@I speak Jive: re Pluggers: Oh, but that’s not an evil credit card – they specify that it’s a “charge account” card. One day the missus was shopping at the local department store (back when it was still open) and realized she’d forgotten her checkbook. They offered to open a charge account for her on the spot, and she could save 15% that day as well! She signed up, got her card and discount, and of course never used it again. She remembers being a “winner” that day.
Any resemblance to anyone who happens to post here is purely coincidental.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: An Eclair is filled choux pastry. An oblong filled piece of fried yeast dough is a long john. It’s important to keep your footwear and your underwear straight.
@matt w: @richardf8: As a casual aficionado of both breakfast cereals and pastries, I’m shocked that I knew about neither Fingos cereal nor the difference between an eclair and a Long John. These are the kinds of things I come here to learn!
@Arabella: O.K., I’m a plugger, and a credit card makes quick work of hoar frost on a windshield. It’s flexible and conforms to the contour of the glass. They’re great for scraping pans too!
@Bryan:
To be fair,
it’s hard to see Quill as being the victim of a bad break-up rather than dodging a HUGE bullet when you put it that wayLuann’s break-up with Quill was also motivated by Bernice going all “PRU IS AN EVIL HOMEWRECKER, THE FACT SHE MOVED IN WITH YOU IS A SIGN YOU’VE LOST QUILL ALREADY, I’M STAKING MY ENTIRE REPUTATION AS A PSYCHOLOGIST ON QUILL ALREADY HAVING CHEATED ON YOU WITH HER”. (There was also Toni talking about how her brother Jonah was the proof that EVERY actor was a selfish jerk with no time to spare for their family (the implication being Quill was the same), but that was less important)
(P.S. Of course the only consequence Bernice faced for having been 100 % wrong in her reading of Pru was her facepalming and saying “I’m an idiot” upon finding the truth, while Luann was cluelessly wondering why Bernice looked embarassed)
@richardf8: @Peanut Gallery: Well, I knew there was no such thing as an eclair “hot out of the oven,” because the thing is frosted on top (I prefer the mocha to the chocolate, which are the Parisian options) and filled with custard.
The “long john” is new to me, but I am completely on board with maple frosting/custard, which seems to be the standard in the Upper Midwest and Canada.
@richardf8: O.K., I’m a plugger, and a credit card makes quick work of hoar frost on a windshield.
It’s incredible how the people here will make a dirty joke about ANYTHING.
@Peanut Gallery: Fingos had a very brief moment from 1993 to 1994. Per le wiki, “The cereal was advertised as a snack which confused consumers.”
@Anonymous:Well, in grudging fairness to Bernice, it was probably difficult to pick up that a woman who never showed any attraction to women was a lesbian.
@TheDiva: Alternative facts”? That’s so 2017.
Yeah, now they’re just called “facts.”
@Anonymous: LUANN: (P.S. Of course the only consequence Bernice faced for having been 100 % wrong in her reading of Pru was her facepalming and saying “I’m an idiot” upon finding the truth, while Luann was cluelessly wondering why Bernice looked embarrassed)
That’s still more of a consequence than Bernice faced for her stalking of Piro. Also more than when she spied on Luann, lied to her face about it, and then followed her to the Fuse so she could catch her hiding Tara there. Bernice does horrible things all the time and never gets held accountable.
Crank: I almost looked up the details of Batty’s career to see just how autobiographical this chapter of Meandering Autobiography Comics was, then was struck by the thought “Who cares?” It’s not like knowing was going to make it interesting or anything.
H&L: See, I assumed Hi was talking about the Foofram Sales Department bowling team (probably mandated by management as a bonding exercise), which doesn’t require the other members to actually like Hi or anything. That’s why his demotion occured at the office. It … did occur at the office, right? Lois didn’t greet Hi coming home from his regular bowling night and think “Oh, that’s Hi back from … work? Does he work evenings on Tuesdays? I know the house is quieter,” right?
Phantom: Hang on, I’ve just realised something I should have thought of yesterday. I’m not completely up on Phantom lore, but Captain Christopher Walker is the father of the original Stripey, right? Who got killed by pirates before his son became a masked pirate hunter, because that’s what he’s avenging? Because every time Stripey has called himself “Mr Walker” for as long as I’ve been reading, a footnote has explained that this is from “Ghost Who Walks”. And it’s not! It’s just his name!
SH: Okay, I get that the joke is actually “where else would a cat go?” when there’s a cardboard box right there, but a) that doesn’t feel like a natural form of words in the circumstances, and b) is Palmtop really being entrusted to people who don’t know that cats like boxes? What else don’t they know about cats? “Hey, Doreen, I was looking at the internet, and apparently we’re supposed to feed her?” But, of course, if they did look in the most logical place to find a cat, it would break the plot, which some might take as an indication it’s a stupid, contrived plot.
@Rube: Holy smokes! Are you saying Pru was supposed to be gay?
No wonder the Evansi shipped her off to
Botany Baywith Little Em’ly, Mrs. Gummidge, and the MicawbersNew York City.@Philip: Thank you. I read about that book when it came out. And honestly, I hope Hi will find a way to accept the change in bowling leadership and will keep on bowling regardless. I do my version of doomscrolling on a desktop computer, not having a smart phone, and it’s nice to think that in the Flagstoniverse, bowling, not doomscrolling, continues to reign.
@Ukulele Ike: Got the references!
@Horace Broon: Re Phantom
Captain Walker didn’t come home
His unborn child will never know him
Believe him missing with a number of men
Don’t expect to see him again
So the Phantom’s first name is Tommy?
S&S: I would just like to point out the mayor is a jagged severed head floating above an empty suit, smoking a cigar from its ear since it has no mouth. I guess people there vote purely based on party or something. Anyway I am not sure that such an entity would take its kickbacks in the form of mortal currency, so maybe he genuinely is sick of talking about it when there’s blood or souls to be had.
Pluggers: Wait a second. Aren’t pluggers supposed to be those fix-it-all types of guys who have a proper tool for every job?
Pluggers: Wait for it. Next winter will feature a pluggers cartoon saying a plugger always has his handy ice scraper among his roadside emergency tool kit.
@Philip: #61: Reminds me of my first winter in Houston, January of 1982. We got one of those once in a decade snowstorms that literally shut the whole city down. Leaving work one could see people desperately scraping the ice off their windshields with credit cards, beer cans, and fingernails. We recently repatriated Yankees simply popped open our trunks, retrieved our ice scrapers and calmly went to work. Some of us still had cans of aerosol windshield de-icer.
It’s ok, Josh….just change the title of your other post to
“You notice nobody but Dithers ever says LAUGH or SNEEZE” or maybe “Sometimes you hear the SMACK” That way you don’t have to kiss McLean Stevenson or die on the 4077th operating table and get Alan Alda’s mask all icky.
@Anonyminimouse: So the Phantom’s first name is Tommy?
________________
Who?
@GarrisonSkunk:
Yes.
Dennis the Menace: He’s hearing the voices again commanding him to do things. At what point do you think they should consider getting this kid some professional help?
@Horace Broon: I almost looked up the details of Batty’s career to see just how autobiographical this chapter of Meandering Autobiography Comics was, then was struck by the thought “Who cares?” It’s not like knowing was going to make it interesting or anything.
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He was the one who could never get all the way up the rope, was always handed hall monitoring duty,and was almost killed by a silent screen actor’s pet murder monkey, however he got those nerds in Shop class to program Holtron’s Star Trek obsessed A.I. so its not ALL about the T.B.!
@Lauralot: Am I insane, or is there a hint of nipple here?
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How can a comic steal so much plot from a sitcom that happily promoted itself as being about nothing? Can the Salmon Square Nazi be that far off?
H&L: All these years we’ve been watching Hi and Thirsty play golf when we could have been watching them bowl. Walker Browne Inc. obviously missed the whole Lebowski boat.
S&S: FBI agents are currently peeing themselves laughing as they trade stories of the small town mayor too dumb to use codewords while demanding bribes.
@Ukulele Ike: Must be Eclair Tuesday, which is fine, because eclairs are good (delicious), especially the way one of the bakers in the Air Force kitchen I worked made the best around by pumping in custard until the thing almost exploded. Megan in Sherman’s Lagoon today ordered an eclair, too, to help with mourning a lost relative. However, everyone in the lagoon lives under water, and it seems to me the pastry would get waterlogged first and then just fall to pieces. Sorry, Megan, but bleagh.
@Mitch: Sometime in my past, possibly in a MAD parody, somebody said “‘Scoff, scoff,’ they scoffed.” Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I saw it, but even so, it’s been stuck in my head ever since.
@Tom T.: (My punctuation indicates that you’re supposed to hear that word in Grandpa Simpson’s voice)
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Now you got me thinking about Matlock *SEX* (But there’s a NEW Matlock!, cries part of my brain) The rest of my brain attacks that part when it starts thinking of Andy Griffith/Kathy Bates *SEX* then Don Knotts arrives and wants to join in, showing off his magic bullet. I’m gonna pass out now,someone else hand out the RITZ™crackers please.
@matt w: @Peanut Gallery: Fingos had a very brief moment from 1993 to 1994.
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They would have lasted longer had they had a cartoon Ringo the Starr on the box saying, “THEY’RE GGGGGGGGGGEAR!”
JP: Meanwhile, the other prisoners and visitors have left the room. “But Mom, you made a two-hour drive to get here!” “That’s all right, son. It’s worth a night in a cheap motel to be able to come back tomorrow and not have to listen to those two lunatics.”
9CL: Okay, so this week is just going to be Thorax throwing random words around. Nothing that requires my attention, it appears.
C-Shaft: “Since I was the first applicant for the ‘Tuesday Teen Page’ who didn’t have any sex-offender indictments, the job was mine.”
DT: Totten Jr. has halted his escape so he can stay back and push a door closed so that Dick gets a foot owie? #ThatsABoldStrategyCotton
Dustin: Employment Agency Lady’s loathing of Dustin is much more baffling than his family’s attitude towards him.
GT: And this time she’s not even wrestling an anorexic, as far as we know.
MW: Being away from the comics yesterday, I missed Dirk apparently crossing the C-word Rubicon with Dawn while guzzling a can of not-at-all-symbolic Beer Boar. Now I’m just catching the depressingly realistic aftermath. In this context it will count as lighthearted if Dawn stumbles on high-profile political assassination as her means of winning back Dirk.
Phantom: From outer appearances they’ll be weird cave-dwelling vigilantes who gaslight their employees, but in their gut they’ll feel like men of the sea.
RMMD: Summer’s not fond of watching movies alone? Funny that it took her half a year to figure that out, but okay.
6C: Big shoes are the new rotting pumpkins and that’s just great.
@Guillermo el chiclero: “Pluggers: Wait for it. Next winter will feature a pluggers cartoon saying a plugger always has his handy ice scraper among his roadside emergency tool kit.”
The thing is, Pluggers is made up of reader submissions. It would be interesting to do a census of where these Pluggers submissions come from, and how many are actually from Plugger areas (more likely to be news deserts that haven’t had a daily newspaper in 20 years) and how many are in the suburban areas where “rurality identity”, or rural cosplay for people heavily reliant and interacting with the main metropolitan area, predominates. For instance, using this website linked to in the Youtube video, New Kensington, PA is a metropolitan city just outside of Pittsburgh.
Real rural or urban working class people would be prepared, but the types that read and submit to Pluggers probably have never lived in an area that doesn’t have regular plowing, easy access to AAA towing, and couldn’t locate the dipstick on their oversized pickup trucks, let alone change the oil. There is always a real working class person to bail them out of their own self-sabotaging laziness.
@Ukulele Ike: LUANN: Holy smokes! Are you saying Pru was supposed to be gay?
No wonder the Evansi shipped her off
That’s actually pretty accurate: she showed up in the strip, said she was gay so Luann would stop being jealous of her, spent the next 4 years not showing any attraction to anyone, then eventually said she had a girlfriend back home, and like a month later was exiled from the strip (and then immediately after that the cast forgot she’d ever been there at all.)
@Artist formerly known as Ben: re: DT: “Foot in the Door” is a pretty famous idiom concerning keeping a door open that never included a hurt foot. Poor pro flatfoot Tracy must be wearing special soft shoes that enable Nazi Totten to make stars fly out of his pedal extremities.
@Dr. Pill: Eating a dozen Air Force Eclairs at one sitting is now on my bucket list.
Luann: “You ever make it with a big bottom blondie waitress? More cushion for the pushin’.”
(wasn’t “Ya ever make it with a big bottom blondie waitress?” one of Peter Falk’s lines to David Niven in Murder by Death?)
@Ukulele Ike: That would be pedally extreme all right.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Pluggers will naturally become less self efficient as time goes by. The people on deck aren’t the most handy.
@Cleveland Mocks:
Yes the band? Who are you talking about?
@matt w: Thanks for the reply, and the research. I guess the subtitlers hit on “scoff” for wordless scoffing, but it looks prominent because their brief does not include providing interpretive commentary on scenes where someone is scoffing in words. (Though some titling services go a few steps into interpretation in describing music scores.)
@Philip: Agreed.
@Artist formerly known as Ben:
C-Shaft: “Since I was the first applicant for the ‘Tuesday Teen Page’ who didn’t have any sex-offender indictments, the job was mine.”
Ha haaaaa, that made me laugh!
@Mitch:
Yes the band? Who are you talking about?
Naturally.
@Cleveland Mocks:
I throw the ball to naturally.
No! You throw it to who.
Naturally
Now you got it.
@Jake: In fairness I could see Thirsty’s DTs being a powerful bowler.
@popomatic:
Sorry, popomatic, I screwed that up.
Naturally.
@Cleveland Mocks: Thanks, bro. I aim to please.
MW: This is just too absurd to read…to the point of being painful. Good Lord. But that is what I’ve come to expect from this strip. Decades ago, it was actually a good soap strip, but under Karen Moy, the storytelling has become so insipid it’s unbearable to follow and almost pointless to riff on it. :-(
Great Moments in Eclair History – My late father was a hospital administrator, and one day, when I was about five, I went in to work with him on one of his days off when he had to get some paperwork. We had lunch in the hospital cafeteria, which sounds like punishment, but this is back in the era before hospital cafeterias sucked, and also, I was five, so, I wasn’t critical. But I had, as dessert, a chocolate eclair, and being the cute kid that I was, recalled the event later and called it a “chocolate declare”, which stuck in my family for years (see also: flying-mingos).
The best eclair I ever had was in Paris, of course. It was coffee flavored – both filling and icing.
Domestically, there is a bakery in my hometown, Henri’s that makes mini eclairs. I associate those with special occasions – like my wedding, and my grandmother’s funeral.
All of this to say: Smack! I like eclairs.
I’ve been the manager of a rec-league slow pitch softball team for nearly ten years, solely because the previous manager left and no one else wanted to do it. In the intervening years we’ve transformed, Ship of Theseus-style, from a group of my existing friends into a team of mainly people I’ve met through softball. They’ve become my friends, but they also could definitely usurp me if they wanted to. But they don’t want to because the job is annoying.
Which raises several questions: 1) how badly has Hi done as captain that someone else is voluntarily taking over filling out league paperwork and cajoling people not to flake out in the group text? 2) Am I at risk of becoming Hi Flagston? 3) Am I at risk of becoming the kind of square middle aged dad who finds Hi and Lois relatable?
(Pretty bad, probably not, very concerning, respectively)
@Ukulele Ike: Eating a dozen Air Force Eclairs at one sitting is now on my bucket list.
Not eclairs, per se, but when I was enlisted USAF I found I could not finish eating everything $1 could purchase at the enlisted mess dessert bar. Then I became an officer and the price went up dramatically. Quality was excellent, either way.
@TheRealAaron: What’s worse, Hi was replaced by Lena from Crankshaft’s bus driver league.
Special to Poteet – Your late night post was correct, it should be “jauntily bouncing buttocks.” I thought of that after posting but, to my shame, did not correct it. Apologies to Scudder. I miss seeing his posts here.
@Hibbleton: Now you got it.
I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT!!!
@Arabella: “Evil Credit Card”
This triggered a memory in me (not that hard really, seeing how much I ramble about nostalgia on here)
But that got me thinking to the cartoon “The Proud Family” which while a pretty good slice-of-life, but then you had weird things like an evil talking credit card, a talking baby who sounded like Tony Jay, and Al Roker who was apparently The Devil.
I would watch the revival series but sadly I just don’t really watch shows these days anymore.
@Avoiding the Madding Crowd: Thanks for confirming! I wasn’t sure. And thank you for bringing up that phrase! It brought back memories of Scudder’s wit and humor. I miss that too.
I’m choosing to think Hi is Bowling Alone and has entered a Fight Club fugue state. Hi’s Tyler Durden now runs the team.