Sorry, nothing that goes on in the Bumstead home constitutes a “healthy lifestyle”
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Blondie, 2/1/25
You know, this strip originally became a cultural sensation when it was about a dissolute failson who wooed and married a flapper and got disinherited over it, but then for a lot longer than that it was about a suburban dipshit who was married to a woman wildly out of his league, and I’m not going to say that’s good or anything, but it’s a hell of a lot better than a strip in which people encourage their children to “vlog” about “healthy lifestyle ideas.” This one is even going so far as to imply that getting involved in the online influencer grift could get you laid! It makes me sick.
Hi and Lois, 2/1/25
Lois was smart to do this: Thirsty is wearing an orange sweater, clearly signaling that he was prepared to go “Garfield mode” on that lasagna. Of course, the sassy orange cat would never let a nagging note stop him from devouring the Italian dish he loves so much, which is why Thirsty, as much as I hold him in great affection, is not a top-tier comic character and never will be.
Shoe, 2/1/25
I’ll say this much for Shoe: when it has characters say jokes like this, it at least has the good grace to make them look like they want to die.
74 replies to “Sorry, nothing that goes on in the Bumstead home constitutes a “healthy lifestyle””
MW:
“I want a real relationship, Mary! — you know, like when you and Dr. Jeff spend carefree time together on his boat!”
“Trust me, Dawn. No relations whatsoever take place when we’re on his ship!”
“‘Pound’? Do you mean ‘hashtag’?”
MW: Seems a little early in the relationship for Dawn to have Stockholm Syndrome but it is what it is.
Blondie: Zack Logan is clearly a Logan Paul stand-in, and Cookie is off to destroy her future career opportunities by desecrating a Japanese suicide forest.
Shoe: Which should mean he never gains weight, because no-one ever has to press the pound key on their phone anymore. But maybe the Perfesser keeps hitting it in the desperate hope it’s the sexy kind of “pound”
H and L:
“What’s it say?”
“Nothing. There’s just a big black spot on a piece of paper.”
“Well, she has been reading ‘Treasure Island’ with her book club!”
I don’t know if Zach Logan is a celebrity I should have heard of or a “Blondie” character I’m supposed to remember.
Maybe he’s a superhero. With claws. Yeah, that sounds right.
Blondie – I thought it was a torque wrench….
H&L – I’ll bet the notes abound – hands off the beer and liquor – don’t plug the toilet…in fact, don’t use it at all since you dribble piss everywhere….
Shoe – Using your phone – pounding – well, that doesn’t sound good….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Blondie: We’ve reached a point in this strip where the ‘punchlines’ have become so mediocre that I haven trouble actually picking them out of the text. Like, on first read I really asked myself “Zack Logan? Is that someone I should know? Is that what makes this funny?” Google tells me that Zachari Logan is a Canadian ceramics artist, which is not funny in and of itself, but he was born is Saskatoon, which even as a Canadian I can say is a funny-sounding name.
H&L: You’d think that the lasagna would have been safe after Lois blended it up and hid it in an old milk carton, but she knows that like most scavengers, Thirsty mainly operates on his sense of smell.
Shoe “To be clear, I programmed my pound sign to call Dominos automatically. Honestly, its a big time saver.”
Blondie: “These vlogs won’t post themselves!” said the clueless young woman, who’s blissfully unaware that, as as with so many other professional tasks, artificial-intelligence tools are poised to turn video production and distribution into jobs that require no human involvement.
Hi and Lois: Based on the location of the note, Lois really knows Thirsty well. She realizes that he wouldn’t go straight for the lasagna, and also that he’s been hiding a half-gallon of Jim Beam in a milk carton in their fridge.
Shoe: “I gain weight just pressing the pound key on my phone. Even worse, I get sexually aroused from pressing star-69!”
Pluggers: It’s a myth that birds are harmed by eating uncooked rice, because it expands in their stomachs. On the other hand, I’m pretty this chicken-lady is about to die after eating a heaping tablespoon of dry Metamucil straight from the container.
H&L: When it comes to reining in his gluttonous buddy, Hi has neither the sense nor the cojones to do so. Hence, the note.
BLONDIE: At first look, Cookie appeared to be holding a wrench. Therefore, I read, “You’ve been CLOGGING nonstop lately.”
CS: The story so far; you didn’t have a voice or a style and consulted with an editor whose job it is to make sure every comic is homogenized down for thousands of local newspapers. Not exactly Groening.
Blondie: Cookie is holding a gimbal…which I recognize…and it’s not some ridiculous amalgam of parts that looks like it was made from a bicycle. We’ve reached a seminal moment in a legacy strip.
Blondie: Vlogging, that’s a euphemism for sex isn’t it? The whole strip is about Cookie having a lot of sex and doing Onlyfans, right?
Luann: ‘What I’m trying to say is, Tiffany, is I’m not gay, but I’ll learn.Think you could get me a date with that guy glaring at you over there?’
JP: Ah yes, the old ‘I gotta find out something’ excuse for leaving a tedious, going-nowhere conversation. Well done Randy, maybe you can go find a more interesting and coherent plot outside of this ‘correctional facility’.
RMMD: ‘I’m willing to violate the privacy of as many parents as it takes to get myself laid tonight. What do you what to hear about first, the parents who are secretly gay? The ones who were obviously high or hungover during our meetings? Your choice!’
Hi seems rather nonchalant about his wife leaving notes for another guy inside their own house.
H&L: I first thought it should say “Hands off the leftover lasagna, Thurston” but realized that Hi wouldn’t dare and Chip can’t read.
Hey @taig, it looks like we were optimistic yesterday. Instead of skipping the last 50 years of his career with a smirk, Batton looks like he’s going to push his boring autobiography into Week 4! But not next week, though. It’s time for the Ohio Music Education Association Convention! Dinkle never misses that!
MW:
“Mary, if a relatonship is a two-way street, that means that the people who are on the street are going in opposite directions! So that indicates that Dirk and I are perfect for one another!”
FC: 80 years later a hooded man carrying a scythe leads Billy to the edge of a giant bathtub.
“Nooooooooooooo!!”
HAPPY FEBRUARY! Remember to pay rent, utilities, phone bill.
JP:. “I have to see a no-good ungrateful former police detective who has betrayed me to get back into his old job.”. Hmm, it’s called career advancement.
@Stacker:
#11. CS:. Your history can get out two ways– either you write it or a liar will.
No, Blondie. You are not allowed to introduce a new character for a one-shot gag and have the main characters use their name as if they both know who he is. The Bumsteads live in a Potemkin village where the dozen-odd real people are surrounded by a flickering cast of evanescent phantoms. If Cookie wants a steady boyfriend, she has to date Lou.
@matt w: This does feel like, when a show (usually a cartoon, and usually from the 70’s) introduces a new character and they say “It’s our old friend ___” and we’re just supposed to go along with that.
Blondie-Blondie, your daughter has an Only Fans page.
FC-The goldfish tells tales of eldritch abominations that live outside of the bowl.
MW-“But a relationship is a two-way street,” thus spaketh the woman who leads Dr. Jeff along.
RMMD-And cue the flashbacks.
Lois doesn’t want Thirsty putting anything other than alcohol in his system. He has one gimmick, and by god, she is going to make sure he sticks to it.
Blondie – With Cookie being on the younger edge of Gen-Z it makes sense she would try to get famous as an influencer, but the dialogue feels like something Dawn Weston would say. The whole premise, “I’m going to try to become a content creator dispensing advice I am unqualified to give, and it’s really about following my libido” really is a Dawn storyline, a merger of her two main influences in life, Wilbur and Mary.
Hi and Lois – Thirsty is no Andy Capp.
Shoe – This joke is a generational checkpoint. No one born after 2000 will get it, and good for them for being able to be turned off Shoe forever.
MW: Mary finally becomes exasperated. “Dawn, you ignorant slut . . .”
CS: “And at that moment, I knew — I KNEW — that I was destined to win a Pulitzer Prize someday! But then . . . then . . . SOB! . . . Oh, Skip, this is my last shot. Please help me. Pleeeeeeeeeease!”
RMMD: “So do you love me yet? Do ya? Do ya? Come on, say you love me!”
Pluggers: “Senior Pluggers”? Huh? You mean there are Junior Pluggers too? I’m sorry, but I was not ready for this.
GT: Um, explain to us please how exactly Keri is lucky.
When the Blondie strip used to call ancillary characters thing like “Zach Pimplefink” you were assured of at least one chuckle.
MW: “Dawn, Dirk shouldn’t make you feel guilty for getting slop on your face. Just keep a box of Kleenex by the side of the bed.”
Shooey — Too bad he can’t make his bon mots funnier by pressing *
Hi and Lois – Nice fridge magnets.
Don Abundio, translated:
“There was nothing good on TV, so I had my set modified”
“And now you enjoy watching it?”
“Yes”
“I turned it into a fish tank!”
Curious what the original subject matter was and what she was originally holding in her hands. My guess is a clipboard with a petition on it to gather signatures to allow women the right to vote
Cookie is committed to sharing healthy lifestyle ideas with the world. Until she finds her view count stagnating, then it’s mukbang all the way, baby. It could be worse though, she could go the “prank” video route and then it’s just embarrassing having to explain why you’re in to your cellmate.
MW: I would say that this is good advice but keep in mind that this is coming from the same woman who gaslit Estelle into taking Wilbur back twice. If this were Dawn complaining about her dad (or even Jared), Mary would lecture her about being respectful to her father and how he sacrifices so much for her current lifestyle.
Shoe: Ha ha, it’s funny because the Perfesser has diabetes (Do birds get diabetes? How big is the pancreas of the average fish hawk? Reminder to self: research the next time you’re off your meds)!
Pearls Before Swine-Another one of Summer’s failed dates?
MW: You know, Dawn is more like her father than I thought. They are both insanely intense about relationships. Show them the tiniest amount of affection and they get obsessed. It’s sad, really.
DT: “And now I shall begin to speak VERY PRECISELY like a Nazi spy from 1944, even though I was born in Schenectady in 1983.”
Blondie: At first glance, I thought Cookie was wielding some weird plumbing tool. I think this would have worked better if she was.
HnL: You’d think Lois would be more concerned about the fleas on Thirsty’s shirt, because they’re definitely jumping off it in panel 2.
Shoe: “I keep hoping it’ll hook me up with Paula Poundstone.” (Is that too recent a reference for Shoe?)
@Noel: And once they think they’ve sunk their claws into a new relationship, they either go full doormat or they wipe their feet on their new partner. Neither one knows what a healthy relationship is like both because they’re insufferable people who blame everything but themselves.
Luann: “What I’m saying, Tiffany, is I want to feel what love is. I want you to show me.”
CS: “I mean, I got to work after I got evicted from my apartment after making a ruckus.”
Shoe: You know, if Americans had adopted a rational system of weights of measures in 1975 like the rest of the civilized world, we wouldn’t have to put up with jokes like this. But conversion might result in layoffs reaching into the high single digits among comedians, daily comics writers, and the curmudgeons who depend on them. That’s a powerful lobby to fight! Little wonder we haven’t made the jump.
FC – “Take me back to Wilbur. Please! He’s disgusting and repellent, but at least he isn’t a moron.”
Mary Worth – Incoming platitude alert.
Rex Morgan – This is Rex Morgan. Those “stories” will be deadly boring.
Pluggers – What a bunch of chicken shit.
MW: “A relationship is a two-way street! And you want to make sure you’re not the one walking into oncoming traffic.”
FC: The goldfish says, “Tell me about it, bub. It’s like swimming in the East River in here.”
Dustin: “No, you dour piece of shit. He’s pretty well-adjusted and would kick out your sourpuss ass after spending 30 seconds with you.”
Hi and Lois: Q: How do you keep a moron occupied all day? A: Tell him not to eat a non-existent lasagna in your fridge. Well-played, Lois, well-played.
Today’s Blondie is sponsored by the grandparents of Zack Logan in celebration of his 18th birthday and successful YouTube account. Zack understands this is an honor, but at the same time, does not understand. Just smile and say “Thank you,” Zack!
Blondie: I’m not saying that Cookie’s “healthy lifestyle ideas” center around raw milk, essential oils, and tradwife philosophy, but I am saying it makes a hell of a lot more sense than the other options.
Shoe: Maybe if you didn’t fell compelled to eat pound cake at the same time…
Archie:
Jughead, founder president of the resurrected Know Nothing Party.
Only he really knows nothing.
I was looking over my shoulder to make an awkward three-point turn in my 2007 car and the following horrifying thought popped into my head: “Plugger rear-view camera [a leering rhino-plugger uses a telephoto lens to zoom in on an unsuspecting Sheila Roo’s butt].” Send help
@Cleveland Mocks: MW – Follow your tummy brain.
Crankshaft: Sparky thinks he’s just spent hours with an important acquiring editor at the Newspaper Association, but it was really a janitor with a wicked sense of humor. Who’s now yukking it up in the break room about getting Sonny Bono to do a ton of artwork on spec that no one’s ever gonna look at.
GT: I’ll have to look into developing bulimia; it seems like an easy way of improving my boxing skills.
Luann: “I was getting bored bouncing nickels off of Stefani’s sculpted buttocks, anyway.”
Zits: Is she telling her son and husband that they should go masturbate together?
Baby Blues: Will Smith didn’t slap Chris Rock at the Oscars, he likes him so much he tried to high five his face! I would actually love to see someone try to use this as a defense in court.
Mother Goose: She doesn’t remember where she’s going because she has chronic dementia.
Dustin: Ed is such a loser that he has to be dragged into going clothes shopping with his wife like a small child.
Family Circus: Billy wishes he could live in his own filth, also that fishbowl doesn’t have any kind of filtration system so it is very quickly going to turn to shit.
@The Rambling Otter: Or was it? “This is our new friend ___” and the character is just immediately added to the group. Which is probably even more pretentious.
C’shaft: The top lessons in this “master class” were “tired running gags are the lifeblood of any strip” and “when all else fails, make a bad pun.” You know what they say, success looks different for everybody.
Dustin: I’m not sure if this particular iteration of “women be shopping” hearkens back to a time when married women lacked financial independence, thus requiring their husbands to tag along and foot the bill for them, or it it stems from a depiction of men as overgrown toddlers who resent having to go on errands when they’d rather be at home watching television.
GT: Next week: both Keri’s eating disorder and Inma’s struggles with Islamophobia will be forgotten, and we’ll be back on Marty’s estranged daughter or Coach Permawave’s latest scheming or something.
HotC: “You mean the one written by Mary Rodgers, daughter of music theatre icon Richard Rodgers and a gifted composer in her own right?”
“That’s the one! Oh my God, we have so much in common!”
*flash, switch back*
“….Huh, that was easy.”
Luann: Kip is a football player, right? Reasonably good looking (as far as can be depicted in the strip)? And Stef is the only girl he’s ever dated? Something else is at work here. I’m guessing it’s some combination of “closeted gay,” “horrifically strict religious upbringing” and “blindingly stupid” (a default explanation as it’s pretty much par for the course for a Luann character).
MW: Man, imagine how badly you’d have to be failing at life for Mary to suggest a woman shouldn’t be dating you. Even Wilbur hasn’t sunk that low.
Blondie: I’m kind of an meme influencer on some sites, but I don’t do it for internet fame, I do it because I just want love and attention. I’m so very very lonely
Lois warning Thirsty off a dish made with cheap ingredients and a ton of work says a lot about both couples. (It’s hard to type with my hands over my ears to avoid thinking about what.)
Curtis: “Giggling from the Grave” has to be the worst name for a horror movie I’ve ever heard. It sounds like something Disney made in the 60s when they were making films like The Shaggy Dog and The Apple Dumpling Gang and That Darn Cat!
Pearls Before Swine: Does anyone actually use the term “station wagon” anymore? I think it was antiquated when National Lampoon’s Vacation was made.
Don Abundio, take 2:
“I’ve started collecting art, it’s supposed to be a good investment”
“Do you have anything besides childishly drawn landscapes?”
“Yes”
“This Nam June Paik sculpture is pretty cool!”
FC: Yes! It’s the triumphant return of Stellan! …. Yeah, I know. This is a disgraceful waste of his talent — a stop-action scene requiring only a few bubbles from him. And the cheapskates wouldn’t hire a Goldfish Pair, like most one panels use. But this is the new reality for my clients.
You see, the Comics Cartel decided to act in cahoots to limit Animal appearances in their product. Clearly an anti-trust violation. But whatcha gonna do? They claim it cut costs and makes comics more “efficient.” Never mind what you as the comic consumers want.
Willa’s contract for Mary Worth is still pending. But she didn’t wanna appear in this Weston story anyway, so we’ll deal with that later. And they’ve put the Terrific Threesome on hiatus and are looking at pay cuts on their contract renewals. Then, Rex Morgan Enterprises went with a two-legger romantic interest for Summer, instead of gettin’ a ratings-proven adorable Pet for her. I’m tellin’ ya, it’s a tough time for my Animal Stars!
Hey, Intern – you need to go over there and pick up Stellan… he’s gettin’ pale tryin’ to hold his gills and not breathe Billy’s halitosis…
Pluggers miss when chips were made with olestra, now they have to take several kinds of laxatives to get their bowels that loose.
SlylickFox and Comix For Kinx: When Diggem the Frog goes bad. Someone get that frog some Smacks™ stat!
@matt w: zoom in on an unsuspecting Sheila Roo’s butt].”
__________________
Sheila Roo’s Butt played at my brother’s wedding.
Oh geeze! I get it now. This guy being interviewed in Crankshaft is a stand-in for the guy who created the comic. I thought he was just supposed to be an egotistical jerk bragging about his lame life history.
Snuffy Smith-They’ll have to eat possum for dinner.
Hi and Lois-Well we know what meal Lois didn’t poison.
Ziggy-Elon Musk’s space car hit their spaceship.
Pluggers: “Oh, jeez,” thinks Earl. “Now I’ll have to listen to Henrietta on the toilet all day screaming bok-bok-bok-BOK!”
Metamucil is the Pluggers Tang.
“She knew you were coming over.” I can’t stress enough that my wife doesn’t just randomly write notes to you and leave them around the house as some kind of spiritual exercise where she imagines you as an eternal supernatural presence who can intercede on her behalf. She only writes you notes when she intends for you to read them.
Luann: A lot of people have already commented that how could a handsome, college football star have had only one girlfriend. Could be Stef was his first steady girlfriend and we’re not counting his many one night stands.
Hey, I nailed # 69 with a comment about sex. Do I get a Mighty Marvel No Prize?
MW: Dawn–there’s something on your mouth, Dirk.
Dirk: what?
Dawn: my fist.
GT. Sorry, don’t keep up with this comic, but Britney Sears? That name reminds me of someone else…
Someone should write a song about this epic battle.
@Bob Tice: @Liam: Snuffy Smith-They’ll have to eat possum for dinner
_________
Possum: the other white trash meat.
@The Rambling Otter: I do it because I just want love and attention. I’m so very very lonely
________
Dial the Mary Worth hotline. 1 800 MEDDLE ME