Wednesday quickies
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Blondie, 8/6/25
Look, obviously Mr. Dithers is an asshole, but also Dagwood is talking to his wife on speaker while standing like six inches away from Dithers while he’s trying to work? The dysfunctionality of this relationship goes both ways, is what I’m saying.
Dennis the Menace, 8/6/25
Alice cringing and saying “My cooking, which you notoriously hate … is that why you’re so angry?” while Dennis stares sullenly off into space: this is by far the most menacing this strip has been in quite some time.
Slylock Fox, 8/6/25
Max is roughly the same size as this goat kid and wants to play video games with him … is it possible that Max Mouse, assistant police detective, is a child? This entirely reorders how I think about his relationship with Slylock, and not for the better.
172 replies to “Wednesday quickies”
MW: Listen, I know that as a denizen of the Internet I am a sick-minded animal, but I still don’t understand how Moy is missing that all Mary’s dialogue in this arc reads as Groomer 101.
Blondie “Let you home early for dinner“? Jesus, has this strip ever had a gag about Dagwood trying to form a union?
DtM Actually Alice it was something you didn’t cook, and now Dennis has to learn to pronounce ‘trichonosis’ for his next darndest thing.
DtM: “C’mon, mom. It was toast for chrissakes.”
Slylock Fox: Are you seriously proposing that video games are only for kids?
Besides, a child mouse would be even smaller.
MW: Please don’t say “kindred spirits” ever again.
Slylock Fox:
I’m not sure, but I’m certain that Slylock will use his hippocampus to find out who or what the real culprit was.
Blondie: Ten thousand percent chance Dagwood is on speaker phone because whoever creates the clipart for this strip realised how hard it is to draw a human hand holding a phone. I’ve done it for strips a few times myself and it actually sucks and is very hard to do.
No celery in the grocery bag? Obviously this strip wasn’t drawn by Art Frahm.
Slylock: A tired Granny goat struggles to raise her grandkid on her own.
“Behave yourself when I’m at work. Those tin cans don’t grow on trees.”
Occasionally, I play a little game called Sometimes I Have Questions. And today, I invite you to play along with me: What in the circus-mirror fuck is up with Alice’s torso? Where do you source a dress for someone with a four-foot ribcage? Why are her arms so rubbery? If Dennis, the titular menacing child of this script, hated his dinner so much, why is the plate basically licked clean? Is… is there, in fact, a joke present in this “comic” strip? What about you, fellow readers– do you have questions? They will not be answered in this or any lifetime! Bye now!
Slylock Fox:
Well, let’s see. If Granny Goat lives in 1B and the hippo couple lives directly above her, does that mean that they live in 2B? Stated in another way — 2B, or not 2B: that is the question.
Slylock Fox:
“You two river horses are really starting to get my goat. So to speak.”
B. Bailey: These newborns must be at the zoo. The only ‘feet’ those booties would fit are typically called hooves.
@Lauralot: I’d be willing to bet that there are two reasons for why Moy doesn’t see this:
1. She has never once in her life seen any kind of media that discusses the warning signs of potential sexual abuse.
2. She doesn’t believe that women can engage in any form of abuse, particularly sexual abuse.
Blondie : …Isn’t Dinner the NOON meal? Shouldn’t that be SUPPER? Or are Dagwood and Mr Dithers ending the day early because Blondie’s cooking is THAT good? /pedantic linguistic nitpicking
***********
Luann :
1) Did Phil actually bring up the fact that he had had a previous girlfriend that left him, or is this a retcon?
2) …That story sounds a lot less like “My girlfriend left me” to “I had a crush on the girl-next-door my entire life, but when I worked up the courage to ask her out it turned out she had been in a steady relationship with another guy this entire time”.
In Phil’s defense, the strip is acting like the lesson here is “Phil shouldn’t jump to conclusions seeing Luann hang out with other boys just because of his past”, and not “Luann should probably stop denying she’s in a relationship with Phil all the time”.
***********
Slylock Fox : This isn’t the first time there’s a vague implication Max Mouse is young. Like, one case with Shady Shrew had Shady trying to set Max up with his niece (“she’s the same age as you!”), and I wondered whether the implication was that Shady was old or Max was young.
Max being Slylock’s kid/teen sidekick does make all those times they go on double dates with female counterparts hit differently, I’ll admit.
MW: It’s been a couple of weeks, and we’re still on Day 1 of Mary’s visit to her “kindred spirit” in New York. So far, it’s been well established that: Mary took a nap on her flight; everyone who knows Olive, including her own parents, avoids her; appliances and dogs are attracted to Mary—except not in a good way. It’s hard to see where this story is going. Wherever it’s headed, it’s just going there very, very slowly.
DTM: The comic strip adaptation of the classic “cornfield” episode of the Twilight Zone.
Blondie’s plans to surprise Dagwood with a nooner are dashed as she tells a bewildered Dagwood to pick up a bucket of KFC on the way home.
@Hibbleton: Dagwood, misreading the mood completely, shows up with Buckethead, hoping for the threesome of his dreams.
MW: If we set aside the icky innuendo (not easy, I know) exactly why WOULD they be kindred spirits? Mary has no preternatural skills. Olive shows no desire for meddling. There is their love of inane, repetitive conversation, but that’s already Mary and Jeff’s thing!
BG&SS: Seriously? There was a whittlin’ gag RIGHT THERE.
DtM: Mom is either a stone-cold masochist or has her memory erased every night.
@Bob Tice: SF- when I taught a course on HIPAA the first slide always said “It’s Not A River Horse”. Trying to get people to stop spelling it HIPPA. I’d ask them if they knew what a river horse was usually to blank stares. Thanks for the memory!
Blondie: The flat backdrop in panel one and floating screens in two and three indicate that we’re in some sort of theatrical production, possibly a musical adaptation of Neil Simon’s little-known Men Jumping From The 23rd Floor. Brace yourself for a hungry, despairing duet between Dagwood and Blondie, is what I’m saying.
Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids: Wait, are those Count Weirdly’s Converse in the front closet? It would explain a lot if Granny Goat were accusing the Hippos of the tango while she was doing the horizontal mambo. Well, except for how the holes got on the ceiling instead of the walls. We don’t need the solution to that mystery.
DTM: What would happen if Dennis acquired the powers of the kid from the classic “cornfield” episode of the Twilight Zone. I think it would go a little something like this…
MW: Oh…oh. Oh no. Oh no no no. Oh NO.
RMMD: The entire e-mail exchange was: “Hello. I am Truck Tyler’s ex-drummers’ biological son.” What does that make us?” “Absolutely nothing.”
Also Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids: “The Tango? Why, I never! Madam, we are hippopotamuses! We only perform our ancestral dance, the Watusi!”
Blondie: At first glance, I somehow mistook Mr. Dither’s slacks for extremely tanned, hairy legs. That’s enough Internet for today.
So many characters neglected, absent from today’s comics: Cora Dithers, Henry Mitchell, Moo Deng…
Go easy on the kid (eheh, goat kid!)! If he smashed his head on the ceiling several times and with enough strength to create holes, he probably has severe concussion and permanent damage
DtM — “You weren’t in a good mood at dinner. Was it something I cooked?”
This line fits either a battered wife or Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Either way, menace level:11!
DtM:
One meal makes you larger
And one meal makes you small
And the ones his mother gives you
Don’t do anything a’tall
Go ask Alice —
When she does crust, wrawl
And if you show baking habits
And you know you’re going to bawl
Tell ’em a gouda-toting platter filler
Has given you a thrall
Gall Alice
And she’ll just appall
When her men are obsessed, bored,
Fed up, and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of crushed gloom
And your mind is oozing woe
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll crow
When chopsticks and proportions
Have gallin’, sloppy bread
And her fright bite is rocking hacked gurds
And the dread fiend’s off in his bed
Re-emember what the bored spouse said:
“Feed your dread
Feed your dread”
@Powers: Yeah, must be difficult being a mouse in that sort of setting.
There was a videogame I played that had animal characters, the protagonist is a fox kid, and at one point he goes to a coffee stand and asks for a coffee. The barista is a mouse.
Mouse: It’ll stunt your growth kid
Fox kid: But I’m bigger than you are.
Mouse: Whatever… smartmouth.
Slylock: Oh Josh, did you know it’s a thing in fiction, for an older detective/professor/adventurer to take on a plucky young child as a sidekick?
-Professor Layton and Luke Triton.
-Professor Childermass and Johnny Dixon.
@Lauralot: is this the creepiest Worthverse storyline ever?
BB Blips and Buxley chuckle, getting back to enjoying their takeout hidden in container-cosies, using their favourite chopsticks. Knitting? They laugh as the general knows nothing about practical crafting – why, every stitch would fall off.
MW Sooo… you haven’t started *really* having fun. It starts now. All that it’s missing is for Mary to pull out a hotel room key and say Olive’s parents aren’t expecting her back right away… ewwww
Letting the upstairs neighbours take the blame while the damage is a series of two holes that are all the same distance apart is the new billy goat’s bluff.
SF: Come on, Mr. and Ms. Hippo, don’t let goat grandma put you down! I say own it! Get matching t-shirts that say “All We Do Is Tango!!”
SF: Even if the Hippos didn’t make the holes, I still imagine that their dancing would be very loud and annoying.
@The Rambling Otter: I think you mean ‘bait,’ not ‘sidekick.’
“Naw, food was fine, Mom. I was wondering – as I often do – why you have a portrait of Microsoft’s Clippy on the wall behind me. It’s weird, Mom, and the other kids make fun of me. I gotta ask – is Clippy my real Dad? It’s OK if he is, I just want to know.”
Blondie – The boob motorboating goes without saying….
DtM – Dennis hasn’t been the same since Art Linkletter’s Kids Say the Darnedest Things went out of print….
SFx – I love it when SFx gets topical like this! When will we accept that the nanny state can’t solve all our problems….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Anonymous: re: Luann – somehow I think that if you asked this “girlfriend” for her side, she’d rant about how they went on, like, *two* dates and it wasn’t some huge *secret* that she wasn’t exclusive and was dating others, heck later when he’d come hang out at her family’s house, she *tried* to mention her newly exclusive boyfriend, but it was like he’d just ignore the topic…
Pluggers don’t know much, but what they know isn’t worth knowing.
@Unca Bob:
This must be a really common misspelling, because there are actually articles on the Internet whose main topic is that it’s “HIPAA,” not “HIPPA.”
Slylock’s pickin’ up the prisoners
And putting ’em in a pen
And hippos just want to dance, dance
Kids been goats
Since I don’t know when
And all they want to do is bounce
Zambezi water’s
The local drink
And hippos just want to dance, dance
They tango all night
In the room upstairs
And the goats just want to bounce
@els: Adding to the game, where are Dennis’ feet and lower legs? Why is his head so enormous compared to the rest of him?
MW-“We can really enjoy ourselves.” Mary’s a groomer!
MW-At the world famous Tavern on the Green.
So Max Mouse is essentially Robin.
Blondie-Dithers is actually in Dagwood’s office correcting the mistakes in the latest contract.
CS: I called it yesterday. Shitcrank is going to end up on the field and it will be so wacky and goofy and hilarious, that this time Tom wins his Pulitzer for sure!.
My God Blondie is STACKED!
rex morgan =did shorty go in a time machine so he could join the band ? i thought he wanted to be a comedian and wheres beanpole
MW: This story has the “honor” of being the creepiest story with no involvement whatsoever from Wilbur. Is it Moy’s plan for Mary to get arrested for grooming Olive so that Wilbur can take over the script?
@Bob Tice: At the end of the presentation I’d put up a final slide intentionally misspelling HIPAA and ask if there were any questions. After several seconds of silence one person would eventually raise their hand and chide me for the mistake. I’d call out “Bingo!” and toss them a large Hershey bar as a reward. Nothing like chocolate as a reinforcement.
WARNING TO BAJA GAIJIN!
Don’t look at Rubes today.
@Tom: Mary Worth is the kind of comic where morals and ethics are firmly rooted in the Hays Code era 1950s, prices haven’t changed since the 1970s, and no one knows how to hold a smartphone let alone use it.
FC: Dolly needs to do a little trimming around the edges of the lower garment.
CS: Crankshaft will be mistaken for a member of the training staff and will end someone’s career.
Slylock – Sure, you’re innocent, but who GAVE the kid that pogo stick, hmmm? It’s well known that Flavio and Marita here have plenty of dough and don’t mind spreading it around.
Don Abundio, translated:
[Sign: COAT CHECK]
“The money these old boys spend on us is all stolen from the working classes”
“But… I thought that didn’t bother you”
“Yeah, you’re right…”
“But I despise a small-time thief!”
@Bob Tice: #6
*SHRIEK!!!!*
P.S. I could make some kind of wordplay out of “hippo + campus,” but you stole my thunder… :-)
@Bob Tice: #11
Man, you are on a roll!!! :-)
“Might be time for the goat kid to confess!” That’s just what they want you to think. Remember, what the National Lawyers Guild says: when talking to the police, shut the f*** up! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWEpW6KOZDs
@Bob Tice: #12
Okay…that does it…
DtM: Making your mom dread being wished into the cornfield: extremely menacing.
SFx: The lines of prejudice are already drawn in the post-Animalpocalypse world, with the hippos being profiled as lumbering and clumsy. They will retaliate by waiting until Granny and her grandson are walking by the pond in the park, grabbing them in their powerful jaws, and dragging them to a watery grave.
MW: And the grooming just keeps getting groomier.
@MKay: #20
Actually, there was a scene in the original iteration of the “Olive” story years back where Olive, in a panic, runs outside toward the C’Stone pool and falls in. She can’t swim, of course. Mary awakens from a deep sleep with a gasp – “Olive!!!,” she cries!! And she runs outside, leaps into the pool and pulls a gasping Olive out of the water. So there’s that. Maybe they *do* have something in common, like tripping over things and falling into swimming pools.
Blondie – It’s sex, right? They’re actually talking in code about sex?
By this logic, anyone who works in an office with a landline phone, regardless of age, is a Plugger.
MW: Yikes! Getting very close to: “I think we’re alone now/There doesn’t seem to be anyone around/I think we’re alone now…”
Slylock Fox: Clearly, this Goat Karen was expecting Slylock to racially profile her “degenerate” hippo neighbors and get rid of them for her. Unfortunately for her, goats are lower in the caste system than hippos and thus Slylock will be taking her child into the station for damaging public property, where he’ll probably fall down some stairs and land on bullets. Total freak accident, you know how it is.
SFx – Anyone else have the urge to put “two hippos dancing the tango” into an AI prompt?… Just me, huh? Thought so.
Phantom/Flash Gordon: These storylines seem parallel… Are we getting a Defenders of the Earth crossover, where they explain that gawdawful “Strength of Ten Tigers” SHAZAM! manufactured plot point?
Curtis: I am genuinely surprised and gobsmacked. No, not that “King” is her dog, but that they went through with the reveal.
MW: No wonder Olive doesn’t have any friends her age or any friends at all considering she acts and talks like an old lady while also dressing like a kid half her age. And yet there’s no sympathy for her considering she goes from crying about not fitting in to humble bragging about how “special” she is at the drop of a hat. Like every Mary Worth character, she’s contrarian as hell and as pleasant to talk to as a root canal without pain medication.
C’shaft: “Centerville resident Ed Crankshaft was trampled to death today by a Canadian Football League team. His family and lov…er, fr…acquaintances are grieving that they were not present to witness his demise.”
Dustin: Helen smiled serenely. Yes, anything was good in moderation…as long as you didn’t have a severe nut allergy. Fortunately, Ed hadn’t bothered to look at his medical records in years ever since he found the sight of his increasing weight “too depressing,” and he hadn’t bothered to set foot in the kitchen since they were married. She’ managed to keep him from killing himself for this long, but the latest life insurance statements showed that this was the time to act. Her smile deepened as she imagined Ed clawing desperately at his throat, the cold look she would give him as she calmly dialed 911, letting him see the lack of concern in her eyes as all her radio experience enabled her to create the perfect note of distress in her voice: “Please help, my dear husband is having trouble breathing…”
JP: “Mom’s in trouble in with the feds again, isn’t she, Daddy? Just keep it down; I have kindergarten in the morning…”
Luann: “I feel so stupid for not seeing it! All that time spent hanging around her, going through her garbage, watching her through her bedroom window with binoculars…”
MW: “I’ll even let you have a sip of my wine! It’s okay, you’re so mature for your age, and I know you can keep a secret from your mom and dad….”
I mean, I know we shouldn’t expect much from the woman who thinks Wilbur Weston is endearing, but Christ on a cracker…
RMMD: I see Parker wisely gave up on their stand-up comedy ambitions and has turned to session music gigs.
@Daisy:
It is often said that a pun is the lowest form of humor. So it’s right in my wheelhouse!
Granny Goat could have referenced any other dance — probably tap dance would have been more appropriate for ruining the ceiling — but she chose tango. Why? Because tango is the sex dance. Granny Goat lives on the edge, constantly threatened by the shadow of raw hippo lust, like ethnic minorities were a threat to the puritanism of Wasps in the 1950s America (are Wasps after the Animalapocalypse just wasps? Must investigate further)
Today’s Slylock Fox answers the tail question: The tail comes out over the pants and under the jacket. This is perfectly modest because even when a fox is bipedal, his tail is above his butt. I’m sure a lot of information on the anthroporophic fox tail/butt question can be found on the internet, where I will not look for it.
You know, Phil, if takes you a year to notice your “forever person” is dating other people, you probably *should* feel stupid.
MW: A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with a group of people that included one woman who, after telling some anecdote, repeated the point of the anecdote five times. Rather than stand up and scream, I said, “Yes, I understand your point.” She looked at me funny. AITAH?
“Mother, they should call you Walter White, because what you cook is criminal!”
“No, they should call me Walter White because my first son is really ‘slow’, if you know what I mean”
Slylock Fox: Goat kid has a modern gaming console, but has to wait until grandma is out shopping to indulge in that most popular of activities among the youth, indoor hopping on a pogo stick.
DT: The bad people have first names now. LaKoyle – is that the name of the friend of artist/writer or an anagram for LOYAL KE or LOYAL EK – some one whose initials are KE or EK and a solid friend? Does the gun have a nick name like zappy? What was the loan shark funding? High tech research takes a lot of money – more money than a grubby loan shark. Wouldn’t the defense department fund the zapper gun? It would be a perfect complement to their autonomous wheeled/track robot vehicle or drone. Is Diet Smith working on this?
JP: Again, the girls fail to wonder why this stranger just left work and came back to their place and doesn’t seem at all worried about losing his job – c’mon this is incredibly suspicious – like he is the killer suspicious. Meanwhile the spy / action /espionage plot is sidelined and someone has to get Randy/Sam (I forgot at this point due to the yelling) some chill pills and hide his crazy pills.
RMMD: Any approach would seem like such a scam especially over the internet unless Cody supplied some proof and even then, why would these strangers want to make a link with him if their own lives are settled?
MW: Freaky Friday is out. Carrie and Firestarter is out. But looking at how old this young teenager acts, it appears that Mary has been over time carefully trying to seize her body and transfer soul into Olivia’s body thereby ensuring her ongoing survival. She’ll then trap Olivia into her body and buddle her back to Charterstone where her cries for help and ravings about not being her would be attributed to a long overdue case of dementia.
@TheDiva: “The man who will one day destroy the earth with a rogue barbecue grill, and once caused an incident by opening a plane door during a commercial flight, was found breaking into a Canadian Football League locker room earlier today. In a sign of Canada’s deteriorating relationship with its southern neighbor, he will be returned to the United States unpunished and unharmed.”
@Little Guy: I thought this was a delightful little Curtis arc, no snark. I enjoyed this unironically.
Hippos are quite graceful dancers and tend to prefer classical ballet, as we all learned from Fantasia.
@lynn: No. Seems like a much nicer way to do it than I would have done.
@Unca Bob:
I’d put up a final slide intentionally misspelling HIPAA and ask if there were any questions.
As someone who has to train HIPAA many, many times each year, I love this. There are several hills I will die on, and the correct spelling of HIPAA is one of them.
My favorite medical record misspelling of all time claimed that the patient was on “maturity leave”. I mean… who is to say? It’s possible.
@Anonymous: I’ve only heard really old people refer to the “noon meal” as “dinner.” Most normal people call it “lunch,” and use “dinner” and “supper” interchangeably.
Slylock Fox reminds me of math classes gone by, in that I’ll use all the skills at my disposal to come up with an answer and then it ends up being the wrong answer. To wit: this strip, in which Mrs. Hippo is wearing high heels that have a much smaller diameter than the holes in the ceiling. Does it make sense? Yes. Is it the answer? Nope. And then I’m reminded that the strip is subtitled “and Comics for Kids” and I feel like a moron. Wasn’t math class enough? Why must I continue to suffer? F it, I’ll play Jumble instead.
@lynn: No, that was a kind way to address it. I was concerned when a long-time friend of mine began repeating things and asking the same questions, often in a short time frame. That was six years ago and she’s now in assisted living memory care.
That goat should tread lightly. Those hippos are likely to revert to their typical nature and just absolutely destroy that lying nanny goat and everything in that crappy apartment. The holes in the ceiling will be the least of her worries when they’re done.
SFx: The fish-net hose on Ms. Hippo are a nice detail..
Nancy: The opposite of Bianca Xunise.
Slylock Fox: DID YOU SEE THE SIZE OF THAT BANANA?!
Slylock: For the accusation against the upstairs neighbors to make any sense, the holes must go all the way through. That means that the step is dancing around the fact that the upstairs neighbors did not complain as goat boy poked numerous holes in their floor. Did they not see it happen? Did they have so little curiosity that they didn’t even raise this occurrence with the goat family downstairs?
Luann- Oh c’mon Phil don’t be so hard on yourself. How stupid do you think Truck felt when he found out about Spuds and Varla? And to think he heard it from his not son after all?And for that matter, how stupid is Cody gonna feel when Lou Reed over here kicks him out the Velvet Underground for being distracted during their gigs?
SlyF – C’mon. A little Sheetrock dust around the kid’s horns, please.
As for Max, he’s just politely making the kid available to Slylock to cuff.
Phantom: “Well, he won’t be needing this cash….”
JP: As in MW, we’re still on day one of the Norse Adventure. The first thing to do is clearly tear through your landlady/benefactor’s private shit. “Wow, look at the SIZE of these dildos. And ewwwwwww…I don’t even understand what this pornography is supposed to be about. And shouldn’t this cream cheese be in the refrigerator?”
Slylock Fox:
When Slylock sleuths the truth, that young goat will be banished to a life of desuetude and dilapidation in Tin Can Alley.
Pluggers brag about some very strange “accomplishments”.
@Sequitur: I LOVED today’s Nancy. I also really enjoyed today’s Alley Oop. All in all, two amusing strips, making for an exceptional day in the funny papers. Oh yeah — Flash Gordon was excellent too. Do this one for Abe Lincoln, Flash!
@Alter Ego: I’d like to think Dithers will bring along Cora, and they’ll swap….
Sorry! Alley Oop. If Squanto had only taken Oop’s tack, we’d all be happier today.
@103 Ukulele Ike:
Remember, when you’re bored, bake bread!
Wednesday Aphorisms
LUANN: “Once burned forever shy” is what I learned but the web says it’s the more adaptive “Once burned twice shy”. Your experience?
ZITS: “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”. Maybe it should be, “No way out for the untrainable.”
BF: Susan wants to get back on the treadmill
FG: others must get off (as Treetop said yesterday, robots are expensive anyway). Can FG force a tyrant to care about human rights?
Crank: And cue the Benny Hill music.
Curtis: Um, so the telekinetic old lady had a dog she loved, and the dog was still alive and on the streets for some reason, and it couldn’t find her, but it could find the kid who was looking after her, and also being reunited has magically cured the dog’s limp, and the whole telekinetic thing wasn’t really relevant to anything? To quote Ms Harris: Okaaaaay.
DT: Yesterday, we got a nameplate reading Theresa Lakoyle. Today we get another strip with Roberta calling her Tess and a closeup of the Lakoyle Labs logo, just like their introduction. Costello really is doing everything short of having a character actually say “Tess Lakoyle” to say “You see? Her name’s ‘Tess Lakoyle’! Do you get it? Do you?”
Meanwhile back at police HQ, Sam has made a list of all the woman scientists in Neo-Chicago who might be the creator of an overpowered taser-like weapon:
Theresa “Tess” Lakoyle
Elektra Caldischarge
Jadyn “Jay” Kobbsladder
Diana “Di” Rektcurrrent
Constance “Con” Ductedenergidevyse
Cree Atorofanoverpoweredtaserlikeweapon
FC: “Mommy! Jeffy’s reusing the ‘Dolly’s such a narc she makes up rules so she can narc about them’ gag for the three millionth time!”
SH: Despite the “clue” that Alex has gone from wearing a teal shirt to … a teal shirt with a jacket and tie, it took me three goes to realise the intended reading wasn’t that Palmtop, who has previously been shown to occasionally transform inadvertently without noticing, hadn’t done so mid-swipe.
(And yes, I know the last “Palmtop shifts to human form inadvertently” storyline made much of the fact she didn’t magically aquire clothes, but it’s not like I expect shapeshifting in this strip to be consistent.)
(Oh, no … now that I’ve said that, I’ve a horrible feeling this quasi-romantic nonsense might be heading towards “Alex arrives home and finds naked Pam apparently waiting for him.” I really hope it doesn’t.)
Phantom: Thank you, DePaul, for including a flashback to when this guy spoke in Saturday’s strip when Stripey refers to his accent, so we can hear it again for ourselves. Oh, wait, no we can’t, because that’s not how comic strips work.
Pluggers: They usually hear it shortly after saying “Hi, it’s me!”
OTF: Me, yesterday: “Don’t you hate it when media properties keep repeating a tired formula?” asks the strip that has done several hundred variants of “What if an internet or business phrase … but real?”
Holbrook, today: Did someone say “What if an internet or business phrase … but real?”
S4th: “Are you kidding? I’ve got actual artwork on the walls!”
SFx: TFW you can’t think of ideas for your post-Animalpocalypse comic, so you put on a random TV channel/the first thing that comes up on streaming, and find yourself watching an old Animaniacs episode with the Hip Hippos.
@Hibbleton:
#9. Hibbleton, the goats I’ve petted I’ve adored but have never raised them. Do they in fact eat tin cans and if so, dont the edges kill their internal organs?
FC – I have to give whichever Keane wrote this credit for perfectly getting the pettiness of the tattletale sister.
Mary Worth – Ye gods. The creepiness is off the charts. Moy must believe that this is a charming relationship, but it comes across as creepy grooming on Mary’s part. “Kindred spirits” my ass. When they get back to chez Olive, I hope that Chris Hansen is waiting in the living room.
Pluggers – I know that I’ve mentioned this before, but in 1961 or ’62, our area went from operator directed phone calls to dial phones. We got new phone numbers. I was in grade school at the time, and the school had an assembly to demonstrate how to use the dial phones. I remember them pointing out how to listen for the dial tone.
Rex Morgan – The glacier plot moves forward half an inch.
Crankshaft – Yeah, an unmarked door in a stadium is obviously for a bathroom. Surely even in rural Canada there would be some labeling on the door. Crankshaft’s stupidity is equal to the stupidity of the plot.
Frazz – A year from now, they’ll both be wishing that they had done a little more mocking of Mrs. Olsen behind her back.
@Activist: The version I’m familiar with is “Once bitten, twice shy,” so I’m not sure we’ve gotten anywhere.
@Activist:
“Once burned twice shy”. Your experience?
I’ve heard it as “once bitten twice shy.”
Kind of depressing how Alice’s cringing fear of upsetting her family by substandard cooking has expanded beyond the 1950’s expectation of having to please her breadwinner husband to being afraid of her own son. Shouldn’t she be taking more of an, “Eat what I made or stay hungry,” approach, in keeping with the anachronous setting?
@Horace Broon:Meanwhile back at police HQ, Sam has made a list of all the woman scientists in Neo-Chicago who might be the creator of an overpowered taser-like weapon:
I’ve just remembered that Tess was wearing a gender-concealing outfit when the eyewitnesses witnessed her, so there’s no reason Sam would be specifically looking for woman scientists. But I can’t think of any male punny names except Raymond “Ray” Gunn, which is pretty meh, so whatever. (Okay, so Jadyn could be either.)
@Activist:
An old wives tale popular when I was young. Goats are attracted to, and gnaw on, the glue holding the labels on. They don’t actually eat the cans.
@Bob Tice: Nice job!
I still can’t believe that a cruise line used the original song in an ad campaign. Someone should have fed their heads information on what the song is about.
@beer farmer: I thought that was Parker, too. Apparently Beatty has only a few male character templates. It could be worse – the band member could look like Truck or (shudder) Buck Wise.
@lynn: No. You were gracious about it, although I hope you had an irritated tone in your voice when you said it.
GA: ok, the kid knows the lingo but what’s “with shoes on”? Hope cook doesnt trade Baleen in for this new model.
FRAZZ: tuck your shirt in Caulfield. We know you weren’t God sent without seeing your navel.
MANDRAKE: May couldn’t find even find the latch if she had her finger on it. Good thing some MEN are coming. /s. yeck
TG: I like that Monica. She’s an independent problem solver
“Dammit, Mom, what have I told you about asking me what I thought about your cooking? Or talking to other kids? And dress more Mom-like, tramp!”
Proceed, Mary Worth, and get Gary Glitter arrested yet again. Assuming he’s free, I MIGHT look it up later.
@Hibbleton:
#115. Thanks for clearing that up. I learned something today.
@Bob Tice: Wow. I could hear Grace belting that one out. Nice.
Did Dennis just turn Mr Wilson into a jack in the box?
@Bob Tice: It’s not true, of course. When in doubt, pun.
@I speak Jive: One day, while at lunch with his bandmates…..”Duh, who’s this from?” See,this storyline has dragged out so long that even Cody lost track! And he’s the main protagonist! Anyway, one day,maybe this storyline might finally get moving. But I doubt it.
Mark Trail Mix: It was Mrs.Peacock, in Action Park, with the greasy white guy! Now Mark can go home and sleep with his wife!
Crankshaft: Kudos for getting that Bombers jersey right. Yes, they sometimes wear one centering the classic block W, with the numbers small and near the shoulder.
Those of you holding out for an authentic Shreveport Pirates kit, I have disappointing news.
Gasoline Alley: I like this waitress applicant already. Will she be able to stand the company she’ll keep?
FC: Dolly, your brother just finished scooping three pounds of sand into his trunks. Give your mom a break.
@Peanut Gallery: I see he has one of those New! urinal/top hats,but where is it in the last panel?
@A Grave Mind: Apparently he’s still inside, after a brief release in 2023.
Max is part of the forest police equivalent of 21 Jump Street. He’s using his youthful appearance to build an affinity with the perp, which will be useful later when Slylock needs him to sign a pre-written confession.
@Rube:
I also wound up looking it up. Nice to see a fella EXACTLY where he belongs.
Parole Board noted that he had displayed no remorse and had not participated in any rehabilitation programs.
@117 Activist:
The “with shoes on” means “to go”.
@Anonymous: depends on where you live. Growing up lunch was the noon meal, dinner was the evening meal. When I moved down south, dinner was the noon meal.
@James:When I was a kid, I remember reading a poem that went something like:
My father’s middle-class, while my mother’s rather upper,
So she always speaks of dinner when my father wants his supper.
And when his father stays, they never can agree,
‘Cos lower-class old Grandpa’s always shouting for his tea.
So as they fight and quarrel, and each one argues harder,
All us kids just slip away and go to raid the larder.
And this confused me, because I was pretty sure that we were working-class-edging-to-middle, and we called the evening meal dinner. I eventually decided it was probably a Scotland/England thing, like how the English think it’s overly mannered and posh to pronounce “scone” to rhyme with “gone” and we think the same about pronouncing it to rhyme with “stone”. (On the other hand, “Scone” is definitely pronounced to rhyme with “soon”.)
GA: Baleen has the natural waitress disadvantage of an appearance that kills the customers’ appetites. The “new girl” is pleasant-looking and attractive head-on but displays greasy, unbrushed hair and the standard GA homeliness from the rear.
RMMD: “YOU should talk, Reed, you’re on the nod every time we go onstage. Her…o…in — will b-b-b-b-be the death of you.”
DtM: Dennis being glum sends Alice into a tailspin. She can’t wait for him to do something bad again so she can send him to the corner. That’s familiar, at least.
SFx: It seems pretty easy to tell if the impact was made by the upstairs or downstairs neighbors? Especially if the hippos don’t have any damage to their floors? Anyway, it sometimes sucks to have a pair of horns. A human kid might have gotten away with it, although probably not.
C-Shaft: Always good to see Crankshaft running in terror, but why do all the Blue Bombers have exclamation points coming out of their heads.
DT: Roberta’s right. No, indeed. Hardly any loan sharks are solo operations. Sphyrna was loaning out money he got from someone higher up. His banker, if you will. How many wiseguys is Tess prepared to electrocute. This could get awfully time-consuming.
Dustin: A rare occasion when Dustdad and Dustmom aren’t depicted in that hackneyed way as Meat-and-Potatoes Mars vs. Vegan Venus.
FC: Dolly knows that’s not really a thing, she just snitches for pure love of the game.
GT: Some Rex Morgan characters write and sing roots country songs. The Milford kids live them, or at least their parents do.
JP: Francesco Marciuliano Presents Stieg Larsson’s Three’s Company!
Luann: “I thought she was my forever person. Then she got sick of hearing cutesy phrases like ‘forever person’ and it was over.”
MT: Somehow it’s mistaken a bearded guy in a yellow jumpsuit for a peahen.
MW: Yeah, um, Karen? Nobody talks like this. And for good reason, too!
RMMD: Now that we’re seeing Cody’s band up close I’m pretty sure the drummer is already the secret father of the non-beanpole half of Shorty and the Beanpole.
“Dinner” is a formal meal at which the family gathers together at table. There may be more than one course, but will consist at least of a “main and two veg.” “Supper” is an informal feeding and may be something like soup and bread, or a mere sandwich.
One winter night, at half-past nine,
Cold, tired, and cross, and muddy,
I had come home, too late to dine,
And supper, with cigars and wine,
Was waiting in the study.
— Lewis Carroll; Phantasmagoria, from Canto I – The Trysting (1869)
(In the poem, Tibbets’s “supper” included cold roast duck, gravy, cold lobster, eggs and bacon, toasted cheese, beer and wine. The point is he was not attended by a servant in the dining room but had to get his own plate together)
Are there any freestanding, one-story restaurants in Midtown Manhattan without any tall buildings nearby? I prefer to think that it’s the early 2000s and Mary and Olive have unwittingly taken a cab to Arti Bucco’s restaurant in New Jersey.
While, as always, Uke busting out the classy shit is cool, I think this means we are free to use them interchangeably, no?
That’s also the best supper ever
@Wool Worth: Smith & Wollensky on Third Avenue and 49th St in Midtown East is considered one of the best steak joints in Manhattan. Does TWO stories work? (Click on the icon at upper right in the link to open the dinner menu)
SlylickFox And Comix For Kinky Kids: Sly will return when he’s called back in a month to find Granny Goat’s stolen oatmeal cookies. Now that the Hippos have all those eye holes in the ceiling (their floor) wonder who Sly will accuse?
@Ukulele Ike: In happier days, my family, on New York visits, went to Keens and to Gallagher’s. A good New York steakhouse is very nice indeed. Never been to Peter Luger’s which sounds like kind of an annoying place, even if the meat is good.
Kid Goat is about to tell Granny to call ICE on the hippo neighbors.
@Ukulele Ike: I dunno. There are things I could criticize Gasoline Alley over, but I don’t think a small town like that is so picky about the appearance of their waitresses.
@Sequitur:
#132. Thanks, I’ve learned TWO things today. See, ma, comics are educational.
@GarrisonSkunk: The coat check guy confiscated it for non-payment of the fee. The woman with the flying saucer on her head saw this coming, and kept it on during the whole meal instead of checking it.
@I speak Jive: I kept my comment very neutral. I think she was waiting for someone to give her a specific reaction to her anecdote, which no one did. I don’t even remember what she was talking about.
@Dr. Pill:
Eggs-actly!
@Rube: Keen’s and Gallagher’s are two of the very best, IMHO. S&W (post #142) is up there, too.
You should try Peter Lugar’s at least once, for the Olde New Yorke experience. They broil you a massive aged Porterhouse, cut afterward into a dozen+ thick slices, which feeds at least two robust eaters. At my age, four of me couldn’t handle it.
There was an Argentine joint on MacDougal St just north of Bleecker that did a mixed grill: two kinds of steak, beef sausage and blood sausage, broiled kidneys and sweetbreads. Came with a small gravy boat of chimichurri on the side. Closed around 1985. Damn, I miss that place.
Late Thread Cuisine: While it contains fish, this dish has no olive slice eyes.
@Baja Gaijin: Seems like a lot of work, especially when you could get the same result by opening a few cans of Friskie’s Sea Captain’s Choice pate.
@Peanut Gallery: I made that connection too xD
@Baja Gaijin: Use an egg instead of gelatin and voila! Sardine gefilte fish.
Stuffed into lemons for some reason.
Having Read N.K Jemison’s The City We Became and The World We Make, seeing Peanut Gallery’s COTW confirms the hypothesis that Mary is an eldritch horror, looking to corrupt Olive and turn her against the city and its diversity. The city is indeed trying to eject Mary at all costs. It is impossible to know whether Olive will rally to Mary’s side or the City’s in the upcoming apocalyptic battle for the City’s soul.
@Peanut Gallery: @The Rambling Otter:
Although, with Animaniacs, while I never found Flavio and Marita funny, I did enjoy the Noah’s Ark episode, where they were treating it like it was a 5-Star cruise and constantly annoying Noah for amenities.
I also remember it had a subplot involving Pinky and the Brain (one of which was dressed in drag in order to get on)
And the Buster and Babs Bunny cameo was both parts hilarious and disturbing.
(As they’re getting on the Ark)
Buster: I’m Buster Bunny!
Babs: I’m Babs Bunny!
Both: No relation!
Noah: I should hope not… this is a kids’ show!
@pugfuggly: I’ve heard that one of the reasons that pigs are both treyf and haram is because of their tricky noses!
@152 Baja Gaijin:
After making the things you line up people in a room facing each other. Then start heaving the things at each other. The first person to toss a thing in someone’s mouth wins!
Dithers knows that Dagwood leaves no leftovers.
@35 Professor Well Actually: “Wilbur Mourns a Dead Fish” was pretty creepy. So was “Angry Redhead, Angry Not-Daughter” was right up there in the creepiness factor. How about “Mary’s Molested and Muffins” storyline?
@56 Sequitur: If you didn’t want me to click the link, WHY DID YOU INCLUDE THE EASILY CLICKABLE LINK!!! EEEEE!!!! [QLUNQ!]
@66 TheDiva: Couldn’t they just eat a bunch of roughage then use their helicopter tails to fling poo all over Granny Goat and Grandson? And everything else within a 30 foot radius?
@110 I speak Jive: on Pluggers: I saw one of those “official Bell System films” introducing the dial phone. I heard an episode of the radio version of Dragnet in which someone explains how “speaker phone” works. Hard to believe people were that innocent of technology at one time.
@113 Tiggrrl: Remember that Alice’s cooking from the ’50s includes those monstrosities I post late in threads.
@125 GarrisonSkunk: I love seeing the peacock atop the dorky bad guy’s head.
@134 Horace Broon: Scotsmen and Scotswomen pronounce “scone” like “stone,” huh? I pronounce it “Throatwobbler Mangrove.”
@151 Ukulele Ike: A “mixed grill: two kinds of steak, beef sausage and blood sausage, broiled kidneys and sweetbreads” sounds like one of next week’s Late Thread Cuisines.
@153 Charterstoned: SNERK!
@155 Ukulele Ike: I wondered about stuffing lemons. Apparently this recipe came from the Florida Lemon Council Cookbook.
@159 Sequitur: “The first person to toss a thing in someone’s mouth wins!” I’m tossing my cookies.
DtM- after looking at how Alice’s body and arms are drawn, I’m guessing Billy moonlights for more strips than Family Circus.
JP: There are police in rural Norway. Norway has TV procedurals about Norwegian police work. There’s a police series called FORTITUDE set in Arctic Norway. But why natter on, it’s all irrelevant. As we watch the Trio Of Panic opening everything in the house, I blame April. Yet again.
@Baja Gaijin: Yes, I’m grateful the lemons are blind.
LUANN: That sort of very youthful neighborly understanding worked better in, say, rural England in 1712. But even then, it was iffy.
MT: A teensy mutant peacock was badly needed at this point in the story, and by golly, here it is.
@167 Poteet:
Ah, yes. Blind Lemon Chitlin’.
@Poteet:
#166. JP: and yes, the police in Norway are mighty fine! Wisconsin lost a hiker in Norway’s fjords and glaciers, and though he had hurt his leg Norwegian police brought him back without even beating or tazing him!
Tomorrow in Judge Parker. Reena totally spazes out.