Quotable Monday
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Crankshaft, 10/27/25
“I mean, I get it! We’re all thinking it. We’re all thinking about the guy who dresses up in pizza boxes and how he’s mortal, and how he’s going to die someday, maybe right here in our restaurant. We’re all thinking about how we might have to pull these pizza boxes off his corpse and look at his face, for the first and last time. We all think about it all the time! But we don’t talk about it. You’ve got to learn not to talk about it.”
Hi and Lois, 10/27/25
“We also text each other about our husbands! Uh, all good stuff.”
Dustin, 10/27/25
“Anyway, long story short, I ruined my laptop.”
102 replies to “Quotable Monday”
A moment of pity for Dustbindad’s coworker, who’s eating untoasted bread with ¿raw lettuce? and a banana for lunch. Can’t blame him for that can of beer to wash it all down.
Blondie: If Starbucks and others hadn’t saturated the pumpkin spice market since August, this would have been a sensible chuckle.
H&L: “It’s my support group. In case you haven’t noticed the total lack of decor, the house is cleaned out. I’m leaving you.”
Dustin:
“…and my wife. And my son….”
RMMD: Augie says something,
Summer repeats it back as a question,
Augie says it again…
(repeat ad nauseum)
CRANKSHAFT: This is stupid weirdness on a Hilary Forth level.
H&L: “Except for Irma, who posts a lot of bombs, blood-dripping knives and poison bottles.”
CSh I never thought too much about what kind of cryptid Centerville might have, but ‘ambulatory pile of pizza trash’ makes a lot of sense.
H&L You can tell thst this is a hip modern strip because they’re up on the latest cool trends like texting, and wearing those sweaters that have one short sleeve.
Dustin Yeah, IT guys have no social skills, unlike you two, blasting moist fragments of sandwich and fritos across the table as you talk aboit how the world sucks with your mouths full.
Crankshaft: He put the emphasis on the wrong word. Try to get to the point where you only think those thoughts, and then you’ll be a true Funkyverser!
H&L: Wow, Lois isn’t even trying to hide her lesbian orgies from Hi any more.
CS: “Try to get to the point where you only think about his death, and Ed’s, and Lillian’s, pretty much anyone associated with this strip.”
My Monday immediately became better when I saw Dustin’s Dad upset over somebody else’s insufferability.
MW: Next week, Mary and Jeff will continue whatever the hell conversation they’re having as they peruse the dessert menu. The following week, over dessert and after-dinner coffee, they will continue admiring Olive and muse about her future. The week after that, they will stroll along the dock. The next week after that, as a full moon rises behind them, they will be in a Thanksgiving frame of mind and express gratitude for all their blessings. The readers will have been beaten into submission.
H&L: “The rest of it is bragging about affairs.”
Montoni’s and a shit bookstore are the only two semi-profitable businesses in this God-forsaken town, so it makes sense to have a Pizza Monster. There’s probably a Book Ghost, but that only comes around Christmas to do a Christmas Carol homage, by which I mean “rip-off with hack puns that lasts two weeks.
The telephone rang, and Richard Maple, who had stayed home from work this Friday because of a cold, answered it: ‘Hello?’ The person at the other end of the line hung up. Richard went into the bedroom, where Joan was making the bed, and said, ‘Your lover just called.’
–John Updike
@MKay: Try reading Summer’s questions in a skeptical tone. You know, like she’s caught on that Augie doesn’t have two publishers, and probably not even a book.
“So two publishers want your book.”
“So there’s now a bidding war.”
JP Did they unhinge the ageing timeline and forget to tell the illustrator? Charlotte not only acts like a scheming tween trapped in a kindergartener’s body when it comes to squirrels, but, um – homework? Yeah, kindergarten might have some, but it’s reading minutes (being read to or doing it aloud to practice) or reading / writing practice pages, not the sort of thing you go off in a corner and do on your lonesome.
Dustin – Okay, nice foreshadowing, but when do we actually get to see Pennywise?
Lois: “It’s about whose husbands cry after sex,” pointing at Hi and smirking.
Hi and Lois: Fart jokes, Hi. I can assure you that it’s mostly about fart jokes. Probably. I’m just extrapolating from what me and the boys talk about.
Lois: “Oh, we’re just commiserating about how our husbands couldn’t find a clitoris with a map.”
@CanuckDownSouth: There’s a theory sometimes floated around here that many of the writers haven’t interacted with children, or indeed anyone under the age of 30, since sometime in the 1990s. It came up a lot during the recent Mary Worth arc, and is perennially invoked for Dustin. Charlotte would be another data point.
Lockhorns: This auction is amazing but the strip doesn’t recognize that. Leroy and Loretta are approaching “Attending the opera is more lifelike” levels of unbelievability.
RMMD: Summer is treating “bidding war” like it’s new youth slang. Maybe “keen” and “23 skidoo” are more up her alley.
BG&SS: I remember Barlow’s name, but nothing about his personality. Is he really the Reggie Mantle of Hootin’ Holler?
FC: Thel, make Billy come back and do that proper. Then get dressed, because now he’s missed the bus, and you have to drive him to school.
MW: The action whipsaws back and forth so hastily that if it weren’t for the sign reading The Bum Boat I wouldn’t know where they were. Thanks, omniscient narration!
Crankshaft: “Let’s see: White male, probably older, probably with emotional baggage, likes Montoni’s pizza, definitely has a smirk and uses mid-to-terrible wordplay. Could be just about anybody in this town, really.”
@Ukranazi Stepan: I thought the “moment of pity” would be because the co-worker is stuck having a conversation with Dustin’s dad.
“I told the guy that if those tricolor RCA cables were good enough for the VCR, they were good enough for any hoity-toity laptop. Took a while to hammer ’em all into the computer holes, and I had to stick the yellow one into the fan exhaust, but I did it!”
Also Hi and Lois: #relationships #family #myhusbandisabigfatidiotandmustdiediedie #relatable
Dustin: “Anyway, that’s why I had the break room painted Pepto-Bismol pink.”
DT: St. Bart’s is one of the older hospitals in London, so that checks out. Really the artist and writer should have insisted on a trip to London for some background research – and try to write it off their taxes as a legitimate business expense.
Flash: So how long has Ming been gone? It seems like it was more than last month, yet everyone’s going nuts.
RMMD: So it will be a week of Thai food.
MW: Yes, Mary is special. She was a special girl like Olive and a special teacher and special in Doctor Jeff’s life.
Most restaurants are actually busy during lunch — but not Montoni’s. Not ever Montoni’s.
Dustin – Ed Kudlick hurt his penis in a surfing accident. He had to slam down his laptop lid quickly when someone came into his office.
And also Crankshaft: “No, no, no, we won’t have to wait until he’s dead. Just until he digs up the corpse of John Darling and shoots him again.”
Strong Poe Toaster vibes from the Pizza Monster guy. Just look for a dude in NY Giants gear.
CS: So, Mindy, you still don’t know the name of someone and your future husband signed bank documents with a year ago? The fact that he’s showing up at all is probably the least scary thing he could do.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Don’t forget “independently wealthy, almost certainly through investments in Silver Age comic books.”
Slylock Fox – Ms. Wingflapper is off the hook for the hotel robbery, but she is now Shylock’s lead suspect for the jewel robbery at the Louvre.
Family Circlejerk – “You call that a kiss? Come back and do some motorboating!”
Dustin: Funny thing — when you’re using an all-caps font, you can’t tell when someone’s using an acronym. For all I know, Dustin’s dad was talking to Pennywise.
@Weaselboy: Oops, you beat me to it!
Funky Winkerbean: Thanks for helping me put out 3 pumpkins, a rubber bat, and a ghost decal, a job I definitely needed help with! Because I’m depressed, you see. Depression makes even emptying a half-full box of dollar store decorations nearly impossible.
DUSTIN: “I couldn’t believe how condescending that IT guy was just because my own careless, callous disregard for work equipment almost damaged a valuable tool of my job. What an asshole, huh?”
DUSTIN (2): Behind-the-scenes tidbit #1: Ed was going to be boiling a teakettle in the break room during this strip, but the creators realized that might be too on-the-nose, even for this comic (also, ha ha, tea is for girls!)
DUSTIN (3): Behind-the-scenes tidbit #2: Originallt this scene featured Ed talking to his wife, since she would be used to being condescending about him “jamming things in the slot wrongly and then ruining it” (the third panel would be a jumpcut to Dustin, naturally.)
“I’ll come back for lunch when things aren’t busy.” HOW DOES HE EAT WITH A PIZZA BOX MASK ON?!?!?!?
***
Ed definitely gives the vibes of someone who thinks people are being “condescending” when they simply tell him what he did to mess something up instead of coming up with a placating lie.
Dustin Actually, middle-aged lawyers in a large firm who eat brown bag lunches in the break room instead of going out to lunch with colleagues or clients, or calling their secretary to get them something while they work on a file, are probably quite used to EVERYBODY talking down to them.
FC: Billy kisses his teacher full on the mouth when he gets to school. “B-b-b-ut that’s what my mom says.”
DtM: A normal father would give Dennis a second helping after shit-talking his mom’s food, but Henry just chews his food in silence. “Maybe if I’m quiet he won’t notice me.” He thinks.
@Charterstoned: Ugh! C’mon dude, you are way behind! Now we’ve moved on to praising how special Mary is. Olive was just a proxy to Mary’s meddling divinity anyway (kind of like how Lisa Moore’s “noble” death was always really about how “noble” Les was watching her die. Sometimes y’all miss the “nuanced subtlety” of these strips.)
@Boomer: Or The Bum Boat. Or whatever Panda Express knockoff at a declining strip-mall that Augie took Summer too.
9CL: hey look everyone, Brooke made a reference to someone ejaculating on a adult magazine. Isn’t that witty and hilarious?
“I don’t allow anyone to talk to me like that, except my teenage daughter!”
“Don’t you also have a son?”
“Yeah, but he never talks to me like that, I have already crushed his ego!”
“Die? Do you believe the Pizza Golem can die? Raised by ancient magics, canned marinara runs through sausage casing veins, as muscles of fake mozzarella slide across bones of dry crust. No, we might with it could die, but it will always be with us, as cursed as we.”
JP:
Corrected narration box: At Neddy’s cottage after school three years later…
MW:
Alcoholics go on benders but is their an equivalent term for people going on extended psychotic breaks like Dr. Jeff is going through here.
The Pizza Monster is “What if the Michelin Man but square instead of round and promoting bad food instead of good”
Mopey Pete lives up to his nickname: “Let those intrusive thoughts take over, girl!”
Crankshaft: Only *think* about death. Don’t talk about it or (for god’s sake) write about it. We’ve already had one Les in this universe; we do NOT need another
Dustin-“I don’t let people talk condescending to me. I talk condescending to them.”
Slylock Fox-Ripped straight from the headlines.
Slylock Fox-Ms Wingflapper was busy at the Louvre stealing jewels from it.
MW-Mary isn’t allowed to teach anymore after teaching some “special” lessons.
Dustin-“Yeah. I know what that’s like. I ruined a laptop once looking at pictures of your daughter.”
If you only read the text, “Is that your phone?” and “what’s it about?” could be sentences shouted by an abusive husband trying to control his wife’s communication and isolate her from others. But fortunately the art shows that it is Hi pronouncing these sentences, so you know he uses them because he is moronically clueless about everything
9CL-“A girlie magazine with me in it.”
MW: At this point, it’s more believable that Mary is talking to an invisible friend than an actual human being.
Not only that, the proper allusion should be about the pages being stuck together.
“Is that your phone?”
“No, it’s my new mini-monolith from Kubrick Inc., with which I hope to evolve into some sort of star child so I can avoid stupid questions like ‘is that your phone.’
Dustin – So, to be clear, Kelley blew up his laptop, was given accurate root cause analysis by the Geek Squad agent at Best Buy, had butthurt over it, and wrote a revenge strip. That fits.
I was just rereading Saturday’s JP over breakfast and noticed Charlotte’s got 6 fingers on her left hand.
I confess that I haven’t been a dedicated Funky Winkerbean fan, and Ed Crankshaft gives me flashbacks to a school bus driver of my youth. I tried to find out who is the Pizza Monster with no luck, but I did discover that Cranshaft and Funky Winkerbean plot lines look like Snuffy Smif’s family tree. What a flipping mess. Ugh.
@richardf8: Fits way more than a lawyer with a firm issued laptop even being able to find a way to use the “wrong cord” on it.
C’shaft: “All dolled up”? Please, you hung a few bats, taped up a couple cardboard decorations and plunked down a fuzzy spider you got 50% off at Kroger’s on November 1st. It’s not exactly Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights.
Dustin: “I couldn’t believe how condescending he was!”=”How dare someone imply that I don’t know everything and might have made a mistake? The NERVE!”
Crankshaft: You’re wrong, Josh. We NEVER think about the pizza monster.
Man, if Dustin’s Dad feels undervalued by someone telling him not to break his expensive company-owned equipment, wait until he finds out that many companies provide free snacks for their employees.
@jnoble: He should get it right it’s him and his sketchbook.
@Grumpy ELA teacher: Considering the proceedings in Rex Morgan, M.D., I think we’ve had a containment breach. Les Moore is infecting other universes now.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I think Augie’s possessed by the spirit of Jack Torrance.
Funky Winkerbean, Goddammit – But first, try to get to the point where you just say those thoughts and don’t make them into a comic strip.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Juan, I’ll bet you have illegitimate children all over the country”
“Very likely, Abundio… and some of them might be abandoned or neglected”
“So, just in case it’s mine… I always introduce myself”
@CanuckDownSouth: That’s because the raspberry-haired brat isn’t doing ‘homework’. Despite our little detour yesterday to check in on Mopey Sophie whining about how bored she is on her paid vacation to Norway, my money is still on my and Ken’s theory that the little brat knows exactly where her parents are and as we snark are on their way to pick her up and whisk her to an new, non-‘sploded safehouse somewhere in Somewhere.
She’s going off to her room to unpack the Penny Gadget-esque communicator she’s been using to stay in touch with CIApril to send her nightly broadcast, assuring CIApril and That Other Guy that Neddy is still clueless as ever and if she ends up collateral damage when they arrive, it will be no big loss. After all, dead bimbos tell no tales.
DT: Why couldn’t we have sent Tracy back to 70s Britain? He could have met Regan from ‘The Sweeney’ who could have showed him how to have a thrilling crime story without resorting to nostalgia-baiting or even excessive gunplay, with plenty of esoteric slang and car chases to boot!
Gad, I miss watching that show… I wish I could get the blu-ray collections I just learned came out recently.
DT: “But of course, he didn’t allow any blood to get all over the carpet. A true Englishman to the end, he was!”
GT: At last, women will have equal access to debilitating, life-shortening brain damage!
HotC: Do kids still do chain letters? If so, do they actually spread them through papers shoved into locker doors rather than via electronic means?
JP: I’m starting to think Charlotte is one of those Midwich Cuckoo aliens who, having learned from their past mistakes, was planted among people who don’t pay enough attention to realize she’s not a normal child. Her “homework” is sketching out the next stage in the plan for world conquest.
Luann: NOOOOOOO! Bad enough you made us sit through that nonsensical attempt at surrealism; now you’re going to ANALYZE it?
MW: Mary used to be a teacher? Was she ousted for inappropriate conduct with her students, or because she ignored the curriculum in favor of smug aphorisms and woo-woo philosophy?
Pluggers refuse to listen to anybody anyways.
RMMD: Sometimes, revealing as little as possible about something can make it far more interesting and intriguing than it would be if the writer actually described it–Calvin and Hobbes’ “Noodle Incident” is the seminal example. This is not one of those times, because a) we’re not told anything about Augie’s novel other than “it’s so very, very good that publishers are fighting over it, honest!” and b) it’s impossible to imagine Augie writing, or doing, anything interesting ever.
Hi and Lois – Now we know why Lois kicks Hi and all the children out of the house and makes them hang out at the library during her ‘Book Group’ meetings. When he found a dildo under the couch cushions, even Hi began to get suspicious.
CS: “That shouldn’t be a problem. I already keep all my thoughts to myself about longing for your death, you brain-dead, baggy-eyed, engagement-tiger-winner douche. Oh, wait… Did I say that out loud? Crap!”
Dustin — Nice stereotype, Ed. Personally, I don’t think there’ll be many lawyers in heaven either, a-hole.
— Al, mild-mannered IT manager.
MW: Forget about asking Mary about missing her teaching days, Jeff, which by the way, were never mentioned previously in strip canon. Ask her if she misses selling apples from a pushcart.
DT: Sir Peter Mayne comes from a long line of St Bart’s surgeons. In fact, St. Bart’s is located downtown, on Mayne Street. Quite well off, too, made their pile in the seafoods and comestibles business. Everyone’s heard of Mayne lobster. Another ancestor is farmed for designing the great drainage system that modernized London in the mid-nineteenth century: the Sewer Mayne.
Arlo and Janis — I need to find that episode. MTM was way hot back in the day.
Phantom: Yeah, the garlic breath and profound body odor. Kit’s secret? Nose plugs.
RMMD: Red paper cups with straws: the keynote to fine dining.
@Peanut Gallery: I didn’t really want to use the word “illegitimate,” but I excused it on the grounds that it was the kind of thing a jerk like Abundio would say. I should have rephrased it as “I’ll bet you have children all over the country that you don’t even know about.”
Mary Worth Spanish to English.
Between Friends : Benoît is being cagey because he doesn’t want to tell Maeve that she’s VERY RIGHT to be paranoid about being followed due to her relationship to him, and doesn’t want her to panic at how much trouble she could actually be in.
**********
Crankshaft : I read Mopey Pete’s line initially as “Try to get to the point where you think only those thoughts”, which fits in with the Funkyshaft ‘Verse’s general morosity better.
While “Try to get to the point where you don’t think at all” fits with its moronicity***********
Dustin : thinks someone getting frustrated at his refusal to correct one of his mistakes as that person being “condescending, like [his] daughter”.
Getting exasperated, giving up, and letting him continue would then be being “condescending, like [his] wife”.
How would he describe his relationship with his son, though. Especially considering he wouldn’t consider his reaction to his son refusing to correct himself as being “condescending”?***********
Luann : has to confide to a daffy nonagenarian about a bizarre dream she had, because it’s not like her best friend (who was right there when she woke up) is a psychologist or anything!
Seriously, it’s the Wizard of Oz! Why would you avoid the “I had the strangest dream… Or was it a dream?… But YOU were there!” part!?I know “Montoni’s closes down forever” was a semi-annual event in Funky Winkerbean, and it was always back right as rain a couple months later, but I genuinely did not foresee it surviving the strip itself. One day Crankshaft will end and I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Maybe they’ll bring John Darling, but set in a pizza place. And instead of being a talk-show host he’ll just be really into silver age comics.
RMMD: This story reads like it was written specifically so that would-be best-selling authors (or maybe just one would-be best-selling author) could read the story over and over and wank off to it. Which of course is fine! To each their own steamy fantasy! And I can understand the urgent burning desire to provide those hot little details (bidding wars!!) describing exactly what would happen and how it would feel to have written that best-selling novel, oh yes, yes, gimme more ginormous royalties, YES!!
But this story is eventually going to end, right? Before Christmas? Because a six-month wank isn’t necessarily healthy, RMMD, if you know what I mean, and I’m sure you do.
Gil Thorp-Enjoy your lifetime of brain damage, ladies.
Dustin-“Hello IT. Have tried turning off and turning on your comic strip?”
@Rover Berkeley: How could I not have noticed Charlotte’s weird hands? And how could I not have noticed Neddy’s weird hands, not to mention her weird fork? I thank you for alerting me to yet another feature of JP that I will follow in future whether I like it or not, The Hands. Especially since I have just checked back through several recent strips and Neddy’s bazonkas are apparently more shy and retiring than they used to be.
Crankshaft: Part of the staff’s Halloween decorating included throwing some extra cobwebs on the booth where Skip is still interviewing Batton Thomas.
HtH: Well, folks, our new Monday placement deal with Hagar continues to bring you the finest in Animal talent! Today we have a rare appearance by Drexel Dromedary – you may remember him from his more serious roles, as in Prince Valiant. Back then he acted under the name Clyde Camel… before he had a humpectomy and officially became a Dromedary. I’ll admit there’s still some confusion over the species, but he can play either with the right back coverings.
Intern, if Melody Mare calls, tell her … well, just say I’m on the other line with Judge Parker management about her cameo coming up. If she starts complaining about being dissed by Hagar, pretend you have a bad connection….
@88 Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!:
I checked and there’s no animal at all next Monday. In fact, all week long all we get is a shark fin tomorrow and what looks like a dead Snert (Hagar’s dog) on Saturday. Not a good week for animals in Hagar.
Mary Worth – Mary was a teacher? When did this happen? I thought her CV was 5 years selling apples and 95 years as a professional meddler.
9CL – It’s too bad that this wasn’t another Thorax strip. Then I would have skipped reading it at all.
Breaking Cat News – Time traveling mice! Sign me up!
Rex Morgan – Omigod – pick one publisher! Sell the book! I can’t take any more of this suspense.
Frazz & Crankshaft – Caulfield’s Halloween costume and the identity of the Pizza Monster. Two beloved yearly traditions that I don’t give a rat’s behind about and will not waste one second thinking about.
Dustin: In this comic, people skills are like dark matter. It’s never been observed by scientists directly, but it must exist in order for the rules they made up to match their observations.
In 9CL New Hampshire, nuns don’t beat you with rulers for shortening your school uniform to mid-thigh, and titty magazines are left lying open all over the landscape.
Luann: Mrs. Horner knows all about “appropriate tea,” having dealt reefers to Kerouac and Cassady back in the 50s. And Burroughs knew she always had the cleanest heroin.
Time to “share a little tea with Goldie,” Luann.
FC: Next time, Billy, slip Mommy a little tongue.
FC: Thel, maybe if you opened up your bathrobe a pulled a Sharon Stone flash of your gash Billy would be more attentive.
FC: What’s with these severely stunted kids? Billy’s only knee high to Thel yet he’s supposed to be seven years old. Even an 18 month old toddler is that high.
Quick! Someone warn DustDad! He’s about to eat an old style can pull tab! If he swallows it,he might choke and die! And we won’t have to put up with him anymore!
On second thought…….Never mind………………………..
@Guillermo el Chiclero: FC: What’s with these severely stunted kids? Billy’s only knee high to Thel yet he’s supposed to be seven years old
___________________
Gravity is causing their heads to constantly squash their bodies.
Dustin: “IT guys aren’t known for people skills,” Ed’s friend replied condescendingly.
“And I escaped by climbing down some tied bedsheets,” the prisoner said condescendingly.
Thank you Sid,for securing the role of Snooty French Waiter for me in today’s SlylickFox!
Is there any talk of a spin off?
@Guillermo el Chiclero: Billy’s behavioral age ranges from about five to fifty-plus, so he’s creepy, er, unusual in several ways. I suppose that might not have been apparent by the time Dolly was conceived, but there’s no excuse for creating Jeffy and PJ.
Six Chex And A Cat Named Samantha Stevens In Search of A Punchline: Joke? joke?joke?
6CX: Ancient Persian Saying: “Happy is the hand that leaves the mouse and finds the cat.”
JUMP STREET: Look at Dexter. Not so much a matter of posture as it is that someone made mistske I putting Mr. Potatohead together..
BF: well, at least I thought you were being coy, Maeve.
JP: and when April magically shows up, little Char will slap her hand away. Now it’s not so much a case of missing her parents as it is having lost faith in life.
@Ken: They would *also* have to have nobody in their lives who has interacted with kids since the 90s. Or nobody who cares about them enough to say anything before they put out ridiculously poor work involving kids. Which… might track with cartoonists?