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Beetle Bailey, 3/15/22

Guys, I was about to go on a whole smug riff here about how the idea of a “bucket list” — that is, a list of things to do before you “kick the bucket” (i.e., die) — really hit its cultural peak back when the movie of the same title came out in 2007, which is why it’s telling and sad that Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC is only now getting around to making “bucket list” jokes. However, my total commitment to serving up accurate, information to you, the reader, led me to fact check some things and learn some truly mind-blowing stuff.

First off: Far from being a common phrase that was then borrowed as the title of the movie, as I had very strongly assumed, the phrase was actually originally coined by the screenwriter, Justin Zackham, who says he had kept a list like that for himself that he called “List of Things to do Before I Kick the Bucket,” eventually shortened to “Justin’s Bucket List.” Linguist, Wall Street Journal language columnist, and friend of the blog Ben Zimmer wrote a in 2015 column in which he backs Zackham’s claims; somewhat amusingly, a 2011 Slate article written to debunk the idea has an editorial note at the top added in 2015 admitting that they either misinterpreted or misdated supposedly earlier uses of the phrase. This extremely well-documented Reddit comment in a discussion on the topic in /r/etymology does a great job of demonstrating that the phrase was either invented for the movie or was almost unknown at the time it was released, because there are lots of earlier references to the concept but none actually use the phrase (they usually call it a “life list”).

And it’s not just me, a Gen Xer who was a married adult in his early 30s and had been doing this comics blog for three years when the movie came out, whose mind was blown by this: apparently it has similarly blown the minds of all the teens on TikTok, where discourse on the subject went viral last month. Did I know this? Obviously not, I am an old person who, as noted, was fully adult in the year of our lord 2007, I have not downloaded the TikTok app to my phone and I never will, thank you ver much. As the research journey outlined here has made clear, I only got hepped to this whole scene by — that’s right — the comic strip Beetle Bailey. THE WALKER-BROWNE STRIPS ARE MORE HIP TO WHAT THE KIDS ARE TALKING ABOUT THAN I AM, IT DOES NOT MATTER THAT I HAVE MANY ITEMS UNFINISHED ON MY “BUCKET LIST” BECAUSE I AM CLEARLY DEAD AND ALREADY IN THE GRAVE

Gil Thorp, 3/15/22

Speaking of teens, the “Pranit accidentally becomes a bookie” plot ended super boringly (Pranit got narced on and suspended from the team but otherwise seems to be doing fine and learning the appropriate lessons), so I appreciate the fact that today the strip decided to “have a little fun” and just provide some unsettling closeups of food. You ever wonder what it would look like for a hamburger to be pointed at — form the hamburger’s point of view? Then today’s Gil Thorp is for you, friends.

Pluggers, 3/15/22

A lot of comics did “Pi Day” jokes for 3/14 yesterday, and I ignored them because, as a dork who went to a magnet high school with an engineering focus, I can assure you that I have heard enough of those jokes to last me a lifetime. (Get at me when you’re ready to get on my level and celebrate Mole Day.) I guess today’s Pluggers is supposed to be a saying “I may have forgotten to do a Pi Day joke yesterday but every day is pie day, when you think about it”, but honestly I can’t get over how completely joyless this dog-man’s face is as he looks into the fridge. Pluggers are just simple, down-home real Americans who long ago lost the ability to feel pleasure or anything at all, really, even when they see that there’s a delicious slice of pie for them to eat whenever they want.

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/12/22

Oh my GOD she wasn’t talking about Lisa at all, she was talking about LES, this is a million times funnier than I could’ve possibly imagined! I had been joking that it was weird that the guy who wrote the script based on his own graphic novel/life didn’t get invited to the Oscar ceremony when his movie was up for an award, but then I remembered that Les was only the screenwriter for the original version of the movie, which was a cable TV version that Les killed when he stalked off the set in disgust, and then Mason revived the project years later with a promise that he’d do it “the right way” and also Les wouldn’t have to do any work. I don’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of the WGA credit process, which is quite byzantine, but you’d think that Les would have still gotten his name on the movie, since I can’t imagine his original screenplay was that different from the final product. But the important thing is that he’s the real winner here, not the performer who apparently made this boring glurge-fest that nobody liked marginally bearable to watch, and he will soon have the Best Actress Oscar that he earned.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/12/22

I don’t buy this: the denizens of Hootin’ Holler don’t have access to complex machinery like “clocks,” so they wouldn’t get this joke. Instead, they tell time from the position of the sun. This is also why Snuffy wouldn’t be so casual with the phrase “daylight savings time,” which he by right ought to see as a form of mind control imposed by the tyrannical United Nations.

Beetle Bailey, 3/12/22

It’s absolutely true that the average Beetle Bailey reader is of an age that they find cell phones in general and emojis in particular extremely “mysterious.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/2/22

I truly enjoy the fact that these two old timer comics artist have been dragged out of retirement (one of them was actually dragged back to life from the realm of ghosts and spirits) to add a little Golden Age verve to Atomik Comix, only to be told they should do a comic where their super-powered heroes should battle, like, a metaphor, man. Their facial expressions in the final panel are absolutely appropriate.

Beetle Bailey, 3/2/22

TIRED: Sarge and Beetle’s public antagonism is a cover for a secret sexual relationship that has a lot less reason to be secret now that gay service members can serve openly.
WIRED: Pvt. Blips and Spc. Gizmo are a couple of real freaks whose kinks cannot be accommodated by banal physical reality. They spend all day plugged into their Oculus Rifts and teledildonic rigs so they can enjoy the experience of 69ing each other in the metaverse as two unicorns with multiple sets of genitalia or whatever. These kids are the nastiest people in this comic and I am here for it.

Blondie, 3/2/22

I was about to say that a doctor saying, “C’mon, can’t you open wider than that?” to a child would be fine but saying it to an adult would be extremely creepy. But isn’t Dagwood essentially a child, with his constant cheerful indulgence of his own appetites, his love of dressing up, and his inability to take his job seriously? He definitely should be condescended to like an 8-year-old and his doctor knows it. Anyway, he also has throat cancer.