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Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: I want some primroses for a Disraeli

Published: March 23, 2016 1 minute 8 comments

Fz160323
Frazz is my favorite educational comic: I didn't know that "boutonnière" is French for the buttonhole you stick your boutonniere in.

And that link taught me all sorts of other things I didn't know, including that jackets not only used to have real buttonholes there (which I did know) but that there was a loop behind them for the stem of your boutonniere.

I guess I'm a gap child: Born before they quit cutting the buttonholes but after they stopped adding the loop. I don't miss the buttonhole — we always pinned our boutonnieres on there anyway, except for dandelions handed to you by small children — though I think not having it is a sign of our slide into overall cheesiness.

Part of that descent into barbarism is that they then quit putting real pockets in sportcoats.

I feel like a sartorial version of Martin Niemöller: "First, they stopped putting buttonholes in the lapels, but I always pinned on my boutonnieres, so I said nothing. Then they began to sew shut the chest pocket, but I only had those fake handkerchief dickey things anyway, so I said nothing …"

Because then it was the outside pockets and now you're lucky if you can find a sportcoat in which both inside pockets are real. As someone who still needs to pack a reporter's notebook and a couple of pens, plus spare batteries when he heads out, this really is a loss.

DoublenaughtBack in the day, I could even stash a cassette recorder in there and did it ruin the line? Well, if I were a double-naught spy, it would have, but then Q would have found a way around the problem.

As it is, most reporters look a lot more like Columbo than they do James Bond anyway.

Dammit, we don't need boutonnières but we do need pockets!

And if you didn't follow that link, you missed this list of boutonniere musts for the observant man about town:

Red roses are worn by Englishmen on St. George's Day
White roses are worn by residents and more widely those born and originating from the County of Yorkshire in England on Yorkshire Day the 1 August
Blue cornflowers are often worn by Old Harrovians
Primroses are worn for Disraeli's birthday
Artificial poppies (mostly red) are worn for Remembrance Day
Orchids are associated with Joseph Chamberlain
Green carnations are sometimes associated with homosexuality

Which provoked today's headline and this earworm.

Bitte schön

 

New Beginnings

Cragn160323
(Agnes)

Retail
(Retail)

I don't know if Trout's new more-official-than-usual stepdad is a story arc or a real plot development, but I'm doubtful that Tony Cochran can get a whole lot more ongoing bittersweetness into these little girls' lives before someone calls Comics Protective Services.

Dobie_thinker_pose TitusI love this strip, but it reminds me of the way the Fox sitcom Titus riffed on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis by contrasting that clean-cut American boy pondering his white-bread life from a park bench under the Thinker with the twisted dysfunctional Titus on a broken chair in a barren room.

The critical difference being that Titus let it get to him while Trout somehow maintains through it all, more conscious of life's realities than Agnes but unwilling to let it all drag her down. Trout's my hero.

The approach of a new character in Retail is much more foreboding, because, while I'm pretty sure Cochran won't let Dirt Boot drag things too deeply into the mire, that's kind of Norm Feuti's overall motivation, and there is no more horrifying idea than having Stuart pick Marla's new assistant.

In fact, I had a boss whom I genuinely liked but who chose two of the five assistants I had in my tenure with him. One eventually stormed off in a huff while he and I were secretly brainstorming how to appropriately fire her, while the other left my service (phew!) for a job in another department where they eventually just handed him a box and kicked his ass out the door.

So a pair of happy endings, yes, but I doubt Marla will have that kind of luck.

(Of the three I chose for myself, one eventually left for a job in which she earned twice what I made, another was inspired to go back to school, get a masters and doctorate and pursue a career in psychology, and the third took over my position when I left. Different sorts of happy endings.)

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

Prc160323
(Prickly City)

Cand160323
(Candorville)

This giving-up-politics-for-Lent thing is hard, but I think I can hold out for three more days.

Hey, I didn't break any promises — I just posted these, I didn't comment on them. 

And I don't think it's violating my pledge, either, to point out that Scott Stantis and Darrin Bell are both veterans of the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning and that Jen Sorensen and Ann Telnaes are among the guests for this coming September. 

Nothing political about that. Simply an observation.

 

Juxtaposition of the Too Extensive To Reproduce Here

160322_1458608532
(Sheldon)

Ces
(Medium Large)

I sent a young reporter off to the press screening of "Batman vs Superman" last night and will be interested in reading her review. I was more persnickety about applying the PG-13 rating to this one because the trailer just looks like people blowing shit up and beating the crap out of each other in the dark, but I guess that's what superhero films have become, said the grumpy old man.

Though you don't have to be old or a man to question the approach.

Or, as you'll see if you click on those Sheldon and Medium Large links, to have a lot of fun with it all.

 

Now here's your Titus/Batman/apolitical mashup:

  

 

Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.

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Comments 8

  1. Why is it called a sport coat? What does it have to do with any known sport? And I agree totally about the frustration of fake pockets.

  2. I checked my assumption and was right, that the coats began as hunting jackets, then became casual wear for watching sports and part of uniforms for cricket/rugby/football sorts of sportsmen.
    My suspicion came from the fact that I did a lot of reporting jobs in shooting jackets because of their capacious pockets and yet sort of LLBeanish fashionable look. Notebooks, camera, film, all sorts of stuff could be in there permanently, a very good thing when, for instance, you thought you were going to lunch and found yourself at a bank robbery.
    Or a cricket match, of course. A little less likely, but semper paratus.

  4. Actually, some of them HAVE pockets, but the seams are sewn shut so you can’t cram stuff in and spoil the line. Undo the inner seam and you have access to a pocket I know, because my black (women’s) blazer had to be modified so I could carry my car keys when I attended weddings or funerals. And women’s clothes have a LOT fewer pockets than men’s !

  6. Mark: That link is just too cool!

  7. I’ve spent enough time in my life working (at least tangentially) with tailors to have always known what’s going on with that pocket stitching. For men’s jackets (and serious women’s jackets), those are in fact real pockets. They’re sewn shut with basting stitches during the construction of the jacket to keep the opening from stretching or being pressed out of shape during finishing, handling, shipping, display, etc. In the old days, the shop staff routinely cut the basting before handing it over to the customer. These days, when more of us do self-serve shopping and just bring the goods to the register, we have to do it ourselves. So grab your seam ripper or a nail scissors and pull out the basting stitches; you’ll notice they’re larger than regular seam stitching and come loose quite easily.
    I’ve stopped being surprised at how few people know about this. I’ve opened pockets for many of my male friends and some of the women as well. Even when I buy used blazers at thrift stores, chances are good that the pockets were never cut.
    (Too often, though, women’s brands do have just flaps, no pocket underneath, both because it’s cheaper and it’s expected that we’ll carry purses anyway. I need my pockets, and I’ve even passed up jeans because the decorative watch pocket isn’t big enough to hold my actual pocketwatch.)

  8. True of the relatively expensive Italian blazer I got at a going-out-of-business sale, not true of the cheapo JC Penney blazers I can afford the rest of the time.
    And that little pocket in your jeans is called a “watch pocket” because you’re supposed to watch your dog at the park and, when he poops, take a bag out of that pocket and pick it up. Very handy, holds three or four bags at a time.

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