CSotD: Midweek Short Takes
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Just for fun, we'll go in order of dumbness today, and, when it comes to dumb jokes, Wayno often leads the pack.
Don't get me wrong: I like dumb jokes, but I like them done well, and there are a million ways this joke could have been done badly.
Instead, by not actually telling the joke, he incorporates a beat that forces the reader to tell it.
It's not dissimilar from Jack Benny's technique, though this is a one-off while Benny used his well-established miser identity, so that, if the topic of money came up at all, the audience began to laugh and often Benny didn't have to do anything but put his hand to his cheek.
Kieran Meehan is also the master of the dumb joke, but he goes the opposite direction in today's Pros and Cons: He uses a "wait a minute …" punchline, so that he doesn't make readers fill in the gag but rather revisit the set-up.
The dumb joke is central to a number of ethnic/cultural groups, from the "droll Yankee" tradition, where the challenge is to tell, and to receive, a really dumb joke with a perfectly straight face, to the African-American "Barbershop" culture, where dumb jokes are greeted with hoots of delighted laughter.
People who are too uptight and insecure to enjoy dumb jokes are awfully tiresome, but human decency demands we feel sorry for them.
I suppose.
And one cannot speak of dumb jokes very long before coming to Joe Martin, who runs an empire of dumb jokes of which today's Mr. Boffo is only a sample.
It would, indeed, be better if those call-center advisories were more straightforward and said, "This call may be monitored, so that we can make an already miserable job that much worse."
One of the newspapers I worked at set up a boiler room, which promptly closed down when such things began to be outsourced to the Third World. But in the two years or so it was active, I used to wander back there and I never saw the same faces twice, except for one fellow who was in a wheelchair and so benefited from the ease of access it offered and became a lower-management type.
The "quality control" thing could, I suppose, come into play if someone claimed they'd been cursed at by a telephone solicitor, but my guess is that it has more to do with keeping them from chatting with people rather than selling.
It's kind of like Ben-Hur, where the galley slave who pipes up to complain is whipped to death and replaced.
Which also happens in three dimensions, though not as often as it used to: I had a young woman appear on my doorstep a few days ago, wanting me to buy a book to "help her pay for her education."
It was a brief conversation and only after she left did I realize that she was probably being picked up at the corner in a van and ferried back to a cheesy motel room with a dozen other kids, en route to the next town down the road.
I used to chat up those poor young'uns, advising them where to call for help when they wised up and wanted to go home, but it came as such a shock to see the old scam in action that I didn't think of it in time.
Flipping burgers may be a lousy, ill-paying job, but they are hiring and, in the words of the Pirate King, the work is "comparatively honest."
And, speaking of phones, The Buckets offers this bit of technological frustration and Generation Gap humor.
My kids were ragging on me the other day because, to know what time it is, I have to dig my flip phone out of my pocket, while they can just look at their magical smartphone wrist-worn gizmos, and I'm willing to admit that I'm a cranky old fart. But I'm not a technophobe: I'm just picky about how much of it I carry around, which is mostly none.
And if I wanted to know the time so instantaneously, I know an old-school technology that actually allows you to find out by looking at a device on your wrist.
I only monitor time that closely when something is about to explode, and evil geniuses are always considerate enough to include a digital countdown device on their bombs, so that's covered.
Two to be watching
The folks at Dick Tracy have, in recent years, transformed that creaking old legend into a fun read, complete with crossovers and cameos, but you've gotta love the current one, in which Tracy is paired up with Fearless Fosdick.
Fosdick was originally a parody of the strip that appeared from time to time over in Li'l Abner. Now that Dick Tracy has begun to be something of an intentional parody of itself — they even resurrected Moon Maid, symbol of the strip's original shark-jump — it only stands to reason that Fosdick and Tracy should have an adventure together.
You can pop back to Sunday to start the arc.
Evil-Eye Fleegle. Lord have mercy.
Meanwhile, in another strip that has been greatly rejuvenated and improved under new management, a rather large shoe has dropped at Rex Morgan in the past two days.
Little Sarah's promotional picture book has been a theme in the background of the strip for quite some time, and, while such things do happen in real life, the idea that she is an artistic genius has been carried out to a point that stretches credulity.
This isn't necessarily a reversal, given that her patroness has long been shown to have some sketchy connections, but the illogic of the situation seems about to become logical and I guess we'll see how everyone handles that.
And when she passes, each one she passes goes "ewwww"
Ed Hall on the upcoming Rio de Merda Olympics.
Hey, you think maybe the fecal coliform will kill the Zika virus?
Anyway, here's your moment of Olympian zen:
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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