CSotD: Some Halloweeneeneen Humor
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There are plenty of politically based “What did you get?” cartoons floating around, but Prickly City managed to be specific, which is one of the benefits of having four panels to work with, and also reflects Ramsay’s experience as a political cartoonist. I’d note, too, that the gags build towards the fourth panel, where Carmen caps it off. Nicely done.
And here’s one for the folks who can’t get used to self-check. There really is nothing new in the concept, though it may be more common in rural areas where eggs and veggies are often on a roadside “honesty stand,” but I’ve seen the same concept on city newsstands.
I think the resisters are a fading group, both in the sense of being fewer and in the sense of being elderly, but I did see a guy yesterday with four items pass up an available self-check and get in line behind someone with a full basket at a staffed aisle. He looked to be in his mid-forties, which made me wonder what on earth he does for a living that makes him afraid to try the scanner.
Serious about that. In the 70s, I watched my father-in-law go from his background as a tool-and-die maker to using computers with the old-school punched metal tapes, then, in the late 80s, I worked with guys who had been hot-metal typesetters and were now on computers, and, as a reporter, I toured a factory that made plastic items, where blue-collar workers were casually inputting whatever they needed to make their machine spit out forks.
Why, it’s just this little chromium switch scanner, here. You people are SO superstitious!
My dog knows that when I hold up a treat, she’s supposed to sit, so I tell her to sit in foreign languages to make people think she’s a polyglot genius. She’s actually more adept at interpreting gestures, and will pause at a crossroads in the woods and look back for me to point the right choice, and she comes more readily to a whistle than to my calling her.
As for this cartoon, I think making someone else’s dog sit or shake is like disciplining someone else’s kid. You have to really know them well for that not to be a case of overstepping. But, just as most people’s kids are polite anyway, a lot of dogs are like mine and will sit if you hold up the treat.
Took me a minute to recognize that Batman is talking to a Trichinella worm, but the pun made me laugh. It also made me look up the derivation of the nickname for NYC, which comes from the same guy who wrote that mostly-fictional biography of Columbus, but also gave us Rip Van Winkle and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and who bestowed the nickname “Knickerbocker” on Gothamites. The explanation is worth a read, particularly at this time of year.
Irving was a bit of a wiseass, and knew that, in ancient times, Gotham was the setting for jokes about fools, as memorialized in this nursery rhyme, illustrated here by Arthur Rackham:
Three wise men of Gotham;
Went to sea in a bowl;
if the bowl had been stronger,
My song would be longer.
Juxtaposition of Pedantic Actuallies
Both comics are funny, but Whamond gets to go first in this Juxtaposition because he’s citing a Washington Irving story, and so he gets the first “actually,” because actually, there was no Headless Horseman. Read the Legend of Sleepy Hollow again. It was just Brom Bones playing a prank on his romantic rival, which is why he carried an uncarved pumpkin to make the school teacher think it was his head.
We read the story in seventh grade, and Mrs. Wilcox put particular emphasis on Irving’s description of Katrina Van Tassel:
“She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.”
“Coquette” was a fun word to learn at that age, and it was also interesting to learn that, in those prim days, the sight of a foot and ankle was a turn-on, which was why both Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane were intent on capturing her affections.
As for the coquette and her father in Mark Anderson’s cartoon, the “actually” is that, actually, having transparent retinas, the Invisible Man would be blind. Also, he wouldn’t actually be invisible unless he’d done a full prep as if he were going to have a colonoscopy.
In honor of the Brewers, and the upcoming Hispanic holiday, a baseball/piñata gag, which made me laugh and also reminded me of an old baseball story and my version of it.
I associate the story with Rabbit Maranville, but he was a shortstop, so he may have been on the receiving end. There had been a carnival in town and the opposing pitcher got hold of a cheap, sawdust-stuffed ball from a carny game, hid it in his glove and then pitched it. The ball exploded on contact and the recipient made the joke funnier by being outraged and charging the mound.
I was about 11 when we were playing a sandlot game and one of the little guys had eaten the skin off an apple and tossed away the rest, as four- and five-year-olds are wont to do. So I stuck it in my glove and, in the next inning, pitched it to one of the older kids, whereupon the infield was sprayed with applesauce and, as in the major league version, the batter was furious.
The real joke being that neither batter was robbed of a hit; the pitch wouldn’t have been so easy to hit if full contact weren’t essential to the prank.
Glad I scan the papers before downloading cartoons in the morning. I found the real story as amusing as Venables evidently did.
Meanwhile, in Duckburg:
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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