CSotD: The Return of Humpday Humor
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San Diego Comic Con is over, and I had to look up the San Diego Chicken to see if he was still around and he is, though Ted Giannoulas is now 71 and has to limit the physical comedy a bit.
I think SDCC is like Grateful Dead concerts (were) and Mardi Gras in New Orleans (is), one of those things that, if you went to it before it was cool, it was cool, but otherwise, as Yogi said, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
Some day I’m going to assemble a book of cartoons ripping off Charles Addams’ classic cartoon of unicorns having missed the Ark, but I’m giving Rosen credit for putting a different spin on the gag, which assumes you know how the story ends, from — if you’re cool — seeing the original.
Although obituary tribute cartoons are almost always ghastly schmaltz, Jeremy Banx proves that it’s possible for one to be absolutely brilliant. Like Rosen, he assumes you know the source, and if not, you wouldn’t get it anyway.
Matt Pritchett’s gag does need an explanation on this side of the Atlantic, but certainly doesn’t in his native England, where the Lionesses beat Spain for the Euro 2025 title.
But the final score is all the hint you should need; explaining the other source would ruin the gag.
To be fair to her, Jane Austen employed sharp, not always subtle, sarcasm, and anything she wrote has to be taken with a heaping spoonful of salt. Still, Matt’s cartoon is a nice updating of how little girls see the world.
Having just featured two cartoons normally seen here in political postings, here’s a comic strip that could have run on one of my political days.
MMA fights are different from pro-wrestling in that they are not choreographed. On the other hand, it sure seems as if the ref knows who Dana White expects to win a particular match, and the official calls sure seem intended to carry out that goal.
So it’s kind of like the Roberts Court.
Barney & Clyde, on the other hand, is frequently political and, in each of these episodes, makes such good points about pretend money that I couldn’t decide between them.
Bitcoins used to be a relatively harmless place for people to play with their money, but it appears that Dear Leader is making moves to shove it down our throats. I suppose it’ll be better than having to carry around a backpack full of Beanie Babies to pay for things.
We’ll see how it works if the rest of the world doesn’t succumb to the fantasy: I wonder how many yuan an American bitcoin will be worth, if any, because yuans could turn out to be the new international currency standard.
I have a bad back and regret to report that what we were rolling in college doesn’t seem to help, except in the sense of not caring about the pain nearly so much. Not that I would know, since NH hasn’t legalized anything one might roll and Vermont is a whole five miles away.
When I got to college, I was chagrinned to find my new classmates had all been reading great literature in high school and I was way behind them. OTOH, my old classmates and I had experience with Bugler, so I could roll with one paper, which put me way ahead in a category that more than offset not having read “Darkness at Noon” or “Notes from the Underground.”
(I’m used to the fact that fart jokes have become acceptable on the comics page, but I suspect that Betty may have slipped this reference past the goalies.)
Dating apps have become a lot more sophisticated since I was in college, but I’m not sure the results are any better. I tried Match.com in my second bachelorhood and it yielded a couple of interesting dinners but never a second date.
But in 1970, my next-door neighbor, Beach Ball, sent in an old-school bubble-sheet computer-dating form. We teased him, but he said he indicated that he wanted to meet a good-looking girl who didn’t object to sex on a first date, and I don’t know how close the computer came to the specifics, but they matched him with a cute Jewish girl. They made quite a couple, given that she still lived with her parents and he was a biker.
They dated for a few weeks and things were going well until he met her folks, with his long hair, Fu Manchu mustache, tattoos, black hat with concho band and blue-jean vest with gang colors. I am not joking or exaggerating when I say that, within days, she was on an airplane off to live on a kibbutz in Israel.
O Beach Ball, Beach Ball, wherefore art thou Beach Ball?
Our boys had some nicer-than-usual clothes they could wear to formal shindigs, but we never put them into the jacket-tie-slicked-down-hair look I’ve seen on some kids. Jeremy is right: They look like ventriloquists’ dummies.
I don’t know why anyone would want to dress like that at any age. As a reporter, I kept the obligatory jacket and tie hanging by my desk to throw on when I went out on assignment, but we’re talking rumpled tweed.
I haven’t donned an actual monkey suit since my younger son’s wedding, and I had to then because I was a grown-up and there’d be pictures. Before that, I think my last tux was Homecoming sophomore year, so 34 years earlier.
A good reason to have rented.
For the most part, my rule has been to just dress nice enough that nobody sends my girlfriend to live on a kibbutz.
Hsu puts a modern twist on an old scene and it’s dark humor indeed. Farming is a demanding life and a lot of farm kids don’t want to carry it on, while many of the ones who do have degrees in the sciences required to operate a modern farm.
So I support the American Farmland Trust, which helps retiring farmers put their land into agricultural conservation easements or find young people who want to carry on the business.
We’ve got enough data centers.
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