CSotD: Friday Frightening Funnies

Actually, there’s not much frightening in the comics themselves. I predicted the flood of “Jack O’ Lantern with a Mask” cartoons several weeks ago, and every election brings out plenty of cartoons of people being scared of Trick-or-Treaters dressed up as the candidates.

Though Caulfield is right and we probably won’t have many Trick-or-Treaters.

But this observation in Frazz (AMS) scares hell out of me because my son is a trauma nurse and, while the full moon thing is nonsense, having people get into costumes and drink heavily is a bad thing to begin with, and worse when Halloween falls on a weekend because the parties increase.

Maybe the pandemic will offset that this time around

Somehow, when you are pretending to be someone else, there is an enhanced degree of alcohol-fueled lowering of inhibitions that occasionally ends up at the ER.

Be careful out there.

My son is a great guy, but you don’t want to meet him or any of his colleagues.

 

Nothing scary about little Sedgwick’s costume in Monty (UFS), except for the cultural illiteracy of our era, in which it’s easy to be too smart for the room.

Though the dialogue in that third panel could have been an entire strip on its own. Much of the fun in these arcs is the Upstairs/Downstairs factor in Sedgwick’s relationship with Jarvis, though if I go on about the difference between mouthing ivory tower theoretical platitudes and knowing how life really works, we’re gonna end up breaking the no-politics-on-Friday rule.

Instead, I’ll note that I bought a box of Captain Crunch a few months ago for the nostalgia factor and maybe I’m remembering wrong, but I think they shrank the pieces and turned it more into candy than it once was. And variations in which they leave out the cereal entirely do not assuage my doubts.

Add Captain Crunch to Hostess Cupcakes and Tootsie Rolls on the list of things I wish they would release in “Throwback” form the way they make Mountain Dew and Pepsi from time to time, so I could see if they tasted like crap back when I was a kid.

On accounta I don’t think they did.

At least, thanks to Throwbacks, I know that Mountain Dew really did used to tickle my innards.

 

Speaking of throwbacks — or, perhaps, flashbacks — Harry Bliss (AMS) dropped a nice bit of nostalgia into today’s strip. I had to look up Billy Hayes, because I get her mixed up with Sharon Baird, the former Mouseketeer who played Judy Frog, not Witchy Poo.

Owsley should have been getting royalties for those Sid and Marty Kroft shows.

 

And while we’re on a nostalgia kick, I wasn’t that impressed with the pun in last Sunday’s Bizarro (KFS) but I was blown away by Dan Piraro’s artwork. Handing off the dailies to Wayno so Piraro could focus on Sundays (and also create an on-line graphic novel) is one of the few recent changes in cartooning that has really paid off.

It helps, of course, that Wayno was a long-time collaborator and not only has the illustrating chops but thoroughly grokked the strip.

But Piraro outdid himself with this one, right down to Kermit’s neck.

 

Something interesting is going on at Between Friends (KFS), and this strip pretty much explains the story arc that began here.

I once did get to see my replacement hired while I was still there, but it was all in the timing: They were still in the process of harassing me to quit so they wouldn’t have to pay me unemployment. They told me he was a photographer, though he never seemed to take any pictures.

After I left, he lasted about a week before they handed off the job to someone else and then shut everything down and declared bankruptcy.

Which may be why I never watched “The Office.” I didn’t have to: I’d lived it.

Good luck, Susan.

 

I also got a laff out of this Speed Bump (Creators), and I’m at an age where I frequently look back at the various forks in the road that I didn’t take.

That metaphor, however, fits in with a saying I apply when I start pondering those choices, which is that “If you like where you’re at, you ought not to despise the road that brought you there.”

And I like where I’m at, or I’d change it. Still, it’s normal to play “what-if?”

Much of that involves women I dated and might have married, but, again, I look at where I ended up, and where they ended up, and whatever might have happened to us together would have only been different, not better.

No need to get all Jimmy Webby over it.

As for career stuff, imaginary oil wells invariably come in. Real ones aren’t nearly so cooperative.

Granted, opening a bluejeans store in the university town of Bordeaux in 1973 would have worked, and I had supply connections to Levi, Stetson and Frye as well as the initial blessings of the French government.

But what I did instead also worked, so wotthehell.

When I see friends floundering in the wake of a divorce or losing a job or some other consequential shakeup, I feel for them, because I’ve been there, but I’m not there now and they won’t be there forever, either, though of course they can’t see that from here.

I don’t know if stoicism helps or if I embrace stoicism because I’m that sort of person, but I know that freaking out is not productive.

Neither is making “bucket lists” of things you’re never going to do. As a wise quasi-Muppet once said, “Do or do not. There is no ‘try’.”

Granted, it’s easier to say “chin up” when you’re standing on firm ground, but, nevertheless, it’s excellent advice.

You can go with the flow and trust in the future, and in yourself, or you can keep picking at the scabs to keep them from healing.

What happens to you isn’t always your choice.

How you respond to it is.