Note the interplay in this Wallace the Brave (AMS): First, Rose is the right character to have a turquoise necklace, or, at least, she’s the right character to show it off to her friends. Amelia might have one — heck, even Spud has had one — but Amelia wouldn’t make note of it.
And, of course, since they live in coastal New England, Wallace’s “wicked” is the proper response.
Then we come to Spud, the Larry Mondello of this ensemble, who feels compelled to tell his somewhat embarrassing story but is self-aware enough to know how insignificant it is.
Having had a point for several days, I’m declaring a Spud day for myself. I hope you’ll join me.
And none of the “Too smart for the room” sort of humor found in today’s Andertoons (AMS). I have to admire Mark Anderson for not putting a label under the painting, but, then again, I have to wonder how many readers could identify it?
But a label would ruin the gag, and a wink to the audience provides that momentary pause of “What? … OMG!” that makes smart humor that much more fun. And wotthehell, as even rock-and-roll fans know, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.
Though even this somewhat lofty intellectual gag reminded me of my little brother having squirreled away some color plates of far more representational nudes from a collection of art books we had, when he was about the age of these art critics.
Which is a perfect segue to this Bizarro (KFS), because that’s also about the age when adolescent Catholics find Confession to be a near occasion of sin itself, given the religious necessity to confess such things honestly, and the natural reluctance to do so.
It brings to mind Stephen Dedalus’s dilemma of not making his Easter Duty because he doesn’t believe in it, but worrying that, if it is true, he’ll burn in Hell and, in any case, he’d greatly disappoint his mother if she found out.
Sounds like the Diocese of Trenton is enmeshed in its own dilemma:
Geez, Padre, I think I was less confused before you began explaining it.
Though this idea that we shouldn’t be surprised by things nobody told us about reminds me of a Pentecost when the Catholic Youth Organization had a Communion Sunday, so that we were all sitting together at the front of the church when the priest was reading about the Coming of the Paraclete, which was a spontaneous getting of wisdom and grace by the Apostles.
Only he somehow left out the L in Paraclete, which might have gotten past me without a burst of giggles, had not the president of the CYO and our class’s eventual valedictorian leaned over to me and whispered, “I thought it was a dove.”
The good part being that I realized we were both going to go to Hell and so I no longer had to fret over the Church’s position on self-rising.
I realize parakeet to dove to crows is a dubious segue, but this Rhymes With Orange (KFS) cracked me up, less because of people showing you far more pictures of their kids than you wanted to see (that would be two), but because we’ve taken a giant step backwards since the days when people carried family photos encased in plastic in their wallets.
Not only did it thankfully limit the number they had — though some people’s wallets unfolded yards of photos, like clowns coming out of a car — but it only required them to whip out their wallet and open it. And you could see the photo.
Which has been supplanted by several minutes of fumbling with their phone and then holding it out, being careful not to hit a button and make it disappear again, at which point the lighting is usually not right for anyone to see it anyway.
Side Note: RWO’s Hilary Price will be teaching a five-day course on writing and drawing single-panel cartoons this June at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction.
Pretty sure Hillary’s course is a better deal than the one Rat outlines in Pearls Before Swine (AMS), though it would be something of a contest between my utter inability to draw anything but a bath and my nearly equal inability to wait.
As it happens, today is Match Day, when medical students find out where they have been offered an internship, after a series of applications and interviews that would drive me absolutely mad, were I not protected by having had no more chance of getting into med school — much less through it — than I had of becoming an astronaut.
I wish the McCoy brothers would offer a course in where to find a six-pack of beer for two bucks, although I’m not sure I want to know. Today’s Duplex (AMS) reminded me of the lean days when we drank Rhinelander, a beer that sparks passionate loyalty back in Wisconsin but was chiefly noted for being the cheapest beer on the shelf in Colorado.
Granted, it was markedly better than the beer we went to when the Rhinelander ran out, which was so wretched that the label advised you to drink it ice cold, presumably to kill the flavor.
This all having happened before they invented alcopops and hard lemonades and such for people who don’t like the taste of beer but do like getting wasted. I don’t think you can get six of those for two bucks, either, but, if you can, you’ve been overcharged.
In the past year, I’ve gone from a succession of Rhodesian Ridgebacks to a Danish Swedish Farm Dog, and, while the transition from a 95 pound dog to a 20 pound dog is significant, it’s not as jarring as going from a kindly, loving musclehead to a dog who seems to be a little smarter than I am.
This Dogs of C Kennel (Creators) brought back memories of my last ridgeback who, having no undercoat, hated rain, and so, if he asked to go out the kitchen door but then discovered it was raining, would go to the door in the livingroom and ask to go out there instead.
Speaking of rain and memories …
Note: Comments at the Daily Cartoonist are still not working. You can chime in at
Twitter or Facebook to let me know you’re out there.
Once had a cat like your ridgeback. When he found it was raining both back and front he considered it my fault and probably done on purpose.