CSotD: Sunday Will Sometimes Be The Same

There are only so many new ideas out there, and Pardon My Planet (KFS) isn’t the first strip to make an organized/disorganized religion joke. But a good gagster can add freshening elements, and Vic Lee hits some football matters just as the Hall of Fame Game has fans ready for a new season.

Specifically, it takes me back half a century, to one of my touch-and-go returns to the church of my youth, in an era before the explosion of cable and the emergence of home videotaping, a day in which the 8:30 Mass in Denver was well attended in the fall.

And it has better be a Low Mass, without a lot of singing, and the priest had better keep his sermon concise, because Notre Dame Replay began at 9:30 on KOA-TV and the Broncos kicked off half an hour afterwards, at 11.

So the 10:30 Mass was out of the question and the 8:30 needed to wrap up in time for everyone to be home in an hour.

Only a well-organized religion could consistently pull this off.

 

Similarly, there’s nothing new about “animals Noah left behind,” and if Charles Addams’ estate were being run by the Suess or Disney people, half its income would derive from suing people who rip off his classic unicorns cartoon. Including Shel Silverstein, who set it to music.

For those keeping score at home, Addams’ piece ran in 1956, which means its copyright is well within enforceable time.

 

Lately, I’ve seen a few artists finesse both the copyright and copycat issues by having it be dinosaurs who were left behind, but Dan Piraro does much better in a Bizarro (KFS) that shows them NOT being left behind, opening up a whole new alternative universe.

The 60 million year gap between the last of the true dinosaurs and the first humans is no barrier, since Noah’s Ark is clearly folkloric, not historic, though I suppose you could get arrested for saying that in Florida.

But speculative fiction is not bound by actual facts, and let’s assume the second ark in today’s Bizarro were headed for the New World, piloted by the forebears of the original Americans.

Now the story of Columbus becomes a mashup with “Land of the Lost.”

I think he’s gonna need three bigger boats.

 

We can bring in Wallace the Brave (AMS) and Spud as the writing team on “Jurassic Ark,” since they’ve shown their chops at speculative fiction, including what we will call “Spud’s Razor,” which has been the guiding principle for every popular movie of the past 20 years.

Thing is, when they tried to turn the original Wallace the Brave into historical drama with “Braveheart” (1995), the Internet exploded with people pointing out that Scots didn’t wear tartan yet, that the movie showed Wallace falling in love with a princess who had barely been born and so forth and so on, right down to complaints that, if he could be clean-shaven, why couldn’t he cut a few snags out of that tangled mop on his head?

But if you just throw in a couple of dinosaurs or make him a superhero, you no longer have to fret over science, history, continuity or logic.

Just apply Spud’s Razor.

 

Though, if you want to tell a story that nobody is going to believe, The Buckets (AMS) has one nailed.

As it happens, we were just talking about this at the park the other day: If you call for an appointment, instead of a date sometime in the next week or two, you’re offered something six or eight weeks away, and probably then only a Zoom call perhaps with a nurse or PA. (Nothing wrong with RNs and PAs, mind you, but the rotating staff doesn’t offer much Continuity of Care, which is the point of having a Primary Care Physician.)

We used to worry about how poor people wait until minor problems become major issues, but I suspect there’s a real danger of that happening even for people who should have access to the system.

That’s not good.

 

Never mind. Let’s go to Cornered (AMS) for a little frivolity. The best thing about this cartoon is that, not only can you not tell whether it’s the patient or the analyst speaking, it’s not 100% clear that it’s not an unseen narrator.

As with Piraros’ dueling arks, this opens up a whole lot of speculation that you can take anywhere you’d like.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Next Door Neighbors — AMS)

 

(Crabgrass — AMS)

My initial response to Next Door Neighbors was that his parents need to clamp down, but then I rethought it in Real World terms. My boys and I each served three-day suspensions, but on different planets.

When I got kicked out for smoking in the boys’ room, it was in a two-parent family with my mother at home. She sentenced me to do schoolwork during school hours, which was how I finished my senior paper on James Joyce. When elder son got suspended, I was divorced but freelancing at home, so, once again, I could keep a lid on him.

But when it came time for younger son, I was a single dad working at the paper so he was on the honor system. He graduated with high honors, so whatever happened during those three days didn’t do much damage, but it does make me wonder how parents will handle the 4-day school weeks being proposed in states that have driven away their teachers.

Meanwhile, the only time I successfully faked illness to stay home was Tuesday, February 20, 1962, and, since I was sick and not being punished, I was permitted to watch TV.

John Glenn made three orbits of the Earth and landed safely.

My mom may have known I was faking it.

 

I agree with Lemont in this Candorville (WPWG). There was a time of global innocence that is likely gone forever.

 

He cites it as his generation’s moment, but it belonged not to Americans, but to young people in Berlin, in Poland and in Tiananmen Square.

Arlo explained it to me in an interview that remains one of my favorites.

Meanwhile, Lemont, the road will call you when it’s time, but you need to be listening or you’ll miss it.

That hasn’t changed.