It is all you can eat for $6.50 because it is all that you get for that price.
All you can eat for $6.95 is a plate of food. If you want more you’ll have to pay more. That’s all you can(we will allow you to eat) for $6.95.
For some reason you thought we were saying if you pay us $6.95 we’ll feed you all the food you are capable of eating. Now where would you get a silly idea like that?
The rate of inflation appears to be 15 cents per minute.
Variants:
The old National Lampoon had a strip of a guy pigging out at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Contentedly bloated, he gets up to leave but a surly bouncer forces him back to his table. Turns out “all you can eat” was here defined as all you’re physically capable of eating until you have to be removed by ambulance.
National Lampoon also proposed an eat-all-you-want diet. The one thing you were allowed to eat (think “feedback loop”) not only insured you’d want to eat very little, but that you’d decide very quickly you had no further interest in losing weight.
The “bottomless cup of coffee”, presumably a thing at one time, was rendered literally in a magazine panel. Customer lifts it off the counter, and voila. A related gag in a vintage Nancy strip: Nancy and Sluggo see an soda fountain promising the Biggest Dish of Ice Cream in Town. It turns out to be gigantic dish with a lone scoop of vanilla in it.
Another vintage Nancy strip had her ordering an all-you-can-eat meal in a diner, and she brought a bunch of friends to eat the leftovers. Definitely shaky thinking.
In “Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver” (a slightly cleaned up version of the privately printed “No Navel to Guide Him”), Jack Douglas headed a chapter with “All You Can Eat for $75”. This was when $75 would buy substantially more than anybody could eat. Douglas was better known for his quasi-autobiographical “The Neighbors are Scaring My Wolf” and “Shut Up and Eat Your Snowshoes”.
The animated “Dilbert” revealed that Dilbert’s father was alive and well. He simply never left an all-you-can-eat establishment, stretching a single meal over several years.
Googling “That’s all you can eat for $” turned up a ton of variations of the joke, including one from Milton Berle, and a scene from a very silly-looking movie called Pandemonium.
Along with the biggest dish of ice cream in town, Archive comics recycled the “biggest cup of coffee in town” joke. The punchline was, of course, that there was that the sign didn’t say “full cup”.
(Tangent warning)
Speaking of potentially ambiguous messages centering on “can”, does anybody else have hesitations over expressions like “You can’t be too careful.”?
That one specifically is not problematic (without some additional details to swing it the other way) : it means no level of taking-care is excessive, and advises extreme caution.
Contrast “[When it comes to fats and oils,] you can’t overindulge.” which probably is advising restraint. But the ads for the biggest bowl of ice cream might urge “You just can’t have too much”. And that #3 could be in other cases urging restraint.
Oh, thanks a bunch, Mitch4. Now I’ll never hear that again without thinking of you.
Think of it as your own personal immortality. ;-)
(All you can eat) for $6.50 vs (all you can eat for $6.50).
In 1992, my sisters and I visited a diner whose sign said “OPEN 24 HOURS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY”. We arrived just before 9PM on Friday and sat down. Waitress came over and said “Order fast, we close in 20 minutes.”
“Oh, your sign said OPEN 24 HOURS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY”.
“Yes, 12 hours each day.”
This was one of those where you wait a second for her to laugh, and then she doesn’t, and you realize she wasn’t kidding. (And yes, this is a real-life twist on an old joke, “24 hour dry-cleaning” — 3 8-hour days.)
Steven Wright:
“I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door.
I said, ‘Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.’
He said, ‘Yes, but not in a row.'”
Back in the 1950’s, Dennis the Menace had an all-you-can-drink lemonade stand. Caption: “I say that’s all you can drink! That’s who says that’s all you can drink!”
This joke must go back at least as far as vaudeville.
Any one who verbalizes “Yum, Yum, Chew, chew, Chomp. Slurp” deserves the extra charge.
@ woozy – I agree that it’s gross, but I think that bit of idiocy is the cartoonist’s fault, not Slim’s.
Yes, there is a special economic theory at work with all-you-can-eateries that prevent them from losing money. It has to do with figuring out an optimum amount of consumable food and then taking everybody else’s smaller portions into consideration. That’s what I remember, anyway. Feel free to look it up.
MinorAnnoyance – I love Jack Douglas! I wanted to be him when I grew up! No, really. I wanted to write books like his and go on TV and tell stories like he did.
You left out my of my favorite books of his – “Huckleberry Hashimoto”.
Mark in Boston – I was going to mention the Dennis comic also. It is one of the few that stick in my mind.
http://buffets.blogspot.com – a website which explains that all you can eat is just an offer, not a challenge.
Wow. This is so old that I’m disappointed that any professional cartoonist would try to use it (the “24 divided by 7” is, of course, a new twist and legit). The only reason I thought my story was relevant was because it’s so tired, yet there it was in real life!
Another reason to hate “Close to Home.” Not only can’t the guy draw, he doesn’t even come up with his own jokes.
If we condemned every comic strip writer who sometimes has to fall back on a gag that was old during vaudeville…
The 24-hour joke is old, but I don’t think it goes all the way back to vaudeville (were there 24 hour stores back then?). At least Steven Wright put his own spin on it. In “Close to Home,” John McPherson copied Wright almost word for word.
Ok, this has nothing to do with the comic in this post, but it’s the only Gasoline Alley thread at least that is still around. This is a time-sensitive one, as the answer will likely be given tomorrow.
So, as it’s not the famous singer, what “Peggy Lee” are they talking about? I assume that from the realistic style that’s it’s an actual person and not a strip character. Further I would think it’s probably someone still alive.
Anyone have a guess?
That particular Peggy Sue died today.
Peggy Sue Heron, muse to Buddy Holly. BUT that name isn’t the same as Peggy LEE. And doesn’t look anything like the drawing in GA.
Gerron, not Heron. Sorry – got birds on the brain, I guess.
I think CIDU Bill must have moderated himself, or perhaps he had a typo in his YouTube link.
Not much new information in today’s episode, other than this Peggy Lee is about the same age as the strip, so around 100.
Comics I Don't Understand 
It is all you can eat for $6.50 because it is all that you get for that price.
All you can eat for $6.95 is a plate of food. If you want more you’ll have to pay more. That’s all you can(we will allow you to eat) for $6.95.
For some reason you thought we were saying if you pay us $6.95 we’ll feed you all the food you are capable of eating. Now where would you get a silly idea like that?
The rate of inflation appears to be 15 cents per minute.
Variants:
The old National Lampoon had a strip of a guy pigging out at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Contentedly bloated, he gets up to leave but a surly bouncer forces him back to his table. Turns out “all you can eat” was here defined as all you’re physically capable of eating until you have to be removed by ambulance.
National Lampoon also proposed an eat-all-you-want diet. The one thing you were allowed to eat (think “feedback loop”) not only insured you’d want to eat very little, but that you’d decide very quickly you had no further interest in losing weight.
The “bottomless cup of coffee”, presumably a thing at one time, was rendered literally in a magazine panel. Customer lifts it off the counter, and voila. A related gag in a vintage Nancy strip: Nancy and Sluggo see an soda fountain promising the Biggest Dish of Ice Cream in Town. It turns out to be gigantic dish with a lone scoop of vanilla in it.
Another vintage Nancy strip had her ordering an all-you-can-eat meal in a diner, and she brought a bunch of friends to eat the leftovers. Definitely shaky thinking.
In “Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver” (a slightly cleaned up version of the privately printed “No Navel to Guide Him”), Jack Douglas headed a chapter with “All You Can Eat for $75”. This was when $75 would buy substantially more than anybody could eat. Douglas was better known for his quasi-autobiographical “The Neighbors are Scaring My Wolf” and “Shut Up and Eat Your Snowshoes”.
The animated “Dilbert” revealed that Dilbert’s father was alive and well. He simply never left an all-you-can-eat establishment, stretching a single meal over several years.
Googling “That’s all you can eat for $” turned up a ton of variations of the joke, including one from Milton Berle, and a scene from a very silly-looking movie called Pandemonium.
Along with the biggest dish of ice cream in town, Archive comics recycled the “biggest cup of coffee in town” joke. The punchline was, of course, that there was that the sign didn’t say “full cup”.
(Tangent warning)
Speaking of potentially ambiguous messages centering on “can”, does anybody else have hesitations over expressions like “You can’t be too careful.”?
That one specifically is not problematic (without some additional details to swing it the other way) : it means no level of taking-care is excessive, and advises extreme caution.
Contrast “[When it comes to fats and oils,] you can’t overindulge.” which probably is advising restraint. But the ads for the biggest bowl of ice cream might urge “You just can’t have too much”. And that #3 could be in other cases urging restraint.
Oh, thanks a bunch, Mitch4. Now I’ll never hear that again without thinking of you.
Think of it as your own personal immortality. ;-)
(All you can eat) for $6.50 vs (all you can eat for $6.50).
In 1992, my sisters and I visited a diner whose sign said “OPEN 24 HOURS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY”. We arrived just before 9PM on Friday and sat down. Waitress came over and said “Order fast, we close in 20 minutes.”
“Oh, your sign said OPEN 24 HOURS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY”.
“Yes, 12 hours each day.”
This was one of those where you wait a second for her to laugh, and then she doesn’t, and you realize she wasn’t kidding. (And yes, this is a real-life twist on an old joke, “24 hour dry-cleaning” — 3 8-hour days.)
R: Phil Smith III
Steven Wright:
“I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door.
I said, ‘Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.’
He said, ‘Yes, but not in a row.'”
Here’s a clip:
https://youtu.be/ign6rwI-7co?t=3m7s
Another variation of 24/7:
https://assets.amuniversal.com/c0fe63508ee3012d63f600163e41dd5b
Back in the 1950’s, Dennis the Menace had an all-you-can-drink lemonade stand. Caption: “I say that’s all you can drink! That’s who says that’s all you can drink!”
This joke must go back at least as far as vaudeville.
Any one who verbalizes “Yum, Yum, Chew, chew, Chomp. Slurp” deserves the extra charge.
@ woozy – I agree that it’s gross, but I think that bit of idiocy is the cartoonist’s fault, not Slim’s.
Yes, there is a special economic theory at work with all-you-can-eateries that prevent them from losing money. It has to do with figuring out an optimum amount of consumable food and then taking everybody else’s smaller portions into consideration. That’s what I remember, anyway. Feel free to look it up.
MinorAnnoyance – I love Jack Douglas! I wanted to be him when I grew up! No, really. I wanted to write books like his and go on TV and tell stories like he did.
You left out my of my favorite books of his – “Huckleberry Hashimoto”.
Mark in Boston – I was going to mention the Dennis comic also. It is one of the few that stick in my mind.
http://buffets.blogspot.com – a website which explains that all you can eat is just an offer, not a challenge.
Today’s “Close to Home” does exactly the “open 24 hours” joke! http://www.gocomics.com/closetohome/2018/04/18?ct=v&cti=1861531
Wow. This is so old that I’m disappointed that any professional cartoonist would try to use it (the “24 divided by 7” is, of course, a new twist and legit). The only reason I thought my story was relevant was because it’s so tired, yet there it was in real life!
Another reason to hate “Close to Home.” Not only can’t the guy draw, he doesn’t even come up with his own jokes.
If we condemned every comic strip writer who sometimes has to fall back on a gag that was old during vaudeville…
The 24-hour joke is old, but I don’t think it goes all the way back to vaudeville (were there 24 hour stores back then?). At least Steven Wright put his own spin on it. In “Close to Home,” John McPherson copied Wright almost word for word.
Ok, this has nothing to do with the comic in this post, but it’s the only Gasoline Alley thread at least that is still around. This is a time-sensitive one, as the answer will likely be given tomorrow.
https://www.gocomics.com/gasolinealley/2018/10/02
So, as it’s not the famous singer, what “Peggy Lee” are they talking about? I assume that from the realistic style that’s it’s an actual person and not a strip character. Further I would think it’s probably someone still alive.
Anyone have a guess?
That particular Peggy Sue died today.
Peggy Sue Heron, muse to Buddy Holly. BUT that name isn’t the same as Peggy LEE. And doesn’t look anything like the drawing in GA.
Gerron, not Heron. Sorry – got birds on the brain, I guess.
I think CIDU Bill must have moderated himself, or perhaps he had a typo in his YouTube link.
Not much new information in today’s episode, other than this Peggy Lee is about the same age as the strip, so around 100.
https://www.gocomics.com/gasolinealley/2018/10/03