And I assume the restaurant has some reference in its name to it being owned by “Mom” or “Mother.”
I can’t even tell from her statement whether the makeup is meant to conceal the effects of standing at the stove, or build on and amplify on them.
Mitch4, I assume it’s the latter. But yes it is an awkwardly worded statement.
And there is what appears to be a children’s doodle masquerading as art on the wall.
I don’t know. Vic Lee had a deadline when he happened to be served by an overly-made-up waitress in a restaurant.
Better overly-made-up than overly-perfumed. Although I s’pose the two go together more often than not.
She puts on heavy makeup and then slaves over a hot stove causing the makeup to run so she looks like a Picasso painting to the customers,
That’s more Jackson Pollack than Pablo Picasso. I guess that’s why I didn’t ‘get’ the joke.
I feel like the cartoonist simply turned a very specific restaurant experience he encountered into a panel. Maybe he snickered to himself “Her makeup is dripping so much, it’s like we’re being served by a Picasso painting!” and boom–he had a panel for this week.
The makeup running from the heat was my initial thought.
“She puts on heavy makeup and then slaves over a hot stove causing the makeup to run so she looks like a Picasso painting to the customers,”
And this is funny …. why?
Or her being aware of it and saying it aloud is funny why?
I guess Ignatzz and tygalilee have it. The cartoonists thinks this is a more common experience/noticeable irritant than it actually is.
I have noticed waitresses with lots of makeup and I suppose I have seen them run from the heat in the kitchen but… but it never occurred to me to annoyed or critical or think it was significant in anyway.
In a way this reminds me of Seinfeld bit where he goes on about a toilet set made of clear plastic with pennies embedded in it. Um… I haven’t seen that toilet seat and if I had I wouldn’t care.
Actually now that it’s mentioned, a disproportionately many “breakfast place” diners here in the SF Bay Area have a lot of middle-aged women with unnaturally hennaed frizzy hair, and overly applied make-up. Never noticed before but it is significant numbers. Is it a trend?
Still don’t care and it still isn’t funny.
Woozy, is there a law that they have to address every customer as “Hon?”
This one reminded me of the “I ran into Tammy Faye Baker at the mall” T-shirts from back in the day. Those sort of had a Picasso look…
>>Woozy, is there a law that they have to address every customer as “Hon?”
hmm, “hon” is more a greasy spoon diner thing. In the hip bay area it’s more “sweetie”
Andréa, I only recently added “Mo” to my GoComics list, and probably saw that one in Peterson’s blog instead. Even with his commentary and the GoComics readers’ comments I still didn’t entirely follow how and why the woman with the swirly hair (is that actually “Mo”?) ends up in a space suit.
Not that I don’t understand what’s objectionable about the man casually disrespecting the bartender. (Though for me it’s both the “Hon” and how he gives his order without casting it at all as a request.) But how and why does the woman with the swirly hair end up in a spacesuit?
I thought in fact it had to do with his eating from the open bowl of peanuts, which is surely unsanitary! But then, it seems the restaurant sets that up, it’s not as though he spilled them out of a container.
For ease of reference, this may include the Mo strip as an embed. Oh wait, is it too tall? Well, we’ll see..
Now I’m getting lost in a rabbit hole trying to track down a podcast and a couple articles with a discussion between a UK language maven and a semi-academic writer of American origin who lives in the UK. She observes among other infrequently-observed differences that Americans abroad trying to be polite will usually cast their orders to servers with at least a “please” appended to the “I’ll have the XYZ” if not more completely phrasing it as a request. But to the UK observers, this is actually kind of rude! And they rthink it’s much better to just give their order as, well, an order. … Which in turn, when they visit the States, makes us think “Those Brits are so curt with restaurant staff!”.
I don’t think it’s a “spacesuit” per se — more of the sort of thing a law officer about to face a riot might want to put on. She’s expecting the bartender to “blow up” loudly and destructively momentarily.
Shrug, thank you, that helps clarify it for me. I was thinking of the protective suit as defense against the privileged boor, not the bartender’s reaction.
It’s a flame-proof suit.
I find ordering via the ‘could I have xyz?’ very annoying. Do you expect the waitperson to say ‘Yes, you can/may’, or ‘No, you mayn’t/can’t’?
I always say, “I would like xyz, please.’ Direct, but polite.
Well, sometimes you can’t because the restaurant is fresh out of wabbit.
I sometimes remember and miss numbered comments.
Well, somewhere earlier in this thread I said something about tracking down a podcast and blog (and book / articles) about British / American language and cultural differences and specifically politeness and “please”.
What I misremembered as an article in Murphy’s blog specifically about “Please”was actually an earlier episode of The Allusionist where Murphy had been the guest — Allusionist #33 “Please” https://www.theallusionist.org/please — along with Rachele De Felice . The podcast notes there reference and link two articles of Murphy’s blog:
“saying ‘please’ in restaurants”– https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2012/08/saying-please-in-restaurants.html — which includes a video of her TedX talk, and presents the findings which I tried to repeat but got backwards in my earlier post here! (It is the Brits who expect to hear “please” in restaurants and Americans who don’t. The element of paradox should have been that the Americans’s explanation was not that an order should straightforwardly be an order, but that saying please to a waiter feels condescending.)
While my comment waits in moderation, let me forestall people who may note a mistake: I do know how to make a plural possessive, but inattentively typed Americans’s.
I thought the same as Kevin.
@ Mitch4 – Thanks for the links to the books and websites. I own a similar book on the same subject (Divided by a Common Language), but it is very poorly organized, and unusable as a reference.
Comics I Don't Understand 
And I assume the restaurant has some reference in its name to it being owned by “Mom” or “Mother.”
I can’t even tell from her statement whether the makeup is meant to conceal the effects of standing at the stove, or build on and amplify on them.
Mitch4, I assume it’s the latter. But yes it is an awkwardly worded statement.
And there is what appears to be a children’s doodle masquerading as art on the wall.
I don’t know. Vic Lee had a deadline when he happened to be served by an overly-made-up waitress in a restaurant.
Better overly-made-up than overly-perfumed. Although I s’pose the two go together more often than not.
She puts on heavy makeup and then slaves over a hot stove causing the makeup to run so she looks like a Picasso painting to the customers,
That’s more Jackson Pollack than Pablo Picasso. I guess that’s why I didn’t ‘get’ the joke.
I feel like the cartoonist simply turned a very specific restaurant experience he encountered into a panel. Maybe he snickered to himself “Her makeup is dripping so much, it’s like we’re being served by a Picasso painting!” and boom–he had a panel for this week.
The makeup running from the heat was my initial thought.
“She puts on heavy makeup and then slaves over a hot stove causing the makeup to run so she looks like a Picasso painting to the customers,”
And this is funny …. why?
Or her being aware of it and saying it aloud is funny why?
I guess Ignatzz and tygalilee have it. The cartoonists thinks this is a more common experience/noticeable irritant than it actually is.
I have noticed waitresses with lots of makeup and I suppose I have seen them run from the heat in the kitchen but… but it never occurred to me to annoyed or critical or think it was significant in anyway.
In a way this reminds me of Seinfeld bit where he goes on about a toilet set made of clear plastic with pennies embedded in it. Um… I haven’t seen that toilet seat and if I had I wouldn’t care.
Actually now that it’s mentioned, a disproportionately many “breakfast place” diners here in the SF Bay Area have a lot of middle-aged women with unnaturally hennaed frizzy hair, and overly applied make-up. Never noticed before but it is significant numbers. Is it a trend?
Still don’t care and it still isn’t funny.
Woozy, is there a law that they have to address every customer as “Hon?”
This one reminded me of the “I ran into Tammy Faye Baker at the mall” T-shirts from back in the day. Those sort of had a Picasso look…
>>Woozy, is there a law that they have to address every customer as “Hon?”
hmm, “hon” is more a greasy spoon diner thing. In the hip bay area it’s more “sweetie”
Speaking of “Hon” . . . https://www.gocomics.com/mo/2018/09/24
Andréa, I only recently added “Mo” to my GoComics list, and probably saw that one in Peterson’s blog instead. Even with his commentary and the GoComics readers’ comments I still didn’t entirely follow how and why the woman with the swirly hair (is that actually “Mo”?) ends up in a space suit.
Not that I don’t understand what’s objectionable about the man casually disrespecting the bartender. (Though for me it’s both the “Hon” and how he gives his order without casting it at all as a request.) But how and why does the woman with the swirly hair end up in a spacesuit?
I thought in fact it had to do with his eating from the open bowl of peanuts, which is surely unsanitary! But then, it seems the restaurant sets that up, it’s not as though he spilled them out of a container.
For ease of reference, this may include the Mo strip as an embed. Oh wait, is it too tall? Well, we’ll see..
Now I’m getting lost in a rabbit hole trying to track down a podcast and a couple articles with a discussion between a UK language maven and a semi-academic writer of American origin who lives in the UK. She observes among other infrequently-observed differences that Americans abroad trying to be polite will usually cast their orders to servers with at least a “please” appended to the “I’ll have the XYZ” if not more completely phrasing it as a request. But to the UK observers, this is actually kind of rude! And they rthink it’s much better to just give their order as, well, an order. … Which in turn, when they visit the States, makes us think “Those Brits are so curt with restaurant staff!”.
I don’t think it’s a “spacesuit” per se — more of the sort of thing a law officer about to face a riot might want to put on. She’s expecting the bartender to “blow up” loudly and destructively momentarily.
Shrug, thank you, that helps clarify it for me. I was thinking of the protective suit as defense against the privileged boor, not the bartender’s reaction.
It’s a flame-proof suit.
I find ordering via the ‘could I have xyz?’ very annoying. Do you expect the waitperson to say ‘Yes, you can/may’, or ‘No, you mayn’t/can’t’?
I always say, “I would like xyz, please.’ Direct, but polite.
Well, sometimes you can’t because the restaurant is fresh out of wabbit.
I sometimes remember and miss numbered comments.
Well, somewhere earlier in this thread I said something about tracking down a podcast and blog (and book / articles) about British / American language and cultural differences and specifically politeness and “please”.
The podcast I had in mind was “The Allusionist” https://www.theallusionist.org (hosted by Helen Zaltzman) which is about language in general, and the specific episode was #76 “Across the Pond” https://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/across-the-pond
The guest was Lynne Murphy, author of the book “The Prodigal Tongue” (book site https://theprodigaltongue.com/ ) and writer of the blog “Separated by a Common Language” https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/
What I misremembered as an article in Murphy’s blog specifically about “Please”was actually an earlier episode of The Allusionist where Murphy had been the guest — Allusionist #33 “Please” https://www.theallusionist.org/please — along with Rachele De Felice . The podcast notes there reference and link two articles of Murphy’s blog:
“saying ‘please’ in restaurants”– https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2012/08/saying-please-in-restaurants.html — which includes a video of her TedX talk, and presents the findings which I tried to repeat but got backwards in my earlier post here! (It is the Brits who expect to hear “please” in restaurants and Americans who don’t. The element of paradox should have been that the Americans’s explanation was not that an order should straightforwardly be an order, but that saying please to a waiter feels condescending.)
“please find attached” — https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2015/08/please-find-attached.html — which expands to more general contexts
While my comment waits in moderation, let me forestall people who may note a mistake: I do know how to make a plural possessive, but inattentively typed Americans’s.
I thought the same as Kevin.
@ Mitch4 – Thanks for the links to the books and websites. I own a similar book on the same subject (Divided by a Common Language), but it is very poorly organized, and unusable as a reference.