That is a poorly drawn coffin, not a sideboard with a pile of oranges on it. They are at a funeral/wake and he is yo-yoing. Debbie Downer tell him “This is not the time to yo-yo.” So he asks her, if not now, when? He has been shaken to the core by the death and feels he must carpe diem and yo-yo like there is no tomorrow, as there may not be.
Or maybe it’s her yo-yo and she doesn’t want him playing with it.
The pic on the coffin at first made me think it was of a baby with a dummy, then Hannibal Lecter, but I suppose it is a chap with a beard. But as SingporeBill says, now is the time to carpe yo-yo.
I think it’s “When is a good time for you?” but pressed into a stupid punchline about yo-yos, because the cartoonist was facing a hard deadline.
I guess I saw it a little differently. The artist, like many others, think of playing with a yo-yo as a pretty mundane exercise. “Oh look. It’s going up and down. How fun!”. The lady saying this isn’t the best time for it is basically saying have some respect. What the guy is saying is that there is no good time for playing with a yo-yo. The fact that he is contradicting himself and playing with it anyway is an added chuckle.
On a side note, often when someone doesn’t find a joke particularly funny, there’s a comment about how the artist must have had to “beat a deadline”. Just my opinion but I doubt that’s very often the case. Not everyone finds humor in the same places. I thought this strip was pretty good.
I suppose it could be taken as a comment that everyone deals with death differently.
I think the Smothers Brothers should have added a cello solo to that number by now.
Even more than the picture, I was a bit nonplussed by the pile of shrunken heads beside it. Or the pyramid of meatballs? Or are you going to try to tell me it’s just flowers?
@ Mitch4 – Perhaps breadrolls for the wake?
“On a side note, often when someone doesn’t find a joke particularly funny, there’s a comment about how the artist must have had to “beat a deadline”. Just my opinion but I doubt that’s very often the case.”
A strip that almost, but not quite, hits the mark suggests that if the creator had had a little more time to tinker with it, they might have found a better way to execute the gag. But comic strip creators don’t have unlimited time to tinker, they have to produce six dailies and a Sunday every week. So there’s two things at work suggesting you’re only seeing this one because deadline… First, the artist had to stop tinkering and turn it in, because the editor was on the phone saying “hey, you’re short one this week.” The other point is that if the artist thought more work would make it better, they’d save it for another week, except… there isn’t enough time to come up with a new gag, because (oops) this one isn’t done but it’s time to submit to the syndicate.
What James says.
I never did a comic strip, but I did write a weekly syndicated column for a while — and there were certainly times when “getting it out by noon Monday” trumped “honing it to be the best it could possibly be.”
I guess I liked this better than most here. To me, the guy thinks this is a perfectly fine time for yo-yo. I like that the photo on the coffin is kind of scowling. Maybe it’s in reaction to the yo-yo. Maybe that’s the best the family could find.
That’s Walter White in the coffin and the comic was perfectly timed to coincide with the “El Camino” premiere.
Cidu Bill, I’m guessing that when you were writing that column, you also had other obligations, like a full time job maybe? On the other hand, people like Tony Carillo can probably get by writing one strip per day for over 150 newspapers (according to Wikipedia). And when you take into consideration that he likely gets mail all the time with ideas for jokes from fans who have no ability to draw but would love to see their idea in print, I still doubt he is very often nearing a hard deadline.
I think this is a pretty standard joke for F-Minus. Somebody is doing something unusual or absurd (in this case, playing with a Yo-Yo at a wake). The humor is in the incongruity between normal expectations (wakes are supposed to be serious) and the character, who doesn’t see anything wrong with what they are doing.
I agree with jglor. I’d go even further and say it’s a good joke for F-.
The standard joke is something utterly capricious and arbitrary and pointing out it’s capricious and arbitrary– a bunch of guys eating pizza by wadding it into a ball; a grill chef being asked to make cookie burgers; a sullen kid complaining that just because he set fire to the house it’s going to be unfair that he gets blamed for setting fire to the house, etc. –to which I usually feel, yeah, it was arbitrary… so what?
But at least in this one it *IS* pretty weird and absurd that this bozo would think to play with a yo-yo at a funeral.
For what it’s worth, I’m reminded of an instance a few years ago when a friend was dying in a VA hospital and his stepdaughter was dealing with grief by juggling (which she was good at). And I found it curiously life-affirming.
O.K., not a funeral and not a yo-yo, but different strokes for different blokes.
Lyrics from The Roches:
When the Maid of the Seas whispered to me in the breeze
She said sex is the opposite of death
It’s alright child it’s natural it’s wild
It’s just the life force and you can use it
You won’t abuse it Enjoy yourself she said
Should have started that at the top of the song, where “funeral” is mentioned:
I wanted to take your face in my hands and kiss you on the mouth
At the funeral
There was a quake in the place where love demands to be noticed and found out
Making you beautiful
I turned myself away from you in shame
Wanting these sensations to go back from where they came
Shrug: I’d go a bit further. If your friend got any joy from the juggling, I’d say it was a beautiful moment. There’s time enough to mourn once someone has gone. I hope that memory brings you smiles.
@Kilby: Except that cuckoo clocks aren’t Bavarian. They’re from the Black Forest, which is in Baden-Württemberg, I mean, I’ll give Wiley props for not saying “Swiss”, but Bavarian is just wrong.
@ DemetriosX – That is a distinction beyond the comprehension of American stereotyping. Cuckoo clocks are German, and most of the attributes that Americans associate with “German” are really “Bavarian”. (I had a friend from northern Germany who once applied to work at Disneyland Paris, but when he found out that they expected him to wear “Lederhosen” to work in the beer hall, he was offended and refuse the job offer.)
“That is a distinction beyond the comprehension of American stereotyping.”
And thus we get into deep philosophical questions. Is it okay to play to the ignorance of people in order to make a joke which is understandable? Or, is furthering the ignorance anathema? (This assumes that Wiley is even aware of the distinction.)
Let’s take a different example, which Wiley never would have used (for reasons that will soon become obvious): the bishop’s mitre(*) could have been drawn to be one of those large wooden nutcrackers (made famous by the fairy tale and/or musical). They are well-known, and widely available (both in Germany and America), but nobody in America would ever be able to identify the proper region from which they come, partly because the name “Erzgebirge” is simply unpronounceable if you haven’t learned German. Besides that, calling him a “Saxon” (rather than “Bavarian”) would have called up the wrong kind of connotations.
P.S. Yes, he was addressed as “Father”, but the headgear says “bishop”, not “priest”.
One of the ways in which Bavaria and Texas are alike is that both barely consider themselves part of the larger country and the rest of the world thinks they’re representative. In any case, if Wiley were playing to American perceptions, he’d have used Swiss, since that’s where most Americans seem to think they’re from. There’s that famous line in The Third Man, for example.
@ DemetriosX – Absolutely the only thing I know about “The Third Man” is that Winnetouch played music from the film in Bully Herbig’s brilliant (German) western parody “Der Schuh des Manitu“.
P.S. A 15-minute selection of scenes in English was included on the original DVD set, which was still hilarious, but also proved without a shadow of a doubt that the movie is simply unmarketable for the American market: it would get shredded by the political correctness freaks.
@Kilby: The Third Man is worth seeking out. It’s pretty good. The relevant quote is the bad guy’s justification for violence, claiming that the violence of the Borgias also produced the Renaissance and “In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
For all its brilliance, Schuh des Manitou hasn’t aged all that well. Despite Winnetouch being a hero, the stereotypes cross a line occasionally. (Still a damn sight better than his Star Trek parody, though.) I doubt it ever would have really worked in English. Too many jokes would have gone right past the audience or just would have been lost. “Wir sind Südstaatler” still cracks me up every time.
So the line should be “500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? Not even the cuckoo clock.”?
Comics I Don't Understand 
That is a poorly drawn coffin, not a sideboard with a pile of oranges on it. They are at a funeral/wake and he is yo-yoing. Debbie Downer tell him “This is not the time to yo-yo.” So he asks her, if not now, when? He has been shaken to the core by the death and feels he must carpe diem and yo-yo like there is no tomorrow, as there may not be.
Or maybe it’s her yo-yo and she doesn’t want him playing with it.
The pic on the coffin at first made me think it was of a baby with a dummy, then Hannibal Lecter, but I suppose it is a chap with a beard. But as SingporeBill says, now is the time to carpe yo-yo.
I think it’s “When is a good time for you?” but pressed into a stupid punchline about yo-yos, because the cartoonist was facing a hard deadline.
I guess I saw it a little differently. The artist, like many others, think of playing with a yo-yo as a pretty mundane exercise. “Oh look. It’s going up and down. How fun!”. The lady saying this isn’t the best time for it is basically saying have some respect. What the guy is saying is that there is no good time for playing with a yo-yo. The fact that he is contradicting himself and playing with it anyway is an added chuckle.
On a side note, often when someone doesn’t find a joke particularly funny, there’s a comment about how the artist must have had to “beat a deadline”. Just my opinion but I doubt that’s very often the case. Not everyone finds humor in the same places. I thought this strip was pretty good.
I suppose it could be taken as a comment that everyone deals with death differently.
I think the Smothers Brothers should have added a cello solo to that number by now.
Even more than the picture, I was a bit nonplussed by the pile of shrunken heads beside it. Or the pyramid of meatballs? Or are you going to try to tell me it’s just flowers?
@ Mitch4 – Perhaps breadrolls for the wake?
“On a side note, often when someone doesn’t find a joke particularly funny, there’s a comment about how the artist must have had to “beat a deadline”. Just my opinion but I doubt that’s very often the case.”
A strip that almost, but not quite, hits the mark suggests that if the creator had had a little more time to tinker with it, they might have found a better way to execute the gag. But comic strip creators don’t have unlimited time to tinker, they have to produce six dailies and a Sunday every week. So there’s two things at work suggesting you’re only seeing this one because deadline… First, the artist had to stop tinkering and turn it in, because the editor was on the phone saying “hey, you’re short one this week.” The other point is that if the artist thought more work would make it better, they’d save it for another week, except… there isn’t enough time to come up with a new gag, because (oops) this one isn’t done but it’s time to submit to the syndicate.
What James says.
I never did a comic strip, but I did write a weekly syndicated column for a while — and there were certainly times when “getting it out by noon Monday” trumped “honing it to be the best it could possibly be.”
I guess I liked this better than most here. To me, the guy thinks this is a perfectly fine time for yo-yo. I like that the photo on the coffin is kind of scowling. Maybe it’s in reaction to the yo-yo. Maybe that’s the best the family could find.
That’s Walter White in the coffin and the comic was perfectly timed to coincide with the “El Camino” premiere.
Cidu Bill, I’m guessing that when you were writing that column, you also had other obligations, like a full time job maybe? On the other hand, people like Tony Carillo can probably get by writing one strip per day for over 150 newspapers (according to Wikipedia). And when you take into consideration that he likely gets mail all the time with ideas for jokes from fans who have no ability to draw but would love to see their idea in print, I still doubt he is very often nearing a hard deadline.
I think this is a pretty standard joke for F-Minus. Somebody is doing something unusual or absurd (in this case, playing with a Yo-Yo at a wake). The humor is in the incongruity between normal expectations (wakes are supposed to be serious) and the character, who doesn’t see anything wrong with what they are doing.
I agree with jglor. I’d go even further and say it’s a good joke for F-.
The standard joke is something utterly capricious and arbitrary and pointing out it’s capricious and arbitrary– a bunch of guys eating pizza by wadding it into a ball; a grill chef being asked to make cookie burgers; a sullen kid complaining that just because he set fire to the house it’s going to be unfair that he gets blamed for setting fire to the house, etc. –to which I usually feel, yeah, it was arbitrary… so what?
But at least in this one it *IS* pretty weird and absurd that this bozo would think to play with a yo-yo at a funeral.
For what it’s worth, I’m reminded of an instance a few years ago when a friend was dying in a VA hospital and his stepdaughter was dealing with grief by juggling (which she was good at). And I found it curiously life-affirming.
O.K., not a funeral and not a yo-yo, but different strokes for different blokes.
Lyrics from The Roches:
When the Maid of the Seas whispered to me in the breeze
She said sex is the opposite of death
It’s alright child it’s natural it’s wild
It’s just the life force and you can use it
You won’t abuse it Enjoy yourself she said
Should have started that at the top of the song, where “funeral” is mentioned:
I wanted to take your face in my hands and kiss you on the mouth
At the funeral
There was a quake in the place where love demands to be noticed and found out
Making you beautiful
I turned myself away from you in shame
Wanting these sensations to go back from where they came
Shrug: I’d go a bit further. If your friend got any joy from the juggling, I’d say it was a beautiful moment. There’s time enough to mourn once someone has gone. I hope that memory brings you smiles.
I’d say it’s a good comic.
Speaking of good comics here’s another one:
@Kilby: Except that cuckoo clocks aren’t Bavarian. They’re from the Black Forest, which is in Baden-Württemberg, I mean, I’ll give Wiley props for not saying “Swiss”, but Bavarian is just wrong.
@ DemetriosX – That is a distinction beyond the comprehension of American stereotyping. Cuckoo clocks are German, and most of the attributes that Americans associate with “German” are really “Bavarian”. (I had a friend from northern Germany who once applied to work at Disneyland Paris, but when he found out that they expected him to wear “Lederhosen” to work in the beer hall, he was offended and refuse the job offer.)
“That is a distinction beyond the comprehension of American stereotyping.”
And thus we get into deep philosophical questions. Is it okay to play to the ignorance of people in order to make a joke which is understandable? Or, is furthering the ignorance anathema? (This assumes that Wiley is even aware of the distinction.)
Let’s take a different example, which Wiley never would have used (for reasons that will soon become obvious): the bishop’s mitre(*) could have been drawn to be one of those large wooden nutcrackers (made famous by the fairy tale and/or musical). They are well-known, and widely available (both in Germany and America), but nobody in America would ever be able to identify the proper region from which they come, partly because the name “Erzgebirge” is simply unpronounceable if you haven’t learned German. Besides that, calling him a “Saxon” (rather than “Bavarian”) would have called up the wrong kind of connotations.
P.S. Yes, he was addressed as “Father”, but the headgear says “bishop”, not “priest”.
One of the ways in which Bavaria and Texas are alike is that both barely consider themselves part of the larger country and the rest of the world thinks they’re representative. In any case, if Wiley were playing to American perceptions, he’d have used Swiss, since that’s where most Americans seem to think they’re from. There’s that famous line in The Third Man, for example.
@ DemetriosX – Absolutely the only thing I know about “The Third Man” is that Winnetouch played music from the film in Bully Herbig’s brilliant (German) western parody “Der Schuh des Manitu“.
P.S. A 15-minute selection of scenes in English was included on the original DVD set, which was still hilarious, but also proved without a shadow of a doubt that the movie is simply unmarketable for the American market: it would get shredded by the political correctness freaks.
@Kilby: The Third Man is worth seeking out. It’s pretty good. The relevant quote is the bad guy’s justification for violence, claiming that the violence of the Borgias also produced the Renaissance and “In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
For all its brilliance, Schuh des Manitou hasn’t aged all that well. Despite Winnetouch being a hero, the stereotypes cross a line occasionally. (Still a damn sight better than his Star Trek parody, though.) I doubt it ever would have really worked in English. Too many jokes would have gone right past the audience or just would have been lost. “Wir sind Südstaatler” still cracks me up every time.
So the line should be “500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? Not even the cuckoo clock.”?