I had 7 years of French in school and yet did not know (or maybe just didn’t remember) that “ménage” meant “housework”. wow.
I love their music. I wonder if the cartoonist has ever listened to them.
Before I scrolled all the way down to the caption, I was thinking the dialog was supposed to be from a typical (TV?) operating room.
I’m confused by the design of the speech balloons (or thought balloons). Do they have pointer trails but curtailed to a single bubble? Or are the curved black lines ending in coils also part of the pointers for speech/thought bubbles? Why do they look like that? Artistic ornamentation? Or to make them look like parts of an automobile suspension system?
So…besides the obvious “garage” rhyming with “menage”, I see nothing here. And that’s not funny, or even interesting, unless there’s some rhyming slang involved somehow. Thanks to chipchristian we now know that Garage A Trois is a band. Which still doesn’t help me understand this comic at all–chipchristian, does this mean YOU get it? If so, please explain?
And I agree with Phil Smith on general dissatisfaction with the cartoon. I’ll add another unanswered Q, Why ‘Rafael’? Is that the name of one of the band members? Are there some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle references in here?
Rafael appears to be played by Ron Jeremy.
dvandom: Ouch. I mean, “Who’s Ron Jeremy?” 🙂
So is Rafael supposed to be the artist of that name, the TMNT, Ron Jeremy, or Tom Magliozzi?
I wonder if there is any significance to the colour and placement of the handkerchief hanging out of speaker’s pocket?
SingaporeBill: Yes, I know who he is. That’s why I said “I mean…” 🙂
PSIII: I had to Bing it, of course. 🙂
So….. If we lived in a universe where there was no band called “Garage a trois” (as we did two minutes before one of the band members said “We should call ourselves….”) then this would be a pun on “menage a trois” and it’d be a rather weird one in it doesn’t really conform to the idea of a threesome (unless you count the car as they third party [and, no, I am not going to make the autoeroticism pun]) or much about anything other than porn movies have mood music.
As we do live in a universe where there is a band called “Garage a trois” the question is does the cartoonist know it. In which case as “Garage a trois” was the original pun this cartoon serves no purpose except to explain a pun that shouldn’t need explaining. I though this was case but as there is no band member called Rafeal and the band doesn’t really do soft jazz much I’m guessing the cartoonist isn’t aware of the band and is trying to simulate a scene from a cheesy porn movie (and I’m still not going to make the autoeroticism pun; I’m not going to make it twice.)
If it’s Garage a trois, why are there two of them? And what sense would it make if there were three of them? What point is being made by “soft jazz music”? Why would it be odd to want to listen to soft jazz music while working? Why is he “Rafael” and why would asking him for assistance, and asking him to play some music (presumably through the computer) be funny? So many questions, and not a single answer.
@ignatzz The car is part of the threesome. (Wow, how old are we that there are people that don’t understand that?)
Soft jazz is the definitive porn music from the Golden Age of porn.
(no nudity)
I’ve never seen “the Golden Age of porn” and “(no nudity)” in the same sentence before!
Not the same sentence. Or line. I refer you to the period, PSIII. Or “full stop” as foreigners sometimes call it. The “no nudity” note refers to the video. I found another that has some very fuzzy possible nudity (so blurry I couldn’t be sure if that was a nipple or my imagination), so I didn’t use that link, though I think the music is slightly more emblematic of porn.
As for the Golden Age of Porn, that would be the ’70s and early ’80s, before home video. I have a friend who covered the industry for Adult Video News (yes, porn has trade publications), and, he explained, that was the era where budgets were bigger, there was better equipment and more talented technicians operating it, and, because the films had to run in theatres and not run afoul of obscenity laws in USA, they had to have “artistic merit,” so there were actual scripts and storylines. Some of those scripts and stories were fairly good, even if everything did stop every few minutes for some sex, he says. But after home video, budgets and production values plummeted and stories got skimpier and skimpier until they basically vanished.
Ok, Bill, “same utterance”. And I was joking!
You know…. I’m beginning to think this is a better joke than I first gave it credit for.
The standard plot of a menage a trois porn movie is some hot latin guy is doing something, cleaning a pool, delivering pizza, fixing a cabinet and the two people (usually two women or in this case a mechanic and a car) are doing something and say “Oh, darn, this is difficult with just us. Say Rafael, Can you help us with this” and then the soft jazz music starts up and …shenanigans ensue.
” So many questions, and not a single answer.”
I think all the questions are answered in a single answer. It’s just…. not a very enjoyable answer and the process to get there was …. not pleasant.
PSIII: Pedants gotta pedant. 🙂 Also, gave me a nice segue into discussing the Golden Age of Porn in a classy way. I buy Playboy for the articles and I watch porn for the stories!
Bill, agreed. I have the same reputation around here! Sometimes I notice it and apologize–but it doesn’t stop me.
Pedants gotta pedant
Not to be pedantic or anything, but I thought that pedants ped…
Just checking in on whether the commenters on GoComics had anything useful to say that we may be overlooking, the answer is No, both for the reprint a couple days ago and for what seems to be the original appearance on 2019-Jan-03.
larK: Pedestrians got to ped. Pedophiles got to pedo. Peddlers got to peddle. Pedagouges got to gouge. And pedants got to pedant.
I agree with woozy, I think it’s actually not a very complicated joke, once you accept it’s about two guys having sex with a car.
WW: The term garage a trois indicates they will be making love with the car. A different term would mean they are having sex with the car. And there is a different term that indicates they are f***ing the car.
chipchristian, you did not mention that Stanton Moore is in that band. Charlie Hunter too! Totally legit!
Birds gotta swim, fish gotta fly, and fascist gotta fash — I’d say it’s pretty clear that you are limited to one syllable in your obligatory behavior, and thus all your exemplars must and gotta merely ped, information density be damned.
Interesting that Wikipedia describes Garage a Trois as “an American jazz quartet”.
” And there is a different term that indicates they are f***ing the car.”
Auto-eroticism?
” And there is a different term that indicates they are f***ing the car.”
Ford-ication?
“And there is a different term that indicates they are f***ing the car.”
Trucking?
Ron Jeremy is a porn actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to my youngest sister’s first husband – though her ex is much younger than Ron Jeremy.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I had 7 years of French in school and yet did not know (or maybe just didn’t remember) that “ménage” meant “housework”. wow.
I love their music. I wonder if the cartoonist has ever listened to them.
Before I scrolled all the way down to the caption, I was thinking the dialog was supposed to be from a typical (TV?) operating room.
I’m confused by the design of the speech balloons (or thought balloons). Do they have pointer trails but curtailed to a single bubble? Or are the curved black lines ending in coils also part of the pointers for speech/thought bubbles? Why do they look like that? Artistic ornamentation? Or to make them look like parts of an automobile suspension system?
So…besides the obvious “garage” rhyming with “menage”, I see nothing here. And that’s not funny, or even interesting, unless there’s some rhyming slang involved somehow. Thanks to chipchristian we now know that Garage A Trois is a band. Which still doesn’t help me understand this comic at all–chipchristian, does this mean YOU get it? If so, please explain?
And I agree with Phil Smith on general dissatisfaction with the cartoon. I’ll add another unanswered Q, Why ‘Rafael’? Is that the name of one of the band members? Are there some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle references in here?
Rafael appears to be played by Ron Jeremy.
dvandom: Ouch. I mean, “Who’s Ron Jeremy?” 🙂
So is Rafael supposed to be the artist of that name, the TMNT, Ron Jeremy, or Tom Magliozzi?
PSIII: He’s a famous rapist: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/more-sex-assault-charges-filed-against-adult-film-actor-ron-n1245202
I wonder if there is any significance to the colour and placement of the handkerchief hanging out of speaker’s pocket?
SingaporeBill: Yes, I know who he is. That’s why I said “I mean…” 🙂
PSIII: I had to Bing it, of course. 🙂
So….. If we lived in a universe where there was no band called “Garage a trois” (as we did two minutes before one of the band members said “We should call ourselves….”) then this would be a pun on “menage a trois” and it’d be a rather weird one in it doesn’t really conform to the idea of a threesome (unless you count the car as they third party [and, no, I am not going to make the autoeroticism pun]) or much about anything other than porn movies have mood music.
As we do live in a universe where there is a band called “Garage a trois” the question is does the cartoonist know it. In which case as “Garage a trois” was the original pun this cartoon serves no purpose except to explain a pun that shouldn’t need explaining. I though this was case but as there is no band member called Rafeal and the band doesn’t really do soft jazz much I’m guessing the cartoonist isn’t aware of the band and is trying to simulate a scene from a cheesy porn movie (and I’m still not going to make the autoeroticism pun; I’m not going to make it twice.)
If it’s Garage a trois, why are there two of them? And what sense would it make if there were three of them? What point is being made by “soft jazz music”? Why would it be odd to want to listen to soft jazz music while working? Why is he “Rafael” and why would asking him for assistance, and asking him to play some music (presumably through the computer) be funny? So many questions, and not a single answer.
@ignatzz The car is part of the threesome. (Wow, how old are we that there are people that don’t understand that?)
Soft jazz is the definitive porn music from the Golden Age of porn.
(no nudity)
I’ve never seen “the Golden Age of porn” and “(no nudity)” in the same sentence before!
Not the same sentence. Or line. I refer you to the period, PSIII. Or “full stop” as foreigners sometimes call it. The “no nudity” note refers to the video. I found another that has some very fuzzy possible nudity (so blurry I couldn’t be sure if that was a nipple or my imagination), so I didn’t use that link, though I think the music is slightly more emblematic of porn.
As for the Golden Age of Porn, that would be the ’70s and early ’80s, before home video. I have a friend who covered the industry for Adult Video News (yes, porn has trade publications), and, he explained, that was the era where budgets were bigger, there was better equipment and more talented technicians operating it, and, because the films had to run in theatres and not run afoul of obscenity laws in USA, they had to have “artistic merit,” so there were actual scripts and storylines. Some of those scripts and stories were fairly good, even if everything did stop every few minutes for some sex, he says. But after home video, budgets and production values plummeted and stories got skimpier and skimpier until they basically vanished.
Ok, Bill, “same utterance”. And I was joking!
You know…. I’m beginning to think this is a better joke than I first gave it credit for.
The standard plot of a menage a trois porn movie is some hot latin guy is doing something, cleaning a pool, delivering pizza, fixing a cabinet and the two people (usually two women or in this case a mechanic and a car) are doing something and say “Oh, darn, this is difficult with just us. Say Rafael, Can you help us with this” and then the soft jazz music starts up and …shenanigans ensue.
” So many questions, and not a single answer.”
I think all the questions are answered in a single answer. It’s just…. not a very enjoyable answer and the process to get there was …. not pleasant.
PSIII: Pedants gotta pedant. 🙂 Also, gave me a nice segue into discussing the Golden Age of Porn in a classy way. I buy Playboy for the articles and I watch porn for the stories!
Bill, agreed. I have the same reputation around here! Sometimes I notice it and apologize–but it doesn’t stop me.
Pedants gotta pedant
Not to be pedantic or anything, but I thought that pedants ped…
Just checking in on whether the commenters on GoComics had anything useful to say that we may be overlooking, the answer is No, both for the reprint a couple days ago and for what seems to be the original appearance on 2019-Jan-03.
larK: Pedestrians got to ped. Pedophiles got to pedo. Peddlers got to peddle. Pedagouges got to gouge. And pedants got to pedant.
I agree with woozy, I think it’s actually not a very complicated joke, once you accept it’s about two guys having sex with a car.
WW: The term garage a trois indicates they will be making love with the car. A different term would mean they are having sex with the car. And there is a different term that indicates they are f***ing the car.
chipchristian, you did not mention that Stanton Moore is in that band. Charlie Hunter too! Totally legit!
Birds gotta swim, fish gotta fly, and fascist gotta fash — I’d say it’s pretty clear that you are limited to one syllable in your obligatory behavior, and thus all your exemplars must and gotta merely ped, information density be damned.
Interesting that Wikipedia describes Garage a Trois as “an American jazz quartet”.
” And there is a different term that indicates they are f***ing the car.”
Auto-eroticism?
” And there is a different term that indicates they are f***ing the car.”
Ford-ication?
“And there is a different term that indicates they are f***ing the car.”
Trucking?
Ron Jeremy is a porn actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to my youngest sister’s first husband – though her ex is much younger than Ron Jeremy.