This Sheldon was sent in by Andréa, who asks “Remember the [long ago] discussion of these?”. Maybe not in specifics, but the CIDU crew should be able to make short work of a simple issue like the role of uniqueness and originality in the arts!
A Far Side on the theme of “Could it get any worse?”:
From Le Vieux Lapin, this is probably not an overall-CIDU: notice the classic joke structure, with setup in panel 3 (along with 5) and the payoff in the final one. But along the way there are several bits which can stand in need of explication, for different readers.
For instance, I have never run into pay-as-you-go gas meters in real life (for tenants to get heat or hot water), but sort of know about them from vintage British movies and some novels. (Though it says a quarter and not a shilling so this may be American.) Maybe somebody understands them better — is electricity paid for this way anywhere? And the Patreon structure of “levels” — is this known widely outside of Patreon users? And does the girl’s litany of questions come from anywhere else in this wording?
Help! Has there been a prominent Franken in the news? Not Al? And what does that have to do with bad math?
Okay I tried a little searching, but Franken and Math, while it does turn up a story with Al Franken, it was from 2012. https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/02/gIQAI63kqS_blog.html
It’s certainly true that in most proscenium-style auditoriums, the first few rows are not the most coveted, for a variety of reasons but mostly related to not being able to see up and over the front of the stage, hence not really getting the stage layout or being able to see the actors when they are upstage (or the different instruments, in a musical context). See for example the Chicago Symphony Center seating charts below, with pricing strata color-coded.
But in this particular instance, is there more going on? Are the other attendees holding their program booklets, or are those some kind of splash shields? Does the “Extreme” name and the debris in front of the curtain indicate that there has been stuff flying around? So, the front row would be the most vulnerable of all?
From Boise Ed and Andréa.
So this one is the Yeti? And it lives in a Crane Game booth? And this kid is the first one to notice it there? And it knows about iPads, but mostly as distractions for kids?
Side detail – while Elephant has a laptop like everybody else, Clown has a horn.
Jan’s dating adventure continues. This seems to use a pun on an unspoken characterization.
And it is rather cute to think about how the cymbals can be incorporated into a password. Probably no more annoying than when the form has no way of communicating the legal symbols it will accept to your secure-random-password generator.
From Le Vieux Lapin, who desisted from his not-understanding once he learned how the game is played! However, there does remain a non-obvious aspect, which your editors did not see for quite a while, and which is mainly the joke!
Comics I Don't Understand 