From Chemgal, who was way more scrupulous about synchronicity dating than we would ever demand, asking “Does it count when one is a ‘classics’ strip?”
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Comics I Don't Understand 
Wow, Daryl’s prediction is maddeningly mundane.
Yes, Hammie! There are options B, C, and many more. You don’t have to be a wage slave family man.
It’s weird how Daryl’s glasses stop being opaque when he closes his eyes.
Well, “probably” implies that there are other options.
Susan T-O, great observation. Also odd that he closes his eyes when he talks.
Both Powers and Mark M have valid points-of-view. The dad is being realistic, and that might be the right thing Hammie needs at this point in his life. But there is much to be said for being aspirational, and passing that attitude along to your kids.
Isn’t “a steady job” and “a family of your own” some sort of an aspiration for an impossible vanished past? 40 years 9-5, nice family house and 2.4 children. I gather many younger people 1) feel it unlikely they will have a steady job (or a house) and 2) that they will have a family, either for the reasons in point 1 but also in consideration of future environmental impact and climate change and general prospective turmoil.
I am ahead of the game… I did have a steady job in the 80s and 90s, and a house with a girlfriend… but now no steady job, never had kids and no house of my own. At least I don’t have to worry about how my kids will cope in the later 21stC, but then I also have t wonder who might be caring for me in my dotage (as I am, after a fashion, for my mother, 95 next week).
On the other hand, people in the past often had a variety of jobs, not one steady one… my uncle was a Fleet Air Arm pilot (though WW2 ended before he got into any combat), a farmer for ten years, an airline pilot, and finally (after being grounded with a heart issue) a potter during his 54 years. He did manage to have 4 kids aged over 23 by the time he died, though.
Best wishes to your mother on her 95th!!
Thanks!
Nowadays kids can aspire to be social media influencers. No hard work there…
Social media influencing can be hard in its own way.
But I mean even if Hammie wants a family — not a given — what if he wants to be a homemaker? I just feel like Daryl is being so limiting. Yeah, he said “probably” but given the punchline (is there an Option B?) it sounds like Hammie took it the same way I did.
Social media influencing can be hard in its own way.I’ve been enjoying the second season of a TV streaming comedy called “The Other Two”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Two_(TV_series). I like how it mixes satiric takedown of the whole influencer culture with sympathetic engagement with young people who are left on the fringes of success in aspiration to careers in serious acting etc, and now find themselves embarrassingly striving to get into selfies with any given day’s social media stars.
I have a niece in early 30s and her brother in his late 20s (brother and sister).
Niece works as substitute teacher and a tutor. She also started and runs a business for matching tutors and students who need them. (Her tutor business soared during the pandemic.) She recently started teaching at one of the lesser colleges in the area.
Her brother wants to be a musician. But he works for an advertising company and seems to be doing very well. He also belongs to several bands -including one which plays big band music (something my dad, his grandfather after whom he is named loved) and another which plays Ska. He seems to have a lot of vacation time and uses sames when travels with the various bands.
What are both missing? Neither seems to date much or even be in groups of male/female groups.
@Mitch: taking your advice for TV shows has been working out well for me, so we started watching The Other Two (season 1), and I have to say, three episodes in, I’m quite disappointed. Very obviously Schitt’s Creek derivative, even though with Schitt’s Creek, where after the first episode I was ready to give up on the vain, self-centered characters, I’m glad I stuck with it, they clearly had a plan, for which showing the characters in the worst light possible in the first episode was necessary (and thankfully they scaled back the annoyingness of Chris Elliot — he’s very good at it, but one can only take so much…) But like I said, three episodes in to this, and I just am disliking the characters more and more. (It doesn’t help that we watched that aftershow they have where the creators talk with the actors about the episode you just saw, and make you stupider and diminish the episode, so that you lose respect for anything you might have thought was clever, after their dissection of it…) You did specifically say you are enjoying season two, so does it get noticeably better? Is there light at the end of the tunnel?
larK, thanks for sharing your response to those TV suggestions. My own response for these two was roughly the converse of yours: I stuck with Schitt’s Creek for a while even though I wasn’t feeling welcome there, because I had seen reviews and fan comments acknowledging it can be tough to get into but suggesting it’s worth it after getting past some barrier. But after a short while I just didn’t feel interested in resuming.
I might add that I only very rarely do the “bingeing” style of watching. Usually I watch just one at a time, or maybe two, episodes of a show I’m following. Then on another day it’s a fresh start on “what should I watch right now?” and something that I’m not really hot for will usually not get selected. So it isn’t often “Pah!, I’m not going to bother with this one any more!”; it’s just that it doesn’t get selected again. For a while; or maybe ever.
Parallel to the problems you mention with Chris Elliott in Schitt’s Creek, I got rather turned off by Ken Marino’s character (or maybe just his acting style) in The Other Two. And for that matter I thought there was just enough of Molly Shannon as Pat, the mom — I wouldn’t have wanted more. But the title brother and sister both struck me as interesting characters, a bit shallow in their daily life plans but not evil (as many in similar walks of life can be), and at times admirable for their aspiration (the brother really does want to succeed as a serious actor).
But the 2nd season I don’t think works really well. The production was odd — two episodes were shot before a pandemic-induced hiatus — and it shows. The celebrity-religion episode lost my allegiance — although it did provide plot points to support the idea that the central brother and sister have to have some decency even where others are giving up.