But do we care about it?
The logic clicks for me
A group that my project was coordinating with had moved offices, and the first time I visited there on business the admin assistant was showing me around, and pointed out the pretty nice view thru the ground-level glass doors onto the large grassy area between their building and the complex of the Court Theatre and Smart Museum. “This is our great view!” she said. When I agreed that it was, well, quite okay, she told me to walk by the nearest area of lawn on my way out. I did, and then saw the large air grate embedded in the lawn right outside that office, and in fact blowing exhaust at the moment. So I had to admit, they had a grate view! [==mitch]
Comics I Don't Understand 
I think Atkinson missed two “grate” possibilities for the Wrong Hands comic, but perhaps he figured that an explicit “trans” gag for the playing card would be too risky in the current American political climate; and a marijuana reference in the last panel might have been considered a concrete accusation, seeing as that he has pretty clearly identified the precise monarch with those aural appendages.
The Illinois Storytelling Festival in Spring Grove used to have a Liar’s Contest.
Twice I was one of the winners … or was I?
Alfred E. Neuman was said to resemble that monarch as a youth, on the strength of those prominent ears.
(However, the Wikipedia entry for Alfred E. Neuman traces a long history of comic and advertising characters that Mad’s mascot likely was derived from [some including a form of the “What, me worry?” motto] so the relation to Prince Charles would not be simply one of being-based-on.)
Don’t quite get the cat at the top, unless it’s just supposed to be “cat/cut on the dotted line”?
I guess it’s more “cute” than really “LOL”. Just that the blue kitten is feeling no fear. And considering that it’s from Frog Applause, we’re lucky it’s not cynical or obfuscatted…
I read somewhere that Mad once said Prince Charles’ ears looked like Alfred’s, and they received a letter on royal stationary saying “They do not!”
Nice to know that the King of England read Mad Magazine.
But I still don’t like him.
What is wrong with Mr. Degree in Lying’s head? It looks as if someone smashed a half-cantaloupe on him.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia also says ‘In November 1954, Neuman made his Mad debut on the front cover of Ballantine’s The Mad Reader’, when Chuck was six years old. Even without those predecessors I doubt that the Mad folk would have been paying attention to his ears.
I thought the funniest thing here today was the “grate view” story.
Re: interview. I think the delineation of the part in the hair is just a bit heavy.
I was more confused initially by the jewelry hanging from the interviewer’s nose.
Now that you have pointed it out, I can’t any longer see those little drawing-augmentations except as physical objects — a nose-decoration and collar-projection or something!
I think those are upholstery buttons.
Yes they are. But they’re so prominent that it took me a couple of beats to classify them. The hair/skull zipper was only the second-most distracting part (for me).
As to the Bliss (I think that is the signature) – I have trouble falling asleep at night (okay, technically it is the wee hours of the morning as we go up to bed around 3 am – right now 1:31 am) and Robert generally drops off to sleep right away.
So if there were any noises I would be the one who would hear them as he would be sawing logs and I would go downstairs to explore what is going on. (If there was anything going on when I told him about the next day, he would be upset I did not wake him.) County or township is doing work o the sewers across the street in the side street – which is in a different community – for 2 weeks so far and they seem to start working somewhere around 6 or 7 am and it wakes me up – he sleeps through it. But thanks to the work waking me up I now know that some of the few children near our home go to school by bus, some by car and there is dog which needs to be walked early every morning.
Just as a note – they still have not finished the darn work across the street which wakes me up early. Hopefully they will finish soon as it looks like the street has been readied to be paved. (I am so crazy that I can figure out what they are doing by the sound I hear when it wakes me up.)