I sincerely hope that this strip was meant as a satiric skewering of all the Taylor Swift hoopla, and not as an even semi-serious attempt to get on the bandwagon with everyone else.
P.S. When I first read the strip, I thought Liniers was in the market for the latest and greatest (overpriced) mobile phone, but when I zoomed in on the fourth panel, I discovered that the last word was “plane”. (I really like hand lettering, but now I wonder who does it for the translated version of the strip.)
I didn’t realize how far back Eyebeam goes! But while puzzling over this comic in its November 2023 recycle appearance, it seemed that finding the date of original publication might help. In 1988 simultaneous streaming release was not yet a standard practice ; heck, they didn’t have streaming at all. Distribution for private home viewing was, as shown, mostly tape rentals ; and yes, tape, as DVDs weren’t around until the mid 90s!
And is that what the joke is? That somehow Joe’s Rentals has this title as tape even though it’s just now opening at the theater? Or is it funny-surprising that all these people prefer to see it at the theater rather than in the comforts of home? Or even — but now we’re working too hard — or even that the ice cream shop is a clue that they’re having hot weather, and that gives an answer to “why is everybody going to the movie theater?” : that they are seeking air conditioning?
From Boise Ed.
Yep, that’s what I thought she meant too! Did anyone here not think that first?
Such a nice use of expressive objects.
BTW, if you are looking for a great read, try The Wager. There’s also a long excerpt in The New Yorker a few months back.
This is a CIDU-Oy — is the joke merely in the polysemy of places? Or is there something special about the named cities, like if they all have Marathons and that’s how somebody is likely to break a leg?? Or nothing more? I don’t understand!
In case you would like either an introduction or a refresher on Searle’s Chinese Room argument, that link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy may be of interest.
That’s what this cartoon on Daily Nous recently seems to be about:
Okay, is it funny, to general audience? Is it funny, to an expert? Is it a good response to the Chinese Room Argument? Is trying to ridicule Searle what finished off Derrida?
P.S. It’s natural for comics fans to try illuminating philosophical point by consulting Existential Comics. But the only archive entry I can find there for Searle does not touch on the Chinese Room Argument at all.
Bill drafted this comic back in 2019; it seemed appropriate to post it on the first day of Hanukkah.
P.S. On various occasions Robin has used different spellings (such as “Hanukah“), whereas Bill was always careful to spell it “Chanukah” (as seen in the tags). Unfortunately, Bill’s memorable “(C)Han(n)uk(k)a(h)” spelling bracket was destroyed by Comicgeddon, but there was a nice bonus panel on the subject in a Menorah post in 2018.
The GoComics comments for this 21 November Strange Brew seem to not hit the target until they start asking if it’s Fortran or what programming language it’s in, or what the backslashes are for. Well, it’s not Fortran! But I am ready to accept remarks from one commenter (with a posting name that makes me think of one regular CIDU commenter!) explaining that This is in TeX or LaTeX or MathTeX. They use backslash all the time, for various things including, say , names for symbols. So the “\\in” you see in the top line produces an “element of” symbol…
Whether we can then go on to say that the represented math might be defining “line segment” or something like that, I can’t venture. We can’t go further, it looks like we’ve reached, erm, reached the terminus …
Thanks to Usual John for sending this in.
John points out “Some commenters on GoComics suggested that this strip refers to Charles de Gaulle’s practice, at this time, of exchanging U.S. dollar reserves for gold. While the timing works for this 1966 strip, I don’t see how it leads to a joke.”
My question back then was, always if you can buy bouillon cubes at the supermarket in chicken or beef, why not gold?
There is an excellent pun behind this, which requires just a bit of Disney to recognize. But then there is the sub-question of whether Liniers (the Macanudo creator) is coming up with it spontaneously on their own, or is making an allusion to 1960s U.S. avant-garde theater where a famous campus-set domestic melodrama of psychological cruelty used the pun as its title — as would be familiar to theater and movie fans of a certain age [geecoughzers!].
(BTW, de paso, here for completeness is the version in Spanish, which does not attempt to re-create the pun. Leaving the question, is there then any joke left at all?)
Comics I Don't Understand 