17 Comments

1. 

   Is this just a quibble? I don’t see it as quite the same thing, really.

   I would say the joke is in the girl’s discovery of the double meanng of a description using an indefinite article. The promised performance of the app is to make your picture look like A GENERIC movie star, I.e. attractive, but not resembling anyone you could name ; but Ruthie takes it to mean SOME SPECIFIC movie star (and not necessarily one you would consider attractive),

   Probably indeterminate which sense the old man takes it.

2. 

   @Dana [1] Not just a quibble, your explanation of what’s supposed to be funny is indeed a little different from what the post calls "which I assume is the intended gag" . Their explanation ("she just looks generically old and ugly (both with and without the app ") ) benefits from the doubled meaning, but doesn’t really recognize it as something in play, instead just riding on it by choosing a focus on the first meaning. IOW they think the joke is concluded in panel 3 and the coda in panel 4 is mostly throwaway. But on your reading, panel 4 while it does include some throwaway (the old guy trying to be sweetly reassuring to the old woman that she is not actually all that much of a hag) also has the actual punch line, Ruthie’s landing on the second, specific-ID, meaning.

3. 

   BTW, WTF is up with this new MOTN schedule? I want my breakfast CIDU back! :-)

4. 

   (Or, to capitalise on the previous thread, I could ask, Who is the MFA that came up with this MOTN schedule?)

5. 

   “One man’s Mede is another man’s Persian.” Or, well, as adapted to apply here, one person’s coda throwaway is another person’s delayed final punch line.

6. 

   Perhaps I’m being too literal, but I think see looks like a movie star. Specifically, Jack Nicholson as The Joker.

7. 

   I thought the same thing as Rob W.

8. 

   Struck me as Jack Nicholson’s Joker immediately as well. As confirmation, one of the first results in an image search is a publicity photo Detorie likely used as a reference.

9. 

   I think Rob and chasm might have it… the hat in her altered photo matches Nicholson’s iconic chapeau and pose from publicity stills for the 1989 Batman film. I didn’t quite make the connection on my own, but now I can’t unsee it.

10. 

    It’s really great to have that identification!

    So now my gloss would be: The joke is in little girl Ruthie’s discovery of the double meaning of the indefinite article. The old woman, and probably the app’s promoters, suggest it will make you look like you could be a movie star, i.e. still you but very attractive. Ruthie understands it to mean you will look like somebody-else, who will turn out to be a specific selected movie star for you, as in this case it re-does the old woman as Jack Nicholson.

    It’s not quite spelled out for the old man, but my take is that he gets the idea and sees the resemblance to Nicholson, but expresses it non-committally so he could seem to be agreeing with the old woman that her picture has been transformed into a glamorized version of herself.

    In any case, this is distinct from the claim that “the intended gag” is that “she just looks generically old and ugly” .. “both with and without the [app]” .

11. 

    Thanks for the suggestion of Jack Nicholson as the Joker. That has to be it, see the photo at

    https://www.gettyimages.no/detail/news-photo/american-actor-jack-nicholson-on-the-set-of-batman-directed-news-photo/607395802

    Sorry about the failure to include the full URL. I’m usually careful to do that, but apparently I dropped the ball this time.

12. 

    Until I checked the date (2018) I was going to say Pennywise the clown killer from IT. Perhaps the Jack Nicholson is the likeliest candidate, even being nearly 30 years (!) after the release of the movie.

13. 

    “BTW, WTF is up with this new MOTN schedule? I want my breakfast CIDU back! :-)” (Danny Boy)

    Not quite understanding this. When I check the post, Kilby set this up to show up at 2am Chicago time, which is pretty typical, at least of my postings over the years. What time zone are you in? What changes are you seeing?

14. 

    ZB, now that you point that out, I guess this may have been the first time recently that I have been up and browsing in the MOTN (likely a side-effect of travelling), and stumbled on a fresh CIDU post.

    Sorry about that mis-attribution!

    I guess I can still have a breakfast CIDU treat by just waiting.

15. 

    It looks to me like Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter movies. She always wears pink like that.

16. 

    In the rerun strips on GoComics, a frequent comment when Avis appears is to liken her to The Joker. Occasionally she is shown without her makeup and does not look that way.

17. 

    
    deety (5): 👏👏 for the great line!