Thanks to Mark H.:
These were separated by five days (12/26 and 1/1), but the intervening strips didn’t seem to help.
Mitch suggested “I think there is supposed to be a confusion-of-twins plot going on” but I’m still lost. And Mike mooted “I think newspaper editors have just decided to give 9CL a permanent pass”, which might well be true, but surely Brooke had something in mind!?
Comics I Don't Understand 
I’m not 100% sure about everything, but I’m fairly certain “thrusters” is a double-entendre.
I think Amos is remarking on how their daughters appear to each be in love.
In the first strip, I’m not sure where the confusion lies. It seems pretty straightforward.
There’s bold type in “My name is Polly”. Does that suggest a contrast? “And my partnering is poly” ?
@Danny Boy: I don’t see anything different about the lettering of the word “name” compared to the rest of the sentence. In fact, I don’t see anything in boldface in either of these strips.
I think this is a case of what is confusing to one reader is obvious to another. In the first comic, the blond guy forgot his name because he’s smitten with Polly. In the second, Amos is concerned about his daughter’s going all googly-eyed for the young man. And yes, “thrusters” is meant to be double-entendre.
Is 9CL still carried by any newspaper anywhere? There were two papers that carried it but they both dropped it years ago. Can anybody name a paper that still carries it? None of the four papers in the “all bout” blurb on GoComics carries it.
A hint for those confusing the twins: Lolly, when facing the viewer, has hair parted on the left. Not her left, yours. Or “stage left” if you’ve ever been on one. So I remember “Lolly-Left.” Polly stole a smooch from Lolly’s fiance (nerdy musical guy with glasses, let’s not talk about daddy issues) but that was before Polly found muscle boy.
Isn’t “stage left” from the perspective of the performer? So if she is parting it on the audience’s left side, (so on the same side as her right hand), isn’t that stage right?
Stage Left is left from the point of view of the performers, which makes sense as they are the ones who have to remember their left hand from right without then having to reverse them. Downstage is towards the audience and upstage is away, as apparently stages are, or used to be, raked slightly to improve sightlines.
https://www.stageplotguru.com/music-industry-blog-planet-do-you-know-your-stage-positions
The Left/Right issue crops up in moviemaking. A cinematographer looking through the camera viewfinder might say to an actor “move to the left a bit” and the actor moves to her left and the cinematographer says “no, the other left”.
Yes indeed. And if you want another pair of terms, there are “house left” and “house right” to express directions from the audience point of view.
Meanwhile, back in Centerville,
“Upstage” confused me as a term on the rare occasion I had cause to think of it – surely that should mean going to the front of the stage and in front of the other actors (centre stage or front and centre, in fact). But using the directional map and the stage slope, presumably it would actually mean going to the back of the stage and being less visible to the audience.
So I assume “upstage” is one word used for two different things. Though I haven’t bothered to investigate, so I am commenting from ignorance.
As a transitive verb, to upstage another actor is to “force” them to go upstage — while you remain downstage and more prominent to the audience.
I remember a story about an actress (but I forgot who it is) who said to another “I can upstage you without even being on stage!” And she did.
She put double-sided tape on the bottom of her prop cocktail glass. As she exited, leaving the other actress to her soliloquy, she put the glass right on the edge of the table. Although it was stuck on, it appeared to be precariously balanced and about to fall off at any minute. The audience paid no attention to the soliloquy as they watched the glass, waiting for it to fall.
I understood that “upstaging” someone is going toward upstage of them while conversing, forcing them to gradually turn their back to the audience.
The reason I submitted the first one is because the last frame’s dialogue is either because she’s noticing his muscles or because she’s noticed his “gallant reflex”. The pause would seem to indicate the latter…
Or maybe because he’s a virgin, and therefore a blank slate.
If “stage left” were the same as “left,” nobody would have invented the term “stage left.” And Snagglepuss used to say “Exit, stage left” and zoom off to his right, and if you can’t trust a cartoon puma, who CAN you trust? ;) I’ve never heard of “house right” or left, may be a recent invention of modern directors. I don’t think it’s any less confusing. “Do you mean stage left or house left?”
As for “upstage”, I think the original term came from scene stealers doing distracting things behind the main actors, who were up front and almost always facing the audience, thus unable to detect the shenanigans. (BTW, many stages have a serious downhill slant towards the audience, hence “upstage” and “downstage.) It’s come to mean any act sucking attention away from the person who officially has the floor.
Thanks, padraig, ever since this thread started I’ve been trying to kick-start my youthful animation memories and come up with the name Snagglepuss (as an obviously relevant authority)!
The Wikipedia entry for him says “Snagglepuss has three signature catchphrases” and counts the “Exit, stage left!” as one. But I may be mixing him up with another, as they don’t list what I thought I remembered as his, a distinct variant pronunciation (or really more of a substitution word) for “connoisseur”.
Mitch4: You are thinking of this commercial for Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies in which he teaches you the French word Gourmet. “I know it looks like gor-mett, but it’s gor-may. French.” At the end he promises next time to teach you the word connoisseur — “I know it looks like con-nize-ier but it’s connoisseur, trust me.” https://youtu.be/xqwhXvChT4Y?si=M83bWhUnIyivxKPL&t=95
Mitch4, Snagglepuss’s main catchphrase (as you probably know from the article) was “Heavens to Murgartroyd!” Which I use around younger folks on every opportunity.
Ha ha! Yes, the con-nize-ier bit is exactly it. Surely it must have been more than this one time?
The strip seems to have abandoned actual stories in favor of everybody having sex-heavy relationships uninterrupted by anything other than the very occasional punchline. Right now they’ve brought back Seth, Edda’s gay roommate / ballet partner / lust object, who long ago married a woman and remains passionately involved with her while still identifying as gay. There could be a story here, comic or dramatic, but I doubt we’re going to get one.
Meanwhile, Pibgorn appears to have simply stopped mid-act — so to speak — having started a story involving dragons, then declaring that a mistake and starting over with a medieval maiden who falls passionately in love with a lad, then forgets him completely after meeting a young lapsed monk — incidentally turning into a fairy at some point. Not sure if this is an origin for Pibgorn herself or not.
UComics used to carry vintage Chickweed Lane strips, in which Catholic school students Edda and Amos were dealing with sexual feelings via strange and affected dialogue. That ended, perhaps not coincidentally, when the current strips did a run of flashbacks.
How old are Edda and Amos now? They have full grown kids? Is Edda’s mom and grandma still around? I haven’t read in years but didn’t know they aged the characters.
Amos and Edda, along with several other characters, seem not to have aged beyond where they were when the twins were born. Her mother now has gray hair and is retired from professoring. I don’t think Gram has been shown since whatever time warp they hit.
Polly and Lolly were born in March 2020 in our timeline. However, Brooke McEldowney took his characters through several flash-forwards and flashbacks along the way, and apparently he has decided to age the twins up to their late teens and stick with that as their primary age.
Mitch4: “Surely it must have been more than this one time?”
It was a commercial, so they showed it again and again and again and again …
I don’t follow this comic. I may be totally wrong with this interpretation.
The second strip:
Panel 1 – Amos and Edda still feel very young. They are thinking of themselves as being about 15, or even younger.
Panel 2 – they pass their nearly grown-up twins.
Panel 3 Amos suddenly realizing that he isn’t so young anymore. (Although the thrusters still work)