I thought this was a reference to Men Without Hats’ song, “Safety Dance”, but there’s no reference to a forest in that song’s lyrics. https://genius.com/Men-without-hats-the-safety-dance-lyrics
Be warned: that song is a bit of an earworm:
So, what cultural reference am I missing here?
Comics I Don't Understand 
“A Forest” is a Cure song. So you get two references to ’80s songs. Other than that, I’m not sure.
I think the joke here is that the two classic green witches are gossiping about the third woman, who is supposed to be a modern witch. With the joke being that instead of doing the stereotypical dancing rituals in the forest, the modern ones merely doing them to the song “a forest”. This would be a “safety dance” because there’s no roots and other forest things to trip over.
If that’s the case, it is an incredibly contrived joke, but it is the only thing that makes sense to me.
Gnomon and Darren are almost certainly correct, i.e., it’s a reference to the song by The Cure. It may just be a super-simple (and not very funny) joke, but . . .
I’m confused by the first box. I looked up the author and expected to find out that she has a running strip called “Safety Dance,” but off she does, her web page doesn’t mention it.
That leads me to believe that the phrase “safety dance” is part of the joke, which laces me back at square one.
Is there a link to the source I didn’t see?
Gnomon and Darren are almost certainly correct, i.e., it’s a reference to the song by The Cure. It may just be a super-simple (and not very funny) joke, but . . .
I’m confused by the first box. I looked up the author and expected to find out that she has a running strip called “Safety Dance,” but off she does, her web page doesn’t mention it.
That leads me to believe that the phrase “safety dance” is part of the joke, which laces me back at square one.
Is there a link to the source I didn’t see?
Gnomon and Darren are almost certainly correct, i.e., it’s a reference to the song by The Cure. It may just be a super-simple (and not very funny) joke, but . . .
I’m confused by the first box. I looked up the author and expected to find out that she has a running strip called “Safety Dance,” but if she does, her web page doesn’t mention it.
That leads me to believe that the phrase “safety dance” is part of the joke, which laces me back at square one.
Is there a link to the source I didn’t see?
I’m copying here a “tech support” comment I just now made in reply to Meryl in the Sunday thread, but may actually be more relevant to situations like CloobBounty’s that end up with multiple copies of a comment. (As I write, there are three instances of the same comment — it may get neatened up by the time some of you are reading!)
Meryl — and anyone — another oddity of the system is sometimes a comment will actually publish, yet the user’s view will not refresh to the page showing the success, and then may treat it as abandoned. This happens to me when using the regular web interface, and when not already signed in, so that a sign-in step was needed.
General advice, then, could include (1) before final click to submit comment, use your capture tools to selects your typing and then to copy to clipboard (so that if it fails, a retry can be done using paste and not requiring rewriting from scratch), and (2) if after submitting, the browser does not load and show you the original thread with your comment added at the end, it may be there anyway. Instead of using browser Back arrow, do a fresh navigation to cidu.info and then to the thread in question,and see if your comment is there after all.
Not sure if the bug is local or backend, but just like this morning, I’m not logged into my WordPress as I type this.
I wonder if, as a result, this post will also be in triplicate.
Hmmm . . . I guess not.
The lyrics of the safety dance are basically we can dance how and where we want to. It was written as a protest against club bouncers ejecting people for doing a particular dance.
The third woman is not a witch but a goth who dances to a song by the cure which was a goth-rock band.
So like the lyrics in the safety dance, she going to dance where she likes to the eay she wants to. Wether the witches approve or not.
Since A Forest and Safety Dance came out in 1980 and 1982 respectively, surely we’re in geezer territory here. I was a child when these songs were released, and I’m old. Or are they classics that everyone knows? I wouldn’t have thought so, but then again, I have no idea what counts as classic anymore. I’m old.
Safety Dance was in constant rotation at work for a long while prior to the Holiday Season. Now it’s mostly Disco. I have no idea how our music provider comes up with their screwy playlists.
After you watch the above “Safety Dance” music video, you might enjoy the following video. You’ll see the same thing, but the lyrics have been modified to match what you see, for a more literal — and amusing — experience:
Stan (10): Nah, you’re not old. Some of us were adults when those came out…!
So yes, the answers were obvious to me. But that era was also the peak of my music-listening period, with MuchMusic (Canadian MTV-like channel) and the like. And The New Music on CITY-TV out of Toronto.
I had two TVs: a 26″ color and a 20″ B&W. The B&W sat on top of the color, and was used only on Saturday nights if the hockey game went long and overlapped with The New Music: then we’d turn the game on in B&W, muted, and watch The New Music in glorious lo-definition. Ah to be young again!
J-L (12): That’s great! Thanks for posting. The sad/funny part is that it makes no less sense than most of the videos of that period.
Speaking of MuchMusic as I was: Anyone else remember video for The Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited” (1982)? At one point of the Sisters stands up in a tub and gasp there’s a momentary view of pubic hair. This was a huge deal, since it was appearing on regular TV, as well as MuchMusic. MM was on a six-hour cycle: they’d show the same stuff four times, six hours apart, then you’d get new stuff the next day. And of course no DVRs, or even VCRs to speak of. We carefully set an alarm and waited for it to come around again just so we could be sure we hadn’t imagined it–we hadn’t.
Such a different time…
J-L, that is a very funny video!
Reminds me at some points of the bad-lip-reading techniques, done for contemporary politics and public figures. Here she is for the 2025 inauguration.
One of the most popular “literal videos” is the parody of Total Eclipse of the Heart.