17 Comments

1. 

   That SMBC is a little disconcerting: I know Zach Weinersmith identifies as male, but the comic uses “I” in the caption and “she” in the dialogue. Just an unusual choice.

   I’m not sure I get the first Bliss. Is this supposed to be an origin story? “Death had been working by hand all these years, went shopping for a tool, saw some cheap scythes, and bought one. The end.” I’ve been thinking about this comic too much: My mind keeps turning to the extremely unsafe scythe display, which is not the joke, and also to the fact that this store is in a crazy climate where they sell snow shovels and scythes at the same time. This is also not the joke, but is an odd choice that Bliss made when drawing.

2. 

   I think the idea with the scythe sale is that it’s winter, the hardware store has some unsold scythes from harvest season, and someone at the store has the idea of having a sale. Death happens to be shopping and decides to stock up on scythes. Of course, Death’s scythe is supposed to be supernatural or metaphorical, and scythes in winter would be more likely to be on markdown than a one-week-only sale, but these minor lapses in cartoon logic in no way affect the humor. Contrary to the suggestion above, these are not very good scythes; they lack handles, and the snath (the shaft) ideally should have an ergonomic curve.

   I was also struck by the use of “I” and “she” by a male cartoonist in the SMBC.

3. 

   So regarding Tenafly, this cartoon is really odd, for a couple reasons:
   1) There actually is an international film festival in neighboring Teaneck
   2) Both Teaneck and Tenafly are basically greater Manhattan bedroom communities — many people commute daily, and so it is not as ridiculous as it sounds to have an international film festival just on the other side of the Hudson from NYC
   2a) Bergen county, within which both Tenafly and Teaneck are, has roughly a million people, and no one sticks to any particular town, the whole thing functions as a big extended edge city, you easily traverse three or four towns doing your daily stuff — to say nothing of NYC being right across the GW Bridge (which from Tenafly means you’d have to go through Englewood, Englewood Cliffs, and Fort Lee, and from Teaneck, you’d go through Leonia (*) and Fort Lee — see what I mean?)

   (*) The actress Téa Leoni is from Englewood; exit 70 on 95 and/or 80 (it’s not quite the Turnpike anymore at that point) is labeled “Teaneck Leonia”. I have always wondered how much that sign played into the choice of her professional name (she was born Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni); being from Englewood, the next exit up, there is no way she could not have been aware of the sign…

4. 

   On a tangent from larK’s comment, within the last year I have had a full reversal of my opinion of Téa Leoni’s style and talents as an actor. For some reason — I’m unclear what it might have been based on — I had thought of her as playing mostly rather tawdry roles, and relying more on sex appeal than good command of tone and smartness. But then I started watching the series “Madame Secretary” (now on Netflix, I don’t know if originally broadcast), and see her as really quite accomplished, and perfectly suited for this vehicle, a semi-serious story of politics, foreign policy, and family relationships. (“West Wing Lite” if you will.)

5. 

   Death in the hardware store is nothing more than joke about how hard it is to find an “expert” or someone to help you in the huge hardware stores. Isn’t it funny how death is shopping just like the rest of us and has a question about a product but the salespeople are avoiding him…

6. 

   TedD: Good point! My dad used to say that Home Depot had a perfect record of never sending him to the correct aisle.

   And some comedian (possibly Graham Chittenden) notes that THD’s slogan is, “You can do it. We can help.” and asks, “Should they be allowed to lie twice in the span of seven words?”

7. 

   It’s interesting that on the Home Depot website they will tell you exactly where the item is, e.g.
   “9 in stock Aisle 7, Bay EC1”,
   but if you actually are in the store, many (not all) of the employees will tend to avoid you and avoid looking it up for you.

   In my local Ace Hardware they will not only lead you right to the item, they will often suggest other items that might work better to solve your problem.

8. 

   There’s also the question of what the reaper came in to buy. Air freshener? Cleaning products? Spray paint?

   Imagining a Charles Addams take: The reaper casually walking out of a garden supply shop with scythe wrapped in plain paper, the employees anxiously watching him leave.

   Or Peter Arno: Anxious golf foursome look at reaper, who has scythe in his golf bag. One of the golfers says, “Sure. Go ahead and play through.”

   Or Gary Larson: An IRS auditor asks the reaper if he uses his scythe solely for work. The below-panel caption is “Death Takes a Deduction”.

   Or Wizard of Id: The wizard examines a scythe at the reaper’s yard sale. Reaper says, “Only used that one on the crabgrass. Honest.”

   Or Mr. Boffo: Reaper, standing next to a huge ride-on mower, asks store clerk Boffo if this is the biggest they’ve got. Title: “A Bad Sign”.

   Or Pardon My Planet: Reaper is returning a broken scythe to a medieval storekeeper, who says “Read the warranty. It’s not designed for plagues.”

   Or Playboy: Sexy girl in bed is talking on phone. Reaper’s robe and scythe are on the floor, bathroom door is open. “I just had a near-death experience …”

9. 

   Those are quite good, particularly the Addams and Arno ones. There used to be a good market for writing cartoons, which writers would sell to cartoonists. In the current state of the cartoon market, though, I expect that is nonviable.

   The cartoon seems to show Death looking for an insecticide, which I suppose would be more efficient than a tiny scythe for millions of insects.

10. 

    P.D.Q. Bach’s Christmas song “O Little Town of Hackensack” mentions Tenafly. There is a long tradition of using New Jersey town names for amusement. First, they are vaguely familiar for anyone in the greater New York City area, and second, they really do have funny names like Teaneck, Ho-Ho-Kus, Piscataway, Elizabeth and Wyckoff.

    You have probably heard Tom Lehrer’s song “Pollution”: “The breakfast garbage you throw into the bay / They drink at lunch in San Jose.” Lehrer said that he often localized the town names to where he was performing. “The breakfast garbage you throw out with joy / They drink at lunch in Perth Amboy.”

11. 

    She buys a scale at the sale, and seeing the scythes on sale, she sighs at the thought of her own thighs, wondering if a scythe applied to her thighs would reduce their size.

12. 

    It’s interesting that on the Home Depot website they will tell you exactly where the item is, e.g.
    “9 in stock Aisle 7, Bay EC1”

    I would have the problems with that sometimes. It would say things like “RT” or “BW” for the location. When I inquired with employees, I found out that the former is “race track” meaning the area at the front of the store that has sale items, and the latter “back wall” meaning the wall farthest from the entrance where some items like the wainscoting boards I wanted were kept.

13. 

    Most of the towns in Bergen county can be created by combining words from the following list: “ridge, park, wood, field” — Ridgefield, Ridgefield Park, Park Ridge, Wood Ridge, Ridgewood are all actual towns. Then there’s Bergenfield, and West Wood, and Woodcliff Lake, and Elmwood Park. And the silly names Mark mentions (Piscataway and Elizabeth aren’t in Bergen County, though…)
    Bergen County has the so called Blue Laws (non-essential businesses must close on Sunday), which manages to continually survive First Amendment scrutiny by claiming the reason for the law is totally secular: traffic is so bad due to all the shopping that residents need one day a week of relief. This really does actually apply to Paramus, which has three of the five major malls, and has most of Route 17 going through it, which is a major artery for strip malls. Back when book stores were more of a vital concern, they had two Barnes and Nobles, one north bound, and one south bound, because it’s such a pain to exit and turn around on Rt. 17…
    Despite the Blue Laws, business seem to flock to Paramus — there’s an IKEA, despite the much longer established one 20 minutes away in Elizabeth. When Amazon bought Whole Foods, NPR broadcast their report about it from the Whole Foods in Paramus (which was weird, being as I was in Washington state when I was listening to that report). Saturdays on Rt. 17 are brutal, as is going to any of the malls, so Sundays are actually a welcome relief (though you wonder if you didn’t have to cram all your shopping into Saturday if it wouldn’t even out some…).
    Teaneck, the one that actually has the international film festival, has a double whammy because a lot of the businesses are Jewish, so they are closed on Saturdays, and then must also close on Sundays. (Interestingly, Teaneck had a Muslim mayor for most of the 2010s, one of the few places in the US to have such.)

14. 

    I was hoping Pearls Before Swine was on bensondonald’s list. I wonder what convoluted pun he could have come up with.

15. 

    When I was first reading the “scythe” joke, I too thought the “Hello” was trying to get assistance, but I hadn’t scanned over far enough to see the sale display. So I’m certain it’s “Hello now, look at that!”

16. 

    Grawlix:
    The reaper shows up at the diner counter with bandaged hand.
    Pig: “Have an accident?”
    Reaper: “Accident hell! It was revenge of the scythe!”
    Rat, holding scythe, to cartoonist: “No new hope for you.”

17. 

    The ridges and parks and woods and fields makes me think of A Prairie Home Companion, where one advertiser had stores in all the Dales: Clydesdale, Teasdale, Beerandale, etc.