I don’t think it’s a reference to music, unless you mean the drumsticks. I think he ate literal bones after leaving the Guitar Center, which then showed up on a cartoon x-ray. Part of the joke is that cartoons commonly have goofy or impossible bones when shown in an x-ray (or struck by lightning).
I have to disagree, in part, with both previous comments. As I see it, in the middle panel we understand “drumsticks” as “chicken legs”, which, if he ate the bones and not just the meat (suggested by “whole”), would explain why bones appeared on his X-ray. But it turns out we were misled: in the last panel we must take “Guitar Center” to be a more general music store, where they stock (and probably train customers on playing) various kinds of instruments, including drums. So the drumsticks he says he ate were the literal kind, used to play drums. That’s what he got kicked out for. Then later he did eat some bones, which showed up on the X-ray.
So yes, it has something to do with music, but needn’t reach out to the “musical bones”. It’s just the misleading detour thru the Guitar Center.
“Remember when I ate all those drumsticks whole?” – Expectation is that the reader will think Cybil meant chicken legs with bones in them, explaining the x-ray gag.
“After I was kicked out of Guitar Center….” – Cybil ate literal drumsticks, a product sold at musical instrument store Guitar Center (it’s a chain store if you’ve never seen one). So the “eating drumsticks” was meant to fix the “then I ate some bones” event in time. Implication is that the possum(?) knew about the drumsticks incident, but not the followup snack.
Back when I was in a Hewlett-Packard jazz band, we referred to the trombone players as “boners”. We thought it was hilarious; the opinions of the trombonists were not recorded.
See “Bones (instrument)” in Wikipedia.
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I don’t think it’s a reference to music, unless you mean the drumsticks. I think he ate literal bones after leaving the Guitar Center, which then showed up on a cartoon x-ray. Part of the joke is that cartoons commonly have goofy or impossible bones when shown in an x-ray (or struck by lightning).
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I have to disagree, in part, with both previous comments. As I see it, in the middle panel we understand “drumsticks” as “chicken legs”, which, if he ate the bones and not just the meat (suggested by “whole”), would explain why bones appeared on his X-ray. But it turns out we were misled: in the last panel we must take “Guitar Center” to be a more general music store, where they stock (and probably train customers on playing) various kinds of instruments, including drums. So the drumsticks he says he ate were the literal kind, used to play drums. That’s what he got kicked out for. Then later he did eat some bones, which showed up on the X-ray.
So yes, it has something to do with music, but needn’t reach out to the “musical bones”. It’s just the misleading detour thru the Guitar Center.
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But what does Guitar Center have to do with anything then? Seems to fail Chekov’s Gun test.
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“Remember when I ate all those drumsticks whole?” – Expectation is that the reader will think Cybil meant chicken legs with bones in them, explaining the x-ray gag.
“After I was kicked out of Guitar Center….” – Cybil ate literal drumsticks, a product sold at musical instrument store Guitar Center (it’s a chain store if you’ve never seen one). So the “eating drumsticks” was meant to fix the “then I ate some bones” event in time. Implication is that the possum(?) knew about the drumsticks incident, but not the followup snack.
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Guitar Center is a national chain of music stores that primarily sell guitars but also drums and keyboards.
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This being Halloween, some stores sell skeletons, even of creatures who don’t have them IRL such as spiders. https://share.google/4TtiPUygiVypka2pc
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FWIW I was hoping “drumsticks” referred to ice cream…
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Perhaps Cybil picked up some trombones at Guitar Center (https://guitarcenter.com/Trombones.gc) for eating after the drumsticks.
Back when I was in a Hewlett-Packard jazz band, we referred to the trombone players as “boners”. We thought it was hilarious; the opinions of the trombonists were not recorded.
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Brad Walker (8): much tastier, but no.
Jack Applin (9): I was thinking of trombones, too, but I think Mitch4 (3) has it right.
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Do Drake’s Funny Bones count?
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I definitely read it as Mitch and Dvandom did.
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