billr sends:
noting, “I’m guessing some cultural reference I’m missing, or forgot (I’m an old) maybe from some movie I never watched. I know that they’ve been rerunning old comics for TMCM but I don’t see a date on this one.”
I see “2016” on the right, which actually tracks with my guess, but I leave it to the hive-mind to see if they reach the same conclusion I did.
JMcAndrew asks, “I’d think at age 5 Dennis would already know what a zoo is. Did Henry take Dennis to some kind of strip club and tell him it was the zoo?”
From the expression on Henry’s face, I think that might be the case, though this seems odd and inappropriate for a DtM strip!
I’m reminded of the alleged bar or strip club named The Library, a great place to spend an afternoon “studying”…
Nancy is often a head-scratcher for me, and this one is no exception:
There’s some fourth-wall thing going on there, but not sure why/what: the flower isn’t changing; “three” and “four” are missing…and is there a joke in here somewhere? Wikipedia describes the strip as “surreal humor”, but there’s gotta be SOME humor for that to work…
…and I (and Chemgal, who contributed it) don’t get it either:
OK, Luddie wants out, and Janis stops her. But…where’s the joke?
JMcAndrew sends a set of related cartoons:
The last two are obviously just different versions of the same joke from the same cartoonist, even if they’re 14 1/2 years apart. I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing or not.
These all remind me of an axiom I was taught long ago as a relationship test: Have lunch at your prospective partner’s house and ask for mayonnaise. If they present Miracle Whip–especially if they aren’t even apologetic about it–RUN.
Miracle Whip is to mayonnaise as carob is to chocolate. As someone else once wrote, “Carob is not an acceptable substitute for chocolate. It is not an acceptable substitute for anything except, perhaps, brown shoe polish.”
(OK, that’s not really the right title but)
Another from JMcAndrew:
Why is he scratching himself with his foot? Is the joke supposed to be that his wife is feeding him dog meat and he’s mimicking dog behavior?
I dunno either. But it does make me think of the classic joke:
I was at the grocery store checkout buying a large bag of dog biscuits and a woman behind me asked if I had a dog. I was feeling a bit crabby, so I told her no, I was starting The Dog Biscuit Diet again. I added that I probably shouldn’t, because although last time I lost 50 pounds, I ended up in the hospital in intensive care.
Her eyes about popped out of her head. I went on and on with the bogus diet story and she was totally buying it. I told her that it was an easy, inexpensive diet and that they’re nutritionally complete: the way it works is to load your pockets or purse with biscuits and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry.
Finally she asked if something in the dog food had poisoned me and was that why I ended up in the hospital. I calmly said no…I was sitting in the street licking myself when a car hit me.
Random web find, at
https://www.victorianlondon.org/words/aesthetic.htm:
Text on the page:
REFINEMENTS OF MODERN SPEECH.
SCENE – A Drawing-room in “Passionate Brompton.”
Fair Aesthetic (suddenly, and in deepest tones, to Smith, who has just been introduced to take her in to Dinner). “ARE YOU INTENSE?”
Punch, June 14, 1879
100% CIDU for me. The rest of the site is interesting, including
https://www.victorianlondon.org/index.html and especially
https://www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm
From JMcAndrew:
Are we supposed to know who this person is that has a giant memorial outhouse topped with a giant statue? It appears to be more like a mausoleum made out of stone.
Indeed…and no, Tha Goog doesn’t know who Earl J. Suggins was, either.
This editor’s guess is that this falls into the “This is vaguely silly and therefore funny because I have to turn in a cartoon for tomorrow and I got nuttin’ else” category.
Not this Grumpy Cat:
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumpy_Cat if you don’t know about Grumpy Cat. Instead, today we have this from JMcAndrew:
The question is, did the cat prepare the meal? In any case, why does the cat look so mad about it? And what are “Cat Yummies” anyway? If they’re cat treats, then the cat’s expression seems particularly inappropriate. If it’s just cat food, then who served it to the man and why? Mysteries abound!
Dirk The Daring says,
I dunno, I don’t really get it. The comments imply it’s showing a bad example. But I don’t know any kid that would choose books over riding a bike like Harley does.
Indeed. Even 50+ years on, I’d still choose not to be trapped in a classroom!
Comics I Don't Understand 