…or thereabouts, asks JMcAndrew: “Trying to figure this one out. Why is it a choice between dessert and an oil painting?”
Indeed: is this just typical The New Yorker cartoon absurdism? (Is “absurdism” even a word? Is “The New Yorker cartoon absurdism” redundant?)
Not really CIDUs, the prolific JMcAndrew grosses us out with these two:
’nuff said…!
Another Ziegler from jmcandrew, who has been finding a bunch of great CIDUs of late. This one apparently dates from 1979, and OP notes:
Is the joke here just that some people don’t enjoy Barry Manilow? He’s been a consistently popular entertainer for 6 decades. Seems like a swanky gathering with a grand piano setup would appreciate his type of music.
I always confuse Barry Manilow with Neil Diamond for some reason. Which definitely doesn’t help.
JMcAndrew asks, “Why would anyone staying at a hotel pay to hear adulterous noises?”
All I can think is that this is leaning into that particular trope of cheap motels. Anyone who has ever experienced such might appreciate a line that I wish I’d written:
“For the first 20 minutes it was funny; then it was irritating; then it was actually pretty impressive…”
OK, that might warrant an Arlo tag…
Another from jmcandrew: “This is a Jack Ziegler cartoon and other than the fact that there is likely not a lot of demand for poet laureates in most corporations I have no idea what the joke here is supposed to be.”
Agreed. Though it does sound like a pretty sweet gig.
from jmcandrew, who asks, “Does this qualify as a geezer comic now for people who remember when long distance communication was prohibitively expensive?”
See, kids, back in the day…ok, yeah, definitely geezer alert time.
I collect what I call “obsolete jokes”: jokes that are no longer funny because technology—not the Zeitgeist—has passed them by. (The latter are common–consider most political humor, whose half-life is often quite short.)
One of these jokes involves a family eating dinner; the phone rings and the maid answers. She listens, says “Sure is!” and hangs up. A minute later it rings again, same story. After the third time, the master of the house asks her, “What’s with the phone calls?” and she explains, “Some joker keeps calling, saying ‘Long distance from New York’!”
One thing I particularly enjoy about these is the often multiple layers of obsolescence. For example with this one we have: family eating together; landline; maid (!); and of course the actual punchline.
From jmcandrew:
Is there a joke here other than this restaurant has chosen to display a single piece of pie in their window instead of an entire pie? Is it controversial for senior women to enjoy banana cream pie?
Thanks to jmcandrew, who wonders, “Why canoes? Is it unusual that someone who did this sort of activity would own 4 canoes? Is this a reference to something else?“
Indeed. It appears Hat Guy has a canoe detector, and…what?
(For extra credit, explain what canoes have to do with oceans)
I tinkered with settings. Disabling “Enable blocks in comments” allows me to comment again. I did have to do a hard refresh (<cntrl><F5> in most browsers), so if it still doesn’t work for you, try that.
Hoping to see a comment from someone soon so I’ll know it’s working!
Adding a quote so we can see the styling both in post and in comments.
I got this on second or third read, but I don’t think it gets points for execution:
Mitch asked, “What is the soccer ball doing in there?” but once I got the overall point (such as it was), I see why it’s there.
Am I being overly critical here?
Comics I Don't Understand 