Author / zbicyclist

by zbicyclist

Bonus: A Holiday Message from Robin Bickel

Robin Bickel provides this holiday update from the Bickel clan. For those of you who are newer readers, or may just want a refresher about Bill, who founded this site, can find it here.

I hope everyone at CIDU is doing well.

Here’s an update on the always entertaining Bickel clan.

Zak is now in charge of all the visual planning for the NY Times business section and does all the hiring and layout for all the business section features. He just got a dog (his girlfriend talked him into it!) so we’ll see what happens with that!

Aaron and Mary Cate are now the proud parents of Hildegard Willa. She’ll be turning 1 at the end of February and she’s already smart and feisty! I’ve included a few photos of their recent trip to Tuscany. (Hildy has already been to Montreal, Portland Oregon, Berkely, Tuscany, Orlando, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York! She is very well traveled and extremely good on airplanes.)

In between grandma time, I’ve been seeing a lot of theater in NYC – 30 pays this year and I’m already making plans for next year. In the spring, Aaron, Mary Cate, Hildy and I will be travelling to London and Scotland. 

As always, I’d love to send everyone a holiday card, designed by that art director extraordinary, Zak! So send me your address and a card will wing it’s way to you [RobinBickel_AT_gmail.com]

Bill wasn’t fond of Dave Whamond‘s squirrel jokes in the corner of Reality Check, so I hope he would forgive me for posting this one. [editor, not Robin]

by zbicyclist

Destroying the Mood

Usual John sends this in. “Curtis is supposed to be eleven, and Michelle presumably is about the same age. Catwoman. Wonder Woman, and Tinker Bell all seem like plausible costume choices for a eleven-year-old girl, even if we might think of them as having more adult physiques. Since Curtis usually is wild to get Michelle to go out with him, I don’t see why he would be turning down this opportunity.”

by zbicyclist

Octo

Jack Applin sends this in. “Bob states that all the sides and angles are equal, which is true for a (regular) octagon. Yes, and … ? Is it a gag about the word “side”, that there’s no need to get to the other side, because all sides are equal?“

…
Unless someone can think of a reason why it might be meaningful, let’s assume that “⦣BDC” is simply a typo for “⦣BCD“.

Here are a couple of octagons that are not regular. After someone explains what the joke is, we can consider whether the joke would apply to these octagons.

by zbicyclist

Bonus: Caulfield’s Costume Contest

Janice wonders, “Are we keeping up the tradition of guessing Caulfield’s costume?”

Why not? Put your guesses in the comments. I’ll try to remember to update this post with the next clue each day; if not, feel free to add that in the comments.

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday. And the answer is:

The day after Halloween, the explanation. But we don’t find out what Caulfield’s actual costume was, at least not yet.

by zbicyclist

Bonus: And the Arlo Award Winner Is …

I had originally set Mark H.’s suggestion to appear on Valentine’s Day, but then Kilby used this comic in his post earlier today. All of this exposure proves that the text below is still relevant, so I’m posting it as a bonus for today.

Bill Bickel set up the Arlo Award tag to indicate comics that seem to have snuck in sexual references past a newspaper comic censor. Of course, the state of the newspaper business is such that comic censors, or copy editors in general, seem to be in short supply. Web comics are, of course, inedible (I mean ineligible) for an Arlo Award.

The award is a nod to Jimmy Johnson’s Arlo & Janis comic, which still has innuendos with some subtlety. But a special Arlo Lifetime Achievement Award has to go to Brooke McEldowney’s 9 Chickweed Lane.

Here’s one sent in by Mark H., who notes “Given that they’ve never been intimate, it’s not clear how she knows how big his macadamias are – except that, being a few years older, she probably baby-sat him in younger days.”

The aging of the twins in this strip has been mysterious; is she older?

But, yes, McEldowney established 3 days earlier that they haven’t had, well, you know what.

So, with the tiny power invested in me as one of the editors of Comics I Don’t Understand, I hereby give 9 Chickweed Lane a Lifetime Arlo Achievement Award.

Any acceptance speech may be NSFW.