I sincerely hope that this strip was meant as a satiric skewering of all the Taylor Swift hoopla, and not as an even semi-serious attempt to get on the bandwagon with everyone else.
P.S. When I first read the strip, I thought Liniers was in the market for the latest and greatest (overpriced) mobile phone, but when I zoomed in on the fourth panel, I discovered that the last word was “plane”. (I really like hand lettering, but now I wonder who does it for the translated version of the strip.)
I didn’t realize how far back Eyebeam goes! But while puzzling over this comic in its November 2023 recycle appearance, it seemed that finding the date of original publication might help. In 1988 simultaneous streaming release was not yet a standard practice ; heck, they didn’t have streaming at all. Distribution for private home viewing was, as shown, mostly tape rentals ; and yes, tape, as DVDs weren’t around until the mid 90s!
And is that what the joke is? That somehow Joe’s Rentals has this title as tape even though it’s just now opening at the theater? Or is it funny-surprising that all these people prefer to see it at the theater rather than in the comforts of home? Or even — but now we’re working too hard — or even that the ice cream shop is a clue that they’re having hot weather, and that gives an answer to “why is everybody going to the movie theater?” : that they are seeking air conditioning?
From Boise Ed.
This is a CIDU-Oy — is the joke merely in the polysemy of places? Or is there something special about the named cities, like if they all have Marathons and that’s how somebody is likely to break a leg?? Or nothing more? I don’t understand!
In case you would like either an introduction or a refresher on Searle’s Chinese Room argument, that link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy may be of interest.
That’s what this cartoon on Daily Nous recently seems to be about:
Okay, is it funny, to general audience? Is it funny, to an expert? Is it a good response to the Chinese Room Argument? Is trying to ridicule Searle what finished off Derrida?
P.S. It’s natural for comics fans to try illuminating philosophical point by consulting Existential Comics. But the only archive entry I can find there for Searle does not touch on the Chinese Room Argument at all.
The GoComics comments for this 21 November Strange Brew seem to not hit the target until they start asking if it’s Fortran or what programming language it’s in, or what the backslashes are for. Well, it’s not Fortran! But I am ready to accept remarks from one commenter (with a posting name that makes me think of one regular CIDU commenter!) explaining that This is in TeX or LaTeX or MathTeX. They use backslash all the time, for various things including, say , names for symbols. So the “\\in” you see in the top line produces an “element of” symbol…
Whether we can then go on to say that the represented math might be defining “line segment” or something like that, I can’t venture. We can’t go further, it looks like we’ve reached, erm, reached the terminus …
Thanks to Usual John for sending this in.
John points out “Some commenters on GoComics suggested that this strip refers to Charles de Gaulle’s practice, at this time, of exchanging U.S. dollar reserves for gold. While the timing works for this 1966 strip, I don’t see how it leads to a joke.”
My question back then was, always if you can buy bouillon cubes at the supermarket in chicken or beef, why not gold?
There is an excellent pun behind this, which requires just a bit of Disney to recognize. But then there is the sub-question of whether Liniers (the Macanudo creator) is coming up with it spontaneously on their own, or is making an allusion to 1960s U.S. avant-garde theater where a famous campus-set domestic melodrama of psychological cruelty used the pun as its title — as would be familiar to theater and movie fans of a certain age [geecoughzers!].
(BTW, de paso, here for completeness is the version in Spanish, which does not attempt to re-create the pun. Leaving the question, is there then any joke left at all?)
Angel and devil on the shoulders is a familiar setup, but the idea is to have contrasting ideas. Here we have synonymous phrases. I didn’t get the joke and had scheduled it as a CIDU for a later date.
But, here in the US, it’s the weekend where college football conference championship games are played, and the 4 teams who will play for the national championship are picked. Last night at dinner, while our joint grandson opened presents for his 10th birthday, his other grandfather had the Florida State – Louisville game on his phone at the table — and it was only a scoreless first quarter. This made me realize that lots of people are committing all their angels, good and bad, to this sport.
Thanks to Brian in STL for sending in this FoxTrot Classics:
Brian sez, “Foxtrot dailies are in reruns on GoComics. Today’s is an okay joke on its own. … However, it’s not fully appreciated without —-” But we’re going to “leave you in suspenders” for a moment or two and invite readers to treat this as a CIDU-puzzle requiring the reference to something it was based on. (Which you can read by expanding the block below.))
“However, it’s not fully appreciated without this Apple commercial that ran around the same time as the original run of the strip:”
Brian continues “The person that provided the link in comments added this: ‘Her side of the story goes that it was late at night when they filmed the ad. It had to be done after school hours for the day. Add to that, she was on allergy medication, which made her a bit “under the influence”.‘ “
Comics I Don't Understand 