From timharrod, who asks : It looks on the surface like everyone’s missing an item, and the reason turns out to be that Wallace built a raft out of them, but it’s still opaque: why would a kid building a sand castle be looking for a rope? Why the lifeguard? Is Wallace actually on a raft or is that Mom’s hypothesis?
Are those his dreams? Or what’s happening outside?
Either way, is there a punch line or message of some sort in the surprising outcome, that it leaves him well rested?
August, 1933: More cultural references to decipher.
Did I miss some modern artifact (radio in 1933, or a refrigerator)?
There was a rather turbulent mayoral election in New York in 1933: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_New_York_City_mayoral_election
It took a while to find a candidate who would fly with the voters.
Euphemism?
Is Mooney someone we would have known?
Chemgal sends this in, as does billr as well.
Some might say making a joke this obscure really isn’t cricket.
This first one may not strictly count as CIDU, since in the end I do understand it. But it took a lot of work!
For this other one, the song quoted and the musician mentioned are easily verified to match up, even if not in your personal playlist. But …
… but I genuinely don’t get the part about “If you’re gonna sound like a Karen…” — there doesn’t seem to be enough basis to take that in the contemporary quasi-political sense of a denigrating term for a woman being fussy in a certain way. And without that, what is there for “sound like a Karen” to mean?
targuman sent:
noting, “I know the phrase ‘Idle hands make the Devil’s workshop’ (or similarly ‘Idle hands make for the Devil’s work’) but I don’t see the Devil working here…just hopping. I get that the idea is sort of like a kid leaving Legos on the floor, but it just doesn’t quite connect for me.”
We have a guess as to the intended story/joke here, but figured we’d let the assembled braintrust have at it.
Was there a particular Abercrombie famous in 1966, that readers would have recognized? And thereby gotten a joke? Or just a fanciful name, whose associations we no longer get? And would the lecture have been about food spoilage and safety, or is her remark directed at the idea of putting up with something you regard as unpleasant?
Mark H. notes: If you study the cartoon carefully, you’ll notice that it is impossible in a clinch like that for the glasses to be in that position on Edda’s nose. The bend of the temples would be up, not down.
Unless the clinch was significantly more complex than we were shown…
There are many Reynolds movies I haven’t seen. Is this a reference to a scene in one of them?
This week’s Beetle Bailey is confusing in a couple of ways:
I have to assume the first panel is a throwaway…but still don’t get the point?! Why is a lieutenant asking a sergeant if he needs to “spice up” his report? And in the rest, ok, there’s a mouse…and?
Comics I Don't Understand 