Bill drafted this comic back in 2019; it seemed appropriate to post it on the first day of Hanukkah.
P.S. On various occasions Robin has used different spellings (such as “Hanukah“), whereas Bill was always careful to spell it “Chanukah” (as seen in the tags). Unfortunately, Bill’s memorable “(C)Han(n)uk(k)a(h)” spelling bracket was destroyed by Comicgeddon, but there was a nice bonus panel on the subject in a Menorah post in 2018.
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.
Last week Robin sent some news, following up with “…feel free to share my post with the group! I am so happy that CIDU continues to be a place where people can actually converse in a civilized manner. Sadly, that seems to be less and less the norm every day.“, and adding that she “…will be sure to share news with the group during the [coming] year.”
I’ve added some relevant links and footnotes to Robin’s message:
Hope this little note finds everyone well at CIDU land! The boys and I are doing well and as it’s already the end of November. (Where does the time go?)
I’m gearing up for holiday cards.† If anyone would like a card designed by the ever talented Zak, please drop me a line (even if you’ve gotten a card in years past).†
Aaron and Mary Cate hosted a bike-a-thon to raise money for the rare disease Charcot Marie Tooth (which Mary Cate has).‡ It was a huge success, and they’ll be doing it again next September. I’ll send out an e-mail next summer in case people would like to donate or participate. It was a lot of fun.
Zachary is still working hard making the business section of the NY Times all pretty. You can check out his Instagram at authenticzakbickel if you’d like to see his work.
Eight of us (including Aaron and Zak) went to Vienna for a week. Not only did we eat fabulous food, see amazing architecture and really great museums, we also saw the government apartment building where my father-in-law lived when he was a young child.
Happy Holidays everyone!
P.S. (†) – From last year’s holiday card reminder: send the e-mail to “robinbickel (at) gmail.com“, and put CIDU in the subject line. If you’d like, you can send Robin a card to 43 Peace Rd, Randolph, NJ 07869.
P.P.S. (‡) – The link goes to Bill’s most recent (2020) Walkathon post, in which Aaron gave some basic information about CMT and their fundraising. Please note that the link listed there for Mary Cate’s fundraising page is no longer in service.
You’d think a company or school or institution could provision their marker-boards with prop-up signs that say “PLEASE DO NOT ERASE!”. The flowchart / architecture sketch on the board does seem to make sense at any rate.
Nice variant on an old theme:
There are worse alternatives, like those strips that get passed down to other, lesser talents. Is Walt still alive in Gasoline Alley?
I have no doubt this month’s tagline, “Deck us all with Boston Charlie” will be familiar, but here’s the rest of Walt Kelly’s fractured carol:
Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an’ Kalamazoo!
Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!
Don’t we know archaic barrel
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don’t love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!
Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly wolly cracker ‘n’ too-da-loo!
Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloupe, ‘lope with you!
Hunky Dory’s pop is lolly,
Gaggin’ on the wagon, Willy, folly go through!
Chollie’s collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarm bung-a-loo!
Dunk us all in bowls of barley,
Hinky dinky dink an’ polly voo!
Chilly Filly’s name is Chollie,
Chollie Filly’s jolly chilly view halloo!
Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, woof, woof!
Tizzy seas on melon collie!
Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, goof, goof!
Cute enough!
Thanks to Boise Ed for this OY-CIDU from Lola:
The partial CIDU designation is occasioned by the surprisingly large number of GoComics commenters who aver they just don’t get it — even after putting together “Skip Recap”. Evidently not in the habit of watching serialized TV over a streaming service.
The squirrel’s comment was briefly puzzling. The drawing doesn’t look much like a bottle, nor a glass, so the “alcoholic beverages” reading of “spirits” was blocked. But that’s what it has to be, isn’t it?
Kilby writes: This Sunday Kevin & Kell strip‡ was drafted by CIDU Bill in 2019, but never posted. I’m not sure why Holbrook published this strip in February.† I would have thought that late fall or early winter would have been more appropriate, but perhaps the idea was to make the stash revelation completely unexpected.
P.S. (†) – Both the strip one week before and two weeks later are covered in snow; this one and the following Sunday strip look more like springtime.
P.P.S. (‡) – According to the remaining comments on the author’s website, there was originally a misspelling in the first panel, which was later corrected. Nice to see such artistic dedication!
There’s no question about whether these two comics are (nearly) synchronous, the puzzle is why both of them showed up one day apart in November. There are no Jewish holidays anywhere in the vicinity.
Comics I Don't Understand 