In honor of what would have been CIDU Bill‘s 70th birthday, here are a pair of comics that he would never have understood:
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P.S. When I first discovered this strip, I thought that the “60” in the first frame might be a wonderful, serendipitous coincidence, but alas, my math was off by a decade.
Mark H. sends this in: “OK, I get that Lolly is sneaking a peek at Polly with her ancient boyfriend / lover, and that Polly catches her at it. But is the last frame Lolly raising her hand for a turn? What happened to her engagement to Alistair?
Or is she vicariously joining in on the action?
This whole May (March?) / December thing seems to be one of McEldowney’s fixations. Kind of like Woody Allen…”
Chris Hoover sends this in: “I perceive this to be two jokes about typing but with your hand in the wrong position on the keyboard. However, I am unable to decipher the one on the right. For that matter, I’m not particularly certain about the one on the left.”
A similar gag from Nancy, but this one’s not a CIDU.
Thanks to Mark H.:
These were separated by five days (12/26 and 1/1), but the intervening strips didn’t seem to help.
Mitch suggested “I think there is supposed to be a confusion-of-twins plot going on” but I’m still lost. And Mike mooted “I think newspaper editors have just decided to give 9CL a permanent pass”, which might well be true, but surely Brooke had something in mind!?
Mark H. submitted this 9CWL strip last year as a “Geezer Alert” (and partial CIDU), asking: “Does anyone younger than 60 know about Jimmy Hoffa?” (The CIDU and/or puzzle component is to figure out what she might have said to him underwater.)
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P.S. It is so refreshing to post a Chickweed Lane strip that is not (automatically) “Arlo” material.
This was going to be a CIDU, but it seems to be a colorist error. That’s not a basketball, but a curled up armadillo. But they don’t change color when they curl up, so far as I know.
From Wikipedia: “When threatened by a predator, Tolypeutes species frequently roll up into a ball. Other armadillo species cannot roll up because they have too many plates. When surprised, the North American nine-banded armadillo tends to jump straight in the air, which can lead to a fatal collision with the undercarriage or fenders of passing vehicles.”
Usual John sends this one in. This gets a bit of s “Eww”
The previous one in this series is pretty good, too.
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.
Mark H. submitted this 9CWL quite a while ago(+), commenting: “Looks like the visuals in the first two frames are out of sequence. What woman wraps a towel around her head before going into the shower?“
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I agree that it does look odd, but I think the “out/in/out” sequence is necessary to make the “dash” effect work in the final panel. It’s really just that towel (on her head) that seems out of place.
P.S. (+) This strip is from August, but may have been overlooked amidst all the “swimming“, “milkshake“, and “accelerated maturation” issues we have seen in recent weeks. After all, they are all basically the same topic (the same one that we did not see just this past Wednesday, in “Hägar the Enabler“).
However, as long as we are on that subject, Mark H. also submitted the 9CWL below as an Arlo, commenting: “Given that they’ve never been intimate, it’s not clear how she knows how big his macadamias are….”
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Perhaps she was just estimating their diameter from the effectiveness of his testosterone level on her…
CIDU frequently presents holiday-based material, but virtually all of the holidays we have ever celebrated so far have been American, even if a few of them (such as New Year’s Eve and Halloween) are also celebrated outside of North America. The following collection is presented in recognition of German Unification Day, which just happened to land on October 3rd (in 1990), and has been celebrated on that day ever since.
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Coverly put a “T” in front of the first “CH”, but neglected to do the same for the second, which would have made the pronunciation clearer, but it might have annoyed the syndicate’s censors.
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During my first stay in Germany (over 35 years ago), once I had begun to understand and speak a little of the language, I was frequently astonished (and/or embarrassed) by the linguistic abilities of German toddlers, which were often better than my own.
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Here’s a classic riddle for students beginning to learn the language:
Q – “What does a German parakeet say?“
A – (in a deep voice): “Billig! Billig!” (meaning “cheap”, of course)
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As unlikely as it may seem, Hogan’s Heroes wasn’t just translated into German, they actually did it twice, because the first version didn’t get good enough ratings. The scriptwriters for the newer version invented details and even (unseen) characters not found in the original shows, and the dialog (of the “Germans”) was changed from standard (“Hochdeutsch“) pronunciation to more comical (Bavarian and Saxon) dialects.
The American characters speak normal German in the translation, except for “Newkirk” (Richard Dawson’s character), who was changed from British to being a stutterer, which was both unnecessary and is absolutely unwatchable (at least for anyone who is familiar with the original show). I don’t remember whether LeBeau was synchronized into German with a French accent.
P.S. Keith Knight has drawn at least a dozen strips based on interactions with his (German) wife; there are simply too many of them to include them all here. Perhaps later, in a separate “linguistic” post.
Usual John, Unca $crooge, and Dirk the Daring all sent this in, Dirk noting: “Normally this strip is just about sex, repetitive, but easy to understand. But this one I don’t get, what are they laughing at? Am I missing something obvious?”
It’s 9 Chickweed Lane, so it’s almost certainly about sex, but I don’t get it, either. Here’s the previous two days in this story line:
The following day (August 31, 2024) switched characters entirely, and does not help.
Thanks to Mark H. for sending this along, and noting it as a CIDU and possible Arlo.
“Metaphorical of what, exactly?”
Comics I Don't Understand 