CSotD: Pre-Pubescent Boys and Their Neckties
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A little housekeeping, first. As Marla has been searching for a new assistant manager in Retail, hiring Val has been hanging out there as the obvious move.
Today, that gets cleared up in a style that reminds us of the boutique Marla has long dreamed of owning, and that Norm Feuti worked in retail for many years before he began cartooning about it.
"Write what you know" remains a pretty solid rule.
At first glance, today's Fastrack seems like a miracle of timing, but the system of getting strips drawn, colored and out to the public makes it all but impossible for Bill Holbrook to have produced this in response to the flood of ransomware attacks.
That and the fact that the strip's premise of precisely targeted attacks is quite the opposite of the scattershot explosion that occurred.
Anyway, I laft, and it sure brought me up short for a moment until I realized it could only be synchronicity and not purposeful. Still a pretty funny strip and a nice blend of techno humor and age-old office politics.
And I couldn't relate exactly to this Rhymes With Orange, which is particularly funny because it makes use of a pretty harmless but silly concept of women in tropical cultures using coconut shells for brassieres.
That is, when I see a "missionary in a stewpot" cartoon, or one that relies on Indians sending smoke signals, I get a little queasy over the stereotyping, but, as far as I know, the coconut shell thing is just a Hollywood workaround for not being allowed to put boobs on camera, much as both the Clark Gable and Marlon Brando versions of "Mutiny" required that the women's hair fall over their breasts and, dammit, stay put.
Which makes it a stupid gag device about the Victorian hang-ups of the major culture and not a stupid gag device about the minor culture.
Anyway, I never went through this specific coming-of-age event, but the embarassment factor reminded me that, when I first tried out for a sport, my dad took me to a store to buy a jock strap.
I'm not sure how old I was, but I was certainly not of an age where I wanted the clerk and my dad to immediately agree that I needed a "small."
Which is to say, I didn't yet know that jocks are sized by waistband.
And that could segue us into either of two equally useful directions, but let's take this one first:
I've been fighting off some crud and was very disappointed to miss Hilary Price's Quick Draw event in Brattleboro, which is only about an hour south of here. Fortunately, Mike Lynch has blogged about it, so you (and I) can get a look at what went on.
This is something more cartoonists should get together for. It benefited a local art center, it was fun, there was very little cost involved (All the artists were from within 150 miles) and it gave the public a personal connection to cartooning.
Rather than count on fans to pay big bucks to thread their way through a chaotic scrum of cosplayers and movie promos, why not just get a couple of your artist buddies together and offer something fun and intimate?
Is it because you can't find an arts center that would enjoy bringing in a crowd and making a little money?
And that other segue
Speaking of little boys and their pre-sexual obsessions, Signe Wilkinson's lampooning of GOP lawmakers — though targeted at the idea that old men's mothers are beyond certain biological needs — reminded me of a pre-pubescent stage at which there were fervent declarations at Camp Lord O' The Flies that our parents had certainly never done that.
Some kid would ask, "Then how did you get here?" to which, IIRC, the standard reply was "Shut up." Sometimes we'd punch him for talking about our mothers that way.
Anyway, some of us outgrew that stage and others went into politics and thereby hangs a tale.
T-A-L-E.
None of them double intenders around here, pal.
One lesson I learned at Camp Lord O' The Flies and that Dear Leader should have learned at military school is to never show the bastards an opening.
Clearly, he didn't learn it, since the whole "small hands" thing grew out of a long-ago, silly insult to which Trump responded with irrational, entertaining fury.
Fatal error, Piggy, and sucks to your ass-mar.
Similarly, Ann Telnaes reminds us of what an appropriate symbol Trump's over-length tie has become.
However phallic a necktie may be — I'm not discounting that — it has some odd mojo of its own, hence the "power tie."
I remember, for instance, that when a pair of brothers who had owned the Denver Broncos for years sold the team, one of the players started to mention one of them and said he could never remember which was which, but this was "the one who, the short end of his tie was always longer than the long end of his tie."
I thought that was a helluva legacy for a multi-millionaire, particularly coming from one of the people whom he had invested so much money for the privilege of owning having around.
No man is a hero to his valet, or to his outside linebacker.
There are great athletes who require extra long ties, because ties are measured by the distance between throat and belt line.
The distinction being whether it is measured straight-line or via the great circle route.
The greater distinction being that these indisputably manly-men are increasingly willing to forfeit tens of thousands of dollars and skip a league game in order to be present when their children are born, while other long-tie wearers won't even give up a golf outing to visit their kid and his mother on Mother's Day.
And, though his only other garment is a diaper, Tom Tomorrow's Man Baby wears an XXL tie that he shows no sign of ever growing into on any level:
Need we put a bow on it?
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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