OK, when I typed “So, what’s the deal with airline food?” in yesterday’s post, I didn’t think Les would seize upon that and give us a airline complaints routine that even Milton Berle wouldn’t steal in today’s strip. I’m truly and terribly sorry. Seriously, I genuinely apologize and take full responsibility for this crime against newsprint. Somebody has to take responsibility…
Les griping about the airline nickel-and-diming him just doesn’t track, as Mason paid for his flight, a fact that was mentioned in the strip as recently as… literally yesterday. Well, I mean, the idea that Les and Cayla were charged extra for their stated “free” trip doesn’t track. Les griping at the slightest opportunity, of course, does. If Les was acting like this the whole flight he should be grateful that he wasn’t tossed out of the plane without a parachute. A nation sighs at the missed opportunity.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Les, deeply conflicted over the thought of turning “Lisa’s Story” into a movie (again), becomes pissy and agitated during his (free) flight to Hollywood to meet face-to-face with his Hollywood pal Mason Jarre, with whom he once shared a nail.
It sounds like I’m describing some sort of horrible, horrible nightmare. And I am. BatYap obviously loves recycling his Air Travel Les gags, almost as much as he enjoys recycling entire premises he already used years ago. “Dick Facey is all conflicted and angsty about his cancer book being made into a movie”…he could be happy and excited or nervous and anxious or wry and disinterested instead of conflicted and angsty again but that would require slightly more effort, thus it’s impossible. So here we are, with Les being a jerk at the airport, preparing to market his stupid cancer book to Hollywood. Throw in that Apple Annie and Radio Ron and it’d be just like 2011 all over again.
Mason Jarre has enough of Les during the limo ride to the studio “Les, get up on that cross,” he says. “I want to return that bent nail.”
Right, and if you don’t want to deal with airlines, Hollywood, LA traffic…then just say “ No Mason, I’m just not interested, but thanks.”
See how easy that was. Batty should take note: Dear syndicate, thanks for everything, but I am retiring.
Here’s a fun thought. Batiuk portrays people acting the same way about airline travel as he does about their dream jobs. They’re nothing but sources of misery and agony.
“So, how was your flight…which, incidentally, I paid for?”
Seriously, what are we to make of Mr. Moore’s Crankshaft-like ramblings here? Either these events actually did happen, which makes no logical sense whatsoever and is too ridiculous for a “grounded-in-reality” comic strip to posit occurring, or they didn’t happen, in which case Les is carping and kvetching, for no good reason, about his SoCal sojourn to the guy responsible for it. Neither course is pleasant or funny.
Incidentally, I assume Cayla didn’t have to listen to this during the flight because the middle seat between them was occupied by an urn containing Dead St. Lisa’s ashes. There’s no way Les would leave her out of a meeting regarding bringing “her story” (as told by him) to the silver screen.
You’ve stumbled upon the answer. Obviously the two tickets Mason provided went for Les and Ash Lisa. Cayla had to pay her own way.
And they received first class seats, Cayla was stuck in budget coach.
Les would make Cayla sit in the middle seat so Lisa’s ashes could have the window.
What’s particularly disgusting about this is that, while the “humor” is supposed to come from Les being overbearing, his complaints (again about his free trip) are written to be entirely justified. Bizarre.
Remember, Mason Jarr wants to portray Les in a movie because he’s a hero.
Cayla sighs. “And that was after they sedated him!”
Seriously, what’s wrong with her that she stays married to him? Does she have some anatomical peculiarity that forces her to keep the largest douchebag in history?
This is why it was so easy for me to jump onto this comm when Lynn Johnston retired. Les is little more than a male Elly Patterson in that she too is a despicable idiot who complains all the time and has never understood how the world around her works.
So true. They are both ungrateful people that relish in unnecessary drama and misery.
Somehow I don’t picture Watterson, Breathed, or even Schulz being like that.
Exactly..
I suppose TomBa wants us to see this delusional rant as a clue about Les’ hostility towards Hollywood seeking to tamper with his masterpiece. What the reader comes away with is just another reason to dislike Les.
Those fingers are just itching to slap him. Look at how tense her body is…she can almost feel that salt a pepper stubble sliding like sandpaper across her palms.
Major movie star can walk unmolested through LAX without anyone taking a photo, approaching him, etc.
The greatest fantasy that BatHack wrote is that two women were in a fight over Less! It seems as if Not-Lisa lost and got him.
What I like is that Les has been complaining the entire time, from meeting Mason, to getting the luggage, to loading the car…non stop. What a horrible person, no one could call this man a “hero” unless cannibals were loading him into a sandwich. And they’d throw up.
1. You’d think Masone would just send a limo or assistant to pick them up…
2. Once again I must ask how at LAX a supermega movie star who made Starsuck Jones bigger than the Avengers and Star Wars combined can just chill in public and never be recognized…
3. LAX is crawling with so much paparazzi at any given time that celebs have private routes through the terminal to avoid being seen…
Man, Les would be really unpleasant to be around.
I think one major part of Batiuk’s failings as a writer is that he makes faulty assumptions about how his audience feels about things. He really seems to believe that people would empathize with Les here, that he’s making a point and that his griping is acting like a release for everyone’s frustrations with air travel. But it doesn’t because it’s stupid and over the top, so Les just ends up looking like an ass.
And his whole attitude about this trip is another faulty assumption on Batiuk’s part. He really seems to believe that his audience actually has some emotional investment in “Hollywood” presenting Lisa’s Story “the right way”. He thinks we care about whether Mason maintains the complete integrity of a novel that only exists in this comic strip. If we do, then the audience can empathize with all of Les’s misgivings, but because Batiuk makes the bad assumption that anyone really cares about such a thing, Les just looks like an ass instead.
Again.
Man, what an unpleasant man he would be for anyone to deal with.
I find it very amusing how his “LS” premise is based (at least in part) on his desire to see the “real” LS made into a movie. It’s almost as if he’s using FW to rationalize away a choice he himself never got to make. “Ahh, they would have just ruined my story anyway”…OK, Tom, sure.
…twice. This is already been indulged once, with the “Lust For Lisa” episode. What kind of sad, bitter old man needs TWO movie storylines to get over his butthurt that Hollywood wanted nothing to do with his third-rate, mailed-in, years-past-its-prime newspaper comics franchise.
I saw the “LS” and thought you meant “Love Story.” I hope Batiuk saw the entire movie. The trailer alone was nauseating enough.
I can’t add much to what everybody else has said other than to say lord what a graceless self centered jerk. And by the by I think Mason being hot shot Hollywood actor and the like would have at the least sent Les business class tickets where if memory serves you are exempt from the sort of thing Les is bitching about.
I also realize why Les only eats out at Montoni’s. – he’s kind of customer where waiters routinely spit in his soup (at a minimum)
Still i am surprised that he didn’t complain about not getting enough peanuts.
I would like to imagine a 4th panel of the strip where Mason and Cayla drive away leaving him standing alone at the air port.
I don’t know how to read this one. If you just read the dialogue, it could be a stand-up routine (as predicted by our revered Guest Author) of comical exaggeration. But the pictured body language says that Les means this all quite seriously and is very upset about every item.
So did this stuff all really happen in the strip? Is that the 1/4” from reality thing?
And if it did really happen in the strip-world, should we thank heaven that TB didn’t spread it out instance-by-instance over a whole week?