It took a few months, but Susan finally has taken a cue from Cayla and updated her look, trading in her girlish ponytail for a more sophisticated ‘do. The added surprise of Susan’s big news causes Cayla’s head to nearly swivel right off its moorings.
Bull trudges towards Les’s house with a look on his face like he’s being marched to the electric chair. What’s worse than being invited to a party at Moore Manor? Being forced to stay there until at least midnight.
I’ve read this “gag” over and over and, maybe because my senses have been dulled by holiday revelry, I just do not get the punchline. “Four pencils and an eraser” equals five…there’s five on a side, right? So they’re all tall except for one short player (the “eraser”)? But the one player Bull singles out, “number nine, their center”, is especially tall. Wouldn’t that make them four erasers and a pencil? Or one Number 2 pencil and four of those pencils you keep score with at mini golf? And there are only five of them? No subs? Doesn’t “number nine, their center” have a name? I know there are at least a couple of you who know basketball. Please enlighten me.
Your humble blogger is as sentimental as the next guy, particularly at this time of year. But puh-leeeze…this is some corny-ass shit. Where’s Cayla? Why, she’s run off into the night, screaming in terror at the sight of Lisa’s ghostly apparition! Now Les and his “favorite girls” can enjoy Christmas as a family. Corny and creepy. The part of Summer in panel 2 is being played by cartoon Stan Laurel.
Well, readers, here at last is the payoff: Les ignored her pleas, so Lisa’s Ghost escalated matters and violated laws that would land a living person in federal prison. I haven’t flown in years, but I’m wondering, in the event of an “anonymous phony bomb threat,” if:
(…maybe it was a very explicit threat: “…there’s a bomb on the plane…next to the trunnion mount on the left engine…”)
And file under “quarter inch removed from real life”: the guy with the clipboard can’t grasp how some nut would threaten the safety of airline passengers on Christmas Eve? Unthinkable! I guess we can blame TB’s fatuousness on his year-in-advance production schedule: the world hadn’t yet heard of the Undie Bomber when this strip was drawn.
Son of Stuck Funky 
