We’ll have to take Les’ word about the “beauty” of Mason and Cindy’s second home: what we’ve been shown for the last three days, the exterior resembles a loading dock. We don’t get to see much of the interior: most of the scenery is obscured by word zeppelins. I’m sure it’s not Batiuk’s intent, but there still feels like a lot of sexual tension between these two. I’m not able to dig up the strip where Les first meets Lisa (help me out, billytheskink), but Les’ “main pickup move” must have been strong indeed with Cayla, as seen in this 2008 strip.
Author: TFHackett
Barr to Bubu to Jarre
Composer of Wacky Names Tom Batiuk is batting .500 with today’s strip. “Hershey Barr” is a little childish, sounds too much like “Mason Jarre,” and, as a rapper name, could almost be construed as racist (whatever else Batiuk is, he’s not racist). “Bubu Zayla,” after I took a moment to say it out loud and think about it in an “alt-Latina” context, actually made me chuckle, even if the whole vuvuzela thing dates back to the 2010 World Cup. Seems odd that a house with a multi-car garage would be laid out in a manner that requires you to exit the garage after parking in order to get into the house. I also wonder which of the previous owners saw fit to install a tampon vending machine next to the front door.
In Them High-Rollin’ Hills
School chums Cindy and Les arrive, not at the Jarre’s beach house, but at Mason’s new pied-à-terre in “the ‘Hills’.” I don’t know where TB cribbed his California architecture notes, but all those tubular steel railings and odd-sized windows do give the building a sort of Cali modern feel, even if the doors on their three-car garage suggest a public storage unit.
Les’ll Wrestle
“Wrestling out of my weight class“? Again with the sporto metaphors from 97-pound weakling Les. And again with the “Most Popular Girl in the School” crap. Does anyone who graduated high school before the 21st century recall who was the “most popular” girl in the school–not the class but the entire goddam school? The most popular. Whoever she is, I hope she’s holding up even half as well as Cindy here. And while dwelling upon one’s social status in high school may get old, one never outgrows a taste for flirtatious banter.
Passed Pass from the Past
Maybe she didn’t beat him up like Bull did, but during the twenty years they spent in high school together, Cindy generally treated Les like shit. She wouldn’t have him for a lab partner, let alone a boyfriend. Even when Les wound up keeping her company on that dateless New Year’s Eve, Cindy swore him to secrecy. And decades later she has the gall to break his chops for being a gentleman.
Son of Stuck Funky 