He’s flogging the damn book again…I’m pretty sure at this point that TB is doing this to punish us snarkers.
“Dad” has to wait for school to (finally!) be out before “hitting the road”? What, did he use up his “impersonal days“? And suddenly he doesn’t know how to read a boarding pass? What happened to the Frequent Flyin’ Les who had become so jaded with “the road” that he’d taken to abusing anyone who crossed his path?
The bald guy in panel 2 has that look on his face because he just spent the last four hours on a plane listening to Les abusing the flight attendants. And now Les is walking behind the poor guy and muttering to himself.
I guess Les’ cellphone battery died again, because he doesn’t know if his superstar daughter’s team won tonight’s tournament game. By the way, Panel 3 Les: the momentum would take the team into the next round, not vice-versa.
Les arrives home (didn’t need to be picked up this time?) not to the expected victory celebration, but to be greeted by the sight of his golden girl on crutches. A tip of the SoSF porkpie hat to the many FW followers who predicted a career-threatening sports injury to Sum’ Mo’.
I’m going to leave aside the fact that the flight attendant is a dead ringer for Summer. Instead, let’s focus on her lack of knowledge regarding her airline’s policy regarding traveling with dogs. “I don’t think…?” “Well, I guess…?” Is this her first day on the job?
Over at the Comics Casserole, Alladinsane posted a link to some rules and regs regariding service dogs, which Summer the Stewardess clearly has not read…
Bonus!
Tom Batiuk was interviewed by petliferadio.com about the service dog thingy. You can download the podcast. There are commercials; the interview starts around 4 min., 30 sec.in, and yes, I listened to the whole thing. TB talks with the very chipper hostess about how he researched the Buddy arc (via phone and email); the rest of it is the standard biographical info that is available elsewhere. He brings up the “quarter-inch from reality” thing and talks about “Writing!”, and about how comics should “reflect what’s going on”. Hearing him talk, he sounds like a pretty likable guy, and not a Les-Moore-ish ass.
And you thought the Book Tour was over? I wonder how Principal Nate is feeling now about giving Les unlimited personal days?
I thought Les was getting “fried” too, when he got that courtesy call from his dead wife. But as far as we know, he never shared that incident with his daughter. Instead, Les apparently regaled her with stories about how he behaved like a complete asshole, annoying lowly, hard-working security personnel, newsstand vendors and flight attendants, everywhere he went.
I wonder if he tried the Spinal Tap foil-wrapped-cucumber-down-the-pants trick?
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 
