Tag: curmudgeonly oldsters

With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “P”

Today’s strip will long be remembered as the one where Holly’s mother gives her daughter a wet willy. Also, pools are nice to have or something.

Look, there’s not much to this. I guess I could point out that a trip from Florida to Northern Ohio with three elderly folks would reasonably involve an overnight stay in a motel or some other type of lodging and yet, all three of these characters are wearing the same clothes they have been wearing since the trip began. I could point that out, but I won’t. I don’t want to be a beady-eyed nitpicker.

O-haik-o

“Grandpa’s Waffle Barn”
Said three times in today’s strip
Good haiku first line

Grandpa’s Waffle Barn
A stand in for Waffle House?
At least it’s no pun

Grandpa’s Waffle Barn
Two things grandpas are thought with
Just not together

Waffle Barns closing
Across Ohio, I blame
The politicians

Kucinich, Kasich
Working together to destroy
Our tasty waffles

Did Holly’s mom leave
Ohio in ’92?
Fall apart it did

Bathroom joke again?
Or is Mrs. Budd hungry
10 minutes later?

Route Canal

Dinkle appears in today’s strip.
No “spoiler alert” tag… this is not a spoiler, it is a warning. You have been warned. Read at your own risk. Or don’t, your life will be better off.

You know what, I’m going to focus on just one small little part of this strip and let our great commenters take the rest of it apart. I’m going to deal only with the first four words that appear in the strip, “Speaking of band candy”.

“SPEAKING OF BAND CANDY”?!
NO ONE was speaking of band candy! No one other than Dinkle is ever speaking of band candy! No one in their right mind wants to speak of band candy! I suppose Dinkle is correct in “saying “speaking of band candy” because that is a 100% accurate description of what he proceeds to do… thus, he most assuredly wanders around uttering “speaking of band candy” whenever he wants to speak of band candy. There is no other possible explanation. I’m typing “speaking of band candy” over and over again in desperate hope that this will be last time those words are ever written. Please. Please.

Give the governor “HRRUMMPF!”

Believe it or not, today’s strip IS different from yesterday’s strip.

Well… I mean, some of the words are different between the two strips, that is all. It isn’t really different in tone or subject, the “gag” is derived from the exact same idea as yesterday’s strip, the artwork features the same characters in the same poses from nearly the same angles (what is this, Garfield?). It begs the question, did TB hatch this story arc because he decided that writing unpleasant elderly people is his wheelhouse (he wouldn’t be entirely wrong) or did he honestly believe that Funky Winkerbean was lacking in unpleasant elderly people (self-awareness is not a TB hallmark)?

Biddy Budd

A hearty salute to Epicus who, like all of our fine folks here at SOSF, deserves credit for finding something to say about this strip… especially when it spends two weeks on a remarkably contrived and amazing uninteresting road trip. Yep, billytheskink here to play tour guide on this journey from an Ocala retirement community back to Palookaville, Ohio which, of course, continues in today’s strip.

Holly’s mother is a nag. That’s it. I’m reasonably sure TB used this same gag with Jeff’s vile mother over in Crankshaft several years back. If TB stretches this gag out over the week there are going to be a lot of short posts.