So much humor, so little space ...

And Don Asmussen makes the choosing easy today by executing a flawless triple-play.

I've mentioned this before, but Bad Reporter sets up a tough challenge for itself, and there are many days when I read it and two are good and then, like watching a long field goal drift to the right, there's that "doink" as the third one hits the goal post and it all bounds back onto the field.

Today, it went right through, dead center, far above the crossbar.

Two observations:

1. Your mileage surely, surely may vary.

I haven't seen "27 Dresses," but I have noticed that movies on airplanes have become increasingly bland. Or are edited to become so. Which is fine, because, if I cared a lot or flew a lot, I could get an iPad or a netbook or whatever and bring my own. But still:

Oh, yeah, I saw 'One Fine Day.'
How'd you like it?
I would have walked out, but we were at 35,000 feet. 

And I've tried "Downton Abbey." I really have. Can't even take it as a guilty pleasure. I stream my guilty pleasures on Netflix over the sink while I do dishes, and my current guilty pleasure is "The Borgias."

If I'm going to watch crap, I'm not looking for posh accents and swelling violins behind every line of faux-Edwardian dialogue. I want naked people and bloody, flying heads. The Borgias are no Spartacus, by Jupiter's cock, but they'll do. 

Honestly, I don't know what the writers think of this, whether they laugh and have fun with it, or are truly bound up in it. But the fact that I don't know suggests a lot lighter touch than is brought to more portentious, pretentious cultural soap operas. 

And whoever put together the intro obviously knew what they were doing. Check out this overwrought salute to History, Art and, y'know, Cult-cha:

 

There weren't any naked people in the Notre Dame/Alabama game the other night, but they did come perilously close to some bloody, flying heads. I've developed a fairly active dislike of my old alma mater since Hesburgh retired and they abandoned all traces of post-Vatican progressiveness, but I couldn't sit through such a pointless, one-sided ass-whupping.

That wasn't the end of the first quarter: It was a standing eight-count.

2. Being featured here, or not, doesn't mean a whole lot.

It's in the mission statement: "Each day, I post a strip here that made me laugh, made me think or impressed me with its artistry." Doesn't mean it was the best strip of the day. I'm not the Pope of Comix.

And sometimes a strip amuses me, but doesn't spur much in the way of commentary. For instance, today's "The Barn" put me on the floor, but I've got nothing to say about it beyond, "damn ..."

Other observers could go off on that for hours, but I just look at it, laugh, look at it again, laugh again ...

And today's Watch Your Head is wonderfully well-executed:

But most of the commentary it prompts is so meta that it wouldn't be of general interest. 

Cory's always been willing to keep his characters in flux, but Dana's emergence as the Voice of Reason is not just the fleshing out of a character into three dimensions, but the fleshing out of a character from being so minor she isn't in the cast list to a real backbone of the strip.

What wasn't completely meta turns out to be pretty much inside baseball and so I don't feature this one.

Meanwhile, Deflocked is an example of an arc that amuses me all week but in the aggregate, not one strip at a time. It's like trying to recommend a novel or a movie to someone, but the scenes you describe don't really transmit what you like so much about it. 

Going back to the start of this arc would be worth your time. But I don't have an observation, beyond that my neighbors' kids apparently bought some kind of plastic kit with Mr. Potato Head facial features for a snowman. I don't know if that's sad or just weird.

I don't think there were very many people still heating with coal when I was a kid, but the conversion to oil or gas was recent enough that you could still root around by the cellar door and find Genuine Snowman Parts.

There's a conversation going nowhere.

But that's not a reflection on the strip, which has been a crack-up all week. 

There have actually been several good snowman strips this week, and I liked today's Arlo & Janis, but, then, I like every day's Arlo & Janis. 

You may have noticed that recently I've been doing this thing of sneaking in additional strips, so that it's not longer the Comic Strip of the Day.com but the Comic StripS of the Day.com.

Sue me.

I go through periods where nothing amuses me, and I go through periods where I am amused several times a day.

I prefer the latter.

And I wish you more of those periods, rather than the former, in your life as well.

Wondering how to get to Downton Abbey? Use mass transit:

 

Comments

[Bill J]

Mike,

I'm a long-time reader of your blog, but I believe I lost all respect for your opinion when you dissed Downton Abbey. ;)

But seriously, I thoroughly expected to hate the show before I forced myself to watch the first episode the other day on Netflix. Like you, I'm not in to "pretentious soaps" (or even un-pretentious soaps, for that matter).

I ended up watching 3 episodes that day. I wanted to watch more, but I decided to exercise some self-control.

That program has some of the best character development and dialog ever written for television. The absense of blood and naked bodies aside, the human drama is enough to keep my attention from one scene to the next - and it does it all without being soapy.

[Jan]

Ah...finally a sample of my favorite "The Barn." Just simply funny. All the time.

[vppeterson]

Hooray for Bill! I wasn't around in Edwardian times so I don't know how they really spoke to each other, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief to enjoy the entire thing!

[ChilliGal]

My husband and I love Downton Abbey. Julian Fellowes has come up with another classic. And you really should watch it if you are a fan of Maggie Smith. She's always been a favorite of mine but here she is absolutely priceless as the Dowager Duchess.

[Nostalgic]

I'm tempted to do a word count and see just how much of this CSotD post was about Downton Abbey, contrasted with how much of the commentary is about it.
8~))

[hildigunnur]

Loved seeing "our" rowdy passager on your site :D

[Mike Peterson]

Well, my point being that I don't expect people to embrace all my likes and dislikes ...

I win!

[Dann]

Given my frequent carping on other subjects, I want to note a modest point of agreement. Downton Abbey holds no interest for me at all.

More substantially, I very much enjoy your work, even when I disagree.

B/R,
Dann

[vppeterson]

QED

[Fruitbat]

On the Arlo and Janis--the same day, Red and Rover also featured a dog-peeing-on-snow-sculpture joke. I love the occasional serendipity of two comics working the same (non-topical) subject the same day. This Arlo and Janis was the superior joke.