You asked for it, you got it

Real Life Adventures features a real life issue, but one I kind of hope is a little misaddressed. Or maybe, like a lot of domestic comedy, based on something that would have happened a generation ago but not now.

Please?

Okay, probably not.

Real Life Adventures is a cartoon I really enjoy, in large part because the blandness of the artwork brings a sort of Buster Keaton deadpan aspect to the humor, and I've preferred Keaton to Chaplin for about as long as I've known who Keaton was.

In fact, as I mentioned in a recent posting, I've added some more strips to my daily diet and am, at this point, kind of gritting my teeth while I wait a reasonable time before deleting some of those new bookmarks.

The biggest fatal flaw is a failure to properly deliver a punchline. There are cartoonists out there who feel obligated to tread on their own punchlines and they're driving me crazy with jokes that would work pretty well if they'd just crack the joke and then shut up.

The nice thing about a deadpan single panel cartoon is how hard it is to screw up the timing. Real Life Adventures consistently plays to its strengths, which, for all its lack of "edge," makes it one of the better panels on the comics page.

And probably one of the more frequently seen cartoons on refrigerators.

In today's cartoon, though, it's the set-up that troubles me. I know there are still husbands who treat their kitchens like foreign territory, and who, when left alone for a meal, have to send out for pizza or pick up Chinese food.

But how many? And how sorry should we feel for their wives?

Normally, I'd use "Dagwood" as the archetype for the loveable bumbling hubby, but Dagwood is famous for knowing his way around the kitchen. Which is to say, even Dagwood isn't this obtuse.

So let's come at it another way: I don't personally know very many women under 70 who can't go to the self-serve pump at the gas station, who continually mismanage their checkbooks, who can't perform common household repairs.

Yet it's simplistic to dismiss them as merely a stereotype of the comics page, because I know they're out there.

The goofy cutesy incompetent dependent girly-girl is still a role model for enough women that people make substantial incomes marketing to them in a variety of consumer categories.

Now, as long as the grown-up women who still believe in Barbie's Dream House are mating with the guys who develop their style by watching beer commercials, I guess I'm okay with it, because it fits my theory that people get what they deserve.

Besides, somebody's got to produce the next generation of "Bacon is Good for Me" kids and toddlers in tiaras, right?

So let's talk about this dishwasher gag, because I think what makes me crazy is the disjoint between people getting what they want and wanting what they get.

On the one hand, you have the culture of mutual infantilizing: The little woman who can't hang a picture, married to the lump in the Barcalounger, both of whom are not just pleased to have their Areas of Expertise but who actively work to preserve their turf with a controlling mechanism of "let me do that for you" coupled with "honey, you're so good at this ..." when we're talking about tasks a reasonably bright nine-year-old -- of either sex -- could accomplish.

Which would be fine if they didn't then bitch and moan about the results. I worked in an open-office situation where I was the only male, and I had to bite my tongue listening to women complain about their husbands, because I wanted to say, "Don't you own a suitcase?"

I mean, if it's come to the point where you've been reduced to tearing your spouse down in a roomful of outsiders, why not take control of your life?

But then I realized that they did have control of their lives, and all this complaining was their way of declaring their power. "I'm the only one who knows how to ..."

I guess when your Superpower is the ability to roast a chicken (or to pour a quart of oil into an automobile engine), you've got to make the most of it.

Which is what bleeds into the comics, which is starting to make me sound like I hated today's Real Life Adventures when, in fact, it made me laugh.

Except that the dishwasher thing is, in today's world, a function of guests, not ferchrissake, freaking adult residents of the same household.

It's a very nice gesture for houseguests to do the dishes. But don't don't don't put anything away, unless you can find something exactly like it and put it there.

For family members, however, the dishwasher is not an appliance for washing dishes.

It is a battleground for passive-aggressive control freaks.

Your mother hides the colander to suggest that she knows better than you where these things belong.

And your husband hides it to suggest that, in future, you should stay in your part of the house and let him stay in his part of the house.

And why did you ask him to do it in the first place, hmmmmm?

As the caption says, "When one asks for help, one gets what one gets."

I would add, "And what one probably really wanted."

 

 

Comments

[Mary]

This got a loud guffaw out of me. When it comes to the dishwasher issue, I am convinced that Bob and I live in the same house, but in parallel universes. (Seriously, it would explain a lot.)

Does the fact that I can't find things stop me from caring if he empties the dishwasher? Nah.

I look at the hunt for a misplaced casserole dish as a challenge, like switching around the maze route for lab rats to keep their aging rat brains flexible.

Now, loading the dishwasher - that's a whole 'nother universe!

As always, thanks for the laugh and the commentary.

[Mark Jackson]

"unless you can find something exactly like it and put it there"

But what if your hosts' system is "one of everything in each place, so that no matter what you need it's *right there*!"?

[Mike Peterson]

Leave it on the counter, Mark.

You can pile everything up on the counter, if you want to communicate the message that their system is eccentric to the point of spawning a reality show.

Which they may find flattering. Who knows?