Monday Short Takes

(Baby Blues)

(Between Friends)

I've wanted to ratchet things down a bit here without re-introducing the Lenten Political Fast, and how better than to start the week with a Juxtaposition of Warm Parental Feelings from each end of the process.

As often as you might say, "Oh, I wish this moment could last forever," I was always interested enough in what was going to come next that I didn't want to freeze time.

But there was a period, depicted in today's Baby Blues, that still makes me nostalgic, and it is that flash -- they're all flashes -- between the baby being a well-loved but kind of inert object in the grocery cart and being a youngster hanging off the front.

The point where they are sitting up, alert and interested and still taking it all in with fresh wonder, made weekly grocery shopping as much an occasion of "wow!" then as taking them to a science museum would, years later.

Imagine being able to say, "We're going to buy some celery!" and having it greeted with deep interest as you select the celery, hold it up for inspection and place it in the cart. For those 10 seconds, that celery becomes the center of the universe.

And then, oh my god, here's a jar of mayonnaise! The wonders of groceries are unbounded!

It does seem to progress quickly to "Want that," and the set-up for the gag requires Wanda to be more curt than I ever was, because, of course, you don't just say "no."

You explain.

Perhaps not in depth each time, but "No, that's junk!" was a pretty common phrase in our family, and we relied enough on muesli and granola from the co-op that we whisked right through the cereal aisle at King Soopers (because of course we didn't go to Safeway), without a lot of need to differentiate between corn flakes and Frosted Flakes. 

There were many things that qualified as "junk" and the judgment was accepted because parents know everything at that stage. 

Well, when we were raising our eldest.

By the time his little brother came along, we had moved and were living near Grandma.

Going to the grocery store with Grandma was pretty much the opposite of going with Mom or Dad.

I'm not sure how much longer life in the bubble was going to last anyway. We'd been living next to a family whose same-age toddler's favorite phrase was "Go-go K-Mart?"

The notion of explaining what we buy and what we don't buy, and what we eat and what we don't eat, ties in neatly with the idea that, for all your nurturing, you can still wind up with kids whose favorite food is junk from the local pizzeria.

However, Between Friends keeps the tongue in cheek enough that I'm not taking it too seriously.

The payoff for me at the empty-nest end of the parenting scale came when those first phone calls came in with questions like, "How do you make white clam sauce?"

They hadn't missed much, except which herbs and precisely how much.

And, anyway, a visit home would be a nice excuse for a trip to the local pizza joint.

Though, just as the Baby Blues gag requires Wanda to simply say "No, Wren," rather than engage the child in a teachable moment, the structure of the gag in Between Friends requires the kid to want bacon on a pizza.

In real life, that would signal an abject failure of parenting.

 

Two to watch:

Tina's Groove is kicking off a sequence this week that should prove fun. 

I'm sure there are cartoonists who keep very careful diagrams and charts, but not many.

Lynn Johnston used to block out scenes in "For Better or For Worse" and would occasionally even have people act them out while she took Polaroids to get everything just so.

But the majority work more on the level of a non-animated version of the Flintstones, where, as Fred walked through the house, the same table and lamp would keep passing by in the background.

Obviously, Rina Piccolo's got five more in the set ready to come. Can't wait.

 

Meanwhile, Pooch Cafe has been in an arc in which Ponch's owners are heading off for Vegas without him, and he has finally accepted the abandonment, which appears to be the opening for a sub-story-arc in which he learns to enjoy the good life.

Perhaps I should have bundled this one up with Wren and Danny and junk food, but, in any case, it looks like fun.

 

Found in Translation

I enjoyed today's Ben, because we're through mud season, but still in that period where whatever you pick out to wear in the morning is wrong for the afternoon, and a day spent sitting on the porch soaking up the sun will be followed by a day of shoveling the driveway.

But the fact that his mash-up of spring and winter results in an actual word, "sprinter," raises a question that makes me wish I could find an archive of Ben cartoons in their first-run format.

Daniel Shelton creates the cartoon in French for a Quebecois audience. Given that, when puns are involved, the translations never seem quite as apt as in the original, this leaves me wondering how "hiver" and "printemps" fit together when he conceived the gag.

 

Coincidence of the Day

As it happens, I have cited eight cartoonists here:

Jerry Scott (Baby Blues)
Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues)
Sandra Bell Lundy (Between Friends)
Rina Piccolo (Tina's Groove)
Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse)
Paul Gilligan (Pooch Cafe)
Daniel Shelton (Ben)

Anyone see a pattern here? Anyone?

Yes .. you in the mukluks carrying the Tim Horton's cup?

That's right: Five out of seven, or 71.4%, of the cartoonists in today's posting are Canadian.

Pure coincidence.

It certainly doesn't suggest that Canadians are, by nature, more intelligent or better looking or anything remotely close to that.

 

  

Mais peut-il faire la tarte plus élevé?

 

Comments

[sean martin]

Well, actually, we are, but, you know, we dont like to brag about it... or anything...

Sorry...

[parnell nelson]

My nine year old granddaughter went to the lumberyard with me yesterday to help pick out the-you guessed it-lumber. She watched me pick one 2x4 then got right into it, sighting down the edges to make sure they were straight , checking for bad chips and gouges and knots etc. So I'm visualizing her as a future skyscraper building, mega-contractor when she picks out two Western Cedar 2x6s as says "These look really good...and they're PINK!" Then she wanted to go look at axes...

[Murdoch]

The Bumstead's house has 1, a front door, 2, living room with sofa, 3. two easy chairs with one sideways to other, 4. a kitchen, 5. stairs, 6, bedroom, and 7, bath. These are all drawn flat. Never understood how they fit together.

[Craig L Wittler]

It must be noted that one of the two American cartoonists, Baby Blues' Jerry Scott, lives just down the road from me in San Luis Obispo, California, which was declared the Happiest City in America in 2008 (although Oprah's involvement in our receiving that honor did tarnish it for some of us). Another local celebrity is Leigh Rubin of the semi-eponymous "Rubes" which did a good job of "literalism as humor" today. http://www.gocomics.com/rubes/2016/04/18 So if we aren't really the Happiest City, we re certainly one of the most Comical.