Officially on holiday
Chase and Status! I think gripping the arms of an armchair while trying to fight off your personal demons is a David Milch thing. I’ve been re-watching NYPD Blue on Disney+ but eight seasons in I don’t think I’ve reached the evocation of this particular act yet. Or it could be from literally any other gritty police drama I have watched. I seem to have watched a lot of them.
Yes, I had to google Chase & Status. Another thing the young people are into that I’ve never heard of.
They’ve been on Later with Jools Holland, so us old people have no excuse for not knowing they make bad noises.
Although I have been reliably informed that there are more than fifteen bands in the world, I am still surprised whenever I come across one that I have not heard of before, especially if they have confabbed with Jools Holland on TV.
…aha, they are on Bandcamp. So I have three weeks to educate myself on their music before the next Bandcamp Friday
Ah, thank you – I’d just assumed that this was a variation on “Cheese and crackers!” (Hellcat’s old catchphrase from Marvel comics).
Is there a word (probably German) for the smug joy you feel when you realise some people are more out of touch than you?
I thought it was rhyming slang and spent some time trying to figure out what it rhymed with.
Jason Stahtham (was what I assumed she was not quite saying).
(Obviously I had not heard of the band either!)
Same here. But I’m still a bit puzzled. Is this a play on being phoneme-adjacent to “Jesus Christ” as an exclamation?
I like how she expresses (perfectly justifiable) resentment about the pamphlet, but then pins it up on the cork board anyway.
I’ve been puzzling over this “pamphlet” discussion. In the USA, this kind of one-sheet would be called a “flyer.” I assume there’s nothing important on the back side? A “pamphlet” to us ‘murkins is folded, sometimes even stapled, into a kind of booklet, and thus has things printed on all sides of all pages. If in the Anglophone world the former is a pamphlet, then what do you call the latter? … or have I answered my own question with booklet…
As another American, I admit I have just been assuming this was a UK language difference thing and was just going with it. This is a learned reaction because I’ve encountered so many words where the US and UK definitions sort of seem the same, but are not quite one-to-one (e.g. What is called “jam” in the UK is only called jam in the US if it’s lumpy, otherwise it’s called “jelly”) However, now that I’ve looked up the definition for “pamphlet” in a few online dictionaries, I’m not so sure. I could not find any UK-specific definitions that describe a “pamphlet” as a single one-sided sheet. Maybe it’s an old-lady thing? Or maybe it’s just a Mrs. Clovis thing?
I think the jam/jelly distinction stands in the UK too. Obviously there’s also “jelly” as the equivalent to “jello” but almost any smooth conserve is – I think – a jelly eg redcurrant jelly, crabapple jelly?
Ah, OK. I stand corrected. Then it looks like the real example (of a word where the UK/US definitions have only partial overlap) would be the word “jelly”.
It’s also interesting to me that your examples of “jelly” are both more-or-less unheard of in the US. Is grape jelly (which is ubiquitous in the US) a thing in the UK?
No. I know what it is, but it’s not sold in supermarkets as anything other than a novelty import item.
My understanding has always been that jam is made with whole fruits, while jelly is made with fruit juice.
I thought when you used whole fruit it was preserves.
I use Apples to Apples. They’re game preserves.
In my own experience I’ve found Jam and Jelly being used interchangeably here but in reality they’re not. But I admit I usually always preferred Jams and Preserves. Also yea, Jelly is basically just using the juice rather than having bits of fruit in it, or being created from the fruit without pieces still in it like Preserves and Jams respectively.
I always felt like Jellys were always just… too sugary. Which is probably a mark of their American-ess.
It’s lucky both words start with ‘J’ so a PBJ sandwich covers both.
I think it’s really a leaflet.
Well, in its pinned-up form, yeah, flyer rather than pamphlet. But when Mrs. Clovis hands it to Maggie, I wouldn’t object to receiving a non-folded pamphlet, I don’t think. (As John says, “leaflet” nicely covers both scenarios.)
That pamphlet reminds me of Susan’s T-Shirt from Giant Days – “NO”.
isn’t it more of a poster?
God has his tentacles in you, dear heart. In a little while you may start feeling joy instead of rage and love for your fellow person rather than seeing them as cattle to be driven to your will. Welcome to the Light Side. They have ice cream.
Meanwhile my Patron Tsathoggue looks at both sides from His throne in Dark N’Kai and croaks “Ia! Ia!”
That’s more properly “Ïa! Ïa!”.
This keyboard has issues with diacrItical marks 🙁
Grip and gripe, gnash and gnarl.
To this day I still do not know what a Bobbin(singular) is or how it’s become the namesake of John’s career. The first time I’ve heard of the word was from Plok, there is a boss in that game named the “Bobbins Bros.” and I find that pretty amusing. Maybe John should draw them someday.
It comes from John’s extensive sewing background. Most people don’t know this, but he was originally tipped to be the head judge on The Great British Sewing Bee before they settled on Patrick Grant instead
It’s a cotton spool. Of course, I would never dedicate multiple issues of a comic to sewing. This could not, cannot, will not happen.
I look forward to it.
Really enjoying this comment thread. Has me in stitches.
Can’t do multiple issues because you’ll have the plot sewn up in just 1?
There’s a seam of wisdom running through this thread.
If you accuse me of bias, I’ll just bolt.
Well done.
Seconds later, standing in the torn wreckage of the chair, Maggie screamed, “WHY CAN’T ANYONE SEE HOW GOOD I’M BEING???”
Which will prompt a crazed Maggie to invite all of her old COS friends to have raucous orgy in the house and she’ll film herself not taking part in it to prove to Mrs. Clovis how good she’s being.
Which might possibly not even be against the rules, provided all attendees are persons of decorum, they all refrain from standing, and none of them are named “Maggie”.
The last panel is giving me flashbacks to the Lent episode of Father Ted.
“When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better. ”
― Mae West
Is Ken’s located near the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic? It may come in useful.
I see that I was wrong in claiming earlier that the vacuum cleaner was constructed from doodlebug parts. From the brand name, if the internet is to be believed, Clovis must have availed herself of an unwanted torpedo and borrowed the control unit.
When my first Miele died, it was due to a failed control unit (motherboard). The part was discontinued so there was no repairing it.
_Everything_ is near the Museum of Witchcraft: Boscastle is not that big a place.
Of course, that’s in our World, where (contrary to an earlier episode) Boscastle does not and has never had a train station (the nearest was at Camelford, 5 miles away. There was a bus link). It’s possible that in the Bobbinsverse the place is bigger.
Maggie seems fine. Now it’s time for her to relax, do meditation and rethink about what she wants to do in her life. She definitely has no temptations of not be good. Nothing can go wrong.
I remember in happening in Batman The Animated Series a lot where there were a lot of demons to be gripped.
A statement which may or may not be suggestive in its’ interpretation.
Hmm, another Ken. This makes six, I think: the stocky bald reporter at the Cormorant, original-Ellen’s husband in “Fire Inside”, the bartender in “Forked Road” (assuming Ryan wasn’t too pickled to identify him correctly), Mrs Lord’s husband, Big Ken (whom Brian can lift, greased or ungreased), and this guy.
I think I may be forgetting one.
There’s another one in what I have just finished writing, Ken Morris. I had to revise several scripts to remove other reused names. But Ken Morris had a surname so I figured he could remain.
John is answering a question asked by John about how the comic has a lot of characters with the same name. 🙂
It’s almost as though Ken were a common name in the UK.
“What is this, The Planet Of The Kens?”
I will have to add that Maggie wears those shorts well.
So sorry you have been subjected to Disney+, such is the state of letters in our time.
I’m admiring the miniaturized (from our point of view) version of the pamphlet in panel 4. We even get to see a bit of the “missing rule” from the last page.
One day at a time, Maggie.
Chase and Status always makes me think of Jason Statham and vice versa.
Makes me think of Chase and Sanborn, the coffee company.
I thought I recognized that distinctively red German cleaning device when Mrs. Clovis called our attention to it. Chekhov’s vacuum?
Also, in the UK is a Miele a Hoover, or is Hoovering only a verb?
Hoover is its own thing, like Electrolux or Zanussi or Amstrad
Nothing sucks like Electrolux!
Maggie. Mags. Listen. If you’re going to do this, You need to plan appropriately. You need to consider every step, every contingency, every possible thing that could go wrong, and some steps you could take to prevent anything from going wrong. Then throw those plans out and go with it because any time you PLAN something like that everything cocks up.
So instead what you want to do is loophole abuse. Not sure a workaround for “Devil Music” but the pamphlet specifies “Stand-Up Parties” with an illustration of something formal. Easily construed as “well you didn’t say I couldn’t have any Other kind of party.” Also as for Fornication… Dang it’s too vague. It doesn’t specify “in the house” because I figure maybe “shagging” as you guys over there like to say out in the yard or somewhere else would qualify. Uuuh… shoot I’m running out of ideas.
You might just have to settle for having a small shindig with only a few people over to do something small yet gnarly to get it out of your system. Probably good for ya.
Indeed, the pamphlet is absolutely rife with loopholes. Mrs C would have done well to have a legal professional look it over first.
She probably thought about a legal consultation, but ran out of time or money just getting it designed and printed.
Or maybe she just did not happen to have any relatives in that profession who were willing to do it for free.
Why would she want a legal consultation? She wants to be able to hold it over Maggie when she inevitably fails to abide perfectly by all the rules, not to be able to take Maggie to court or anything like that.
Yea that tracks.