Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 23, 2023

Instead, he got on the plane for Bangkok.

That’s funny!

Is that a maggot or leech on his arm?

what is he holding in the first panel?

He’s as real as a three dollar bill!!

His morphing hat!

He probably missed the plane because of bone spurs.

He’s also missed the boat!!

No, in actuality, the weather is the ultimate truth. Tornados never lie, and are only romanticized in “The Wizard of OZ”!!

Roland the first vape user.

But it didn’t stop him from reporting ‘live’ from where he wasn’t. (When he worked in radio, pre-Hollywood, Reagan used to give ‘live’ broadcasts from baseball games he wasn’t at. He’d just take the sparse details off the AP wire and invent fiction to pad it out.)

Probably the smartest thing Roland ever did. When it came time to leave, he’d have been hanging on the helicopter’s landing gear, with someone beating on his fingers.

What’s that black thing? Wasn’t this strip written before vaping?

That’s why Roland was TOTALLY qualified to work for FAUX Noise. THEY specialize in just making s*** up as well!!

Richard Engel he’s not.

Does he have a nose hair clipper in the first panel. …no matter. Good dramatic effects are priceless. I suppose a dime a dozen would be fair market value.

When I took the plane for Bangkok it stopped in Saigon first!

The horror!

Roland missed more than the plane.

HE LOOKS LIKE A FAILED DUCK HUNTER

Minor pet peeve: Everyone uses the word “tempering” wrong. Tempering makes the metal softer. I used to work as a heat treater, making metals harder or softer. In hardening steel there are two phases: hardening, and tempering. Hardening is the first step: heating at a prescribed high temperature and cooling rapidly which produces maximum hardness. Tempering is the second step, heating at a prescribed lower temperature to reduce hardness to the desired level and make the steel less brittle.

Vivid commentary.

I was interviewed in the early 80s for a position with AID. The interviewer told me that he had been in Saigon at the end when the governement collapsed. As best I can recall, this is how he decribed it, “the VC tanks were knocking down the embassy gate. We were buring all of the doucments that we could before running up the stairs to the roof to catch a helicopter for a ride out. It was kind of exciting.” Kind of? I got an offer but decided to turn it down.