Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 04, 2011

Mum was a bit of a dragon, eh?

Could you make her look more demonic please?

(…picking up from Monday…) Yeah, the list of deaths of recurring characters appears to be:

Andy (Joan’s heartthrob) Dick Davenport (Lacey’s birdwatching husband) Lacey Davenport Phil Slackmeyer (Mark’s dad)

Now, the widow Doonesbury.

So, who gets the farm and who gets the Honda dealership? …and did she plant rice last year?

So, anybody recall the last time we actually saw Ben/Sal? The last time I can think of off the top of my head was way back in Gulf War I, at Mike and JJ’s place in NYC (setting up a series of Tripp Trippler strips, maybe around the time Ray got wounded).

Maybe Ben appeared since. Was he at Mike and Kim’s wedding?

rmbdot said, So, who gets the farm…

It looks like the Widow “bought the farm”.

He he, ho ho, ha ha…. (I kill myself !)

Bill, won’t you? You’d be performing a service.

Had a similar case with my Mom. People could believe it was actually her, her mouth was shut.

rmbdot, worth noting that we’ve never heard him referred to as Ben before: in the 70s Mike’s little brother was Benji, then Sal in the 80s. Guess we’re back to a different diminutive of Benjamin.

@wiwo:

And how do you get “Sal” from “Benji?”

And what’s with the hair? Mike’s older, right? Does he dye it, then?

My father-in-law looked like a gay hooker with the lousy make-up job. My wife nearly killed her step-mom for letting it happen. This is NOT funny. Cause it usually goes the other way.

So very true.

And how do you get “Sal” from “Benji?”

When Benji was going through a punk phase, he changed his name to “Sal Putrid”, and the “Sal” was short for “saliva”.

When my wife died and was laid out for the wake, she had a very sour expression. I hadn’t seen her until the service, and when I commented on that, one of my friends said, “I think being dead had something to do with it”.

“Is it too late to fix it?” He asks.

Uhhh….YEAH!!!

It’s a little late for Daisy to fix the expression that she wore throughout her life.

But it’s not too late for the funeral director to make alterations to reflect it.

Howcum, if Mike is the older brother, his hair is brown and Ben’s is white?

And no easy answers like “He dyes it.”

…………….

Ah, I see someone else has already said the same things.

Very observant Jews keep the casket closed, and no one gets to see the deceased at any time. Eliminates discussion about what they look like.

Altho I’m sure that’s not the reason.

My brother was killed (car accident) at young age, over 50 years ago, my mom had a ton of pictures of him in the casket, he looked better alive. Mom is now 98 and hangs onto THAT mental image of him. I don’t “do” funerals, in large part because it’s best to hang onto memories of the folks as they lived.

Okay, some personalities ARE so “stiff” you can’t tell the difference.

Freeholder - Maybe your father in law WAS a gay hooker?

One reason I don’t like “the viewing of the dead”…… The discussion that follows of how “awful” or how “natural” the dearly departed looked.

It’s a great way for the funeral place to make extra money, dressing up the loved ones so you can parade by. The time has come to do away with this practice, people. Close the lid.

Rina: “Howcum, if Mike is the older brother, his hair is brown and Ben’s is white? And no easy answers like ‘He dyes it.’”

What if the easy answer happens to be the RIGHT answer, though? Of course “he” could refer to either brother. Ben has an earring, so he may still have some “alternative” fashion ideas, and bleaches. On the other hand, Mike is married to a much younger woman, so perhaps he “touches up” to appear younger. Or maybe Ben simply went white earlier; it happens, particularly if one brother started with lighter hair to begin with. Does anyone remember if Benjy was blond as a child?

The point being overlooked is that visiting over the years has been neglected by at least one of the boys… But both boys agree about the inappropriate look as presented by the Undertakers . Shared memories, indeed!

And GT has always presented rather “timely” glimpses at our funnier side of life … including EVERYTHING!

It’s a COMIC strip, idjits!

For my wife, we put things in the casket that were important to her or meaningful in some other way. I managed to avoid the funeral home for the ritual (we used a Unitarian church) but it still was expensive. I could never have afforded it if it hadn’t been for life insurance.

It simply could be that Ben prefers the “Straker” look. I wonder how many folks here remember that show?

And don’t forget that many outlets (not this one) catagorize Doonesbury as an “Editorial Cartoon”, not a COMIC strip.

Step away from the corpse. Let it go.

Live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

What ever happened to Daisy’s biker buddies?

So typical of an absent brother to come home for the funeral and then think they can dictate what happens!

@ Nemesys; Straker, from the old British series, UFO. Hadn’t thought about that show in years.

Stop obsessing over the hair. I’m 12 years older than my brother, and he has noticeably more grey hair. In fact, my 87 year old grandmother still has “salt and pepper”, while dad’s completely white. At least we all still have our hair!

And yes, this strip hits too close to home. When my mother died, the original makeup job was excellent, considering the toll her illness had taken, but her mother was dissatisfied, and made them redo it like a mannequin.

My father died at 48, of cancer. When he went, he was emaciated but not ravaged. At the open-casket visitation, they did a good job making him presentatble, but he was clearly what he had been in the last year of his life, rather than what he had been while healthy. Well, so be it. There’s only so much you can do.

The one complaint I had was that he was wearing a cap, which he had only started affecting when the chemo kicked in. It would have been more “him” if he had been bare-headed, even if he had less hair than most would remember him having.

Personally, I’m going with my hat. It’s part of “who I am.”