Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 31, 2013

I love it ! The callow,shallow youth shall not usurp the wise, witty seniors. Geezers rule !

Zonk and Zip are equivalent but Jeff (loser though he is) is no Mike Doonesbury.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I will wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

—T.S. Idiot, er, Eliot

Whew! My faith has just been restored!

Of the four dudes in this strip, only Mike has a lady love, his babe-wife Kim.

Synchronicity! Before I saw today’s strip, today I was going to comment thusly: Why not just rename the strip (something like, Doonesbury: the 2nd Generation, or, Doonesbury: the Disappointment) and be done with it? I get SO bummed out not having the original characters taking center stage.

Ahem!

Mike Doonesbury is back, iPhone in hand and Zonker in tow… Lovely to see you again my friends.

….Reports of their demise “somewhat exaggerated?”

I think GT is letting us know that he and his gang are far from dead and buried, thank you very much.;>)

Doesn’t ZOnker get any gray hairs?

“YOU are old, Father William,” the young man said,“And your hair has become very white;And yet you incessantly stand on your head—Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,“I feared it might injure the brain;But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,Why, I do it again and again.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before,And have grown most uncommonly fat;Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—Pray, what is the reason of that?”

“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,“I kept all my limbs very suppleBy the use of this ointment – one shilling the box, Allow me to sell you a couple?”

“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weakFor anything tougher than suet;Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,And argued each case with my wife;And the muscular strength which it gave to my jawHas lasted the rest of my life.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly supposeThat your eye was as steady as ever;Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—What made you so awfully clever?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?Be off, or I’ll kick you down-stairs!”

by:Lewis Carroll (1832-1898

@DylanThomasPiYou’re stealing my fire. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

We have to say that we like ALL the characters, even Zipper, BUT could we get back to Alex’s twins now? We are so wanting to know what Mike and Kim think, not to mention Alex’s mother, whose name escapes us right now, BUT who we know has age issues already. It’s almost Downton, but of course not quite.

Great quotes in the comments today. My hat is doffed to DTpi and Linguist.

“The young think the old are fools—but the old KNOW the young are fools!” – A. Christie

Joanie Caucus is Jeff’s mom. Joanie goes back a very long way with the strip, as to the Jeff connection that someone wondered about.

Take that younger generation.

“Some of us have jobs unlike my deadbeat brother-in-law.”

Yep, the youngsters STILL living in their parents’ basement.

Errors / absurdities in Calimesajim’s post:

• Hillary Clinton fell on no sword.• Cal can’t read HIll’s mind.• Cal chokes over four American dead in service to America in Benghazi and ignores four thousand+ American service-people dead serving their country in W.Bush’s insane Iraq war.• Cal again fails to provide so much as a single shred of evidence of malfeasance / misfeasance on the part of the Obama administration, including secretary of state Clinton.• Ditto for any so-called “coverup”.• He also fails to acknowledge the GOP failure to provide requested adequate funding to upgrading defenses of our embassies round the world — including and in specific, Benghazi.

Just like the title of the first Doonesbury collection said many years ago, there ARE still a few bugs in the system! Welcome back Mike and Zonker.

Calimaghazi is the epitome of a troll; stops in to say the same nonsense, doesn’t read any responses and then speeds off. No point to even reply.

One thing Cal CAN do, though. He can fail.

Yeah, well my four Millenials all have jobs. The Doonesbury offspring are all spoiled brats.