Recent Comments

1. 1 day ago on Big Nate

   When I was a high school senior I got into the exact opposite of Nate’s situation: real fire, no lunch, generous teacher.

   I was in art class and the fire alarm went off. We thought it was a drill but then fire trucks pulled up. Turns out a ceiling tile had ignited. Nobody was hurt and the firefighters kept it from spreading. The authorities said it was caused by an electrical short. The rumor mill said it was a kid with a cigarette. Believe whichever one you find more entertaining.

   The fire department kept everyone out of the school for over an hour. When they let us back in we were told to return to our last class and stay there until further notice. By then it was past lunch time and we had 25 hungry teenagers trapped in a room together.

   Luckily it was a staff member’s birthday and my art teacher had brought a 9-inch round carrot cake for the after-school party. So our lunch was thin slices of carrot cake and tiny Dixie Cups of water (the art room had a sink).

2. about 1 month ago on Frazz

   That lead time for registration is there for ironing out legal kinks, as my family found out first hand back in the early 1980s.

   My childhood home sits in a rural area halfway between two towns with elementary schools. When it was time to register my oldest sister for kindergarten both schools insisted that we lived in the other school’s district and refused to take her.

   After weeks of back-and-forth our mother appealed to the local Board of Education. They ruled that she could choose. So while our mailing address said we belonged to Town #1 she picked Town #2 because she used to work at their school and liked it.

   Those two elementary schools feed into different middle and high schools. If my siblings and I had been forced to go to the other school we would have had completely different teachers and friends growing up. I often wonder how our lives would have been different.

3. 2 months ago on Brewster Rockit

   In November 2022 there was a spike in online searches for “cheugy” online thanks to Pokemon. In the Pokemon Scarlet & Violet video games your character attends a boarding school. At one point the school’s director asks you what “cheugy” means. Your options are: “Something super cool”, “Being outdated and uncool”, and “It’s a really chewy gumball”.

4. 3 months ago on FoxTrot

   Canonically Andy Fox is (eternally) 42 years old. I’m 41 years old and the Peter Jackson “Lord of the Rings” movies came out when I was in college.

5. 3 months ago on Sherman's Lagoon

   That’s the plot of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”.

6. 6 months ago on Heart of the City

   Spock was all black in the original Tatulli strips.

   And there is no Spock II. Maybe you’re thinking of the original series story arc where the vet told Dean that Spock had to be euthanized. While it was inspired by the death of Mr. Tatulli’s real cat, in the comic it turns out to be a mix-up and Spock lives.

7. 6 months ago on Heart of the City

   They both have pointy ears.

8. 8 months ago on Wizard of Id

   Cacnea, Cacturne, and Maractus used Pin Missile!

9. 9 months ago on Broom Hilda

   I’m surprisingly not grossed out, but I’ve read Patricia Polacco’s children’s book “Thunder Cake”. Tomatoes and chocolate cake go together better than most people realize, especially with cut strawberries on top. (But it’s better to mix tomato puree directly into the batter than to squirt ketchup on the side.)

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10. 9 months ago on Sherman's Lagoon

    My mother was a second grade teacher in a rural town. A boy in her class was going to an open audition for child actors at the nearby city’s civics center. This audition had been advertised on the radio; they claimed it was run by actual Hollywood talent scouts and they named-dropped major Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows like iCarly.

    The boy had NO acting experience, not even in a school play. But his mother was certain that he was a star and convinced him that he was going to succeed.

    In the week leading up to the audition the boy would not shut up about it. “When I get my acting job I’m gonna be rich.” “When I get my acting job I’m gonna be famous.” “When I get my acting job I won’t have to go to school any more.” That one prompted my mother to explain that child actors have on-set tutors. The boy looked at her like she was nuts.

    The weekend of the audition came and went. The following Monday the boy came into class crestfallen. He had not gotten his acting job. “They said I didn’t ‘sparkle’.”