Recent Comments

1. 1 day ago on Mutt & Jeff

   Or it may simply be that Bud Fisher hadn’t decided what Mutt’s wife looked like. She came and went as the gags dictated. Can’t take any of it literally.

2. 1 day ago on Mutt & Jeff

   In another they each played their own son. In another they played their own twin brothers. Never pays to read hidden meanings into any of it. It was all for laughs.

3. 1 day ago on Working Daze

   The insides are concave and hollow, and the drippings fit loosely, leaving as much room to breathe as any other face mask.

4. 2 days ago on Mutt & Jeff

   Laurel and Hardy did the same kind if back and forth reality. The main difference is that, in some films, Stan was married too- while Jeff is never (as far as I’m aware) shown married.

5. 2 days ago on Mutt & Jeff

   Then why would she refer to Mutt as ‘my husband’?

6. 2 days ago on Mutt & Jeff

   It’s the same wife, but the art was inconsistent in the early years. By the time Al Smith took over he strip, he settled on the blonde design permanently.

7. 4 days ago on Wizard of Id Classics

   Maybe that’s how the Duke thinks it works. Who said he’s an expert?

8. 5 days ago on Mutt & Jeff

   I’ve always mean to watch The Prisoner, but still never have. But I’m sure others have said the same things I’m saying.

9. 5 days ago on Mutt & Jeff

   However, history IS too often taught that way. I got A’s in my senior year history class, and I was lousy at dates. I lucked out in that the questions were more often essays. “Why did such and such happen?” Sometimes I bluffed my way through, thinking “Based on human nature, why WOULD it happen?” Somehow it worked. If the tests were all about showing that I could rattle off dates, without understanding anything else about the historic events, I would not have done well.

   And, again, what else DOES memorizing the dates really help us to learn? That we can fire off answers like machines and pass tests?

   And yes, I know how gags work, I’m a gag-writer. I know the professor is SUPPOSED to be a blowhard. The gag is not the problem, but it exposes the problem.

10. 6 days ago on Mutt & Jeff

    Not that a lecture belongs in the comments of MUTT AND JEFF, but the professor is doing exactly what I always found wrong about teaching history: emphasizing dates first and foremost. What good is to know the date something happened if you haven’t leaned WHAT actually happened, or HOW or WHY?

    Suppose I tell you that my grandfather came to this country from Prague with no money, sold fruit from a sidewalk cart he built from discarded cartons, and saved up enough to buy small shop. He married a woman who had recently arrived from Ireland, and they had fourteen children. Life was tough sometimes. They had to scrimp and save, but eventually they moved out to upstate NY. They they worked a farm, and one of the children grew up to a mayor, who created many good laws for his community. Another became a prize winning journalist, and one other a research scientist who developed a medicine that eradicated a common disease. My grandparents were well loved, and when they died, their services were attended by people from all over their county.

    Or suppose I tell you instead that my grandfather came to this country on April 13th, 1887.

    Which helps you better understand my grandfather? Who cares? Just memorize the second account, and be prepared to recite it on command.