Now, don’t be offended. You know I’m not talking about you, but this old cartoon from five years ago is an example of the problems I sometimes cause for myself. Arlo’s words in the last panel, “I figure grape jelly/wine…,” makes the joke very subtle. The reader must fill in a blank. I know—I certainly hope—that many readers would have no problem doing this, but looking back I know a lot of readers probably were left thinking “I don’t get it.” This could have been avoided by having Arlo say, “I figure grape jelly/wine, what’s the difference?” I have had to learn over the years that a cartoonist can’t be too obvious.
413 responses to “A Touch of Glass”
No I actually “got” this one. Some cartoonist get a little too busy with the dialog, which makes it harder to read. You can’t please all the people all the time.
Good morning, Villagers! Looks like a great tday ahead, Lord wiling!
Life does not always spoonfeed us, we must learn to think on our own.
@Mindy from Indy,
Symply wish you some Fargone better luck for the rest of the year….stay dry.
When I grew up my parents always drank homemade Dago Red out of Jelly Glasses.
I’m no wine expert/snob, but I do know that wine and grape jelly have many more dissimilarities than the glasses they’re served in. Unless there is a Welch’s Grape Jelly Wine I haven’t tried yet. I wonder what kind of wine Arlo would serve in a Smucker’s Sweet Orange Marmalade jar.
Lady Mindy, I too have lived in an apartment, primarily because all that (maintenance, upkeep and repair) is supposed to be included. What you describe is obviously unacceptable.
JJ-
No, you did it the right way. That pause between when someone reads the punch line and when the “I get it” kicks in makes the joke that much better.
Symply, listening to Enter the Haggis. Wish I could be up your way come Halloween to hear them. They’re good!
Some of the best iced tea (and other things) I’ve ever drunk (drank?) has been out of Mason jars. 😉
Symply, listening to Enter the Haggis. Wish I could be up your way come Halloween to hear them. They’re good!
Some of the best iced tea (and other things) I’ve ever drunk (drank?) has been out of Mason jars. 😉
Don’t worry, JJ, I got the joke!
Recalling my youth, every glass in our kitchen cabinet held jelly at one time. I didn’t know that you could actually buy drinking glasses until I was older and wiser.
Jean dear, I have a (very) antique Mason jar (which belonged to my paternal grandmother) that is used only for the consumption of iced tea.
Jackie, I’ve been on a quest for the cabernet sauvignon, petite sirah and merlot wines with the best quality-to-price ratio. Since you mentioned you have done wine work*, I would greatly value your opinion.
* Damn, girl, is there anything you haven’t done? Exclusive of anything illegal in nature, of course. 🙂
I drink wine out of lowball glasses in the evening cause I spill less. I get my nose in a book and I am liable to knock a stemmed glass over and get in bad trouble with The Boss In My Life
Okay, don’t know why half of my post went up before the last line did. Maybe my computer is haunted. More likely is what my sister says: Technology hates me.
Speaking of haunted things, and bringing forward a topic from the other day-the house we moved out of some years ago was haunted, and by something that didn’t like me at all. We had people in to check, and they said it was female, and resented another woman in the house. Now the house wasn’t old by any means, so whoever or whatever this was had been on the land before the house was built. Husband had bought the house just after it was built, and nothing showed up until after we were married and my kids and I moved in. Nothing overt, like moving stuff around, just a feeling of menace and dislike. Not a comfortable house to live in.
Our house has been around since 1926 and I guess nobody has bothered to haunt it. It is a friendly, welcoming place and it makes me happy just to walk in the door. I want to live there the rest of my life
Quick recap for those who don’t want to flip back: After a REALLY long day with only two and half or so hours sleep in twenty-four, I come home from work at 4am to a flooded kitchen. There is no water shut off under my sink. 🙁 According to the office staff “there have been ongoing issues with the after-hours emergency maintenance phone lines.” So I didn’t even speak to anyone until 8am when the office opened. (So why did literally EVERYONE who the call could have redirected to have their phones off if they knew there were issues?!) Rest assured, the office hasn’t heard the last of me yet. Just wait until they stupidly ask me to renew my lease.
Aftermath:
Final tally: basic plumbing – 4; sub-standard issue maintenance guy – 1
Dude was astonished to discover there really is NO shut off valve under my sink. I wouldn’t have stayed up an extra four frigging hours emptying a bucket if I could have found the stupid thing! (It’s in the hallway BEHIND the water heater.) He cracked himself on the knuckles with his tools, spent several minutes losing to the gorilla tape I had used as a half-baked patch/funnel just to see if THERE WAS REALLY A PROBLEM WITH THE PIPE (newsflash: YES!), spent an hour finding (creating out of whole cloth?) the *massive* 14″ (or so) long piece of cpvc he needed, and brilliantly decided to check for a leak in the line … by turning on the water: with the faucet on and the garbage disposal off. Oh yeah, the garbage disposal for a lick in too: he had to get something for it too. There is an extra part in the bottom of the cabinet: I smell sequel.
Oh yeah: he drove the golf cart to my building from the maintenance building. The maintenance building is seriously straight out the front door. Herbie (my car) is right across from it – maybe 100-150 feet door to door.
Debbe, here is a Corpus Christi ghost story just for you. Do you remember Black Beards?
We used to go there for the good seafood but also the live bands that played on weekends.
Anyway, there was one miserable small bathroom in corner by the back patio and bandstand and it was dark back there. I went from dining room to bathroom and saw someone enter the BR just ahead of me and close door, lights were on inside. So, I waited and waited, a line formed and we all really needed to go. All the Texas tea.
Finally we decided perhaps the “pee-er” had passed out from the tea? So, we knocked on door. No answer. After some discussion, we opened the door. Total darkness and no one on toilet or floor. No window, no door except that one door we were standing in.
At this point I lost desire to pee and went back into dining room shaking just as my food arrived. Told husband and my waiter I had just stood in line for a ghost! Waiter calmly said, “Oh yeah, it shows up all the time.” And proceeded to tell me dozens of instances it had disrupted the restaurant.
Spirits/ghosts/angels come in many forms and shapes and places, age and history have nothing to do with it I believe.
Love, Jackie Monies
Sorry to hear it, Mindy. I walk a lot, even though The Man In My Life keeps telling me “When people in a small town see you walking, they think you are either poor, drunk, or high.”
Ghost, I will see if ill husband has an opinion. He was once president of a state American Wine Society group. He is pretty indiscriminate for a man who once made his living selling the finest wines (read $$$$) produced in Europe!
Now I can’t drink and he drinks one glass per night. What a change in life. I only think of it when I pick up a wine magazine or something similar in my doctor’s office
Jackie, if somebody told me I couldn’t drink any more, I would go up with the window shade. That’s the only thing that keeps me happy and sane. I will add you and your husband to my prayer list.
Ghost, about whether I have done just about everything in life? I want another 70 years to keep doing different things! I always say “Texans are like tea bags, put us in hot water and see what you get.”
You just keep reinventing yourself in life. JJ’s jelly jar strip made me laugh. One, because we all drank out of recycled jelly jars and tea from mason jars. The second because I started a company in Houston to make jellies called “Jellies by JAM” (my initials) We (I) made over 150 varieties of home made jams and jellies, all by hand in an open pot stirring with a big wooden spoon.
I ended up buying jelly jars by the boxcar load before it all ended. Mike was my unofficial “rep” and he sold all his huge wine and gourmet accounts on my jellies, along with all the gourmet shops and historical gift shops.
One Christmas I had to make a couple thousand jars each for two of his accounts who used my green and my red jalapeno jelly in their baskets. All my eye lashes and eye brows and hair on my arms fell out from the jalapeno fumes!
Love, Jackie Monies
Ooops, forgot to tell you our motto. “Jelly eaters are sweet people.”
Love, Jackie Monies
Lily: Watch your liver function, hon.
After all our discussion on the Civil War I thought some might enjoy the current thread/strip over on Monty. He stumbles into a Civil War reenactment group and is mistaken for a Yankee spy.
The part about “find him some wire rimmed glasses and take those polyester pants off him”
is totally hilarious!
Love, Jackie Monies (who has friends who are reenactors of many periods)
Re. today’s strip, I thought maybe Arlo was going Italian on us. In many trattorias throughout Italy they serve red wine in small tumblers that look like jelly jars. Which at first surprised me, but when in Rome, you know. Then I got to like drinking wine that way. (The Italian wines might’ve had something to do with the liking it, though.) After I got back, the closest thing to them I had in my cupboard were a couple of little old jelly jars.
Someone gave me a set of stemless wine glasses for Christmas, and that’s also how my cabernet was served the last time I visited my favorite Italian eatery. I suppose that constitutes some sort of trend.
Also, as Lily noted about hers, it’s harder to knock them over. Which is a good thing, unless knocking over your wine glass is your tell that you’ve had enough.