Working the Palace

As I went through the For Better or For Worse 3-year archives on their web site for the Grandpa Jim-related strips, I found it interesting how many of the strips revealed Grandpa’s lecherous side. He had one moment after another where he was dreaming about being served by beautiful women, or talking about how he would wink at a 50-year-old woman, or was staring at young girls walking by, and of course, the infamous butt-signing incident. After these things occurred, Iris would almost never say anything about it. It’s like Lynn thinks the idea of a grandpa lusting after women, when he doesn’t have the stamina to do anything about it, is more humorous than the humiliation that such actions would bring to his wife. It was with this in mind that I compared Jim and his friend Frank to lusty constructors workers leering at passing women. In contrast, I tried to show why Iris and May wouldn’t care what Jim and Frank did with a bizarre discussion about the Milborough courtship lifestyle that made it appear as though they were much more in control of the situation than their husbands.

I went through the strips and letters involving the new Bentwood Rockers also. I found that the person writing the Iris / Jim monthly website letters must not have actually looked at the strips for the new Bentwood Rockers. Esther Whiffleblatt was mentioned playing a mean clarinet in the letters, where the only lady shown in the strip playing an instrument is consistently carrying a violin. Also the letters’ litany of musical instruments is far greater than the numbers presented in the strip. I tried to attribute this to Howard having bad eyes. To Lynn’s credit, the new Bentwood Rockers song lyrics are recognizable and never repeat. So I boiled down some of those and then some of my favorite Cole Porter songs for the concert songs. Cole Porter was a legendary homosexual and did not write per the standard Broadway tripe of his day, so he is a good choice for Howard to admire outside of the light opera stuff he usually quotes for musical references.

It’s been fun to snark on Grandpa Jim and Iris because the plethora of FBOFW commentary boards rarely ever goes in that direction. The downside is that my references may be so obscure that nobody gets the joke. Oh well. Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.

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