Not Your Mother’s Raspberries
In today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse, Elly does a raspberry of BLFPTTT!! This is very reminiscent of 2 strips. The first is from April 23, 2007, where Liz gives Warren Blackwood a big BWAPPBLFTT after she has hung up the phone with him, because he has informed Liz that he has taken a job in Yellowknife and has to cancel his date with her. Just as it happened today, the raspberry to Warren is delivered after the object of the raspberry cannot receive it, and the raspberry is delivered because a job-related matter has taken the man away from the woman. This fits in with our two themes for Patterson life: (1) Always complain about something passively and (2) Anything that causes the man to travel away from home, so he is not home for dinner every single day is a subject for complaint. With Elizabeth Patterson, this is practically the only reason homebody Anthony Caine was preferred over Warren Blackwood, who had to travel for his work, and over Paul Wright, who was unable or unwilling to move a second time to follow Elizabeth to Milborough.
An interesting contrast to this is Deanna Patterson, whose response to Mike’s desires to travel for work are definitely not passive. In this strip, when Mike asks her to throw together a sandwich to help him take a work-related trip, Deanna literally starts throwing things.
As for our strip today, John Patterson tries to make it seem like Elly would not want to go on a trip to his dental convention, and she raspberries him in response. I have been to a few work-related conventions with my wife and frankly, John is right. Based on my experience at such things, it would be very dull for Elly. She should thank John for not insisting she get a babysitter so she could come.
The funny part about this is that I have seen old pictures of Lynn Johnston at the National Cartoonist Society dinner where they give out the Reuben awards, with Rod Johnston no where around. Given that, it seems an odd thing for Lynn to have Elly complain about. Nevertheless, it does fit in with a longstanding theme for this comic strip: Men who travel for work and are not home every day are not suitable marriage material.
A second odd thing is Elly use of the raspberry sound BLFPTTT!! Grown-up Liz used the more adult raspberry sound BWAPPBLFTT. Doing a search in AMU reprints across all of their For Better or For Worse archives for blf*, I discovered the following:
5/15/2003 Young Meredith does BLFFT
7/27/2003 Young Meredith does BLFPPPP
12/19/2003 Young Meredith does BLFFTT
12/14/2000 Young Rosemary does BLFTTT
11/20/2007 Young Lizzie does BLFF
2/1/2008 Young Lizzie does BLFFF
9/13/2008 Young Lizzie does BFLBTTT, PFFBLTTT, BLFPTT followed by young Michael doing BFPBTTF.
4/23/1997 Edgar does BLFFTTK
As you can see, adult humans do not make a raspberry sound beginning with BLF. That is the sign of a physically immature raspberry-maker. Obviously, if Lynn did her proper research, she would realize that. As it is, I imagine a 6th panel in today’s new-run where John Patterson returns and says, “You call that a raspberry? Lizzie can do a raspberry better than that and she is only somewhere between the ages of 1 and 2. I hereby swear a solemn oath that I will train Lizzie how to properly raspberry, so when she is old enough to be angry at a man for no good reason related to his job, she can do a proper raspberry. Obviously I can’t leave that important training in your incompetent, wimpy raspberrying hands (or tongue as it may be).
An interesting contrast to this is Deanna Patterson, whose response to Mike’s desires to travel for work are definitely not passive. In this strip, when Mike asks her to throw together a sandwich to help him take a work-related trip, Deanna literally starts throwing things.
As for our strip today, John Patterson tries to make it seem like Elly would not want to go on a trip to his dental convention, and she raspberries him in response. I have been to a few work-related conventions with my wife and frankly, John is right. Based on my experience at such things, it would be very dull for Elly. She should thank John for not insisting she get a babysitter so she could come.
The funny part about this is that I have seen old pictures of Lynn Johnston at the National Cartoonist Society dinner where they give out the Reuben awards, with Rod Johnston no where around. Given that, it seems an odd thing for Lynn to have Elly complain about. Nevertheless, it does fit in with a longstanding theme for this comic strip: Men who travel for work and are not home every day are not suitable marriage material.
A second odd thing is Elly use of the raspberry sound BLFPTTT!! Grown-up Liz used the more adult raspberry sound BWAPPBLFTT. Doing a search in AMU reprints across all of their For Better or For Worse archives for blf*, I discovered the following:
5/15/2003 Young Meredith does BLFFT
7/27/2003 Young Meredith does BLFPPPP
12/19/2003 Young Meredith does BLFFTT
12/14/2000 Young Rosemary does BLFTTT
11/20/2007 Young Lizzie does BLFF
2/1/2008 Young Lizzie does BLFFF
9/13/2008 Young Lizzie does BFLBTTT, PFFBLTTT, BLFPTT followed by young Michael doing BFPBTTF.
4/23/1997 Edgar does BLFFTTK
As you can see, adult humans do not make a raspberry sound beginning with BLF. That is the sign of a physically immature raspberry-maker. Obviously, if Lynn did her proper research, she would realize that. As it is, I imagine a 6th panel in today’s new-run where John Patterson returns and says, “You call that a raspberry? Lizzie can do a raspberry better than that and she is only somewhere between the ages of 1 and 2. I hereby swear a solemn oath that I will train Lizzie how to properly raspberry, so when she is old enough to be angry at a man for no good reason related to his job, she can do a proper raspberry. Obviously I can’t leave that important training in your incompetent, wimpy raspberrying hands (or tongue as it may be).
posted by howard at 10:39 PM
8 Comments:
The funny part about this is that I have seen old pictures of Lynn Johnston at the National Cartoonist Society dinner where they give out the Reuben awards, with Rod Johnston no where around. Given that, it seems an odd thing for Lynn to have Elly complain about.I've wondered before how much of Lynn/Elly's paranoia about cheating was projection. A lot of sleeping around in Lynn Lake, huh? And when people are away from their spouses, they cheat, do they?
As for the strip, if Lynn keeps producing stuff like this, we'll never run short of snark material.
The hatred the women of the Patterverse have for the idea that their husbands being out of visual range because their jobs demand it is one of the more selfishly annoying themes we must contend with; Lynn clearly seems to believe that passive, insecure women who fear betrayal are normal and good. It's not just working for a living that's for suckers; trust is also a big no-no.
clio_1,
I've wondered before how much of Lynn/Elly's paranoia about cheating was projection. A lot of sleeping around in Lynn Lake, huh? And when people are away from their spouses, they cheat, do they? -
We won’t ever know for sure if Rod Johnston cheated during his time at Lynn Lake. What we do know is that Lynn Johnston is not shy about spilling things to the public via her strip or via interviews, which make Rod Johnston look bad, even back in 1979. Because of this, we know that if Lynn Johnston ever had any concrete proof that Rod was cheating, she would trumpet it to the highest hills. When she did her interview with Mcleans where she talked about the rampant cheating of Lynn Lake, she never did actually say that Rod was cheating there. She just implied that he was because everyone else was. That’s as far as Lynn goes, when she has no proof. The more I see of Lynn Johnston, the more I am inclined to believe that this is was Lynn/Elly’s paranoia about cheating, which she got thanks to her cheating first husband.
DreadedCandiru2,
The hatred the women of the Patterverse have for the idea that their husbands being out of visual range because their jobs demand it is one of the more selfishly annoying themes we must contend with-
I can understand the reason why Lynn has made it a mark of a good husband, but I think she fails to understand that by placing such an emphasis on it, she makes her female lead character look obsessive and overly controlling.
Howard, I was actually trying to imply that Lynn was the one possibly cheating, or who wanted to cheat, projecting her own bad behavior onto others. Constantly freaking about the possibility of your s.o. cheating is a classic sign of being a cheater.
The funny part about this is that I have seen old pictures of Lynn Johnston at the National Cartoonist Society dinner where they give out the Reuben awards, with Rod Johnston no where around.I had the impression that Rod was actually in the habit of accompanying Lynn to her conventions. This impression came from a piece that, IIRC, someone had linked at Foobiverse. The author of the piece mentioned encountering LJ at a convention after having seen her at another, earlier one. She asked Lynn if she had Rod with her "this time" (since she'd met them both the previous time), and Lynn (always with the puns) told her, "Yes, I have my Rod and my staff with me."
Maybe the story behind the story is that Rod went along on these things to please Lynn and ended up being quite bored?
aprilp_katje,
You could be right that Rod Johnston attended all the National Cartoonist conventions. I just remember seeing pictures from those conventions of Lynn posing with various comic strip celebrities and Rod nowhere to be seen.
clio_1,
Howard, I was actually trying to imply that Lynn was the one possibly cheating, or who wanted to cheat, projecting her own bad behavior onto others.-
Interesting perspective. I remember seeing Monte Schulz's complaints that the author of the recent Charles Schulz biography tried to imply he (Charles) was a cheater with Lynn's name linked in there. These are the lines:
But what about voices who weren’t heard? Well, for example, he only spoke to my sister Jill once over a lunch and that was that. He did interview Cathy Guisewite, but then called back to ask her, if you can believe it, whether or not my dad “came on to her.” Is he joking? Cathy knew Dad for more than twenty years, and except for one or two lines, David left her out of the book in favor of Lynn Johnston who provided much more provocative information, much of which (particularly in the first draft) is silly and self-serving.-
I seriously doubt Lynn cheated, but she might have fallen in the "wanted to cheat" category.
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