Monday, August 17, 2009

Going Roadside with Rotgut

The funniest parts of today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse are in the background. Setting aside what I may think of a 1-year-old like little Lizzie eating a choking hazard like a hot dog, her antics with the hot dog are pretty amusing, especially considering her parents seem to be blissfully unaware of her inability to handle said dog. Also amusing is the Burger cook in the background, flipping burgers in a room full of flies, and then taking a moment to (I think) smoke a pipe.

As to the point of the strip, which is that John, for some reason, thinks Elly wouldn’t like her roadside rotgut, and Elly’s explanation that she likes anything she doesn’t have to cook it herself, I draw the following conclusions:

a. John has only taken Elly to fancy restaurants before.
b. Elly’s cooking is so bad, that even Elly prefers the roadside rotgut to it.
c. John really knows very little about his wife and her eating habits.

11 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

howard,

a. John has only taken Elly to fancy restaurants before.
b. Elly’s cooking is so bad, that even Elly prefers the roadside rotgut to it.
c. John really knows very little about his wife and her eating habits.


d. All of the above.

As for Lizzie's struggle with the solid food she cannot swallow, it might explain why Mike is not in frame for most of today's strip; I think that he's probably administering either the Heimlich maneuver or CPR.

11:39 PM  
Blogger howard said...

There you go! That's the kind of "betweeen-the-lines" thinking Lynn wants from her fans. The reason that hotdog is springing up in the air is because Michael has just Heimliched it out of Liz, allowing her to breathe once again. And this happens all the while the parents are sitting right there.

12:33 AM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

In tomorrow's FOOBAR, you get to see the rest of their conversation. :)

3:56 AM  
Blogger Muzition said...

The title of this entry is made of win. :)

7:31 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

All the strips portraying Elly as a domestic cooking goddess (much as readers may have found the food bland or unpalatable) in the latter years, and here we have proof that in her prime, Elly despised the taste of her own cooking.

When did the shift occur?

8:38 AM  
Blogger howard said...

Muzition,

The title of this entry is made of win. :)

Thanks. Roadside is one of my favourite Lynn Johnston slang words.

10:14 AM  
Blogger howard said...

Anonymous,

When did the shift occur?

Going through the old monthly letters in the archive which go back to 2004, April never has a positive thing to say about Elly’s cooking.

Mike's Letter, January 2005

Mom's dinner was excellent as ever, and she even served perogies in honor of Wilf and Mira.

Liz's Letter, June 2005

One thing I'm looking forward to is Mom's home cooking. I think I miss her meatloaf the most. Also her pies - nobody makes rhubarb pies like Ma!

AMU archives go back to 1996 and I searched for the word “cooking” to find ones related to Elly and getting compliments for cooking. There is nothing from 1996 – 1998. In 1999, things start to pick up, but initially it is not always complimentary. The trend seems to have started when Elizabeth went to university.

In this strip from 1/2/1999, John and Grandpa Jim congratulate Elly on a good holiday meal.
In this strip from 2/22/1999, April compares Elly’s cooking of chicken to the smell of a rat.
In this strip from 6/26/1999, the family lets Elly know all the foods they prefer to her casserole.
In this strip from 10/10/1999, Elly says Elizabeth missed her cooking while she was at university.
In this strip from 11/24/1999 John tells Ted that Elly is an excellent cook.
In this strip from 5/13/2002, Elly’s cooking is complemented by Liz returning home from university, but we get to see Elly’s cooking secret comes from a bag.
In this strip from 11/6/2002 Elly shows April how she turned leftovers into a casserole.

After university with Elizabeth was over, there is a long stretch where Elly’s cooking skills are not really mentioned in the strip. April takes a cooking class. We get to see Deanna and Lovey Salzman’s cooking instead. Then in the final year, the focus goes back to Elly’s cooking, this time mainly as a cook for John or Grandpa Jim and Iris.

This strip from 8/13/2007 is the one everyone remembers about Elly’s cooking, where she compliments herself, with the grease literally pouring off the food.

In this strip from 1/25/2008 Iris raves over Elly’s cooking.

10:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Much as the Pattersons loathe and love to secretly insult and openly berate Wilf and Mira, they'll still buy a bag of frozen perogies at Safeway in case the two happen to be over for dinner.

Nice.

12:06 PM  
Blogger howard said...

Only in the letters, Anonymous. The letters were oftentimes used to apology or explain terrible behaviour on the part of the Pattersons which appeared in the strip.

1:59 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

But Lynn -had- to demonize Wilf & Mira (mostly Mira!) and even have their own daughter join in with the Pattersons in constantly rolling their eyes and condemning them!

Otherwise, how would people know that Elly is saintly and good?

This from the Lynn Johnston who was ever so proud at how she made Connie, originally intended to be an antagonist into a "good" character.

6:03 PM  
Blogger Holly said...

Connie, originally intended to be an antagonist into a "good" character.

Even though she became little more than a sounding board for Elly's puns, the harbinger of re-runs, and whose only memorable personality trait in the final years was her craving to be a real grandmother (not a step-grandmother) and her not-so-secret disappointment in her son's gender preventing her from being mother-of-the-bride.

Verification word: distatio. Sounds apt.

10:35 PM  

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