Never mind Doonesbury; I can’t even figure out Mister Boffo:
OK, he thought he didn’t need to feed the meter, but the meter maid proved him wrong. Where is the humor in this? Is this keyed to the fact that today is Columbus Day? Is there an epidemic of illegal parking on minor holidays?
I feel like I’m missing something here. Am I?
Is Mr. Boffo supposed to be funny?
My (not so) WAG is yes, a lot of communities waive parking fees on Holidays when the city offices would be closed. The point being, non-essential employees have the day off, and Parking enforcement is non-essential. Who’s downtown anyway, with the Government Offices closed? Plenty of parking for remaining retail traffic.
The subtext is Don’t trust the Government to change this without notice.
And yeah, it’s just not particularly funny.
It’s the meter maid, not Boffo, who’s the subject of the caption.
The humor, as I see it, is the irony of describing a mundane activity like handing out parking tickets with an overwrought phrase like “exploding the myth”. It’s a little weak in my opinion. The Onion also frequently does this kind of joke.
Well, if he is, he does a piss-poor job of it. :dubious:
He’s the only one there. The whole purpose of parking meters is to make room for other people.
Today’s isn’t very amusing, but generally, “Mr. Boffo” is hilarious.
It certainly isn’t very well drawn. For years (after I first saw it when I was in NJ for
a few years) I thought that the strip had this weird disembodied head which would
often appear in the final panel as a sort of counterpoint/silent commentary. Finally
figured it out that it was supposed to be Boffo’s dog (I think)…
I assume the joke is that today is Columbus Day, but it’s one of those psuedo-holidays that only some people get off. It’s not funny, but that’s what I read.
Cite?! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a comic as totally devoid of humor as Mr. Boffo, with the sole exception of that excremental comic his son did for a little while. He makes Cathy look like Bloom County.
One out of every 20 or 30 Boffos is gut-bustingly hilarious. Of the remainder, two or three might be good for a chuckle, 20 or 25 will be repetitious and lame, and a few will leave me scratching my head, like today.
I put up with the repetitious and lame ones for the occasional payoff. Example:
Two doctors are scrubbing down after surgery. “Field this one”, one says, like he’s going to ask a tough medical question.
“You’re halfway through a heart transplant . . . and you find out it’s the wrong patient!!”
Long pause.
“How do you handle the billing?”
Personally, I usually enjoy Boffo. Admittedly this was not one of the better strips.
Explaining “Mr. Boffo” is as pointless as explaining “The Far Side.”