I hope Deanna kicks his ass. I would be so mad if my husband pulled that.
Some enterprising reader over on one of the foob livejournal communities posted links to the January letters from the characters, so if you want to know what happens next . . .
(spoilers!)
[spoiler] Mike runs upstairs to get his laptop and manuscript (despite the fact that Elly apparently had hard copies of all but the last chapter) but is overwhelmed by smoke on the way back out, collapses, and needs to be rescued by firefighters and treated for smoke inhalation. Meanwhile, Deanna has to abandon the photo albums and kid’s blankets she was carrying in order to get Robin down the stairs, and then wait outside the burning building wondering if her husband will live. She apparently chews him out later for this particularly assholish behavior.
The evil downstairs neighbors suffered more severe injuries, but that’s okay because they started the fire with their cigars and their booze.
Mike and Co. move back in with Elly and John, after reluctantly telling Deanna’s annoying parents what’s going on (for ‘family politics’ reasons, instead of, you know, because informing your parents when your house burns down is something normal people do), and they have the happy family Christmas we’ve all been expecting, except for Grandpa Jim and Iris, who dis-invite themselves so they won’t cause any extra stress for anyone, what with their needy post-stroke lifestyle.
Nobody dies. Mike certainly doesn’t do anything noble.[/spoiler]
The actual strips aren’t available, so I don’t know how much of that will actually play out in the newspapers (maybe it’s a fake spoiler to throw off the snarkers! intrigue!), but I’d image they include a lot of punnish declarations about the importance of family.
It should be noted that almost every feature of this particular storyline was predicted over a year and a half ago on the livejournal snark communities. Foob isn’t particularly big on subtlety.
i’m betting that mike and deanna will end up somehow (buying/coming to some sort of agreement on) in mike’s family home.
elly and john will end up in the wee house john has been eyeing for the last few years.
all will live happily ever after.
Yeah, and Mike collapses from smoke inhalation, but all it takes to make him better is a whiff of oxygen and a few hours in the hospital?
In today’s strip, 12/22, the fireman has it right. “Some things just aren’t worth dying for”
Although I will admit it’s a bit of comica verite in that I know several writers which would have as their first instinct just what he’s done here.
Spoilers were wrong—he made it out with the laptop.
And he didn’t collapse. He saved his novel, but lost the photo albums. I guess that’s Ok, Grandma and Grandpa probably have duplicates of all the important holidays like birthdays and Christmases.
WTF? You all realize this is a comic strip, don’t ya?
Whaaat? 
But…they answered the postcard I sent them. And…and they have a blog! Only real people have a blog! And they age! Comics don’t age! Only people! I won’t listen to this blasphemy! covers ears
Sure do. Just like Lost is just a TV show. But people talk about the characters anyway. Maybe you’re lost? After all, this is Cafe Society right?
Y’all shure that the person referred to in today’s strip is Michael, and not Mr Kelpfroth?
Colbeagle, who or what is Foob? Is it an acronym? In differing contexts, the term appears to have different meanings. My Googlefu must be weak as I couldn’t find a definition, just many, many examples of that pejorative being used.
Of course Michael is an idiot, if he was smart he would have got a gig in a better comic strip.
I’m not sure of the derivation, but I’ve assumed from context that it’s a nickname for the strip author, Lynn Johnston. If you’ve seen contexts that that doesn’t fit, well I dunno.
I’d say from looking in Google that FOOB refers to the strip. This kind of thing
And here is a history of the FOOBiverse.
Lynn Johnston prefers to make up slang, rather than use terms that will become outdated. In these strips, we see how well she succeeds. (What 13 y/o girl, nowadays, even knows that the word “boob” refers to anything besides a breast?)
Over time, comics sites began using FOOB to refer to the strip itself, since it’s close to the acronym FBOFW. The characters themselves can often well be described as foobs, and the strip universe is known as FOOBiverse, FOOBonia, or FOOBistan.
Foob came from the strip itself. Awhile back, April and her friends were slamming their schoolmates using teen slang like foob and roadside. Foob is supposed to be a combo of “fool” and “boob” and “roadside” means slut. (“She’s totally roadside, man”).
Over at the Comics Curmudgeon blog, there was some confusion about the words. No one had ever heard teens use them. Even the Canadian readers were puzzled. Some bright eyes got the idea to e-mail the FBOFW web site, and in return, a staffer said that Lynn had made them up.
An offering of the gods was too good to pass up, and so “Foob” was applied to the strip, its cast, and just about anything in the FBOFW universe that’s annoying.
Jeez, Rilchiam, did you have those links memorized?