Or
Q: When is a bonnet not a bonnet
A: When it becomes a young lady.
Hyuck hyuck!
When is a door not a door?
[spoiler]When it’s a jar!
Comedy gold.[/spoiler]
Well, Hart does deserve credit for not overwriting the joke. If this were “Mr. Boffo,” drawn by Joe “I think my readers are complete dumbasses, so I include a huge explanatory panel in every cartoon that spoon-feeds them the punch line” Martin, the strip would probably feature something to the effect of, “Another way to tell when you’re dealing with someone who isn’t clear on the concept of homonyms.”
Ah yes, water balls, the Midnight Skulker, “clams got feet”, and Wiley’s tirades against water, women and woodpeckers.
Sigh… I don’t suppose the Cute Chick is even loose anymore.
Boy, I tried using some of the jokes in this thread, and a pie came out and hit me in the face, while a giant hook draged me away offstage.
Give Johnny Hart a break. “B.C.” is old-fashioned and usually lame, but have you looked at some of the competition? I’ve been habitually reading “Overboard” for years now because it was funny once. Ever since then, the writer consistently kills his own half-baked jokes by smothering the punchline. Idiot. And have you ever looked at a panel called “Pardon my Planet”? Jesus wept.
I have to admit to feeling utterly stupid. I’ve never heard of an electrologist, so I thought it was something akin to electro-therapy and the B.C. was a “hare-brain.”
Unfortunately, it reads just as funny both ways. That is to say not.
While I didn’t think the strip in question was truly funny, I’m surprised no one else has picked up on the double joke involved. Aside from the “hair”/“hare” pun, there’s also the allusion to the magician’s trick of pulling a rabbit out of a hat. To be perfectly honest, I got the magician allusion before I got the “hair”/“hare” pun. I found the strip quite clever when both parts of the joke registered with me.
Anyhoo…
Oh, I got it, but I couldn’t fathom any way to make it work as part of the joke.
What’s funny about a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat? That was the first thing I thought of, too, before I went to dictionary.com, but I still didn’t find it funny.
This thread reminds me of a quote by Winston Churchill: “Never has so much inspiration been inspired by something so uninspiring. And 90 percent perspiration.” Or was that Thomas Edison?
And in conclusion: Clams got suspenders!!!