30 October 2006

Torch Song

See it here.

Hmm, I picked the wrong day to come back.

Today's Dinette Set is a singularly puzzling panel. In a strictly narrative sense we have an unfamiliar neighbor leaning on the car, begging for a ride. Burl informs the man that they are going exactly where he is going, and that he may join them. Dale adds the neither helpful nor humorous capping comment that they must stop for gas along the way.

Searching for humor, the reader is given two potential options. Perhaps we are meant to focus on the obesity/laziness angle playing out in leaning man's gym bag and the fact that a carful of men are driving, rather than walking, to a rec center just a few blocks away. Alternately, perhaps we are to marvel at the energy inefficiency of driving "just down the next block over."

Unfortunately, either way there's not much in the way of a joke going on, meaning that something else must be going on, subtextually.

The only conclusion I am able to draw on that score is based on several rather odd details coupled with the big black car. The first is the pumpkin face, conspicuously visible due to the strange perspective at which the house is drawn. Second is the large and menacing pair of bolt cutters in the garage. Third is the concept of a wrestling league for men Burl's age.

From all of this, the reader can piece together a hidden narrative involving the wrestler being a bully or homoerotic threat in the locker room. Burl and his posse, always up for a spot of gay-bashing, decide to pick up their nemesis in an intimidating black sedan. Instead of going to the rec center, however, they will be driving to the gas station, and then out to the woods where the bolt cutter will be used to remove all fingerprintable digits while the gas will be used to torch any potential evidence.

I feel safe saying there can be no other possible interpretation.

Men's all-star marginalia team members:
  • What the hell is going on with the left rear tire? Why is it outside the wheel well?
  • Is that leaf thing an elaborate hood ornament or some sort of plant growing near the light? It looks like it is attached to the front of the car.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yay, you're back! I've been missing my daily dose of Dinette snark.

Is there anywhere on the planet where people actually talk like the characters in TDS? "Just down the next block over"??

Anonymous said...

Welcome back. The marginalia in the October 26th TDS has left me shaken. It contains a refernece to a movie about the "Boggy Creek Monster," which is a movie that appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000. So either Julie Larson has seen some of the worst movies imaginable, or she's a fan of MST3K. I guess we won't know for sure until Manos, Hands of Fate appears in a comic.

Anonymous said...

My first interpretation was that the driver of the car and his friends (I can't tell the characters apart) were smiling smugly because they were going to extort gas money from Leaning Man. All I know for sure is that I call for the death of anyone who has ever appeared in this strip with the exception of Penny's daughter.