247

Off the hook
Posted on August 10, 2017 by David M Willis

247 thoughts on “Off the hook”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    *twang*

    1. Nono

      *twan’*

      1. butts

        *twaeunghe*

        1. OnyxIdol

          What is that? Chinese? Or korean?

        2. Perry

          Everybody twang chung tonight!

    2. Needfuldoer

      Anyone else read this as the “twang” sound effect from Smells Like Nirvana?

      1. Geneseepaw

        I believe that sound bite from Nirvana is .mp3 file in the dictionary beside the words.

  2. AnvilPro

    I choose to believe that Danny is trying to play Hotel California

    1. pjeseb

      Such a lovely place.

    2. shadowcell

      welcome to the Hotel Indiana
      such a boring place (such a boring place)
      such a pasty face

      1. Tenzhi

        On a dark rural highway
        Humid wind in my hair
        Rustic smell of the cornfields
        Rising up through the air

        Up ahead in the distance
        I saw a shimmering light
        But I knew it was Knightstown
        I shouldn’t stop there at night

        1. Clif

          +1 Interwebs.

        2. BagFaceMan

          There she stood on the street way.
          In front of Taco Bell.
          And I was thinking to myself
          This place is far worse than hell

    3. Stephen Bierce

      And after that, Chris Isaak’s “Can’t Do A Thing To Stop Me”…

    4. butting

      Nah, it’s the Hollies. The Air I Breathe, I think?

    5. DinaWho

      According to Google those match the uke chords for Creep.

      1. Tomas

        The previous scene transitioning to the next with “Creep” playing in the background is just so perfect.

    6. 3oranges

      Checking, even with transposition it doesn’t seem to fit. The Air I Breathe does work in the original key; just putting the sequence in google offers Creep as another, but that seems unlikely.

      1. Schmeedle

        That’s the key Amanda Palmer plays Creep on ukulele

        1. butting

          Hold on, AnvilPro was right to begin with. Hotel California, by the Byrds.

        2. UniqueSnowflake2

          Wrong birds.

    7. avistel

      G B7 C Cm is also “Creep” by Radiohead, Danny playing it makes WAY too much sense.

      1. Maxine Morey

        (also is the entirety of the the SU opening theme)

    8. Tawdry Quirks

      Nah, this isn’t Bruce Hall at the University of North Texas. Never understood why there was a campus legend claiming “Hotel California” was about Bruce Hall. Okay, Don Henley did attend UNT, and did reside in that dorm, but I’ve never heard any evidence for that theory beyond “he lived in that dorm”.

    9. Eyebrow

      I was thinking “Creep”, since it uses just those four chords, over and over.

      “The Air That I Breathe” was apparently first to make use of the progression, and it’s so unusual that its authors, Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, received credit in the re-release of Creep.

      But Danny just plunking out those four chords alone says “Creep”. I once wrote down those four chords (yes, in that key) and handed it to an accompanist, who glanced at it and immediately guessed “Radiohead?”

  3. Miguel

    Danny is embracing his Gayness

    1. Orion Fury

      I…

      1. Dusk Rain

        Danny’s bisexual invisibility will shortly activate, leaving only a disembodied ukulele.

        1. Brumagem

          (I love you)

    2. ugh

      Well isn’t that an unfortunate and obnoxious bit of stereotyping. Go embrace a cactus.

      1. Orion Fury

        I think I was looking for words like that.

      2. Roborat

        Nah, step it up a notch, go fornicate with a cactus.

  4. Derek

    Danny I’ll accept this new development if you stop calling it UKE
    this isn’t yaoi!

    1. vlademir1

      I kinda wanna make a joke here about SEMME… but I won’t.

      1. Dusk Rain

        You win my internets for this.

        1. SgtWadeyWilson

          Where were you when I went there? *Shakes fist.*
          (Honestly, I think it was funnier their way.)

        2. Clif

          I’m still trying to figure out the connection between ukesters and yaoists.

        3. Kinoko

          Cannot tell if serious.

          Also, yeah, every time he calls it an “uke”, my inner teenager giggles.

    2. Ryek Hvek

      Don’t rebuke the uke. 🙂

      1. JetstreamGW

        You’re a bad person, and you should feel bad.

  5. LeslieBean4Shizzle

    Fucking hell, Danny has some pretty eyelashes.

    1. ValdVin

      Yes, he does.

      Another added benefit of New Danny. They were much less visible in Old Danny’s “freak out/flail arms/solve Joe’s problem” mode.

      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/freakingoutone/

    2. lady jack

      I understand that I’m only saying this because it is My story*, but do you think that Danny’s on the path to transition?

      *(like, same hat, same Blue ukulele, same Douche-y past, etc)

    3. Micki

      I had the exact same thought. <3

  6. Leorale

    I don’t care who doesn’t like the ukulele, I will love it forever, this is a promise.

    1. Yumi

      “The ukulele” referring to the instrument in general or Danny’s playing of it? Because I’m a fan of the instrument, but I’m not sure how I feel about this ukulele+Danny combo.

      1. Leorale

        Hypothesis: any panel of any comic may be improved by the presence of a ukulele.

        1. Yumi

          I started thinking of terrible webcomic panels to insert a ukulele into. My mind got to that Ctrl+Alt+Del comic and I was like, “Yeah, I need to stop.”

        2. Delicious Taffy

          Ctrl+Alt+Del? What do security options have to do with bad comic panels?

        3. Yumi

          Get with the old cringe memes, man.

        4. Delicious Taffy

          Is this like Pingas and Chris-Chan?

        5. Queen Anthai

          Hey, if he doesn’t know that particular one, it’s his loss.

        6. Delicious Taffy

          Wait a minute. “Loss”? Like, loss.jpg?

        7. Dusk Rain

          …Wait. Was that a loss reference? (I only know it from memes.) Because if so, I tip my hat to your pun.

        8. Queen Anthai

          tee hee

        9. Icalasari

          :.|:;

        10. Clif

          https://www.google.com/search?site=&source=hp&ei=91aMWbLQFJavjwTHk7ngAw&q=control+alt+delete+comic&oq=control-alt-delete+co&gs_l=mobile-gws-hp.1.0.0i22i30k1l5.2507.31549.0.33775.22.22.0.9.9.0.332.4134.0j14j4j4.22.0….0…1.1j4.64.mobile-gws-hp..1.21.2363.3..0j41j0i131k1j0i131i155k1j0i30k1.yKknXZ9qas8#imgrc=pJPjERX5kcPCuM:

    2. Neeks

      I have a headcanon that Danny will at some point teach himself this song.

  7. Tacos

    Gas. It’s definitely gas.

    1. WikiDreamer

      Aren’t there pills for that and if there are, is it possible to take too many to fix a major build up of self induced hot air?

    2. Orion Fury

      Why can’t you accept colonialism as the cause? Too challenging?

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Colonialism takes effort, man. You’ve gotta, like, do stuff.

        1. Valerie

          Nah, most of the hard part has already been done by our ancestors. We just enjoy/suffer the consequences now, depending on which side your ancestors were on.

  8. BBCC

    Yay, Sal’s here <3

    Also, Danny, I realize that as the years go by you're getting too young to have been around fandom much but you using the word 'use' made me snort.

  9. Passchendaele

    Maybe “chillin’ out with somebody’s mom” is not the best way to put it, danny, or maybe I just have a dirty mind. Probably the latter :p

    Stupid farting colonialists! They’re everywhere!

    1. Emperor Daniel

      It didn’t even cost Danny a nickel.

    2. Orion Fury

      “Farting”? On purpose or a new filter (for me, anyways).

      1. Dusk Rain

        Sal said it was either gas or colonialism so I’d guess on purpose.

  10. KJ

    Is that Radiohead’s “Creep”?

    1. Eyebrow

      It’s so very special!
      (Yes, it definitely is Creep.)

  11. vlademir1

    No, Sal, it’s just some cultural appropriation relating to the ties between music and specific lower class subsets of culture in the South. It’s somewhat unfortunate, but not nearly on the level of colonialism.

    1. Leorale

      I think she’s referring to Portugal/Hawaii.

    2. Goshii

      I disagree with the cultural appropriation, because an instrument is a tool, and a tool cannot be appropriated. The music made with it can be, but the tool itself cannot. Otherwise we would never have advanced as a species to having actually having left the planet and landing on another celestial body.

      1. dn3s

        that is a clever and also pretty arbitrary distinction.

        1. Goshii

          It makes perfect sense, if tools cannot be shared freely, then no one can benefit. If culture A comes up with a revolutionary way to harvest 5x as many crops in a given time, and culture B is able to grow 5x the crops in a given time, if those ways aren’t exchanged, it is to the detriment of both cultures.

          Coastal peoples taught the inlanders how to fish, while the inlanders taught the coastal people how to effectiviely ranch their fish with fish farming.

          Truly when you get down to it however, it is impossible to stop appropriation without stopping the free exchange of ideas. While there are some horrible people who abuse other’s cultures, there are far more that learn because they want to know more about said culture. But saying things like “White people playing the ukulele is cultural appropriation” while at the same time saying “Sampling of ‘white’ music by POC rappers is perfectly fine” will in time not create equality but shift oppression whether real or perceived in the other direction.

          We can either become a truly globalized society where all the cultures are intermixed becoming one super culture, or we can stick to our tribalism and never unify as a species or people.

        2. Eldritch Gentleman

          If you start digging into this then without cultural appropriation jazz and blues would never be born because the instruments used to create this music were invented by white people.

          All in all people who support “SJW” ideas are on the extreme end of “cultural appropriation is bad” while truth is much closer to the middle. It’s okay to grab ideas from other cultures because they grab them from us too. What should not be done is making fun and mocking said culture. Say wearing a kimono is fine, but making fun of Japanese and protraying them as “yellow monkeys” while wearing said kimono is not acceptable.

          I think the key issue here is that extremisation of this concept came from US. Because minority groups like blacks or native americans feel threatened and exploited by white people taking their culture but then bashing them for said culture (like adopting rap but then calling black rapers gangsters). The key issue lies in the fact that those socities-within-society feel threatened because they don’t have a structure (nation, country) to protect and preserve their culture. You won’t really see other nations (like the Japanese who HEAVILY appropriated from other cultures, like from the Chinese) raising this problem because it’s NOT a problem for them. If someone just tries to make Italian food or play some regional music, hey it’s okay, so long as they are not making fun of us, it’s okay. They are not Afraid of having their culture stolen and destroyed because it’s their own, protected by their own country.

        3. thejeff

          Not just that they feel threatened and exploited, but that they have been threatened and exploited. And to a large degree still are.

          *And that’s a horrible typo in “black rappers”. 🙂

        4. Eldritch Gentleman

          Yeah.
          Huh? There is a second r there? Well I’ve never been interested in this music so whoops.

        5. Li

          There’s a second p, if you’re not being facetious.

        6. Eldritch Gentleman

          Ah mixed up r for p. I’m kinda stressed out today so I hope you’ll forgive me these small mistakes.

        7. Li

          “The instruments were invented by white people”

          Citation sorely needed. And remember that who we give credit to for inventions that happened in multiple parts of the world, especially an evolution of instruments that were in use all over, is an extremely arbitrary and often literally racist thing.

          Like. The history you’ve been taught is not an unvarnished reflection of objective reality, y’know.

          (Never mind that you can’t appropriate from the culture that was literally forced on you at pain of death. That’s not how that works.)

        8. Eldritch Gentleman

          Well I know wikipedia is hardly an extremely accurate source but to give two examples, a piano was invented by an Italian Bartolomeo Cristofori and Saxophone by a Belgian Adolphe Sax.

        9. Elisto

          African Americans using instruments invented by white people is not cultural appropriation because, as the topic at hand states, colonialism. They didn’t exploit white cultures for just the parts they it liked, white cultures were literally forced on enslaved Africans (and others), so of course their descendants continued to use what they knew.

        10. Eldritch Gentleman

          Frankly what I was talking about was more along the lines of “cultural appropriation vs. cultural exchange”. Exchange of ideas and concepts is important and improve cultures but what minorities in US face is more along the lines of appropriation.

        11. Durandal_1707

          Actually, many of the European instruments are derived from instruments invented in the Muslim world, introduced to Europe both by the Moorish invasion of Spain and the Crusades. The lute, guitar, violin, and other string instruments were inspired by the oud, for example (the word “lute” actually derives from a misunderstanding of “al oud”). The reed instruments, similarly, are derived from the Middle Eastern shawm.

          Basically, in the end, *everything* is the result of cultural exchange. No culture has ever existed in a vacuum.

        12. Li

          ^^ what this person said about your instrument claim

        13. Eldritch Gentleman

          @Durandal_1707
          Whiiich was kinda my point but you all mostly focused on the half-serious mostly uninformed joke-guess than on the rest of the comment.
          Still, good to know, thanks for the info.

      2. Kryss LaBryn

        The funny thing is that bagpipes are thoroughly associated with Scotland now, but actually they were invented in the Middle East and only made their way to Scotland (where they really caught on, obviously) when they had already gone out of fashion everywhere else.

    3. Meta

      But Danny seems to be referencing soul music, which is mostly affiliated with black musicians, who are generally descended from African slaves and are therefore proxy victims of colonialism. He also drops his g’s on the phrases ‘kickin’ it’ and ‘chillin’,’ both of which are largely derived from and associated with black American language, and uses the phrase ‘off the hook,’ which is also associated with black American language. The way he uses the phrase ‘rhythm in my soul’ also reads to me like an (especially condescending) appropriation of black American language.

      I think this type of appropriation counts as residue of colonialism because it has such deep roots in the European empires’ literal appropriation of foreign cultures. Whether it’s yoga, wearing faux-dreads, or language, it’s claiming ownership of things that white people only have access to because our ancestors literally claimed ownership of huge swaths of the world.

      In the case of appropriating black language, white people are claiming ownership of something that we only have access to because our ancestors literally claimed ownership of African people.

      1. Meta

        And yeah it’s not on the level of colonialism but it is a byproduct of it.

        1. Meta

          …which is why Sal’s comment is accurate and relevant.

      2. Rukduk

        I have only ever heard the phrase ‘off the hook’ spoken by surfers. Who also commonly drop the ‘g’ from active verb endings. Surfer culture (yes I will say surfer culture) is itself more of a hybrid culture born on Hawaii due to a combination of cultural exchange and partial assimilation into the native culture by middle-class whites and Asian American and African American immigrants that emerged during the late 60s and was disseminated across the pacific coast (particularly California) throughout the 70s and 80s. This hybrid culture combined with Yuppie culture, nerd culture, and a general desire to be counter cultural without becoming part of the punk, goth, etc. counter-cultures to eventually produce the modern hipster cultural movement.

        1. Rukduk

          At least, that’s what I would argue.

        2. Meta

          It also appears in early hip hop, but yeah it’s not as clearly appropriated as the other examples.

          And… I basically agree with the rest of what you said, but does it change the role that colonialism played in these cultural imports? Surfer culture also borrowed heavily from native Hawaiian culture, and was able to do so because Hawaii was a literal colony of the U.S. from 1898 to 1959.

          Here’s an 1899 cartoon depicting the U.S. with its colonial ‘possessions’ — note Hawaii at the top.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii#/media/File:1899BalanceCartoon.jpg

    4. Eyebrow

      I think it’s a bit hypocritical of Sal to point out Danny’s affected dropped G’s while continuing to call him “Wonderbread”.

  12. Ryek Hvek

    “I shall strum it and pick it and call it George.”

    1. CJ

      Is that an EGS reference or was that already a reference to something else?

      1. MatthewTheLucky

        Looney Tunes. If it was EGS, it’d be Grace.

        1. CJ

          Sarah, referring to Grace in squirrel form.

        2. MatthewTheLucky

          That is what I just said, yes.

      2. Needfuldoer

        It’s an old Looney Tunes gag.

        1. anonymsly

          Which also came originally, I’m pretty sure, from the really not funny Of Mice and Men.

        2. Ryek Hvek

          ** ding ** I wonder how John Steinbeck felt about his novel becoming a recurring “Which way did they go, George” gag in cartoons.

  13. JessWitt

    Don’t get cooked, stay off the hook!

    1. Quartz Falcon

      With Danny as Pearl and Sal as Marina!

    2. Doki

      OMG that was my first thought too

  14. Leorale

    It’s pretty sweet that Sal can casually point to colonialism within the first semester of freshman year. I wonder what class she’s taking that focuses on colonialism, or if she’s just well read, to have this word so handy.

    1. butts

      Despite certain people’s intimations to the contrary, Sal is quite sharp.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Like a knife in the hand, that girl.

        1. Yumi

          Don’t you mean “a phone”?

        2. Orion Fury

          If so, she had a very unique way of holding it.

        3. Emperor Daniel

          Perhaps it’s just her cutting wit.

        4. Brotato

          This is my favorite running joke on this site. IT WAS HIS PHONE.

    2. Li

      Mmmm, but Sal is Black; people who aren’t white often wind up learning this shit outside of class, and have lots of ugly first hand examples.

      (Sal is very sharp but I would NOT necessarily give the credit to IU, is all I’m saying. Now, if JOYCE was seeing colonialism, that would definitely come from IU, because there’s no way she learned about that before coming.)

      1. Li

        Like. As white folks we are incredibly sheltered from this stuff, and even when we learn about it it’s usually couched in ways that make us feel okay about the present and just vaguely guilty about the past — and then often angry about that guilt.

        But a lot of other people do not have the luxury of learning about this only through the textbook. The total absence of yourself in that narrative more frequently drives people to do independent study to find themselves, among other things. And the legacy of colonialism is all over Sal’s place in the narrative of the US.

    3. Nico

      …I am from outside the US. Is it normal to not discuss colonization before university? A gradeschooler knows (at least, vaguely) the word “colonization” here. Also, ditto on that point by Li above: even if colonization isn’t discussed in classes in the US, Sal is black; it’s unlikely she wouldn’t feel a resonance with that narrative or have lived experiences that correspond with it.

      1. Li

        Wr discussed it in like second grade in my school (in a way that made me cry for weeks, but I don’t know if that was me reading between the lines or an unusually accurate lesson) but I have no idea what’s normal in the American public school system (and Sal wound up in private, Catholic school), because my schooling was a series of experiential schools and very atypical.

      2. Rectilinear Propagation

        It was when I was in school but apparently there are grade school textbooks that refer to slaves as just “workers” and pretend families weren’t split up when people were sold now. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same texts also never used the word colonization.

        But even the textbooks I got glossed over, left out, or straight up lied about stuff (like Native Americans not understanding how white people do transactions instead of admitting that they were just straight up not repaying loans).

      3. Brigid Keely

        Any historic lesson or class discussion in the USA is designed & presented to shield white people from as much bad feelings as possible, both to “protect” white kids from feeling bad/guilty AND because most textbooks in the USA are approved by the state of Texas. There’s very few actual text book companies with big distributors so large states like Texas hold a huge amount of editorial power. If they say they won’t use a book as written… it tends to get changed. While not every resident of Texas is a big old racist, the people in power tend to be, and really want enforce their view on the rest of the world.

  15. butts

    p o s e r

    1. Ryek Hvek

      h o s e r

      1. Orion Fury

        d o z e r

        1. Needfuldoer

          g o z e r

        2. Eyebrow

          THERE IS ONLY ZOOOL.

          ROFL.

  16. newllend(henryvolt)

    Okay I know that the moral of this current ark is not to encourage violence but breaking the ukulele might be big enough shock to snap him out of it.

    Especially if he says “Uke” again…I’m just saying.

    1. Fart Captor

      There’s nothing wrong with that egg

      1. Gesc

        Only that it would be so much better scrambled.

    2. Kryss LaBryn

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKdohNSnLtw

  17. Sam

    How happy Danny seems feels offputting to me here considering he is making everything seem far more chill than it was or is.

  18. Goki

    Don’t be mean Sal, Danny has been “Off the hook” in the recent comics.

    1. Orion Fury

      But could we go so far as to say his playing is “lit”?

      1. Neeks

        Depends, you got any lighter fluid?

    2. ValdVin

      Somehow I find “off the hook” as a dorkier thing to hear from a ukulele-strumming Danny than the dropped “g”.

  19. Delicious Taffy

    I don’t understand is it problematic for him to drop the G and play the ukulele?

    1. Orion Fury

      I don’t know if this is a serious question or a joke that I don’t understand.

    2. SgtWadeyWilson

      No, but it would be problematic for him to drop the G and play the uitar.

    3. Valerie

      It’s not the way he normally speaks. He adopted this new style of speaking to sound cool. When groups that normally drop the Gs do it (black people, poor people, southerners, etc.), they get made fun of and called uneducated. When a middle class white boy does it, it’s “cool.”

      1. Li

        Sal specifically says “you don’t have to drop your g’s when you talk TO ME”; it’s especially obnoxious if Danny is only using this speech style around her, because then it’s like he doesn’t think she can understand his usual way of talking, which is “correct” English, and there’s just like five different kinds of baggage there.

        Danny doing this just to sound cool is obnoxious enough, but doing it just around Sal would be worse, and she has no way of telling which is happening, so she reminds him (suuuuper politely, considering that I’m sure Sal has experienced this before) that he doesn’t need to affect this accent with her.

        1. Eyebrow

          And yet she keeps calling him “Wonderbread”. What, do culture jabs work only one way?

        2. BBCC

          A) Not a cultural jab. There’s a difference between that and making fun of accents.

          B) She’s not making a jab at him.

        3. Valerie

          I didn’t even think of that. Good catch!

      2. Ntrovert

        My state (Illinois) has a governor who does this when he is traveling around outside of Chicago. An extremely wealthy venture capitalist who is well-educated and who plays this little game to sound like “regular people”. And, you know, to fit in with the folks that he needs to have support his anti-labor, anti-Chicago agenda.

        1. Brigid Keely

          I hate him so much. I did not know this about him. I did not think I could hate and despise him more than I already did. And yet I find I have room in me for even more hate. What a dickbag.

  20. Achallenger

    More like colonism amirite

  21. KarkatTheDalek

    Danny, I…don’t call it that. You don’t know what that means.

    1. SgtWadeyWilson

      Maybe he does, and he’s hoping Ethan starts wearing a t-shirt with a big yellow stripe.

    2. Li

      He’s pronouncing it Yuke. That’s not a word that I’m aware of?

    3. Spencer

      I half wonder if Willis chose to have Danny refer to it as such for that reason.

      Also Danny is somewhat versed in gay porn vis a vis Amber.

      1. Li

        Uke as in that is Ooh-kay.

        Uke as in this is Yooh-k.

        The words sound nothing alike! Seriously XD It’s not a reference. I bet yook is a pretty common nickname for the instrument among English speakers too.

        (We are not pronouncing ukulele correctly to begin with, so it being just our nickname would make sense.)

      2. Kamino Neko

        Uke has been the short form of ukulele since long before any English speaker ever heard the word anime, let alone yaoi.

        1. Spencer

          Danny is also a total bottom with a canonical tendency to enjoy being pegged, so I’m not ruling it out.

      3. thejeff

        uke and seme are also terms used in some martial arts – probably all the Japanese ones? (Seme being the one performing the technique and uke being the one it’s being done to.)
        Which Danny is unlikely to know, but Amber probably does.

        1. Spencer

          Amber is probably more familiar with the other variation of the term.

        2. thejeff

          Well, she has extensive martial arts training. She likely knows both.

        3. BBCC

          Nooooooot necessarily. I took martial arts for seven years and we never learned any terms like that – we learned the names of our forms and that was about it.

  22. Emperor Daniel

    Danny is on Those Steps. You know what this means.

    Yes, the ukulele is going to dump him very shortly.

    1. Dusk Rain

      *Gasp*

    2. Bagge

      Soon we will see NEW new Danny

    3. Torra

      But a uke never dumps anyone

  23. Mr D

    I don’t get the punchline.

    Somebody explain please?

    1. Tomas

      We’re too old to understand these kids today and their crazy rock and roll music.

    2. Valerie

      He’s talking in a way that many black people talk (dropping Gs) despite the fact that he has never spoken like that before, and his reasoning is that it’s because now he has “rhythm” and “soul.”

      There’s a stereotype that black people are more soulful and have better rhythm than white people. He’s feeding that stereotype and using it to his advantage because he thinks it’ll make him look cool. Sal is poking fun at him by calling hi out on it.

      1. Valerie

        *him

  24. DarkoNeko

    “spent all evening chillin’ with someone’s mom” could be taken very, very differently had Joe said that.

    1. Dusk Rain

      Or Mike!

    2. CJ

      I wouldn’t call hanging out with Amber’s mom chilling in the verb sense.
      The whole description is a look through rather rose-tinted glasses anyway.

      1. thejeff

        Certainly is, though it makes me wonder if he realized whose mom he was chillin’ with. He just might not have wanted to say “my traumatized ex-girlfriend’s mom”. (Or let on that his ex really sort of was Amber, for that matter.)

        And how long were they “chillin'”? Did Stacy really stay after Amber went and hid in her room? I’d assumed she’d left before that.

        1. Delicious Taffy

          He knows who she is.

        2. ValdVin

          I imagine Danny spending a couple hours with Stacy means she’d tell him who, exactly, she was. Otherwise it’d be weird unless they were stuck in an elevator*.

          I hope we get more about Danny finding things out from Stacy and vice-versa.

          I don’t thinnk Stacy would leave (today) without first finding out if Amber was totally done talking with her. Maybe secondhand, from Ethan?

          (*I bet New Danny is completely able to keep his chill after two hours stuck in an elevator.)

  25. Rukduk

    Ah don’t worry Sal, it isn’t either. It’s too much time spent watching surfer movies. Which is troublesome in and of itself if he’s starting down the path of 90s and 00s surfer lingo. Pretty sure he’ll be calling everyone “brah” and using words like “narly” and ending all of his sentences with either “dude”, “like”, or “ya know?” by the end of the weekend (in comic time).

    1. Needfuldoer

      Keanu Reeves is brought on to DoA the Animated Series as a mid season replacement for Danny’s previous voice actor.

      1. Rukduk

        “Excellent!”

  26. saltchocolate

    Is anyone else suddenly having trouble seeing the hovertext (on iPhone), or is it just my phone (new software update), or what??

    1. DinaWho

      I couldn’t see yesterday’s, but I didn’t have a problem today.

      1. DinaWho

        I also haven’t actually installed the update yet, though.

  27. Tomas

    Danny started strumming first thing in the morning and he’s still strumming at sunset. He’s not gonna stop till his fingers bleed.

    1. Needfuldoer

      He’s got blistahs on his fingahs!

  28. Keulan

    I like new Danny, but it’s still kinda weird to see him so chill like this.

    1. Unusually Angry Hippie

      I actually preferred it when he was generally being terrible at life, but I guess the dramatic impetus has just been shifted elsewhere.

  29. Jude

    Is he playing the Steven Universe theme song?

    1. David M Willis

      yes you are the first person to guess correctly, you win

      1. Yumi

        TIL that the Steven Universe theme song and Radiohead’s “Creep” apparently have some overlap.

        1. Delicious Taffy

          Willis ripped off SiIvagunner.

          https://youtu.be/pV1_FGqt24o

        2. Eyebrow

          A whole LOT of overlap, to be honest. They’re in the same key, and have the same four chords, repeated.

        3. butting

          Listened to ’em both any number of times (and even performed Creep a few times) and never even noticed. I, uh, hope Sugar doesn’t have any legal issues lurking with Albert Hammond or with Mike Hazelwood’s estate?

      2. Kris

        Yay I thought that as soon as I heard it!

  30. Morrison

    I really like how you did Danny in panel three.

  31. Ryek Hvek

    By day, he’s Danny the Strummer, but by night, he becomes Danny the Shredder.

  32. Lingo

    Newsflash: Nobody actually pronounces those G’s.

    1. A Scientist

      Yeah, I have especially careful annunciation, and I’m pretty sure I don’t pronounce those g’s, either, despite it.. It would probably sound more intentional and unnatural for someone to pronounce them.

      1. Arian

        I wish I could think of a good joke on “especially careful annunciation”. I’ll have to leave it to someone funnier. But you meant “enunciation”.

    2. Yumi

      I feel like it changes the way you pronounce the last vowel sound, whether you’re just saying the words in a way that doesn’t emphasis the “g” or if the way you’re leaving it off is more deliberate.

      But that’s just me; feel free to mutter different pronunciations to yourself to see if you notice a difference, like I did.

      1. A Scientist

        I’m not getting a huge difference, but perhaps that’s for one of several reasons related to how I speak in general: the depth of my voice, my accent, my pace and cadence, etc.

        And if it’s a big difference for you, perhaps that’s also the case for Danny.

        1. Random832

          For me there’s not much difference, and it depends on the position and stress of the syllable… I tried out Danny’s lines and none of them were really noticeable or anywhere near half as cringey anyway as most of what he was actually saying.

          Maybe there’s a line through the state north of which people enunciate it more clearly though, or maybe Danny is just a nerd.

      2. Emperor Norton II

        In other words, there are different ways of not pronouncing the g, so to speak.

        (I’m mostly trying to be silly here.)

    3. varius

      Bugs Bunny has lawn gears.

    4. SgtWadeyWilson

      I guess that makes me nobody.

      I will drop the G of chilling sometimes, but I tend to use the word to mean “causing one chills” or whatever the horror genre version means, and “the chillin’ suspense of Stephen King” is just not right.

      1. skart

        Naw, s’like, the sound on the end of chilling is not a g-sound, it’s an “ng” sound.

        1. SgtWadeyWilson

          The g in -ing denotes a difference in pronunciation from -in’; the difference is defined by a sound g is commonly used to symbolize.

          I really shouldn’t care about this…

    5. ValdVin

      I’m somewhere in the middle, as I’m as Wonder Bread as Danny. But making sure I put the g on strumming and chilling? I would come off like Maraget Dumont.

      However I’d feel silly saying my guitar work is “bringing out the rhythm in my soul”.(g.or no :).

      How I want to study an accent map with Danny’s hometown and Bloomington.

      1. Random832

        Well, if it helps, Danny’s presumably from (as listed on Dorothy’s cast page) Mishawaka, which is basically in the exact center east-west, within a few miles of Indiana’s northern border.

        Sal is from Evansville, which is on the Ohio river (southern border), not quite in the southwest corner of the state, but if you drew a line south from the straight part of the western border.

        1. ValdVin

          Thanks for the info.

          A few maps I glanced at all point to Danny’s hometown accent, local IU accent, and Sal (from her five years in boarding school, or childhood in Evansville) being different.

        2. thejeff

          Given that Walky doesn’t have Sal’s southern accent, it seems to be from her years in boarding school.

        3. ValdVin

          Oh, of course. I forget if that was TN or KY, but here is just one map which suggests the differences.

          http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/usdialects.gif

          Whenever my wife goes to Worcester, 60 miles away, for one day, she comes back with her native accent, and it’s incredible to listen to.

        4. merbrat

          While in the USAF, I had a friend who had a Texas accent, but after calling her mom she would come back with a serious Georgia accent. I asked, and she said: “When ah call her, the first thing she says is ‘Git that Texas outta yer voice!'” (what I thought was funny, is her mom was the Base Commander’s secretary, at Warner Robbins AFB, GA)

    6. 3oranges

      I don’t pronounce the gs, but they change the n from a dental consonant (tongue against the teeth) to a velar consonant (tongue against the top of your mouth).

      Try it! The two sound different enough that I can tell most people I’ve met do the same; there’s a co-worker who never does for only certain words, and it makes those sounds strangely informal.

  33. Bagge

    A good egg

    1. MatthewTheLucky

      Muahahahaha!

  34. A Scientist

    A good e

    1. A Scientist

      Darn it, that was supposed to be a reply to Bagge above me.

      1. Emperor Norton II

        As long as nobody else replies to Bagge, it’ll look good.

        1. Bagge

          Or as long as all other new additions are replies to me, which I hereby declare canon.

        2. Emperor Norton II

          Hey, who told you that you are allowed to declare stuff? Trying to steal some perks of being emperor, huh?

        3. Bagge

          I’m a loooooose canon.

          Thereby I can declare canon.

          At least the loose canon.

          This canon, in fact.

          It’s mine. You can’t have it. *clutches canon*

  35. marianne

    What if colonialism IS a gas? It would explain its rapid spread!

    1. wwwhhattt

      Jumping Jack colonialism/it’s a gas gas gas

  36. Josh

    Yeah, those chords sound like Creep. Hummed out the notes, seems right.

  37. zathael

    “Colonialism or Gas” is the next book title.

    1. Emperor Daniel

      How about “I just spent all evening chillin’ with somebody’s mom”?

  38. Gesc

    Plays Dude Looks like a Lady on the Uke?

    Well, at least Danny survived this day with his optimism and musical instrument of choice. He’s relatively well off compared other people.

  39. BenRG

    Firstly, Sal wouldn’t be Sal if she was unimpressed by everything and anyone she encountered.

    Secondly… Danny is making up most of those slang sayings, isn’t he? There is nothing quite so painful or troubling as watching a fundamentally uncool person try to be cool!

    1. MatthewTheLucky

      Ironically, no. You’re just out of touch.

  40. zoelogical

    so danny and amber’s mom were hanging out all night, yes

    1. zoelogical

      ….parsing correction: danny was hanging out with amber’s mom

      danny and amber do not share a mother as far as i know

      1. wwwhhattt

        but ‘were’ implies 2 or more people, so ‘danny and amber’s mum were’ would be fine. Except there’s bound to be a dialect that uses ‘were’ as the singular…

        1. zoelogical

          ye this is true, but it still feels awkward/confusing as heck and much more confusing than the latter

          i feel weird about doing “amber’s mom and danny” for. some reason??? im not really sure. just dont feel right to me as a constructed phrase. i think it’s because “amber’s mom” is a description instead of a name and i forgot her name

  41. BenRG

    I’ve got a question: Does Sal carefully research places where she can ‘hang’ and look cool (the right lighting, crosswind and the like) or is it just a natural talent? I know that Joyce thinks it is the latter!

    1. Eldritch Gentleman

      It might be a conditioned reflex, she’s been doing this for so long that she subconsciously knows where she’ll look cool.

    2. Gesc

      She’s not even trying. Sal is the sort of person that proves that true coolness comes from not giving a shit about looking cool. Well, it works for her at least.

    3. ValdVin

      In the “we’re not so different” trope, that reminds me how Sal and Amazi-Girl hang out in the same kinds of places.

      Amazi-Girl was incapable of finding a wall or roof to stand on without a cross-breeze to make her cape look cool.

  42. KSClaw

    I’m just waiting for Danny to start playing the Chocobo theme.

    1. Scar Man!!!

      Swing De Chocobo?

  43. Ryek Hvek

    Danny stops strumming, looks at Sal, and starts in again with “I like to go swimming, with bow-legged wimming”

    1. ValdVin

      And:

      “I love to go swimmin’ with women”.

      –Ballard MacDonald, lyric
      –Sigmund Romberg, music

      Yes, one of the Monsters of Operetta had a dropped “g”, provided by a Tin Pan Alley lyricist.

  44. Vulcanodon

    Huh. I usually say “strumming” but I also say “chillin'”. But if I say “chilling” it’s an adjective meaning “something that causes anxiety or fear”.

  45. Meagan

    I noticed something here that seems like a catch-22 or contradiction and I’m wondering if anyone else noticed or what your thoughts on it are.

    Sal calls Danny “Wonderbread,” which I understand as saying he is boringly white (culturally). This seems to imply a criticism and by extension a suggestion that he be less boringly white / more interesting.

    Yet, as he’s becoming more interesting – “finding himself”: coming out as bi, developing a musical talent and evolving his personal style (even if it is with a hat that is part of a larger trend) – she’s also offhandedly critiquing him for doing it in a way that is colonialist.

    I get that issues of colonialism abound, and many white people go through stages of “finding ourselves” that include borrowing or stealing or however you wanna think about it from other cultures, without acknowledging the historical and contemporary relationship of power between those cultures.

    Having delved pretty deeply into exploring the roots of colonialism, I know that one of the proposed alternatives for white people to “find ourselves” without appropriating is to look into our own cultural heritage and reclaim those traditions.

    However, given that these characters are not going that deeply into this exploration in this strip, does anyone else think this is a little catch-22-ey?

    And, if we wanna go further down this line of thought, do you think that the above strategy (looking into his own cultural roots) is what Sal would recommend for Danny to be less boring and more interesting, without appropriating? Do you think that this is something Sal has thought about? What do you think she would consider the way out of that dilemma?

    Or, what do you (anyone who cares to respond) think is the way out of the dilemma?

    1. smarties

      Calling him wonderbread and pointing out how culturally white he is isn’t necessarily a challenge that he be less so. It’s more pointing out what he is. He doesn’t have to try and be less so. He doesn’t have to try and be Less Wonderbread. It’s more reminding him of his place, or more probably from Sal and her demeanor, playful teasing as friends can often do.

      I don’t see the challenge from her statement at all.

      1. Fart Captor

        I agree. I think that originally, it was a mild dig at how Danny was both white and bland. Now it’s become an affectionate nickname.

        Sal probably would have encouraged Danny exploring new hobbies and interests, but I doubt she’d stop calling him that if she feels he’s become more interesting.

        1. ValdVin

          I’m with you on this.

          Especially since the math tutoring w/o trying to get into her knickers (I like that quote) Danny goes on the Good Egg side of her ledger. For someone as closely guarded as Sal, that’s a pretty big thing.

        2. Meagan

          On second look and considering your comments, I think this is a fair interpretation (even before the next comics came out showing them being such cute sweet friends – I just hadn’t gotten around to commenting).

  46. Tenn

    What the hell is he doing there?
    He doesn’t belong there.

    1. Eyebrow

      He’s so frickin’ special!

      1. Derick

        Yeah, he wishes.

  47. Larkle

    Having a ukulele is fine, but calling it a uke is a little… not.

  48. motorfirebox

    I know that Danny’s lashes are drawn thick to make it clear he’s looking down. But I’m going to pretend that they’re actually just luxuriously long.

  49. Romanticide

    I for once I am glad Danny looks so happy for once, his face looks really relaxed

  50. Floranna

    Uke?
    That’s hilarious. =D
    Luckily, neither of them seem to know what that means…

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