Table Tennis Archives - Page 20 of 26

CUPS 35: RIIITTTAAA

Not pictured: Whatever Rick’s been doing for the last several hours. Like, here it is, 8:15 in the morning, and it sounds like his day is up, moving, and already having unique characteristics. Did he not go to sleep? Is he one of those insufferable people who never get hungover? Did he maybe get up, boot, rally, hit up the McDonalds and is just now finishing up a small Madden session before attempting to make contact with the real world? Alas, this is something that will probably never have an answer, unfortunately, because I don’t feel like delving deeper into that portion of the storyline. Sorry, guys. Sometimes you just gotta let the background stay a little bit blurry to make the foreground stand out.

CUPS 34: The Morning After

Hangovers. They’re the worst am I right? (applause break) I mean, seriously, it’s like God’s way of punishing us if you think about it (applause break). “Don’t have toooo much fun down there!” (raucous applause break, lean back in smug appreciation of yourself for creating a new mountaintop for which other comedians to aspire to climb to)

CUPS 33: The Night

Here’s the part where I deconstruct the joke and tell you why what you just read is funnier than you may have thought: The ‘punchline’ to this strip (having an internal narrative going on that implies to you your level of drunkenness) is at best the fourth funniest thing in this strip. ‘Prussian Dance Party’, ‘Peppermint Boston Terrier Shots’ and ‘The Night Descended Into Madness’ are all choice cuts of CUPS humor. Look, I get that you may find neither me nor my comic humorous, that’s fine. But whatever you may think that I’m doing with this comic in general, I’m doing that thing SUPER HARD in this strip

CUPS 32: A Toast

Thirty-two strips have come and gone in the CUPS saga. Thirty-two is not a remarkable number. It’s not a particularly huge number, nor is it a multiple of ten. IT’S NOT EVEN A MULTIPLE OF FIVE. So, by all accounts, the thirty-second strip of this comic is not something to comment on, but here goes:

Thirty strips is a bit of a ‘magic’ number, historically, for humor comic strips. Back when newspapers were where you wanted to be, you needed to have thirty strips done in order to submit to the syndicates. Nowadays, of course, with the internet, you could have a quarter of a strip done and put it online to share with the world, but that thirty number still sticks out in my mind as significant.

This strip is my favorite to date artistically, and one of my favorites in terms of storytelling as well. I think it’s a big deal, to me and the overall story going on, and so I’m making note of it. There have been some good strips in the last ten or so, and there’s some pretty fun stuff coming up, too. So, bit of a humblebrag happening here, but, you’re reading this strip and hanging out on this site, so you must be sort of interested in this stuff, too! I guess what I’m getting at with all of this is that I think CUPS is heading to bigger and better things than even I could have imagined when I started. Thanks for being here, you, you’re making the whole thing worthwhile.

CUPS 31: The Cheeseburger Corollary

When you’re grilling burgers, always ask your guests if they don’t want cheese on their burgers. And then be sure to double check to make sure they don’t want you to steal money from their purse when they’re not looking. And then, to be absolutely positive, ask them if they aren’t completely certain they don’t want you to not make a move on their significant other. You will be the talk of the neighborhood. “He puts on the best party and should also hold a manners seminar” people will say.