He’d probably rather play football than watch it anyway
February 8, 2016
2:47 am
Apparently this is a real phenomena and there is basically a 99% overlap between “People who take their families to amusement parks on the weekends” and “people who watch the Super Bowl” so on Super Bowl day the parks are empty to run around. I got invited to go to just such a roller coaster party but I got kind of a late start to the day so I went to a taxidermy store and bought a ram skull instead.
I know it’s early, but why aren’t there a dozen comments already?! Come on, people!
I love every strip that has Jared in it.
Same reason why the theme park is empty, I’d expect.
That’s a real life advice right there
Sad to say it… but the only reason any of our family even celebrated football/superbowl was bc of my grandfather… Sadly though… after 2yrs battling cancer… he passed away Friday February 5… it didnt hit home that he was really gone until I got into work and everyone was talking football and I didnt even know the game happened…
All my sympathies
I’d just like to chime in, in support of your decision to buy a ram skull. That sounds like a truly excellent way to spend the day.
I just noticed that Mr. Fish is riding behind them. Dear god!
As long as he keeps his arms and legs inside the ride at all times, he should be fine. Right?
To be honest I’m more worried about the ride than Mr. Fish. You really think the ride has a chance against the Laser Fish?
Oh crap!
Mr. Fish IS at least “this” tall :P
Are you going to tell him he can’t ride? I sure wouldn’t.
Imagine if Mr. Fish used his Hyper Beam to propel the rollercoaster to insane speeds.
Oh gods. RWBY Laserfish dragonsnake?
Granted, I don’t think Hyper Beam has recoil, but I’ve been wrong before.
Awww now that I think of it, with time travel sporting events ARE a bummer. Like trying to avoid spoilers for your favourite show while following no one BUT the fans of said show on Tumblr.
Heh and I have to say that I share Commander’s sentiment. I much preferred to play football (or as Americans call it Soccer) than watch it on TV as a kid…
Depends how far in the future and if it’s a sport still played. Can you tell me the sports results of any game from the 16th century?
You could look it up online if it was a big enough game.
I think there’s a significant difference between sports records from the 16th century and records from the modern era. Unless there was some kind of major data crash or sports became so insignificant between now and when the Commander is from, I don’t think it should be too big a worry about that happening.
Plus, even if those things did happen, ‘Time Travel’ – if he ever really wants to catch the game, he can literally go catch it any time he wants.
Yeh, that’s the thing that bugged me about Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. George Carlin keeps going “the clock in San Dimas is still ticking” but I think he was just faking it to put pressure on them: if they missed the prom they could always go back in time after the prom to catch the prom. Nobody would notice if they were Bill & Ted from slightly in the future instead of Bill & Ted from the present.
It kinda makes sense in telling someone that they should finish time traveling relative to how long they’ve been traveling. You might not notice a couple of days or a month even, but the longer they spend traveling, the more you’ll notice change.
Like the Commander coming back five minutes later shipwrecked with bloodshot eyes.
Doctor Who touched on this. The doctor borrow Amy and Rory for a couple weeks mid party, so they came back in different clothes. Also all the years they spent time travelling had started catching up to them in Angels take Manhattan. Amy need glasses and had a couple wrinkles.
It depends what version of time travel you’re using – some kinds (like the Feng Shui RPG) have time travel where it only goes to certain distinct points, and those points move forward through time at a constant rate. So it could make sense!
I mean, Bill and Ted wasn’t all that bothered about internal consistency of its rules or anything. But that bit could make sense!
Royal jousting tournament, France, July 1, 1559:
Participants: King Henry II vs. Sir Gabriel Montgomery
Results:
Winner: Sir Gabriel Montgomery
Loser: King Henry II (Died from a lance sliver through the eye)
You, my good sir, win the internet.
Wow, all of it?
Only parts where people write and chat about La Princesse de Clèves.
“Bummer” or “Placing a no-lose bet”. Except the Commander doesn’t seem like the sort of person to go for the time-traveler cheats.
TIALS might even have rules against it, but yeah, I doubt Commander would want to cheat.
With a presumably sweet spacefuture army pension/commission on top of the steady public service Manly Guys agency gig, and his pick of any era in history with its accordant level of technology and stuff to live with, he’s probably like “What would I even need a pile of money for, that’s probably just gonna make it harder to get up in the morning”.
And yeah, they have to have rules about it and even if they didn’t the Commander would cause he’s not the guy to take money off a poor defenseless bookie who’s just trying to make a living.
You uhhh… Don’t know too many bookies do ya? I’ll clue you in, very few are A.) Poor
B.) Defenseless
C.) Just tryin to make a living
That would be a great idea to try in real life, except for the fact that it’s the middle of winter and everything is closed until summer.
Unless you live somewhere that stays reasonably warm in the winter, like the southern parts of the United States. They’ve got theme parks open all year.
I live in someplace reasonably warm that doesn’t get below freezing more than a couple of nights a year and never snows, but all of our local theme parks are national chains, and corporate tells them they should be closed in the winter. I am always saddened by this because I would definitely want to go ride roller coasters on my birthday in early January.
Long time ago, I used to work at a theme park in southern California, when it was purchased by a national chain. They were so proud that they would finally have a park that was open all twelve months of the year.
I’ll tell you right now. I was at DisneyWorld on Saturday. It was cold and rainy, and just as crowded anyway. But honestly probably still better than in the summer when it’s 100F and everything is literally wilting and warping from the heat of miles of concrete and steel.
Super Bowl Sunday in Los Angeles was in the middle (or perhaps the beginning of) a heat wave. That day, temperatures were in the 80’s and it looks like it’ll stay that way for a few days at least.
He’s a time traveler. He can do both. Then again, that’s not really any different from just recording the match.
I love how you live a life where the alternative to rollercoasters is a goat’s head.
Sheep. Never mix them up, especially if it’s for religious purposes; that is how I got these antlers…
I will always be grateful for these opportunities to learn from the mistakes of others.
Thank you.
You make it sound like having antlers is a bad thing.
Hahaha ditto, you wonderful weird person.
That sports shirt on Jones reminds me of an old comic where one team “was sportsing very hard and scored many points”. I can’t help but wonder if this is a reference to that, or that comic was a reference to something even older. It might even be something other, normal, people has always said…
First panel of this one? https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/06/16
Probably this one
Ah, you got it!
Or maybe the last page of Dresden Codak’s Hob storyline? Sportland Sportsball!
Oh, headsup: There’s (I believe) a typo on panel two. it says [or “literally” lirerally].
The commander and Jones seem to have a very , very honest relationship. You gotta love when you say sorry can’t make it to the sports events because I’m going to the theme park and the other is completely understanding about it.
It’s the kind of honesty that rarely appears in half-hour sitcoms, but I think that in real life giving an honest account of what you’re doing instead of going to some kind of event isn’t really that rare.
“Football Prom” is literally the best term for the Super Bowl I’ve ever heard, and will be the only term I use for it from now on.
That’s awesome! Wish I didn’t have to work Sundays, or I’d actually try this.
Also I love Jonesy’s shirt and Jared’s face in the last panels.
I’m reminded of the most surreal roller coaster experience I’ve ever had.
Myself and friends are at a park in off-season, doing essentially this exact thing. We get on a wooden coaster, vintage old thing, and it was nice, but the highlight of the ride was the operator.
Weird, lanky looking guy – like a Eastern European knockoff of David Bowie with a bushy blonde moustache. He was sitting slouched against his control panel like he was hung over, but the entire time we’re in line we hear him yammering away nonstop at the passengers who are loading in front of us. “Okay, you gonna have real good ride! I believe it, you believe it, and then come back and tell me the true score, eh? Okay, bye now! Next batch, next group! Eh hey! Okay, you saw what they did? You kids just do that. Destraints tight, goodie good. Okay, watch out for that low beam on the final curve, yeah? Hah, not for serious!”
We get up to the front, my friends and I pile into our spots in one of the middle cars, but the punks beside us who are supposed to get in the front car are holding up the loading, goofing off and acting stoned out of their goards. The operator loses his patience, “Hey!Hey!Hey!Hey! What, you invent some invisible crutches? People wait because of you! Move it, huh?” The kids bust out laughing at him, and take their sweet time sitting down.
The operator glares at them and flips a switch on his board. We’re all set to start the ride, but the train just sits there. The punks start complaining. The guy rolls his eyes and begins giving drawn out safety instructions. “Okayyy, so we have some first timers it seems like, don’t know how to do the rides, so I have to esplaaain to them how it goes.”
He gets up from his slump, sticks his thumbs behind his back, and saunters up to the front of the train. “My name is Fusilli, and there are three rules on my roller coaster machine. Number One: do not turn off your seat belt. Number Two: KEEP YOUR FEET ON THE GROUND!” The punks are cracking up, and one of them asks, “Yo man, what’s number three?” He claps his hands together suddenly making everyone jump, taps a finger to his temple, winks, and strolls back to the control panel to throw the release. As we accelerate out of the loading bay he shouts after us, “Always be good to your mothers!”
That guy sounds pretty awesome! Entertaining story :)
Fusilli rules. No joke.
Personally, I don’t even have actual television (I basically watch Netflix and one or two other streaming services), so I didn’t watch the game myself. I probably won’t bother until the Dolphins get back to the Super Bowl.
I’m well aware that will probably take quite some time, especially considering they share a division with the fucking Patriots.
…Dammit. *sob*
At least you aren’t one of my fellow Detroit Lions fans. Console yourself with that.
I’m sure there are plenty of sites that stream it, but… Meh. I forgot it was even happening; if I’m gonna stare at a screen for that long at once I’d rather be playing XCOM or something. Or at least chewing through some homework.
I would sell a dozen cats into prostitution for that shirt.
Football and ram skulls. Either way, you’re dealing with testosterone-addled males who knock (or have knocked) their heads together. The rams, of course, are significantly more adapted to literal head-banging. They are also far more metal.
I have to ask, though: Two horns or four?
Two, the 4 horn ones are like $700.
Seven *hundred* for a four-horned ram skull? That’s nuts. A four-horned stud ram in his prime might go for half that much if he’s particularly good. I do mean the entire, living animal. (Who you would not kill, although you would end up with his skull eventually. They do pass on of old age.)
I mean, sure, the skulls are relatively rare, but… it seems like the skull shouldn’t be worth more than the actual sheep.
You’re probably right and I’m getting them mixed up with bighorn rams that can go for $400-$1000 for ones with a nice set of horns on them. I’ve seen big, symmetrical bighorn horns on their own without the skull attached on sale for an asking price of $999 (I actually have a reasonably sized set of ram horns with a bunch of insect damage we’re gonna try repairing with bondo and painting to match because they were only about $30 as-is, I think the really expensive ones are some Montana breed with strict hunting regulations on them) four-horn Jacob Sheep skulls seem to be like $375-$500 depending on the size and symmetry of the horns.
Well, I mean, I don’t know what kind of mark-up a taxidermy shop would put on a clean skull. You might not be wrong about the exorbitant price at all. (It just boggles my mind that someone might pay more than twice as much for a skull than for the live animal it used to be part of.) To be fair, bighorn ram skulls are pretty spectacular. And four-horn Jacob skulls can be, too.
Kind of nice to know what the going price is for skulls, however. Apparently it is, indeed, worth salvaging bones. (Jeez. $375-500 is still more than the actual sheep. MUCH more if they’re from culls, although those are generally younger animals with less developed horns, so…)
The place I got this ram from generally doesn’t mark up their stuff too much, which is rare for a specialty store in downtown LA. You could get individual deer jaws for $5 each and a lot of the prices for complete skulls were comparable to what I’d expect to see them offered for on most skull sites, ebay, and etsy. I guess the extra +/-$200~ is for the trouble of raising the sheep, processing it, and cleaning the skull? Plus aesthetically balanced four-horn skulls with fairly even, symmetrical growth can be pretty rare and in high demand. If you’re a farmer keeping sheep for regular sheepy things it doesn’t matter so much if the horns are crooked but if you’re a skull collector it’s like panning for gold to get a mostly symmetrical one, so the people selling them can afford to twist arms a little. The nicest, cheapest jacob ram I’ve seen for sale was a $400 skull that got knocked to $200 for a clearance sale, but it was gone by the time I was made aware of it.
By contrast 2-horn Jacob sheep skulls are like $75 from the same sellers as the $400 4-horn ones.
Wow. Yeah, in LA, I’d expect a really high mark-up. And you’re right, super symmetrical horns are more difficult to come by on a four-horn ram. (Jacobs aren’t the only breed with the polycerate gene.) For breeding purposes, they have to be a balanced set, and the top horns should not sweep forward. (This can impede grazing and/or threaten the animal’s eyes.) The top horns can sweep to the side or to the back, however.
The laterals should sweep out, and shouldn’t grow toward the jaw. The tips of the laterals can be trimmed, though, so they aren’t really a deal-breaker.
Horns are tricky. I can’t imagine breeding for perfect symmetry, especially with Jacobs. There are too many other, more important traits to pay attention to. (Including personality. Have I mentioned that I love these sheep? XD)
Well, remember you’re not just paying for the raw materials, you’re also paying for the work of getting and preparing them. If you rate a whole four-horned ram at $350, how much would you value the time, effort, and skill needed to get all the meat and brains and whatnot off/out of the skull and leave it in a presentable condition?
To be fair that process is usually “Stick it in a bucket of bugs” and “Come back when they’re done and move it to a bleach solution overnight”.
What about the process of making a fancy Leather jacket with a 4 horned rams skull??? Patching the elbows and all, for a Birthday gift, perhaps? :)
(I’m still haunted by a phone that never stops vibrating :p)
Odin’s ballsack that was colored fast! It was black and white when I posted my last comment!
Couldn’t he, like, abuse time travel to go to both?
Time cops!
He abused time travel to get revenge on himself for stealing his own latte. I… Don’t think he’s worried about the time cops.
But that leaves so many questions: Why was the coffee stolen in the first place? Who stole it and why? Who really composed Beethoven’s 5th?
Oooh, I never thought of going to the theme parks! Magic Mountain was calling and I did not hear its voice! Sage tip (…Mrs T!
You’re Badass, and, you even have a mohawk! … I’m a dork lol :P)
It had just occurred to me that taxidermists would have stores and would sell stuff. I’d always thought of it as a business where you took your recently deceased corpse to and they returned it taxidermied, but they’d presumably be able to find other stuff.
Wait, I just realised Mr. Fish is in the back. FANART PLEASE
You do it.
No u.
Nope, I’m gonna keep being lazy for a few weeks, and then getting good enough to produce postworthy content may take a while. Maybe you can convince Yotomoe.
Like, literally, its literally right literally there, why can’t you literally see the thing that is literally right there.
I approve of this roller coaster plan, especially in light of how boring the game usually turns out to be.
I’m on the same page as the commander…I’d forgo my own funeral if I knew there were no lines for my favorite coasters. :)
I’d ignore the inevitable heat death of the universe for no lines :D
Least he was honest
Okay, so Mr Fishie didn’t have anything to do with the near-empty amusement park? o_O
I don’t think people notice him because of his camouflage; unless you’re specifically on the lookout for an extra-large gyarados it’s easy to mistake him for yet another roller-coaster.
We used to have season tickets to Universal Florida and discovered that the day after thanksgiving the park was a ghost town. You could walk off the mummy, walk through the line and get back on without seeing another person, it was incredible.
“SPORTS THE POINTS”
best shirt
I love it and I want one :D
So when is the Commander gonna make it official and legally adopt Jared? Because he’s basically Jared’s “capital-D” Dad.
Capitol D. Hah, dick jokes.
Pretty sure Jared’s in his early 20s, so…probably never, unless there’s some kind of process in the generic space-future to adopt legal adults.
He kind of struck me as nebulously 17-21. Plus, you can (in the US at least) legally adopt adults. The process is in fact almost identical to adopting children.
Yeah, I figure he’s like 18/19
And if you don’t know for sure, how could we?
“It all ends in blood, fire and tears. Or a touchdown. It’s all pretty jumbled together.”
Hehe, Football Prom.
I read that as football porn, wondering if that is a thing.
Rule 34, of course it’s a thing. Probably mostly player on cheerleader locker room action, and Lingerie Bowl type stuff, but definitely a thing.
But is rollercoaster porn a thing?
You mean people on rollercoasters or anthropomorphic roller coasters because lemme tell you there is a whole subculture devoted to the latter.
FIVE HUNDRED BUCKS?! For that?!! Damn, I should have bought one of her bizarre crapfest books the first time some someone showed it to me. Then I could have had my laughs and sold it for a fortune.
It is entirely possible that’s some error of that weird algorithm that sometimes glitches on Amazon and makes things cost thousands of dollars
Holy shit, Im gonna not…not go buy that.
Wait, why is the Commander not rich off sports betting and lottery tickets?
SpaceEthics.
This one word answer alone is one of the many many reasons I read your comics.
SpaceEthics. Seriously, it really does say it all.
Shoulda guessed, he always does have integrity to him. Do any of his friends hedge bets? I feel like Ace has to pay for those tuxedos somehow…
Command supplies nifty outfits, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Ace knows a variety of tuxedo-crafting techniques.
He runs an employment/counseling center for every action hero in the omniverse. How do you think he pays for that?
Pretty sure the spacefuture government finances the agency.
I went to Disneyland yesterday expecting this.
This comic is a lie
Okay but that’s Disneyland
Disneyland has a lot of pull with kids, many of whom don’t care who’s in the football prom if weighed against meeting Mickey Mouse. Try a Six Flags, or the like.
Yeah, I was specifically warned to go to Six Flags, Universal, or Knotts and not Disney because Disney would be packed for just that reason.
Weird, I went to Disneyland during the football prom when it was in San Diego decades back. It was clear of just about everyone. Still, it could have just been because it was decades ago.
That’s the thing, people have gotten wise to it since then, and now it’s packed with the crowd of people who think it’s going to be empty because it was ten years ago.
Unacceptable! Bring me a bat, stained sweater with Frankenstein’s Monster on it, and a bullhorn. I’ll make sure we have a clear amusement park for all the roller coasters! I may also get kicked out however.
It could also be because San Diego is less than two hours away from Disneyland.
Honestly the taxidermy and ram skull sounds like more fun than theme parks, even abandoned ones. Unless they’re abandoned AND you get to ride a scooter around the place, it’s still too much work.
Is it just me, or is Jared using a Jitterbug?
Jones’ shirt is absolutely perfect.
Go to the games with the gf?
Sorry, but someone here has a thing called priorities.
As somebody who lives in Colorado but doesn’t really care about football:
Holy crap, why didn’t I think of this? All I thought about was getting errands done during the empty streets time.
Oh yeah. Also a great day for the museum, the aquarium, or pretty much anything else.
Yeah, sorry super bowl, but roller coasters beat you every time in my book.
Yep, Jared’s got the right idea.
Also, kudos to letting Jonesy be a Super Bowl geek as well – flipped stereotypes are one of the many awesome things about this comic.
She may just enjoy Super Bowl parties. In the group of 10ish people who watched the Super Bowl at our party, exactly one is a football fan – the rest of us just enjoy having an excuse to get together and serve grill-type food.
I hate that literally can literally mean non-literally, which literally leads to using non-figuratively when you want to mean literally literally.
There’s an actual subset of words that are their own antonyms, and ‘literally’ recently joined them. English was created by the gods as an April Fool’s joke, and things just got out of hand…
Hunh, I did know that was a thing. It may not be the case in my area, due to culture and not because the amusement parks close in November. At work this weekend at the exotic critter ranch, there was a bigger crowd on Saturday than there was on Sunday, but not by much.
I don’t suppose you’d be willing to elaborate on the ram skull purchase? Are you, perhaps, going to create a costume of the most awesome secondary character from Dragon Age: Inquisition?
How’s a ram skull relevant to Dori- oh, you meant Iron Bull!
She did that already. xP
Nah, I meant the goat-chucking chieftain of course. The Iron Bull? Who cares about that second-rate hack. I bet he hasn’t even thrown a single goat at his problems.
This is probably my favorite explanation of what somebody did all day i have ever heard
More and more we see it. Commander really is Angel’s Jared.
I didn’t watch the super bowl. I was playing Rise of the Tomb Raider on pc. I don’t regret this one bit. Now onto the comic, I love Jared for just being Jared. Also that he invited the Commander, that’s a good friend there. Mr. Fish is on the Roller Coaster, that’s all kinds of crazy and awesome.
I was making a temple to creepers in Minecraft. It’s a very big temple, more like a cathedral that went through a growth spurt.
Pls make this shirt
“He’d probably rather play football than watch it anyway”
I don’t know… You could stop him once he’s got the ball? It must get old after a while.
Kratos would rampage on defeat, Duke Nukem would cry, Ganon would be too relaxed and dignified to want to play, Canadian guy doesn’t play by the same rules and Sten would be distracted by cookies.
It took me too long to realize that Mr. Fish is strapped to the back.
i want that shirt in a large please now thank you.
I wanna see the skull! Post pictures? Pretty please?
When he doesn’t have to be the grownup in the room Rock really is the spacefuture soldier’s version of Jared.
If I had time travel I would ABSOLUTELY go and watch the entire 1980 US Olympic hockey series, though.
What if you wanted to see it more than once from different seats? Are there time travel laws against buying multiple box tickets for yourself?
What if there were sections of the audience of famous matches that were just the same sports fan from the future and his friends at different stages of his life?
Dammit, you’re not supposed to think about it!
*sigh…* If I were to buy a ram skull I dunno if I ever could resist making RAM jokes any chance I got.
That or mounting it to my tower in some way so that when people ask “whys there a skull on your computer?” I can say “Oh I needed two more horns of RAM..” >_>
. . . . I now need to purchase a ram skull ONLY to do this.
Is Mr. Fish riding that coaster too??
To be fair it’s always more fun to play sports than watch them. Hell, I would rather play than watch and I suck at them, out loud, in stereo, with concert speakers, amped up to 11.
This is especially true for sports such as golf. Not that I have ever played golf, mind, but anything has to be more fun than watching it…
I have. I HATE watching it but I love working on my swing! Now if only I could afford my own clubs :(
As you now Have a ram skull you have in your possession the ultimate way to make comedy of anything Truck related involving that particular company, for in comic and beyond.
Woo! Sports the points!
If I could travel through time I’d travel to days that the amusement park would have the fewest amount of people on the nicest of days.
That last panel, it’s interesting what Commander said. I’m sure someone else brought this up, but what the hell. Commander must really love his job, because he’s basically a walking Grays Sports Almanac. He must make a mint, betting on games, because he already knows the outcome of so many. Like I said, he must really love his job. No argument with that, I mean Confucius said it best “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” So I’m guessing that’s Commander’s logic with his work.
…….”Sports the points?” … Seems about right.
I would totally buy that shirt
Awesome! I once did something nearly similar the lines had maybe 7 people each though almost the whole day on a Sunday. Sadly we had to call it quits after lunch because after riding so many back to back without end all morning we started to black out just from the smaller ones. So we decided it was time to call it.
Well, because everyone is watching DEADPOOL! Yaayyy~!!!! XD
Wondering where is the Fattest Pigeon and when will Jared name it so it’ll have his own tv show that starts: “My name is ………………. and i’m the fattest pigeon alive…”
very VERY seriously Coelasquid, If you make that shirt design and put it in your store, I will buy it. I will buy TWO if you make it available in a 3X
I would also probably buy that shirt.
Football Prom is now my favourite alternative to the Superb Owl. Thank you for that.
“I was gonna go on a rollercoaster but I bought a ram skull instead.” It’s one of those sentences you never expect to hear/read, like “Let’s get that videotape out of that clown’s butt” or “Nickelback isn’t that bad”.
I know you don’t like hearing character ideas unless they’ve got a full comic planned out, and I’m probably three years late to any of these jokes, but you could probably do Dovahkiin/Dragonborn from Skyrim pissing everybody off by using Throw Voice shout and using Unrelenting Force on the dinner table, then Commander calling Paarthurnax to get him to chill the feck out.
wait, if he knows the outcomes to all the games, why doesn’t he pull a Back to the future and get filthy rich off it?
So did the Commander just cancel on plans with Jonesy because something better came up without explaining it fully to her? Cause that seems sorta jerkish to me. I mean, I’d certainly rather ride roller coasters than attend a super bowl party, but you don’t cancel plans without at least making sure the person you have plans with understands what you’re doing and is okay with it. And it kinda seems that Jonesy was only okay with him bailing on her because she thought it was a fatherhood thing.
He’s in the process of cancelling and explaining exactly why. Like, that is specifically what is happening in this comic. Jonesy assumes it’s because of his kids and he directly tells her it is not. Jonesy’s okay with it because she’s having a big party with her friends and doesn’t need him to have fun. Their relationship is secure enough he knows she won’t have a problem with it.
Okay. I was thrown by the fact that he was already on a roller coaster when he was cancelling.