Pearls Before Spine
Cidu Bill on Mar 25th 2009
Is PBS in reruns this week? Because the hedgehog-throwing incident took place in February of 2008, and I can’t believe it took Pastis more than a year to come up with this gag.
Filed in Bill Bickel, Crimeweek, Pearls Before Swine, Stephan Pastis, Weird World of Crime, comic strips, comics, hedgehogs, humor | 12 responses so far
Matthew Mar 25th 2009 at 09:09 am 1
Stephen Pastis probably has a clip file that he just got around to reading.
Alternatively, he googled “groundhog” around February 2nd–got nothin’. Then, he thought that he might try “hedghog”, and this came up. A month or so later, we have this little bit of genius.
Secondly alternatively, he had the hedgehog at the ready, but it took him a year before he thought of “Ding Dong”, and it’s really “Ding Dong” that makes the joke.
Matthew Mar 25th 2009 at 09:16 am 2
(Sorry for the typo. I saw it & tried to fix it, but the comment was already winging its way through cyberspace.)
(Of course, if you did google “hedghog”, then you would get 83,000 hits, AND Google would offer to fix it for you & then tell you all about one irate New Zealander. It’s all good.)
Frosted Donut Mar 25th 2009 at 11:13 am 3
Pastis has stated in the past that he’s as much as nine months ahead of deadline (although sometimes I think he shuffles strips around if he wants to be more timely).
Probably he figured that this gag had a certain “timeless” quality to it and didn’t need to run right away.
Elyrest Mar 25th 2009 at 11:30 am 4
I agree that this gag has a timeless quality to it. I vaguely remember reading about this when it happened and haven’t heard anything about it recently. It happened in New Zealand with hedgehogs! I can see sitting on the joke for a while and then when, everybody but Bill, had forgotten it popping it out. Hedgehogs are always funny.
And what, pray tell, is the slam against PBS?
furrykef Mar 25th 2009 at 12:09 pm 5
PBS as in Pearls Before Swine, not Public Broadcasting Service or any other PBS you may be thinking of.
Elyrest Mar 25th 2009 at 12:43 pm 6
Oh, a rookie mistake. I thought he was referring to the news story and not the comic. I always have trouble with acronyms.
Nicole Mar 25th 2009 at 01:11 pm 7
I was going ot guess that he was way ahead of schedule, still you would think that if a strip refered to a recent news story you would push it to the front
Keera Mar 25th 2009 at 01:29 pm 8
This joked worked for me without knowing anything about New Zealand events. So this thing with the hedgehog really happened/will happen? (I’m not clear on what you all are actually talking about.)
Cidu Bill Mar 25th 2009 at 01:40 pm 9
Follow the link, Keera.
Keera Mar 25th 2009 at 03:46 pm 10
Dang, you people have good memories! I can hardly remember what was in the news yesterday.
tofor Mar 25th 2009 at 11:40 pm 11
What is this ‘yesterday’ of which you speak?
David A. Rooney Mar 26th 2009 at 09:42 pm 12
tofor - Keera speaks of the Before Time, when Grumps ruled the world.