The Slice: Huckleberry picking? Let’s move on

There’s no shame in it, really.

Perhaps they have been busy doing volunteer work.

But some people don’t want to admit that they have never been huckleberry picking.

So, for them, the key is to change the subject. Sometimes non sequiturs work.

If harvesting huckleberries comes up, they can say …

“I know of someone here in Spokane who put her placenta in the freezer.”

Or “Remember that scene in ‘Rome’ when the huge gladiator is about to kill Pullo and Vorenus steps in and saves him?”

Or “Mariah McKay doesn’t really dig it if you call her Spokane’s ‘It’ girl.”

Or “I like how that new stretch of road says ‘Future 395,’ as if you’ll be making the leap to 2020.”

Or “That song ‘Hot Child in the City’ is about teenage prostitution.”

Or “Didn’t you love it at the end of ‘Vision Quest’ when Journey’s ‘Only the Young’ kicks in just as the referee raises Louden’s arm in victory?”

Death in the comics: Maybe he’ll show up again. But it sure seemed like last Sunday’s “Mutts” signaled the end of Crabby the crab.

It was sort of hard to avoid the suspicion that an oil spill led to his demise.

That got me thinking about other deaths on the comics page over the years. There was the baby raccoon in “Calvin and Hobbes.”

“What a stupid world,” said Calvin after efforts to save the little guy failed.

There was the heroic old dog, Farley, in “For Better or For Worse.”

And you might remember birdwatcher Dick Davenport suffering a heart attack and slumping to the ground in “Doonesbury.” That day’s last panel was filled with birds coming to check on him.

Sometimes the funnies are anything but amusing.

Can you remember a time when a comic strip got to you in an unexpected way?

The difference between real bars and bars in beer commercials: “In real-life bars, people are usually desperately lonely and socially isolated,” wrote Victor Buksbazen.

Today’s Slice question: What movie, TV show or novel has been the source of names for your pets?