The value of a shekel
Part 2 of Circus Windows begins! Has it really been a whole three days since part 1 ended? What a time. What a time.
I actually did a bit of research while writing this comic, as I have never been in a car wash. I was told from a young age that automatic car washes just “scratch your car” and “are haunted” and other, similar folk tales. I still believe them all. So I watched videos of car washes instead.
My favourite was from Finland. There’s something about the final emergence onto the snowy streets that really brought back the great feelings I got in that cold, cold country. If all carwashes ended that way, I’d be flaying the paint off my car in one on a weekly basis, ghosts or no ghosts.
Clearly this car wash is haunted – the soap nozzle has been used to write on the car by some mysterious presence.
It’s Tackleford. It would be more surprising if it were not haunted, cursed, run by goblins, used as a cover by space aliens, or otherwise deeply bizarre.
I actually worked in a car wash back in the mid ’70s (yes, the 70’s. Deal with it, I do). From the looks of this video things haven’t changed all that much since then. By the way, I can tell you that car washes are indeed haunted. Haunted by the souls of high school boys trying to make some money for “extracurricular activities.”
Did you meet a movie star? Or maybe even an Indian chief?
Well, at least it was better than digging a ditch.
Lottie has discovered a new world of bubbles, soap and hot water ♡. A better world. Beautiful. Clean! Where foam can communicate with you!!
I am still constantly learning the value of a shekel with my own car, but I have been a passenger in someone else’s car through a wash. Charlotte’s reaction is très relatable. By the way… unless you want to get a good whiff of the chemicals used, it’s probably a good idea to make sure your vent, A/C, or heater is turned off before entering the wash.
Feeling like a bit of a dweeb after looking at Lottie’s phone and thinking “Huh, that’s an N, not a Z. Did Zambian Computing get bought out or something?” Took me a moment.
By the way, here I am age fifty-…-something… and I’ll STILL take any opportunity to take a car through a car wash. You owe it to yourself to go at least once, John.
The newest Zambian phones have a logo that automatically rotates when you hold it sideways. Very bleeding-edge! Lottie must have an older one.
LOVE THAT FIRST PANEL
Same. I love the soap bubbles in Lottie’s awestruck pupils.
A shekel!
Are the Grotes Jewish in any way? Or has this idiom just passed into English colloquialism?
It got into English as a Biblical reference. So a bit out of fashion.
Carwashception!
For the best car wash experience, you need a car with a big sunroof. Then bring your dad along with you in the car wash to occasionally shout at you ‘Stop opening the sunroof, you idiot!’
Sundays carwash with my dad there, from when I was a youth.
Clearly this comic needs to be accompanied by the classic Rose Royce hit (and 1976 film featuring Richard Pryor AND George Carlin) “Car Wash.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB0aROCl530
And Professor Irwin Corey! And don’t forget Franklin Ajaye. 😉
And Outkast!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JfEJq56IwI&ab_channel=OutkastVEVO
Those are the best kind of car wash. My mother was (and syill is) feeaked out by the ride-through sort, so we’d go this place where they’d kick you out of your car while spraying bits with these crazy spray guns, and you could walk through a special hallway (complete with step-ups for little kids!) and follow your car thriugh the car wash. At the end you’d pay while a bunch of guys wiped down your car with chamois(x?), vacuumed it out, and maybe performed “special services”.
An electric car in a watery car wash. The universe survives only because of a thin film of disbelief between the two.
The car seems to be rolling its eyes in panel 2. If you anthropomorphize its middle light on its right side as an eye, that is.
Today’s dose of pareidolia!!
Looks like an eye to me too, John.
so the two of you make it a pairidolia then
Poor Lottie (and John), missing out on the experience of going through a car wash as a kid, when it’s all so much bigger. It’s fun as an adult, but it’s amazing as a kid.
Speak for yourself! Those things *terrified* me as a little kid!
I agree, it was the best!
I spy a gimlet eye in the headlight of Mildred’s car!
Heh – the exit lane is exactly the exit lane from your Finnish video.
I haven’t even been in a car in over a year, let alone through a carwash… *dreamy emoji*
It would have been very wicked not to have tipped the hat to that Finnish dreamscape!
I was in car washes as a kid.
But today (at least in our local car wash, no idea how widespread this policy is), the driver is supposed to get out of the car before the process. I suspect this may have to do with insurance concerns.
I’ve been to the car wash many a time, but I’ve only been through a ride-through car wash once, so I understand Lottie’s fascination.
the value of a Shekel is about 0.22GBP
I wouldn’t wait til the next day to have my car washed! who knows what was in that custard (eggs?!?!) and if it will peel Mildred’s paint! Eek! http://davisbodyshop.com/fix-car-paint-damaged-eggs/
Please tell me that it was some kind of vegan custard, so I can rest easy.
I’m sure it was Birds, so definitely vegan. Don’t worry!!
I am vastly relieved.
I’m sure ‘This ASMR Dungeon’ will be headlining in a festival in Whitby at some point when the covids have relaxed their iron grip on us all…
Mildred’s pecuniary accusations cut me deeply by proxy. JOBS
Reminds me of the washers my town had when I was a boy, which always had a magical, psychedelic experience about it; if it had a ghost, it was that of a kindly hippie. The super efficient air dry model we have now is boring and noisy. No ghost now.