The anal bead shop.

Yes, that was the joke... A YEAR GO.

Now the joke is you, but me also for taking the time to respond to this.

Goddamn typos. All making me the joke and what have you.

Wow. I just imagined a Lord of the Flies type scenario after Madonna returns from a non-stop 5 year tour.

This is why I may occasionally go to a bead shop, or take my mother there, but I would never make a dude go in with me.

how in the world did you notice this

My God, he speaks truth!

no way in hell google returns zero results or suggests a misspelling of kazenzakis.

In 2005 Nikos Kazantzakis probably pulled more searches than Beef. Now ... it's not so clear.

I shall [url=http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Roast Beef Kazenzakis&word2=Nikos Kazantzakis]make it clear[/url]

[url]http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Roast Beef Kazenzakis&word2=Nikos Kazantzakis[/url]

[url="http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Roast Beef Kazenzakis&word2=Nikos Kazantzakis"/]This work?[/url]

[url=http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Roast Beef Kazenzakis&word2=Nikos Kazantzakis]here.[/url] now be quiet.

here

shoulda scrolled...

[url=http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Roast Beef Kazenzakis&word2=Nikos Kazantzakis]I am success?[/url]

goddammit!
Dude, i tried.

[url]http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Roast Beef Kazenzakis&word2=Nikos Kazantzakis[/url]

chubbied, cheater.

Now, do the Twist!

[IMGS OFF]

You win.

You can conceive of it from the Bead Shop.

Well done, sir.

You (keep) say(ing) that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

Is that the guy that played Freud in The Hotel New Hampshire?

I think it's that guy from Princess Bride, can't remember the name of who he played.

Hold on, Wikipedia will tell me...Wallace Shawn. Who, indeed, did apparently play Freud in The Hotel New Hampshire. Well done.

He also had a recurring role in The Cosby Show as the Huxtables' neighbor. There was a pretty good episode where Cliff borrowed his cordless drill (or screwdriver or something) and lost it.

Oh man that is mega nasty

At the time this strip was posted, it was true; there were zero results for Kazenzakis and it suggested the alternate spelling Kazantzakis, for the famed Greek writer. However, TO THIS DAY (Jan. 5, 2009), a search for Beef's name typed in Greek returns no hits! Whereas searches in English still return, seemingly completely, references to Roast Beef.

So, apparently no Greeks actually have that slightly-different version of the name. However I maintain that it's entirely possible, for the purposes of retconning, that Beef's family just had that spelling changed, for one reason or another, as so many other immigrants did when they came to America.

Solved!

hell yes beef speak the truth on boring places

I am that girlfriend, and I have taken my man to those places.

I feel ashamed.

Its not so bad, I'm sure you're cool most of the time. Most of the rest of the time.

YOU are my boring place.

Mike Watt is brilliant.

Are they still AROUND? I went to a fIREHOSE concert in 1989 and it was hella Boring Place.

Beef does not dig the yarn store either.

Ahahaha I missed this one... "Sass Foot" gets a hearty lollin' :)

Sass foot people can walk at a normal pace, but it looks completely insane.

oh my god reading that entry then closing it to have the stark white assetbar backround staring at me really did a number on my eyes

There should be more examples of Beef straddling the line between being a devoted boyfriend and a complete creepy-creep creep-creep, because it is one of his funniest/most touching traits.

Wow. I read this comment and couldn't help hearing Tom Waits saying it, and it's just so perfect.

FUCKIN GOD DAMN SON OF A BITCH

Beef is Inside before he even realizes what's going on. Poor guy.

We have all been to the bead shop. a very, very easy 5/5.

I have found my Boring Place, and it is called Wow Outlets. It is not 'wow.' It is Wind chimes! Wicker furniture! Dolls each with one eye that won't open! Chipped coffee mugs with three-dimensional poodle heads sticking out of a two dimensional poodle drawing (on the coffee mug)! Gas grills?

yep, me too.

When I moved to Nottingham for uni, I saw there was a bead shop (called "The Bead Shop") and immediately thought, oh man hilarious a boing place. Anyway, circumstances dictated that I go in there one day last term, and I ended up despising myself because of how much I enjoyed myself. I don't know what the fuck's wrong with me.

I have to point out 'boing place', not in the spirit of typo-correcting dickery, but because it really made me laugh. Chubby as a symbol of my goodwill.

I wonder if he gets mad tail with that voice of his

Women find him devestating. He's just this oversexed, brilliant kind of animal.(double highbrow reference combo! [300 points])

There are actually whole shops just for beads?

There are, and I have been Beef in this story at a real store called "Beadazzled."

There's one where I live called 'Beadasaurus'. My friend used to work there at weekends. I don't think it was a very exciting job.

For me the best part is the steady angering of Beef's expression as he contemplates what could be happening. Mouth twisting, then brows furrowing....

You're stupid.

Yeah? Well, you're worse than HITLER, so deancain still wins.

Winner,winner, chicken dinner

I think she was saying that Dean Cain 29 was stupid because he implied that Hitler was a pretty bad pervert instead of the usual murdered/bigot/war monger/history's greatest monster allegations that are levelled at Hitler.

Yes, Hecci Biggs: Hitler Defender.

illegal ghost ranch

sometimes she takes me to bed bath and beyond.

the universe, however, granted me one small conceit in this matter.

in my town, bed bath and beyond is two store-fronts away from EBgames. they are in the same parking lot.

victory!

You deserve more chubbies for this than you have.

agreed.

My job at the university lab was a boring place.

panels 5-6: Roast Beef is oddly fascinated by how boring this place is.

My favorite part about when Google asks, "Did you mean...?" is that when you click on it, it often also returns 0 results.

I have never, ever believed it coming from anyone else, but somehow I can believe that Ray never whacks off. It just, I don't know, fits him somehow.

Holy shit did everyone else know that Teodor has a fleshlight?

no

i preferred not to know to be perfectly honest

Both Beef's and Cornelius' posts here are fantastic. Especially Cornelius on the Internet as evil oboe.

Here's something I forgot since the first time through: 2005 was the absolute peak of this comic.

This is my absolute favorite comic so far. Beef just can't stand that for even one moment he is in such a boring place, and he is so all-consumed by this fact that he ignores his girlfriend and contemplates suicide.
On a side note, Google is hella rude when it suggests a misspelling of your last name.

I love this strip so much that I'm actually changing my feelings on it for the first time ever. Pro.

This is why I never bring my boyfriend into the bead shop.

Beef discovers in panel #3 that a Boring place is like the Twilight Zone: suddenly you're inside of it, all is horror and confusion, and you will likely die or greatly suffer in some ironic, terrible way. Maybe he will choke on the free tenth bead while ruminating over Ziggy Stardust and Hedwig Robinson battling the sand minions of Alpha Centauri in a new 'Lost in Space' series on the Sci-Fi channel.

I wonder what caused those magenta artifacts in the first couple panels. They're in a couple other strips too.

This strip perfectly encapsulates all my fears of marriage and long-term commitment. While I could be ear-deep in some rude titties, instead I am at a bead shop.

One of my fave strips.
I hate it when google suggests a misspelling of my last name. Jerk google.

the bead shop... the epitome of obscurity, no one, nobody.

In Memphis, bixschmix and I actually drove by a bead shop. We briefly considered stopping to take a picture in reference to this strip but did not actually do so for whatever reason.

I can actually identify with this.

Houston, Texas, March 2008.

The day my soul died.

Damn you Beef, remember the toast.

This is probably one of my favorite strips. I had an ex-girlfriend that was really into knitting. We spent a lot of time at the Yarn Barn. I usually ran out of ways to entertain myself in about 30 second (the time it takes for the old woman who runs the place to ask me to stop pressing balls of yarn into my face because I'm mildly autistic and enjoy varying tactile sensations).

At first, I thought panel one said "head shop". I thought "Roast Beef, why wouldn't you want to go into the head shop with your girlfriend?"

Before I take my boyfriend into the fabric shop, I tell him "THIS IS A BORING PLACE. WE WILL HAVE SEX SOON AFTERWARDS."

Right now, [famous person] is [verb, ludicrous, raunchy, or otherwise entertaining]

And [I, Me, We, etc.] are at the [Boring Place (suggestions: Bead Shop, Antique Store, Pawn Shop)]

Do you really get shops that just sell beads? Because what the hell people

While The fucking Cure are on tour, Hulk Hogan throws a party at Robert Smiths house, where Danny DeVito smears butter all over the windows while Matt Damon and Ben Affleck play basketball after applying all the make-up from the bathroom. All the while, Christopher Walken tickles a baby until it cries of laughing.
...and I am at the bead shop

i like to make stuff out of hemp chord, so i wouldnt feel entirely out of place at a bead shop.

My girlfriend loves the local head shop, but I don't smoke, don't have tattoos, don't care. I have to interact with the door-knockered nose piercings staff "that's nice filligree work on that hookah ..." and try to tune Phish out. Then again I have dragged various girlfriends to independent record stores over the years, like Murmur in Orlando or Zed's in Long Beach and gleefully thumbed through thousands of LP's until a wild-eyed with boredom girlfriend dragged me from the shop by my ear. The women in my life don't dig record stores for more than 15 minutes.

h...head shop?

You need to find new girlfriends, man.

Got a '71 Triumph TR6 at a firesale price & brought it home. Excitedly told the (now ex)wife about it- she walked to the bedroom blinds, lifted them a half inch and monotoned, "It's red. When will you mow the lawn?" at which point I learned a valuable life lesson: I'd married the wrong woman.
Upon reflection, trips to the head shop are a walk in the park. Occasional boredom trumps lovelessness.

What

Motherfucker, that's cold! Something about that made me jump up and wish there was some pecan pie in the kitchen!

I used to work in the cosmetics department of Macy's and I could see this inner monologue happening every time some guy got suckered into waiting around while his girlfriend/wife/baby mama was picking out a $25 tube of lipstick. Same thing in Sephora or Bath and Body Works. That look on their face like they would rather be a horse on a truck speeding towards the glue factory.