Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for January 26, 2017

I understand why Tiffany would not want the security guard to realize the coffee was hot. (If it was hers, it would have cooled down during the time she was with the guard and Ms. Lopez.) But why lie about it first? If the guard had picked up the cup, he would have realized Tiff was lying.

close shave… for now

“Paging Lt. Columbo.”

Ok, Piro, come out, wherever you’re hidden…

Something mystifies me. It’s implied that Tiffany is an accomplice in the theft of the TV. I’d like to know why. She’s rich. If she wanted a TV of her own, why not ask her parents for one?

@BAARORSO: I think two plot lines are being tangled by a lot of people (including the cartoonist, who is probably just trying to stimulate a lot of conversation). Tiffany has shown by her own actions that she is violating the dorm policy by letting someone stay in her room who must not live there, and she probably loaned that person her card to let them get in and out. The disappearance of the TV is most likely a separate issue, but both are happening at the same time. This leads a lot of posters here to conclude that the two issues are linked. But there is no proof that Tiffany stole the TV. There is proof, from her texted warning to someone, that she is letting someone use her room who doesn’t have the right to be there…

The insulation on that coffee cup must be some new space – age technology to have kept the coffee hot for weeks!

.

Now, if I drank coffee, I’d want to buy one.

.

Mordy … ?

There was Never a serious suggestion that Tiffany has done Anything wrong… Everyone is just to anxious to trip her up.

They are also dealing with the issue of a stolen television on “Pearls Before Swine”:

.

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2017/01/26

Let me add one more comment, and I am going to bed like a normal person. -:) If Piro is the active miscreant, or at least the person two young women lied about here, he must have some powerful mojo.

backpack = student? Blanket on sofa means separate sleeping arrangement, so comic stays “G” rated. I’d really hate to see creepy Piro show up, Tiff has more class than that. Would prefer a girl on the run. Check backpack: clothes or books? Crystal was Tiff’s friend. Rosa is too much to hope for.

I think she’s stashing someone innocently and didn’t realize she might be setting herself up for this much adversity! Poor Tiff!

Piro’s slippin’ in https://youtu.be/A5lI8G6ajfQ

Greg – Very interesting at this point! Please don’t jump to Gunther’s Mom and Mr. Gray deciding what TV show to watch after dinner tomorrow night.

I think that the writers have intentionally depicted Piro in such a way that our stereotyping neurons fire when he appears. We know VERY little about him, but many of us have judged him as, at least, sketchy… and possibly worse. I think when his backstory is finally revealed, the reality will be entirely else, and that we’ll find our sympathy for this character. Someone suggested earlier that he might be a military veteran experiencing PTSD. Makes sense to me as a possible development. We’ll just have to wait and see, no?

Not trying to be snarky, but how many people have pictures of themselves on the wall?

This still leaves me wondering, where is the TV? I thought they would find it in the room. Did Piro take it when he hid?

This arc is very interesting. Staying tuned!

Hmm… not a thing out of place! Except for the someone that just was ,and also the things Tiffany just, uh, ‘owned up to’…

“…And End Scene!”

“Turning Over A New Relief”

“Passed Tense”

“Charaders Of The Lost Card”

“A Tough Act To Wallow In”

“One Good Concern Deserves Another”

“It’s Bean… A… Long, Long Time”

“Blanket Coverage”

“The Bag’s Under Her Eyes”

“Whooo’d Off Her Feet”

“A Ric Flair For Drama”

or

“Room With A ‘Whew!’ "

A “very old” cup of coffee still steaming! Way to adlib, Tiff!

there’s no perfect crime. the person will be found eventually. whether Paris(Tiffany) is in it or not.

I’ll tell you the concern that I have today. The death of my favorite actress Mary Tyler Moore.

When Tiff and Gunth came back from their field trip and Gunth was sitting on the couch wasn’t there a window behind him?

“All rooms are clear” How many rooms are there in a dorm room?

Folgers: good to the last cop.

It was Leslie!

As others have said I don’t think that Piro took the TV, Tiffany was just worried about them finding out he was staying there.As for the missing TV I think that someone in the dorm is having a Super Bowl party and they just ‘borrowed’ it for the occasion,

Would be interesting to see Gunther’s reaction to finding out Piro’s been spending extended time at Tiffany’s.

Much as I love the Tiff character, this arc is becoming very tangled. Greg has introduced, and found himself juggling, too many characters and characer-arcs. Let’s hope the couch potato isn’t yet another. The main character, Luann, seems to be relegated to a minor arc. Very frustrating. At some point he may just get tired of his own strip and, like Lynn Johnston with For Better or For Worse, he may just throw up his hands and do a revert to an earlier time in the strip’s history. One he liked and could handle. Luann has morphed from a gag strip to a soap opera.

Piro showed no interest in Tiffany so I doubt it’s him. The scarf is circumstantial evidence and would prove nothing in a court of law. People forget things all the time. Today, most modern colleges allow resident students to bring guests into their dorms, and have for years. They just don’t allow them to live there. Leslie had no access to Tiffany’s card. My guess is Gunther. Their relationship is a platonic friendship, but Tiffany is very vain. She thinks it would hurt her image if people knew she was friends with a dweeb.

@SCHRODINGER’S DOG: I don’t actually think Gunther would care all that much if Piro was staying in Tiffany’s dorm suite (other than to be annoyed that the ‘scruffy guy’ who Bernice obsesses about is back.) Although Gunther does feel physical attraction to Tiffany, his own obsession about moving on with his future means she isn’t important to him in the ways that count for him. He still sees Bernice, or a Bernice-type, intellectually-oriented woman, as the one he needs to become his ‘significant other’ as he progresses toward that future he envisions….

Nothing that we have been shown of Piro’s character suggests that he would steal anything, let alone a huge TV. The scarf is a red herring or belongs to Hair. I still wonder if Hair has flunked out, and Tiffany is being a little too compassionate. Several of my theories are not in serious contradiction to one another.

First the coffee cup has no steam, and now it is hot.

I suspect we’re getting ready to meet a new major character, here. As for the TV, I agree with those who theorize that it’s an entirely separate issue. It going missing simply provides an excuse to reveal that Tiff has been letting someone use her dorm room during the break. Who might this mysterious person be, if not an established character? A black-sheep sibling? Someone in the industry to which Tiffany aspires? A friend of a friend, whom she was persuaded to accommodate?

8

.

This is becoming more and more elaborate and intriguing. Tiffany has at least one thing to hide at the moment. Is Piro involved? Is Gunther involved? Is someone else, as yet unnamed involved? Does any of this really have anything to do with the missing tv? Was the scarf in the common room because Piro left it? Did Hair leave it? Did someone else leave it? Is the scarf important to the missing tv story? Is the scarf not really related to the missing tv? Is the scarf an indication that Tiffany let Piro use the dorm during break and he may have been lounging in the common room and left his scarf?

.

Now, if we were to assume the worse…. and Piro was in the dorms during break because Tiffany gave him her key-card…. might it be possible that Piro (instead of stealing) broke the television, and has been working behind the scenes to get a replacement?

.

All I do know for certain is that it is pretty damn lucky for Tiffany that the coffee cup did not start emitting steam until after the cop and the dorm supervisor left! :)

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine?ct=v&cti=163624

it is a good point (made by someone no doubt) that we don’t know if this person is a guy or a girl.

so what’s the next step? Bernice still tracing whomever may have stolen the TV? I can see her in a Sherlock Holmes type cap.

“Everything look ok, Tiffany?”

“Definitely not; there aren’t enough pictures of me on the wall!”

That cup of coffee managed to stay steaming hot while the admin. woman made a new, personalized card for Tiffany. It has to be personalized because they know whose card is used to enter.

@LUANAPHILE: If I am remembering correctly, Gunther either started drinking coffee while in Peru, or startled his mother by drinking coffee at her house after he returned from Peru.

.

If you think Tiffany and company are in trouble, consider how much trouble those of us outside of the Luanniverse are right now. The Washington Post reported that the senior most staff of the State Department all just quit. (Of course, this is the Washington Post’s report, so maybe I should wait and see if it appears anywhere else…)

Not much of a cop/investigator

Whatever the story becomes, I expect Piro to be Tiff’s visitor.

I think it’s Gunther. Awhile back when Gunther told Tiff he was going to ask Bernice to coffee,she exclaimed that she can make coffee. Maybe Gunther is hanging out there because things are getting hot and heavy with Mr. Grey and his mom and he doesn’t want to hang around at home.

One would think that since the coffee was still hot, would there not be the smell of fresh brewed coffee that someone would have noticed? Even if it was instant coffee, it still has a smell when it is hot.

@TOMJUDYTX: But when Tiffany was telling Gunther that she could make coffee, too (because she was trying to get him to stay), he either ignored her or basically didn’t hear her. When Gunther’s mother and Mr. Gray get together, they seem to go to his place, rather than staying at her place. Gunther is only attracted to Tiffany for reasons that seem (to him) short term and superficial. His fixation on Bernice is because he has a by-the-book idea about what his life should be, and it needs to have someone he considers his mental equal as his significant other. He seems to think that Tiffany does not fit that description.

@SCHRONINGER’S DOG: (Not being political, here, just interested in how our universe is ticking along). Actually, a total of 6 senior officials are now gone. While it is routine for heads of bureaus to submit letters of resignation, a new administration usually waits until they have new people to put in place, and lets the older crew train them, before accepting the resignations.

.

The institutional memory lost by today’s exit includes the Under Secretary for Management (Patrick Kennedy), the Assistant Secretary for Administration, the Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs and the Director for the Office of Foreign Missions. Resignations accepted on January 20 included the Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security and the Director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations.

.

If it were my call, I would have waited until after the Embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before trying to recruit new folks to work on issues of overseas security for embassies. But that’s just me, I guess.

NO politics, but this is a purge. You saw the political commissar that scientists at EPA have to have approve their work before it can be published, or the PR for the agency? That ought to really help the development of environmental or general science. This is Russian authoritarianism being transferred to the American government. Should we be surprised? I/we need Luann more than ever.

Tough stretch of events for anyone to insist on the no-politics-rule. I have a scary hand tremor from sitting on my tongue. haha.

But Luann is a kind of innocent garden we can retreat to.

If Piro the Zero, shows up, disappointment will be upon me like a desperate hooker. It would be too predictable, and Greg is rarely predictable. As Tiff once told Gunther, she’s a tease not a sleeze, so maybe she’s hiding the biggest surprise of the year……..Rosa. And, even bigger, Gunther’s baby. Wow! Maybe Greg is too old to handle anything this radical.

If it is Piro, the circumstances will be innocent. Or Piro damages the TV because of a PTSD flashback, and Tiffany is on a rescue mission. Remember that the Evanses seem bent on rehabilitating Tiffany. In a way I hope this is the story.

So, that very old cup of coffee is still steaming hot, ehh? Was Sherlock the Campus Cop sharp enough to catch that? Or Director Lopez?

This caper isn’t closed, not by a long shot!

Usually by this time, I can write a SPOILER comment, because the next day’s comic has been posted on ArcaMax. But not today. Something has gone wrong with Discus. And the suspense about what comes next is almost too much to deal with…