So timely=so dated.

Every once in a while, I turned to actual events for inspiration. In this case it was a UNC vs. Notre Dame basketball game sometime in the spring of my freshman year, the details of which have long been forgotten some 20 years later. As the strip is black-and-white, one would need more than a passing familiarity with the central characters to know that Nick's hair is normally dark. Of course, having Bill shout it out in the first panel does a decent job of setting it up. This is one of those strips that works better out loud, which is rare. Have you ever read someone a comic strip? And wonder why they didn't laugh? In this case, the parallel structure of the second and fourth panels' dialogue comes to life when spoken. Or at least I'd like to think so.