Beavis and Butt-head issue 23

Beavis and Butt-head #23 was the November 1995 issue of the Beavis and Butt-head comic. The strip was written by Glenn Herdling and drawn and lettered by Rick Parker, with art assists by Georges Lavgine and with colours by Rob Camacho; Glenn Eichler was consultant.

Witless

Highland High is off on a school field trip to the Pennsylvania Dutch, to see how they continue their customs apart from the industrialisation of society. The school bus is full of anarchy and confusion:

• Daria: PUT A SOCK IN IT!

but soon sets off, Mr. Van Driessen talking about the history of the Penn Dutch. Beavis and Butt-head, waking up and briefly forgetting they're not watching the TV, try desperately to change the channel with their remote. Butt-head starts to do a Twilight Zone opening, intoning that they're trapped in the Discovery Channel and next stop is "the Toilet Zone" ("heh heh heh! ...I don't get it.") They soon brighten up when they see the town is called Intercourse, and confuse that with having intercourse - Beavis doesn't think it feels like sex, but it's pointed out to him that he wouldn't know. When they discover the town is pre-industrialised though, they realise it sucks - there's no TV! When Van Driessen explains there was a time before TV, Beavis wonders when that was while he picks his nose:

• Daria: Ewww... gross!

The first exhibit is seeing a woman doing traditional glassblowing ("huh huh heh heh!"), with the lads enjoying the description of squeezing and blowing (and nobody but Butt-head enjoying Beavis showing his gas-blowing). Next is a demonstration of candle making, which Daria finds:

• Daria: ...interesting... very interesting...

and the class make their own candles. Beavis, misunderstanding the talk of "harden" and "wick", does wax around his wiener. When he hands in the results, saying he thinks he "spanked it too hard or whatever", the lady candle-maker stares at the results in shock and says "well, it's too small to use anyway...". Next is chocolate fudge ("heh heh. He said a dirty word"), where the lads enjoy themselves trying to get the fudge-maker to say he's a fudgepacker in Intercourse (until he beats them up). After all that, Van Driessen treats the class to a screening of Birth of a Nation on a Nickelodeon, so they can see the first motion pictures - he's stunned by the price inflation to $5 a head but decides the price of good education isn't too high ("Man!!! I sure hope the school reimburses me!" he thinks).

In the cinema, however, the Nickelodeon has broken again, so they decide to use the video projection unit on the cable television, "they'll never know the difference". Down in the cinema, Butt-head is horrified by Birth of a Nation: "You have to read the words?!! This SUCKS!" Disgusted at the idea of a film that's like a book but a film, Butt-head uses the remote... changing the channel to hardcore porn. An outraged Van Driessen demands a refund from the cinema for using a VCR projector, but the owner dismisses it and tells him to go hang out with the Amish if he hates modern tech. Beavis and Butt-head are stunned to discover the Amish (mistaking one for Abraham Lincoln) and watch as two Amish kids accidentally chop their dad's hands off.

Van Driessen, disgruntled, ends the field trip and starts to gather everyone up... except Beavis and Butt-head just saw a big-breasted Amish girl called Rachel, and Butt-head has an idea that they should hide in her buggy and when she comes back "we'll.... I'll think of something!". The Amish kids, meanwhile, wander over to the class to check out the bus, and during register they start to go "hah hah" and "hih hih hih" over the name Buttkiss, getting them mistaken for Beavis and Butt-head. When Stewart Stevenson tries to reveal the truth:

• Daria: Speak, Stevenson, and you die!!

She means it.

The bus drives off, while Beavis and Butt-head are mistaken for the Amish kids with their constant snickering (especially when they hear spanking mentioned). Only at the farm do they find out their mistake, but Rachel decides that in exchange for food and a warm bed, she can convince them to do the missing boy's chores. The two are taken in, having to say grace at dinner (Butt-head thanks God for "this hot chick at the table and... uh, making my wiener bigger than Beavis'"), and discovering to their horror that the Amish have no TV or video games. (They enjoy tiddlywinks though, because Rachel is bent over) At bedtime, their clothes are taken away as they're offensive - "That's what Coach Buzzcut says!!" - and sent to sleep in the same bed together. Beavis, worried about the statement "may the Lord watch over you", wonders aloud if the Lord is watching them in bed...

Sleeping in the same bed as Beavis proves to be a grim task ("if I feel anything wet on my leg again, I'm gonna smack you!") and they're woken up before the Sun is even up, to be made to dress like dorks. They enjoy meeting Elsie the cow though, realising they get to squeeze teats; Butt-head wins the fight and discovers "these things squirt further than Beavis!". Beavis ends up churning the butter, and proves horrifyingly good as he uses pumping the churner as a sex substitute and butter pours from the barn. "We shall calleth him... Buttermaster Beavis!")

The lads take the butter into town to trade it, but the only shop they bother with is a mart so they can exchange butter for nachos. The mart is overloaded with dairy products though, but they manage to get nachos anyway, and utterly miss the fact that their faces are on milk cartons as missing people. When they leave, Butt-head remarks if he doesn't get back to Elsie's teats "they'll make me sleep with Beavis again" and Beavis boasts everyone is going to watch him "spank my monkey" as he's "Masterbutter Beavis!". The horrified store owner, realising those are the missing boys, calls in the police, thinking a prostitution ring is being run from the farm. Beavis and Butt-head return as the cops arrive in helicopters, bellowing demands from loudspeakers ("Oh Papa! It is the word of GOD!"), and everyone is arrested.

The boys are told they'll be given a police escort home for busting the prostitution ring, which stuns Butt-head: Rachel was a prostitute?! Beavis theorises that means they could have exchanged her for more nachos. Butt-head declares "Next time, we'll come back and exchange the nachos for her!"

Trivia

• Daria is actively trying to get Beavis and Butt-head lost far, far away from home where they'll likely run into trouble - one of her more aggressive and vicious acts. She'll show this vicious streak again in "Speedtrapped" (threatening to run a man over to scare Quinn) and "Antisocial Climbers" (calmly abandoning the other students).

• Mr Van Driessen views Birth of a Nation as a classic worth watching - the film is infamous for racism and having the Klu Klux Klan as the good guys, as well as pioneering many technical achievements in cinema. For a stereotypical fluffy hippie, Van Driessen is showing a remarkable ability to appreciate the film for its technical ability & historical importance when its politics are utterly opposed to his own.