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Family Circus, 8/7/06

I’d like to think that little Jeffy is finally asserting himself violently, like a Frenchman whose honor has been insulted, while Billy is suddenly whining like a little baby Italian. But longtime readers of this feature know that Jeffy has neither the cojones to take on his brother’s sternum with his forehead nor the leg strength to take the flying leap depicted in the top half of this panel. The only logical conclusion is that he once again is a pawn in someone else’s game: presumably some other Keane who has a gripe with Billy (Mom? Dad? Dolly? Barfy?) has hurled Jeffy at the offending towhead.

Apartment 3-G, 8/7/06

Speaking of red cards, if Tommie doesn’t do something really dramatic tomorrow — I’m thinking suicide, or at least some sort of ritual cutting — then I’m citing her for drama. “Sorry, Professor, I wanted to ask if you’d watch Crossing Jordan with me last night … but now it’s too late! That is, at least until next Tuesday at 10 p.m., on NBC!”

By the way, panel two features a rare example of the King Features coloring monkeys actually making up for a defect in the original drawing. That cool cat Ari somehow lost his mustache between the first and second panels, making him look all too much more like Mary Worth’s Professor Ian “Chinbeard” Cameron. In an attempt to maintain facial hair continuity, the colorists didn’t daub his upper lip with “caucasian peach” in panel two, leaving him looking like he has one of those icky “got milk?” mustaches.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/7/06

Something about Rex’s bolded-italicized phrase in panel one makes me want to repeat it over and over again, Zippy the Pinhead style. It sounds like it could be a rhyming catchphrase from a Jesse Jackson speech. “Your life was an escalating deception … as you tried to create a dishonest perception! Now you need to make a whole-hearted correction!”

In a comment in an earlier post, faithful reader Laura noted that the little blurb at the top right of the first panel (“As Rex begins to walk away, Troy stops him!”) is, in her words, the “GAYEST. OMNISCIENT NARRATION BOX. EVER.”, which made me chuckle. What I’m wondering is how this so-called omniscient narration box failed to figure out that “Troy”‘s name is actually “Adam,” since everyone in the strip, up to and including Abbey the Wonder Dog, has by now been clued it.

The Middletons, 8/7/06

I suppose it’s strictly accurate to say that it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “rockin’ and rollin’.” Since nobody has actually used the phrase before, any meaning you attribute to it would be “new.”

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Hi kids! As I’ve mentioned in the past, I write a weekly feature on political cartoons for the political blog Wonkette. Well, Wonkette is a bit short-staffed at the moment, and, having proven my ability to operate blogging software and my lack of an office job that might frown on my blogging on company time, I’ve been drafted into guest-blogging for a few days this week. Since I don’t live in Washington, don’t have any real connection with politics or government, and don’t have cable, it will be interesting to see how this works out. If you have any tips that might make interesting posts on Wonkette, please send ’em to me.

Keep in mind that Wonkette is a political blog in a fairly loose sense: it’s interested not so much in thoughtful debate and policy analysis and more in mockery and perversion. Think less “McNeil-Lehrer News Hour” and more “The Daily Show.” So please don’t send me your impassioned 4,000-word treatise on health care reform or campaign finance law, or your detailed conspiracy theories. Did someone show up to testify at a House finance subcommittee meeting dressed as a chicken? Did a national office-holder or major political candidate make a bizarre or inadvertently hilarious statement in public, possibly when he or she didn’t realize that the microphone was on? Is there a major political sex scandal brewing, involving (this would be the Wonkette mother lode) sodomy? This is the sort of thing I want to know.

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Apartment 3-G, 8/6/06

I think it’s pretty clear that Tommie’s going to get her mind blown, over and over, until she begs to never ever get a storyline of her own again. I admit that it’s pretty shocking that a woman in her late twenties might call a man in his early fifties by his first name — if you live in 1954. Otherwise, I got nothing on Tommie’s total bafflement. Maybe she’s devastated that her longtime partner in sexless chastity has a non-platonic date with someone. Whatever it is, I hope we’re treated to a whole week of Tommie word-ballooning random words in quotation marks and out of context.

Mary Worth, 8/6/06

“I’m pretty open-mined, but I don’t find Aldo’s brand of stalking amusing at all!” Personally, I find Mary, that champion of suburban condo conformity, describing herself as “open minded” to be quite amusing. Tell the ladies at the downtown women’s shelter all about your open-mindedness, why don’t ya?

Since I actually am open minded, I find Aldo’s brand of humor freakin’ hilarious. Particularly risible is his maniacal and heavily-motion-lined evil hand-rubbing in the final panel. Or maybe he’s so turned on by the thrill of pursuit that he’s doing some spontaneous hand-jiving.

Crankshaft, 8/6/06

There’s absolutely nothing about the humor content of this strip that demands that it be narrated by girls in bikinis, but I’m gradually learning that the main role of the granddaughter in this feature is to distract from the lame-o writing by wearing something skimpy.