Post Content

Curtis, 11/9/09

This may not be interesting to anybody else (though really, what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t write about things that aren’t interesting to anybody else?), but I was sort of intrigued by Curtis’s father describing The Day After Tomorrow as a “Dennis Quaid movie.” I mean, yes, Quaid got top billing, but the film featured an ensemble cast, and you certainly wouldn’t call it a Dennis Quaid vehicle. It got me wondering whether films with large casts jockeying for screentime aren’t sort of Rorschach tests, with people seeing as most prominent the actor with whom they have the most in common. So, whereas middle-aged dad Greg Wilkins might call the film a Dennis Quaid movie, younger adults might consider it a Jake Gyllenhaal flick, whereas short sixtysomething Brits would identify it as an Ian Holm film. (As a believer in the auteur theory, I’d call it a Roland Emmerich movie myself, and who else is going out on opening day with me to see 2012, the latest from history’s greatest artiste of delightful computer-generated mass destruction? Anyone? Anyone?)

Getting back to the comic, I’m sort of amused by Curtis’s “Um, yeah” in panel three. “Dad, The Day After Tomorrow was a huge Hollywood blockbuster with an enormous marketing budget, so obviously I saw it. I’m the film industry’s perfect consumer! It’s like they grew me in a lab!”

Shoe, 11/9/09

Have you ever noticed that virtually all of Shoe’s distasteful romantic interludes are depicted as occurring in bars? I’m not just talking about the creepy courtship; even the sort of relationship talks that you’d expect to take place at home, or in the car, or in one of the more secluded booths at Pizza Hut, or really just somewhere that provides a little privacy, are instead aired out with Shoe and some interchangeable member of his cast of soul-deadened lady birds bellied up to the same bar where they presumably first set bleary, bloodshot eyes on one another. It leads one to believe each partner has someone or something at home that much be kept in the dark (e.g., children, spouse) or kept secret (e.g., porn collection, spouse) about/from the other. The logical conclusion is that the entire duration of these ephemeral relationships takes place at smoke-filled watering holes, with the drunken lovers hopefully retiring to the backseat of one of their cars to get it on rather than taking up a valuable toilet stall in the men’s room.

Marvin, 11/9/09

In somehow even more distasteful romantic news, today we learn what odor Marvin finds sexually arousing: the unguent one has smeared on one’s nether parts to soothe rashes caused by sitting in one’s own urine or feces for extended periods of time.

Marmaduke, 11/9/09

Hey, lady, don’t try to impose your square heteronormality on Marmaduke! Unfettered by humanity’s hang-ups, he’s free in his polymorphously perverse state to flirt with either the carefully groomed poodle or the big butch terrier, or both, whatever strikes his fancy. And anyway, this being Marmaduke, he’s probably not planning to “flirt with” anyone so much as to “kill and eat” them.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/9/09

Meanwhile, Wally Winkerbean, his life torn apart by a cruel twist of fate and his mind tortured by traumatic brain injury and PTSD, has decided to drink himself to death. Gonna be a fun week!