Post Content

Blondie, 6/9/10

Here is a 100 percent true story: When I was about 10 or so, my dad and I were driving through downtown Buffalo, and this car sort of cut us off, and my dad said, “Jeez, what’s up with this clown,” exactly the way you would in such a situation, and then I looked closer and saw that the car in question was being driven by an actual, literal clown, in full make-up and regalia and everything. His car was not unusually small, nor was he sharing it with dozens of other clowns. This was endlessly hilarious to me, and whenever I see clowns depicted in everyday life, I think of this incident, and it makes me laugh. Certainly it was much funnier than Blondie’s grim and off-putting attempt to wring surrealistic yuks out of a vicious clown assault.

Mark Trail, 6/9/10

You know who really, really likes working zoning disputes into his stories? Jack Elrod, author of Mark Trail! Now, it probably is true that land use regulations are a much more important part of rural life than we city slickers realize, but now all of the sudden a dramatic change in zoning laws is arising as a plot point in this unusually urban storyline. Thus, I must assume that Elrod is a member of the small, misunderstood community of zoning fetishists, or “zonies.” While he toils away on the outdoorsman strip he inherited from Ed Dodd, he’s always hoping that one day one of the alternative presses will pick up Fred Gorski, Zoning Board Co-Chair Of Destiny!, the erotic graphic novel he’s been tinkering with for years.

Apartment 3-G, 6/9/10

Uh, is it just me, or are those oven mitts really, really big? They look more like the freakishly oversized novelty hands you get at sporting events. Naturally, Tommie has cut off the protruding index finger, as neither she nor anyone else believes her to be “number one.”