Aggressions, macro and micro
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Gil Thorp, 3/9/23
We all of course remember that time that Mudlark basketball star Ted Pearse was living in a homeless shelter and the fans of one of their rivals taunted him about it by dressing up as hobos, but I feel like we’ve mostly forgotten that Ted’s own teammates showed their support (?) for him by wearing masks so that they didn’t “catch homelessness.” Anyway, it looks like one of our current Mudlarks is, like Ted, in an economically precarious position, but sadly (for us, and, maybe for him?) the days of ostentatious Valley Conference theatricality are long behind us, so all we have is the new assistant coach blurting out “Damn, son, your shoes are all fucked up, like a poor person’s.”
Mary Worth, 3/9/23
Oh, sorry, do YOUNG ZOOMER veterinarians feel like they need to go to their “safe spaces” and engage in “self-care” after a hard day of putting dogs to sleep, like the girls with the nose rings on TikTok tell them to do? Well, their ELDER GEN X/BOOMER CUSP/NOT REALLY SURE HOW OLD ED AND/OR ESTELLE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE uncles certainly don’t bother with that nonsense. “Burnout?” Ed says, the corners of his mouth tugging up into a smile but his eyes staying 100% dead. “Never heard of it.”
164 replies to “Aggressions, macro and micro”
Mary Worth: Something doesn’t seem right. How come Nephew Boy gets an actual nose during portrait shots when the star of the strip, Mary Worth herself, only gets Voldemort nasal slits? He must be sleeping with the author. [shudder]
Dustin: Wow, the author put in some real work on today’s strip: he managed to work not just one but two, count them, two stale insulting 50’s female stereotypes. Because everyone knows, “Wimmens be bad drivers” and “Wimmens be spending all the man’s money” are comedy gold in the twenty-first century. Comedy. Gold.
Pooch Cafe: This one’s a knee slapper for sure.
MW: “Uncle Ed, the daily grind here is so time-consuming and repetitive that I can’t pursue my hobby of reading great books, and I can only practice general veterinary medicine instead of my specialty concentration.”
****
“No. Don’t say it, Steven.”
****
“Yep. I’m a little-read core vet!”
JP: I get the handcuffs but why’d they remove the Judge’s dentures in P2.
@Y145 richardf8: Zippy’s not an EVILSCARYCLOWN; he’s apparently a free thinking man with really bad taste in clothing and a Nancy bow in what’s left of his hair.
MW – I was already thisclose to really disliking Mopey Nephew. Then he went and used the phrase “self-care” so now I truly hate him.
GT: Coach Tays has substituted fan-favourite character Coach Katz, how can we win over the resistance of the readers? I know, let him callously mock poor people!
MW: The solution to work, private life and self-care is one and the same: gin
@Bob Tice, MW: Rat shows up on Moy’s desk with a Wilbur Bat.
“I can’t be a good veterinarian if I am burned out!”
“That’s not a problem, you can still be a half-assed veterinarian! Who is going to complain, the dogs?”
MT – “dressing up as hobos”
Man, I miss the batshit bonkers early-aughts era of Gil Thorp. That “hobo” taunting Mary Tyler Pearse was GOLD, Jerry. GOLD!
Oops, that was supposed to say “GT” not “MT.” Early morning abbreviation fail.
FC: Bil’s been putting off ‘the talk’ with Billy for some time but figures he better do it now if he ever wants to stop him from barging into their bedroom unannounced. So, he sits him down and gives him his first lesson in scientific notation.
MW: “Nephew, if you work sucks, you don’t work to improve its conditions or find a better life-work balance, you suffer through it while cynically mocking it. Let me share the wisdom of my favourite cartoonist, Scott Adams…”
@astroboy: You almost had me, there. I was THIS CLOSE to reading Mark Trail after a long hiatus, just to see what Jules’ version of wilderness hobos would look like. Whew!
Mary Worth: “I’m human,” says Ed, despite all evidence to the contrary.
MW: Oh snap, did Dr. Mr. Ed just get interesting? Nah, probably not; this jarringly passable dialogue almost definitely won’t lead to any kind of meaningful character exploration about Ed’s perspective on life. But at least it will hopefully shut Doggie Howser up for a few minutes.
9CL: Of course we don’t get to see the payoff of the water balloons hitting the couples. Of course we don’t get to see the aftermath of the soaking. Of course we don’t hear any yells of surprise or anger from the people below. We don’t even get a couple of SPLOOOOSHes to signify that the water balloons impacted anything. But do we get a side profile shot of Amos’s horrendously disgusting anteater-esque proboscis of an upper lip? You’d better believe it!
(Morrissey voice): Ed is human and he needs to be loved. Just like everybody else does.
MW: Burn-out, as his age? Steven needs a hard slap across the face to jolt him back to reality. Man, Joan Crawford never seems to be around when you really need her.
MW: This has just tilted from, The Whippersnapper Gets Schooled to The Old Guy Learns That Estelle + Piano = Self-Care.
9CL: True karmic retribution would demand that Edda and Amos be doused with cold water any time they get within a foot of each other.
RMMD: Nothing says low self-esteem like a blank name badge. Or, maybe NO ONE can remember if she’s Wanda or Rhonda.
DtM: “Good news, Mr Wilson! Dennis has gone to live on a farm with a wonderful family!”
Crankshaft : “Yeah, we’re at home because business at the Valentine is slow. I don’t get it, though; where else can you watch vintage movies!?”
********
Garfield/Shoe vs Heart of the City : common subject : properly hydrating yourself, albeit the furries focus on the negatives, ie it can make you look bloated and fat.
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Gil Thorp : “Oh my gosh, what’s wrong with your shoes!?” followed by “Oh, well, it looks stylish on you!” is a save attempt. A bad one, but at least Tays tried.
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Hagar the Horrible : was destined for “greatness”, and, even at a young age, all his peers could immediately tell the person he would grow up to be.
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Mary Worth : “I don’t. I’m ALWAYS at work, watching a beloved pet died. I went on a DATE with a LOVELY WOMAN the other week, and all I could talk about was giving her specific examples of that week’s fatalities!”
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Pluggers : are lovingly looking at a collector plate that was never used to serve a meal, wholly ignoring the caption. Because if they DID respect the caption, yes, the plate would be clean, but there would be foodstains all over the Pluggers’ face, clothes, hands, table, floor, ceiling…
********
Six Chix : what kind of cobbler advertises using so much glue the fumes could drug a half-ton animal unconscious? …. This is just a front for an inhalant joint, isn’t it? Scruff McGruff needs to do drug bust?
DtM: As Henry plows straight ahead he realizes he’ll be long dead before he knows whether that combine harvester breaks down before reaching the back seat. He guns the engine, turns to Dennis and screams above the din; “Amor Fati!”
@Charterstoned:
MW: Burn-out, as his age? Steven needs a hard slap across the face to jolt him back to reality. Man, Joan Crawford never seems to be around when you really need her.
Or Patton
Josh, veterinarians have a pretty high suicide rate, so burnout is not a joke.
The dogs may not complain when they are “put to sleep,” but their owners are probably in tears.
@Bob Tice:
Baby, your mutts, too, passed.
Damn, I hate it when Josh leads off with Gil Thorp. All those things that seem like English sentences, but don’t seem to amount to a conversation – Did I sleep in? Am I having a particularly strange dream? Did I slip on the ice and hurt my head? What’s going on?
Then I remember: That’s just our Gil.
MW: “I never self care! It’s sinful! Hav
MW: “I never self care! It’s sinful! Have you never heard of Onan? Look, there’s hair on your palms!”
(Complete version, sorry about the premature post-a- lation).
Pluggers learned their eating disorders at an early age, and are proud of it.
DT: Wolfe and Goodwin have given up their favorite beverages — beer and milk, respectively — and switched to that amazing new product, Blue Juice.
Dustin: Wimmin….be shoppin.’
GT: Kicks just keep getting harder to find.
GT: “It’s whatever“. Man, even a year ago I’d have made a joke about how this strip is written by some kind of AI teenspeak bot, except with the rise of ChatGPT, we now know that AI can do everyday vernacular much better than that. I guess in a way it’s comforting to know that Gil Thorp gets written the traditional way, by half-remembering a phrase they heard on the MTV some years back.
MW: There’s two ways that one could interpret Dr Ed’s last remark: (1) that he doesn’t really have time for a social life at all or (2) that his professional and personal life are one and the same, and he’s fuckin’ them animals…
Dustin Doesn’t the mother have a successful career of her own? Why does she have to account to this asshole for what she spends at Nordstrom?
Oh, right, so they can do a gag that was stale the fifteenth time I Love Lucy did it in 1955.
Dennis the Menace: parking your vintage ’64 Valiant in the direct path of the reaper, now that’s menacing.
MW: As they leave the office, Dr Ed gets into his Porsche convertible and looks back to Steven; “Listen kid, you don’t drive a car like this by arranging flowers for a living. Now get back in there and put down (checks notes) Mr. Pickles!”
MW – Over the past few years, Moy and Brigman have spent an inordinate amount of time schooling us on the inate goodness of dogs, and have now moved on about the hard-knock lives of Veterinarians. Did one of them kick a poodle on live television? Because this feels like they are over-compensating for concepts most of us aren’t struggling with.
If you want to hammer home a helpful point, why don’t you spend some time rebranding Wilbur from diamond-in-the rough quirky to what he really is – a hot mess with serious sociopathic behaviors?
@Hibbleton: “I won’t have cowards in ANIMAL HOSPITAL.”
@Hibbleton: I’m glad I’m not the only one who spotted the juxtaposition of the car and the farm equipment, but kudos to you for knowing what to call it.
Garfield: In today’s strip, Garfield has congestive heart failure. Where’s Doc Ed when you need him? Doing self-care?
MW:
“How do you balance work with private life and self-care, Uncle Ed?”
****
“I play the baby grand to wind down and relax. Right now, I’m going home to play a piano rendition of ‘Taps‘ for that Pomeranian!”
MW: Is Steven wiggling his fingers together on both hands like a fire as he says the words “burned out?” Because that would explain the maniacal look on his face.
GT – Monica’s a Lifesaver? Judging by her outfit, I’m gonna guess raspberry.
MW:
SANTA ROYALE PICAYUNE-TIMES
Thursday, March 9, 2023
POMERANIAN TERRORIZES SANTA ROYALE
“Coastal Cujo” ‘s Biting Spree Apprently Triggered by Botched Surgery Performed by Piano-Playing DVM
Don Abundio, translated:
“Don’t take a picture of me with that endangered plant! It might help collectors find it and remove it!”
“Relax, Veronica! I’m having the rest of this forest clearcut soon anyway”
“Smile!”
[Caption: FOREST OF THE SEQUOIAS]
Dr. Ed excuses himself to write a scathing online review of #@$% Steven for LinkedIn.
@Baja Gaijin: True, true.
Dustin: “Young people are lazy parasites that don’t want to work a honest day!”
Mary Worth: “Older people often fail to recognise how their relationship with work can turn toxic, with detrimental effects on both their performance and personal health”.
I’m afraid to inform you that recently created strip Dustin has been outwoked by legacy strip MARY WORTH!
“Damn enough about Wilbur already” (monkey’s paw closes, and perfectly nice lady Estelle has her third straight “shitty boyfriend” plotline in a row)
GT: In my high school, we had a dress code and kids would often express their individuality through their footwear. I wonder if Atazhoon’s ratty kicks are his way of saying: fuck you, Dad…Mom…Sis…Coach Thorp —yeah, that’s the one.
CS: Oh God, the malapropitis moronis has finally spread to the younger generation. Hey Crankclones, at least your grandfather doesn’t smirk every time he cuts a verbal fart.
JP: Jeez, Yelich must really be hammered. But how did he get everyone else to agree to mass suey side? (I think that’s one of those words the modbot condemns to death. If not, someone please let me know.)
RMMD: With great sadness, Wanda suddenly realizes that she has no next generation to hand her diner over to and that she’s condemned to stay there until the day she eventually keels over onto someone’s cheese omelet.
GT: “Thanks for coming, Sis.”
“Yeah, whatever. It’s kind of a pain. Would you like me to do your homework too? Maybe fix you a nice cup of hot cocoa? Any other impositions you can guilt me into?”
9CL – Pretty standard 9CL fare, in that this entire sequence is written to set up a single panel payoff, which is then never drawn or even really described as it takes place entirely off panel. And portrays Edda as pure evil….
FC-“Why? Has the national debt reached zillion yet?”
MW-Ed practices self-care in his office during lunch time that’s why the door is locked and you can’t come in.
JP-“They’ll kill me.” Is that promise?
MW: The nephew in the first panel has a strong resemblance to Martin Freeman.
MW: If you find yourself wearing a lilac jacket over a mint green shirt (but white cuffs, somehow) with a powder blue tie, you’re well beyond self-care
GT – A lot of targets to take a bead on today, but I’m going with the Asgard Floor Service b-ball court. Loki is gonna have some laughs with the slippin’n’slidin’ and resultant broken bones….
MW – It all starts with a genuine love for the profession – especially euthanizing and incinerating puppies and kittens….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
“I don’t! And apropos of nothing, did you know the DEA barely monitor the drugs in vet clinics?”
@Voshkod: “And an old school vet smock has many pockets that can hold airplane size vodka bottles!”
@Anonymous: This is sadly true, and if were being addressed in anything but a ham-handed manner in Mary Worth, maybe the point would come across. But what I’m seeing is vets complaining about customers and on-line reviews, making the burn-out seem like something that could happen in any industry. As with so many Mary Worth problems, a good writer could turn this into something. Estelle wondering why Dr. Ed is quietly crying while throwing a ball for her dog, while we flash-back to Ed having to put down a badly injured pug just a hour before, for example.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just allergies.”
Perry Mason reached for the folder on his desk, intending to review the brief one last time before court reconvened at 10 a.m. He frowned when he realized the folder was empty, and quickly buzzed for his confidential secretary, Della Street. The frown turned to an expression of alarm when Della entered, and he saw that she had been crying.
“What is it Della? What’s wrong?” he asked solicitously, starting up from his chair. The missing brief could wait.
“It’s…it’s Hamilton! He’s DEAD!” she managed to blurt out before bursting into tears once again.
“Hamilton Burger is DEAD?” Perry recalled that the prosecutor had seemed fit and healthy just an hour before, when he’d seen him in his office. Anyway, as fit and healthy as he ever looked–although Perry often thought his courtroom nemesis always looked like he was one step away from the grave.
“Not Hamilton Burger, Perry. Hamilton is my pet hamster! WAS my pet hamster! Oh, Perry!” Della dissolved into tears and clutched Perry’s lapels as she sobbed. “Hamilton was all I had, he was there for me every night to keep me company, and now he’s G-GONE!” she hiccupped.
“I didn’t know you had any pets, Della, I’m sorry. I thought you lived alone.” Perry hoped Della didn’t notice his convulsive shudder as he patted her back soothingly. He couldn’t stand rodents. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, Perry. I honestly don’t know. He was in court with me yesterday, just sitting on the bench when the judge adjourned court, and the gavel must have hit him harder than I thought. I knew the judge had accidentally whacked Hamilton’s tail [at this, Perry smiled grimly because he knew the judge suffered from a severe rodent phobia] so I took him to ANIMAL HOSPITAL so Dr. Ed could check him over, and the young vet, Steven, took him to the back and that’s the last I saw of him. I got a call just now that he didn’t make it.” Della made a brave attempt to control her emotions, wiping her tears furiously and straightening her shoulders. She looked up into Perry’s large eyes. “But, Perry, he wasn’t seriously hurt, I KNOW it! He shouldn’t have died! And now all I have is an empty cage filled with old cedar chips and a dripping water bottle and a wheel that won’t ever spin again…!” She sniffed and smoothed her hair against Perry’s shoulder. “Well. I’ll be alright, Perry. It’s just that–I’ve never liked living alone. I thought I could get used to the idea, but after all these years, not being married, not having children of my own, having to sleep alone–at least Hamilton was company on a cold night.”
Perry looked at Della strangely, as if he were seeing her for the first time. He had a brief image of her snuggling with Hamilton under the blankets, and forcefully banished the thought. It didn’t do to get distracted before a court session.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked, hoping she wouldn’t come up with anything.
“Perry, I just think something about ANIMAL HOSPITAL isn’t right. There’s NO REASON Hamilton should have died. How many other pets are going in there for routine care that aren’t ever coming out again?” Perry could feel Della’s anger was beginning to rise. “I never would have taken Hamilton to that place if I’d thought he would just be flushed. And I know that’s what they did to him. The worst thing is that I could have splinted his tail at my apartment, with toothpicks. I’m sure he would have been fine. But I trusted Dr. Ed and his nephew, Steven. And now–” Della looked pleadingly at her boss. “Can’t we have Paul Drake look into this?”
At that moment, the private detective came through the door. “Hi, Beautif–say, what gives?” Paul stared at Della and Perry, still caught in an embrace.
“Hamilton’s dead,” Della said dully, reluctantly pulling away from Perry.
Drake poured himself a cup of coffee. “The old coot. I hope he took Tragg with him.”
GT – I think Paul Revere and the Raiders said it best: “Kicks just keep gettin’ harder to find.”
There’s a simple solution that will fix the problems for people in both these strips. Instead of putting the dogs down, Ed and Dr. Nephew can give these unfortunate pets to Atazhoon who can start up an underground dog fighting ring to raise money for the latest Air Adidas shoes. Problem solved until they’re busted by, say, someone from Judge Parker.
***
As an aside, the best thing about sneaker culture is that men can’t mock women for having lots of shoes anymore.
Wary Morth:
“I don’t. That’s why the papers call me Dr Ed The Ripper. Muhahahahahaha.”
MW: “I’m human.” That explains why Estelle is into Dr. Ed and no longer with Wilbur.
Gil Thorp: What’s really sad is that he bought those shoes two months ago. They really don’t make sneakers like they used to! (And he should really stop getting “Barely Jordans” from the Shnikee Store.)
Mary Worth: Young or old, eager or jaded, the most important thing is that you dye your hair to match your eye color.
Pluggers: If you always lick your plate clean, you’re a plugger. And also a giant cat.
Ed has a T-shirt reading “I MURDER DOGS, AND I VOTE”
@astroboy: (Philip Oakey voice) Ed’s only human, of flesh and blood he’s made. Human, born to make mistake…
MW: “Self-care”–yet another useful concept ruined by the Internet, where the circles on the Venn diagram for “people who talk about how they need ‘self-care'” and “people who actually need to do ‘self-care'” don’t have a lot of overlap.
Also, it seems like this is the setup for breaking up Dr. Ed and Estelle. Do Moy and Brigman just hate the poor woman?
Mary Worth – The battle for dwindling comics page space continues, with Mary Worth creators signaling to readers and editors that they can do Mary’s signature meddling and the medical drama that Rex Morgan, MD refuses to do.
MW: Dr. Ed seems not to have figured out the Doorknob Principle.
Mary Worth: Intrigued to discover that Dr. Ed’s door is apparently operated by a trigger.
Glad I’m not the only one who sees the phrase “self-care” and whose warped brain immediately jumps to “wanking off.”
Gil Thorp: I feel sorry for Atazhoon. He can’t afford new shoes but has to tape up the shoes he has just to. . . wait a minute. His sister does his homework for him?! Well, fuck them both, then.
Gil Thorp: Normally I would complain about a school faculty member wildly insulting the students under his care, but given this is Milford High School I feel like all the students kinda deserve it tbh.
Mary Worth: Love how this whole sequence was probably just meant to give an excuse for why Estelle should dump the successful, handsome, kind-hearted veterinarian in favor of Fucking Wilbur, but has instead kinda taken on its own life, with the result that the strip has kind of been taken over by days on end of this two assholes bitching about their job, which they apparently aren’t very good at.
Mary Worth: Dr. Ed: “I’m only human.”
Dr. Steven: “WELL I’M NOT” [tears off shirt as fur and fangs begin to sprout, gives dreadful howl, still somehow manages to be a better mate than Wilbur]
Atazhoon . . . Atazhoon? South Asian? Armenian? Albanian? Navajo? Or R’leyh?
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women: I too feel sorry for Atazhoon. I mean, after all, he is named Atazhoon. What’s that you say? Atazhoon is a real name? It’s the real name of a high school basketball player? Never mind…
MW: Good heavens – Dr Ed looks like he is one heartbeat away from a total meltdown…he is grimacing as though he’s holding back his slowly simmering rage while admitting to his apprentice nephew that he doesn’t even *try* to attain balance in his work/life. NO, STEVEN, I DON’T EVEN TRY ANY MORE…THE ANIMALS, STEVEN…THE ANIMALS!! I HEAR THEM WAILING IN MY DREAMS…THEY NEVER STOP WAILING!!! Then Dr Ed picks up a scalpel and…[SCREEN GOES BLACK]
@Voshkod: Diné, maybe?
@Tom: “SELF CARE – another useful concept ruined by the Internet, where the circles on the Venn diagram for “people who talk about how they need ‘self-care’” and “people who actually need to do ‘self-care’” don’t have a lot of overlap.”
OMG I LOVE VENN DIAGRAMS! Where there are the three circles! And they intersect! Hahahahahaha! Here, I brought some of my own to share with you guys!!!
@pastordan: Yeah, I actually Googled first. I found Navajo (Dine). Still a very interesting – and very rare – name. I could see Coach No-Tact asking dumb questions about it.
@pastordan:
What’s that you say? Atazhoon is a real name? It’s the real name of a high school basketball player?
the real Atazhoon should send the writers of Gil Thorp a cease and desist order, threatening to take away every penny they have (and, for the record, legacy strip cartoonists do get some pennies in there when they pick up their pay envelopes at the folding table in the lobby of the Tribune building each week). Maybe Earth-1 Atazhoon can get his sister to write the court filing for him.
JUDGE PARKER: Bruh. A bunch of unarmed, untrained women just beat the $%@# out you. I dunno why you still think the big danger is outside the house.
GT: It’s “Gil Thorp”. His shoes don’t look any more out of place to me than everything else does. Flooring that simmers aggressively, mute giants with funky hair, purple enabling sisters… It really is “whatever”. Those shoes are ready to boogie down, near as I can tell.
@Kamala Harris:
Kamala! Nice to see you here! Things a little slow at the office?
JP: my wild guess is that there’s no one out there.
Six Chex: Is Shoe glue vapor a real thing, and if it is, is it why we get Pumpkinhead Halloween comics in July?
MW- Our family crest is the international prohibited circle imposed on a wine bottle and a straw- meaning “No whining, suck it up Bucky!” That’s what young “Dr. Self-Care” needs to be told
@astroboy: #5
Steven went to a “woke” veterinary school, didn’t he…
@Garrison Skunk: Looks like I picked the right Chix day to start sniffing glue.
@Anonymous: “Six Chix : what kind of cobbler advertises using so much glue the fumes could drug a half-ton animal unconscious? …. This is just a front for an inhalant joint, isn’t it? Scruff McGruff needs to do drug bust?”
Now that I think about it, there are all kinds of shoe repair stores in downtown Toronto, but I’ve never heard anybody mention they had taken their shoes in for repair, and the only time I ever tried to use one, the proprietors seemed appalled that the shoes actually needed repair, and told me I was better off buying new ones. So, yeah, fronts for drug trafficking does seem plausible.
Moose & Molly – “Don’t spoil your appetite! We’re having Roast 10-Pound Bag of Sugar.”
Since we’ve all picked up on the wanking theme in Mary Worth today, how come no one has suggested that Needy McNephew consult with Dr. Jeff on the concept of “self care”?
G. &*&$#%! Thorp: I didn’t pick up on Albania/Cameroon/Whatever’s kicks being ratty initially. Of course, from the art work, I thought that Altoid and his sister were walking through an airport. Not a complaint, mind you – I’m loving what Hammerin’ Hank is doing with this.
MW: The nephew just wants to quit his job. It’s that simple. But does he have to be such a drama queen about it? Fire him, Ed, before he breaks into song.
MARY WORTH: Dr. Ed: “Oh don’t mind me. Just spoon-feeding to the dumb baby audience the reason ‘Stel’ is inevitably going to break up with me. They’re a bunch of clueless morons so we have to waste a few weeks with my nephew, Dr. Whiny McBurnout to make sure the dimwits ‘get it.'”
@Voshkod: #74
Tatooine??
GT – All the other kids with the pumped up kicks better run, better run, run from my whatever
@Charterstoned:
As in, “don’t act like a fucking doorknob”?
MW: Junior’s going to be racking up the one-star reviews for the clinic if he can’t get his head out of his own ass. I hope the moral of this story isn’t going to be that the key to success is a bad attitude.
MW: Nephew “sure I went to veterinary school. And sure, I’m now a veterinarian but I never wanted to be a vet. I’ve always wanted to be a lumberjack. ”
“Oh I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay.
@Peanut Gallery:
Faster than Roy Rogers’ dog? Ties in the whole vet thing.
@Voshkod: Dear, it’s not a problem that can be solved with muffins sprinkled with platitudes, Mary Worth ain’t interested.
Of course, they did have a woman resolve her domestic abuse PTSD with a few “Dogs are good” bromides. Maybe Dr Burnout there should just surround himself with dogs and…oh wait.
@Inspector Gotcha: “Kamala! Nice to see you here! Things a little slow at the office?”
The overlap among “people who know what to do”, “people who are willing to do it”, and “people who are here today” is, sadly, the null set :(
@Weaselboy: Fun Fact – The song doesn’t glorify Air Jordan’s and other high-end athletic shoes. It’s actually a big shoe admonishment – everyone knows you can run just as fast and jump just as high with those Walmart tennis shoes glued together by political prisoners and child labor….
GIL THORP: I think Coach Not-Gil is asking what’s up with those “kicks” because they’re supposed to have blades on the bottom of them or else Atazhoon going to totally slip on this ice skating rink.
@Kamala Harris:
The tragedy of work-from-home.
LUANN: I see Mrs. Horner hasn’t gotten to the “Drama doesn’t need to be so heavily manufactured” lesson plan yet.
Harry Dirth – To get serious for a moment (I hate doing that), the sad thing about what Moy is doing is making this impossible to not mock the concept of work-life balance, which is a significant and good thing. But with Whiny McNephew sounding like he’d like to jerk off (or better yet, go cornhole one of those animals), we can’t get sympathetic. I guess we should be more like Dr. E.D., who is so dedicated to his work that he’ll leave Estelle to her vibrator (or worse, Wilbur) while he succumbs to a variety of bad outcomes caused by stress.
All this is real shit, but it’s treated with the same lack of perspicacity as we see every day in Luann.
MW – “I’ll put you in touch with Mr. McEldowney. He can give you some information. He’s a master of self care while he’s working.”
Pluggers – And he’s really hurt that he hasn’t yet received a thank you note from any of those starving children in China.
JP – Please have him be jumped by the guard dogs from the lake house. Who cares how they get there? It’s not like this story has ever made sense.
REX MORGAN M.D.: Hah! What I like about this is that it strongly suggest that the sole reason Yvonne married that dipshit is because this was the only way she could finally retire from the soul-crushing diner for some reason.
Random guy: “Hi! I’m a serial killer just stopping by for a slice of pie in between strandling sessions. Say, you’re kinda cute! Wanna get ma–
Yvonne (eyes wide as dinner plates with overt eagerness): “Yes!”
Apple Mary – “We never burn anything unless by design…to cremate after euthanasia.”
REX MORGAN: “That wonderful man who just stepped out asked me to marry him, and . . . hmm . . . come to think of it, he’s been gone for over an hour now, and I *did* hear the sound of tires screeching from the parking lot exit just after he excused himself . . . oh well, probably just a coincidence. Let’s talk some more about diners, and road trips, and roots rock, and then still more about diners, O.K.? I can do that all day!”
@Uncle Lumpy: As in The Far Side. I would LOVE to see how June Brigman holds phones, tea cups, and eating utensils in real life. The way she depicts hands in the act of grasping almost anything—including the doorknob in today’s first panel—makes no sense and in many cases actually defies the laws of physics. I wonder how long it will be before Dr. Ed figures it out. Meanwhile, he and Steven are trapped in the room and in a conversation loop of complaint, while without, the animal patients continue to drop like flies.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: “I said keep your mask ON! You’ve got this horrible zit on your chin and it’s making me sick! (Oh, all right, I’ll call it a ‘spider-zit’ just to keep your PR folks happy.”)
Phantom – Ok, but if the Phantom gets wounded with the Bandar army around him, won’t they just take him to Guran rather than to that vet? And keep Savarna far away from him, so she never hears any feverish rantings from him?
Also, that without modern antibiotics, he’s going to die? So problem solved?
GIL THORP: Gil: “I hope we raised enough to make up for the budget shortfall. Maybe we can finally afford to build a locker room instead of making everyone change right there in the gymnasium itself!”
@Baja Gaijin: To be fair, the “almost hit a motorcycle in a parking space” isn’t just a “wimmin be bad drivers” thing. Especially in a crowded parking lot, it is easy to think you’ve scored a nice space close to the entrance only to see, just as you start to pull in, someone’s Yamaha just sitting there, like “ha ha sucker, gotcha!”
@2+2=7: So next she’s telling Woody Harrelson the key lime pie is “an acquired taste”?
BTW, that movie sucked, But that’s what happens when you have Oliver Stone make a Quentin Tarantino movie, instead of letting the man do his own vision.
MW – Dr. Ed sees his work helping animals as essential, far more so than any interactions with humans. In other words, he’s a Quisling helping to bring about the animal uprising foretold in Slylock Fox. The pieces are coming together.
@Hibbleton: Did Snuffy Smith get Roy Rogers’ dog when Rogers was done with it? “Ol’ Bullet” might be older than I thought!
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Unfortunately, it may be that three panels a day with a recap on Sundays just isn’t a good medium for addressing real issues. Which is why all the soap strips should actually be soap operas, full of unpredictable and absurd twists of fate, and Rex Morgan should get caught up in breaking an oxy ring run by vampires, and Mark Trail can punch some guys on the edge of an erupting volcano controlled by a mad furrier, and Mary Worth can try to deal with a case of demonic possession involving an evil twin coming out of a coma and Judge Parker could have a drug-crazed judge with multiple gang connections and a CIA assassin.
OK, I feel better now.
@Voshkod: Rex Morgan should get caught up in breaking an oxy ring run by vampires Totally a Nicholas Cage movie.
MW: You know, I think these two could stand to be a little more grateful for their positions in life.
@Peanut Gallery: I knew that Trigger was stuffed after he died and dimly remembered that the dog Bullet had the same fate. I just looked it up and learned that Bullet had indeed been taxidermied. Both Trigger and Bullet were exhibits at Roy Rogers’s museum until it closed. Both animals were sold at auction at Christie’s in 2010. I didn’t follow up beyond that.
Maybe Snuffy went to the auction and bought Bullet. He could have bid online or by phone.
@Blast Hardcheese: Vampushers, starring Nic Cage.
CS: Watch out, Crankshaft.
https://www.rawstory.com/bus-driver-arrested/
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I think folks here generally appreciate the distinction between mocking cartoonists’ questionable representations of issues and mocking the issues themselves. For example, there’s really nothing funny about breast cancer, but it’s very amusing to call Tom Batiuk out for his desperate and repetitive attempts to cash in on his fictional breast cancer story.
That said, I agree Karen Moy especially makes this separation difficult, especially with how her ignorant and counterproductive takes on serious matters are presented as basic wisdom. Personally the work-life balance thing is light enough to not rustle my jimmies (at least so far), but Moy needs to stay the hell away from weightier than this.
“How do I balance work, self care, and a personal life? I stuff my feelings down and bury them with bourbon, lots and lots of bourbon like my father and his father before him and his father before him. And now I can kill a hundred animals without feeling anything. Here! Stab me! Nevermind, you Nancy, I’ll do it myself. AHHHHHH! AHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHH! SEE? I didn’t feel a thing!”
@Bob Tice: O M G seriously
@Tabby Lavalamp: #60
“There’s a simple solution that will fix the problems for people in both these strips. Instead of putting the dogs down, Ed and Dr. Nephew can give these unfortunate pets to Atazhoon who can start up an underground dog fighting ring to raise money for the latest Air Adidas shoes.”
Too much competition in the dog fighting ring business. How about Atazhoon starts up a hamster fighting ring instead?
MW-“I don’t.” And it really bothers his lover Rex Morgan.
@Charterstoned:
“I hope he took Tragg with him” made me chortle considerably. Ray Collins forever!
@Professor Well Actually: #84
“JP: my wild guess is that there’s no one out there.”
Or they open the door and hear a loud “SMILE — you’re on CANDID CAMERA!”
9CL: “Do you think we’ve interrupted anything important?” “Are you kidding? You saw the way those guys were humping like crazed weasels, so there was nothing impotent about . . . oh, wait, you said ‘imPORtant.’ Nah, not really.”
@Andrew Leal: #130: Ray Collins fun fact: Collins played the crooked political boss that Charles Foster Kane was running against in “Citizen Kane”. Out of respect Collins name was still kept on the closing credits of “Perry Mason” years after failing health forced him to retire.
JP: April may still be in prison but Wurst is still running free. I’d like for this gang of nincompoops to go outside and find every remaining crooked cop and meth gang member lying dead with their necks snapped, and Wurst standing over their bodies.
“Everyone in Cavelton corrupt so I kill whole town. Now I finish with you.”
@Guillermo el chiclero: I have to admit, you’ve come up with the wurst possible way to end this story.
@Guillermo el chiclero:
The indispensable character actor Ray Collins had a small but pivotal role as Dr. Beamish, the court psychiatrist (!) in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. At one point Cary Grant asks him how he got in Grant’s apartment, and he says, “The door was closed, so I opened it and walked right in.”
@Baja Gaijin, Dustin: If she was also crying inconsolably to get sympathy, it would have been the Blondie Bumstead Hat Trick.
@Voshkod: Vampushers, starring Nic Cage.
They shoot you up, then suck you dry!
@Little Blue Bicycle: MW: “I never self care! It’s sinful! Have you never heard of Onan? Look, there’s hair on your palms!” (Complete version, sorry about the premature post-a- lation).
There’s no cure yet, but I heard there’s one coming quick!
@Shrug: 9CL: “Do you think we’ve interrupted anything important?”
Funny, we recently spent a lot of time with Tween Edda, establishing that she thinks making babies and doing the Hokey-Pokey are one and the same. But, here we are clearly in the Child Edda stage, and yet she was able to discern by peering down from a window several stories up that at least one of the guys in the car was about to climax.
MW: Well Dr Ed does have enough personal time to die his hair. I seem to remember the extremely busy young surgeons in Gray’s Anatomy had enough personal time to bang everything with legs.
@Lord Flatulence: You just got yourself an ‘executive producer’ credit, my friend.
Israeli actor Chaim Topol, who mostly went by his surname, passed away at age 87. RIP
@Guillermo el chiclero: Something I read recently: Zero Mostel was very upset when Norman Jewison cast Topol instead of Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof. Years later, Jewison cast Zero’s son in Jesus Christ Superstar. Zero yelled: “Why didn’t he cast Topol’s kid!”
The thing about Gil Thorp is, it’s unintelligible without someone like Josh to explain it to a lay audience, and they should really be paying him a portion of whatever bizarre fees are keeping it going.
Curtis Okay, this is supposed to be a drawn-out “sure”, the universally recognised signal for “I am sarcastically agreeing with your statement because I don’t actually believe you in the slightest”, right? Then shouldn’t it be the “u” that gets elongated? “Suuuure”? Because “sureeee” looks like it should rhyme with “jury”.
GT: So this isn’t Toby, because I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a sister. Is it the guy who looks like Toby from the duo who look identical to the Toby and Rod duo but are diametrically opposed to them, or is it some other guy who looks like Toby?
JP: Okay, here’s the odds as I see them:
Evens: The judge and Yelich die in a hail of gunfire by the crooked cops who hate the judge and therefore shot Steve on his orders, and who have been sitting outside the ranch all this time but can’t go inside to kill the judge becaue they don’t have a warrant. The Driver-Spencers are just like “Well, I guess that wraps everything up!”
10-1: April Bower appears out of nowhere, shoots the judge, and reveals she’s also shot anyone else who might be narratively inconvenient going forward.
50-1: Ces suddenly remembers that he never explained who Sam phoned to arrange the police guard on Steve (again, great job there, Sam) and arranged to meet at the ranch, given it couldn’t be any of the people he actually did meet at the ranch, since he didn’t expect any of them, and that person resolves the situation somehow. (May happen in tandem with the above.)
1-100 odds on: The judge and Yelich leave the ranch without incident, and after several days of banal conversation between Sam and Abbey, Yelich phones up and says the judge is now in prison. The Driver-Spencers are just like “Well, I guess that wraps everything up!”
And the million to one shot: Something happens that actually makes sense.
MW: Dammit, we really are heading there, aren’t we? This story is going full-speed ahead towards “Dr Ed is a great and noble veterinarian, but this simply doesn’t leave him with enough time or energy for poor neglected Estelle! But look, there’s still Wilbur! Wilbur has never sacrificed his romantic prospects to help an animal in his life! He will always be there when you need him, providing he’s not drunk or creeping on Iris or wandered into trafffic!”
Phantom: Did it? I don’t remember that. Then again, it was so long ago…
@Horace Broon: 1-5: Steve isn’t dead. This is some nonsensical ploy to draw out some information that will be used in some narratively convenient way.
@Ettorre:
GT: Coach Tays has substituted fan-favourite character Coach Katz, how can we win over the resistance of the readers?
_______________________________________
Let’s split the difference and introduce Tasmanian devil Coach Taz
GT: No, no, “Atazhoon” is this kid’s nickname. I’ll tell you the backstory on that as soon as I make it up.
RMMD: “Wonderful man? I only saw that old bald fart. Look, if you had three people at this table, I’m gonna have to charge you for an extra plate.”
@astroboy: I’m glad I’m not the first person to mention this.
GT: Wonder how long it took Kaz to learn that “you poor are something?” was a no-go subject with the kids.
MW: Just noticing now that the irises in Steve’s eyes are about twice as big as in Ed’s. One explanation is that he’s a Margaret Keane painting on his mother’s side. Or else he’s looking for work/life balance in the medicine cabinet.
C-Shaft: Say what you want about Ed Crankshaft, he generally doesn’t act like these sub-humorous puns are clever.
DT: Curtis and Pleger’s Kramer seems to have been taken from the A&E series, or at least resembles Bill Smitrovich. As to the “clown at his own funeral” that’s definitely in the realm of “tell”, not “show.”
Dustin: They said you couldn’t put a woman driver joke in the same strip as a “ladies be shopping” joke. They were wrong. Then they said it wouldn’t be funny. So, one out of two.
JP: Could also say “the wonderful man whose stench you’ll catch the next time you clean your public restroom.”
HtH: It’s a little late in the day to suggest that “Hagar the Horrible” is a guise passed from person to person a la “The Dread Pirate Roberts.”
MG&G: Sorry, Mother Goose. Everyone on the Internet who matters already knows about all your porn searches for “dish-spoon.”
S4th: Sally picks an odd time for her karaoke rendition of Bill Withers’s “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone.”
@Voshkod: You are too kind.
Director Bert I. Gordon just passed away at age 100. He holds the record for the most of his movies riffed on MST3K, eight. RIP
@Guillermo el chiclero: Wow. Offhand I wouldn’t have guessed that he was still alive as of this year. And a quick IMDb search tells me his last movie came out as recently as 2015 (Secrets of a Psychopath, starring Kari Wuhrer from Sliders.)
Ooo! Ooo! I wanna do an obituary, too!
Robert Blake, actor, age 89. Famous for being in “Our Gang” (aka “Little Rascals”) short films, In Cold Blood (1967), Baretta on teevee, and being that spooky little fucker in David Lynch’s Lost Highway.
Dennis the Menace: Confusing. From the shape of the fender, the splash panel, the side marker light, and the fender well opening into the door, it looks like that’s the rear of the car facing the field with the ominous combine. But the outside rear view mirror and the positions of Dennis and Alice indicate this is the front of the car. I guess the artist didn’t know whether he was coming or going. Or just didn’t know how to draw a car.
Juliet Jones – Yep. Eve’s on the cover of the magazine.
If anyone wants to see a strip with adults throwing temper tantrums like bratty children, this is the strip for you.
Vintage JP – The Colonel took a bus instead of flying because he didn’t want to go through airport security. 1980 security.
The comments on Comics Kingdom include a link to the next day’s Sunday strip, April 13, 1980. A view of the full page includes a Mary Worth strip in which Toby Cameron is moving in to Charterstone.
As something of an Our Gang historian, Michael Gubitosi aka Robert Blake was the WORST long-running kid in the history of the show. When I was a kid I would automatically turn off any OG with that whiny little jerkwad “Mickey” and it turns out he’s pretty much universally detested among Gang fans. And to think he appeared in more films than the likes of Stymie Beard. It’s a disgrace.
George “Spanky” McFarland didn’t like him at all despite their parents being close friends, in later interviews calling him “preachy, whiny and obnoxious.” Spanky, always a defender of the films, took great delight in destroying Blake’s ridiculous claims against the series. (“Child slavery? First of all, that’s offensive. Second of all, we were all very well paid and he was a featured performer, making more than anyone else except Buck and me. If his parents didn’t put it in a trust fund for him, that’s on his parents, not on Our Gang”)
(I do not blame children for poor writing and direction, which those late-era OG films that Blake starred in suffered from. But as an actor, the kid was insufferable.)
That Mary Worth panel is one of the funniest things I’ve seen on the comics page in a long time.
@astroboy: That’s interesting about Our Gang. Spanky came to a video store in our town in 1993 I think to push sales of the videos of Our Gang. I think he died soon after. BTW, you’re not Leonard Maltin, are you?
@Ukulele Ike: #156: He also played the Mexican kid selling lottery tickets in “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, the one that got a glassful of water tossed in his face by Humphrey Bogart. He was also Red Rider’s sidekick Little Beaver. I wonder if Baretta’s cockatoo Fred is still alive? Those buggers can live to be over 100.
@I speak Jive: April 13, 1980. A day that will live in infamy. Although, considering how many whack jobs have come and gone through Charterstone, Toby probably isn’t that bad, as whack jobs go.
@Charterstoned: Toby is too insipid to be a whack job, unfortunately. And I’m still unhappy that Moy remodeled Ian into a mellow bore. He was more interesting when he was a pompous blowhard.