Charterstone will be empty by the afternoon
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Mary Worth, 11/27/24
Oh, man, this is incredible, we’re now on day three of Mary’s dinner guests making it very clear that they don’t mind at all that dinner’s been cancelled, and then going off and doing the thing that they’re now free to do because dinner’s been cancelled while very much not worrying about whether Mary’s dying or whatever. In Dr. Jeff’s case, the thing that he’s now free to do is to take a brisk walk alone into the woods and never come back.
Shoe, 11/27/24
Normally it would be the guy delivering the gag who would get the heavy lidded expression of despair in the second panel, indicating his shame at delivering terrible Shoe-level wordplay. But that’s not the case here, which leads me to believe this guy isn’t making a joke or anything. He’s dead serious about it: the toilet seat thing is a sick sex thing, one that drives his wife wild with desire, and it’s no doubt just the beginning of some very elaborate process that you do not want to know about. Shoe’s right to look so angry about having to hear this.
Pluggers, 11/27/24
Hey, pluggers, you guys know that they give the mall Santas a wig and a fake beard, right? It’s pretty obvious when you look at them. Even the little kids can tell, for the most part.
80 replies to “Charterstone will be empty by the afternoon”
Mary Worth Mashups: What does Dr. Jeff do?
MW:
“Jeff, I’m so delusional from this bug I’ve contracted that I’m hallucinating that I’m a semiaquatic fish-eating mammal of the weasel family!”
“My dear Mary…always thinking of otters!”
MW: “Are you tired of me already, Mary?”
“Well, let’s put it this way, Jeff, my perennial beau, you were not the first person I called.”
“Darling”?? Surely as a doctor Jeff can recognise the signs of severe delirium.
MT: Thus begins an eight week series of strips on The Handbook of Sloyd.
Shoe: Look, Susie, if you’re going to make a joke about someone being married for 35 years, maybe don’t make them look like they’re 32 years old.
DT: Speaking of contentious changes, when did Liz(z) turn into a male anime protagonist from the 1980s?
H&L: Remember how Hi is somehow a forty-something man who grew up listening to the Beatles when they were just starting out? Eric Reaves doesn’t! So now Hi hates that noisy rock-and-roll the kids listen to, um, “these” days. Speaking of kids these days, boy that Hi & Lois clip-art library is starting to ail severely. So now Chip’s band of current year teenagers includes some kind of disco beatnik running a a three-card-monte game on a table he bought for $10 at Walmart and the babyhead creep wearing safety glasses and a tiny sailor hat while holding his drum sticks like he’s about to eat some chow mein. Why even put them in the panel if this is the best you can do?
JP: Why would it matter whether Anndoryl is caught in the Parkers’ home town or somewhere else when the charge is murder? Did Cavelton secede from the United States or something? I guess I’ll have to defer to Alan and Randy’s superior legal knowledge on this matter, especially considering Don’s cause of death was, according to the coroners, “I ‘unno.”
RMMD: For the thousandth time, I stare at a Terry Beatty story arc and ask, “Why does this tale need to be told?”
MW: Back in the day, there was an awesome sci-fi show called “The Invaders” in which malevolent aliens walked among us. The only way you could tell them apart from real humans was that the aliens could not unstraighten their pinkies. Time has passed, but the aliens are still among us and have overcome their problem with the pinkies. The improbable way they hold their cellphones is now the only clue to their true nature.
MW:
“Mary, I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant, if your situation worsens and I am required to treat you: I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those veterinarians treating river horses in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.”
“What in the world is that, Jeff?”
“The Hippopotamic Oath!”
@Charterstoned:
Didn’t Roy Thinnes star in that show, and wasn’t he the protagonist who had a unique ability to be able to distinguish normal humans from invaders?
MW:
Why is Jeff wearing that garish plaid?– did he lose a bet?
MW: Mary may be under the weather, but she’s apparently not too sick to practice her cock-teasing skills on Jeff by calling him “Darling” in the same breath as she tells him “DON’T come over tonight.”
@Bob Tice: That’s the one. That straight pinky narrowed it down quite a bit, though. It was either an alien or a snooty socialite drinking tea.
Dennis the Menace: You, Dennis! Back into the Chair of Shame in the Corner of Punishment! Bogarting Dolly’s tired puns. You’re better than that. At least I thought you were.
MW: For a second there, I thought Jeff was indulging his true feelings by offering a middle finger as he chatted with Mary. Which he could have been, if he had six fingers. Which he MIGHT have only we haven’t noticed it before.*
*See earlier comment regarding straight pinkies.
Pluggers refuse to take part in No Nut November.
MW: Dr Jeff drops his axe; “Looks like someone got a reprieve, Mister Gobbles.”
Shoe: And here you thought knowing about cloacas was bad. And here I thought knowing about cloacas was bad. Anyway, it’s 6:58 A.M. where I am, time to break into the Johnny Walker!
PLUGGERS: “They”? Sounds unpluggeresque to me.
Pluggers: Also every November: Pluggers’ wives remind them that while they’ve aged well, they shouldn’t get too full of themselves, Scott Gallatin of Wilson Wisconsin.
MW: since when has. Mary cared about others?
What kind of a doctor is Dr Jeff, anyway, if he can’t even visit his sick girlfriend to find out what’s wrong with her* and if he can help?
*COVID, please let it be COVID.
MW: If this leads into an It’s A Wonderful Life dream sequence in which Mary learns that all of Charterstone would be far better off without her, and then the strip ends forever, it would go down in history as the greatest newspaper comic of all time.
@Charterstoned:
That was a great show. It only lasted a couple of years, though — I guess you can only have so many plot lines involving malevolent aliens. I’m thinking it ran in the later ’60s.
“Mary Worth” is quckly turning into “The Little Red Hen.” Will anyone make Thanksgiving dinner?
“Not I,” said Toby.
“Not I,” said Dawn.
“Not I,” said Dr. Jeff.
It’s a page-turner, that’s for sure.
Many older men grow their own beards during the year to work as mall Santas. If you want to see a fake beard in all its tacky glory, go to a Breakfast with Santa at a local firehouse or Kiwanis or church.
@Ukranazi Stepan: Pleaseohpleaseohplease! (I have Mary in the dead pool.)
MW: I don’t claim to be an expert, but I would have portrayed Jeff…Mary’s boyfriend…the physician…offering the tiniest bit of medical attention, and with a WAY less gleeful expression.
SHOE:Toilet Seat Bird is obviously a sadist. Why does he even have a toilet? The time-honored bird method- dropping it off a branch- is so much less complicated.
MW: Dr. Jeff is somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. That’s how much he doesn’t care.
Shoe: Fortunately, this discussion won’t continue tomorrow, where it dives hard into scat p0rn.
Pluggs: Speaking of a wig and fake beard, you can’t tell me that’s the Pluggers natural hair. I’m going to guess he mauled George Clooney for that setup.
MW-Mary Worth always thinking of others and how they can benefit her.
FC-Because Grandma is suffering from dementia and your father just doesn’t have the heart to take her out behind the woodshed.
MW-Jeff wasn’t planning on coming over anyways. He’s at his other girlfriend’s place.
Family Circlejerk – Thel understands. HTT Grandma calls her by even more names: courtesan, slut, floozy, slattern, concubine, hussy, tramp, whore, strumpet . . .
Luann: At first, I was going to scoff at the fact that Luann did nothing to contribute to the meal and was confined to a simple arts n’ crafts project. Then I realized that even though children as young as five can be helpful in the kitchen with some guidance, Luann can’t even reach that level of competence without setting herself on fire. Also, not that I care, but where is Bernice? Surely, she isn’t visiting her family for Thanksgiving.
CS: Panel 3 contains a question Batiuk’s audience snarkily asks on a constant basis.
9CL: What happened to the pair of glasses Lolly had shoved down her bikini?
Also, pluggers think malls are still a thing.
MW: OK, everyone, put a pin in your calendar: Mary and Jeff’s regular scheduled sex night is Wednesday. Or maybe the Wednesday before Thanksgiving specifically. Sorry Jeff, better luck next year.
It isn’t unbelievable that a plugger of that species would want to maul Santa instead of becoming a mall Santa.
FC: “She knows my skull isn’t numb. Also, what is an ‘umbesill?'”
Dustin: It’s not like Ed is going to listen to your advice to change his habits, so you might as well fob him off to a doctor who cares even less about Ed’s health.
Plugger men don’t have hair that luxurious. Like me, they have bald spots that reflect so much sunlight that they’re a hazard to air traffic.
Pluggers: Every May a Plugger is reminded that with a little more hair they’d make a passable Karl Marx.
MW: “When Mary Calls Jeff” world’s worst rom-com
CS: “Have you come up with a title for your next book?”
“Yes, ‘Murder at the Book Burning.'”
“You mean like when they tried to burn down your bookstore?”
“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock.”
Side note: When I was in the Army and one of the guys would say something painfully obvious, someone else would say, “Boy, you’re a real fox.” One guy stated the obvious so often that his name became Fox.
Plugging — An old man realizes he looks much like the idealized version of an old man. That is all.
@Baja Gaijin: that last one is serious nightmare fuel! Congratulations.
@Baja Gaijin:
In #1, I guess we can assume that Jeff is having Cup-a-Soup.
But I like #2. Hell, the man deserves it.
MW: Mary does think of others but, as usual, she thinks of Dr Jeff last. Maybe that’s because when she’s thinking of those others, she’s really thinking about how she can fix their problems, and Dr Jeff’s problem seems to be that he’s in a one-sided long-term relationship with someone who keeps him around mainly to gloat about her other successful interventions.
Shoe: Speaking of weird expressions, Shoe seems positively shocked by that information in panel 1, presumably because a lifestyle of hard living has left him completely unable to perform sexually. I was going to look up whether birds actually get erections, but I really don’t want to see what that will do to my search algorithm.
Pluggers: It’s funny how (literal) framing can make all the difference in a strip like this. With a close-up the message seems to be “Pluggers do have a lot of facial hair!”. If we zoomed out just a little, however, I think the message would be “Pluggers have a round belly that shakes like jelly, probably from too many milk and cookies…”
Actually, many malls do hire people with actual beards as Santa.
It’s not uncommon to hire big bearded bikers as Mall Santas.
I once read an anecdote, about this one Santa who was a tough as nails biker.
He asked this one little girl what she wanted for Christmas.
She said “I want Daddy to stop having special bedtime with me”
Santa gently put the girl down onto the floor, went over to the father and started beating the crap out of him before calling the police at what the father was doing to his daughter.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Yum Yum’s outfit is particularly bizarre today”
“Are you cosplaying as Jackie Kennedy?”
“NO!”
“Not bad! I love trolling her”
Dustin: Once again, the doctor’s fatshaming of DustinDad might work better if they didn’t have exactly the same body. I suppose it’s not the artist’s fault that he has such a limited skill set, but the writer doesn’t need to keep drawing attention to it.
@The Rambling Otter:
I hope it is real.
Shoe – How do I drive my wife wild? By imagining an ambiguous diner/bar situation where two guys are on opposite sides of a counter, one drinking coffee and the other drinking beer, and they both appear to be customers. It makes her crazy!
Mary Worth – Thanks to her cold isolating her, many in Mary’s orbit are no longer under the sway of her baked goods, which are key to her dominance over their lives. While she’ll make them feel obligated to rally around her and help, when they talk among themselves about Mary, a few forbidden thoughts will be spoken aloud about how much Mary interferes in their lives. It won’t be enough to end her dominance, but just enough to permanently put the wedge in. Mary’s time as queen bee at Charterstone is now coming to an end.
Shoe – Shoe is mad because since the introduction of plumbing, bird people have stopped lining their bathroom floor with his newspaper and his circulation has plummeted.
Pluggers – Older Pluggers are banned from most dating apps due to creeping out women who are problematically much younger than them. So they hope to meet some single mothers at the mall, hoping those women will lower their standards for a man who might not have youthful looks, but some stability. But young people don’t go to the mall anymore, and he’ll only see Plugger women his own age shopping for their grandchildren, which will lead him to post a rant about young people and feminism on his Facebook page that only his fellow toxic male Pluggers will react to.
Damn it, Shoe! Now you’re not just making me think about cloacae again, now you’re making me wonder why the bird people added liftable seats to their toilets. It’s only Wednesday, for crying out loud, I don’t need this on my mind for the rest of the week.
Frazz: Mrs. Olsen decided not to assign homework just to piss off Caulfield. Now the little shit has nothing to whine about. Well played, Mrs. O.!
GT: And the claws are out! Should be a fun time at the dinner table. “Gil, why didn’t you tell me that your new *friend* doesn’t cook? Poor boy, you must be so malnourished all the time.”
RMMD: “Yeah, okay, FINE!”
“FINE!”
“FINE!”
“FINE WITH ME!”
“FINE!”
Look at those towering evergreens behind Dr. Jeff! This episode of Mary Worth was shot in Vancouver for the tax incentives.
You’re a Plugger if a beard makes you look like one of the less memorable presidents of the late nineteenth century
Dr Jeff is not disappointed. He is used to Mary preventing him from coming
MW: why can’t Mary calling off her traditional Thanksgiving dinner be simply be about her not feeling up to it? Why does it have to be about how wonderful she is?
“Leaving the toilet seat up enrages my wife, who says ‘why do we even have a toilet? We have a cloaca we cannot control, we just shit on the floor everywhere'”
“Jeff, could you visit me to do a medical check-up?”
“Sorry Mary, I don’t work holidays, otherwise I would have dated Estelle”
Mary Worth: Dr. Jeff hangs up and goes to focus on his true love, Sasquatch, reassuring the great ape that of course their relationship isn’t just physical and of course Mary doesn’t know.
@Ettorre: Austin Powers: Oh B. Hayes…
MW: “Take care and be well…Don’t die or anything…Just kidding! Bye!”
Opens Blue Sky by Bastille from his iPhone playlist:
Is that a blue sky? Is that a blue sky?
It’s about damn time, yeah, it’s about damn time.
Is that a blue sky? Is that a blue sky?
It’s about damn time, yeah, it’s about damn time!
SHOE: Well of course the toilet seat “drives his wife wild.”
The wife: “I keep telling you, Harold, this toilet is such a waste of time and money. We’re birds! We have cloacas. We do our business wherever we have the urge! Now get rid of this toilet silliness and buy some more newspapers…particularly ones that still run Shoe comics!
The Plugger version of Miracle on 34th Street culminates in Bear Santa being proven real by the U.S Forest Service right before he messily devours a young Natalie Wood.
DtM: Back home Thursday night Martha says to George; “Can you believe Alice stuffed the turkey with popcorn? How does Henry put up with it.” George replies; “If I was stuffing Alice, I wouldn’t care either.”
Santa’s hair is white. Never thought I’d see Pluggers betray unfamiliarity with both Christmas and getting old.
@MKay: Dr Jeff is gleeful, because now that Mary isn’t around, he can finally have a decent sex life.
Today strips are all about old people and the problems with their wife-girlfriend: not assisting your significant other when they are sick (Mary Worth), having constant fights over small things (Shoe), having a beard (Pluggers)
Blondie: I love Maya. Her face is usually drawn in the final panel as if experiencing a wild orgasm. Today, however, she demonstrates an alternative sex talent.
BF: Lousy-Writer Friend has spent ten years not-finishing a novel. You know what THAT means, right, breakfast clubbers? The best she can hope for is posthumous literary glory.
Curtis: Great Scott, Chutney is a Quadroon. No wonder Curtis wants nothing to do with her; he can smell the honkey from a mile off.
MW/GT: Dr. Jeff is on his way to Gil Thorp’s house for a traditional dinner of wine and pizza.
MW: “Oh Jeff, don’t say that! I’ve been tired of you for a long, long time now.”
Pluggers: On one hand, most of the Santas-for-hire I see around these days use their natural facial hair. On the other, the shopping mall is perhaps the only institution more decrepit than print journalism, and probably have to make do with whoever is willing to sit on a decrepit armchair smelling faintly of stale urine under a crumbling “workshop” pavilion waiting for the occasional straggling customer while the elf who sells photos texts her boyfriend.
@Cleveland Mocks:
On Frazz : Mrs Olsen insulting the kids under her breath took me back for a second there, because usually when this strip tries to reinforce the “Caufield is a genius, and Mrs Olsen is a bad teacher” premise, they have Caufield insisting he gets straight A+’s all the time, not have Mrs Olsen gratuitously hating on the kids.
Like, this is the most they’ve sold me on Mrs Olsen being a bad teacher in a long while
(though it’s excusable if Caufield’s antics are being imitated by his classmates)@Ettorre:
On Pluggers : Rutherford Hayes was a Plugger?
FC: In between swigs of Jim Beam, Grandma says; “Hey, Thel. Can’t you get these kids labels or tattoos with their names on them?”
Thel replies under her breath; “As if you can read.”
Pluggers – Everyone knows that Mrs. Claus is Santa’s real beard. #NorthPole
Shoe: For the birds of Shoe, going wild means giving up the drinkware of humans and sipping from whatever puddle, birdbath or open toilet they can find.
MW: When the iPhone 4 was released, it had to be held awkwardly to avoid decreasing the antenna’s signal strength. Dr. Jeff never unlearned this.
H&L: @jroggs: Considering that beatnik’s physique, I think it’s safer to use “they” until we get some pronouns.
FC: @Baja Gaijin: Dennis may not be able to match Dolly’s puns, but at least his parents know not to put flatscreen TVs on the floor.
MW: Please let this end in a “Murder on the Orient Express” style subplot where the Charterstone residents enjoy their first Mary-free Thanksgiving in years and reveal that they had conspired to get her sick in advance…
Every GT entry needs a Marty Moon so I know what the characters are supposed to be emoting. In the last panel who knows what the new gf thinks?
@Old School Allie Cat: Why don’t the Clauses have children?
Santa comes only once a year and it’s down a chimney.
#santajizz
RMMD: As you know, the Morgan Dogs – Abbey and… the other one – are in-house players, not our clients. But we’ve been after them for years to occasionally employ some Domesticateds from our vast selection of adorable Animal Companions. And now it seems they’re ready to take up our long-standing offer… if only for some tertiary characters.
But it’s a start! We’ve already sent over some Good Dogs for their approval and maybe they’ll be making their selection for “The Lewton’s Dog” soon. I just hope this turns out better than that time we provided the talent for “Edward’s Dog”….
Family Circlejerk – So much for HTT Grandma to scold about. Billy, with a shoe untied, is unwilling to share his basketball with PJ, who is looking major pissed off to the side. And, in the foreground, is Thel’s dildo, which the melonheads have taken and are using as a game. But in her dotage, HTT Grandma can’t keep them straight, and in her confusion she’s not even sure if she is in the right house. Well done, Keane LTD.
BCN: “She was supposed to pick them up at school two hours ago!”
C’shaft: “I don’t come up with ideas, I just come up with titles. I’m going to let one of those new AI publishers write this one; it can only be an improvement.”
Dustin: “Well, only one of you. Actually, just you specifically.”
GT: “Clearly you’re a bad influence on him.” *advances on her, brandishing the rolling pin*
JP: Nobody else in the country cares what happens in Cavelton, I guess. (You know what, that tracks.)
Lio: Look, Lio, you got to pick on the last Menken-Ashman movie musical night; it’s the lobster’s turn!
Luann: “I’m sorry, I forgot your name but I was pretty certain on the initial.”
Brad making “biscuits and potatoes” probably involved a twelve-pack of King Hawaiian rolls and a box of potato flakes.
MT: Guessing the Lost Forest doesn’t have anything in the way of a building code.
Phantom: Hey, I called it being the name of an English pub! Neville Stokes doesn’t look like promising love affair material, though…
@Ukulele Ike: #67: Wait a second. Isn’t a quadroon one quarter black? Did they ever specify that Chutney’s late mom was mixed race? If her mom was black wouldn’t that make Chutney a mulatto? Of course, she could’ve just been adopted by a white couple.