Old age, youth, and so forth
Post Content
Crock, 7/6/25
I like the fact that Crock reruns are keeping their publication year in the strip now because you can tell exactly the era that created the dated and terrible joke you’re reading. Like, I guess in [squints] 1997, if you were 67-year-old cartoonist, the valence of “computer virus” would be “a thing that might happen to a nerd, which I take to be meaningless as a setback (since nothing that happens on a computer is real) and therefore proof of how soft these dorks are and how ludicrous the thought of one of them joining the Legion would be.” Today, of course, having your PC or phone infected with malware could result in major financial damage or identity theft on the sort of life-ruining level that would make joining the Legion seem like your only option, so this strip definitely hits different today.
Pluggers, 7/6/25
I assume that all of you faithful readers have different long-ago bits of Deep Lore about joshreads dot com ready for quick recall; personally, one of my favorites is how in the summer of 2006 four comics did jokes about how WILD it was that people would PAY EXTRA for jeans that were ALREADY TORN??? Anyway, one of those comics was Pluggers, obviously, and it was a defiant, contemptuous panel of a plugger throwing a pair of torn-up jeans in the garbage to show what he thought of the kids today and their depraved values. Today’s panel instead shows a plugger being humiliated by his own thrift and/or giant ass, with the fact that young people like the torn jeans look mentioned in a value-neutral way, as a comparison by which pluggers frankly suffer. Perhaps it makes me a plugger to feel slightly sad that it’s come to this!
Shoe, 7/6/25
Not thrilled about how Roz seems to be openly leering in the first panel here. It’s not just me, right? That’s the face of a woman who hopes to be treated to a story about how this lady and the Shoe had sex at the opera, in front of God and the tenor and everybody?
Blondie, 7/6/25
You know that I rely on Blondie to keep me up to date on what the old people are up to these days, and today’s strip confirms what I’m hearing from other sources: what the old people are into these days is pickleball.
Panel from The Lockhorns, 7/6/25
The Lockhorns aren’t into pickleball, though! Just more proof that they are, in fact, millennials.
108 replies to “Old age, youth, and so forth”
Lockhorns:
Good to see that iconic bandleader Mitch Miller is scoping out some of Leroy’s used clothing.
Recent conversation by Shoe creative team:
LANSING: Susie, this will be a Sunday strip. You’ve only written three lines.
SUSIE: Can you draw bigger?
Plugged Up — Let me be the first of many to suggest that the ripping sound emanating from the bear’s backside may not indicate a tear in the fabric.
re: the retro links – Wow, Aldo Kelrast was 19 years ago! Now I feel old.
Crock: Yeah, I’ll bet that the new soldier doesn’t smell…like a baby? Is that what we’re saying? Probably a safe bet.
Pluggers: On first glance I thought this was going to be a gag on Plugger flatulence, so I’m quite relieved it’s just another ripped jeans joke.
Blondie: Boy, I hope that this is the only iteration of this strip that starts with Dag saying “I’m ready for some fancy action”
Crock: It is time Crock retired, to make way for the new French Foreign Legion cyberwarfare division. If they couldn’t hold Algeria with repression and sabre-rattling nuclear tests, then maybe they can do it with ransomware and state-funded propaganda Tiktokers.
Pluggers: Come on, you’re making it too easy. All the Photoshoppers who make fart-themed edits of comics will be pissed today.
Blondie: Coincidentally, “I’m ready for some fancy action!” is also what Dagwood yells in bed. Blondie’s coworkers wonder why the bakery’s French pastries seem to disappear every evening.
RMMD:
“What’s that grotesquely hideous visage on your T-shirt, anyway, young man?”
“Oh, that’s just Mom’s artistic depiction of the man she said sired me.”
Daggy — Nobody, but nobody, moves that much at pickleball. A few steps forward and a few steps back are about the extent of it. Probably why Leroy Lockhorn soured on it.
Lockhorns: The browsers, who have no idea who Leroy is, assume Loretta is just spouting sports non sequiturs.
“Leroy soured on Pickleball”
“Curling brooms aren’t for cleaning!”
Slylock Fox-Slylock dropped Max down the well.
MW-Yeah. Keep telling yourself that, Mary.
FC-Sorry, Billy, but Jeffy gets the comic strip.
Blondie: This is the only time that Dagwood will ever get sweaty with his wife.
MW: If anyone remembers the episode of The Simpsons where Homer voiced a cartoon dog, remember that time when he had the idea that if his character isn’t on screen, other characters should be asking where he is?
Wilbur has reached Poochie status at this point, except for the fact that only Mary and Dawn shill him.
Shoe: I attribute Roz’ leer to her anticipation of the reveal of how Shoe predictably made a spectacle of himself and ruined the opera. Frankly, merely trying to start the wave is a little disappointing.
MW: “Frankly, Mary. I don’t know about Wilbur. Isn’t he the guy with the dead fish?
All I know is I love you! BTW, you better drive. I’m quite plastered.”
The Ice Man Cometh:
– LUANN:Give the puppy a step ladder, folks. He wore out his bounce
– TG: Give the cook a bell, folks. He wore out his horn
– FRAZZ: Give the runner his 6′ plot, folks. He lost his endurance
The rips in a Plugger’s jeans are better heard than smelled.
Blondie: Every shot he misses is a forehand shit.
“Sour” “pickle” — there’s either an unintentional joke in there or a poorly-executed intentional one.
“I got a virus in my computer.”
“What a Crock!”
Last week we left JUNGLE JIM! falling. He not fall no more.
Oops, shot wrong man. Hope he not dead.
Josh and the Sunday Lockhorns: Hey,Josh! It takes less than a minute to run an image through a image enhancer!
FC: The joyful moment of reinforced gender stereotypes is ruined when Jeffy turns the corner wearing Thel’s lipstick.
FG: Kidnapped again!!!
Dale: (Bugs Bunny voice): “DIS is gettin’ MONOTONOUS….”
JP: Reena: “This is Norway. They’re ALL blondes. Which is why I’m expecting to get plenty of sex action up here. Everybody gets sick of vanilla after a while and wants a taste of chocolate.”
Sophie: “But it’s April! What a TOTALLY AMAZING COINCIDENCE.”
Lockhorns: Are the pickleball gear and Leroy’s madras shirt the only items they couldn’t sell, or the only items they’re selling? Either way, it has to be a pretty good yard sale if you’re attracting aging hipsters to your suburban… patio? Driveway? Paved-over lawn? I dunno… this place is weird, man.
Pluggers: I have it on good authority that Costco’s store-brand Kirkland jeans — the only type pluggers buy — now stretch in every direction, so they’re unlikely to rip. Of course, the last time this guy purchased new pants was 20 years and 30 pounds ago, so it really is time for him to shell out $17 for another pair. (Well, $18.50 when you add the food-court hot dog.)
It could have been worse. Picture, if you dare, Shoe performing the Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome.
Shoe: Roz didn’t mention the Perfessor…she said “Shoe”
MW: Wilbur’s “ups and downs” in love? Dr Jeff is desperately trying to hold in the snarky “what do you mean, ‘ups’?”
Curtis: Speaking of dissecting love lives, remember that this is discussing *pre-teens*. Plus they’re talking like he has to offer a betrothal, what about “neither” or “just be friendly but honest with the one who doesn’t treat you terribly, maybe you’ll feel more for her over time but more likely you’ll go your separate ways and just *maybe* meet *somebody else* you like in the *many years* before you can legally pair off”
JP: The colorist really missed the mark today – “which blonde?” needs everyone in the cafe apart from Reena to have shades of golden hair
DT: With both Lovejoys in the painting portal there isn’t going to be any loose end wrapup, is there?
Pluggers: When I’m on the Internet, that’s not the kind of bare ass I’m looking for.
MW: “Getting back to Wilbur, though, does he ever really learn anything? He does something ridiculous, runs to you for his reward, rinse and repeat. What has he learned?”
“Not to question my wisdom, Jeff. Waiter! I’ll take these scallops to go! Call me a cab.”
Crock: I cried because my computer wouldn’t boot up, but then I met a man with no TV.
@6 Schroduck: I resisted the urge to Photoshop today’s Pluggers. Unless someone asks…
@11 Needless Exposition: So when is
PoochieWilbur returning to his home planet?@24 BigTed: on Pluggers: One Costco $1.50 hot dog? For a Plugger? Have you never read this strip before?
@Baja Gaijin:
Unless someone asks…
If British comedy has taught me one thing, you can never have enough potty humor.
MW: Growth? WILBUR??? Maybe it’s like a progressive jackpot; Wilbur hits a certain number of disastrous decisions, and DING, DING, DING, he’s transformed.
RMMD: That durned Truck! The man virtually vomits lyrics!
SHOE: The opera is the last place I’d expect to see any of those scruffy man-birds. They’d sooner play pickleball. (not a LOT sooner)
#33 That was me
@Baja Gaijin:
Hi Baka!
Do not click on this.
You didn’t, right?
@33 Hibbleton: I’m on it.
@34 MKay: Growth? WILBUR??? Yes. He bent over to pick up a coin and RIIIIP!
Speaking of weird time lapses in the comics, I think Blondie got her tennis outfit from 1952. “How did you miss that slow serve?” “In this tight, knee-length skirt I can only take short, mincing steps.”
Speaking of weird time portals in the comics, we’ve just solved the problem of overt bloody violence in DT. Just place your villains in a time portal, then throw it out the window! Easiest disposal of unwanted characters since David Copperfield sent them all to Australia!
Also, meet DT Roll of Honor Member Matthew Hare, who rescued a suicide from the train tracks and then stood on them long enough to get killed by a train. Police work hint: if you don’t want to be hit by a train, simply step off the train tracks. The trains need to stay on them!
@36 Ukranazi Stepan: EEEEE!!!! [QLUNQ!] But seriously, what’s the point of that thing? Bring it to work, place it in the supply closet to see who’s stealing pencils? Hang it in a tree outside then drop it on people you hate before they can ring make it to the doorstep? Put it in a catapult and fling it over the fence onto the annoying neighbor’s summer party as a distraction while you deface his irreplaceable childhood artwork?
Dustin is an ordinary chuckle but there is some effort into making the lawn look as real as the rest. By comparison recent Blondie or H&Ls were very lazy.
Speaking of lazy: Crock is in reruns? I’m with Dorothy Parker: How could you tell?
BG&SS: AC dries out the air, just like in an algae-covered well. The denizens of Hootin’ Holler only know of it by listening to their Philco.
MW: Has Jeff dropped the L word before?
H&L: Has Chip ever prepared food before? This is the biggest step towards near-adulthood i remember from him.
@38 Ukulele Ike: I don’t follow Dick Tracy. Did they really put the villains in a time portal and chuck it out the window? Somehow that seems, uh, what’s the word? Hilarious! That’s the word. Far less violent than chucking them into a smokestack to be eaten by rats.
Officer Hare’s Boss: “Where is Officer Hare?”
Officer Hare’s Partner: “Uh, he got hit by the train.”
Officer Hare’s Boss: “He didn’t step off the tracks?”
Officer Hare’s Partner: “No.”
Officer Hare’s Boss: “He should have run like a bunny! Get it? Huh, get it?”
@Baja Gaijin: Not only eeeeeevil 1917 Lovejoy (who stole a famous painting and then gave it back, and was also shirty with the police receptionist, the lousy sneak) but hapless 2025 Lovejoy, whose only sin was to work the overnight shift loading trucks at the biscuit factory.
Both lost forever in the misty Void. I simply do not understand why you don’t follow DT. Entertainment like this is priceless.
@CanuckDownSouth: That stupid fish funeral was such an imposition on Jeff (and several other people) that the mere mention of Wilbur’s name should send Jeff into a venomous rage. Or prompt him to ask Mary if she feels safe at home, since no person on earth would tolerate this man’s behavior. In fact, that’s my new headcanon: Wilbur has some kind of dirt on Mary he’s blackmailing her with. Whatever it is, it’s so bad that she’s counseling him full-time, and actually doing his job for him.
MW: Mary’s talking to Jeff but looking at US when she says “Delicious!” Why is she breaking the 4th wall? Is there something momentous we need to know about scallops? Maybe it was just to get our attention in advance of her pronouncement that “We are here for GROWTH, not for comfort.” After all, Jeff surely knows that by now: his “growth” is always uncomfortable. So she must be talking to US. Are we to understand that Mary Worth has been given direct knowledge of the true meaning of Life by the Almighty? Why bury the lede? And why bring Eleanor Roosevelt into it?
@Dmsilev: Does it involve him taking off seven pairs of sneakers? Because he already is walking around stark naked.
Crock doesn’t care about the brutality he inflicts on the native population — could keep doing it for decades! — but thinks it’s time to retire because his soldiers are not manly enough. It’s gender, it’s gender all the way down
Well, you know, I’ll say this. Good for Blondie and Dagwood doing some personal fun activities together.
Sure Dagwood is terrible at it, but that’s half the fun.
I’m disturbed that Roz knowingly let someone go on a date with Shoe, but the singles scene in Treetops must be really grim now that Biz is off the market.
Crock: I get that the throwaway panels are making a “new car smell” joke. But what does Crock think “new trooper smell” is? Freshly washed baby? Sweat-encrusted lost soul? Or is he hoping to meet someone who doesn’t smell like spoiled meat and Forever War? Guess we’ll never know!
@Ukulele Ike: I personally can’t, because my browser protection blocks any searches with the word “Dick” in them so I can’t google the comic at all, it won’t even let me look up TvTropes pages on the franchise.
I could just remove the protection but nah… I might end up in the Foreign Legion before I know it.
“How’d it go at the opera with Shoe?”
“Not good. There is not official dress code, but spectators are subtly encouraged to dress sharply. However, he arrived, as usual, without wearing any clothes”
@Victor Von: It smells like old dirty underwear for certain.
Because “War… War never changes.”
Crock – Don’t they have a can of “New Trooper Smell” they can spray him with?
Pluggers – What? No joke about this plugger begin “em-bear-assed”? I am disappoint.
I’m sorry lady, you complain he tried to form a wave?!?! The stereotype of the male person going to the opera is a Philistine who would get bored and fall asleep. Instead Shoe was so moved by the passionate music of Verdi or Wagner that he wanted to involve the rest of the public! This naive but passionate outburst of feeling is what Romantic music is all about! Embrace the mainly enthusiasm for opera, that’s how Belgium was born!
Blondie – You think your paddle has a loose grip? Come on, Dagwood. You don’t want to get the same reputation as “Crybaby” Boobie (featured all last week in Peanuts).
Josh is 51; are Dagwood and Blondie actually canonically younger than him?
Don Abundio, translated:
“What do you think of the new break room?”
“It’s not going over well”
“The staff say you’re charging outrageous prices for bottled water and other beverages”
“The water cooler’s still free!”
(Of course, they have to supply their own cups)
Crock: This is a prime example of a writer who knows absolutely nothing about a subject trying to write about it and inadvertantly creating something bizarre because of it. Like, think about the implications here that this dude’s computer got fried by a virus and his immediate thought was evidently to join the military. Does he think that shooting people on behalf of the nation of France will cleanse his computer of the malware or something? Is the loss of his machine so devastating that he’s suicidal and decided combat is how he wants to die? Like, what is going on here?
Shoe: See, if we were actually being shown the Perfesser acting like some kind of metalhead at an opera, it’d be legitimately funny. But instead, we’re having described secondhand in the same bored yet smug mood that this comic always has, and its not funny, it just comes off as lame.
Beetle Bailey: Every mention I’ve heard of pickleball – in media and in life – has been so vague and vapid, only ever mentioned in lame late night talk show-style “jokes” about what the masses (actually a comparatively small number of people probably) are supposedly doing nowadays, that I’ve never had any actual idea of what it even is as a sport, and I’ve never cared enough to research it, so its all been kind of a mystery to me. This is the first time I’ve ever seen it depicted visually and it turns out its just a fucking variant of tennis or banminton? Talk about an anticlimax.
“Don’t worry about getting a virus here, boy! Our official brothels keep our prostitutes checked and healthy!”
“But sir, I thought official military brothels were a colonialist archaism!”
“We are in 1997, so you still have six years to use them“
@43 Ukulele Ike: I got lost years ago when the new creative team came on. I’m not retired: I don’t have the time to research all the old one-off villains from the 30’s and 40’s to figure out their schticks. I peek in when someone here mentions something interesting’s happening, like yesterday’s strip with someone stealing a 48″ TV from WalMart.
@57Peanut Gallery: With a character named “Crybaby Boobie,” I expected a different kind of strip involving some Bow-Chicka-Bow-Wow music.
MW: Well, this arc packed quite a wallop. Wilber was visited by a murderous Trollope / without so much as a call up. Dawn was served a poisonous dollop, but she always kept her wall up. Belle’s brother weirded things all up, and Mary enjoyed some scallops.*
*In Nova Scotia, this rhymes.
Pluggers Mashups: No bare asses visible in the linked content, I promise.
@Sequitur: The “Jade Mi-Ki” must be some kind of expensive vibrator.
I can see a younger plugger giving a cashier a quarter they found on the ground then putting the rest on their debit card. Older pluggers still only pay in cash. The oldest, pluggiest pluggers take joy in holding up the line as they insist on paying by cheque.
I’ve lost I think my last five pairs of pants by tearing the crotch. Two of them I tried to mend but they tore again. Whether the cause be cursed bad luck, ample penis or I know not what, my youth is now long spent, alas, because apparently I’m a plugger.
Bizarro – Please tell me that was Loathsome Lillian. Or Wilbur Weston.
FC – Thel spoke too soon. That creepy doll is going to put a curse on Dolly, and she’ll grow up to be a pole dancer.
Mary Worth – Scallops with a side of platitudes.
Frazz – Nice humblebrag.
Rex Morgan – Where is that white thing Wanda screws into her beehive hairdo? She looks naked without it.
Pluggers-Oh. It’s “pluggers are fat and rip their pants when they bend over?” My mistake, I thought it was “pluggers are old and rip the connective tissue between their glutes an iliac crests when they bend over.”
Blondie: I can’t prove that this strip originally focused on tennis, and the rackets were hastily redrawn as pickleball paddles and some dots were added to the ball to give it the Wiffle look; I’m just saying there is a non-zero chance that is exactly what happened.
Shoe: “In front of God and the tenor and everybody” is my new “Right in front of my salad?” and I intend to use it at the soonest possible opportunity.
Popeye:
Brutus! Brutus! Boma yé!
@Baja Gaijin: Most of us Oldies owned The Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy back in the 70s. Big reprint volume that book-larned us about The Blank, Little Face Finney, 88 Keyes, Flattop, B.B. Eyes, The Brow, Mumbles, etc. But no Pruneface. (It was okay, though….Pruneface’s schtick was having a face like a prune.)
@TheDiva: Hypocrite! Without this time portal you’re nothing!
(….satisfying….)
Crock: Today, I guess the joke would be, “I bankrupted myself on Candy Crush,” if they wanted to stay, uh, relevant.
Pluggers: Pluggers can only rip a new one in their jeans.
Shoe: The fat lady has sung on these opera jokes.
Blondie: Dagwood is waiting to get all those delicious pickles.
@Ukulele Ike: Interesting. B.B. Eyes, Flattop, and Mumbles all died by drowning. I guess Gould suffered from hydrophobia.
(88 Keyes was machine-gunned to death by Tracy; the Brow was good and impaled on a fifty-foot flagpole alllllll the way down; Little Face just went to jail, after having his ears chopped off)
FC: “OK, are those two losers finally gone? I want to join the circus.” “I want to try meth.”
MW: “And that you made me a better person.”*
*citation needed
Dustin: This strip defies belief. There is no way Ed Kudlick splurged on a riding mower. In fact, during last week’s “Bon Jovi” strip, Dustin had to use a push mower, so the riding mower would have been a relatively recent purchase.
@matt w: Feathers. He’d self-pluck.
C’shaft: Pam realizes that not only does her dad need to go into a home, her husband probably needs to as well.
DT: Dick Tracy and his intrepid team of forensic experts didn’t really do a whole lot here, did they? Crimes happened, they were confused by them, then Diet Smith popped up and said “Oh yeah, it’s a time travel thing” and they arrive in time for the culprit to deus ex machina himself out of (into?) the picture. You’d think a story involving a fourth-dimensional art thief would be more interesting.
Dustin: It’s funny because literally the only thing keeping Dustdad from throwing his own son out on the street is his aversion to doing yard work.
JP: “Someone from my home town” is a real roundabout way of saying “my adoptive dad’s professional partner’s wife who is involved in various vague, clandestine organizations.”
MW: “I don’t know about Wilbur…and I don’t want to know about him! Jesus H. Christ, you have not shut up about that waste of carbon all night! If I tell you I love you, will you drop the damn subject already?”
Luann: Puddles is a Plugger, I guess?
CS: I’ve worked out today’s joke: Just as Crankshaft picked up Pam’s phone, Ralph called Pam because he wanted a booty call (which explains Pam’s look in the final panel), and Bean’s End called Crankshaft because he hadn’t ordered anything from them in the past 6 hours.
What do you think, sirs?
9CL: The way this is drawn, Dr. Mrs. Burber (not one of Edda’s twins in “grown up” mode, why would you even think that based on how she appears?!?) got stabbed in the eye with one of those paper airplanes. I hope she gets to the emergency room after yelling at her
momdaughter.Josh’s links were really interesting – the beginning of the Aldo Kelrast story especially. It was also a reminder of how much I miss TDIET.
@Ukulele Ike: But, mumbles has appeared in recent arcs here and there.
I guess Mumbles 2.0
@Ukulele Ike: Did you cut out the little collectible panels of the Dick Tracy’s Crimestoppers Notebook?
You know what? good on Dagwood for sticking with pickleball even after he found out it was j just a name.
By the way, today’s Mary Worth quote is accurate. zzzz
@Sequitur: Woof. Given the other racial stereotypes on display, using “Chinese” instead of “Chinaman” is an improvement, I suppose.
Blondie: So, “playing pickleball with Blondie” is literal and not a lame metaphor? Darn it.
@taig: I’m with you on this. DustDad is definitely the kind of guy who would send his son out with a push lawnmower just to teach him the “value of hard work.” Though I would argue using an old school gasoline-powered Sears lawnmower with a pull starter can be just as much work. No personal memories there, no sirree…
Those of you that read Flash Gordon might be interested in this.
@86 Sequitur: The author reminds me of what the Sunday Popeye author did with that strip. Take the familiar and flesh it out versus taking a well-known property and changing it all around until it’s barely recognizable [cough]Mark Trail[cough].
@matt w: zzzz can apply to the whole strip for at least the last three weeks.
MW: Now it is clear, why the strip has been knocking both vegans, vegetarians and solid red meat eaters, Mary going for the scallops along with her salmon squares is advancing the pescatarian diet movement. Beware their squamous touch.
JP: And now we have convergence plots A and B coincide. The CIA back up team in the nearby van is now scrambling to ID who those two girls are who are eyeballing the asset and contact. Are they the opposition? An enemy kill squad? They reach to their contacts in the Politidirekiter office for help since these are two wild cards.
RMMD: So Truck is just jumping ahead and assuming. Once the comically wrong results are in, he and his could-be-son hit over to RMMD to have a set of actual genetic tests drawn (e.g. blood)
DT: OK – going for a spectacular ending, but what was the scheme? The Phoenician Scheme and Asteroid City had a more linear plot line. Old-timey Lovejoy wanted to swap into our wonderous world of the future for Current Lovejoy. He offers a simple life in the Gilded Age where being wealthy and one of the society elite (one of the 100) meant he could do nearly anything he wanted given the constraints of the tech and time. How does stealing those paintings fit into all of this? Getting dental care for a doppleganger ex-vet seemed down right obvious.
Slylock: Throwing rocks down is a variation of the puzzle that usually involves stones. If Slylock throws down those rocks, they may make the water cloudy and brackish.
@Baja Gaijin: Please yield to temptation!
Peanuts – How can Patty tell it was diet cola? Impossible! So I’m going to assume Marcie was right all along!
@90 treetown: I did: Plugger Mashups.
DT: I was hoping Tracy would fire some shots into that time portal painting where a stray bullet would kill the President of France, setting off a second Franco-Prussian War.
Blondie: Dagwood thought pickleball would involve more pickles and fewer balls. There. That is the Dagwood-is-an-insatiable-eating-machine-specific joke the strip should have made, instead of “ha ha, the Bumsteads are doing a sport and Dag isn’t good at it!”
DT: Look, I don’t normally question the physics of time portals, but I will question the physics of how Lovejoy 1917 dived head first into the portal, Lovejoy 2025 was pushed backwards by the momentum (because I guess the portal didn’t absorb it?) and then they both ended up in the portal, feet first.
JP: Given everything Sophie’s been saying since Sam said “You like drone footage, don’t you?” all those months ago, her immediate reaction should be to nope out of this entire situation. But she won’t!
MW: I am tentatively reconsidering my theory that Moy knows about our discussions and is throwing in all this “Wilbur is a better person” crap because she thinks we’d enjoy tearing it to shreds and hasn’t realised it stopped being fun a while ago. I am now considering the possibility that Moy knows about our discussions and is throwing in all this “Wilbur is a better person” crap because she knows we utterly hate it and she wants us to suffer.
RMMD: I know we talk about how drama-free Rex Morgan is a lot, but seriously, imagine any other soap opera in any medium saying “So this guy’s about to get married, when suddenly he learns that he has a son he never knew about from his ex-wife, who resented him and forbade the kid from ever listening to his songs. Now he has to tell his new fiance about this. And everyone’s cool with it and there’s no friction whatsoever in any way, the end.”
@Baja Gaijin:
Number one for the win!
@92 Baja Gaijin:
I like all three and can’t really say which is better. However, you cannot go wrong with flying farting pigs.
#95 was me.
Crock: In French Foreign Legion slang veteran Legionnaires are referred to as old sweats. Maybe this new guy should’ve smelled like new sweat.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Nope sorry. We all know with Mary, blackmail material only goes one direction. See Mary is like a vaccum*: She sucks up and absorbs “dirt” that she can use against her enemies and (especially) her friends later on. So Jeff is wise not to question Mary too much, lest she reminds him of how many pharmaceutical kickbacks it takes to afford a gigantic mega-yacht of the type that Jeff owns.
*But not the way that Jeff is clearly hoping for. Hiyo!
MW: “We are here for growth not comfort” unless you mean that Wilbur is here to gain weight but not get pants with larger waistband, I don’t have the vaguest idea what you mean. Wilbur only makes worse mistakes as he goes along.
he is if anything even MORE self absorbed than before.
“And you made me a better person”
Objection! Presumes facts not in evidence, Jeff fails to exhibit any sort of real personality other than owning a boat and being off screen for months on end to be made better and there is no sign that MW has had any effect on him other than to guilt him into doing things like Wilbur’s fish funeral. That hardly makes one a better person.
If you ask the kids on TikTok, millennials ARE old people.
@Baja Gaijin: Pluggers definitely contain eldritch horrors.
LOCKHORNS: That is a teensy yard sale, by Greater Cowplop standards, anyway. You’re supposed to work with your neighbors if necessary, so you’ll have so much stuff for sale displayed on so many tables and racks that visitors will be staggering by the time they’ve viewed it all.
Mutts Spanish to English.
MW: I’m sure there are indeed some people whose secret dream is being able to frequently spout off their personal wisdom and have it always received with avid attention, enormous admiration, and repeatedly-expressed love. Probably we’ll never see a comic strip with a Sunday episode in which a protagonist is ecstatic because eighty-seven of her witty blog comments were included in a single example of a weekly comment compilation titled COTW. And yet, a few such people might possibly exist as well. *cough*
@Professor Fate: Jeff fails to exhibit any sort of real personality other than owning a boat and being off screen for months on end to be made better and there is no sign that MW has had any effect on him other than to guilt him into doing things like Wilbur’s fish funeral. That hardly makes one a better person.
Although, now I’m remembering that way back in the day, Jeff was (checks notes) selflessly running a children’s hospital in Vietnam and Mary (checks notes again) told him to stop doing that and come home where he belonged, so he did. That’s arguably a personality trait, and certainly one Mary changed, since he never showed any inclination to return. Was it a change for the better? Well, it’s certainly better for Mary, and what other definition of “better” is there, really?
@I speak Jive:
I had forgotten about Aldo Kelrast’s weird hand fetish. That was a nice touch, back when Moy was semi-competent. It somehow “fit” with his creepy stalker persona.
@Horace Broon: I really think that Mary and Jeff’s relationship is purely transactional in that Mary is extorting restaurant trips and social clout by threatening to out Jeff because she thinks everyone else is as much of a virulent homophobe as she is. Because Mary’s mindset has been on loop in the Hays Code era 1950s when WASPs were prevalent, women didn’t work or wear pants, “home correction” was not just the norm but expected, and anyone who didn’t fit the mold was considered the enemy or, worse, a communist.