Also, did he sleep sitting up or what
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Beetle Bailey, 3/29/26
The last panel here fills me with nothing but contempt. Apparently the only way they could think of to visually drive home that Sarge had pizza at bedtime was to put a pizza box in bed with him, but then they put it in a wildly unrealistic position (open? on his thighs?) and drew it without any identifying features so it looks like a laptop. Beetle is there to deliver the necessary information anyway. The rest of the strip is fine, definitely not the most unpleasant dream sequence the strip has ever done.
Mary Worth, 3/29/26
OK, I joked yesterday about how maybe dumb old Harvey isn’t the one we should be sympathetic with in this scenario, but if “Trixie” actually manages to escape his awful enslavement thanks to the outdoor privileges he earned scamming Harvey, I think we genuinely have a moral dilemma on our hands here. And who knows, maybe “Trixie” will track down Harvey and tell him the full story and offer to help make him whole to the best of his abilities. And maybe they’ll fall in love! Dare to dream!
Blondie, 3/29/26
Hey, do mild stimulants help you get more productivity out of your workers? For a little while, anyway, is what Dithers just found out. Back to the drawing board! Let’s take that “mild” out next time, maybe!
77 replies to “Also, did he sleep sitting up or what”
MW:
The anagram of “tuna casserole” is “scrotal unease.”
Coincidence? — I think not. Scratchy, what do you think?
It’s to provide Sarge with a cover story. “I was…looking at porn! ‘Drowning in mozzarella’ is a phrase the kids use now!” Because that’s somehow, some way, less shameful than dreaming about pizza like a goddamn five-year-old.
Blondie-Dagwood is an inspiration. His coworkers see the beatings he get and they don’t want to be him.
Slylock Fox-Slylock then went off and arrested Slick Smitty.
MW-“Mary, is Trixie scamming someone else?”
FC-“The kids too cheap to get ya ninety-nine red balloons?”
Beetle Bailey:
“Are you feeling ‘eel‘ from what you ate, Sarge?”
” ‘Eel‘ ?!? — why would you ask that?”
” ‘When the ‘toon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s a moray‘ !”
If Hervey and Scammer Dude wind up frolicking in the woods like Wilbur and his Not Son (that was the deal right?), much will be forgiven. If they show the Scam Leader angrily saying something like “Why DO we keep giving outdoor privileges?!” this will be the best story this side of Flash Gordon.
Judge Parker: Katherine (or Neddy, I can’t tell the difference) is gonna so cocktease Bogdan to extract information she’s looking for.
Blondie: Funnier if you leave out the SKNX-X so it looks like he died from exhaustion but probably too dark for Sunday morning. Damn editors.
@Baja Gaijin: Ann – curlier hair and also calls the old judge “dad”. (If he not only married a near-twin of his daughter but also has her call him “daddy” as a pet name I do not want to know)
I’m telling you, Dithers, at what BS energy drinks cost, you might as well start passing out rum and doubloons. And set course for awesomeness!
FC: Mystery solved! Someone please go tell the vice-president it’s not demons.
Beetle Bailey: When kids grow up and start ordering from Domino’s, they’ll be awfully disappointed to discover that an “extra-large” pizza is only slightly bigger than a large, and you literally can’t drown in it.
Blondie: Given Dagwood’s uniquely fast metabolism, he can probably pound a half-dozen Red Bulls over the course of a day before the high leads to an inevitable crash. Pretty sure that extra expense will take him over the edge from being a slightly profitable employee to a net money-loser, so Mr. Dithers should keep that in mind when he makes his next order from Costco Business Delivery.
Mary Worth: So what happens when these actual scam-reporting sites suddenly get an uptick in visits from people worried that their great-grandkids might be using those newfangled dating apps? “Looks like we were mentioned in ‘Mary Worth’ today.” “Uh-oh, it’s gonna be a long couple of weeks!”
Hi and Lois: “Feet, get moving! If they’re going to stick me out in this giant yard full of random rocks and concrete benches with zero supervision, I’d better learn to take care of myself fast — by my second birthday, at the latest!”
BB: The funniest part of this strip is that the pizza box seems to imply that Sarge was shoving pizza into his face to the point of passing out, literally eating himself to sleep. Wait, did I say ‘funniest’? I mean ‘saddest’.
MW: The funniest possible reveal here would be ‘Trixie’ scampering over that brick wall and falling directly into the Charterstone courtyard. Turns out this whole digital sweathouse was a side-hustle of Toby’s.
Blondie: Hey, Mr Dithers, an idea for you: maybe take that energy drinks budget and invest in a Local Area Network? That way, office efficiency wouldn’t depend so much on running documents back and forth at breakneck speed.
Blondie They’re going to need a caffeine IV drip if they want Dagwood to stay active!
MW I look forward to how the walled scam-slave compound will be shown in relation to Charterstone. Presumably it’s down a wooded path past the hot air balloon clearing and fire truck accessibility road through the pines.
MW:
“Trixie! Trixie!”
****
Trixie Fraudenetti lives in Santa Royale on Worthless Street, in the Charterstonian North End — the home for more than fifty years of the Mary Worth Tuna Casserole Kitchen. Trixie knows a lot about local Santa Royaleian customs. And he knows a lot about Mary Worth’s Tuna Casserole, because that’s a local custom, too. Mary’s Tuna Casseroles are more than authentic; they’re something that will grow you with piscatorial energy other casseroles leave out. Most days, Trixie takes his time scaling a 12-foot brick retaining wall to escape a fraud den. But not today. Today is Sunday. And, as every family in the north end of Santa Royale knows, Sunday is Mary Worth Tuna Casserole Day.
@CanuckDownSouth: The Comics Kingdom banner shows that in the not-too-distant past, the women of Judge Parker weren’t all near-twins, and also that characters had facial expressions. Is this some subtle dig at the prevalence of cosmetic surgery and botox among the wealthy?
“An inspiration to the rest of the crew”? The only other co-worker we see is cautiously trying to get away from him. Which may not seem like much, but usually the non-Dithers supporting cast treat Dagwood like a kid who can wish them into the cornfield.
BB: This is not necessarily a sex dream, but the phrase “hot and heavy” suggests it’s also not not a sex dream.
@pugfuggly: @CanuckDownSouth: The sane solution would be for “Trixie” to make it to a police station, or perhaps the US Embassy, in whatever country he’s in, and for HH to find out about the scam from news reports. However this is Mary Worth, so odds are you’re both right, the scam prison is near Santa Royale, and “Trixie” shows up at HH’s door.
Phantom:
“Here I am, lolling on the beach. Where’s Deborah Kerr when you need her?”
Not sure who this nameless employee is that Dithers is talking to, but they evidently met at a Low-Waisted Guys support group.
@Ken: Mary Worth lives in a world where a missing presumed-drowned after going overboard from a cruise ship man can show up at a tropical resort and it doesn’t make the news. The only way HH finds out about Trixie is having the guy knock on the door!
Phantom:
“Father, has anyone ever told you that you look — well, at least posthumously — a touch like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull?”
Phantom:
“None save we the dead, my boy.”
“Father, since the word ‘save,’ meaning ‘except for,’ introduces a prepositional phrase, shouldn’t that phrase be taking the objective ‘us’ the dead, rather than the nominative ‘we’ the dead?”
“There are no grammatical rules in the hereafter, my son!”
MW – What would be an interesting plot development would be for “Trixie” to escape and resume fleecing the old goat all over again, only this time as an independent freelancer. But this is Mary Worth, so we’ll probably just get the guards machine-gunning him as he goes over the wall, so we can move on to a new story next week.
@matt w: Yeah, it sounds just as ridiculous as the Funky-verse school janitor needing to magically manipulate the other students to not spend time with Les.
Beetle Bailey-The floor is hot melted cheese.
MW-Who does H-rvey do his banking with? A withdrawal of $200,000 should raise eyebrows.
MW: Sadly, this will probably end with “Trixie” escaping the facility, contacting the authorities, having the organization shut down, who in turn have to pay back all of the money that they scammed.
Harv gets all of his 200,000 back and learns NOTHING
Ten seconds later Trixie falls off the wall and *really* needs the surgery this time.
Wrecks Moregone:
Moustache figures out who Mae Mae is, tells the world that Lorna Starr is waiting tables, and a million people rush to Glenwood and Doug’s cafe to see.
Unfortunately they only want to see, not buy any food. And what with the gigantic crowd, real customers can’t even squeeze in.
Andy Capp:
I think I know why Ernie’s behaviour changed.
?
?Wearing that corrugated metal tie choked off the blood supply to his brain.
Blondied By The Light: fun fact: in the coke-soaked 1990s, a doctor-turned-consultant seriously proposed putting vending machines containing low-dose cocaine gum into office buildings, to boost white-collar productivity. As usual, art imitates life… thirty years later.
The artist on Beetle Bailey could have made it less obvious that Sarge couldn’t simply walk around the dream pizza with a very, very slight change in perspe–(a bullet fires from a sniper rifle held by a King Features assassin)
MW: This facility, once raided by the police, can rescue all of the Nigerian Princes that are held captive, they’ll all thank Mary for it for some reason.
@Dan: Also a change in perspective (by which I mean can’t see the entire thing) would make the pizza look much larger, adding some extra “whimsy” to this dream, but what do I know?
MW – The impending drama depends on where Scruffy McScrufface emerges after his incredible leap. If it’s Cambodia, he’ll have a helluva time trying to get out of the region. If it’s Charterstone, it will be even worse.
MW: Trixie cannot scale the wall, he makes a light prayer and a beam of sunlight obliterates it.
The gritty reboot no-one asked for.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Maybe in an flimsy attempt to “humanize” him, Wilbur will be in Cambodia or wherever doing another of his survivor interviews, and he’s the first person Trixie runs into and Wilbur calls the authorities.
@Bob Tice: My scrotal region just got very uneasy. That’s scary. Good work on deciphering the Worth Code.
MW — Actually, AI is better at pig-butchering these days, so it’s likely that putting Trixie in a yard with a climbable wall to make his Leap of Faith was just the scammers’ low-effort method of getting rid of unwanted labor. To paraphrase Keirkegaard, When the people with money don’t need humans to kill or scam other humans, we’re all expendable. . . ,
Blondie: The enterprising and resourceful
Jannic Karl-Heinz Deitrich IVJ. C. Dithers can’t buy Pervitin like his great grandfather did, so he makes do with what he can get.BG&SS: Not so loud, townsfolks. This ain’t a national park.
MW – Are we sure that quote is from Soren Kierkegaard? I thought it was Pete Townshend.
MW: Tomorrow: Trixie crouches on top of the wall, screaming “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”
RMMD Mae Mae’s time in Hollywood has made her so out of touch with how regular jobs work that she really thinks two whole customers is a full workload for a waitress and the café is turning a great profit! The we-have-to-turn-this-around pep talk from her boss is going be awkward
MW – My favorite Kirkegaard quote is, “Tough luck, dumbshit.”
B. Bailey: Little Sarge gets stuck in the gooey mozzarella atop the pizza he keeps by his groin.
“Boy, Magoo. ‘Alt text’ has sure got a lot more interesting since Scratchy started volunteering for the visually impaired.”
BB: Who took the giant pizza out of the box between panel 1 and 2? And why would he drown in something that has little to no depth to it?
Boy I sure hope someone got fired for THAT blunder!
MT: Hey Intern, I gotta prank call yesterday from some guy claiming to be Mark Trail! Said he wanted to order some “Great Basin Collard Lizards.”…. can you believe that? … so I asked if he wanted some Turnip Lizards, too. heh heh heh … he didn’t have any comeback to that.
So, anyway, I told him I didn’t have time for nonsense and to get lost … yeah,, was probably on drugs. Could you hand me the morning paper? I’d like to read the Sunday funnies…
SFx: Having the license plate number kinda makes all those other things superfluous.
6Chx: All the other lady scientists laughed and laughed at her soul patch, but Lillian Gilbreth SHOWED THEM ALL by inventing the “pedal bin.” Shortly thereafter she sold the patent for seventy-five dollars to a man who made hundreds of millions after putting it into mass production. Lillian Gilbreth died penniless in obscurity in 1934.
The Mark Trail cover photo on Komics Kondom looks like Cherry is really trying to show off her rack.
Beetle – And no more playing Battleship at bedtime.
MW: As soon as I saw that high stone wall in yesterday’s strip my mind went to Count Screwloose of Tooloose by the great Milt Gross. I was hoping to see Trixie escaping via trebuchet.
After spending a week with HH, Mary, Toby, Ian, and Wilbur, we’ll see Trixie breaking back into Nuttycrest Asylum, ordering his little white dog in the Napoleon hat “Iggy, keep an eye on me!”
Don Abundio, translated:
[Sign: SUGGESTIONS]
“I have a sure-fire suggestion for Don Abundio”
“I can guess what you wrote…”
“And he already knows he needs a bigger wastebasket”
Mary Worth: I look forward to a strip a year from now, when Mary is pleased things turned out well, with H. adopting Trixie “like a son” (but perplexed over why the younger man still uses that name) until, one day, while thinking how good it is that she walks regularly for exercise, Toby sees them kissing in the woods. . .
Mary Worth – This is the first that Mary has found out exactly how much money Hascot lost, and her jaw didn’t hit the floor. She didn’t even gasp. She did, however, have website addresses for fraud reporting on the tip of her tongue. Proof that Mary is a robot or an extraterrestrial.
Her meddlesense should be in full vibration mode. She needs to start baking muffins for when Trixie shows up after escaping.
FC – My grandson sent me a balloon! I really appreciate him thinking of me. I’m going to reward him. He likes to play outside, so I’ll control the weather so he gets sunshine and no rain for the next five months. Fuck those farmers.
9CL – Total time spent on the first three panels – three minutes. Time spent on the last panel – four hours, including cleanup.
For all the meticulous detail on that leg, one would think that he would get the proportions right.
MW: The likelihood of “Trixie” winding up in Charterstone is depressingly high; however, I will forgive everything if it leads to a reenactment of the final dialogue from Some Like It Hot. (Hell, Widow Hart’s look is already three-quarters of the way to Osgood Fielding III.)
Slylock – The confusing answer to the dolphin trivia question leads me to a grim conclusion. Sure, some dolphins can stay underwater for 22 minutes, but they’re dead.
Sarge was sleeping in that position because he’ll be damned if acid reflux will keep him from eating in bed.
***
Look at Mary memorizing URLs! She is a damned fine professional meddler, and deserves a meddler medal of some kind.
***
“SKNX-X” is the sound of Dagwood having a heart attack from all of those energy drinks. R.I.P.
RMMD: Mae spills a tankard of ale onto Mustache’s lap.
“Now I remember! You were in that action flick, Enter the Flagon“
I’m not sure which is funnier, the idea of Mary Worth having the fraud site memorized and ready to go at all times, or the idea of her memorizing it in a frenzy just before visiting H*rv*y. “Okay, report dash fraud dash FT…wait, no, report dot fraud dash – run it by me again one more time, Toby?”
BLONDIE: I know Dag works at one of the disappearing office buildings that still mandate suits and ties, but I gotta say, I never see dressed up men stomping around in shoes that look like what these guys are always wearing. From the ankles down, everyone looks like the Super Mario Bros. I guess if wing-tipped shoes are too uncomfortable, the boss lets you come in wearing waterproof work shoes.
@8 CanuckDownSouth: They could eliminate the confusion in one of two ways, or both: Make the characters wear nametags or hire an artist that can draw people that are differentiated from each other.
@11 BigTed: Except in San Antonio. Big Lou’s has 42 inch pizza. Guillermo el chiclero, have you seen this thing in person?
@TheDiva: “The likelihood of “Trixie” winding up in Charterstone is depressingly high”
It’s a common fiction trope, although I kind of feel that Mary Worth has too high standards to go that route… (laughs awkwardly)
I mean, example: One episode of The Simpsons, Marge is playing an MMORPG, and every single player she meets online is someone she knows from Springfield.
C’shaft: Gee, if only you had small pocket computers connected to a vast store of human information which could give you the answer, instead of listening to Crankshaft bather on about it. (If you’re curious: apparently because “fit” originally meant “appropriate or useful” so it was kind of a way of saying “as apt to the purpose as a fiddle is for making music.”)
Dustin: Give it time.
FG: I genuinely enjoy the Flash Gordon Sunday recaps–the POV narration makes for an interesting change of pace. Not sure I’d recommend the technique for other strips, though–I don’t think I could stand several panels of Mary waxing philosophical on Charterstone drama.
JP: Your son’s just come back from a Siberian private prison after months with no contact, and your main problem is “I don’t like the beard”? I think the alcohol is messing with your ability to prioritize, Alan.
Luann: I’m sorry, there’s no way that any of these idiots do the New York Times Sunday crossword.
@Baja Gaijin: “Big Lou’s has 42 inch pizza.”
When you went there, did you run into Dagwood Bumstead?
MW – All of Mary’s lines in today’s strip work perfectly if you imagine them in the voice of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Harv is in for an unpleasant surprise when he tries to get Mary to open the door of her apartment so he can go home.
@TheDiva: More fitting would be those jumbles on the back of kids menus. Bwad keeps his crayons on him for such an occasion.
Mary Worth: Anyone notice that we haven’t really seen any, like, guards or such in these cutaways to “Trixie”? Why did it take Trixie so long to escape when there’s evidently nobody around preventing him from doing anything and all he has to do is jump a short wall? Starting to think he isn’t actually a slave, just a delusional employee at a local call-center.
Blondie: So Dithers & Co. is doing a zany, 80s themed casual Friday, right? And the bathrooms are full of mountains of blow, right? That’s what ‘energy drinks’ is slang for, right. What a whimsical decade.
MW- Empowered by the sweet smell of tuna helper, Trixie leaps over the prison wall in a single bound…
@64 The Rambling Otter: I didn’t see Daggy or Sarge or DustinDad. I’ve not been there. I thought I’d seen the largest pizza in Texas in Amarillo. Technically, a pizzeria in a small town claims to make a pizza they call “The Bus.” It’s 8 feet by 2 feet 8 inches. Yes, rectangular. I say “technically” because it’s not mentioned anywhere on their menu for order.
@67 ectojazzmage: Maybe he’s on the other side of the wall that Les fell from in Luann.
Mary Worth: One good thing about today’s strips is the “casserole” is wayyy in the background. It’s impossible to see the burnt dollar store tuna, the chunks of raw Splak!, and sprinkling of scorched pubic wigs as garnish.
I do quite regularly fall asleep reclining upright on my pillows when Jihadi Rose is not here, so I’ll let that part go unchallenged.
@72 Ukranazi Stepan: Do you routinely fall asleep with the remnants of a 56cm pizza on your lap?
@The Rambling Otter:
To be fair, The Simpsons should’ve ended in 2000. If it had, it’d be remembered as arguably the best show ever. Now, it’s a bloated, unfunny monster that will not die. I’m sad, now.
RMMD: “Hey, Mae Mae, what’s going on in here? Did you not see those other 6 customers who came in and finally gave up and left while you were jawing with Mud?”
GA: Oh gawd, they’re gonna drag out “the death and resurrection of Walt Wallet” through next weekend. Hmm. Something’s happening next weekend. Oh no.
Tabby@57: There’s a medal available…the International Meddling Society just vacated the Middle East Meddling gold medal they awarded Pete Hegseth.
I wonder how many papers cancelled or severely trimmed today’s Doonesbury.
PV: we have fight.
Dagwood: when Jolt Cola was introduced, I brought a 6-pack to the radio station where I worked a morning show with another announcer.
We each had half a can as we joked about it on the air.
I left the remaining cans in the studio.
I came back 2 hours later and 3 cans were gone.
The next announcer had come in desperately thirsty.
His hands were shaking uncontrollably.
It was snowing, so I sent him outside and he shoveled 3 blocks of sidewalks.