Important follow-ups
Post Content
Mary Worth, 9/8/26
Wow, I’m glad to see that there are still sensible people living in Charterstone! “So what?” is exactly the appropriate response to someone telling you that two people who you vaguely know were sitting in a parked car. I don’t know how to tell you this, Nelly, but this is America, and as a person who gets around on foot and by bike more than the average American, I can tell you that this country is just littered with people sitting in parked cars. What are they doing in there? Listening to podcasts? Crying? Dicking around on their phones? Cheating on their spouses? Getting ready to pull out into traffic or open their door with no warning just as I’m trying to get past them? I don’t know and (except in that last scenario) it’s none of my business. Nelly was a safe distance away when she spotted the specific instance of car-sitting under discussion, so this is definitely a “So what?” situation if I’ve ever seen one.
Gil Thorp, 9/8/26
The Milford tryout numbers are strong this year, but Gil wants to establish that the Mudlarks will lead the Valley Conference in quality as well as quantity. You will not be able to overtake them in terms of players with names that make them sound like characters in vaudeville bits. Does Goshen have a Borys Orlov? Well, Milford has an Adrian Blatz. Of the Métis Winnipeg Blatzes. You might have heard of them.
Blondie, 9/8/26
Oh, no, Blondie! You were so close to correctly incorporating young people’s love of short-form video content into your model of how the world works! But you made the crucial mistake of using the term “vlogging,” which I’m not sure the kids say anymore, and anyway it led you down the path to today, doing a strip where Cookie is blogging, something I’m definitely sure the kids today are not saying or doing anymore. Blogging is an old man’s game now, trust me on this.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/8/26
“Oh, Josh, I think you were overstating things about that guy’s head-lump yesterday, I’m sure if we saw it from a different angle we’d–” You fool. You idiot. You ABSOLUTE SIMPLETON
44 replies to “Important follow-ups”
MW: Is Nelly Fenely the worst possible timeline version of Lorraine McFly? “When I was your age I never chased a boy or called a boy or sat in a parked car with a boy.”
RMMD: Given how much Rex Morgan characters love making random, unprompted hand gestures, I wouldn’t be surprised if this man styles his hair by karate chopping it. That would explain a lot about the shape.
MW: I really hope tomorrow’s strip is just Alma saying “So what?” again.
CS: “The pizza business sure has changed, in my day we had to make implied threats to customers using our own handheld lasers.”
FG: “I’d sure like to go to Tropica with you Flash, but see, my old trick knees and my old trick back and my tennis elbow and my…”
MW: You know what. I mean.
It’s ‘I’m mean’ and I quite agree!
Wrecks Moregone:
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a medical appointment.”
“Oh? Where?”
“At a Doctor Rex Morgan’s.”
“Who’s he?”
“The one who’s going to remove my skull growth, that’s who!”
“Oh….well, it was nice knowing you.”
GT: Football commentator Mr Madden becomes a national celebrity and gets a billion dollar video game franchise named after him. Football commentator Ms Madden asks high-school coaches if other high-school coaches gate-crashed their weddings. This says a lot about our society.
Wary Morth:
Alma reminds me of the anonymous Lockhorns characters who appear once, listen to Leroy or Loretta’s profundity, and vanish, never to be seen again. She’s probably cursing herself for passing up that Lockhorn’s gig now.
MW: Dang it, why couldn’t she say “So what?” to Mary?
RxMD: Grandpa is going to track the teens, by legal means and dubious techniques, but it will be all right, because they are the teens.
Luann: Sorry, Evansii, you can’t “catch up” and overcompensate when you load your characters with several plot points and say, “Oh, yeah, that exceeds the number of hours in the day. Let’s just make them exhaustive.”
GA: “Experiments are a waste of time of energy!” “Experiments expand the boundaries of imagination!” I prefer the “Less Filling/Tastes Great” Debate.
Peanuts – Was this one from a period that the Hays code scared Schulz into avoiding the real issue with Donald Duck? That he doesn’t wear pants?
MW – No, Nelly, Alma doesn’t know what you mean. You don’t have to play Pictionary and draw all the details. Just put your index finger and thumb together and vigorously pump another finger through it. Add some fur around it if Alma still doesn’t catch on.
RMMD New Guy is showing us just what it takes to act like a normal person in the Morganverse – skull molding as a baby to keep out the “now you love Roots Country! now you consider lip-syncing the Worst Scam Ever!” mind-control waves
If “Blatz” isn’t a brand of beer, it should be, if only so teens could say, “Get blitzed on Blatz!!”
Frazz : Mrs Olsen said : “I’m just as enthuisiastic as you are to begin this new school year.”
Caufield heard : “You can’t believe how eager I am to continually victimize you, as eager as you are to constantly insult me to my face, and behind my back with Frazz.”
Mrs Olsen meant : “I hate school as much as you kids do. I *WANT* to move on, I *WANT* you kids to move on, but you never do. And so we just give up, sleepwalk through another flunked year, and start over again the next.”
****************
Luann : that second panel… is this the first time someone’s has come this close to saying “Hey, Tara, your stories about your life don’t add up. And often contradict one another. Are you… lying?”
So I’m sad that Tara just deflects because Luann’s sleepy because she can’t handle
having a part-time job and being a studentworking a night shift + having a (admittedly, relaxed) daytime schedule.****************
Mary Worth : Oh, that’s a diffrent direction than I expected this storyline to take. She’s NOT outraged, she’s actually REVELLING in making those insinuations about Mary and Ian!
I look forward to the rest of this week’s Rex Morgan strips, in which Head-Lump tries out different ways of explaining the concept and process of moving to the twin’s increasingly addled grandfather. “Loaded some boxes and suitcases in their car and split.” “Packed up their stuff and left.” “Okay. First, they removed all their belongings from the premises. Are you with me so far? Good. And then they vacated said premises. Still with me? No? Hmm. Here, let me get out my finger puppets…”
GT Métis isn’t really A Thing for sportsball ability, but then it’s also not A Thing in the USA. I’m more disturbed by the idea that Adrian’s parents might have deliberately moved south of the border to get him to play football on *gasp* the wrong-sized field, with smaller balls and a strategy distorted by having more downs per play…
Heathcliff: Despite all my rage, I am still just a cat in a helmet.
“With school back in session, I’m spotlighting sports drinks” is no “In the absence of weights, I am employing isometrics.” Try again, Blondie.
@Pozzo:
It is- I worked at a beverage store in the 70’s and it was a cheap beer then (I think you could buy a case for $3.99)
From the look on Nelly’s face, I’d say she means “Let’s start some sleazy unsubstantiated rumors.” Like could she make it any more obvious what a pleasure it is for her to find an excuse to talk behind someone’s back? If I was in Alma’s shoes I’d take this as a warning to keep away from Nelly and question where anyone’s gotten any information I find about people in the neighborhood. Maybe it’s cause my good friend has lately had trouble at work with people who apparently have no conception why they shouldn’t talk about someone who isn’t in the room. (Happy ending: After a letter to management naming my friend was circulated around the workplace to collect signatures, without success, some people have been reassigned.) Mary could be miserable for years, except this is Mary Worth, where troublemakers are so bad at what they do the heroes will triumph within a few weeks of strips at most and leave us in awe at their relative competency.
@Pozzo: There is in fact a Blatz beer; it’s mostly available in the midwest US. I mostly know this because a Mystery Science Theater 3000 subject had a character named Blatz in it, and the hosts naturally made some references.
But Blondie didn’t say “vlogging.”
DT: ‘Little Bro’? So these two are supposed to be related?
CS: Wow, Batty just ripped that Band-Aid right off, didn’t he?
GT: Gil’s strategy seems to be based on the cartoon series of the 1980s, building a team around token demographics–and the more boxes he can check, the better. Sure, he has an indigenous American on the team, but how many teams have an indigenous Canadian, too? Not many, I’ll wager!
MW: First we have Nelly, who hates Mary and everything she stands for, and now we have Alma, who responds to the tepid “drama” of the strip with dismissive “so what”? I think we may have the most relatable Mary Worth arc in history here.
MW: Easy there, Nelly. Do you really want to face the cosmic consequences of treating Mary Worth as though she’s just another human being? If your mouth suddenly disappears, don’t come crying to us.
@Cleve Barrister: Sold to Pabst in 1959.
Dustin: “No, I meant why are you coming over to my barbecue grill with a plate in hand. Do your parents feed you?”
Luann: Why isn’t Tara the protagonist of this strip?
“Frankly Nelly, if this is the best you can do, I’m going to have to start getting my Charterstone gossip somewhere else. Unless you can follow up ‘sitting in a car together looking awfully friendly’ with at least “And then I saw him taking down his pants’, this just isn’t worth a ‘WHOOOA NELLY!’ from me.”
Mary Worth: TURN BACK MORTAL, TURN BACK BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE: THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE MEDDLER AND YOU ARE NOT IT
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: (I must give Ms. Moy credit however for accurately depicting how up in everyone’s business retirement community residents are.)
@TheDiva: Re: Luann: Because that would be interesting.
@TheDiva:
On Luann, and why Tara isn’t the protagonist of the strip :
a) Because she’s a latecomer to the cast (2016-7 ish?), and the strip isn’t named after her;
b) Because the Evansii have no idea how to actually write a juvenile delinquent from the wrong side of the tracks who’s an adrenaline junkie who does a multitude of extreme sports beyond the tiny slivers of Tara we actually get.
Rex Morgan, M.D.:
Actually, Helpful Apartment Resident’s head lump makes perfect artistic sense when you consider the tableau formed by the last two panels in today’s strip. Clearly these characters are being set in stark contrast to each other: Ollman is white, Lumpy is black; Ollman is old, McLump is young; Ollman wears black over powder blue, the Lumpster wears powder blue over black. So of course, since Ollman doesn’t have a weird head lump, there’s only one option that makes narrative sense.
Gil Thorp:
In Goshen there is no Blatz
That’s why we track his stats
And when we’re left with Coach Katz
He’ll still play that Winnipeg Métis Blatz
[Oompah out]
Blatz—Even though I’ve always lived on the East Coast, I still remember the Blatz beer jingle:
I’m from Milwaukee and I ought to know
It’s draft brewed Blatz beer, wherever you go.
Smoother and fresher, less filling that’s clear
Blatz is Milwaukee’s finest beer
Blondie:
I’m not sure what the intended joke is in today’s Blondie. Cookie is too lazy to bother investigating something she wouldn’t be in proximity to anyway? That’s hardly what I’d call being a “girl on a blogging mission”, to use Blondie’s extremely natural turn of phrase.
@TheDiva: In Omaha there was also a Storz beer. Storz is now better known as a local “old money” name that adorns prominent buildings, like Eppley and Buffett.
MW- Nelly, if your trying to out “busy body’ Mary, you’re going to have to up your game. Don’t just bring people their mail, you need some sort of baked good.
Oh, and their are other people who live at Charterstone? Either they are completely well- adjusted, or they know to lock their door whenever they see Mary on the prowl.
@CanuckDownSouth: Not to mention having twelve men on the field who start running around before the snap!
@Unca Bob:
True geezers remember Blatz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpfEbCAMtos
Nelly: “…with that busybody Mary Worth!”
Neighbor: “So what?”
Nelly: “Mary was in the driver’s seat!”
Neighbor: “Now I know you’re lying!”
MW – “Okay, Nelly, well, I’ve got this weird purple skin condition to see about, so I’ll just leave you to your tiny, tiny envelopes and get on with my day.”
Wrecks Moregone:
I thought xenomorphs incubated inside their victims’ chests, but then this one might have lost its way. Kind of like a tapeworm larva that ends up in a brain or something instead of the intestine as intended.
Either way the emergence scene is going to be *spectacular*.
GT — “And it’s a good thing we got Blatz now, because he would have cost 50% more in a few months!
Don Abundio, translated:
“Flora, it’s performance evaluation time”
“All right, Don Abundio”
“What grade do you think I should give you? A? B? C? D? …”
“I keep forgetting, she used to be a kindergarten teacher!”