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Gil Thorp, 8/18/11

So, just as Kenny helped Molly with her golf swing by filming her so she could see the problems with her technique, so too will he help his mother by showing her detailed footage of her drunken swoons. I like it! Because so far, Kenny’s mom’s alcohol problem has been strictly amateur hour. “See, mom, look at this … you made it all the way to the couch before you passed out, and you even set the wine glass down on the end table before you lost consciousness. If you had fallen just a few steps earlier, you could have spent the night on the carpet surrounded by broken glass; pick a red instead of a white, and you’d even have a permanent stain on the rug for which you’d have to come up with an embarrassingly transparent excuse. And here, in this video, you’re semi-conscious and clinging to the toilet bowl as you puke up all that merlot. If you had some guts, you’d have have just konked out the bathroom floor on your back, upping your chances of choking on your own sick. Are you committed to this drunken lifestyle or not?”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/18/11

Oh my God, I really thought at this little soliloquy, in which over the course of the last few days Les has described the good times he had in this park, like when he took summer strolls with Lisa, but also the bad times, like when Lisa told him she was date-rape-pregnant, or when she found some cancerous lumps, couldn’t get more insulting to Cayla, but then … this happened, holy crap. Les’s smug eyebrow-waggle is definitely the best part, if by “best” you mean “most urgently demanding a punch in the face.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/16/11

Aww, look at Cayla’s little secret smile as their romantic walk suddenly turns into yet another opportunity for Les to natter on about his dead wife. “Lisa who? Lalalalalalalala I CAN’T HEAR YOU … happy thoughts happy thoughts”

Apartment 3-G, 8/16/11

“Her fiancé got killed in Tibet, so she’s got nobody to turn her down for sex!”

Mary Worth, 8/16/11

ALERT: CLEAN-CUT SKATEBOARD KID HAS BEEN JOINED BY OTHERS TO FORM A CLEAN-CUT SKATEBOARD GANG. ALL NYPD UNITS REPORT TO QUAINTTOWN NEIGHBORHOOD IMMEDIATELY. BRING WATER CANNONS. SUSPECTS MAY BE CHEWING GUM.

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/6/11

Oh, man, did I almost somehow manage to not comment on an entire week of Les grousing and moaning about the fine print on the contract he was forced to sign because sinister Hollywood wants to turn Lisa’s Story into a wacky comedy called Cancer Movie? Here’s the climax of the entire sullen festival of entitlement, in which our hero complains of having been sucked dry by the entertainment industry vampires, who have given him literally nothing in return. Yes, of course a tidy check counts as “nothing.” I’m sure Les barely even cashed it. Are you seriously trying to put a price tag on art? Are you not aware that Lisa died, of cancer?

Anyway, Les, if this is like most Hollywood book options, it was approved by some mid-level studio exec trying to improve his reputation by getting a middlebrow tearjerker out for awards season three years from now, but said exec will be outmaneuvered by other players within the company who have optioned other books, books that can be turned into movies that people might actually pay money to see, so you really don’t have to worry about anything terrible happening to your precious book. If you’re really lucky, when your option is about to expire two years from now, someone at the studio will notice, think, “Huh, who the hell approved this? Enh, better re-up in case it was somebody important,” and send you another check. That should be about the extent of your hopes in this matter.

Judge Parker, 8/6/11

Oh, were you worried that there might be a minor ancillary character in Judge Parker who wasn’t going to be rewarded for their non-efforts with six figures? Well, you can relax.