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Garfield, 3/23-4/06

I never really thought I’d say this, but … I’ve suddenly become quite concerned about Garfield. The whole Garfield-and-Jon-eat-at-a-restaurant schtick is on the one hand a blessed relief from the usual mind-numbing sameness of the strip, though it may herald things going seriously awry. Yesterday’s installment is pretty much par for the Garfield course — Garfield’s fat, you see, and loves to eat, so the thought that he didn’t have room for desert is laughable. Of course, the laughing seems a little … off, what with the mouths gaping open and the spit flying and what not. Today, the laughing continues, in a way that would make no sense unless you had read the previous day. The waiter (who’s freakier and freakier looking every time I look at him) joins in. And it’s not joyful laughter either. No. It’s discomfort-making laughter. Crazy person laughter. Disturbing laughter. Did someone release nitrous oxide into the air supply over at Paws, Inc.? I sort of want to know, but I much more sort of don’t want to know, what’s in store.

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Garfield, 8/20/05

My personal curmudgeonly opinion is that the less said about the 75th anniversary Blondie mutual wank-a-thon, the better, but I feel compelled to drag Saturday’s Garfield out to help illustrate why comics characters drawn by different artists shouldn’t be put in close proximity to one another. Because I’ve been reading Garfield pretty much since I achieved rudimentary literacy, but it wasn’t until I saw Jon next to Dagwood that I realized that OH MY GOD HE HAS NO NOSE! I MEAN, LOOK AT HIM! HIS ENORMOUS, BULBOUS EYES ARE JUST SITTING DIRECTLY ABOVE HIS UPPER LIP! SWEET JESUS CHRIST THAT’S CREEPY! I’m sure the architects of this huge crossoverfest were looking to instill a sense of “warm and fuzzy” in their readers; for me, anyway, they got “aesthetically unsettled” instead.

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Garfield, 5/11/05

OK, this is going to take a minute, so stay with me.

Two years ago, the future Mrs. C. and I took our very first vacation together, to the UK and Spain. Since she has Panamanian relatives, and has spent time in Panama, Costa Rica, and Mexico, she was in charge of hablaing the Español, and, despite her self-deprecating statements in advance of the trip, acquitted herself admirably in all the situations where Spanish was required.

The next year, we went to Garfield le Film-mad Paris. Since I had taken eight years of French in grammar and high school, passed a test in graduate school establishing my competence in the language, and previously voyaged to both Paris and Montreal, I was understandably given the mandate to parlez our vous while in the City of Light. It only took about 24 hours before the first incident arose indicating that this decision may have been a mistake. Our first morning there, we were at a little flea market, and were going to eat at a food stand there. They were selling something called a galette. We could tell from the posted menu that a galette contained tasty items such as eggs, tomatoes, and cheese; but what was it? TFMC told me to go find out. I realized in horror that this was a big difference between us: when confronted with such a foreign term, my instinct was to slink off in shame and have a Kit Kat bar for lunch, but she wanted me to, you know, ask. Unwilling to lose face in front of my woman, I walked up to the Frenchies behind the counter and asked:

“Excusez-moi, quand est un galette?”

The francophonic among you, of course, know that what I asked was, “Excuse me, when is a galette?” The proprietors of the little food cart, naturally, looked at me as if I were retarded. I thought of that little moment when I read today’s Garfield. I have to imagine that Jon, in yet another desperate, flop-sweat-soaked attempt to impress, took his date to a French restaurant that is so fancy that either (a) its staff refuses to speak English, or (b) it’s actually in France. Because otherwise this strip makes NO GODDAMN SENSE AT ALL.

Oh, and: after a humiliating retreat to a park bench where I consulted my phrase book, I came back with the correct version of my question, and they still gave me that baffled “I know those words, but they don’t make sense in that order” look. I suppose if you walked into Burger King and asked “What is this so-called ‘burger’ I’ve heard so much about, and how’d you get to be ‘king’ of it?” you wouldn’t do much better. After some deeply embarrassing hijinks, we eventually just ordered the damn thing. Word to the wise: it’s a savory crepe, and it’s pretty yummy.