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They’ll Do It Every Time, 8/2/06

Some might say that my incessant fawning over TDIET has left me without any kind of credibility when it comes to this feature. I’m just some sort of TDIET cheerleader! Well, today I’m here to tell you that it just isn’t so. See, today’s installment of this usually totally awesome panel undermines exactly what makes it totally awesome. Generally, the patented TDIET twist involves the same person or people or institution: it’s like, Titus notices shoddy work, but not the tip jar! or hospitals have too many bureaucrats and not enough health care providers! or the Pestleys insist that other people be clean, even though they’re messy! Today we’d have the perfect opportunity for that favorite TDIET theme, in which some happy, naive person believes that some aspect of life is basically good, only to be disabused of that notion in some shattering way — except that it only works if the person in the hospital is the same person watching the TV! Instead, our red-headed lady is going to go through life believing that doctors are great and attentive, and our poor patient has never had his hopes about medical care raised so as to be dashed in a narratively pleasing way. Presumably this discrepancy arises because the artist is too gentlemanly to draw an injured woman in a hospital gown, and too sexist to imagine that a man might watch soap operas.

Gil Thorp, 8/2/06

Say, have you ever wanted to see a comic strip where a little girl punches another little girl in the face? Well, today’s Gil Thorp is for you, my friend.

I thankfully don’t have any seven-to-ten year olds that I need to shuttle back and forth to gymnastics practice, so maybe somebody can tell me if gymnastics coaches actually wear form-fitting spandex leotards to work. And are sexy, sexy ladies.

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Curtis, 7/21/06

Wow, Curtis, you make me feel all funny inside, in the following ways:

• Is it OK to be appalled at the child abuse joke and yet still impressed by the wordplay of “slap the taste out of your mouth”?
• Are the Curtises’ black apples left over from some sort of twisted goth Adam and Eve musical number?

Gil Thorp, 7/21/06

See, Ben Franklin, there have been some advances in histrionics in the 216 years since your death. Nowadays, when people shout “No-o-o-o!”, they usually shake their fists at the skies, get down on one knee and pound the earth, and weep openly. Perhaps putting an index finger on the lower lip was a sign of great emotional distress during the 18th century, but nowadays it just makes you look contemplative.

Marty Moon may refer to his winnings as “only” $20, but he’s holding and staring at that Andrew Jackson-festooned note with an expression of rapt wonder, as if he were a starving Darfurian refugee and somebody just handed him a steak.

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Apartment 3-G, 7/13/06

OK, I know Apartment 3-G is forbidden by law from being sexy, but … Lucy swaps spit with Captain Brushcut in an elevator, and then ends up slightly disheveled but fully clothed on his couch? Lamest. Extramarital affair. Ever.

I do like the trepidatious way in which she’s regarding the slightly open doorway. “That color … oh, crap, please tell me I didn’t go home with that tool Seth from my poetry group, who’s always wearing those hideous electric blue suit jackets. Note to self: eat something after the fourth cosmo from now on.”

Curtis, 7/13/06

Here’s something that you may not believe or even agree with: though I don’t find Curtis funny most of the time, I have come to admire it. Unlike so many, many syndicated strips, it doesn’t phone things in; there’s almost always a wealth of details that reward examination. I particularly like the use of the double-wide second panel to show the Curtis POV church lady panorama, with Curtis’ horrified head dead center. I’m even willing to overlook the inappropriate quote marks in the final panel just because the idea of Curtis hoping to be freed from these women by death’s sweet embrace makes me laugh.

(Tangent: This past weekend we went to see a free outdoor concert by a Latin-y/swing band that a friend of ours is in. Towards the end, this adorable little ham of a child, somewhere in the six to eight range, ran down in front of the stage and started busting a hilarious and surprisingly successful series of circa-1986 breakdancing moves. He was wearing a ludicrously oversized baseball cap that kept falling off as he would spin around on his back or whatever, and ever time he picked it up, he’d be careful to put it back on a more or less the same jaunty angle at which Curtis is rocking his own chapeau here.)

Crankshaft, 7/13/06

In case you’re wondering what Crankshaft does to supplement his meager Social Security checks during the summer when he’s not driving a bus, this week has the answer: he drives an ice cream truck, though this seemingly benign profession should not be taken to indicate that he’s open to compromise on his fundamental and general hatred of the human race. Strips in this storyline so far have featured Crankshaft engaging in such par-for-the-course prickery as taunting people at a Weight Watchers meeting, being rude to children, and, as depicted here, refusing to deploy even basic customer service techniques. It all strengthens my conviction that this strip should be given the slightly longer but much more descriptive title Jesus Christ, Ed Crankshaft Is Such An Asshole.

Gil Thorp and Judge Parker, 7/13/06

Boy, Raju is sure going to be disillusioned when he signs up for his first American gymnastics class.