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I’ve been plugging the merchandise steadily, but you and I both know that it’s been getting a bit stale. That’s why tonight I’ve taken some of your ideas and some ideas the Future Mrs. C. and I have been percolating on and revamped the Comics Curmudgeon store! You can still buy the Fence Post Frank hat (our latest model) and the “More Zippers, Mule!” shirts (timeless classics), but the mugs and other t-shirts have been replaced, and we have some sexy new items for you!

First, the new shirts. Show your solidarity with Milford’s unjustly accused by sporting a “Free Hutch” shirt.

Next, prepare for the inevitable spit-take with this fine mug, a desperate attempt to sex up America’s lamest burg.

And finally, what better way to show that you’ve “been there” than to sport boxers, a camisole, or (no, really) a thong that showcases your roadside status?

Thank you to the many fine posters who came up with the ideas for these. Alas, nothing is available from Cafepress in that hideous electric blue color.

Now, once you’ve bought this stuff (as I’m sure you will immediately) you are of course going take a picture of yourself wearing and/or using it and send it to me, right? Of course you are. I’m especially interested in some pictures from the ladies here — almost all of our current models are menfolk! I know the Future Mrs. C. is hard to top, but we strive for gender balance. (Please, though, no thong photos, or at least no photos of your thong on your … thong … area.)

What’s that address again? Glad you asked. It’s http://www.cafepress.com/joshreads, of course. Now go forth and purchase!

Oh, and I almost forgot to add that when I was making the underwear, I said, “I need to find a slutty font for this.” There’s a sentence you don’t get to say very often.

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Gil Thorp, 5/17/05

How — I mean how — can you people keep calling for the death of Gil Thorp when he consistently provides this level of entertainment? Honestly. You might choose to see Milford as so stultifyingly lame that this counts as a major vice bust; I prefer to see this whole storyline, taken in conjunction with the legendary Marty Moon’s arrest and sentence to mildly difficult labor, as a cautionary tale about the reign of terror enforced by an out-of-control police force. Prepare to see Coach Thorp make a To Kill a Mockingbird-level impassioned courtroom speech to free his wrongly imprisoned nickel-ante student-athletes. Because if the court doesn’t set them free … then Milford’s baseball team will be short of players and need to forfeit! Surely the good townsfolk won’t allow that to happen.

A review of last week’s strip reveals that Brent was in fact just at Hutch’s as a spectator. Still, the fact that Officer Bebow didn’t have him thrown in the clink for uttering the phrase “just chillin’ with the peeps, brah” indicates that she has special plans for him. Look at the Rap-Dog in panel two: that luxurious, fluffy mane of hair, that stunned, vacant expression, the mouth slightly agape and threatening to start drooling at any moment. He and the lady policeman are even wearing the same t-shirt, and his breasts are almost as big as hers. Yes, being an undercover cop is tough gig, but there are compensations.

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I wish had something harrowing, impressive, or at least interesting to explain my lackadaisical posting pace, but alas I all I can say is “I didn’t get around do it.” Plus: my copy of the Baltimore Sun arrived today WITHOUT A COMICS SECTION! Am I the subject of some relentless persecution from the Powers That Be? Have the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and King Features Syndicate joined forces with the dude who delivers my paper in an attempt to silence me?

(These are the sort of paranoid thoughts that go through your head when you work at home, folks. Thank God for the Future Mrs. C. driving me to Target and such every few days or you’d be reading these words tapped out on a vintage mechanical typewriter, wrapped around a brick, and hurled through the window of the Sun’s offices. Well, actually, you probably wouldn’t be reading it at all, unless you worked for the Baltimore Police’s forensics department, but I digress.)

Anyway, due to the disruptions of my comics schedule, I’m going all crizzy-crazy in an attempt the catch up: three comics from two days today, and no Sunday comic (and yes, I read about Mim’s baby’s name, and no, I don’t want to know what sick sex thing they’ve got cooked up over at For Better Or For Worse).

Mary Worth, 4/29/05

My first introduction to Mary Worth was the now-infamous Smitty Smedlap storyline. I came in just after the beginning of a dinner out attended by Mary, Smitty, and other, lesser characters. It was obvious to me that Smitty was an unstomachable prick. But — did the author intend for us to see him as such? It was hard to tell, at first, since day after day, week after week, the strip just featured his irascible rantings, followed up by polite murmurings from his fellow diners.

The funeral of the late lamented nurse what’s-her-face may, I’m beginning to see, be destined to last as long as that fateful dinner with Smitty, and its creeping social awfulness may go unacknowledged verbally by any of the participants. Panel one, here, though, may rate among my favorite Mary Worth scenes ever. Momma Rita places a melodramatic hand on her forehead as she pours her heart out to Santa Royale’s first couple of nosiness. Mary’s face, though carefully composed to match the gravity of the situation, cannot mask her glee as all these deeply personal details are vomited forth for her delectation. “Yes,” she seems to be thinking, “Give me your grief, your pain! Dump it all out for me! Allow me to live vicariously through the highs and lows of your life! Then I shall dispense some time-worn aphorisms and YOU WILL BE MINE! MINE, YOU HEAR ME? MINE!”

Dr. Jeff’s facial express, meanwhile, I think can be summed up simply: “Oh, crap, how much longer until we can leave?”

Our flashback panel is worthy of interest in its own right. I’m particularly intrigued by Rita’s giraffe-like neck and long, serpentine limbs, along, of course, with that … gelatinous … thing on the plate she’s holding. Growing up in upstate New York, we learned a lot in school about the Iroquois Confederacy, and I seem to recall making a plasticine longhouse model that looked a lot like that. Except this one appears to be covered with human skin.

On a very different note, let’s take a look at what all the cool kids are doing over in Milford.

Gil Thorp, 4/29-30/05

I think that with these two strips, Gil Thorp may have surpassed Curtis in the race for Most Ham-Handed Comics Use of Contemporary Urban Slang. I myself have longed to blast the hip-hop in the valley with the south side, but I’m not “down” or “with it” or “crunk” or whatever the hell it is like these headband-sporting, grey-haired, IM-savvy white girls so clearly are. You can tell by the blissful look on the face of the not-Hadley girl in panel three that they are true members of Hip-Hop Nation. On Saturday, the strip takes a turn for the weirdly meta as the DJ uses possibly the most non-connective segue in the history of radio to launch into a Don Rickles-light tirade against Milford’s prominent teachers and their awful, awful hair. I suppose that it makes sense that, since everyone in this crappy little town is obsessed with Milford sports, the hairstyles of the school faculty might merit public derision at the hands of the Morning Zoo Crew. On the other hand, everyone in Milford is having the worst day hair day of their lives every day of their lives, so I would advise the listening audience not to laugh to loudly, lest the next laugh be on them. (Steve Luhm, I’m looking in your direction.) The whole thing is so ludicrous that Hutch Renfro’s radio has exploded into a miniature mushroom cloud in protest.