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Mary Worth, 1/19/16

Oh, look, it’s another Beloved Character From Mary Worth’s Past, which gives me another chance to walk you down memory lane, building up my pageviews in the process! You might remember John Dill as a former Charterstone resident who appeared at a pool party just after his wife’s death with a garish cake. Turns out he’d always dreamed of being a professional cake designer, and decided to risk ridicule by entering Santa Royale’s notoriously tough cake design contest — and Mary volunteered to help. Dr. Jeff was briefly jealous, but Mary assured him that she and John had a strictly professional relationship [FORESHADOWING]. After a grueling cake-design montage, Team John Dill was ready to go! On camera, John reacted to the assigned decorating theme — “the beauty of nature” — by carving an idol of Mary as a pagan fertility goddess, proving that Dr. Jeff was entirely correct to be suspicious of John’s intentions (keeping in mind that John’s wife was barely cold in the ground at this point). John and Mary won, obviously, and didn’t just get a big check but also an opportunity to apprentice with New York’s very own Chef Pierre! John wanted Mary to go to New York with him to learn how to make cakes and also probably do sex stuff, but she turned him down, so he flew off thinking sad thoughts. Later, Mary visited New York and seriously considered leaving Dr. Jeff for handsome Broadway actor Ken Kensington and visited John not at all, but now she’s stuck trying to entertain Olive for days on end, so, sure, she’ll drop by and see how he’s doing in year three of his unpaid internship.

Mark Trail, 1/19/16

Oh, whoops, Gabe isn’t angling to get Mark to write an article about his damn bats at all. He’s angling to get Mark into a three-way with him, like he’d always wanted. Considering the economics of the print magazine industry, this actually makes more sense.

Herb and Jamaal, 1/19/16

Good lord, are computers really just flat, featureless 8-inch squares now? This punchline really resonates with me!

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Dennis the Menace and Beetle Bailey, 12/7/15

These are, in my opinion, some solid prompts for philosophical discussion. If we conceive of our lives as an endless series of journeys towards some specific destinations, don’t we ignore the charms and possibilities of the intermediary space we pass through, every inch of which is itself a possible destination? Similarly, why do we discount the third of our lives we spend asleep? It’s largely opaque to us, but is it possible that sleep is really what we’re for, and we only wake up when we can’t sleep anymore? Anyway, A+++ work this Monday, guys, feel free to spend the rest of the week slacking off with mild jokes about children who don’t understand that you shouldn’t repeat rude things your parents say about their friends and/or the tragedy of physical abuse in our armed forces.

Judge Parker, 12/7/15

Much as I would like the Spencer-Drivers to all be arrested at once after a long investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and IRS working in tandem, I’m assuming Neddy is about to get a ticket for her semi-competent operation of this huge behemoth of a motor home. You know, in some countries, monetary fines don’t have set amounts but are instead calculated based on the offender’s income, on the logic that otherwise the rich would be able to, say, speed or run lights with impunity; this can result in very wealthy people being handed six-figure traffic tickets. The practice is almost unheard of in the U.S., and it’s too bad because otherwise the local municipality here would have its budget covered for the next decade.

Herb and Jamaal, 12/7/15

Haha, yes, fish that’s of such high quality that you can eat it raw, that’s definitely like everything else on this list here!

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Mary Worth, 11/17/15

At last, the crossover distraction is over with and we can get down to the hot Mary Worth action we’ve all waited for: Mary’s weird and off-putting relationship with a psychic child she flew all the way across the country to hang out with. Olive’s parents, always polite, want Mary to come with them to the many after-hours nightspots in the neighborhood of their tastefully appointed apartment. All the hottest clubs are just up the street! Perfect for when you’re rolling on molly and don’t want to drive and are afraid you’ll start freaking out on the subway!

Apartment 3-G, 11/17/15

The countdown to the death of Apartment 3-G is ticking away and … we’re still talking about Diane the fake psychic, I guess? Haha, isn’t it funny when a person claiming to be psychic can’t actually predict the future? This is definitely a clever joke that people haven’t heard before.

Hi and Lois, 11/17/15

I was going to make some joke about “the newspaper, are you kidding me,” but this is exactly the sort of lesson an out-of-touch high school civics or history teacher would give, taking the students’ moans of dissent as just more evidence that kids today are terrible, rather than evidence that kids today literally all have mobile computing devices that they can use to get the latest news at any time. Anyway, I think the way Chip is carrying that paper — with just his fingertips, away from his body, as if it were something mildly disgusting — is a pretty accurate depiction of the relationship between teens and legacy media.

Herb and Jamaal, 11/17/15

Most people giving thanks to God for the day usually frame it in terms of nothing bad happening to them, rather than the other way around. Herb, though, is particularly aware of the indelible stain of sin that marks all of humankind, and marks him in particular. Someday, he knows, he’s going to do something awful. Today is not that day, or at least not yet.