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Judge Parker, 3/21/05

“But seriously, Josh,” I hear you asking, “What’s been happening in Judge Parker for the past month?” Well, I’ll tell you: a whole lot of nothing (or, as they say in the strip’s current south-of-the-border locale, nada). Sam has arrived in Mexico, spoken with Gloria, and gone back with this priest to his church. That’s taken something like five weeks. It makes Mary Worth look like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. The strip is so parched for excitement that an entirely gratuitous exclamation point has been added to the first panel’s exposition in an attempt to make the “short drive out of town” sound like some kind of adrenaline-fueled car chase sequence.

That being said, I’m kind of intrigued by the underlying religio-cultural tensions in today’s dialog between Sam and Father David. To that end, I’d like to introduce what could (if I feel like it) become the first installment of an occasional feature: What They Say and What They Mean.

Um … OK, so that was in poor taste. Watch this space for a future installment of What They Say and What They Mean, assuming I’m not fleeing for my life from the combined forces of the Jesuits and the federales.

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Judge Parker, 2/15/05

“No, I don’t think you’re listening to me, Harman. She’s an American. A white American. We all know that those crazy-ass Mexican ‘laws’ don’t apply to her!”

Maybe our hero would be having more luck if he were actually talking to someone from the U.S. State Department, rather than Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Also, I like to see that the State Department is being tight-fisted with my tax dollars, since it clearly hasn’t replaced the phones in its offices since 1987.

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Judge Parker, 2/3/05

So I’ve been following Judge Parker ever since I started reading the soap opera strips at the Houston Chronicle Web site, which has been, what, two months now? You’d think I could tell you something concrete about it by now, but it’s been grinding along even more interminably than the rest of the serials, making it difficult to follow. The plotlines seem pleasingly lurid, though: one involves a pair of college students anonymously sending half-naked toga party pictures of a bitchy acquaintance to said acquaintance’s mother, so said mother would force said bitchy acquaintance to leave the state college party school where she engaged in the aforementioned semi-nude chicanery; another involved a man who (off camera, alas) apparently was tossed from an airplane somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean. The current story revolves around a woman named Gloria, who is currently rotting in a Mexican jail, arrested by a (fat, hairy, and swarthy, of course) corrupt Mexican cop on a trumped-up gun charge; now Judge Parker has to fly down there and help her out. (We think the charges are phony, anyway. Stay tuned to find out the truth! Hopefully sometime this year!)

Anyway, I felt a need to comment on this one, because I laughed aloud at the warning that this Planet of the Apes refugee gives to the man who I’m reasonably sure is the title character. You may have a fancy law school education, Judge, but did you know that they speak Spanish in Mexico? Huh? You just thought you’d shout in English and get your way, didn’t you? That sort of thing may get you more margaritas at Chevy’s, but actual Mexico is totally different! Fortunately, he’ll have plenty of time to read the entire dictionary on the plane.