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Curtis, 2/10/07

What a roller-coaster ride this week has been in Curtis: from Philly’s own “Compton Kaheem” to drunk, jiggling, syrup covered ladies to the fantastic dancing Nicholas Brothers to Curtis being savagely mauled by vicious dogs. I will ignore the labored and unnatural “I met … I met … we’d like you to meet” set-up so that I can question “Onion”‘s assertion that he needed to get his stomach pumped after accidentally ingesting a little Meow Mix. Cat food is bland and not very nutritious, but it certainly isn’t poisonous. I mean, I ate a whole bag of dog treats when I was a kid, and I came out fine!

What? It was an accident. Honest!

Still and all, if Curtis is killed or at least horribly disfigured by this pit bull attack, it might be adequate punishment for the horror that was “the syrup chapter.”

Mark Trail, 2/10/07

Speaking of labored and unnatural, I’m beginning to suspect that the real name of this feature is Mark Weg in Verlorenem Wald and that the dialogue is all translated on the cheap. I’m pretty baffled by the sentence “Rusty here is the main member of our family … he keeps us all in shape”; I assume it means that Rusty has near-omnipotent powers, like the little kid in the “Put them in the cornfield” episode of the Twilight Zone, and he forces Mark and Cherry to engage in their various inane adventures for his amusement and benefit. Meanwhile, “Sally, the love of my life” sounds to me like a circumlocution that allows Dan to avoid actually describing the nature of their relationship. Presumably, their prudish hosts wouldn’t allow them to share a bedroom if he said “Sally, my latest assistant grifter/sex buddy” or “Sally, a thirty-dollar-a-day hooker I met at a truck stop an hour before we got here.”

Mary Worth, 2/10/07

I like Mary’s self-righteous assertion that helping others is the exclusive province of the young and impoverished, while middle-aged types like Jeff ought to be instead carefully monitoring their investment portfolio so that he can be sure to be able to afford ever larger powerboats and thrice weekly “dates” at the Bum Boat that don’t result in any action. Still, I’m not entirely sure that 21 is the primary age for selflessness. I’d have been much more amused by Mary’s “You’re not twenty-one anymore” plea if she had discovered Jeff sucking Bud Light out of a keg tap while being held upside down by two guys named Chad and “the Gooch”.

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Dennis the Menace, 2/8/07

Well, OK, so it’s a little menacing to fill some little kid’s head full of tales of supernatural demons to the extent that his eyes are wide with mortal terror and (presumably) his bladder is emptying onto the sheets. However, the little kid is Joey, who is such a tremendous feeb that it isn’t even sporting to try to scar his psyche permanently. Dennis could have gotten the same results by saying, “Look, under the bed! Shoes!” Or just making a loud noise.

Mary Worth, 2/8/07

“No, I came halfway around the world to drag you back to the stultifying suburban existence that you’ve tried so hard to escape! If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for you! The fact that I got to insult a third-world doctor and condemn dozens of children to a lifetime of suffering in the process — well, that’s just a bonus!”

Seriously, Mary Worth is an awful, awful human being. If Jeff manages to muster his last reserves of strength, sit up, and bite off the tip of Mary’s pointing finger, he will forever be my hero.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 2/8/07

Today’s TDIET shocked and horrified me — not for the usual reasons, but because Loopina is actually a type recognizable to modern, vaguely with-it people. Surely we all know that young contrarian hipster — probably not a teenager, but certainly under the age of 35, which, for the typical TDIET reader, amounts to the same thing — who’s all techno-enabled and blog-happy and whatnot but when it comes to music will wax rhapsodic about the warmer sound you get from LPs. Heck, he or she may very well have a blog that focuses on that very subject. It’s a good thing that this panel includes characters dressed like they’re from some bizarre alternate-universe 1950s and the delightfully weird phrase “computer-armchair potato” or my head might have exploded.

Update: Well, obviously the reason this TDIET depicts life after the end of the Truman administration is that “Leila Louise Henly” is none other than faithful reader Non-Shannon (you might remember her from the picture that accompanied this post). Congrats, Non-Shannon. I like the bow in your hair, but I’m frankly shocked that you weren’t depicted as listening to a Victrola.

Mark Trail, 2/8/07

Hmm, I may have to rethink my heroin theory. The only way you make tropical-island-retirement money in a national forest is through shady logging deals. If we get to see Mark punch out Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne at the end of all this, I will be a happy guy.

Garfield, 2/8/07

Ha! Garfield got a text message! And it spelled you like u! It’s funny … text messages … kids today … um … oh, God … [soft, persistent weeping].

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For Better Or For Worse, 2/7/07

Who among us — particularly, who among those of us who have had the misfortune to read his loathsome monthly letters — hasn’t wanted to say “*#@[star][Saturn]!!” to Michael Patterson? At last Grandpa Jim, who certainly didn’t leave his farm to stoically fight the Nazis just so his whiny ingrate of grandson could make mad bank with a book about an innocent Irish girl and the stoic Canadian who left his farm to fight the Nazis who abused her, says what everyone else is feeling. My only concern is that the final thought balloon undermines the joy at seeing the eldest Patterspawn obscenely insulted, that maybe Jim thought he was saying “Good for you, m’boy! I always knew you’d make it!” instead of “*#@[star][Saturn]!!”. However, I choose to believe that he’s wondering about the construction of the book because he’s hoping, once next fall comes around and his strength has returned, that he can beat Michael to death with it. *#@[star][Saturn]!! you, Michael.

Hi and Lois, 2/7/07

“Because once the two of them die of pneumonia, I’m another step closer to 100 percent of the inheritance. Then all I have to do is rig Chip’s guitar to electrocute him, and … MOO HA HA!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/07

Rex Morgan, M.D., is trying to worm its way back into my affections with the whole “June throws herself at a thirteen-year-old boy” gambit again; I have to admit that it’s kind of working. I’m interested to see what strategy she uses to distract Niki from his simmering class resentment. “No, it’s not really so big … uh-oh, I just splashed water all over my white t-shirt!” You don’t want to know what the carrot is for.

Mark Trail, 2/7/07

Wait, Mark Trail was in the army? Maybe his obsessive love of nature is some kind of attempt to make up for the massive Agent Orange deforestation program he ran back in ‘Nam. He does seem to have received extensive training in righteous-fist-to-face combat.

I am a little unnerved by Mark’s shit-eating grin in panel two. It’s too easy to assume that Mark and Dan were all not asking and not telling when they were in the service, and anyway, it’s well known that Mark finds sex with anyone to be abhorrent. I’m guessing Dan was Mark’s connection to sweet, sweet heroin. The reason Mark so angrily beats up drug dealers on his turf nowadays is that none of them offer product as satisfying as the horse he got back when he was in the army, and Mark demands high-quality goods, dammit.

Pluggers, 2/7/07

When it comes to food science, gerontology, and/or chemistry, pluggers are terribly misinformed.