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Mary Worth, 7/14/24

Dawn has said a couple times that she and her mother don’t agree on politics but hasn’t offered any specifics, and this reminds me that at one point I tried to come up with a list of the political ideologies of the whole Mary Worth cast and immediately decided that neither Wilbur nor Dawn had ever voted in their lives. I’m imagining that her mother is a fairly middle-of-the road suburban type, maybe a former Romney Republican who became an MSNBC lib during the Trump era; she mostly just wants Dawn to at least register to vote, and thinks her daughter refuses to do so because she’s one of those protesting anti-electoralist leftists like her friends’ kids who go to Ivy League and Seven Sisters colleges, when in fact Dawn just finds everything about the American system of governance “confusing” and thinks about it as little as possible.

Anyway, I know Wilbur’s emotionally fragile right now, but I regret to tell him that “Let’s do something fun this week!” doesn’t sound like a plan at all! It actually sounds like what you’d say if you don’t want to hang out with someone but also don’t want to explicitly say that, and you hope that not nailing down any specifics will allow you to get out of a social obligation unnoticed.

Judge Parker, 7/14/24

So it turns out Sophie had a little problem with a rip current and was rescued not by Lucas, the increasingly whiny drip who has a crush on her, but by his hunkier, significantly chiller older brother Glen, and I thought that was setting up a tired love triangle type story? Except no, what it’s actually setting up an exciting underwater zombie type story and I am immediately 100% on board for it. Sorry hunks! It’s zombie time now.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/13/24

Hey, he got made but he didn’t get caught, seeing as he’s standing right here in front of you a free tween. He can still pull this off! Look, his shirt is exactly same color as the couch, you could easily camouflage him as part of the decor when the cops show up!

Mary Worth, 7/13/24

DAWN [thinking]: “Ha ha, when he says they ‘saved’ him, he probably means he once again fell into the water and they had to fish him out, right? He doesn’t mean they saved him emotionally, right? Not gonna ask that out loud. Better just to assume. Don’t really want to know the truth.”

Gil Thorp, 7/13/24

[getting increasingly agitated] Wait, who won it? Who is the winner?? [calming down] Oh, right, it’s a literary device to create suspense, we’ll find out tomorrow, that’s fine, I can wait [suddenly getting agitated again] Oh NO it’s SATURDAY, Gil Thorp doesn’t run on Sundays, I gotta wait till Monday, HOW AM I GONNA WAIT TILL MONDAY

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Mary Worth, 7/9/24

OK, here’s the thing: we know really next to nothing about Dawn’s mother, and I admit that I’ve been projecting a lot onto the image of the icy WASP queen in Wilbur’s mind. Basically, I assumed that she was, yes, an icy New Englander, but also a more or less normal person, and honestly it’s kind of surprising that I’ve only now started to wonder if maybe she’s not? Like, let’s be real, this is a woman who let Wilbur [AUTHOR’S NOTE: I CAME UP WITH THREE DIFFERENT INCREASINGLY CRASS EUPHEMISMS FOR “HAVING UNPROTECTED AND ULTIMATELY PROCREATIVE SEX WITH” HERE AND DECIDED NOT TO ACTUALLY RUN WITH ANY OF THEM, YOU’RE WELCOME] her, and anyone who makes that kind of decision can’t be OK, mentally or spiritually. So maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that she had compiled a quick list of “Ways to bond with Dawn” that went like “1. Do shopping, like in Sex in the City, 2. Go to ballet, 3. Eat at fancy places [research on Yelp.com], 4. Discuss various issues of interest to college students [research on TikTok],” and when none of that took, just texted her the PDF of a plane ticket home from the next room and trusted her to do the right thing.

Six Chix, 7/9/24

So it’s been a little bit since I checked in with Six Chix, but, you know what? If a syndicated newspaper comic does a strip where you see someone dry-humping a giant sandwich, that’s absolutely going to make it onto my blog. If there’s anything you should know about joshreads dot com, the Comics Curmudgeon, it’s that. In a perfect world it would’ve been Blondie, but they long ago lost their joie de vivre, so kudos to Six Chix for stepping up to the plate.