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Apartment 3-G, 7/5/07

Oh, please, please, please let this be Lu Ann’s mother. Please. It only makes sense that Lu Ann’s wan, boring, unobtrusive personality grew up in the shadow of a larger-than-life southern belle, with her bright orange suit jackets and matching hair ribbons. It explains a lot, like why Lu Ann puts up with Margo’s constant stream of haughty abuse. Heck, if Lu Ann Senior and Margo start to bond, I will have officially died and gone to heaven.

Just because I like to make things even funnier in my mind, I’m imagining that Big Tipper is handing her cabbie a crisp dollar bill. “Now don’t spend it all in one place, sugar!” Of course, since the driver seems to be wearing an old-timey hat with a little button on it that presumably says “TAXI”, perhaps $1 does go pretty far back in his home decade.

Crankshaft, 7/5/07

Actually, from everything I’ve heard, the replacement of a brutal but essentially secular dictatorship with an elected coalition of religious-based political parties has resulted in Western dress becoming less common, not more, in Iraq. But if the Surge was abandoned and replaced with a strategy based on dressing Iraqis like the members of the Village People, the resulting political and diplomatic shitstorm would be 100 percent worth it, due to the extreme hilariousness that would result.

Mary Worth, 7/5/07

Dawn’s word balloon in panel two makes exactly zero sense. “I already wanted to study medicine — and now that I have made the entirely novel discovery that doctors are sometimes handsome, my choice becomes even more sensible!” Dawn, the more realistic attitude would be as follows: “Wait, I don’t have to go through the grueling process of earning a medical degree to net a doctor — there’s one standing right here in front of me! Now I can use the money Wilbur saved for tuition to help pay for the doves we’ll release at the end of our elaborate wedding ceremony!”

I know it’s impossible to tell from the Mary Worth art, which makes everyone looks like they’re in their 40s and it’s 1978, but anyone who’s gotten all the way through medical school and is now boasting at snoresville parties about being a doctor has got to be at minimum, what, 26? 27? FYI, kids: people in their late 20s who hit on college undergraduates = SKEEEEVY. I don’t want to see the funny pages lead a young generation astray on this.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 7/5/07

OH MY GOD FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLDS READ AND/OR SUBMIT ENTRIES TO TDIET EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS IS WRONG

I do have to say that Junior’s “Wha’-?” may be the most subtle expression of ironic bafflement in this feature’s history.

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For Better Or For Worse, 7/4/07

Hey, kids, didn’t your mothers ever teach you to either say something nice or not say anything at all? Well, I’m going to say something nice. I profoundly respect Liz an’ Anthony’s decision to flee in terror at the prospect of being forced into a conga line. That’s just good common sense.

On the note of their kissing and simul-thought-balooning, well, I … uh … BLAARRRGGGGGH.

There, it’s not saying anything if it’s vomiting.

Mary Worth, 7/4/07

Aw, yeah, it’s a CAT FIGHT FOR DR. DREW’S LOVE! Dawn Weston, who I believe (despite the evidence of her baby blue high-waisted slacks) is supposed to a college student, will have the advantages of youth, but I predict that those will not be able to stack up against Vera’s tightly-wound rage-filled nature. More entertaining will be the proxy battle for meddling supremacy between the two young people’s respective champions. Wilbur “Ask Wendy” Weston has, one must assume, always harbored a resentment against Mary, since his newspaper column yenta persona is clearly a pale imitation of the puppet master with whom he shares a condo complex. They’re both looking their best — Mary has finally managed to find a cravat the exact same color as her shirt, and Wilbur has gotten those five strands of hair to lay across his scalp just so — which will make it all the more satisfying when they tumble into the pool, hands locked around each other’s throats.

Gil Thorp, 7/4/07

“So, kids, the history lesson you learned this semester was: People who appear to be helpful, friendly authority figures are in most cases desperately needy frauds.”

Rex Morgan, M.D. 7/4/07

Oh, really, Rex, this isn’t right. Your wife saw him first. He’s just a simple teenage street hustler for New Orleans; he’s used to doing what he has to do, getting his money, and getting out. He isn’t emotionally prepared for the horrifying snake pit that is the Morgan marriage. Being caught in the Rex/June web of sexual spite is going to make him long for the comforting arms of FEMA.

God only knows what the good doctor is doing with that tennis racket. Presumably he found it next to the tackle box and thinks it’s part of the fishing equipment.

Family Circus, 7/4/07

The social worker had seen a lot of awful things in his years working for Child Protective Services, but there was something about this case that he just couldn’t get out of his mind. After a child’s agonizing death from salmonellosis, you’d expect the mother to be pretty rattled. But all this one kept saying — at the investigation, and later at the trial — was “He asked for it. It was what he wanted.” That was bad enough, but it was her little half smile that the social worker kept flashing back to while he was trying to fall asleep. Spookiest thing he ever saw, by God.

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Gil Thorp, 6/28/07

Milford’s boys of late spring aren’t content to let the softball team get all the glory when comes to insane and pointless acts of dogooderism. Today we see that the Milford baseball team is on a “peace tour” of the Middle East: they’ve injected themselves with an experimental growth serum and are now sixty feet tall, and are playing a series of baseball games along the West Bank separation barrier to cow the locals with their Godzilla-like might and force peaceful existence upon them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have worked, as Clambake has apparently been beheaded by a radical Islamic Jihad splinter cell, presumably because he wouldn’t SHUT UP with his filthy infidel Negro League lies.

Mary Worth, 6/28/07

You know what? I want to see more flirting in Mary Worth. Honest. And then the sex. Because any sex that results from this ham-handed danse l’amour will be so awkward and excruciating, it’ll be like pornographic performance art. And if there’s one thing I want to see in the funnies, it’s pornographic performance art.

Man, those Charterstone pool parties have some good grub — a bowl of French fries, a bowl of yams, and a bowl of off-color hard-boiled eggs. Mmm-mmm! I also love the huge, brutalist set of concrete stairs that lead nowhere. Presumably that empty platform at the top is the altar for human sacrifices. You’re it, Dr. Drew! Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon!

Judge Parker, 6/28/07

I moved away from the Bay Area five years ago now, but I still feel a lot of affection for it. I knew that the state was having trouble paying for the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, but I don’t see how painting the Golden Gate Bridge grey is going save any money.

Pluggers, 6/28/07

You’re a plugger if everything you own is garbage.