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I’ve been sitting on all kinds of random stuff for a while, and why not throw it all together in one big metapost of FUN?

OK, first thing’s first: Readers! Do you live in, or near, New York City, and/or will you be in New York City on the evening of June 22? If so, you will have your chance to see the world-famous Comics Curmudgeon (aka me) make an ass of himself his first foray into live comedy-style entertainment! I was invited by a faithful reader who’s also some sort of big-city entertainment impresario to participate in an event called ROFL! The deal is that I and seven other hilarious individuals will present and/or explicate to the audience hilarious material we find in the depths of the Internet. Our performances are pitted against one another until one emerges the ULTIMATE CHAMPION! Victors are determined by audience hooting, so obviously I need to pack the joint with my supporters. The event is at Joe’s Pub, which is at 425 Lafayette Street, between Astor Place and East 4th Street, in Manhattan. You can buy tickets online for $12 plus services charges, or just come directly to Joe’s Pub or the Public Theater and avoid said service charges. I will be pimping this again closer to the actual event, unless I hear that it’s sold out, in which case I will mock you suckers who didn’t buy your tickets in time, so you should probably get your tix now, and buy an extra one in case you fall in love sometime in the next three weeks.

Speaking of random sort-of-related-to-comics things I do, I recently managed to bring together the comics-loving and tech journalism sides of my soul by doing an audio interview with Ryan North, creator of the ever-awesome Dinosaur Comics. We talked about Project Wonderful, his new auction-based ad system, which appears on many comics-related Websites (this one among them). You can check out the interview at ITworld.com — either read the transcript or, if you’re interested in finding out just how pinched and nasal my voice is, listen to the audio.

Changing the subject entirely: Many of you are no doubt familiar with Alison Bechdel, the writer and artist behind the long-running and much-beloved underground Dykes To Watch Out For strip (note: contains occasional nudity), who found critical acclaim last year for her graphic novel memoir Fun Home. What you almost certainly don’t know, however, is that she’s a longtime Mark Trail aficionado. She sent me this parody from about 12 years ago featuring Mo, her DTWOF protagonist, as the Man Himself:

Good to see the basic formula hasn’t changed.

Speaking of comics that contain occasional nudity, I’ve been meaning for a while to direct your attention to The Fart Party, a Webcomic by Julia Wertz, just because I love it so.

Speaking of comics that we should all be glad do not contain occasional nudity … have you ever wanted to illustrate a bit of FBOFW foefic? Web comic superstar T Campbell, who writes for Penny and Aggie and a whole bunch of other stuff, is looking for an artist for a Foob-related thingie he’s got cooked up. If you’re interested, e-mail him.

I conclude with two random bits from readers. First, faithful reader Kevin illuminated the thought process of many in regards to Apartment 3-G:

And faithful reader Mooncattie brought his Margo!Boxcar!Saturn! mug to the heart of Foobness itself — Toronto city hall!

Oh, and, uh, in regards to self-clubbing Tyler: I’m going to have a winner picked out … real … soon now. Real soon. Hey, choosing the best one is h-a-a-ard, OK? I don’t like making decisions! WAAAAHHHH! [Further Mike Patterson-style whining.]

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Hey, everybody! Ready for this week’s top comments? Here’s #1:

“I like the fact that in Santa Royale, nothing says drunkenness like loosening one’s tie ever so slightly.” –Andrew Leal

As my wife says: “I know it’s easy to make fun of Mary Worth, but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying.” Also satisfying is collating the list of runners-up:

“A3G: Aaargh!! Sunday’s strip was no more than a synopsis of all the previous week’s crap, and Monday’s is a synopsis of Sunday’s. I mean, how much torture can one woman take? And by that, I mean myself, of course, not Lu Ann.” –Kronkina

“Dagwood is disturbed by the fact that he had a sex dream about Blondie. They’ve never done it — just look at their children, who are creepily identical to them. Clearly the Bumsteads reproduce via mitosis, possibly by releasing a cloud of spores.” –Steve S

“I’m having a real problem with Mark Trail. He says most of his stories are interesting, which means, by his own low standards, some are not. Much like ‘Can God make a rock so heavy that not even he could lift it?’ the concept of a story so uninteresting that even Mark Trail calls it boring is a paradox that experts in the field of logic, and college students high on pot, will debate for the foreseeable future.” –Missy

“Perhaps Hi is simply such a poor golfer that he won’t even be able to achieve par on his children’s mockery of a course, and with the entire venue in view of the window, his atrocious failure will be public fodder for jokes for years to come. But more likely he’s simply afraid his children found the bodies.” –minosbull

“I think that Mark Trail is actually the Elrod Repertory Cartoon Company, in which many different characters are played by the same toons. For example, George Spelvin played both Bo Jones in ‘Andy Kidnapped by Rednecks at the Ivory Billed Woodpecker Woods’ and is now playing the role of ‘Buzzard’ in ‘Oh, Those Crooked Airport Pols.’ The same toon plays Cherry, Kelly Welly, and now Sam Hill. Those years of study at the Old Vic certainly paid off.” –Islamorada Girl

“Mrs. Lockhorn is right, life is not like a box of chocolates; chocolate goes straight to your hips, and Leroy hasn’t paid a visit to that region in years.” –andreavis

“If Milford’s Poorliest-Drawn Kidz Klub is going to help cure cancer, I bet their plan involves standing around like 1970s Sears mannequins in a lab and freaking out the scientists. ‘Oh, hey, are you kids here on a field trip?’ [Eerie silence.] ‘I said, are you here on a field trip? Do you want to watch me titrate this sample?’ [Eerie silence.] ‘Oh. Oh, no.'” –Yitzchok

“When Mike says ‘I’ll get it gassed up and ready,’ he’s actually referring to the Pattersons’ secret basement death chamber. The poor realtor will regret the day he sold them that tree-magnet of a house.” –Steve S

[On Funky Winkerbean]: “Doomlarity will ensue.” –Jym

“Don’t you just love the look on Heather’s face? Her internal thermostat has run up from ‘Nanny’ to ‘Au Pair’ to ‘Governess’ to ‘Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS.'” –willethompson

“I’m off till Tuesday, secure in the knowledge that, when I return … county commissioners will still be behaving like typical liberal politicians who think any problem can be solved simply by throwing more birds at it.” –gh

“For someone’s who’s never had to drink from a glass without his butler’s assistance, Von’s a quick study: ‘Perhaps if I pour it on my forehead? Hmm, that didn’t work. No no, let me be, Jeeves, I want to puzzle this out for myself. Ah, what about into my ear? Unsatisfactory. It can’t be too difficult, surely. Poor people seem to manage it. Think, Von, think!'” –Old Bean

“I wonder if this was sent in by a dentist or a denture wearer. If it was sent in by a dentist, I find it very endearing that, when confronted by an obvious lie about broken dentures, the dentist’s vision of the awful truth is a brushing accident, and not the insane meth-induced BDSM/tooth breaking fetish nightmare that I would naturally lean towards. ‘Spongecake” indeed.” –evie oh oh

“Does the government keep a list of people aroused by reading Slylock Fox? Just looking at the strip makes me feel bad inside. It’s like getting off on the Junior Jumble.” –Flealick

And it’s satisfying to give mad props to our advertisers as well:

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To find out more about advertising on this site, click here.

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“Dog Haiku: The cat is not all/ Bad; she fills the litter box/ With Tootsie Rolls.” –AAckTTpth

(Update: Faithful reader AAckTTpth writes me to note that this haiku is not in fact his original creation, but was discovered here. Duly noted, but it still made me laugh a lot, so I shall not attempt to understand the past in order to change it, Mary Worth-style. For more information on why 5-7-5 isn’t exactly the be-all and end-all of haiku, see here.)

The other comments chosen weren’t haiku, but were almost as good.

“The dynamics of a Daddy Keane/Mama Hagar mating, meanwhile, would probably be about as disturbing as Sammy Hagar as the lead singer of Keane.” –Plinko Commie

“Near as I can tell by squinting, Blondie’s ‘favorite meal’ consists of an egg and a baked potato. I’m guessing she was forcibly defaulted to that as her favorite because it’s her only meal, being the only two food items in the house that don’t get used for sandwiches.” –Rhekarid

“Anyone who thinks Jack Elrod is just mailing it in these days should take a second and ponder how difficult it would be to come up with a sentence that shows less understanding of current American politics than ‘If we can get the people all fired up about the birds, they will vote to build a new airport!'” –gump worsley

“GT: Look how disappointed the girl on the right is that her coach didn’t tell her that she got a mammogram. I don’t know what she’s upset about. If one of my basketball coaches told me they had gotten a mammogram with empty, soulless Gil Thorp eyes, I would have sued for sexual harassment.” –kat

“Judge Parker (the comic strip) has a villainous son in it, who is currently sitting down talkin’ smack about his allegedly crazy mom and sharing mullet-maintenance tips with Abbey. (‘I like to use bear grease to style mine, it gives it that stringy quality that just screams “roadie for Lynyrd Skynyrd.” Plus, the NASCAR babes frickin’ love it.’ ‘That’s cool. I usually just dump a bunch of hair dye on mine and blow dry it for like an hour.’)” –Trilobite

“It seems to me that faking a rockslide would be easy compared to faking a bird problem at the airport. What are the hairy-faced villains going to do, sprinkle shelled peanuts and mealworms all over the landing strip? Reflood the drained wetland? Unclean the landfill? And the worst part is that we’re going to find out.” –Poteet

“Sally Forth: I can’t believe Ted stole a computer from his office. How in the world did he lift it with those tiny little hands?” –AppleGirl

“TDIET: My prayers and thoughts go out to J. Posener’s son, Winthrop, who was brutally beaten in school today after saying, ‘Oh, WHAT he said, tsk-tsk!'” –Darkefang

“I’m liking the quiet cruelty over the last week, like Neddy’s last panel silent reaction shot. ‘No, Rachel can’t just go and live out the rest of her days peacefully with her wrinkly lover on some rich person’s island paradise! She’s meant to die horribly so I can inherit all her stuff! Everybody’s always so mean to me!'” –lesles

“So, is the bearded guy an evil villain or just trying to help Luann learn a lesson? His actions say ‘evil’ but his words say ‘tedious didactic plot device.'” –Prehumous

“Getting people fired up over non-existent problems is 75% of politics. If you don’t know that by now, generic county commissioner, then maybe you don’t deserve to be sharing a crappy office in the basement of County Hall.” –King Folderol

“Spider-man can’t plug up Kordork’s gun with his web shooter because he has a woman next to him? This has to be the lamest thing we’ve ever seen out of Spidey…except maybe when a brick knocked him out. Come to think of it, when he went to the doctor’s office with his costume on underneath his clothes that was really lame too. And when he let a fat chauffeur sneak up on him and knock him out, God that was lame. Screw it, this is perfectly in character.” –reader-who-posts

“Try not to worry overmuch about Vera. Judging from her flashback, clearly homeless = drinking coffee in the same diner as a black person. Hey, just this morning I was homeless too!” –SecretMargo

A couple of other funny thingies:

• Anyone who, like me, enjoys the overwrought NEXT! boxes in the Phantom and Spider-Man, should check out these hilarious reworkings by faithful reader Chaz Larson. (Just click on the file names to see the ‘toons.)
• Should the dim-bulb county commissioners in Mark Trail take their bird-and-airport show over to Fulton County?

And finally, we must of course give thanks to our advertisers, from whom all blessings flow.

• Support indie artists at Shana Logic: Stylish gifts for you and the ones you love!
• Nathaniel Bright is back: The final episode of Cairo is now on-line. Explosions, heart-break, mummies, and a tommy-gun. What else could you ask for?

To find out more about advertising on this site, click here. You may not be aware of it, but you can also buy ad space at the top of the page, just under the search box, where the Google ad sits now; e-mail me for rates.