Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 7/21/07

Love, Apartment 3-G-style: You’ve been waiting for months to make a move on your pretty, bland underling, so what better opportunity than her roommate’s possible brain damage? Just hand her the business card with your private number on it (the one that says “stud” instead of “brain doctor”), lean in close so she can get a good look at your bland, sandy good looks and your leer, and order her to call you by your first name. She may be leaning away from you at the exact angle that you’re leaning in, but you know she wants you.

Mary Worth, 7/21/07

Love, Mary Worth-style: You’ve never actually seen the Big Sleep, of course, but you’ve heard that in it 21-year-old Lauren Bacall seduced 47-year-old Humphrey Bogart in a restaurant with sexy horse talk, so try to babble artlessly about the noble equines in as blunt a matter as possible so that he knows you’re talking about screwing. Be sure to use inappropriate quotation marks (if we’re really talking about horses, doesn’t she long to actually, literally, get back into the saddle again?) that nobody can see, anyway. If that doesn’t work, hint darkly at your troubled past and push your hands together and pray for pity sex — since that’s the only kind of sex you feel that you deserve, what with the self-loathing.

Gil Thorp, 7/21/07

Love, Gil Thorp-style: Teach a one-legged guy how to box. I know, it’s not romantic, but its nothing short of a gesture of true love to the readers. It’s like Gil and Coach Kaz are in some kind of competition to see who can have the most bizarre summer. Hopefully it will all end in mid-August in some kind of transcendent hallucinatory explosion of joy at Thorpstock, with braids and prostheses and punching, lots of punching.

Pluggers, 7/21/07

Everyone, with the possible exception of Marie Antoinette, is a plugger.

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 7/17/07

And Kaz answered and said unto her, “Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.” Gail said unto him, “Verily I say unto thee, That this night, after the drunken lout crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Or at least once, before thou art humiliated by thy girlfriend.”

(Gail’s capacity for forgiveness is infinite, of course, but just to stay on her safe side, you might want to buy some merch.)

Hi and Lois, 7/17/07

Hi and Lois has stolen Funky Winkerbean’s Cancer Test Results Mixup storyline and applied it to Hi’s car. It’s marginally funnier here.

Pluggers, 7/17/07

Pluggers don’t need some fancy big-city liberal doctors or nutritionists or people who might savor even a fleeting moment of appreciation for the food that crosses their palate to change their notions about things that they already “know.”

Sorry for the abbreviated post today, everybody, but it’s my 33rd birthday and my wife’s made my favorite birthday meal, which is (no kidding) tuna casserole. I shall be enjoying both its quantity and quality for the remainder of the evening. Till tomorrow!

Post Content

Hi and Lois, 7/13/07

The eldest Flagston child apparently hasn’t noticed that the background to the strip, which in Hi and Lois is usually rendered with a certain amount of detail, as if someone feels obligated to at least pretend to care, is completely absent today; Chip and his dad (and his dad’s disgustingly ancient chair and side table) are floating at random in a nightmarish vacuum of gleaming white nothingness. This indicates that their already fictional universe is becoming less and less detailed, leaving them with only a few concrete items and concepts to latch onto, one of which is apparently Chip’s job. So, the poor boy won’t just be flipping burgers for the rest of his life; in this existentialist blankness, he’ll be flipping burgers for the rest of eternity.

Beetle Bailey, 7/13/07

Not that I have a long history of drinking binges or anything, but in my experience they result in giddiness, a heightened and unjustified sense of competence and/or attractiveness (one’s own and others’), lapses in judgement, and loss of motor control and digestive stability. They do not, however, generate pleasant hallucinations. Still, it’s kind of heartrending and pathetic to see what General Halftrack’s perfect world is like. Apparently it involves sexy half-naked angels, birds, a gnome tending a pot of gold, and some kind of golf club rainbow (and I hope I don’t offend anyone here, but if your transcendent fantasies involve equipment that you can buy at Dick’s Sporting Goods, I pity the narrowness of your imagination).

Incidentally, does anyone want to explain what the deal is with Beetle Bailey and gnomes? In a way that won’t scar me for life?

Crankshaft, 7/13/07

I come before you today not to criticize Crankshaft’s hateful misanthropy, nor to comment on his awful punning, nor even to remark on the fucking smirks to which his entire family is prone. I seek only to express concern at their awful pallor. Seriously, they look like death warmed over. Was this particular shade of off-flesh intended for Funky Winkerbean and accidentally misrouted? Or is Crankshaft going to one-up zombie strips written by the sons and nephews of the original creators and become a strip that’s literally about zombies?

Sally Forth, 7/13/07

This actually made me laugh aloud this morning. Ted says it hurt, but look at his eyes. You can tell that he stopped feeling pain — or feeling anything at all, really — about three weeks ago.

Hey! Remember how a little band called the Quarrymen eventually changed their name to the Beatles? Well, New Delhi Monkey Gang (that would be Hil and Faye) are looking for a similar shift in fortunes to go with a new moniker. Head over to Ces’s blog to help him pick a new name. I’m pushing heavily for “Teenage Girl President.” I’m also pushing for Faye to get a new guitar that isn’t so hideously green.

Pluggers, 7/13/07

Pluggers are awful damn cheerful, considering how close they are to all that manure.