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We must begin our review of Blog Year Eight with a discussion of that time one of Rex’s charming drunk old patients died and left Rex all his money. There was a mysterious screenplay-novel hybrid involved, as well as a sexy alcoholic daughter, and it climaxed, naturally, with an ugly scene at a funeral. Honestly, can’t we have one funeral in this town that doesn’t end in drunken violence?

Apparently not! Don’t worry, everything worked out fine, by which I mean that Rex cashed a check.

Judge Parker featured a long, weird storyline in which Sam Driver spent thirty seconds negotiating with Hollywood big-shot Avery Blackstone to get an insanely generous movie deal for Judge Parker Senior’s terrible, unreadable book. This was followed by weeks and weeks of an ill-fated fishing trip, during which they stumbled on a massive marijuana grow operation, whose proprietor eventually captured Avery. This sequence was most notable for intense narrative whiplash: At one point Avery was about to be dismembered by a chainsaw-wielding maniac:

But mere moments later Avery and said maniac were sipping fine scotch and discussing art.

In the end, everything worked out fine, by which I mean that Sam cashed a check.

Apartment 3-G featured the return of beloved ancillary characters Scott Gaines (erstwhile billionaire janitor/Lu Ann fiancé) and his high-powered wife Nina, whose wedding Margo planned. They had decided to have a baby despite Nina’s ambivalence, and Tommie, who had accidentally become a midwife, was in charge! There were some dumb misunderstandings that arose because Margo maybe kissed Scott a little, but eventually they made up and gave birth on their own terms, which is to say in their own apartment, with an inexperienced midwife overseeing a difficult birth. Why didn’t they just call the paramedics to take Nina to the hospital, you might ask, but that would be a pretty stupid question.

But for sheer insanity, it was hard to top Gil Thorp basketball season plot. It all started with this sexy scene:

Yes, Milford had a new tattoo parlor, run by Ransom Hale, who in addition to being very handsome was extremely good at business.

Sounds like a winning marketing strat, Ransom! Milford’s dopey basketball players couldn’t get the Mudlarks’ logo tattooed on themselves fast enough, despite the fact that Coach Kaz has a tattoo and Coach Kaz is in all ways aesthetically embarrassing. Milford Ink also provided nose-piercing services and hot Kiwi accents and bootleg DVDs, which gave Ransom another opportunity to be extremely good at business.

No, wait, that one actually worked:

Anyway, eventually Gil got miffed at all the tattoos adorning his players, did some half-assed psychoanalysis, then used the excuse that one of the underage Mudlarks forged his dad’s signature to get permission to get a tattoo to bust up this little operation. He discovered that Ransom Hale the New Zealander was really Rupert Hall from Dayton, Ohio, but the most shocking revelation was yet to come: those bootleg DVDs? They weren’t bootleg at all. Behold just how amazingly good at business Rupert Hall is:

Man, is that a 100% guaranteed massively lucrative money-making scheme or what? Anyway, Gil successfully shamed this wholly legal small business into shutting down, and its downtown storefront remains empty and a burden on the city’s tax base to this day, the end. Tomorrow, in Blog Year Nine: senility in the squared circle, stripper hotel, and, of course, life’s brutality.

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Apartment 3-G, 7/9/14

For the past five days, Tommie has been letting Tina believe that Lily is a human baby, rather than a fawn who Tommie started raising after killing her mother with her car. That’s all that’s been happening, and it’s going to keep happening, forever. It’s been … kind of amazing? I think time is running backwards now.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/9/14

OH BOY, IT’S THE FUNKY WINKERBEAN COMICS NERDS GO TO COMIC-CON PLOT YOU’VE BEEN ASKING FOR!!! You … you have been asking for it, right? No? Oh well, too bad! Anyway, I’m actually genuinely surprised to learn that any actual comics business happens at Comic-Con anymore, as I assumed it had long ago turned into a marketing channel for major media conglomerates’ more explosion-heavy properties. Good luck finding that last Starbucks Jones issue while waiting in line three hours to see a teaser trailer for whatever the big Marvel Cinematic Universe release is going to be in 2017, Holly!

Hi and Lois, 7/9/14

Sunbeam’s little brother is … a laser beam? A laser beam blasting into Trixie’s room from the depths of space? Sure, I guess!

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2010-11 was another great year for my holy trinity of Mark Trail, Apartment 3-G, and Mary Worth. Just in time for the midterm elections, Mark Trail wove a tale of political intrigue! Seems a mysterious fenced compound popped up on the edge of Mark’s land. Turns out it was the home of a little girl who adopted a deer (note that while I expect Apartment 3-G to conform to some kind of reality, I didn’t even blink at this in Mark Trail), whose stepfather Frank planned to stage caged hunts for bigwigs as some sort of plan to become governor. Obviously the little girl objected, as did (in particularly bad-ass fashion) Mark, ruining everybody’s fun. Frank sure was mad! Deer-kicking mad.

Mark punched him, obviously, and later Frank tried to kill Mark with his car but at the last minute a deer knocked his car off a cliff (haha, I know) and Mark saved him, for further humiliation purposes.

Mary Worth, meanwhile, forwarded the story of Dr. Jeff’s drippy daughter Dr. Adrian, who finally found the love of a good man in handsome cop Scott. Adrian got wedding-planning help from her “outspoken” pal Jill, who didn’t care for Scott, a feeling that was mutual. Later, at the rehearsal dinner, Jill got bombed, literally threw herself at Dr. Jeff, then denounced the concept of marriage in increasingly desperate terms.

Turns out Jill had ideological objections to a traditionally patriarchal institution was just a bitter old maid who had been left at the altar, and Mary literally told her to change the past by altering her memory in either the best or worst session of cognitive-behavioral therapy I’ve ever seen. Jill was too ashamed to come to Adrian’s wedding, of course, but she did spend a wildly overextravagant gift!

But as fantastic as those two plots were (and they were!) in Blog Year Seven my heart was won by Apartment 3-G, which included an adventure for all three of its main characters … as they dressed … in the dark.

Yes, Tommie applied to be on a TV makeover show, and somehow got Margo and Lu Ann roped in as well. Sinister makeover host “Mama Kat” insulted all three gals in turn and then openly announced her intention to annihilate their wills.

Lu Ann had her very sense of self (i.e., her hair) threatened, while Margo just resolved to use the opportunity to get as much free stuff as possible. Later, the girls met their stylist, “Mister Mojo,” who was written as some kind of sassy gay stereotype, though that was undermined by the art, which, as I put it at the time, answered the question “What if Mr. Clean were a supervillain who was also a resurrected undead king from ancient Sumer?”

After enduring some psychological gameswomanship, the girls’ makeovers were revealed. Margo looked like herself, with longer hair and exposed shoulders.

Lu Ann was indeed de-blonded, though the characters and the syndicate colorists couldn’t agree on the final results.

And Tommie … well, I guess they combed her hair properly, for once? That was literally it. Her new outfit was also stupid.

The absolute best part, though, was how all three girls immediately went back to their previous boring looks the instant the makeover show ended. For Lu Ann, this meant an introduction to new innovations in the haircare industry, which she was very enthusiastic about.

Coming up next in Blog Year Eight: Funeral fights! Home births! And the dumbest money-making scheme of all time!