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Your COTW is coming momentarily, but I have several items to share with you first — and a couple of them are about ME! First: do many of you use the Twitter? After much badgering, I, too have begun to use the Twitter! I am jfruh in those parts, and you may now follow me there for fun times! I will let you know when this blog updates, will clue you in on writing of mine that appears elsewhere, and will give you 140-character glimpses into my inner life.
But what if you wanted to find out about all that stuff in increments longer than 140 characters? Well, my friends, then you’d have to start reading my blog, the Josh Fruhlinger Experience. I’ve been thinking for a while about starting a blog of my very own — because while I am a professional blogger, I do try to keep the Comics Curmudgeon focused more or less on comics-related curmudgeonry. The Josh Fruhlinger Experience will serve as the place where I do all the things that most people do with their blogs — enthuse about local and national entertainment, blather half-informed about politics, post pictures of my cat, etc. I’ll also have news about other projects and events that I’m involved in; half the point of doing this new blog is to give me an incentive to come up with exciting events and projects to blog about. I can’t promise it’ll be updated every day, so you’ll want to subscribe to the RSS feed, obviously. And, uh, I’ll probably be linking to the more interesting bits on Twitter. And I’ll probably still post random non-comics-related stuff here too, although I might be more likely to just give you pointers to the other blog.
Also! There are things you should know about that are not wholly me-related! First of all, I have been meaning to alert you to the fact that there is now a My Cage Cafepress store, since I know many of you enjoy this comic (whose writer Ed Power is an occasional commentor here).
And! Faithful reader Highway pointed me to the hilarious Depression Funnies, from Ruben Bolling. Learn how Mark Trail will be getting through the hard economic times!
In addition! The LA Times insists on being awesome by continuing to post classic comics pages from years past. They just put up one from 1959, which contained this amazing Judge Parker, where we learn that college has transformed future judge Randy into a colossal tool:
And, finally: you might recall that a throwaway joke I made about Hi and Lois became a fantastic movie treatment, They Buried Beethoven Alive!, put together by faithful readers Captain Thunder and Comrade Denny in the comments. Faithful reader John Wood collected their work in one easy-to-read Google Docs document, making him a true American hero.
And now, without further ado … your COMMENT OF THE WEEK!
“Oddly enough, I sympathize with Crankshaft’s daughter. I also find stoned people annoying.” –J
And your runners-up! Very funny!
“I can’t think of anything as soul crushing as being nominated for the Westview High School Hall of Fame. I wonder, does the induction ceremony end with everyone swallowing a cyanide capsule?” –JHPants
“I think the Crankshaft mom is horrified that her daughter isn’t showing ‘anything’; hence, her last dreams of showing off her daughter’s prime young body to the highest social class she’ll ever socialize with (high school grads) will be shot, leaving her destined to a more typical Crankshaftian lifestyle.” –pccmdoc
“You should judge Mary Worth by her having chosen to dress like an undertaker for her volunteer job at the hospital.” –gnome de blog
“I have two theories about the blue-sheeted lump in the Room Beyond. It could be Ted, himself, once a con artist, now a patient at Mountview Hospital where he lingers near death after he is injured in a prison yard shanking at the Santa Royale Center for Attitude Adjustment. In this case, the plot will involve Adrian’s shock at recognizing her new patient and her sudden realization that she loves Ted still, in spite of all his faults. On the other hand, it could be that the Room Beyond is really the cafeteria and the blue lump is just an industrial quantity of the type of amorphous foodstuffs we’re so used to seeing in Mary Worth.” –Charterstoned
“The Morgans spend their time alone in the room with their legs crossed. Geez, no wonder these two always act frustrated. They don’t even know where or how to begin.” –True Fable
“Graduation Day in Funky Winkerbean would find the boys wearing hospital gowns and the girls wearing burial shrouds.” –Perky Bird
“In a pitiful display of Stockholm Syndrome, Margo’s assistant has tragically tried to duplicate her oppressor/employer’s appearance but has failed miserably and instead looks like the abandoned offspring of Moe Howard and Marcie from Peanuts.” –Joe Blevins
“Dinner and a movie for under 20 bucks? Where did Beetle and Miss Buxley go on their date? 1973?” –Patrick
“We’ll see who’s about to die … when I disturb the feng shui of this Hammacher Schlemmer Desktop Executive Zen Garden by raking all the patterns out of the sand!” –Holy Prepuce
“I dunno, I think Detective Sherbertblazer would be a good match for Adrian. The fact that he asked her out while conducting an investigation into her recently-arrested fiance without considering the emotional or professional implications indicates that his complete lack of common sense is equal to her own.” –TheDiva
“I’m just creeped out by Peter greeting Aunt May with ‘Hi pretty lady.’ I like to think she responds with the grammatically awkward and unnatural ‘Did you sleep here also last night?’ because it makes her a little uncomfortable as well, and not because she thinks that’s an acceptable way to speak English.” –Canaduck
“If Adrian chose that haircut, Adrian cannot be allowed to choose a life mate.” –Cranky
“The point is, when you’re a dead-eyed ancillary character in Mary Worth with hair like an ink helmet clinging mercilessly to your skull, you’re probably going to need a way to find exceptionally desperate guys if you’re ever going to get any action at all. So yeah, why not let your dad scare off all the normal, sane men before you waste your time on them?” –Trilobite
“I have spent some time in hospitals and I have to say that if I had been wheeled back to my room after some horrendous procedure to discover Mary Worth and some strange — ‘strange’ meaning ‘batshit nuts’ — doctor carrying on a prayer revival next to my bed, I wouldn’t have looked nearly as chipper as that poor sap in the wheelchair.” –Farley’s Revenge
“I’d hate to miss the fun … but since this is Judge Parker, I guess there’s not a whole lot of danger of that.” –Pozzo
“Don’t forget, Ces: when Sal is finally committed, Ted will be free to pursue Aria. Or become an eccentric shut-in who collects original Go-bots, including the rare South American releases. Thankfully, from what we know about Aria, these two fates are not mutually exclusive.” –Master Softheart
“This is the second or third day that Judge Parker has not featured attractive, scantily clad women, and without them, the strip has lost all of its appeal. It’s just a bunch of upper-class jerks (with porn star names) talking about their next lucrative contract, or their next pointless purchase; it’s essentially the illustrated version of The Wall Street Journal. Which means that, at its finest (with scantily clad women), Judge Parker is really just The Wall Street Journal Swimsuit Edition.” –Alan’s Addiction
“Dr. Jeff sure is suspicious of the detective who, after all, was kind enough to save his daughter from marrying a grifter. Could it be he’s worried that the good detective will deduce that Dr. Corey’s been prescribing himself ever-increasing amounts chlorpromazine and other powerful psychotropic drugs to deal with the self-loathing and despair he feels for dating Mary Worth? It’s not much of a deduction, though. More of a foregone conclusion.” –Comrade Denny
“Assuming the giant midpanel white space in Blondie is deliberate and not an insult to panel composition, the joke is obviously that in the first two panels Dagwood was trying and failing to smash through the walls à la Kool-Aid Man.” –Dragon of Life
“Also, I think Gabriella is Generic, not Hispanic. So ‘uno momento’, and for that matter, ‘uno memento’, are perfectly grammatical.” –Uncle Lumpy
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