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Apartment 3-G, 1/22/08

I swear I’m not obsessed with the sex life of the Apartment 3-G girls. If anything, I’m obsessed with how any feature that’s about three single young women in New York City can be marked by such a stunning lack of sex, which, I’ll try gamely to argue, isn’t quite the same thing. Anyhoo, I’m always open for any hint that I might be wrong, and we’re getting some hints today. Note that Lu Ann isn’t responding to Tommie coming home in the morning with “OH MY GOD TOMMIE WHERE WERE YOU WERE YOU KIDNAPPED??” but “Huh, you’re not wearing the same clothes you left the house in last night, plus I don’t see any hickeys.” So, while Tommie didn’t get lucky last night (obviously, ’cause she’s Tommie), the idea isn’t completely out of the question for even goody-goody Lu Ann.

It’s also possible that goody-goody Lu Ann thinks that Tommie and Gary engaged in some “Naughty Nurse”-style role play after their date, and is goody-goody enough that even this extremely mild kink would drive her to two question marks’ worth of shock.

I can’t really remember — is Dr. Kelly another bland lookalike vying half-heartedly for Tommie’s affection? It’s nice to be wanted and all, but I have to imagine that forcing a lady to leave in the middle of a date just so she can sew together New Years Eve drunks with you rates pretty high on the old Actionable-Sexual-Harrasment-O-Meter.

Mary Worth, 1/22/08

Panel two proves that the absence of ESP is in fact an evolutionary advantage: if your potential partners could hear what you were thinking in the moments leading up to sex, nobody would ever reproduce. I’m not sure if Drew is supposed to be adjusting his nonexistent bow tie or if he’s just relishing the thought so intently that he’s unbuttoning his shirt right there in the local cafe.

Marmaduke, 1/22/08

A roving pack of semi-feral dogs has eaten fourteen elderly residents of the neighborhood so far, luring them to deserted parks with promises of companionship and pizza. Authorities urge citizens to stay indoors until the National Guard can defeat the savage canines.

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Hey kids! Comments of the week coming up, but two items of interest first:

• Over at This Week In Milford, the Internet’s premier Gil Thorp-focused blog, the results are in for the Best Panels of 2007! And now voting is open for the Worst Panels of 2007. What distinguishes a “good” Gil Thorp panel from a “bad” one is a debate best left to professional art critics and philosphers, but you should nevertheless make your voice heard.
• Though the earlier tech difficulties seemed to have cleared up for most, I’m still getting scattered reports (well, OK, one report, but such a report usually presages more out there) of problems posting. Feel free the e-mail me if you’re one of the unlucky few and I’ll try to figure out what’s up.

And now, without further ado, this week’s COMMENT OF THE WEEK! It just slipped in under the wire:

“Only two cookies? Girl, if I could hold a knife I’d cut you.” –Johan

And the ever-funny runners up!

“Man, what a fishing trip. I bet Niki’s mom’s skanky meth-cooking boyfriend is starting to look pretty good in retrospect. And once Rex blows up the still, in an uncanny echo of the meth lab explosion that nearly killed his mother, post-traumatic stress disorder and a phobia for (or rather a rational, well-founded fear of) grown-up men is going to be Niki’s inescapable destiny, if he survives at all.” –mcmc

“But what I really want to know is how you can play basketball when your entire school is built on a 25-degree slant. Is this what’s known as a ‘home court advantage?'” –Electro

“[Gil Thorp] has amply represented neurotics and sociopaths. Andrew is a venture into psycopathy. Marty Moon will die.” –prospero

“Hey there John, buddy, as a former bachelor married to a busy woman I want to introduce you to a startling new Culinary Development. It’s called ‘chips and dip’. You can buy these in the store, and they are easy to serve. Open the bag. Open the jar. If you are feeling ambitious, pour one or both of them into a bowl. Problem solved, my friend. Oh, and you can also buy wine or soft drinks at a store. You can even purchase ice, my friend. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about some specialty store in New York. There are a whole bunch of conveniently located stores that populate most neighborhoods. We’ll call them ‘convenience stores.’ Just pop into one of them and pick up these items. It should only take five or ten minutes. Your guests will thank you!” –Poewar

“This ‘Jungle Patrol’ plot promises to be as chock full of twists and turns as Peter Parker shopping at an Old Navy for seven months while his Spidey sense goes haywire because he forgot to leave his costume at home and can’t try on cargo pants.” –Benicillin

“In the Winkerverse, perhaps ‘band directors’ widows’ is not a euphemism. I wouldn’t be surprised if band directors drop like flies there, succumbing to cancer, freak accidents, and diabetes, the latter of which would explain the beer and M&Ms … it’s an altar.” –Frinkenstein

“I had the same thoughts re: public transportation when I read the strip this morning, but then I remembered: have you ever tried to deal with the crowds in a busy city 16 days after midnight on New Years Eve? Impossible.” –LogopolisMike

“To me, the fact that Maureen caught fire — and that the ‘fire’ is covered up by a narration box — means only one thing: She really caught fire. She’s going to go to the ER with her hands burned beyond repair and that alien looking girl with chopsticks in her hair is going to irreparably injure her hands in a gesture of solidarity.” –pleinedepoisson

“Apparently Dr. Drew speaks to himself in cliches and adolescent angst, always an attractive quality in a man.” –Burning Prairie

“I like the narration box in the first panel of Gil Thorp, and I hope other strips start adopting the formula ‘[name of character] catches fire, and [resulting consequence]’ for their own narration boxes. ‘Tommie Thompson catches fire, and no one notices for several days.’ ‘Mary Worth catches fire, and thousands emerge from their decades-long enslavement, blinking and hesitant, as if waking from a dream.’ ‘Mike Patterson catches fire, and jubilant throngs flood the streets.’ Wouldn’t that be neat?” –OtherOpus

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Blondie, 1/21/08

I don’t want to come across as some kind of elitist food snob (and anyone who’s ever seen me cook and/or eat is no doubt enjoying a hearty laugh that I would ever have to preface anything I write with that sentence). But I have to say that Dagwood’s armful of foodstuffs doesn’t strike me as all that unhealthy. It’s hard to see at this resolution, but most of it appears to be the kind of fresh ingredients (including actual vegetables) of the sort that you’re really supposed to be eating, and not the boxed and/or frozen heavily processed and low-grade-corn-based stuff that most of us (myself included) actually eat. Who would have guessed that Dagwood’s love of food ran to quality, not just quantity?

Dagwood’s rejection of the modern industrial food chain might be a sign of a broader Luddism that has extended to more troubling dimensions, though. For instance, his insistence on carrying his bounty rather than putting it in a more convenient cart points to his rejection of that devil’s tool, the so-called “wheel.” Unrelated but also unsettling is the coloring error that rendered the word balloons in this strip an icy blue. As if today’s weather didn’t leave me cold enough!

Apartment 3-G, 1/21/08

Real-life chances that, in New York, a city of 8 million or so souls, a lonely, horny Margo would show up at the same bar where a lonely, horny Alan has decided to fall off the wagon with gusto, and the two would end up drunkenly making out: practically zero. Chances in Apartment 3-G’s New York, population approximately 50: very high, especially when you consider that Alan and Eric look essentially identical. If Alan’s hair settles into whatever color Eric’s was when Margo last saw him, all bets are off.

For Better Or For Worse, 1/21/08

As several faithful readers wrote me to point out, Grandpa Jim’s hand gesture in panel three is essentially the British version of giving someone the finger. While I’m not sure if the Brits left their rude hand signs in the Canadian psyche as a legacy of their Empire, it’s true that Grandpa spent most of WWII fixing up planes in the UK — plenty of time to learn how to flip off folks like a local. Once again, this poor man, trapped both in the half-responsive shell of his body and in the floundering final days of this comic strip, expresses what we’re all really feeling.

Mary Worth, 1/21/08

Dr. Drew manages to neatly combine surprise and smugness into one facial expression in panel two. “Ah, to be young and Drew Corey!” he seems to be thinking. “To be so gosh-darn irresistible that the ladies can’t even wait for you to sit down together before their need for your sweet young body becomes irresistible!” His narcissistic glow should last another five or ten seconds, until Vera starts eating his face.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 1/21/08

If my record-keeping is right, “Bob Bennett” is none other than faithful reader benro, and truly by now we should have come to expect that any TDIET that features newfangled advances like cell phones or e-mail would be from a Comics Curmudgeon reader. Cell phone glued to his ear or no, Hossbutt may have some problems hearing his wife when he calls her, considering that he and the nameless URGEd individual are apparently riding in a tiny, roofless go-cart in the middle of a multilane highway.

Pluggers, 1/21/08

You’re a plugger if your intimate life becomes a terrifying Oedipal nightmare by the time you hit 45.