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Gil Thorp, 11/14/07

Oh, Gil, Gil, Gil. I know that your desperate need to salvage some shred of dignity out of this season has lead to radical measures, like actually coaching, but surely you know that the reason your team is in this mess in the first place is because they’re not only athletically untalented, but incredibly dim. Building an offense around trickery and cleverness is doomed to failure in too many ways to even begin to describe. You’ll be lucky if the team hasn’t accidentally set itself on fire by the end of the first quarter. Gil’s fear that any other team might be trying to find out about the Mudlarks’ top secret plans is hilariously misplaced as indicated by the sadly deserted hall outside of LOCKER LOCKER, completely devoid of spies from rival high schools or snoopy reporters looking for a scoop.

There are so many more interesting phrases that could have followed “those years” in panel two. “Picking pockets,” for one. Or maybe “working as a magician at children’s parties.”

Mark Trail, 11/14/07

Today’s Mark Trail is yet another example of a recurring phenomenon in which I think the chatter of commentors has prepared me for the action in a strip, only to still be blown away when confronted with the reality. As so many of you noted, Johnny clearly isn’t punching Malone; he’s rubbing his fist in the cigar-smoking cad’s face, forcing his nemesis to smell whatever foul-smelling substance he’s smeared across his knuckles (don’t think about what that might be don’t think about what that might be).

The depiction of that saucy, arrogant Malone in panels one and two is actually quite charming. He looks like he just strode off of some Merchant Marine freighter, circa 1943, and if the Nazis tried their best to send him to the bottom of the Atlantic and failed, he’s not going to let some pissy little French Canadian discombobulate him with his stinky hand.

Mary Worth, 11/14/07

WAIT WHAT MARY DIDN’T CHECK THE CONDO BYLAWS BEFORE BRINGING HOME A DOG? HAS SHE GONE COMPLETELY INSANE? The condo bylaws are like sacred scriptures to Mary (as indicated by the fact that she keeps them in the upper drawer of her dresser, as if they were a Gideon’s Bible) and now she’s throwing ALL THAT AWAY because of some yapping pooping little mutt? Oh, Mary, the other condo-dwellers will be right to chase you out of Charterstone with torches and pitchforks — not because you’ve violated the condo codes, but because you’re obviously some kind of reverse pod person impostor who actually has normal human emotions.

B.C., 11/14/07

Today’s B.C. took on a current event in a weird, loopy, mushy way that didn’t make much sense and also wasn’t funny. Somewhere, Johnny Hart must be so proud.

Pluggers, 11/14/07

Pluggers hate foreign food almost as much as they hate actual foreigners.

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Well, here it is, the moment at least some of you have been waiting for: Mark Trail Theater on YouTube. I hope it doesn’t disappoint! We weren’t able to pull off the production values of those now-famous Mary Worth videos, so we went for campy. It’s going to be dark at first; stay with it.

(If you have a hard time seeing the projections, you might want to go directly to the video’s page on YouTube and watch it in full-screen mode.)

And now, some probably indulgent notes on the cast and production:

The play was part of a larger variety/talent show called Glitterama, which is put on by the zany Baltimore performance group Fluid Movement. We were one of the few acts that didn’t involve burlesque and/or semi-nudity (though on the first night after we left the stage there were calls for Mark Trail to “take it off”). It was very gratifying to hear everyone laughing in the audience, but we were fortunate to be the third act, and so they were all good and warmed up.

That’s my lovely wife Amber as poor neglected Cherry Trail in the first and last scenes, gamely wearing a curly wig, Keds, and (the ultimate sacrifice) mom jeans. She’s actually on the board of Fluid Movement, and at the last minute was roped into saying a few words about the group at the beginning of the show — in costume, of course. She’s a pro. She also was the driving force behind actually moving this thing from big talk on my part to reality (as she was for this very blog), and helped keep us organized as it progressed.

Our friend Sam only had a single line as Buck Jones at the very end, but he was a very crucial part of the production. He’s been reading soap opera strips for much longer than I have, and once we had settled on a plotline that we would use, he meticulously pieced together the panels to create the story and then wrote the script. And yes, other than the Sunday strip-style bear slander in the middle, virtually every line in this play is taken directly from the strip. He also wrote and performed that theme song, all by himself (the lyrics for which, if you have trouble hearing them, are “It’s the land of the beaver and bear/ And home of their friend Mark Trail/ Cherry and Andy and Rusty are there/ And all of the bad guys have facial hair/ In Lost Forest”). He also had valuable theater experience that kept us on track, and ran the slide projector during the performances.

Our friend Dave was for obvious reasons the only choice to play Mark Trail. I love the way he makes Mark so incredibly straight that he’s hilarious. He sunk so deep into his character that his wife (who is behind the camera here) forbade him to talk in the Mark Trail voice at home anymore. (Actual quote as we were helping clean up the backstage area, in Mark Trail voice: “If there’s one thing I hate more than bears, it’s litter.”) He was also great with props — for instance, he built that pup tent in a night when the Glitterama head honcho informed us that our previous effort (a tarp draped over some chairs) was sub-par.

Our friend Kaycee, who glams it up as Kelly Welly, was already a reader of my blog when she met my wife, and later realized who she was when some friends posted pictures of our wedding in the forum. Her camptastic Marilyn-Monroe-meets-Miss-Piggy version of Kelly’s voice (amplified by the hand mike so she could go for maximum breathiness) kept us on the verge of breaking up at all times, and some of the funniest little flourishes originated with her ad libs during rehearsal. She also provided costumes and props from her seemingly limitless supply, including the all-important bear suit.

Speaking of which … our friend Rupert did triple duty as Rusty, the arrow-ass bear (for whose ass we never got around to fashioning an arrow) and, in the final scene, Molly, all of which roles he embraced with total and deranged commitment, stealing everyone’s heart and mastering the quick change in the wings. My only regret about this video is that many of his awesome antics ended up just beyond the left side of the frame.

Our friend Kevin did a great job with the narration, making the whole bizarre thing sound official and halfway normal. The fake Sunday strip in particular got some of the biggest laughs of the night, not least because of his awesomely deadpan delivery.

And finally, that’s me dorking it up as both Bill Ellis and Ranger Rick Rogers. I find Kelly and the bear’s second entrance, during which I flail about desperately trying to figure out where I’m supposed to be standing on stage, particularly cringeworthy. At least at one point I got to walk off stage with a girl in one hand and a gun in the other — truly the dream of every American man.

Anyway, I’ll stop nattering on about this, but I really enjoyed putting this on with all these people. This video will obviously make you devastated that you missed it, but we’re already trying to figure out a venue for the next chapter of Mark Trail Theater: Molly Doesn’t Understand The Hostility! It will call for a higher special effects budget, obviously.

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Dick Tracy, 11/13/07

This week’s award for worst punctuated sentence containing unnecessary exposition: “But why Tracy? Why, me, the mayor?”

Hagar the Horrible, 11/13/07

Straightforward responses to honest questions: Not funny. Straightforward responses to honest questions on a desert island: Funny!

No, wait, I meant not funny. My mistake.

Mark Trail, 11/13/07

“I’ll fix him with my bare hands … which I’ll use to remove my pants!”

Spider-Man, 11/13/07

All future Spider-Man strips will consist entirely of the title character aimlessly web-slinging around New York as he explains what has already happened and what’s about to happen in the current plot. This change will represent a marked improvement.

Family Circus, 11/13/07

Ha ha! Jeffy thinks he’s going to college!

Wizard of Id, 11/13/07

Ha ha! This peasant is so terrified at the prospect of being strangled to death that he fainted!

Mary Worth, 11/13/07

HOLY CRAP THAT DOG’S FACE IS THE SCARIEST THING I’VE SEEN ALL DAY