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Hey kids! As usual, a few things of potential interest to all of you have accumulated in my inbox, to be presented for your delectation on this fine Saturday.

First off, Happy Bloomsday, everyone! Today is the day to celebrate James Joyce and his novel Ulysses (more information can, of course, be found you-know-where). In honor of Bloomsday a few years ago, faithful reader Nate created an awesome Mary Worth/Molly Bloom mashup; here’s an excerpt:

Sorry I can’t make it much bigger; but you can see the whole much-more-legible thing here.

Secondly! You may have seen the ad in the sidebar for News Free Comics! This is as an intriguing project that I feel deserves your attention. Essentially, it serves as a print syndicator of mainstream but lesser-known newspaper comics. It was originally conceived of as a locally distributed free paper in the creator’s hometown, but not enough advertising could be lined up; now he’s trying a subscription model. Would you pay for newspaper comics on paper, as God intended, delivered to your door, for only $18 a year? If so, check it out!

And, finally, there’s still ROFL!, that comedy show I’m doing in NYC in less than week…

Yes, if you live in New York, or are going to be there on June 22, and you can handle a show that starts at 11:30 p.m. (which you really ought to be able to do … after all, New York is the “city that never sleeps,” or, as my wife calls it, the “city that stays up really late and then sleeps in the next day”), then you need to come, obviously. This will be my first venture into live comedy-style entertainment, so you’ll get to witness either my discovery of my svengali-like power to mold an audience into putty, which I will use in my rise to fame and glory, or my total on-stage meltdown. Either way, you won’t want to miss it! And tickets are only $12!

The show will actually be a single-elimination Gong Show-style comedy deathmatch. My competitors include:

• Cintra Wilson of Salon and Dregublog
• Joe Garden of The Onion (the voice of Jim Anchower and Jackie Harvey), Vote Joe Garden!, and Monkeywire
• Michelle Collins of You Can’t Make It Up and VH1’s Best Week Ever
• Andrew Baron, co-creator and producer of Rocketboom
• Marisa Olson, artist/editor/curator of Rhizome.org and Nasty Nets
• Stu VanAirsdale of The Reeler
• Charles Broskoski of Supercentral

My victory over or defeat at the hands of these illustrious persons will be entirely determined by audience hooting, so buy tickets now, for pete’s sake!

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Gil Thorp, 6/15/07

“I got a haircut … from the aliens that abducted me! I don’t think they understand the concept of ‘haircuts,’ actually, but it was free and all.”

I successfully called this one yesterday, not that being able to predict the twists and turns of this simultaneously obvious and moronic storyline ought to garner me anything but shame. Pissy little whiny baby Brynna will still be mad, since Lisa Wyche seems to have scored a wig that looks more or less like her actual hair rather than some cancer turban. This battle won’t end until the upcoming unfortunate mutual decapitation incident.

Family Circus, 6/15/07

“Of course, we made Grandma into jerky! She’ll stay good for months.”

Mark Trail, 6/15/07

There’s something unutterably creepy about panel three, in which Mark is gazing lovingly at the blinded Sam while sexily straddling a chair, and it’s not just because I saw Crazy Love the other night, either. Meanwhile, as usual, the forces of good prove to be less dumb than the forces of evil by only a miniscule amount. Despite the fact the Evil County Commissioners are open about their quest to get a new airport built, Mark will need to go back to the scene of the crime and find some revealing eyehook before his feeble synapses start to fire and the punching begins.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/15/07

Ah, the old “my father never loved me” routine, eh? It’s a bold move, but when you’re trying to bed your lookalike stepmother when they haven’t even fished your father’s cold corpse out of the North Atlantic yet, you’ve got to pull out the big guns.

Pluggers, 6/15/07

So pluggers watch movies to see the non-human mammalian characters? This may be the most reasonable and logical Pluggers ever.

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Apartment 3-G, 6/14/07

“Mamma mia! I get so excited, I forget how to form the past tense in English, even though I speak the language perfectly well most of the time! Madre de Dios!”

I love the epic furrow in Margo’s brow in the first panel. She’s clearly thinking “Note to self: Never ask Gabriella to tell a story ever again.”

Gil Thorp, 6/14/07

Oh, Gil Thorp: so continuously delightful. What exactly do you suppose Yul Brynna’s wearing on her head there in the first panel? A doo-rag? An Aunt Jemima-style head kerchief? A plastic bag? I’d suggest another lookalike contest, but I do want my readership to maintain a certain degree of dignity.

Lisa Wyche is, of course, inevitably going to shave her head in solidarity with Brynna’s stupidity. Perhaps it will spark an epidemic of head-shaving for no good reason whatsoever. Then when Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp does get cancer, they’ll be too involved in their depilatory drama to notice or care.

For Better Or For Worse, 6/14/07

So apparently they’re just going to keep making Julia shorter and wider in the hopes that eventually we won’t like her anymore. Well, guess what? She could be a God-damned puddle and I’d still find her more appealing than Liz “Singularity Of Self-Absorbed Passivity” Patterson. TEAM JULIA FOREVER! WOO!

Funky Winkerbean, 6/14/07

“And then, once I was there, of course I solicited a 14-year-old for sex. I mean, that’s what you do on that site, right?”