We’re going on a long weekend trip to celebrate my birthday (that is, the anniversary of my actual birth, not of the birth of this blog), though we are not travelling to sunny Mexico, as this awesome graphic from faithful reader Joan might imply. New posts back on Tuesday, I promise.
To entertain yourself in my absence, check out this increasingly alarming series of graphics featuring my head from faithful reader jonnya:
Apartment 3-G, 7/13/06
OK, I know Apartment 3-G is forbidden by law from being sexy, but … Lucy swaps spit with Captain Brushcut in an elevator, and then ends up slightly disheveled but fully clothed on his couch? Lamest. Extramarital affair. Ever.
I do like the trepidatious way in which she’s regarding the slightly open doorway. “That color … oh, crap, please tell me I didn’t go home with that tool Seth from my poetry group, who’s always wearing those hideous electric blue suit jackets. Note to self: eat something after the fourth cosmo from now on.”
Curtis, 7/13/06
Here’s something that you may not believe or even agree with: though I don’t find Curtis funny most of the time, I have come to admire it. Unlike so many, many syndicated strips, it doesn’t phone things in; there’s almost always a wealth of details that reward examination. I particularly like the use of the double-wide second panel to show the Curtis POV church lady panorama, with Curtis’ horrified head dead center. I’m even willing to overlook the inappropriate quote marks in the final panel just because the idea of Curtis hoping to be freed from these women by death’s sweet embrace makes me laugh.
(Tangent: This past weekend we went to see a free outdoor concert by a Latin-y/swing band that a friend of ours is in. Towards the end, this adorable little ham of a child, somewhere in the six to eight range, ran down in front of the stage and started busting a hilarious and surprisingly successful series of circa-1986 breakdancing moves. He was wearing a ludicrously oversized baseball cap that kept falling off as he would spin around on his back or whatever, and ever time he picked it up, he’d be careful to put it back on a more or less the same jaunty angle at which Curtis is rocking his own chapeau here.)
Crankshaft, 7/13/06
In case you’re wondering what Crankshaft does to supplement his meager Social Security checks during the summer when he’s not driving a bus, this week has the answer: he drives an ice cream truck, though this seemingly benign profession should not be taken to indicate that he’s open to compromise on his fundamental and general hatred of the human race. Strips in this storyline so far have featured Crankshaft engaging in such par-for-the-course prickery as taunting people at a Weight Watchers meeting, being rude to children, and, as depicted here, refusing to deploy even basic customer service techniques. It all strengthens my conviction that this strip should be given the slightly longer but much more descriptive title Jesus Christ, Ed Crankshaft Is Such An Asshole.
Gil Thorp and Judge Parker, 7/13/06
Boy, Raju is sure going to be disillusioned when he signs up for his first American gymnastics class.
Family Circus, 7/12/06
In the latest salvo in the long-running passive-aggressive War of the Family Circus Brothers, Jeffy calls for Billy to be castrated.
Mark Trail, 7/12/06
I know I’m an effete East Coast intellectual who would shriek like a girl and run away when faced with an actual gun, but … does it seem a little bit weird that that Ranger Rick thinks he’s going to be able to kill Arrow-Butt Grizzly when he hasn’t even tried to tranq-dart him yet?
Getting back to topics that effete East Coast intellectuals are suited to comment on: is Mark a damn handsome sumbitch in panel one, or what?
Gil Thorp, 7/12/06
Meanwhile, Ben Franklin has travelled forward to 2006 in a time machine of his own design to see what’s become of the great nation he helped create, only to be defrauded by Marty Moon.