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Actual conversation conducted mere moments ago between myself (TCC) and the future Mrs. Curmudgeon (TFMC) about the issue of hipster music magazine Magnet that just arrived in our mailbox:

TFMC: You know, Sleater-Kinney is on the cover of Magnet. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen women on the cover.

TCC: Uh huh.

TFMC: I also think it’s the first time I’ve seen people smiling on the cover. Usually they’re too cool for school.

TCC: Yeah, those girls are sly. They have sly smiles on the cover.

TFMC: Uh huh.

TCC: But not, you know, sly like Sally Forth.

There you go, kids: indie rock to mass-market newspaper comics in three moves! I have problems.

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Gil Thorp, 4/20/05

Now, those of you have been following this blog know that I love Gil Thorp for its deranged, coked-up pacing, its bizarre hairstyles, and its transformation of the jocks who persecuted me in high school to a parade of morons who dance about for my amusement. That’s why I feel justified by saying, with love and affection, that the art is really, really bad. I mean, really. Take a look at everyone’s favorite “dealer” (and events have proven that he’s just a card shark, not a drug pusher), Hutch Renfro, from his first appearance a few weeks ago:

I’m assuming from context that the dude inviting the gamblers inside in panel one of today’s strip is the self-same Hutch, even though there are differences that make it hard to be sure; for one thing, his forehead seems to have expanded into Star Trek alien territory. If half the attention that has been lavished on the door’s wood grain had been applied to Renfro’s face, this would be a lot easier to follow. Then he proceeds to morph into someone else entirely in panels two and three, assuming he’s the guy to the right of easy-to-identify dorkwad Steve Luhm. He mainly seems to be getting beefier and beefier with each passing moment, so maybe this plotline will involve steroids after all. Or gamma radiation! A Hulk-Gil Thorp crossover! That I’d pay good money to see.

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For Better Or For Worse, 4/19/05

OK, the “slutty 12-year-old girls of Canada” thing in FBOFW has gone past laughable and unsettling and is headed into insane moral panic territory. To ask a halfway-serious question: does anyone remember from the days when Elizabeth was in junior high whether her burgeoning sexuality was repeatedly dissected for our squirmy edification? Because you know, before the Clinton administration and all those damn blow jobs, no one under the age of 21 ever thought about sex. (His pernicious influence has even spread to Canada!)

Seriously, I’m all for 12-year-old girls lusting after hot twentysomething dentists with stupid facial hair — it’s part of the natural order of things. What I can’t get behind is the lusty use of the word “morsel.” Ick. The block-lettering font makes it all the harder to ignore. And the interjection “Hooo!” just leads me to think about a certain monologue involving the phrase “sexual playtoy” that I promised my therapist that I would try to forget about.