Post Content

Kudzu, 3/5/05

Just in case you were wondering.

Kudzu is the most egregious (but by no means the only) perpetrator of what I like to call Vacation Cloud syndrome. Were you ever forced to sit through the slides or photos of someone’s tropical vacation, where they insist on showing you all 219 pictures they took of tropical skies because “each one is so different”? And, I mean, you could spend the long time in studying the pictures, and eventually you would see that in there are subtle variations in the interplay of light and shadow that give each picture a unique feel. But you wouldn’t do that, because it would be a goddamn waste of time. Kudzu is a little like that: I’m sure that each one of the “Spiritual Weatherman” or “Preacher Dunn Gives A Eulogy” or “Doris The Parakeet Watches TV” strips has its own individual charms, but, really, will the payoff be worth the effort in figuring out the subtleties? Sadly, the answer is no.

Post Content

For Better Or For Worse, 3/4/05

Kudos to FBOFW! Generally speaking, pop culture depictions of the first three years of any human’s life are shown through some sort of rosy, gauzy filter, depicted as a nonstop cavalcade of pure unadulterated love and hugs and family togetherness and candy canes and happy happy oogie woogies boo boo bean. Too often left out are the crapping and the puking and the screaming and the screaming and the OH MY GOD THE SCREAMING MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP. I mean, I know about this stuff and I don’t even have kids. But too often if you bring any of this up, especially if someone who has chosen to bring forth precious new children into this vale of tears we call “life,” you get accused of hating children in general, of hating your interlocutor’s children in particular, and of hating America.

Fortunately, our friends the Pattersons have already proven their hatred of America by their insistence on being Canadian, so FBOFW can depict the non-Ann-Geddes-little-angel side of toddlerdom with impunity. Though good taste has prevented them from taking on the feces and the vomit, they’ve tackled the screeching with gusto. Fortunately for our protagonists, in the strip after this Michael and Deanna were offered rent-free use of the apartment above them by their landlord (more proof of Canada’s capitalism-spurning anti-American hate). But at least we got to see them get close to the breaking point, which wouldn’t happen in, say, Marvin, even if they don’t actually snap.

Apartment 3-G’s Mim, who recently declared that her baby-sitting experience has, like, totally prepared her for motherhood, is clearly someone who needs to be reading this strip. Her rendezvous with Chuck is inching forward ever so slowly, but I thought this exchange was worth reproducing:

Why would Margo be mean? Um, Lu Ann, where have you been? She doesn’t need a reason — she’s Margo!

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 3/3/05

Mim’s baby’s-daddy’s name is Chuck
And he’s a guy who likes to … have sex without using birth control, apparently.

OK, so that was the future Mrs. Curmudgeon’s joke. I don’t have anything specific to add about this strip, but this is as good an opportunity as any to discuss an interesting dream I had last night: I was with Salon.com sports columnist King Kaufman, and we were going over to the apartment that Britney Spears shares with Tommie from Apartment 3-G. King and Britney wandered off somewhere to talk, and Tommie and I stood next to an enormous free-standing bookcase in the middle of their living room that was filled with old encyclopedias. “Are these all yours,” I asked her, in all seriousness, “or is the library out of room and using your apartment for storage?” She just laughed.

Any amateur analysts out there who can explain to me what this means? Longtime readers will remember that this isn’t the first time that I’ve had a comics-themed dream.