Post Content

Judge Parker, 7/25/22

Say, remember a few years ago when Judge Parker Senior ran for mayor on a NIMBY platform to protect Cavelton’s quaint vibes and their associated property values? Well, he lost (technically, he dropped out before the election, which is the worst kind of losing you can do), and now downtown Cavelton is full of multifamily mixed use buildings where regular people can afford to live, or, in this case, non-regular people who used to be married to local gazillionaires but said local gazillionaires are now divorcing them. (Oh, Abbey is divorcing Sam, by the way, I’m not sure if the fact that I’m more interested in the housing economics of Judge Parker than I am about the characters’ love lives says more about me or Judge Parker.)

Gil Thorp, 7/25/22

Milford’s number one hangout location for student athletes is, of course, the Bucket. But where do the Valley Conference coaches hang out? Apparently it’s this coffee shop (vaguely word-play-y name TK), which provides a safe space for them to all cattily gossip about each other because the barista will helpfully loudly announce whoever’s arriving, just in case you’re saying something really emotionally cutting about him.

Marvin, 7/25/22

Wow, huh, I guess the Millers deciding to move for some reason wasn’t just a one-off joke, but actually a running plotline of some sort? I’m kind of tickled that these two can only handle like one big emotionally strenuous process per quarter, and now that it’s July they’re finally ready for #3 of 2022. Sort of explains why they haven’t gotten around to potty training Marvin yet.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 7/24/22

I am currently reading The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), which I highly recommend if you want a more-or-less accessible intro to not just the end of the universe but the current state of scientific consensus on big-picture cosmology stuff. One of the parts that I find hardest to get my head around is what it means to say “the universe is expanding,” which it is, and if I’m understanding things right this doesn’t just mean that individual stellar objects are continuing to move outward from the Big Bang origin point into the void, but that the fabric of spacetime itself is in some sense spreading out.

Weirdly, I might’ve just gotten a little insight into this from today’s Mary Worth. Throughout this Jared-Dawn horrorshow, there’s been some discourse on this blog as to whether Jared or Dawn has the greater claim to be the wronged party and/or history’s greatest monster. But only today — in which we learn that Jared can never truly commit to Jess by smooching her until his ex, whom he dumped, agrees to be friends with him, and this will become the central engine of the remainder of the drama here — did I realize that it’s actually the narrative fabric of the universe they inhabit itself that’s at fault here. This takes a real load off my mind, honestly! Jared and Dawn can no more stop sucking than distant galaxies can stop hurtling away from us into infinite space (which they probably can’t, since according to the book most people now no longer believe in the Big Crunch hypothesis).

Slylock Fox, 7/24/22

Ahh, isn’t this a pleasant rooftop scene! Everyone enjoying snacks and beverages, Slylock flirting the only way he knows how (by posing elementary logic puzzles, a little too eagerly), and … what’s this? Notorious sad drunk McGruff the Crime Dog, just sitting there silently watching the proceedings? Has he been invited to the gathering out of pity, or did he just stumble up to the rooftop for a weekend suicide attempt and decided to act casual about it?

Dennis the Menace, 7/24/22

I’m just gonna say it, Dennis: that isn’t a very good question at all. Do better next time.

Post Content

Gasoline Alley, 7/23/22

Despite feeling obliged to read Gasoline Alley every day, I often fail to retain the details of its sprawling cast and their various problems, because honestly, why do that with my precious brain space when I could be doing literally anything else with it, but it’s slowly been dawning on me that the “Jimmy” who we recently saw ruining his sister’s sex life is the same kid who got a ride on a real live steam locomotive because he was dying of some unspecified terminal illness all the way back in 2014. I’m not sure if they somehow cured him in the interim and I just forgot or if the kid suffers from “Walt Syndrome,” a rare condition unique to the Alleyverse where a character lingers at the ege of death indefinitely without ever actually dying, but clearly Jimmy’s sister’s paramour is done with waiting. That’s why he’s turning to his grandfather Slim, who once got mad about some local teens playing basketball so he hired a guy to murder them by dropping a meteorite on them out of a helicopter. Slim knows from killing minors in elaborate space-themed “accidents,” in other words, and this rocketship built much faster than NASA ever could, with fewer safety features than NASA would ever be allowed to include, will do nicely.

Dick Tracy, 7/23/22

So whey would some faction of the now Earthbound race of Moon People want to turn their monstrous powers against Earth’s unsuspecting governments? Well, it turns out their Moon youth are being corrupted by anime. How else do you expect any self-respecting civilization to respond?

Hi and Lois, 7/23/22

Honestly respect how absolutely devastated Hi is by this. He’s been hanging on by a thread for a while now, but at least he thought that his family respected his grilling prowess. Now even that’s been taken from him, and there’s nothing left.