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Hello, pals! I am doing a VERY SPECIAL Internet Read Aloud next Friday in Los Angeles, one week from today: it’s a one-man show, and that one man is ME!

If you’ve been saying “I keep meaning to go see one of Josh’s shows,” I would really appreciate it this is the one you came to! I’ll be doing an hour (or so) of weird and funny internet multimedia bits that will amply demonstrate how much Being Online has broken my brain. 8 pm! Free parking! BYOB! We’ll all get ice cream afterwards, for real! Please come, if you’re in town, or near town! And here’s the Facebook event, if you like those!

But it took many people to create such a funny comment section this week! Still, I must select one for COTW, and I selected this one:

“The Purported Punter would also be a fine start to Kaz’s film education. The 1938 classic starring Basil Rathbone as Hercule Poirot on the trail of a master criminal disguised as a Venetian gondolier was once hailed by Roger Ebert as ’94 minutes long.’” –Navigator

The hilarious runners up show why this was so hard!

“They need to perform a fees/ability study.” –Dennis Jimenez

“Okay, this took a bit of thinking, but I finally figured out this cartoon. First, note the reddish-orange chairs in the conference room. Then note that the screaming woman in the purple cardigan isn’t apparently sitting in one. She’s actually a child who’s standing up. Let’s call her Olivia. That anguished woman in the middle isn’t a coworker; it’s her mother. We’ll call her Amanda. This is some kind of ‘take your daughter to work’ event that has gone very wrong. Amanda has gathered everyone in the conference room so that Olivia can do a presentation, thinking it would be cute and entertaining, but instead, Olivia is doing a broad, scathing parody of her mother, based on things she’s overheard. Some of what she’s screaming about might even hint at ethical violations on her mother’s part. The guy in the blue shirt — let’s say his name is Doug — doesn’t know what to do. Amanda is his boss, so it would be rude to leave in the middle of Olivia’s performance, but it somehow seems even ruder to stay and witness this embarrassing spectacle. There. I did it. I decoded a Six Chix. To me, it’s more satisfying and fun than any Sudoko.” –Joe Blevins

“Butternut is also a walnut (‘white walnut’) that doesn’t impart any nutrition but does make you shit like there’s no tomorrow. Snuffy is basically warning us that within a few years we can expect him to be an ancillary character in a Marvin spinoff, minus indoor plumbing and single-use diapers.” –Hopester

“I can vaguely recall the last plot in this strip about Marty Moon for getting in trouble for…being an asshole to some sports kids? I honestly don’t remember what he did. In any event, it seems the pendulum has sung in the other direction, as Marty has decided to salute both teams at every play, just to show his undying respect for them.” –pugfuggly

“I missed that the lady is addressed as ‘Darla’ in the first panel, so my first thought was that ‘Darla Gillespie’ is her archenemy and she organises class reunions purely in order to spite Darla in some way. It certainly explains how angry she looks about it!” –Horace Broon

“Meanwhile, Iron Fist’s sound effect, ‘SLAMM MM,’ combines devastation with the contented noises of someone eating caviar.” –Thomas Keith, on Facebook

“Hey everybody! It’s time to play Giant Motorcycle Or Tiny Josh Brolin!” –The Mighty Untrained FOOZLE

“There won’t be any killing of children in Mark Trail. All Cool Dude is going to do is trick Rusty into trading his phone for a ride on his motorcycle. Once Cool Dude has the phone and Rusty’s ride is over, Cool Dude will delete the SnapClapTrapApp and warn him about the risks of taking pictures in public without permission. Rusty will give a mopey Ted Cruz-looking apology, wondering what the word ‘public’ means and Cool Dude will ride off in the sunset waving a peace sign, telling the kids to not do drugs.” –Bud

“Trust me, carousel slide projectors are going to be the next big hipster fad. And I’ve got a warehouse full of ’em! Mwa ha ha ha!” –Peanut Gallery

“Legacy comics are just so out-of-touch and unrelatable. Like, Lois, mother of four, is tending her infant child, and I’m supposed to believe she gives a shit about wearing pants? Underwear, half-fastened nursing bra, and a ratty t-shirt slung over one shoulder in case of spit-up, that’s the uniform until at least noon. Maybe 10:00 if there’s a grocery store trip on the agenda.” –Dan

“The lower jaws were first to go, then the pants. Hi and Lois turned into 9 Chickweed Lane so slowly no one noticed.” –matt w

“It was in September 2018, when Six Chix finally revealed its Snoopy sex robot, that the Universal and King Features syndicates really went to war.” –Big Ted

“The Marriage Mascot (Laulibu Talismans) was actually the final film of the misunderstood Latvian auteur Sixi Chixu. The profane bestial, sexual ultraviolence of the infamous ‘wedding night’ scene tests the stomach of even the most hardened critic, but it’s still preferable to wasting a year of evenings being half-assedly coached by Gil and Kaz.” –Schroduck

“I’ve never married because I would never be able to afford a honeymoon location better than ‘elementary school classroom‘ either.” –Flonatin of Bologna

“Also, all the gunfire probably helped get their attention.” –Randallw

“There’s a lot of space between these pet gravestones, especially the cats. Were these, like, giant human sized cats? I guess that explains why they were buried with such reverence. ‘Here Lies Fluffy. While on this earth no one ever fucked with him.’” –Mikey

“Do you see this? That one cop is hitting people! Hitting people is my thing! Cut that out, you … you … normal fist!” –made of wince

“I would have thought looking up from your Candy Crush game to find a massive insect screaming about being excluded from raucous debauchery would be grounds for panicked terror, but I guess mild bemusement works, too.” –JJ48

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Mary Worth, 9/28/18

One of my very favorite things that sometimes happens on this blog is when I make an outrageous prediction about the future course of some soap opera strip’s plot that then almost immediately comes true! So yes, Mr. Wynter really did spend more on his dog’s grave than on his wife’s. At least Bella’s monument is relatively tasteful, with Bella depicted as she was in life, wearing her adorable bow tie, and not as some kind of terrifying supernatural winged cat chimera like whoever’s buried in the plot just behind her. The second panel is great, because it shows what Bella would see if she were buried alive and had like a little hole in her casket attached to a periscope or something.

Six Chix, 9/28/18

Look, one of the advantages of having a multi-artist production like Six Chix is that you get a variety of perspectives and voices, so I’m as confused and disappointed by “big horny animal week” as everybody else.

Spider-Man, 9/28/18

“Say, Danny, have you ever considered using the incredible privilege and authority you wield in our society to better people’s lives, instead of putting on a mask and punching people unusually hard? Just spitballing here!”

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Gil Thorp, 9/27/18

Oh, right! The cineaste kid! Turns out he too, like Tiki Jansen, is being inexorably drawn into the gravity well of the fall “the Mudlarks special teams are wacky” plot. Honestly, the real revelation here for me is that Kaz, who’s never exactly struck me as an intellectual, is apparently forced to supplement his assistant coaching salary by also teaching “world geography,” where presumably he gets uncomfortably enthusiastic about the unit on China. Anyway, you might remember Kaz showing his deep contempt for non-mainstream cinema just a few weeks ago, but hopefully in return for his services Joe Bolek will insist that the entire coaching staff watch Sátántangó, Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr’s seven-hour black-and-white masterpiece, which will open their eyes to the magic of independent film.

Six Chix, 9/27/18

There’s nothing immoral per se with wanting to have a three-way with a furry on your wedding night, but its absolutely imperative that you have a discussion with your partner first, to make sure everyone’s on the same page.