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When I was about 14, my mom urged to me to go down to the local mall because they were looking for teen models. Mortified, I locked myself in my room and didn’t come out for a year. But if I had only listened to her advice, I could be have become a supermodel, instead of wasting my time with distractions like “college” and whatnot. Don’t make the same mistake I did! Remember, if you are the proud owner of some Comics Curmudgeon gear, just photograph yourself wearing it and send the pic to me to join the rotating cast of models in the left-hand navbar. You could be the first to appear sporting a jaunty Fence Post Frank hat (after you become the first to buy one — you people are all talk).

The observant among you have already noted that we’ve added a new model to the mix: that’s the future Mrs. C.’s brother showing his Apartment 3-G pride. And hey, NYC-area ladies: he’s single! So if you’re living in an apartment in Manhattan with two adventure-loving roommates, he can add exciting new plotlines to your slow-moving life.

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Apartment 3-G, 3/15/05

After years and years (OK, I guess just years) of reading Apartment 3-G, I can now finally say that I’ve seen something in its panels recognizable as being a potential part of the New York I’ve visited. This combination laundromat-restaurant is exactly the kind of twee, high-concept wackiness I expect from those people up there. Down here in Baltimore, we just like leave the house and pay someone to cook for us, but apparently in New York, you need to have a theme to pack ’em in. Of course, in real life this joint would probably just be called “Laundromat” or something similarly minimalist for extra confusion — “Laughs & Laundry” strikes me as, you know, trying too hard. Kids today! With their laundry bars and their oxygen bars and their cereal bars and their flim-flam and their hoo-hah and their pants hanging down so you can see their underwear! It makes me sick.

The stab at modernity is sort of undermined by the young woman in the background of panel one, who appears to be on spring break from Vassar, circa 1962. Or is she a retro-hipster, fresh from Williamsburg? Only Frank Bolle and Lisa Trusiani know for sure!

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Get Fuzzy, 3/16/05

Was Get Fuzzy in a slump the first few weeks it was in the Sun, or is it just the kind of strip where you have to get into the rhythm of it every day to really appreciate it? Either way, I recant my earlier doubt about the strip and am once again a believer.

This may seem a little counterintuitive, given that Satchel and Bucky are a sweet and emotionally vulnerable moron and a self-absorbed and cruel moron, respectively, but one of the reasons I like Get Fuzzy is because I’m a cat and dog lover. The strip actually keeps a lot closer to domestic animals personalities than most comics. Cats have a reputation for mysterious intelligence that any cat owner can tell you is entirely undeserved. They are great at moving and acting as if they know exactly what they’re doing at all times, even when what they’re doing is something incredibly stupid. (We watched our cat take a full minute to gather herself up, judge the distance between herself on the floor and the tabletop, and then launch herself directly into a lava lamp, which almost landed on top of her as they both plummeted to the ground.) Dogs don’t really exude that sort of self-confidence, but they do make rash decisions based on little to no information. I think that’s perfectly encapsulated in this exchange here. Also, I like the phrase “Been there, ate that.”

Incidentally, in my research for this post (yes, I do too do research), I read an online interview with Darby Conley from a few years ago in which he was asked if there was anything his syndicate wouldn’t let him get away with. He said wasn’t allowed to deal with “religion or poo.” Between this and last month’s shizzle outside the litter bizzle, I think at least one of those two have rules have gone out the window.