Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

Good for nothing, bad in bed
Nobody likes you and you’re better off dead
Goodbye, we’ve all come to say goodbye (goodbye)
Goodbye (goodbye)
Born defeated, died in vain
Super-destructive, you were hooked on pain
Though your music lingers on
All of us are glad you’re gone

–Paul Williams

So I’m dinking around my blog, looking at statistics and such, and checking out where folks find me (most of them come my link at the Comics Curmudgeon). However, there is the occasionally very odd association, and this one is particularly unusual and very, very cool.

The link is a boating website in Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay, with all sorts of interesting news items for the boating set. All right, I’m doing the snark thing with Rex Morgan and his yet-to-be explored adventures on the High Seas with a Caribbean cruise and a sailing regatta to benefit a hospice. Where’s the connection? Get a gander at this:

Lenore Foster, long time organizing board member for the TURKEY SHOOT HOSPICE REGATTA (October 10-12, 2008), is the “model” for a new character in the REX MORGAN M.D, comic strip by Woody Wilson and Graham Nolan. The daily strip already has introduced the story line, where Lenore, one of Rex’s patients, hounds him to “come sailing” with her in a special regatta in October. The regatta is the Turkey Shoot Hospice and the story line will lead up to and through the actual regatta. The details of the story are fictional (they say…). Wilson is doing this as a birthday gift to the real Lenore; they are long time friends. Wilson and Nolan are donating the artwork to the Hospice regatta to be auctioned for a donation to the Hospice cause. There are especially good unintended consequences – HOSPICE REGATTAS across the country will receive recognition – there are an estimated 30 million regular readers of the syndicated strip.

Isn’t this fabulously great?! Evidently hospice regattas are popular ways of fund-raising, but even more fabulously great, Lenore Foster is a real woman! Kudos to Woody Wilson for feting his friend, and for getting the word about this! (Yes, I feel kind of ashamed for making fun of her and the regatta thing. It probably won’t stop me, only I’ll just make more fun of Rex during it all (wasn’t I doing that anyway?)).

And how terrific would it be to own the original art of that EXTREME REX MORGAN CLOSE-UP??? Pretty terrific.

Anyway, read more about Hospice Regattas at http://www.broadbaysailing.org/

Nope. Not a mashup in this thread. Not yet, at least.

…only with sailboats instead of horses. It’s not so much the sport, it’s the Seeing and Being Seen. Everyone dressed to the nines. Everyone soused to the gills. Everyone cattily bitching about one another.

You’d think that the Regatta sailboat crews would be far removed from the petty goings-on, much like the Derby jockeys. Well, you’d be wrong…

SEE FOR YOURSELF!

Well, at least Lenore is laying her cards (her old, musty, crumbling around the edges cards) on the table…

…and the question is: is Rex a gambling man?

Maybe so, but I hope he can swim. I have a bad feeling he’s going to be in the water a lot more than on the water…

I only did this because Comics Curmudgeon reader Joe Btfsplk’s comment today just tickled me to death, and if I couldn’t carve it in stone, I’d mash it up in pixels.

There was some sort of ending in the current Phantom story-arc, and Kit and Diana flew off into the sunset, or the closest nude beach. COOL!

…none of us are getting any younger. Particularly Lenore.

The funny thing is, I really haven’t been “moved” to mash the Foobiverse recently. I just knew that the Creatrix wasn’t going to do anything to subvert the dominant paradigm of How Weddings Should Run (okay, Grandpa Chinnuts had a heart attack, and then *poof* no more mention of him), so snarking a plain old vanilla wedding is boring.

Many of the comments that April makes are observations that folks at the Comics Curmudgeon noted over the past day or so; maybe this is more like a “scrapbook” or “memory box” (awwwwwwwwww….) for the wonderful, wonderful event…

All right, a few cheap shots. Heh.

And then…

Damn, did LJ chap my hide! I’m not a real “family” kind of person, but the Pattersons have been touted as the touchy-feely-squishy-cuddly clan since God (and LJ) were pups — there’s always family to fall back on, and Woe Unto You should you run up against the Elders of the tribe! (well, as long at the Main Elder has a potato for a nose and the Goodyear blimp for an ass)!

Liz finally discovers that Grandpa and Iris are missing. Elly’s feeble explanation is supposed to mollify her, I suppose (The first three panels are verbatim from the strip.) In the last panel, Liz’s response to “Do you have to go NOW?” (how farkin’ whiny is that?) was a simple “I do.”

Okay, Liz shows some class. And maybe this would’ve been more appropriate for April, but hey, I’m sure there’s enough pent-up resentment toward Elly for all.

When the plots dawdle along like this, I tend(ed) to keep my mashups to a twice or three times a week schedule. I’m hooked, sadly (either that, or messing with Rex is a lot more fun than messin’ with Foobs).

I must admit that I’m proud that even Rex sees through this tissue paper-thin ruse…

Maybe there ought to be an animal mascot for water conservation (like Smokey the Bear and Woodsy Owl). In the meantime, there’s always good old Mark Trail…