Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

The 11 January 2009 serial strips were particularly lead-footed today (and Sundays afford multiple panels for exciting action!).  Lynn and her Mama Rose of a coaching dad continue to natter in Mary Worth.  Sam is stuck in the airport with a two-hour layover in Judge Parker (oh, please, God, don’t show us his flight home).  Not much has progressed in Rex Morgan, either, other than June finally believes that Sarah has Seen Something on deck and has gone outside to investigate (way to build your kid’s self-esteem, June).

Still, Mrs. Morgan manages to strike quite the colorful pose in the homey glow of a port-hole, leading to some speculation by CC’s commodorejohn and myself that dropping June into any comics strip would improve it.

Look! An experiment!

I hate being sick.  It would be nice to have it as an excuse that it makes me delirious and hallucinogenic (or that the drugs I taking do), but I’m never that sick.  I usually only get sick enough to be cranky and bitchy and tired (which are either two or three of the unloved Dwarves, I believe).

So, when the current Mary Worth story continues to crawl at a glacier’s pace (I’m not even going to grace this by saying that the plot is advancing — at least glaciers that that in their favor), I notice, and I get even more annoyed by it than I usually do.  Other serials have a similar slow-pacing, but gee whiz! Don’t think that you can keep a reader’s attention, week after week, by only changing the word order around or flipping the panels!  Folks want variety! Intellectual challenge!  Philosophical quandaries!  Ethical dilemmas!

Okay, “eye-candy” works, too.

You Tube is dangerous to one’s creativity (or lack of it. or the ability to make good on it. I dunno.).  Not only can I find several of the intros to the old 70s and 80s series “The Love Boat” on it, but in my mind, I can see it being so much better utilizing the current story in Rex Morgan.

In my mind.

I don’t have the mad skillz for animation (or for singing like Jack Jones), so you’ll just have to hum the new lyrics to yourself as you recall the intro and slip the frames in as necessary.

I imagine “guest stars” would include Kathleen “Dixie Julep” Patterson (subbing for Juliet Prowse), Max “the Ax” Malloy (ditto for Van Johnson), and Dr. Andy Reed (who gets stuck in there somewhere, just because he’s Rex’s friend).

My Loathe Boat theme:

Sex, with no strings attached,
Climb aboard.
Don’t remain unmatched.
Sex, bang the old headboard.
Morals go,
Will you remain unscratched?

The Loathe Boat
Is heading flat-out for bankruptcy
The Loathe Boat, filled with drunks and debauchery.
Set your eye on a steward,
Your mind on a noon-time fling.

Sex won’t hurt anymore
Get some KY from the medical store

It’s Seeeeeeeeeex!
Hello sailor – It’s Seeeeex!

Of course, one of the undeniable masters of song parody is CC’s Dingo, and if you want a second verse, here’s his version (Hi, Dingo, if you want me to delete this, I will…but it’s so dang good!):

The Rex Boat

Rex, that closeted fool
Pour a drink and push in his stool
Rex, here’s your chance for to take
Treat that Latin cock, like a T-bone steak!

The Rex boat, overboard both June and kid will go
The Rex boat promises Guido Tomas he’ll blow
If you take doctor’s orders
His moral borders will fall

And Rex won’t hurt anymore
Thanks to AstroGlide, he’s a hirsute whore!
It’s Rex!
Welcome aboard
It’s Rex!

A recent Family Circus (9 Jan 2009) has Dolly complaining mightily that cats don’t like being taken for walks.  At the end of a leash, lying on the floor, is the very sad Kittycat.  I’ve never seen the Keanes’ Kittycat anything but happy and frisky, and the depiction of her this way just really bummed me out.  It made me think that the little cat is being abused in other ways as well.

(It also made me think about “The Heaviest Harness in the World” photos over at Flickr.com: http://www.flickr.com/groups/worldsheaviestharness/pool/ But I digress.)

I hate the idea of small animals being tortured.  Well, mostly.

When I posted the above mashup on Flickr.com, I titled it “Tough Love, Dolly-Style.”  Dang, my mashing of FC has been few and far between recently, and here comes something new, which is probably best titled “Real tough Love, Dolly-Style.”

I suspect in another time and place, the lone daughter of the Keane Clan might’ve grown up to be Dolly, She-Wolf of the SS…

(I kinda like how Big Daddy Keane seems on-board with Dolly’s plans.)

Just because it doesn’t make sense doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong in Mark Trail.  Somehow, Mark’s commands didn’t seem so much commands as a desperate cry for a little levity amid raccoon/dog fights, kidnappings, environmental disasters, and Pop’s swamp buggy konking out (much like Pop himself).

You know you SAW something, or HEARD something, or SMELLED something, and just because you’re only five years old, Mom and Dad don’t believe you?  You’re either scolded for imagining things, or ignored altogether.

And yet, when an Adult SEES something, or HEARS something, or SMELLS something that you’ve already told everyone about, suddenly it becomes the Gospel truth!  Even when the Adult is an old, senile alcoholic.

This is why kids kill their parents with an axe when they’re 16.  Well, that and having been given a name like “Dweezel” or “Taw’nisha” or “Apple Bronx Banana Fluff”…

…I’m getting to the point that I think any story would be improved by the presence of a vampire.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Thank you, and good night.

I think it’s a little weird that The Phantom has two unique plots going at a time, one that occurs on the weekdays (and Saturday), and the other than occurs only in the Sunday strips.  I know the reason behind it, but more often than not, I find myself reading two sub-par storylines.

Anyway, as Chatu the Python is returned to prison during the week, the Phantom takes a street kid under his wing, which means letting his own children beat the crap out of him and generally make fun of him. (This is known as “Jungle Justice.”)

Maybe I’d be more impressed with all of this if Kit’s kids, a boy and a girl, didn’t look like they’d been working out and ‘roiding up for weight-lifting competitions since they were five years old.  And I know I’d be REALLY more impressed if they wore something that didn’t look like it came from the Walgreens’ incontinence aisle.  Apparently, I’m not the only one…

Ah…maybe not.

It seems that Dixie Julep, stripper and murderess, has joined the Choir Invisible.  Not surprising, in the land of Sheriff Joe Arpaio — after all, she was armed with a knife vs. the entire metropolitan SWAT team of Scottsdale, with Mesa and Phoenix and Glendale and Tempe, and the 20 other Valley of the Sun communities likely thrown in.

Dang.

I’d like to think that there was an alternative…

Oh, Creator Lords of Rex Morgan, M.D., we are not worthy of your bounty of sights and sounds!

We will, nonetheless, run with it! Run like the wind!

(Are Nolan and Wilson on to the snark? The Dunsmores…and Guido…and the whole S.S. Surly/Loathe Boat/Rex Morgan, Cabin Boy plot are just too good.)

Brooke McE.’s “hands” are an interested analogy, but in all honesty, I think the too-often repeated use is coming close to being parody, rather than having a touching sweetness.

And a hearty “Yo Ho!” for Nolan and Wilson for reintroducing yet another component of this Wackiest Cruise-Ship in the Fleet storyline: