Statistics Leap Day: Rating the Leap Days of the Past Half-Century

Leap Day	Rating
2020	Pebble where one should not be, such as in a bowl of trail mix
2016	The David Bowie channel on Sirius XM
2012	Final Fantasy VI so I hear (I never played it myself)
2008	Playing Reach For The Stars on the student newspaper’s good computer instead of getting any of the student newspaper stuff done
2004	Spotting a seventh difference in a Slylock Fox strip
2000	Playing Risk on the student newspaper’s good computer instead of getting any of the student newspaper stuff done
1996	This nice wallet with a good velcro cover
1992	SCTV reruns on Nick at Nite in like 1989
1988	No known records survive for comparison
1984	Getting to Ohio and back and only hitting two red lights
1980	Spotting an eighth difference in a Slylock Fox strip
1976	Unexpectedly hearing ragtime music

Reference: Who’s Who in Mythology: A Classic Guide to the Ancient World, Alexander S. Murray.

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Who is this Bunzo character? December 2023 – February 2024

The current lead villain in the Popeye side of Emi Burdge and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye is Bunzo, whom you remember from … 1931. It was mentioned in the strip but you might have missed. Way back during Herbert Hoover’s presidency, when Popeye and gang first journeyed to King Blozo’s kingdom, Bunzo was General in charge of the army or whatnot. And wanted the kingdom for himself, certainly more than Blozo wanted it, so there we go. Then it turned out running kingdoms is hard, especially when you have Blozo and the people who put up with being ruled by Blozo on your side. Since then, the Popeye wiki tells me, he’s made other appearances like in that comic book series from twelve years ago and in the current story.

So this should catch you up to late February 2024 in the Olive and Popeye side strip. There haven’t been any continuity-heavy bits of anything going on in the main Sunday Thimble Theatre comics. If you’re reading this after about May 2024, there’s probably a more up-to-date recap here. If there’s not, there’s not. Life is complicated, you know?

Olive and Popeye.

5 December 2023 – 26 February 2024.

Popeye, following the map of Plaidfoot the Pirate, had just got captured by an unbreakable bubble. O G Wotasnozzle apologizes; he had no choice in the matter. He was being compelled by Popeye’s greatest enemy … Bunzo.

Yes, it’s another archive pull for Randy Milholland. He includes a footnote giving the dates, very helpful if you have the Complete Segar Popeye reprints, less helpful if you have to dig around the Comics Kingdom archives. (The story should be coming up in the next year, though, if Comics Kingdom doesn’t blow up everything in its redesign later this week.) Blozo, realizing power without responsibility is the best, has moved into CEO work, in the business of selling himself. And it’ll help him get going if he has, say, the ancient treasure of Plaidfoot the Pirate. And what can stop him, as long as Popeye is trapped inside Wotasnozzle’s unbreakable bubble?

Well, there’s Wotasnozzle breaking the bubble. And giving the bad news that Bunzo is searching for treasure using both Wotasnozzle’s robots and enslaved townspeople. Who can punch their way through all this trouble, besides Popeye and Rip Haywire? Fortunately we have a Popeye on hand.

---

Emi Burdge’s Olive and Popeye for the 6th of February, 2024. So far as I’m aware Charon and his family haven’t appeared in Popeye comics before, but, I mean, Popeye’s uncle is literally the Davey Jones of locker fame, and there’s another story (printed by the Lost Popeye Zine) that meets up with Jupiter Pluvius so you know, who knows?

Meanwhile in Olive’s story … all those many ghosts she keeps seeing let her know that the “old boatman” meant to escort them to the other side has disappeared. The gang find a cloaked boatman figure wandering around the harbor, though. Olive runs up to ask Charon what’s going on and … gets yelled at for grabbing Hel, a young woman who turns out to be Charon’s granddaughter. He’s on vacation, and she’s filling in to build character and whatnot. But she hasn’t seen a single ghost since taking up the oar.

Olive can not believe this. Petunia offers that maybe Hel will develop her own ghost sight. Hel decides that Olive Oyl will mentor her in the ghost-seeing and managing business, and we’ll just see what Olive makes of that, then.

Next Week!

A certain time-travelling caveman decides to go and invent bestseller authorship and the kind of unthinkable, unreasoning wealth Bunzo hopes for. It’s Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop next Tuesday, all going well. See you then.

That Time Spunky The Kangaroo Borrowed His Uncle Hector’s Magic Wand

How it started …

Panel from Frisky Fables #12, March 1947, page 37 of 52. Original artist uncredited. Now Uncle Hector I can understand not seeing what’s coming, but Spunky’s Mama has been through … I really have no idea how many of these adventures before. She’s got to be setting up for something kind of like this …

How it’s going …

Panel from Frisky Fables #12, March 1947, page 41 of 52. Original artist uncredited. I mean, you don’t want to dawdle, yeah, but the goldfish is like right there, you could pretty much just reach in and grab the kid out. Anyway, why does the goldfish have teeth? Why does the worm have teeth? Why does Uncle Hector wear a jacket? I guess because he’s a magician and this way he can show he doesn’t have anything up his sleeves when the only possible reason to wear a jacket is to have something up his sleeves? But wait, every magician only tells you there’s nothing up their sleeves because they want you not to wonder what they have up their sleeves! Also, does any magician who’s not in a cartoon ever say anything about their sleeves? These are all questions I feel I cannot answer.

Your Newspaper Has Dropped Every Comic Strip by a Woman or Black Guy

I am simplifying the matter a bit, and making it a bit wrong in doing so. The gist of my subject line is true, however.

So last year, as part of its campaign to make sure its local papers were somehow even less engaged with the communities they serve, Gannet decreed that its papers should start selecting comics from pre-bundled sets. A newspaper could run as many or as few of the sets as they wanted, and were not prohibited (so far as I’m aware) from adding strips not on their list. But the intention and, more, the cost savings from getting bulk printing of the comic strips, especially Sunday strips, was clear.

Georgia Dunn, creator of Breaking Cat News, one of the best comic strips currently in production, outlined a big effect of this: women cartoonists were cut almost entirely nationwide [ emphasis added ]. D D Degg, with The Daily Cartoonist (from which I learned of Dunn’s Facebook post about this), followed up with analysis based on the Gannet lists.

The upshot: Gannet carries a single comic strip credited to a woman right now, Lynn Johnston’s For Better Or For Worse reruns. It carries one other comic strip co-written by a woman, though she doesn’t get byline credit, Greg Evans and Karen Evans’s Luann.

And, as Degg notes, other newspaper chains with standardized comics pages are not much better. Between McClatchy, Lee Enterprise, Postmedia, and Wick Communications only For Better Or For Worse repeats and Luann have comics written by women.

Commenters on Daily Cartoonist’s report about this point out the shortage of non-white-character strips as well. Baldo, Crabgrass, Curtis, and JumpStart appear to be the only ones still in any of these chains’ newspapers.

I bring all this up not because I figure you’re responsible or can specifically do something about it. But it is worth pointing out to people how bad corporations are at doing the things they exist for, such as, for newspapers, sharing news and entertainment that reflects the people in their communities.

Statistics Saturday: Some Facts About Me (also February)

• Time since I last brought up that the Ancient Romans considered Leap Day to be the 24th of February, doubled up: 4 years.
• Time since I last mentioned the Ancient Romans regarded this as the sixth day to the start of March: 4 years.
• Time since I last mentioned this is why a Leap Year is sometimes called a `bissextile year`, as it doubles the sixth: 4 years.
• Time since I last brought up how this affects Dominical Letters, and how it marks a difference between the Catholic and the Anglican calendars: 4 years.
• Time since anyone was interested in hearing all this: my whole life so far.
• Except that: people are kind of amused-ish that the Romans were so bad at calendars they’d think it made a lick of sense to put the leap day in the middle of late February instead of the end of a month and then they get to hear how before there were leap days the Romans might sometimes just stuff a whole extra month in the middle-lateish part of February and they’re not sure if I’m making that up or not.

Reference: Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury.

Comics Kingdom Is Broken Because They Redid the Web Site (120-Hour Warning)

It isn’t broken yet, as of the moment I write this and as of the moment I have this scheduled to appear. But I want to be out ahead of the search engine queries. This because this morning Comics Kingdom e-mailed its subscribers confirming what Tony DePaul told us last month. They’re to unleash the new web site on Wednesday, the 28th of February.

Their e-mail promises that it will have both “a unique visual identity and an optimized user experience” and that “world-class developers” have worked on this “blend of creativity and innovation” so you’ll probably be able to actually see Sam and Silo reliably around the 29th of March.

I grant I am taking a pessimistic view of this. But, y’know, it’s been since about 2014 that a web site redesign didn’t mostly make it harder for me to do the stuff I thought the web site was for. And the latest MacOS has been a disaster, with Terminal breaking if you ever hide the application and with Preview no longer able to display the Lost Popeye Dailies comic strip collections. I know that isn’t Comics Kingdom’s fault, but c’mon. I spent two years on their current design trying to get them to understand that the Sunday Lockhorns, printed in a long column three-quarters of an inch wide, was unreadable by humans, and they refused to ever try fixing it. The new site is going to require clicking more stuff, everything will move slower, and all the links will either be dark grey words on light grey background or else be rounded rectangles six inches on a side. That’s just how it works.

MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 27

Author-protagonist Keith A— is dead! Or so a raccoon calling himself Chris Petrucci tells the Knothole Villagers and the cast of one of the 90s Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons! As the villagers mourn the human who entered their lives, taught them a little something about prejudice, snagged a computer into his arm, and left, Chris takes out his guitar …

I hope you’re enjoying this 1997-era Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan fiction of mine, based on my friend Keith A—‘s own Sonic fan fiction. The whole of the MiSTing of Altered Destiny should be at this link. I’ll talk about things needing explanation at the end of this week’s installment.

---

> After a few
>measures, Chris closed his eyes and began to sing.
>
>He seems alone and tired,

JOEL: But he has a rich private life.

>Thoughts remain without an answer.
>Afraid and uninvited,
>He slowly drifts away.

TOM: You’re sure you dropped anchor, right?

CROW: Positive!

>Moved by desire and fear,
>Breaking delicate wings.

JOEL: [ As a mother ] Are you kids breaking delicate wings down
there?

CROW, TOM: No, Mom!

>
>Lifting shadows
>Off a dream once broken,
>She can turn a drop of water
>Into an ocean

CROW: She just will not let stuff drop. Always builds it into
bigger and bigger stuff.

>
> The music continued, slow and sorrowful, but then it
>hardened and became the sounds of unbearable heartbreak.

CROW: Crack!

JOEL: [ As a mother ] Now are you kids breaking unbearable hearts?

CROW, TOM: No, Mom!

>
>As the rain is pouring down,
>Tears of sorrow wash his mind.
>Drifting with the current,
>The stream of life flows on.

TOM: Daylight come an’ me wan’ go home.

>He seems alone and tired,
>Waiting on his hands and knees,
>The chill of winter’s darkness,
>Sits quietly.

CROW: In a land called Honalee!

>
>Moved by desire and fear,
>He takes a few steps away.
>
>Lifting shadows off a dream
>Once broken.

JOEL: [ As a mother ] Now are you two breaking shadows again?

CROW, TOM: No, Mom! No!

JOEL: We just can’t have good dream here, can we?

>She can turn a drop of water
>Into an ocean.

JOEL: She can turn meat loaf and vegetables into a startlingly
good casserole.

>And she listens openly
>
> Now the music, though still a bit heavy, told of
>comfort, solace. The music seemed to carry Chris’ mind to
>the farthest corners of his imagination, where he actually
>experienced it as if the music was a living, breathing
>thing.

JOEL: Meanwhile, Bookshire gets the syringe ready again.

>
>He pours his soul into the water,
>Reflecting the mystery.
>She carries him away,

TOM: She has to do everything. He is *so* lazy.

>And the winds die slowly.
>
>Lifting shadows off a dream once broken,
>She can turn a drop of water
>Into an ocean.

TOM: Yet even she cannot tell a cabbage from a lettuce.

>
> He suddenly reared his head back, singing at the top of
>his voice.
>
>Lifting shadows off a dream,
>Lifting shadows off a dream.

JOEL: [ As Sally ] Nudge the human, he’s stuck again.

>
> He lowered his head again, and let the music swirl to a
>halt. When it was done, he looked up, and saw that most of
>the attendees were crying, or ready to.

TOM: Please, stop!

CROW: Sob! We’re music lovers here!

> "Now, for the
>goodbye note.

CROW: Goodbye………..

JOEL: Goodbye…….

TOM: Goodbye…

ALL: Goodbye!

> You’ll have to ask Antoine for a translation
>of the chorus. It’s called ‘A Tout le Monde.’ Sasha?"

TOM: It means "A toot of the mound."

>
>Don’t remember where I was,
>I realized life was a game.
>The more seriously I took things,
>The harder the rules became.

JOEL: Yeah, "Civilization II" is a challenge.

>I had no idea what it cost,
>My life passed before my eyes.

CROW: And it turns out I spent my life thinking about video games.

>I found out how little I accomplished,
>All my plans denied.
>
> Suddenly, the mood went from a slow requiem to a hard,
>throbbing, pulse-metal sound. Chris’ face twisted in
>uncontrolled pain and rage.

TOM: Shouldn’t have turned the volume up past seven.

>
>So as you read this, know, my friends,
>I’d love to stay with you all,

JOEL: But I’ve got to be in Utica by eight p.m. tonight.

>Smile when you think of me,
>My body’s gone, that’s all.

CROW: And what do you need a body for, really?

>
>A tout le monde,
>A tout les amis,

TOM: The new Visit Quebec advertisements are chugging along nicely.

>Je vous aime,
>Je dois partir.

CROW: Tish!

JOEL: Gomez!

>
>These are the last words I’ll ever speak.
>And they’ll set me free.

TOM: So is the story over?

>
>If my heart were still alive,
>I know it would surely break.
>And the memories left with you,
>There’s nothing more to say.

JOEL: So, uh, goodnight.

>Moving on, is a simple thing.
>What it leaves behind is hard.

CROW: This little greasy residue in the sink. It’s gross.

>You kow the sleeping feel no more pain,
>And the living, are scarred.
>
>A tout le monde,

JOEL: D’Avignon! L’on y danse, L’on y danse.

>A tout les amis,
>Je vous aime,
>Je dois partir.
>
>These are the last words I’ll ever speak,

TOM: Again.

>And they’ll set me free.
>
> The next line of chords, though still grating, were set
>in a way that gave some small amount of comfort to the
>heartbroken masses. Then, it spiraled down into the requiem
>it began as, and died out.

CROW: Uhm…Chris, I’m sorry, the microphone wasn’t on, could you
do that again?

>
> Tears were streaming from his eyes as Chris walked over
>to the grave,

JOEL: See, Bugs has tricked Elmer Fudd into climbing down in there.

> threw his handful of dirt on, and walked into
>the hut.

CROW: Bonk!

>
> Rotor went over to Antoine, who had tears in his eyes.

TOM: And eyes in his tears, strangely enough.

>"What was that part in the chorus, Ant?"
>
> Antoine, turned and stared at his walrus friend.

JOEL: Hey, you know the eggman?

> "Zat,
>my friend, is zee saddest sing I have evair heard.

CROW: [ Snicker ]

JOEL: [ Giggles ] Some writers just shouldn’t try dialects.

TOM: [ As Antoine ] "Of course I’m violently allergic to music."

> He said,
>’To evaireebody, to all my friends, I love you, I have to
>leave.’" Antoine suddenly broke down crying.

CROW: Massive wimp theater.

>
> "Man, Sal, I’ve never seen anyone so broken up over a
>funeral before.

TOM: But then I have no emotional life of my own.

> Not even you were that bad when…" Sonic
>trailed off as the emotions became too much for even him to
>bear.

CROW: Emote emote emote emote emote.

JOEL: Stop, it’s too much to bear.

> Sally put a hand on his shoulder. "I can understand,
>Sonic. I mean, my mother was dear to me,

TOM: In both of the conversations we ever had.

> and I miss her
>very much. But what do you think it feels like to attend
>your own funeral?"

CROW: That’d be kind of cool, actually.

>

[ To continue … ]

---

The riff about “cannot tell a cabbage from a lettuce” is from The Electric Company, where it was one of those odd yet lovable songs probably by Joe Raposo. I want some admiration for my skill at remembering stuff here because in 1997 you just couldn’t see The Electric Company. I had to have like a quarter of the song lodged in my brain for almost two decades at that point. The cabbage and lettuce thing became one of my running joke riffs and I don’t remember when or why I stopped.

The “L’on y danse, l’on y danse” thing comes from one of over four things I remember from middle and high school French classes, that there’s a song which starts “sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse, l’on y danse”. It’s a song about dancing on the bridge at Avignon. We did not in fact dance in class.

Bugs Bunny tricks Elmer into climbing into a grave in the 1944 Bob Clampett cartoon The Old Gray Hare. If you’re not sure you remember the circumstances, imagine Bugs shouting “SO LONG, METHUSELAH!” and you’ve got it.

While Pondering a Smaller Injustice of the World

Like most people, I figure myself to be about the correct level of sensitive, balancing the respect I should give to every creature’s pain and the hardheadedness that the finiteness of my (and anyone’s) ability to act require. The only way I’m different is that I’m right. Still, it’s been bugging me lately that there’s someone, maybe many ones, whose job is putting together vacation travel packages that the contestants on Let’s Make A Deal win and then immediately trade away because they want a shot at the Big Deal Of The Day that isn’t valuable enough to make the expectation value of their win worthwhile. Or maybe they want a giant cardboard Zonk-in-the-box. And sure, it’s nothing personal and it’s not like they get paid more ofif their vacation tour gets picked and all their work can go into a prize on another show someday so it means they can spend less time in prep for that episode but still, there’s that moment of rejection, even if it is because someone in the audience dressed in the mustard bottle container from Halloween City is yelling out bad advice.

What’s Going On In Judge Parker? Who is this ‘Ann Parker’? November 2023- February 2024

Ann Parker, who entered the strip the last day of 2023 and has been the focus since, is in fact part of Nicholas P Dallis’s original cast of the strip! Mark Carlson’s excellent listing of major characters describes her as “[ often ] engaged in ill-advised romances. She graduated with a nursing degree but is rarely shown utilizing it”. Carlson offers examples, including romances to a man with “criminal connections”, being stalked by a psychopath who later takes her hostage, being engaged to a jewel thief, and finally deciding between a penniless two-timing playboy and a struggling young attorney. She last appeared in the strip in 1968, around the time of Judge Alan Parker’s wedding to Katherine, and the strip’s transition to being about Sam Driver and Abbey ParkerSpencer.

After 55 years she’s back and ready to compete for the Ham Gravy Trophy for Formerly Important Characters Forgotten By Their Comic Strip. If that doesn’t sound anything like what you’re reading in Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker that’s probably because you’re reading these words after around May 2024. If you are in that distant future, there’s probably a more up-to-date plot recap here. Otherwise, or if you’re looking for how we got to Ann Parker running for mayor of Cavelton, read on here.

And to answer your other question: the last several months Bret Blevins has been doing the art, in place of the ill Mike Manley. I don’t know why Blevins isn’t putting his name in the credit box. My guess is a contractual obligation, possibly something relating to health care, as the deranged United States model of employer-based health care causes many goofy results. But Blevins’s filling in is why the art looks different. Also the suddenness with which Blevins had to step up may explain some of the art panel reuse, like from the 5th, the 6th, and the 7th of January this year.

Judge Parker.

26 November 2023 – 17 February 2024.

After resolving more assassin stuff the Judge Parker cast was looking forward to a quiet holiday season. That got disrupted with April and Randy Parker’s house being swarmed by CIA agents again. It turns out April’s mother Helena Bowen Or Bowers is dead. Or believed dead. At least, her body was found dead. But the truck carrying her body to autopsy was stopped, the driver and security detail killed, and the body stolen. April, offended by the suggestion she might know something about the woman she lived with secretly for years, declares she’s had enough of the CIA suspecting her of knowing something and quits the agency.

Francesco Marciuliano and Bret Blevins’s Judge Parker for the 28th of December, 2023. I’m glad April is taking this all so well. It’d be easy to handle the secret death of a parent badly. (And speaking of reused artwork: the 29th and with a zoom in 30th of December can be disorienting to look at in rapid succession.)

After some Christmas family moments of happiness, New Year’s Eve arrives and some fresh family moments of awkwardness. Ann Parker is back, Randy understating things by explaining to April that they haven’t seen her in “over twenty years”. While April is on full double red alert, Alan Parker is happy to hear his prodigal daughter’s tale. She’s married — not to David, the guy she was with when last seen, before Lyndon Johnson quit the presidential race — but someone else. And she needs money, a lot of it.

She doesn’t get it from Alan Parker, not with a story like that. Also, while she was in the bathroom, he checked her purse and found an ID for “Doris Lachlan”. April surmises that Ann is doing identity frauds, and that there must be serious trouble if she’s going to her father now. She suspects blackmail. Also that she’s now killed the “Doris Lachlan” persona.

Which is what brings Don Barnes to the law detective offices of Sam Driver and company. He was married-ish to Doris Lachlan, who ran off with a lot of money they were supposed to split. Detective (suspended) Yelich is happy to go searching, figuring there’s a chance to find her before she flees or someone finds her.

Francesco Marciuliano and Bret Blevins’s Judge Parker for the 4th of February 2024. So what do you think the big score Don made with Ann/Doris/Cheryl/a-name-to-be-named-later was? Do you think her nursing expertise was used for it?

Finding her at the train station is someone named Harrison, who’s angry about “Cheryl” and the money she owes him. She swears several times she’s saving to pay him back. His better idea is to go find this one house she visited while in this town “Cheryl” has no reason to visit, and get the money out of “old friend” Alan Parker. Yelich is close enough to find out about this abduction and warns Randy Parker to get his father out of there. Alan Parker refuses to leave, and Rene Belluso takes notes, wrong.

Next Week!

We got supernatural beings trapped on this side of the great beyond! We got Popeye trapped on the other side of the great bubble! Who will win? Emi Burdge and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye gets some attention next week, all going to plan.

What I Learned From Watching All The _Popeye And Son_ Cartoons

And now, for real, I bring the Internet’s most-cherished Popeye and Son rewatch project to its conclusion with thoughts about the series as a whole.

I learned that Popeye and Son is fine, really. It’s not some lost gem of the pre-90s-Renaissance setting the stage for everything we’d love the next decade’s cartoons for. It’s also not some misbegotten-from-birth idea that couldn’t have done anything but exile Popeye from the pop culture. It’s also not something that shakes the Popeye canon in interesting ways, or even a weird enough take that it deserves some attention, the way the Bobby London daily strip was.

I admit going in kind of hoping that this would be a fiasco. Fiascos are exciting to watch and fun to tell other people about. My next hope was that it would be better than I thought, and that it was. Over and over I found the plots just a bit more thought-out and involved than they needed to be. Sometimes this involved actual shifts in what the cartoon was about, as when finding Eugene has a family lead into rescuing the littlest Jeep baby. Or the several times it turns out Bluto isn’t spending his fatherhood thinking of ways to mess with Popeye. His willingness to give Junior a job, and be reasonable about what he does, stands out. Or doing a Jekyll and Hyde story with two Hydes, a twist I don’t remember seeing anywhere else.

The better-than-needed air extends to the things that fill up episodes. Poopdeck Pappy emerging from the sea riding a turtle. Olive in a lost world hanging out with a pack of Flintstones day players, when one or two would have sufficed. Fred and Eileen Furple from Fearville, Florida, hanging around just to be odd corners of the story. And, occasionally, Popeye muttering in nice fun asides. I don’t know whether they were all scripted or whether Maurice LaMarche was improvising, or if there was a blend of both. I’m guessing scripted, but that’s just how I explain the episodes that didn’t have anything to speak of.

So if these cartoons are so good why does nobody care about them? Fair question. First, I suppose, is that while they’re better than expected they’re not great. There’s the problem that Junior is a generically pleasant kid, and his friends even more so. There’s like one episode where Junior really wants something and I can’t think of any good quips or lines of dialogue or anything. “Like Popeye, but hates spinach” is a good first thought for a character, but without signifiers like Popeye’s speech mannerisms or the pre-domesticated Popeye’s eagerness for mayhem there’s not a lot left.

Tank is a failed antagonist, something I think the show even sensed given how much of the series he disappeared for. I’m not sure if that’s more because they couldn’t find a way to distinguish him from Bluto, or that the more promising stories for Junior didn’t need a bully in them. (His subordinate bullies fare even worse; I can’t remember if they even get names.) Francis coasts on being something-like-Uncle-Wimpy, which is almost enough. I’m not sure whether that’s more because Wimpy is that solid a character or because we see pretty little of Francis after all. He starts to emerge into his own with that Sherlock Holmes bit. If he were more of a determined but maybe inept kid investigator they might have found a role that was Wimpy-ish but original enough to feel fresh.

And remember, no matter what the opening credits suggest, don’t inflate your sea serpents to gigantic size and send them jetting off like popped balloons. Just let them canoodle, why are you making life hard for sea serpents?

Sweethaven as a setting is okay enough. Tying the series to a specific location makes sense for the production, even if it’s out of line with the way the pre-Hanna-Barbera Popeye cartoons worked. (Though it does match the comic strip.) The advantage of a specific setting, other than saving on background animation, is that you should be able to build stories out of the setting. That’s not done here, perhaps because the cartoon didn’t run long enough to build up lore. As a setting it’s not a bad one; it’s much more sensible for Popeye to be in a shore town sometimes building boats than it ever did to have him in a generic suburb. Popeye also has a job running a fitness club. We saw the building, although I think there’s only one or two episodes where we see him at that work and my memory is it didn’t matter to the plot. Olive Oyl gets a juice bar that I don’t think we ever look into.

These settings, though, do suggest they thought there would be story potential in them. That none developed might reflect poor choice, although I’m not sure what would make a better choice. Wimpy running a shore restaurant is fine. It’s built entirely on the association that Wimpy has stuff to do with hamburgers, and doens’t think further that you can’t run a restaurant when you’re as quintessentially lazy as Wimpy.

The most curious bit of background setting is Bluto. He’s reimagined as a guy with a life outside of Popeye. Past that we get a bit hazy — one episode he’s the town used-car dealer, another he owns a waterpark, yet another he has a fancy restaurant — but the personality change is the thing that stands out. Considering Bluto only exists because Popeye needed a regular foil you’d think removing that would drain him of interest and that didn’t happen. I don’t believe this was a conscious choice. Bluto’s empty squabbling with Popeye in the first episode hints that they expected he’d do more of that. But characters are interesting in how they surprise you and a Bluto who mostly has better stuff to do is surprising.

Can I say there was any grand mistake in the execution of Popeye and Son that kept it from greatness? No, not really. There’d need to be some stroke of luck to get the series a second or third season. And it probably could not ever have reached enough episodes to be part of a syndication package on its own. Most Saturday morning cartoons of the 80s got one season and that’s all they needed. And with the dwindling of independent stations needing plenty of old cartoon airing blocks there’s not much that could have kept Popeye as a franchise going in the 90s, even if these were the most compelling cartoons of the decade.

The cartoon’s fine. You won’t feel bad for watching it, but you’re not missing anything if you don’t. The episodes with the Sea Hag are pretty good.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son and Grandson_, Episode 14: Attack of the Sea Haglet

On second thought no, that’s getting a bit silly.

Statistics Saturday: US President Birthdays (Observed)

• Abraham Lincoln (12 February)
• George Washington (22 February) (ns)
• Calvin Coolidge (4 July)
• All The Rest (not observed)

Reference: Printer 1 & C, Navy Training Courses NAVPERS 10458, Bureau of Naval Personnel.

Why Does _Dick Tracy_ Look Weird Now?

This week (the one that started the 11th of February, 2024) Dick Tracy looks different because it’s a Minit Mystery, drawn by guest artist Dee Fish. (And written by Eric Costello, who’s created Minit Mysteries for the strip before.) I don’t have a credit for Dee Fish as guest artist before this, but I don’t claim to be complete in my records or good at research.

After the 25th of February, though? The answer may be revealed by the alert people of The Daily Cartoonist. D D Degg observed that the Dick Tracy page at Tribune Content Agency Intellectual Properties Franchise Opportunities LLC GmbH Inc’s web site credits Charles Ettinger as partnering with Mike Curtis to make the comic. Ettinger was guest artist for a November 2017 story rerun in January 2022, and for some time at the start of 2018 guest-inked the comic strip.

There’s no word yet when the handover will happen, trusting that it will. Nor why Shelly Pleger, the current artist (and before that, inker), might have left. If I hear anything, it’ll probably be from The Daily Cartoonist, so you’d find out sooner from them. But you never know. If I carry this blog on long enough I’m bound to have a scoop someday!

MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 26

Author-protagonist Keith A—, transported to the world of Sonic the Hedgehog and with a computer grafted to his arm, has disappeared! But weeks later, a raccoon calling himself Christopher Petrucci appears in Knothole Village, and he’s brought his guitar! What happens next? Find out in this week’s installment of my Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment of Keith A—‘s fan fiction, fresh to you from the forgotten year of 1997.

And if you’d like to read the whole MiSTing of Altered Destiny please check out this link. If you’d like me to explain or apologize for any of the riffs in this, check out the end of this segment.

---

>
>* * * * *
>
> That night, Chris and Rebecca were sitting on the same
>rock by Starlight Pond, side by side, gazing at the crystal
>waters.

TOM: Talk about hard water.

> Chris was the first to break the silence. "I’m
>sorry I scared you all like that. Especially you, Becky."

CROW: Aw, we didn’t think about you at all, silly.

>
> "Just what were you doing in your room, anyway? What
>was up with all that singing?" Keith sighed.

TOM: Again, he’s at the age where that sort of thing will happen.

> "Have you
>ever felt something really deeply, but had no way to put it
>into words?" Rebecca nodded. "Well, that’s what the songs
>were for.

JOEL: He couldn’t think of words, so he composed a whole bunch
of words and made them match up in meter and rhyme with
songs.

> I had to get my pain out into the open, and,
>well, I guess I just lost myself. It really helped me deal
>with my problems, though, so it wasn’t all bad."

CROW: He understands the quadratic formula now.

> They were
>silent for some time, and suddenly Rebecca hugged him tight.
>"Just promise you’ll never leave me."

JOEL: This story is just dozens of epilogues leaning against
each other.

> Chris hugged her
>back, just as tightly. "I promise. I’ll never leave your
>side until the end of time." Rebecca looked into his eyes.

TOM: Ding ding ding ding ding! We *have* deadmeat!

>"I love you, Chris. More than anything else on Mobius, I
>love you."

JOEL: "Course, I hate Mobius."

>
> "And I love you, Rebecca. Thank you for showing me
>what love truly is."

CROW: In the scenes we didn’t get to see.

> They spent the rest of the night that
>way, locked in a loving embrace, gazing at the twin moons of
>Mobius.

TOM: You know, it looks like there’s two moons, but actually
it’s just the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the same moon.

>
>* * * * *
>
> The people of Knothole found it much easier to accept

>Keith (sorry, Chris : )

CROW: Sorry, Pete.

JOEL: Sorry, Ed.

TOM: Sorry, Stu.

CROW: Sorry, Alan.

TOM: Sorry, Gene.

JOEL: Sorry, Wally.

> now that he didn’t constantly remind
>them of how much humans had done to them. In fact, they
>started to like him.

TOM: Well, they liked his collection of Milk-Bones, anyway.

> He had become a thorn in Robotnik’s
>ample side more times then he could count.

CROW: Four times?

> But the real
>test of his mettle came during the funeral.
>
> He had placed everything he had owned in his former
>life in a small box,

JOEL: Yeah, what does he need with underwear anyway?

> wrapped it in the shirt he had worn,
>and carried it to the chosen gravesite. It was right next
>to Queen Acorn’s grave.

ALL: [ Snicker ]

CROW: So, like, would Queen Acorn’s royal theater company be a
group of ‘Acornion Players’?

> "Now you’ve got someone to talk to,
>Mother," Sally said, tears in her eyes, as she laid the box
>down.

TOM: A dull person who isn’t really dead, but still someone.

> Into the scene walked Chris, wrapped in a voluminous
>black cloak. As he unfolded his hands from beneath it, all
>could see

TOM: He was flashing them.

> the bakhat he had around his waist, the Mobian
>sign for mourning. He looked around.
>
> "I know it’s your custom to sing a Mobian ballad at
>your funerals,

CROW: They tried singing Hopi Indian ballads, but somehow that
never caught on at the planet Mobius.

> but none seemed right, none could tell this
>boy’s story so well as these next two songs can.

JOEL: The haunting theme from "One Day at a Time," followed by a
Diet Coke jingle from 1986.

> One is a
>look into his heart, the next are his last words."

TOM: Ah-hem. "Nah, if the cliff wasn’t stable they would put up
a siiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII…."

> He
>looked down at his computer. "Sasha, please play ‘Lifting
>Shadows off a Dream,’ minus the vocals."
>
> The bass line came first, the sound of water dripping
>into a small pool.

JOEL: Oh, great, now the whole village is going to feel like
going to the bathroom.

> A few notes plucked out on a guitar told
>of a wind blowing across the scene, and the synthesizer
>wrapped the whole thing together with a beauty that brought
>tears to the eyes of the hardiest souls.

CROW: Aw, lookie, Ted Koppel is sobbing.

[ To continue … ]

---

More old sitcom themes get a mention this week. I kind of remember the theme to One Day at a Time, which went: “One day at a time / one day at a time / one day at a time / one day at a ti-iii-iiiiii-iii-iiii-ime”. Look, there were only three networks back then.

Not sure whether I’m more sorry that I spotted this right away or that I did this in the first place. In that whole sorry, Pete, sorry, Ed/ Sorry, Stu exchange? The names are all from the lesser-known Apollo astronauts. I guess I understand why everybody treated me like that in middle school.

You May Find This Hard to Believe

But I was talking with someone about Star Trek: The Next Generation, about the episode where the genderless sapient being of the week decides to become a girl and kiss Riker, and then realized there’s more than one episode like that. And I know, that sounds odd, but I swear, someone wanted to talk with me about Star Trek: The Next Generation for some reason.

What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? Are Gil and Mimi Thorp Divorced? November 2023 – February 2024

They are. We saw Gil Thorp and Mimi signing the divorce papers the 29th of January. Before that we saw the two looking over photo albums agreeing they had good times, and Mimi asking if they’d still be friends. Coach Cami Ochoa mentioned how she thought Keri Thorp would be someone who loved having two moms. And coach Luke Martinez swore up and down that Gil Thorp would be the hottest bachelor in Milford. So this is as established as can be.

So this should bring you up to date to mid-February 2024 in
Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp. If you’re reading this after about May 2024, or news breaks about the strip, I should have a more up-to-date essay about it here. Now get in losers: we’re going to Milford.

Gil Thorp.

20 November 2023 – 10 February 2024.

Formatting this as a celebrity gossip column worked last time too, so I’m going to keep that up. We got a title for Chapter Four: The Misdirect, the 27th of November, which means once again a story strip started a fresh installment right about when I covered them here. This is coincidence but an eerie one. Except that loose definitions make it all but inevitable.

So. Also broken up? Keri Thorp and Pedro Martinez, who’s been ghosting her — and staying in his room — since Keri’s abortion and the football accident that broke his leg. Keri thinks Pedro is trying to embarrass his father; Tobias Gordon wonders if Pedro’s embarrassed about blowing the game.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 6th of February, 2024. Hey, no fair running into Mark Trail there! Turn back before a squirrel talks about the poachers!

One person does cut through Pedro’s seclusion. Valley Tech Coach Paul Kim shows up at the Martinez’s one day, saying he needs Pedro’s help. Before long he’s got Pedro doing push-ups and racing peacocks, all the signs of being recalled to life.

Speaking of Tobias: the story of him and Rodney Barnes going to juvenile detention for selling vape sticks reached a natural conclusion. And a punch line that would have fit in the Neal Rubin era, too, which underscores how Barajas has loaded new motifs into Gil Thorp without abandoning the old. After a couple strips establishing them getting back to normal with their friends, Rodney mentions how his cousin is making a killing flipping shoes. “You’re on your own, homie,” says Toby, and they freeze mid-laughter while the credits roll.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 18th of December, 2023. Compliance officers, by the way, are the people who find out whether there are laws to cover a thing, and then tell people in the organization what they are. So I’m assuming there’s a thin-skinned class of people whining about compliance officers existing and now you can dismiss their very silly opinions right away.

With that story of teens in trouble resolved there’s room for a new one. This would be Inma Rimsha, who’s on the girls wrestling team that’s brand-new this year. We’re introduced to this with an opposing team’s coach demanding she not wear her hijab. We don’t see how that particular conflict worked out, but Gil Thorp spoke with the district compliance officer and confirmed that yes, religious freedom means women can wear hijabs if they want.

Gil Thorp urges Rimsha to invite her parents to a match. She’s not sure that’s wise, but it turns out they’re proud of her and she has what seems like a convincing win, which is great. But the other controversy comes thanks to Marty Moon, who asks Rimsha’s opinion about the protests outside. Rimsha says she wishes she were there with the protesters, supporting an immediate cease-fire. Taking a mild stand against genocide proves controversial, of course, but Thorp stands up for his student.

Gil Thorp also gets into a weird exchange with a Coach Hernandez, which is a name once used by mistake for Martinez and that’s caused me no end of confusion in the first drafts of these essays. It also has Thorp demanding Hernandez keep his hands off “your student’s parents”, which isn’t something we’ve seen out of Martinez. I have no explanation for this phenomenon.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 15th of January, 2024. Well that’s a development that hit like a, oh, I don’t know, some kind of punch to the gut or something.

There’s also a curious coach-in-trouble story going on. This with — I believe, based on what seems to be the results of a four-team open-air hockey tournaments — Goshen’s Coach Gerads. This began, logic tells me, after the basketball game against Milford. Some of the benched players take out their anger at the teams loss on Gerads’s stomach, and since then he’s been afraid of his students, to the point he’s cringing at Gil Thorp, a man whose antique flip phone only makes calls through Myrt the Operator.

Also, Coach Ochoa stumbled across a gimmick that seems to rally the boys hockey team. Chanting nursery rhymes sure changes the mood, going from one of facing imminent defeat to one of the opponents not knowing what’s going on over there. Again, something that wouldn’t be out of line in Neal Rubin’s day.

There, now. Does the past twelve weeks of storytelling make more sense to you?

Milford Sports Watch!

The sports watch is getting all the more exciting and complicated as Barajas gets more elliptical about naming his opponents! So there are probably errors on this list. I will accept corrections and only sulk privately about getting stuff wrong, as always.

• Valley Tech (20 – 25 November) (with a day off for Thanksgiving.)
• Unnamed High School (6 December) (And yeah, another typo here, with ‘UUW’ allegedly standing for ‘United World Wrestling’)
• Unnamed Wrestling team (6 December)
• Unnamed Hockey team (14 – 16 December)
• Unnamed Basketball team (27 – 28 December)
• East Hampton (4 – 6 January)
• Goshen (11 – 15 January)
• Unnamed Hockey team (17 – 18 January)
• Unnamed Wrestling team (22 January)
• Unnamed Basketball team (1 – 2 February) (with Valley Tech getting named the 2nd)
• Oakwood (7 February)
• Goshen, and whoever has the Bobcats (8 February)

Next Week!

From the comic strip people most complain about jumbled and unmotivated plots to … Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker! Am I going to have to separate these two strips so I don’t overload my rationalization engine? Anyway it’s your chance to meet a Judge Parker relative I don’t know if Marciuliano just made up or who actually used to be in the comic back in the Benjamin Harrison administration or what.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 1: Happy Anniversary

Today we come at last to the final cartoon of the final episode of my Popeye and Son reviews. I too regret that the world’s leading Popeye and Son blog has run out of new episodes to review, but I hope to have a postscript essay about what I learned from all this. You know, my usual after finishing a project.

Today’s episode, Happy Anniversary, is another credited to John Loy, cementing my early impression that he and Eric Lewald defined the series. This episode tells the story I would have thought might be Episode 1, Cartoon 1, how Popeye and Olive got married. Write down your guesses for how it came to pass and then watch the episode. We’ll see how close you came.

The Plot: After Popeye and Olive have a fight on their anniversary the kids learn, in separate flashbacks, the story of their wedding day. On their wedding day — the last of many attempts — Popeye has to navigate Bluto’s dirty tricks and kidnapping, while Olive Oyl has to fend of Lizzie pointing out how Popeye is not large. But Popeye has his spinach, and Olive has a motorbike. Before the day is done, Bluto’s married Lizzie and Popeye and Olive Oyl exchange vows before the captain of a garbage scow. Retelling their parts of the tale rekindles Olive’s and Popeye’s affections, and hey, Popeye did too remember their anniversary, giving a diamond-ed up version of the bolt that was their original ad hoc wedding ring. On to the surprise party!

The Thoughts: Nana Oyl is in this one! I teased you yesterday about the obscure characters and here she is, getting her second animated appearance ever, if the Popeye Wikia is complete. Her father, Cole Oyl, gets to appear too, pacing while checking his watch and not demanding apologies.

The cartoon has a nice story structure, told in parallel flashbacks from Popeye and Olive. It’s also good emotional structure, as telling the story of their wedding day, overcoming Bluto’s sabotage, gives both the chance to calm down and realize they didn’t want to fight. Popeye finds his lost anniversary present earlier in the cartoon than I expected; his impulse to throw it away is understandable in the moment. Good reflexes on Junior in catching it.

The wedding day being sabotaged by Bluto brings to mind Nearlyweds, the last Famous Studios Popeye cartoon (the handful theatrically produced after that were under the Paramount Cartoon Studios name). But there’s not a repetition in any of the stunts used. There’s rather fewer tricks Bluto uses than he did in the theatrical cartoon, in fact, amounting to just swiping Popeye’s tuxedo and then driving him out of town. The flashback structure, and splitting the story between Popeye and Olive, keeps this from feeling like an under-plotted episode.

There’s also some nice bits of filling in the setting of the series. We see Popeye’s Fitness Club and Olive Oyl’s Juice Bar. The juice bar turns out never to play into the series, but this establishes what they thought they were setting up. It also gives us a first look at Bluto’s wife, as well as her name, Lizzie, which we otherwise didn’t hear until episode five. Making her Olive’s bridesmaid was probably done for dramatic economy. It suggests an angle that could have been done for the series, though, where Olive and Lizzie were as good friends as Popeye and Bluto were rivals. It turned out Bluto had little to do with the series and Lizzie even less, but there was plot-generating potential here.

I know what you’re thinking because I’m thinking it too: so who served as witnesses for Olive and Popeye? For that matter, how could Lizzie and Bluto get married without a license? Granted perhaps Sweethaven is in a state where you can get same-day licenses but it is explicitly late in the day, surely past when the county clerk would be taking new applications. On reflection, I understand why everyone treated me like that in middle school.

So what do you think of Popeye and Olive’s wedding, done by the dubious legal theory that the captain of a ship can marry couples? I had expected Popeye to use his spinach power-up to race to the Oyl house in time. I’m still not sure why he didn’t. Or at least call Olive’s parents to promise they were on their way, but maybe that promise was spoiled by past failed weddings. Still, one running theme of this series has been how it beat my expectations, often taking an idea in a novel direction.

I liked this. It was a surprising way to get to what we knew was there, with surprise being the hardest thing to get in a prequel. Popeye being married by a ship captain makes startling emotional sense; once seen, it felt inevitable. Having it be captain of a garbage scow is also a good touch of the scruffy, disreputable start that Popeye had. He’s cleaned up considerably since 1929. It’s good he can still touch that without losing his dignity.

There’s some nice animation touches here too. Popeye spinning his pipe around, startled, which is always a fun bit of business. Olive Oyl’s head shaking causing her eyes to swing back and forth, like her face is rubber. And Popeye peeling the roof of Bluto’s cab open has just the sort of style you’d expect from the theatrical cartoons.

As bachelor, apparently, Popeye lived at Ma Wimpy’s Boarding House. I had thought this was the first time we’ve ever seen a hint that Wimpy even has a mother, though Wikipedia tells me in an incited paragraph that she appeared in the Sunday comics. (The Popeye wikia offers no hint of this, listing just his cousin Francis, introduced in this cartoon, and his cousins Otis O Otis, whom I’ve seen in the Sagendorf reruns, and Meldew, who I never heard of before either.) Shame they couldn’t have outdone even Randy Millholland in bringing out the obscurities.

When Olive finishes her story, at about 22:04 in the video, her mouth quivers. I think this is an animation error: note how it stops the moment the off-screen character stops talking. However, it works in making Olive’s crying a better-acted thing. There have been a couple animation errors this series, most of them small enough to not be worth mentioning. I just want to highlight one that’s making things better.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 1: Attack of the Sea Hag

Surprised to see the world’s leading Popeye and Son blog posting about the cartoon again? Me too, though not for the reasons you’d think. I mentioned back when this started that King Features’s YouTube playlist with the series on it lacked the first video, episode 1, which was hidden. I didn’t know why they would hide the first episode but imagined they had their reasons. Whatever those reasons are, they still have them. The playlist of the show starts from episode 2, just as my Internet-favorite Popeye and Son episode reviews have done.

But what I didn’t think to check, until well into these reviews, was whether the episode was available as a standalone thing, not in the playlists. And it is, sitting there just on his own, where we can watch it. So now, let’s get to the first episode of the show, written by John Loy, who also co-wrote the final cartoon of the series. And a good number of those in-between.

The Plot: While surfing after school Junior runs across a curious wooden mermaid which Tank then steals, and Bluto takes from the both of them for his yacht. Popeye won’t fight Bluto for it, though, as he recognizes the mermaid as the Sea Hag’s figurehead. During an evening party the mermaid’s eyes light, making the yacht float up to the Sea Hag, who demands Bluto return the slab mermaid. When Bluto won’t take a hint, Junior takes his spinach and throws the mermaid, the Sea Hag, and the storm behind her out of the cartoon.

The Thoughts: I’m glad to come to this episode at the end. It gives me the chance to compare the series as it came out to what they thought they would make. The opening sequence, for example, with Popeye and Bluto called in to deal with their sons who were fighting in class? It suggests they expected the series to be, much like the opening credits show, one where Junior and Tank are always fighting, just as their fathers are. As the show turned out, Popeye and Bluto had almost nothing to do with each other, and even Tank disappeared.

The Sea Hag’s presence suggests they figured to work in some of Popeye’s old supporting cast. We’d get some of that, Poopdeck Pappy and the Goons getting episodes and the Sea Hag getting another appearance. And Eugene the Jeep getting an episode where it turns out he has a family. No deep cuts, though, nothing like the cast Randy Millholland has pulled out of obscurity for the revived comic strip. (But watch this space.) (Swee’Pea, a probably unresolvable character, stays out of the show.) We get a take on the Sea Hag that’s more mysterious and arbitrary and inscrutable than she was in the King Features cartons of the 60s. That’s a good take on the character. I haven’t seen the late-70s Hanna-Barbera cartoons recently enough to remember if that’s a new take for this series. But it’s in line with the decision to make the Goons a remote, menacing presence too.

I’ll dismiss the main body of the story soon. I want to continue cross-examining the meeting-with-the-principal scene. Popeye and Bluto getting into a fight over which of their kids started a fight makes sense. Their getting so caught up in their fight everyone quietly leaves the room and they never notice works too. But listen to their words. Besides being the same “like father like son” dialogue from the opening credits, the argument is nothing.

Sometime in Like 1989 I read a TV scriptwriting book by some writer for the series Moonlighting, renowned for the snappy arguments between Cybill Shepherd’s and Bruce Willis’s characters. He mentioned one common failure, enough to mark the writer as someone who didn’t understand the series, was to have an argument scene devolve into “All right then!” “All right!” “Fine!” “FINE!”. (Or something like that.) The problem is this exchange isn’t about anything; it’s an argument without content. And without personality; you could drop it into any argument in any movie or TV show without affecting anything.

Popeye and Bluto’s dialogue is all this filler, devoid even of any good insults. The cartoon may have been under restrictions about how much Popeye and Bluto could punch each other, but surely they could have said insulting things? Or at least made preposterous boasts about how hard they would punch the other? Right there we have almost my opinion on the whole series. Sensible enough premise, some good bits, but limited by this genericness that strikes even the central characters.

Sea Hag isn’t being paid enough to open her eyes this series. And please welcome as the mermaid shiphead special guest star Richie Rich’s girlfriend Gloria Glad!

When we get into the real story, things pick up some. We get to meet Junior’s friends although the girls remain just “the girls” and Tank’s sub-bullies not even that. Popeye spotting the mermaid as the Sea Hag’s and backing out of it is also a good bit. It shows Popeye as smart enough to avoid needless trouble. It presents Popeye as stuffing Junior’s head full of old adventures that Junior doesn’t necessarily believe. And the mermaid’s eyes lighting up with some old Superfriends sound effects and causing the yacht to just … sail itself away, into a storm … is this nice eerie bit. It’s got some good mystery and danger to it.

I’m not clear why everyone at Bluto’s party is so scared of this. It’s weird for the ship to float away from the dock on its own but, like, it has engines. Bluto owns it. He should be able to get it back to dock. Maybe they cut, or didn’t think to write, a scene where that won’t work. Bluto’s pigheaded about not returning the Sea Hag’s mermaid. Popeye didn’t tell him it was the Sea Hag’s, although Bluto’s continued refusal once he sees her suggests he doesn’t know who the Sea Hag is. Which might be, come to think of it, at least in this continuity. Would have helped if there were a line making clear he doesn’t recognize her. Bit of a jerk move on Popeye’s part to not at least give Bluto a heads-up, but how many favors does Popeye need to do Bluto?

Popeye has nothing to do with the resolution of the crisis. I think I like that as a way of building up Junior as protagonist, or at least his own character. I do like that he takes the obvious, direct way out of throwing the mermaid so hard at the Sea Hag that she and her ship leave. No punching necessary! I also like how much time at Bluto’s party is spent having vaguely Margaret Dumontesque dowagers fainting on each other. Might be a bit much of that for your tastes, but it didn’t wear me out.

Statistics Saturday: Some Trademark-Law-Safe Euphemisms For The Super Bowl

• The Big Game
• Upersay Owlbay
• The Superb Owl
• Sapsucker Frog
• Igbay Amegay
• The Splendid Bowl
• The Inadequate Spoon [ Bizarro World only ]
• Uperbsay Owlay
• Thorax-In-A-Bog
• Pro Bowl 2: Pro Bowler Twoer
• They Tell Us We Love Advertising Today
• Thrakkorzog

Reference: A Short History of English Words, Bernard Groom.

I saw The Inadequate Spoon opening for Flint Eastwood at the Common Ground Music Festival once, they were really good.

Without Denying That Society Still Has Problems

And I just put that in the subject line because I don’t want people to think I’m someone who thinks society doesn’t have problems. Oh, I’d love to say we did, or didn’t, and mean it, or mean we didn’t it, but without even trying I can think of four or even five problems society has and doesn’t look ready to get rid of anytime soon. I mean only to point out where there’s one we don’t have. And that is: whatever else might be going wrong, they never did make The Emoji Movie 2: Emojier Movierer.

Note to self: cancel this post if it turns out they did make The Emoji Movie 2 whatever its subtitle, even if it were Emojiish Movielesser.

MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 25

Last time in my Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan fiction was a host sketch that didn’t have much to do with anything. So never mind that. Previously in the Sonic the Hedgehog fan fiction Altered Destiny, author-protagonist Keith A— bade farewell to Sally Acorn and went off to the woods to deal with ears. And now, who or what will we find return? Hint: a lot of TV show theme songs for some reason.

The whole of the MiSTing of Altered Destiny should be at this link. After this, I’ll try to explain anything needing that sort of thing.

---

[ ALL settle back in ]

>
>* * * * *
>
> The next morning, the entire village was gathered to
>the eastern border of the town.

CROW: Which was about twenty feet from the western border of town.

> Apparently, there were some
>strange sounds floating over the treetops. It was faint at
>first, but gradually grew louder. It sounded like music!

TOM: Would somebody get the Beatles off the roof, *please*?

>When she heard the voice, Sally’s heart leaped to her
>throat. It couldn’t be! But the singing continued.

JOEL: "Somebody want to turn the human down?"

>
>And the road becomes my bride.
>I have stripped of all but pride,
>So in her I do confide,
>And she keeps me satisfied.

CROW: This isn’t a very good "Underdog" episode.

>Gives me all I need.
>And with dust in throat I crave.

TOM: Oh, and give me a dollar, too.

>Only knowledge will I save.
>To the game you stay a slave.
>Rover Wanderer
>Nomad Vagabond

JOEL: These were early concepts for naming Star Trek: Voyager.

>Call me what you will, yeah.

CROW: Hey, thanks, "Binky."

>
>But I’ll take my time anywhere.
>Free to speak my mind anywhere.

TOM: See, the Internet has trained people to think of free speech
as a blunt instrument.

>And I’ll redefine anywhere,
>Anywhere I roam,
>Where I lay my head is home, yeah.

JOEL: Well, also where I keep my aspirin collection too.

>
>And the earth becomes my throne.
>I adapt to the unknown.
>Under wandering stars I’ve grown.
>By myself but not alone,

CROW: I think this is the theme song to some Japanese animation.

TOM: I think this is the theme song to *all* Japanese animation.

>I ask no one.
>And my ties are severed clean.
>Less I have, the more I gain.

JOEL: [ Theme of "Valerie/Valerie’s Family/The Hogan Family" ] In
the heart of every family…there’s a love that starts by
letting go…

>Off the beaten path I reign.
>Rover Wanderer
>Nomad Vagabond
>Call me what you will

TOM: Biff "Buffington" Biffwell.

>
>But I’ll take my time anywhere.

JOEL: "Other people need to use the facilities, you know."

>Free to speak my mind anywhere.
>And I’ll never mind anywhere.

CROW: [ Theme to "Cheers" ] "You want to go where everybody knows
your name…"

>Any where I roam.
>Where I lay my head is home.
>
> As the music seemed to reach it’s peak,

TOM: A sudden avalanche buried the team and made them cancel
their ascent.

> a figure could
>be seen trotting out of the mists.

CROW: Yet strangely he wasn’t, because everyone was fascinated by
the earthworms that came up after the last rain.

> His attitude was of one
>who had suffered great pain, but has found shelter and
>safety. He stopped, reared back his head, and continued
>singing.

JOEL: It’s always so wacky when Waylon Jennings himself gets involved
in a "Dukes of Hazzard" script.

>
>But I’ll take my time anywhere.
>Free to speak my mind any where.
>And I’ll redefine anywhere.

CROW: From now on, "anywhere" will mean "Camden, New Jersey."

TOM: How horrifying.

>Anywhere I roam,
>Where I lay my head is home.
>Carved upon my stone,
>My body lie, but still I roam, yeah, yeah.

TOM: [ Singing to "Brady Bunch" theme ] "And that’s the way we
became The Brady Bunch!"

>
> The figure stepped completely out of the fog, and the
>villagers gasped at what they saw.

CROW: X-Y-Z…

TOM: Your fly…

JOEL: C’mon, you’re just embarassing yourself.

> A male raccoon, in his
>late teens, and wearing clothes they’d only previously seen
>on a certain human, stood before them, grinning like a
>maniac.

TOM: When’d Tom Bodett become a raccoon?

> He stepped back, and gave a deep bow to Sally.

CROW: Sally instinctively picked him up by the scruff of his neck
and carried him back into the tree.

>"Hello, Princess. I, Christopher Jonathan Petrucci, wish to
>thank you on behalf of Keith A—, who, he said, had
>stayed with you for a brief period."

JOEL: "Aw, it was nothing. Who’s Keith?"

> He looked at Rebecca.
>"You like?" he said, turning this way and that. Rebecca
>nodded, smiling through tears. "I like. Oh, do I ever
>like!" With that, she dashed into his arms.

CROW: "My four and a half hours of estrus next year are going to be
extra-special!"

JOEL: Behave yourself.

>
> Sally was still speechless. The voice, and the
>attitude… it had to be him!

JOEL: [ Pointing to TOM ] It couldn’t be you; [ Pointing to CROW ]
It couldn’t be you; [ Pointing to KEITH ] It had to be him!

> "Keith, is that you?!" The
>raccoon shook his head. "I told you, Sally, Keith is dead.
>Well, kind of.

TOM: Well, okay, he’s alive and living in Portland, Maine. There,
I said it and I’m glad.

> Anyway, can we get back home, please? I’m
>tired, and looking for a real bed to sleep in.

JOEL: At least a knot in a tree, or a limestone cavern.

> He trotted
>back in the general direction of Rebecca’s hut, still
>humming bars from the odd song he’d just finished singing.

CROW: Oh, great, he’s a Neil Diamond fan.

[ To continue … ]

---

Wow, apparently in the 90s I remembered the sitcom Valerie / Valerie’s Family / The Hogan Family and, more, thought it mattered that I list all three titles. I am so glad to know my brain has managed to forget at least some bit of nonsense, once.

I hope Neil Diamond’s ego has recovered from the devastating blow this work landed.

I Apologize for Bragging About My Wealth

I know, I know, I should be thinking about how it’s the 50th anniversary of the end of the Skylab 4/3 mission, but I did want to acknowledge the great financial management which has brought me to this point.

You know, if I had a nickel for every nickel I had in redemption value, I’d have a nickel, which isn’t much, but hey, free nickel!

182 more years on this thing and a veggie sub is on me!

What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Is Rene Belluso gone now? November 2023 – February 2024

I can’t imagine that Rene Belluso is gone from Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.. While I sympathize with those who find the Wile E Coyote-like explosion of all his scams exhausting, I suspect that his is too good a bit of business to drop. At least not unless you have a more serious story to tell. And Beatty’s Glenwood is a gentle place. He may recede for a while, and I wouldn’t mind that as he’s had a lot of story lately. But I expect he’ll be back.

So this should catch you up to early February 2024 in Rex Morgan, M.D.. If you’re reading this after about May 2024, or news about the comic strip breaks, I’ll try to have something useful for you at this link. If I don’t, well, maybe I fell for one of Rene’s plots or I’m running late and need an extra day. We’ll see.

Rex Morgan, M.D..

12 November 2023 – 4 February 2024.

Rene Belluso, having tried his own “Mirakle Method” of personality fixing, had turned himself in to authorities as the first step in repairing his life. With the help of Mirakle Method Industries LLC chief promoter Buzzy Cameron, though, he got released from prison and joined Cameron and “Mud” Murphy’s tours on-stage. As Cameron points out, everyone loves a redemption story.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 5th of December, 2023. “How bad are you at promotion that you couldn’t sell self-esteem in the 70s? Were you even trying? … no, no, look, you’re okay, I’m okay, it’s all for the est.”

Meanwhile in a chance encounter Rex Morgan, M.D., finds himself doing some doctor work. His patient Lyle Ollman knows more specific Mirakle Method stuff than a guy who never heard of the thing should. It transpires that Ollman created the Mirakle Method, back in the 70s, as the Ollman Technique. But it didn’t catch on so how does anyone know about it now? Morgan advises Ollman to get a lawyer fast. Here, you can have one of his, out of petit-jury.

A couple weeks later, Cameron gets word from his lawyers about all this. He and Mud Murphy try to find Belluso, who’s fled their hotel. Ollman gets together with Cameron and Murphy and somebody’s lawyer and everyone agrees, you know, why mess up the money machine? Just give Ollman credit and royalties and everything’s cool. It is, perhaps, another case of Terry Beatty setting up an interesting conflict and then punting. But how would you feel if someone was willing to give you a dump truck full of money and in exchange you just have to let them?

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 27th of December, 2023. I don’t know how realistic that is. So for a test, I’d like if someone could reveal they’d turned something or other that I scribbled out back in, say, 2007 and went and turned it into an Oprah’s Book Club-grade bestseller and oops now they had huge ongoing royalties to deliver to me. Just to see what my reaction would be. So we can judge for realism.

New year, new start. Cameron and Murphy get Rex Morgan into one of their Glenwood Mirakle Method seminars, in gratitude to him for letting them take over his comic strip. Rene Belluso is there too, in disguise, and vows revenge on Morgan for however it is the good doctor has ruined his life again. As the seminar breaks up the scheming Belluso steps out into traffic and gets hit very hard by a car. A bright red one, too, the most dangerous kind. Fortunately, there happens to be a doctor in the strip.

Belluso makes it through, but he’s in a full-body cast. And doesn’t know whether to be more horrified that he’s stuck in that cast for six to eight weeks minimum or that he has Rex Morgan to thank for doctoring. And if that’s not enough Mud Murphy’s come to visit! The onetime hellion now worries sincerely for the person who, even if he was pulling a scam, helped him and maybe even other people. And hey, Murphy’s brought a special guest, Lyle Ollman, let’s give a big hand for —

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 28th of January, 2024. For the sake of avoiding confusion I figure to keep calling him Rene Belluso, among other things because barring extraordinary reason you should call someone by the name they pick themselves. Also, I’m not sure whether he’s Jimmy Ollman or some other last name. I feel like if Ollman were Rene’s uncle on his father’s side, he would have said “after my brother died”. But that’s not an unshakable hook to hang the question of Rene’s birth name on.

Rene’s uncle? Because Ollman recognizes the man in the cast as Jimmy, his long-lost nephew. Rene protests, over and over, and finally just asks Uncle Lyle to leave him be. No such luck, and Ollman insists on giving Belluso unquestioning acceptance and welcoming. You understand his terror.

And that’s the standings as of early February. What’s next?

Next Week!

It’s adventures in Milford! I look at Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp and see what’s up in that Gil-Mimi divorce and everything else going on. Catch you then, I’m hoping. Meanwhile, everyone, please be careful crossing the street. Those red cars are something else.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 13: Damsel in Distress

For this, the final cartoon of the last episode of the series, writing credit goes to Eric Lewald and John Loy. Between the two they’ve written cartoons for almost all the episodes of the series. John Loy has writing credits for Here Today, Goon Tomorrow, for Don’t Give Up The Picnic, and Junior Gets A Job.

Eric Lewald, meanwhile, is the voice of the show, with credits for Poopdeck Pappy and the Family Tree, for The Lost Treasure of Pirate’s Cove, for Junior’s Genie, for Mighty Olive at the Bat, for Redbeard, for both Dr Junior and Mr Hyde, and for There Goes The Neighborhood.

If you’d like to see my essays on the episodes listed above, they’re right there. Or you can get everything I have to say on the Internet’s most esteemed Popeye And Son blog at this link. And now, let’s see the concluding thought of Popeye’s most recent television cartoon series.

The Plot: Popeye and Bluto race to a remote island in hopes of answering a bottled message from a damsel in distress. But! The damsel turns out to be the Sea Hag! Who wants to find the strongest man, a contest neither of them is willing to lose until she promises the winner a kiss. Also facing the winner: a battle against the two-headed giant of the island. Popeye is happy to take a dive and let Bluto get the kiss, but is he willing to let Bluto get murderized by the giant? No, of course not, but what can he do with only his wits and spinach about him? Oh yeah, he can punch!

The Thoughts: It’s an interesting choice to have the finale of Popeye and Son ditch Son. The cartoon doesn’t suffer for it, really. It’s a Popeye-and-Bluto-compete episode, and there’s not much Junior could add besides taking up lines that Popeye delivers better. I’m still surprised that Junior and Tank weren’t brought along as a reflex. Instead, we get a throwback to the theatrical-type cartoons. Two of them, really, with a Popeye-and-Bluto-compete story feeding into a Popeye-needs-Bluto story. And a twist I didn’t see coming, the Sea Hag turning up to stir up trouble and enjoy the chaos. I knew the Sea Hag was in the first episode of the cartoon, but I supposed her appearances were done.

The cartoon also evokes the most renowned of the two-reeler cartoons, Popeye The Sailor Meets Sindbad The Sailor. The two-headed giant here seems to be Boola, although redesigned, as many characters were for this series. Less hair, pattered leotard with a tail for some reason. He’s lost the difficult-to-parse accent. And he’s less fat. Still read as the same character to me. Another, subtler callback is the point where Popeye yanks the far side of a canyon over to walking distance. The land has a similar sort of perspective-defying lower level that’s a bit hard to parse from Sindbad’s island. Pulling a canyon closed — before he’s had his spinach — is another traditional black-and-white Popeye theatrical gag. The cave with the signs about ‘This is it!’ and ‘Strongest man enter here!’ reminds me of the entrance to Sindbad’s island, but that might be coincidence.

Actual footage of me doing any cartoon reviews or story strip plot recaps.

There’s little I dislike here. I’m confused by the Sea Hag’s goal, I suppose. If she just wanted Boola knocked out why choose an unreliable method like a message in a bottle? (Also why would she want Boola knocked out?) If she wanted Popeye killed, it makes sense that she’d leave the bottle where Popeye, or Junior, would find it quickly, but then was she surprised Popeye turned up? Or both Popeye and Bluto? Her whole deal seems to be wanting to make people go to a lot of trouble for her own entertainment, which is legitimate enough, I guess. I do like how she keeps Popeye and Bluto from nope’ing out of her scheme by calling them chicken, basically. Good thinking on her part.

And the interactions of Popeye and Bluto, in what feels like their most prolonged interaction this series, crackle nicely. Popeye gets a good number of solid lines in too. You can take your choice for best but mine is Popeye sneering at Bluto’s tunneling through a mountain by declaring, “I don’t know if I’s that strong but I’s not that dumb either” before picking up and tossing the mountain out of his way. “Who was you expectorating?” is also a good line. I don’t know how much of this is the writers and how much is Maurice LaMarche but they’ve got Popeye’s voice.

I’d love to know more about how this cartoon got made. At what point did they decide it would be such a traditional Popeye, No Son story? Neither John Loy nor Eric Lewald have cartoon writing credentials going back to the previous Hanna-Barbera Popeye series, which seems likely to rule out that it was a trunk script. (And if it were, why would a solid story like that this have been put in the trunk?)

So this is how Popeye concluded his last regular TV series. It’s a high point, stuffed with nice surprises. If the series were all at this level it’d be a lost gem of a show.

Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 13: Olive’s Day Off

Bryce Malek gets another outing in today’s episode of Popeye and Son. You’ll remember Malek from Olive’s Dinosaur Dilemma and The Mystery Of Who’s Stealing Burgers Of Course It’s Wimpy.

And if you missed those, you can catch them and the rest of the Internet’s most popular Popeye and Son reviews at this link.

Meanwhile, let’s look at the first cartoon of the final episode of the show and see what it’s like.

The Plot: Olive, fed up with being taken for granted, takes the day off. Will Popeye and Junior be able to clean the house, do the laundry, and prepare dinner before his granny comes over? Or will it create an impossible, huge mess as they can’t do basic household chores? And who will eat spinach to set everything right in a minute?

The Thoughts: This is one of those rare new premises for a Popeye cartoon. I don’t mean the premise that Olive Oyl has been an important character in the Popeye and Son universe. I mean that without Popeye and Olive married, the sailor man can’t be made to do the household work. Even cartoons that come close, such as Nurse-Mates, Popeye’s more or less volunteering to take a load off. So this offers the different dynamic that he can’t, in principle, just forget it.

Still, seeing how incompetent the man is at woman’s work is a premise that I’ve never liked. Even as a kid, the hubris of the guy declaring that of course he could do his wife/girlfriend’s job without even practicing offended me. Did I mention how everyone treated me in middle school? Anyway it’s my problem that I’m a reluctant audience, not going along with the premise that Popeye and Junior will find themselves overwhelmed with laundry, shopping, and cooking.

Hey, uh … I think someone needed that life preserver.

If you’re willing to grant that then, well, the cartoon is all fine enough. All the bits that follow make sense from it and if there’s nothing surprising, there’s also nothing done wrong. Junior figures he can stuff all the laundry in one load and he and Popeye figure they need to use all the soap in the world and it makes a tidal wave of phosphorous compounds, fine. They have half the time they need to cook dinner, so just turn the oven up twice as high, sure. They don’t have the common sense needed to know three tablespoons of sugar doesn’t mean you put the spoons in the mix.

Popeye and Junior repeating to each other how they’re using their brains makes the jokes too obvious to me. I imagine it works well for the target audience, though, which hasn’t burned out on this sort of story. And that likes being signalled that that the characters are wrong and are getting their comeuppance soon.

Another weakness to the story, and one that might have bothered me as a kid, is that whatever disaster unfolds, Popeye just has to eat his spinach and he can fix everything in a cloud of activity. So it turns out, although I appreciate the touch that in the supermarket they pick up an extra two cans of spinach just in case. But given Popeye’s spinach as a magic wand how much fun can it be having everything turn to shambles?

Here’s how I would fix it in rewrite. The cartoon is called Olive’s Day Off; why not see that? We get some glimpses of what she’s doing to enjoy herself and that’s fine. Why not spend most of the time on Olive doing stuff, with quick cuts back to see that Popeye and Junior are making a mess of things? Olive can even come back from her day off, see that it’s a disaster, and herself eat the spinach to set things right. Nothing unexpected happens in the Popeye-and-Junior side of things, so why not cut it down to the bare minimums?

I’m startled to learn that apparently all this time Olive Oyl’s had her own thing and we never heard it mentioned or anything? Also, the design of the Popeye’s Health Club/Olive Oyl’s Juice Bar delights me as if you wanted to make something look over-the-top 80s you wouldn’t think to come up with this. It’s wonderful in its crafting.

The obvious answer is there’s nobody Olive can interact with. In this series the Goons are mysterious shadowy villains so she can’t hang out with Alice. She won’t hang out with the Sea Hag. And after that you get into the obscure characters, or make some up for the series. Or use Bluto’s wife, who I feel very sure had a name given at some point. But what’s wrong with that? If we can see Popeye’s Granny in what might be her only animated appearance (I haven’t checked the 70s Hanna-Barbera series), why not see Nana Oyl? Or any of her inexhaustible set of cousins? If Bluto can be a pretty reasonable guy this whole series, why not give his wife a little attention?

Understand me, this isn’t a bad cartoon. There’s a basic level of competence that, by this time, Hanna-Barbera could not fall under. And there are good bits, such as Popeye fixing the accident where they pour the whole sack of flour in by rewriting the recipe. I’m just disappointed that given the chance to do a story the characters could not have ever done before, you get a story exhausted before The Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show did it.

Statistics Saturday: Popular Songs of the 70s

Not pictured: weird experimental instrumental compositions on a synthesizer programmed to sound like a bell but it’s also a violin somehow.

Reference: My love, who did the research and explained these findings to me. honest; thank you, dear.

Statistics January: How People Want Me To Explain Comic Strips To Them

You know what the start of a new month means: I should get around to sometime or other looking over my previous month’s readership figures. I’m on that a little earlier than usual this time, since it is such a short month.

WordPress figures I had 7,097 page views here in January 2024, which is my fourth-busiest month on record. I’m startled too, but it was a month that let me do both Phantom and Mary Worth recaps and people want both those comics explained a lot. This is, like you’d expect, way above the twelve-month running mean (5,535.7) and median (5,374.5) count of page views.

The story is almost the same in unique visitors. There were 3,746 of them logged in January, which I believe is the third-highest count on record. For me, I mean. Again, way above the running mean (3,172.9) and median (2,962.5).

The number of posts liked rose in January, too, topping out at 114. That’s a bit above the running mean of 101.2 and median of 98.5, which leaves me waiting for the other shoe’s drop. That shoe is a statistic, and that statistic is the number of comments. That dropped to 38, way below the running mean of 73.2 and median of 67, even though I was pretty good this time about not waiting forever to answer people who were kind enough to say something around here.

WordPress figures me as starting February with a total of 411,747 views from 232,111 unique visitors, spread over 4,017 posts and 6,549 comments.

Against expectations I did remember how to set it to a specific month range! I like that more than whatever exactly it was I had to do before.

As usual, the most popular things were comic strip news and, for some reason, the monthly statistics post. I’m a bit surprised the annual statistics post, for the whole of 2023, didn’t rate higher. Well, the five most popular things people looked specifically at were:

• What’s Going On In Mary Worth? Has Karen Moy ever met a vegetarian? October 2023 – January 2024
• Comics Kingdom to Mess Everything Up Again
• Statistics Saturday: What You Think _Peanuts_ Specials Are Titled Vs What They Really Are
• Statistics December: People Like Me Having Good Opinions About Soup
• What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? What’s with the Jungle Patrol safe? November 2023 – January 2024

The most popular of the long MiSTing segments was part 21, which was one of them, all right. I’m not sure it was the best of the set, but it was all right.

My plan for covering story strips in the month-or-so ahead is this, but I don’t promise that it will all come in on time and as planned. I’ve learned better by now:

• Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. (6 February)
• Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp (13 February)
• Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker (20 February)
• Emi Burdge and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye (27 February)
• Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop (what-have-you)

I should probably start work on that Gil Thorp recap now, but won’t.

So this time I got a better world map by magnifying the statistics page, like, eight times and taking a screenshot. It’s a bit hacky but it worked, so I’m content.

90 countries or country-ish things sent me readers in January. 20 of them sent me only a single page view, though. Can you spot which ones they are? And which are the three that were also single-view countries the month before?

Country	Readers
United States	5359
Canada	196
United Kingdom	166
India	116
Australia	115
Brazil	102
Peru	97
Poland	92
Italy	75
France	70
Sweden	64
Philippines	56
Germany	53
Finland	47
Georgia	27
Mexico	25
Spain	22
South Korea	21
Colombia	20
Norway	20
South Africa	19
Malaysia	17
Argentina	15
Japan	15
Ireland	13
New Zealand	13
Switzerland	13
Turkey	13
Costa Rica	12
Denmark	12
Cayman Islands	11
Hungary	10
Romania	10
Singapore	10
Ukraine	8
Indonesia	7
Israel	7
Kuwait	7
Netherlands	7
Russia	7
Uganda	7
Chile	6
Panama	6
Trinidad & Tobago	6
Vietnam	6
Croatia	5
European Union	5
United Arab Emirates	5
Bangladesh	4
Czechia	4
El Salvador	4
Guatemala	4
Hong Kong SAR China	4
Thailand	4
Uruguay	4
Algeria	3
Greece	3
Jamaica	3
Jordan	3
American Samoa	2
Austria	2
Brunei	2
Ecuador	2
Kazakhstan	2
Kenya	2
Nicaragua	2
Pakistan	2
Saudi Arabia	2
Slovakia	2
Sri Lanka	2
Angola	1
Aruba	1 (*)
Bahamas	1
Belgium	1
Bolivia	1
Bulgaria	1
Dominican Republic	1
Egypt	1
Laos	1
Lithuania	1
Martinique	1
Mozambique	1
Myanmar (Burma)	1
Nigeria	1
North Macedonia	1
Paraguay	1 (**)
Portugal	1
Puerto Rico	1
South Sudan	1
Taiwan	1 (*)

If you said the countries with a ‘1’ in the views column were the single-view countries, you’re right. Aruba, Paraguay, and Taiwan were single-view countries the month before, and Paraguay was a single view the month before that even. I’m flattered that Paraguay is sort of interest-ish in my writing but not working that hard at it.

WordPress figures I published 19,828 words last month. I somehow lost track of keeping that number last year so it’s nice to have it back. That comes to about 640 words per posting, which seems like a lot, especially considering how often the Statistics Saturday post is, like, a picture or a list of ten words or something slight like that. All that Popeye and Son talk. Oh yes, and what am I going to turn to reviewing once Popeye and Son is exhausted? … I don’t know, haven’t got plans that far ahead. I, too, am exhausted.

If you’d like to be exhausted daily alongside me, please do. This and every post should have a ‘Follow Another Blog, Meanwhile’ button on the navigation panel on the right side of the page. This is if you’re on the desktop version. If you’re looking at this on a phone … really? Huh. All right. I guess that’s normal these days, I just don’t understand it myself. You can also get these posts e-mailed to you, before I correct some of the worse typos, with a box that’s just beneath the ‘Follow Another Blog, Meanwhile’ button. And don’t forget that you can use the https://nebushumor.wordpress.com/feed RSS feed with whatever your preferred reader is. It’s all good, don’t worry.

MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 24

Last time in the Sonic the Hedgehog fan fiction Altered Destiny, author Keith A— excused him to go off into the woods and do … something. This week, we close out that scene and have a host sketch, the last one before the end of the MiSTing. Yes, that’s right, we’re only three-quarters of the way done here! I think you’ll enjoy the end, though.

The whole of the MiSTing of Altered Destiny should be at this link. I’ll talk about things needing explanation at the end of this week’s installment.

---

>
>* * * * *
>
> For a couple of days, no one had seen hide nor hair of
>the boy.

TOM: But that’s just because they’re all nocturnal and…

> Then, on the third night, there came a shriek
>tearing out of the Forest as of some eternally damned
>spirit.

CROW: Joe Barbera?

> Those awake never slept, and those asleep were
>plagued with nightmares.

JOEL: They imagined they were in Sonic the Hedgehog fanfics.

> Even in far-off Robotropolis, Dr.
>Ivo Robotnik,

ALL: [ Snickering ] Ivo?

JOEL: Well, I’d be evil if that was my name.

> the only living being to function without a
>heart, shivered and moaned in his sleep.

CROW: Again with the images we don’t want to live with.

TOM: Can we take a break?

JOEL: [ Picking up TOM ] Yeah, it’s about time.

[ 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6.. ]

[ INT SOL. TOM, JOEL, and CROW are standing around, talking. ]

JOEL: Wow. Guys, you know, the villain of the Sonic stories here, Ivo Robotnik, really does have an evil name.

TOM: An evil name, you say?

JOEL: Certainly, Tom. Just try saying it. "Ivo Robotnik." The syllables conjure up visions of a foul, despicable man.

CROW: Yeah, I see it.

TOM: So you’re suggesting that names control our destiny?

JOEL: Not that strong a suggestion, Tom. But within the confines of a story, something as simple as what name a character has can go a long way to defining his personality.

CROW: So if you want an evil character, it helps to have an evil name for him or her?

JOEL: Exactly, Crow.

TOM: I kind of see what you’re saying. For instance, if you were a character in a story, Joel, you couldn’t be evil. ‘Joel Robinson’ just doesn’t pass as an evil name.

CROW: No; no, he couldn’t. Maybe if he had a different first name, though.

TOM: Yeah, like…how about ‘Bentley’?

JOEL: Bentley?

CROW: Sure. Bentley Robinson, daring and ultra-slick super-secret- agent. [ JOEL beings pantomiming to CROW’s movie-announcer-like recitation. ] Fast with a gun; faster with the ladies…he knows all the moves, he knows all the secrets, and this summer, he’s going to take Washington D.C. hostage.

JOEL: [ Standing normally again. ] You got it. How about you, Tom?

TOM: Hmm. ‘Tom Servo’ isn’t that evil a name.

JOEL: No, it’s not. But what if instead you were…hm…

TOM: Walt Servo?

CROW: Nah.

TOM: Jim Servo?

JOEL: Definitely not.

TOM: Lazarus Servo?

CROW: Maybe we can come back to you. Try me instead!

JOEL: Okay, Crow…do you think you’d be evil if you were ‘Stan T. Robot’?

CROW: No…I think I might be an accountant, though.

TOM: How about ‘Dar T. Robot’?

CROW: Hmm… [ Moves around, as though fitting the name. ] Dar T. Robot. They thought he was locked away. They thought he was harmless. They thought he was powerless. They were wrong. This August, they’re going to pay.

JOEL: Okay, so we’ve found a good evil name for you. Brings us back to Tom here. How about ‘Jerry Servo’?

TOM: Too cutesy.

CROW: ‘Big Bad Bill Servo.’

TOM: Sounds like a chili recipe.

JOEL: ‘Scott Servo?’

TOM: That’s more a morning DJ’s name.

CROW: That is pretty darned evil, Tom.

JOEL: True.

TOM: Still not me, guys. Or, me as an evil person, anyway.

JOEL: Why not try some names from the fanfic? ‘Ivo Servo?’

TOM: Bleah.

CROW: ‘Bookshire Servo’?

TOM: Sounds like a land management plan.

JOEL: ‘Keith Servo’?

TOM: It’s not working. Guys, maybe you just can’t give me a name that would inherently suggest I was evil.

JOEL: ‘Blackjack Servo’?

CROW: Blackjack Servo: Exiled to a penal planet for crimes humanity would not face…Labor Day weekend, he’s going to make them face him again.

TOM: Hey, you’ve got it. I *could* be pure evil if I had the right name!

CROW: Great!

TOM: Yeah. So, what have we learned?

JOEL: Uh…

CROW: We learned…uh..

TOM: That with a slightly different name, we wouldn’t be carriers of right and good?

JOEL: I guess so.

CROW: Maybe there is no lesson. Maybe it’s a cautionary tale.

TOM: There you go. Parents–and parents-to-be: Don’t give your children names that will make them evil.

CROW: Right. It results in a lot of heartbreak, and fanfics.

JOEL: There you go. You guys are learning all the time.

[ COMMERCIAL SIGN flashes. ]

JOEL: We’ll be right back.

TOM: But we won’t be evil.

[ BREAK ]

[ To continue … ]

---

I don’t think there’s anything needing explaining this installment. I do like how the host sketch played out, though. You may not find the attempted names amusing, but the concept feels like one the Brains would do. (And I was going for mildly amusing names, not I-demand-you-laugh-at-these names. Even when I was that young I knew better.) The shift in focus from evil names to movie-trailer narration also feels like one that might have happened in the show. If you don’t agree, well, please, take a fresh sheet of paper and write down your reasons why you don’t agree, then set the paper in the back of the closet and forget to take it with you when you move. It’ll be a baffling gift to some future person!

A message from the cruel, horrible future of … 2022.

So I’ve been watching Soylent Green, which I assume hasn’t been made into a new streaming media platform’s centerpiece show yet but I could be wrong, and I’m stuck thinking: wow, what a surveillance-free dystopia those people get to live in! Probably not the intended takeaway from the movie, which was instead “oh look at that cool roundy video game cabinet they have, it doesn’t look like an angry car radiator at all!”.