Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Mary Worth 1,404

Lucky day indeed! And you'll have a lot to talk about if that gentleman's arm was bitten off by a shark while swimming ashore from a sinking ship.

Today's Full Strip

23 comments:

Punky said...

It gets worse. Not only does Dawn's purple jacket match an equally purple pair of slacks (because all teenagers dress like this these days), but it turns out that the tragedy (sorry, "incident") at sea, where many people lost their lives, and the soul-searching it caused in Dawn, was only to get her volunteer at the hospital so that she would sit down at this table to meet this guy. Sigh.

meg said...

Charterstone in Crisis, continued...

Things are settling down in Santa Royale's most exclusive condominium community.

Mary is back from Passages Sarasota, seemingly rehabbed, and seemingly unable to remember the Dear Wendy columns which she wrote during the 7 days Wilbur and Dawn were away (7 days- yes, the day of the flight, Florence and the Dave, fresh Tuscany veggies, Rome and the brutal Colosseum, Amalfi coast and the Dave-fave blue water, the disastrous cruise night, and the flight home: seemed like a lot longer, no?).

Wilbur is happily munching and sipping and typing, trying to reassure his fan base that a computer glitch accounts for the strange columns of the last week. Dawn is waiting to see what's about to happen to her, in that passive-aggressive way she has...

And the Charterstone Three are continuing to work on ghostwriting Wilbur's travelogue, but it proves difficult.

The scene: Ian's office at Santa Royale Community College. He sits pompously erect in his pompous brown leather chair. On his desk are pictures of Toby, of himself, and of Sean Connery. With a sigh, he begins to write, using his plaid iPad.

"My dour dochter Dawn and I were having a bit o' lunch in a braw restaurant in a town called Siena or Vienna or one of the Italian names. Yon waiter approached and offered to gie me a glass of the whisky. Aye, jist a wee dram. NO, YOU GRET GLAIKIT non-Geordie! I dinnae say a thimble-ful! And I'll have the haggis pasta. And I'll hae no more havers from the likes of ye."

The scene: Bonnie Johnson's apartment. She carefully removes shopping bags and packages from UPS off the chair in front of her desk, then cleans off the desk also. Which one of my laptops shall I use? The Mac, the HP, the Sony, the Acer?
She begins to write:

"Roma is fabulous! My daughter Dawn and I have been shopping at all the designer boutiques! And there are wonderful department stores called grande maggazinos.
And when the stores are all closed, there are peddlars everywhere selling designer purses at fabulously low prices. I must really be tired, though, I accidentally gave every peddler a five dollar bill instead of a twenty. Thank goodness they were all honest and told me about my mistake. (So did the taxi driver- I was so sure I gave him a twenty, but he was very understanding about my mistake). The doorman at the hotel was happy to carry up all my packages, particularly when I gave him a five."

The scene: Toby's den. She is idly doodling in a notebook.
She writes, "Mrs. Chuckles McClown.....Mrs. Toby McClown... Chuckles and Toby McClown...." then she opens her diary and reads: "Dear Diary, Why do I always fall in love with my professors? There was just something about Art Professor McClown that made me dizzy with desire....Was it his orange hair and white complexion? Or was it his big red nose? Those five days I spent in his History of Circus Art class were the happiest I can ever remember. Too bad Mary dried out so fast, or I'd still be there."

Asking his friends to ghost-write his travelogue may not have been Wilbur's best idea.

fauxprof said...

Dawn: Let's see, I have my nice carton of slightly-spoiled milk, my little bowl of rancid cottage cheese, and my Fancy Feast salmon empenada. Now, for a place to sit. Oh, there's a guy who reminds me of Dave, only with one arm and much, much older. I think I'll sit down and cheer him up by talking about ME!

Thorpnotized said...

So now we go from the plagiarized account of the cruise ship "incident" in Vanity Fair, to gleaning character ideas from other strips! (Gil Thorp introduced a one-armed man on 7/11.)

This may be Dawn's lucky day, but it isn't for this poor guy...

Dave in Parma said...

20 minutes after Dawn steals the seat of the male nurse who had been attempting to sit down, she is startled to find out that she's been carrying on a 1 sided conversation with a Red Cross Recusi-Andy CPR mannequin that the nurse left at the table.

Undaunted, she continues with details of Dave and the cruise.

Toots McGee said...

My take on Dawn's breakfast: milk, half an english muffin and a large, whole wheat perogi.

At first, I didn't notice the sandwich, probably because my eye was drawn to the pinned up sleeve. (OMG, the pinned up sleeve! There are no prostheses in the comics pages!)

New character holding the sandwich in such a way that it is extended beyond the far edge of the table. Perhaps he even used it as a way to shoo away the headless person (or maybe headless person is an extremely hunchbacked person passing by).

However you slice it, this is an epic panel.

Toots McGee said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Toots McGee said...

Dawn's search for a table just made me flash on something. I work in a hospital. I don't often frequent the "cafeteria", but it would never dawn on me to go sliding in to a table where somebody was already sitting. I'm not saying that nobody does this. It might happen frequently at peak hours, and some people might be more socially outgoing than me and think nothing of it. Am I weird?

I do recall my college years when the dining areas would be crowded and it was more or less a given that you'd sit whereever there was a seat and it was usually pleasant to exchange small talk.

I guess I'm sort of sidling up to you denizens of Maryworthandmeville and sitting at your lunch table and asking you intrusive questions now.

Anonymous said...

I agree with you Toots. Let's see if Dawn has the manners to ask if she may join him. But considering that this is Dawn's lucky day and she found "a seat for ME", I'm guessing that she just sits down without asking.

Anonymous said...

"Mind if I take that sandwich home for my Dad?"

Nance said...

Mr. Downcast has NO IDEA how much worse his life is about to get. If he is already morose about

A. That horrid sandwich
B. The argument he just had with Green Scrubs
C. The noise in Mountainview Cafeteria
D. The impossible smallness of the tables in Cafeteria
E. Hearing from women that they wish they had his eyelashes
F. Having one arm...

all of those will soon pale by comparison when Dawn "It's All About Me" Weston sits down. Fresh from Volunteering For Credit Orientation, she and her exclamation points will soon make him wish he had cyanide in that sandwich.

Anonymous said...

Whatever the heck that third item of "food" on Dawn's tray is in the second panel, it wasn't there in the first one. I swear Giella tries to entertain himself (and us) by making every strip a what's-wrong-with-this-picture puzzle.

heydave said...

I'm tempted to eat my own arm if it gets me out of here soon.

Anonymous said...

...Dude didn't wipe the table before leaving, it figures, geesh people can be so thoughtless...

I'll just scoot over to this guy's left side.... AHA! Lucky for me he has no left arm.

birdie said...

The perspective on this picture confuses me. At first, I thought the sandwich was the top of the other guy's chair, and one-arm guy was quietly sticking up a finger as he saw Dawn approaching.

Now I see he's holding a sandwich, but he's holding it far out behind the table.

Sandi Ego said...

I was sad because I had no purse strap to hang from my arm until I met a man who had no arm.

meg said...

I'm liking the chances of the SRCC basketball team this season. That dude in the corner of the panel is taaaallll- practically bumping his head on the ceiling.

Dave in Parma said...

Maybe he'll unload on Dawn about how he killed Dr. Sam Sheppard's wife.

Vicki said...

@Meg: as always, you crack me up!!

Another "first" would have been a cafeteria with a sprinkling of ethnic employees or visitors having lunch. (I've heard hospitals sometimes have such), however a morose one-armed white man might be interesting, too. If you squint your eyes, he kind of looks like one of the BurlyKenos from the ship!

KitKat said...

Okay, I'm showing my age here (although I was a wee small lassie when "The Fugitive" aired), but this might be the guy Richard Kimble was chasing.

Anonymous said...

At second glance, I'm so glad I saw the sandwich in the doctor's (only) hand. My first thought was Moy and Giella were going for some tasteless adult humor.

Mary's Cranberry Mothballs said...

Dude, you will want to put the sandwich down. In about ten minutes, you will need that hand for slapping a whiney, self-absorbed, yammering 40 year old with arrested development who can't seem to graduate from College.

Dawn's Biggest Fan said...

Dawn is lookin' good and livin' large in lavender once again! YES!