It's been a crazy week in Santa Royale, California. Over at Dr. Jeff Corey's Suburban Man Cabin, Jeff had one of those father daughter discussions that required forty-seven cups of coffee to get through, and when it was over, he was still left on the losing end of his daughter's Oldsmobile.
Apparently, Jeff has been doing a little research into Ted's background and has come up with some interesting tidbits. For one thing, Ted is a musical theatre guy, and NOT a photo journalist for Nations Geography Magazine. That explains Ted's mustache and the spell it cast on Adrian. Musical theatre guys are soooo hard to resist, and soooo hard not to give money to. They just start singing, they just start dancing, and suddenly you just start wiring money all over town. They're just soooo talented.
Of course, you know and I know that there's a big difference between lying about your medical credentials so you can get a job at the local hospital, and lying to your fiance about your last ten years of employment, but such moral relativism goes a long way to explain how Adrian got her job.
Adrian digs deep inside her psyche to uncover an explanation for Ted's pathological behavior, and what does she come up with? "He is so in love with me that he can't think clearly. He's so ga-ga, words just come out of his mouth without context. Dad, you just don't understand what it's like to be so in love with someone that you just make stuff up all the time."
Perhaps one of the most brilliant lines in Mary Worth history. I rank it right up there with "I'll make seafood scampi," and, "I think I'll retile the kitchen floor tomorrow." For me, this was one of those moments that remind me why I read Mary Worth. "He even calls me Queenie." It's like saying, "As dumb as you thought I was, let me surprise you with even more dumberness."
So Adrian drives over to see Ted, picturing all those tender moments and cherished memories in her thought balloons and her thought balloon's thought balloons. What she doesn't picture however is this:
It's hard to know what Ted is thinking here, since he doesn't have any thought balloons. His mind control is so powerful, he prevents even us from reading his mind. However, I suspect he's thinking something like, "$50,000 is a lot of money. But it barely covers my hotel expenses for the past month."Everyone is a loser. Adrian lost $50,000. Ted lost out on an even bigger prize, thwarted by Adrian's refusal to elope. And the rest of us have lost a month of our life we'll never get back.
23 comments:
Yes, $50,000 is chicken feed compared with the prize Ted probably had his sights set on. (It wasn't even enough to cause a reaction from Jeff.)
But have Ted's plans really been thwarted without Mary's involvement? She remains strangely apart from the action.
of course I miss the daily fix, but I do like this format. And it gives each day the flavor of anticipation, of wondering which panels you will spotlight and which thoughts. Let's have a collection of Best Lines; you're right on this one. Oh, and thank you for expalining why my Googly seaqrching for the National Geographer came up with nothing. Thanks for all of your lovely efforts. You are a Prince... may we call you "Princey"?
What in the HECK is Ted doing!? That's the skinniest suitcase ever! Is he about to fold his laptop up into his suitcoat, or what? I wonder if he'll take that painting off the wall and squeeze that in there, too?
Oh, my, I just can't believe Ted is LEAVING!
What's even funnier about the line "He even calls me 'Queenie'" is that it's spoken by someone with a Prince Valiant haircut.
Oh, I get it: This is all a misunderstanding. Ted HAS been on the payroll at Nation's Geography for ten years: of course the anthropologists have been paying HIM for the inconvenience of his being a subject in their lengthy qualitative study on "the effects of facial hair on a man's character."
Of course he's embarrassed to tell his Queenie, it all makes sense now!
(And it's Jennahrationex again. I know: I've had plenty of time to redo my user name and password. I'll fix it soon.)
Teds grey shirts are nicely pressed. And his 286 laptop is all fired up and ready. Whats not to love?
Monday: Adrian, Ted isn't going to pick up and answer. You're trying to call him on your black Ipod shuffle.
Maybe Adrians car would drive a little faster and smoother if it had a steering wheel.
I still mourn the fact that Adrian is still deluding herself into believing that 'Queenie' is a term of endearment and not ridicule. That and engaging in endless amounts of face-touching, either Ted's or her own, makes me think she needs therapy - lots and lots of therapy.
And today - Monday - Adrian crying while being deafened by the clamour of her thought balloons, while using the phone, while driving a car with no steering wheel - well I can see no good coming of this.
Is that a curve in the road ahead? Or a pedestrian jaywalking - perhaps even Mary herself in search of some seafood scampi? Oh yes, I see troubled times ahead.
Calls you Queenie, eh? Treats you like royalty, eh? Well, let me ask you this, Adrian: How many people try to get $50,000 out of their government?
Oh, hmm...
Numbat, I had the same thoughts. A crash, perhaps under the perfidious Ted's hotel window, is coming in the next ten days or so.
You know, I honestly thought Ted was ironing his gray suit with that laptop. Then it suddenly became clear to me that the brown thing the suit was on wasn't an oddly-shaped ironing board, but an amazingly flat suitcase. I think Ted was only able to pack a few things for his whirlwind trip to Santa Royale, and has been buying and wearing disposable suits ever since he got to town. That's why he only has the old stand-by gray suit. The orange/brown one is in the local landfill.
--wheelhead
Numbat, I too saw danger ahead for Adrian, because she's crying and driving. But an accident that involves any speed isn't possible as long as we see even the smallest of phones in her hand, because current state driving law bans handheld cell phones for all California drivers.
And clearly, Adrian parks each time she calls Ted. She can stay parked in her current spot until 8pm, assuming it's a weekday, repeatedly leaving messages about "picking up" and "good explanations". At this rate, he'll be out of the country before she pulls out of that spot.
Suitcase appears to be made of wood.
I'm hoping that Adrian will make in into Ted's room to stand right in front of that pink drapery for at least a frame.
I also miss the daily fix... but I like the "Well, its been a crazy week in Santa Royale, California my hometown, out on the edge of the prarie" format as well. Ah! If there was only some way we could have the best of both worlds! But alas, Queenie, its not meant to be.
Ahhhhh, love is indeed blind....but in Queenie's case, also very stupid.
Well, duh! Of course Ted can't pick up. He's got his hands full balancing his laptop on his coat.
And I see Adrian still hasn't gotten her steering wheel replaced yet.
Hahaha, look at that Parking sign in the first panel-- No room for the "G"! It just says "Parkin". That [taxpayer] man walking by looks pretty angry about it, too.
Pick up, Ted! Do you have a good explanation for lying to Adrian? Give it a try--she'll believe ANYTHING you say if you preface it w/ "Queenie, I can explain..."
@duckduckgoose Whew! Thanks for explaining about the cell laws in California. I shall be able to rest easier now. :)
Though it does cause another concern to spring to mind - if Adrian parks for too long while making these calls of desperate love and leaves the engine running...the build up of carbon moron-oxide...oh, the tragedy.
How far will this go before Adrian snaps? She's found him suddenly packed and leaving, he's withholding reassuring conversation, AND ... Did he just call her by her given name? A-d-r-i-a-n
I'd love to see Ted at the receiving end of the "Dawn Slap" given to Dr. Drew in the Fall of 2007.
"I believed you, you LIAR you... you... SLAP !
You know, I'm thinking with today's strip, that Ted will leave in a flurry of gravel and dust from his roadside motel (exterior)/high-rise hoity-toity luxury hotel (interior), only to have to come back in a day or two because he left his electronic box with an antenna in the back seat of the rental car.
This is so pathetic--here I am at work imagining ways to get a Snidely Whiplash goofball back to Santa Royale so some dimwitted hack physician can (please!) whack him upside the head once the meddlesome busy-body spinster (or is it widow) talks some sense into her and she becomes Woman (hear her roar!).
--wheelhead
There's still a chance that Ted will get his just desserts if he takes that same road that Aldo Kelrast drove, and in his haste to get away from his favorite city, he ends up going over that same cliff.
Ted burns to ashes at the bottom of Kelrast Cliff, inside of the rented 1965 turquoise Chevelle.
His wooden suitcase/briefcase/box will only fuel the flames.
Adrian will continue to thrust her purse at Ted's remains, in a desperate attempt to make all things right again. But it will be of no use.
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