"Smugmental?" Nicely coined, Fauxprof.
I love the many literary devices that Karen Moy incorporates into her storytelling. The duplicate-plot-in-an-Ask-Wendy-letter device allows Mary to give advice to Dawn without giving advice to Dawn. Which means the advice is meant for someone else, probably us. Is Karen Moy the real Hugo? Don't leave us Karen Moy. We will never get over you. Never!
“Dear Glum Gina,
ReplyDeleteSince you are miserable in this limbo, why don’t you go to hell?
Smugmentally yours,
Wendy”
Thanks for the shoutout, Wanders (blushes!)
ReplyDeleteI’m worried about “Glum Gina”. Could she possibly be Gina the Waitress, her marriage to her indoor soccer player star husband on the rocks? Is indoor soccer still a thing? Have I been reading Mary Worth and retaining ancient plot lines way too long? Now I’m worried about the state of my long term memory.
Mary had no idea such goings-on were happening — right under her nose! every summer in Santa Royale. There’s more to Seasonal Meddling than just fixing someone’s alcoholic mother-in-law at Christmas, you know.
ReplyDeleteDear Gina, Did you actually meet this bartender in Jamaica or did you fall in love with him while ordering your drinks on-line? Did he tell you that he needed money to keep his on-line drink ordering business going but the funds were tied up in overseas banking issues? Oh Estelle, I mean Gina, will you ever learn?
ReplyDeleteha ha ha, KitKat! Good one!
ReplyDeletefauxprof? Yes....
Michael Beaumier: Alcoholic? You make it sound like a bad thing.
Actually, I'd be very surprised if Glum Gina turns out to be Gina the Waitress/SoccerWife. The only character that I remember Moy bringing back for a second time was Olive. Why Olive, I'll never know; that's a mystery.
I suspect it's just that Moy's well of dumb names has run dry and she will now have to re-use old ones.
HelenClark
ReplyDeleteAt least Wendy doesn't resort to the lame advice that constitutes 80% of the current Dear Abby column, which is, "Seek counseling from a licensed therapist."
Also, she's always coming up with idiotic possible rationales for why things happen, such as, "Your friend might be committing armed robberies because of a vitamin deficiency."
Seriously, the current Abby is comically bad. Which is why she's the perfect complement to Mary Worth.
Maybe I should start a "Dear Abby and Me" blog.
-- Scottie McW.
I wonder what kind of sage advice Mary is going to give Dawn...I mean Gina over a two week period. I would give the standard answer Ann Landers always gave when she couldn't come up with something definitive: "Speak with your clergyman about this."
ReplyDeleteI know we've beat a dead horse over this, but I can't understand how a newspaper lets someone who doesn't even work for them take over one of their columns just because the person that does it is on another assignment. It just boggles my mind. I want to go to my boss and ask him if I can have my neighbor come in and do my job while I go on vacation. But then, KM has no clue how the real world works, does she.
Hmmm. "Glum Gina" doesn't really track. If KM wanted to create a sound-alike name, she could have used "Possibly Jilted Gina". And, the first thing I thought of, fauxprof, was also Gina the Waitress, so you're not alone on that one.
ReplyDeleteIf she met her bartender in a bar, she must be "Ginned Up Gina".
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is Gina the Waitress, after all, didn't she move to a snooty Long Island hamlet, which is not too far from Jamaica, in Queens?
LouisF - I agree... Glum Gina just doesn't cut it. Plus, wouldn't it have been a little kinder for Mary's salutation to be Dear Gina, instead of Dear Glum?!
ReplyDeleteSATURDAY
ReplyDeleteKaren Moy must have left the robot translator write today's dialogue. That's the only explanation for "it's great that you experienced romance while on vacation!" Maybe KM is on vacation experiencing romance in Paris ... Kentucky.
As a Gina, I protest this alliterative stereotyping. Many of us Ginas are not glum. Some of us are positively gleeful.
ReplyDeleteLouiseF, that was my first thought, I don't like the soft G sound with the hard G sound. Chester the Dog, I like your version! I might suggest Gina, pronounced Jinn-ah, to my daughter, who keeps a very long list of possible baby names. Sometimes they're regular names pronounced quite differently, sometimes a word that strikes her fancy. Vaxine, Ulna, Magpie, anything can be a name, really.
ReplyDeleteSandi Ego: Making up lists of absurd baby names has been my stock gift to expecting parents over the years, and I always get a kick out of the names Bill Griffith bestows upon the denizens of Dingburg in "Zippy the Pinhead." And having mentioned Zippy, I now crave to see a scene between him and Mary. I could maybe draw one, but I'm a notoriously slow worker. So maybe one of you creative and CAD-proficient folks could put one together. Could be a fun challenge. Just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteI once took some dialogue from Zippy the Pinhead and put it in Mary Worth panels. I'll find them and upload them again.
ReplyDeleteHope this link will work for my MW/Zippy crossover. I apologize for the font, as I made the cartoons before I learned my way around photo editing and didn't know how to change it. It kind of fits for Zippy dialogue, though:
ReplyDeletehttps://imgur.com/a/5spe8ZT
Anonymous: Thank you! Those are great. I'd still like to see Mary trying to meddle in Dingburg.
ReplyDeleteSUNDAY: Have we ever actually seen the advice that Wilbur provides when he's functioning in the Wendy role? It's got to be better than what Mary brings to the table (so to speak; we all know what she brings to the literal table).
I've been wondering the same thing. His advice to Gina would involve mayonnaise, I'm sure.
DeleteReggae karaoke.
ReplyDeleteDawn’s spent so much time in the water, she’s shrunk at least ten inches.
ReplyDelete