Happy Birthday Grandpa Jim Part II
Today’s strip was an age joke. My immediate thought was this seems awfully familiar to me, and then I remembered I had been doing a running gag on the appearance of old age on Jeremy since last November. Amazingly, I have not tired of it, but I am sure others have. Constable Paul Wright and Howard did their own riffs on age and that left only an unusual snark to put into place about the bizarre thing Robin was doing in Panel 1, with his feet around a black balloon, his head against John and sucking his thumb. I also tried to work in the stuffed bear which seems to be alternatively played with by Merrie and Robin. Merrie sleeps with it, but I am not sure if I can identify her as the owner, since there are a number of strips showing Robin with the same stuffed teddy. I decided it would represent someone common to both kids, in this case grandpa Jim to fit in with the theme of today’s strip.
Otherwise, I just played along with others. I tossed a few things to susannamoodie’s Zandra Larson story about MacBeth and a few things to qnjones’ story about her date with 2 guys at once.
Tomorrow’s strip: The return of Eva, at least in name. I know we have often said you can’t follow the strip without the monthly letters any more, but I think today is the first time we could say you can’t follow the strip without reading April’s Real Blog. Eva is mentioned as the new singer for 4-Evah, without even the slightest mention of her being able to sing or considering singing in 4-Evah or auditioning or anything of the sort in either the strips or the monthly letters. But it has been mentioned in April’s Real Blog. I think this is definitely a sign we are leading the storyline in the strip and we may want to consider writing our plots with that in mind. Instead of going on some tangent, we should be writing April’s Real Blog as if we are writing the strip ourselves and determining where it should go, because clearly that is what we are doing.
Tomorrow’s strip seems to indicate that yet another musician is going to be added to 4-Evah. There are 3 ways it could go:
a. Shannon Lake. Her previous shyness over joining 4-Evah will be overcome when April goes out of her way to make her realize that the fact she is a heretofore unknown piano prodigy can help her win the friendship she so desperately craves.
b. Jeremy Jones. His redemption from his prior bullying activities is fulfilled by his announcement he will depart from doing audio work for the evil Becky in order to play keyboards for 4-Evah.
c. A completely new character from some ethnic background not previously portrayed in For Better or For Worse. I think a gay, Jewish, African-American First Nations Indian hermaphrodite named Joe would be ideal.
There also appears to be a possibility of a name change for the band. How many puns can you do off the number 5? I think we will find out first hand.
More importantly, does this mean all the storylines mentioned since Eva first appeared in November are now going to be played out, like the Eva-Duncan romance, and the school talent show? If so, Lynn better get moving. She only has April and May to get those started and she is probably going to spend all this week with grandpa Jim at his birthday party.
Otherwise, I just played along with others. I tossed a few things to susannamoodie’s Zandra Larson story about MacBeth and a few things to qnjones’ story about her date with 2 guys at once.
Tomorrow’s strip: The return of Eva, at least in name. I know we have often said you can’t follow the strip without the monthly letters any more, but I think today is the first time we could say you can’t follow the strip without reading April’s Real Blog. Eva is mentioned as the new singer for 4-Evah, without even the slightest mention of her being able to sing or considering singing in 4-Evah or auditioning or anything of the sort in either the strips or the monthly letters. But it has been mentioned in April’s Real Blog. I think this is definitely a sign we are leading the storyline in the strip and we may want to consider writing our plots with that in mind. Instead of going on some tangent, we should be writing April’s Real Blog as if we are writing the strip ourselves and determining where it should go, because clearly that is what we are doing.
Tomorrow’s strip seems to indicate that yet another musician is going to be added to 4-Evah. There are 3 ways it could go:
a. Shannon Lake. Her previous shyness over joining 4-Evah will be overcome when April goes out of her way to make her realize that the fact she is a heretofore unknown piano prodigy can help her win the friendship she so desperately craves.
b. Jeremy Jones. His redemption from his prior bullying activities is fulfilled by his announcement he will depart from doing audio work for the evil Becky in order to play keyboards for 4-Evah.
c. A completely new character from some ethnic background not previously portrayed in For Better or For Worse. I think a gay, Jewish, African-American First Nations Indian hermaphrodite named Joe would be ideal.
There also appears to be a possibility of a name change for the band. How many puns can you do off the number 5? I think we will find out first hand.
More importantly, does this mean all the storylines mentioned since Eva first appeared in November are now going to be played out, like the Eva-Duncan romance, and the school talent show? If so, Lynn better get moving. She only has April and May to get those started and she is probably going to spend all this week with grandpa Jim at his birthday party.
posted by howard at 12:16 AM
3 Comments:
Instead of going on some tangent, we should be writing April’s Real Blog as if we are writing the strip ourselves and determining where it should go, because clearly that is what we are doing.
Woot, high-fives all around!
Bring on Joe! Though I suspect there'd be a special, alternate spelling. J'Oh?
NOW I get your joke about Robin! I frankly often fail to look closely at the art in these strips anymore. It's so awful that unless something really jumps out at me, I focus more on the god-awful stories.
Same here on both counts--I missed the balloon in the strip.
I gaze at the art pretty closely for my Foobiverse snarks, precisely because it is quite bad now and so snarkworthy.
aprilp_katje,
Though I suspect there'd be a special, alternate spelling. J'Oh?
I don't think so. Lately, Lynn likes to take the ethnic personalities but frequently gives them not very ethnic-sounding names, like Paul, Eva, Duncan or Gary.
Good point about the names. I thought maybe "Jo" for the androgyny, but Lynn already has Jo(sef) Weeder.
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