The Asshole Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

Sturdivant Kleeb has parents, and they’re even bigger jerkwads than he is.

“Boy”?

Apparently the Kleebs think that they’re in the pre-Civil Rights South and that somehow “Boy!” an acceptable way to address other humans.

I suppose you have to feel for them. It must be tough, trying to be a racist in a world where there aren’t any non-Caucasians.

While panel 1 is the money shot, panel 3 is an awesome bonus, as the Kleebs are so amazingly horrified that their beloved Giant Chin is marrying into a family that manages to live in a house with only two stories.

A Day of Rest

I don’t have the affection for Sunday Gasoline Alleys that I do for the daily strips. Sunday strips fall outside the day-to-day plotlines, and moreover are self-contained stories so there’s not even any chance for the insanity to build. They’re sometimes even less; today’s strip is just a bunch of lame wordplay. (An astronomer’s business is looking up? Oh, ha, ha.)

Since I don’t care much about the Sunday strips, in most cases, I won’t be writing about them.

In the words of a rather brilliant philosopher (or, depending on your viewpoint, evil hand puppet), read a book!

Then Shouldn’t You Be Asleep, Too?

In Gasoline Alley, it’s often difficult to know who is actually who; it’s got a large cast and characters important but not central to the specific plotline sometimes aren’t introduced real clearly and don’t appear often enough to get a good sense of who they are on sight. The Wallet Family History by Stephen M. Lawson is a great help here. Old Babbling Grandpa in panel one is Amanda Lynn’s father, Adam. (He and his wife Teeka have appeared in this plotline a few times; her name is somewhat easier to remember.)

Anyhow, this is a wonderful example of the kind of thing that makes this strip so delightful. Sturdivant Kleeb has been nothing but a giant twit through his introduction. But today, Adam decides to top him: Rather than letting the young lovers (in a purely spiritual sense, since Sturdy’s promised his lipginity) have their time, he demands that they go to bed, lest the hay bales go unbaled in the morning, or whatever chores absolutely positively have to be done at 5:30 in the morning, before they turn back into pumpkins.

But how the hell does Adam know that the Obviously Not Gonna Stay In Love-birds are still up? It’s not like they’re shouting, or worse, playing basketball, outside his window. If Adam were asleep, their conversation wouldn’t wake him up. So the conclusion to be drawn is that he’s up late, just like he’s berating Sturdy and Amanda for doing. And worse, he’s spying on them, which, let’s face it, is creepy.

(I guess in a sense we’re spying on them too, but we at least have the decency to feel dirty about it.)

I also just noticed that Adam has closed his window by the third panel, but he’s still shouting through it, which apparently indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of some of the basic properties of matter, which sadly is about par for the course.

Just Because You’re Stupid, Doesn’t Mean You’re Stupid

Good Ol’ Sturdivant Kleeb comes through in a big way today. First off, he’s not only promising Amanda Lynn his virginity, he’s promising his… well, lip-virginity. Lip-ginity? Lipoginity? Whatever, that he’s never kissed a girl before. Apparently the thrift store where he bought his Yale sweater didn’t have any women in it.

Even better, while most people trying to build a web of lies in hopes of securing first-hand knowledge of a woman’s womanly bits can keep their story straight for at least a little while, Sturdivant Kleeb contradicts himself in the very next sentence.

Amanda Lynn, meanwhile, shows some never-before-seen insightfulness, proving that you don’t need to be able to count to two to know when someone’s just after your sweet rural jumblies. But how does she pull this off, exactly? I’m assuming that she’s just phantasmagorically self-centered: Numbers belong to the mundane wold that everyone shares, but her nipples are hers and therefore matter. (I was going to say that they “count”, but as I’m not a fan of the wordplay gags in it would be a bit hypocritical to make that semi-joke.)

Sturdivant Kleeb, the Philandering Somnambulist

This really isn’t the best one to start a blog on. I’m most fond of Gasoline Alley when it’s focusing on insane (or rather, antisane) plots, rather than wordplay. (Particularly when it could have made a grovel/gravel pun. Well, no, not really. Let’s say that wordplay is never a good option for this strip.)

But it does give me the opportunity to review the plotline thus far:

Young Amanda Lynn has gotten herself engaged–and engaged to someone who isn’t a total hick! Her beloved is Sturdivant Kleeb, an urbanite with a chin that looks like a giant sausage, a speech impediment, and a Yale sweater.

Sturdivant reveals that he’s a somnambulist. Amanda Lynn thinks he’s swearing. Then she thinks he’s a member of a religious cult.

He then acts like a giant douchebag, refusing to accompany one of his future in-laws on a tractor ride. He apparently didn’t realize that the country would have such monstrosities.

Then, because that wasn’t bad enough, he hits on his fiancee’s sister, Ada.

When Amanda Lynn learns of this, she demonstrates that she’s too stupid to count. Literally. She tells Sturdivant that she doesn’t want to be number two in his life, and to illustrate this point, she holds up three fingers.

Yesterday, Amanda Lynn caught Sturdy sneaking up to Ada’s room. Having finally explained to the doyenne of dimwittedness what “Somnambulist” means, he tries out the excuse that he carefully seeded, claiming he was sleepwalking.

Which brings us to today’s… wordplay on the difference between metaphorical dust and actual dust.

Well, they can’t all be good ones.

Enjoy, however, the fact that in Gasoline Alley, “smooch” has a “t”.

Why? Why? Why!

My name is Greg. I’m 32, and I’m a fan of the comic strip Gasoline Alley.

I suspect that’s not a sentence you hear every day.

But I have genuine affection for the strip. I was introduced to it (and the other comics that I read) by the site Comics Curmudgeon. It was probably a year ago, maybe more, with a plotline that involved some old guy lost in the woods and trying to recover a baby from a bear, or something like that.

(I said I have genuine affection for it, not that it’s believable.)

Anyhow, it dropped off my radar, and I was reintroduced to it with the exploits of one of the characters having a scheme to get kids to stop noisily playing basketball next to his house by, and I kid you not, acquiring a large meteorite and hiring a helicopter pilot to drop the rock on the basketball court, thereby destroying it.

From there I was hooked on this strip that, while not good in the traditional sense, is delightful in the audacity of its badness. It’s sort of like Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” in comic form.

Anyhow, inspired by Comics Curmudgeon and the single-comic strip blogs that have sprung up, I offer Goin’ Antisane with Gasoline Alley, in hopes of offering first-class snark and simultaneous appreciation.