The Return of Plot

Odd that Scancarelli would put the start of what could be an actual storyline on Saturday — I’d think that would be the lowest day for comic-reading. (Don’t a lot of papers have special “weekday” rates that don’t include Saturday or Sunday? I don’t honestly know; I’ve read news exclusively online for about 8 years, ever since I first moved into the city of Chicago from the suburbs, and the Chicago Tribune, which I had subscribed to, told me that it couldn’t deliver the paper to my apartment.)

Anyhow, despite Chef Meowrice’s claims, the contest is not really all that exciting, unless you’ve got a postal fetish. But I am excited that a) we’re starting a new story and b) we’re going to a new character. Not new, actually, I believe (don’t quote me on this, because we know how well I am at identifying characters) that the ‘new’ character is Rufus, who I think lives in the dump and drives around hauling things on basically a mobile dump with his cat (Kitty) and a hanger-on named Joel. But new in the sense that we get away from the Wallets for a bit.

Although I hope that Teeka has some part in this cat food contest story. I’d like to see the extremes to which she goes to win this thing, being a massive fan of the commercial but not, unless I’m forgetting something, a cat owner herself. I’m thinking she could get Gourmet Cooking With Cat Food in 20 Easy Lessons (or 1 Hard One) from the library and make some micemeat pies. And then she’ll feed them to Adam, because he’s a bit of a jerk, and she’s an evil genius.

It’s great that Rufus feels the need to explain the contest prize to Kitty, rather than just letting her listen to Chef Meowrice. You’d think she’d be better able to understand the Chef, what with them both being cats, but clearly Rufus understands cross-species communication better than I do.

Yvette Me-Who?

After a week of felines who are recognizable parodies of figures you have probably heard of, today we run into Yvette Me-Mew, a take-off of Yvette Mimieux, who was an actress up to 1992 but was mostly not famous past the 60s. (Thank you Wikipedia!)

If you knew who that was, you’re a far better person than I. (Or at least, far more knowledgable about Yvette Mimieux than I.)

Anyhow, Yvette Me-Mew has got creepy eyes, and she’s going to have creepy cat sex with Chef Meowrice, so It’s looking like this is the flight down the hill after the take-off from yesterday’s metaphorical (and physical) ski jump. Hopefully it will end quickly and excitingly, like the “agony of defeat” crash, rather than slowly and painfully, like a long series of ski jumpers soaring down the hill and landing and then stopping.

Boozwams!

Sorry for the lateness of the post. It’s been a hell of a day; I had to go in to work a couple hours early, leave a couple hours late, then went direct to a show. Long story short, it’s been about a 16 and a half hour day. Yet still, I go on. Why? I could say that it’s because I only live to serve you, Loyal Reader, but frankly, I don’t think I can pull that off in my fatigued state. So I’ll be completely honest with you. The reason is: Boobs!

Yep, we return today to country music with one of the genre’s grand dames, Dolly Pawton. And she’s drawn… well, not quite proportionally to her human counterpart, because that wouldn’t be possible within the confines of a daily comic strip, but at least with an awareness that, to borrow a phrase, her boozwams are tremendulous.

And I say that with a certain affection for the lady–I can’t claim any real fandom, but I’ve definitely felt positively toward her since seeing her perform “Travelin’ Through” at the Oscars a couple years ago and clearly having the time of her life, even though she clearly wasn’t going to win. Despite that, I still know her best and first for her ginormous womblies.

I, and I think most midwestern boys of my age, knew her for her ginormous womblies before we really understood that society generally considered ginormous womblies to be a good thing.

(I know, I know, appalling. Quick, without looking it up… what color are Dolly Parton’s eyes?)

Anyhow, I kind of have a bone to pick with Dolly Pawton’s (the cartoon character’s) boogly boogly shoops. Not the size; as I said before, those jigglypuffs are quite admirably rendered. No, my concern is this: Dolly Pawton is a cat. Therefore, rather than a pair of 16-pound bowling balls in her blouse, she should have an octet of oogly booglies.

I feel passionately about this issue. Enough that I hope to rectify it at some point in the fairly near future. Being an improvisor in Chicago, I’m in a near-constant state of “working on a sketch show.” (It really doesn’t make sense, but the two things do go hand-in-hand, even though they shouldn’t.) Anyhow, an eight-gazongaed country singer is definitely on my short (and bouncy) list of proposed characters.

There’s some jokey bits in the strip, but they’re tough to motorboat so I’m going to go to bed instead of talking about them.

The Parade Continues…

I’m normally a pretty plot-driven fellow, but I’m really loving this absolutely [seemingly] pointless Chef Meowrice Extravaganza. I’m thrilled that the parade of pussy stars (Not dirty! Hah!) has moved out of the country (still not dirty!) music genre. I wouldn’t even mind if Cat King Cole’s daughter comes on to perform the Mice-a-roni jingle with her (apparently undead and very well-preserved) feline father.

[Ed: I was thinking about calling him either "vast" or "extraterrestrial"--see, he's "spacial"--but the gag just doesn't work as well without the death aspect.]

I’m intrigued that Chef Meowrice calls Mice-a-roni a “culinary creation.” I don’t think that the human analog has ever made that claim. It’s somewhat surprising that Mice-a-roni isn’t described as “the San Francatnip treat,” though.

Anyhow, I’m excited to see who is up next. True, all of this stunt casting means there’s some danger of Gasoline Alley becoming Will and Grace. But on the other hand, introducing a couple gay characters (or better, having a couple come out) would make the heads of other characters explode. And exploding heads are good heads.

Still not dirty. Ha!

Ooh! A Cavalcade!

Right now, I don’t particularly care what kind of plotline this fits into. I’m just delighting in the parade of country music superstars of yesteryear, rendered in feline form and reduced to hawking cat food. Who’s next? Furball Haggard? Calico Harris? Minnie Purrle? Tomcat Goldthwait?

Conway Kitty, however, is an amazingly effeminate looking man-cat. That hair, those ears, his obvious delight in eating the liver of force-fed rats or birds chopped up and cooked in a delicate egg dish? Girly, girly, girly!

I’m also liking Teeka here. She really, really loves this ad, and she’d not going to drop it, no matter how angry it makes her husband. And he hates it so much it made him constipated, which is a lot of hate for a commercial.

Death, Rodents, and Country Music Semistars

As if Chef Meowrice weren’t enough of celebrity to endorse cat food, he had to bring in Tabby Wynette, known for her country hit “Stand By Your Pussy.” Normally this much star power in one place would cause sales to skyrocket. Unfortunately, this ad had the opposite effect, because too many people took Tabby’s wordplay literally and decided to make their own cat food by slaughtering their own mice and cooking them in rat gravy.

Teeka, as we can see, finds this adorable. She’s probably got a butcher knife under the pillow, in case she decides to sleep-slaughter any rodents. If Adam wanted her dead, he could just tap her heart with a couple fingers and she’d stab herself out of instinct before she was fully awake.

Adam would never do that, however. He obviously doesn’t know the difference between food and vermin. He would eat a petri dish of botulism if it happened to see it. He at least has the wisdom to realize that he’d literally die without the more-intelligent Teeka around to keep him from doing so.

Petroleum ‘Pothetical #6

Time to fill your victory-holes, fellow Americans! Last week I asked: “What are the Pye Boys going to do with Sturdivant?” who, at the time, had been kidnapped for a ransom that his parents weren’t willing to pay.

They seem to have taken cover for the time being, but that doesn’t stop me from suspecting that this week’s winner is correct: “The obvious thing would be ‘white slavery’ – imagine Sturdy beaten like a red headed step-child, hooked on heroin hustling on the streets of New York to pay for his next fix.”

Congratulations to Brent for his possibly Thoroughly Modern Millie-inspired answer.

But don’t dwell on it, because there’s a new question, and it’s a toughie. (Not much happened this week, so there’s not all that much to base a response on.) The question:

“What song were Amanda Lynn and Joseph duetting in their harmonica/mandolin jam session?”

Bonus points for using an actual song; however, equal bonus points for coming up with your own title. Appropriate or terrifying, I want to hear it. (ABBA’s “Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)” might qualify as both.)

As always, give your answer as a comment to this post to have a chance at Total Victory. (Ninja Warrior rocks!)

Transitions and Terrors

One thing you must admit about Gasoline Alley: it’s transitions between plotlines or beats of plotlines tend to be more abrupt and random than seamless and elegant like, say, the tidy pool party device of Mary Worth. (Not that Mary Worth is something to emulate, ever, in any situation, either as a comic strip or as a life role model.)

I don’t recognize Chef Meowrice, even though Teeka clearly does. It’s tough to guess whether this is the start of a new plotline or a continuation of the Amanda Lynn-in-horrible-horrible-love story. I really, really, really hope it’s the former, though.

It’s partly because I’m sick of Amanda Lynn, I’ll admit. I was biking home from the gym today when I was struck by a terrifying thought: Amanda Lynn and Joseph are going to get married, and then they’re going to have a baby, but Joseph will die in childbirth, so Amanda Lynn will have no choice but to name the baby “Monica.” Apart from Joseph dying, I don’t want to see any of that. (It would be kind of fun to see how he kicks the bucket in childbirth–although stranger things have happened, at least in this comic strip–but I don’t think it’s worth the rest of it.)

But more positively: Think of the plot possibilities offered by an anthropomorphic cat with a penchant for hawking consumer goods and an obsession with tinned fake tuna? Particularly if his hypnotic powers are developed to the point where he holds other people mesmerized by his incredibleness the way he has Teeka.

I am under your power, Chef Meowrice.

Get Them Together, Then Keep Them Apart

Adam’s a bit of a jerkwad, no?

Yesterday, he wanted Joseph and Amanda Lynn to get together. Today, he wants to go out and prevent them from enjoying it. And let’s face it, it’s not gonna be easy to enjoy being with either one of those two, let alone being with one of them while you happen to be the other one.

Interrupting young people in mid-snog is acceptable once, maybe, if you’re twelve. If not, you just need to be slapped.

Plus, the stripes on his shirt stay perfectly vertical and horizontal, even when he’s bent at an angle. That’s a sure sign of evil.

But despite this, I’m going to give Adam a bit of advice. If you happen to hear some rhythmic thumping, punctuated by some occasional clangs or whoops, don’t bother trying to drop a meteor on them. It’ll damage your foundation, and it probably won’t do anything to stop them. (From playing basketball, which is Amanda Lynn’s favorite hobby.)

Commence Cookie Tossing!

I was prepared for snogging, really I was. I just wasn’t prepared for it this quickly. There was an entire song in The Music Man devoted to what a hussy Amanda Lynn would be if she kissed on the second date; kissing on the first time seeing a guy in several years, when they’re not even on a date and just sitting on the front porch engaged in hell’s jam session, practically makes her Linda Lovelace.

She really couldn’t wait to get into it, either. Judging by Adam and Teeka’s dialogue, they just started playing. Then, two sentences in, they’re examining each other’s tonsils. Can anyone say “repression?”

Also, Adam seems to have developed a wicked superpower: He can talk about two people falling in love, and they will. Think (if it’s not too horrifying) what would happen if Adam used his powers on other people in the Gasoline Alley universe. Joe Pye could finally express his love for… uh… bwrawff!

Sorry. It really was too horrifying.