A Blur of Root Beer and Diet Pills

Yeah, I screwed up.  Just completely forgot I hadn’t finished the RJ-in-the-Catfish-with-Elvis storyline when I wrote the next week (last week for those keeping score at home).   You’d think we ran a professional operation with color-coded plot lines on dry-erase white boards.   But you’d be wrong.  We wing it around here.  Seat of the pants stuff.  And the seat is wearing thin.

Over the Hedge:  None of that stale continuity you get in other strips.  We’re made fresh daily!*

*The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Strip

A Hammy in One

I used to play a LOT of golf.   A LOT.  LIke 5X/week.   I had a problem.  I was addicted. So, I quit about five years ago.

You might be thinking golf is a silly thing to get addicted to.   I mean, golf is healthy, right?   It’s been five years and I still have bursitis in my left heel and I can’t stand up straight without my back going into spasms after ten minutes.   Golf reduces stress, right?  Only someone who’s never played would think that.   Golf is a game that for a couple holes and a half dozen strokes you can be as good as Tiger Woods (was).  And then it all goes to shit.  And you have no idea why.  But golf is played on a grand natural scale, right?   Not when you skull one into the weeds and your ball ends up next to a rattlesnake nest and you have to play it as it lies.

Golf is a game invented by sociopaths, played by lunatics and enjoyed by masochists.

But yet….  when a 70 foot putt snakes in, or you hit it so flush you can’t feel the ball on the club face, or you hit a hole in one (Plum Creek Golf Course, Kyle, TX, par 3 4th hole, 7 iron, 168 yards, Titliest NXT, one bounce and in the hole), then…

…it’s sublime, transcendent, EPIC!

How often do you get do something epic?  You just might do ANYTHING to do something epic?  You just might.

I did.

Huckleberry Finn as Read by a Brain

This cartoon works on several levels.  Most of which are in this reality.

Level 1:   Word Play  (mind nuts,  …terrible thing to taste.)

Level 2:  Surrealism (walking, talking brains)

Level 3:  Gross Out (Hammy licking his brain)

Level 4:  Literary (the opening lines of Huckleberry Finn)

Level 5:  Random (pretty much the whole thing)

Over the Hedge:  More levels!  More fun!  Six Flags!

Salted Mind Nuts For The Soul

I can’t remember when I was last in a library.  Can you?

The One With Brains Exercising to Lady Gaga

I wrote this with the brains doing gymnastics.  Like the vault, pommel hourse, rings, etc…   T probably figured it was too hard to draw.  Hard to imagine.  No, it’s easy to imagine.  Hard to draw.

Ma-ma-ma-My poker face…!

The Squirrel with Kaleidoscope Eyes

You know it’s true. Forty plus year old Beatles’ references never get old.

I’m thinking that last panel of Hammy is a t-shirt.  Even I’d wear it.

Crisco Twister Fun

Crisco Twiser — two words that have no business being in the same vicinity of one another.  Yet when sidled up against one another (in a disturbingly metaphoric way) they combine to produce one highly comedic offspring.

Word Sex:  No place but Over the Hedge.

Unminded Minds Mostly Meander

Those observant two or three of you will notice that we left  poor RJ stranded in the catfish with Elvis on Saturday.  Yet here he is soaking in the kiddie pool.   I have no explanation for this other than I’ve lost my !@?$!! mind as well.

We will return to the RJ-and-Elvis-in-the-catfish story line next week (short of).  I know you (and I use the second person loosely here) can’t wait.

The One Where Verne Waterboards Himself

I think enough time has passed to make waterboarding jokes, don’t you?   No?  Tough.

In Santa Fe for a week.  I’m typing this in a fly infested coffee shop off the square.     These are argressive high-altitude flies who obviously haven’t gotten the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce memo to kick back, chill and allow hassle free luxury good fleecing.

Santa Fe will die a horrible death one day.   Cause of death?  Pretense.

And flies.

Namaste, Dudes.

“I’m Dead.” – Elvis

I’ve got a t-shirt from years ago with the title of today’s blog entry on it.   For those of you born after 1980…  After Elvis died in 1977, and for years afterward, there was a near constant stream of Elvis sightings.  He was retired and living in Bolivia.  He was Goofy at Disneyworld.  After plastic surgery, he became George Wendt and played Norm on Cheers.  Etc.

My favorite (that I made up) is that he became an Elvis impersonator.   I’ve got a a  movie pitch about Elvis still alive, hits hard times and has to impersonate himself to make ends meet (©2010 Michael Fry).   It opens on a corporate event.  An Elvis impersonator (Elvis) takes the stage.  Someone in the audience says,  “He’s pretty good, but he’s no Elvis.”