Gaylord Q. Tinkledink

When Dansy text messaged me that I should watch The Simpsons tonight, I figured there'd be something Drew-specific in it. It turned out to be better than I could have ever hoped for: tonight's episode, "Little Orphan Millie," takes place, if only for a few moments, in Solvang, the Disneyland-for-Danes quilting store of a town that I resent for more reasons than I care to list. I can't quite believe that Solvang registered on radar of the episode's writer — Mick Kelly, quite possibly writing for the first time — but at the same time, I note that the show took nineteen seasons to get around to mentioning it. That, I'm positing, is precisely how long it should take any show to feature Solvang in any way. For what it was, the episode dealt with Solvang just how I would have wanted it to: jokes about butter cookie and boring Danish architecture. Amazing.

One more quick note: The Simpsons episode concerned Milhouse thinking his parents were dead after they fell over the rail of a cruise ship and were lost at sea. The episode weirdly mirrored last week's 100th episode of Family Guy, in which Lois seemingly died after she fell off a cruise ship. Even more weirdly, last week's Family Guy episode was "to be continued," meaning we had to deal with even more fake-dying-by-falling-of-cruise ships with the part two that aired just one half-hour after tonight's Simpsons.

Whither the Blue-Haired One?

In an effort to back up the hard copies of my clips with soft copies, I headed back into that womb of a college newspaper office to use the scanner. While there, I stumbled onto one of the many pieces of office clutter I added to the wall: a surreal, dadaist cartoon that I drew of my assistants at the time, Daniel and Kristina. I can't imagine why I thought this was a good idea, but I can only imagine it had something to do with copy being slow that night. Fucking copy.

Yeah, I scanned it.

It's large, so I decided the best way to show it one the website would be to just link to it and have it open in its own window.

[ click it! click it now! ]

In retrospect, Daniel looks like Hobbes and Kristina like Angelica from "Rugrats." The resemblance wasn't intentional, but it's nonetheless there. For those of you adverse to clicking links, the story tells of Angelica-Kristina and Hobbes-Daniel going on an adventure in a soda factory, which is also a forest where it's snowing. Or something. The two promptly become lost in an abyss of newspaper clippings. Finland is recalled fondly. Following that, they climb some skyscrapers, whereupon Kristina develops lobster claws. In the last panel, the two are on the moon. Kristina's feet are in Howard Hughes-style Kleenex boxes. Daniel, who has devolved into a large single-celled organism, again recalls Finland fondly.

I don't care what anybody says. It takes a certain talent to be truly nonsensical.

The whole image has also been posted on my Flickr account. I'm interested to see what kind of attention it draws.

[ my legs are weak but resolute ]