Social lives are for ethnic people.

I would have had a post up yesterday, but I have a terrible case of Bad Internet.  So anyway.  Let’s get this over with.

Hi and Lois, 5/23/09

Where are they?  I don’t know.  Perhaps they’re coming from church, whose steeple I can see towering in the background.  Does… does anyone ever stop an entire group of people just to tell them what a lovely family they are, sans the moody teenage son?  People stop to tell us how cute our dogs are.  And of course, everyone thought I was an adorable baby.  But this…?  It’s a bit odd.  You don’t even know that they are a family, ma’am, or that Hi is their real father.  Which he isn’t.

Anyway.  I like (yes, like) two things about this strip.  I un-ironically like that the date is written on the door of the non-descript building — an actual good example of incorporating the meta with the art.  I ironically like the bleak, torn Circus poster hanging next to Chip’s devil-may-care pose.  Chip.  You are fooling no one.

Hi and Lois, 5/24/09

Auurgh, this is such crap.  No, sorry, that’s not funny — I need to actually point out some things.  What follows are things that I am pointing out.

• Milton! says Lois’s shirt.  Or does it say… Wilton?  I can’t really tell.  If it really does say Wilton, that proves a point we’ve been pondering in the comments.  Another shout out to the homies in Connecticut from my dawgs B & G Walker.  Does Lois wear anything on her day off that doesn’t recall college?
• Debbie and J.C.; are they too a real entity?  Or is “J.C.” merely a reminder of our Lord Christ?
• There doesn’t seem to be a proper apostrophe in Lois’s second-panel dialogue.  “Weve”?  Also, check out that thousand mile stare as she remembers happier times.
• Also, “Yay!”?  Are we three years old, Lois?
• The wide shot of the squalid living room kinda cracks me up.  It is practically cartoonish in its ruin, is it not?  A sock hanging off the lamp.  Empty cans of Beige Brand Beer lying sideways on the coffee table.  A bulging bookbag hooked precariously over the edge of the flatscreen television, threatening to pull it over and shatter it all over the damn carpet.  No house looks like this.  (Well, I hope no house does.)
• It might be difficult to see in the tiny web-version of the comic, but Trixie is defying the laws of physics.  She brings down a dustbunny (or crumpled paper, or cartoon cloud) in her tiny hand, and then radically alters its projectory so that it flies across the room instead of burying itself in the ground?  This was drawn by the same people who don’t know how motion lines work.
• The Flagston Parents live a sad and lonely life, alienated from the other families who have a more sane amount of offspring.
• God, these people cross their arms more than anyone on earth!  No one crosses their arms that much!  I know you’re trying to add variety and sassiness to your drawings but it’s just annoying me!
• Sorry about that.

Happy Labor Day Memorial Day weekend!  I mix those two up sometimes.