Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for April 03, 2012

Now I know why Jeff has problem with women.

Very funny strip today.

Did Alex refer to the Rascal as her uncle yesterday? Please someone point me to a family tree so I can figure that out. Jeff’s father is that former journalist, now starving blogger, Rick, right? Alex’s dad is Mike D. himself? So, wait, Alex’s Gramma is the Rascal’s mom? No, wait, Gramma is Rick the blogger’s wife? So is Rick Alex’s grandfather? I’m confused. I haven’t paid enough attention over the years. I am, Too. Zonked. Please help. Please. Help.

She referred to him as her half-uncle, minimizing the relationship. Jeff is Alex’s mother’s half-brother. He is the son of Joannie, Alex’s maternal grandmother, and Joannie’s second husband, Rick Redfern.

Who has issues again…

Lying in bed now trying to fall asleep turning this over, then I think it came to me – Was it Joanie who had the line, (thought, not spoken), “As the kid goes for broke,” (I think that became the name of a book/collection of strips) and was it Rick to whom she offered to make breakfast, that preceded the thought? Was the cinematic Sunday strip from decades ago, of the slow pan in on the quaint American town on a crisp spring morning, each frame getting closer and closer to the open window with the curtains billowing in the breeze, until the final panel revealed Joanie in bed, resting her head on a man’s chest – was that Rick?

They are both going on to greater, greater fame.!!!!!

“So I thought you’d be bigger, more ripped” says…the big, ripped guy?

Alex knows her family. Which means we have to wonder how she got up the nerve to ask Leo to meet her parents so quickly after the “engagement.”

Lots of soldiers aren’t ripped like Vin Diesel. But they can rip shrimps like Jeff.

Is GT house cleaning?

I’ve read Doonesbury since Mike, BD and Mark were college students (gulp! I’m old!)Joanie was the 30-ish mother of a preschool daughter, JJ, when she fled her oppressive family life and hitched a ride to Walden commune on the back of Mike Doonebury’s motorcycle.She eventually went to law school in California, worked on congressional races, reconciled with JJ, and in her 40’s, married Rick, a reporter for the Washington Post, and had Jeff. So JJ is about 15 years older than Jeff, and they weren’t raised together.

JJ, meanwhile, grew up to marry Mike, have Alex…. and run off with the useless Zeke (who I believe worked for Uncle Duke)…….leaving Alex with Mike, who then married Kim… and THEY raised Alex.Alex rarely sees her mother, JJ, cos she hates Zeke…. (calls him Uncle Stupid.)but her father, Mike, is still good friends with his ex-mother-in-law, Joanie, who is Alex’s grandmother… Jeff and Zipper came to see her at MIT… Zipper hit on her, and Jeff went after her beautiful roommate, Drew…. the girls were NOT impressed.So yeah, Alex knows Jeff well. Clear as mud?I’m doing all this from memory at 2am — no guarantees.Feel free to correct me….

GBT (or someone) needs to publish a family tree. I find the half-uncle relationship mentioned earlier hard to wrap my mind around!!!

Nobody can get Jeff to understand that “he has issues.” That’s why he’ll never become an interesting character. He’s a narcissist who doesn’t even examine the self he’s in love with. Leo’s “Why?” must puzzle him.

Specifically, J.J. (Joan Junior) is the daughter of Clinton Caucus. She isn’t mentioned when Joanie runs away from Clinton in 1972, but Joan’s references to her tiresome “roles” suggest motherhood was one of the things she fled. So Jeff is the half-uncle but very much from another generation, albeit equally screwed up, as would be expected of any child of Joanie who would be as neglected whether she stayed to raise them or left. (We note that when she left Clinton and presumably J.J., she cared more about the girls in the day care she worked at than her daughter. Joanie’s primary trait has always been self-absorption.) Alex’s grandfather Clinton has never reappeared, so far as I know. He must have fallen on hard times, else the useless J.J. would have tried to bum from him or inherit.

“So I thought you’d be bigger, more ripped”Jeff asked this because Alex described Leo as bigger and ripped! This is how Alex sees Leo…love is blind!

I’m just waiting for tomorrow’s or Thursday’s strip where Jeff comments on Leo’s stutter. Who want’s to bet Jeff won’t?

Sorry, man, that you had needs in your inner world. Sound engineers don’t move heavy stuff. Pro athletes, movie models, and other slaves need their bulk. It’s cinematographic. You know, entertainment and show biz?

The sneaking and peeking, shooting and hooting is often done by the wiry and skinny.

Ooooh! Thank you SusanSunshine! For years I avoided Doonesbury because it was just too dang intimidating. I couldn’t learn the characters and their backstories. I’ve been making myself keep at it for the last couple years, and though I’m learning, I still get kind of lost sometimes.

For a year or so when I was around 11, I really got into Days of Our Lives. Then I realized how stupid it was and quit watching. Now every once in a while, just for yuks, I go on Wikipedia and try and figure out what’s happened to all the characters I remember from 25 years ago. (Usually because I’m home on a weekday afternoon flipping through channels, and I spot an actor I remember from 25 years ago, and I think, “Jeez, you’re still alive?”) Days of Our Lives—with all of the mistaken and lied-about paternities, orphanings and adoptions, marriages and divorces and remarriages, deaths and resurrections, long-lost children returning for vengeance or an organ donation, and characters’ kids going from middle school to adulthood in a few months so they can start the cycle all over again—is only slightly more confusing than Doonesbury.

And oh yeah—Jeff is going to get his a** kicked.

Sounds like any normal modern American family…you know, the kind Republicans despise but actually have.I couldn’t help but notice, for those who come to the strip through Slate, that the Say What? feature is exactly what I knew it would be, the “unzipped Mitt”. Now I need to get that picture out of my head!

“Toggle” was a com guy (thus the name) and driver. Jeff is of course a hero in his own mind. But my experience confirms tigre 1’s observation, it IS the wiry and skinny who do the sneaking, peeking and shooting, but NOT the “hooting”, or chest beating, or “war loving” (as in chickenhawks who think Stallone and Schwarzeneggar flicks are “real life”)

Doonesbury Family Trees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doonesbury_characters

I wondered when Leo and Jeff would meet. Actual war veteran vs. self-deluded loser who thinks he’s a romantic hero. LET’S GET READY TO RUMM-BLE!!!

I doubt Leo will get too upset with or about Jeff… Alex, on the other hand, may rip Jeff a new one…

In my mind I’ve usually tried to defend Jeff, but no more. I hope Leo gets him good.