Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 17, 2011

I believe Leo and Joannie will have more in common than Alex and Joannie.

Leo seems much more intelligent than I first thought when I first saw him in the strip. I was misled by his stutter. And his “mild mannered reporter” demeanor. Good match for the smart Alex in that respect. Other respects? My jury is still out. Ps. “Smart Alex” = “Smart Aleck”? No pun intended. But it does make me wonder if that that thought, at least subconsciously or perhaps fleetingly, passed through Trudeau’s hyper-febrile imagination.

Calm down, Alex. You’re not dating Simon Cowell here.

Alex must be worried that Leo will turn out to be the graduate student in her dream.(Not that GBT would let that happen; but it’s fun to tease her, especially when she can’t see how much Joanie has in common with her.)

 Paula and Simon? Dare to go there? You know you want to …. http://www.celebrityactions.com/paula-abdul-might-be-the-fourth-judge-on-the-x-factor/

The test of wiils.Honesty verses the scheming thoughts of why the other is trying to get a leg up.Marriage material for sure.

I think my DH’s nephew does his cheating like that.

Too bad we can’t audition our grandparents before we’re born, it would change that whole “pick your friends, can’t pick your family” dialogue.

Readers who are getting bored (as jrmerm and I both are) with Alex’s familiar anxieties might enjoy Collins’s ironical piece in today’s NYT.It’s worthy of GBT at his best. Collins reveals himself to be Mark Zuckerberg’s real, biological father and then hits on his “son” for $15 million of his $15+ billions.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/opinion/mea-totally-sincere-if-overdue-culpa.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

“Garner bitches.” It’s a compliment. I got it from the gay community, where “bitching” was being used as “functioning well”. (I remember when the black community changed the meaning of “bad” to “good”, as in, “That’s bad!”, meaning the opposite.) I first picked the term up reading a gay magazine. The writer enthused about a “delightfully bitchy” performance by a gay impersonator of Marilyn Monroe. And I’ve been using it ever since. Example: James Garner bitched in the “Maverick” TV series. Meaning: He performed well.

Or you could say “James Garner was bitchin’ in Maverick” for the surfer angle.

That’s hilarious localhost, Maverick/surf I get it, bitchin’.

Toggle’s pretty smart playing the stutter card, when someone’s gettin’ on his case. I do the same thing, works every tttime.

I have heard of bitchin as a compliment but bitches. Now one would say Garner is the bomb.