Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for September 02, 2017

Right in the middle of the lab. Very serious lol

“Uh… okay…” indeed.

She wastes no time.

I do hope lunch lasts all week.

And is that party tonight?

Tara’s decided that she likes Luann a lot. She definitely wants a close friendship.

… But to what ends???

Oh dear oh dear oh no with cats and dogs living together in sin.

There is only one pair of glasses on the table.

So That’s Your “Lab Bud,” Huh Lu?

Well, I guess it’s Safe to Predict that there WON’T be any “Easy” *A*s in THIS Class like there was in Professor Zebo’s……..,

Good grief, everyone so far seems to think Tara is a baby Ma Barker. It is clear she is a friendly, very directive and attractive type person, kind of take-charge and smart, and clearly Luann appears to like her. So because she did some dumb things, she must be the kind of bad person one’s parents warned them about, and worry that “their” kid might hang out with. She has not been charged with the crimes, Mooney adjudicated it with expulsion, and when is the time to make dumb mistakes anyway but in youth? College students can make serious mistakes that might affect negatively the rest of their lives (loan debt is one big one, but the crime is that public college students have to borrow, when public colleges and universities should be tax-supported including tuition and other attendant costs, not student debt supported); bad examples are frat parties where girls in particular get sexually abused after drinking too much, and the girls get branded as “sluts” (I abhor that term) while the boys are “studs” except they are not, they are rapists if the young woman is unaware she is being abused. What Tara admits she did is dumb, and is a crime, but it is a mistake, and maybe giving her the benefit of the doubt is a good thing, rather than having the idea that she is some kind of Ann Eiffel in training, or worse. I do think though that Bernice is far more conservative and JUDGMENTAL as are many of the posts here are, and that be real issue, if Luann and Tara become friends. Dez, where are you? I bet she would not be judgmental.

Since when are college/university classes dismissed with the ring of a bell? Isn’t that something that happens only in middle and high school? Or something we see only on old TV shows? None of my college classes were ever dismissed this way.

Tara looks like she escaped from an “Archie” comic strip.

This college has a bell? Does it have lockers too?

Tara is thinking, “If Luann likes Bernice, then she likes a bossy woman. I will be that bossy woman for her and then I will turn the tables on Bernice. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!!”

Tara goes on and on about her wild parties and late nights. It’s not easy to quit that stuff cold turkey. Usually alcohol and drugs have been part of the fun. Tara may have just got out of rehab. Maybe she senses that Luann is a decent person and is desperate to establish that kind of companionship. However I’m hoping that Tara has lunch money. If she invites Luann and then doesn’t have money for her own lunch, that should be the last lunch until she does. Oh well – the jury’s in recess now.

School bell????I’ve never been to ANY colleges that has school bells………….only in grades schools to high schools

Several good arcs started recently that took a break in the middle of the story. Each time I thought that I didn’t want to see any more new characters until some of these stories got where they were going. But the new characters Fay and Tara worked their way into our imagination. Maybe if TJ or Pru acquired a girlfriend there would be another interesting addition to the cast.

I once had a neighbour who was quite a thief (she and I were about 5 years old). Her dad was a burglar! Luckily, she never stole from her friends, and her dad’s activities were primarily the docks and warehouses. Strange family….. they didn’t stay in our neighbourhood long, thank goodness.

Here’s what I wish would happen, but it would probably be difficult to orchestrate in the format of the daily comic strip. I’d love to see a couple of arcs here and another couple there and yet others elsewhere begin to overlap. Then some of those strands would disengage and interweave with the other detached lines of narrative. Ultimately, a big encounter of all of them with previously hidden connections becoming clear. (It probably couldn’t work unless the endgame were played out in a double sized comic book.) My model for this is the films of Robert Altman, particularly the amazing structure of his 1975 magnum opus “Nashville.” Just as the dialogue overlaps in almost all of his films, here multiple storylines do so. There are twenty-four principal characters, and three or four may be involved in one narrative. Then a couple of them get involved with some characters from yet another plotline. At one point, multiple lines meet in a literal traffic jam. Finally, one of the twenty-four commits a violent act against another of the two dozen… and we see the other twenty-two react. Its one of the most elegant dramatic constructions I’ve ever witnessed and, as you might not expect, it’s not difficult to follow at all. Its about sex, politics, show business, American value systems, the music industry, and multiple human foibles of the individual characters. It’s one of a small number of movies that I’m almost evangelical about. I try to steer people toward it when I think they’d appreciate it. Some here certainly would.

Tara seems pretty pushy and overly chummy. If I were Luann I’d say, “Thanks, but I’ve got plans, see you next class”. She doesn’t have to be Tara’s buddy just because they’re lab partners.

Maybe put away the lab equipment before skipping out?

Bubble, bubble, toil and …

.

… where’d she go?

Distillation. Three panels is the gist of a scene, friends.

Tara doesn’t seem pushy, but rather just extremely gregarious and extroverted. A lot of confidence in her ability to communicate, act, and react with people (most of the time, people wonder in the back of their minds if that encounter with a coworker while opening the fridge in the breakroom could have gone better than they did, when we fumbled our speech, or if we committed some ‘social faux pas’). There usually seems to be that one who ‘zigs’ when the rest of us just ‘zag’, one who is more adventurous, when we choose to be more reserved (whether by social convention, or just because its in our own personality) . She’s either very confident in her people skills, or her motto is just Go for it!" .

-

If she is a “go getter”, she’d better be careful, in both her transitions from one thing to another, and in her judgment skills (as evidenced by her recent transgressions, and being led by the wrong crowd)!

“Don’t Mess With Bell” (♬)

“Out Of The ‘Trying Plan’… And Into Those Fire-Roasted Chicken Empanadas!”

“Girls Without Classes, Don’t Need Passes!“

“It Ain’t Over, ‘Til It’s Over!”

“…And That ‘Totally Phat’ Signal Rings…”

“Steal Away!….To Lunch!”

“Materials Mismanagement”

“On To Something New”

“All That You Leave Behind”

“Flighty, Of The Bumbling ‘B+’ ’s” (♬)

“Trans Elbow Express” (♬)

“Rocket Girl” (♬)

“I Can’t Drive, After 1:55 (p.m.)!” (♪)

“…And Keep Your Eye, On This Sparrow!…” (♪)

“The Break, Fast Club"

“The Lunch Track, Of A Noted Dame”

“She Oughta Be Committed!”

or

“I’m 110% Unconditional! ….Except For Holidays…And Days With The Letter Y, That Aren’t After The Second Week In Months With An ‘R’ Or A ‘T’….And…..”

Has Luann always been left-handed? I never noticed.

So Luann has gone from mentoring an extreme introvert to being thrown in with an extreme extrovert. What a roller coaster ride.

Did I miss a week? What happened with Pru and Les and Ann Eiffel?

Makes sense to me. You’re SUPPOSED to leave class when the bell rings. The professor is.

Team Evans forgot that this is a biology lab rather than a chemistry lab, right? That is, unless they are creating some new mutant microbial life form, which seems like a rather advanced experiment for the first day of class.

Wild parties and late nights? She must have been hanging out in someone’s apartment off campus, because Bernice makes sure there that in the dorm where Tara lived there is only soft music playing after 10:00 PM, and no visitors are allowed in the rooms after curfew!

“Tara Starr.”

Not Serious. Flighty. Irresponsible.

You Know, I think We’ve found the Perfect match for Jonah Daytona…..,

Coulda sworn it should have been 175 grams … Tara stole the extra 25 grams !

This is the first step in Tara’s plan to find better friends.

Isn’t that a postage scale?

What Tara meant to say was “Would you like to have lunch with me if you don’t have other plans?” And then, “Where would you like to go for lunch?”

colleges dont have bells, nor is that what you use to and HOW you measure fluids in a beaker

What happened to the Delta character??

A college student would not say “Let’s DO lunch.” That’s dated businessspeak. “GET lunch,” maybe, or “get something to eat…”

This is not what a biology course is like, Team Evans must have got mixed up

I like Tara!

Luann’s school does not have bells. She (i.e., Greg Evans) told us that, on September 9, 2014.

When the Professor closed up his briefcase, most of us departed. Some stayed to ask a question or schedule a conference with the Prof.

I’d be hesitant to “do lunch” on a “first date” with Tara Starr, no matter how glib her hustle is. Maybe she’s not bad (as she claims). Or maybe she is. Take it slowly and cautiously, Luann, if you’re wise (one can only hope she is)….