Armando Vargas: “Poof Mason” Cover Boy
Unlike his father, a magician with bricks (”And now watch as I make all Shaqille O’Neal’s free throws disappear!”), Elmer is a magician at waste management. He’s already managed to fit a building, a tree, a traffic signal and Brendan-Oyl into an ordinary trash bin…and now he’s going to squeeze a conch shell in there!
Meanwhile, in the past or something, baby Elmer is so frightened of being over-swaddled by his parents that, magic mason be damned, he’s frantically searching for the nearest emergency exit.
Finally, the boring conversation of the day is kept almost interesting by Brendan trying to walk with both legs inserted in the same pant leg, and a giant plumber’s crack ruining the left side of the panel.
Panel One: Why is Elmer drinking mustard? Or is it…glue?
Comment by sourbelly — April 29, 2008 @ 9:53 am
I love the look on Li’l Elmer’s face in panel two. It’s like, “Who are these people!??!?!?” Are we sure the Vargas family secret isn’t really that Elmer was abducted by a childless couple who escaped the authorities by running to America?
Comment by El Santo — April 29, 2008 @ 10:05 am
Brenden looks shocked at the totally limp-wristed display in P1, as the E-Train throws away a perfectly good rose.
(By the way, it looks like today’s a good day to buy that new ‘R’.)
Comment by Striker — April 29, 2008 @ 10:24 am
I’ve tried hopping down a sidewalk with one of my legs crossed over the other. It ain’t easy.
Comment by sir douglas — April 29, 2008 @ 10:41 am
The look on baby Elmer’s face is priceless.
Is it me, or does the dialog in panel one make absolutely no sense unless you read it five or six times? The first time I read it, I thought Senor Vargas did a magic act with bricks. Then I realized what ELmer is saying in his own inarticulate way is that Senor Vargas was a good stone mason and could work magic as a masonary.
I hope I explained it a little better than Elmer Fudd.
Okay, I get it, Senor Vargas overstayed his visa. Now does he have to give back his Rotary Club Man of the Year award? And where is Gil gonna fit into all of this?
I’d like to think that Gil is passed out drunk on the floor of his huge kitchen.
Comment by Regina — April 29, 2008 @ 11:00 am
Regina: Gil’s at DETOX.
Comment by Striker — April 29, 2008 @ 11:03 am
Striker and Regina: I’ve got Gil at a retreat in Milawukee this weekend. He’s currently limbering up for a sauasage race at a Brewer’s game after eating six brats and a half dozn Pabst tallboys. Unconventional, yes. Possibility of throwing up, high.
Is it me or is this Vargas do-gooder dating a younger version of his mom? What in the Back to the Future is going on here?
Comment by Dr. "Eat More Cheddar and Drink More Pabst," aka Gil's Dietician — April 29, 2008 @ 11:10 am
That would be cheddar-infused brats, wouldn’t it, Doc?
Maybe the Brewers will have “Randall Simon bat day” and a drunken, sausage-clad Gil can be pummelled by all kids in attendance 14 and under.
This storyline stinks worse than Gil’s sausage suit. Did Dolan Masonry fly the whole family up every six months? Maybe that’s just some random mother and child Senior Vargas is molesting on the plane (the mother’s valium is kicking in, but the kid spit his out and he’s having none of this nonsense…bad touch, bricklayer, bad touch!)
Comment by Ned Ryerson — April 29, 2008 @ 11:45 am
If Elmer’s Dad was a Mason, should he have been in the Grand Masonic Lodge, rather than the Rotary Club? And does he really know the meaning of the Third Degree?
Comment by JJ — April 29, 2008 @ 11:54 am
It appears that young Elmer and Bill Ritter were switched at some point shortly after the Vargas family arrived in the US.
Comment by AirForbes — April 29, 2008 @ 12:37 pm
Dr., Elmer and Olyve-den are JUST FRIENDS. Very close friends. Anyway, I think what makes panel one so hard to parse is the two sentences don’t go together. The fact that Elmer was actually born in Mexico has nothing to do with Vargas being a magician with bricks. Even if he was the Copperfield of Mexico.
Comment by Emily — April 29, 2008 @ 12:41 pm
Maybe the bricks he refers to are “brick-packed” Mexican “magic” marijuana. The FAA was way more relaxed about security back then, and with NAFTA and all…
Comment by Striker — April 29, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
It’s funny how a person’s only considered to be an illegal alien at all times if they’re originally from Mexico. Oh, wait, that’s not actually funny.
Comment by Ramsey — April 29, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
Mmmmm, cheddar brats…
Back to work. The ginormous hand appears again on El Mer, squeezing the life out of a can of Clown Soda, while Brendan looks on with distress and foreboding from the trash can. “Man,” she thinks, “those look like OUCH fingers.”
As for panel 2, what I have NOT done while flying with chunky 2-year-olds is (a) given them a prison haircut with white sidewalls for traveling, nor (b) swaddled them in a feeble attempt to sedate them from the pokes of nosy passengers. That panicked look is completely understandable.
Comment by julienne — April 29, 2008 @ 5:20 pm
Some tradition-bound people call the chedder brat a crime against humanity (and, swine, I suppose)– but I say its science’s finest moment since E = mc2.
Comment by Dr. "Eat More Cheddar and Drink More Pabst," aka Gil's Dietician — April 30, 2008 @ 10:03 am
Philistines. They swill down Schlitz with their dry burnt brats and claim it as authentic German cuisine. The noble combo of sausage, beer, and cheese is a sacred trinity.
Comment by julienne — April 30, 2008 @ 6:04 pm