9 Chickweed Lane

1-24-2023

There's a lot wrong with this strip.

There's a great deal wrong with this strip.

One of the biggest remains the unseen visual gag about his underpants.

It fails because there's two ways you can spin something like this:

1) Show it, but don't describe it... at least not immediately. A depiction of underpants with Wagner's face, or a bunch of his faces as a pattern, and then an explanation would work. "What? Oh, yeah. These are my Wagnerian pants. I always wear them on Wednesday."

2) Describe it and only describe it, but describe it in detail. We don't get detail (it isn't until day 2 that we find out what the decoration is, that it's a face on his butt cheek, and that there's a second face on his other butt cheek but he only refers to his underpants by the name of the first butt cheek guy) and we also see the front of his underpants, which are white.

Now for the overclothes... where to start?

McEldowney dressed Amos in a turtleneck sweater and a pea coat or a blazer. Yesterday Amos ripped his turtleneck sweater in half down the center to quickly bare his chest. He didn't pull it off and whip it away. Nor did he yank it open, buttons flying, as one would a button down shirt. He shredded that fucker. And yet today he's fully dressed. If he'd torn off and thrown his sweater he could simply put it back on. If he'd ripped open his button down shirt he could hold it closed, even if the buttons are long gone. But apparently his turtleneck sweater just... reformed? Did McEldowney forget that Amos had shredded the turtleneck sweater? Does he just not care? Does it not matter to him as long as Amos has gotten nude in public?

Out there in the outside world. Where other people are. Where it's cold enough to need outerwear. Possibly in a place where people called the police on them as Amos licked Edda's feet on the sidewalk.

All that matters is Amos has nipples hard enough to cut glass.

1/22/2023

These two have a LONG running history of pretending they're humping other people. Just a constant state of fantasy. They each have a library full of 1930s-era black and white film stars they pretend is actually the person they're making out with. I mean, excuse me. The person with whom they are making out.

So Edda re-grooming Amos and informing him that she wants to pretend he's Cary Grant, over his protestations that he doesn't want to look like Cary Grant, is pretty par for the course.

And this shared behavior might explain why Amos trails behind her praising her with the most vague platitudes. She's pulchritudinous. She's resplendent. She's bewitching. She's sublime. It's rare they praise anything specific about the other, anything involving their personalities or actions or skills.

And maybe, you know, maybe that's by design with each seeing the other as a blank form upon which to project their fucky fantasies.

It might explain how casually Edda makes out with Seth on several different occasions, and how unbothered Amos is about it.

1-20-2023

Ok, so...

This isn't a depiction of them getting sexy.

I appreciate that.

I do.

But this isn't surreal.

This is a pun.

1-18-2023

The problem with McEldowney's examples of musical interpretation as "surreal" is that this is how these two are all the time.

The fermata (the boob looking thing they're both pondering) is regularly interpreted by characters in this strip as "pause." As in "pause here and let's fuck." It can also mean "sustain the note" or "this is the end of the song, stop playing."

The previous two examples of "surrealities" are "pound on the piano keys then make out" and "pound on the piano keys" and both are, again, what these two do all the time. Edda lying on top of a grand piano in an evening gown and reaching behind/beneath her to strike a single key while Amos gazes at her is a daily occurrence for them.

And one really must ask where they're doing this.

Because they are dressed up in evening wear against a white void and absolutely just fucking around. This isn't a concert. This can't be a concert. Can it? Is this how they warm up before a concert? Is there a large audience behind a curtain eagerly awaiting an evening of Mahler and Dvorák? Where do they have practice space? Are they at home? Is their home large enough to hold a grand piano or two? Do they regularly don formal wear and retire to the music room to play a few bars of music then hump on top of the piano?

This once again brings me to the assumption that these two arrogant snobs who regularly mangle the English language so they can sound more smarter and who can afford constant beach vacations are indeed working musicians... but it's sexual performance art catering to specific kinks. That has to be it. Right? It's that or a previously unmentioned trust fund. It has to be.

1-16-2023

And we're back to music fucking.

Edda's right hand in the first panel is really good, I'm glad he drew her fingers. Amos' right hand is a mitten and her hand cupping his face/closing around his throat in the final panel is also basically a mitten. He CAN draw hands, he can even draw them in the correct proportion, but he usually focuses on other things.

Edda's movement from the first panel to the second is well done, too. There's a great sense of motion.

However if you're going to prominently feature breasts with ample cleavage you should perhaps practice a bit. They don't look like weird inflamed pectoral muscles but they still don't look right.

It feels like there's been a shift and McEldowney is suddenly letting loose with a flood of sexy stuff. He's not just focusing on legs (and knees). Now he's got butts, boobs, and feet in the mix. He doesn't have the skill earned by decades of practice in depicting them, they're obviously not as well loved and well rendered as legs legs legs, but it's there.

Anyway, maybe we'll find out what Edda meant about "do you want a sister/brother/sister and brother/brother and sister/two sisters/two brothers/cat and dog/bicycle built for two/small litter/etc." by this time next year. At least Xiulan's pregnancy has progressed, we know (?) time is passing (??).

I really don't know if these two have gotten dressed up to work out their concert fucking kink at home or if they're on stage doing their performance art thing. She bangs on the piano keys discordantly, he plucks a single note, they start humping.That's what they're doing right? That has to be what they're doing. It's "sexy" performance art for people with a very specific set of tastes.

1-14-2023

This is not a bad payoff but the setup was far too long.

I'm also impressed by the fact that there's actual backgrounds, actual physical things they're interacting with.

But I feel compelled to note that the last time they were in present-day they were on an isolated tropical beach, and now they're at some lake where it's warm. Just how much traveling do they do? Especially as this scene could be set anywhere. It could be set in Central Park. It could be set in their living room. It could be set at a party where people are talking about how they learned about sex (a frequently hilarious conversation). Instead they are isolated, occupied only with each other. No friends, no family members - including their own kids.

Which, I mean... we had an entire extended story line about how badly they want to conceive children and the final (?) scene is them as adults who have children but the children aren't there.

It's easy to forget because until a few years ago, and his marriage to a homophobic asshole, Seth was the Gay Gay Gay character with the Barbie-loving boyfriend - but Seth mentioned several times that he was "13% straight" although he also referred to dating girls as faking it or forcing it. Pretending. Because bisexuality doesn't exist in this world a man who primarily is attracted to other men but sometimes is attracted to women is, thus, gay. Not "I am primarily attracted to men but sometimes to women, but I prefer to call myself gay." No, he just is gay. That's what he is. He's a giant hulking gay guy dating, but never kissing or humping in public, a tiny effeminate Liza Minnelli loving gay guy. Ha ha, just kidding. They aren't Liza Minnelli fans. They only like black and white heterosexual romance movies from the 1930s.

Edda, who has been lusting after Seth since they first met and who has tried to seduce him many times, tries once more after the "13%" reveal. She regularly sexually assaulted him. After a lot of talk about protecting her, Seth closes the door on a sexual relationship in a very literal way.

OR DOES HE??????? Someone enters her room and joins her in bed, although it's revealed to be Amos. This raises a few possibilities:

1. Edda had a fantasy about having sex with Seth, later she had sex with Amos.


2. Edda fantasized about Seth while having sex with Amos.


3. Amos is surprisingly muscular. (This might explain why he can so easily support her weight/carry her around while she's humping him.)


4. Edda had sex with Seth, then later had sex with Amos.

Edda apparently told Amos something of what happened, which he confirmed with Seth. They told different versions of what happened. While they both deny sexual activity neither of their accounts are TRUE. Later there's a weird exchange where Edda states that Amos "is better than" Seth and taunts Seth that he will never get to experience whatever it is with Amos. Either she's talking about kissing or else she's talking about sex and stating that Seth is bad at sex. Telling someone that they suck at sex AND ALSO taunting them about not being able to have sex with a guy they have a crush on is really mean. When you're the person who seduced the guy who is allegedly bad at sex, and who is protecting your little secret and thus preserving your relationship with your fiance, it edges into cruel territory.

Immediately after this she bolts for Amos and begs him to elope, at which point they're met by her mom and Seth (who is holding her wedding gown) and are forced into a church wedding. She interrupts the ceremony to drag Amos off for a heart-to-heart about her relationship with Seth. There's a solid joke ("he cooked for you, too?") followed by a decent second joke and then something that's not a confession. She and Seth made out, but did they have sex? She acts like they didn't. Either way, she and Amos reconcile and have sex on top of a grave. They conduct the rest of the ceremony with her dress completely grass stained so that everyone in the congregation knows that they ran off mid-ceremony, had sex in the grass, and came back. We all needed to witness this, I guess.

Edda goes on to flirt with Seth and makes out with him heavily at least once while he's dithering about dating/marrying Fernanda Jons. It's... it's A Whole Thing. Amos doesn't seem to mind.

If this were a webcomic they'd be in a polycule by now.

9-30-2007

I thought I'd share some of the music McEldowney references in his strip.

Borodin's Nocturne String Quartet No. 2:


I'm not that familiar with Alexander Borodin's work and I need to rectify that. This is lovely.

Brahm's Intermezzo Opus 117 Measure 1:


Debussy's Clair de Lune:


Lehar's Komm, in den kleinen Pavillon:


Tchaikovsky's Adagio cantabile from Souvenir de Florence:


Mahler's Ruhevoll from symphony No.4:


If you're not familiar with this piece, note that it starts extremely quietly.

Rachmaninoff's 18th variation rhapsody on a theme of Pagannini:


I'm so used to seeing classical musicians in suits/tuxedos and evening gowns that seeing them in t-shirts kind of threw me. Felt like I was back in high school. I could smell the chalk and wet brass.

Anyway, this is from a period of time before their marriage when Edda and Amos weren't having sex and it was a sad horny desperate time for them. Don't worry, people were still humping in public places/in front of people. (Although that story line does have this very touching scene.)

1-6-2023

Me: Well uh I guess "the hokey pokey" is one way of describing terrible sex but surely nobody would describe sex that way to a small child

9 Chickweed Lane: lol just watch me

01-01-2023

Happy New Year! Let's all settle in for a month of writing the wrong year every time we have to write the date.

The Van Hoesen family is celebrating their entrance to 2023 by romping on their own private tropical island. Again.

"How can two professional concert musicians afford family vacations on private tropical islands," you ask? I figure it's one of those fake islands like the one Wilbur Weston discovered when he fall off a cruise ship in a drunken stupor. Those trees are fake, the coconuts in them are fake, and there's a swim-up bar just off panel.

There are people who are reading this strip as a valid joke, that the punchline is Amos screaming about his wife's ass to nobody. And that's, you know. That's a punchline, I guess. Just Amos shouting to nobody and everybody about how sexy his wife is, ultimate Wife Guy move.

But what would be FUNNY would be actual people there with them. What would be FUNNY would be a group of other vacationers all quietly doing their own personal thing and not paying any attention at all to the absolutely normal family doing absolutely normal things and only looking over at them when Amos starts bellowing about his wife's behind, drawing attention to it.

Considering how much they like attention while fucking this would just be foreplay.

I mean, either way Amos is a punchline, but one of those jokes requires McEldowney to put in the work of drawing other people. He really only does that when he needs witnesses to his characters doing something erotic in public.

Their New England beach visits, their tropical island beach visits, their swimming pool visits, they are all completely devoid of others even when Amos or Edda refer to other people (usually in context of Edda being so sexy people are staring at her). Their lake/pond visits sometimes have supporting characters there too but usually they don't.

But whether there are people there or not, White Knight True Paladin Amos is hollering about his wife's sexy ass right there in front of his children, ice cream dripping down his arms. These are the childhood memories his children are forming.