9 Chickweed Lane

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.

12-04-2022

This Sunday's strip has 9 panels, two of which are the throw-away panels often stripped out to make room to cram more strips onto the Sunday comic page. Since they're regularly not printed they are often a throw-away gag or just a background thing to the main event.

In the top two "throw away" panels Amos stands against a muddy streaky background and drinks from an opaque white cup, then turns his back to the viewer while holding his cello. He's wearing a tuxedo.

The second row starts off with the third panel, where Edda stops him. He's still in a tux holding the cello, and he's got a purple-red smudge across his upper lip. She's wearing a black evening gown, sleeveless, with a high collar. In the fourth panel she wipes at his upper lip with a tissue, the way I've wiped my child's upper lip a thousand times as a toddler. She states that it's "not shifting." In the fifth panel he makes an announcement that he has a cranberry juice stain on his upper lip and asks if anyone else "in this room" also does.

The three panels share the same smudgy dull background so it's hard to know exactly what's happened. Yes, he walked and stopped and had his lip wiped like a small child and then said something. But did Edda stop him backstage? Did she come out onstage to clean him up? Is there even a backstage/onstage thing going on? And why on earth would he drink CRANBERRY JUICE, a juice that notoriously stains things like starched white button down dress shirts, and which famously does not in any way whet your whistle, right before going on stage for an encore?

Panel six, on the third row, reveals that he's on stage in front of an audience. There's the standard heavy red curtains pulled to the wings, and no visible piano, or chair for him to sit in. It also looks like he's standing at the very edge of the stage. Several rows back a hand shoots up. Amos dedicates the encore to this person in panel seven. Panel 8 shows him playing - he's found what looks like a folding chair. Panel 9 reveals a small child who also has a purple-red smudge across her upper lip which makes it look like she's wearing lipstick.

The only good thing I have to say about this strip is that the small child looks like a small child. She reads as "child" and not "short flat-chested woman." It's really hard to get child-proportions right, as we've seen time and again as he tries to depict Edda and Amos' daughters. We also get a sketched-in audience surrounding her in her red chair and red dress, which looks very charming.

But we need to talk about something and that something is that Edda and Amos regularly get incredibly sexual on stage. They have what appear to be orgasms as they play, they make out with each other, they have simulated or actual sex. Another musician pair they're friends with had a rambling discussion, complete with urinated-upon pregnancy test, about conception. A female pianist they're friends with regularly performs wearing clothing that looks like it's about to fall off, and also apparently has orgasms while playing piano.

My friend, that's not what "being a passionate musician" means to most people.

So we have these fairly explicit musical performances but at least in theory it's only adults at them. People don't take their kids to classical concerts nearly as much as they used to... it wasn't unheard of when I was a kid; my parents took me and my brothers to a few concerts, plays, musicals, and one opera when I was younger. It's far more rare now.

And here we see a small child in the audience of an award winning cellist who apparently can support his family on his musical performances. SURELY he has a reputation by now! SURELY! And yet here is a small child witnessing him and his smudgy lip (which at first seems like it might be lipstick, of course, from hot and heavy backstage makeouts, or maybe a hickey from sucking the glass against his mouth).

She's all dressed up in a cute dress.

And speaking as a parent, small children GENERALLY don't like the very tart taste of cranberry juice.

Now, one could "solve" this by simply having Amos chug down a glass of grape juice. Small children love grape juice.

Parents of small children don't love when those small children's dress clothing gets stained with grape juice.


AND TOO ALSO there's the fact that you generally can't make out the details of a person's upper lip when they're onstage and you aren't. So either his wife came bustling out to wipe the stain off his lip in full view of everyone at which point he made his announcement, or else he sauntered onstage and then gave a mini statement about staining his face with beverage. But if he hadn't SAID that would anyone have noticed? It's not the first time he and/or Edda have apologized for having dirty clothing/faces - lipstick and baby spit up are the two I remember.

Either way I guess he expected someone in the audience to also have a juice-stained upper lip in a... concert hall? Theater? High school auditorium? VFW hall? The lack of details, of background, make it hard to tell. But the audience isn't full of children... that would be a cute thing, actually! If he was performing for a school and one or more kids had a juice-y face, especially if they were in casual clothing! But no, he just assumes there'll be someone (an adult?) in the audience with food on their face.

Sometimes a comic strip is so bafflingly obtuse that it exists as a favor to someone, or a tribute, or a personal in-joke or reference. The young married couple in this very cartoony strip with realistic faces are the artist's grown kid and new spouse; the character in a completely different style is referencing a beloved defunct newspaper strip of yore; those sweatshirts the characters are wearing have the artist's college logo; the artist introduces a character for one strip or a very short story line as a thank-you or a fuck-you. Sometimes a story draws directly from the artist's life, or an anecdote someone in their life told them.

Is this, God help us, something like that? Is this kid based on an actual kid? Is this story translated from a charming, sweet story that makes sense in context to... this? Or is it just... a bunch of stuff that happened for some reason that doesn't quite make sense.