Oy Vey ist Premiere!

Let’s hope the prospective Mr. and Mrs. Jarre and Mr. and Mrs. Anger get back from the courthouse in time for the World Premiere of Starbuck Jones! The studio’s pulled out all the stops, installing huge inflatables of Starbuck, Jupiter Moon, and a Xanax Warrior atop the Val’s crumbling marquee, while the “front of house,” which just last week was brown, appears to have been repainted the same blue-gray as the drab balloons at that kid’s birthday party. Here’s hoping that the life-sized SJ and Jupiter we see waving to the crowd are costumed players; to have the movie’s leads cosplaying themselves at the world premiere would be too cheesy even for Batiuk.

Court and Snark

Snifit
August 21, 2017 at 12:26 am
I like how Batiuk doesn’t bother actually showing where they are. The theater? Marriage License office? Swinger hotel? They’re here, guys. Just here.

“Here” turns out to be the courthouse, and there are so many questions. Are they picking up marriage licences, or are they going to be married by a judge, or maybe by Centerville’s mayor, Bill Clinton? Why then did the prospective grooms (separately!) reach out to Pete to find a minister?  Why all the secrecy about the wedding? And while it’s true that Starbuck Jones is what brought them together, does that somehow mandate that they must marry as soon as the movie comes out? Has the movie come out, and have we not been shown the gala Ohio premiere? What happened to the pink boutonniere that Cliff wore yesterday?

DOUBLE STARBUCK WEDDING

“Both Mason Jarre and Cliff Anger have separately asked me to find a minister for just after the premiere.” If you’re gonna “tell, not show,” Mr. Batiuk, couldn’t you at least do it using less unwieldy sentences? So assuming that Mason and Cliff don’t intend to marry each other, each man holds matrimony in enough esteem to require a minister to perform the ceremony. But neither man has a problem with delegating the task of finding a clergyman to Pete. Guess this falls under Pete’s “advance work” duties. But that’s not the gag here, folks: the gag is that John is shitting eggrolls over the news that the film’s male leads have (separately!) decided to wed their betrothed after the premiere.

Another Pizza My Heart

Another perpendicular panel and more of Pete and Mindy meeting cute. I can’t tell you “the age of that joke” (I’m guessing ancient) but I can tell you Batiuk last used it six months ago (in another sideways strip no less). I guess he forgot, just like he forgot that it was a Tweet, not a “coded Junior Spaceman message” that Jff sent to the director. Pete nurses a glass of coyote urine as he watches Mindy gorge on pizza and Italian bread. He’s either too cheap/broke to get a slice for himself, or perhaps he’s already grooming svelte Mindy to join the ranks of dumpy blonde Westview wives.