A SCANT 8 MONTHS OVERDUE, GOOD RUBBISH PROUDLY PRESENTS RETOONING: ROUND 3

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I've found myself in uncharted waters over the past few weeks as I actually have several completely finished projects lying around my house just waiting to be immortalized as Good Rubbish posts (it should come as no surprise to regular readers that normally I find myself scrambling to throw some awful piece of shit together at the 11th hour just to have something to write about). Despite this fact, I didn't have much to do this past weekend so I thought I'd get a little proactive and build a new post from scratch just for the hell of it. Couple this mindset with the fact that I haven't done a retooning post in almost 9 months (seriously?), and the fate of this week's Rubbish post was all but sealed.

For those of you who don't remember the rules of this vile one person game we call Retooning (originally introduced to me by the late Seamus O'Tilliger, may he rest in peace), all you have to do is take a normal pencil eraser and remove the captions from any of your local paper's decidedly unfunny comic strips, then write in your own captions in their place. Believe me when I say that it truly is oodles of fun for the whole family... and by "oodles of fun" I actually mean "mildly entertaining," and by "the whole family" I actually mean "you and that ratty tube sock you just befouled 5 minutes ago."

I think it's time we move on.

Our first retooning strip comes to us from the world of Fred Basset - one of those endearing comics of yesteryear (a la "Blondie" and "Prince Valiant") that makes people in their 30's and 40's feel all nostalgic inside for an era that they never actually lived in.



As much as I hate to use poop jokes in consecutive retooning posts, I was really left with no other options here.



I really need to work on my poop drawing skills at some point in the near future - if I'm going to keep using this as a fallback joke I might as well learn to illustrate the stuff properly. Maybe I'm a bit too critical of myself, but that looks a lot more like a severely charred squirrel to me than anything else.

Our next subject comes to us from the world of Bound and Gagged. I really didn't know anything about this unapologetically generic strip, so a decided to do a little bit of research on them. A cursory look over their wikipedia page has led me to conclude that I have no interest in allowing this comic strip to babysit my children at any point in the near or distant future. Simply repugnant to say the least... how this sort of trash gets printed in a daily newspaper is absolutely beyond me.



I must admit that this comic solicited a half hearted chuckle from me in its original state, if for no other reason than for the fact that the perp in question appears to either be one of the ghosts from Pac-Man or Richard Nixon with a form-fitting lycra bag wrapped around his face and jowls. Still, it wasn't nearly funny enough to exempt it from the wrath of retooning.

Now watch closely... erase those jowls, then do a little bit of cut and paste work, and what do we get left with?



Why, it's a piece of social commentary that Spike Lee himself would be proud of. Hooray!

note: Many thanks to the University of Minnesota for their contribution to this fine post

Our final retooning subject comes to us from the frightfully unfunny world of Crankshaft, though it should be mentioned that the crotchety old man often featured in Crankshaft is in fact SO unfunny that he occasionally crosses over into "so awful it's fantastic" territory - a land typically dominated by strips from Marmaduke, Cathy, and The Family Circus. It's a rare occurrence, but it does happen from time to time, and I feel it should be mentioned that I find this quality in him somewhat redeeming.

Anyway, I found this comic last week in the Denver Post:



There's a lot to look at in this strip, so if you'd like to look at a little larger version of it before proceeding you can click here.

Now, I'm not going to accuse "Tom Batiuk" or "Chuck Ayers" of hanging out at raves or under bridges all the time, but something must have inspired them to draw their flight attendant in the manner that they did. Just look at those soulless eyes, her ineffectual, malaise-riddled facial expressions - clearly this woman is a basehead. Plain and simple.

She reminds me of a feminine version of one of my favorite baseheads of all time, the homeless guy from 1996 Oscar snub Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinkin' Your Juice in the Hood:



Please note that I would have normally noted the cheeseburger-wielding basehead from Menace II Society as my inspiration for this retooning effort, but linking to clips from that movie would have almost certainly stepped over the line that separates "funny" from "earnestly disturbing."

Anyway, my inspiration in tow, I moved around a couple of the cells on that crappy Crankshaft comic to serve as a fitting tribute to all the great drug addicts of the cinema:



Once again, if you'd like to check this one out a little closer up you can click here.

Good Rubbish is a site for the whole family, and obviously this cartoon was always intended to be run in the newspaper, so I decided to use "$#@*!" in lieu of the slang word for "dong" that usually goes at the end of that quote. Upon further review, I really shouldn't have started my mess of exclamatory characters with a dollar symbol, as it kind of looks like she's saying "man, I will suck your shit," which is definitely not the intended message I wanted her to be getting across, but whatever. What's done is done. Just like this post.

Tah!