Cordially Invited

Reading the comics page has been one of my decades-long morning rituals, fitting snuggly between checking the TV listings and completing the crossword puzzle. "Comics" or "Funnies" are both dubious terms now, as I rarely laugh at any of the strips, with an occasional exception for the sublime silliness of "Drabble" and "Brewster Rocket: Space Guy." Although the comics pages are thriving, with more entries than ever, my daily memory of what I peruse is quite ephemeral, registering in my brain as deeply as the most recent toilet flush.

Very occasionally there is some milestone in a long-running strip that at least distinguishes it for a moment from the blandness of endless syndication--for instance, "Doonsebury's" B.D. losing his leg in Iraq, Charlie Brown making his first black friend in Franklin, Walt's wife blinking out in "Gasoline Alley." This week we've been witness to the watershed event in "Cathy," the wedding of the eternally hopeful bachelorette without a nose to Irving, her longtime on-and-off again boyfriend, also nasally-deprived. This represents a challenge to the creator, Cathy Guisewite, to alter the thrust of her story lines, since they were originally centered on the single life of a girl, her shopping, her eating, and her mother. Well, if Rhoda could get married, so could Cathy. (But we know what happened to Rhoda!)

In the interest of fairness I'm obliged to the following disclosure: I have some oblique personal connection to this story. I've never met Guisewite, but I do know her husband, with whom I socialized in my early L.A. days, and who once called me to help him out of a car breakdown problem, promising to quid pro quo me with a dinner. He never spoke to me after that, and never treated me to even a stopover at the In & Out Burger, even though he went on to co-write some screenplays. He, therefore, registers as "jerk" on my personal history ledger. I also have a very good friend, who introduced us, and actually played the piano at their wedding reception. At that time the groom leaned over to my friend and announced proudly, "I'm marrying a franchise!" Yuck. I trust Cathy's Irving is not as venal.

But just as I'm ready to leeringly condemn Guisewite's personal choices I read that she is donating much of what her website makes on "Cathy" accessories to a local pet adoption agency in Van Nuys, which happens to be the site where I adopted my dog and to which I am eternally giving and grateful. She also volunteers there, as does her daughter. So now my sentiments swing the other way, returning me to neutral. You can do what you want to "Cathy," Cathy. It would be helpful, though, if you could make her funny. I guess now the arenas of pregnancy and parenthood are available. These offer promising comic possibilities--just do a better job, please, than "Baby Blues" and "The Family Circus."

One final observation. Although religion is a moot issue in this strip, I get the feeling that Irving is Jewish. I mean, how many people named Irving are not? It's an interesting point, better investigated in a later blog, why in this Christian country Jewish men have become idealized as the best husbands. From "Abie's Irish Rose" through "Bridget Loves Bernie," "Mad About You," Ben Stiller's "Fokker" movies and NBC's current "Committed, " the same endearing short-statured shlub has been crunching that glass under the canopy, for better or worse. Though it's somewhat flattering, this odd aggrandizement is a puzzling feature of our cultural consciousness.