9 Chickweed Rage

All of the sudden, out of literally nowhere, Brooke Mac-El-Dee decides to do a whole series based on things you can do (or cannot do) on unicycles. Where we discover that Amos rides a unicycle. I mean, why not? We've never seen him do it before. No one in the comic has ever even mentioned a unicycle even once. But, sure, let's put Amos on a unicycle because it makes sense that he would ride one. I...

After NOT making good on our promise to cover the courtship of Polly and Lolly last episode, we get around to it this time and boy do we ever regret it! Since we began this podcast, we have never made a clear distinction between Polly and Lolly. We did this because primarily Brooke Mac-El-Dee seems to believe they are perfectly interchangeable. Why draw two women as independent characters? But tha...

When given the simple task of doing a listener request, Brooke decides instead to go rogue. So instead of us talking about Alistair and his indifference about which twin he fucks or marries (but which would he kill?), we end up in the world of the Peels, Arthur and Nan-Lin. It's been ten episodes since we last saw them, and it took us a while to figure out exactly who we were dealing with this epi...

So our journey this episode takes us to a recital, where Amos and Edda get a less than glowing review from a critic. They are SO BAD at taking any amount of criticism that they go onstage the next night to flip the critic off. Oh wait! Yeah. In this world, Amos and Edda have a multi-night engagement AND the critic comes to EVERY performance AND writes about every performance. Just like in real lif...

For this episode, we spend basically all of our time in the water, a Mac-El-Dee classic! But we begin with Edda staring at her reflection in a mirror, because of COURSE that's what she's doing. Edda provides multiple opportunities for the Brooke-ster to draw crazy teeth, for reasons that are completely unclear. Turns out, she's trying out various monster faces to look sexier for Amos -- like that...

So sorry we've been away for so long. If it's any consolation, these strips punish us quite handily for our laziness. Boy do they ever! The white hot romance of Juliette and Elliott is explored a little this time around. Seems that Juliette loses her shit for Milk Duds. She makes it sound like it's a sexual thing, because isn't everything sexual in this godforsaken strip? But by the time we actual...

After two and a half years of doing this podcast, Jeff has obviously lost his mind. He brings thirty -- THIRTY -- strips to discuss, all about the lead-up to Seth and Fernanda's wedding. And boy oh boy is it a doozy! We talk about how Brooke is obviously the world's favorite co-host of this podcast, and that's it's not even close. We begin with Fernanda talking about panties at length, which we ha...

Matt Fraction really should be writing the new Batman comic, but instead he made the mistake of wondering, "What exactly is this comic strip Jeff and Brooke are talking about?" It's a dangerous question to pose to yourself. Even more so, as Matt discovered, if one makes the mistake of Googling this comic strip. It kind of opens a Pandora's box. Which is what happened, and the next thing Matt knew,...

In the days leading up to the wedding of Amos and Edda, Edda tries to seduce her (mostly) gay roommate Seth. He rebuffs her, or does he? She's engaged to Amos, but she (at the very least) dry humps his knee. He says no. But then (apparently?) he changes his mind and has sex with her anyway. Later, that same night? Later, like, the next day? It's impossible to decipher. But later she has sex with A...

Amos and Edda are in a body of water, so that of course means that it is unclear: a) what kind of body of water it is, b) how deep the water is, and c) if there are any other people around. Amos threatens (promises?) to drown himself waiting for Edda to swim by again. I mean, they're married or at least dating at this point, so I'm not sure why he's being so stealthy about looking at her. Later, h...

First of all, we recorded on Brooke Dillman's actual birthday. That was fun. To celebrate, we welcomed our first-ever guest Adam Grosswirth to the podcast. He tipped us off to the disgusting storyline about Polly & Lolly wanting to fuck the same guy...and both basically being okay with the fact that they might just do that. It's a truly upsetting journey, that we only cover the tiniest fractio...

We do our best to figure out where this stupid comic strip all allegedly takes place, but we get distracted. I mean, it's sort of what we do, right? Along the way, Juliette climbs over a couch that looks like a hot dog bun, Uncle Ethel becomes Auntie Ethel for no obvious reason, Edda does gymnastics in a subway, Edda and Amos fuck on a busy city street. Guys, the wheels really come off the wagon t...

Somehow, we limit ourselves to only five strips this episode. Seems impossible, but we actually did it. Brooke (Dillman) found a short run on one topic that, while only five-strips in length, carried all the fury-inducing content of a dozen or more ordinary strips. The journey begins with Ginger (Xiulan's friend whom we met at Xiulan's wedding to Hugh) and Gerald (the guy from the wedding she's no...

As it turns out, Juliette is a professor. But she's more than that, she's also a total asshole. She treats the new Visiting Assistant Professor -- or Vizassprof -- horribly, all for our entertainment! Because what's more fun than evergreen jokes about the upper echelons of academia? Nothing, if you ask ol' Brooke Mac-El-Dee. Here we get a solid ten-strip run of nothing but professorial hilarity, a...

For some reason, Edda or Amos (here sometimes referred to as Edna and Otis) has gone through a wormhole and now Polly and Lolly are older. How much older? Well, we think The Master intended them to be some specific age (probably because he couldn't wait for them to reach the age of consent, because he is a monster), but the way they are drawn from strip to strip makes it impossible to tell what ag...

What better way to start the new year than to take a look at the first Chickweed Lanes of 2024? Well, I guess it might be better to NOT look at them at all. But that's really not on the table for us, now, is it? Please excuse Jeff sounding like he's broadcasting from inside a tin can. He was literally inside a tin can. Once again, get ready to enjoy some smooth jazz segues, because the technical p...

After becoming convinced that Brooke Mac-El-Dee himself is listening to this podcast, we take a deep dive into his poor history with the ellipsis (and other punctuation). You see, in one strip, he makes a point of "educating" everyone about the use of an ellipsis. According to The Master, it is only used to indicated omitted words. And that is not only not true, it is also not how he has EVER used...

It's the big day for Xiulan Ha'Penny Yuan and Hugh Portwhistle Godalming. For some reason, Xiulan has chosen Edda to be one of her two bridesmaids, because of course and why not? Look, Edda is a small part of a wedding that isn't her wedding, so naturally she's furious that someone else is getting all the attention. She has a plan to not only "go commando" underneath her cheongsam, but to "slink u...

Despite repeated mysterious technical difficulties, Brooke and Jeff persevered to bring you the 30th installment of this very important podcast. Was it worth all of the trouble? Of course the answer is no, probably not. But we begin with the aftermath of a date between Gil and Janice, the Nicolette Cignet photographer and Edda's friend and rival from the dance company we met way back in Episode 24...

Well, we've been gone for two months but we're back! And if you thought that this stupid comic strip wasn't still stupid, boy, are you in for a rude awakening! All the same old shit is still there: turtlenecks, Dutch angles, references to starlets of the '30s and '40s, no backgrounds, the McEldowney ellipsis! Oh, how did we survive all these weeks without these? Anyway, this stupid storyline is ab...

Inspired by the 4th of July (I guess), we go all the way back to the beginning and take a look at the very first Chickweed strips. Brooke Mac-El-Dee comes right out of the gate with Juliette talking with Edda about physical attractiveness and how that's very important to catch a man. Edda at this point is maybe 12, so this is a TOTALLY NORMAL AND APPROPRIATE conversation for a mother to have. But...

We could not resist the gravitational pull of the international cello competition that Amos won. You remember it, right? He and Edda got caught on camera (by a news balloon of course) having sex and then people complained that the sex tape (which everyone in the world saw) gave Amos an unfair advantage. So now we dive into the aftermath. It's 20 strips this episode, sorry guys! It's a re-match bet...

Here we are introduced to 60-year-old Arthur Peel and his assistant Nan-Lin Peel (no relation), who is thirty years younger than him. Arthur excuses himself for being a disgusting old man, with a balding head, hair coming out of his ears and nose and eyebrows, wattles, and flapping flesh. These are his descriptions of himself, although Brooke Mac-El-Dee doesn't take the time to actually draw him t...

In this episode, we dive into Amos's subconscious, which is predictably icky. Amos describes a dream he had the previous night. He headlines it as a dream where Edda went to buy a car. But what the dream is really about is how the car salesman sexually assaulted her. So, at least we know where Amos's priorities lie. The Ol' Mac-El-Dee makes a big point of repeating (endlessly) that the salesman's...

Edda's modeling career begins when a scout for the famous designer Nicolette Cignet picks Edda from everyone else in her dance company because of her nice butt. Only, Brooke Mac-El-Dee never says "nice butt," he prefers to say "caboose" over and over and over, with a brief digression to "sitzfleisch" from Amos. The twist is that they only want Edda for her butt and they want Janice to be the face....