Happy Monday! And look, it’s…OFFICER PATCH! Uh oh, how will Mal explain what happened to Dextor? Well, two more strips this week! Tune in tomorrow and Wednesday!

Meanwhile, I’ll be working on the next two pages, and then I’ll be taking a week or so break. Maybe I’ll draw during the break, I just won’t be able to edit & upload anything. I decided as I was putting this page together that Mal & Dee #2 will end on page 46 instead of 44. I’ll get to that on Wednesday.

I saw the Savannah Bananas play at Wrigley Field on Saturday and it was much more enjoyable in person than on TV. If you don’t know, it’s an almost Harlem Globetrotter type baseball organization that has taken off, and now performs in MLB stadiums for entire weekends. That’s NUTS. And great marketing. Is it good? Yeah, it’s fun. It’s not purist baseball and MLB can learn a thing or two, but also questions I had watching it on youtube were answered in person: mostly, why they keep playing music DURING an at bat, as opposed to walk up music. It’s for the fans, so they can sing along. There’s a lot of constant hype throughout the game that doesn’t translate on TV (and also can get tedious in person, even though the goal is to finish a game by 2 hours by cutting out the ‘boring stuff’ like mound visits and bunts). It was family friendly, in that it was mostly people with little kids who have trouble getting up and down concrete stairs or through narrow paths between sections. However, one thing I noticed was how much food everyone was buying. Parents (adults of the group) with ARMFULS of food. I don’t think I see that much food bought throughout a regular season game. It was entertaining for sure. I don’t know how I’d ‘fix’ it, but the constant music through the game might be over-stimulating for a lot of fans (lots of kids wearing noise cancelling headphones). And on that note (ha!), how much of their budget is on music rights at stadiums? Still, a good time overall.

Also saw Man Or Astro-Man on Saturday night. They played stuff from Experiment Zero and a couple other albums that guitarist Starcrunch was on, though only one song (I think) from the last album that came out in, I think, 2012(?). They’ve had a couple singles since then. I don’t know what they have planned next. They’re pretty fun.