Guy Talk

(a continuing look back at a comic strip for a small universe)

The club’s Green Room has one of those Oxford Dictionaries the size of a footstool with type so small it comes with a magnifying glass.
Some of the conversations at the club might lead you to believe a few members knew that book practically by heart. It’s a tough house for repartee.

There’s no point in cartooning if you don’t take a shot at the desert island gag...

...but even for this audience, it might be a reach using the word “perspicacity.”

Goin’ To the Chapel

The club’s a successful model of adapted diversity. What started as an excuse for some Murray Hill swells to ditch their wives and put on plays was a heck of a good formula in the 1880s, but it still needed new blood.
Over the years since, bluebloods, blue collars and the occasional brigand joined forces on and off stage, and ever have categories of bachelors, newly-married, “daddy-track” and indeterminate old farts been in evidence. There was a spate of guys tying the knot in the oughties; this strip commemorated a future president’s pre-nup festivities:

Really Should Get Out More

The cartoon wasn’t a regular thing in the club’s newsletter because the cartoonist was pretty lazy. Or distracted. Or depressed. Probably all three.

’01 through ’03 saw little over a dozen strips, this one a product of renting too many VCR movies, which features the final appearance of a little dog that was lost in his divorce:

TV was escalating its proof of the old Mencken saw about never going broke underestimating the intelligence of the the American public...

...and commentary about club goings on tried to evoke sentiments of guilt

...and the ilk of unedited candor our departed little friend was famous for...

...but always, always there was golf’s dark passion...

to unambiguously remind men of good will why life is beautifully futile...