Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 26, 2011

Can’t talk; reading “Fern Hill”…

Grats, Leftwing Patriot, on being first. Now where’s Vista Bill?.Re today’s toon: Somebody predicted this. Grats, whoever you are! Jeff’s febrile imagination has scored two women, a blonde babe and a slightly-by-the-bend auburn. Notice that they’re drinking alcoholic beverages, whereas Sorkh has ordered “three cups of tea”. Faux pas. It will be interesting to see how GBT will “save” his wunderkind in tomorrow’s strip!

Wait, I just noticed something else. The auburn says Sorkh has “baby blues”, whereas he’s wearing what we used to call shades (sunglasses). Did GBT make a mistake? Or is he switching back-and-forth between “magic realism” and reality?

Do you really think Jeff went out in public in a turban? I might be wrong but I don’t think he did. Chat in the morning.

C’mon, Dylan … you think any of Jeff’s fever dreams approaches reality?

I have a different take. Jeff’s not looking for female companionship, he’s recruiting civilians for his new mission.

Just checked Jeff’s bio (badly in need of an update) on Slate’s Doonesbury, he’s 29 years old, old enough to legally consume alcoholic beverages in a public bar in any State. Here’s the source:

.http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/cast/member/1.

JEFF REDFERNThe son of social activist and former Justice Department lawyer Joanie Caucus and Washington Post journalist Rick Redfern, Jeff Redfern was born in December, 1982. He showed an early predeliction for prepositions such as “although”, “and”, “but” and “unless”. Despite difficult passage through the day care years — largely the result of his inability to speak the native language of his caregivers — Redfern was outed as a gifted child at four and sent to nerd school. Despite this training he was nonetheless able to nurture a gift of extreme hand-eye coordination to achieve a high level of mastery of Doom. By the time he reached puberty he was a veteran of Camp Cyberpines.

Heavily recruited by Walden College as an academic ringer, he was awarded a full football scholarship and is a first string benchman for the Fighting Swooshes. When not playing videogames and helping plan the annual Walden Riot, Redfern has actually gotten serious about his studies. Along with roommate-teammate Zipper Harris, he co-founded myVulture.com and sold it to entrepreneur Mike Doonesbury. Recruited by the CIA as a summer intern, Redfern managed to accidentally launch a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone, taking out an Al-Qaeda ammo dump. He was subsequently assigned to study Arabic in Spook School and sent back to SW Asia for Gulf War II.

I don’t read this strip very often….is this a transvestite bar?

Look at the pictures in each panel carefully and read the conversations. There are several clues: it’s a straight bar.

Cabeza Blanco.

Those two look like addicts on heat.

DylanT3 – They DO look like men in drag…..anyway most transvestites are heterosexual.

Welcome, Vista Bill. Did you fly in from Hong Kong?

DylanT3 – I’m not criticising. We have a “Tranny” in the family, married and a father – he calls it drag and often goes out with his wife, dressed up (tastefully thanks to her) to all sorts of places.He wouldn’t mind me saying this.

..they notice his baby blues how,now?!?..

er…. just one question, the redhead says “look at those baby blues” How does she know that? Jeff is wearing sunglasses

Based on the last few days’ strips, I believe that the turban and sunglasses are in Jeff’s mind, and are only shown in panels that show Jeff’s point of view, much the way Hobbes was a real tiger only from Calvin’s POV. That’s how the girls can be commenting on Jeff’s baby blues.

Well, at least he doesn’t need to get them roaring drunk for them to notice him.

Either Jeff is sitting in front of his screen gone in total fantasy, or he’s in a bar gone in total fantasy AND totally bonkers.

No faux pas — the Red Rascal doesn’t drink alcohol.

“Three cups of tea” — ROFL! Dream on, Jeff!

I think the assumption that Jeff Redfern = Sorkh Razil = Red Rascal is a Muslim is mistaken. He doesn’t go to mosque. He doesn’t pray three times a day facing Mecca. He only wears his turban, etc., when he’s writing at home or out in a fugue state, as he is in today’s strip. For a real Muslim, it’s “all about Allah”. For Jeff, it’s “all about Jeff”. There’s a difference. Allah means, literally, “the God” (al = “the” and “Ah” = God). Thus the saying, “There is no God but Allah” means, in Arabic, “There is no God but God.” Jeff never says this. Therefore he’s no true Muslim. If not, then what is he? He’s an American young man who dreams of being a one-man CIA, infiltrating Islamic culture. That doesn’t mean he’s a virgin. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t drink alcohol. Doesn’t mean anything except highly imaginative dreams, approaching hallucinations.

A fugue state … is a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality and other identifying characteristics of individuality. The state is usually short-lived (hours to days), but can last months or longer. Dissociative fugue usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity. …. Fugues are usually precipitated by a stressful episode [Jeff’s relationship with his mother?], and upon recovery there may be amnesia for the original stressor ….".Source: Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugue_state>

Thanx G.Martin, I enjoy your comments too.

“Tranny” can refer to either a transvestite or a transsexual (pre- or post-op), so make sure you check under the hood before you drive one off the lot.

The difference between “transvestism” and “drag” is likewise indistinct, but my understanding is that, traditionally, “drag” is transvestism done for entertainment purposes. Milton Berle performed in drag, but he wasn’t a “drag queen”, and he’d only be considered a “transvestite” in the most literal (i.e. non-diagnostic) sense.

By the way, “drag” also has a broader (perhaps older) sense of simply wearing a distinctive and identifying costume/outfit. An man in “military drag” might be wearing a dress uniform, not necessarily a dress.

It’s my belief that Jeff is REALLY wearing his “Sorkh Razil” outfit (his “Afghani drag”) in public, and that the women are actually responding to him. Trudeau is perfectly willing to suspend plausibility when it suits him (with some characters more than others).

While Jeff’s “mental image” turban would alarm many if public, should we now fear blond-“baby blue-eyed”-Norse- fundamentalist Christians? Reality bites. (and Dylan, it would be five times a day.)

I just remembered: In yesterday’s strip, Jeff left the house without his Arabic get-up. So how do we explain the fact that the auburn-hair woman noticed “the dude in the turban”? Was he wearing it in reality? Is Trudeau mixing Jeff’s fantasy with reality? What’s really going on?

An article about the scandal plus a bit more: http://www.slate.com/id/2293127/

For his Sorkh Razil arcs, GT often resorts to Cervantes’ brilliant discovery, 400 years ago, that a novelist can play with the reader’s perspective. One moment we get Don Quixote’s view: “Those are giants, Sancho, but I understand that your fear makes them look like windmills.” After charging them and being knocked senseless, Quixote insists that the windmills are actually transformed giants.

GT alternates the perspective by drawing either Jeff or Sorkh Razil. But that only establishes the perspective for the last panel. The first three panels—with the androgynous females who falsely perceive blue eyes behind Sorkh/Jeff’s shades—may show our (the “real”) perspective; or GT could be playing here with a THIRD perspective.

See wiwo’s comment above. And as BluJayRobin astutely remarks, the reference to “Three Cups of Tea” neatly ties Jeff’s perspective to another quixotic Afghanistan novel.

I knew Rick Blaine. Rick Blaine was a friend of mine. Jeff Redfern is no Rick Blaine. (Rick NEVER drank with the customers…)

Hate to sound like an I told me so, but didn’t someone comment about the possibilities, “… within the constraints of the comic format”, yesterday?

Speaking of yesterday and the Natalie Wood fantasies, I want to hear about a geezer that was conflicted between Jane Fonda and Bridget Bardot. Like, “I really dug Jane Fonda until she joined the Viet Cong.” or “Bridget Bardot really made me want to learn French, until I found out she was a Nazi.”

The idea that Bridget Bardot was a Nazi must be exaggerated. I Googled that combination, and the best I could come up with was this:.Last of the great playboys (…who married Bardot for a bet): As Gunther Sachs shoots himself (like his SS officer father), the story of the Sixties’ biggest womaniser.Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1385381/Gunther-Sachs-dies-Brigitte-Bardots-ex-husband-shoots-himself.html#ixzz1TG5fP2Eg

Pic (last one down) of Rick Blaine and lover Ilsa Lund at table in Rick’s Cafe American, Casablanca, Morocco:.http://users.datarealm.com/Lucius/Casablanca.index.html

Is Jeff even in the same bar as those two girls?

This is getting weird.