Clearly, this assignment is really going to go swell:  Bring your 11-year old kid along on a job, while he daydreams this is a vacation. What the heck was Mark thinking, anyway!?

As for the “two houses in Santa Monica”, I had no idea what that meant. It took no time at all to discover they are two distinct homes on Palisades Beach Road. The so-called “Goth” and “Bubblegum” homes, aka the “Batman” and “Barbie” houses, owing to their black and pink colors, respectively.  And yes, I noticed that the pink house is not really pink.

Okay, is there a point to Rusty’s pointless babbling? Is Rivera just trying to give a little peek at Mark and Rusty passing the time on a plane to California? Or maybe padding the story to fill out the week? Or maybe hinting at a plot contrivance that will show up down the road? Like, what are the odds that one of those two houses turns out to be Mark’s lion house?

But I’m not sure what Rivera is suggesting in her textbox in panel 3. Watching online video gaming has been around for years. I don’t especially see the excitement. Heck, I have an 11-year old nephew who watches 20-Somethings play Minecraft. So even old farts (i.e. Trailheads) know about it. I hope Rivera doesn’t waste time “Trailsplaining” all this to us dinosaurs.