Lucky for you all, I’m not in a very loquacious mood. Oh, I could say it had something to do with being out Saturday night at a George Harrison tribute concert with The Missus. Or I could blame the temporary crappy keyboard I’m using because my once good mechanical keyboard broke down. I’m not even particularly angry with the past week’s strips, either. <Sigh!> Well, let’s see how things go.

Mark’s Woodsman Olympics were put on the back burner for Cherry, as she got bored and took Rusty back to their hotel. Her goal for the rest of the day was a nice, luxurious bath. Rusty, on the other hand, is a typical adolescent. Therefore, he decided to go exploring outside and find something interesting to photograph. Ignoring his mom’s dictum about staying in the hotel’s rear garden (he is an adolescent, remember!?), Rusty decided to explore the grounds beyond the outer walls, so he easily slipped through a security chain only meant to stop incurious adults.

Unfortunately for Rusty, a “pirate” security guard (remember them!?) on patrol discovered him engaged in the act of taking photos of a scorpion. Rusty was hauled back to his room where the security guard told Cherry the hotel would not press charges if he could scrub her back. Just kidding! The guard did, in fact, take Rusty back to the room with a proper warning given to Cherry about Rusty not going back behind the garden. And that was the week. Some excitement, huh?

So Jules Rivera found nothing local to talk about? I reckon she missed reading commenter Hannibal Lectern’s discussion of Las Vegas’s advanced water reclamation processes that would have made a nice Sunday topic. Instead, we get another hawk talk, and not even a local hawk! This hawk, like most Sunday topics, would be a lot more impressive if it was not usually relegated to background duty for Mark’s continuous and dominant appearance in virtually every panel! Talk about ego.

This is contrary to the practice of prior Mark Trail artists who usually limited Mark’s mug to the first and last panels, preferring to give the majority of face time to the Sunday Topic. The old ways sometimes are better, including the habit of avoiding inserting lame puns into the last panel.