We're just fans, originally uploaded by emdashes.

One of the great things about being a girl is that if you praise someone who's praised you, and then it turns out you both admire a third person, and a fourth person, Scott McLemee, was the one who started it all, and everyone praises everyone—even then, no one can really call it a circle jerk.

Hence, my smooth palms' warm but unbesmirched applause for both Minor Tweaks, which I have written about several times already, and whose clever proprietor, mild-mannered redhead Tom Bartlett, I finally met in D.C. this weekend over organic goodness in Dupont Circle; and also Tom's recent recommendation, The Comics Curmudgeon. The brainchild of writer/editor (and, so far, stranger to me) Josh Fruhlinger, who (says his bio) has been "reading the entire comics section every day for as long as he can remember," the C.C. is indeed all about reading exactly those parts of the funny pages you scan with mesmerised and often lonely fear—not to mention sometimes rewarded hope—and, this being the '00s, reading into them on many levels, all witty ones. Fruhlinger reprints the strips (from "Beetle Bailey" to "Mark Trail" to, careful readers will be happy to see, Sally Forth) under discussion on the blog itself, which I can't really do with the entire New Yorker, fortunately for everyone; think of all the accent-code keystrokes! Those really can make you blind.

Anyway, C.C. is just splendid, and I'm officially adding it to Check Every Day. A short list, indeed so short it can be recited in moments, meaning that those on it can consider themselves such adorably fun virtual company that I bet even Colby Christofferson, undisputed and long-reigning 1979-84 Madison, WI, dream date, would seriously consider taking them to the '83 spring dance. Theme: '57 Chevy Café. Don we now our pegged pants and circle pins! Pins.

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