"9 Chickweed Lane" is one of those comic strips I want to like with it's multitude of sexy female characters and underlying message of "Live passionately!" but when author/artist Brooke McEldowney draws his characters with freakish facial expressions and tries to impress readers with his extensive vocabulary, it serves as more of a wet blanket than as an enjoyable escape, which is what I've always thought a comic strip should be.