so Leander is Beef's cousin maybe?  i mean he's got a black flag tattoo that would go well with beef's old DK shirt.
Leander doesn't look totally maniacal or bloodthirsty to me, he looks like he's at the fight b/c of the crowd he hangs out with, but not especially happy to be there if it was up to him.  lea looks uncomfortable, plus he's got depression.

And my mind continually boggles that all this is happening just because Ray wants to keep his mother from finding out about a business that entails selling rubber testicles that attach to cellular phones.

i completely forgot about the cell phone testes business.  too caught up in drama

I'm surprised nobody is reading this as a backstab-in-progress by Beef. Seems to me what you have here is a case of pumping Ray up to make him a huge target while insuring that he has his own alliances to fall back on when the fight gets rolling.

i have three, well four, ideas about the arc:

1.  Beef is using Ray as a Leader, but the backstab can't happen until the very end.  what does Beef know that all others don't?  that Ray is a big fake.  that's Beef's advantage (with Ray's dependence) so he's got to ride it for it's maximum value.  

2.  as Beef said, its rumored that the Leaders don't really fight on the second day, so maybe Ray does get taken out on the first day, advancing Beef to day three when Beef takes over the army.

3.  Ray, in character, wins the fight because of perverse luck.

four:  Onstad keeps his streak alive and suprises me like always while i giggle and drool.  I LOVE this arc

i cannot wait to find out their fight names.  Cassandra Roast Beef = Canadian Ribeye Ben;  Raymond Smuckles = Romper-Stomper

##### - jim beam is excellent for the price.  
emergen c - big shots have drivers, unless they are tormented loners, so it makes sense to ride sidecar in this case

i read that they were large carnivorous cats in like africa and people get some sort of perfume from their smelliness.  maybe i should have researched deeper.

but that's not really my question . . . does the tv audience think that Jaime is a man or a cat?

i'm glad yous doods felt that way too.  

Ray is just tonight's audience

that's a really good way to put it.  maybe to get to that next level of creepiness CH sets up an audience of one.  
on the other hand, it could be an unfortunate accident and CH took it too far or performed the trick one too many times.  but def CH was still performing at the end.

i like the progression too, doods; in each strip ray gets more CH than he was comfortable with.  that's sort of CH's thing, and ray is getting a lot of it.  
from sitting in the audience, to going to dinner, to sitting at the table, to drinking weirdo wine.  
each time there is more CH to deal with a little closer.   back up, softie!  
ray could have said "no" to going and "no" to dinner, and he wouldn't have to really disappoint CH, but for the wine CH looks at ray like it'll hurt CH's feelings if ray turns it down.  

also i like that the CH cards carried over.  it makes sense to get a message on a card in the audience, b/c the performer can't talk at that moment, but CH uses a card to offer wine face to cartilage.

I don't know how Ray could come to that conclusion, since the shoe is obviously a Nike and Russell Simmons, entrepreneur and self-whoring bidnissman that he is, would never leave anything but a Phat Pharm (his company's brand of clothing and shoes) on someone's doorstep.

Ray's conclusion is specious here. Specious!

jough, i too was thrown by the ray's nike brand connection to russell simmons.  however, my first shoe connection to R.S. would have to be adidas (recently 'merged' with reebok).  
i thought that ray was just mistaken, but the alt text explains that ray did do something to upset R.S.