Manhunter #33: *single tear* There’s no Blue Beetle in this issue (from all appearances, he was drafted into Final Crisis #3 to do.. whatever it is that’s going on in that book), but there are still guest-appearances galore, and hints of a major ass-kicking next issue by some of my favorite DC ladies. Kate hasn’t done anything of questionable morality lately, and I’m wondering if she’s lost her edge being a family woman now. Nah. Still, Kate needs some ethical dilemma to cut her way through. And soon! A-
Final Crisis #3 Since this series began I was under the impression that it was going to touch all the titles of the DCU, but I’ve recently been told otherwise. This confuses me because I know that Morrison is a great writer who doesn’t go in for half-told tales, yet Final Crisis continues to give only glimpses into the full story of the “War of the Fourth World” (as I see it shaping up to be) while wasting time on sub-plots and characters who ultimately don’t do anything. Again, maybe “don’t do anything yet,” but still, the waiting is getting painful. I don’t love FC, but I’m not ready to drop it either. The regeneration of the Forever People as Japanese pop heroes is a funny sub-plot and I’m always wanting news of my grrlfriend Mary Marvel. Morrison once gave 6 billion people super-powers to stop an alien invasion, so what will he do this time to save the world? B
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight #17: Really, Joss? Dark Willow? Again? 200 years in the future and dressed like Mary Shelly? Really, Joss? C
The Boys #21: I should have collected this series from issue one, but a review by someone whose opinion I respect overrode my curiosity, and didn’t think that the series was worth a look. Eventually, my scholarly nature overrode my repulsion and I took a look. I can’t disagree with many things that have been said about The Boys: it’s depraved, sexist, decadent, self-indulgent, tawdry and 1,000 other denigrating adjectives that add up to one of the edgiest reads since The Walking Dead. Being a completist, I’m definitely going to find the back issues and enjoy the horror. A+
Marry Me: I’m not a big fan of Amerimanga (or whatever the kids call it these days) – American artists borrowing manga styles stroke-for-stroke – because it’s so… stylishless, like a dress made of beautiful fabric held together with staples. Still, Marry Me is a cute and breakneck-paced romantic comedy that will be made into a November-release movie within the next year, no doubt. B+
Myth #1: Ah, yes, PORN! Mystech porn! Mystech gay porn stacked full of semi- to fully-naked men all of whom are hung like the tentacles from that squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees, I have no idea what happened in the story, but it seemed hot. Really, where do guys like that hang out and can I get a membership? Oh! Accidental pun! B+
Why Do You Cry When I’m on Top?: Funny shit even if it’s all absurd potty humor pushed past good taste but without entering crass. B
In the news, Jeff Trexler of uncivilsociety.org has posted an enlightening article about the early creative history of Superman entitled “Lois Lane’s Abortion and the Gay Superman”. A deeper look at these documents is in Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book, which I highly recommend.
As we turn to our video video features for the week, I’m going to note again that I’m not a big believer in permanently linking to YouTube as they appear and disappear so frequently. I’d honestly rather have my own copy to distribute, but that’s not always possible. Therefore, I offer up these transitory morsels. First, The Muppets’ Beaker performing Ode to Joy:
Then, the never-before-seen-now-virally-seen pilot of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Animated Series:
And finally, I cannot believe that Bill Donohue hasn’t had a rage-induced stroke over the soon-to-be-released Hamlet 2 and its musical interlude, “Rock Me, Sexy Jesus”:
The White House Office of Youth Purity has established two websites extolling the virtues of abstinence-only lifestyles: the first of which is for the boys – Sex is for FAGS!.
With Gibraltar-strong testimonials such as these:
how can i even think about engaging in pre-martial sex again? I even took their vow:
I, [MY NAME], hereby pledge:
1. To stay massively cool by not having sex. Because only major losers have sex – which everyone knows is only for fags.
2. To never let any slutty girls peer pressure me into touching their vaginas – because vaginas are totally gay.
3. To ignore my raging hormones and burning drive to fondle, suckle, and thrust furiously into a hot gooey pit of creamy-soft fleshy ecstasy.
4. To keep my groinal giblets inside my GAP khakis, and to punch those sweaty bits into submission whenever they percolate with desire.
5. To never spill my sacred “dude milk” – unless it is inside of some hot babe who already married me and took my last name.
I understand that abstaining from sex protects me from:
The regret and guilt caused by the disgusting, squishy act of stupid sex, which is basically like going to the toilet from the front side.
Making retard babies out of wedlock, then having to blow my whole allowance on diapers and a stroller instead of XBox games and Snickers.
Catching a brain-rotting STD like “Finger Herpes” from “feeling up” any nasty dirty girlie holes.
There is also Iron Hymen for vagino-Americans of a certain age.
While they have pledges and t-shorts, too, they also have TEN THINGS EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BOYS AND THEIR VILE PRIVATE PARTS, in which First Lady Mrs. George W. Bush proves how totally fair and accurate in reporting she can be. For example:
1.) Unlike your girly privates, which are internal, boy privates are external. God knew that nobody wanted to see all our lady mess, so He pushed everything up inside you. What in tarnation He was thinking when he came up with that nasty, dangling, squishy flesh on boys beats the heck out of me, but I suspect it was so it would be easier for Him to keep an eye on what they’re up to. Because trust me: that grotesque grab bag of horror and disappointment is always up to something, gals.
Flawless.
Hie to the appropriate site and get yourself something pretty.
via Joe.My.God
Yeas ago, I saw the Lloyd Webber oddity Aspects of Love when it first opened on Broadway. Yes, I saw it with the hot-but-then-fat-but-then-back-to-human-proportions Michael Ball, for those of you who are as in love with his voice as I am you’ll know what I mean. The show was a delight if not weighted down by themes of incest and statutory rape. The essentail story is about Alex who falls in love with Rose who falls in love with Alex’ Uncle George who loves Giulietta who begins and affair with Rose and George before Rose becomes pregnant with George’s daughter who, as a 15 year-old, falls in love with he substantially older first cousin Alex who reciprocates, killing George and driving Alex to screw Giulietta at the funeral before all three women press him for his eternal devotion. All the salaciousness is whimsically shown in this video to the theme tune “Love Changes Everything”:
Today I found a recording by Forbidden Broadway this is supposed to be a parody of the song (and the show), but is more of a reiteration of the plot. Of course, good parody is supposed to be opaque.
…there was Mr. Midnight!!
Thank the gods Christopher Lee had the chance to redeem himself after The Return of Captain Invincible, unlike Orson Welles whose swan song was The Transformers: The Movie. Poor guy.
I sent this email out to my friends earlier this week, but I find myself unable to keep the horror out of the public arena anymore:
if i’ve sent this to you it means i know you to have a sick sense of humor or that i think you’re a filthy, filthy whore. maybe both.
so, who hates the family circus with their traditional values and unfunny observational jokes? no matter how much you THINK you hate them, you will never, ever bring them down to the depths of shame that “the other family” has. so VERY much NSFW!!!! in fact, it might not even be fit for private consumption.
oh god. i can see forever.
That was the least offensive of all the comics I could find. The Other Family is affiliated with Weird Ads, which proves that there really are no boundaries to people’s taste in what they consider to be a fairly good time.
Oh! I’m a week behind in posting this, but American Idol: totally scripted or judged by a woman so high on Vicodin that she thinks she’s Mother Shipton?
Discuss.
My students think that by randomly substituting words from the thesaurus into their papers, they will sound more brilliant than they actually are. Not to say they’re “dumb”, they’re not; they just… don’t have a lot of exposure to the nuances of the English language. However, the quite brilliant people at The Onion stepped up to the plate today to show the semantically unwise the right way to use the thesaurus, to hilarious effect:
87 Killed In Violent Kerfuffle
March 11, 2008 | Issue 44•11
ISLAMABAD—Eighty-seven people were killed and 114 wounded at an open-air market in Islamabad yesterday in one of the worst ruckuses to hit the Pakistani capital in years. Witnesses said that the bloody to-do occurred shortly before noontime prayers, and that dozens were instantly killed by the doozy of a shockwave. Many more were reportedly trampled to death in the rush to escape the foofaraw. “It was as though some invisible hand had come through to wipe out all that was good and human,” onlooker Taufiq Jinnah said. “There was so much death and carnage—how could God let such a brouhaha happen?” The Pakistani government, which promised a major counter-hubbub against those responsible, would not rule out a small-scale nuclear donnybrook.
Is there any word inn the English language funnier than “kerfuffle”? I don’t think so!
OK, maybe “donnybrook”.
My brother sent me this email today about my nephew:
Hee hee hee hee.
I was rolling in the car tonight on the way back to Dominic’s house. He’s been having the Bible read to him at night and I asked him how it was going.
“Good.”
“Did you get to the flood story yet?”
“The one with Noah’s ark, yeah.”
“Did you like it?”
“Yeah.”
I asked him some questions about the two birds and all that and then said:
“Did you know that there’s another story just like that about a flood?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, except in this other one Noah is called Utnapishtim.”
“Why’s he called Utnapishtim?!?!?!?!?!?”
He pronounced it properly and his enunciation was so perfect that I started laughing my ass off. It was cute as hell. I explained why his name was different, yeah. He wasn’t proud of himself for having said it right. He just kept saying it over trying to get me to laugh again.
I asked him, “Do you remember which animals Noah took?”
“All of them. Except the unicorns were goofing around.”
*pause*…”Is that why we don’t have unicorns anymore?”
“Yeah.”
God, I love that kid!
Of anyone I (or you) know, I am the one person who can believe in anything seemingly impossible. I will get run over by the “we just saw/experienced/were attacked by something weird” bandwagon in order to jump on it. Vampires? Could be. Werewolves? Sure! Zombies? A distinct possibility. Faeries? Why not? Bigfoot? “More things in Heaven and Earth…”.
Gnomes?
According to The Sun (yeah yeah yeah, I know), we don’t have to speculate anymore because proof of gnomes has been filmed by a teenager in South America.
A town in South America is living in fear after several sightings of a ‘creepy gnome’ that locals claim stalks the streets at night.
The midget – which wears a pointy hat and has a distinctive sideways walk – was caught on video last week by a terrified group of youngsters.
Teenager Jose Alvarez – who filmed the gnome – yesterday told national newspaper El Tribuno that they caught the creature while larking about in their hometown of General Guemes, in the province of Salta, Argentina.
He said: “We were chatting about our last fishing trip. It was one in the morning.
“I began to film a bit with my mobile phone while the others were chatting and joking.
“Suddenly we heard something – a weird noise as if someone was throwing stones.
“We looked to one side and saw that the grass was moving. To begin with we thought it was a dog but when we saw this gnome-like figure begin to emerge we were really afraid.”
Jose added that other locals had come forward to say they had spotted the gnome.
He said: “This is no joke. We are still afraid to go out – just like everyone else in the neighbourhood now.
“One of my friends was so scared after seeing that thing that we had to take him to the hospital.”
This is the film of what they saw. Quite frankly, it’s the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while, true or not.
As I hoped in my previous post, SpaceSqiud sent me a JPG of their “Slacker Map of Austin”. Click to embiggen.
Some clever soul has created an interactive map of The Simpson‘ hometown of Springfield (click on the image to go to the site).
Any true geeks out there know how accurate it is?
Even though Pirates of Desire made the list of “14 Valentine’s Day Gifts Guaranteed to Not Get You Laid” (it was #12), I can’t help but think that this would be the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. It’s like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, but instead of the annoying second-person pronouns, your name and the name of a loved one are placed into the text. I would love to read about me and my Pirate King cruising the high seas (as it were), making war by day and making sweet, sweet love at night. Have a peg-legged role-play you’ve been meaning to try out? This could be your gateway to ripped bodices and heaving chesteses. Lord knows I want my bodiced ripped. Also, it’s fat free. You won’t have to apologize to your personal trainer the next day for slipping “because it was a special occasion”.
The big downer is the price. Just because someone knows how to use the “Search/Replace” function in Microsoft Word, doesn’t mean he or she gets to charge $39.95 for it. Nice work if you can get it.
Still, as someone who appreciates good kitsch a gift like this would show that someone really knows me well.
Just a thought…
Ambigrams are clever pictures that are the same backwards and forwards, or right-side up or upside down, or angle-to-angle (soon to be made wildly popular with the movie adaptation of Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, no doubt). And the 20th Anniversary DVD of a favorite movie of mine, The Princess Bride, features an ambigram:
Pretty neat, eh? I saw this movie for the first time on Thanksgiving Day, 1987. It was my freshman year at Mercyhurst College and I had just worked a 13 hour shift at Rebecca’s Restaurant where I was a bus slave. Really, my job at Rebecca’s was a great one; obviously so, I had been there for three years by the time I started college. The whole staff was amazingly cool – the bartender let us drink after-shift sometimes, the head waiter was a condescending prick with a wicked sense of humor (ah, Fred!) whom we all loved, the eponymous co-owner was a terrific woman with a thing for gay men, the wait staff was a trip and us bus kids… well, we thought we owned the place. On the Thanksgiving in question, I was to work the early shift, then go home to have dinner with my folks. However, just before I was supposed to leave, Fred told me that several of the bus kids who were supposed to be there, weren’t coming. They were “sick” or some such BS. Fred gave me the option to leave, but said they really needed the help that afternoon.
What could I do? I called my mom and told her to go ahead and eat without me. A work ethic is a terrible thing sometimes, right? Thank God Mom understood.
One other busser stayed for a second shift – Amy. By the time we were done it was way late and we were exhausted, but we couldn’t relax. Rebecca fed us and tipped us extra (from her own pocket, I think), so, feeling rich, Amy and I called our parents and said we were going to see a movie to unwind. The Princess Bride.
To say I howled and stomped and cried my way through the movie is a gross injustice to the embarrassment that Amy suffered that night. But The Princess Bride is still one of the best movies ever, and I say that with twenty years’ (!!!) worth of perspective and repeated viewings, not just through the lens of punchiness.
Jesus. Twenty years.
Next week, I go home to Erie, PA to see my folks for an extended Christmas visit. And usually before I go home (case in point, tonight), I log into Gay.com to see what folks are about and if there’s anyone cool to meet or whatnot. Really, I almost never do this anymore because chatting is such a hassle and, really, if i wanted to see any of these guys, I’d go visit in person. Still, gay people in my hometown fascinate me, and going back makes me want to see what the scene is like (especially if anyone from high school is there – heh heh). Then I got a private message that reminded me why I don’t chat often:
«xxxxxxxxxxxx» visitng?
«stsean» not yet
«stsean» next week
«txxxxxxxxxxxx» up for a massage when visting?
«xxxxxxxxxxxx» i do sensaul erotic to deep – can really use the business
«stsean» well, tis the season 
«xxxxxxxxxxxx» th
«xxxxxxxxxxxx» thx
«stsean» no pro
«stsean» er.. no prob
«xxxxxxxxxxxx» well keep me postd next week
«stsean» whoops! my freudian slip was showing there.
«xxxxxxxxxxxx» unto sure what u meant
«stsean» unto?
«xxxxxxxxxxxx» yeah
«stsean» what is “unto”?
«xxxxxxxxxxxx» duh. un means not.
«stsean» so you’re not to sure what i meant.
«xxxxxxxxxxxx» yeah.
«stsean» nice chest pics.
«xxxxxxxxxxxx» thx
*sigh* And he really did have nice pecs. But that was about all.
Whatever ran a LOLCreashun contest last month to see who could LOLize pictures from the Creation Museum. Check out the entries. They made me LOL. My faves are below.
(thanks to JoeMyGod for posting it first!)
more under the fold
