Nun fight again

I just had to post this again. It's been a while.
Nun Fight, by our old buddies Paul and Storm.

Showcase (finally) Presents: The Doom Patrol

I have been waiting for someone to reprint the early issues of "Doom Patrol" in the cheap format. I have always wanted to read them, but the back issues cost too much and so do the hardcover reprint editions.
However, next Wednesday, the "Showcase Presents" version is being released! Huzzah!

How to recession-proof your budget!

Here's how: Be filthy, stinking rich to start with.
Or, you can join what seems to be a growing trend: Start a Web site full of common-sense advice about how to make scads of money during economic hard times.
Why did I post this? Apparently, blogs about personal finances are getting a lot of attention. And, while we are at it, take a look at this list of Web sites devoted to the subject.
I have no clue what, if any, of this stuff has any value, but I'd say if you want to start a new business, make sure it has something to do with making money during a recession.
However, when the recession is over, you'll have to change it to something like, "How to make money in a recovering economy." Frankly, you can probably even use the same advice. Good money management is good money management, no matter how much you have.
Let's see if I get more hits just by mentioning the topic. Heh.

Ambush Bug

Just thought you'd like to see a cover featuring Ambush Bug. That's all.
(Somehow, issue six of "Ambush Buh Year None" seems to be very, very late.)

And, how about a Garfield episode

I suspect there's a lawyer trying to get this removed from the Internet, but since Mark Evanier sometimes links to these, I'd guess it OK for me, as well.
This really is one of the better ones and is well worth the time you might invest in watching it.

One of my favorite They Might Be Giants songs

"Doctor Worm." 'nuff said.

An early clip of The Avengers

THE AVENGERS (1961) The Frighteners - Amazing videos are here
This is a really early clip of "The Avengers," even before Diana Rigg joined the show. It's a little long, at nine-and-a-half minutes, but kind of interesting to watch and see where the show went from the early start.

Max and Ruby: Latch-key kids?

Does anyone else wonder where the parental supervision on "Max and Ruby" is? The show, for those of you who don't know, is a kids show about two bunnies: Ruby and her little brother Max.
But, there are no parents on this show. Ever. All we ever see is their grandma who comes over occasionally.
Apparently, I am not the only one to notice this. This blog says the whole thing more eloquently than I could, and did it way before I ever heard of the show.

Rodney Carrington can suck my hairy @#$%

Every one of us has heard commercials that get under our skin, right?
Well, there's one on the local ESPN affiliate (WGH-AM 1310) that seems to play at every station break all day long. It's an advertisement for a Rodney Carrington concert, to take place in early April somewhere in the Hampton Roads area. (I'd look it up, but I am too lazy and I don't want to give it any more press than I have to.)
The commercial not only makes me turn off the station, but also never, ever want to hear Rodney Carrington live, on TV, on the radio or anywhere else. Not in a house, not with a mouse, not here or there, not anywhere, Sam-I-Am!
Potty-mouth comedians can be funny, especially when they are clever. In this case, however ... well, I'll let you read some of what I have had to hear every single stinking day and you can decide for yourself.
This commercial starts out with a song that must be called, "Don't look now, your momma's got her boobs out." At least, those are the only lyrics that we hear. I have no idea what its real title is. And, even though it appears to deal with breasts, I have no interest in hearing any more of it.
Then, the commercial proceeds to a few clips of ol' Rodney saying things like, "My wife and I made a homemade porno movie which somehow has ended up in the Internet. Because I put it there." And, "You think those things are ugly with hair on them? I stepped out of the shower and my wife said,'What did you do?' and I said 'Ta-daaa!'"
Then, it ends up with a few strains of his latest hit song, "Show them to me."
I think in this case, "hit song" means you want to hit someone when you hear it.
Someone obviously thinks this is funny. Someone is buying this guy's CDs and tickets to his concerts. Somewhere there's somebody sitting in his living room laughing out loud and reciting Rodeney Carrington jokes, such as they may be. And, there's probably someone else sitting beside this fellow roaring aloud with laughter.
But it sure as all-git-out ain't me.
With all that said, I can hardly wait for his concert.
Because when it's over, the commercial will be off the air. And, I won't have to think about his shaven member, his mommas boobs or his stupid homemade porno movie (which, by the way, may have featured this shaven member and his momma's boobs for all I know.).
I wish I could say I am offended by his lowbrow vulgarity, but I'm not. What offends me is the stupid banality he is passing off as humor. If this commercial features some of the funniest parts of his show to entice me to buy tickets, it ain't working.
Maybe there are some funny parts to his routine. Maybe there's something I am missing. If so, I'm sorry, Rodney, for taking you to task on this blog read by millions of people worldwide. (OK, how about it's read by up to a half-dozen people who know me and have nothing better to do right now than read this rant? Woudja believe two cops in a rowboat? *)
But I am so sick of that damn commercial -- which wasn't funny in the first time and hasn't gotten any better through what seems like 9,257 replays -- that I am never, ever gonna find out if he says anything truly funny or not.
It's almost as bad as political ads around election day. You remember -- the ones Gary Burbank used to "blow up" the day after the election was over. Boy, did that always make me feel good. In fact, I wish Gary was still on the air, so that after Rodney's concert is over, he could blow up that annoying commercial. That, I could listen to at every station break all day long.
I can hear it now: "Live, in person, Rodney CarringBOOOOOOOOOOM ... That sound like a big sa'plosion."
Music to my ears. And funnier than any of ol' Rodney's jokes about his hairless blue-veined throbber, I bet.**

*This joke was stolen from an episode of "Get Smart," which is good advice for Rodney when he hires the next person to make commercials advertising his concerts.
** But, what do I know? I am the guy blogging about what he has for breakfast, for cryin' out loud!

Serial cereal blogging

Well, today, I didn't have cereal. My lovely and talented wife made bacon and eggs for me.

(In case you are curious, the currently open cereal box from which I am eating is Golden Grahams.)

So, ya wanna be an NFL star, eh?

Here's an abbreviated version of the Wonderlic Test, which is administered to NFL hopefuls during the combine.
Some other interesting information from Wikipedia:
The Wonderlic Personnel Test is a twelve-minute, fifty-question intelligence test used to assess the aptitude of prospective employees for learning and problem-solving in a wide range of occupations.[1] The score is calculated as the number of correct answers given in the allotted time. A score of 20 is intended to indicate average intelligence (corresponding to an intelligence quotient of 100; a rough conversion is accomplished via the following formula: IQ = 2WPT + 60). A new version was released in Jan, '07 called the Wonderlic Personnel Test - Revised. It contains questions deemed more appropriate to the 21st century.
Though used in a wide variety of institutions, the Wonderlic test has become best known for its use in the NFL pre-draft assessments of prospective football players.
This assessment roughly corresponds to examples from Paul Zimmerman's The New Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football. According to Zimmerman, examples of average scores for each position are:
Offensive tackle - 26
Center - 25
Quarterback - 24
Guard - 23
Tight end - 22
Safety - 19
Linebacker - 19
Cornerback - 18
Wide receiver - 17
Fullback - 17
Halfback - 16
Pat McInally, a graduate of Harvard University, is the only football player to record a confirmed perfect score of 50.

So, say what you will, the smartest NFL players, by this standard anyway, are offensive tackles. That doesn't make much intuitive sense.
Vince Young, famously, got a 6.

I'd do it in a heartbeart

This story from the Plain Dealer tells us the Browns may be considering trading Braylon Edwards to the New York Football Giants for a second- and a fifth-round ddraft pick.
I don't think I'd think twice about it. I'd trade him. He drops too many passes to be a really good number one receiver. The Browns could probably sign one of a dozen free agents who would not catch passes that hit them in hands.
I'd also do any kind of deal that would involve anything up to a mid-first round deal for Brady Quinn. They already have three picks in the first two rounds. Why not stockpile them and, with an Edwards and a Quinn trade, get five?
If I were running the Browns, I'd make those trades and draft defensive players -- linebackers and cornerbacks. The Browns need playmakers on defense. They have a decent offensive line and could win games by just eating the clock and grinding out yards on the ground. With a good defense, that strategy quickly can make a mediocre team a playoff team.
Here's my pie-in-the-sky fantasy football wish: Wouldn't it be awesome if the Browns could draft somebody really high with the number five pick, and with the other later picks also get Clay Matthews III, the son of the former Browns linebacker, and James Laurinitis from Ohio State?

(By the way, this is the first post from my new iMac, which I got yesterday. You probably don't see much difference from that end, but I sure can tell.)

For those of you who don't get to see the Watchmen movie ...

Take a gander at the "motion comic," available on DVD and Blu-Ray. It may be cooler than the movie.

Fair and balanced?

Somewhere in the Bible, there are four sequential words that say, "There is no God."
Surrounded with the words they are supposed to be surrounded with, that phrase has a totally different meaning.
In that vein, I find this really alarming, especially for a major news network.

Summary: Fox News' Martha MacCallum claimed that "after weeks of economic doom and gloom, the Obama administration is now singing a slightly different tune. Take a look at what was said in recent interviews this weekend." Fox News then aired clips of administration officials purportedly giving an optimistic view of the economy, which included video of Joe Biden stating: "The fundamentals of the economy are strong." However, Biden did not make those remarks during an "interview[]" over the past weekend; he made those remarks at a September 2008 campaign event in which he criticized statements by John McCain.

Every news organization should take pride in their credibility. It only reinforces Fox's perspective if its reporters and pundits tell the truth. Things like this .. well, make me want to watch C-Span or BBC or Comedy Central something.
No matter what our political leanings are, we should all condemn misleading "news" segments like this one.
Here's what Fox later had to say about it.

On Tuesday, (Martha) MacCallum said it was an honest mistake.
"We inadvertently used a piece of video of Vice-President Biden saying the 'fundamentals of the economy are strong'," she said.
"This video was from the campaign trail, when the vice-president was a candidate, and was actually quoting Senator John McCain."

Oh, and by the way, you'd probably like to see Biden's full quote, if you haven't already:

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that's why John McCain could say with a straight face, as recently as this morning -- and this is a quote: "The fundamentals of the economy are strong." That's what John says. He says that "we've made great progress economically" in the Bush years.

I'd say even a seasoned TV producer would have to try pretty hard to find a real six-month-old quote from Biden supporting the Bush administration, but it's downright malicious to take this clip and edit it down to the point where the original meaning was completely reversed.
Somebody had to watch the whole clip to find that sentence and then edit the clip. There's almost no way to do that without being aware of the few seconds of audio and video before and after the clip.
That's why I do not believe this was inadvertent. You couldn't try to be that stupid. Sorry, Martha, but I know the Emperor is nekkid. "Wardrobe malfunction," indeed!
Dan Rather lost his job for putting a story on the air without doing enough fact checking. Jayson Blair was publicly humiliated for, well, writing fiction in a newspaper.
Et tu, Martha?

An interview with one of our favorite cartoonists

How about speanding some time getting to know Jill Thompson a little better?

Glacier run in Kentucky?

Here's a link to a new exhibit at the Louisville Zoo. I doubt we'll get a membership this year after moving to Virginia, but I am kind of sad I won't be able to see it go up. It's being built where the polar bears used to be, in case you are curious. I bet polar bears hate living in Kentucky in August.

Terry Pluto's Talkin' (and you should be listening)

If you aren't reading these Sunday columns by our old buddy Terry Pluto (whom I have e-mailed with but never actually met), you should be.

Sorry I haven't been here

I have been awfully busy for the last week or so. I shall continue to be as busy for the next week or so. Please forgive me. I shall resume my regular irregular schedule of posting as soon as I can. Check back, because I have pre-set some things to pop up while I am gone.