Oh, man this is so wanting and needing to be parody yet is not, in fact, parody. Is there anyone else in the immediate vicinity that would like to elucidate on the releasing of birds? Mr. Squirrel, what say you?
Once again, got it from The Comics Curmudgeon, but only because it's the easiest and quickest way to pick up on the wackiness. Although I may officially be a Mark Trail fan now, so maybe I'll go to the source.
The Comics Curmudgeon already commented on this one a while back. But he doesn't seem to understand that General Halftrack is partaking in a perfectly normal drunken rumination. Who doesn't, in an extremely intoxicated state, daydream about gnomes becoming comfortably well-off, birds hovering in a vacuum, or Lisa Kudrow's after-death concert series? Josh is right about the golf club rainbow though. What the f*** is that?
This blog has been too wordy lately. It must be time for Armageddon Wednesday...
See, here's how it'll all pan out. First, Ray Harryhausen will send his flying saucers...
Civilians will look on in boredom and indifference. They'll develop a casual acceptance of their fate...
Then the aliens show up. They sound amazingly like Paul Frees, which does not in any way detract from their overall phallus-ness...
But Salvador Dali is not amused...
So then more Saucers show up...!
And GROUCHO...!
And THESE GUYS...!
And everyone yells, "BLOW, GERRY, BLOW!" BUT...
IT'S TOO LATE!!!!! The world explodes in a beautiful technicolor dream! "We'll... meet again... Don't know where... Don't know wheennnnnn...."
Well, that's the way I would want it to end. Wouldn't you?
Here's an interesting statement on personal interests and their application or association to the web in general or blogs in particular. I was searching blogcatalog.com, one of the dozens of blog directories listing the tens of thousands of blogs out there by everyone from professional artists and technophiles to your Aunt Gertie. It appears that on this particular site there are about 2,500 music blogs, 4,000 political blogs and so forth. Blogs can be searched by tags or just by content. Anyway, to make a long diatribe short, I searched for Chaplin and only one result appeared, and it wasn't even referring to Charlie. Tens of thousands of blogs with hundreds and thousands of blog posts and not one has to do with the Tramp? Seems inconceivable. But I've already noted over the years that there really isn't a huge classic film community on the web. It probably has something to do with the fact that classic film is a somewhat static, academic concept, with only DVD releases and film preservation efforts as the means to current, topical comment or conversation to anyone who isn't a filmmaker and studying technique or whatnot.
Anyway, here's a post for you Charlie. One of my several hundred heroes, you are. In case anyone is wondering, the above pic is from A Dog's Life.
*Update* - I've found a couple sites after all:
The Crowd Roars
Out of the Past
And of course, the seminal Greenbriar Picture Shows blog.
And about 108 mentions of Charlie Chaplin within posts, as would be probable, although still pretty low. I guess it would be fairly representational of real life, subculture vs. pop culture.
Due to my recent resurgence of interest in EC Comics, Zombie Monday has become EC Monday! I read a very good issue of Tales From the Crypt yesterday and was going to scan some panels emphasizing the different artists. Alas, I am at work, so it will have to wait until next week. But I figure that this is a great way for me to really wrap my head around this amazing archive of stories and art, since as a kid I really just had a fleeting, morbid interest in the whole thing. And considering the wordiness of the stories, I didn't even read half of them. But don't worry. If the whole thing seems a bit too academic, there's certainly enough to poke fun at, which I will surely do.
One last thing, I just learned yesterday that a comics publisher called Papercutz is producing all new issues of Tales. They seem to have a definite indie-comic flavor to them, which could work. I ordered the first issue off of ebay, so we shall see. Here's the cover:
Looks like the subsequent covers will be in the traditional EC format. There seems to be a lot of respect for the original run, which will help its longevity.
Just a reminder, in these days Harry Potter craziness, that Tim Hunter came first. His creator, Neil Gaiman, has graciously conceded that the concept of the young, burgeoning magician is simply an archetype. But everyone should read The Books of Magic miniseries, regardless, if only for the fourth book, which blew my mind.
Anyway, go on with your Potter mania. I honestly respect obsessions of any sort. I've got way too many myself.
I just realized what day it is. Happy 70th Birthday to the late H.S.T.
Link to Rolling Stone article.
Today on Armageddon Wednesday... GIANT LOCUSTS!...
... as seen in the Bert I. Gordon film, The Beginning of the End, starring a typically wooden Peter Graves...
...as seen, by my generation anyway, on MST3K. And speaking of that, the first DVD release by The Film Crew is now available on Amazon. But for now, let us not forget the...
...GIANT LOCUSTS! Oops. It's just Bert I. Gordon. Hey Bert.
More Beetle Bailey Awareness Training! Sunday's strip is pretty standard, but I cracked right up at panel seven. It pretty much sums up what I strive for in life: to be hopelessly inundated by my personal interests to the point that the mind-numbing repetitiveness of my work day barely distracts from them, and in fact, enhances them! Someday, as I am processing invoices and dodging phone calls, I too will be Superman.
EC Comics. Thanks to Gladstone's reprints in the eighties, they were as much a part of my childhood as they were to the baby boomers. They featured some pretty gruesome stuff sometimes, not just of the horror variety. Crime Suspenstories and the like could be pretty outrageous in that pre-politically correct sort of way. But the art was amazing. Johnny Craig, Jack Davis and the rest really knew how to render disembowelment quite beautifully.
Can Drift Marlo: Space Jock save Skippy the Space Chimp and the Secret Vacuum Tubes of Project Beat Buttnik? Adventure awaits... IN SPACE!
Pulled from an amazing, comprehensive site of children's space book art, Dreams of Space.
Say, it's Chicken Little from Disney's 1943 short, Chicken Little. It obviously has less to do with the end of the world and more with Nazism (or generally, as in the fable, manipulation and hysteria).
Foxy Loxy, while shown to be reading a book labeled "Psychology" to facilitate the spread of fear and chaos, actually recites passages from Mein Kampf. I presume the original story ends happily for the chickens, but in accordance with the symbolism, the cartoon ends with rows of wishbones and a happily engorged Foxy. "Don't believe everything you read, brudder."
Incidentally, try image searching Chicken Little these days and you come up with thousands of pictures of this poor dope:
Welcome to a special 4th of July edition of Armageddon Wednesday, in which we discuss the tiny little firecracker with the power to blow up the Earth, the Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator, not to be confused with the now defunct Uranium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator, or the completely nonexistent Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. Now, it's important that on this day of celebration we do not inadvertently destroy the planet, so please, do not light off an Illudium PU-36. If you are having trouble differentiating between the Illudium and your average firecracker, look for the following directions - "Place on flat surface, light wick, and get 35 million miles away." Simply place the Modulator in your pocket, and light yourself a sparkler. We'll all be much happier.
On this Zombie Monday we celebrate the fact that Rob Zombie's animated feature film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, is somewhere in post-post-production. The most exciting aspect for me is that the character of Dr. Satan, shown above, is voiced by none other than Paul Giamatti. I can't seem to figure out when this is going to be released, but Zombie seems to suggest in the wiki article that they may get slapped with the horrible NC-17 rating, so that would definitely hinder it's distribution.
Speaking of the horrible NC-17 rating, I just watched This Film Is Not Yet Rated, a pretty decent documentary about how the MPAA delegates the entire film rating system to a handful of anonymous "average adults," anonymous so as to avoid outside influence, never mind the fact that they are influenced internally by the studios themselves. No child psychiatrists allowed, as designated by the former duce, Jack Valenti. Anyway, this is why you'll see five hundred people killed in an R movie but any overt and frequent references to sex will ramp it up to NC-17. Violence speaks to the key demographic and somehow doesn't offend conservative Christian values anymore. There's basically no checks and balances, no citing precedent. Fascism at its best.
IRONICALLY, after going through quite a bit of hassle to procure beer from the Flying Dog Brewery, I just found several varieties at the party store down the street. It was sitting on a shelf that, because of it's placement across from the cooler, no one ever looks at. The stuff could have been there the entire time for all I knew, but they told me they just got it in last week. So there's a bit of clunky synchronicity for you.
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