Comic for Friday, February 17th, 2006

Posted: 12:01 am, Friday, February 17th

I've gotta say, I was psyched other people knew what I was talking about with those little books with the picture on every other page. That's a nice trip down memory lane right there.

For today, quick comment on the strip - for her being the only member of the gang that's actually Irish, I sure do have Lissa speak Italian a lot. Also, I actually think this is one of my better bar backgrounds going on there - the silhouetted crowd worked better than most of them do. Speaking of backgrounds in comic strips, the always excellent Medium Large tackled that issue yesterday (along with the issue of clearly illustrating anything anyone in a comic strip is eating - the closest I ever come to succeeding there is with burgers, which is why the Five Bucks gang subsists almost entirely off of burgers, to the viewers' knowledge). While we're on the subject of comics, I'd also like to say that, while I love Fox Trot, Bill Amend has really been mailing it in this week. And making jokes about mailing it in while you're mailing it in still doesn't make it any better, Bill.

Hm, what else do I like? Oh, right, music. I know RAW among others cannot abide by mash-ups, but for some reason, these things amuse me to no end. This dude mashed up the Beatles with the Beastie Boys. I'm only so-so on it after a few listens, but I will say that basically anything he did with tracks off of To the 5 Boroughs is a great improvement, since he bothers to actually vary the beats. The Beastie Boys didn't feel the need to do that. That lead me to find this somewhat scholarly take on the Beatles, which I pass onto you just for something to read. (Also, however good DJ BC's mash-up is or isn't, it's worlds better than that ridiculous Jay-Z/Linkin Park/Paul McCartney thing from the Grammys last week).

Evidently, Bloomberg is trying to land both the GOP convention and the Democratic convention in 2008. Gothamist is as skeptical as I am about the GOP coming back, but I say bring 'em on. Last time was a great fuckin' party. Gothamist also mentions that maybe New Orleans would be attractive to the parties - holy God, I hope neither of them actually think that's even close to appropriate. It was ghoulish enough for Shitwit to return to his "proudest" moment, but for either of the parties to use what will likely be still in parts a ruined city as a backdrop, God, that's positively horrible.

Time to lower ye olde blood pressure, and what better to do that with than some video games. 101 free ones, to be exact. I haven't actually fired any of them up yet, but there's bound to be some quality in there somewhere, no? And something for every taste - even those of us who wish to be museum curators.

bullfrog

Shoot, they pulled that 101 free games thing. Sorry, guys. I guess here's four or so.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3148113

Dude, you were at the GOP convention protest? Your homies swarmed me and my coworkers on the way out of the convention, apparently thinking we were delegates and not the media:

http://stacked.patrickstack.com/archives/2004/ 09/01/my-night-with-the-gop-or-lie-down-with-dogs-and-youll- probably-get-fleas/

Then, when they did find out we were the media, we got booed anyway. Sweet.

Is Pete breaking the fourth wall in the last panel?

Tree - I don't think that he is. I'm justifying it with the reasoning that I sometimes address an unseen observer in my day-to-day life. This is caused from watching too much The Office, reading too many comic strips as a kid, and being fundamentally unstable in the noggin.

Pat - hell yeah, I love a good protest march. I definitely wasn't with the group that heckled you - we only walked marched on Sunday and lit out when we got to wherever the finish line was because it was about 119 degrees and we were hungry - but they sound like the group of Radical Socialist Students or whatever that we briefly joined because I'm stupid and take things that people hand me, in this case their flag.

I think the day of the actual convention was the day 2.0 and I moved, if I'm remembering correctly.

... and looking at the protest photos, I see that I basically just retold the Communist Youth Brigade story verbatim. SMRT.

I am so bummed - the Beastles mashup wont work! Is it just me?

Which one? The one needs a bit torrent client-thingy, the other one, just right-click and save target as on your desktop or wherever. If you're doing it from the office, they may have a block on such chicanery.

Oh, you mean the page won't come up. I'd like to take credit for my readers destroying this guy's bandwidth, but that's unpossible. Either try again later or maybe the Beastie's lawyers finally found out about him. His main page is

http://www.djbc.net/

This is up in a few different places, but former Phillies catcher Darren Daulton says we're all going to disappear on December 12, 2012, because it is the last day on the Mayan calendar.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/13894089.htm

I was a big Daulton fan, merely because he played with Nails at the time, but he is a certifiable nut now... "It was 4 or 5 years [after that day in Wrigley Field] that I started seeing this other dimension." Better yet, "There was a horrendous car wreck on Interstate 75 outside Tampa in January 2001. He was arrested for drunken driving, but says that the truth is that he was intentionally run off the road because of a business deal with ties to the FBI and White House." How about locking him up and throwing away the key before he hurts someone. Why can't athletes just be normal when their careers end...in many ways they are more ridiculous than child stars.

That was Reggie's opinion, by the way.