Comic for Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006

Posted: 7:45 am, Wednesday, February 22nd

Oh, Ron, you dummy. Sorry if Kelly's wallpaper is scalding your retinas - I get a little bored with Ron's apartment walls every once in a while. I figure Kelly must be the first tenant after an elderly lady in an apartment somewhere.

Diesel Sweeties has a friggin' sweet shirt available right now of the happiest radish in the world.

It’s rare that I stumble across a Peanuts strip that I haven’t seen yet, but this one is new to me. Schulz was probably the first one to break the fourth wall with much regularity, even if he did it in subtle ways (usually through Snoopy's inner dialogue). This is one of the most surreal ways I've seen him do it, though. Anyway, this strip will be in the next Fantagraphics book. Evidently a quarter of the new book has never been reprinted – sweet. By the way, look at those Fantagraphic covers... Not one of the characters has appeared looking happy yet. Pig-Pen alone is not distraught, and even he seems ill at ease.

Speaking of sweet books reprinting old comics, the Voice reviews a Little Nemo collection and the World on Sunday, which I've already seen out and about. Both of these books look outstanding, and hopefully they stop printing Little Nemo on platinum or whatever the hell is causing it to go for $325 right now, because I've always wanted a good collection of that. Also, Little Nemo was a great Nintendo game. Probably the only one I beat on the 8-bit and for some reason could never duplicate that feat on the Nesticle.

Remember the Screech online chat in the Post from about a year ago or so? This is not nearly the tour de force that one was, but it's amusing nonetheless - Vanilla Ice speaks. I like the part where he played to 35,000 in Russia now that they’re out from underneath the Iron Claw (of the Steel Curtain, I guess).  I was at a shitty Texmex restaurant on the East Side a month and a half ago – he was playing there the next Friday for a ten dollar cover that got you two Budweisers.

One of my buddies at the office found this site where dudes send in photos of their beards. I had a beard for two weeks back in late summer of 2003, it looked more or less like this one, because I can't grow a mustache to save my life. Why I grew a beard a few weeks after starting to date 2.0 is utterly beyond me, but, yeah. Anyway.

Gawker is all over the dude that wrote the article about my neighborhood bar the other day. I don't believe they're big fans.

Man, I don't remember this book appearing in Lost, but evidently it's flying off the shelves because of a brief appearance.

Two brief notes before the something special I promised yesterday (and you thought I forgot!). The chick in the Toyota ads with the really good enunciation - is she pregnant? I can't tell. Also, before the Olympics came on on Sunday was the ever-fascinating Daytona 500. NASCAR is not a sport, I think we can all agree on that. It's a competition, yes, but not a sport. Anyway, so I tuned in by accident to the post-race interviews, and they were tremendous. Good ol' boy after good ol' boy talking about whatever may've happened when they were driving and turning left a lot for the past few hours. The winner's speech was hilarious - he threw it out to "the haters of the 48 team." Um, OK. Between him and a couple of the other Southerners bitching about who crashed into whom and who cut off whom, it was like the Confederate version of the 50 Cent-Game beef from back over the summer. Anyway, I was going to link to it, but you need IE, and I use Firefox. You can watch a bunch of the interviews here.

OK. So, anyway, you've probably noticed a lot of the strips are more story-oriented lately. I ran a week of gag-a-days or whatever a few weeks back, but I've got a bit of a direction I'm trying to get things to in a certain timeframe right now. This, unfortunately, cuts into anything I want to do that's timely at all. So, today, I'm debuting a new feature that will pop up from time to time. I'm calling it Five and Dime. When I'm in the middle of something and I come up with a strip I want to run immediately (because sometimes if I wait to draw an idea at all, it get diluted a lot by the time I get to it), the immediate strip will run in Five and Dime. It'll help me keep things moving along, and also give me a chance to draw with pen and ink more often. Oh, right - it's going to be done in pen and ink. Ink, I guess 'pen and ink' is redundant. Anyway, without further ado, the premiere of Five and Dime:

Now wasn't that something? I don't know how often this is going to appear - I only have one other strip planned, probably for Friday.. I had to kind of rush today's, too, I'd expect the art to normally be a bit tighter than this - never all that polished, because this is more or less just going to be a fun thing, but I'll at least get a pen I can control better (possibly just a Bic or something, actually). The point is loose and easy. Like your mot - sorry, channeling Pete there. Dear God, is my writing sometimes illegible. Let me know if anyone has a hard time reading it.

Irish basketball: Infuriating.

Alright, that's all for today.

bullfrog

so...how does that break the 4th wall?

That Peanuts strip? I guess technically it really doesn't, but making fun of Charlie Brown for always wearing the same shirt is kind of displaying an awareness that the characters are in a comic strip, no?

well no, because he could just be the sort of kid who wears the same shirt every day. Also, they're not making fun of charlie brown for wearing the same shirt...they ALL wear the same clothes each day. They're just using the shirt to take on his personna and make fun of his gloomy nature.

A side note: I knew a kid that carried around a rubber snake everywhere he went. I'm sure there's some Freudian reason I don't want to know about, but seriously...for years that kid carried around that snake. So, you know...it happens.

I guess sure, that they all wear the same shit each day is weird enough to point out the fact that this may indeed be a strip we are looking at. I think you still could achieve the same idea in your strip too, even though the gang changes outfits regularly. Like jen's glasses, Ron's sideburns/sox gear, lissa's martini glass, or pete's...swearing.

Also, I mean, if I wanted to make fun of...say you...in real life this could easily be achieved through similar means, like say...with ugly hat. Not that I would ever allow ugly hat to touch my head...

I like five and dime by the way.

I do find it funny that C-Brown refers to himself in the 3rd person. That's not explicitly 4th wall, but it's gotta count for something.

The missus is working with Ebola this semester. This made me think of when Grafe would lie on the grubby yellow couch and cough for 72 consecutive hours.

OK, if not fourth-wall breaking, I guess it's meta-humor or something.

And I have done what you mentioned there...

http://www.fivebuckstofriday.com/archive/archi ve102904.html

Grafe - the only person I know who lofted a single for the express purpose of fitting a couch in the room.

Also: Have thought of several alternate titles for Five and Dime. Perhaps I will save them for when I expand to a strip, a hand-drawn strip, and a strip etched on a cuneiform tablet each day.

Yeah, I was thinking about that strip as I wrote that... though I guess pete seems to think ron is the one that swears alot.

I have seen a few mentions here that things are *not* sports. While I personally avoid NASCAR, I have to admit that according to dictionary.com, it is in fact a sport:

1. Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively.

or for those more cynical:

4. An object of mockery, jest, or play

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sport

So, playing cards and Trivial Pursuit are considered sports? Yay! I can call myself an athlete, now!

This is the 8th anniversary of ebola. I remember because i watched all of the winter olympics coverage that year while dying on the couch.

in other news, gas was $1.74 in south carolina, so if you're in the area, rent a tanker.

in other other news, we were in biloxi over the weekend. it looks like a bomb went off there. i can't even imagine what new orleans looks like.

NASCAR remains un-sported in my eyes, E, sorry.

People, people, we're ignoring the important thing here - the chick in the Toyota ad. Pregnant?

Random, but consider this site to be my best shot at an answer, as my co-workers are failing miserably. Is there a name for the salty snacks you sometimes get for free at a bar, besides just "bar snacks"?

I made a very cursory effort at finding the answer on the interweb, MJL, but they remembered I have a ton of work to do. Plus, I got side-tracked at the wikipedia entry for pork rinds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_rind

I love the new tags that are showing up all over Wikipedia... "It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with crackling." Note the passive voice? Who's doing all this suggesting? There are also quite a few about the neutrality of various articles (see Howard Zinn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn). But, hey, I'm still confident Wikipedia cannot be controlled by anyone and find comfort in that.

Pork rinds really disgust me, and I'm a pretty good carnivore.

Nice article in today's Slate on Condi's request for $75 mil to promote democracy in Iran. I thought at the time, "What would the Bushies do if the EU approved funding to promote democracy in America? They'd go nuts," and wondering why we'd expect Iran to do any differently. So did this guy.

http://www.slate.com/id/2136720/?nav=tap3

That thing on pork rinds was pretty rad, though did you notice when the tone changed from neutral to lauditory? Seems someone particularly likes the pickled sort.

I was tempted to hit the link to beer, but feared that would end all of my productivity for the day.

I like the disambiugation link on beer. Now I can be very clear on all the separate meanings of beer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_%28disambigu ation%29