Comic for Friday, May 5th, 2006

Posted: 7:40 am, Friday, May 5th

Again, I greatly enjoyed drawing this strip. The favorite part I referred to yesterday is more obvious in this one, by the way.

So, hey, happy cinco de mayo! Suck down a Corona or a Tecate or a Dos Equis or a margarita or, if you feel like pouring a metaphorical 40 to Ana Lucia, a tequila and tonic. I've never heard of anyone drinking a tequila and tonic. I'm grabbing some sort of Mexican-themed drink at some sort of place after work and then crashing for my weekly Friday night sleep of the dead. Honestly, I used to go out on Friday nights? How did I manage that? Crikey. Thursday nights, I feel like dying of exhaustion.

By the way, speaking of Lost, you can evidently stream the full episode for free on ABC's site. Which is nice, given that they're trying to cash in on it in every conceivable way.

Gearing up for the big summer movie season, Pajiba lists the ten worst blockbusters of all time. I thought the list was bullshit when Armagaeddon didn't get number one, but then I saw the top film. Oh, yeah. They nailed this list. Something for everyone on this one.

Barroid Bonds goes to face the narstiest fans in sports this weekend. Should be fun for all!

More fun with YouTube, because it's awesome. Check out this absolutely bizarre line dance/rap Zelda ad from Japan. Obviously, Link is portrayed by a chick in this ad. Also obviously, upon being confronted with Ganon, everyone dances. Then there's this gem of an ad for Dragon Warrior. All my friends thought I was nuts for liking that game. Easily the biggest disparity between graphics and story of any NES game - not that the story was anything fantastic, but, God, those graphics. Oh, man, then there's this video of some lady beating the everliving shit out of her husband. My favorite is the cop car that drives up and decides to just keep going. Man, YouTube is fantastic.

Oh, E brought up the point about unwanted/unplanned children in poor families and I said something about Chomsky. The passage I was referring to wasn't from Hegemony or Survival, but rather Understanding Power, kind of a mix tape of Chomsky's lectures (which is *so* much more readable than his other books). I recommened Understanding Power highly, and am just going to rattle off the passage I was thinking of real quick, and then get on with the plug for 2.0's show.

In Sweden, mothers and fathers both get substantial parental leave to take care of their children, like a year or something - because taking care of children in considered something that has value in that society, unlike in the United States, where the leadership elements *hate* families.³ I mean, Newt Gingrich and the rest of these people may talk about supporting "family values," but they actually want families destroyed - because families are not rational from the point of view of profit-making.

...

...the Anglo-American pattern has been what [can be called] "a war" against children and families. And that's particularly been true in the last twenty years, because the so-called "conservatives" who took over in the 1980s, aside from their love of torture and misery abroad, also happen to be passionately opposed to family values and the rights of children, and have carried out social policies that have destroyed them.⁴

...

It turns out that contact time between parents and children has declined by about 40 percent in the United States since the 1960s - that means that on average, parents and children have to spend about 10 or 12 hours less time together a week.¹³ Alright, the effects of that also are obvious: it means television as supervision, latch-key kids, more violence by children and against children, drug abuse - it's all perfectly predictable. And this is mostly the result of that fact that today, both parents in a family have to put in 50- or 60-hour work-weeks, with no child-support system around to help them (unlike in other countries), just to make ends meet.¹⁴ And remember, this is in the 1990s, a period when, as Fortune magazine just pointed out, corporate profits are at a record high, and the percentage of corporate income going into payrolls is near a record low - that's the context in which all of this has been happening.¹⁵

The footnotes, in anyone cares enough to look them up, can be found here. As I said, not exactly related to what E brought up yesterday, but int'resting nonetheless.

I should lighten the mood some before kicking it to the plug. Um. Back in school, NBC 4 had what I liked to call the Drunk Student Rebroadcast on Saturday nights following home football games. Basically, they edited the NBC feed of the home games down to about an hour and a half and ran them at something like two in the morning, right about the time when parietals had everyone at Notre Dame trained to come home and pass out (non-Domers, especially non-Domers that went to a state school, are usually shocked to learn that not only are all the dorms at Notre Dame single-sex, but there's a curfew in place designed to kick the dudes out of the chick dorms at midnight during the week and two on weekends, and vice versa ladies and our dorms - this policy is strictly enforced and *shockingly* effective). I loved the Drunk Student Rebroadcast. Just when you get home from the bar or wherever, bam, more football on, and no girls around to complain that you're watching a game you actually attended several hours earlier. I don't know if they still have the Drunk Student Rebroadcast. The kids they let into ND these days are pretty friggin' lame half the time and are probably in bed by eleven, and also, eight years of craptastic football coached by Davieham are enough to kill just about any tradition. Hopefully the Robot Genius can get that back up and running. At any rate, though, I love the game threads at Human Goiter v. Sox Fan. After a Sox victory, there's nothing like scanning the thread for the highlights, with all the fans going nuts when good stuff happens. It's like the Drunk Student Rebroadcast except I'm sober, in a cubicle, and reading them. Aside from that, it's like the same damn thing.

OK, that wasn't especially amusing or anything, but it's at least put some distance between the Chomsky passage and my sign-off, which is all I was really hoping for. Hey! Remember! Monday, the show 2.0 is curating opens up at Pratt Institute. Check it out.

Now everyone go get their Mexican-themed drink on.

bullfrog

I think phantom menace should have taken the top spot simply because it made every male over the age of 20 when that film came out look back at their childhood and ask, was everything i believed in when i was a kid total bullshit? That movie provides the soul crushing answer of yes, absolute and total bullshit.

I was expecting either Phantom Menace or Armagaeddon, myself, but I had completely forgotten about Batman and Robin. I think the #2 of Big Momma's House is kind of stretching the term 'blockbuster,' but if it made $100, well, then... I got a kick out of how many Bruckheimer/Bay collaborations were on the list. Those two are friggin' terrible.

I'm almost positive this is Lenny Kravitz's song-writing method:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/5BrianGe ary.html

I can agree with most of the list, but it seems a little unbalanced. I also think he's stretching the term blockbuster a bit. Patch Adams? There are far worse movies out there than that. Van Helsing is the worst movie on that list by a decent margin, but there are still worse movies, like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Blade 3.

2.0's friend Ben is a pretty smart, artsy guy, who, because of his last name, was awarded free passes to Lowe's movie chains for the month of May two years ago (their 100th anniversary or 75th, or something). He saw Van Helsing and was ashamed to tell us. I myself haven't seen it, but I do remember the film Monster Squad that they referenced in the write-up of it. I loved that movie when I was nine. "I kicked Wolf-Man in the 'nards!" God, I was a stupid nine-year old.

i liked "the rock" - but mostly because sean connery can do no wrong in my eyes :)

I don't think I saw it.. But I can't imagine it being more ridiculous than Con-Air.

SO MUCH BETTER THAN CON-AIR. now that was just dumb :) (i'm very picky over my crappy movies.. hehe)

So, now we all know about Crownover's taste in crappy movies. So that's something.

SHUT UP! :)

speaking of movies.. i'm psyched for this one. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/arti cle_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002462572

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417148/ This could be the cinematic spectacular of summer 2006 and take the cake on the list. Who doesnt want to see Samuel L fight a snake.

But if we are talking about great movies that some people hate, I liked the rock too so kudos, I rewatched Tombstone last night. I had forgotten that Kurt Russell was pretty much stretched to the limit of his acting talent to play a cowboy that says 100 words in the whole film and that everybody and thier brother was in the film. ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108358/fullcredit s ) including Frank Stallone and a guy named Wyatt Earp who isnt Wyatt Earp. The best part is if you click on this mysterious Earp man he appears as Wyatt Earp I, how many Earps can there be in hollywood?

Gee, I've always thought people liked Tombstone. It's another one I've never seen, but..

I've never been too impressed with Kurt Russell. Possibly because I thought John Carpenter's the Thing was a tremendous let-down, but..

Did you notice that the credits for SoaP includes a puppeteer? I was rather hoping to see a snake wrangler instead.

Fear not, RAW, this lady's the animal wrangler:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1524975/

It is an awesome movie. Tombstone that is.

I think the key to getting an amazing performance out of Russell is to keep him silent or talking very slowly. Like Miracle where he just had to speak with a bad Minnesotan accent. Or Soldier... actually nevermind, even having Gary Buesy didnt make Soldier good.

All you ripping on Russell have clearly never seen Tango & Cash.

... the film featuring the grenade with the longest timer of any grenade ever made.

Anyone else find it interesting that Sen. Pat Kennedy is checking himself into rehab? He said he hadn't been drinking before he crashed his car the other day, and only took a sleep aid? Hmmm.....those Kennedys! I don't think they should be allowed licenses to operate any sort of vehicle or machinery.

Seriously, I just wish the Kennedys would stop embarrassing themselves with drinking and driving and leave that to the Bushes.

By the way, I forgot - Tree guessed it a few hours ago, "my favorite thing" about yesterday and today's strip is that the dude sitting next to Lissa keeps sneaking looks at her chest. I don't know why this amuses me so much, but it does.

I was just searching the world wide web and stumbled across this site. You people sure are silly. Any chance of working me into one of the comics?

Get that running back to commit and we'll talk.

Done. Marc Tyler will commit next Tuesday...

Clausen - quit hitting refresh.