Comic for Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

Posted: 7:41 am, Tuesday, October 24th

Wait, what?! I thought this storyline was *Ron* getting a date? Awwwww, see what I did there? I totally flipped the script on you. Yep, I'm as unpredictable as a mislabeled candy bar. You're all like, "Yeah, Snickers. Come to papa." And you bite in and are treated to a total lack of peanuts. You've been Milky Way-ed like a sucker. Or a winner, if you like Milky Ways better. Which I do (if they're of the midnight dark variety).

The scary thing is, I haven't even been drinking tonight. By the way, bizarre picture to the left of this shockingly sparse Milky Way timeline (the candy bar, not the galaxy).

God dammit, I bought a shirt from Threadless last week.

Man, awesome postcards from the Edge over on McSweeney's yesterday. I especially like the part about the big heads during the ZooTV tour. While I actually really liked the concept of that tour, I do have a hard time believing that all four guys in the bar thought of that and not just, you know, the megalomaniacal one.

Oh, man, terrible news yesterday - rbally is going down, right before I gave it a permanent link over to the left. The archives will be up 'til Thanksgiving, and I really recommend scouring them. I've only been hitting the site the past few months, but I highly recommend Beck with the Flaming Lips, this Foo Fighters show from right before Colour and the Shape came out, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on their recent tour, and Wilco with some new stuff. But if you're just hitting one concert, this Wilco show from '97 is probably my favorite concert I've ever downloaded. Just rollicking. And I just now noticed some Bends-era Radiohead going on there. I'm going to have to scour this site before it goes the big A-way.

I know I throw around a lot of "this is the worst song ever," especially when I'm talking about the musical trainwreck that is the Black-eyed Peas, but I honestly think this new one from Fergie may be the lowpoint of 'popular' music. The ridiculous stop-starts around a minute or two in are topped only by the parts where she runs her voice through a synthesizer. Wow.

I love the Onion's fake editorial cartoons. The little guy down in the right-hand box making the extra pointed comment is priceless. And speaking of editorial cartoons, three of you e-mailed me the tour de force profile of Garry Trudeau from this past Sunday's Washington Post (the "WaPo" for people who are in a hurry, but I am working at a leisurely pace right now, so Washington Post it is). It is excellent, and highly recommended. I love Doonesbury and until I started reading a lot of history in the past few years, was where I got a good chunk of my knowledge of the 70s and early 80s from (you know, the parts post-WWII that you never get to in high school social studies because it's already late May and you need to study for the Regents exams)(or whatever your state's standardized tests were). Doonesbury in the early 70s was awesome. There's an excellent companion chat with the author of the article here, in which he addresses a few errors he made in referencing the continuity of the strip, and also gets flamed by a troll a few times. Fun stuff! Also, the chat is handily formatted into a single-page view, whereas the profile is four very short pages followed by a fifth page that takes about half an hour to read. Nice layout, WaPo. (See, now I'm in a hurry because that fifth page took up so much of my time.) I was depressed to learn that Trudeau is a Yankee fan, but cataloging the last 35 years of America's slide out of the heady days of the Civil Rights movement has to take its toll on one's soul, so I'm glad it manifested itself in Trudeau in an unfortunate choice of baseball clubs to support. There was also an interested throwaway line midway through the fifth page about how many strips only have three good years - this was accompanied by Grafe telling me to cancel his subcription for next year, when I hit the big three, uh, years. Well, fear not, because the qualifier was three 'good' years, and if you ever go through the early archives, you can pretty easily tell that my first year was pretty rough 'round these parts. So we're good for at least two more.

Man, the Montreal Wanderers sweater is pretty awesome. Although I do like the idea of the Kenora Thistles being a small-town team to win the Stanley Cup. That was from Uni Watch, who had an ESPN article yesterday that studied the evolution of the logos of both the Tigers and the Cards. As recommended as everything Lukas does. (But don't click on the last link, 15.)

(Speaking of ESPN briefly, Sports Guy has become not only a total effin' dick, but he's developed quite a knack for making terrible predictions in his NFL column. He actually did pretty well this week, but some of the points he makes are ridiculous.

By the way, who was the guy in your fantasy league who started discreetly offering Larry Johnson around this week and hoping that one of the other owners had been traveling out of the country since late-September? Mine was Mike McCullers.

Well, Mike McCullers is a horse's ass then, because Larry Johnson had 132 rushing yards and two touchdowns, and is carrying I Love Clay Aiken into a showdown for first place this coming weekend.

I don't know what's happening with Brian Westbrook's knees, but I do know this: Just hearing the words "microfracture surgery" would make me react like one of the poor guys who wakes up handcuffed to a radiator in the "Saw" movies.

Brian Westbrook on Sunday: 101 yards rushing, 113 yards and a touchdown receiving.

Anyway, this is the week that Raiders fans fully realize that their team passed up on a Sure Thing QB (Matt Leinart) to take a safety last April.

Matt Leinart is a sure thing, all right. FOR ME TO POOP ON. Sorry, that didn't make sense. But Matt Leinart's a douchebag, and so is Sports Guy. I'm rooting for his wife to kill him in their pick 'em contest.)

And, finally, the Voice put out its best of New York 2006 issue last week and I just finally remembered to link to it. This thing used to come out in December, I thought, but I saw some dude putting out the Christmas music at Best Buy last week, so I guess it's time for the year-end issues to start. I've been to almost none of the establishments listed in this issue, but I'm linking it for the hell of it, anyway. I have to remember to take my mom here sometime when she visits, as it's got a shrine to the Brooklyn Dodgers going on. Also, they name the always-loathesome John Sterling as the best sports announcer in New York (link NSFW - there's a picture of a girl with naughty nunchuks up top as this is part of their Sex and Sports category). That's so wrong that I'm surprised the paper they printed this damnable lie on didn't immediately catch fire. Since the link is a no-no, here's the text, with my edits:

The guilty pleasure is a way of life for fans of that capitalist toolbags that root for the New York Yankees Goat Fuckers. Veteran play-by-play man the always-loathesome John Sterling embodies the paradox of loving the super-rich franchise that made Johnny Damon jumped out of his Sox for and cut his hair all for a little bit more money. Long a shill for George Steinbrenner's evil plot to build a stadium near Penn Station at city expense, he still not surprisingly sounds all too sincer happy intoning the evil slogans "Fox News—we report, you decide" and "Indian Point—safe, secure, vital." But give him this; he collaborates respectfully and productively with tolerates the only play-by-play woman in the major leagues, Suzyn Waldman. Sterling's orotund tones are among the most physically compelling in sports, frequently inducing vomiting across the listening area; he goes down as easy as Bing Crosby Jenna Jameson. [Sorry, but it was right there, I had to take that one.] What's more, he knows baseball, and however often he says, "You gotta throw strikes" and "You can only hit it, you can't aim it," both bear repeating brutally fucking obvious. His home run calls—"Bernie goes boom," "Bern, baby, Bern,"and 1,300 ways to enthuse "The Yankees win!!!" are justly renowned incredibly lame. Honestly, 'Bernie goes boom?' And why not mention 'the Giambino!'? Oh, right, because Giambi's an inveterate cheat and a douchebag. And no TV mouthpiece would ever watch Nick Green wave at strike three and say, "That was the worst swing I've ever seen." Because they'd be too busy talking about the awesome Yankeeography on Scott Brosius that's following the game. You know, from back when the Goat Fuckers won titles. (Robert Christgau)

There, that's better. Should I have made the strikethroughs red, too? It was getting to be a lot of red.

bullfrog

I would have gone with green strike-thru. Whenever I read about the yankees (Goatfuckers in vernacular) I like to think about Christmas so I dont become enraged and angry. I goes like this...

Woods Eyes: Fucking yankees, whoremonger syccophants Woods Brain: Christmas is wonderful Woods Eyes: They got bitch slapped in the playoffs Woods Brain: CHRISTMAS CAME EARLY!! Wood: Yippee!!! Woods Cow-orkers: Quiet down Wood: Fuck you [wood runs into the parkinglot and pounds a beer while listening to Hall and Oates Greatest Hits]

My script was destroyed by the editing function.

I think we get the drift. I honestly can't believe the Voice went with the always-loathesome Sterling over Rose or Cohen from the Mets. I mean, you actually become more pompous just from exposure to his voice.

Is that the guy that goes "it is high, it is far, it is goooooone"?

My favorite is: "It is high, it is far, it is caught two steps shy of the warning track by Crisp. Well, you can't fault A-Rod for that."

for all you old school sci fi geeks: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/CylonOLantern

and yes, Sterling probably broadcasts wearing pinstriped undies. And he suck-diddly-ucks.

Zero

My favorite Sterlingism was when Bernie Williams was called safe on a play he was out on by a good foot and a half (I happened to see it before heading out to my truck), and after watching the replay several times Sterling said, "Well, I'm not going to say he was out, but I'm not going to say he was safe, either, heh heh." Tool. The only man who could make Phil 'I shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame' Rizzuto seem like an impartial broadcaster.

Zero

Well I was hoping for a better reception. Bummer. Regardless, are any of you Tenacious D fans and if so have you seen the trailers for their new movie.

I saw the trailer a few months back, yeah. I thought it looked pretty good. I like comic rock quests (Detroit Rock City, Bill and Ted's, Blues Brothers, stuff like that).

I also overheard some doofuses on the subway last night talking about "The Destiny of the Pick."

"Fifty-three *thousand* people. Can you *believe* that?"

"Fifty-three *thousand* people. Can you *believe* that?"

You just love that one, don't you?

Heh. I was in a little Irish bar in Newark Saturday afternoon and when Brady hit Samarzdja (I have no idea how to spell that) the place damn near exploded.

Zero

The radio call is floating out there on the internets - the Blue-Gray Sky has it set to some video - and the dude just goes nuts. "HE'S GOING IN!" Euphoria. I wish we'd knock it off, but, euphoria.