Comic for Monday, April 7th, 2008

Posted: 8:00 am, Monday, April 7th

I looked up the Natural plot as a refresher (I couldn't remember if he was shot or stabbed) for this strip, and, Goddamn, the book sounds like a fucking downer. Oh, and, God, to get that screen cap of Elevator Action in the third panel, I had to play some awful Flash interpretation of the game and do a screen cap and crop it down in Photoshop and livetrace it in Illustrator... What a pain. And now I realize I should've 3D-ed it a bit to make the screen bulge out. Crap.

Pourin' a 40 for Charlton Heston at Five Bucks World HQ. Sure, he was totally batshit from about '92 on (I believe it was his agreeing to appear on SeaQuest DSV that was the beginning of the end), and I'm not sure how much we can blame on the Alzheimer's (the "cold, dead hands" came before he said anything about his illness, so I'm not sure). But, I mean, damn - the Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green... There's a lot of excellence in there. And then the gun stuff.

From the matinee idol of years past to the one of today, we saw Leatherheads last night, and it was pretty good. Not great, but thoroughly entertaining and a pleasant way to spend two hours. (Also, set a new record for movie prices - Kip's Bay is charging $11.25 these days, holy fuck. We had gift cards, though.) Anyway, observations from Leatherheards - there are definitely times in the film where Clooney's character melts Zellweger's character's heart just with a dreamy gaze, and the audience buys it because the audience's heart is also melting. Zellweger should only play women with moxie from the 1920s, because she owns that. And that's about all I have. I dunno, it's a total DVDer if you think $11.25 is absurd, which it is.

Also ate at some good pizza place, Totonno's, which is evidently legendary and I had never heard of before yesterday. We went with the plain, which is how you should judge this stuff, and it was excellent. A thin but extremely substantial crust, delicious sauce, and very nicely singed cheese. Good stuff.

I love the bit at the end of this FJM about the umpire getting hit. That's hilarious. Tough start for the Sox. Julio Lugo sure did impress yesterday! We seem to be losing free cable channels on a daily basis, now, and the HD TBS went away yesterday. So not only were we getting a fuzzy distorted picture of the Sox kicking the ball around, but we had Buck Martinez in the booth, who called a Toronto game almost as impartially as Buck and McCarver call a St. Louis game. There were three glaring errors I heard in the first five minutes, but I can only recall two, "Manny Ortiz," and when Manny (the real one) ripped a ball into the gap, he goes, "And Manny gets a hit! And maybe more than one!" Nope, Buck, even if Manny gets to second, it still only counts as one hit.

Yeah, so that's about it. Battlestar was good but not great, I thought, although the space battles were some of the best they've ever had on that show. I was glad that the weird circle-y ship held tough, I was afraid it done got blown up.

bullfrog

skt -- Monday, April 7 2008, 08:14 am

omg - we had totonno's on friday. i agree - good stuff.

The movie version of 'The Natural' and the book pretty much have the name of Roy Hobbs the same, and not much else. It's a very, very dark book. Hobbs is not a nice guy.

Starbuck is so homely it's distracting.

Zero

"Good but not great" is my thoughts exactly. I liked the shot of the battle-damaged ring ship limping along (at least that's my name for it) after the battle.

But here's a big thumbs up for Casey Affleck's total show-stealing performance in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Crow Ford". The film's a bit long and much less action than "3:10 to Yuma", but still a good one.

Easy on Starbuck, Zero. I don't think she's homely at all! But then I'm a pretty unabashed Starbuck groupie....

How does it compare to Sal & Carmine's?

Different. For one, they don't do slices. For two, I was never as big on Sal and Carmine's as you, so I don't think my opinion will do any good. Thirdly, you usually don't care about my opinion, anyway.

"For two, I was never as big on Sal and Carmine's as you." You're lucky I live 733 miles away from you right now.

Why don't you just tell me you hate my mother while you're at it?

You totally google mapped your apartment to Brooklyn, didn't you?

I think I was just jaded by the proximity we were to the pizzeria with the slices the size of my torso. I am not refined, you know this.

You'll be happy to know, I *am* rooting for the Jayhawks tonight.

I had my first-ever (somehow) knish for lunch today. Hot damn, that was yummy.

what's a knish?

It's like a dough pocket of potato (the one I had, anyway).

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

They're big in the Polish and Russian areas around here, and also evidently the Jewish areas. As I said, mine was potato-based, with some spicy mustard. A well-spent buck fifty.

ah, kind of like a periogi (however you spell that)

Hm. Yeah, kind of, I guess, although I've had a ton of pierogi and didn't even think of one while I was eating my knish. Pierogi are usually fried (or boiled, according to this article), and knishes always look like little square pouches, baked, evidently.

http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2008/mar/10/0310_knish/

Hat tip to the Daily Gazette, Schenectady's finest. Oi, Schenectady. Not a nice place.

Did you go to the Knishery on Houston near 1st Ave? I love that place.

Nope, the bagel shop near our place that we swung you by that one time. Was getting cold cuts and didn't feel like making myself a sammich for lunch.

There's a New York Deli shop out in Columbia, MO (the owners were from Queens, apparently lost everything because of 9/11 and decided to move out here) that makes wonderful cheese, spinach, and bacon knishs. (Yes, bacon. The spinach knish is very good.)