Comic for Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Posted: 12:00 am, Wednesday, May 27th

Strip yesterday, by the way, to make up for my absence last Friday. And I hope you dig this one. It's so nice, I'll post it twice, because I really dig the art, if I do say so myself, and I think I totally botched the script.

I was going for a watercolor effect, and I'm much closer than I have been, but I think I still have a way to go. I think this looks as much crayon-y or color pencil-y as watercolor-y, but it's the happiest I've been with any of my Photoshop strips. Look for the experimentation to continue in late June. Thirteen class days left!

I'm listening to a NewsHour segment from Monday, about the in-fighting going on with the GOP, and its future. Good news! They're not getting it. They think they're hated because of the hard decisions they've had to make while governing. It's mostly the bloody terrible, Constitution-crushing decisions that they've made. Keep deluding yourselves, assholes.

I would've written about this yesterday, but not enough interesting stuff happens in my life these days, so I need to pace myself. 2.0 and I went to Brighton Beach on Saturday, an ethnic neighborhood known as "Little Odessa" that is unlike anywhere else I've ever been in New York City. It's the closest I've ever been to Russia, that's for sure. "Gamers" in the audience may remember it from the opening quarter of Grand Theft Auto IV, it's where Nico started his rise to power. Little Odessa is just the weirdest freaking place. We hit the staples - or what I understand to be the staples - of M&I and Food Heaven, wandered past the National (we're discussing birthday festivities there), and hit up the Gold Deli, which sold us a large loaf of bread stacked with some sort of sausage? Or beef? I have no idea, but meat, and good meat, for $2.50. This site has a nice little walking tour, since I'm a tool and forgot the camera. It does, however, miss my favorite part. The street signs read "Brighton 5 St" and "Brighton 4 St." Now, non-Yorkers, the streets around here usually have the oridinal. I used to live on "17th Street," not "17 Street." And I certainly didn't live on "Windsor Terrace 17 St." The fact that Little Odessa is so much a foreign country that the DOT makes the signs differently for them - Chinatown doesn't get that consideration! - is just mind-blowing to me. I highly recommend the long B/Q ride for New Yorkers in the room (produce is cheap, if you need further jusitification). The last thing I took away from my trip to Brighton is that the Russians are incredibly cheery people. I have no idea how we were so pissed and scared of them for so long. Stalin! (Shakes fist.)

A week late with this, but here is Jon Stewart on Homeboy, No! DOMEboy!

Geez, that looks like a mess in Dreamweaver. Hope it works.

New Beasties on the way! They announced it on Jimmy Fallon. And called it Hot Sauce Committee. And I listened to a few tracks from To the 5 Boroughs the other day, and now I'm just getting depressed.

bullfrog

Bullfrog -- Wednesday, May 27 2009, 06:20 am

I wanted to post the box score from the KC Star to support the hometown paper, but their box score html leaves something to be desired. Check out Greinke's stats from last night - CG, 8K, 0BB, 1ER. And that still raised his ERA.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/boxscore.jsp?gid=2009_05_26_detmlb_kcamlb_1

Great article from the great Posnanski on Greinke today, too.

http://www.kansascity.com/180/story/1218310.html

My eternal gripe with Citizen Kane - the reporter spends the movie trying to figure out what or who Rosebud was, since it was Kane's last word - THE LAST WORD NOBODY WAS THERE TO HEAR.

That's a pretty big plot hole and it irks me to no end. Oh, and Casablanca has a romance centered around infidelity. I never could get why that was the choice of hopeless romantics when Ingrid Bergman sleeps with Bogart to get the letters of transit.

Best 80's flicks - Bull Durham? Blue Velvet? Raging Bull? Raiders of the Lost Ark? Princess Bride? Brazil? This is Spinal Tap? A Fish Called Wanda?

I'm just sayin'.

Zero

oh, and cool artwork. Very nice.

Zero

But she doesn't sleep with Bogart at all -- at least not while they're in Morocco. They kiss a bit, and she'd like to stay with Bogart, but as the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world (especially when you have a freedom fighter of a husband you need to inspire), she can't. And it's that "They want to be together but give it up for a higher cause" that makes it romantic.

Both strips today are great, Bullfrog.

Even after the Tigers scored their first-inning run, Greinke informed pitching coach Bob McClure that he was ready to go the distance, although there was one little shred of doubt.

"I told Mac, 'I think I should have at least a complete game today'.

I love it.

Wouldnt it be unwise to show Star Wars to our future alien overlords? For all we know they may have a death star and, after viewing lucas's masterwork, may simply destroy us lest a farmboy from kansas get his hands on an x-wing and go after them.

Just a thought, probably not a good one though. Regardless, dynamite one liner on pulp fiction

CK - IMHO, of course she sleeps with Bogart. They kiss, the scene goes black, and then you cut to Bogart smoking a cigarette. Given the era they certainly couldn't have shown the sex scene, but given the way they shot it that's not really much of a leap.

We had a great discussion about this in a film class once and the opinions were pretty much split 50/50 on whether they did or didn't. No right or wrong answer, really, but it actually got pretty heated between two people.

Zero

Clearly, I need to rewatch "Casablanca." Darn.

That's just general good policy, CK.