Comic for Friday, September 30th, 2005

Posted: 7:35 am, Friday, September 30, 2005

Hey, welcome, welcome. I think we've got a good show lined up for you today.

We'll get things started with the completely insane Marty Markowitz, whom I've referenced in the past. He's the borough president of Brooklyn. I don't know what all comes with that territory, but, for Marty, it's largely a PR thing. He must be annoying as all hell for other elected officials in the city, because evidently he's been fighting City Hall for this sign. Which, frankly, is hilarious. I never drive over the Williamsburg, though, so I guess I'll never see it.

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is coming out soon, which would normally psyche me all the hell out (as it is probably even better than Peanuts, actually, as far as best comic strip of all time goes), except that I already own all the Calvin and Hobbes books, even the completely extraneous Lazy Sunday Book. But all is not lost, as Andrews McMeel convinced Bill Watterson to emerge from seclusion long enough to answer fifteen questions from fans. He's a less grouchy than he is for much of the 10th Anniversary book's commentary, and has a funny line about Calvin peeing on Ford logos, but he's a bit dismissive of webcomics. The guys at Yirmumah address that a bit more rationally than they address most things. I would think that Watterson would actually be all about webcomics and the freedom that they give, especially now that he's rich forever and doesn't even need to worry about popular acceptance and stuff, but I guess not so much.

I don't even remember how I found my way to this link, but here's a celebrity gossip blog that's reporting on a book party that Paris Hilton attended. Note the picture exactly to the right of hers - holy geez, it's the dude who asked 2.0 to the prom and then got shot down on national television! Evidently, his fifteen minutes have yet to expire. Inspired, I googled him, and came up with these three results: Jerry Ferris day at a Rochester-area golf course; a report on his whereabouts from a while back, including a link to a sadly nonfunctioning website; and the unrelated minutes of a zoning board meeting in Iowa.

And now a quiet interlude where I endorse some coffee before - ak, both my contacts just jumped out of my eyes.  What the hell was that?  OK, back.  I bitched about Starbucks and their not filling my damned coffee the other day, and I have taken action! No lazy American am I, content to put up with corporate douchebaggery on a personal level.  I had been going to the cafe in Coliseum, but they charge $1.86 for a small, relatively nondescript cup of coffee.  Pret is a bit better, $1.50 for a nice cup of organic Sumatra.  But a buck fifty is still a bit much for what's pretty much just a normal cup of coffee.  In the lobby of my building, there's a little deli that gets eighty-five cents for a cup of strong, kind of bitter, black coffee.  Not bad, but not great (the coffee - the price is fine).  Then, last week, I went into a coffee shop on 43rd St, which is right around the corner from my building, but when compared to 42nd St, it's basically a back alley.  Lo and behold, there's a coffee shop there that serves Green Mountain and gets a buck twenty-five for a small of any flavor you want.  OK, a buck twenty-five is still too much for a cup of coffee, but this is the best cost/quality compromise I've found yet.  I love Green Mountain coffee and these guys seem to rotate the flavors pretty dependably. The coffee shop is Crossings (I think), and they don't have a site, otherwise, they'd get some love.

The next link comes from the always-interesting Stacked. It's a very long article from the San Fran Chronicle about Pat Tillman, the guy who quit the NFL to join the Army Rangers and go to Afghanistan and got killed by fellow Rangers. The whole situation gets more screwed up with every passing piece of information that comes forth, and from the article, it's not unreasonable to conclude that a lot of the screwed-upness comes from pretty high up, possibly as high as good ol' Rummy. About four-fifths of the way down is some really interesting stuff, though. Tillman's favorite author was Noam Chomsky, and Tillman thought the war in Iraq was completely illegal. He evidently also built up a library for his fellow troops to read from while they had down-time, too. I wish that stuff had made it into the ESPN and SI articles about Tillman's death instead of the party-line patriotic stuff they included. Not that anything they said was untrue (to the best of their ability to detect - remember, the defense department lied about a ton of stuff in the Tillman case), but they really accentuated the Non-thinking Patriotic Ribbon-magnet side of things in a lot of their articles. It would've been nice if his anti-Bush views could've made the sports page, which, by and large, is a much more blue-collar place than the Sunday San Fran Chronicle.

And, finally, because it's an Irish football weekend, I've got to talk some football. Marco - who, like the similarly named Marty Markowitz, is completely insane - details the inverse relationship between Karl Rove's success and Notre Dame football's success. I absolutely love this entry. I just tried to type a summary of it, but why screw with Marco's work? It's perfect, read it. Even you, football-dodging 2.0. By the way, today's strip is for 2.0, who flips out whenever I point out someone who played at Notre Dame but is clearly not Irish (usually, the athlete in question is black) by saying "He's Irish." Oh, also, I don't know why, if it's because she started out kind of acting like my friend Lauren or what, but I've always kind of thought that Jen had a degree of Asian in her. I never mentioned it because I am a whitewhiteWHITE guy and doubt I could write with any sort of an Asian perspective on things. And then, for some reason, for this strip, I go ahead and have Jen be a quarter Asian. I have no idea why I did this. But there it is.

The squad goes down to West Lafayette to play in the ugliest stadium this side of Bowling Green tomorrow night. The most incompetent coach in the history of the known universe will be in the booth, which means I'll be watching the game either in a bar or I'll make Di turns the sound way down. I actually originally predicted a one-point victory for the Irish, but then I saw this shit. Have some pride, Purdue, will you? Irish by fifteen.

Irish, 42; Purdue, 27.

Go Irish, beat Boilermakers!

bullfrog

Don't forget, we get to see the World's Largest Drum tomorrow...

I thought Zahm built one a little bigger during a pep rally a few years back.

Shoot, sorry everyone - for some reason, none of the links pop. Lemme fix that up.

And now the pictures of Ross-Ade and Bob Davie aren't coming up. Ma-a-a-a-an.

http://www.purdue.edu/athletics/student_servic es/pages/athletic/rossade.html

http://www.freep.com/art/photogal/um3/um3_8.jp g

Marco also addresses the topic of Purdue's largest drum.

http://ndchoochoo.blogspot.com/2005/09/purdue- shame-shame-shame.html

Also, this guy has a great Purdue scouting report.

http://houserockbuilt.blogspot.com/2005/09/pur due-scouting-report.html

I was so worried about the 'stache at Pitt that I had forgotten about Purdue's array of mustaches.

I am *shocked* that Purdue's drum is not the World's Largest! What about the little toy train on the sidelines, is that still there?

Seems to be, yeah.

http://bluegraysky.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_blu egraysky_archive.html#112800023740526956

bullfrog:

are you an albany, ny dude? meaning, do you have roots in the capital district? i ask, just in the link for the calvin & hobbes boxed set, you linked it to a book store at stuyvesant plaza. there have been one too many coincidences between you and i! i was born in troy, love the smashing pumpkins, the bosox, live in windsor terrace, etc. small world! the bosox need to win 2 of 3 and hopefully cleveland botches up their weekend series. so in that case, let's go BOTH SOX!

I love it...

http://www.linuxpipeline.com/blog/archives/200 5/10/google_in_the_a.html

I'm liking it that your comic dudes are clearly hanging out in a Steelers bar. Good shit!