Tag Archives: 1998

God Lives Underwater

Twenty years ago, I drew the first batch of Bands I Useta Like strips.

Twenty years ago.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Girls of BIUL, Magazine Rack, Thousand Listen Club

PaRappa the Crapper

Long ago, in the Before Times, I was dating a woman with a very young daughter. I had not yet gelled as an artistic entity, and was in the process of learning that I’m really not cut out to be a father, even a surrogate one. This became apparent on two occasions. Both were attempts on my part to make a connection with a kid. Both failed hilariously.

The first was the purchase of a “children’s book”. I spent hours at Books-A-Million (down the block from Media Play) hunting for just the right one. It had to be colorful, clever, and not condescending. I refused to buy anything “kiddie”, on principle. It had to be something that enticed, thrilled, and sparked the imagination, like the books I read in my grade school library.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Thousand Listen Club

The Final Time-Out

I was banned from Facebook for 24 hours. I guess I shared a .gif of bouncing boobies with my friend, on a private page. I don’t know or care, to be honest.

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Go ahead, pull up Zuckerberg’s terms of service. Point out the exact fine print where it says titties are bad for social media. Tell me I’m on someone else’s digital property. Then print those terms out, roll them up, and shove them up your mother’s pussy. Sideways. Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Site Stuff, Worst Of All

Marilyn Manson

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned, Worst Of All

Soul Coughing

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All comics I produced from 2006-2008 were written and drawn during the production of my movie, John’s Arm: Armageddon. I jumped the gun by putting a “release date” on my shirt in the opening panel. Here’s why.

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Thousand Listen Club

Why I Love Jar Jar Binks

As the venerable Star Wars imprint slowly transforms into an empowerment series for little girls who wear costumes and bitter old fanboys, one of my favorite aspects is being scrubbed from the narrative:

Weird, stupid aliens.

He attempts to eat that dead monster.

He attempts to eat that dead Woodring monster.

I’ll never comprehend the segregationist nature of the “Star Wars fan”. Watching the fandom dismiss George Lucas, the creator of everything they care about, has been like observing a schism of zealots. Since general audiences weren’t born in the 80s, when ripoffs of Star Wars abounded, they gladly accepted a ripoff from J.J. Abrams.  Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned

“Tunak Tunak Tun”

I’ve admitted before that I am not fond of the medium of “music video”. I have observed it from its infancy; I lucked out and happened to be present when MTV started broadcasting in summer of 1981. If you enjoy being awkwardly sung to by a band, or like to be teased with sleazy, half-naked sluts, MTV was your White Knight, bubby.

Everyone wants to break into the movies, so it’s easy for a coked-up director to cajole an otherwise sensible group into painful, cringe-worthy antics. Then another director would react by crafting the most pretentious, arthouse video possible, all long takes and black-and-white aesthetics. “They’re like mini-movies,” say the line-toers, ignoring that music videos typically appropriate and condense everything meaningful about film. Some people will say anything to promote their clients.

But like Tijuana Bibles and Bumfight videos, there is still a vein of good under mountains of terrible. For every ten thousand glamor-shot videos of the latest solipsistic pop bimbo, there is one that reminds you why the medium exists in the first place. Maybe it’s not merely a quick-and-dirty promotional tool; it is like a “mini-movie”.

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Filed under Faint Signals, Late To The Party, Thousand Listen Club

Hate Proof: Adam Ant’s “Goody Two Shoes”

You probably won’t believe this, but when I was a stage actor in the late 90s, I hung around with an actual carny. A guy who really did run off to join the circus as a kid, name of D.C.; a character so colorful, the memories seem like legends. We used to cruise the streets of Savannah in his gigantic box truck and pick up chicks. It was every bit as great as it sounds. Who amongst you can say you’ve been a carny’s wingman?

I have no idea where D.C. went after the century’s turn. Probably somewhere fun and awesome, relatively close to a beach or a circus. Backstage when we were castmates in a production of Brendan Behan’s The Hostage, he would signal an impending night of debauchery by singing “pound note, pound note.”

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Hate Proof: Vengaboys’ “We Like To Party”

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Imagine yourself sprawled on a nameless battlefield, exhausted, gasping your final breaths into the mud. The air is thick with the scorched smell of spent artillery and the moans of the dying. How long before help arrives? Is it even coming? All you hear is the distant whistle of a locomotive, as it slowly approaches with detached menace.

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They’re coming to round up the survivors, you think as you squint into the hazy distance. The end is near. Best hope that it’s merciful when it comes. Surely this must be the onset of madness, brought on by impending extinction. The stench of carnage gives way to the comforting scent of… cheese pizza? Ice cream sundaes? Funnel cake? Continue reading

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Freedy Johnston

Freedy Johnston is a New York-based singer/songwriter who was born in Kansas. His lyrics are articulate and literary, and of a quality not heard since the days of Gordon Lightfoot and Laura Nyro. He has been called “a songwriter’s songwriter”, and his work has been featured in movie soundtracks, most notably Kingpin(1996).

Sweet merciful mother of god, his songs are sad.

Not pictured: Freedy Johnston.

Not pictured: Freedy Johnston.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Girls of BIUL, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee