From BIUL #2.
Tag Archives: comedy
Shitting Monsters
From BIUL #2.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions, Worst Of All
1941: The Illustrated Story
1941 is a not-very-good comedy from 1979, directed by a young Steven Spielberg. It has an all-star cast; John Belushi, Robert Stack, Slim Pickens, Ned Beatty, and Christopher Lee, just to name a few. The score, from the dependable John Williams, is rousing and bombastic, with a great send-up of Glenn Miller that plays before a “zoot-suit riot”. The movie is a farce about a small California town that descends into chaos when a Japanese sub appears off the coast, just after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The destruction effects, and Slim Pickens faking a forceful shit by chucking a boot in a toilet, greatly endeared 1941 to me as a boy, to the point where I drove my dad nuts with it. He knew it was a stupid, leaden bomb. I saw Dan Aykroyd with nylon hose on his head and oranges in his eyes screaming “I’m a bug”, and I lost my mind. Then I tried it myself one day, and I almost lost my eyesight. Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Magazine Rack, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All
My Back Pages
Print is important and always will be. Secret messages are sent on paper; on computers, they have to be heavily encrypted. This still doesn’t work as well as something that has to be photographed before someone burns or swallows it.
I’d call it a safe bet that money will always be printed, from elaborate etchings.
It is illegal in America to burn or otherwise destroy currency. Since 2000, new watermarks and patterns have been added, to make counterfeiting totally impossible. That’s how important these little rectangles of printed linen are. Continue reading
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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack
Career Immolation: A User’s Guide
They say there is no such thing as bad publicity. Of course there is, when the public asks;
“Whatever happened to that guy?”
And then the public remembers, “Oh yeah. That happened.”
(l-r:) Glenn Humplik and Tom Green, with one of Canada’s accursed “milk bags”. Hopefully I won’t be legally pressured to remove this photo.
In the late 1990s, MTV gave Canadian public access personality Tom Green his own show. It was a raucous, prank-filled half-hour wherein Green literally abused and humiliated every single person he encountered, while affecting an oblivious, addled mien. It was for the most part very funny. Continue reading
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Late To The Party, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All
I Forgot Altergott
Mea culpa. You know what? In all my apple polishing of cartoonists I admire, I’ve never mentioned Rick Altergott. What the fuck.
I even saw Altergott in person, at a MOCCA Festival years ago. I didn’t approach him, because his abilities as a cartoonist scare the bejeezus out of me. He’s got the touch that the old MAD guys had. He’s not only a caricaturist on par with Mort Drucker, he’s an inker like Wally Wood, with the gift for rendering faces and objects as though they exist in actual space. Continue reading
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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Idiot's Delight, Late To The Party, Magazine Rack
The Worst Comic Strip Ever
Every cartoonist has a cabinet full of failures. It’s part of the job. A maxim I live by is one an old writing partner told me:
They can’t all be golden.
That says “Headcheese”, in the “Cheese” font. I was being pedantic, not meta.
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Magazine Rack, Worst Of All
BIUL III: Turd Time’s The Charm
The third issue of BANDS I USETA LIKE MAGAZINE is NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE.
Unlike the first two issues, this one is 100% NEW MATERIAL.
For example: Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Magazine Rack, Site Stuff
The Sifl and Olly Show
A time slot on a major cable network is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you couldn’t ask for a larger audience. On the other, you’re the property of the company store, and you bend to their whim.
For example, MTV aired Beavis & Butthead, but to pad out the episodes to sitcom-length, they inserted music videos with Mike Judge doing commentary in character. At the time, I could appreciate the necessity of this, being that ink-and-paint animation takes time to create. Still, it was obvious that the idea was cribbed from MST3K, and much of the music was unlistenable, or not worth the mockery.
MTV pulled the same jazz when they aired the extraordinary sock-puppet comedy The Sifl and Olly Show, from 1997 to 1999.
Videotape artifacts are subconsciously comforting.
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Filed under Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club
The Extract Experiment
Videodrome, my local video store, often features used DVDs at clearance prices. There was a copy of Mike Judge’s Extract for $3. I’m a huge fan of Judge’s film and television, so I Netflixed Extract upon its release, and truthfully, I was underwhelmed. But a friend who also enthuses upon Mike Judge loved it, and $3 was just right to give it another chance.
What happens when a company has no idea how to market a film.
“I didn’t really get this one,” the clerk said as he rang up my purchase, “and I love his other stuff.” I told him a theory I’d read that Office Space was for the workers, and Extract was for the bosses, reflecting Judge’s ascent in the studio system. I also noted that Idiocracy was an impossible act to follow, and that it wasn’t well-received upon its (delayed) debut. I figured if I remained ambivalent about Extract, I could gift it to my friend.
After watching Extract for the second time, I decided to keep it. Continue reading
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Movies You Missed, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned
Helping Millennials Understand The Simpsons
The world is tough on young people, especially when there are forces trying to control them, often by coddling them. Every awkward feeling teenagers have is commoditized and acknowledged, no matter how insignificant. Their bad moods are notated with special emoticons. Their hormonal bullshit is all validated as worthy expression.
This gag’s humor outlived the technology that inspired it.
Coincidentally, almost everything sucks.
I make an effort to be unprejudiced about millennials, I really do. I refuse to become the stereotype of the old man screaming at the kids to get off his proverbial lawn. But you have to understand the frustration. 20 years ago, I had to argue with people my age who claimed Quentin Tarantino was God. Now I’m dealing with the children of those people. Continue reading
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Late To The Party, Nostalgic Obsessions, Unfairly Maligned
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