Hey, what if BeaucoupKevin wore glasses?

Dinner at The Midwest Grille, home of the meat on a stick that never stops: $23.00 plus tip.

Drinks at Bukowski’s, trying three different way-awesome beers that you had the waitress write down? $25.00

Singing “Zombie” by The Cranberries with your drunk friends very very loudly? Priceless.

Now, if only somebody had a copy of “Debaser” by the Pixies that I could crank very very loudly.

File Under: So, The Big Dog Made A Speech…

When I was in office, the Republicans were pretty mean to me. When I left and made money, I became part of the most important group in the world to them. At first I thought I should send them a thank you note – until I realized they were sending you the bill.

Everyone had to sacrifice except the wealthiest Americans, who wanted to do their part but were asked only to expend the energy necessary to open the envelopes containing our tax cuts. If you agree with these choices, you should vote to return them to the White House and Congress. If not, take a look at John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats.

Damn, Bill’s still got it. My favorite bit is this, though…

During the Vietnam War, many young men — including the current president, the vice president and me – could have gone to Vietnam but didn’t. John Kerry came from a privileged background and could have avoided it too. Instead he said, send me.

Now that Clinton’s operating without a personal agenda, he’s going to be the most dangerous weapon Kerry’s got in this race. While the Republicans keep talking about the liberal elite sipping lattes, you have a veritable litany of reasons why They’re Wrong and We’re Right embedded in the most dramatic speech I can recall since Kennedy’s “The Cause Endures” speech at the 1980 convention, which was the first time I paid attention to politics. (I was six at the time, an impressionable age.)

(Oh, and if this homophobic marriage amendment hits the constitution, I want to start a movement to repeal the 22nd amendment and put Bill back in office. Who’s with me?)

More Outrageous Comics Industry Rumors

Scott Kurtz of Player Vs Player ate a bug once. Just because he could.

Mark Millar was once ejected from a live studio audience of a Friends episode in New York for repeatedly asking Matt LeBlanc to “bend over and give us some arse cleavage, you hunk of man!” in a loud voice that sounded remarkably like Dame Edna. Two weeks later, security kept him out of a Will And Grace taping.

Devil’s Due has a new property from the 80s in the pipeline – look for a Jayce And The Wheeled Warriors revival with plots and editing from J Michael Straczynski.

Warren Ellis’s Marvel Exclusivity deal? It’s something they strapped him with after he broke down crying on the phone with Joe Quesada while begging for Ultimate ROM: Spaceknight with Stuart Immonen on pencils.

Found Freur’s album Doot-Doot very cheap today. God, they looked silly, Karl (in the red) and Rick (to his immediate right)…

Thank god they went and got themselves pretty, eh?

Matt sent me this excellent link under the heading “Art Everyone Can Enjoy.” I do believe he’s right. Screw Norman Rockwell, this is what we need.

When Lynn and I ride around in her Jeep, we listen to college radio. Usually, because of the time-of-day we choose to hang out, it’s “Rockers,” which is a fine program full of reggae and dub. Yesterday, though, there was a program on which played, in this order, The Seatbelts, Senor Coconut, and Goldfrapp.

That was pretty cool.

I think I’m going to have to buy Top Shelf as I keep buying their stuff! Yesterday, three books came out under their label: American Elf: The Collected Sketchbook Diaries of James Kolchaka, Carnet de Voyage by Craig Thompson, and combining these two indie comics heavyweights, Conversation. All are worth checking out, and Thompson’s done the impossible – he makes me think that a trip to Paris may not be so bad. Huh.

Some dude’s giving me the evil eye and coughing loudly as I’ve been on this computer at the library about a minute longer than I should be. (The girl before me was on for 8 minutes longer, but did I act like a cockhead? No! I want that noted in my permanent record.)

File Under: Apologies to Rich Johnston and Keef

 

Outrageous Comic Industry Rumors that we plan to perpetuate…

 

Alan Moore once shaved Grant Morrison’s body completely nude and smoked the collected hair for the next three years for its psychoactive properties.  The visions experienced led to Promethea.

 

Jim Lee has wanted to draw Superman since a man in a Superman costume told him his mother was hurt and to get in the van to go to the hospital to see her.  He was finally rescued, six weeks later, from the basement of Carmine Infantino’s brownstone in New York where he’d been held as a “Malaysian love slave” despite his Korean origin.

 

Brian Michael Bendis and David Mack still wince whenever you use salad tongs near them.  This apparently has something to do with a “party trick” that Eric Larsen showed at every Image hospitality suite during the ’02 season.

 

John Buscema’s desire to draw Thor and Hercules came from his love of a bar in Manhattan called Nutshakers!, located just inside the Village.

 

More will be forthcoming.

I just wrote a massive entry that got sent into the ether, never to return. Alas!

The key point was to make sure I managed to work in a quote by New York Massachusetts (thanks, Maggie! I must have had New York Times on my mind as that was the source) Uber-Gay Congressman Barney Frank: “I believe most people aren’t as homophobic as they were raised to believe they are.”

(It also said some nasty things about Mitt Romney at the National Press Club luncheon, stated that we should all probably read What’s The Matter With Kansas, and may have included inflammatory remarks about the Republican party.)

Hey, the Hulk’s diary made it to BoingBoing.

If you’re a comic-buying nerd, you know the weeks I’m about to talk about. You wander into your shop and you think “Hey, it’s going to be a light week!” after glancing at the wall and seeing none of your regular titles in the new releases section and you then see one of the proprietors pulling out a stack of trade paperbacks. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

“Oh, shit.” You might say, if you’re like me and you don’t have a job and yeah, you worked a few hours at the shop this week and it’ll cover a big chunk of it but what the hell is that oversized beast at the bottom?

That oversized beast is the well-worth-your-money Two Sisters by Matt Kindt (who did the art on the excellent Pistolwhip graphic novels.) A fascinating, cerebral, and beautifully-done tale of a woman who finds herself a spy in World War II, this book is one of the best things I’ve read all year and the gorgeous production values hurt it not at all.

Also from Top Shelf was a collection of David Yurkovich’s self published Less Than Heroes. An interesting look at superheroes that suffers from bad proofreading and developing art, Less Than Heroes is a nice alternate to the universes that DC and Marvel present to you.

Oni put out The Tomb from DeFilippis and Weir, who’ve become two writers I’ve come to expect good things from and art by Christopher Mitten, who disappoints in the digest-sized format presented with here. The concept is that a hot Harvard doctor in archaeology who’se been recently fired due to some anti-war activities in Iraw is enlisted to invade an old New Englad manor that’s decked out like an Egyptian tomb, complete with traps, undead spirits, and all the accoutrements a pharaoh could want. This is a good, solid story with the deft characterization I’ve come to expect from the writers, but that art is a big distraction for me.

For the July 4th Holiday, I did the most patriotic thing I could think of that didn’t involve actually going to the massive fireworks show on the waterfront. I watched GI Joe: The Movie. It is, without a doubt, the Citizen Kane of Animated Movies Based On A Toy Property In Which The Safety Of The World Is Threatened By A 40,000 Years-Dormant Race Of Snake People.

The best part of the DVD for the movie is the complete inclusion of all the original Public Service Announcements. It’s creepy, how the team always happens to be around when kids are about to do Stupid Shit. One could almost come to the conclusion that they’re hanging out at schoolyards in a black van when not fighting COBRA.

(Nerd moment – the Denizens of Cobra-La seem to be the inspiration for the Yuuzhan Vong that populated the recent New Jedi Order series of Star Wars books. They are purely biological when it comes to their technology and view inorganic works as “heresy.” Serpentor uses the snakes on his shoulder in the exact same manner as they do their amphistaffs. Don’t even get me started on the animals being used as ships and giant destructive worms, which was what jogged my attention.)

Yesterday, I was at Anna’s, picking up a burrito before wandering into Comicazi to perform the shoply duties that they occasionally pay me to do. I was clad in a Superman shirt featuring the familiar S logo and the guy behind the counter says “Hey, Superman! What do you want, man?”

“Shouldn’t that be Ultrahombre?” I asked him.

“Sure, man! You can be Ultrahombre and I’ll be Julio Olsen!”

My mom’s mother died on Friday afternoon. My brother made his usual Friday At Four call to her place and she didn’t answer. As she really wasn’t able to drive and was rarely seen running down the street aimlessly, he called her next door neighbor and asked them to look in on her. They looked in and found her on the bed I’d spent many an afternoon reading on in my youth. She died during her afternoon nap, which is somewhat comforting, at least to me. She was fragile, in her 80s, and had basically been waiting for death since my grandfather passed on in the mid-90s.

I’ll not be at the funeral, which is hard, but apparently it’s going to be a 20 minute affair, same as her husband’s, which she didn’t even get out of the car for. I’m sure she’d say she doesn’t want me to feel put out – she was that considerate of everyone else. (My brother, on the phone just now, said that she liked as little fuss made as possible over her, so she’d have appreciated dying in her own bed, not in the middle of a store or crowd.)

I’ll miss you, Mom Morris. You were far too wonderful to this underappreciative brat and the pompous man he grew into. At least my mom can now safely claim to be the best cook in the world – shitty way to move up the ladder, though.

Sasha’s new one, Involver. Yeah, you need to get it. Deep groove into funky “progressive” sounds with an unerring sense of melody. It’s nice that he’s managed to stay the course in a dance scene liberally splattered with cookie-cutter acts making shit for Abercrombie And Fitch CD samplers. This is the first “dance” CD I’ve bought in months, oddly enough.