Category Archives: Bad Influences
The Cranberries
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Worst Of All, Zappalogy
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
“Rappin’ Rodney”
You can offend a rapper the same way you can offend a cartoonist; by implying that their career “looks easy”. Cartoonists must compete in the public eye with Internet doodlers who draw in their ample free time, and rappers have to battle the false impression that they’re just boopity-bopping over a beat loop.
Before hip-hop and rap were widely understood, they were exploited as “novelty” records; a passing trend, not something that would dominate and rend asunder every other type of fucking music on earth. Rap was not a “lifestyle”. It was a fad, like the hula hoop and the Twist. So, like many other musical fads before it, rap became a haven for bad comedy.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All
Soul Coughing
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
Air Raiders
Previously, I remarked upon how those of us who were children in the 1980s “knew disappointment by name”, thanks to the deluge of new toy lines leaping at us from store shelves, most of them doomed to two-year lifespans and discount-bin futures. Companies were just beginning to learn how the lack of a Saturday morning cartoon could put an ugly dent in their profits. The hunt was on for the next best gimmick, the hook that would bring in the kids and establish the next He-Man or GI Joe. Not coincidentally, those lines were also infusing gimmicks circa 1987 in a losing battle to stay on top.
Transformers, arguably the decade’s most popular toys, were expensive to produce. The supply of repainted robots that comprised the line’s first few years had run dry, leaving Hasbro no choice but to design the toys themselves, an extra step that was not only also very expensive, but resulted in the far simpler Pretenders and Firecons. Few, if any, will argue that either was a high point in quality. For the uninitiated: Firecons used the same sparking mechanism as Doc’s DeLorean from Back To The Future, and that was a Happy Meal toy. (It was recalled because “kids” could chew off a rear tire and choke on it, not because of the sparks as you might assume. I have two of the worthless things.)
So it was that in 1987 Hasbro began to try some new tricks. Here is but one example of something they threw at the wall with the greatest effort, and try as it might, it just didn’t stick. Ladies and gentlemen of the Internet, I give you Air Raiders.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish
Eagles
From my understanding, it’s just “Eagles”, not “The Eagles”. Remember how in the 80s, the woman in charge of the LEGO Company put little messages in every box, asking consumers to say “LEGO bricks and toys” instead of “LEGOs”? Yeah. Good luck.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club
Animation Analysis: The Transformers: The Movie
For the past ten years, one Rhode Island company has made me so deliriously happy, I’ve considered corporate personhood, so I could ask for its hand in marriage.
Hasbro.
They even threw in a rubsign. Hasbro is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
2006 was the year this little toy company had a subline of their Transformers toys called “Classics”; new figures of favorite characters from the 1984 cartoon. And a funny thing happened- these robots from an old show sold very, very well. Characters like “Bumblebee”, “Megatron” and “Optimus Prime” were familiar to a enviously broad range of people. They had staying power equal to Superman or Batman. The world was on the cusp of finding this out. Continue reading
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned
After The Beep
Answering machines were a form of technology in use before telecommunication was monopolized. At first, they were huge, then they used micro-cassettes, then regular cassettes, then a computer chip, then they went in the garbage. Telephones were not generally mobile prior to the year 2000. The average home had a room where the phone and answering machine resided.
The answering machine was the predecessor to the ringtone, in terms of personal expression through phones. There was even a default recording of a robot intoning “please leave a message after the beep”, which is how you knew your dad or grandpa wasn’t at home. Older relatives were confounded by the damn things, and would require the aid of sons or nephews, just as with smartphones today. A family would retain an answering machine until the tape wore out, meaning that for much of the 1980s, there was a phantasmagoria of wood-paneled plastic boxes, varying in quality. “Wireless” meant “unreliable”, which meant that the telephone station generally resembled an improvised bomb, to 21st century eyeballs. Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions
XTC
You wanna lampoon Jehovah? It’s been done. Nobody can top Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Move on with your life.
You’re protected from nefarious religions in the present, mostly. Kids aren’t put through the parochial school ringer like sixty years ago. Nuns get in hot water for rapping the knuckles of students with a ruler. Child abuse is rightfully and openly abhorred. Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club
Pure Evel
I don’t know why people are sad about the Great Deathwave of 2016. It’s a remarkable opportunity to make a stranger’s life all about yourself.
Muhammad Ali, The Greatest, 1942-2016. A multifarious and complex personality that’s tough to categorize (especially for a pugilist), not a prop for your opinions.
When a celebrity dies, you now own them. You can take the life’s work of someone you never encountered and reduce it to a personal inspiration. You can interpret their efforts as empowerment for your own agendas. Oh, and you can cherry-pick the qualities of their persona that you agree with, and ignore everything else. A corpse will never call your bluff. Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All
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