Category Archives: Nostalgic Obsessions

12/26/2014 · 4:22 pm

Joewalshmas (December 26)

Joewalshmas is a Poddist tradition, whereupon we cast the lawn chair into the swimming pool, and celebrate all the ways Life has been Good to us So Far. May Joewalshmas bring the Good Life to you and yours for another year.

Twas The Night Of Joewalshmas

Twas the night of Joewalshmas, and we were rockin’ the joint,
with bitches and chicken and Matty on point.
The lightweights were knackered, passed out in their beds
in hopes a drunk Wampus wouldn’t pee on their heads.
With Ma in her leathers, and me in my suit,
we were poppin’ and lockin’ to some old Uncle Luke…
When from up on the roof there arose such a clatter
that I put on my pants, grabbed my gat and my ladder…
With my spliff in my mouth, I climbed up to see
the most funkiest shit since I quit PCP!
Not a Nick, not a Saint, not a jolly fat bitch,
not a yellow-eyed crack fiend with a terminal itch,
Now man this shit’s real and Pimps do not lie,
It was fuckin’ Joe Walsh with a gleam in his eye.
And what to my wondering eyes did appear
but a red Maserati full of groupies and beer.

And Joe, he just smiled, and tossed me a Schlitz,
and said, “Life’s been good to me, man, let’s get on with this shit.”
We dropped down the chim, much to Matty’s surprise,
with a sack full of goodies for the ladies and guys.

There was whiskey and absinthe and K.B. for all,
and adrenaline for Wampus who was slumped on the wall.
Joe brought liquor and dildos and a shitload of cheer,
and the joint was retarded but then Wamp got The Fear…

But Joe Walsh don’t abide his friends feelin’ sick
so he strapped on his guitar and tested a lick…
And it didn’t take much until Wampus was fine,
just the very beginning of “Funk 49”.

And before we all knew it, it was time to go,
but none of us wanted to say bye to Joe…
So all slobbering drunken we begged him to stay
but the Number One Eagle just smiled and said, “Hey…

“There’s no call for sadness, now Wampus, don’t cry,
You know I’m an ordinary, average guy…
“I like big tits, and I like me some beer,
but I really love spreading this Joewalshmas Cheer…

“And if all of the people across this sad earth
would just stop their fighting and enjoy Walshmas mirth…
“Then maybe an end to all war and despair
could just be replaced with hot licks and great hair.”

Then he laughed and he said, “But seriously, folks,
stop killing each other and learn a few jokes.”
Then, fixing his glasses and ruffling his hair,
he winked and then vanished right into thin air!

But then that dope Maserati flew right past my collar,
and a groupie fell out but I still heard Joe holler:
“Have a beer and a smile and treat everyone right!
Good Joewalshmas to all and to all a Good Night!”

And this Pimp, though he’s hard, felt something… a trace
sorta like in the movie when they murder Scarface,
And my chest it did swell with that Joewalshmas cheer…

…Anybody who says I cried is a lyin’ bitch.

HAPPY JOEWALSHMAS, EVERYONE!

–Dread Pirate Iceberg Slim

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Filed under Bad Influences, Nostalgic Obsessions, Site Stuff

Tagged as Eagles, Joe Walsh, Joewalshmas, Mike the Pod, music, Pod holidays

12/20/2014 · 9:49 pm

Four Songs That Fudged Christmas

Behold, I softened the strip’s headline in a way that doesn’t make me want to puke (one could argue it’s a ‘topical reference’), but also won’t scare off potential sharing visitors. Of course, when they read the strip itself, then they want to puke. As long as you share, in the spirit of the season!

From 2004:

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Nostalgic Obsessions, Worst Of All

Tagged as bad Xmas music, Bands I Useta Like, Bruce Springsteen, Christmas, comic, corporate crap, depression, despair, Elmo & Patsy, John Lennon, music, Paul McCartney, sellouts, strips, whores, Yoko Ono

12/11/2014 · 9:34 pm

McNugget Anatomy

It may seem obvious, but when over a million people see your creation, it is quite a rush. When you make something that goes viral, I explained to a friend recently, it’s like surfing the inside of a tornado. It’s euphoric, but it taxes your emotional equilibrium, and if you aren’t careful it becomes an addiction. How would you handle the attention of a million people?

Sometime in 1999 (I think) I conjured up this piece, basing the shapes on the most common McNuggets. Nothing I have done since has elicited the same level of emotion and hysteria from readers, which I take great pride in. And despite my commitment to accuracy (for example, the crunch of the ‘eye’), I still enjoy eating the godforsaken things on occasion.

Before you ask, yes, there were t-shirts and posters. Grimace ate them all.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Eatable Things, Nostalgic Obsessions

Tagged as #tbt, 1990s, anatomy, chicken, comedy, corporate crap, fast food, Last Laugh, McDonald's, McNuggets, Mike the Pod, old internet, Throwback Thursday

12/04/2014 · 10:32 pm

Alask, Poor Popeyes

I’m sure by now a lot of you have seen the trailer for the upcoming CGI Popeye, and unless the sailor is a stranger to you, you noticed a lack of a certain tooty trademark. That’s right folks: a Popeye without a pipe is not a Popeye, and a donut without a hole is a Danish.

It defies all sense. As recently as 2011 we had a terrific Tintin movie with a captain who literally cannot function without liquor, and jumpstarts a seaplane engine with merely his breath. Even the portrait of Popeye on canned spinach labels in grocery stores has the pipe in his mouth. He cannot complete his own theme song without it!!!

I foresaw this gut-shot of political correctness as an 11th grader, and wrote this strip for the school paper. I redrew it two years later for the first issue of Mike The Pod Comix. The lines around the type are because I typed out all the Blockheads’ lines on my old Brother, then sliced them out with a razor blade and glued them directly onto the artwork.

1991:

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions

Tagged as #tbt, 1990s, 1991, comix, corporate crap, Mike the Pod, Popeye, Segar, strips, Throwback Thursday, underground

12/02/2014 · 6:59 pm

The (English) Beat

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Nostalgic Obsessions

Tagged as 1990s, Bands I Useta Like, comic, Ferris Bueller, music, ska, strips, The (English) Beat

11/25/2014 · 4:02 am

Comic Relief 1985

For an UNPRECEDENTED three years in the late 1980s, I drew a surrealistic comic strip called Mike the Pod for my high school newspaper. Initially, a buddy of mine scripted it, but once he graduated (he was a grade ahead), I went solo and moved the strip in a more satirical direction. This meant parodies of established icons of the comic page, but in the Age Before Internet, what did one do for proper visual reference?

Typically, I would lug a sketchbook to the library, open one of the huge newspaper compendiums, and double the relevant artist until I got the hang of their style. This was seldom convenient. Then one holiday season in 1988 or ’89, the aforementioned co-writer buddy gifted me a small book that not only provided visual reference for over 100 different newspaper strips, but ironic belly-laughs for decades. For crying out loud, the foreword is written by Kenny Rogers… and it’s about a hunger project.

“Comic Relief”.

Here’s the flavor text from the back cover:

Thanksgiving 1985 was a memorable day in the nation’s funny papers. For the first time in history, the entire comics page was devoted to one subject: hunger. The project, organized by Milton Caniff (Steve Canyon), Charles Schulz (Peanuts), and Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury), brought together over 175 cartoonists, and Comic Relief presents their Thanksgiving Day strips and panels. A cornucopia of cartoon commentary and humor, it is the first time such an array of American comic-strip talent has appeared together in one book. The reader can enjoy this great cartoon spectrum while helping directly in the fight against hunger: Sales of Comic Relief will raise money for USA for AFRICA.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Nostalgic Obsessions

Tagged as #tbt, 1985, book, comic, comic strips, corporate crap, sellouts, strips, Sunday comics, Thanksgiving, USA for AFRICA, We Are The World

11/17/2014 · 4:51 pm

Rush

What better proof of the niceness of Canadians could you ask for, than three dudes getting along well enough to perform together for forty years?

This song in particular got me through some lonely teenage nights:

As did this one:

And for crying out loud, to any red-blooded man, this song is utterly indisputable:

That’s why guys like me and Bubbles look beyond the songs about trees talkin to each other and the wordy 90s stuff. You’re lucky I outgrew my “Show of Hands” phase, however.

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club

Tagged as #tbt, 1990s, Alex Lifeson, Bands I Useta Like, Canada, classic rock, Geddy Lee, metal, Moving Pictures, music, Neil Peart, R40, Rush, strips

10/30/2014 · 7:55 pm

Kenner’s Action Toy Guide 1988

*Originally posted on Mike the Pod 05.01.2008.

Twenty years ago* was a pivotal point in the “male action” aisles (get your head out of the gutter) of toy stores. Hasbro’s venerable Transformers and G.I.Joe lines were still popular, but also beginning to feel the strain of their expanding lineups. In two short years, after infusing just about every conceivable gimmick, they would both be discontinued in the US. Micro Machines and a certain group of mutated sewer turtles were exacting their kudzu-like stranglehold of toy shelves, and it seemed like a new batch of hyperactive plastic-mongering cartoon shows hit the air every week. Street Sharks. The Fake Ghostbusters. Madballs. It was all a desperate cacophony designed to seek out the Next Big Kid Craze that would replicate the boon times of 1985, wallets flying from parents’ pockets like startled pigeons, compensation for all manner of arcane electronic injection-molded crap.

1988 was also the year that those of us who were young at that time learned that Nothing Lasts Forever. Children nowadays have the luxury of always seeing Star Wars figurines and Transformers on the toy shelves at Target, unless they’re sold out. In most cases, those toys have been available since the parents were kids. This was not the way things were in 1988. You could be wined and dined by a cool new toyline, read the comics and watch the cartoon, become a veritable wizard of the details of it, and then one day it would just be gone. And there sure as hell wasn’t an Internet to tell you why, or whether it would ever come back again. Anyone who loved “StarCom” as much as I did knows exactly what I’m speaking of.

But in 1988, no one had a clue of what was, inevitably, to come. Kenner themselves would be subsumed into Hasbro three years later. They went out more or less on top, with M.A.S.K. and many other beloved lines completed or underway by the end. Kenner’s plastic wasn’t always the greatest, and not every toy they made has stood the test of time, but twenty years ago, they were still bringing kids the ACTION. Luckily, I was young enough at the time to still rely on relatives willing to fund my expeditions into new and uncharted toys.

If you’re within this site’s recommended age group, hahayeahright, you may fondly recognize one of the logos on the cover above. I used to think that maybe the Silverhawks inhabited the same conceptual galaxy as the Thundercats and Tigersharks, but I was probably overthinking it. I won’t be covering Starting Lineup, not just because I don’t care for sports, but because looking at little plastic statues of ballplayers is legally the most boring thing ever. I would literally be breaking Internet law by posting it.

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