Part of being an inscrutable artist weirdo like myself is that you love it when people buy gifts for you, but you never buy gifts for anyone, because you feel an inner obligation to instead create something for them, which you then you take forever to do, and you just end up looking ungrateful.
Comments Off on The Qotile Ultimatum
Filed under Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club
Of course I’m gonna provide clips to go with this mediocre comic strip, I mean, what are we doing here?
Continue readingComments Off on The Dickies
Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, O'Shloktoberfest, Saturday Movie Matinee
In a previous installment, I told you that in its early-’80s heyday, CRAZY magazine was the equal of MAD or National Lampoon. What I’m about to show you will prove that assertion.
Continue readingComments Off on “The Brownstones”
Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions
Ralph Reese is a brilliant illustrator whose art I first discovered in Choose Your Own Adventure books; he was my personal favorite. His work leapt off the page more than the others, owing to his apprenticeship under the great Wally Wood. In my teens, I found reprints of Ralph’s collaboration with Byron Preiss for National Lampoon, “One Year Affair”. I dreamed of being able to draw like Ralph Reese.
When Ralph did a feature in CRAZY magazine, it was a cause for celebration. Because Ralph wasn’t just a master illustrator.
Ralph was also a master of making you crap your pants.
Comments Off on The Orphanage at Dreary Knolls
Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions, O'Shloktoberfest
In the early 1980s, video games were simple in concept, much like the “game apps” on phones nowadays. At heart, they were demonstrations of your skills with a joystick, paddle, or “track-ball” controller, performing one or more challenges. Eating all the dots, or climbing a scaffold to defeat a giant ape, to cite a couple of well-known examples. Navigating a maze while being pursued by killer robots. Killing a centipede, segment by segment. Swinging on vines over bottomless pits.
Or, flying planes into buildings. For fun!
Signed by programmer Steve Cartwright!
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions
Yea, I say unto you, I was in the right place at the right time for two major moments in American history. You must believe that what I’m about to tell you is the truth; it will seem like so much legend and myth.
The first: I was gifted a copy of E.T. (the game) for the Atari 2600, on Christmas, but that is a tale for another article.
I HAD TO PRETEND I ENJOYED THIS.
The second, and more significant: I talked my father into buying me Pac-Man for the Atari 2600, one of the most notoriously disappointing games of all time. Second only to E.T.,of course.
Comments Off on The Pac-simile
Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions
Okay, tell me I’m crazy. On Fleetwood Mac’s 1982 single “Hold Me”, immediately after the third “hold” in the chorus, there’s a cough, right? I haven’t been hearing things for 35 years, right? Right?!?
https://youtu.be/wWdgTraidlU
I hear it every time the chorus plays. “Hold me, hold me, hold- (cough) -ME-eee.” If it’s not a cough, what the fuck is it? A sneeze? A blob of mustard from a 3M employee’s sandwich? What???
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Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club
How come so few folks know about The Freeze? Punk rock band, formed in Cape Cod, 1978? Come on, the lead singer called himself Cliff Hanger! (“Rob Decradle” played guitar!)
It’s a shame they’re so obscure, but on the other hand, it works to their advantage in these times of prefabricated rebellion. They made fantastic, inspired punk rock, and they came from Cape Cod! Of all places!
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Late To The Party, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club
Everyone loves a gingerbread house. Even South Park’s hate campaign against the “ginger” couldn’t dull the sugary luster of the beloved cookie-built domicile. You probably remember the first time you saw one, right? Or the first time you smelled one?
How to make me put a ring on it*, chapter one. (*the robot.)
Sometime in the late 1970s, at my local church, I spied and smelled a real, elaborate gingerbread house for the first time. It was during an Advent festival, with apple-cheeked residents of my snowy hometown selling pinecone ornaments and weaving fragrant holiday wreaths budded with hollyberry. Someone had knocked themselves out on the centerpiece, a resplendent dwelling of gingerbread with all the confectionery trimmings, the kind that lured the likes of Hansel and Gretel to their near-doom.
Comments Off on The Necco Betrayal
Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Eatable Things, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Worst Of All
In the 1982 science-fiction fantasy TRON, there comes a moment inside the computer world where the protagonists are imperiled by “gridbugs”.
Clearly a threat.
The danger is underlined by dialogue spoken by Cindy Morgan, as the shapely input/output program Yori:
“This isn’t going to be easy. If those gridbugs get us, we’ve had it.”
The gridbugs in question get a ten-second interlude, complete with a unique and rather corny soundtrack cue, and then go on to never affect anything or even be mentioned in passing again. Continue reading
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned, Worst Of All
BIG BOOK OF COMICS (SIGNED)
Original price was: $15.00.$10.00Current price is: $10.00.
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