To All Students:
It has come to this administration’s attention that there is now a second 32-page issue of “Bands I Useta Like” magazine. You may recall the trouble that resulted on campus after the first pile of this filth appeared. We do not want a repeat of that incident. Ergo;
“Bands I Useta Like” magazine is hereby banned from the campus. All copies found will be confiscated and destroyed. Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions, Site Stuff
Hey, you know when depicting any female consort in a comic strip is a good idea? Never. You know who wants to read comics about you and your spouse (if you have one), past or present? No one. Other than yourself, do you know who thinks comics about your relationships are funny? Nobody. (Now, putting buddies in strips? Gold. Who doesn’t love that?) Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club
Would you trust these men?
As promised, the AGE OF THE SHRUG podcast has begun! Have you ever wondered what it would sound like if you were stuck in a room with an insufferable cartoonist and his equally grouchy friend? Wonder no longer, person I sure hope exists!
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Podcastery
As Halloween approaches, we celebrate by getting sick on weird candy. To kick off this recurring feature, here’s an article from October 31, 2007.
What, you thought I was too busy to hand out treats to you fine kids? Hell no! How could I show up empty-handed, with all the hard work you guys put into your costumes? Sure, maybe you’ll be a little disappointed with what I have to offer, but since I at least made an effort to please you nice kids, maybe you won’t huck eggs at my quaint little Web 1.0 home here.
I’ll be blunt; my choices aren’t very original, but I hope you nice kids won’t hold that against me. I can see the glimmer of apprehension in your eyes behind those clever masks, no doubt caused by the realization that my home smells like compacted ass. Perhaps my shambling and tattered clothes suggest a feral man easily spooked by traffic’s roar. I assure you the corpses on the lawn are decorations and not interns.
‘Tis the Season. Let’s eat some CANDY!
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Filed under Bad Influences, Eatable Things, Nostalgic Obsessions, O'Shloktoberfest
It’s September, folks, and you know what that means! Fall weather, leaves changing color, ringing school bells, and a new issue of BANDS I USETA LIKE.
Available everywhere this fall
It’s the perfect item to get you kicked out of class this semester! Forget about technicolored hair, tribal piercings, and half-exposed genitalia. When your teacher or professor sees this in your hands, they’ll know you’re a true subversive– the type of weirdo that always grows up smarter than everyone else. You don’t just take the trends and paradigms that life hands you- you subvert them, and expose their hidden hypocrisies for all to see. Your contempt for the lowest common denominator is already deep in amber. You’re the reason there used to be not only MAD, but CRAZY, SICK, PLOP, and even a little rag called TRUMP. They kept young minds like yours from becoming good little automatons.
I got your back. Print is forever. How do I know? Because I have piles of it, going back two hundred years. People and computers die. Books do not.
Get ready. Class begins again this fall.
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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Magazine Rack, Site Stuff
Almost every single aspect of my personality can be explained by one simple fact: when I was a kid I ate a bouillon cube.
I was too young to know better. I had witnessed the flavor sorcery that resulted when my parents would cook with a bouillon cube. Surely, I reasoned, if it made dinner taste that good, then a whole cube of it would be a trip to flavor heaven. I even imagined it might expand into a steak or a burger, like in The Jetsons. So one evening I sneaked into the kitchen, unwrapped a beef cube, popped it in my mouth, and chewed it up. Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Eatable Things, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Thousand Listen Club
Originally published on Mike The Pod in July of 2003. G4 was launched in April of 2002, and broadcast until the end of 2014.
For some reason there’s this channel we get called G4. It’s about video games. So far everything I’ve seen on it has ranged from abysmal to truly soul-crushing. The people behind it must realize that folks tend to play video games on their TVs, so there’s really no call for a channel about them. There was some show on yesterday called “Portal”. I think it’s what they’re using to interrogate captured Al-Qaeda, because after about forty-two seconds of it, I was confessing to all sorts of stuff. It’s kind of like those god-awful sitcoms on public TV that are designed to teach foreigners English, but without all the wit, verve, and rich character development. Like a 7th-grade drama club amok in a television studio. (Kids Incorporated, anyone?)
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions
No, not Peter Bagge’s HATE. I mean that ’90s comic book you’ve never heard of.
A short-lived little funnybook called DROP DEAD, which any fool could see was inspired by Bagge’s neat stuff. Some kid who called himself Matty Boy Anderson was barely out of high school when he started cranking out copies, and timidly mailing them to review periodicals like Factsheet Five, and cartoonists he admired, such as Bagge, Roy (Trailer Trash) Tompkins, and Evan Dorkin.
It began in 1993, when self-publishing meant a trip to Kinko’s. The black & white interior was cheap to print (and fun to huff), but full-color covers were expensive. So typically an office color-copier was secretly abused for free, someplace prior. With a book stapler, you were all set to collate and fold your comix. This is the way it was done. Plus, not sinking your life savings into a print run left you more open to trading, which is also the way it was done. When you submitted your publication to Factsheet Five, you indicated whether trades were welcome. If you did, you found yourself with quite a “zine” collection, very rapidly.
It was actually pretty grand. Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Late To The Party, Magazine Rack
The signs were there all along. It doesn’t take a genius to see what this means. It was only a matter of time. The evidence just kept mounting, until finally, the pressure was too much. Something had to give. Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Site Stuff
If you’ve never seen Harmony Korine’s 1997 meisterwerk Gummo, you are doing yourself a great disservice. Rarely do I recommend a film so unabashedly, or so often. It has been my favorite movie for almost a decade, regardless of mood. I’ve seen it a hundred times, easily, and it continues to amaze me in new ways. And yes, it shocks, in a manner I draw great inspiration from. But beyond its often hilarious jolts, Gummo is the most explicitly human and raw film I’ve ever seen. The believability of the scenes- some scripted, some improvised- is so overwhelming and authentic, it pulls you into their world with all the force of the tornadoes that set the film’s events in motion. And you may find yourself every bit as devastated in their wake.
Gummo loosely tells the story of the residents of Xenia, Ohio, a quasi-fictional town that was savaged by tornadoes at an indistinct point in the past, and never fully recovered. The film centers primarily on a small group of children, but as we explore their ruined world, we meet a larger cast of characters, almost all portrayed by “non-actors”. Some are legitimately mentally retarded. It all gels amazingly well, providing a heretofore unseen view of what liberal assholes call “white trash”. I love it so dearly that I could go on endlessly about it, so I’ve decided to instead whittle my thoughts down to my ten favorite (more or less) things about my favorite movie. Here we go! Don’t forget to put out the cat! For god’s sakes! Continue reading
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned
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