Tag Archives: National Lampoon

Mannish Boy

Every so often, somebody inquires as to why the hell I call myself Matty Boy.

To which I affect my terrible Billy Bob Thornton impersonation, and reply, “would you ask Sonny Boy Williamson that?”

"Are you fucking with me?"

“Are you fucking with me?”

Since I’m referencing a radio debacle from years ago between Thornton and the guy from Moxy Fruvous, I receive blank looks in return. So let me clear the air a bit.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Uncategorized

My Back Pages

Print is important and always will be. Secret messages are sent on paper; on computers, they have to be heavily encrypted. This still doesn’t work as well as something that has to be photographed before someone burns or swallows it.

I’d call it a safe bet that money will always be printed, from elaborate etchings.

money_folded

It is illegal in America to burn or otherwise destroy currency. Since 2000, new watermarks and patterns have been added, to make counterfeiting totally impossible. That’s how important these little rectangles of printed linen are.  Continue reading

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack

I Forgot Altergott

Mea culpa. You know what? In all my apple polishing of cartoonists I admire, I’ve never mentioned Rick Altergott. What the fuck.

doofus3

I even saw Altergott in person, at a MOCCA Festival years ago. I didn’t approach him, because his abilities as a cartoonist scare the bejeezus out of me. He’s got the touch that the old MAD guys had. He’s not only a caricaturist on par with Mort Drucker, he’s an inker like Wally Wood, with the gift for rendering faces and objects as though they exist in actual space.  Continue reading

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Idiot's Delight, Late To The Party, Magazine Rack

Animation Analysis: Heavy Metal

When analyzing or criticizing animated feature films, it’s important to keep three factors in mind:

  1. The talent
  2. The resources
  3. The date of production and release
Production designer: the late great Michael Gross, who gave you National Lampoon Comics and the Ghostbusters logo (for a movie Ivan Reitman directed that you might have heard of).

Production designer: the late great Michael Gross, who gave you National Lampoon Comics and the Ghostbusters logo (for a movie Ivan Reitman directed that you might have heard of).

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, O'Shloktoberfest, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned

R. Buddy

From BIUL #2.

From BIUL #2.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions, Worst Of All

Yello

BIUL_Yello

30 years ago, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came out. If you build a time machine and go back to 1986, you might just enjoy that movie.

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club

The 200th Post

Next month marks the second anniversary of the BANDS I USETA LIKE website, and here we are; the 200th post. I’m sure you couldn’t care less, but you helped make this possible, and in the 13 years I ran Mike The Pod online, I maybe cracked a hundred actual articles.

So let’s mark the occasion with a peek at the cover of BANDS I USETA LIKE III, yes?

That’s the magazine that will complete your summer, heading your way around the time you start buying fireworks in bulk. So buy this too. It would be a crime if you didn’t.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Magazine Rack, Site Stuff

Chevy Chase

chevychase3

It really gets my goat when people talk shit about Chevy Chase. Not just as a fan of his work, or as an admirer. I think some people judge Chevy Chase unfairly, with a scrutiny they do not apply to other comedians or entertainers.

Okay, you read an article relating an incident where Chevy Chase was a jerk. So what? Did he come to your house and fuck with you? Did he push your mother into the street? This is Chevy Chase we’re talking about. I give him absolute carte blanc to be as big a jerk as he likes. Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned

Reborted

Moviegoers today act like naked Kate Winslet in Titanic, coyly demanding Leonardo DiCaprio to draw her like a French girl. A preternatural relationship has been forged between audience and studio. A production falls all over itself to seduce a fandom, because that’s where the blindly loyal dollars are. If a popular intellectual property is even slightly altered for a motion picture adaptation, it’s headline news, even above mass murder and election-year chicanery.

Eventually, this film will be remade, and this scene will feature different actors, pretty much just to fuck with you.

Eventually, this film will be remade, and this scene will feature different actors, pretty much just to fuck with you.

The movie industry has become such an intellectual wasteland that the 80s era of numerical sequel-mania looks dignified by comparison. Honest promotion and word-of-mouth don’t work anymore; attention span is dead. The only way to really sell a remake is to get people steamed. Take the things viewers loved about an original film, and subvert them. Serves the suckers right anyway, for falling in love with a fictional universe. The names P.T. Barnum and J.J. Abrams aren’t similar for nothing. Continue reading

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Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Late To The Party, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All

Æon Flux: The Herodotus File

From 1991 to 1995, the animated femme fatale Æon Flux appeared on MTV (of all places), at first in shorts that appeared on the variety program Liquid Television. She was created by Korean animator Peter Chung, storyboard artist for Transformers: The Movie (1986), and veteran of cartoon shows like Rugrats and Ring Raiders.

Rob Liefeld learned everything he knows about female anatomy from this single image.

Rob Liefeld learned everything he knows about female anatomy from this single image.

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee