All posts by Dan

What’s in a name?

Politics

Confusion, apparently.

Browsing the headlines on Yahoo! this morning, I was thrown not once but twice.

First, “Delay disrupts meeting to discuss Iran“. Wait, what? Tom DeLay disrupted a meeting to discuss the Republican boogeyman of the moment? Which meeting? And anyway, isn’t he out of the picture? Oh, wait, they’re just talking about Condoleezza Rice’s flight being delayed. Right. I heard about that on the radio while driving in. (In hindsight, the failure to correctly capitalize DeLay should have tipped me off, except that I’m so used to sloppy typography in journalism that I’ve almost come, sadly, to expect it.)

Skimming down a few lines, I then got to “Rice could doom U.S.-Korea trade deal: source” and thought, Jesus, what’s she screwing up now?. But it turns out they’re just talking about the grain.

Context is everything. And there is no conspiracy.

New Blog of the Month: Kung Fu Monkey

Humor, Politics

First with “Wait, aren’t you scared?” and now This is Technically Child Abuse, John Rogers has earned his Kung Fu Monkey a spot amongst the half-dozen or so blogs I visit regularly.

(Unfortunately, I may soon wind up dropping Fafblog from that same list. Not because I want to, just because we’re coming up on a month and a half since it was last updated. Fafnir? Giblets? Medium Lobster? C’mon out, guys — joke’s over.)

The Amazing Screw-On Head

Comics, TV

I don’t know what Mike Mignola is smoking, but I hope that The Powers That Be realize the importance of securing him an adequate supply. His latest project, The Amazing Screw On-Head, combines his distinctive visual style with a dash of cheerfully goofy anachronism and the kind of wry, ironic humor he only allowed himself flashes of on Hellboy.

The first episode is highly entertaining, and leads one to hope that it will get a chance to build an audience. (Given that we’re talking about Sci-Fi, the folks who gave Battlestar Galactica the time and space it needed to get its legs under it, and not the scum-sucking swine at Fox, who shot promising infant series like Firefly and The Tick in the head when they didn’t produce high returns instantly, the odds would seem good.)

The Chad Vader Conspiracy

Comics, Movies

This morning, Holly sent me a link to Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager. I fell in love with it immediately, of course: if features not only one of the best James Earl Jones impressions I’ve heard anywhere, but a charming acoustic version of the Imperial March to boot.

And then, about two-thirds of the way through, a character named Lloyd appeared, and I thought: “Whoa, that guy looks an awful lot like Rob Matsushita.” This being the age of the intarweb, it took me all of one click to reveal the credits and blurt, “Holy fuck, it is Rob Matsushita.”

(Rob Matsushita, for those of you playing at home, is one of my friend Seth’s best friends; after hearing about him secondhand for years, I finally got to meet him at Seth’s wedding in 2003, and to see for myself that he’s every bit as funny as his reputation led me to expect.)

The intertwingularity doesn’t stop there, though. According to his post about the experience of being involved in the making of Chad Vader, Rob has come to the attention of Dan Harmon, who co-created, with Rob Schrab, the ill-fated Heat Vision and Jack, which I’d just been telling Holly about. (He also had a hand in “Scud the Disposable Assassin“, one of the best — and certainly most surreal — comics you’ve never heard of.)

I’m going to curl up into a ball and reflect on the total connectedness of all things now.

(Wait, not quite. In the course of assembling this post I’ve discovered that there’s a fourth Scud book out, “The Yellow Horseman“, which finally wraps up the storyline left dangling for years. Great. In addition to messing with my head, these people are now actively costing me money. Bastards.)