Category Archives: Entertainment

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.)

Yup yup yup

TV

For almost as long as I can remember, first-contact stories have been among my favorite subgenre of science fiction. I’m not sure why, but I long suspected that it might have been a consequence of reading James P. Hogan’s Giants series at an impressionable age. Having recently been pointed at this bit of vintage Sesame Street, though, which I’d seen but long forgotten, I’ve been forced to wonder if I wasn’t in fact deeply imprinted at an even more impressionable age.

Uh huh uh huh uh huh.

I have felt the purifying flame…

Music

…of the Reverend Horton Heat, who played at the Blank Club last night. Throw Rag and Horror Pops opened, and put on quite the rousing show in their own right. (Random aside/rant: why is it that band sites seem to be something akin to a roach motel for the utter dregs of wretched, user-hostile, late-nineties interface excess? Useless “front” pages. Self-resizing windows. Flash. “The list is long, with not a lot of smiles.”)

At any rate, lessons learned about attending a show at the Blank Club:

  • Don’t forget the earplugs.
  • Dress in layers.
  • Wear comfortable shoes.

We had to leave a little early ’cause we were getting chilled. I think we’d both sort of expected the place to be a lot warmer than it ultimately was, just because that’s the usual result of packing warm bodies aplenty into a small space, even before you factor in the heat produced by the lights and other equipment. The Blank Club is pretty well ventilated, though. This is, on the whole, a good thing — if you’re properly prepared.

Rock and Roll Boy

Humor, Music

It has been said of Jonathan Coulton that he writes songs that are “insanely clever without being too clever for their own good“, which sounds about right. He first came to Internet prominence, of a sort at least, with his eyebrow-raising acoustic cover of “Baby Got Back“, which was followed a while later by the goofy, yet endearing, “Code Monkey“. Digging back through the archives, I see that he’s also written Greg‘s theme song: “Skullcrusher Mountain“.

He’s outdone himself with the recent “Rock and Roll Boy“, though: starting with found audio of a six-year-old boy burbling a song into his a tape recorder and ending it with a dedication to his mother, he’s actually crafted an infectiously catchy pop tune. Joe Bob says check it out.

Misheard Lyrics

Humor, Music

I made an offhand reference to Devo’s “Whip It” while chatting with Holly the other day, and she of course caught it instantly. But then she went looking for the full lyrics, realized that she’d been under a misimpression for years, and opted to do the honorable thing by confessing: she’d always mistaken “Try to detect it” for “Tattoo Detective.”

After thinking about it further, we concluded that “Tattoo Detective” would probably be a pretty interesting job. “Miss, could I see an up-to-date registration for that tramp stamp? Uh huh. I thought so. Come with me, please.”

Of course, being part of an elite unit wouldn’t lessen the need for smooth interdepartmental cooperation. “Sir? Excuse me, sir? This is Sergeant O’Hallorhan from the Cliche Squad. He’d like to have a word with you about the barbed-wire bracelet on your upper arm. Step this way, please…”