Posts Tagged ‘80s’
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You take for granted some things in life will always be around: monuments, your parents, museums, even a good book. I grew up a PBS Kid. A day without Sesame Street was my personal 9/11. I did not suffer fools that caused me to miss a moment of Snuffleupagus. I had a long memory when slighted back then.
Once there was no more Sesame Street to be had, I settled for a post coital cuddle with Mr. Rogers, The Electric Company, and Reading Rainbow. I even watched that one show you can barely remember with the creepy-ass male mannequin that would come to life after the mall closed. If you don’t remember the title, I don’t blame you it was kind of a let down when I researched it. It’s just called Today’s Special.
Naively I thought these shows would be around for my kids someday. Unbeknowest to me and probably many of you, Reading Rainbow actually stopped making new episodes as of 2006. LeVar Burton hung up his Butterflies three years ago, and I was not consulted. The recent news of Reading Rainbow being canceled is actually PBS deciding it doesn’t want to spend the money to renew the reruns. My mother growing up actually picked up quite a few books based on the shows recommendations around the time I was three or four. I suppose I’ll just pick it up on dvd at some point when I come across them in a bargain bin.
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District 9? more like District 10! And by 10 I mean awesome, and not the new internment camp. This movie has actual character development. It shows the weakness and heroism inherent in man, and the duality of such available in the same man. The whole film is emotionally wrenching. Your allegiances shift multiple times, to the point of you having to make an ethical decision as to who you should be rooting for. You may heard something about the movie’s politics, the movie itself is mired in a realistic scenario, comparisons can be made to real world things, but it’s not forced on you. But if it makes you think because you happen to be fairly fluent in world politics, then bonus for you. It’s probably been mentioned elsewhere but the Alien Chris Johnson, would be the first CGI character that not only do his decisions and actions make sense, he’s never wacky or zany like many before him, but we also get emotionally invested in what happens to him almost from the get go. I have a lot of Sci Fi favorites, I want to watch this again to see if it retains it’s magnificence after a few re-watches, but this is quickly becoming one of my favorite Sci Fi films. The icing on the cake, or more appropriately in your pants, the special effects are the sort of things wet dreams are made of. A+, 4 snaps in Z formation.
Here we are, the big 50. That’s 50 strips in the can, ladies and dudes another milestone under our slowly swelling belt. In celebration we’ve gotten ourselves a Private Server with our hosting. In lieu of flowers as always we’d be glad to take your facebook recommendations to your friends and Diggs, Stumbleupons, forum mentions etc. I hope the archives have been a bit smoother sailing this last week. Also we are having a little work done around the site in general. That starts sometime this week as well depending on our web developer’s schedule.
Today’s comic is about love. My love for Saved by the Bell. A love so strong it made me watch a Jimmy Fallon clip. That’s right, Fallon’s got a Saved by the Bell reunion in the works. Sadly Screech aka Dustin Diamond will not be attending. He is working on a tell all behind the bell book and the other cast members aren’t on speaking terms with him. Luckily Jimmy Fallon will be there. He’s just as socially awkward and out of place on a talk show as Screech, so I think everything will pan out. They get him a nice Jew Fro and a bright colored ugly shirt and he’s in. It’ll feel just like the real thing, but only Principal Belding will know for sure. Go Bayside Tigers!
So for those of you who have been back in the archives and noticed our comments are missing, don’t panic. We’re working on implementing a comment reply system to make the site a little cooler. We’ll be going through some site changes hopefully mostly for the better over the next couple of weeks. No huge changes just some polish. I know we have a few readers now that have their own webcomics. We’ve joined Project Wonderful and will be offering an ad or two on the site, I’ll keep you posted probably via twitter on this.
You can see we brought back Ricardo Montadjinn. I’m not sure if he coexists in the lamp and the real world at the same time, or if for some reason there’s some missing back story since his last appearance. Perhaps he’s under some sort of community service obligation from Genie Child Protective Services.
With Don heading to Comic Con for the weekend, I’m left to my own devices to keep entertained. I’m really sad I couldn’t make it but the 5 bucks I made on those smurfs more than makes up for it. Don hopefully, will keep us posted on comic con goings on via a blog on Monday and perhaps a few tweets. Now it’s a waiting game to see if Scott Kurtz has Don removed from the premises or not. Stay tuned for possible geek mugshots.
We have some news! We did a guest comic for another webcomic artist, George Ford, he is currently on a costal move to California from Virgina. This will display on his site tomorrow (Friday the 3rd). It will be here. If you’re hooked into our Twitter and/or Facebook I’ll do my best to remind you. It’s a crossover with our characters and his, so consider it a bonus comic.
A note about the Gundam reference in the comic if you haven’t seen the real deal check it out, it’s really amazing!
Today’s comic continues our cultist series, ties in with Independence Day, and even opens us up for a review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I’m not going to go into one of my huge long in depth reviews simply because this film doesn’t warrant it. It is what it is. If you enjoy watching Michael Bay trying to outdo himself and blow shit up in bigger and better ways you’ll most likely enjoy the movie. The caveat is if you are expecting other typical movie elements, such as plot, acting, or plausibility you’re probably not going to enjoy this film. I can enjoy it on the same level that I enjoyed Shoot Em Up. I went in for action and Robots punching each other. There was even bonus Decepticon Trucknutz. You earned my doll hairs Michael Bay. I know the fans of our Trucknutz strip are upset we didn’t do a comic about it, but our friend Joel over at Hininks Ensue beat us to the robot junk punch.
Only two things got in the way of my efficient enjoyment of robots punching each other. One: There’s a point in the movie where Optimus is stabbing a robot larger than himself that’s rolling down the streets of China, while on top of it, awesome right? Until he bellows: “Pull over!” My eyes rolled so hard it was gangster. Two: In the end desert fight sequences, all the Decepticons with the exception of like two look exactly like baby Megatrons–I dub them Chrome Shirts. Iron Hide kills what looks to be the same Decepticon 15 times. Other than that, robot killing action is had. I give this sucker a D+ as a film over all. C+-B- if you curve the grade to just include Michael Bay films. It’s like watching a grown man play out the childhood trauma of never being allowed to light fireworks on the 4th–not even a sparkler. So remember this 4th if you let your child stay safe and sane, odds are he’s going to make a 200 Million Dollar blockbuster with no substance–or a webcomic about a giant robot flipping the bird. It’s a cointoss really.
We at The Straight Face are not heartless ogres born of stone and ill will. Today we bring you a magical father-son moment to help you celebrate with that special father figure in your life be he animal, vegetable, or mineral. Let’s hope he’s made of diamonds and not potatoes though–who wouldn’t trade their dad in for a diamond statue of him? I like to think that just before he turned to diamonds that he’d be happy about being immortalized, or really scared of dying. While the second choice is less valuable artistically I bet you could put him in your front yard so the neighbor kids thought you had some diamond transmogrifying basilisk in your yard. Until some rapper steals him and takes him apart to create a diamond shell for his skin. Good luck with that man.
Next year you should probably just get a bottle of scotch, drink half, and pour the rest out on his grave. That way things don’t get out of hand like they did this year. Happy Father’s Day from The Face.
While Matt, Don, and Jeremy will remain around for the long haul, we’ve been having fun writing some less structured comics this last week or two. We have a back stock of about eight of these suckers. So we thought we’d showcase a couple for you guys this week while we wait anxiously for Cthulhu to bestow on our chest a big enough piece of Don to cast a Scroll of Resurection on. Does anyone have a 500gp gem they can mail me? I promise to only use it for good.