Maybe the Funniest Comic You've Never Heard of...

Indulging in a bit of nostalgia for my friend Dave Craig's old comic, Horovitz. Check out more over at Horovitz Central, where you can also sign up for a daily version. Share and enjoy.

Furry Happy Monsters

Sesame Street has always been able to attract some great singers to their neighbourhood — it's a recognition that kids like good music and their parents are likely watching with them.

Tristan isn't ready for this stuff yet, but I'm happy to hear that Feist will be reworking 1234 into 1234 Monsters Crawling ‘Cross the Floor as a duet with the Elmo in a future episode. Reminds me of Rebel L, Sesame Street's take on Billy Idol.

Speaking of R.E.M., their rework of Shiny Happy People into Furry Happy Monsters was from the show’s 30th season and the role of Kate Pierson of the B52s was played by Stephanie D'Abruzzo of Avenue Q, which makes that much better.

"Come on monsters, you don't have to cry... we can be happy!"

William Shakespeare's Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction, as performed by the King's Men

ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter a carriage, with JULES and VINCENT, murderers.

Jules: And know'st thou what the French name cottage pie?
Vincent: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
J: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
Are strange to ours, with their own history:
Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
V: What say they then, pray?
J: Hachis Parmentier.
V: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
J: Cream is but cream, only they say le crème.
V: What do they name black pudding?
J: I know not; I visited no inn it could be bought.

From Kevin Pease, with my shoddy Photoshop work.

Cereal Mascot Reunion

Ever wonder where old cereal mascots go once they are no longer in demand? Of course you do. Seems they don't disappear, but slowly fade away in the wood-paneled, shag-carpeted rec room of artist Rob Sheridan's mind.

So long Franken Berry, Trix Rabbit, Count Chocula, Cap'n Crunch and Tony the Tiger, sugary breakfasts just aren't the same without you.

Little Boxes

And none of them look the same. I've been slumming around the house sick for the past three days and took it upon myself to get craft, but in a pop culture way of course.

Cubeecraft has a fabulous collection of cutouts of animation and video game characters that you can print out at home and stick together with tabs (no glue or anything). I'm working on the Dr. Zoidberg but have realized I need to print it on thicker paper stock. I'll post a pic if I ever complete it.

So bookmark Cubeecraft, there's a new character every week.

A Cardboard Hope

One of the best of the fan-produced "Sweded" versions of films, based on the process in Be Kind Rewind. I'd say these videos are becoming more popular than the film itself.

Snacked has put together an extensive list of Sweded movies, or head to Be Kind Rewind's YouTube page.

(I'm actually on vacation right now. This post brought to you by the miracle of Blogger in Draft's Scheduled Post Publishing.)

If Cartoons Were Real

Seeing cartoons characters as they would like in real life is, well, disturbing. This photo-realistic Homer Simpson is from jaxpixeloo, and I would run in terror from him if I were to see him on the street.


Good news, everybody! A realistic version of a few of the Futurama cast, from Dylan Marvin. I think the year 3000 would be... all glory to the Hypnotoad.


A realistic Wile E. Coyote (Road-Runnerus Digestus) and Roadrunner (Accelleratti Incredibusc) wouldn't be so bad, but the Acme products would be devastating. From an old Fark contest, where there are many other examples.


Michael Paulus also takes the concept of real cartoons but approaches it from a whole other angle and showing the skeletal system of 22 different characters. Wonderfully odd.

(I'm actually on vacation right now. This post brought to you by the miracle of Blogger in Draft's Scheduled Post Publishing.)

I Spoil Your Movie

Another cool piece of typography, which appears to be a fascination of mine these days. I love seeing what can be done with words and am jealous as I wouldn't be able to do it myself.

The t-shirt isn't much of a spoiler, unless you are a pop culture shut-in. It's more hipster irony and another in a series of t-shirts that would be cool to wear if I still did that sort of thing. Get it here. Artist Olly Moss has a wealth of other cool designs as well.

(I'm actually on vacation right now. This post brought to you by the miracle of Blogger in Draft's Scheduled Post Publishing.)

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

After discovering that Cracked had revived themselves as a generally amusing online site, I wondered if MAD had joined the online world. Not so much, it seems.

But then I came across a New York Times profile of cartoonist Al Jaffee, he of the infamous fold-in. Even though it went against every my every fiber to "wreck" the magazine, I did it anyway.

The profile includes 23 flash-based fold-ins from the 1960s to the present and the lines match up perfectly.

Bang, Bang Goes The Night

Guest poster Kyle Murray describes a transcendent evening with My Morning Jacket @ The Berkeley Church, March 31, 2008

Having no idea what to expect, I showed up with a couple hundred of Toronto’s hippest, to catch this larger than life band in an amazing venue. Waiting in line to get in and to make sure my name was actually on the list, I watched as people try to bribe and/or plead their way in. Had some of these people not been so adamant that they had to attend, I may have mentioned that I had one extra spot to give away. It’s difficult for me to get my regular concert going friends out on a Monday night. So when the unassuming, polite guy walked up to me, standing by my lonesome and asked if I had an extra — I told him to get in line with me.

Through the security checkpoint and into one of the coolest setups I’ve seen in a while. The stage was small, a velvet rope showed us where we could stand and we were surrounded by about a half dozen high definition cameras. The whole show was being taped for a Sun TV live concert series; I stood at the front behind the Steadicam guy. The crew taping the show was ridiculously professional, never in the way and it actually looked like some of them were enjoying themselves.

The band exploded on to the stage, commented on the beauty of the venue; even pointing out that the widow’s watch opening above us was where our souls would be headed that night. They weren’t wrong. If anyone had a bad time at that gig, it was their own doing. My Morning Jacket played for over an hour, mixing songs from their upcoming album with different versions of some of their classics. The 21-year-old girl next to me was dancing just as much as the 40-year-old dude behind me. Coats began hitting the floor, beer bottles got stuffed in denim back pockets and we were all happily bumping into each other. When the hair started whipping around on stage, the audience reciprocated. The energy level was amazing.

When I thought the grin on my face couldn’t get any bigger, the head honcho Jim jumped off the stage just inches from my face. The cameramen scrambled and it looked like the velvet rope wasn’t going to contain us, but the vibe had been so great for so long I think we consciously decided as an audience to not push, to just enjoy.

All in all, it was a fantastic show. My only complaint would be that there was only one type of beer being sold and it’s not one I would normally buy. How’s that for a complaint? I went to a concert at a church and pretty much had a spiritual experience, that’s pretty cool.

— check out Kyle's regular gig, Six Pix over at Cuzoogle.

I Pity the April Fool

Evolution takes its next logical step. No more jokes about penguins not being able to afford the airfare.


Gmail Custom Time? I would use this function daily!


Looks like this one isn't actually a joke, though it probably should be.

As Mr. T says in the story: ‘All these suckers with their fancy powers! They need a reality check, and only one guy can do that, and that’s me, Mr. T! Ain’t no difference if they’re a vampire, a dinosaur, a mutant, if they’re doing wrong, then it needs Mr. T to set things straight with a swift right!’

It would hardly be the first time either, as evidenced by Mr. T vs. Everything.

ABC3D

So now even books have advance trailers? Well, it's working. This is one of the coolest pop-up books I've seen, but I think it will be some time before I'd let Tristan get his hands on it — it would be demolished in moments. Think of it as a kids book for adults. From graphic and book designer Marion Bataille, it is another example of typography brought to life.

Great moments in farting: The whoopee cushion

Are farts funny? Canadians once seemed to think so and the country's finest contribution to flatulence is the invention of the whoopee cushion.

We're an odd country sometimes, always taking pride in the oddest of things: annoying singers (Céline Dion, Bryan Adams, etc.), over-the-top comedians (Jim Carrey, even though I think he is getting U.S. citizenship) and fake breasts (hello Pamela Anderson!). But now it has been discovered we are the inventors of fake farts too.

I feel strangely proud of that. And here I thought our biggest fart joke was Terrence and Philip.

Music From Outer Space

Who would have thought the original cast of Star Trek would turn out to be such a musical bunch? Likely no one, after the spoken-word stylings of William Shatner and the unintentionally hilarious Leonard Nimoy.

Still, that hasn't stopped George Takei from joining their ranks, not with an album but as a country singer on the upcoming Secret Talents of the Stars on April 8. Yep, CBS is essentially reviving Circus of the Stars and everything old is new again.

Seeing as we will soon be hearing Mr. Sulu's dulcet tones, why not a review of what has come before? Most people, when they think of Shatner and music probably think of his over-the-top rendition of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. While it is a camp classic, I've always been more partial to his interpretation of Elton John's Rocket Man at the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards.


I actually listen to that one voluntarily — it has a way of growing on you. But Nimoy? Not so much. Highly Illogical is painful.



For even more on the song stylings of the Trek casts from Next Generation to Voyager, read The Collective's Star Tracks - Trek Stars Sing.

World's Toughest T-Shirt

The Righting Wrongs Dream Team: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Steven Seagal, Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris and Clint Eastwood.

Looking at it will likely result in some sort of roundhouse kick. From Upper Playground via Film School Rejects.

March of the Bunnies

In the harshest place on Earth, the 30-Second Bunnies find a way. It's been awhile since I've linked to my furry little friends, but their mini-version of the March of the Penguins did the trick. Somehow the travails of the little suckers seemed a lot less grim and austere when whole cycle whips by in a blink of an eye. Be sure to indulge in the whole archive over at Angry Alien. Coming up later this year: Goodfellas. I can hardly wait — it should get a full minute.

A Way With Words

If a picture is worth a thousand words does it follow that it takes a thousand words to make a picture? Not if the words are used in kinetic typography, the art of combining typography with motion. It's one of those things that is easier to see than have explained, so here is a scene from Fight Club done only with type and audio.



If your tastes run more to comedy, Abbott and Costello's famous Who's On First routine is another great example.



I'm enough of a typography geek that I have a favourite font (Palintino) so I think these videos are amazing. Always Watching has a great collection of some of the best of kinetic typography, which I found through a Neatorama link. (Small aside, Neatorama's link to my Last Supper collection caused an avalanche of visitors and links.) You can check YouTube for more.

Go, Cobra!

From Cracked's 20 Insane Supervillain Schemes In Flowchart Form. Very funny stuff. If you haven't thought about Cracked since you were a teenager, check them out. They have changed.

Eye TV vs. Ear TV

All television is either Eye TV or Ear TV, argues Entertainment Weekly columnist Mark Harris. "Eye TV is intense: You care about it so much that not only do you know when it is on, you actually watch it when it is on. And you really watch it -- forks down, phones away, laptops idle.

"Most television os Ear TV. It's what you have on in the background while you are surfing the Internet or answering email or cleaning up... it never matters if it is a repeat or not."

That's as accurate a description of how I watch TV that I've ever heard. I'd say 90% of the shows I watch are done with a computer on my lap. Most of them either aren't compelling enough to give my full attention to or just don't require that much concentration.

There are, of course, exceptions. Lost requires that I close the laptop and watch closely. There is so much packed into each episode that if I look down I inevitably need to rewind to find out what was said, and I have to do that enough on the show to piece together all the connections.

I also give both by eyes and ears to 30 Rock and My Name is Earl, two shows that pile on laughs and clever lines so thick that it is impossible to do anything else but watch.

While not in the realm of this shows, the now-lamented jPod was quickly becoming Eye TV for me. Quirky and sly, it was a show I made a point of paying attention to. But not enough people were and it wasn't granted a second season. Now there is a growing group of people trying to save the show, of which I count myself as one. I don't know if it will work, but it is worth a shot.

Save jPod!
Save jPod petition
jPod ipetition
Facebook: jpod
Facebook: Save jPod Now!
Defendoid
Neotronic Arts
Cowboy's blog
VanCity Players
Coupland
Ebay Neighborhood
Kam Fong Blog
JPod Info

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Danny Boy

Ok, if the Swedish Chef, Animal and Beeker don't do it for you, then how about a little Pogues?



Now keep away from that green beer.