A pep talk from Coach Newman

Here's Paul Newman in what may be his greatest role -- "Reg" Dunlop, coach of the Chiefs. I really wish I could find the clip where he tells off the team's owner, who's about to sell, but instead here's a bit of a locker room speech from Reg. Stick around for the rest, too, which doesn't feature Newman, but does feature the Hanson brothers and some of the movie's memorable violence. Oh, great ending line, too.

There's plenty of profanity in this clip, by the way, but that's just one of the things that makes SLAP SHOT great.

Paul Newman dies at 83

He was one of the greats. Maybe the last of the greats, in fact.

Charisma to spare, but never arrogant, never off-putting. When Scorsese cast him in THE COLOR OF MONEY, his too-slick sequel to THE HUSTLER, Paul Newman effortlessly -- effortlessly -- stole the movie from young hotshot Tom Cruise. But it's in the original where he really shines...

Dave tells it like it is

It's been a long time since I watched David Letterman on anything approaching a regular basis, but every so often, I'm reminded why he's one of the greats.

Buy my comics, make me rich: BATMAN BLACK AND WHITE VOL. 3

I didn't think I'd be posting another one of these for a while, what with the cancellation of CATWOMAN and all, then lo and behold, DC releases the third volume of its BATMAN BLACK AND WHITE collections in the handy, affordable paperback format. And hell, I'm in it.

The story in question is "Urban Renewal," a short nostalgic piece about a writer trying to land a book deal for a volume dedicated to all that great old Gotham architecture -- you know, the buildings that look like cash registers, blenders... that sort of thing. Brent Anderson, an artist I've long admired (heck, he drew the X-Men graphic novel GOD LOVES MAN KILLS way back when) does a beautiful job with the art, giving it just the right human touch. This is no slam-bang dark look at a dark hero. It's my little salute to the Batman of the 1950s and the crazy, colorful world he lived in.

There are plenty of other talents in there besides me and Brent, of course. You get stories written and/or drawn by Jill Thompson, Brian Azzarello, Darwyn Cooke, Sean Phillips, Bill Wray, Ryan Sook, Ed Brubaker and lots of others. And it's only $19.99. Wotta bargain!

Whatever happened to Mayhem, anyway? Or Johnny Turd and the Commodes?

Thanks to the miracle of You Tube, here are the highlights of the infamous episode of QUINCY where our hero confronts the evils of punk rock...


You know, aside from the complete nihilism, these kids were pretty well behaved, if a bit overly made up. Not a single beer bottle tossed at Quincy's head, not a single profanity uttered.

And here, as a bonus, is the final panel of "Mad's Punk Rock Group of the Year" from the June 1978 issue of, you guessed it, Mad...

Given that this appeared just months after the Sex Pistols fell apart in Jan. 1978 in San Francisco, I'll give the middle-aged Madmen credit for at least making fun of a trend before the corpse was completely cold, but really guys -- why have an Anita Bryant parody do the interviews? It just doesn't make any sense. (Though her increasing disgust as they spit, vomit and urinate on their audience is amusing -- too bad it's not the real Anita Bryant.)

A quick update on a project you probably don't care about

Since I posted this entry a couple of weeks ago, I've since dived (dove? diven?) headlong into a self-obsessive trip down memory lane and dug up just about every small press comic I've ever done, scanned them in, and am currently assembling the whole mess in an ancient version of Adobe InDesign I bought years ago on eBay.

Some of it's cringe-worthy, some of it's fun, and all of it will be collected between the online-published covers of LATE NIGHTS AT KINKOS, the tentatively named book I hope to have done by the end of October (mostly so I have something to sell at the Windy City Con and don't have to sit there at my table like a goof.)
I realize this has, to put it mildly, limited appeal, but I figure if worse comes to worst, I'll at least have a copy for myself so I don't have to go digging through dozens of old folders the next time I want to read a copy of "Generation X-Mas" (and if you guessed that comic was created in the early-to-mid 1990s, give yourself a can of OK Cola.

And, me being me, there will be pages and pages of obsessive annotations explaining all the thankfully forgotten references and giving me yet another chance to blather on and on. If this sounds like a book you, for some odd reason, might be interested in, keep an eye on this blog. I'll have details of how to buy the damn thing as soon as I send it off to Lulu Press. I'm hoping it'll end up being somewhere around 200 pages for somewhere around $15 bucks.

And speaking of annotations, David Foster Wallace apparently committed suicide. Wow. That sort of came out of nowhere, no? I never read his most famous book, INFINITE JEST, but I really enjoyed two of his essay collections -- A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING I'LL NEVER DO AGAIN (with a great portrait of LOST HIGHWAY-era David Lynch) and CONSIDER THE LOBSTER (with a jaw-dropping, hilarious look at the Adult Film Awards ceremony).

If you've never read anything by him, pick up one of these books. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Hey! I want some Big Top points, too!

I have no idea what it all means or what the hell it's supposed to be selling, but here's a new commercial featuring a couple of really, really rich guys...



I like it, mostly for how damned strange it is. The Conquistador? Showering in your clothes? A computer that's like a cake? Now that's funny stuff. A lot funnier, say, than those annoying Mac commercials that waste the talents of John Hodgman, one of the funniest guys on the planet.

OK, go ahead, Mac cultists. Tell me how I'm wrong.

Need another reason not to support Sarah Palin?

Howzabout this? She doesn't support your rights to read what you want. Here are the details, from an article in TIME:

(Former Wasilla, Alaska Mayor John) Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times.

"She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast."

That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

Nice, eh? Just the sort of close-minded religious nut we want one shaky heartbeat away from the highest office in the land. Don't let that carefully crafted "hockey mom" image fool you. She's a mom all right -- that mom in my neighborhood who tried to convince my parents to stop me from playing Dungeons & Dragons as a kid because it was a tool of Satan. My parents had enough common sense to see that woman for what she was.

Let's hope the voters have same common sense in November.