Because I am a comic nerd: the Box Office writer's commentary

As a child, Kim Pedersen dreamed of building a monorail in his backyard, but his dad wouldn't let him.

Several decades later and now a homeowner, Pedersen has gotten his wish: The 52-year-old Californian is possibly the only person in the world with a working backyard monorail.

Six Degrees of St. Elsewhere

For the purposes of our demonstration, we postulate that any TV show that shares characters with another series is in the same universe as that series. With the help of the guys at the Milestone E-group and their discovery of a wondrous TV crossover website that lists an astonishingly large list of spinoffs and crossovers, I will first reveal to you a stunning tapestry of interconnected TV shows, then prove that none of those shows' episodes actually occurred. I’ll do the last with two magic words: St. Elsewhere.

For those of you don’t know, St. Elsewhere was a slick, well written and acted drama series about the doctors, administrators and patients of the fictional Boston hospital, St. Eligius (nicknamed St. Elsewhere by the staff). After a long, award-winning run, in the very last moments of the show’s final episode, it was revealed that all of the events of the show were merely the prolonged daydream of an autistic child. None of it "really" happened. Whether you like this final twist (for what it’s worth, I didn’t), it’s a legitimate ending to a self-contained show. But if St. Elsewhere played by the rules of comics, either they wouldn’t have been allowed to do it, or they would have precipitated a crisis in TV Land far bloodier than DC Comics’ Crisis On Infinite Earths. Why? Because crossover-wise, St. Elsewhere is the Kevin Bacon of TV shows.

Stay with me now, this is complicated but kind of fun.

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Gay, or Asian?

Noam Chomsky has a blog

The David Sim Onion interview is up
If you're fond of more behind the scenes stuff on the David Sim interview, be sure to check out the hoops that Tasha Robinson had to jump through as well as the rejected Cerebus Jeopardy bit. Nutty, nutty stuff.

I love retro-gaming. Legend of Zelda, here I come. And doesn't the new SP look great or what?

Khaaan!

It's time to send out Rescue Dragon!

They made a Doom comic, back in the day.

A really fantastic overview of NeW X-MeN

What Morrison has attempted with New X-Men is an inoculation. He injected the series with all the old viruses--Magneto, Sentinels, evil twins, dystopian futures, the Phoenix, Weapon X, the Shi'ar Empire--but in altered forms that showed them for the diseases they had become. They worked in the past, but now they keep the X-Men idea from progressing--they keep the mutants locked in an endless series of battles and reworkings of past ideas. Morrison's New X-Men is one last shot of all the old tropes, a chance for the characters and the readers to build antibodies against them so they can't come back. So the X-Men can evolve out of the superhero box they were shoehorned into (given what has been revealed so far of Marvel's post-Morrison plans, there’s only a slim chance of this actually happening). And Morrison's not just talking about the old superhero saws of pacifism vs. violence and should-we-kill? vs. we-shouldn't-kill; he’s talking about the aggression at the very core of superhero comics. Superhero fights started as metaphors, but now they refer only to themselves, and the only progress made is in the level of graphic detail. The idea of the superman, New X-Men tells us, has the potential for much more than just an excuse for earth-shattering wrestling matches. We created the supermen, and there is still more we can learn from them, just as they are capable of more--even something as profound and simple as love.

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Chinese transsexual vies for Miss Universe

Chen Lili, a 24-year old fashion model from China, will become the first transgender woman allowed to compete in a Miss Universe contest, according to a report in the People's Daily, a Beijing newspaper.

Lili was granted permission this week to participate in the international event by Miss Universe-China contest officials in New York.

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The Blankets soundtrack is coming out this summer.

I picked up the first trade paperback of the Losers off of ebay. If you want to know why I'm picking it up, I think the cover for issue #13 says it all. Jock is a kickass artist.

How can you *not* like the Darkness?

Ever wanted to know about sumo sex?

"For the bigger sumo, the hardest problem is finding his malehood because it's always buried within the rolls of fat. The first thing to do is get the fat out of the way," she says. You can't move the fat with your hands alone. And it's not like you can ask somebody else for help. What I did was sat on top and moved my butt around in a circle until I found his thing. From there it was easy. Naturally, he doesn't do much else but lie there. It's nearly always the woman on top, or a sitting position."

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Chuck Palahniuk's Guts

Inhale.
Take in as much air as you can.

This story should last about as long as you can hold your breath, and then just a little bit longer. So listen as fast as you can.

A friend of mine, when he was 13 years' old he heard about "pegging". This is when a guy gets banged up the butt with a dildo. Stimulate the prostate gland hard enough, and the rumour is you can have explosive hands-free orgasms. At that age, this friend's a little sex maniac. He's always jonesing for a better way to get his rocks off. He goes out to buy a carrot and some petroleum jelly. To conduct a little private research. Then he pictures how it's going to look at the supermarket checkstand, the lonely carrot and petroleum jelly rolling down the conveyer belt toward the grocery store cashier. All the shoppers waiting in line, watching. Everyone seeing the big evening he has planned.

So, my friend, he buys milk and eggs and sugar and a carrot, all the ingredients for a carrot cake. And Vaseline.

Like he's going home to stick a carrot cake up his butt.

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Can you defeat the 1000 styles of Rumsfeld?

Can anyone give me information on how an RSS newsfeed works and which software is best?

Today is Steak and BJ Day

Shamelessly stolen from fanboy rampage

Safe for work porn

The first review for Kill Bill Vol 2 is up

Man is held after bizarre day care center visits

A 53-year-old Paterson man who recently finished a jail term for molesting a young girl was arrested after visiting three day care centers in Morris and Sussex counties, dressed and behaving bizarrely, police said yesterday.

William Rhode stopped at a day care center in Hardyston late Thursday morning, next visited the Learning Christian Childcare Center in Jefferson about 1 p.m., and then surprised students, parents and staff at the child care center of the Holy Spirit School in Pequannock sometime before 3 p.m., according to police.


Each time he said he was seeking a job. But his attire, including pink women's tights with a diaper over them, and his actions, including defecating and urinating in front of children and staff in Pequannock, prompted calls to police from all three locations

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This is what happens when the Onion tries to interview Dave Sim

I reassured him that we do long-form interviews. I offered to fax him copies of the interviews I've done with Alan Moore and Scott McCloud, so he could see what kind of stuff we do. I mentioned that we look for people who have non-mainstream opinions. He said that Scott McCloud and Alan Moore ARE mainstream. I said that they've been embraced by the mainstream, but that they don't necessarily express themselves in mainstream-friendly ways; for instance, Alan Moore claims that he worships a sock puppet. Dave said something about that depending on whether it's a feminist issue. I asked how worshipping a sock puppet was a feminist issue. He said "Same pus, different zit." I said "I'm not getting you." He said "Yeah. I know

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Oscar winner Charlize Theron to star as Aeon Flux

Charlize Theron is set to earn a $10 million payday, her biggest, to star in Aeon Flux. The Lakeshore Entertainment and Paramount Pictures-financed sci-fi film is based on the futuristic MTV animated series created by Peter Chung. MTV Films and Gale Anne Hurd's Valhalla Productions are producing.

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MC Hammer to make film

MC Hammer's - WorldHit Films announces their PANTHER film project has finished the script stage and pre-production will begin as soon as financing, distribution, and talent deals are in place. The film is expected to be budgeted at under $30 million.

The script, written by their head of Creative Development, Lance Dow, is based on a story by MC Hammer and Dow. Hammer and Dow will also produce.

The story with elements of Batman, Spiderman, and Daredevil revolves around a wealthy and reclusive Chicago heart surgeon and comic book buff - who dons a night-time alter ego of a Panther-suited, motorcycle-riding, martial arts-using crimefighter.

The character uses specialized equipment such as firing retractable panther claws to scale buildings and take out his adversaries, specialized pistols that fire immobilizing high-tech curare injecting darts, highly-sensitive listening devices in his ears to seek out trouble and hear adversaries movements, specialized contacts that allow him to see in a variety of spectrums with super-zoom capabilities and the ability to interact with satellite imagery from his own imaging and GPS satellite. He also maintains a deep underground high-tech command center in a rusting industrial area of Chicago where he keeps tabs on Chicago as well as sharpens his fighting skills in a special room where he battles holographic opponents.

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