MJ and margaritas

Now, I'm not going to say that I was the biggest Michael Jackson fan.  Honestly, growing up with the oldies station blaring in my mom's car, I would say I'm a bigger fan of the Jackson Five (best drunk game ever?  Name all the Jacksons).  However, I have, on occasion, been known to drunkenly shout out "da da da THRILLER!" while doing the zombi dance (I assume you are picking up on a theme: I drunk sing everything).

Anyway, the passing of Michael Jackson had left me a little bummed.  Truly, this guy was one of the bizarre geniuses of our lifetime, and I was sad to see him go.  But what tribute could I, the casual fan, give such a great man?  Why, I could post the YouTube video of a really good tribute to him!

These prisoner dudes are totally awesome, and they deserve some conjugal visits from the finest prostitutes in the land for this little ditty of theirs.

Oh, you want me to explain the title of this post?  That's easy, I enjoy drinking and it's past 5pm (cocktail hour!).  So make an educated guess and just be glad my Macbook's got spell check.

quickie

I'm off to vacation for a week, so I won't be updating about the Philly Wizard World until next week.  However, I will give you this one tidibt:

Walt Simonson is awesome, and he will totally sketch you Lockjaw (even if Frog Thor is more his thing) AND let you cut in line if you're a babe (which I am).  If you ever see him at a con, shake that man's hand and tell him he's the best.

Spin around, ninjas

So there was a time a few months ago when I could not stop singing Total Eclipse of the Heart.  Literally, every day I would sing this song, but I only really knew  the chorus (well, one of the choruses), so I would always sing it like this, "blah blah blah BRIGHT EYES!"  I would just mumble makeup words for two and a half minutes until I got to the part I knew.  Soon, I tracked down the actual song and learned a reasonable amount of it (much to the chagrin of everyone around me) and would randomly start singing it at work, on the train, while making dinner, but most the time when I was stumbling home from a gin drinking session and thought that my entire block needed, yes, NEEDED to hear a little Bonnie Tyler song off key and as a loud as possible around midnight on a Wednesday.

Then one day, I actually sat down and watched the music video for this song.

Holy crap.

Had I had known this song was about a pedder-ass schoolteacher who wants to hump every fifteen-year-old boy in a 5 mile radius of her, I would have never ever sang this song in public all those many many many times I had.  I felt dirty and wronged.  How could this wonderful cheesy love song be about kid-touching?  I wanted to make this song the first dance as my wedding!  I had dreamed up choreography to this song!  There was smoke machines involved, and we would release doves!  And now, it was dirty and wrong and I could never ever sing this song again.

Until today.  Today I discovered the Literal Version.  And now, now when I feel like I've had one too many gimlets and I need to bust a lung on something, I can bust on, "and they shouldn't fence at night cause they're going to hurt the gymnastics!"

Review: Atomic Robo

Nothing gets me going like 400 pounds of steel with automatic intelligence in uniform. Rawr.

So, this year at free comic book day (see blog post numero uno), I picked up a comic containing something called Atomic Robo.  Not really knowing what to expect, I read it cautiously, thinking to myself, "Well, the title says Why Atomic Robo Hates Dr. Dinosaur.  This could be awesome, or it could be worse than season three of Heros.  Wait, nothing could be worse than season three of Heros, so I'll give this comic a try."

Happily, after my interior monologue, I realized that Atomic Robo was awesome!  Totally awesome!  It's basically the robot version of Hellboy, but more guns and less Cthulu*.  Oddly enough though, there's about the same amount of Nazis (personally, I think  Nazis  are really satisfying  villains.  They were total nutjobs with good graphic artists.  Seriously, what other evil-doer stands behind a giant art deco eagle?).  There's not enough Tesla;  though he's Robo's creator, we have yet to see him.  I hope that when they finally have him come around, he's really just be David Bowie (Having Bowie there was the only thing that made The Prestige watchable)  because, Nazi-beating Robot + David Bowie rocking the Pervert 'Stache = aaaaawesome.  Since picking up the free comic, I've read the trades, and the good times don't stop at Dr. Dinosaur.  Besides the Nazis smashing, there's pyramid smashing, giant ant smashing, AND Steven Hawking mocking (no smashing).  Who could ask for anything more? 

On the more serious side of Robo, there's this underlying layer of sadness that you begin to see as you read more issues.  Maybe it's just me and I'm reading too far into it, but Robo, being self aware, realizes that all these people who call him a friend, partner, or ally will grow old and die, while Robo will live on forever.  It's in small moments when he notes the passing of an old army buddy, or bypasses questions of his longevity with a quick joke when you start to wonder if Atomic Robo is making jokes because he's funny, or if he is trying to circumnavigate thoughts of his dying friends with humor and brevity?

Whoa.  What a downer.  I didn't really mean to make this post into a robotic theological discussion, but there I went and spoiled it for everyone.

Honestly, this comic is not sad and weepy!  It's laugh out loud funny!  It's really really worth your time so pick it up already!

*Well, in Volume 3, there's apparently some Lovecrafty monsters, but I'm only picking this up in trades, so meh.