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Steven Grant
Josh Elder
Christopher S. Wilson
Mauro Vargas
Andres Carranza
Andres Ponce
Tomas Aira
Leonardo Pietro
Michael Netzer
Brian Warmoth
Molly Crabapple
John Leavitt
David Gallaher
David Marquez
Justin Aclin
Chris Ward
Eric Palicki
I'm in transit to Chicago as you read this. Actually, I'm either in a bar, or a McDonald's getting a shamrock shake. But later today: Chicago. I've got too many friends there with nary a drop of Irish blood who require my presence to drink properly. But here, enjoy this flashback Cracked piece I did about Dublin.
Since it's Prose Wednesday and I'm swamped with graphics work and he made it timely again via his Twitter apology: Cracked -- Kanye West Steals Mic From Taylor Swift at MTV Awards
Yes, I know that flowchart is horrible. Be kind, as it was literally the first infographic I ever designed.
Probably as often as someone comes to the site looking up Rule 34 fare, I get traffic from "Beer butt crockpot chicken." The fact is, it was a failed experiment: beer can might work in the oven and definitely on the grill, but it's a moot tool in the crockpot, which is already as convected as convection gets without boiling.
Regardless, a crockpot is a darn fine way to roast anything, since most of us like our meat moist and delicious. I've barbecued bbq ribs with a commitment that would make the South proud, and some succeed, some don't. But here's what I discovered this winter: there's nothing better than crockpot ribs.
If I sold these in a restaurant, the price would be 5% of each diner's annual income.
They were on sale at the supermarket, and darned if I was going to wait till May to grill some, so I decided to give the crockpot a try. It's a well known fact that a lot of restaurants will steam their ribs with a variety of hasty methods to get that drop-off-the-bone goodness. It was time to try. I mixed up a rub for the ribs the day before, then added a little marinade the morning of the meal. At lunchtime I put them in the oven for 10/15 minutes uncovered to get a little crispy, then transferred them to the crockpot while I worked on some Cracked articles.
Six hours later (plus the introduction of some barbecue sauce a half hour before completion), I was in Heaven. Without question, the best ribs I have ever made. Twice the quality of my grilling efforts with half the effort and none of the mess, muss or fuss.
To these we added some garlic & butter spinach, candied carrots (butter & a little brown sugar), and grits. Basically, a healthy meal to fight these ribby bastids, immediately undone by butter and sugar.
Now I'm wondering if I can sear some burgers, then transfer them to the crockpot...
A few months ago I wrote an entire article about how hot redheads are based on how much I missed my redhead girlfriend, and today the internet's redheads naturally decided I was making fun of them.
I didn't do that header image, though, so maybe that's where their feelings are getting hurt. Read the article independent of that, and you'll see 1400 words on what a sucker I am for a redheaded woman.
I'd been meaning to revise that extinction event header on the Relationship Advice topic; I was never happy with it. Turns out Cracked did it for me with some Photoshop-fu of a checkout belt way past my capabilities. I'm afraid I don't know who to credit, but good job, masked illustrator.
The reason the magazines repeat is because I did the ones in the article, and I guess they got incorporated. Sorry, internet.
I spoofed shallow magazines for Cracked AND IT IS 5:30 A.M. Sleep or death, I don't care which at this point.
That's a companion piece to the Christina Hendricks Cosmopolitan cover.
Don't worry, there's a Maxim version that's just as bad.
Found her! And she very kindly gave me retroactive permission. You should give all your photo assignments to Stef Keenan.*
*If you're on the west coast I mean. East coasters, keep using Brenizer.
One day, when I've made my wealth, I'm going to find the photog who took this and pay his due. I was just sort of mucking around, looking for someone with that "hand on hip" shot Cosmo always uses, and got lucky enough that Cracked had an assignment close enough to fit the idea around the same time. I forget where I got the photo from, and when I do stuff like this, I try to always go public domain, permission, or otherwise respect stuff. You'll note that Kim Kardashian Maxim spoof comes from a Playboy shoot, where I'm at least trying to take from a billion-dollar corporation than somebody earning their bread. For both of these, though, I'm at the mercy of my own poverty and budget, since Cracked pays pretty well for the internet, but to make something like this in the first place you need a professional shot, it has to be sexy, it was to be free of cover copy...
I dunno. I just wanna do right by creators is all I'm saying. If you took this photo, get in touch. I didn't set out to screw you, guy. I've just been poor for two years now and will pay you a fee when I have more than my rent in the bank.
Happy 1998! I got you a Cracked Topic on motivational speaker Darth Maul.
Invisible, Inc. will go up this afternoon. I am going to bed at dawn again.
In the meantime, let's tide you over with this Batman Characters Topic I did for Cracked. Click onward to read some of the best infanticide jokes you'll hear all day.
I've had very few first dates, which is either the sign of a loser or a keeper. I'll let you figure out which one while I go polish my collection of "World's Greatest Lover" pickle jars.
I've been doing a bundle of Topics for Cracked that I haven't yet listed here because I'm still tweaking them. However, this goose is ready for a gander.
I give you...Redheads
Cracked just put up the Wolfman Trailer Topic on the front page. I like werewolves, which is why I don't like that most werewolf flicks eschew horror to empathize with the wolfman's pain.
But since you're here, enjoy an alternate version of the header graphic on me.
The Love topic I made has been revamped, revised and reloaded just in time for Valentine's Day. Give it to the one you love, because it's better than syphilis, although not by much.
You can still get a t-shirt of the "How Love Works" Venn Diagram. I'm taking it off the board once I've sold 50.
So Friday Night Lights has just declared its end date, which stinks, because that show rated exceptionally high on the Al Swearengen Cuss-O-Meter for Dramatic Excellence. That graph isn't to scale, either, because it's only 600px wide, so I had to basically make it polar.
But then, they get time to finish up strong, and nothing good lasts forever, while nothing that lasts forever is good. Only vampires and cancer cells are immortal.
Goodnight, sweet show. And a flight of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Here are pitch notes I was prepping for a Cracked article on the show, before the Topic went to somebody else.
Friday Night Lights
Basically, football is religion in Texas, and Eric Taylor, like Jesus, changes it for the better, only to be killed for his efforts. I'd kind of converge the megachurch storyline with the state championship storyline.
SUMMARY
Friday Night Lights is an award-winning NBC series documenting the true events that led to the crucifixion of Dillon, TX football coach Eric Taylor.
JUST THE FACTS
--Football is a religion in Texas
--Texas is a religion in Texas
--Pretty much everything is a religion in Texas
Image: A stained-glass picture of Coach Taylor and QB Matt Saracen
Cap: "You are Saracen and on you I build my team."
Image: A play diagram in the shape of a cross.
Cap: As foretold in the playbook.
Image: A shot of Tim Riggens in the megachurch.
Cap:
BACKGROUND
Taylor as foretold by Tom Landry. The unusual circumstances of Taylor's birth. The time his parents lost him at Texas A&M, only to find him giving advice to the coaching staff.
This section serves to lay out the actual premise of the show: Dillon football,
THE TEAM
This starts out like Jesus gathering the Apostles, and turns into a brief overview of the cast.
He then went forth and found Jason, son of Mitchell Street, playing Pee Wee League, and saying unto him thus: "Leave thy team and follow me."
(I'm not going to sustain this biblical tone throughout, just for a line or two at the start of the sections.)
MIRACLES & TEACHINGS
An overview of what makes the show great, filtered through Taylor's miraculous victories, tied into how much faith his team has in themselves. Also, every time Coach Taylor teaches someone what it is to be a man, that's a stamp on his Jesus card.
THE TEMPTATION
In season two, Taylor took a coaching job at the university for about forty days and forty nights. Then he came back and banished his inferior replacement.
Anyway, it'd build like that, showing how great he is for the community, how deftly he avoids the pitfalls of the town trying to test and judge him, much like El Senor Jesuscristo vs. the Pharisees and Sadducees, making everyone around him better...right up till the first time he loses a state championship. At that point he's crucified and a small team of true believers goes on to win in his name, but Dillon football falls into ruin.
It ought to be titled "The Wolfman Trailer," since the film's not out yet, but prejudice is just one of my many talents.
If you're looking for some DC trade paperbacks or a copy of a Dose, there's a way to combine the two now that the products page is up and running. Maximum fun for minimum cost!
Japanese commercials and the wacky celebrities who star in them.
Personally, I vote "Genius." Japan relentlessly embraces the new. One day I hope to go there.
Anyway, the header image is madness, but so is the subject, so I think it works. Your entertainment mileage may vary. I ran the picture captions back and forth through Babel Fish a few times between English and Japanese. That computer is a poet.
Hey, I'm in DC this weekend partying with White House interns, although hopefully with far less legal trouble than Clinton. You'll have a colored Heist page late this evening. Have a Cracked Topic on how terrific Breaking Bad is for your troubles.
Ehhh, maybe not my best work, but it's hard to make something awesome funny. You have to be Seanbaby for that kind of humorous agility. Mostly I just wanted to encourage people to watch that show.
Anyway, check back here later today for another treat, and then tonight for the next installment of Heist. It's a three-fer Tuesday!
I love Christmas, even though my supposedly centrist views qualify me as an America-hating liberal according to those authoritarian sons of bitches at Fox News. What they don't know is that Jesus and I are like THIS, and I believe in the power of the family, so I guess when I see Certified Nutjob for Rent Glenn Beck defending the true meaning of Christmas (or that little twerp John Gibson and his fictionalized War on Christmas fabricated in a desperate bid for success and notoriety), I think it akin to Chris Brown defending Rihanna. Oh, girlfriend, I WENT there, and here's why: You can't make a sweet thing into ground zero for an artificial culture war that wouldn't exist if you didn't keep insisting it does, and then claim you have its best interests at heart.
And speaking of ground zero, have you heard about Beck's 9/12 project? I was in the Bronx on 9/11. You could actually see the faintest dust at ankle level all the way up there, and hear invisible fighter jets screeching overhead. We did make a lot more eye contact on the street, checking whether each other was handling the stress alright, and nodding silently. While it's nice to know strangers are concerned for you, that's not a feeling I need every day, because that means every day of my life would be one day after a horrific act of terrorism. Three thousand people died and another 6000 were injured, and it wasn't so you could feel great about America.You could feel that on 9/10, even despite having a president more interested in clearing brush than running the country. There's better national pride to have than clustering together in fear that more terror might befall you.
It's important to know when watching Glenn Beck you're watching someone who will say anything for a buck. Someone who invokes the spectre of 9/11 to generate blind nationalism, even though blind -isms are what crashed planes into the buildings anyway. Someone who fights health care reform to bring coverage to tens of millions of uncovered Americans based on lies about costs. If this issue were really about budgets, Beck could save at least $400,000 worth of thalidomide babies from the mythical American Fourth Reich, but then he'd have to actually practice what he preaches and care more about people than money.
Anyway, here's where I decimate Glenn Beck's The Christmas Sweater, because I love you. Merry Christmas.
Maybe not the funniest one I've done there, but definitely the prettiest.
I did another CRACKED Topic this week, this one on charming character actress Kristen Bell.
I'm proud of this one. I tried to differentiate (or at least take off) from the tendency prevalent in some CRACKED Topics about female celebrities to simply slag their talents/personalities and lust after their bodies. You can't make jokes out of "Boy, that person sure is well-rounded." I mean, you can, but then you're ripping off the punchline to "Richard Cory". Which I'm not above doing, I just wasn't clever enough to think of earlier than now.
So that was my challenge to write. How do you make normality funny? I had to turn the problem of what was funny about it around in my head for awhile, and I'm happy with the solution that came to me: exacerbate the crush to uncomfortable levels and then detonate it amid existential nihilism.
Good, because I just wrote an uber-comprehensive CRACKED article about comics.
Go. Read. Share. Comment on my peerless wit so I can make $50 and eat Thai food this year.
Please accept this Cracked Topic I wrote about Dublin for your Prose Wednesday entry.
So you didn't get an actual sequential HEIST update today, but you took it patiently like a good sport.
By way of consolation, enjoy my new topic entry over at CRACKED: How to Barbecue Like a Real Man
Firk, I was born to write that one. I hope you like the subtle allusion to Alan Moore's VOICE OF THE FIRE in there.
