Posts Tagged ‘Prose Wednesday’

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From “The Lost Adventures of Detective Martin Mariello”

by Brendan McGinley on 09.21.2011 at 3:20 am
Posted In: Blog

Presenting the adventures of the fictional detective who stepped into reality where he was needed the most. I think I jotted this down in 2001 with the intention of expanding it. Back when I thought I had time to get any prose fiction done. Or comics. Or comedy. Good lord, nothing is ever achieved.

No trace of Dr. Sanchez was ever seen again. In his office were found only a few jars of an unidentified substance and a single sheet of paper, reading:

Klonsky

reverberatum

3 p.m.

The paper was traced to a carbon stock line out of Trenton, produced to the specifications of the now-defunct New York Divine Society, whose motto, “Ex corde, ex mentis” made them the laughingstock of 19th century Manhattan. The Society bore this in stride, or seemed to, until it unleashed its terrible Scarlet Revenge on the city for 64 days, stopped only by the quick wits and sharp marksmanship of Sgt. Emilio Estevez, no relation to his famous contemporary, Blaupunkt Estevez. The latter, however, was a premogenitor of our own celebrated actor, Emilio Estevez.  Despite reports that the actor’s great-aunt by marriage was a grand-daughter of the policeman’s, no relationship has yet been established.

Sgt. Estevez’s handiness with a pig gaff is the sole reason we may still gaze with fondness or some equivalent emotion upon the statue of a mounted Teddy Roosevelt that frequently changes locations in Central Park. The Scarlet Revenge was a terrible week, one still commemorated with the reverent closure of several Wall Street offices each year; the results of course, being much bloodier and costly than Cmpt. DeLaurelac of City Hall would have modern society believe.

All of this was well known and ill-held by Investigating Detective Martin Mariello of the New York City Police Dept (details, see ch. 76)…

Pinchy needed to concentrate, so Riggle kept quiet by reading a book. He had just started the 26th volume of his favorite detective series (actually a string of disjointed pulps written by Frederic Monroe, who, despite his nomenclature, looked nothing like the hero of a ladies’ romance novel, but was dumpy in the middle regions, unhappy with his shrinking haircut [both the shrinking and the haircut] and possessed of bad breath): The True Life Adventures of Detective Martin Mariello, and the sub-title, Containing Details of a Number of New York Incidents Quite Unknown to the General Public Due to the Sensitivities of Ladies and the Irish in Reading the News-Papers.

 

LATER: the man wore a trenchcoat that had met its share of back alley puddles at the brass-knuckled hands of men named Mugs and GrimIron. The stranger’s cleft chin tugged at his lower lip, giving him a perpetual “Say! What’s this now!” grin that had graduated from catching frogs to catching criminals. His fedora sat back on his head, surely pushed there by his thumb during a moment in which he said or thought “Shucks!” good-naturedly.  Y shrieked with delight and ran out of the group to clutch the stranger’s hand.

By God, it was Detective Martin Mariello!

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Before there was Invisible, Inc….

by Brendan McGinley on 08.31.2011 at 1:00 am
Posted In: Blog

There was this really pretentious non-superhero pitch spun of feeding on too many conspiracy theory and monster hunter stories. This would have been early or mid '03. I think Invisible, Inc. had started coming together by then, but who wants to write two epic conspiracy tales at one time? I stole the best thing about this pitch from myself: The title.

In this version, Indelible, Inc. is the name of the good guys rather than the wicked fiends strangling the world. And I think I smashed together a few other failed pitches. That Craddock guy is definitely an import from last week's horrendously named "A Love of Flesh."

Indelible, Inc.

Latere semper patere, quod latuit diu.

(Leave in concealment what has long been concealed.)

--Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca), Oedipus (826)

Indelible, Inc.  The name is whispered in corners of high society, at that level where people are enough in the know to realize how much they’re cut out.  You and I and the President of the United States have never – will never – hear the name, because it’s passed through circles we cannot imagine.

Indelible, Inc. is the guardian.  The assassin.  The thief and the spy and the burglar, performing the black-ops tasks commanded by the nameless cabal that rules the world.  Forget the New World Order.  Or the Vatican conspiracy.  Or the Freemasons.  They’re all red herrings.

These people have resources beyond this world, and aim to steer the future along certain orderly lines to remain in power.  If the magic and monsters and aliens and lost civilizations and trans-dimensional gods were allowed to reach the public…too much possibility would explode through the world, disturbing the agenda set by these shadow-people and their map of the future.

Enter Indelible, Inc.  They are the ones who planted evidence of a meteor crash at the 1908 Siberian Explosion (actually debris from the Second War for Space).  They captured the last werewolf.  They visit UFO witnesses and persuade them to change their stories.  All like they’re supposed to do.

But in their downtime, Indelible keeps very busy, indeed.  They’re swapping artifacts, recovering amazing devices, and building their own network, because Carolyn Cross does not feel these mysteries are here to be buried, but here to be solved.  Not content with her company’s role of men in black, she is subverting the agenda, tripping the legs out from under the rulers of the world.

But someone in the company is a traitor.  Someone tips off the elite that Cross is plotting against them and bungles what is Indelible’s most important mission yet: to retrieve an artifact that accesses other universes.  The elite send another group to erase Indelible, Inc.  This group is so secret even Cross, who trades information with parallel Earths, has only vague clues about their existence.  This new group is called Black, Inc.  They are not the surgeons, like the crew of Indelible.  They are butchers, and they decimate Indelible headquarters with only a minutes’ warning.

The remainder of the team flees to recoup, but just barely. They still have some gadgets, their incredible abilities, and most importantly, their memory.  The elite may have the resources, but no one knows more than Cross, who has spent a lifetime hiding valuable secrets.  The time has come for her final strike at the cabal.  Omniscience will challenge omnipotence in a survivors’ battle that changes the world forever.

CHARACTERS:

"The world is governed by very different personages

from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."

--Benjamin Disraeli.

INDELIBLE, INC. – The phantoms of the world may also be its saviors:

LADY CAROLYN CROSS: Dangerous by 20, sexy at 40. English. President of Indelible, Inc., inheritor of her father’s estate, and subversive in the fight for the future.  The truth belongs to everyone, and Lady Cross intends to deliver it to them.  Her position as guardian of the super-elite, and burier of their secrets, puts her in a perfect opportunity to reveal them…when the time is right.

KARINA PATTON: A beautiful young woman from Queens, NY. Raw recruit, and though she doesn’t know it, being groomed to take over Indelible one day.

DUTCH: Indelible’s oldest agent and Karina’s handler. Cheery, grandfatherly, a good mix of scholar and rascal. He’s had lots of adventure, but most of it’s behind him. He fights the good fight, and appreciates the beauty of the world, and it has all been worth it.

HUGH BRENNING: Young for a field agent, but very talented and a bit shy around Karina, due to their mutual romantic interested

HALO: The last surviving crewmember of the USC Kennedy, sent to 2005 by an alternate timeline to jumpstart a pan-dimensional golden age…and shot down by Black, Inc. Carolyn Cross’ first encounter with Black was rescuing her from them. Halo is the only one capable of operating the quantum key Black, Inc. salvaged from the Kennedy.

POPPY: She’s 900 years old and she doesn’t sleep. Speaks with an untraceable accent. Beyond that, little is known except people get drowsy in her presence, she prefers to work alone, and headless bodies appear in the wake of her missions.

DONOVAN CRADDOCK: Indelible’s monster hunter, and a monster of sorts himself.  His bulk is etched with cryptic, quasi-religious tattoos…tattoos that sometimes change. Merciless to the point of vindictive. He openly scorns Poppy.

MARK: No last name known. Pale. Appears perpetually fevered. Haunted, desperate look, but a cool demeanor. He never speaks…until he does, and we can’t hear what he’s saying. He is, we discover, a ghost.

BLACK, INC. – Brutal operatives who believe they do a dirty, but necessary job:

IAN HOLMES: Ex-SAS soldier, ex-lover of Carolyn Cross, and till now, believed dead.

S: Fast, silent, unbelievably strong, and able to hide in the barest surroundings. But his eyes look reptilian and his skin is a little…off.

GHUL: A demon. Even the other members of Black, Inc. are leery of him.

ZED: An unearthly beauty…literally.

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Alas, poor loglines–

by Brendan McGinley on 08.24.2011 at 1:20 am
Posted In: Blog

When I get cynical, I craft loglines for films that I think nobody could possibly want to see because they're so stupid, generic, dull, or cliched. Then I pitch them to producers because that's exactly what sells. Below is my complete list from what must have been spring of 2003, because Strychnine Kiss was still called Shadows and had yet to be merged with Thrash the World.

They're all mixed together. I don't even remember most of these ever having existed. Some are the cynical ones, some are cool ideas I wanted to write, and others started off the former but became the latter. What they all have in common is an utter lack of central conflict. You can tell how much I had to learn (and still do) about writing a pitch.

WETWARE (sci-fi) – “Anthrotech”—microscopic technology designed specifically for upgrading human beings—has created a golden age. But how long can it last against a terrorist cyborg virus?

Seriously? Hegel is rolling in his grave.

DINAH MIGHT (family) – 7 year-old girl inherits the family superpowers and discovers her parents aren’t as lame as they appear to be.

One day I'll do this one with the right artist.

MILO'S MONSTER (family) – A boy inherits a spooky house, and its resident monster, from a great-uncle, but the house casts him into a fantasy world.

Ditto.

SPACE MONKEY (family) – Alien monkey infiltrates suburban neighborhood to find missing artifact.

You can tell the cynical ones because they sound like they were written by Awesome-o.

THRASH THE WORLD (drama) – A woman returns to her old neighborhood — possibly from the dead — to enact a revenge scheme against the gang that killed her boyfriend and left her to die.

FUNNY ABOUT LOVE (romantic comedy) – A young woman must abandon clown college for erotic modeling unless her boyfriend can replace a rare circus artifact.

I may have to change that to purple and actually write it one day.

DEATH PERCEPTION (comedy) – The Grim Reaper takes a vacation while a man performs Death’s duties in exchange for eternal life.

Now called Reaping Profit.

LOWLIFE (comedy) – A teenager struggles against poverty and dysfunctional family to pursue his dream of a mediocre existence.

The thing is...the logline's terrible, but I like the idea of someone whose big dream is just to attain what everyone else takes for granted as blah: a lower-middle income, frozen vegetables for dinner, parents who don't shoplift.

PROPHETEER (comedy) – A lunatic who thinks he’s a messiah will do anything for the love of a sexy stigmatist.

Shoot, that might need to happen, too. Needs more meat and sinew, though.

AS LONG AS IT TAKES (romantic comedy) – Unhappy singer sabotages his career to win back his ex-girlfriend.

This might be an old title for a She's Famous Now sequel.

STAGGER MALONE: ANACHRONISTIC DETECTIVE (comedy/detective) - A contemporary private eye seems to think he lives in the 1930s, but must acknowledge his 21st century surroundings in order to solve a murder.

CONFIDENCE MAN (suspense) – An ex-convict rises to the top of a criminal empire with unnatural powers of persuasion.

BLACK AMBULANCES (suspense) – Sinister ambulances prowl urban neighborhoods, taking victims not to any hospital but mysterious compounds.

A LOVE OF FLESH (horror) - A monster-hunter suspects that his prey and his fiancee are the same person

That is the worst title I have ever devised

FADE (indie drama) – A high school girl moves from Berkeley to New York in a drastic bid for a second chance at life.

Always meant to be tied to -- but these days bundled up with -- Flicker.

SYNESTHESIA (suspense) – A man with an unusual disorder searches for his kidnapped brother.

Ah, ripping on Memento, I see.

INDELIBLE, INC. (suspense) – A conspiracy within a conspiracy fights to preserve the hidden history of the human race. Indelible, Inc. is a private interest firm hired to keep the magnificent secrets of the world quiet while the global elite profit by them. Little do they know that Indelible is not concealing, but collecting.

Yeah, this is definitely early 2003, because I had yet to retool my Black, Inc. pitch from DC as Control at Marvel's Epic program, before combining the two into Invisible, Inc.

WHITE NOISE (sci-fi/horror) – The Army pursues an epileptic woman through a blizzard after her seizures expose their black-budget invisibility project.

I believe this is meant to be tied into Black Ambulances.

SHADOWS (sci-fi/western) - A beautiful gun-for-hire in a post-apocalyptic Chicago takes on the job of protecting a young boy and his family.

355 (drama) – A Revolutionary War spy must escape her British captors and deliver an urgent piece of information to the Continental Army.

CITIZEN X (sci-fi/drama) – A frustrated policeman is given control of an empire, but discovers the hidden pitfalls of power.

SHE'S FAMOUS NOW (romantic comedy) - Two young men seek to have it all in their pursuit of fame, fortune and a foxy former classmate who is now a major popstar.

DEATH TRAIN (satire, action-adventure) - Ex-Marine returns from retirement to stop a hijacked train and its nuclear payload. Also, terrorists, like, die by the dozens.

First screenplay I ever wrote, first comic I ever commissioned. First artist who ever ripped me off and disappeared with my money. Hi, Jake Bilbao!

SUCCUBUS (horror) – A seductive demoness prowls New York, stalked by the widow of her first victim.

SOULED OUT (comedy) - A teen discovers he has the ability to step out of his body and possess others, but can it help him win the girl of his dreams?

Body swap comedies will never go away.

DOMINO (comedy) - A crimefighter in the 1920s battles a Chicago mobster.

I imported Domino Bones into Invisible, Inc. or rather, his great-grandson.

SKULL & BONES (horror) - 18th-century privateers discover an abandoned ship laden with treasure...but one of the chests contains a horrific monster.

THINK TANK (suspense) - ESP is a latent ability in all people, but the group that wants to train us how to do it finds itself assassinated by political interests. The lone survivor struggles to pass on what he knows.

Conspiracies are a big thing with me, you might have noticed.

FLiCKER (indie suspense) – A young man's search for his vanished girlfriend leads him into a nightmare of desolation and desperation. Reality – or perhaps his sanity – fractures around him.

I LOVE BIG MISTAKE (road trip comedy) – High schoolers make a bid to see their favorite band's last show 200 miles from home and still make it back for their final exam.

Big Mistake is a real Connecticut hardcore/metal/punk/funk band, and if you can, you should get their albums.

ST. MARY (drama) – Young, pregnant woman drops sinks into a harsh existence when her baby’s father is killed.

There's no plot there.

HELD BACK (comedy) – Unhappy businessman gets a second chance when he finds himself reliving his high school years.

Quantum leaping will never go away either.

ERASE THE PAST (drama) – An amnesiac is fascinated by a mysterious woman. He comes to remember the awful and beautiful details of their history.

I'm pretty sure this is based on watching too many Everclear videos. Trick statement: There is no such thing as too many.

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What’s in that tub of Cool Whip?

by Brendan McGinley on 08.17.2011 at 12:57 am
Posted In: Blog

Cool Whip: The very name conjures up images of tasty summer treats that even those lame lactose-intolerant (or as we like to call them, lactose bigoted) kids can eat. But really, do you know what you're putting in your body? No? Well for crying out loud, man, that's what Asylum's here for. Read on to see our pretty chart of everything that goes into the Cool Whip.

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7 Advertising Mascot Movies We’d Like To See

by Brendan McGinley on 08.10.2011 at 12:19 am
Posted In: Blog

Nick Nadel and I co-plotted this off his idea for the article, then I did the Photoshop while he wrote the text below. We had a lot of fun, and I'll tell you a secret: I fought so hard for the Burger King Fellini film I think I came down to "I'm doing it no matter what, so you might as well run it."

We've finally calmed down after learning that the E-Trade babies -- those sassy talking tots who understand the global stock market for no apparent reason -- could be starring in their own movie. And no longer brimming with furious anger, we thought we'd help remake-happy Hollywood's current creative bankruptcy. It's only a matter of time before they give up and just start pumping out feature-length advertisements.

Here's where they got it wrong: Instead of forcing a "Look Who's Talking" rip-off down our collective throats, Tinseltown should have looked to other (i.e., better) advertising mascots for inspiration.

Here are seven movies based on famous commercials that we'd actually like to see.

(All posters below designed by Brendan McGinley)

"The Noid"
The beloved Domino's Pizza mascot comes to the big screen at last!

When the nation's pizzas are threatened by nefarious super-prankster The Noid (played by Tracy Morgan), it's up to one diligent Domino's employee (Jesse Eisenberg) and his impossibly hot girlfriend (Olivia Wilde) to stop the costumed imp before it's too late.

It's the movie that guarantees at least 30 minutes of laughs ... or your ticket is free!


"National Treasure: Where's the Beef?"
It's a race around the world as Nicolas Cage helps former Wendy's spokeswoman Clara Peller (deliciously brought back to life by the special effects wizards behind "Avatar") finally uncover the location of the beef.

Will they find a patty large enough to satisfy Peller's ravenous hunger before it's too late? And what secrets lie in Ronald Reagan's tomb?

Co-starring Rich Little as the voice of robot Reagan!


"Exorbitant Charges"
Two cops, one city terrorized by overages and dead spots.

From the guy who brought you "Date Night" and "Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian" comes the one action-comedy you won't need to silence your cell phone for.

"Exorbitant Charges" stars both Luke Wilson (as AT&T spokesman Luke Wilson) and the Verizon "Can You Hear Me Now?" guy.


"Six Flags Over da Streets"
From the studio that brought you "Dangerous Minds" and "Freedom Writers" comes a tale of believing in yourself when the chips are down.

They were a street-wise group of inner-city teens. He was a mysterious, creepy old guy who taught them the power of dance. Together, their love for roller coasters, overpriced funnel cakes, and cheesy '90s dance music would change the world. This winter, more flags means more hugs.

The soundtrack is entirely made up of the Vengaboys' song "We Like to Party" (aka "The Six Flags Theme") as remixed by the Black Eyed Peas, Ke$ha, 3Oh!3, All-American Rejects and other terrible bands.


"Burger Satyricon"
Sex, violence and an ungodly amount of Whopper Jrs. all factor into this bizarre, Fellini-esque tale of the rise and fall of the Burger King "King."

How did he get to be the King? Why is he so irresistible to women? How can he appear in random places offering strangers a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit like it's no big thing?

This summer, audiences will find out why it's good to be the King -- if they can even figure out what's going on.


"Paranoia"
It's old-school thrills when the Geico money stack stars in the Hitchcockian thriller "Paranoia."

Who's watching you? A pile of cash with googly eyes. Bet you didn't see that coming!

Directed by whoever made "Saw VI."


"The Outlast"
The director of "The Road" returns to post-apocalyptic horror with this tale of a toy bunny that keeps "going and going and going" -- even after a nuclear holocaust turns the population into roving, cannibalistic gangs.

It's nearly three hours of the Energizer Bunny banging his drum through beautifully shot barren wastelands. Just give this one the Best Picture Oscar now, folks.

This Christmas, Energizer outlasts the competition ... until the end of time.

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The 12 Most Amazing (and Useless) Wikipedia Entries

by Brendan McGinley on 08.03.2011 at 8:51 am
Posted In: Blog

Someone in England wrote this article, and then I Americanized it, turning every wry witticism into toilet humor.

I also swapped out odd-toed ungulates for Alpha Flight, because they're terrible, whereas ungulates are an all right order of mammals in my book.



Wikipedia page: Donaudampf schiffahrtselektrizitatenhaupt betriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft (all one word)

Which is what? An incredibly long German word.

Huh? The German language loves itself some compound words (in German: kompositwortswiemädupp), and this one of its longest. It means 'Association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services' which is becoming more and more common in today's steamboat-based economy.

How to use it in a sentence: Assume you started losing your audience halfway through the word and bring them back with the good stuff. "Athought a fine example of sesquipedalianism, Donaudampf schiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft will never recover from last month's spicy sex scandal." 


Wikipedia page: The Alpha Flight family of entries

Which is what? Canada's answer to The Avengers

Huh? It's one thing when the entry for Superman is 50 times longer than the one for Man & Superman. It's quite another to make an individual page for the headquarters of a team other comic book characters make fun of. Standalone entries also waste electricity for Alpha Flight's back-up teams, and characters who died in their first appearance. 

How to use it in a sentence: "Alpha Flight hasn't really been able to carry a book since Wolverine quit." 



Wikipedia page: The Katzenklavier

Which is what? It's a cat piano.

Huh? Yep, a piano made of cats. You press keys like you would on a normal keyboard, except the hammers hit specially tonally selected cats' outstretched tails, making them meow out in pain. Weird, right? But sensible, when you think about it. Those "Meow Mix" commercials aren't going to torture themselves. Sadly, no instructions for how to modify one to accommodate the cast of The Jersey Shore.

How to use it in a sentence: "My wife Yoko Ono and I are recording an album of blues classics stripped of every third beat and instead of guitar, a Katzenklavier."



Wikipedia page: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Which is what? A very bizarre sentence.

Huh? You're going to wish you didn't know this, but buffalo has just enough versatility and inertia of plurality to build a grammatically coherent thought that won't be useful till the next Ice Age. Using homonyms and homophones, the arrangement of nouns, verbs, adjectives and place names makes perfect grammatical sense, and makes you sound like a genius and a tool at the same time. It describes a herd of buffalo in the city of Buffalo who intimidate ("buffalo") other buffalo beneath them. See? It wasn't worth learning, was it?  

How to use it in a sentence: Using it in a sentence is all you can do, and, in fact, the only reason this entry exists. Nevertheless, our advice is don't. 



Wikipedia page: Foreign Accent Syndrome

Which is what? A strange mental condition.

Huh? A very, very rare side effect of certain brain injuries where patients wake up speaking their native tongue – but in a totally different accent, with Englishmen speaking like New Yorkers and vice versa, and Americans sounding like Keanu Reeves in Dracula. It's nigh-on unbelievable, but it's actually happened. Wikipedia says so. Can you imagine how maddening it must be? Cursed never to use your own voice, with your loved ones unsympathetically insisting you're taking this joke too far. 

How to use it in a sentence: "Oi, you lot! Don't be havin' a larff at me Foreign Accent Syndrome, now, or I'll box your ears, so I will!"



Wikipedia page: Uncombable Hair Syndrome

Which is what? A strange hair-based condition.

Huh? No, it isn't just an official term for "curly hair", but a genuine condition, whereby an unusual structural anomaly of the hair means the mess on your scalp (typically straw-colored or whitish-blond) cannot be combed flat...yet. Get on it, science. 

How to use it in a sentence: "No, it's not uncombable hair syndrome; they're pretty normal pubes."



Wikipedia page: The Original Whizzinator

Which is what? A piece of avoiding getting busted for taking drugs.

Huh? This was a kit for cheating urine-sample tests. It even heated up the liquid to room temperature, and included fake penises (individual skin tones available on request) to fool any inspector. The manufacturer has been convicted of 'selling drug paraphernalia' and has been sentenced for 6 months in jail, where he'll no doubt undergo... drug tests. Sometimes, life is poetry. 

How to use it in a sentence: "My girlfriend's into some bedroom games I'm not entirely comfortable with. I need to get a Whizzinator." 



Wikipedia page: Wolfe+585, Senior

Which is what? It's a name. Yes, a name.

Huh? It's the shortened form of the longest name, ever. It starts with "Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus" and goes on for ages. Its bearer once complained that newspaper misspelled it, and had a correction printed. No, really.

How to use it in a sentence: Frankly, who has the breath? 



Wikipedia page: Leck mich im Arsch

Which is what? It's a canon written by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Huh? This canon's title transliterates to mean "Lick me in the ass" – though the more idiomatic translation is "Get stuffed." Titled Let Us Be Glad by publishers, its original lyrics, "Lick me in the ass, quickly," were replaced with "Let us be glad, grumbling is in vain," which is pretty empty comfort if you're already engaged in the first version. 

How to use it in a sentence: "Since I am the lead character in a typical German porno, kindly Leck mich im Arsch. Ah...thank you." 



Wikipedia page: Hitler bacon or 'Hitlerszalonna'

Which is what? Bacon for people who don't have bacon.

Huh? We don't mean to rail on Germany, but Hitler and bacon together comprise 8% of the internet, so we couldn't leave this one off the list. During WW2, bacon was in short supply. As a bizarre substitute, Hungarian soldiers fighting for Germany were given very dense jam made from plums and the like, hardened into the shape of a brick, to be sliced up and cooked. They called it... Hitler Bacon. That's sort of like building a pinewood derby car and naming it Killbot 3000. 

How to use it in a sentence: "Despite having entirely parve ingredients, Hitler bacon will never pass kosher inspection."



Wikipedia page: Fox tossing

Which is what? Exactly what it sounds like. 

Huh? Cruelty and point systems go together like human and nature. In the 17th and 18th centuries, people bundled animals into leather slings and fired the poor beasts into the air for sport. Maybe those foxes were shredding local chicken populations, but it's not like positive reinforcement is going to stop them. Not content with bite and claw wounds from foxes, slingers expanded their predator-tossing game to wildcats. 

How to use it in a sentence: This phrase is ripe to return as some sort of political expression, in which a nearly harmless annoyance is riled into a hot mess. "What if all this uninformed Tea Party nonsense fox-tosses Christine O'Donnell into the Senate?"



Wikipedia page: The small penis rule

Which is what? A trick used by lawyers to get their writer clients out of libel trouble.

Huh? Essentially, it fixes situations where Mr Famous Person A complains that Writer B has written a character that's essentially them in a bad light, but with a different name. The lawyer now uses the rule. "But for this character to be like you, you'd also have to have a small penis to prove the similarity, as the character definitely has a small penis. Do you have a small penis, Mr Famous Person A?" Didn't think so...

How to use it in a sentence: Probably best you don't court slander or libel charges, unless you want to face down fictional rocker Rick Dagger. 


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Other ways of measuring the BP oil spill

by Brendan McGinley on 07.27.2011 at 12:09 am
Posted In: Blog

In which we see other applications for that many gallons of oil, graphic by me, off research and text by Wendy Rose Gould.

Other ways of measuring the Gulf oil spill

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Hannibal’s view

by Brendan McGinley on 07.20.2011 at 12:21 am
Posted In: Blog

Here's my very first Asylum article, followed by some bonus material.

Happy birthday, President Washington!

What made Ol' Wooden Chompers the Father of Our Country (besides spending all of mom's money on drink), was his sheer will to make the army function. When the Pennsylvania Line mutinied, Washington did the unexpected: He took their grievances to Congress. (Less lucky: the executed leaders of the New Jersey Line uprising thereafter.)

When the going gets tough, the tough get creative, and quite possibly brutal. Confronted by a challenge, these leaders proved unpredictable enough to win, or at least blow the enemy's mind.

HANNIBAL BARCA
When Hannibal wanted to move his army somewhere that hadn't been used as a toilet by 50,000 mercenaries, Roman general Fabius was outside the valley blocking more access points than a Promise Keepers purity ball.

Common sense says press the enemy's weakest point, move in darkness, and divert attention to spread out your foes. But only maniacal genius says to do all of those with stampeding cattle on fire.

With burning torches tied to their horns, the army guided the panicked cows to the pass. By the time they reached the Romans guarding it, half the forest was on fire and the other half smelled like delicious steak.

Hannibal's army waltzed through, presumably in the formation of a middle finger.

TIMUR
Hannibal was most famous for bringing elephants over the Alps and only getting most of their handlers killed.

But elephants are smart enough to panic when things go wrong. Like, for instance, another batch of burning livestock.

Facing 120 armored war elephants with poisoned tusks, Genghis Khan's descendant Timur sanely responded, "Hell no, I'm not fighting that." He then not-so-sanely set camels on fire. The elephants turned and trampled the Indian army in their rush to be someplace with fewer screaming pack-animals.

VLAD III
What, in turn, intimidated the Turks? Only Dracula.

In his time, Prince Vlad impaled more people than Ron Jeremy. He racked up a six-figure body count back when the world population practically was six figures.

That didn't deter Sultan Mehmed II from invading Wallachia, so Vlad undertook the most ambitious PsyOp in history. As the Sultan's army marched into Targoviste, they passed through a forest of 20,000 impaled Turks.

ZHUGE LIANG
"The Crouching Dragon" of the Shu Kingdom caught one rebel leader seven times, setting him free until he surrendered of his own broken will. He was feared in a way most men brandishing feathery fans are not. Basically, he was Ancient Chinese Batman.

The best story about Zhuge Liang that doesn't involve magic is when Zhou Yu, the Wu commander told Zhuge Liang that he had to supply 100,000 arrows in 10 days or be executed.

The resourceful Liang filled boats with scarecrows and drifted toward the opponents' encampment. His war drums attracted more than 100,000 arrows, all sunk in the boat hull and his straw sailors.

SIMEON & LEVI
For the last word in tricks that succeeded despite being insane, consider Israel versus the Hivites. Simeon & Levi's sister was raped by Prince Shechem of the Hivites, who then had the gumption to ask for her hand in marriage.

So the brothers offered to merge tribes, with one catch. As per Jewish law, Hivite men would need to be circumcised. (Although one would hope there was also a "no more rape" clause.)

The Hivites soon found themselves ... well, let the Bible tell it: "On the third day, when the men of the city were in pain, Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi each took his sword, came upon the city with stealth, and killed all the men, including Hamor and Shechem."

That's right. Two avengers slaughtered every man in the city, none of whom could stand up. Remember that if anyone offers to trade you cattle for your foreskin.

Hannibal Goes to Rome

In Hannibal's opinion, the greatest general of all time was Pyrrhus of Epirus. We tend to think of Pyrrhus as a loser thanks to the prevalent phrase "Pyrrhic Victory," but remember the second half of that is VICTORY. The Commander was of the opinion that for sheer audacity joined to brains, you couldn't beat Ol' Pyrrhy, a man who was determined to get the job done no matter what.


Also known as Pyrrhus of Goddamn Gorgeous

WHAT HE SET OUT TO DO

Nothing less than destroy the Roman empire. Alexander the Great's second cousin couldn't hold onto a throne, so he decided to carve one for himself. The Greeks had colonized the coast of southern Italy, and Rome's expansion put a bunch of Latin knights sharpening their swords in plain view of Magna Graecia. The city of Tarentum asked him to command their war, so Pyrrhus did the reasonable thing and sought the advice of a hallucinating virgin. Whereas today that would get you some ghastly Twilight fan fiction, the Oracle at Delphi gave a wordy amphiboly that guaranteed she'd be right no matter what happened, a tactic familiar to any man who's ever argued with his wife.


The quality of our fake-fortune-telling virgins has really dipped since the Iron Age

Thus assured in the wisdom of his endeavor, Pyrrhus set forth to literally strangle the Roman empire in its crib. His 25,000 troops, plus some non-Latin Italian allies, met Rome at the Battle of Heraclea for a mixed martial arts clash so thunderous Pyrrhus' humongous brass balls are still vibrating in his grave. Neither phalanx nor legion could thwart the other until Pyrrhus decided to do things the easy way and unleashed his war elephants.

Pyrrhus, like any cop out for justice, stood over his foes' bodies as the backup arrived just late enough to say, "Damn...I'll call it in." The unified Greek forces then wandered around the bootheel, taking or plundering any town they wanted. Rome, the European terrorist in this action flick, upped the ante by slaughtering a bunch of Greeks so they couldn't join Pyrrhus. It's important to remember in this article that Romans are dicks (Latin: [i]mentulae[/i]).

WHAT WENT WRONG

The Battle of Asculum. The evenly sized armies fought, with Pyrrhus finally cracking the solid steel shields of the legion, but taking some good licks of his own. Eventually, the elephants were able to stomp Rome again, and the Latin army retreated, losing 6,000 men to Pyrrhus' 3,500 men. All good, right?

Wrong. Now Pyrrhus is running short on men, including many of his best officers. He hasn't picked up the Italic allies he thought he would. In his own words, "We can't survive another victory like this one." He may have added, "Now give me that crown." Making matters worse, the pasta wouldn't have tomato sauce for another 1700 years, so there wasn't a lot of incentive to stick around. But, hey, Rome's been thoroughly spanked and run home holding its bottom twice now, maybe they'd be sensible and agree to respect Tarentine independence.

Yeah, that would have been swell, except: the Romans were dicks. They wouldn't talk treaty until Pyrrhus went home, at which point Rome would have had as much as incentive to negotiate as a bank robber given a private jet and the secret map to Nude Carnival Island.


The island's horrible secret revealed!

Bear in mind, Pyrrhus wasn't overrunning Rome, he was simply asking them to leave his people alone, which is kind of like those same police letting the robber take home whatever he can carry if he promises not to do it again. On top of all that, by leaving the continent, he'd have to abdicate the throne he was angling for in the first place. That would have been tough explaining to several thousand widows back in Greece.

Rome allied with Carthage, the other almighty empire at the time, who pounced on Syracuse like it was Ass-Kicking Tuesday and Sicily wore size 44 jeans. Pyrrhus tried to help, but the legendary Punic navy was so eager to cut him open you'd have thought he had a caramel center. His attentions now divided and his resources dwindling, he lost to the Romans at the aptly-named town of "Bad Event" which those garlic-munching imperialists promptly renamed Beneventum ("Good Event"). Because again: Romans = dicks.


A typical Roman senator

THE AFTERMATH

Pyrrhus left us with the phrase "Pyrrhic Victory," a triumph so costly it wasn't worth the prize. He also left enough troops to defend Tarentum, which waited about five minutes for him to leave before promptly surrendering to the Romans. In a surprising display of non-dickery Rome didn't punish the rebellion, even letting them govern themselves, which was exactly what all the bloodshed was over. All the war did was encourage the development of new, passive-aggressive dick techology.


Okay, you guys should be saf--wait, is that a Roman eagle banner? Seriously? Why'd you even invite me out here?

Pyrrhus got his crown by attacking the Macedonian homeland, but got greedy enough to make the mistake of attacking Sparta, despite being aware that it was full of Spartans.


Seriously? Everyone saw that movie. How could you not know?

Refusing to learn, he proceeded to Argos. Alas, if talent ran in family, all the Baldwins would be worth watching. Similarly, Alexander's cousin was killed by an old woman bonking him with a roof tile, serving up the assist for an Argive stabbing fatality. But you have to admit, that's still a more dignified end than Stephen Baldwin.

Bonus Hannibal today: I've got an article on incredibly audacious generals over at Asylum. Lots of burning livestock and impalations there, if that's your thing. No Pyrrhus, but there are robot oxen. Because those were all Washington wanted for his birthday.

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Love Almanac

by Brendan McGinley on 07.13.2011 at 12:35 am
Posted In: Blog

New Asylum article went up today! The Love Almanac.

It's got a real purty infographic made specially for you.

Every year, February builds up to that one holiday that means so much to so many: Presidents Day. What most people don't realize is that another day, hidden in the mix, promises love and joy to all whose hearts are pure and minds are dirty. We speak, of course, of Valentine's Day.

But what of those whose Valentine's expectations are disappointed with a gas-station bouquet of half-dead roses and an unsatisfying two minutes in the sack? It turns out disappointment and a need to feel appreciated leads many to stray after certain holidays, according to AshleyMadison.com founder Noel Biderman. Valentine's Day, New Year's and even Mother's Day spike traffic to the Web site for people looking to have an affair.

For your relationship to weather time and tide, you're going to need a guide. Here's our rough almanac to your year of marriage.


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I sort of had nothing to do with this.

by Brendan McGinley on 07.06.2011 at 12:22 am
Posted In: Blog

Over at Asylum they asked me to do a flashy chart for Andy Green's article on horrifying facts about lady parts. And I said "Flashy? No no no, let us be demure."

What's a tasteful way of making a visual representation for that kind of thing? I went for an anterior view of the pubic bone, because when you buy my services, you're buying class. Also, sarcasm. But mostly class. And I make a good martini.

Anyway, I asked them to hold off the credit, because when this originally ran, I was job-hunting and didn't really want Google linking my name with "Horrifying vagina." Which of course it's doing right now. I've already got my name image-associated to a dude banging an inflatable horse (not my fault) and two guys in Spider-Man costumes (okay, that's my fault).

It blew up Digg, though, to Andy's credit. Or maybe credit is due to female anatomy. One of those has got to be popular on the internet. Anyway, yeah. I didn't write any of that follows, but I took a day's pay to gig up the graphic. God, that went down as one of the worst summers of my existence. Not because of all the cold, clinical vagina I'm getting paid to make PG, but because of all the stuff that was preferable to.

Horrifying facts about the vagina

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Oh yeah

by Brendan McGinley on 06.29.2011 at 12:17 am
Posted In: Blog

When I wrote this, I'd been dumped for all of of half a week, and my very old dog (who later died that year) was 130 miles away. All I wanted was to get out of the house I'd been sitting in with freelance and shattered expectations for the last few days and walk along the waterfront with a dog. For money.

And I swear to you, that pit bull lay down in the street and refused to go towards the shore. She insisted we head towards the more populated Bedford Ave.

Anyway, a pretty good dog. I hope she found a loving home.

Asylum New York had me hang out with a brindle-colored pitbull to see if sketchy pick-up artist techniques actually work. I'm pondering an entire series, including wearing a stupid hat and having my nephew run up to strange women and say "You look just like my dead mommy!"

Can I tell you a secret? I just wanted to walk a dog. It's been a rough month. I would have adopted Mango in two seconds if I 1) didn't belong to a labrador in CT already 2) were allowed to have a pet in my apartment, and 3) had enough money to feed myself, let alone a giant pit bull.

Everyone knows that women love men with dogs. But what if you don't have the time, patience and willingness to scoop excrement off the sidewalk with a plastic bag every day for the next 7–10 years? You "borrow" a shelter dog, take it for a walk, and then return it a couple hours later.

That's what some unscrupulous singles are doing as a means to meet women, according to the New York Post. But does it actually work? I decided to test it as unscientifically as possible.

I swing by BARC (Brooklyn Animal Rescue Coalition) on a breezy Tuesday evening. My companion is brought out, a barrel-chested pit bull mix named Mango. A ball of herringbone muscle explodes into me with all the reserve of a pinball, leaps up to eye level, and begins harmlessly nibbling my arm.

"She likes to chew," says the next fellow in line, who's been here before. Sweet -- she ignores personal boundaries and has a harmless fetish. This dog is going to make my quirks look good.

Keep reading to see if Mango made a good wingdog.

To test Mango's skills, I've barred myself from starting a conversation unless the dog makes an opening for me. We're trying to gauge how much interest this pooch can raise, and it wouldn't be right for me to distort the experiment with smooth opening lines like, "You know, I can eat an entire slice of pizza in one bite. What, this? Oh, it's a dog ..."

I plan to take Mango west to the park where there's always someone enjoying the view of Manhattan, but after a few steps she shows her best trick: passive resistance. When Mango doesn't want to go somewhere, she drops flat on the ground, daring you to drag her in full view of the people who just entrusted her to your care. I count on them to forgive my gentle nudge, since their dog is now prone in the middle of the street.

She has no problem staying upright when we venture northeast, which is where all the dames are, so that's one point for the dog. Before long, we're caroming down Havemayer, Metropolitan and Driggs, but what women we pass don't give Mango much of a glance. The ones who do are escorting feebler canines and avoid my awesome pit bull. Here's a rule: If a dog weighs under 10 lbs., it's a cat until it proves itself otherwise.

Mango and I drag each other onto Bedford Ave. with no female interaction; it's clearly time to give her a push. We encounter a cute brunette and her dog Zoey, so I ask her permission to let the dogs meet and greet. They sniff each other's intimate parts while I take the more subtle path of inquiring about Zoey's breed, given her unusually large ears. Things are going so well, I'm about to introduce myself, when something makes Zoey snap. The suddenly snarling pup gets pulled away from us. I decide this is not Mango's fault, because to admit so would be admitting my dog is as charming yet socially inept as I am.

 

Bedford is definitely the spot for this ploy, rife with people getting home from work or going out to dinner. Finally, women are admiring the dog, and one shapely blonde even throws an arm out to pet Mango, but is instantly gone. I stop a couple of girls in leather jackets and Ray Bans, and ask them to take our picture. Opportunity is there if you're willing to make it, but I've already kept Mango out past curfew.

We return to BARC, unburdened by the phone numbers of Brooklyn beauties, but we had fun. Walking a pooch might not open doors with all women, but it's a great way to approach ladies with other dogs, often at 35 mph.

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Oscar Fever is making me sick

by Brendan McGinley on 06.22.2011 at 12:03 am
Posted In: Blog

New piece up at Asylum: If the Oscars Were Honest, starring gobs of Photoshopped movie posters.

Sunday is Oscar night, and while that means nothing to anyone who doesn't read gossip magazines, we still can't escape their buzz. So we know that the categories and winners aren't exactly straightforward. As the film industry dislocates its shoulder patting itself on the back, we have some suggestions to bring honesty and awesometicity to the Academy Awards:

First, we have Best Actor. Deserving nominees can't compete with the tabula rasa that christens itself Nicolas Cage. An ordinary Best Actor statuette doesn't capture the undiluted dramatic power of Cagedom. We propose a new category: Best Overwrought Nicolas Cage Performance.

Keep reading for more of our own awards and posters.



Milla Jovovich also throws herself into every role she takes, be it terrible action movie, terrible horror film, or terrible indie comedy. Did you know she trained three hours a day for months prior to Resident Evil: Apocalypse? Why? There are Taco Bell commercials with better plotlines than that train wreck. There needs to be an award for Best Milla Jovovich Performance in a Movie That Didn't Deserve Her Commitment.

 


Then there are the supporting roles. We all know the winner's never judged on just the role that he's nominated for, and these categories are where Hollywood likes to reward the larger context. That's why the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Dead or Near Death goes to...

Actresses as a whole face a tougher challenge than actors; there's an entire industry devoted to tracking their body fat. The rule of thumb is if a beautiful woman does something, it's pop, but if an unattractive woman does it, it's art. Therefore we're creating the Best Artificially Dowdy Actress Drawing Attention to Her Acting Ability.
 




Look, we're not saying most action films are transcendent statements of human suffering. We're just saying if 90 percent of everything is crap, then so are most films that only college professors own on Blu-ray. The award for Most Pretentious Film People Are Afraid Not to Admire goes to...



On a similar note, there's a category for Best Foreign Language Film. The winner's usually pretty good, even though the category implies an inferior English-language flick wins Best Picture every time. The fact is, American audiences just don't have the mental software to enjoy a lot of stories outside our frame of reference, so why not re-brand this Most Incomprehensible Foreign Film?

 




Speaking of foreign films, how come a remake of one is the only time Martin Scorsese gets his due? Let's be frank, this category should be Best Director Who Isn't Martin Scorsese Even Though Martin Scorsese Is The Best Director.



They've never explained what makes the Best Animated Film separate. Is it the quality of animation? Or is it just a great film that would get its butt kicked in the other categories because cartoons are perceived as kid stuff? The best stories of the century have all come from one studio, so let's just re-name this one Best Pixar Film and Live-Action Is Lucky It's Stuck in This Category.


It's easier to make an audience cry than it is to laugh, but there's still no respect for the clowns in the Academy's hall of heroes. It's time to come clean and recognize Best Picture That Should Have Won Best Picture but It's a Comedy.


And, of course, a special award must go to the people who walk the red carpet. Let's have a Best Performance by an Actor Pretending Not to Be Disgusted With Melissa & Joan Rivers.

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Fightin’ females & NES games that want a remake

by Brendan McGinley on 06.15.2011 at 2:38 am
Posted In: Blog

Another Asylum article, and it's all about nostalgia, which I'm told is popular among the man-children who populate the internet these days. Kneel before your one true god, retro-pop devotees! KNEEEEEEEL!

And it was fun to write.

But even better than that is the matchup between the toughest fictional females in pop culture. I'm an objective analyst in such matters, or you would have seen Veronica Mars triumphant.

Official article below!

This wonderful snowball fight between Princess Leia and Lara Croft got us wondering who'd win if these two ladies actually squared off (or curved off, rather) in real life. Then our stunted pea brains wandered and we found ourselves pondering who is truly the toughest woman in pop-culture history.

Before we knew it, we had a sort of March Madness for gladiatrices on our hands ... and in our geeky hearts. Because there's just something awesome about a woman who could kill you, but doesn't.

Read on to see which pop-culture babe is the baddest ever, and please let us know if we've left anyone out. Xena, anyone?



So far, so vicious. But let's see what happens when the pairings get a bit more unpredictable.


We're down the final two fights now, composed of our heartiest heroines.

And it all comes down to this: a clay goddess versus a steely mortal.
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NES Games that need to be remade NOW

by Brendan McGinley on 06.08.2011 at 1:24 am
Posted In: Blog

And don't gripe at me about how some of these were remade for your crappy platform. I'm talking here about games that truly deserve a second chance in our new wireless, body-language reading, super-graphics consoles.

A long time ago, there was a heartwarming Nintendo game full of potential, despite the limitations of the 8-bit system. We're speaking, of course, about "Wall Street Kid." Wall Street's still cool these days, right?

No? Good, because the Wayford/Majesco reinterpretation of "A Boy and His Blob" is a much better example of what we're talking about. Boy feeds Blob jellybeans, Blob turns into useful shapes according to what flavors he eats. The new version is gorgeous, accessible, and heartwarming -- in all ways an expansion of the already-fun original's potential.

The only catch is it has made us hungry for terrific recreations of NES titles that were greater than the 8 bits that went into them.

Click through to see some cult classics that deserve a second shot at life on a high-tech console.

"Super Dodgeball"
If ever a game were meant for Wii, it's the hilarious sport of chucking a ball two dozen different ways at someone's head. Imagine how great it would be to lob custom missiles at your family based on your actual windup and pitch instead of pressing button combos. Bonus points to whoever invents a Nerf peripheral for actual clobbery.


"Battletoads"
A terrific sense of humor, a broad variety of attacks and the ability for players and enemies to attack their own side make this one of the most beloved NES games out there. America needs a "Battletoads" game in a 3-D environment. Do it for the troops.


"Paperboy"
Before there was "Grand Theft Auto," there was "Paperboy," a thin excuse to wreak as much havoc as possible in your neighborhood. The question is, now that there is GTA, why can't we use its engine to dodge lawn mowers, beehives and the occasional Grim Reaper? Come on, Atari, why don't you collaborate with Rockstar on something beautiful?

"Skate or Die 2"
Despite its clumsy handling and messy graphics, "Skate or Die 2 "was raw fun. The Tony Hawk series also left the ramp to thrash urban terrain, so take the skateboard peripheral from "Tony Hawk's Ride," ditch the glitch, and graft sleek gameplay onto a punk skateboarding adventure. "Skate or Die 2" was much more engaging than its predecessor, so use its story and bizarre sense of fun to create some delirious anarchy.


"River City Ransom"
There are a lot of games about two geeky gym rats beating their way through the streets to rescue someone's girlfriend, the President or the President's girlfriend. Usually they just murder everyone in town until they stumble across the right person. But the only one to make it even more fun than Double Dragon was this unrepentant thuggery.

"Kid Icarus"
This game was always meant for a 3-D world. Taking aim in flight is an activity just crying out for a dual-analog controller. Lovable lead character Pit has already been recreated for "Super Smash Bros." so throw in some trick arrows, and you have yourself a game.

Honorable mention: "Captain N: The Game Master"
Though never actually a video game, Captain N existed in between all Nintendo games. Imagine if all the languishing properties out there were licensed for one epic quest. You could guide the Captain through a world where each level is a better version of those '80s classics. And that, friends, would be the finest world of all.

What other classic NES games should be re-released?

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The 8 Very Worst Local Commercials

by Brendan McGinley on 06.01.2011 at 12:20 am
Posted In: Blog

Over at Asylum, I wrote a takedown of the most horrifying local commercials. It involves mutilated strippers and transexual eagles.

The more I watch that Trent Bedding ad, the more protective I get of Trent Ranburger. He looks like he's having a lot of fun.

Somewhere between folk art and pop art lies the do-it-yourself wasteland of local advertising. It wasn't easy, but we scoured hours of badly scripted, poorly acted and unfortunately conceived local commercials to pluck the worst -- but most entertaining -- ads filmed by small-business owners around the land. (Or at least the ones that made it onto YouTube before they died of shame.)

8. Trent Bedding Does Austin Powers
Back in the late '90s, you couldn't swing your fist without clobbering someone badly imitating Austin Powers. Yet no matter how blindly we punched our way into the millennium, it didn't stop until "The Spy Who Shagged Me" silenced our laughter forever. So there's really no malice in watching Trent Ranburger swim around in $17 worth of spy costume; it was just what people did back then. This commercial is awful, but you're rooting for it anyway, like watching a play performed by a cancer support group.

7. Marc Norton From Norton Furniture
Marc Norton murmurs like Peter Lorre in countless acts of insanity, casually cursing and generally being terrific. This is history's only furniture ad to become a successful local cable show. The next time someone tells you evil clowns and comedy can't be blended into a furniture ad, you slam their head on the table and roar, "This is Marc Norton's genius milkshake, AND YOU WILL DRINK IT UP!"

 

6. The Fridge BBQ Sauce
This is just intolerable. After William "The Refrigerator" Perry stopped sacking quarterbacks and fighting COBRA terrorists, he released his own barbecue sauce. Like, literally, from his pores. So why isn't he endorsing it? The Fridge appears for barely three seconds in his own ad, taking a backseat to a middle-aged surfer, the South of France and some orphans forced to live in a cartoon house. No, there's no excuse for that.

 

5. Eagleman
This has been called the worst commercial ever -- mostly for the acting, but also for the abomination before the Lord of Mr. so-called Eagleman popping out eggs. What transthropomorphic trickery transpires here? Was he once a woman? Eagles mate in midair, so was he impregnated by a flying insurance agent? Other than that, Eagleman's fine work of tracking down uninsured drivers is commendable.

 

4. CPA Claycomb in Starship Defender
The first step from cult to religion is demanding the entire universe be stamped with your object of worship. Trekkies took that step long ago. They also prefer the term "Trekkers," because making up reasons to get offended is the second step. Anyway, they need a place to do their taxes, and that's where Claycomb comes in, and where, in turn -- specifically at 0:14 -- a look of existential horror spreads across its employees' faces as they look into the eyes of the Tax Monster.

 

3. Credit MacDaddy
Some occupations just attract awful people, like spammer or CEO of The Trump Organization. While we've known some swell used car salesmen, they get a bad enough rap that you wonder why one would pretend to be an even more reviled member of society like the Credit MacDaddy. It's like a pimp and a credit executive are dueling within this man, and the prize is America's scorn, so of course their preferred weapon had to be Middle-Aged White Person Rap. The only way this could get more embarrassing would be if he proposed to his daughter's homeroom teacher without breaking rhyme. And got turned down. And then his pants fell down. And he had a horrifying circumcision scar. Yeah, that'd be about what it takes.

 

2. J. Michael Gallagher Approves This Ad
So you've just blown $5,200 on your mistress and a DUI charge, and your selfish wife wants a divorce. You're going to need a lawyer with a bevy of lovely assistants if you want to spite your ex. Fortunately, attorney Mike Gallagher is here if you need help. It's not like the couples doing everything to ruin each other's lives don't need lawyers too, but Mike Gallagher sets the bar so low he actually broke the lowest common denominator. Like a drunken voyeur, his camera sways and leers at his employees' inappropriate attire.

 

1. Frankie and Johnnie's Furniture
"I say I say I say" what the hell is going on in this freak-show of a commercial? Frankie and Johnnie take the cake for integrating such disparate elements as repetition, a bad Foghorn Leghorn impression and mysterious and possibly offensive references to "the special man." Everything's pretty normal until about 23 seconds in, which just makes the carnage that follows even more disturbing.

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Astroglide explained

by Brendan McGinley on 05.25.2011 at 12:24 am
Posted In: Blog

Don't tell my ma I wrote this Astroglide piece for Asylum. It'd break her heart to find out I'm having pre-marital comedy.

Shed a tear for the deleted one-liner, "Water prevents pregnancy; that why fish can't reproduce, right?" It were my fav'rit.

You may also notice I got some of the science wrong. Look again: I got the science FUNNY.

Lubricant! That magic potion that keeps your partner's orifices interested in what your body's talking about is mysterious stuff. It's water, but it's sticky; it's alcohol, but it dissolves. Here's a breakdown of how that bottle of Astroglide in your mom's underwear drawer works.


Keep reading for a more detailed breakdown of what makes this bottle more fun than a Slip-n-Slide...

Purified Water
Awesome! Water prevents pregnancy, right? It turns out water is only in here as a medium for the good stuff. Sorry, should have told you that six weeks ago.

Glycerin
It's a sugar alcohol, meaning it's basically antifreeze for your private parts. It won't evaporate due to the friction of your conviction, unless you're the Flash. But even if you are, cross-country runners never get laid, so it's not your concern.

Propylene Glycol
If water is a universal solvent, what good is this additional solvent? We can only assume (incorrectly) from the name "propylene" that this is some kind of propellant so you can set new land-speed records for having to explain that you usually last longer. But seriously, propylene glycol, good job doing whatever it is you do.

Polyquaternium 15
Its chemical name is acrylamide-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate methyl chloride copolymer. That's a lot of meth! So remember: Every time you're having sex, you're making good use of methane that would otherwise contribute to global warming.

Methylparaben
According to Miss Manners, it's polite to clean up before you stick your private parts in someone else's body. It's a respect thing. But also, there's a weird love triangle in nature between sugar, yeast and alcohol. Since glycerin is two of those, methylparaben is the bouncer that keeps yeast infections waiting outside.

Propylparaben
You'd think with all the alcohol inside, our nation's body cavities would be pickled for eternity. You'd be wrong. This ingredient is here specifically to act as a preservative.

So there you have it, a rough guide to smooth sex. Now that you know how all the parts work, you can brew your own at home. And then, when that fails, you'll know what to compare when you go shopping for the quality stuff.

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Other things Facebook wants Betty White to do.

by Brendan McGinley on 05.18.2011 at 12:16 am
Posted In: Blog

Over at Asylum Nick Nadel and I hammered out some Fakebook pages to show why the internet should stop asking Betty White for favors. Then we made that dream...a reality.

When Betty White hosted "Saturday Night Live," it meant Facebook had finally accomplished something other than detonating your privacy and making your junior high crush momentarily remember you.

But success has gone to the heads of Betty White's fans. Just punch Betty White into Facebook's search engine, and find scores of pages calling for her to host the Oscars, guest star on "Glee," and even star in her own porno. And, no, we're not linking to that, you sick bastard.

We decided to beat Facebook to the punch by predicting the five most ludicrous things Ms. White could be asked to do next.

Click through to see Betty's possible next moves.

(Click on each image to join the group on Facebook.)

Who doesn't want to see America's two cuddliest senior citizens joined in holy union? Surely the president can marry them even if they object, right? That's probably in one of the early Constitutional amendments.

A longtime animal supporter, Ms. White's natural next step might be eradicating a horrendous scourge. Since "Heroes" is already canceled, the likeliest candidate would be this epidemic.

Of course, there's more to America's favorite Golden Girl than terrible diseases that call into question to the existence of a beneficent God. A large part of Ms. White's appeal is her kindly nature. She can comfort a child with a skinned knee within five seconds of meeting him, 2.25 times faster than standard octogenarians.

A great deal of her comedy stems from the incongruity of an elderly woman sweetly uttering foul-mouthed obscenities. Let's take that a step further and apply her frailty to a grueling mission. Laughs galore!

Of course, once we've had enough Betty White to fulfill our heart's desires, there will be nowhere left to take our obsession with this fine lady ... except straight to the gutter.

In fact, maybe we'd all be better off if we just let her have a cup of tea with biscotti and an afternoon nap. You can't demand everything of someone who's given you so much.

Text by Brendan McGinley and Nick Nadel. Art by Brendan McGinley

 

Yes, that's a GrimJack reference I just dropped. I'm not above doing that. And Rue was alive when we did it, so that makes us...slightly less terrible people?

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What’s Inside 5-Hour Energy Shots?

by Brendan McGinley on 05.11.2011 at 8:29 am
Posted In: Blog

Lots of Vitamin B, according to this Wikipedia-fueled analysis I did for Asylum. I apologize in advance to Science.

The makers of 5-Hour Energy Shot claim it delivers all of the rush with none of the crash that accompanies high-sugar energy drinks. So what's in there to keep you alert?

Thanks to Public Domain Pictures for the coffee and asparagus.

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Five Ways the ’90s Made Us Strong

by Brendan McGinley on 05.08.2011 at 2:03 am
Posted In: Blog

The Gentleman Bastard by Brendan McGinley

How about a little Cracked with your prose wednesday? My new column started last week, and gets its first front-page feature today. This one was written before the bin Laden piece, though, so it's got more claim to being first. Either way, happy to be here.

Five Ways the '90s Made Us Stronger

↓ Read the rest of this entry...

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Baby Bombers

by Brendan McGinley on 05.04.2011 at 12:24 am
Posted In: Blog

As someone raised Red Sox who went to his first Yankees game last night, I can safely say I would rather go to Staten Island than root for the Yanks.

Remember when baseball was fun? Gentlemen in straw hats and women with parasols would gather at the cow patch to jeer, cuss and throw food at the athletes? No? Neither do we. And fortunately, we don't have to.

We can get all the Crackerjacks and none of the era's painful dentistry simply by nabbing a free ferry. Out in the forgotten borough tonight, the Staten Island Yankees start another fun season for anyone who enjoys baseball without all the muckety-muck.

Keep reading for some of the advantages the minors have over their big league buddies.

Winning Record
The Class A Short Season team has won the league championship five times since their formation in 1999, a 50 percent rate, which is even better than that of their slightly better-paid counterparts. They've also sent 41 players to the majors -- almost as many as the Ripken family.

Cheaper Tickets, Better Seats
In a case of obscene New York rents, the new Yankee Stadium clipped 4,000 seats and raised the price on a prime seat to a blinding $2,600 (The outfit eventually slashed that price in half, and still no one's willing to pay that much). Of course, that's an exceptional example. The average grass-side ticket goes for a mere $510, which would also get you a decent bedroom in Queens for a month. Contrast that with the Baby Bombers, who will plop you behind home plate for just $16.

Fun Mascots
The Yankees don't have a mascot except for 1979's Dandy bird or, worse, menu items in Yankees caps during the '90s. Their farm team sports Scooter "The Holy" Cow, an homage to Phil Rizzuto, who in addition to informing Americans about the Money Store, was apparently a respected Yankees shortstop. Lately Scooter's battled two other cows, "Red" and "Huck," so even if you hate baseball, you get to watch slapstick performed by anthropomorphic bovines. And hey, if you're a plushie, you get three times the titillation!

Promotions
Staten Island's Richmond County Bank Ballpark regularly features Tuesday Night Tickets, in which you get a twofer on a ticket purchase by bringing the wrapper from a Kraft Singles packet. Think about that: you can seat two people on the foul line for $7 each and justify eating a stack of cheese every week. And that's not even the package that gets you free Wendy's. Now if only there were some way to combine cheese and burger into a delicious hybrid.

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Left hanging

by Brendan McGinley on 04.27.2011 at 8:20 am
Posted In: Blog

At the man-cave that is AOL's lifestyle section Asylum, I cracked wise about the shame of being left hanging on a high five. You get to watch Ryan Seacrest drag a blind man into a faux pas.

The high-five: that expression of a victory beyond any words.

"I have succeeded in my efforts," says the gesture. "Let the thunderous clap of triumph inform the land of my deeds."

But the higher the thrill, the further the fall, and there are moments when we are denied our due.

Here are some of the worst moments when a man goes from feeling hung like a horse to left hanging like a horse thief.

A few months ago, the U.S. bombed the moon, just in case our celestial prisoner was getting any notions about who's boss. The guy in the black shirt must be important since he can't even stick around after blowing up the moon. Take a moment for the high-five!


In his defense, NASA contains more Trekkers per capita than even the Internet circa 1994, so he probably knew better than to get near a red shirt. And, yeah, the latter shrugs it off with a jovial recovery, but that casual recline says different. Black Shirt Guy has denied his cohort his well-earned thrill, looked right in his eyes and said, "I don't give two sticks of licorice for your lunar bomb, good sir." This was an egregious, conscious decision to deny someone a once-in-a-lifetime, wholly appropriate high-five. Shenanigans!

Speaking of guys who rule the world and drink high-end scotch, here are some dudes who attend a hockey game in sport jackets.


You can pass that one off as simply turning the wrong way. If leaving someone hanging were murder, this would be involuntary manslaughter, much like this "American Idol" clip. However, if you want to see the show break new and uncomfortable ground, watch Ryan Seacrest anti-reverse-double-backflip to leave himself hanging when he high-fives a blind man.


In a way, it's a mark of good character. Seacrest doesn't see a disability; all he sees is a person -- a person he has awkwardly dragged into his faux pas.

A converse of that is someone twisting in the wind with just cause. Watching this Tyra Banks clip with the sound off, you might think she's chumping that lady whose head and hand she passes over again and again and again and again. But watch the man behind her.


If you give people free money, they're gonna go crazy. But this is an extremely unwarranted high-five that still isn't excused. In the first place, her hands are full of bills, so you're celebrating before the job is done. Second, did you bomb the moon? No, you got free money, through neither luck nor achievement. Third, you're a man at the Tyra Banks show. You don't high-five anyone except the only other guy, and then only if it's one of the 33 percent of episodes about Ms. Banks' breasts.

Perhaps the most painful example on this list is where the shame falls not on the man, but all the men around him. Badgers QB Scott Tolzien can't find anyone to high-five him after a touchdown.


What? A touchdown is exactly why the high-five was invented. Scoring one is considered the greatest moment in a two-year radius of a man's existence, unless he scored a better touchdown or his wife had twins. It is the single time it's permissible to pat another man on the butt, hoist him by the waist and carry him more than five yards.

Worse, that's the quarterback, for crying out loud. Imagine if at the end of "Lethal Weapon 3," everyone had jostled Mel Gibson out of the family photograph. Sure, we would have gotten a hilariously drunken screed as an alternate ending, but something would have been lost. That something is called due respect to the guy spearheading the battle.

Next time, Tolzien should take a page from Andrew Bogut's book and high-five himself. The lesson is if no one gives a man what he deserves, he takes it anyway, even if he has to steal it from ghosts.

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Everyone hates the Westboro Baptists

by Brendan McGinley on 04.20.2011 at 8:16 am
Posted In: Blog

I wish them the worst thing benevolent intentions can deliver: clarity and self-awareness regarding their awful actions.

But till then, here are some people messing with the Phelps family and the Westboro Baptist Church over at Asylum.

Your friends at Asylum hold a lot of different beliefs. Some of us believe in God, some of us believe in nothing and some of us who are clearly right believe the world was created when the evil north wind Tezca'aunhathicon scattered the ashes of the gods' fire into the stars of the universe, as was revealed in the sacred crystals.

But we can all believe in the value of a good laugh. One plucky young satirist had the right idea recently when he minimized a brimstone preacher's "You're all going to hell" screed ... with pancake mix.

Since he wasn't torn apart by bears at the end of the video, we decided to round up some of our favorite videos of people heckling hateful preachers, which, naturally, led us to the Westboro Baptist Church.

When you're picketing Marines' funerals and even the KKK makes a point of distancing itself from you, you've plainly failed as Americans.

Keep reading to see the best videos of Phelps and the gang getting pwned.

Our first fine fellow swoops in at the two-minute mark in Anonymous's hallmark Guy Fawkes mask, and steals the WBC's Hawaiian flag. Damn right, because our ancestors didn't annex Hawaii at gunpoint just for some anti-American types to come in and wish for its destruction.


Australia isn't as shy as the U.S. about airing foul language, at least until we annex it at gunpoint. (A hearty welcome to 2017's addition, the Koala State!) When comedian Charles Firth decided to romance Fred Phelps's son, they informed their audience exactly who these crazy Topekans are with exquisitely NSFW audio clips, unless you work at a sewerage treatment plant.


This next youth strides brazenly into the church's midst and promptly Rick Rolls them. Considering the Westboro Baptists start their morning with a prayer for God to kill everyone and end it by gargling with the blood of the unbaptized, that takes a serious pair. Buy this guy a beer if you know him.


The great thing about this country is when hatemongers gather, they're usually met by a much larger counter-protest. So here's something you don't hear every day -- how about a cheer for the frat boys? The guys at Alpha Delta Phi decided to protest the WBC by dancing to Diana Ross. In terms of gaiety, their dance only lands a 5 out of 10, but the judges award you a perfect score for Awesome, Alpha Delta Phis!


And, of course, the video that inspired us in the first place, "You ain't got no pancake mix!"

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What’s inside a box of Cocoa Puffs?

by Brendan McGinley on 04.13.2011 at 8:59 am
Posted In: Blog

Hours and hours of nudging text around until it fits into Asylum's narrow column, apparently. Not my best layout, I admit, but I dissected General Mills ingredients for 9 hours and found a way to compare salt to Darth Vader.

What's in a box of Cocoa Puffs?

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Band fails got front-paged on AOL

by Brendan McGinley on 03.30.2011 at 8:28 am
Posted In: Blog

My Asylum article on Band and Orchestra Fails ended up on AOL's welcome screen, so now there's the added hilarity of criticisms from AOL users.

(Confidential to Offended in Omaha: For what it's worth, I don't think I wrote that "loses his s*** laughing" line. I have no problem with profanity; I just prefer mine more creative than that.)

Orchestras, symphonies and marching bands don't get enough credit. Learning to master instruments through years of hard work earns these groups little but band-camp jokes and possible praise from New York Times critics with salt-and-pepper beards.

So, we salute you, hard-working musicians of the world, the only way we know how: by making fun of your most hilarious failures.

When faced with the mighty challenge of coordinating elaborate performances, these folks went for the far-more-demanding Internet gaffe. Read on to see (and hear) bands behaving badly.

This is the gem that inspired this list. The surest way to make someone in the Asylum offices lose his sh** laughing is to turn up your speakers and play this clip. There's no picture to go along with the extremely flawed audio, but who needs one?




When this tuxedo-ed timpanist loses his fight with physics, the end result is disastrous ... and hilarious.




What can you do when your paperwork is tamped down but your instrument itself decides to pop its strings? This musician experiences a rare moment of utter de-volumization when his viola quits all four strings at once. That's what you get for buying a knockoff brand like Strattyvarious. You try to save a few thousand dollars, and it comes back to bite you.




All of these are embarrassing moments, to be sure, but none so humiliating as getting knocked out cold in front of nature's most bloodthirsty beast: the teenager. Also, painful: a shot to the face from a metal bar. Watch the guy in the orange shirt just before the half-minute mark. Then watch it again in slow-mo as the laughter of his peers turns demonically sadistic.




Faces heal, but egos remain bruised forever. Arguably more painful than catching a trombone to the face at practice are these cascading pratfalls in the middle of gameday. Watch the far left at the half-minute mark as these kids start dropping ... and dropping ... and dropping. Then laugh. Then resume watching, because the marchers will still be hitting the ground.




For an even better view of such shenanigans, watch these 10 kids take a dive just right of the middle of the screen. Then at 0:17, a saxophonist with no empathy takes out his cell phone to record the mayhem. Injury? Check. Insult? Check.




Dueling tubas? In the Zapruder film of band fails, there's a side-scuttling heavy metal section taking out a few competitors, "Showgirls"-style. Back, and to the left, boys. Back, and to your left.




Sometimes you do everything right and you're still in a bad place. Whether you're a classical concert player or a member of the spirit team, you'll never come out worse than this bell ringer whose spirited war-gong duties render him the victim of an unfortunate camera angle.

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The evolution of the female action hero

by Brendan McGinley on 03.23.2011 at 8:50 am
Posted In: Blog

A gigantic infographic featuring the most devastating warriors of womanhood went up at Asylum. It took me 15 22 28 hours to make and is literally six feet tall.

Well-behaved women rarely make history, but they once made movies. From then, it's been a long, slow climb to today, where Hollywood actually allows women to blow things up on screen.

They've had to work twice as hard to get here, and five times as hard to make movies as bad as the ones men put out.

Keep reading to see our timeline of misbehaving women of the screen, from 1915 to today.

Embed this image on your site:

And now: the deleted designer's cut bonus footage:

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Dickering over size in the animal kingdom

by Brendan McGinley on 03.16.2011 at 8:22 am
Posted In: Blog

Asylum asked me to do this chart, and though I like the aesthetic, I don't ever want to spend two days researching and composing this kind of ghastly material ever again. Combined with the Taser research the day before, I'm sure Google has my IP address flagged under possible animal offenders.

Anyway, here's the original article (their idea) entitled "Penis Size in the Animal Kingdom -- What Species Has the Biggest Equipment?"

Recently, scientists in the Falkland Islands aroused and measured the penis size of a dead squid. And while we're not ones to judge what turns some people on, we are ones to plug our ears and chatter "la la la la" when those scientists report that deep-sea squid are monstrously hung.

It did get us wondering if there were any other animals that, uh, cut humans down to size. So, we ranked the penis-to-body ratios of Earth's best-hung critters to determine where we fit into nature's penis picture.

Check below to see the results of our investigation.

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‘Not the Father!’ The 7 Best Paternity Test Reactions on Maury

by Brendan McGinley on 03.09.2011 at 8:08 am
Posted In: Blog

This is the cleaned-up version that ran on Asylum, but I recommend the full version I posted originally.

Maury Povich exploits peopleEvery morning, Maury Povich rises from a coffin filled with his native earth, puts on his human face and heads to work, where fresh victims wait to trade their dignity for a free paternity test.

After they've memorized the foul invective they'll hurl during the show's pre-taped introductions, they step into the studio lights of Maury's lair. And that's where we, the American audience, come in.

Read on to see the train wreckage that is a Maury Povich paternity testing episode, and help us keep it from happening in the future by remembering one simple fact about condoms: They're fairly cheap and easy to put on.

There, we just prevented 1,000 babies from ever being conceived. Take that, John Connor and Second Coming Jesus!

Happy news sends one fellow into a real-life synchronized dance number. That only happens in "Glee." (Does it happen in "Glee?" We don't have a girlfriend right now, so no one's ever made us watch it.) Only one thing's for sure -- when you dance this well, you'll have women lining up to drag you into a paternity suit.




Telia appeared on the show nine times and gloated over Dion that he must be her baby's daddy. The test results literally knock him out of his seat and catapult her across the stage. The real victim, however, is the audience member who gets left hanging at 1:24. Oh, and the child. Always, the child.



Is it us, or, in this next clip, does the victory dance steal the mother's life force? She flees its effects, but is struck down before she can escape.




No male guest was so excited to be free of responsibility as Felix. He executed a neat backflip, which is more than most men do when their child's born (let alone disinherited).




Not to be outdone, Aaron lands a solid backflip with no hands! And, apparently, no empathy.



Maury's official Most Outrageous Guest pioneered the "I'm not the dad" explosive acrobatics, but still fathered six kids. Branden finally realized creating human life isn't a Saturday afternoon hobby. It's a good thing he stopped having kids of his own volition, because he was one away from a court-ordered vasectomy.




Although it is pretty heart-wrenching when the betrayed father cries, here there was one pretty obvious tip-off: It's one thing not to question your child's complexion; it's quite another to believe you fathered a baby that adorable.



Just think how many of these kids are going to get psychologically scarred when their classmates find YouTube clips of their parents wishing they'd never been born. Povich's compassion for these guests might be genuine, but, if he really cares about their well-being, why's he still giving them a venue to make fools of themselves and their loved ones?

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National anthem fails

by Brendan McGinley on 02.16.2011 at 8:44 am
Posted In: Blog


I wrote an article on National Anthem Fails for Asylum. It's awesome, and will make you love America. I heard the CIA is using it to undercut al'Qaeda's recruiting efforts, but I've said too much already. No I haven't: Trombone lengthening carrot ball tuna hat! Silly putty! Fotzpa overshoots Tur! There, now I've said too much.

Anthem failsThe National Anthem is a challenging piece to sing. It's full of soaring notes, and there are three other stanzas no one ever learns because they're rife with imagery from the War of 1812, aka the One We Don't Study Because It Was a Tie.

To top it all off, our anthem is based on an English drinking song, so it wouldn't be disrespectful of you to have a couple beers before attempting it. Heck, a good drink might even be a necessary step in remembering the lyrics.

It certainly would have relaxed the vocal cords in these screeching and stammering singers, perpetrators of some of the anthem's worst renditions ever recorded (and then posted on YouTube).

Let's start with an uplifting one. Natalie Gilbert has a great voice, but she forgets the words. The supportive crowd touchingly cheers her on, but she remains flummoxed. She needs a hero. And because this is America, she gets one in the form of Mo Cheeks. Coach Cheeks can't sing, but remembers all the words. Together, they're the Voltron of national pride. People helping people: That's what this country is all about (and cheeseburgers).




This plucky chanteuse is French-Canadian, so there's no shame in needing the written lyrics, especially since an American would have used a cheat sheet from the start. What happens next, however, seals this failure into a debacle worthy of its own anthem. Give her credit, though; she wins a gold medal for her positive attitude.




This next rendition isn't so much off-key as trying every key on the chain without realizing you're at the wrong door. It's hard to tell if the audience is for this version or against it, but one thing's for sure: Passion is great, but you have to at least make eye contact with the notes you hope to use.




Now for something even more uncomfortable than teasing teenage girls. This policeman in Chattanooga gave the anthem a go at a memorial for fallen officers. That's normally where your smartass pals at Asylum politely walk the other way whistling, but then we noticed his compatriot doing his level best not to laugh. That makes it OK, right?




Just to cement our reputation as horrible people, here's an atonal elderly veteran who leapfrogs from verse to verse, sometimes mid-sentence. Look, it's not our fault that all these nice folks keep screwing up. This is the material life hands us because amoral killers are only chosen to sing the anthem in Nevada, where there are no laws, and the measure of a man is in the speed of his trigger finger.




If only there were some anthem failure we could all hate guilt-free. In the movie "Office Space" a character named Michael Bolton complains about "that no-talent assclown" who stole his name. "Why should I change?" he moans. "He's the one who sucks." That's how this next clip makes us feel. Why should we change the national anthem, Mr. Sings From His Groin? You're the one who sucks.




There's no explaining why the San Diego Padres invited professional squawker Roseanne Barr to do to the anthem what "Hellraiser" did to D-list actresses. Still, they probably didn't expect her to hock a spitwad at the end, a move the comedienne later explained was just her tribute to dip-chewing, seed-munching baseball players. Twenty years later, this is still the second thing people think of when you say "Roseanne Barr," after her long-running TV show.




Using great technical proficiency but little discretion, this man invents a new anthem. Take out the words, and what song is he singing? Is this one of those live mashups? Because if so, we would prefer YouTube stick with sultry songstress Allison Williams.




Here's a rare case of an Anthembomb! Singer Rene Rancourt is pumped to belt the "Star Spangled Banner" like it was two sizes too big. The much-amused announcer's box sings along with an R-rated version that's pre-empted by some speedy producer-inflicted muzak. Remember muzak, kids? No? Ah, you're better off. (NSFW language)




Speaking of gold medals, here's America's most famous anthem failure, as the crushing weight of Olympic gold round his neck cracks Carl Lewis's voice. Listen to the audience roar its contempt. That's a man who brought more glory to our country than bald eagles and Rambo combined, but they're laughing at him.




The roundup below is the final word in forgotten words. Watch a few clips, but don't try to convince us Cab Calloway wasn't just coming up with new and better ways to bend the English language.


Here's one for you to decide. Kat DeLuna puts her own spin on the anthem, and goes Texas-sized with it. She could technically be arrested for using that much vibrato in a state where dildos are illegal. Is this creative license or fibrillation fail? Discuss.


At least we've never been subjected to this collection of Dutch Idol rejects mangling Tina Turner. These Nederlanders DEFINITELY don't need another hero. And they don't deserve to leave the Thunderdome. The action starts at 2:25, but the rehearsal's worth watching so that if you're ever present at a breech birth, you'll know what to expect.


Finally, we'll leave you with a true professional. You could all learn from 6-year-old Courtney King.


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Reporters being upstaged by animals

by Brendan McGinley on 02.09.2011 at 8:20 am
Posted In: Blog

There are more reporters cavorting with -- or against -- people in fuzzy animal costumes than you might think. I documented them for Asylum, because the work I do is important.

Local TV news generally thrives on sternly worded reports of mangled bodies. Even when the anchors get humorous, the punch line's always something dry and ambiguous, like "I bet you enjoyed yesterday's sunshine as well, Diane!"

Sure, Ernie Anastos might tell you to "keep f**king that chicken," but you can't dance to that the way you can to, say, a hurricane.

But every once in a while, some unexpected levity comes along in the form of a wacky costume. We've collected our favorite clips of reporters being upstaged by costumed creatures (and one sexy cop outfit).

A couple of weeks ago, we showed you a courageous man in a bear suit defying the wrath of both nature and the local news team. Here is that man again, because if you don't want to see hurricanes, news-bombers and portly bears twice, then you, sir, are no kind of fellow we want to drink with.




It turns out the bear wasn't the only fuzzy suit cavorting around Hurricane Ike in search of reporters. Not satisfied with local news, this chicken took on no less prestigious a target than CNN. Unfortunately for him, there was a silver fox in the henhouse, and his name was Anderson Cooper. Result: The chicken got cooped. Nobody puts Cooper in a corner!




Where do old Internet memes go to die? Santa Clara, apparently. Watch as the Peanut Butter Jelly Time banana dances in the background of this report on drugs, prostitution and college students -- only two of which have anything to do with dancing bananas.




For the ultimate in disruptive costumed buffoonery, watch reporter Jim Taricani delve deep into the costumed heart of the plushy beast. When he tries to interview a woman accused of cyberstalking, he finds "Donnie Darko"–level surrealism wearing not one but two masks, the second of which is a bonnet-wearing bunny. Watch the expression on his face at the 2:12 mark when the last shred of idealism that led him to become an investigative reporter exposing the stories that matter withers away.




To counter all that costumed negativity, here's Cincinnati reporter Bob Herzog, who loves dressing up for Halloween. The problem is that the holiday only comes once a year. The solution? Dance Party Friday! To counter criticism of his dancing, Herzog solves the problem the only way he knows how: with a full-body costume. Watch as Clifford the Big Red Dog enters the scene to solve the lack of costumes on the morning news.




Of course, Clifford's a big name, and not always available. Thankfully, the Cincinnati Reds have enough mascots for Herzog; he can dance with a different costumed character each week. If it's red, plushy and dances, Bob Herzog will find it.




And finally, because we love you, here is New York's PIX News reporter Jill Nicolini arresting our vision in a sexy cop costume, just one of many wardrobe changes for the Long Island lust-magnet. What is it with traffic reporters, and their costumes? We don't know, but we're glad this one's a bust.


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The Sneakiest Trick Plays in Football

by Brendan McGinley on 02.02.2011 at 8:01 am
Posted In: Blog

Archiving the lamented, lost Asylum articles (remember way back a week ago when that site still existed?) by re-running them here for your Prose Wednesday entries. I catalogued some dastardly trick plays over at Asylum. Mostly by Steve Spurrier, who's no Coach Eric Taylor.

Driscoll Middle School Trick play

Football is a game that rewards brains as much as brawn. It's not enough to outrun or outsmash your opponent, you must also have a man where no one expects him to be (such as in a yoga class).

Make confusion your strategy and you'll almost surely end up running a trick play. Sometimes, it's as simple as concealing who has the ball. Other times, it goes all the way into the realm of verbal deception.

The trick play is inherently about gamesmanship, which is nothing like sportsmanship. If sports were video games, gamesmanship would be exploiting programming glitches. Original gamesmanship is the mark of a military genius, as well as a sure way to find out who the whiners are on the other team. Keep reading to see our favorite examples.

Recently Driscoll Middle School in Corpus Christi, Texas, found itself down 6–0, so the team lured opponent Wynn Seale into an off-side penalty. After their opponent was penalized five yards, Driscoll announced they were taking another five. The quarterback asked the center for the ball, which is, yes, technically a snap to begin the play, then marched past the defending Wynn Seale line before breaking into a run. The touchdown evened the score, and the game ended in what was either a tie or, according to The New York Times, a loss for Driscoll. Either way, the team now has a bigger audience than "Glee."




Driscoll's trick was a more respectable variation of the "wrong ball" play, which is common among punk coaches across the country. Yes, you're there to win. And, yes, it's legal. Make no mistake -- the first guy to think this up was brilliant. But everyone who's done it since? There's a reason you only see this move in Pee Wee League: It's essentially a trick reserved for middle-aged men to pull on pre-teen children who are still learning the game. At that level, it's still cute and educational. They're learning some authority figures can't be trusted.




This hard lesson can also be seen here, with a classy fellow swearing at children. But try that on older kids, and your player will end up flatter than a male cheerleader. Here's one kid prepared for such shenanigans:




According to the description, this flapjack toss occurred because the QB was too short to throw the ball, which sounds like the most helplessly adorable football game ever. But it's also a trick play used by the big kids.




Here's a team that ran the same fake punt play all season without opponents catching on. It gets so ludicrous about halfway through, you suspect they deliberately fumbled the ball just to give the other team a chance.




This next one combines speed and tenacity to defuse an orderly defense, improvising a system to iceberg the ball into the end zone. With enough time on the clock for one more play, the Trinity Tigers settle on endless laterals as their delivery system for a game-winning touchdown. Listen to the twin announcers losing their minds over this endless hook-and-lateral. The Millsaps Majors know what's happening, but there's nothing they can do to stop this juggling juggernaut.




You know who wouldn't pull these shenanigans? Coach Eric Taylor on "Friday Night Lights." He wins with sagely advice and a clean conscience. He also surrounds himself with beautiful women, which lends weight to any man's wisdom. "Let me tell you something," he'd growl. "It's not just about winning, son. It's about heart. Now go out there, and let's play some football!" The kids need him while they're still developing into morally upright citizens. That's why he can't coach at the collegiate level. But you know who can? South Carolina Gamecocks coach Steve Spurrier, who does stuff like the hidden ball trick all the time.




Here's Spurrier again. This time, a handoff from the quarterback turns into a monster throw that falls into the Kentucky Wildcats' end zone with the subtlety of the Tunguska event. By the time that ball fell into the receiver's hands, enrollment had dropped off at Kentucky.




And finally, here's Spurrier punking the Mississippi State Bulldogs. Eight Bulldog players had to be taken off the field in a stretcher with injured pride.

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Things you notice reading submissions at a literary agency

by Brendan McGinley on 01.26.2011 at 12:11 am
Posted In: Blog

"Damn!" muttered the Literary Reader, flipping through the pages. It had happened again. Someone had opened a novel with an exclamation designed to grab attention, referring to something that happened moments before the opening. It was not the first time he had seen such a tactic, which usually led into a flashback of a few days or weeks earlier. The first, and most important such occurrence had been three weeks prior...

Lesson learned: Find the relevant and interesting point and start there. A lot of books use this opening, and many make it to print, but it's tired and so is the person who has to read 100 of them a day. If you want to up your chances, develop a fresher opening.

One submission opened with a newscast about the capture of a serial killer before casually mentioning "in other news, a man shot up a nursing home. Fifty senior citizens are dead and twenty more await diagnosis." This is called "burying the lead" in news and it is also the case in prose. Moreover, twenty awaiting diagnosis? Have you ever heard the news say that? They'd say "injured," no? This isn't a mesothelioma suit, it's the worst shooting in U.S. history. Top story, man. TOP STORY.

Lesson learned: Know how your characters would say what they do, why, and in what order (in this case, their concern is to grab your attention). If it bleeds, it leads.

For pages and pages, some writers structure every sentence as, "Subject verbed as subject other verbed." e.g. Aruna sighed as the turned into her husband's embrace. Sanjeev nuzzled her as he pulled her closer. She closed her eyes as she hugged him back.

Lesson learned: Variety. You wouldn't want to hear a song that was exactly the same in the first bar and every bar that followed, would you?

I don't care if the book's politics are different from mine, so long as the writing is good, but one Tea Partier(?) submitted his novel about four guys who decided to terrorize Dubai in order to convince other UAE states to stop supporting terror. So...they're anti-heroes? No, they're straight-up heroes who are going to murder innocent people in one country until rich residents of another country realize this is exactly what they've been supporting, and, aghast, stop their work. So these guys, who become terrorists in response to terrorism, decide to commit acts of terror to thwart the creation of other terrorists. It's not logically consistent, but the book is playing it as though it is. At no point is it brought up that, by their own experience, this will probably create a greater number of terrorists.

I'll give him this, though. He started off with the action. Meet the characters -- KA-BOOM! -- trauma. But then he slowed down the narrative for a few pages to have a health-care debate between a "FAX News" reporter and a thinly veiled President Obama, right there in the rubble of the stadium bombing.

Lesson learned: Be consistent. Also, don't drag down your story, especially in the opening.

I awarded that submission extra points though, for most creative death: a headless body, vaulted from the stands by the explosion as a burning, decapitated missile, struck one of the lead character's son just before he could score the game-winning touchdown, breaking his neck.

DAMN YOU, TERRORISTS.

Finally, the biggest lesson of all, since I know you're writing a young adult love story between a woman and a vampire/ghost/angel/demon/merman/alien/time-traveler/college mascot -- Do not use these names anymore: Damien, Daemon, Damon, Marek, Dominic, Tristan, Lucien, Azrael, Gabriel. I suspect the reason Twilight got published over other, better submissions, was the love interest's fairly typical name, "Edward Cullen." Every single paranormal stud in the voluminous submission pile of my short stint as a reader was named "Vlad Fangarescu" or "Aqueous Gillii" or "Hugo Frankensteiny".

Lesson learned: You can still use Victor, but only if he's a normal person without any special powers.

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If My Resume Were More Honest

by Brendan McGinley on 01.26.2011 at 12:00 am
If My Resume Were More Honest

This is my new resume. It's a beautiful thing.

If you want to see the real version to decide whether you should throw money at me, email me via that slick animated "Contact" gif (which, p.s. I whipped up in 10 minutes) to the left.

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Fish tacos

by Brendan McGinley on 01.12.2011 at 12:20 am
Posted In: Blog

I moved into new digs more northwest in the borough of Queens that feeds me oh, so well. I expect my cooking to bend towards whatever Russian fun I can find. But till then, I went with what I know and made the best fish tacos ever from scratch. Short of pounding my own tortillas and impregnating the fish's mother, this is all by hand, right down to a special batch of Russian salad dressing (a nod to my new neighborhood, though I also used guacamole for half of these).

I also bought myself a fine mortar and pestle as a housewarming gift, because I'm the only one who welcomes me to any area. I crushed up some herbs and spices into a paste for these tilapia fillets, then let the thing soak while I made another powder batch for the guacamole.

The Russian dressing was easy -- just relish, mayo, ketchup. Being unable to leave well enough alone, as usual, I added a little bit of mustard and hot sauce, which turned out very well.

So there's that. I also chopped up the tomatoes, onions, and red pepper the day before so the diced veggies could perfumate each other in the fridge. All that was left to do was slice strips of red cabbage while the fish seared in a pan with just enough butter to grease the bottom. I then turned it down to low and covered it. Over to the left, I had some tortillas stacked in a pan, and I half-covered those. It'll soften them nicely so they bend without cracking, and at the same time sear the side touching the pan for structual support.

Knowing how your tortillas work is key. They're like plastic bags: you have to double-layer them or they're no good. Why nobody makes thicker tortillas or double-weave plastic bags to skip the nesting, I don't know. But here's what I do: put some guacamole or Russian dressing between the tortillas (or if making regular land-dwelling tacos, put cheese there). It's a way to help keep everything together without making so much mess. You still get the flavor but it's not oozing out of what's already a messy meal.

In goes the fish. Down pours the mortar-made ahi. Then the raw onions and tomatoes. Then sprinkled cilanto. Then the shredded cabbage. Pour yourself some tarragon-vanilla Russian soda the color of the finest emeralds, and brother, you've got yourself a meal. Eat while watching Breaking Bad.

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My problem with the Bechdel Test

by Brendan McGinley on 12.29.2010 at 3:09 am
Posted In: Blog

There's this set of standards called the Bechdel Test. It makes the worthy point that female characters get a really short stick in cinema (and books and comics, etc.) which is something to watch out for. It's a rule of thumb for whether one person wants to watch a movie that's lacking something that ought to be more common, not a measuring stick all stories must pass.

But people try to apply it on a case-by-case basis to stories, and that bugs me. The Bechdel Point makes a good observation about a trend in mass-market storytelling, but The Bechdel Test is inapplicable to individual cases. Whether a story passes or fails it has no bearing on whether that story is a valid tale.

Also, I'm not even sure Emma passes the test, and that's troublesome.

All it can really do is cite a work not on its own merits, but the application of this external requirement that may or may not fit the needs of the story. It doesn't distinguish a really well-written story about things people can relate to from the garbage storytelling that views women as 2-D objects.

It doesn't comment on the work, and it can inaccurately comment on the medium's state. If the percentage of films that fail it goes up by random chance, but each of those films is a marvelous, moving tale that gives each actress a chance to do her best work, well yeah, you still want an even number of films that show them talking about something other than a man, or shopping, or anything else men think women only care about. But all you're left to say is "More films are failing the Bechdel Test than ever," in general, and specifically, "These films all failed the Bechdel Test," without mentioning how great they were.

To use an extremely handy analogy, it's like faulting a good superhero comic because capes inordinately dominate the industry and most aren't that good. Just because the second two parts are worrisome doesn't necessarily mean the first bit's part of the problem. You still wrote a good story, just not one Alison Bechdel wants to read. Nothing wrong with you, nothing wrong with her. I've got my own reasons I don't want to watch medical dramas, or read teen vampire romances. I just hope those reasons don't ever lead me to reject the worth of any great examples of those genres.

EDIT: (That's a little pat, since one would hope solid female characters aren't their own genre. I'm just saying if something's good, it's good. And it still won't be for everybody. In this case, Bechdel or her characters might not be interested in a work that fails the test. Basically, if something passes the test, it's likelier a good read or viewing than something that doesn't, but I don't think you should dismiss a work just because it fails the test.)

I wrote She's Famous Now because I was sick of all the romantic comedies with the message that if a guy just acted like enough of a passive-aggressive lunatic, he'd win over a girl. I wanted one where that kind of behavior gets smacked down. Prior to that I wrote Death Train because I was sick of my friends dragging me to awful Steven Seagal flicks in which he maims people with impatient joy. And probably some Michael Bay stupidity found its way in there, too. Neither one's a great work, but I wrote the (anti-)romantic comedy and (satirical) action scripts I wanted to see. I found a place on those worlds where I could live.

Raymond Chandler was sick of all the meatheads in detective fiction, so he created one of the best characters of the 20th century in Philip Marlowe just by giving the typical detective a brain, a heart, and a respectable set of principles. What he didn't do was gripe about the state of the genre. Instead he wrote a version of it that made him happy.

If you have a problem with an industry trend, do what Alison Bechdel did; go make something that defies and redefines the trend. It might just find an audience.

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You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News

by Brendan McGinley on 12.22.2010 at 6:53 pm
Posted In: Blog

Hey, remember that Cracked book I helped illustrate? It's out this week. And you can Like it on Facebook here.

It's available to order right now on Amazon...

Or maybe you'd rather skip the wait, save a tree, and get it as an eBook.

It's all the same to me, cashwise, but I've read portions of it, and they're as funny as you'd expect. Plus, you get to watch me stumble through my infancy in Photoshop plus Wacom.

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My love affair with Uncommon Goods

by Brendan McGinley on 12.22.2010 at 2:44 pm
Posted In: Blog

Awhile back I applied to to a copywriting job at Uncommon Goods, a snazzy website in my old neighborhood of Sunset Park. My inquiry was typical, as was their reply.

When another position opened up in September, I applied again. But this time I decided, hey, if I won't get hired, I might as well have fun.

I applied in April, and though my credentials were excellent, they did not match your needs at the time.

But now is another time. The summer is at its close, and you find yourselves once again in need of a vivacious copywriter. Perhaps the spring hire abandoned you, as such fleeting vernal romances so often end. Or perhaps you got everything you wished for and realized that was some sort of monkey's paw. Regardless, here am I, the only one who stood by you, the only one who ever recognized Uncommon Goods for the real you inside. I was always here. You just had to say yes.

Say yes, Uncommon Goods. Say yes to your heart.

I bring with me witty banter and the location of the most delicious Chinese in Sunset Park (sadly, not near you. But at least in your hunger you'll have my upbeat humor to console you). Anyway, if you need me to share my resume again, just ask.

yours forever,
Brendan McGinley
www.brendanmcginley.com

No reply. Then in November, another position opened up. So I decided to apply again.

Hello, you fine folks at Uncommon Goods. I see again you seek a copywriter. How much longer can you deny what you feel in your heart? We were meant to be together. Hire me, UncommonGoods, and let me make you the happiest catalog company in Brooklyn.

Say yes. Say yes. Say you don't need me to share my resume with you again because you have it on file. This...this is destiny.

Brendan McGinley
www.brendanmcginley.com

This time, they wrote back:

Dear Brendan McGinley,

Thank you for thinking of us again and, unfortunately, we are still looking for a different set of skills and experience.

Wishing you best in your search.

Regards,
Human Resources

Oh, Uncommon Goods, why do you break my heart so? And to think, that fickle site was still advertising for copywriters a few weeks later. I wrote them one last time.

Dear Uncommon Goods,

Baby, it's over. I gave you everything. My time, care, and attention. I wanted us to be together always. But you wouldn't have me. I see that now. While I'm working hard, there you are, sneaking onto Craigslist and posting for another copywriter.

Damn.

I won't stand in your way. You deserve the best. Just remember me from time to time. Now we have to go our separate ways. You stay special, Uncommon Goods. We could have had something great.

Brendan McGinley
www.brendanmcginley.com

I don't want to get hurt no more.

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Hey, cool

by Brendan McGinley on 12.22.2010 at 8:15 am
Posted In: Blog

Someone plopped Geist into the entry for The Intangible Man over at TV Tropes.

I'm kind of flattered to be noticed by the catalogers of pop culture.

The entry says he has a two-minute limit on his powers, which is about right. It's not that he has to breathe while he's intangible, it's just that his ability to stay ghostly is similar to how long you can hold your breath. The amount of demands he puts on Jin's powers is something akin to speeding up the clock, same way you'd hold your breath longer in a chair and relaxed than you would swimming for shore with a shark after you.

And you can see for yourself if you check back with us after New Year for the exciting return of Heist! We'll meet Geist exactly where we left him -- surrounded by superheroes and already overextended on his abilities, as the world starts fading out around him...

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Turkey Genocide Day was good

by Brendan McGinley on 12.01.2010 at 1:29 am
Posted In: Blog

My niece is a better photographer with a $30 camera than I am with a DS3. She is 8.

A lot of people like to deep fry their Thanksgiving turkey. A lot of people are fat and stupid. I've had fried turkey. It doesn't taste a lick different except blander, chewier, and at the loss of all that delicious skin.

No, in the McGinley house, I stepped up to all my chicken knowledge and assumed the mantle of turkey chef this year. And there was only one way to do it: BRINE.

I made a pretty simple brine: salt, sugar, chopped onion, some peppercorns, a fat garlic clove sliced all along the surface to let the flavor and oils out, but not chopped into separate pieces. Also in there: some bay leaves, a sprinkle of mustard powder, a little fresh squeezed orange, and just a splash of white balsamic vinegar with truffle oil that I found in ma's cupboard. I doubt it did anything, but you don't stumble across that kind of firepower and not use it.

And there you have it: brine, brine, brine away for a full day beforehand in a massive ziplock bag (and supporting pan). This beast weighed all but the official 19 lbs, so I had to wrestle that plus two gallons of water into the fridge.

Mom's got a new oven smart enough to make the whole meal by itself if it only had robot hands with cartoon gloves, but we decided to play it safe, simple and traditional: bake at 325 for five hours, with time out of the oven for basting. An aluminum sheet went over at about halfway through just to keep the top from burning, and that surely helped keep it moist.

Oh, and I might have glazed it with local honey and maple syrup at a couple of intervals. Not much, just to keep it safe.

I had to fight to make the stuffing inside the bird rather than the microwave, and I'm happy to say the best results for the world won out. And because I'm overkill, I put a sliced apple and a sliced orange inside the cavity first. Don't judge me, it was my first turkey, I needed to guarantee tender meat.

All the other dishes were supplied by the rest of the family. It was a darned near perfect Thanksgiving, but for all the suddenly absent loved ones. There was supposed to be twice as many people as this.

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Don’t be boring.

by Brendan McGinley on 10.06.2010 at 8:45 am
Posted In: Blog

There's a standing idea in comics that you have to grab the reader's attention by page 1. If you don't hook them with something immediately, they'll put down your book and give someone else's a read. This isn't unreasonable thinking. After all, a great opening line, a great opening scene, these behoove a book or movie. In fact, in comedy, you generally start off with your second-best material (saving your best for last) to make that quick impression so essential to establishing a rapport with your audience.

The same is true in comics. It was this idea, which I believe originated with Julie Schwartz, that called for an opening splash page depicting the crucial, unbelievable scene from later in the story ("Two Green Lanterns fighting one another! Keep reading to see how it came to this!"), but I could be wrong. I know he was the one pushing for shocking covers to establish the same effect. ("SEE! The Superman Who Turned Evil!")

Personally, I think there's virtue in the build-up as well. It doesn't have to all be a splash or an unbelievable scene. The opening page of Watchmen is an intriguing composition of the ghastly and the mundane, but it's presented in a tightly drafted PULL BACK TO REVEAL. Other comics derive their intrigue from engaging dialogue, charismatic characters...the gist is that something has to be happening between the comic and the reader. But no, it doesn't have to be a gigantic splash page or even a gripping image.

It should, however, be a GOOD image. Adrian Tomine is a master of economy. He can use just a few lines to situate you in a Greenwich Village street. But a lot of his comics open with people doing something mundane, being disenchanted a little bit with life. That's exactly what he should be doing, because it establishes the feel of his comic. For me, his work has the sadness of wandering around suburbia with nothing to do on a Friday night. I know that's a very personalized response, because that's what I did on half of my high school Fridays, but the connection is that in both my memories and many of Tomine's comics, there's a feeling of some opportunity lost, and a sadness at it. There's also humor and fear and a host of other good things, because that's your responsibility: make the audience feel something.

Hold on, I'll say that again.

MAKE THE AUDIENCE FEEL SOMETHING

It's surprisingly okay to be bad. It's definitely to be trashy. It's fine to be disposable. But it's unforgivable to be boring. I know, because in nearly every comic I wrote from 18 to maybe...24 years of age was a whole lot of chatter and not a lot of development. Poor Pietro has been drawing Citizen X off and on for years because it took me three revisions before I realized it was all just Rakh wandering from one conversation to another for people to talk AT him, not WITH him, about their philosophical musings. It was only with a more experienced eye that I realized there were a few elements in place.

Go ahead, read chapter 1 of Citizen X. I'll wait.

(Incidentally while I'm waiting, don't give your character a goofy name like Rakh al'Gadriel. I've actually changed a few of the other characters' names to something else that, while still Punic, sounds a lot more like modern counterparts. I kept Rakh's, though, to teach myself a punishing lesson. I've started interning at a literary agency, and in the first day, I saw so many characters named Bal'thoun Kto'Silvostri or Hua'hourc na'Tirnagog, I thought I was turning dyslexic. I don't care if your characters are elves or orcs or vampires, keep it simple. Even common names can be badly mixed, or made to sound artificial, like one memorable example, Lord Stefan di Spicolli.)

Back? Okay, you may have liked or hated that story, but I guarantee you it was galactic improvement on the previous versions. That whole chapter was an expansion of a few pages of flashback from Rakh's arrival in Ireland. What was chapter 1 became chapter 2 after I got sick of jumping around the timeline and decided to make a short chapter 1 out of those flashbacks. And all I was left with was with the General lecturing Rakh, Dad lecturing Rakh, Hamilcar lecturing Rakh...

In other words, nothing changed. The scene with the Roman getting arrested ended the same way it started: Rakh was sulking at Hamilcar's insensitivity, and some guy we'd never see was going to jail. It was only later that I thought to add the drunk's passing out and Hamilcar stealing his money, then Rakh's reaction to that showing us how extreme his morality takes it that he'd assault a superior officer and teacher. It also shows he's an idealistic teenager (with all the attendant extremity and mood swings), that he's losing his heroes and beliefs, that he's starting to realize nobody lives up to what they preach, even though he does.

What he DOESN'T realize, and this is why I added the scene with Thalia, is that it makes him an inhuman jerk. He can't interact with other people because he's too austere. He demands the same severity of others that he gives of himself because the state and religion say "Act this way." He's so committed to purity and perfection that he breaks up with his first love rather than wait and wonder if she's going to live up to something he's imposing on her. It's a no-gain situation, giving up love and happiness to attend to someone's rules, but it's him being the person he wants to be. In his head, he still has an unblemished record.

When he later escorts the commander in chief, who's acting like a drunken lout, he doesn't react with the same furor, because he's changed in those few hours, and he's already in enough trouble. He's also inclined to defer to his father, even though he chafes a bit. That scene, too, had to change from merely being Dad telling him he'd learn the ends are often more important than the means to an actual example of it.

All of which is to say, if I'd opened that comic with an in medias res scene of Rakh breaking character, sure, you'd be engaged by the sight of him punching his teacher, or of him aaaalllmost giving in to his passions for Thalia, but it wouldn't have any relevance for you, because you're not a monthly reader. We all know Superman and know he would never force Jimmy Olsen to marry a gorilla, so what strangeness transpires here?

But Superman! I don't want to marry a gorilla!

Tough nuts, Jimmy, Superman's a witch doctor AND a superhero

But for this introductory meeting? Not so much. Here's what's not boring about the Citizen X script:
--The gold
--The fight
--The drunken impudence on the part of Citizen X
--The insubordinate, but noble, defense of honor by Insufabal
--The tryst in the garden
--The breakup
--The mugging and its resolution

That's also a list of what's new to the latest revision. You'll notice in all of those: things happen. And it's not a punch or a love scene simply to have such things; they directly result in a change of circumstance, or a change in a character's outlook.

You can engage the reader viscerally, intellectually, or emotionally. You can do it slow, fast, big, small, really any way that fits the piece. But you can't be boring. It's the worst possible crime.

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So you want to write a comic script

by Brendan McGinley on 09.29.2010 at 9:19 am
Posted In: Blog

Well, if that's what you want, you just have to do it and do it until you know that it's good, and then dig it out a few years later, unable to believe you thought X and Y were worthwhile ideas, but Z still seems pretty nifty.

If you're here to figure out how you should format it, though, I can help you with that. I have no doubt there will be an industry standard in short order now that DC and Marvel are both superconglomerate idea factories at the same time that they're monolithic universes coordinated by a mere couple of creators (that sounds perjorative, but it's not). Figure in ten years you'll have Bendis-style vs. Johns-style vying for supremacy. Or maybe not. It doesn't matter, because here's how I format a comic script, which is the best possible way in all possible worlds.

You can get the all-purpose (and very nifty) Celtx for free and Andy Diggle has a formatted Final Draft template you can download, but I just want to write in pure text and not be slowed down kicking the formatting around. TAB key? Buddy, you're lucky if I even press ENTER.

That said, I think the Final Draft can automatically re-number your panels and pages if, like me, you write pretty tight scripts and often end up pulling a few boxes from one page to another, moving a scene around, and generally making life worse for yourself.

Anyway, I'll write a page of script like so: ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

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I owe you some Prose Wednesday

by Brendan McGinley on 09.22.2010 at 9:46 am
Posted In: Blog

But my head is throbibing from a really nasty cold and there are three assignments due. I also owe you an Invisible, Inc. page. So let me post that in a few minutes, and let this suffice for your Prose Wednesday entry.

AEC
↓ Read the rest of this entry...

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Homegrown cucumbers

by Brendan McGinley on 09.01.2010 at 12:28 am
Posted In: Blog

Today I turn 30 and here are some cucumbers.

We're going to pickle these cucumbly guys. You can't even keep up with them. We have three cucumber plants in the backyard and they're dropping off hourly. Between them and the tomatoes, everything's climbing.

Meanwhile, a pumpkin somehow snuck out of the compost and into the garden's shady, abandoned horizontal plane.

Now that I'm old and thinking of mortality, I know how I want my remains handled. Just pickle me and put an old-fashioned checkered label on the jar with an expired "Best By" date.

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Complete the Nyack Library!

by Brendan McGinley on 08.25.2010 at 8:20 am
Posted In: Blog

As my fortunes are taking me away from Rockland, I don't want to be beholden to pretending I know what I'm talking about each week. I'll continue to post there if the right topic comes along, but my week's structure is kind of built against a weekly thing.

Anyway, here's why I gave to the Nyack library and so should you.

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Bagely sammich time

by Brendan McGinley on 08.18.2010 at 12:02 am
Posted In: Blog

Sometimes all you need is a fried egg over easy on one of Brooklyn's finest multigrain bagels. A little cheese, tomato and minimal cilantro, and you've got yourself a day's eats.

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Argentine chicken

by Brendan McGinley on 08.11.2010 at 12:03 am
Posted In: Blog

It's super easy to make. Just Play Frankenstein until it looks like a frog (dislocate the legs, cut along the sternum). Use a few basic spices, and fabricate some chimichurri dipping sauce Cook low and slow over indirect heat.

I cheated, though. I rolled frozen pats of butter in spices and slipped them under the skin. I'd be hard pressed to find a chicken recipe that I didn't do that for.

And chocolate chip cookies from scratch.

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Speed Kills

by Brendan McGinley on 08.04.2010 at 1:16 am
Posted In: Blog

Crystal meth is killing The Flash.

Oh, Flash. Get off the crank.

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Recent cookery

by Brendan McGinley on 07.28.2010 at 10:51 am
Posted In: Blog

From three separate dinners: Fish tacos, the best quesadillas ever made (american + swiss with caramelized onions, cilantro, tomato, avocado and lime juice in a double-layered shell) and...apple juice.

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Toyfare “Rag” pitches that never made it

by Brendan McGinley on 07.21.2010 at 8:38 am
Posted In: Blog

Pursuant to the "Hulk to Smash" article, some old pitches and notes:

--"Corpse Bride" Sequel Planned

sub: Hilton to Wed in June

(a brief one about Paris Hilton's upcoming nuptials, with wedding director Tim Burton coordinating the ghastliness)

--"LOST" Villains Revealed

sub: Seven stranded castaways behind campaign of terror

(this, naturally, would be about Gilligan and Co.)

--"MAD" Tumbles Eagerly Toward Soft Irrelevance
(frankly, this one only works if we show the Family Guy/Simpsons cover that's about five years too late and not that original a joke)

--J.K. Rowling Harvests More Souls
sub: Extends life another five years

(this could be about keeping herself young and healthy by collecting young minds for Satan via witchcraft. The fundamentalists were right!)

or:
--J.K. Rowling Announces Potter Book 7: "Reloaded"

(in which the literary world's most successful franchise in decades makes the same mistakes as The Matrix did, and gives us a crapout ending)

--Newsarama interviews Kevin Smith

sub: Website Content Now 80% Nerd, 12% Butter

(a bit of meanness about how by interviewing Smith, the site has reached fatty nerd critical mass)

--DC to release "Supermega Steaming Pile of Infinite-Plus-One Hyper-Crises"
sub: Company to Release All Possible Stories in Existence Simultaneously
Gorgeous art, impossible story:
(George Perez, Phil Jimenez, and their numberless twins on parallel worlds have been tapped to draw everything that has ever been conceived, as well as everything that has not. The mighty task, DiDio says, balances itself out by eliminating the need for writers.
Jimenez, speaking wearily from the infinite, hyper-dimensional string of desks to which he is chained, cited fatigue, friction, and deadlines as major obstacles, but explained the biggest stumbling block was drawing that which is neither physically nor visually possible. "George killed himself in the middle of the sequence in which a Square Circle with Ma Hunkel's face steals the Infinity Gauntlet from the Marvel Universe, then kills Superman by dropping a rock so big even she can't lift it on him." A dehydrated Jimenez added, "Wow! I get to finish my art hero's layouts!")

--Grant Morrison Rises on Third Day

sub: Redeems humanity after dying on crossover

(a piece about how Grant's exotic ideas and love for all humanity led him to literally die while working on Seven Soldiers, or, if you prefer, Grant Morrison the character from Animal Man sneaking into Seven Soldiers to die within its pages. Probably both, given the man's theories on metafiction. Anyway, the best part is you get the line about him being tempted in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights by Warren Ellis).

--Little Nemo in Slumberland Celebrates 100th Anniversary Quietly at Home

sub: Pioneering strip 'doesn't want anyone fussing over me'

(October was the 100th anniversary of the strip's debut, and nobody marked it. Boo hoo')

--Bush Giggles Delightedly at Stikfa

sub: Thousands dead in Volcanic earthquake as President enjoys toy, snack, nap

(a bit about how easily distracted President Bush is, but can you blame him with toys this awesome? Cheney had to take it away to get him to come to dinner)

--"Shield" Figures Collect Protection from Other Toys

sub: Chiklis, Goggins Hijack Cobra Booty

(The badass cops from 'The Shield' demand tribute from the other toys on the building block')

--Lego Announces New Mature Sets

sub: S&M party, Meth lab among fall releases

(Citing the enduring popularity of the multi-morphic toys well into adult age groups, Lego announced that it would begin tailoring sets to the

--Bam-Bam, Thank Ya, Ma'am
Sub: Pebbles files for divorce

(a spoof on Renee Zellweger and that country music yahoo. 'The file for annulment cited 'fraud' on Mr. Rubble's part. Publicists for Rubble and Ms. Flintstone-Rubble declined to return reporters' calls.)

--Infinity Gauntlet Used to Make, Get Girls

sub: 30 year-old wills lingerie models with nerd fetish into existence

("Ho ho!" Laughs nerd. "Absolute power attracts absolutely!")

--Bionic Six wait patiently for nostalgic revival

sub: forgotten super-family fails to ride '80s and 'Incredibles' waves of popularity

--Lion-O Dead at 33
sub: Chokes on Hairball
("It was awful," wailed Lion-O's lifemate, Panthor. "He stuck the Sword of Omens down his throat, but he couldn't yell "Thunder-thunder-thundercats!" without choking and wheezing." The sword failed to extend magically and dislodge the hairball.)

--Ork-O Sadly Declines Lap Dance Offer

sub: Imp produces magical wad of bills,
(SKOKIE, ETERNIA- The Sorcerer Laureate of Eternia tearfully refused a proffered lap dance Friday, despite eagerly staring at the barbarian hordes of girls at Jiggles Exotic Dance Club. Witnesses say Orko, the extradimensional troll who serves the Eternian royal family was able to summon a magical wad of 20-dollar bills, but no lap. Without legs, the hovering necromancer was forced to decline a dance from Alysin Cane, 25. This is not the first such defeat for Orko, whose botched magical attempts perpetually amuse and annoy. In October he was rebuked by Jiggles owner Ryan Dennehy, for smelling like brimstone and hydrochloric acid, while last year he was left out of a round of body shots when it was explained the removing the scarf that covers his mouth would unleash the 58 Hounds of Grokkor, a hellbound entity condemned to hunt the sins of man for all eternity. THEN WE GO INTO THE LUSCIOUS TASTES OF THE FLESH DENIED TO THE POOR LITTLE IMP.)

and my personal favorite:

--Ask a Character Written By Brian Michael Bendis
(only because I know you won't let me do Ask a Black Character Written by Brian Michael Bendis, who tend to provide bleeped-out swears and sassy backtalk by the bucketful!)

Dear Character Written by Brian Michael Bendis:

I'm a single mom working a full-time job with two teenagers. I love them both dearly, but I'd love to meet someone and I have no time for myself! Worse, all the men my age are either taken, or scared off by the "kid baggage." How can I find true love?

--Hopeless in Hoboken

Dear Hopeless in Hoboken:

This--
This is big.
You're saying to me--excuse me, if I get this right--what you're saying is, and I'm just guessing here. But what you're telling me is huge, and what you're telling me is this: you need--

I need to meet--

Meet someone. Right. And this isn't just someone, like, excuse me, the guy at the busstop, or your gynecologist. This is like...wow. The big thing. And you can't meet someone because you're all alone. (and I'm not saying that vindictively, I just--wow. According to my spellcheck vindictive doesn't have a K in it. Anyway). But you want--

True love.

Right. Not just the usual cocktails and enemas. But--hold on--okay, so you know how everyone believes in true love, but like, no one can explain what it's like in words?

Totally.

That's because Love is blind, and it is OFFICIALLY urban legend.

Woah! You're yanking my--

And you're going to stay alone--Wait, listen. Stay alone, because, and I'm not saying this is true, but come on, it's so like everyone in your situation, because you can't admit that the problem might be with you.

So the problem is with me?

The problem is with you.

Me.

You. I'm pointing at you.

You haven't answered my question.

Whatever. I sooooo don't need this.

(answer continued next month in part 6 of 6, possibly 7, issues.)

A Character Written by Brian Michael Bendis is the author of five monthly advice columns appearing weekly in the Marvel universe.
OTHER ASKS:

A Malfunctioning Doombot ' all of the ego, plus homicidal robot tendencies! Plus he develops sentience halfway through the column and has an existential crisis.

e.g.

Bah! So you have uncovered Doom's ruse! It is no matter! I am possessed of the same intellect as 'bzzkt!'almighty Doom, but with an invincible hide! And'yet, what is this disruption in my neural patterns when I 'zzt!' gaze on Susan Richards? Doombot does not understand your human 'e-mo-tion' called love!

Batroc Ze Leaper ' oh ho ho! It is funny when sissies zink zey are tough! Batroc's advice surely leads one down the wrong path because he just can't perceive when he or his audience is outclassed:

Later, in the hospital, I reflected on my glorious triumph in showing that popinjay his comeuppance!

Jeph Loeb's Superman and Batman ' Featuring the extremely affectionate dialogue of the world's finest team. These two just can't answer a question without drifting into adoring thoughts of each other.

e.g.

Dear World's Finest Team,

My brother's always borrowing things and never returning them! I try to be nice, but I feel he's taking advantage of me? What can I do to let him know enough is enough?

Bruce knows to let me handle this one. He says he works best alone, but neither of us can deny the powerful results of our union this time out.

Clark's probably doubting whether I can play ball. I'd never admit it to him, but we're an excellent pair. His speed and my attention to detail make us the world's finest team. He's like the brother I might have had. The brother I'm proud to have.

A Jedi Padawan ' The advice of adorable little Bi'wo Cutenoggins abruptly cuts off following a joyful greeting addressed to Anakin.

Dear Jedi Padawan,

My brother's always borrowing things and never returning them! I try to be nice, but I feel he's taking advantage of me? What can I do to let him know enough is enough?

Anakin! Hey, look everybody, it's Anakin! We don't have to hide anymore, Master Anakin is here to protect us! Yay, Anakin! Take us to freedom, Anakin! We trust you to find the way! Come on, everyo'

(and then just a long, three inches of blank column. I swear, it'd be the funniest)

A Marvel PR rep ' Yes, no matter what the storyline coming down the pipe, Marvel ensures you'll go bonkers! Watch as our mole at Marvel tries to spin the disastrous new storylines for 2006, only to shame himself.

Dear Marvel PR Rep,

My brother's always borrowing things and never returning them! I try to be nice, but I feel he's taking advantage of me? What can I do to let him know enough is enough?

Good news for your brother, Screwed in Skokie! The world's greatest adventure magazine just got a fresh new face! That's right, the secret is ready to be revealed; Power Pack will replace the Fantastic Four after Reed's hubris turns the FF into alcoholic chickens! WOAH, anything can happen here at the House of Ideas! That's great And guess who the Mystery Avenger is? After Daredevil, Elektra, Echo and John Byrne were all leaked, we went with our first pick. That's right, Spider-Man's new nemesis The Other! Who, in turn, will be revealed to be Uncle Ben. You love it! Keep an eye out for all eight alternate covers!

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Six horrific forms of contraception

by Brendan McGinley on 07.14.2010 at 12:41 am
Posted In: Blog

Turns out Cracked already ran 10 forms, so this pitch never got past a sample.

So we're lucky enough to live in an age of condoms, contraceptive pills, and google-stalking to see if someone's screenname shows up on threads like "Living with genital warts." But for the first 100,000 years of human history, the only methods of preventing disease, and worse -- other human beings --were a high fall or the old "spray 'n' pray."

Or were they? Here's a list of horrible things people used as barriers to disease and dissemination that make one ask if it was even worth getting off.

--Pliable turtle shell condoms (19th century Japan)
--Softened animal horns (Japan again...you start to see why tentacles seem downright gentle and pleasurable)
--Lemon diaphragms (ancient Egypt)
--Coca-Cola douche (19th century America)
--Animal intestines (which, we'll remind you, is where feces are made)
--Drinking mercury, for crying out loud

e.g.

DRINKING GODDAMN MERCURY
Okay, so far, everything here makes a sick sort of sense, like bulimia or voting for Nader. After all, Coca Cola can take the rust off an engine block, and if a woman gets pregnant after having sex with a horn, either her uterus is made of leather or Truman only bombed Nagasaki to make sure the Anti-Christ was destroyed. But no one should get anywhere near mercury, except Jeremy Piven.

IMAGE: Piven looking mercury-poisoned
CAP: Keep ordering those maki rolls, Piv!

DOES IT WORK?
Yeah, in the same way napalming half of Vietnam took out a few Viet Cong. They don't make caps locks big enough for this kind of emphasis: DO NOT DRINK THE MERCURY, IT IS WORSE THAN GETTING PREGNANT, EVEN IF YOUR STEPDAD IS THE FATHER AND YOUR MOM IS THE POPE.

IMAGE: Ann Coulter in a Pope's hat.
CAP: She leads with her right, so duck and roll

SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
Mercury is readily absorbed through the skin, even though your skin's whole job is to not do shit like that, and even more readiliery by mucous membranes, which is exactly what God chose as the vagina's interior decoration, almost like you're not supposed to put mercury in there. Desperate damsels found a work-around by drinking the stuff, which is even worse because, honestly, then it has to go through your entire system. The only thing more toxic would be using the water-fountain after Amy Winehouse.

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Musings on horror.

by Brendan McGinley on 07.07.2010 at 2:26 am
Posted In: Blog

There's a lot about horror that inverts the structural norms.

It's understood in writing that for a protagonist's journey to be great, she has to be up against something greater than herself, and we're impressed, because there's no drama in an easy win. It's pulling off the difficult that impresses us.

Horror's sort of the reverse. For most of the film, you have to believe there's an imminent threat. Watching Jason mow through the stupid and the slow isn't impressive, and all that Saw/Eli Roth suckerpunch nonsense just deserves its torture porn nickname.

That's what was so great about the opening of Scream -- Drew Barrymore did everything right. Hell, most of those kids did -- they got the hell out of there, fought back when they had to. They made it tough for the killer. But yeah, Drew Barrymore -- we had no idea if she would live or die.

The horror monster/villain usually trades on the highest stakes: it's trying to kill from the start. But it can't succeed (granted it can wipe out a group of teens, but the stakes and/or scares must escalate with each murder to intensify the thrill) or the story ends. And if it can't succeed, it loses its potency. After all, the protagonist escapes at every turn, however narrowly. Even if some teens die, the group survives, at least to The Last Girl.

One of my favorite kinds of horror is the realization that something atrocious has been going on for the duration of the seemingly innocuous scene you thought was your break between terror. Yes, surprise is frightening, but less something jumping out at you, and more the looming, unknowable that could strike it any time. Total annihilation, biding its time, something so big and unknowable, it's almost beyond a question of evil or malice.

Scarier than killers leaping out of the shadows, which is the shock of a second, is strange, amorphous shapes dancing in the distance, or a beast looming outside the window, not moving, just making horrible sounds, gathering itself before it picks its moment to attack. And there's nothing you can do except try not to hear the lurching and the groaning.

Of course, eventually you need to conflict to resolve in order to induce change. Make that change in favor of the Unknown Beast, the great terror. Make each stage worse. Constrict the throat a little more.

Yes, horror demands a very different dramatic structure than the heroic three-act everyone's used to.
In a way, your killer is your protagonist for those moments of terror. You don't want a superhuman killer (even if your killer is actually superhuman) who's just wading through the kids. And at the same time, the terror comes from relating to the victim and feeling the great and powerful unknown agony bearing down on you. It's a delicate balance.

A lot of the best Punisher stories are basically horror tales told sympathetically from the monster's perspective. The criminal's death is a foregone conclusion. It's seeing how it plays out.

Horror is a lot like comedy. Both trade on the unexpected, via surprise and the fulfillment of expectation in an unforeseen manner. Because of this, both have an easier time breaking free of the 3-act structure without disappointing the audience. Of course, that structure doesn't have to be the standard, and most of the best stories break it, when written by people who know what they're doing. Both also work best if you mix a few kinds of fear/humor.

Anyway, not much to connect the dots, there, just thoughts I need to get together for Black Ambulances.

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Crock pot bbq pork ribs

by Brendan McGinley on 06.30.2010 at 1:19 am
Posted In: Blog

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...

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Pad See Yu. Who, me?

by Brendan McGinley on 06.23.2010 at 1:49 am
Posted In: Blog

Foodies will tell you the best Thai in New York (or maybe even the east coast) is Sripaphai. And yeah, it's good, and I'm no expert on Thai food. But I will tell you the best Thai iced tea, pineapple fried rice, and nearly the best pad see yu I've ever had are a few blocks down Jamaica Avenue at Thai Kitchen. I can only speak to the fact that this is the most satisfying Thai in my dining history, out of probably two dozen venues.

Anyway, so I'm a poor freelancer, and I really wanted Thai, but it was a lean week. Thank golly the internet will tell you how to make your own rice noodles and pad see yu.

Just soak a cup of rice in a cup of water overnight in the fridge. Next day, whir that thing in a blender until it looks like milk.

Now in the recipe I just linked to, they recommend a double boiler. I'm poor, so here's what I did to keep the thing moist yet hot. I have two Anchorware glass pans. I oiled the smaller one, put an inch of water in the larger one, then put the smaller in the larger. I put my rice slurry in the oiled pan, and covered it all with an aluminum cooking pan large enough to cover the whole shebang. Into the oven it went on high.

Making rice noodles at home

The result was pretty perfect. You just lift the top aluminum every ten minutes, add a layer of oil, another layer of rice slurry, and continue until you've got a pan full of thick rice noodles.

Let it rest for a few minutes. It will get more cohesive as it cools.

While it cools, heat a large frying pan or wok, add a little bit of oil (not a lot!) for a crushed garlic clove, and some onions or scallions if you like. Then add the raw chicken and broccoli, and turn the heat to low. Cover. You might want to add a little soy sauce & lime juice before you do, or a tablespoonful of water, just so things stay moist. If you're going to use cashews or peanuts in your pad see yu, add them at the beginning so they soften.

You'll have rice noodle sheets you can cut into ribbons

You can throw the noodle ribbons straight into the pan. At this time you want to add the softer ingredients: peppers, cucumbers, etc. You'll also want to add the lime juice and soy sauce if you haven't already. I used a little Srichacha hot sauce, but honestly, I think it distracts from the flavor. Add a little straight hot sauce if you must go for the zip. Cover again for a minute or two, lifting occasionally to stir.

Lemongrass goes great here if you have it

Finally, take the lid off, and wait for the water to boil away while you keep pushing everything around. I like one last dose of soy sauce & lime juice here. You don't have to use cilantro, but this is when I add it. I might also add some more chopped onion, to get that intermediate point between raw and cooked. Add an egg and keep stirring.

Pad see yu sees you

Once the egg congeals, you're done. Take everything out and add some raw onion (this might be too much for some folks, but this is how it's served). sliced tomato, sliced cucumber (the cool vegetables are a delightful treat in the middle of the hot food), and your last shpritz of lime juice.

Oh honey, it's courtin' time

Final thought: don't use as much lime juice as it sounds like from this recipe. It goes a long way and can really overpower a recipe. Stick to half a lime or a whole small one if you intend to boil off a lot of it quickly as it cooks.

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Chuck Klosterman on infantile leukemia

by Brendan McGinley on 06.16.2010 at 12:21 am
Posted In: Blog

Ladies and gentlemen, today we're proud to bring you guest blogger Chuck Klosterman, explaining the pop relevance of childhood terminal diseases.

It's become cool to like infantile leukemia, which actually means it's totally uncool to like infantile leukemia. I think you know what I mean by this. There was a time in our very recent history when it was "interesting" to be an infantile leukemia fan, or even recovering patient. It was sort of like admitting you watch Star Wars twice a day, or that your favorite arcade game was Burger Time.*

I don't recall anyone talking about infantile leukemia in 1990, except for that select class of hypochondriacs who consciously embraced diseases they de facto could not have.

What's interesting about this illness is how it relates to the mid-80s band Van Halen. Infantile leukemia has finally become the Van Halen of childhood diseases. Consider that Van Halen's heyday was the David Lee Roth years.** Infantile leukemia is this exact kind of immuno-deficient rock-out, peaking at an unstoppable fever very early on, and like the '80s, childhood is a period when no one is fully developed.

When I was growing up on a farm in North Dakota or South Dakota--wherever I might be from, I distinctly remember having a friend named Jerry. Jerry was one of those guys, the otherwise nameless, faceless townies at the party who would shotgun a beer then discuss with you the influence of Proust on Happy Days . What was my point? Oh yes. He died.

At his funeral, I recall having a discussion with friends about what was then the fresh new show on MTV, The Real World, in which seven strangers were picked to live in a loft. The fact that every one of these strangers was some type of creative artist was not, in fact, real. Neither was their spacious Manhattan apartment. Also, infantile leukemia appeared nowhere. But Julie,*** who was clearly not crazy enough to be the star of the show and therefore, the only member of the cast normal enough for the real real world, once called her roommate Epsilon "a cancer on the face of alt-prog rock," and that put me in mind of the fact that there are no more outlaw rock stars or directors.

What I mean by this is consider the films of the '70s: Mean Streets. Death Wish. Dirty Harry. The Electric Company.***** A desire for raw justice oozes out of these films, not only in spite of the law, but direly flouting it. Much like infantile cancer. I am keenly aware that the music at the time was popularized by Captain & Tenille, John Denver, and other heartful pap. But along came Van Halen, and even though they completely characterized what a mid-'80s band should be, it was like they were from the '70s. They partied hard, had moppish hair, and were completely unkillable, except by radiation--again, just like infantile leukemia.

Now, of course, hipsters love to loudly state how little regard they hold Van Halen in, and at the same time, how infantile leukemia is "totally not cool," or, at best, "I had infantile leukemia before it was so widespread." Sammy Hagar acts in the role of death, who serves as the tragic capstone of irony, bleaching the spirit of vivacity from the very embodiment of youth and potential. These are the things everyone knows to be true in their marrow.******

All life is travesty.

___________________________________

*although Burger Time was actually a mod of a Japanese game called Crazy Sandwich that was far superior, but this is beside the point

**Sammy Hagar might have sold more records, but he never possessed that "fuck it, I'm here" cool that Roth emanated. Hagar, by contrast, belonged to the class of round and orange middle-aged men better left surfing the California beaches well into their 40s but no further.

***The one who was probably not a lesbian.****

****But kissed Tyrol, the hermaphrodite with male features who nevertheless identified as a bicurious woman with cross-dressing tendencies, so it all worked out.

*****Which was technically a long-running children's show on PBS, but it proves my point.

******Assuming their marrow is healthy and functional and hasn't been donated to a dying baby.

(Anyway, that's how I assume Klosterman would write it.)

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Why you should never ask me about comics

by Brendan McGinley on 06.09.2010 at 12:35 am
Posted In: Blog

Because I only half-follow them, and then I spit back what I've seen. This is the last time Elder made that mistake, back when it was revealed that Green Goblin had hate-screwed Spider-Man's girlfriend. I can't believe i just typed that. Oh, comics, you were such a cute kid. Now you're in that late teens dawning maturity where you mistake ugliness for depth.

Why does this creepiness exist?

Josh: New comic: http://www.erichowen.com/spidey_pg01.jpg
Josh: Goes up to 11
Brendan: Hey, this is your story!
Brendan: nice pun on costume-r
Brendan: this is awesome!
Brendan: that dryer opens weird
Brendan: better if he missed to the left of him.
Josh: Yeah, I know.
Brendan: this is so pro though yo
Josh: Not much I can do 'cause he just drew it all and then showed it to me.
Brendan: yah
Josh: But I'm pretty darned pleased with it.
Brendan: just flip the window
Brendan: two panels. bamf
Josh: I think I got Spidey's voice pretty pitch perfect.
Brendan: by the way
Brendan: well that was my next point
Josh: Better than JMS at any rate.
Josh: Man, why can't they just let Spidey be fun?
Brendan: hah
Brendan: I dunno.
Brendan: Gwen needs ramrodding
Brendan: Solid, hard, green ramrodding
Josh: He needs to make jokes and slap bad guys around...
Josh: Shut up
Josh: Damn you!
Brendan: I bet Green Goblin put the mask on right before he climaxed
Josh: And damn you JMS!
Josh: Damn you straight to comic geek hell!
Brendan: She was like "Did you put a rubber on?"
Brendan: and he said "Right here, baby. BLALEBLBLABLBLAEH!!"
Josh: So wrong...
Josh: But I'm glad you liked my story at any rate.
Brendan: I can picture them having sex, sadly. She goes from these high-pitched gasps to kind of a shrill "Oh!" which I point out to give you an idea of how good she feels when he leans in and she says "Norman..." and he says "Gwen.."
Josh: We'll be giving it to every Marvel guy we meet.
Brendan: repeat x 3
Brendan: until suddenly: "Gwen...I was lying when I said I loved you, and I'm not wearing a condom."
Brendan: Next panel: Norman grimaces in painful orgasm, gritting his teeth.
Brendan: Ah....
Brendan: then he falls asleep on her lily-white breast while she cries.
Brendan: You know I'm right.
Josh: I hate you.

Why I should write Spider-Man instead of J. Michael Straczynski.

elder1938: New comic: http://www.erichowen.com/spidey_pg01.jpg
elder1938: Goes up to 11
BANKSH0T: Hey, this is your story!
BANKSH0T: nice pun on costume-r
BANKSH0T: this is awesome!
BANKSH0T: that dryer opens weird
BANKSH0T: better if he missed to the left of him.
elder1938: Yeah, I know.
BANKSH0T: this is so pro though yo
elder1938: Not much I can do 'cause he just drew it all and then showed it to me.
BANKSH0T: yah
elder1938: But I'm pretty darned pleased with it.
BANKSH0T: just flip the window
BANKSH0T: two panels. bamf
elder1938: I think I got Spidey's voice pretty pitch perfect.
BANKSH0T: by the way
BANKSH0T: well that was my next point
elder1938: Better than JMS at any rate.
elder1938: Man, why can't they just let Spidey be fun?
BANKSH0T: hah
BANKSH0T: I dunno.
BANKSH0T: Gwen needs ramrodding
BANKSH0T: Solid, hard, green ramrodding
elder1938: He needs to make jokes and slap bad guys around...
elder1938: Shut up
elder1938: Damn you!
BANKSH0T: I bet Green Goblin put the mask on right before he climaxed
elder1938: And damn you JMS!
elder1938: Damn you straight to comic geek hell!
BANKSH0T: She was like "Did you put a rubber on?"
BANKSH0T: and he said "Right here, baby. BLALEBLBLABLBLAEH!!"
elder1938: So wrong...
elder1938: But I'm glad you liked my story at any rate.
BANKSH0T: I can picture them having sex, sadly. She goes from these high-pitched gasps to kind of a shrill "Oh!" which I point out to give you an idea of how good she feels when he leans in and she says "Norman..." and he says "Gwen.."
elder1938: We'll be giving it to every Marvel guy we meet.
BANKSH0T: repeat x 3
BANKSH0T: until suddenly: "Gwen...I was lying when I said I loved you, and I'm not wearing a condom."
BANKSH0T: Next panel: Norman grimaces in painful orgasm, gritting his teeth.
BANKSH0T: Ah....
BANKSH0T: then he falls asleep on her lily-white breast while she cries.
BANKSH0T: You know I'm right.
elder1938: I hate you.
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Underwear

by Brendan McGinley on 06.04.2010 at 11:38 am
Posted In: Blog

Finally got a long-standing Cracked Topic done: UNDERWEAR

They say funny is sexy, but I set out to prove them wrong.

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One from the Toyfare vaults

by Brendan McGinley on 06.02.2010 at 12:32 am
Posted In: Blog

I’m not sure if this ever ran in TOYFARE, but for awhile we were blatantly ripping off THE ONION with a section called "The Rag." This was pretty much loathed by the readers, but great fun for the writers. One of my first pieces was the bit below, that I’d forgotten all about:

HED: HULK TO SMASH

ALT:
SMASH, HIT FOR HULK
HULK: "HULK SMASH"

(but how can you turn your back on "Hulk to Smash"?)

SUB:
Gamma-Powered Goliath Announces Smash, Hit
Jade Giant Promises Pulverization
Green Giant to Crush, Rend, Destroy

The Incredible Hulk announced at an impromptu press conference Thursday that he would smash. "Hulk make you understand!" the jade giant roared to quivering reporters, "Hulk smash! That what Hulk do! Even on Sundays!"

Hulk’s alter-ego, Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, was unavailable for comment. Hulk has yet to fulfill his oft-stated goal of smashing Puny Banner.

The Hulk first smashed in 1962 when he destroyed a U.S. Army Jeep. A chain of smash followed, broken only in the late ’70s by an addiction to Hostess fruit pies.

He most recently targeted director Michael Bay after watching Bay’s film, The Island. "How clones not realize they for spare parts?" growled Hulk Thursday. "Film insult Hulk’s intelligence! Now Bay one who need organ donors! Ho ho ho!" he laughed, causing the walls to rumble.

The smash work has frequently earned Hulk both praise and criticism.  In 1988 he was lauded by First Lady Nancy Reagan for smashing teen drug abuse and soviet super-villain The Abomination, but subsequently lost White House support when he smashed a faltering U.S. dollar weakened by foreign lending. Banner later apologized, though Hulk still defends his actions. "Dollar learn Hulk strongest one there is!" he iterated Thursday.

Dr. Leonard Samson, Hulk’s therapist and occasional smash-object, defended his patient’s behavior. "Hulk is the impulsive id of Banner’s psyche," said Samson, "Smashing is a healthy outlet for him." He added, "Still, I’d hate to be Thor or whoever gets their face knobbed this time."

When asked about his intended target(s), the Hulk kept mum, but indicated he might select traditional smashing victims Claw-Man (Wolverine), Star-Hat (Gen. Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross) or Not-Funny Meatneck (comedian Joe Rogan).
"Hulk hate stupid Thunder-Star!" announced the green goliath, obliterating the podium with his pinky. "Why can’t Army just leave Hulk alone? AAAAARGH!" He then smashed through the ceiling, killing five reporters.

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Redheads

by Brendan McGinley on 05.26.2010 at 12:45 pm
Posted In: Blog

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.

Plainly, this is something I would mock and reject

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.

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Prose Wednesday interview with Secret Identity

by Brendan McGinley on 05.26.2010 at 12:17 pm
Posted In: Blog

Brian LeTendre at Secret Identity just asked me some questions about the junk I write, and I answered them in a semi-serious manner. Mostly it's me listing everyone I admire in comics and comedy.

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Shaking & baking

by Brendan McGinley on 05.19.2010 at 12:15 am
Posted In: Blog

I've been doing a lot of baking lately, probably ever since I made that chicken pot pie crust from scratch, which was itself a way to use up a roast chicken without making my thousandth batch of chicken soup.

Bagels
I followed this recipe in the pictures below, but I've since tweaked it to have a little more oil and yeast (depends what kind of yeast you're using, really). Anyway, they're looking much better than the rough cut you see here. If your yeast isn't puffing up the dough enough, flatten them before they set too much. That way at least you'll have thin bagels you can smear something on.

The important thing is to really merge the two ends when you make your ring, or they'll pop right off in the water. A little pinch and a twist should do it. The sooner you do this, the better, as the longer the yeast rises, the more it loses interest in reforming. When everything's shaped and risen, it goes into the pot of boiling water!

Just a minute'll do, then flip.

This batch got used for egg & cheese sandwiches, but the later generations were thick-bodied enough I could slice and butter them by their lonesome. They're pretty much going to come out of the oven looking like what you put in. These are before they baked:

And these are after:

Next I made some English muffins:

Dough's pretty easy. You'll want corn meal to bake these, but you'll also want corn meal because it's delicious. You can find some pretty varying recipes. I used one that didn't call for shortening. While my bagels could be topped by most any decent Brooklyn bakery, these English muffins beat your tastebuds with a mace called joy.

Dough gets prepped, then dusted with corn meal

Cakes on the griddle

They finish up in the oven

And once I had corn meal, how could I not try Italian bread?

It's only the fresh, piping hot, most delicious stuff ever. No harder to make than any of this stuff. I used this recipe.

Not much to add, except: Yum.

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Chicken pot pie

by Brendan McGinley on 05.12.2010 at 8:49 am
Posted In: Blog

Whoever said easy as pie must have bought their shell at the store. Real pie crust is a pain in the neck. But I have flour and butter, so sometimes I get the call to make it. Since this is a chicken pie, not a sweet pie, I threw some parsley, oregano, basil into the crust, though what I really wanted was scallions.

One such opportunity came along after I'd roasted a chicken (note: a beer can is pointless in a crockpot, since they basically serve the same function. Most of the chickens I make are roasted in the oven using the spices described in that post). I didn't want to make my 1000th batch of chicken soup, so into the pie it went.

Basically, you prep the remains of the roast chicken for soup by chucking it in a pot full of boiling water, but leave the lid off so most of the water evaporates. Take the chicken out to cool on a plate, while you transfer the couple remaining inches of oily broth into a pan. Add enough flour to make a moderately thin gravy, and then go to work stripping your chicken bones of their meat. Mix the meat into the gravy, and put it all in the pie crust.

You may want to cook the bottom of the pie crust very briefly before you add any chicken, so it's even with the top part. Either way, put the meat and gravy in the pie crust, top it with the rest of the crust, pinch the crust shut with your fingers, slice a couple of ventilation holes in the top, and bake that sucker. The insides are already cooked, so you should be good.

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Scryptic column #12 — Tough dialogue.

by Brendan McGinley on 05.05.2010 at 12:49 am
Posted In: Blog

I swear I posted this before, but I can't find it. I also can't find Swift as Mercury column #s6-11 but oh well. Here we go.

What’s hard? Besides writing something good.

#12 – Do You Know What Really Hard Is? (pt. 1)

File Under: Tough stuff

Pounded out to the silent screams of:
Kill Bill Vol. 2 soundtrack

Last column addressed how to talk tough. The answer, of course, is don’t try, so this one’s about walking the walk.

I’d been making pass after pass at a confrontation in the opening chapter of this feminist mob western called Strychnine Kiss. It consists of two parties threatening one another, and while that happens, the structure’s wrong and it doesn’t work. There’s an architecture to how people bully, bluff and threaten.  Before any real action takes place, a staredown is a chance for the combatants to assert their superiority and avoid any dangerous engagement. If you can thump your chest loudly enough, you might not have to risk bodily harm.

Of course, some folks are into bodily harm.  And that’s where we’re at today. Action films and comics get a (probably deserved) bad rap, but action, we’re also told, is the best possible means of characterizing someone.

So as long as things are going to explode, they ought to be meaningful. Few do it well in comics. Andy Diggle is a master of action as plot, and so he steals your breath. Give us a glimpse of the different personalities behind the fists and triggers. John Ostrander’s a personal favorite of mine for this. My first great comics love was a relentlessly nasty piece of work called GrimJack, because it had a very guarded heart that in no way contradicted its viciousness.

Strychnine Kiss is a hard world.  It’s Chicago after the oil and the government have both run out, and the only thing keeping things in line is the mafia, which has been in power for so long, it’s the official governing body.  Most crimes are permitted, under the right circumstances. Honor’s the new code of conduct, and like most rules of thumb, it gets sorely abused.

Most people, therefore, are more defensive, and less willing to trust. That’s a kind of hardness, perhaps the first step. But like I say, I’m new to this. I’m not vindictive, and haven’t known many vindictive people.

So I picture two samurai about to duel. The first strikes an attacking pose, the second assumes a stance in response to that.  Reacting, the first chooses a new pose to which the second is now vulnerable, and so on, it’s a warning display and preparation for the battle at the same time. There can be a lot of conflict without a lot of action.  If done properly, it resonates with subtext; that’s what’s so great about Brian Azzarello’s writing beneath the patter.  He puts the screws to all characters, and by the time the gun goes off, the scene’s such an ionized airlock your head is buzzing.  He earns almost any ending he can devise.

That tension, that build-up, in a stand-off also implies that conflict is inevitable.  And yet Strychnine Kiss is about clawing to the top by doing things differently. The main character is a woman, used to dealing with misogynistic thugs. There are going to be a lot of challenges to her authority.  What’s more, she has a reputation for being pretty crazy, which I think she plays up in order to cover her back.  But it means she needs to be unpredictable and fearsome.

And yet…I can’t have her just punching everyone’s lights out unprovoked because nobody would follow a lunatic like that.  What’s more, it makes her a jerk, drawing sympathy for the thugs she’s muscling around.  That’s ok in measures, but only as part of her internal conflict.  If I time it wrong, or phrase it wrong, she just becomes a vicious beast, and you can’t do that more than a couple times before it’s established and set in stone.  Anytime you repeat a trick, you’re repeating an idea.  If that’s not your intention, and usually even if it is, you should develop it a little further along.

And speaking of intentions, it’s not her goal to commit slaughter, which would only bring her more trouble and probably create all kinds of psychological havoc.  But she does want to make her own death not worth the opponents’ trouble, which is the only weapon at hand for her.  She leverages it to get what she wants (the thugs’ dispersal).

Statistics tell us women commit fewer acts of violence, but most humans are ready to do so if it becomes the best or only option. But statistics are generalized, and characters are most interesting when and how they deviate from norms. A woman trying to salvage her authority from a brash man in an underling role might act outside of her own inclinations to send the right message in male terms.

Vulnerability plays a huge factor in hard characterization.  Bullies pick on the weak. But bullies are often (not always) scared of something themselves, taking a broad offense against the world to avoid being put on the defensive.  I’d say in almost equal measure, some of them are just sadists, but even then, you have variety. There’s the actual psychopath, the psychosexual sadist, the power junkie, etc.

Think of violence as music.  The same performance can express very different messages depending on the amplitude, the key, and perhaps most importantly, what’s left out. Deliberately atonal chords can send a message of something very wrong indeed.

After I wrote the first issue of Strychnine Kiss’ earliest incarnation I realized I’d placed my morally fluid protagonist in a post-apocalyptic Chicago, so I was probably just channeling my 12-year-old self’s love of the aforementioned GrimJack.

The main character is one John Gaunt, an all-around gun-for-hire and occasional detective.  Gaunt was once the best gladiator in the city of Cynosure, but is now past his prime and getting by on skill rather than talent, dodging tougher battles when he can via his reputation, and winning the ones he can’t with dirty fighting.

But that’s not really what makes him hard.

Drawn into a fight, Gaunt lets free a crazy smile, a sick grin like he’s been waiting all week for this.  And yeah, that makes him hard. But not really hard.

What makes him really hard, what makes him so much more believably tough than the action heroes of the ‘80s who wade through endless gun battles with stony stoicism, is Gaunt cries.

He doesn’t run around weeping, but when he tries his damnedest to stop something terrible from happening, and it costs him a higher price than he’d have liked to pay, then yeah, that blow reaches his core.  Crying authenticates the tough exterior, because an absolute lack of emotional response to something like killing his son wouldn’t make him tougher; it’d just make him less human, putting him on the side of the sociopaths.

It would also undermine the loss.  What’s the point of the story if nothing matters to the protagonist? Even that monster Lono, in Azzarello’s 100 Bullets, can’t believe it when the only two people he respects are dead, one of them by his own hand.  Loss, then, makes us hard. Taking something from others, that’s hard too.

In the final analysis, hard character is a resolve to achieve a particular end regardless of cost to oneself or others, but murky relevant factors color the audience’s sympathies.

Maybe a simpler way to say it is: find out what your character wouldn’t do, then find a way to make them do it.

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Ma McGinley’s Kindergarten Kookies

by Brendan McGinley on 04.28.2010 at 12:31 am
Posted In: Blog

Here's what I'm making today: my mom's recipe for these delicious, candy-like cookies that coagulate into sort of chocolate's birds' nests. They're called Kindergarten Kookies because she used to send them into school on our birthdays.

KINDERGARTEN KOOKIES

In a mixing bowl:
3 cups oats
1/2 cup cocoa OR 1 square unsweetened chocolate
1 cup coconut
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup pecans OR dates

Boil hard 1 minute:
2 cups sugar
1 stick butter
1/2 cup milk
Have ingredients ready that are in mixing bowl before you boil other ingredients. Boil sugar, butter and milk* and then mix with the ingredients in the mixing bowl. Then drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper and let set until hard enough to eat.
*And square of chocolate if using instead of cocoa powder.
Thanks, Ma!
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Scryptic Column #5 — “321Go!”

by Brendan McGinley on 04.21.2010 at 12:38 am
Posted In: Blog

I found a few of my "Swift as Mercury" columns that used to run over at Scryptic Studios, this nifty website for comic book writers. Drew Melbourne invited me to do a column, and then the site folded. Go ahead and blame me for it if you want.

There are many paths to the truth, but there's no truth in this column about the importance of location to your story, and probably no path, either. Just a lot of meandering that will hopefully lead to self-discovery, but probably find only more cheap jokes. At least those will distract you from the chasm of meaningless existence and threat of inevitable death!

03.14.07
#5 –321Go!
File under: Location, location, location
Launched into the glorious dawn to the stirring tones of:
Ursula 1000 – Here Comes Tomorrow
Johnny Cash – I’ve Been Everywhere
Conor & Jay – “Change”
Chris Murray – “California Time”
The Hand Grenade Serenade – “Jackson Avenue”

So this is how I ended up kissing a 21-year-old model last night.

Let’s skip the normal drone about writing and magic (what would magic be without a hypnotic murmur of 10-dollar words? Probably interesting writing, if illustrated by negative example in this column). I’m ensconced in self-publishing and submission business this month, so let me draw in words an illustrative portrait of why self-publishing is not a fool’s business, but is a lunatic’s. It’s alright; if you’re not crazy in some way, you weren’t going to be a good writer or mage anyway, and you’re probably no fun at parties.

Of late, I’ve found myself stretched in a lot of directions, both figuratively and physically. I’ve been bouncing around from New York City to Long Island to Connecticut to Washington D.C. to Rockland County to Boston, and you know what?

That is just fine by me. I’ve been thinking a lot about how location affects vocation lately. Maybe it’s this script for Heist. More on that later.

We’re celebrating Guy Roommate’s 27th birthday this week. I’m enjoying it quite a bit. Blessed for the first time in years with good roomies, I’m making good use of their company at bars or barbecues. So when a friend of mine said she was at a nearby pub with her younger sister and sis’s friends, we heeded the call. We are vampires, and we stay young not by tapping veins of the healthy, but kegs with them.

For want of a Metrocard, we hoofed our way north towards the company of college seniors brimming with youth and bursting with life. We got to talking about travel, which most people look forward to, but here’s an extra wrinkle for me; I am a sucker for real places in fiction.

Doubtless this has to do with my affection for metafiction. I believe it’s more fundamental however. I love the idea that not only does reality lend the fiction weight, but even more than that, the idea the fiction imbues the reality with some of its supernatural meaning, its larger themes swirling over a place like an invisible wind eddy.

Alan Moore has said in interviews that once you examine a place – any place – you discover just how much hidden history it has that makes it seem like one of the most important places on Earth. And then…you notice history’s patterns.

He is not wrong.

What I said during the pub walk (which, remember, ends with me kissing a model and will not be what you think) was that I enjoy the act of traveling itself. Trains offer a fleeting look at the private face of a city, flights have a giddy thrill of liftoff and helplessness, car trips provide a private atmosphere with friends. Walking affords time to stop and look around. Transit offers good banter, shared music, and always the sense of something new waiting to be found (probably malaria).

Additionally, my notebook and I have found long trips to be excellent sequester jaunts for writing, away from the internet and cell phone reception. In fact, with all my travel lately, I have a backlog of script notes begging to be saved on the computer so that I can keep the wheels turning to the next inspiration or editorial swath of destruction.

Excluding my day job duties, here’s what’s on my plate today (and many days ahead):

--Two freelance articles (done!)

--This column (in progress)

--Fix glitches and gaffes on DOSE, which is effectively done, but is bugging me in the details. “Li’l Sammy Swift” could be funnier, and I’m not sure the hand-lettering of “Deficient in Love” is legible, even if it preserved the ‘60s romance comic look I was going for. Also, does anybody know where to find a comparable font to the Leroy Mechanical System used on Tales from The Crypt and other EC comics? Much obliged.

--Having downloaded seven massive, awesome, full-color Invisible, Inc. pages from artist Tomás Aira, I must now pay the talented lad, and begin lettering. I’m still not happy with the monologue on the first couple pages, which needs to strike a good mix of atmosphere, information and ambiguity as to who the speaker is. So that’s a slow evening. Then I should calculate page rate costs against sales forecasts to see what kind of realistic loss and profit forecasts I can make.

--Script the opening scene and action sequence for Heist. This is a collaborative story that’s been swirling between myself and Mail Order Ninja’s Josh Elder since he didn’t have the MON prefix. Josh is even busier than I am, so when I tripped over a plot outline that worked for us one day, he assented and I’m going to drag this beast towards completion, then summon him, Capcom tag-team style, when I get stuck. We crafted this tale in our starry-eyed youth, when doing a villain book would have been a novel thing to do, but both of us knew we didn’t really pick that final tumbler in the lock to a great story till now. Andres Ponce, who’s been working on Star-Xed with me, but took a break when we both got too busy to keep that one in fourth gear, has finished his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles prequels. I’m going to try to lure him over to Heist before resuming Star-Xed, since one is meant to be a forward-driven, seat-of-your-pants tale of adaptive genius, and the other uses iambic pentameter.

--Break the panels out of Strychnine Kiss as drawn by Jorge Heufemann, combine with those by German Erramouspe, resize, reconfigure, and reletter, then paste into DOSE. Figure out how I’m going to transition a story like this into a book that’s otherwise 56 pages of humor. It’s got an ironic ending, which is a border-state of humor. Think, brain!

--Overhaul the entire Citizen X script for Leonardo Pietro (God bless Argentina, which ought to be renamed Aureliana for the wealth of talented, enthusiastic professionals turning in their work at a faster rate than I can match). Decide if I’m breaking it out into short episodes Strychnine Kiss style, or issue-sized acts, or keeping it as one solid graphic novel. That’s going to take a couple of weeks at best.

--Create a presentable webpage for this stupid domain I’ve had the last two years.

--Register a business before I make up a package in order to…

--Submit DOSE to Diamond for distribution and begin canvassing the world outside of the direct market with mad marketing schemes. Ship this beast off to the printer. Figure out exactly how I’m going to receive a couple thousand comics at a shipping pier from abroad.

--Advance Black Ambulances, which has treaded water for years since I first proposed a collaboration to the infinitely patient Steven Grant. Oh, lord, I am not reliable in this regard. I’ve become my own artists (excluding the fine company above).

--Draw large chunks of DOSE #2, so I have it as complete as possible before the first one goes to print. This I do while watching my way through my queue of Blockbuster flicks so neither one lags behind. If a flick’s on, I’m drawing. If the mailbox is empty, I resume the tasks above. This might seem like a great way to screw up a page, but I grew up drawing in class, and found if I didn’t distract my right brain, I’d get twitchy, to the detriment of both lessons and drawings. Multi-tasking just works better, ripping through all the inertia. You can be quite productive, provided you carefully plot your layout thumbnails before you begin. And, chums, I’m skipping the brain-baking stupidity of commercials. This one is sort of ongoing.

--Return to the final three issues of Invisible Inc.’s first storyline, “Yellow Journalism.” I have extensive notes just waiting to go into each of these story files, had I time to sit and type. Tomás is one of my fastest artists, so the three-issue lead I have over him is nothing more than a half-step. My one salvation is he’s as crazily obsessed with details as I am, so the either of us is glad when the other starts niggling over getting the exact details of a New York City trashcan for veracity’s sake. I’m grateful every day for that, as it’s a tale that draws its strength from the lore and legends of both comic history and conspiracy culture. As fantastic as its theories are going to branch out, it needs roots planted deep in the surreality of those groups. If we’re going to achieve our eerie paranoia, then it’s no good to make connections between scenarios we devised ourselves. It has to feel real and terrifying.

Speaking of real and terrifying, I larked to Boston with friends this week. No, that’s not the terrifying part; great times were had. I’ve been before, and wanted to attend school there. It’s home to some of my favorite bands (and hosting The Pogues on Sunday, to our deep loss in missing that festive show, but hey…they’re playing with Langhorne Slim here in NYC this week, and that’s an even greater billing). It has a neat accent, a young population, and an educated one besides. It also has enough Ben Franklin tribute to satisfy even an adulant like myself. Yes, Boston has long held a place in my heart.

It’s a city with an omnipresent sense of history. In New York, the history curve drops off behind the roaring ‘20s, and disappears before the Civil War, where it’s just a blur of Peter Stuyvesant and British embargoes. It’s not present at the front lines. If anything, there’s a cultural history. But in Boston…man, it’s tattooed on the infrastructure. We followed the Freedom Trail through half the city, nothing the historic plaques on every third restaurant, office building and church. We saw famous graves, monuments, and markers where big names lived and died and became part of an American heritage.

There was also Boston cream pie, which recommends the trip in its entirety.

We hit the library our first morning there to see the Sargent murals, and then browsed the rest of that wonderful building. Now here’s the terrifying part. My friends lingered at one point near the end, so I found a copy of Stephen King’s Cell on the shelf. I’ve been meaning to read this for awhile. Zombies have always been the most interesting of horror films for me (slashers just don’t do it, and most vampires are posturing choads too busy preening themselves), and King’s frequently at his best with them, as they provide him opportunity to play in complete social breakdown. I opened it up…

Oh…no. The book takes place right here. It’s right outside the Boston Public Library and like my party, presently bound for the Common. By the second page, something is Not Right in Boston, and by the seventh, it’s exploded into complete insanity.

That’s when they came for me.

I put the book on the shelf and joined my patiently waiting friends to step outside into the scene laid out in prose before me. No terrors awaited, but I’m a patient man. I noticed it again on a bus yesterday, where cell phone users had me boxed in. Then I realized it was blocks from where Drew Edwards raised a zombie outbreak in the pages of Arch-Enemies.

Just by collecting trivia from my neighborhood, I've discovered links between Area-51, Donald Trump's dad, Coney Island, spy planes and Evergreen Cemetary, and how perfectly they all tie into the details of a murder I had already plotted and placed in Invisible, Inc.

So, yeah: I love locations. They’re important to any story. They’re as much a shaping element to a story as characters and camera angles.

Anyway, all of this was swirling in my head last night as we entered the pub, a storm of threads and thoughts that shows why self-publishing is a noble tilt at windmills. You’re probably best off focusing on that bucking bronco called story. I’m only self-publishing some of these titles because I’m a lunatic. Now, granted, I’m working on more projects than a rational human being would want to undertake at any one time, especially top to bottom, but I’m also blessed with a job that lets me out at 3:30, affords me time to write during the day, and takes an hour’s commute in either direction. I’ve got a little more time than your customary struggling comic creator (and grateful for the luck, thanks), but even something as simple as lettering a few pages on the computer can consume an entire Saturday.

Ah, and now Heist is coming to me. I have to write a super-powered thief into some well-attended civic ball, then break him out with the loot. It’s the opening sequence, so we have to witness his powers and weaknesses, his personality, his motivations (via the risks he takes)…it’s all a primer in what’s to come, no different from the practice missions prevalent at the start of a video game. We have to set out the ground rules.

Ok, that’s not the hard part. It’s making sure it’s not too easy for his formidable prowess. We have to show our man is the best there is at what he does without making it a cake walk. We need a challenge up to his skills, and while we have a happy scenario intact, I’m just wondering why he doesn’t fly far, far away from it.

Fortunately, the security measures in place to protect the loot, as well as the elite celebration surrounding its unveiling, promise us an inaccessible location. No need to change the parts that work (the heist and the getaway), when I can simply place the whole scene somewhere remote and exotic. A train or a blimp would work if this were a normal crime tale, but not for a man who becomes a ghost. We’re going to have to put this party in a pocket dimension, an inescapable locale for even the world’s greatest thief you never heard of. Location matters.

Oh, but you wanted to know about the kiss.

Like I said, location matters. A peck on the cheek goodbye and happy birthday at the evening’s end. Not at all the fulfillment of the promising lead to this column. The very definition of platonic, saying goodnight to my friend’s sister, a lovely girl: friendly, fun personality, much beholden in her heart to her Russian boyfriend.

It may have been a non-event, but for purposes of this column, it lay at the end of a road with its own value. I mean, hey, I just devised a pocket dimensional cocktail party.

Sometimes, the joy is in the journey.

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Scryptic column #4 — “Prufrock ‘n’ Roll”

by Brendan McGinley on 04.14.2010 at 12:36 am
Posted In: Blog

I found a few of my "Swift as Mercury" columns that used to run over at Scryptic Studios, this nifty website for comic book writers. Drew Melbourne invited me to do a column, and then the site folded. Go ahead and blame me for it if you want.

SWIFT AS MERCURY

02.28.07

#4 – Prufrock Had That, at Least

File under: Visions & Revisions

Sung each to each in the mermaid voices of:

Mighty Mighty Bosstones – “So Many Ways”

Right -- I’ve slept about two hours, I’m eating Altoids for breakfast, and I’m locked in a sub-basement of Rockefeller Center with seven gallons of scotch, vodka, and rye, so this should be interesting.

Just another typical day at work. No, seriously.  It’s all in the telling, innit?

Continuing from our thoughts on marrying disparate ideas to produce beautiful mutant progeny, let’s talk about drafts.

Writing, I’ve said before, is a kind of shamanism.  Most writers are familiar with the magic moment when the story, the universe takes the reins, and the story turns out to be true.  I genuinely mean that the world tosses information needed to complete the story at you, without even seeking it.  It bubbles up in front of your eyes and under your ears.

It doesn’t matter of this is real, or if the brain, fired up to find connections, is imposing meaning on life.  It matters that it works, and that we treat it as real.  As long as it’s working, who cares what the source is?  Believe what you want, or better yet, believe nothing, and lose nothing when the truth disagrees with you.

At any rate, it beats finding the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich.

We’ve compared writing to a confidence game, and that’s going to be our operating model until someone writes in to refute it. You give the reader a premise (usually many premises), and you can take it back anyway you choose, but with this understanding:

You will the premise back from them at some point, in an engaging manner, be it intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, or whatever else fits its presentation.  Relieving them of the concept must be worth the burden of holding it so long.  Really, you exchange the premise for a compromise.

Most Hollywood movies, and thereby, most books and mainstream comics, which hold out hope of turning into licen$ed film properties, use the three-act structure. Blah blah, look it up if you don’t know it.  The popular college shorthand for Georgie “Porkchops” Hegel and his famous dialectic theory of everything is the “thesis/antithesis/synthesis” model.

Though this is actually “Typhoid” Johann Fichte’s model, rather than Hegel’s.  After last week’s Nietzsche bout, I’m developing an awkward tendency to cite philosophers that influenced German nationalism.  Next time, I’ll have to get some space by employing a metaphysical dross-dealer like Richard Bach (take a moment to enjoy his Wikipedia entry and ask yourself if the line about sledding and weariness was written by a vandal, a disgruntled neighbor, or Bach himself).

Anyway, Fichte’s triad of equal and opposite reactions is only right maybe a quarter of the time in real life, but it works quite well for fiction, thanks.  It’s dramatic, it’s focused, and it’s simple.  No wonder producers love it!  If you could net millions popping out farts like Epic Movie, you’d be leery of challenging your audience, too.

Shakespeare worked in five acts: setting up a great dilemma in the first act, and then pitching opportunities for things to go right or wrong before veering in the opposite direction for a conclusion.  That fellow understood the power of showing audiences what could have been.  And guess what?  Each act takes the original concept, and introduces a new wrinkle both on it and the developments of the other acts.

There’s a reason Shakespeare tells his audience upfront what’s going to happen to Romeo & Juliet.  He doesn’t want them to operate under the false expectation of a happy ending and feel justifiably cheated.  Then he goes and makes sure the plot is served by their deaths, which so crush their parents that they have no more will to fight.  Now their love is enshrined by the good work it engenders, terminating the feud and saving their families from the total destruction both had pledged to achieve.

Unless my college professor was lying to me (entirely possible), TS Eliot wrote that literary criticism informs not only future criticism based on it, but previous criticism that underlies it.  It’s sort of a four-dimensional apprehension of work in its actuality, each facet seen from all sides.  When you’re really nailing your acts, that’s what you achieve with your story.

The same is true of chapters, which are usually synchronized to acts or scenes, but can easily be an additional layer based on a structural, thematic, aesthetic or epistemological patterns of an entirely different level than plot.  Think of it like a map.  Some boundaries are natural, like a river or a cliff.  People incorporate them into their artificial delineations of states and nations, but not every border will be a natural formation.  Sometimes it’s necessary to pick the one measured and planned.

You’re under no stipulations of structure, of course.  If you want to get really experimental, you may lose touch with narrative altogether and create a sort of ambient hypertext like Ulysses. Caveat: then no one will love you except professors and Marcel Proust.

Four times out of five, when an act ends, something should be different from when it started.  It’s like a leg of a marathon.  Granted, it will be useful to you to recover from or prepare for the adjacent chapter if you want to blow off tension or build up pressure.  That happens often enough.  There may be other reasons that serve your purpose, like getting to know the characters and building affection or understanding of them.  That’s still a change that suits your goal.  Plot may get the lion’s share of control over what happens, but it’s still in service to the ultimate effect of your story.  Sometimes you need to kick it out, and build some scenes, lay out charm, create feelings that draw people into the story so they’re not just watching it.

Whatever you do, you can’t take somebody on a 120-page journey (pretty lengthy for comics, the size of your average graphic novel these days) and have them end up in the same place they started from. Unless…say, are you writing a serial?

Even then, there should be some reward for the viewers’ attentions, some development whereby the hero doesn’t achieve his goal, but does gain a new tool for the next attempt.  You can also end with the poor lad or lass even further from the objective than at the start, because if the story is going to continue, hey, great, this just means even more tension.  A serial is almost by default an epic; the question is whether it has the good sense and taste to end at the right point.  If you don’t have the guts to do that, here are three options:

1) Find a new challenge that justifies the protagonist’s place at the forefront

2) Boot the character whose tale has concluded to the background and let a former supporting cast member. Have the limelight

3) Phone it in while you enjoy the gains of your slapshod storytelling. I don’t recommend this one, but for many people, there’s nothing wrong with it in the light of the steady income it brings.

In the Silver Age, DC was having Superman passively pound through villains that wouldn’t intimidate Aquaman, crushing a crisis in 6 pages with Kryptonian omnipotence.  Stan Lee, however, was dropping that loser Spider-Man into poorer, lonelier circumstances, no matter how great his sacrifice and victory to stop the Vulture from taking over the world’s supply of Polident seemed to earn him.  When, oh, when, readers wondered, would puny Parker catch a break?

Which one would you come back and read next month?

Right, and that’s what happened.  Unfortunately, Spidey’s hard-times became as much of a handicap to holding readers’ attention as Superman’s omnipotence (too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart, as W.B. Yeats once said, though probably thinking of something loftier than a battle with Paste Pot Pete).  So things got better for the web-spinner, hooray!  Progress!  (Of course, it wasn’t the same Spider-Man that achieved popularity, and it was the beginning of the end, since no one wants to see a nice guy go from loser to winner to loser again…but leave that thought for another day.)

Despite appearances, the story’s ending doesn’t proceed from its beginning.  Beginnings are tailored to the endings.  This is why you sometimes get told to write the ending first, so you know where things are heading.  I don’t think that’s necessary, but…the ending is usually where you state your final conclusion. It’s the proof of whatever you’ve discovered in your story.  If you write that first, even to change it later, you have just established your findings.

Then you write your beginning, which is the thesis statement.  Writing is like Intelligent Design Theory: you pick your conclusion, tailor the thesis to it, and then cherrypick all the information that build your theory’s case.

Sure, you might write a kick-ass beginning with no idea what, if anything, is going to happen.  No reason not to write it down if it occurs to you.

Drafts?  I’ve happened onto a few of those.  What I usually deal in though, is a polymorphous amoeba, perpetually creating and abandoning feet until it’s crossed the finish line. I either have many indistinct drafts, or one, big four-dimensional one, depending on your philosophy. Revisions, tinker. Really only one draft modified to a new beast.  Occasionally, You do whatever works for you in that particular moment.  Alan Moore wrote Watchmen pretty much in one take; James Joyce modified A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man so many times it’s amazing it made it to print (having made it into the fireplace previously).

I mentioned a story called She’s Famous Now in the last column. Nice boy pines for high school crush, boy gets opportunity to win high school crush, boy wins girl via unsavory methods, boy’s conscience and genuine love lead him to confess his sins…boy loses girl.

That ending just doesn’t fit.  Why?  Because our initial premise is about a boy trying to win the heart of a girl he can’t possibly get, and implicit in that premise is a promise to the audience that, YES, he WILL and here’s the amazing story of how he did it.  Moreover, he is a Nice Boy, and so there’s a silent endorsement of nicety as the path to virtue.

Plus, love is a wonderful drug that boggles a heart in steep ways.  Love will permit (or mask and minimize) a whole lot of awful revelations about a person in order to hold onto that mighty feeling.

And anyway, it’s a downer. But really, the key reason, above the happy ending, above the reality of the thing, is it was given us to that surely a boy who would dare buck his station in life…surely if this story is worth telling it’s because that boy, in spite of appearances, has some shot at his goal?

Just as the proverbial gun on the mantle must be used at some point in the play, the questions raised by your inciting event, point of attack and introductory conflict must all, by their resolution, prove to hold some value that made them worth asking in the first place.  If the answers to those questions is the obvious conclusion, you haven’t done your job.  You’ve simply exploded the reality you’re seeking to contain in the box of fiction.

Very few stories can sell the potential of their premise without acquiring the maguffin.  It’s quite a trick, and it’s why Rocky won the Oscar in a year packed with great films.

So what do we do? We certainly don’t have to have to have a happy ending, but the ending we WILL reveal must be implicit in our initial conflict.  Cluing the audience in after the terms have been established, even for the bulk of the piece, may foreshadow the ending, but it won’t deliver it in an acceptable manner.  Audiences are smart even when they’re stupid, and they’ll be aware that something fundamental was unresolved, or worse, irresolved.  You might entertain them enough to get forgiven, but you won’t make that lifelong dent in their brains of a well-told tale. You haven't rendered the kind of story that lives on after you're dead.

Now excuse me, I have to go see if rye and Altoids mix.

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Scryptic Column #3 — “Where Do You Get Your Ideas?”

by Brendan McGinley on 04.07.2010 at 12:36 am
Posted In: Blog

I found a few of my "Swift as Mercury" columns that used to run over at Scryptic Studios, this nifty website for comic book writers. Drew Melbourne invited me to do a column, and then the site folded. Go ahead and blame me for it if you want.

Sex sells, but love reprints. See why Valentine's Day has more to teach about giving birth to really cool content than the proper way to give a foot massage (but that's good too).

02.14.07
File under: Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Seductively crooned to the tune of:
Bouncing Souls – “Hopeless Romantic”
Reel Big Fish – “Good Thing”
Stiff Little Fingers – “Running Bear”
Johnny Cash – “Walk the Line”
Elvis Presley – “Can’t Help Falling in Love”
The Pietasters – “Night Before”
The Pogues & Sinead O’Connor – “Haunted”

Happy Valentine’s Day! (Or, if you prefer, Horny Werewolf Day.) Here in New York, we’re celebrating in bursts of sleet and hail. The yin-yang children of snow and rain possess the attributes of both, but the personality of neither.

Why aren’t they used to atmospheric effect in drama more?