Comedy

Tasting Table commissioned something a little different from me recently. My editor tasked me with finding the weirdest stock photos about food and cracking wise on them: something I am well-versed at doing from four years at the helm of CBS Local’s Man Cave Daily. I can tell you from a half-decade of experience, we’re … Read more

It’s 1-900-HOT-DOG time again, and this month we’re looking at Archie’s Sonshine, that licensed Spire comic book where the Riverdale gang meets—I kid you not—Jesus, but He’s pretending He’s just a random Christian, despite multiplying everyone’s food. Also, He lives in The Love Van, solicits teens to it at the beach, and basically creeps everyone … Read more

Last month and also week, we began making fun of Stardust the Super Wizard over at 1-900-HOTDOG. This month, we conclude making fun of Stardust over at 1-900-HOTDOG. Nature has an order to it, you see. I mentioned on the journal entry for part one, about how Stardust might just be the demigod I’m looking … Read more

A new two-parter begins today at 1-900-HOTDOG, in which the mad mind of Fletcher Hanks gives us Stardust the Super Wizard, a merciless arbiter of…justice? Vengeance? Let’s just call it punishment. It’s weird! It was always weird! There are kids born in 1930 who have living memories today of thinking this was weird. Though he … Read more

What if we’re in hell and we just don’t know it? That’s the question explored by every single episode of Beverly Hills Teens, last seen in my 1-900-HOTDOG debut. We return to that poisoned well today with “Look Deep Into My Eyes,” a hypnotism episode that asks, “What if young Donald Trump had been given … Read more

Over at my most-beloved gig as a monthly columnist in the comedy website/burgeoning cult known as 1-900-HOTDOG, I wrote about the bug-eyed beauty Buster Brown. Buster is a very early character from the history of comics, who has not aged, sold more merch than Garfield, once adjusted for world population and production costs, and absolutely … Read more

My old pal from Cracked and my current pal from 1-900-HOTDOG, Alex Schmidt, invited me and our fellow tubed-meat comedy colleague Dennard Dayle onto his big-fun podcast Secretly, Incredibly Fascinating. As a long-time listener, first-time caller, it was a pleasure to see Schmidty’s smiling face again now that he’s rolling in Jeopardy money and can … Read more

Does that title make no sense to you? Then you have successfully filtered yourself out of the morass of old-timey obfuscation that is the first American edition of the annual Pumblechook & Figg Christ-Mass catalog: Tumblefook & Pygge. Today’s piece is like the Appalachian Trail: very long, you do only as much of it as … Read more

Teamworking Day! It’s Teamworking Day! All the Hot Dogs wrote up our favorite Japanese Ads starring U.S. celebrities, a topic I know a little something about. Our mandate: write a paragraph about short TV spots. Our execution: mini-essays, because no word count on this topic can compress comprehensively. If I hadn’t already covered some spots … Read more

The Top Doggz are running a Columnist Appreciation Week in order of assimilation. You can read it (for free!) along with all their picks for my best articles of the year at 1900hotdog.com—or on the Patreon version if you’re feeling finicky. No one will blame you for taking a serving of the the internet’s best … Read more

Last year I put on my hazmat suit and opened up The O’Reilly Factor for Kids, Bill O’Reilly’s scolding scribejob on the millennial youth. This year, I drank again from the well of my hatred, and 5000 words later, I had to cut out 1000 words that had no jokes, only vitriol. What’s left is … Read more

Today at 1-900-HOTDOG, I have completed my examination of “Dogs of Glory,” a Christian children’s song that is pretty good at music, a matter of personal taste in its Christianity, barely passing as kids’ entertainment, and very confused about what a dog acts like. It’s free to read, because the Overlords are running a Columnist … Read more

Do you remember 1999’s action sci-fi comic book Nash? Sure, we all don’t. I don’t even think 1999 remembered it, because wrestler/writer Kevin Nash put out two issues through Image Comics, but not a third. Regardless, it’s a trip, and I reviewed it for 1-900-HOTDOG before falling under its spell and fulfilling my longstanding vow … Read more

Sure, name one Vanilla Ice song and survey says it’s “Ice, Ice, Baby.” Name two and it’s “Ninja Rap.” Name three and I am growing uncomfortable with this line of questioning, sir, get out of my living room. But if you want the most characteristic Vanilla Ice song, it has to be the confused seduction … Read more

Advertisers in the ’80s had no idea what to do with video games. Think of everything you’ve seen depicted in Mad Men, now picture those exact same survivors of childhood in the Depression, but older and just burning their days until retirement, trying to sell 8-bit computer games to children in a decade exultant in … Read more

That’s my theory and you can’t convince me otherwise. The Navy sponsored baby boxing and 20 years later we got the first SEALs. Coincidence? An awfully convenient one, I say. Oh, what’s that? Yes, you heard correctly. Toddler. Goddamn. BOXING. Sure, we know about the kids brutalized in coke mines and upon printing presses, but … Read more

Over at the ol’ 1-900-HOTDOG, I watched a couple of vintage U.S. Civil Defense videos on how to survive nuclear fallout without your shadow being burnt into a wall or puking up your own internal organs. “Walt Builds a Family Fallout Shelter” segues into “Fallout: When and How to Protect Yourself” with so much existential … Read more

Are you scared about the future? Scared about the present? Scared there’s no future? Let the past reassure you, thanks to the most devoted* adaptation of the DC Universe ever put to film. Over at 1-900-HOTDOG I reviewed Legends of the Superheroes: The Challenge and The Roast, and found them strangely wonderful? They do exactly … Read more

Beautiful people! Boxy clothes! A narrowly heteronormative view of sexuality! Zero fear of AIDS! Welcome to Hollywood’s view of sexy in the ’90s. Oh, it was a strange time, when it was still shameful to be a Nazi, but The Simpsons caused an uproar for saying “Hell…”

As I roll into another year as a 1-900-HOTDOG columnist, I’m starting to notice that the bulk of my accepted pitches are the DVDs or even VHS tapes that I bought as bootlegs in comic book stores more than half a lifetime ago, sprinkled with the occasional e-book I saved to mock back in the … Read more

Not every year, but every year in the hearts of children around the world, I find enough time to put together the H.P. Dickenscraftian index of purchasable commerce-goods known as The Pumblechook & Figg Catalogue. This Skymall of nightmares is a lot of extra work, but so worth it when it runs and it looks … Read more

I could fill a list with what’s great about writing for the 1-900-HOTDOG pirate ship and its kind yet twisted crew, and I wouldn’t be too many entries in before it comes up that no era or area are off-limits. If you can make a fighting manual from the 19th Century into comedy that fits … Read more

If you didn’t get a Chick tract in your Halloween pillowcase this year, I’ve got you covered. I read Jack Chick’s The Crusaders #1 over at 1-900-HOT-DOG (and its Patreon). The Crusaders was Jack Chick’s first full-sized and full-length comic book. I grew up Catholic—definitely too Catholic, if you had to suffer through my company … Read more

Do you think that’s a clickbait headline? Those are the most carefully chosen words of my existence, and I’ve had to counsel friends through trauma. I have never seen a film so ignorant in the language of film. It’s as though Glenn Danzig is inventing the medium from scratch in the 1880s, except if Glenn … Read more

Hoo boy, this is a Golden Age villain like no other: a murderous 13-year-old child from Chattanooga. I examined his only appearance, a face-off against Captain Marvel (the Shazam one) to figure out which of this kids was the grimmest in their crimefighting. The answer is the one you’d think, but the reason–hoo boy, nobody … Read more