The way things are going up here on my vacation I may never have time to post a proper “out with the old, in with the new” type blog, but I certainly have time to share this gem of a cartoon from November 6th 2008 by the Portland Oregonian’s Jack Ohman.
Happy New Era.
A billion gallons of toxic sludge containing mercury and arsenic from a coal plant in Kingston, Tennessee is no longer where it’s supposed to be.
If you own a home anywhere near this place its value is now hovering around “Just Kill Yourself.”
Happy Boxing Day.
Wrapping up the Blog-Challenge for my buddy, Richard Howe:
Oh sure, he could have stopped with “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” and he still would have been among the immortals of the comics field. His run on “Daredevil, the Man Without Fear” remains the standard by which such titles are measured. His original creations “Ronin”, “Sin City” and “300″all thrum with the power of a craftsman focusing all his passion and skill to their utmost.
Add to this his yeoman’s service to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and commitment to fighting censorship in all its forms and it would seem such a man’s rough nobility would urge him to further expand the boundaries of what could be done in this extraordinary medium of American Comic Books.
But…
What happened?
“DK2?”
“All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder?”
“The Spirit” movie?
There are theories: Drugs. Brain tumor. Replaced by evil android. Possibly all three…
But I have a different notion.
I think Frank Miller is (and has been) in the process of his greatest and most altruistic project yet.
Frank Miller is deliberately crashing and burning his own reputation just to make every other creator in the world feel better about themselves.
Think about it. You’re Rob Liefeld and the ride’s been over for years. Everyone knows you’re a hack, living off the past and selling those office supplies you stole from Image after dark. A few years ago that’s all you were and all you could ever imagine yourself to be.
But now?
Now you can look at your horrible 15th relaunch of “Youngblood” coming out of the printer at Kinkos and say “Wow! This is just as good as what Frank Miller’s doing!”
And that is how much Frank Miller loves us all.
Done!
We shall confine our statements here to the subjects of Taco Sauce and Torture, venturing not at all upon digressions concerning Miss Powell and the curious sounds emanating from her rooms after dusk nor to the disturbing expanses of fresh-turned earth appearing in her garden each morn.
Her comings and goings are her own, as are those of the vagabonds and wastrels we observe no more in her area of the city.
That taco sauce has been used as a form of torture is no revelation to those with an eye for Tex-Mex cuisine and counter-terrorism. Indeed, among the farmboys of Langley and the halls of MI5 the weekly “Chi-Chi’s Night” is earplugs and rain ponchos mandatory.
That said, the earliest documented use of taco sauce as a form of torture took place during the Spanish Inquisition at the castle of a noblewoman, named only as “The Scorned Woman of Seville.” While her true name was purged from all manuscripts of the time by exorcists, some portraits have survived.
(Their resemblance to any contemporary persons must be regarded as coincidence and nothing more.)
In the Vatican’s Encyclopedia Infernum, we read “The sorrowful knave wept for death e’en should it bring interment in unhallowed ground, proclaiming loudly the fires of Hell should seem a lover’s caress upon the ministrations of The Woman… Said She in all innocence ‘My swain, that was but the extra-mild…’”
Further pages of this volume appeared torn out, but were rumored to have been repurposed among early medical colleges as chemistry and anatomy guides. Still others were discovered in the possession of certain collectors after the fall of the Reich.
And so we see (if we can bear to look) a continuum of atrocity flowing from the depravity of the middle ages up through the convenience of the modern drive-thru with its optional packets of “sensory enhancement.”
Whether they are employed to warm the palate or inflame the places where love once dwelled is, as it ever was, between us and God.
Michael S. King is a writer I met doing “Big News.” He is NOT Michael Patrick King, the writer/director of “Sex and the City.”
Michael Patrick King is funny, famous and gay.
Michael S. King is funny, infamous and what happens during undergrad doesn’t count.
The pork pie hat got its name for looking like a real pork pie and thus may have paved the way to making it okay for Carmen Miranda to walk around with food on her head.
I should note that I’ve never seen an actual pork pie, nor any other kind of pie that came with a brim, so I’m taking someone’s word here.
The coolest thing about pork pie hats is probably the people who have worn them: Dean Martin, Robert “Opie” Oppenheimer, Ed Brubaker, Robert Crumb and, best of all, Buster Keaton, who actually made his own pork pie hats!
This is so cool I have to share the following bit of Keaton lore. In 1964, he told an interviewer at the Movieland Wax Museum how he made them.
“I took a good Stetson and cut it down, then I stiffened the brim with sugar water. My recipe calls for three heaping teaspoons of granulated sugar in a teacup of warm water. You wet the top and bottom of the brim, and then smooth it out on a clean, hard surface and let it dry to a good stiffness.”
Eleanor Keaton said that when she made Buster’s porkpie hats, she used gray fedoras.
I’ve known a few comedians and I’d be surprised if most of them knew how to make their own breakfasts, let alone their own hats.
(On the other hand, if I ever needed a hand-crafted bong on the fly…)
I guess that’s the zen of the pork pie. It’s made cool by the wearer, not the other way around. It’s a modest workman’s hat, low, flat, good for stashing a guitar pick or a cigarette, maybe the occasional ace card in the back. And if you need to punch out a window pane without cutting your hand?
It is the pork pie and no other.
What a shame they are considered “unclean” in Muslim countries!
Finally, the best thing about pork pie hats: You never see them on surly, unshaven lip-synchers at the Country Music Awards.
Two down.
Next up: Taco Sauce as a Form of Torture (dedicated to Jenni Powell’s ex-boyfriend).
