Tasteless halloween costumes...

Yep, it is that time of year...When we all sit around waiting for Jesus to rise from the grave...to eat our brains in honor of Halloween.

Last year, I went as a "Suicide Balmer." My paraphernalia of oily doom was constructed of vaseline and chap-stick, duct tape, and thoughts of God and country.

Other ideas for Halloween costumes:

• Hegemony Cricket--the Conscience of George Bush
• The Other Jackson 5--Action Jackson, Latoya Jackson, Andrew Jackson, Jesse Jackson, and Jackson Pollock
• Wallpaper
• Sanitation Worker from Mars

See that is what is great about Halloween. You can be just about anything. Except sensible.

True Portland...

So if you are a true Portlander you know that we have only one team...and it isn't the Winterhawk, Forest Dragons, Timbers, Beavers, or anything else...


In Portland, you are a Trailblazer Fan or you are a plebeian fool. Everyone loves the Blazers here. From when they are at their highest highs playing in the first round of the play-offs, to the inevitable lows when they are knocked out of competitions after three games in that first round, we still love them. We love the Blazers when they drive at high speeds bright yellow SUVs while smoking their friends smoke pot, we love then when they are not. We love the Blazers when they are out of jail, and we even love them when they fail...all too often. The businessman, the Tri-Met driver, the methed-out tweaker, to club going hipster all love the Blazers.


But nothing says that they love us as fans as they did in 1992. During this glorious year for Portland's only team, they recorded a rap song. It is important to note that 1992 is the most important year for rap music ever, a point I will elaborate upon on another post. So without much further fan fair...be prepared to experience what RIP CITY is all about...


Thus: Bust a Bucket...











Quick post script: I don't believe anyone in Portland knows where Rip City is or what Rip City really meant.

Brave and the Bald

Image via Wikipedia

The funny pages have provided America with a source of entertainment for many decades now. But there are some strange trends with comic strip characters that I have yet to understand.

I don't understand the humor in apathetic bald individuals. Two individuals come to mind. Charlie Brown and Ziggy. Charlie Brown, I don't think was every meant to be pure humor, instead, the Peanuts strip was an examination of existential conundrums formatted as a Socratic dialogue in three panels with an occasional Jazz background.

Ziggy in contrast is an exercise in pathetic futility.

Now why would I state this about this single daily comic? Well, beyond the pure lack of humor in the strip, Ziggy is an emblem of children's illness. And without getting into too many details, nobody finds a child with cancer funny. Not even me. Even in the comic everyone from Ziggy's pets, friends, and antagonizing parrots tells the titular character that he is pathetic and unwanted.

Ziggy wasn't even originally a comic strip character. He was a greeting card product squeezed into the realm of Family Circles and Far Sides. And nothing says "Thinking of you" like a short, bald, apathetic man who is the poster child of kids with cancer.

If you think about it you probably feel dirty for laughing at the comic. You should. So ask your newspaper to stop publishing it. Then buy a condolence card for someone who really cares.

Evil Monkey: Mustached Menaces

Intuition and conditioning tells us that people with mustaches are by nature friendly. We all knew them from the educational films we watched in 5th grade health class. You remember those films--the whirring projectors, the teacher with a headache, the worry the film spool might break. 


Anyway, the men with mustaches drove large cars and vans and they liked to hang out around playgrounds. And they always had candy. What was there not to be trusted about them? And motorcycle cops had mustaches, and everyone can trust a police officer wearing leather chaps with shiny handcuff on his belt, right?


But of course the evil monkeys had to come along and ruin it. 


That white mustache might look like one of those insidious "Got Milk" advertisements, but it is actually a line of pure cocaine, evil, and monkey hair. In fact the Mustached Monkey is the only mammal to naturally secrete its own narcotics into its own body. This constant supply of cocaine makes permanent stains on the upper lip of this evil simian and the constant flow of drugs turns it into the biggest asshole out of any other monkey. When you need to use the restroom, it is there taking with a group of other Mustached Monkeys chattering at a high rate about how important their band will be to the music scene. 

The Mustached Monkey however is an avoidable beast. Given the animals tendency toward self-importance and other ego-stroking activities, it likes to spend most of its time around hipster bar bathroomstalking about how cool they are and that they are so cool because they secrete their own cocaine instead of spending their evil monkey trust funds on it. So if you go out to see a show, don't go use the restroom.

Their status in the Simian Kabal ranks low. Greater evil monkeys and apes will often sell Mustached Monkeys is a weird forms of narcotic-slavery trade. Unsuspecting coke heads try to purchase the Mustached Monkeys thinking they would be a new source of everlasting dope. When this occurs, the monkey usually eats the unsuspecting coke head, unknowingly ridding the world of one annoyance but leaving us with a well fed evil new one.

Things to ponder as the weekend draws near...

Grape mimes think a like...

Just say it really fast...
And think about it...Seriously...This is how my brain works.

Book Binding For Fun...

This was found in a Popular Mechanics digest size book from around the 50s. I figured since I have been working on binding my comics, this image was appropriate.

Sure, it isn't as exciting as soap carving, making leather wallets, or macrame. But Hey...Let's bind a BOOK!

So the next comic book bind is a collection of the entire Crisis on Infinite Earths cross-over including pre-crisis appearances of the Monitor. Now if preceding sentences make no sense to you, consider yourself lucky. That means that you probably have a social life, girlfriend, and healthy pursuits in your life.

1492 Revisited... Happy Colobus Day

Image via Wikipedia

So it's time for a history lesson...


In 1492 the Colobus monkey was sent by the Spanish Inquisition to seek out new "spices" such as cocaine and peyote to fill the pagan orgies of the Simian High Court. 


The head Colobus Monkey, Cristobal Colobus, was honored for determining the Earth was hollow and for driving most of the remaining civilized humans that lived in Spain to hide in caves. It was thought that this new quest to find spices could also find more humans for unique slave tasks.


Why? A logical question to ask, because monkeys are evil. And the Colobus monkey is very much a conqueror of foreign lands. The land soon to be named America, or the New Monkey Orgy Land, history would later tell us was Cristobal Colobus's greatest accomplishment.


Natives of the islands, curious to the nature of these simian ships, came to great the strange sailors. But this was far from the peaceful greating we have been told in our history books. Upon landing on land the wild band of Colobus monkeys fled off the docks and violently burned the hills and forests of the small island that would eventually become named Jamaica. They also ate babies. And threw lots of poo, because that is what colobus monkeys do. Cristobal was not above such activities and ate twelve native babies.


Cristobal, thinking he had circumcised and circumnavigated the the globe thought he had landed in back at his starting place.  When he saw half-naked people who didn't speak his language, the simian prince of the sea decided that these people must have snuck into Spain while he was sailing. And that is why people of America call those who are don't speak the same language "sneaky immigrants." 


And this is why we celebrate Colobus Day. So honor your simian Overlords. HONOR THEM OR PAY DIRE CONSEQUENCES...

This message has been Forced upon you by the

3rd order of the Simian Kabal

local 28

Soldiers of Fortunate People...

Hand-painted toy soldiers fascinate me. I think it has to do with my fascination with small objects. And perhaps the idea that a person could map out their own vision of war in miniature without the gore, without the loss, without the flag draped caskets, or any of the other things that come with such skirmishes.

I guess the cultural norms have changed since the 1930s and now I doubt we will be seeing any more playsets like the Arabs of the Desert displayed below.

Evil Monkey of the Week: Don't Mess with the Baboon

I like to believe we all play this game every once in a while--Who can best who. You know the game, Shark vs. Alligator... Tiger vs. Bear.... Wyvern vs. Griffin... Mormon vs. Jehovah's Witness. All of these games are fun. But rarely do we get to see this display played out perfectly preserved perpetuity through the art of taxidermy.

Here we see the eternal struggle between two of natures most vicious rivals. The cheetah and the baboon. The cheetah, with cat-like, given that it is a cat, instincts has become aware that the baboon is part some evil menacing plot that involves stealing babies. Through the infinite wisdom of the Thundercats, we all know that cheetahs, lions, and pumas are our best friend in the feline hierarchy. And we also know that the cheetah is very fast...like go-kart fast.  In this life or death struggle, that is what the cheetah will need.

That is...if these two mounted animals were had not been placed on display at a outdoors' man store in the middle of Lacey, Washington. But life and death struggles can play out forever in taxidermy. Kind of  like watching re-runs of Gilligan's Island without any hope of the Globe Trotters to ever show up to rescue them from that hellish atoll.

Let's Go Swimming...Wait...WTF?

The Red Cross Water Rescue Manual doesn't leave much to the imagination...Unless you take the pictures completely out of context.

In this instance, one might assume a randy young life guard is going to undo the bikini top of a hapless young co-ed...

Well, we called that one wrong. Looks like this lifeguard has evil on his mind.

Kind of awkward isn't it? Well, speaking of awkward, what happens when a pool side conversation between two grown men becomes something more?

Right now these two gents might be talking about their wives, families, the deals at the cardboard box factory they both work at, and how Harold is a terrible drunk and how the CEO will never take him golfing ever again. Pretty mundane stuff. But of course, one thing always leads to another when a swimming pool is involved.

Inevitably, an exploration in homo-erotic pool-side massage happens.

And this is the reason why you have an Uncle Bruce who really isn't really your uncle.

A Day at the Circus...

The following self-made comic strip was from an old zine I co-wrote with a two friends while I was in college. The point of the zine was that Ashland, Oregon, was a soulless tourist trap with a college campus, a lot of retirees who complained about noise, and attack swans.

A note about the swans. In 1997 the city of Ashland flooded. The entirety of downtown was deluged when a silver thaw melted the snow pack and the normally foot deep creek that ran through the town turned into a class five series of rapids.  The swans of Ashland had been a emblem and tourist attraction. But during the flood, one had died. 

Whether this is true or not, it is said that swans mate for life together. And now a swan was widowed...And this swan then pulled its feathers out in depressing sadness to die as only the way elegant fowl can: Alone.

Knowing that Ashland without a swan is kind of like is like Idaho without a militia, Texas without a Border fence, or Portland with a classy Olympian, a new mating pair was brought in. Of course no one told the tourists never to try to pet the swans.

You see, swans are really bitchy and mean animals. And they like to bite people. And unlike ducks, swans are big, strong, and likely to knock you down and draw blood when messed with. Personally, I found this funny when tourists were attacked by swans. But Ashlanders more concerned with tourist dollars decided to deport these winged wonders to prevent lawsuits. 

Out of Context Comic Panels: Eh?

So is this what it looks like?


Superman + A married woman in servitude + a vibrator...
Ummmmm...


Can you say super awkward?

And a side note there are probably better ways to break mind control than to remind someone of their responsibilities. "You have to pay your mortgage...you have responsibilities...snap out of it," might make someone feign the influence of an evil four-armed alien and allow whatever disgraces they demand when they tell you to give a nuclear phallus to someone for their bemusement.

Good thing Superman has decided to play the sub in this weird S&M game. 


Intentional or not, it certainly is less disgusting than Superman and Big Barda being tricked by an evil alien troll to make super hero stag films. You think I am making this up? Seriously, somethings I can't even make up. The eighties were filled with bad ideas. I think cocaine had a lot to do with it.