Monday, February 22, 2010
The Comics That Time Forgot #2
Here's one from 1993 or so, when "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was near the height of its popularity. God forbid I use a ruler for the borders, right?
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The Comics That Time Forgot #1
I was rooting around in my old papers this weekend and I came across some comic strips I had drawn in the early to mid 90's. Some of them were funnier than others, but unfortunately many of my favorites also contained a good number of inside jokes. So, in the interest of accessibility, I decided to post a couple of the more "audience friendly" strips online. Maybe eventually I'll post some of the more esoteric stuff as well, or excerpts from them, if people are curious enough.
The strip below was originally envisioned as an ongoing strip with me and my buddy Jon commenting on various tv programs. Notice the obvious Reg Smythe ("Andy Capp") and Don Martin (Mad Magazine) influence on the characters, most notably exemplified by the large, bulbous noses. There's also a touch of Gary Trudeau in the "watching tv" format and static scenery, even though I'm not a big Doonesbury fan.
The strip below was originally envisioned as an ongoing strip with me and my buddy Jon commenting on various tv programs. Notice the obvious Reg Smythe ("Andy Capp") and Don Martin (Mad Magazine) influence on the characters, most notably exemplified by the large, bulbous noses. There's also a touch of Gary Trudeau in the "watching tv" format and static scenery, even though I'm not a big Doonesbury fan.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
5 Things Not to Talk About on a First Date
*************************************************************
• Ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend
• Views on marriage
• Best way to cover up smell of decomposing corpses
• Most effective treatment for an Abraham-Lincoln-shaped rash which started out as a young Abe, but is now sporting the full top hat and beard combo
• Politics
• Ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend
• Views on marriage
• Best way to cover up smell of decomposing corpses
• Most effective treatment for an Abraham-Lincoln-shaped rash which started out as a young Abe, but is now sporting the full top hat and beard combo
• Politics
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Original Song Demo: "Tell Me" by Glenn (Featuring Chloe)
Hey, it's a "new" demo from Glenn Page Music! This time Glenn goes into the vaults and pulls out a little ditty called "Tell Me." This baby goes back to 2000 or so, and features some blood-curdling falsetto notes that would make Roy Orbison jump out of his grave and come after Glenn with a machete. (Thank goodness he's dead and all!) Meanwhile, Chloe the Chihuahua once again provides excellent accompaniment on the "silenceaphone," a very rare and small norwegian wind instrument.
Listen and watch here:
Listen and watch here:
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Retro-Cool: How Marketing and Advertising Send You on a Bad Trip, Daddy-o
Yes, the retro marketing craze continues unabated! We as a culture continue to concede that no one has come up with any good original ideas in the last, oh, 20 years or so, and as a result nostalgia for stuff we barely had time to forget is currently all the rage.
Take, for example, "Pepsi Throwback," which Pepsico is currently offering for a limited time only (unless it makes boatloads of money, I'm sure). It features the "old school" Pepsi logo and is made with REAL honest-to-goodness sugar! Woo-hoo! Man, you know it's a sad state of affairs when we're nostalgic for the good ol' days when we were only being poisoned with diabetes-inflicting cane/beet sugar, as opposed to the super-high-octane super-concentrated high-fructose corn syrup that infuses everything now.
That's right folks! Hop in our time machine and travel with Pepsico as they "throw you back" (isn't that something you do with a bad fish?) into the mists of yesteryear and rot your teeth the old-fashioned way! Yes, it was a simpler time back then, when no one dared to challenge their corporate masters' concern for the public's "well-being."*
More importantly, I think this trend speaks to a pervasive human weakness - one from which I am sadly not immune. That is, our tendency to romanticize the past regardless of how crappy that past may have actually been. It seems that things we associate with a younger, more innocent time (perhaps a healthier and safer time as well) always end up enshrouded in a glaze of rose-colored nostalgia, regardless of the truth of the situation. It matters not that we eventually learn Pepsi is dreadfully bad for us (or that our favorite TV show actually sucked, or our favorite music is sub-par). The important thing is we were awash in those pop culture symbols at a key point in our development, and hence we still have positive feelings for them.
Most well-socialized Americans will always have a strong affection for SOME token of consumer culture. We try to distance ourselves from these feelings as we get older by using intellectual weapons like irony, but their hold on us will always remain pretty powerful. Coca-Cola, for example, has always trounced Pepsi around the holidays because of the strong connotations Coke has forged between holiday imagery and the sugary beverage.
This is what makes corporate America so insidious and disingenuous: they try to downplay the role of branding and consumer culture in our lives (especially when someone calls them to task on their questionable marketing practices), but not only are they fully aware of the seductive power they wield, they're actively COUNTING on that power in lieu of being allowed to physically force us into buying stuff! You think they spend billions of dollars on PR, marketing and advertising every year because they think they CAN'T unduly influence us?
In other words, Pepsi (as well as the filmmakers who plunder bad TV shows, or the music exec's who keep re-selling us the same music in different packages) know exactly what they're doing when they try to push our nostalgia buttons; they're exploiting an evolutionary glitch that bestows virtue upon whatever sneakers we were wearing the night we first got laid (or whatever).
Even worse, we now live in a "savvy post-modern era" so marketers feel compelled to try and convince us that they're all "in" on the joke by using irony and self-awareness in the same way we do. It's almost like they're saying, "Haha! Yeah, we know this stuff is cheesy crap, but don't you love it? Haha! 20 dollars, please." Hell, as long as we keep buying whatever junk they toss our way they don't really care how we relate to it psychologically.
A particularly egregious example of this trend is the "Enzyte" (male enhancement) commercial. Although it is a recent product, the company's commercial exhibits the worst traits of Madison Avenue's many attempts to co-opt both nostalgia and post-modernism. Ostensibly a spoof of old-time advertising, television, and 50's "lifestyles", the makers of this commercial clearly missed an important lesson: Irony originally gained popularity in the mainstream as a means of subverting, questioning and commenting on the crap our culture constantly feeds us. (And let's not even get started on the type of vanity and insecurity that an ad like this is pandering to in the first place.)
Irony and self-awareness are used to greatest effect when someone is satirizing or undermining some aspect of the subject at hand, not when they're trying really hard to promote that thing! In other words, an exaggerated, cutesy spoof of 50's media works better as a critique of the messages media sends us; why the hell would someone want to buy a product from a commercial that effectively reminds us advertising can't be trusted and needs to be subverted?**
Simply stated, the answer is that all this stuff is just too overwhelming for any of us to think about on a regular basis. Corporate America hopes we'll just be so exhausted by them that we'll "go with the flow" just for the sake of our own sanity. The marketers' goal is to tap into the zeitgeist and then expertly exploit it; they're hoping they can hit a few of the "right notes" (be it nostalgia, irony, self-parody or whatever) and that'll be enough to send us scurrying for the malls. Unfortunately, it seems to work more often than not.
Excuse me one second.... what's that???? Target is selling Pac-Man pajamas??? COOL!!!!!!!!***
*************************************************************
*And by the way, "natural sugar"? Yeah, I know sugar is a natural ingredient, but the connotation of the word "natural" is that it carries some kind of wholesome-y goodness. Is Pepsi health food now? Not sure if belting back 40 grams of the sweet stuff in one sitting really fits the bill of "healthy." I wonder if this is Pepsi's token attempt at "going green" for the year 2010? After all, corporate America has never witnessed a movement they didn't see fit to exploit.
** I'm aware the makers of Enzyte would probably argue their ad is merely a playful "parody" or "affectionate homage" designed to get idiots like me talking. Well, parody or not, the commercial is poking fun at a long-gone era, and as such, it reminds us - however unwittingly - that pop culture and the media should always be viewed with a suspicious eye.
***What a lame cop-out ending. Wakka-wakka, game over.
Take, for example, "Pepsi Throwback," which Pepsico is currently offering for a limited time only (unless it makes boatloads of money, I'm sure). It features the "old school" Pepsi logo and is made with REAL honest-to-goodness sugar! Woo-hoo! Man, you know it's a sad state of affairs when we're nostalgic for the good ol' days when we were only being poisoned with diabetes-inflicting cane/beet sugar, as opposed to the super-high-octane super-concentrated high-fructose corn syrup that infuses everything now.
That's right folks! Hop in our time machine and travel with Pepsico as they "throw you back" (isn't that something you do with a bad fish?) into the mists of yesteryear and rot your teeth the old-fashioned way! Yes, it was a simpler time back then, when no one dared to challenge their corporate masters' concern for the public's "well-being."*
More importantly, I think this trend speaks to a pervasive human weakness - one from which I am sadly not immune. That is, our tendency to romanticize the past regardless of how crappy that past may have actually been. It seems that things we associate with a younger, more innocent time (perhaps a healthier and safer time as well) always end up enshrouded in a glaze of rose-colored nostalgia, regardless of the truth of the situation. It matters not that we eventually learn Pepsi is dreadfully bad for us (or that our favorite TV show actually sucked, or our favorite music is sub-par). The important thing is we were awash in those pop culture symbols at a key point in our development, and hence we still have positive feelings for them.
Most well-socialized Americans will always have a strong affection for SOME token of consumer culture. We try to distance ourselves from these feelings as we get older by using intellectual weapons like irony, but their hold on us will always remain pretty powerful. Coca-Cola, for example, has always trounced Pepsi around the holidays because of the strong connotations Coke has forged between holiday imagery and the sugary beverage.
This is what makes corporate America so insidious and disingenuous: they try to downplay the role of branding and consumer culture in our lives (especially when someone calls them to task on their questionable marketing practices), but not only are they fully aware of the seductive power they wield, they're actively COUNTING on that power in lieu of being allowed to physically force us into buying stuff! You think they spend billions of dollars on PR, marketing and advertising every year because they think they CAN'T unduly influence us?
In other words, Pepsi (as well as the filmmakers who plunder bad TV shows, or the music exec's who keep re-selling us the same music in different packages) know exactly what they're doing when they try to push our nostalgia buttons; they're exploiting an evolutionary glitch that bestows virtue upon whatever sneakers we were wearing the night we first got laid (or whatever).
Even worse, we now live in a "savvy post-modern era" so marketers feel compelled to try and convince us that they're all "in" on the joke by using irony and self-awareness in the same way we do. It's almost like they're saying, "Haha! Yeah, we know this stuff is cheesy crap, but don't you love it? Haha! 20 dollars, please." Hell, as long as we keep buying whatever junk they toss our way they don't really care how we relate to it psychologically.
A particularly egregious example of this trend is the "Enzyte" (male enhancement) commercial. Although it is a recent product, the company's commercial exhibits the worst traits of Madison Avenue's many attempts to co-opt both nostalgia and post-modernism. Ostensibly a spoof of old-time advertising, television, and 50's "lifestyles", the makers of this commercial clearly missed an important lesson: Irony originally gained popularity in the mainstream as a means of subverting, questioning and commenting on the crap our culture constantly feeds us. (And let's not even get started on the type of vanity and insecurity that an ad like this is pandering to in the first place.)
Irony and self-awareness are used to greatest effect when someone is satirizing or undermining some aspect of the subject at hand, not when they're trying really hard to promote that thing! In other words, an exaggerated, cutesy spoof of 50's media works better as a critique of the messages media sends us; why the hell would someone want to buy a product from a commercial that effectively reminds us advertising can't be trusted and needs to be subverted?**
Simply stated, the answer is that all this stuff is just too overwhelming for any of us to think about on a regular basis. Corporate America hopes we'll just be so exhausted by them that we'll "go with the flow" just for the sake of our own sanity. The marketers' goal is to tap into the zeitgeist and then expertly exploit it; they're hoping they can hit a few of the "right notes" (be it nostalgia, irony, self-parody or whatever) and that'll be enough to send us scurrying for the malls. Unfortunately, it seems to work more often than not.
Excuse me one second.... what's that???? Target is selling Pac-Man pajamas??? COOL!!!!!!!!***
*************************************************************
*And by the way, "natural sugar"? Yeah, I know sugar is a natural ingredient, but the connotation of the word "natural" is that it carries some kind of wholesome-y goodness. Is Pepsi health food now? Not sure if belting back 40 grams of the sweet stuff in one sitting really fits the bill of "healthy." I wonder if this is Pepsi's token attempt at "going green" for the year 2010? After all, corporate America has never witnessed a movement they didn't see fit to exploit.
** I'm aware the makers of Enzyte would probably argue their ad is merely a playful "parody" or "affectionate homage" designed to get idiots like me talking. Well, parody or not, the commercial is poking fun at a long-gone era, and as such, it reminds us - however unwittingly - that pop culture and the media should always be viewed with a suspicious eye.
***What a lame cop-out ending. Wakka-wakka, game over.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Bed Bugged (Or: I Survived My Sleep Study, and All I Got Is This Lousy CPAP Machine)
So I went for a sleep study last week. For those of you who don't know what a sleep study is, you may be surprised to learn that it's not the term used to describe my old method of studying back in college (that is, passing out with my face in the textbook at 5am the night before an exam and hoping the material will somehow magically seep into my brain via osmosis).
No, a "sleep study" is when you're having trouble sleeping properly (or having trouble staying awake during the day without mainlining lattes) and someone decides the best way to cure this is to glue cumbersome electrodes and wires to your every appendage, then stick you in an unfamiliar bed and watch you all night with an infrared camera ala' Ted Levine stalking Jodie Foster in "Silence of the Lambs." In this way, they can observe you in your "natural" sleep state and hopefully figure out what-the-freak your problem is.
Needless to say, this approach doesn't generate the most, er, "organic" results. I can be quite nervous and restless to begin with, and it doesn't exactly send me spiraling into a state of Calgon-like zen when there's an unknown member of the female persuasion peering at my supine form and drooling cake-hole all night. Krist, I have a hard enough time with people looking at me in the daytime after I've primped myself obsessively for hours on end; there's no way I'm going to chill out while being scrutinized on a bed-sized microscope slide overnight.
At any rate, I reluctantly went for my sleep study, where the technician hooked me up to about a thousand color-coded wires and a hundred various devices that perform god-knows-what to tell them who-the-hell-knows about my sleep patterns. (Stop me if I get too technical at any point.) In fact, I had so much damn apparatus draped over me that I started to feel like a Borg on Star Trek, but without all the bad-ass leather or ability to assimilate alien races. Now if only I could have teleported the hell out of there like they do on Star Trek, I would have been golden.
No such luck! She finished hooking up my jumper cables and I managed to clamber into my appointed lair for the evening. At this point, the sleep technician - let's call her "the sleep technician" - vanished into an adjoining room, leaving me to contemplate if her boyfriend was going to show up so they could spend the evening watching movies, making out, and occasionally taking a break to laugh at the idiot on the monitor. However, that thought didn't have a chance to fully form because her voice suddenly filled the room, blaring out at me from a set of hidden speakers like a very aggressive McDonald's drive-through clerk. "ARE YOU OKAY IN THERE????" she queried, effectively boosting my systolic blood pressure well into the triple-digits and leading me to wonder if they were getting kickbacks from the cardiologist next door.
After a series of "calibrating" procedures - code word for "Simon Says" with breathing, coughing and snoring sounds - I was told it's "time to go to sleep." Well, I'm glad they cleared that up; I thought the purpose of a SLEEP STUDY was to play a little shuffleboard with the staff. Regardless, I did my best to dutifully "go to sleep," as requested.
As I lay there all kinds of thoughts plagued me: What if I scratch my crotch in my sleep? It could happen you know - I can't control where and when an itch will strike. I'd be half-asleep and people would be watching! I could easily forget my usual amount of discretion and end up doing something pretty unseemly. Normally, during the day, I just yell "LOOK! IT'S BALKI FROM PERFECT STRANGERS!" and then give myself a good scratch in the ensuing chaos. Unfortunately, I knew that wouldn't really work in this situation. (Or would it?)
Even worse, I thought, what if I were to break wind in my sleep? Jeezuz Krist, the horror! Mind you, this isn't normally an issue for me, but with all the stress I was under… well, anything could happen. I wondered just HOW sensitive the electrodes all over my body were; would I end up blowing out some poor lab tech's ear drums with one ill-timed toot? What if she turns up the monitor at the precise wrong moment; would it be like a sonic boom going off in her headphones? Would she run from the lab screaming and clutching the sides of her head, then burst through the emergency exit and fall to her knees in the freshly fallen snow? You gotta think about this kind of stuff, folks.
Despite my nagging concerns, I did manage to eventually drift off to sleep. And, based on the 14 minutes or so I slept (by my generous estimation), I was informed the next morning that I needed to start using a "CPAP" machine, or what's commonly referred to in the literature as a "vacuum cleaner on your face." I was actually really happy to receive this news, because, as my closest friends know, it's always been my lifelong ambition to look like I just stepped off the cover of Black Sabbath's "Never Say Die" album.
In short, the function of the CPAP machine, which comes with a long tube and a face mask you wear to bed every night, is to make you look both extremely frightening AND incredibly ridiculous to your mate at the SAME TIME, which is no small feat. (Oh yeah, it's also supposed to help you breathe better, or something.) So I've been making a good faith effort to use this, er, contraption, but so far, the results have been less than stellar. It's quite discouraging really; I mean, what the hell is wrong with me!??! I can't even sleep right?!!? Man, you know you're really a failure when you can't even lie down and be unconscious correctly.
No, a "sleep study" is when you're having trouble sleeping properly (or having trouble staying awake during the day without mainlining lattes) and someone decides the best way to cure this is to glue cumbersome electrodes and wires to your every appendage, then stick you in an unfamiliar bed and watch you all night with an infrared camera ala' Ted Levine stalking Jodie Foster in "Silence of the Lambs." In this way, they can observe you in your "natural" sleep state and hopefully figure out what-the-freak your problem is.
Needless to say, this approach doesn't generate the most, er, "organic" results. I can be quite nervous and restless to begin with, and it doesn't exactly send me spiraling into a state of Calgon-like zen when there's an unknown member of the female persuasion peering at my supine form and drooling cake-hole all night. Krist, I have a hard enough time with people looking at me in the daytime after I've primped myself obsessively for hours on end; there's no way I'm going to chill out while being scrutinized on a bed-sized microscope slide overnight.
At any rate, I reluctantly went for my sleep study, where the technician hooked me up to about a thousand color-coded wires and a hundred various devices that perform god-knows-what to tell them who-the-hell-knows about my sleep patterns. (Stop me if I get too technical at any point.) In fact, I had so much damn apparatus draped over me that I started to feel like a Borg on Star Trek, but without all the bad-ass leather or ability to assimilate alien races. Now if only I could have teleported the hell out of there like they do on Star Trek, I would have been golden.
No such luck! She finished hooking up my jumper cables and I managed to clamber into my appointed lair for the evening. At this point, the sleep technician - let's call her "the sleep technician" - vanished into an adjoining room, leaving me to contemplate if her boyfriend was going to show up so they could spend the evening watching movies, making out, and occasionally taking a break to laugh at the idiot on the monitor. However, that thought didn't have a chance to fully form because her voice suddenly filled the room, blaring out at me from a set of hidden speakers like a very aggressive McDonald's drive-through clerk. "ARE YOU OKAY IN THERE????" she queried, effectively boosting my systolic blood pressure well into the triple-digits and leading me to wonder if they were getting kickbacks from the cardiologist next door.
After a series of "calibrating" procedures - code word for "Simon Says" with breathing, coughing and snoring sounds - I was told it's "time to go to sleep." Well, I'm glad they cleared that up; I thought the purpose of a SLEEP STUDY was to play a little shuffleboard with the staff. Regardless, I did my best to dutifully "go to sleep," as requested.
As I lay there all kinds of thoughts plagued me: What if I scratch my crotch in my sleep? It could happen you know - I can't control where and when an itch will strike. I'd be half-asleep and people would be watching! I could easily forget my usual amount of discretion and end up doing something pretty unseemly. Normally, during the day, I just yell "LOOK! IT'S BALKI FROM PERFECT STRANGERS!" and then give myself a good scratch in the ensuing chaos. Unfortunately, I knew that wouldn't really work in this situation. (Or would it?)
Even worse, I thought, what if I were to break wind in my sleep? Jeezuz Krist, the horror! Mind you, this isn't normally an issue for me, but with all the stress I was under… well, anything could happen. I wondered just HOW sensitive the electrodes all over my body were; would I end up blowing out some poor lab tech's ear drums with one ill-timed toot? What if she turns up the monitor at the precise wrong moment; would it be like a sonic boom going off in her headphones? Would she run from the lab screaming and clutching the sides of her head, then burst through the emergency exit and fall to her knees in the freshly fallen snow? You gotta think about this kind of stuff, folks.
Despite my nagging concerns, I did manage to eventually drift off to sleep. And, based on the 14 minutes or so I slept (by my generous estimation), I was informed the next morning that I needed to start using a "CPAP" machine, or what's commonly referred to in the literature as a "vacuum cleaner on your face." I was actually really happy to receive this news, because, as my closest friends know, it's always been my lifelong ambition to look like I just stepped off the cover of Black Sabbath's "Never Say Die" album.
In short, the function of the CPAP machine, which comes with a long tube and a face mask you wear to bed every night, is to make you look both extremely frightening AND incredibly ridiculous to your mate at the SAME TIME, which is no small feat. (Oh yeah, it's also supposed to help you breathe better, or something.) So I've been making a good faith effort to use this, er, contraption, but so far, the results have been less than stellar. It's quite discouraging really; I mean, what the hell is wrong with me!??! I can't even sleep right?!!? Man, you know you're really a failure when you can't even lie down and be unconscious correctly.But I won't go gently into the night! I'm going to press on with the CPAP machine a little while longer, Snuffleupagus comparisons be damned. Maybe after a few more nights, I'll get the hang of this whole "sleeping" thing and begin to reap the benefits of my unwieldy bedside companion. Rest assured, I'll probably let you know how it goes, provided I don't dream the air tube is a large boa constrictor and wake up screaming and flailing, inadvertantly tangling the tube around my neck, and then crashing backwards through a second story window so they can find me dangling with my feet 4 inches off the ground the next morning. (What are the odds of that, anyway? Gotta be at least 10 to 1.)
In the meantime, take my advice: If you're gonna have a sleep study, don't eat Mexican food for dinner that night.
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