Shout-Outs: August 2004 Archives

Con season's over, and it's time to plump that link list off on the left up from merely bloated to full-out unwieldy.

I've added a bunch of people, Like Erika, Clio, Derek, Roger, BMAN and Brion. And take note, the new Matthew is not my Matthew, but a Canadian variety of Matthew who writes the comic book Black Bastard and suggested I check out the band Tea Party. A totally different Matthew, but a swell guy all the same. I'll be moving into his crawlspace if Bush wins the election this year.

Many, many irons in the fire these days, few of which I feel like elaborating on until they're less theoretical and more actual. But I will say this: Comic conventions? Sound investment. If you have any aspirations to make a lifestyle out of your funnybook doodles, go. Selling crap is literally secondary to the contacts you make.

I once mentioned Roc Party Internet radio in a previous post, ages and ages ago, when it was just getting off the ground. Well, Roc Party's evolved into GBS-FM, a somethingawful.com-associated, user-run station. And it is awesome.

Sign up, upload an unlimited number of songs, and add them to the playlist. (You only get to have one song on the playlist at a time, so no one person can flood the station with four hours of Japanese pop or Inuit throat-singing.) Listen to a ridiculous variety of music that you would otherwise never hear: try some Guns N' Roses, which follows the Hebrew version of the Pokemon theme song, which follows Ween, which follows some band you've never heard of, which follows Roy Orbison, which follows Los Lobos covering La Bamba.

Better yet, GBS-FM allows sign-ups to host weekend hour-long blocks. Wanna be a DJ? Get a microphone.

Tell me this isn't beautiful.

Tune in. Enjoy.

I'll be the busiest little bee of them all for the better part of this weekend, since I'll be manning a table at Wizard Con Chicago in Artist's Alley. But don't worry, I've found a few babysitters to keep you folks lucid until I can once again grace you with my company. Blargh.

This appears to be a site dedicated to documenting plagiarism in advertising art and photography. I can't really be sure, it's in French. But there are plenty of pictures, and plenty of suspiscious coincidences, more pathetic than infuriating. How appallingly unimaginative do you hafta be to steal the punchline from a Hustler gag comic for your diet drink campaign?

The Order of the Stick, a webcomic by Rich Burlew, is only funny if you're freakish nerdling-spoor. Like myself. Toot toot. Self-aware, old school roleplaying humor, best taken while fondling a 20-sided die and eyeing a Monster Manual.

Mom's Cancer is another webcomic. But it's a true-life diary comic, written and drawn by the son of a woman with Stage 4 lung cancer that's metastasized in her brain. Not quite so depressing at it sounds, but then, he hasn't written the ending yet, has he?

The unspeakably awful trailer for Alone in the Dark, Uwe Boll's latest video-game-to-movie disasterpiece. Make sure to take note of the pinched end of the discharged shell whirling through the air in that close-up shot. The crumpled end means it was a blank, kids. And that little oopsie is the least if this thing's problems. OH GOOD ANOTHER BLACK UNFOLDING TONGUE ALIEN CRITTER THING. NEVER SEEN THAT BEFORE.

Gimps Gone Wild. Because someone, somwhere, is totally into this. And you damn well know it. What's your pleasure, sir? Amputees? Cerebral Palsy? Osteogenesis Imperfecta? (Warning: Loud, obnoxious music on the opening page.)

And that oughta do it. See you guys Monday.