Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?

A little too ironic. And, yeah, I really do think.

Hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home

Forget Fisher Stevens! They should get Scott Bakula on LOST. He needs to way to repent for his crimes. Actually, they don’t need any Quantum Leap actors since Desmond is basically a Scottish Dr. Sam Beckett. Think about it. When the hatch blew, that was him “stepping into the Quantum Leap Accelerator.” For a while there with Charlie he was striving to “put right what once went wrong.” Instead of “Oh, boy” he says “(oh) brother.” Al is Sam’s “constant” just as Penny is Desmond’s. Ok, wait. I started typing this as a joke. Now I just think they ripped off Quantum Leap.

Also they had a helicopter… that’s just like “Airwolf!” Those bastards. And Walt is “Small Wonder!” It’s all 80’s TV!

Locke = Mr. Belvedere
Ecko= Mr. T as B.A. Baracus from “The A Team”
Jack = some guy from St. “Elsewhere” or possibly Sam from “Cheers”
ummmm… premise getting thin… must recover…
Hurley = Natalie from “Facts of Life”
Oh wait! Ecko and Locke are both Bull from “Nightcourt!” No! Ecko is Mac, Jack is Judge Harry, Sawyer is Dan Fielding, Kate is Christine Sullivan, Rose is Roz (YES! YES!), Rousseau is Selma, the Others are Phil the homeless guy, the smoke monster is Mel Torme (get it? “The Velvet Fog“), and the island is the courthouse which exists out of phase with the rest of the world (because it’s AT NIGHT!!!) IT ALL MAKES SENSE! I HAVE JUST SOLVED LOST!
LOST = NIGHT COURT FTW!!!LOLOLeleventy1!11!00!!LOLZ

I think I just had a faneurysm. Did I ust invent that word? Don’t fucking steal it! I’m going to put it on a shirt or something.

An Oscar Caliber Performance

I still haven’t seen “There Will Be Blood” yet. And for that I am sorry. After “Gangs of New York” I wanted to find out the exact moment I would die, so that I could arrange to be murdered by Daniel Day Lewis (as Bill the Butcher) 5 minutes prior to my death. That would really be the best possible way to go out. Moments before I succumb to the grips of cancer or heart disease, Day Lewis appears behind me with a waxed up mustache, waxed down hair and a top hat and runs me through with a skewer. Then he would climb atop a nearby potato box or tree stump and make a short speech about what an honor it was to kill me. Classy. That’s all there is to it. Classy.

Twenty years later (Day Lewis is still 45 or so because he’s also a Highlander or some sort of Vampire) my daughter would infiltrate his ranks, befriend him, earn his trust, then stick him like a pig when he least expects it. She’s a good girl like that.

OK, wait… that’s basically EXACTLY the plot of “Gangs of New York.” I guess if I had to pick a different movie-themed death I would want to be sent into space and set on a collision course with earth so that Bruce Willis could fly a rocket to me, land on me, drill a hole in my face and plant a nuclear warhead in my skull then save the rest of his crew by staying behind to make sure I blew up. He’s an American hero.

I tried hand-drawing the speech bubbles for the first time with this comic. I think it looks pretty cool. I also liked the hand lettering in the last panel. Let me know what you think in the comments. Also, (this may be a morbid question) but what movie-themed death would you choose? Die Hard? Dukes of Hazard? Hannah Montana?

Go check out the Podcast. People seem to like it.

UPDATE: JOEL’s JOCULARITY EXPLANATION CORNER!
Since I’m getting a lot of “Whuh?” and “Buh?” in regard to this comic, I’m just going to spell it out. This is a parody of the (apparently not so) popular meme “I drink your milkshake,” which is based on the movie “There Will Be Blood” for which Daniel Day Lewis just won Best Actor at the 2008 Academy Awards. Sorry for the confusion.

Battleship: The Movie, The Game, The Breakfast Cereal

Ever hungry for new (old) intellectual properties to exploit, Universal is now working on taking classic Hasbro board games like Monopoly and Battleship to the big screen. I only foresee positive outcomes. I want these movies greenlit, and rushed into production so I can enjoy them by X-Mas. In fact, I’m so enthusiastic that I’m pitching my own spin on these movies and a few others to the studios later this month:

Monopoly: Matt Damon is an up and coming real estate executive that uncovers a nefarious plot by his firm to destroy all of their competition. Ends with climactic train, car, top hat chase through the Boardwalk.

Uno – Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are rival card sharks in Mexico. A tale of sex, action and intrigue. You can cut the sexual tension between them with a single card.

Connect 4 – A family (2 brothers and 2 sisters) separated at birth must cross the country to reunite after their biological mother’s death. In finding each other they find themselves. Sundance 2008. Fox Searchlight will produce. Stars are Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hillary Swank. Meryl Streep in the mom in a flashback.

Jenga – Gripping, too-real tale of the heroes, heroines and horrors of 9/11 (you were thinking it too).

Risk – Clint Eastwood directs. Its 14 hours long. Donnie Wahlberg and Ron Livingston star.

Guess Who – Ben Afleck has a list of 40 individuals, some with glasses, some with brown hair, only one of them is the killer. Can he “Guess Who” before they strike again?

Speaking of board games: if you are into them and would like to try something new, check out Cheap Ass Games. They are, well, inexpensive games that generally require you to provide the game pieces, dice, etc. from other games you have around the house.

Personal favorites are:

Kill Dr. Lucky – It’s like Clue in reverse. You must find a room and a weapon and murder the good doctor without anyone seeing)

Captain Park’s Imaginary Polar Expedition – You did not go on a fascinating polar expedition, but you must convince the wealthy elite that you did with tails of daring do and false artifacts.

U.S. Patent Number 1 – Build your time machine, outfit it with weaponry then race your rivals to the patent office, not only to be the first to patent the time machine, but also the first to patent ANYTHING!

My friend, Wes, introduced me to Cheap Ass Games about 7 years ago. They are inventive, imaginative and quite funny. Simpler and cheaper than Halo, they offer a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.

Any other ideas for board game movies? Post yours in the comments.

Call it a going away present

Back up in your ass with the resurrection.

Back when things really started to look bleak for Toshiba and HD-DVD I said I had always been rooting for them, but I really didn’t care who won as long as there was a clear winner and we could stop all this foolishness. Well, finally the troops are pulling out and coming home. The war is officially over.

I’m still not ready to buy a Blu-Ray player. Let’s pretend this format war never happened and consider this to be the day High Definition optical media is first released. Essentially it is, because the war stifled the format adoption, market growth, title availability, etc for the last 2 years. We would probably be looking at sub $300 Blu-Ray players and $15-17 Discs by now if not for the unforgivable stupidity of the movie and technology industries. Instead we are looking at the PS3 being the only Blu-Ray player worth buying (t’s firmware upgradable and has the online connectivity that most other current players do not offer) and $25-30 for new titles at big box retailers.

The price drops we saw from the HD-DVD camp around November and December of 2007 were false so they don’t count. By that I mean they were slashing retail prices for players WAY below the cost to produce them in the hopes early adopters would flock in and secure their position as the de facto HiDef disc. Instead of a viable consumer install base they now have about a half a million angry Wal-Mart customers that want to beat them to death with their shiny, obsolete “Ayche-Dee-DeeBeeDee” boxes.

Josh said, “I don’t care! I want to watch beautiful moving pictures on my new giant HD-TV!” and bought a decent sized library of HD-DVD’s. He contends that the are still playable, no matter who won. I contend that his choice was bad and he should feel bad. Those of you in the same predicament may want to consider converting your HD-DVD collection to Blu-Ray. All you need is a bunch of money, nearly unlimited time, and a master’s degree in computer science. You could also just pretend it was a fancy DVD player and play like it never happened.

I can’t think too hard about the contestants and the outcome, because Blu-Ray winning makes no fucking sense. HD-DVD was cheaper to produce, cheaper to buy, higher capacity (at first), region free, more interactive right out of the gate, and posessed the foresight to give their product a LOGICAL name people could understand. If we are looking for a replacement for sandwiches and the contenders are “Sandwich-2” and “Purple Explosion Ninja” I am certainly going to be curious about the PEN format but I’m also not going to immediately recognize it as something tasty and nutritious for my lunch time enjoyment.

The thing that really bugs the shit out of me is the fact that Sony actually won a format war. God damnit.