Monkey Sea, Monkey Cruise

The HIJINKS ENSUE STORE Is where you can buy stuff that I made! It supports me and my family and keeps this littler operation going.

The Jonathan Coulton Cruise, JoCo Cruise Crazy II, is only a month away! Do you see my pants? Do you see how excited they are! EXCITEDPANTS!

A few more things you should know about JoCo Cruise Crazy II:

The only form of currency accepted on the ship are “secrets whispered into a beard.”
If Paul F. Tompkins catches you without a mustache you must answer his riddle lest you be forced to wear the “Shame Fez” and fed to a shark.
All island dwelling children are to be treated as hostile and you should throw bits of glass and screws into their eyes before they can lunge for your pockets (which should be filled with a jellyfish just in case).
There is a 24 hour buffet so revoltingly opulent as to make Poseidon himself vomit with embarrassment.
Should you find yourself caressing an unwilling dolphin it is best to commit to the path you have chosen and power through.
And finally there’s a secret gaming room on board that can’t be found on any map. You can only enter if you have a real need of it, and it’s always equipped with the right dice for the seeker’s needs.

I’ve only been on 2 proper vacations in the last decade, and one of them was sort of terrible (thanks Mexico). Because of my poor vacation track record, I am particularly overwhelmed that not only am I getting to take my wife on a fabulously geeky cruise, but I am also going to be accompanied by a multitude of friends. From the world of Internet dick pictures, I will be joined by David “ShrimpPants” Willis and Rob “Internet Dick Pictures” ~~DikPicter~~ DenBleyker. From the adjacent world of geekery Internetted, w00tstocked, televised and otherwised, I will also be joined by my friends Paul, Storm, Stepto, The entire Wheaton Family, Dammit Liz, Marian, Atom & Kathleen, and quite literally a host of others. Plus John Hodgman will be there standing in judgement of us all, while John Flansburgh DJ’s the dancefloor and Paul F. Tompkins hosts karaoke! What was that thing I said about my pants? Oh yeah, excited.

I’m sure I will say this 1000 times between now and when I ask you do it again next year, but THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH to all the Fancy Bastards that purchased prints to help me raise money for this trip. It most definitely would not have been possible if not for your unwavering support and intense generosity. I am going to swim with a fucking dolphin! Can you believe that shit?

COMMENTERS: Assuming you are aware of the cruise and who will be performing/ in attendance, please come up with the rest of the Secret JoCo Cruise Rules and Customs.

CONVENTION NEWS: I am working on finalizing my convention schedule for 2012 and there are 4-5 shows that are still up in the air as of today. Luckily I can announce that I will be making my first appearance at the Calgary Expo, April 26-29 with Blind Ferret.

Welcome To The Rock

“George Hurt You” shirts are in the store!!!

I like to imagine that if Jorge Garcia and Sam Niel backed out of J.J. Abrams‘ Alcatraz due to extreme insulaphobia, the producers would just go down the list of combination Lost and Jurrasic Park stars. First they would ask Matthew Fox and Jeff Goldblum, then Evangeline Lily and Laura Dern until they eventually settled on the guy that played Boone and the bottom half of an animatronic triceratops.

I watched the two episode premiere of Alcatraz and I definitely enjoyed it. It seems to be the J.J. Abrams show that has learned from the mistakes (real and perceived) of previous J.J. Abrams shows. It is a serialized mystery like LOST, but they have clearly planned out a trajectory for the show as opposed to “let’s keep doing crazy shit and hope it all works out in the end.” I say this only because there is no way he would pitch another show with no endgame after the complete shit-bagel that was the final three seasons of LOST. It also relies on the LOSTesque “present day/ flashbacks” plot device to tell it’s 50 year spanning story. It worked for the first few seasons of LOST and I expect it to work for this show as long as they don’t lose themselves trying to make TOO MANY interweaving back stories in the flashbacks.

Despite the fact that I think Fringe is the best show on television, period, I know that there are aspects of it that have scared off a mass audience and even universal adoption among geeks and sci-fi fans. Chief among them are the show’s “bad guy/experiment gone wrong of the week” elements overshadowing the overall story arch and vice versa. With a show like Fringe, or the X-Files or now Alcatraz striking a balance between episodic story and seasonal story is key to maintaining audience interest without leading to frustration. Alcatraz has laid the groundwork for a pretty flexible mix between the two that should lend itself to compelling stories with a fair amount of payoff vs. new questions. Since the premise depends on some 250+ inmates, guards and personel coming back from the past (seemingly one at a time) there should be room for a nice mix of “there’s a new murderer on the loose,” “there’s an inmate that we can feel sympathetic toward,” “hey, now there’s a guard and we need to help him find closure,” and due to the large numer of returning baddies they should be able to do the occasional ep featuring groups of them coming to the present to cause trouble.

Of couse, I might be just overly optimistic that Bad Robot is going to take everything they’ve learned from making (mostly) high quality television over the last decade and put that knowledge to good use. As a frustrated fan of LOST and an evangelist for Fringe, the “right things to do” seem obvious to me. Then again, I don’t make TV shows.

Speaking of people that make TV shows and J.J. Abrams, my dear friend Amy is now a writer/executive producer on Bad Robot’s Person Of Interest. It premiered at a time that I felt like I was being crushed under the weight of the amount of TV I was already watching, but I have only heard good things about the show. I need to start watching and get caught up.

COMMENTERS: What did you think of Alcatraz? Good start, shows potential or pass? How exactly has their island time effected Hurley and Dr. Grant’s daily lives? What other combination of LOST/Jurassic Park cast members should be on Alcatraz, or any other show for that matter? How about an CSI spin-off starring Anna Lucia and Nedry? She’s the angry, drunk, tough-as-nails detective who keeps accidentally murdering people, and he’s the fat, bumbling forensic scientist that keeps getting acid spit into his face!

Speaking of other people that make TV shows, Jon Rogers makes a show called Leverage, Wil was a guest star on that show, during filming he got the whole cast saying/doing the “Sci-Five,” Aldis Hodge adlibbed one during the season finale (“The Last Dam Job”) and IT MADE IT IN! A phrase coined by one of my shirts, was uttered and acted out in a TV show that I watch. ON THE TV! What is that I don’t even…

Lupine Fiasco

Fighting Time Lords hoodies are at Sharksplode right now! Wibbly Wobbly Hoodie Warmy!

Hell yes, I want to see Liam Neeson punch-fuck a bunch of stupid wolves to death! Is there anything that can’t be improved by having Liam Neeson murder it? The Grey answers that question with a resounding, howling-KrrACK-then-gurgling NO! I would watch a cooking show where he murders the animals (NOTE: he does not “hunt” the animals, because that would imply that he needs a license, which implies he needs permission), then just throws their carcasses on a fire for warmth, eventually gnawing off bits of charred meat in order to keep his strength up for the one-man war he’s about to wage on those human trafficers. It could be called “Liam Murders Dinner.”

With all the fairy tale shows and movies getting made (Once Upon A Time, Grimm, Hansel And Gretel: Return To Witch Mountain, Snow White: Live Action Shrek With Julia Roberts and Dead Behind The Eyes Snow White with Kristen Stewart ), why can’t we get a Little Red Riding Hood movie starring Liam Neeson? “I want you to listen to me very closely. The Big Bad Wolf is going to take you. Then he’s going to eat you. I want you to describe every thing you see on the way down.”

‘The Grey’ Theatrical Trailer: Liam Neeson vs. Wolves Round 2

COMMENTERS: The first rule of Wolf-punch Club is punch the shit out of some wolves. What other key scenes might be in Wolf Puncher? What sequels or spin-offs might it have? What else is there left for Liam Neeson to punch to death that hasn’t yet been made into a movie?

Some of you have been asking for prints of yesterdays Doctor Who/ MST3K mashup comic. I am working on getting comics prints added back to the store, but in the meantime please email store (at) hijinksensue (dot) com if you’d like that particular print.

Somewhere In Time And Relative Dimension In Space

Just before The Doctor saves the planet, that bitch Harriet Jones jerks it out from under him. ARRRRRRRGH!

I owe a lot to Mystery Science Theater 3000. In all honesty I owe my job to that show. I didn’t realize it at the time, but every episode of MST3K I saw as a kid was teaching me how to be funny. From Joel, Mike, Crow and Tom Servo’s example I learned how to find the common threads in totally unrelated things and exploit them for comedy. I learned how to index, search and retrieve references and how to find the one glimmer of humor in a seemingly humorless situation (or film, in their case). They taught me less about “making jokes” and more about learning how to look at situations to see why they are already funny, or the find the missing piece that would make them funny. I use those lessons every single day and I am grateful that there was such a resource available to me. Considering none of that was even remotely funny, perhaps I have forgotten all I learned. Oh well.

I was lucky enough to get to hang out with Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett at SDCC last year and tell them just how much of an impact they had on my comedic upbringing. If you haven’t spent a great deal of time with Joel, Mike and the bots, I strongly suggest you stream the available episodes of MST3K on Netflix and FOR THE LOVE OF SPACE CHIEF you have to check out Rifftrax. The very fact that their commentary made both Eragon and Twilight not only endurable but enjoyable should be enough to convince you to give them your delicious monies in exchange for their electronic laugh-time files.

COMMENTERS: Please insert The Doctor into your favorite MST‘d movie. Give me the title and the key scenes. Perhaps in Pod People he could give Trumpy the choice to end his terrible reign of “making things float” and “doing stupid things” in exchange for helping him get back to his own planet. Of course in the end, when Trumpy doesn’t aquiesce, The Doctor would have to destroy him. Maybe The Doctor could team up with Rowsdower in The Final Sacrifice and stop all those… Canadians from… doing whatever they were trying to do. I’m still not sure about that one. ROWSDOWER!

100,000 bonus points to anyone that rewrites the MST3K theme song (any version) to be about The Doctor. I KNOW one of you can do it.

UPDATE 2:

BIG ASS 11×17 PRINTS ARE IN THE HIJINKS ENSUE PRINT SHOP!

UPDATE: Today’s comic has been desktopified and wallpaper-o-tronned for your amusement and downloadification. All HijiNKS Ensue wallpapers are now available on a “Pay what you like” donation basis. Please consider donating to support HijiNKS Ensue.

TO CURRENT VAULT SUBSCRIBERS: I am currently reworking the Vault and the incentives for donations. I have some really fun stuff to announce, hopefully later this month (January 2012).

What Is The Deal With Airline Peanuts?

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made this “Fighting Time Lords” shirt for you!

While I wait for TBS to complete its inevitable transition into the “24 Hour Seinfeld Rerun Network” I satiate my need for unlikable characters dissecting the minutia of the human experience with the paltry 3 to 4 hours blocks of daily programming they currently provide. Seinfeld is one of those shows, like Newsradio, that I find to be infinitely rewatchable. Last week I was about 3 episodes deep into a Seinfeld binge when it dawned on me that nearly every premise, every complication, every problem these characters experience has been rendered moot by the modern smart phone.

Take the exact same characters and pose them with the same situations in 2012 and each episode would be about 4 minutes long, if not zapped out of existence entirely. “Are you sure we’re going to the right movie theater?” Check Elaine’s original txt, then Google Map it. “Where did I park my car in this parking garage?” Pardon the phrase, but there’s an app for that. Couple in the Hamptons wants you to see their ugly baby? Check the photos they posted on Facebook before you bother making the trip. Have you ever stopped to think about how much of Seinfeld involves getting lost? Or just not having access to a specific piece of information? In the age of the smart phone the show basically becomes the story of 4 extremely organized friends who rarely miscommunicate, have misunderstandings, or get lost.

If you examine this idea deeper the whole concept of Seinfeld really starts to unravel. Jerry, as a comedian, would never waste his witty lines on George when he could post them to his 150,000 Twitter followers. Eventually he would sell a sitcom to CBS based on his popular @ShitKramerSays Twitter account. George would be able to more successfully impersonate a marine biologist, an architect or even an importer/exporter having constant access to Wikipedia. As for “the contest,” well… for four sex-obsessed narcissists with constant access to pocket-pornography and 4G data connections, I don’t see any of them ever proposing this bet or having any interest in participating in it.

COMMENTERS: What other Seinfeld plot ideas fall apart when you add smart phones, or even the Internet to the equation? What about other classic sitcoms? Assuming they were trying to make Seinfeld today, what modern minutia would Jerry obsess over? Maybe the girl he’s dating posts too many cat pictures on Facebook. Or maybe she posts AS HER CAT. Would Kramer and Newman start one failed e-business after another? Would George freak out that his parents read his Twitter?