Thanks for understanding guys. I am just swamped right now. There will be a proper new comic tomorrow.
~Joel
COMMENTERS: I assume many of you bought the Star Wars Blu Rays. Feel free to express your opinions, positive, negative or neutral, in the comments.
Reed Hastings seems like a made up CEO name. Like someone that moves to Hollywood and changes their name to Selby Feingold to Rock Explosionhole or somehting. I feel like this guy has the right idea in wanting to hedge his bets that streaming will overtake physical media for movie distribution in the coming years, but his decision to split Netflix into two companies (thus raising prices, and confusion for customers) is definitely shortsighted. The real problem for me is that neither side of Netflix, streaming or DVDs by mail, was really worth my money. It was the combination of both services for one price that made it worth while. I only take one physical DVD from them maybe ever 6-8 weeks and I only watch 4-5 streaming shows a month (most of which are for my daughter). All of that in total was worth the $9 I was paying. Of course now that fee is $16 and soon it will be split between two sites with two logins and two different credit card charges. I’m not entirely sure what the fee breakdown is going to be when the dust settles, but I have a feeling I will be far less enthusiastic about keeping both services, which in turn will make me less likely to keep either.
Unless Netflix come out in the next couple of months with some KILLER content deals, I don’t see me sticking around for that long. They are going to need something along the lines of EVERY major hollywood release available for streaming no more than 30 days after the DVD hits stores to keep their product viable. Something tells me that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. The only thing that makes me hesitate abandoning them in favor of other streaming sites and RedBox is the back catalog. If I really want to see The Last Starfighter and I don’t already own it, Netf… Qwikster is going to be my only legitimate option… unless that movie is already on streaming. I haven’t checked.
I think Hastings needs to integrate his “divide to accommodate” strategy into every aspect of his life. “Hey kids, from now on the person known as ‘Dad’ is going to split into two entities. ‘Dad’ will still be around if you need advice on dating, or help with your homework, but when you step out of line, don’t clean your room or break curfew you are going to have to answer with ‘THE PAIN HAMMER.’ Remember, ‘Dad’ will always love you and be there for you, but ‘THE PAIN HAMMER’ is going to crush you.
COMMENTERS: What other changes or alternative delivery methods could Qwikster implement to grab our attention? What other companies or institutions could be broken up into smaller, more confusing entities? Perhaps “The Post Office” will still sell stamps and envelopes, but if you actually want to mail something you have to deal with “BlergBlorg,” the Internet startup that consists of mail trucks that randomly drive around major US cities collecting mail from people lucky enough to find them. Also, who already owns the Twitter names of the new companies? @BlergBlorg belong to a convicted sea lion rapist.
Serious question: If you have Netflix, are you going to keep both services? Just one? Neither? Why?
This comic is a completely true story, except it was less Josh yelling at a Brookstone employee and more me and my wife making fun of all the vibrators masquerading as “personal massagers” on their shelves.
If you start on the left side of the “massager” section, you see some plausibly legitimate, semi-medical devices. There are some big, sturdy pieces of machinery with multiple rubberized contact points contoured to the shape of the human spine. As you move to the right, it’s like the evolutionary chart of the vibrator. They get smaller and more cylindrical, lower power (more buzzing and less percussing), more ergonomically shaped for one handed use and more focused on stimulating a specific, conspicuously vagina-sized area. The packaging also shows less and less people making the “OUCH! My back hurts!” face and more of the “I’m having a glass of red wine, taking a hot bath, then laying a towel down over my good sheets,” face.
Of course, if you look at it from right to left it just seems like ladies are demanding more and more cumbersome and industrial erotic implements. It’s like the tiny ones on the right are for humans and the multi-pronged jill-hammers on the left are for bears and rhinos and to aid in the collection of bull semen.
In reality, people have been using personal massagers to get themselves off since their inception and some clever marketing person just decided to start designing them towards their actual use rather than their intended purpose. Still, the cheeky box art, exploding with innuendo is rather amusing.
Speaking of bang-machines, have you seen the trailer for Hysteria? It looks pretty great as far as lady-gasm based films go.
COMMENTERS: What’s the silliest “this is totally a vibrator” item you have ever seen in a store? When’s the last time you saw a product advertised as one thing that was CERTAINLY supposed to be used as another thing? Are “massagers” the only industry that does this? Why can’t we just sell vibrators on regular store shelves next to the tupperware? People need to keep their leftovers from spoiling and they need to get off.
Alternate Title: Emergency V-Section
The only thing I know for sure about Twilight: Breaking Dawn is that the director own’s one of my Team Edward shirts, because his partner bought it for him at Comic-Con this year. He was a nice guy (the partner, never met the director) and apparently he bought most of the BSG props when they went up for auction. I’m talking hatch doors, the CIC table, the phones, the computers, everything. So that’s pretty neat.
COMMENTERS: What scene in any movie has really surprised you with how uncomfortable it made you feel? Doesn’t have to be horror or gore. Just anything that was completely out of place, over the top or beyond the boundaries established earlier in the film.
Why did I make this comic? Event Horizon is neither recent, nor topical, nor good, nor not terrible. I’ll tell you why [I’ll teach your grandmother to suck eggs]. It came on TV a few days ago and I, having not seen it in over a decade, remembering it was awful, but not remember exactly WHY it was awful, watched it in its entirety. It was then that I learned the dark secret of the movie about a spaceship that takes you to hell. The movie itself does the same thing.
For the first 5 minutes or so, it seems like you’re going to get some decent, self-contained sci-fi, then almost immediately and with no provocation everything turns bat-tits and the ship, which is also the Devil [spoilers] shows everyone creepy visions until they kill themselves or each other. Luckily the movie seem to give you a blue print for how to escape its life-suck field by constantly showing you people that have mellon balled their eyes out. It’s an easter egg that says, “Want to escape with your will to live in tact? Well pluck our your eyes and run a crossbow bolt through your ear canal like a toilet snake.”
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 only thing I was able to enjoy about Event Horizon was figuring out who the “before they were kind of famous” supporting cast were. The ship’s crew consisted of the mom/wife from Nip/Tuck, Lucious Malfoy, the kid from Mtv’s Dead At 21, the FBI dude from Terminator: TSCC (who seemed to be doing a fairly spot on Denzel impression the entire time) and a lady who I kind of remember from Prison Break.
If you haven’t seen Event Horizon in a while, or ever, PLEASE do not make any attempt to change that. You will seriously be carving off chunks of your own face before it’s over. Instead, maybe go check out Pandorum. It’s got the same creepy spaceship vibe + maybe there’s a monster, maybe just a killer type of situation and, in my opinion, it’s executed really well for a fairly low budget space-horror flick.
COMMENTERS: Is space-horror a genre now? Other than the ALIEN franchise what other films fit? I suppose 2001 does. The Predator and AVP franchises probably qualify more as action than horror. Something to think about.
Speaking of Event Horizon, my friend Corn Mo made a damn fine rock and roll song about that terrible sack of space-shit. Here’s a VIDEO for it.
Speaking for Corn Mo, if you like A Gamge Of Thrones and songs, he has gone to the trouble of combining them for you. Two great tastes that taste bleek and ominous together! Video HERE. Buy the song HERE.