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?

Side Effects May Include

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

Purell: Kills 99% of germs and rewrites 99% of your DNA!

I am still very sick and the things happening in and around my head are still quite horrible. It is as these moments that I reflect on how lucky I am to not have a real job. It used to infuriate me when I had to decide between staying home, losing money, getting shit from my boss, but actually getting well and going in to work no matter how ill I was in order to save face, impress my boss and not impact my finances. People get sick. I never understood the vilification of illness in the average American workplace. Every real job I’ve ever had has viewed getting sick as a form of betrayal, a character flaw or a lack of commitment. I once got sick the first week of a new job. It was a 24 hour virus that my wife (then girlfriend) got at the same time. Unspeakable terrors were exploding out of all available evacuation points with little to no warning and we only had one bathroom. It was a god damn nightmare. When I came back to work the next day my new boss told me that he strongly considered firing me right then and there, and that I should have come to work, thrown up to prove I was sick, then been sent home. He turned out to be a heroin addict, so… hey, whatever.

COMMENTERS: What’s the worst state you ever forced yourself to go to work in despite your better judgement? What’s the best “playing hooky” that you’ve ever pulled? Have you ever tried so hard NOT to get sick that you made yourself ill? Once I felt a cold coming on so I started eating vitamin-C like TicTacs. I had a crazy adverse reaction to an overdose of the stuff and had to go to the hospital. Then it happened again a few years later when I didn’t realize the cough drops I was sucking down by the bag full each contained “100% of my daily recommended dose of vitamin-C.” Considering that each time my entire body began swelling up in a freak-show maroon rash, I am now deathly afraid of anything that has more than a standard amount of C. If I even see an orange in a grocery store, I set the entire building on fire. It’s the only way to be sure.

Good news for Chicago Fancy Bastards: It looks like I will be at C2E2 again this year with the Blind Ferret crew. That’s one of my favorite shows of the year. I’ll post more details when things are finalized.

You Can’t Do That In My Sinuses

Sorry for the lack of comics last week, but the above panels pretty accurately (and rather unfortunately) illustrate what my life has been like for 7 or 8 days now. I thought I was just getting an allergy attack, but after several days it seems to have gained a malicious sentience and begun a full scale assault against my ability to not feel like a giant pile of undulating grossness. I assume that came across in the tone of the comic.

Nothing says, “I bought you some stuff from the Internet,” like buying people stuff from the Internet.

I made the terrible mistake a few days ago of thinking, “I’m starting to feel a little less shitty, so I should get out of the house and have some fun!” I might as well have injected monkey pox straight into my eyeball. After my prematurely celebratory Friday night out I not only went back to sickness square one, but I seem to have super charged my cold/sinus infection/techno-organic anti-life virus into overdrive. Now, I’m basically sleeping all day and only waking every 12 hours or so to drain my face into a bucket. A sadness bucket. A sadness bucket full of hateful face juice. I am not kidding when I say this shit resembles Nickelodeon Gak in both color and consistency. I am scared that if I went to a doctor they would turn me over to the government, who would permanently detain me in an undisclosed location and harvest my mucus for spaceship fuel. Or at least industrial comet polish.

Ok, enough gross out, health related nonsense. When I was a kid I had a tub of Gak. I remember it smelling like burnt tires and carcinogens. It just reeked of petroleum and poison. I always wondered if the unpleasant odor lead them to develop “Smell My Gak.” I never saw that particular variation up close and personal, but I find it hard to believe that the “hot dog” scented variety was an improvement over the original recipe. I also get the impression that “Glow In The Dark Gak” was simply them giving up on trying to make Gak NOT glow in the dark. Like they had exhausted the world’s supply of cadmium attempting to mask Gak’s natural radioactive properties, so they had to introduce it as a feature.

I had grown too old for amorphous weaponized chemical gel-based non-toys by the time Floam and Sqand were introduced. I didn’t even realize that the “Here, kid, play with this biproduct of an industrial accident,” trend continued with products such as Smud, Gooze, Skweeez (with three E’s), and Zzand. SPUMG seems to fall right in line with these fine products. It’s terrible, it smells bad, it tastes worse, it’s is most definitely poisonous and you DO NOT WANT TO KNOW HOW IT IS MADE.

COMMENTERS: Continue the Nickelodeon product line! All you need is a few odd consonants and an improperly placed vowel or twelve. Something like SKROBZ. What does SKROBZ look like? How terrible does it feel? What is it supposed to do and HOW TERRIBLE DOES IT FEEL? Did you own any of the actual NICK family of chemical warfare play things? I had a GAK inflator. One time I made a stop motion movie using my friend’s camcorder of the GAK crawling out of its tub, oozing over to the inflator, blowing itself up then popping. In retrospect, I wonder if it was actually stop motion, or if I had simply managed to video the moment it became self aware.

Apparition Stipulation

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made this “Fighting Time Lords” shirt for you! No, really. Specifically FOR YOU.

More alternate subtitles for Mission Impossible 4:

Mission Impossible 4: Ethereal Accord
Mission Impossible 4: Phantasm Arrangement
Mission Impossible 4: Spectre Covenant
Mission Impossible 4: Shadow Proclimation
Mission Impossible 4: Spooky Plan

Seriously, Tom Cruise. What is the deal with being so damned likable in movies, yet so scummy in real life? “Ghost Protocol” even SOUNDS like Scientology jargon. “Margaret has gone against Tech and become a Suppressive Personality. She’ll never achieve Operating Thetan Level 6 now. Engage Ghost Protocol!” Regardless of Mr. Cruise’s more eccentric beliefs (specifically the ones about all humans being psychically drained by the parasitic souls of ancient aliens that were blown up in giant volcanoes billions of years ago by the galactic overlord Xenu), he makes some damn fine movies.

Well, he stars in and produces some damn fine movies, at least. I feel like the real credit for MI: 4 being an absolute joy of an action movie start to finish goes to Brad Bird and J.J. Abrams. What a freakin’ creative, ultra-geeky team, amirite? Brad Bird directed The Incredibles, which while not Pixar’s best film (that’s a toss up between WALL-E and Toy Story 3), IS there best story/ character piece. And Abrams is almost single handedly responsible for giving geeks a reason to watch TV over the last 6 or 7 years. Honestly, I had no real interest in the Mission Impossible franchise until J.J got involved. In fact, I really don’t even remember the first 2. The third installment, however, is one of my favorite action movies. Phillip Seymour Hoffman just KILLS it as the big bad. When he is telling Tom Cruise what he’s going to do to his wife and family and friends, I really felt like he was completely out of character and completely serious. Like maybe the FBI should tap his phones or something. That dude is probably a murderer. He’s at least drowned a dog or stabbed a few hoboes. Where was I? Oh, yeah. MI: 4: GP: TLDR: JKLOL is loads of fun, has at least three jump-out-of-your-seat-moments and should really be seen in the biggest possible theater (IMAX ’em if ya’ got ’em) to be fully appreciated.

COMMENTERS: Did you see Ghost Protocol? What did you think? Are you struggling with the same conflict over Tom Cruise’s good looks and charm on screen, and dirtbag space religion brainwash scheme off screen?

Feliz Año Nuevo!

Buy my book. Buy my book. BUY MY BOOK!

Theoretically, when someone opens an eventual 4th HijiNKS ENSUE Book THIS will be the first comic they see. Seems like the perfect way to scare off the normals.

I spent New Years Eve (eve) with Eli, Josh and a slew of other friends at Eli and Denise’s home. There was food and beer and snacks and beer and eatables and beer. Also beer. Eli rigged up a ghetto movie theatre on the back porch and we suffered the freezing night (which is Texas is something like 60 degrees) to watch shitty movies projected 12 feet high on his wall. There was talk of subjecting us all, once again, to Riki–Oh: The Story of Ricky, but the vault Josh keeps that particular bit of punishment in can only be opened by turning three keys simultaneously and I wasn’t about to relinquish mine.

Instead, Eli subjected us to Chillerama, a collection of 3.5 short films… “filmed things” based around the last hurrah of a drive-in theatre on its final night before closing up shop for good. All you really need to know about Chillerama are the titles of the vignettes. The show started with Wadzilla, a 1950’s monster movie send up about a man who, after taking an experimental drug, ejaculates a single giant sperm which continues to grow and devastate the city. More? Really? You want more? Ok, how about I Was A Teenage WereBear? A 60’s beach party movie spoof about a sexually confused teen who get’s bitten on the ass by a WereBear (a skinny gay teen who transforms into a burly, bearded, be-fanged leather daddy). Considering there were no less than 4 bears in attendance that night, this segment was certainly proof that there IS a god and he is super gay. The third installment was called The Diary Of Anne Frankenstein. They really should have stopped with the title. There’s no further explanation needed. That’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard and nothing the filmmakers could have put after that title could have possibly lived up to it. There’s no point in me even explaining it. Your imagination will do a better job than I could. There’s sort of a 4th short film, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise. The shorts are wrapped up in an A-story about a drive in worker who, through acts of necro-feelin’ ya, begins to accidentally spread a “super horny zombie” virus to all of the drive-in patrons.

If none of this has scared you off, I actually can recommend Chillerama for your next drunken shitty movie night. It almost crosses the line between “we tried but this came out shitty,” and “HEY! Look out shitty this is on purpose!” a few times, but manages to reel it in with genuine cheese and above average special effects for a low budget D-movie. It’s hard to talk about production quality with films like this, but it really does help you to stomach the bad jokes, worse acting and ridiculous plots when you can actually HEAR and SEE everything the creators intend you to. Most movies of this caliber suffer greatly from technical shortcomings. By contrast, Chillerama is extremely watchable for something that is nearly unwatchable. I believe it’s on Netflix instant now and should make for an interesting evening with inebriated friends.

COMMENTERS: Josh actually made be watch Riki-Oh during one of the first times we ever hung out. It was an event that would set the tone of our friendship for the next decade or so. Has anyone ever made such an impact on you by forcing you to sit through an unbelievably terrible movie? Did you uncle show you the Star Wars Christmas Special in your basement? It’s OK to share. You are among friends.

Do you have any geeky new years resolutions? Any shows you are determined to finally plow through?