Of Draculas And Candy Corn

Happy Halloween! Please do not smash my jack-o-lantern or murder my pets! Here, take some candy to stifle your Satan-fueled rage!

There is a new HijiNKS ENSUE Podcast. Episode 67 is ready to download for free. Vault subscribers can get the uncut version of the show (unedited and almost 2 hours long) and the post show as well.

I have good new for those of you interested in the British Knights shirt. It should be on sale this weekend or early next week. I will update this post with a link when it goes live. It looks fantastic and I am super proud of it.

COMMENTERS: Are you dressing up this year? What are you going as? What’s the most inventive costume you’ve ever seen? What’s the worst “sexy _____” costume you’ve seen (i.e. sexy nurse, sexy iron man, sexy Obama, etc).

At The Late Night, Double Feature, Pitch Corrected Show

“In just seven days, I can make you a man which is totally cool because now I’m a girl so it’s not gay or anything.”

I can’t tell if last night’s Rocky Horror Glee Show was more of a tribute or a trashing of the cult favorite musical. On one hand it exposed a new generation to Rocky Horror that probably never would have sought it out otherwise (as it has done with Journey and… well probably just Journey), but on the other hand it took the transvestite right out of Transylvania. That’s like Phantom without the opera, Sweeney Todd without the murder pies or Cats without all the terrible songs.

PODCAST NEWS!!!
The HijiNKS ENSUE PODCAST IS BACK, but I need your help to keep it alive. The goal is to get 300 monthly donation subscribers by the end of the year. Read more HERE if you enjoy the Podcast and want to help.

Some of it was enjoyable (There’s a certain poetry to John “Uncle Jesse” Stamos playing the part originally played by Meatloaf) but I don’t understand the de-gayification of the lead role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. As network TV goes, Glee is about as gay as it gets (which isn’t saying much), but right from the get-go they seemed to be dodging the 800 lb gay-rilla in the room. At first Mr. Shue offers super-gay Kurt the lead which he immediately turns down saying that he doesn’t want to wear the outfit. This is the same super-gay Kurt whose normal attire consists of blouses made from evening gowns and evening gowns made from bras. He dresses like Annie Lennox if she was the First Lady. Yet somehow a bustier and nylons were too out there for him.

Then Mercedes, based on a novel Push by Saphire takes the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter and cannibalizes the lyrics of his signature song. And she does it in such an odd way. Per her lyrics, she is STILL a “transvestive” but she hails from a far less fabulous Transylvania. It’s hard to call it a complete cop out since it was such a confusing choice in the first place.

Anyway, as Wil said, “Dear Guy Who Made Glee: Keep your dirty hands off my Rocky Horror Picture Show, or I will kick you in your nuts. I will do it nine times.”

COMMENTERS: Did you see the episode of Glee in question? What did you think? Do you even still watch Glee? Did you ever?

The Measure Of A Fan

I know this is super inside-baseball-pants for you non-Star Trek nerds, but I just got back from a two day stint at a Star Trek convention so please cut me some slack. Please feel free to cut a bit more slack (as long as slack is already being cut) for the Lo-FijiNKS comic. I was pretty burnt after the con and didn’t feel up to coloring and shading and… drawing all that well.

Flip You Melon Farmer! The “Edited For Content” mug on up for sale NOW!

There was a TNG panel at this particular con, and the guests were Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, and Michael Dorn. I decided to ditch my table for an hour and check out the fun times. Highlights included Frakes moving through the audience for the first 20 minutes or so asking all the standard, tired-ass questions they’ve all heard a thousand times. At one point he asked “When y’all were on the spaceship and y’all stood on the glowing floor things where also the ceiling was glowin’ and y’all got beamed to the planet… what did that feel like?” [at this point I should mention that Tia Carrere was also a guest at the con] Brent Spiner responded with some techno babble about his molecules being dispersed, yo which Michael Dorn replied “I would like to disperse my molecules all over Tia Carrere.” This would be quite an ordeal for Ms. Carrere because, as you know, Klingons have two dongs.

Great Scott! A reader commission I did at the con. Click to Embiggen.

I got a quick chance to meet Frakes and Spiner and give them each a copy of the “Riker, I hardly know her” comic. It was gratifying to share space with a couple of my childhood heroes if only for a minute or two. We talked briefly about Leverage and our mutual admiration for Jon Rogers and Amy Berg. Brent Spiner said, “When is she going to get me on Eureka? Wil Wheaton’s on that show every other week!” Throughout the panel and our encounter afterwards Brent Spiner was none too shy about showing his dissatisfaction with the “lack of Brent Spiner awareness and appreciation” among the general public. To that I say, “Buck up Brent. You are my favorite robot-man and you are pretty great.”

Oh, Shatner was there too. Whatever.

COMMENTERS: Share your “meeting your heroes” experiences. Did they live up to the hype or were you disappointed?

Here’s a commission I did for a reader at the con. Click to embiggen.

We’re Calling This One Busted

DALLAS AREA FANCY BASTARDS: Come see me at Star Trek Fan Days this weekend (October 23rd – 24th) in Plano, TX. Riker, Data, Worf, Doc Brown, Draco Malfoy, and Captain Kirk will be there! More info HERE.

Flip You Melon Farmer! The “Edited For Content” mug on up for sale NOW!

The Laser Defense Grid App (released by ZingoZany Mobile, a division of The NSA) requires at least an iPhone 3Gs running OS 4.1 and is available in The App Store now. Download it or we’re all going to die.

I know the cover story is that Obama met with the Mythbusters as part of the Whitehouse Science Fair and to film a segment for an upcoming Mythbusters episode, but you know somewhere in the Oval Office desk is a tattered piece of legal paper that says:

Barry’s List Of Things to Do Before I Die

Be a lawyer [X]
Get smoking hot wife [X]
Illinois Senator or at least owner of the White Sox [X]
Get elected first black President of USA [X]
[added 3/16/2005] Become honorary Mythbuster/ press button to blow up a limo or something [X]
[added 4/28/2010] Become friends with Lady Gaga [ ]

As for why he met with Steve Jobs I can only assume that there is actually an extinction level event around the corner and Obama wants to get that Verizon iPhone 4 before he takes his place in one of the arks high in the Himalayas that will safely allow 100,000 of our smartest and wealthiest humans to ride out the apocalypse. He might even get Jonathan Ive to design a stylish, brush aluminum test tube to store giraffe DNA.

The first Presidential iPad autograph?

Yo, DIY! Let’s Kick It!

“Word To Your Subcontractor.”

When I watched The Vanilla Ice Project (which, as far as I can tell, is a real thing and NOT a practical joke being played on Robert Van Winkle, me or the public as a whole) I never got a clear impression if Mr. Van Winkle (“Vanilla” if you’re nasty) was somehow in charge of the renovation crew or if he was just one of the dudes making $8.25/hr to hang drywall. I really want to contact the producers of the show, though because some of the crown molding and wainscoting they used seemed eerily similar to the crown molding and wainscoting that Freddy Mercury had installed in David Bowie‘s house 20 years ago and I don’t think they were given proper credit.

PODCAST NEWS!!!
The HijiNKS ENSUE PODCAST IS BACK, but I need your help to keep it alive. The goal is to get 300 monthly donation subscribers by the end of the year. Read more HERE if you enjoy the Podcast and want to help.

DALLAS AREA FB’s!!!
I will be at Star Trek Fan Days in Plano, TX this weekend (10/23-10/24). Riker, Data, Worf, Doc Brown, Draco Mallfoy, Chewbacca and Captain James T. Motherfuckin’ Kirk are going to be there too!

EWOK STARE SHIRTS [based on THIS comic] are IN THE STORE!

[More info about the shirt HERE]

If you have ever owned a “fixer upper/money pit” as I have, then you know there is a secret language you can speak with others who occupy the same circle of DIY hell. It’s a sort of shorthand where entire sentences are replaced with words like “wet saw,” “sawzall” and “keyhole saw.” It’s mostly about different kinds of saws. Oh, and drills. A lot of the time it’s about drills.

There is also an unspoken component to the communication, not unlike that of 2 people who have served in the same grizzly war. You look into each others dark, mournful eyes as you pass each other in the isles of The Home Depot and know that you have seen the same atrocities, lost the same friends, and each tried renting a stump grinder that one time but it was really more than a regular person can handle. I mean, it’s nearly impossible to start by yourself… you at least need someone else to stabilize it and once it’s going there’s basically no way to control it. More than anything, you each know the limits of what caulk can do and how far a man who has nothing else to lose will go to push those limits beyond all reasonable boundaries.

COMMENTERS: Give me your alternate home improvement related “Ice Ice Baby” lyrics.