The Chronic-What?-cles of Sarah Connor

There you go. Josh IS an evil, hate filled robot from the future after all.

Despite a slight climb in last week’s ratings, it is highly likely that “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” will get thrown into a vat of molten steel, only to give a final Fonzyesque thumbs up before liquefying into oblivion (by which I mean it’s probably getting canceled).

I’ll spare you the comparisons to every other quality sci-fi show Fox has canceled prematurely. It’s cliche at this point. The thing I really appreciate about T:SCC is that it’s a simple premise and it delivers every time. Unlike Heroes and LOST, Terminator isn’t trying to be all things to all geeks. It’s not setting it self up for disappointment. The formula is simple (must stop robot apocalypse), and it’s delivered with above average writing and acting. If you haven’t watched it yet, I implore to you check it out on Hulu. Despite the overlying arch, the episodes are fairly self contained so you can pick it up pretty much anywhere.

Season 1 only made it to 10 episodes before the writers strike, so the current season still feels like the end of the first. Unlike Heroes, Terminator didn’t drop everything and start a new story after the strike. Also, unlike Heroes, Terminator doesn’t infuriate me at every opportunity.

Fox either needs to stop cancelling all of it’s high quality sci-fi shows before they have a chance to find an audience or just stop making them all together. If you don’t know how to market them, or don’t have the patience to let them properly gestate then stick to your strengths: reality shows about skanks, gameshows about skanks, reality game shows about skanks and skanks on parade in all their glorious skankdom.

I Am iRon Man

HOLY CRAP, STEVE JOBS HAD A HEART ATTACK (except not at all)!

Turns out it may have been an attempt to sabotage Apple’s stock (AAPL) prices. The perpetrator is potentially facing prison time. So if CNN picks up this comic and thinks it’s real, am I going to Federal Pound You In The Ass Prison (FPYITAP)?

In other Apple news, there’s been a rumor of a new Apple product called “The Brick” netting around the trons for a few weeks. Now it looks like “brick” may refer to a brick of solid billet aluminum, out of which the new Macbooks and Macbooks Pro will be machined out of using water jets and lasers. Sounds cool and all, but nothing earth shattering.

Assuming Eli and Steve did get to work on an iRon Man suit, I imagine it would have no visible seems, be incredibly light, have sub par battery life, radiate at about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit and provide absolutely no protection against machine guns or tank shells. I can also assure you it would be beautiful and Eli would be fired about 3 months into the process for “not getting the vision!”

I suppose I should also mention that Iron Man is the best selling Blu Ray of all time. So many people bought it, in fact, that they shut down Sony’s BD-Live servers. I’ve decided I’m never going to buy a Blu Ray. I’m going to wait until the players are incredibly cheap, then Netflix them until they are completely replaced by digital content distribution.

Eli is going to Chicago this week (all week). If you know of anything he should make sure to visit, experience or a great place to take photos, feel free to post it in the comments. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. Maybe some Chicago FB’s want to buy him a beer?

Technobillies

I keep drawing shirtless old men.

The fact that WalMart is shitting shutting down the DRM servers that allow customer who have purchased music from them to actually listen to said music is a mostly a non-issue for me. If you looked at all of your choices for online music purchasing and chose the place that gives you a case of Coors and a 30 lb bag of cat food with every oil change, then your probably deserve whatever you get.

I was forced for the first time to pay for DRM’d music when, in order to purchase presale tickets to a Ben Folds concert, I was required to buy his new album through the iTunes store. This was a problem for me on so many levels. Ben is my favorite performing artist of any medium. His music has had a greater impact on my life than I can explain in words and I want to thank and support him for that. That’s why I’ve gone to at least 10 Ben Folds shows in the last 8 years. I pay $40 a pop and he gets a healthy chunk of that. I buy $25 teeshirts and he gets nearly all of that. TicketBastard forced me to pay $13 for a group of crippled files, of which Ben probably gets $.05 per track (if that). His label, Sony, gets a fairly even split with Apple. So now I have to burn those broken files to a disk, re-rip them in iTunes and replace them in my library. It’s not hard. It’s just a hassle, and it certainly doesn’t support the artists, which is the only reason I would ever BUY music in the first place.

I enjoyed Ephram and Paw. I might bring them back in the future. Maybe they can tangle with Pete.

(Thanks to FB, Joe Conroy, for inadvertently giving me the punch line for this comic.)

Quantum of Sholace

Of course I have no proof, but I assume when Sir Sean Connery the video for the new Quantum of Solace theme song, “Another Way to Die,” by Jack White and Alicia Keys he was upset to say the least. It doesn’t feature horns, sultry singing, guns pointed at the camera, blood running down the screen or girls in gogo boots. I’m sure he considered it a problem, and like any problem it can be solved one of two ways. By slapping the shit out of it or shagging it until it shuts up. He tried the former, to no avail, so he moved on to the latter. Seems to have worked like a charm.

Originally I was going to have him dig through a box of swords looking for just the right one to cleave the offending video in twain, but then I though, “NO! HE FUCKS THE TV! IT WAS SO OBVIOUS!”

I seriously have no idea what I was thinking. I do remember asking myself, “I wonder how many other cartoonists are drawing a post-techno-coitus Sean Connery right now.”

As for the song itself, I like it. It sounds like The White Stripes (imagine that) with better drumming and Alicia Keys on guest vocals. I always enjoy what Jack White tries to pass off as a guitar solo. It’s like he gets a fork tangled in his strings before he plugs in his amp, and the solo is the sound of his efforts to remove the extraneous cutlery.

A side note: in trying to write dialog in Sean Connery‘s accent I think I invented LOLCONNERY-Speak.

So what do you guys think of the song? Good song? Good bond theme? Both? Neither? What was the BEST bond theme?

It’s Japanese For “I Sing Better When I’m Drunk”

I’ve heard the same said about driving.

We had a Karaoke party on Saturday for my wife’s birthday. Denise posted the pics here. Most of what you see in the comic actually happened, though the people may have been jumbled around a bit (and a few were left out due to “more people = more drawing” math.

Introductions: The bespectacled fellow in panel 1 is Justin (from Podcast 17ish?) whom I’ve known since we were 6. Panel 3 features Mikey (Josh’s old room mate and writer of the “Brother’s in Arms” games). The guy winning the beard contest in panel 4 is Rick (a coworker of Josh and Eli’s who is, sadly, moving away soon. It was only fitting to memorialize his time in Texas with a comic). And finally in panel 4 you have Jen gently caressing/bad touching Josh. When those two get together you would almost think Josh was straight or Jen was a gay man.

High point of the night was Josh singing “Bare Necessities” from the Jungle Book and realizing the unfortunate homonym in the title. Emphasis on HOMOnym.

The very same Justin in panels 1 and 4 is relaunching his podcast, Gentlenews Live!, tonight at 8:31pm central. Go HERE at that time to watch the live video feed and join in on the chat.