So my friend Ian, a Six Flags Great America disciple, spotted this in the vast universe that is the theme park's parking lot. A T-Rex eating the Christian Fish symbol? Hmm.
Well, you could interpret it as someone saying that evolutionary theory trumps creationism. Or else — well, dinosaurs get hungry too, you know? And in Christianity, Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit (known as the Trinity) feed the soul...and most Christians take communion, ingesting the Body of Christ, right?
So I'd like to offer up that this T-Rex is actually a "Trinity Rex" and is merely partaking of the holy sacrament of the Eucharist.
This is the Word of the Leah. Thanks be to Six Flags.
The added comma makes this much more of a request than a demand, doesn't it? Saw this on a Metra train on the way to Geneva, IL. Okay, Metra sign, I won't smoke — since you asked so nicely.
And no, "penis" isn't spelled wrong somewhere. (I had a friend once who was convinced that it was spelled "penus," and to this day I think that's a more palatable formation of the word. I'm going to go draft an open letter to Webster's now, excuse me.)
But first: I spotted this March 1980 copy of Playgirl at the best book/music store in Chicago — Shake Rattle and Read in Uptown.
So I kept saying I was going to "Comic Con" in Chicago, when a comic-convention nerd friend of mine says: "You mean Wizard World?" I've heard it called both, so I figured it's like when people interchange Comiskey Park and Sox Park — oops I mean U.S. Cellular Mitosis Field. Maybe the Wizard of Oz would have the answer?
But for any related blog posts I'm going to bow to the usage of "Wizard World" because the storm clouds that we drove into to get to Rosemont, IL seemed like a scene out of Harry Potter. Oh, and there was hail too, but not the kind that pummeled our car and roof last month. Here's a pic of those mad wizard clouds before the storm, I felt like Helen Hunt driving into a tornado in Twister. Or maybe the Wicked Witch in a funnel cloud if she'd been driving a car instead of a bike.
As we began the game of Okay, You Go Jump Out of the Car and Save That Parking Spot, my friend Amanda started talking about how she has some old comics in boxes somewhere, like the Superman from when (spoiler alert!) Superman dies. I was more of a Archie and Betty and Veronica reader myself, I think it partially had to do with the fact that I could read the balloon bubbles better. And sure, maybe I liked Veronica's outfits and Betty's tomboyishness, but looking back on it now, I wonder if reading those were the best thing for a young impressionable girl to be reading, I mean here you have these two girls constantly fighting over this guy, I mean, really? And over ARCHIE? Hey girls, let's go drink some more of that Kool-Aid.
But one of my faves from that realm was a series of Veronica travel comics (sans any Archie drama) that had her going to different parts of the world, I remember I couldn't wait for it to come in the mail. There's "Veronica in Japan, "Veronica in Greece, "Veronica in Mexico"....
In "Veronica in Hollywood" her and her father try to help save a film studio, and an assistant busts in to announce opening day figures for their recent release: "It's going to be a bigger blockbuster than even 'STAR WARTS'!"
Speaking of Star Warts, or rather Star Wars — check out the blinged-out C-3PO-esque Star Wars headset I got! Maybe I'll be DJ Princess Leia for Halloween. I started to gain inspiration by taking pics with any Princess Leia I saw, and the next day played Radio Producer Leia for the green info-tainment show I do work for, "The Mike Nowak Show."
So I bought the C-3PO headset from a booth for a store in Naperville, IL called Toy+Life. They also had some mad screenprints — the Yoda is by Free Humanity a graff crew out of LA, and the Marvin the Martian is by Arvik:
Oh! And we happened upon the booth of an insane clown that was Angus Oblong, an amazing artist and creator of The Oblongs, this rad animated series about a family whose members are missing an arm or leg here and there due to the tainted water in their hometown, the pharmaceutical capital of the world. It's based on Angus' book called "Creepy Susie & 13 Other Tragic Tales for Troubled Children." The limbless 1950s-like dad is voiced by Will Ferrell, and the rest of the characters and aesthetic remind me of like Ren & Stimpy meets Futurama meets Family Guy. In the episode "Please Be Genital," Ferrell's character, Bob Oblong, is at work at Globocide — he opens up his lunchbox with his nose, peers inside, and says: "Hmm, ironic. We spent all morning capping pesticides, and my Manwich has been gnawed by a rat." The clip also features an ever-so-necessary John Denver Film Festival.
And okay, here's — deep breath — Anthony Michael Hall! He was there because of Dead Zone (a TV show based on Stephen King's 1979 novel), and he was one of the first people we saw when we walked in — okay, the second, Vivica Fox was the first. It cost like $40 to get your pic taken with him, so we just gawked for awhile. Then about an hour later we saw him just walking around, and bee-lined toward him like Judd Nelson toward Molly Ringwald's crotch in The Breakfast Club. Amanda shouted "He doesn't even have a license, Lisa!" from Weird Science. Then I chimed in with, "You gave me a birth control pill?!! Do you know what that can do to a guy my age?!!!" from Sixteen Candles. He laughed and his lip kind of curled up, just like his geeky Farmer Ted character but without the braces.
So, Wizard World...Amanda thought it was just going to be a bunch of stodgy nerdy comic collectors, but decided to come along anyway, and was so jacked that she bought like 10 T-shirts. I bought a couple The Lost Boys film stills from Hollywood Book and Poster Company, and then accidentally left them behind. But thankfully held on to the two music DVDs I got too, "The Best of Beat Club" and "Glam Rock."
So maybe it's best they don't call it Comic Con after all, because that makes people think that the only things being shopped are comics. Which is obviously not true, just ask this guy carrying a life-size blow-up Superman doll up a jammed stairwell in the parking garage:
There are a ton of things going on in Chicago today as Oscar Arriola will tell you on his awesome Fotoflow blog (custom low-riders show in Pilsen!), but I'm just going to do a quick post here about a show in Logan Square that will feature a ton of rad rave flyers from 1992 to 2001 — "Eternity: The Rave and Club Flyer Collection of Bridgette Buckley" is from 5-9pm at The Storefront, 2606 N California. Buckley started collecting these little paper critters after her first rave in Boulder, and will be spinning tunes from the time.
Be ready to hang out — if it's anything like the last thing that Marc Fischer from Public Collectors held at this space, there'll be a lot to comb through and listen to, and people to talk to. See, the whole idea of Public Collectors is that we each have a ton of cool material — music, zines, flyers — that represent a part in history, but never make it into any kind of museum or anything for other people to enjoy (besides your friends, who maybe don't even appreciate how cool your stuff is anyway!). So Fischer sets up these gatherings where people can check out each other's collections.
Last week, he laid out his own underground fanzine collection from the 80s and early 90s. And there was a ton of old cassettes that you could play! from Husker Du to the Beastie Boys to Bad Brains to the Descendents — here's a cool little video I took.
He even had a zine that Jim DeRogatis did back in the day — "Reasons for Living" in New Jersey — and a ton of other zines that featured gritty band images and simple interviews (one zine had an interview with Husker Du, and it started out with Bob Mould and Greg Norton talking about how they're from Minnesota and how people would go out and get birchwood from the forest to burn in their fireplaces)...this was a big way people found out about the music and bands they loved pre-Internet. Thank you zines and zine makers.
So I was IM-ing with a friend yesterday, and screwed up the spacing between "but" and "that" which gave birth to "butthat." Ha ha. I said (wrote) butthat. And it was the first time I heard of it! Here's the Urban Dictionary definition for butthat ("A lesser form of the word asshat, used in polite company.") And here's an awesome photo of a butthat. Heh heh.
Oh — welcome back "Beavis and Butt-Hat"! I mean, Butt-Head. The show's coming back to MTV in October, and I vote that they introduce a new character — Butt-Head's cousin, Butt-Hat. Ha! I can see it now: "Beavis and Butt-Head (and Butt-Hat) Do America."
So the other day I was thinking about how my burger binge was making my stomach rather meaty, and that it would be funny to get a hamburger or cheeseburger tattoo on your stomach — and was thinking that someone in the world must have one, right? So I Googled "cheeseburger tattoo stomach" and haphazardly happened upon a clip interviewing Daily Show writers about how to write for the Daily Show. Holla! (I didn't find any cheeseburger stomach tattoos. By the way, the featured cheeseburger tat is owned by Helen Haskoor.)
And then a couple days later I was Googling the phrase "crane your neck" because I thought that's what the exact wording was for expression, but wasn't 100 percent sure (yes, I call myself a journalist) — and then found this frickin' rockin' YouTube video of this song " Crane Your Neck" by performer Lady Lamb the Beekeeper.
Whew, what a week in the Age of Internet. To be continued.
Okay, first off — am I the only person who kept hearing this movie referred to as Cowboys VERSUS Aliens instead of "Cowboys & Aliens"?! I was about to throw down with my uncle over this matter. I was wrong, of course (dammit), about this sci-fi western flick named after a graphic novel of the same name, and directed by Jon Favreau.
Moo-ving on: So when Harrison Ford starts firing at this Star Wars-esque flying ship that scoops people up with steel-tendril lassos (which also maybe destroyed his cattle) — I couldn't help think about Poland during WWII. Here is Indiana Jones helplessly trying to shoot this supernaturally-powered force of an alien ship with a handgun. And it reminded me of when the Nazis invaded Poland — how the Poles charged the tanks on horseback, with swords. (This, I've heard, is the reason why Polish people are supposedly stupid. I'm 75 percent Polish, by the way.)
As long as the Polish thing is out there, let me also say that I was
brought up Catholic, and that there are a number references to God in
this movie, but it's not too cheesy. Here's one quote as I remember it. And no I'm not a religion freak, but I did grow up with the idea of a higher power —
and this rings true whether you believe in a higher power or not:
"I've seen good men do bad things, and bad men do good things —
but it's not God who ultimately decides whether or not you go to Hell,
it's you." (My translation: You ultimately decide what kind of person
you are and want to be, not some outside force, and don't let the past
define who you are.)
Thinking about how things turned out, I thought of Marcus in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when he says to Prof. Jones, "The pen is mightier than the sword." (As a sidenote, Daniel Craig, aka Jake Lonergan, is much more Indiana Jones than Harrison Ford, aka Woodrow Dolarhyde, in Cowboys & Aliens — and definitely part Terminator.)
There were many Alien-esque scenes in this film, it made me wish that Sigourney Weaver was cast in even a small part. The end was a bit of a mash-up between Alien and The Hurt Locker. Speaking of which, the little boy who goes along on the adventure, actor Noah Ringer (from The Last Airbender), has an out-of-this-world career ahead of him, he's gonna blow up.
And speaking of children, I foresee children of all ages being psyched to own a toy version of one of Jake Lonergan's power-alien-shooter wrist bands — kind of like an ET finger from back in the day. I got one for my birthday in July, but it must've sat in the store for so long that the battery ran out and the finger doesn't light up red. Sad face.
I know I should subscribe to The New Yorker, or at least read it every week at the library, because the articles are the kind that you actually like reading — but I have to admit that I pick it up mostly in waiting rooms and doctor's offices. I grabbed the April 18, 2011 issue recently while taking my gramma for an appointment on the northwest side of Chicago, near Wolfy's hot dog joint.
After reading a great feature about the woman who co-founded the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, I flipped to the back and checked out the cartoon caption contest. If you're not familiar, every week they have three cartoons — one you can submit captions for, one that people already submitted captions for (featuring three that the staff selected and readers can vote on), and then the winning caption from the week before. For the current cartoon that you could vote on, I noticed a familiar name — Roger Ebert (by the third caption, two captions down).
And I just thought, Ha, like Roger Ebert would actually go through the normal channels of submitting his caption like the rest of the world or something. He probably has, like, a different colored phone for every publication out there, and he doesn't even have to dial, he just picks it up — like Batman. So in my mind, his caption-contest submission process went something like this: Ebert picks up the New Yorker phone, which is perhaps in the shape of an apple, and types this on his laptop that helps him speak: "Hey, it's Rodge — yo, I have a stinkin high-larious caption for this week. I'm emailing it now. Peace!"
Oh, and in case you didn't already assume — his caption did end up winning. It was, after all, the best one.
UPDATE: So I guess Ebert submitted 107 times before he won! Reports the Chicago Reader 8/31/11: http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2011/08/31/chicago-media-owns-the-new-yorker-caption-contest
