Sunday, July 27, 2003

Happy Sunday Afternoon.
If you've been to my site, you know that I'm a fan of Wordplay, particularly Palindromes.
Someone just brought to my attention the song BOB on Weird Al Yankovic's New Album.
Pretty funny and clever. Now go buy one of Al's Albums since you just listened to his song for free.

Here's another Top Ten:
Top Ten Tricks The Other Heroes Like To Play on DareDevil
10) Make him the Designated Driver
9) Change his porchlight to a red bulb, and give sailors his address
8) Tell Him his Tights are on Inside-out
7) Talk in Sign Language around him
6) Tell him he accidentally voted for Buchanan
5) Hide the Braille editions of Wizard
4) Trade perfumes and colognes on a daily basis, so he can't tell who's who.
3) Hold his nose, feed him onions, tell him they're apples.
2) Put big sets of concentric circles all over the place to confuse his radar sense.
1) Tie-Dye his costumes while he's sleeping.

Friday, July 25, 2003

well, It's a Hot Summer Friday Night, and I'm the loser at home writing in my Blog. Well. I'm home because something is giving me horrible gas, and the urge to run to the bathroom every 30 minutes only to let out one king-sized Fart. Perhaps it is the ghost of some angry artist whom I've offended in my f-ARTjoke comics. wooooooo.

Not that there's any good bands playing or any Movie I currently feel like wasting money to watch if I felt like going out. But, I'm Middle-Aged now, and I don't know how many Friday Nights I Have Left! But then again, when you're unemployed, every night is Friday Night.

Here's another Top Ten.

BenT Reveals The TOP TEN Pet-Peeves of The Fantastic Four's Dog
10) Long Elevator Rides to the bottom of 4-Freedoms Plaza when I have to Wee-Wee.
9) Johnny keeps Torching the Fetching Stick instead of Tossing it.
8) I get Worn Out fetching Galactus' Pipe and Slippers whenever he's in town.
7) I can't embarrass Alicia Masters by Licking My Balls unless I Slurp Real Loud.
6) Reed Richards is always demonstrating that he could lick his balls, too, if he wanted to.
5) I can never catch that damned Tigra, The Were-Woman.
4) I have Scars from Ben Grimm' Belly-Rubs.
3) Sue keeps turning my Water Dish Invisible.
2) The water in Johnny's Toilet often scalds my tongue.
1) I'm Afraid I'll get blamed for that Mess in the Negative Zone.

Thursday, July 24, 2003

I was cleaning up my desk today, and i found some interesting stuff written in the back pages of one of the notebooks i keep handy. These were some Top-10 lists I made back when I still had my comic shop open. Granted, i don't have Dave Letterman's Writers, but i thought they were funny enough to share here.
But since Top-10 lists are probably as much a cliche in blogs as they are in zines, I'm only going to use them in small doses. Here's today's:

BenT's Top Ten Rejected Vanity Plates for The Batmobile
10) B WAYNE
9) JOKER B8
8) CRUS8R
7) GTHM SUX
6) BATUSI!
5) STOLEN
4) CAPED 1
3) HI BABE
2) BATS R US
1) F.O.O.M.

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

I'm back. I really haven't had much to say in the last couple weeks. What little I've had to say could be handled by my regular posts at the Comics Journal Messboard, and over at Slushfactory. If you're looking for any revelations about turning 40, I have none. Birthdays stopped being really important to me after I turned 25 and my auto insurance went down. All turning 40 has done is make me feel creepy when I realized that a certain pornstar I've been admiring on-line has the same Birthdate as me, but twenty years later.
I did get The Simpsons Season One DVD set from my Brother and his family. That provided a couple days of distraction from the blog. Pet-Sitting for a couple weeks also kept me away from the computer. And I re-discovered my PSOne. SIMCity 2000. spent a couple days building and destroying a city I called Bucken Fjord. I need to get my Demolition Racer disk back from my friend Eric. But I probably won't touch the playstation again for another month or so.

The Philly Zine Fest turned out to be what I expected for a first time show. I made about $50 over my expenses (which were cheap. Zine fests are so much easier on the wallet for the exhibitors than Comic conventions. But then you can expect to have lower sales. But a couple Zine fairs I go to have pleasantly surprised me there.) Most of the about 40 tables were DIY Zine Distro folk, with the usual assortment of Cometbus and Burn Collector, etc. Mary Knott and Beppi of
Pretty Beaver comics were the only other comics folk exhibiting. I did see Dave Kiersh in the crowd, but he didn't table. Robert Helms, of Guinea Pig Zero made a presentation. I was probably the only other person in the room who'd been in zines long enough to remember "Factsheet 5" when he made a reference to that old review zine.
I notice that there's a turnover in zine folk about every three years. Few people stick with it for longer. Only the really dedicated or those with deep pockets who can withstand the few-and-far-between moments of slight monetary reward.
No. I can't think of anybody who stays in zines for the financial reward. You gotta find other ways of making it reward you. Intellectually, spiritually, or perhaps they just distract you or give you an occasional smile.
The one change I'd like to see for next year at Philly is the bands. I think it's a good attraction, and having them in the same room as the exhibitors doesn't take the crowd away. But if they must be in the same room, they should keep the volume down. I had to run to the local drugstore and buy earplugs. Nobody could hold a conversation at their tables, except during the interludes. And the bands were a bit too avant-garde musically. The BR-5 were loud, boring and unintelligible. The Dirt weren't loud, but they were spacey, and rambling. Like The Flying Lizards without a rhythm section. I think a combination of the loud music and the heat in the venue caused too many folk to go sit outside, where they could converse (and smoke). This took them out of the picture as potential zine customers. Meanwhile, those of us with a table felt obligated to sit inside and withstand the loud torture, just in case somebody came to the table.

Enough ranting about that. There are a couple things I'd like to mention in the recent news.

While I'm glad that the question of Udai and Qusai's whereabouts has been finally answered quite bloodily, I'm a little disappointed thatwe couldn't take them alive. I'm not upset that they were killed. They definitely deserved to be killed, but it would have been more effective to have them killed by representatives of the Iraqui people, after a well-publicized trial for their crimes. I'm sure that now certain elements will only use them as martyrs, since they were killed by the "Infidel Imperialist Occupiers"

It's a shame that Celia Cruz, the "Queen of Salsa", has passed away. Every Network, Cable, Radio, and Print news source had ample coverage of her death. But where the hell were they during her career, while she was still alive?
Why am I, a white, middle-class, American male, only now hearing about her? Granted, I'm no fan of Salsa Music, but I'm also no fan of Rap, Hip-Hop, Pop Divas, Heavy Metal, Country, or Christian Rock, yet I have plenty of knowledge of artists in those genres, because the Mainstream Media seem to consider it newsworthy whenever one of these artists has a hangnail. Paying attention to an artist after her death, calling her "The Queen of Salsa" in two minutes of news, is little recompense for ignoring an entire musical genre otherwise. Maybe the brief bump up in record sales will help her heirs pay for her burial expenses. Yahoo!

My final rant is about all the media now changing the pronunciation of "Niger". All of a sudden, it's "Nee-zhur" instead of "Neye-jur". I suppose that this fall I will go to the fair to see the Wheat Teisures now, instead of the White Tigers.
This latest round of white-bread journalists trying to ethnically correct themselves seems to me like a typical Nigerk reaction.

Peace.

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

Hi. I've been away for awhile, partly because of the holidays, partly because these are the weeks that I dog and cat sit for several friends and family members, and partly because I've been working on a new mini-comic which will be available at the Philly Zine Fest this Sunday.

It's another Jack Chick Parody, but this time I've added a twist. It also parodies the old Tootsie Pop commercial, with the little boy, Mr. Turtle, and Mr. Owl.

While doing my research at the Toosie Roll site, I submitted my own results from when i was a kid. Once, on a long car ride, i counted 178 licks on a chocolate Tootsie Pop, until I reached the Tootsie Roll center. Today in my mail, I got a cool frameable certificate documenting my achievement. I like a candy company that embraces its fun side.

Another reason I've been away, is I've been making a mixtape to document my feelings about turning forty tomorrow.
Dr. Bernheisel, if you're still alive, you told me when i was only 17 that I'd have a massive Heart Attack before I turned 40.
Well, I've got less than 12 hours to go then, but If I live that long, and you feel your ears burning, it's me. I'll be screaming a massive "FUCK YOU!" in your honor, on the 40th anniversary of the moment you spanked my ass.

You were the reason i turned punk, and re-embraced Art. Why should I conform, get a well-paying job, get married and raise kids, if you're telling me I won't live to see them graduate? Thank you for stealing my desire to succeed in life.

And, for your info, Doctor, I'm a whole lot healthier now than I was at 30. Except for a full head of grey hair, I think and feel like I'm in my late 20s. My soon-to-be ten-yr-old niece, Kelly, told me the other day that she thought I was only 25.
She'll get a better birthday present from me this year.

Had I not lost my job back in April, I would be spending my 40th with a hooker in Reno. Now, I guess I'll be spending it with my Sister's cats, and drawing comics. Unless there are any hookers reading this that want to come to York for the day.