Dinosaur Comics – More worrying similarities

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Today’s Dinosaur Comics is about disappointment Thursday, and hits a little close to the mark:

How old am I?

27 year olds everywhere cringe.

About Dinosaur Comics:

Dinosaur Comics is Ryan North’s unusual, but long running and well regarded, web comic. The art is the same every day, but it’s so perfectly expressive that it isn’t distracting at all. Just look at that guy. Some weeks the strip is a dictionary of literary terms, some weeks it is a font of relationship advice. Most of the time I read my own thoughts in T-Rex and cringe. You will probably enjoy it.

Confession

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This week, my top track (admittedly with only two plays), is “Who Were You Thinkin’ Of” by the Texas Tornados. That is indefensible, and I apologize. It is because of my upbringing and my brother.

My father (I suppose I should say “our father” since I am implicating my brother here) swings wildly from genre to genre in phases. For two months he will listen to old time country, and for two more, he will listen to Hawaiian music, and then it will be two months of the Kinks. But the bottom line is, for most of my childhood, I heard one of three songs by the Texas Tornados no less often than once a week (the other two: “(Hey Baby) Que Paso” and “Guacomole“). Then my brother moved to Boston, and one of the places he eats is what passes for Mexican out there, and one day he heard Que Paso, and got choked up, thinking about the old man, and how someday he won’t be with us. And he told me this on the phone, and for the rest of the week, in my head, I was singing over and over again “Hey Baby, Que Paso?*” Eventually I downloaded the tracks on iTunes, and it just so happened that that week was a week in which I listened to every song only once, except for the best of the Tornados songs, “Who Were You Thinkin’ Of.” I am deeply sorry.

* – to do this correctly, forget everything you know about Spanish, and make sure to hit the “hey baby” with your best Texan drawl.

How would you like your meat?

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Today’s Cat and Girl levels one of the most commonly-heard criticisms of Achewood, and furthermore, does so at a time when we haven’t even seen Molly in a strip in a full month.

Cat and Girl - Steak House

The criticism is valid. It makes Achewood fans sick to admit it, but there aren’t a lot of ladies in the strip, and as the punchline of today’s Cat and Girl points out, Molly is really just a foil for Roast Beef. That said, it isn’t deep and realistic characters that make Cat and Girl such a good comic either. Cat eats paint, Girl is ambivalent about her hipsterism (obviously I make exception for the most well-fleshed character: Bad Decision Dinosaur). And yeah, Achewood doesn’t have the best crop of female characters (Tina, Ray’s Mom, Phillipe’s Mom… not an inspiring list), but what Chris Onstad does with the male characters makes it worthwhile. Dorothy Gambrell makes that clear with the first half of the joke I posted above. It is, of course, “well done, like Achewood?”

About Cat and Girl:

Cat and Girl is a long running comic, with archives back to 1999, about a cat, a girl, another girl, a boy, a vampire dude, hipsterism, consumer culture, and so on. It is highly likely that you will enjoy it. It’s also pretty likely that you didn’t need me to tell you that.  Written by Dorothy Gambrell and posting Tuesday/Thursday/Friday, if that makes any sense.

Quickly: Jenn Grant

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Orchestra for the Moon
Orchestra for the Moon
Jenn Grant

What: Jenn Grant's Orchestra For The Moon

How I found it: I saw a snatch of her song "Dreamer" on a documentary about the Weakerthans.

Why You Should Care: "Make It Home Tonight" is a perfect Jason Molina song… by someone else. Honestly, you will like this song. And "Dreamer." And the rest of it. Possibly the best debut record in a long time.

Where I have Been for the last month: Moving into a new apartment. Changing jobs. In Florida. The holidays. Not dead, not gone, not given up.

From the HK Collection: from Beijing With Love

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From Beijing with Love
From Beijing with Love

Last week I dusted off Stephen Chow's secret agent parody, From Beijing With Love. It isn't new, and it isn't well known, but hey, that's what the Hong Kong collection is for–stuff you just don't have.

Stephen Chow is best known here for Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, but he has been very prolific, and there is a large back catalog of his work available. One of his more recent efforts (prior to making it in the United States) is this spy movie.

The skull of a dinosaur is stolen by a man with bulletproof metal armor and a powerful golden gun. Declared a national treasure, it must be recovered at all costs, but for some reason the man in charge of resourcing picks pork butcher and reserve secret agent Stephen Chow (that may not be his name in this movie. I forget, but it usually is in his movies) despite his almost total incompetence. On the way to foiling the bad guy, Stephen meets and falls in love with a treacherous double agent, only to be betrayed.

Ok, so it's funny. But what's funny about it? Stephen Chow is a master of nonsense, and that humor abounds in the movie. At one point, going through his secret agent case, we discover that his shoe is really a hair dryer, his hair dryer is really a cordless shaver, his cordless shaver is really a hair dryer, and his mobile phone is really a cordless shaver. His gun first fires backwards and then fires forwards. He has a briefcase that launches him into the air, although not always at the right angle.

Subtitles and transfer are a little iffy, as is usually the case with his early Hong Kong works. Also, look out for ugly transvestites–the funniest thing in the world to Stephen Chow is ugly women.

Also recommended: God of Cookery, Flirting Scholar