I am totally thrilled with The Count’s latest level-up of his bear-drawing technique. That bear looks like it just wandered out of the Jamboree.
—
I haven’t thought about that Tick video game in several years. For us, what promised to be a laugh, slowly became a festival of masochism as we kicked and punched our way thru endless waves of ninjas.
I refused to let the game defeat me and, after several hours of slowly punching and kicking palette-swapped enemies, we made it to the final boss, Chairface Chippendale.
Then the Super Nintendo locked up.
There was nothing we could do but restart, and neither of us had the heart to spend another large chunk of time playing that game. We were judged, and found lacking.
—
On the subject of slap wraps, I had a couple. I’ve also made a few wax hands in my time on this Earth.
I’d think that the new equivalent to the slap bracelet are Silly Bandz. Overthinking It has a fine write-up here.
They also have a pretty good article titled Newtonian Inconsistencies in Lena’s “Satellite” which pretty much delivers the goods.
–Geoff
For those of who who have never had the pleasure of “Bear is Driving! How can that be?!” I direct you to this. Back when we were in college and had nothing but time on our hands to do such things, Geoff and I put in fair amounts of time watching the Clerks cartoons interspersed with hours of self-flagellation in the form of The Tick on the SNES. Good times.
I guess I must have been feeling particularly nostalgic while writing this episode, as it appears that the Russian “R” on Ivan’s soldiers is taken from the Rusty logo. I don’t know if that brand exists anymore, but back in fourth grade in San Diego, if you had that R as a sticker on your trapper keeper, you were IN.
I never had one.
Or a slap wrap.
Sigh.
– Count Dolby von Luckner
Last week WAS all sorts of crazy. For me, it was because I was visiting New Orleans for a friend’s bachelor party.
Now that I am back home, and not consuming roughly four thousand calories worth of gumbo and booze a day, things should be less crazy.
Anyway, I’m glad that Mussorgsky is back.
Also, the minor key anthems are totally the best part about being evil.
–Geoff
Last week was all manner of crazy, so the poor chatter box got neglected, but with some new characters popping up here I can’t resist. First, a big thank you to everybody who bid on our gulf piece, and particularly to he/she who won it! It means a lot that you reached into your pockets for our silly work.
Now, as to this comic, we’ve met composer Modest Mussorgsky before. His life was tragic, brilliant, and brief, which is to say Russian. As he spiraled further into despair he threw himself into thorough going alcoholism, treating it as an artistic stance and, at the time, it more or less was.
Nikolai Lobachevsky is familiar to Tom Lehrer fans, where in the song Lobachevsky he is made out to be a mathematical plagiarizer, though Lehrer, himself a math professor, said that he didn’t actually mean to insult Lobachevsky, but rather chose him because the flow of the name worked in the meter of the song. Anyway, he was AWESOME. Not only did he come up with one branch of Non-Euclidean Geometry, thus breaking out of 2000 years of mathematical tradition, but he also almost single-handedly upheld the reputation of his university. He was in charge of its major collections, of building up its faculty, of maintaining its independence from the tsar, of its library, and even swept out some of the buildings when there was nobody around to do it. He devoted his life to the place and then, when an unfavorable regime arose, they booted him out for absolutely zero damn reason. And then a hundred years later Lehrer kicks him in the nads for reasons of meter. Poor Lobachevsky. But, then again, Lehrer also wrote The Vatican Rag, and New Math, which are both entirely awesome, so it balances.
Anna Akhmatova is one of my favorite poets. She comes out of the early 20th century and, though translated poetry is, according to people of good breeding, an abomination, here is one of her pieces rendered in English:
Now nobody will want to listen to songs,
the bitter days foretold come over the hill.
I tell you, song, the world has no more marvels,
do not shatter my heart, learn to be still.
Not long ago, as free as any swallow,
you rode the mornings out, you braved their dangers.
Now you must wander as a hungry beggar,
desperately knocking at the doors of strangers.
-1917