Edit, Wed. 8/11: Workin’ on the new comic, sorry it’s been forever. Crazy hectic time for me, with Elaine leaving me alone with the kids for 10 days, a deadline at work, and planning my folks’ dual 70th birthday party (which went great, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM & DAD!!). Taking these past few weeks to focus on all that was definitely necessary. Hoping to get back on the horse ASAP, thanks a ton for your patience…

Edit, Thu. 7/29: So… I’m having trouble getting the time to finish the next comic, I’ve been alone with the kids and they’ve got me tied up in a chair. They released me only so I could tell you this. The lesson is always be wary when I say “see you next week”.

Edit, Wed. 7/21: No new episode this week; please see this post about needing to ease up on my update schedule a bit.

Imagine allll the people… sharinggg all the girls

GEEZ LOUISE this took forever to do. It’s probably the episode that’s taken the longest for me to finish, like, ever. Congratulations to me, still raising the bar for eating up all my time and being late. Good ol’ Bill Clinton’s fun to write – Abe may be horny and a bit kinky, but Bill’s just a hardcore sleazebag – but man is he tough to render. He didn’t show up for our scheduled shoot this week, so I had to settle for random footage of him I found on the internet!

I’m not gonna have time to do up a proper Predators review, but here’s my quick impressions. Unfortunately, I thought it was pretty lame. In a nutshell, it felt like a lesser director re-made Predator, basically. There wasn’t anything new. Execution aside, at least all the other A/P/AvP movies tried to bring something new to the table – underwater Aliens! Predator Takes Manhattan! I get that they were trying to go retro with this, but they went too far and just made a lame version of Predator.

I don’t wanna bum you out or stop you from seeing it; obviously there’s plenty of people and critics who liked it. In a complete vaccuum I would’ve probably liked it too. But when everyone in the world already knows what a Predator looks like and what it does, it’s understandably hard to make a new movie where the characters spend half the time wondering what they’re up against. Say what you want about AvP and AvP:R, but at least they were chock full of fun moments.

So what’d you think?

Home again, home again, jiggity jig or whatever that means!!!

GRRAARGH is probably how you all feel too, since I took last week off and with today’s update it’s still not clear where (when) the hell we are (or is it). Lemme say this about the current storyline if you haven’t heard me say it before… I KNOW IT’S TAKING FOREVER AND I’M SORRY. I wrote a few more words about this and put it in a blog post here.

Anyway I was on vacation with my beautiful wife and kids all last week and it was epic. Still catching up with things but my batteries are recharged and all that. See you next week.

Do you have the Mid-Term Election Fever? I won’t talk about my opinion on the state of our government or the direction of our country, but I’ll say that I’ll be glad when this election is over so I don’t have to see any more negative ads attacking the other candidate for running negative attack ads. Just once I’d like to see a race like the one in “Welcome to Mooseport” where– okay, no good could possibly come from finishing that sentence.

Happy Election Day…

I think I owe apologies to an ex-president, a Messiah, and the physically handicapped for this one. But NOT TO THIS WOMAN!

Go check out I’m Just Drinking, a wiki collection of fun, fake and/or freaky drink recipes with a webcomics theme. You can help fill out aLp’s section, if you want…

So what the hell does Secret’s tag-line “pH-Balanced for Women” mean? Do women really have a different level of acid content than men? FIGURES THEY WOULD!

Okay, I don’t know what I meant by that. All I know is when I tried putting Secret on once, it stung. Men, it may be strong enough for you, but it is NOT FOR YOU.

Speaking of nonsensical marketing tag lines… Ivory soap – 99.44% pure? Is that really the necessary precision? What if I wanted to know if it were actually 99.435% rounded up, or 99.444% rounded down? If we’re to assume these hundredths of a percent matter, then why hasn’t someone come out with a soap that’s 99.45% pure and won the Soap Wars?

I love watching R-rated movies on TBS and other network channels to catch the incredibly bad job they do censoring/over-dubbing all the curse words. My favorites are the movies that are non-stop swearing, like The Breakfast Club – where someone who sounds nothing like Judd Nelson was hired to say things like “AIRHEAD!” and “STOOPID DUMMIES!” – and Do the Right Thing – where every instance of “motherfucker” was inexplicably replaced by “mickey fickey.” In the latter case, since Spike Lee liked to use “motherfucker” in his dialogue so extensively, the movie was transformed from a searing social commentary on race relations in Brooklyn to a Dr. Seuss nursery rhyme about people who make pizza, say fun made-up words, and teach you about the parts of the human body, but only from Rosie Perez’s shoulders up and her knees down.

Speaking of which, what would be great is if they applied the same principle and craft to dealing with sex scenes. I think that’d amount to overlaying footage of a guy in a chicken suit on top of all the sinful exposed female flesh. That’d even improve on things in certain cases, because what would be scarier than a naked Sharon Stone straddling you and stabbing you with an ice pick but a guy in a chicken suit doing the same?

Instead of tickling your funny bone this week I thought I’d stroke your logic bone. Or something.

What can be determined about the agents’ names (including physical order) and sexual partners?

If you’d like to post your answer in the comments thread, be sure to use the [spoiler] tags…

Elaine and I have had our share of random New York celebrity sightings over the years… Wesley Snipes, Harrison Ford, Gregory Hines, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Bacon… but when we lived in the East 20′s it seemed like we ran into Paul Rudd (Clueless, Friends, 40-Year-Old Virgin) every other day, before anyone really knew who he was. Having drinks at Molly’s, bowling a few games at Bowlmor, ducking behind parked cars across 3rd Ave from us… it’s like we couldn’t get rid of him. We’re glad he finally decided to leave us alone and get on with his career.

Just kidding, Paul! Call us.

I think this is the first proper episode ever which doesn’t have either Abe or Preston in it (not counting the Starbucks piece).

Aside from that, all I have (the energy) to say today is Happy 7th Anniversary to my beautiful Elaine – the most amazing thing I, and my dune buggy daughter and my pudge-bottomed son, could ever have!

I’m beginning and ending this post by saying that I’d vote for a woman for President of the United States, if she were the best candidate. According to a USA Today poll in late 2005, 13% of Americans wouldn’t. Granted, that’s huge progress since 1937 (when Eleanor Roosevelt was in the public conscience), when two-thirds of Americans answering a similar poll said they’d refuse to vote for a woman – but 13% is still a significant number of people.

Those who support the idea of a female president spout the same boring arguments – women are as smart, as educated, as capable as men for the job – sure. I agree with that, so that’s why I’d vote for her. So what is this defiant 13% thinking? The only thing I can think of is this: international relations. By no fault of her own, I think a woman president would face chauvinistic attitudes that could affect both short and long-term diplomatic relations on the world stage. But waitasec, you might say, what about women like Margaret Thatcher, or Corazon Aquino, who have filled head-of-state roles for prominent countries in recent history? No offense to the U.K. or the Phillipines, but they’re not the Type-A, think with your pants, shoot-first, most powerful nation in the world nation like we are. Chauvinistic? Sure, but don’t point your finger at me. The complicating factor that could make this attitude a potential tipping point in the precarious state of world diplomacy is this: everybody hates us. The only reason more isn’t done about that is that everyone’s also scared we’re going to kick their asses. Having a woman represent us could – could – be perceived as the “softness” our enemies are waiting for. And consider who are enemies are, and the place of women in their societies.

Just a little fuel for argument. I’d vote for the right woman if she came along.

Thanks to all of who you have contributed to the donation drive I announced last week!! We’re well on our way to buying Adrian his first car.