Jesse (http://therealdurona NULL.com/), Randall (http://randalldrew NULL.com/), Chris (http://www NULL.flamejob NULL.net/), and Matt (http://www NULL.apostrophepress NULL.com/) have a roundtable discussion about Gremlins (http://www NULL.imdb NULL.com/title/tt0087363/) and Gremlins 2 (http://www NULL.imdb NULL.com/title/tt0099700/). Feelings about and experiences with the movies are mixed, but there is no shortage of opinions and observations. Eventually (inevitably) things devolve into fan/slash fiction.

A word of warning: do not listen to this until you have seen both films. Not only does it contain approximately three spoilers per minute, it will also make absolutely make no sense and probably give you brain rickets.

A second word f warning: If you are old enough to use the internet and, thusly, are reading this and you haven’t yet seen Gremlins, there is something seriously wrong with you. You should get that looked at, it may be the first sign of something much worse.

I heard you liked links. So I linked you these thinks:

Notable Gremlins (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Gremlin)

This is what happens when you internet. (http://www NULL.fanfiction NULL.net/movie/Gremlins/)

Totally looks like (http://www NULL.demotivationalposters NULL.org/goldie-hawn-goldie-hawn-gremlin-demotivational-posters-60301 NULL.html)

(http://recordings NULL.talkshoe NULL.com/TC-65758/TS-718273 NULL.mp3)

(http://kimwar NULL.blogspot NULL.com/)

Fans of Star Trek in it’s many iterations know the Kobayashi Maru (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru) scenario. To sum it up, the final test that Star Fleet gives it’s potential commanders is a won-win scenario. Their reasoning is that those who will potentially be making decisions that will effect the lives of a ship’s compliment and the ultimate future of the United Federation of Planets must know that failure is always an option and is sometimes unavoidable. It is not an ordeal to be overcome, but to be endured. Success in the Academy can never be confused for ability in real life situations with real life consequences. A Captain is responsible for too many lives to think they are incapable of failure. Life does not play fair, so the Kobayashi Maru doesn’t either.

Kim (http://heymartel NULL.blogspot NULL.com/) got a hold of a bottle of Romulan Ale, by Cerveceria La Constancia S.A., and she knew she was in trouble. No good could come of it. Visit Kim, and watch her fail (http://heymartel NULL.blogspot NULL.com/2012/12/going-where-no-kim-has-gone-before NULL.html).

ASF talks about Free Comicbook Day at Newbury Comics in West Lebanon New Hampshire.  Before that though, they went to the screening of Cartoon College (http://cartooncollegemovie NULL.com) and are gonna tell you all about it!  There were a lot of shakeup in the would of ASF since this was recorded, this episode was actually recorded months ago.  The movie’s still great and FCBD isn’t going anywhere, so this episode is no less relevant.

Here’s your homework:

The Center for Cartoon Studies  (http://www NULL.teachingcomics NULL.org/)

Cartoon College (http://cartooncollegemovie NULL.com)

Free Comic Book Day (http://www NULL.freecomicbookday NULL.com/)

Newbury Comics (http://www NULL.newburycomics NULL.com/)

(http://recordings NULL.talkshoe NULL.com/TC-65758/TS-711555 NULL.mp3)

It’s that time again!

We’re going to be at MICE! (http://www NULL.masscomics NULL.com/)

It’s all going down on Saturday the 29th of September. Check out the jam packed schedule here (http://www NULL.masscomics NULL.com/schedule/).

What can you expect? Oh, I don’t know… How’s about Center for Cartoon Studies (http://www NULL.cartoonstudies NULL.org/) table overflowing with work from past and current students? A CCS BFF Robert Sikoryak (http://www NULL.rsikoryak NULL.com/) telling you all about how comics are for smart people (but you already knew that because you’re smart)? The mighty mighty explosion that is the Boston Comics Roundtable (http://www NULL.bostoncomicsroundtable NULL.com/)‘s Hellbound III? And, oh yeah, ASF will have a table too. To be there or to be square? That is the question.

-Radical Warren

In 1851, Twain Markleson  said; “There are lies, damn lies, and anecdotes”.   Shortly after hearing this,  a young Samuel Langhorne Clemens drowned him.   He didn’t understand that before the age if instantaneous mass media you could get away with paraphrasing without much risk of someone calling bullshit on you.  Luckily for him, he also lived before the concept of DNA, so murder was equally easy to get away with.  So much so that SLC chose a pen name that flaunted his crime of intellectual theft inspired river murder.

This point of all of this is that lies are interesting. That statement was true, and thusly boring.  Read ahead for things less so on both accounts.

-Radical Warren

• Cheers was a revolutionary show for a lot of reasons: It tackled homosexuality, group mentality, arrested development, violence towards woman, class warfare, divorce, unwed pregnancy and alcoholism in just the first season alone. But the only reason it ever got picked up for a second season, and thusly every season the came after, was it’s innovative pretense: The entire show was the hallucination in the mind of George Wendt as he lay impaled on his own steering wheel with his last day, the pilot episode, playing out into the future.  Each episode a blink of his eye, the logical progression of a man who did not live, but rather watched life live itself.  The entire Cheers catalog were the imaginings of a drunk mind winking out existence. A live ended vicariously through e invented stories of acquaintances who would become loved ones of fantasy.  A world where his lost wife Vira, a simplification for the Latin word for truth, is still alive.  But he can not go back to her because to face her would be to face the truth that these people that have comforted his fading existence, which slips away sliding from Coach to Woody and Diane to Rebecca, are no more than the phantoms they truly are.  One can not unwatch Cheers.

• If you are speeding and you see a police car, you can fool the radar by throwing your car into reverse.  The cops don’t want you to know.

• Cats can’t smell peanut-butter. If you can find a real life application for this fact, the government will give you four thousand dollars.

• George Washington was terrified of roller-coasters.  They hadn’t been invented yet in his lifetime, but his precognitive visions of Six Flags gave him the willies.  When asked to create our nation’s flag, Betsy Ross coincidentally submitted a package of six prototypes. Washington’s reaction to this was the unannounced delivery of a brutal palm strike to her celiac plexus followed his busting through the unopened door of her Philadelphia home. In her memoirs she ends her description of this insane encounter by stating that that was the day she knew he would be the man who would free them.

• Owls are not real. Have you ever seen one? Liar.

• You don’t really need to patent anything. You just have to be the first to tell the mayor you invented it. He’ll back you up… or she.

• Cats love fire.

• In 1973, the postal system nearly collapsed when Labor Union negotiations reached an impasse. A secret compromise was made. Then President Richard Nixon convinced the Post Office to disband it’s avian delivery service and retire all of it’s Postal Falcons without benefits.   In exchange for this self betrayal they were permitted to wear short pants on hot days.  Benjamin Franklin would have wept.

(http://kimwar NULL.blogspot NULL.com/)

Is Kimberly a foody?  Yes, but in the same way a wino is a connoisseur.  Obviously, the wino prefers a noble vintage, but he’ll drink Thunderbird if need be and have a good time doing it.

Here’s a good example of some assaults to Kimberly’s pallet (http://heymartel NULL.blogspot NULL.com/2012/03/gross-food-photography-rides-again NULL.html).  She lives in a land where corner bodegas and mini-franchise markets offer “meal deals”.  Wanna know a secret? If it rhymes, it’s probably not super classy.   All of the meals she reviews and photographs defiantly fall into the category of “too good to be true”.   Have you ever had the two dollar breakfast buffet in Vegas?  Well, I’ve had it in Carson City, it has diminishing returns.  Now imagine having it at a gas station.  This is the kind of stuff Kim managed to not only dig up, but consume and document.

Check Kim out at KimWar! (http://heymartel NULL.blogspot NULL.com/2012/03/gross-food-photography-rides-again NULL.html)

We (Randall Drew (http://randalldrew NULL.com/), Jesse Durona (http://therealdurona NULL.com/), Radical Warren, & Mattyoung) sit down to talk about the awesome time we had at the Vermont Small Press & Comics Fair in Winooski.  The gang talks about the people, the places, and good times.  Half of us are more than half in the bag by the end of the night!  Sea shanties are sung and

More links to come:

Winooski Welcome Center (http://www NULL.winooskiwelcomecenter NULL.com/)

Greg Giordano (a.k.a. Flameape) (http://flameape NULL.org/)

What is a horseshoe?  (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Horseshoe)

Matt Aucoin (http://www NULL.mischiefcomics NULL.com)

Also, for reference, this is a joke that was going around the blogosphere/tumblrsphere recently:

(http://recordings NULL.talkshoe NULL.com/TC-65758/TS-612962 NULL.mp3)

The gang sits down for beers with Dan Barlow. We talk about just a few of the huge amount of comic pies he has his thumbs in. That’s not a very good euphemism. I guess since he only has two thumbs. He and ASF will be at a comic convention in Winooski VT on March the 24th. Bring this podcast with you and he’ll sign it.

More links to come:

Trees and Hills (http://treesandhills NULL.org/)

(http://recordings NULL.talkshoe NULL.com/TC-65758/TS-607692 NULL.mp3) 

Who wants to hear some more lies? Since I’m sitting alone watching cartoons and there is no one to answer me I’ll just assume, that if you bothered to read this intro, you’re in it to win it. (by “win”, I mean “read”)

-Radical Warren

• If you meet George Lucas in person and show him a Droid smartphone he will sign it and give you two dollars.

• As a matter of principle, if asked, muggers are obliged to engage you engage you in fair combat for the return of your possessions. If you win you can also request any money he has on him, assuming he didn’t declare “no mug-backs”.

• Badgers, though vicious, can not attack nor defend themselves while maintaining an erection. After this was discovered, the badger population was so devastated that it King Charles Stuart felt it necessary to decree that any killing of a male badger would be punishable by death. This is believed to be the fist known account of the protection of a species in order to stave off extinction. The decision was widely unpopular, as men’s hats made of English badger had become widely popular among french nobility. While it was acknowledged posthumously as the morally correct thing to do, France invaded England clamming that the affront was an attack tantamount to hostile embargo. King Charley was revered by his people, and remembered as King Charles the Martyr, for being willing to sacrifice there lives to protect a creature not capable of protecting itself. He was executed in the year of our lord 1649.

• In the early days of US maritime culture, subordinates on a ship were encouraged and rewarded to question the authority of there superiors in order to cement the magnanimity and infallibility of leadership and stave off mutiny. The naval tradition has persisted in the form “honorable ascension”, a means of promotion within the ranks of the navy acquired by physically attacking a superior officer. Regardless of the station of the officer being assaulted, the attacker is promoted a single full rank towards, but not including, the rank of his victim. For example, if you wish to be promoted, you must violently dominate someone at least two stations above you in order to ascend to the rank below theirs. If a subordinate tries to get the drop on another mariner who is only one rank the ship-man’s better, as is often the case, the first combatant will not be promoted as the highest rank he can possibly acquire through pugilism is the one he already holds. As of the mid 20th century however, crewman have been permitted to “bank” one such attack in order to use later to circumvent any unrelated demotion. Assaults are non-transferable and, for clerical reasons, cannot be taken advantage of more than once per calender year. To become an admiral, you must fight both the President and Vice-President of the United States at the same time.

• Just like in Highlander,When Ringo Starr passes away, Paul McCartney will wield the full power of all four Beatles combined. Also, Alec Baldwin will graduate from “Mr.” to “Mega” Conductor.

• Using a bread maker is like hiring a prostitute. It means that all you care about getting the job done on it’s most base level and you’ve given up on doing it the right and decent way. Also, they’ll give you the clap.

• “(x) takes their coffee way too seriously, which is weird because it’s not even that great. Give me (y) coffee any day.”

x = a city you have an opinion about.
y = doesn’t matter. I stopped listening to you because I don’t care.

• Scientists have proven that starting every day off with a quick bottle of wine can improve your mental calm. Mostly because you won’t be able to go to work.

• On this day Martin Luther nailed a proclamation to the door of his local church. Not his call for reformation, an ad for his improv group. We know from accounts that it was not well received. It was widely considered too religious to be funny and super racist, even for the time. The name of his troop has been lost to history, probably because it was some horrible German pun.

• On this day in 1901 Thomas Edison tragically perished in a zeppelin duel with Nikola Tesla. Thankfully Edison had previously employed the services of a look alike to pose as him to fool the assassins sent by Alexander Graham Bell. He was a homeless veteran, found on the streets of New Orleans. One General Brigadoon P. Electric. No explanation was ever found for his matching birthmark or the locket.

• If vampires exist in society’s shadows, they would understandably take the opportunity to overthrow us during the confusion of a zombie uproar situation. Zs and Vs share a common food source, and the Draculas would need to establish dominance over there chattel to ensure survival. Just saying, if corpses start walking, keep your head on a swivel. They may not be the only undead out there.

P.S. Zombie Vampires who are Zombies who only feed on Vampires are our only hope.

P.P.S. Frankensteins.

Let’s get this clear, Kimberly hates the term “Californ-yiayia”. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s her guilt about not living up to her middle-name sake’s trials and tribulations. For instance: Helen Fisty came up in the depression and wore 5^th hand shoes that crippled her for life, Kim signed off on student loans that would add up for more than Helen made in her entire life. Helen and her cousins once heckled Bela Lugosi, live on stage, for his ridiculous Vamperic antics until the point were he interrupted his own show to tell them to shut the fuck up, Kimberly is an improv performer and tries to recreate both sides of that on a night to night basis. Also, Helen bussed down to Atlantic City for the easy scratch, and Kim is all about the free drinks at the nickle slots.

Now that you’ve read all that, it had nothing to do with Kim’s article. Take that!

Check Kim out at KimWar! (http://kimwar NULL.blogspot NULL.com/2012/01/are-you-there-giagia NULL.html)