Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Fashion No-Show!

That's me, Blockade Boy, since Jeremy's computer crashed on Monday morning. The big fancy computer company's service center blames Jeremy for not creating his recovery disks soon enough. So they're charging him for shipping out new ones, which probably won't get here until Friday. Probably because they're coming from India. No, seriously. Maybe. This is my last chance until then to work on an internet-capable computer (don't ask) so I wanted to just say "Sorry about the delay." I had a nice little post planned with red carpet coverage of a Dazzler concert, featuring the return of a superheroine outfit nobody wanted to see again. It'll have to wait, now. And I'd like to give an especially sincere "sorry" to Jon the Intergalactic Gladiator because that e-mail you sent me got destroyed in the crash with everything else and I had only skimmed it before that happened. So I'll need you to send it to me again after the computer is fixed. (Dang it.) Sorry. I'll let everyone here know as soon as we get things back up and running. So, no pictures today. As a kind-of consolation prize, I now turn things over to Jeremy the Football Newbie and his coverage of Monday night's Steelers/Jaguars game. Rock it, J-Man!

Thanks, Blockade Boy. I had decided at the start of the season to root for the Chiefs and the Steelers so last night was freaking horrible. The Jaguars stomped the Steelers 9-0, making it the lowest-scoring game in the history of Monday Night Football. If I understood the announcers right, it was also the first time the previous season's Super Bowl champs were shut out since the Raiders in 1981 (it happened to them three times that year! What, did the entire team contract Epstein-Barr Syndrome over the summer?) Still, it was cool to see Ben Roethlisberger in action (first time, for me) -- impressive even though he was playing with a 104-degree fever! Some random notes:
  • According to the announcers, the game drew a "sellout crowd!" Yeah, I liked that crowd a lot better before they went all commercial. The phonies.
  • Thank you, NFL, for showing me why comic book artist are still designing superheroine costumes with out-of-fashion belly shirts. It's because all the cheerleaders are wearing them.
  • Playing left tackle for the Steelers was #77, Marvel Smith. Sidelined: Valiant Juarez, Fantagraphics Davidovich and Kitchen Sink Kaufman, as well as twins Red Circle and Impact Al-Bashir. (Now there's an obscure reference!)
  • In the first quarter, ESPN showed a detailed graphic of Roethlisberger's inflamed intestine. Three months from now it will be swiped by Greg Horn for a She-Hulk cover.
  • The announcers said Jaguars' #18 Matt Jones has "a five-inch advantage" over Steelers' #24 Ike Taylor. I know sports fans love their stats but isn't that kinda personal?
  • Nobody commented on the fact that one of the refs was wearing the Living Eraser's bracelets on his hands. Nor did the fact that the silvery robot doomsday device from that old Star Trek episode was flying ominously over the field.
  • On a sign held aloft by a Jaguars fan: "Every Steelers Possession Nullified." My visceral reaction: "How dare you, good sir! *slaps fan with white linen glove* We shall meet on the field of honor. Pistols at dawn!" On the other hand, maybe the fan was a Catholic priest and he was just being helpful.
  • Other signs spotted by the camera at the end of the game: "Every Steelers Player's Nightmare" and "wE Spare Pittsburgh No pain." Damn, my dueling schedule is going to be packed. Just as well. It's not like I'm going to be doing any posting for the next few days. *grumbles*

Wish me luck with the computer, pals, and I'll post again as soon as it's fixed!

Monday, September 18, 2006

Hey, Nerds! Football!

Hi, guys! It's me, Jeremy, the football newbie. I didn't think it would make any sense for me to barge into Lance's post so I'm doing the football commentary separately. Yesterday I watched the Denver-Kansas City game. It was another close one. Tied 6-6 at the end of the fourth quarter, and the Broncos finally won with a field goal in overtime. I was pissed. (Hey, I am turning into a football fan! If a team I like wins next time, maybe I'll vandalize something. Or overturn a police car.) Some thoughts I scribbled down as I was watching:

  • According to the commentators, the Broncos had "too many turnovers last week." Yeah, me too. Too many delicious, piping-hot apple turnovers with cream cheese icing. My lower intestine was like a Play-Doh Fun Factory.
  • In the first quarter, KC managed to fumble the ball less than ten yards from the goal line and Denver grabbed it away from then. It was the most frustrating moment of the game for me. Until the second quarter, that is, when Denver took the ball away from KC when it was one foot from the goal line. Gah! And then, of course, overtime. *weakly shakes fist in the general direction of Denver*
  • KC's fill-in QB Damon Huard spent 2121 days between starts. That's enough time for Kevin Smith to write two whole comic book scripts!
  • I just noticed, when football players pull their helmets up and back and let them just kind of squat atop their heads like big inflated berets... that'd be a good look for Maximus the Mad.
  • Second quarter, actual quotes from the announcers: "Smith is down!" "But the ball... squirts out at the end." Sounds like somebody forgot to wear a cup!
  • In the third quarter, KC's Huard passed to Kennison, and Denver's Ferguson managed to push him out of bounds after essentially waltzing with him for about ten yards. It was freaky. They just twirled around and around for what felt like forever. I kept waiting for Bruno Tonioli to say something.

Steele, Crazy After All These Years

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What's shakin', poindexters? Lancelot Steele again, with more excerpts from my stupendous new how-to book, "Be Steele, My Heart." That's the one where I transform you, the lowly nerd, into an irresistable love beast. All you have to do is follow my easy-to-understand rules! Here's a web-only exclusive rule: stop wasting your time reading comic book blogs! ...Hey, come back here! Hey! Where are you-- goddammit!!! I didn't mean right now! No, don't cry. Don't -- what? No, I'm not mad at you. I'm not! Jesus Christ, you are a freaking mess. Thank God I'm here to help, huh? Shh. Shhhh. It'll be okay. Daddy loves you.

We alright? Great. Now, on to rules that actually appear in my book. Like the ones illustrated by the above panel...

Rule #54: Be muscular, somehow. I don't care how you achieve this. Illegal steroids, expensive and dangerous plastic surgery, or even that tired old workhorse, exercise. Just be muscular. And once you do that...

Rule #55: Make sure other people know about it! Tell everyone you know. And when you've done that, tell complete strangers! If they try to change the subject, subtly steer the conversation back around to your body. Also, remove all draperies and Venetian blinds from your home and office and keep the lights on at all times. Teach yourself to sleep standing up, facing the largest window on the front of your house. Start a chain letter where people have to mail a photo of you to ten of their friends or else their pet will die. If your local homeowners' association will allow it, paint a realistic mural of yourself (naked if possible) on your roof, so your beautiful muscular form is visible to airplanes and med-evac helicopters and hang-gliders and people with jetpacks. Have sexy, nearly-nude photos of yourself printed on all of your checks. Or if you prefer to bank online, find a way to send your creditors a video file of yourself dancing around topless and/or bottomless to some hot, sensual song. I recommend "Crocodile Rock."

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Read Cassandra's dialogue again. Did you all catch that? I wasn't even flirting with that four-eyed popsicle stick but she automatically visualized herself doing a lap dance for me! As if I'd even let her! Which brings me to...

Rule #62: Everyone will want to sleep with you. Don't let them. Now, I know this sounds like crazy talk, but bear with me. Here's the deal. Aside from all the time management issues full-time lovemaking would cause, you have to maintain some standards. Hmm. How can I explain this to somebody who has never had sex before? Huh. Okay, it's like this: let's say you live in a mansion. A tall, broad-shouldered mansion with huge "guns" and washboard abs. Sure, you could let a Puerto Rican come inside -- but if a neighbor saw, it would devalue your property. Oh, I'm sorry. That's a terrible analogy, and offensive to boot. Because the phrase "come inside" makes me sound gay! Again, my apologies. But you get the idea.

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Rule #77: Always be lifting something. And make sure it's heavy! So-called "experts" will say that you shouldn't work every single muscle group every day, and that "rest periods" are necessary to avoid stress and strain. This is 100% pure b.s. promulgated by some whacked-out women's libber chick who wants to keep all us men down. She's the same person who secretly instigated such feminizing man-fads as beard dyes, eyebrow shaping, and bathing. Personally, I do none of those things. But I digress. The above panels show the devastating results from when I took a day off from exercising. Look at it! Blech! Disgusting! I'm practically a skeleton. I could barely hold that plant! And Cassandra had to help me up the ladder. We were just like Jimmy Stewart and Barbara Bel Geddes in "Vertigo!" ("I look up, I look down. I look up, I look down...")

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Rule #80: Technology is for turkeys! If you're reading this on a computer screen then I've just proved my point. So get in touch with your caveman side! The foxes may say they want a sensitive, hairless nuturer with the heart of a poet, but way deep down inside their woman-parts they crave a horny neanderthal. With a paycheck. So never pass up an opportunity to demonstrate any skill that would serve you well in the wild. Like yelling! See that panel up there? Here's what really went down: I have powerful lungs to go along with my powerful everything else, so I pretended I couldn't work the phones. For added sexuality I loosened my tie and touseled my perfect coif (just a tad). Also, between panels I ate that entire pencil! Sideways! Made the Dazzler wetter than the flume ride at Six Flags. Not that I slept with her, mind you. (See Rule #62.)

For the rest of my rules, you'll have to buy my book! That's "Be Steele, My Heart" by me, Lancelot Steele, available in all fine coffee shops, stripper clubs, church lobbies, and Amazon.com, just as soon as I figure out how to work the "collate" function on the copy machine.