Chicago Comics, Found Magazine & St. Gertrude

I was in Chicago last weekend with one of the mandatory stops being Chicago Comics. I picked up Found Magazine #5 and am pretty pleased with it. I thought #3 was a dropoff in quality and just didn't bother with #4 for that reason. A quick scan through #5 told me they were back on form and it's $5 well spent.

Yeah, I know it's been out awhile but the one place that I know sells it in KC isn't in a part of town that I visit very often.

Last time I was there, I acquired a small plastic St. Gertrude, patron saint of cats. Since I've got two cats, seemed appropriate. Even more so knowing one of my grandmothers was named Gertrude.

Don Mossi

We made fun of this guy's ears when we were kids-this is when about all there was to do was play with baseball cards. Turns out we weren't alone. This from Bill James:

"Don Mossi was the complete five-tool ugly player. He could run ugly, hit ugly, throw ugly, field ugly and ugly for power. He was ugly to all fields. He could ugly behind the runner as well as anybody, and you talk about pressure ... man, you never saw a player who was uglier in the clutch."

This came up when I saw a pic today of Pedro Alvarez, third baseman for Vanderbilt. Can't help but to think of Star Trek and aliens when I see those ears.

Storm

Two nights ago, we had one of those nice electrical storm. Virtually nothing here in beautiful Parkville but just south had it pretty exciting. One lightning strike took out a gasoline storage tank in KCK. Here you see the burning tank and another strike farther south.

Edwin Van der Sar

Another pic-this of the Manchester United keeper saving Anelka's penalty attempt and winning the Champions League Final for United.

Chaitan

Two great pics of a Chilean volcano that erupted last week.

Hillary Clinton

Some people don't know when to leave but here's a hint: when you're being ridiculed by people who aren't your enemy. In the last few days, I compared her refusing to leave the race to the "Bring Out Your Dead" bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Since then? At least three totally unrelated shots (all of which reach many more people than I do):

1. A show I never watch ... Saturday Night Live.



2. Dana Milbank, Washington Post, coming through with the Dead Parrot sketch reference:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/13/AR2008051302862.html

3. Travis Fox, going for a Sixth Sense comparison:

http://comicstripjoint.blogspot.com/2008/05/super-happy-fun-time-7.html

It's when they're making fun of you-laughing at you, not with you-that it's time to leave.

Comic Stripjoint

Other than Joe Posnanski, the Kansas City Star has very little going for it these days. The only other exception of note is Travis Fox, who's Foxymoron comic runs on Thursdays. He also gets a full page in the Star's attempt to compete with The Pitch, cleverly called Ink. (Not that The Pitch couldn't use some competition but this isn't off to a good start.)

Fox's stuff is very good and the site he shares with some other cartoonists is one of the very few to which I've subscribed. Some time ago, he did a fabulous summary of Spiderman 3. I wasn't going to see that flick anyway but this one comic was so devastating, so brutal that Sam Raimi should have been here buying up every copy of the paper that day. I saved it, along with the one he did on Lost (much nicer). I thought about scanning 'em in but it took so long to get the Star to quit calling me about not subscribing that I don't want to get their lawyers on me.

And no, I don't know the guy. http://comicstripjoint.blogspot.com/

Mike Thompson Ch. 4 Kansas City

Kansas City's Ch. 4 weatherman Mike Thompson, who's very unhappy with those in favor of global warming:

"It is easier to silence scientific dissent by utilizing the politics of personal destruction, than to actually debate them on the merits of their arguments. That should tell you something about the global warming debate...there is none right now...it's either you believe, or you are to be discredited. Isn't that how Hitler took control of Germany?"

http://community.myfoxkc.com/blogs/wxteam4/2008/04/14/Not_Over_Yet

Yep, that's exactly it. Hitler and the Nazis took over Germany because they silenced opposing scientists by taking away their grant money. It's been said (before and much better) that the last refuge of any scoundrel is equating their opponents to Hitler. Why do they do this? Because Hitler is the personfication of the "Big Lie". If my opponent is Hitler, then he must be telling a Big Lie!

Look, I've not spent any time thinking about Global Warming. I won't pay cash money so Al Gore can lecture me. I've no idea about the science behind the debate. I do know that equating this debate to Nazi doctrine on Aryans and Jews and anyone who's skin isn't pearly white is amazingly stupid.

Save the Hitler comparisons for when it really applies.

Elwess Alley

Yeah, it's been awhile. Busy. I was going to write up the history of our neighborhood nuisance but when it got so long, I decided to give it a home of its own.

http://elwessalley.blogspot.com/

Back now to that peculiar joy one gets when Brian Bannister and Zach Grienke get off to good starts.

Steve Delaportas

I said I wouldn't write much about law here but there's going to be those times ... this is one.

There's a guy named Steve Delaportas who seems to have previously worked in the food business. Somehow, he wound up as the manager for Brian Welch, the former Korn member who underwent a very public religious conversion a few years ago. They started a media company called Fortitude planning movies, music, etc.

One of my clients, Skinlab, got caught up in this when Crash Music tried to assign their recording contract to Fortitude. After doing some research, I found that Delaportas, the CEO of Fortitude, was a recently convicted felon, as part of a bankruptcy fraud. He's also on the losing end of a pair of $2,000,000 judgments. One's from a Colorado federal court, the other's from a Wisconsin federal court. I've got copies of the orders in the latter-when I get time to convert 'em to .pdfs and upload, I'll make 'em available. It's pretty clear the federal judge thought Delaportas was a crook.

Delaportas has also been sued a whole mess of times in Arizona civil court for various nonpayments. Go here to search 'em out:

http://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/

Just click on "find a case" on the left side, then "Civil Cases" and then "Case History". I found this history courtesy of some random stranger that modified the attached Wikipedia page. Note that it's the page for the word "Shyster". Look under "Other Uses". I'm guessing it's someone else who was cheated by Delaportas and I'm grateful for whoever it is putting that up there-it led me to find the other evidence and kept Skinlab from making a massive mistake.

Anyway, word out of Arizona is that Welch has figured out what I and Skinlab already knew-that Delaportas isn't someone to be trusted. If you run into this guy, keep your hands on your wallet.

Joey Gathright

One of my curses/better traits is my loong support of the Kansas City Royals. A couple of years ago, the then-new GM Dayton Moore made his first trade, for an outfielder named Joey Gathright. Very fast but as they say, you can't steal first. Gathright showed some improvement last season after some minor league time and two pretty smart guys (George Brett and Paul Splittorff) judge Gathright as the star of spring training. Last night, Gathright hit a ball down the first base line. Check out the video. Amazing stuff.

Mongolian Stomper

As a kid, the cool face wrestler here in Kansas City was the Mongolian Stomper. Key word here is "Mongolian". And here I find out that he's from Canada and his real name is Archie. Dang, I was gullible. Must have been the bald head as I was pretty sure at the time all Mongolians were bald. My memory is that he wrestled tagteam with Cowboy Bob Ellis against the late Bob Geigel and late Bob Brown.

Here's what I really find funny. Mr. Stomper is alive in well, living in Knoxville. That's not the funny part. Mr. Stomper also has ... a MySpace page:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=127507005

Or someone's doing it for him-the bio material isn't written in the first person.

The Onion Channels Macabre

One of my clients is Chicago's own Minstrels of Mayhem, Macabre. I had a liking for sick humor before working with them and that hasn't changed. I sent this link to their manager, Rodney Pawlak, last week and he replied, "THATS SICK." Probably all you need to know but if'n you're feeling brave, click below:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/anonymous_philanthropist_donates

Sid Gary

I've uploaded an audio file that's the impetus for starting this project. I don't see an easy way to upload audio, only video, so I've managed to upload it using my profile. If you click on the "view my complete profile" link on the left, you'll see the audio file.

This is an old vaudeville comedian named Sid Gary telling a story about his time as George Burns' partner. It's from an hour-long tribute to Burns that ran in 1964 on Monitor Radio. Monitor was NBC's weekend radio service at the time. Gene Rayburn is the host. If you want the entire hour, you can download it for free at http://www.monitorbeacon.net

Some of you might find it a tad sexist or a tad making fun of animal cruelty. That's fine. It's still one of the funniest stories I've ever heard.

Or ... if this works, click here: http://www.box.net/shared/3arg5hp44w