Comic Books: Not Just Kids' Stuff

I’m not easily offended, but when I came across one particular blurb titled “Comics and Combovers” on The New York Times’ City Room Blog, I couldn’t help but shake my shiny head in disgust. As many comic book fans know, New York Comic Con opens on February 6 and is the premier geek gathering outside of San Diego where the main event, Comic-Con International, opens in July. Of course, both events—and all comic book conventions—have grown beyond a sole focus on comic books to include programming to drum up awareness of new films, books, television series and video games.

However, whenever a comic book convention starts grabbing headlines, the geek culture—and I use the term affectionately—is approached with a disheartening ethnographic detachment, as it is in the City Room Blog piece. Posted by Alan Feuer, it reads, “The culture is strewn with examples of grown men in their 40s — some in their 50s — unabashedly proclaiming love for comic books, an obsession that hints at lingering boyhood hungers and ranks up there with coin collecting as something to be given up by age 13. Maybe the security of affluence has permitted men to remain adolescents at heart well after middle age has taken their bodies.” It then directs readers to New York Comic Con's website for ticket information so they can observe these sad, strange people in person.

What’s being said here perhaps isn’t all that bad. Comic books, since their inception, have always been viewed as a childish diversion. However, not only is the NY Times blogger ignoring the fact that the majority of comic book readers are adults these days—and not all of us are the basement-dwelling introverts that stereotypes would suggest—and that the subject matter of most books is geared toward a mature audience and has been since the mid-1980s or so. I would hardly call Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen or Neil Gaiman’s Sandman “adolescent” in nature. But what do I know? I have “lingering boyhood hungers.”

The New York Times Building is located just seconds away from Midtown Comics’ Times Square location. Perhaps staffers should plan a visit and get educated before marginalizing a legitimate art form.

What the Hell is Gamer Grub?

Earlier today, when I was clicking through the Penny Arcade archive, I came across a comic strip lambasting something called “Gamer Grub,” which appeared to be a brand of snack food targeted exclusively at the video gaming set. Naturally, my interest was piqued. I just had to know what this stuff was, and the search was on. Four seconds later, I found myself at the Gamer Grub website. Well, to be realistic, it only took me about two seconds to actually get to the bloody site and the other two were spent pondering why I gave a fuck about something that touts itself as “the first performance snack formulated especially for gamers.”

According to the product’s website, the benefits of Gamer Grub include—but surely aren’t limited to—“great tasting flavors,” “ergonomic packaging,” “no keyboard crumbs” and “no greasy fingers.” Ergonomic packaging? Sure, I’ll give them that. The canisters that this stuff comes in look easy to wrap your hand around, leaving your other hand free for World of Warcraft or any other one-handed activity (such as high-fiving your grandmother, flipping off your dog or whatever other demanding one-handed activities you can think of). The cup-like packaging will prevent crumbs from falling onto your keyboard—unlike those asshole potato chip bags—and your fingers are left grease-free because you never have to touch the stuff. But “great tasting flavors?” Let’s review:

Action Pizza: “A great tasting, healthy pizza blend with a satisfying crunch.” (WTF is a “healthy pizza blend?”)

Racing Wasabi: “Wasabi and honey mustard? Trust us—the combination creates a crunchy, mouth-watering bite. Watch out, it’s addictive!” (Lolz! I will!)

Strategy Chocolate: “A sweet chocolate and cherry sensation, velvety in taste for deep thought. Tell us how you like it; we ate all our samples.” (I’ll take their word for it.)

Sports PB&J: “No need to get out of your seat and stop playing to make a PB&J sandwich. Just pop open a can and continue to play. Your taste buds will not know the difference.” (Yep, because the last thing anyone interested in athletics wants to do is something as demanding as GETTING OFF THE COUCH TO MAKE A SANDWICH!)

It’s a good thing that Gamer Grub doesn’t get crumbs on the keyboard, because most people choking it down when it hits retailers will be too worried about cleaning the vomit out from underneath the caps lock. Hell, I’m nauseated just reading about the stuff. Not only is the concept insulting to gamers—who have come a long way from the basement-dwelling, sedentary losers that we’re often depicted as—but the fact that Biosilo Foods seems to have randomly assigned flavors to different gaming genres is a mystery to me. What if I’m a strategy gamer and I love pizza? What if I enjoy Mario Kart Wii but can’t stand wasabi? Why must you mock me, Gamer Grub?

I needed to read up on the “science” behind Gamer Grub, and learned that this stuff includes a blend of vitamins and minerals that “supports fast reaction times for maximum gaming performance.” You know what else promotes “maximum gaming performance?” Actual meals. And sleep.

Are you hungry? Put down the controller for five minutes and make a sandwich. Have we gotten to the point where we can’t tear ourselves away from Call of Duty 4 long enough to take care of basic human needs? Wake me up when they start marketing D-Pad Diapers for those all-night Gears of War sessions.

Read all about Gamer Grub by clicking here.

No Love for The Love Guru

When I first saw the previews for Mike Myers' The Love Guru, one thing was immediately clear: the one-time heir apparent to the comedy throne has been unseated in his five-year hiatus from live-action comedy. Waynes's World was gold.The Austin Powers movies were hilarious. The first two Shrek movies were fun. Hell, I'm one of the few people who regularly quotes So I Married an Axe Murderer ("Head! Move!"). I'm among the five people who own a copy of Wayne's World 2 on DVD. Granted, it came packaged with the first one. Nevertheless, I'm a fan of the man's work...aside from The Cat and the Hat, but I won't go into that one. I'm not sure how many pro-life readers I have, so I find it inappropriate to write about cinematic abortions.

Not that The Love Guru looks much better. From the brief clips I've seen, Myers' character Guru Pitka is a warmed-over Austin Powers with a cringe-inducing (and near-offensive) Indian makeover. And he's brought Verne Troyer (Mini-Me) back with him, to ensure that we'll get a healthy dose of midget humor (haha, he's tiny!) to go along with the dick, piss and fart jokes. Mind you, a great dick joke goes a long way, but from what I saw in the trailer, the ones in The Love Guru are a bit flaccid. Yep. Went there.

My point is, if I have one, is that these once-great comedic actors, such as Myers and Adam Sandler (star of another summer '08 dud, You Don't Mess with the Zohan) need to try harder. A dick joke ("nut sack." Get it? "Nut." "Sack.") is just a dick joke, but in the hands (the joke, not the dick) of someone like Judd Apatow, it can be something fresh and new. But, much like his most beloved character Austin Powers, it seems like Myers' sense of humor was cryogenically frozen long ago. Can someone please thaw it out?

Oh, and if you are thinking of seeing this dreck, please peruse The Love Guru's Rotten Tomatoes page. As of this writing, it's at 10 percent and quite rotten. This says a lot. Moviegoers, consider yourselves warned.

Information Overload

I’m a journalist in the information age, so you might call me a bit of a workaholic. You see, with the growing popularity of this Internet thing, it’s nearly impossible for me to glance at an article, watch a movie, listen to an album, read a book or fire up a video game without thinking of a way to respond to it, throw in some flashy language and slap my name on it for an audience that may or may not give a damn about what I have to say. It’s the curse of the digital soapbox—a need to assimilate information and self-brand it with a byline.

As a culture, we’re addicted to information, no matter how trivial, lewd or sensationalist it may be. Lindsay Lohan (gasp). Amy Winehouse (gasp). Miley Cyrus (gasp). In 2008, the American dollar may be flimsy, but bullshit remains the strongest currency of the realm. And we love it, don’t we? We flip on our computers each morning to watch the world turn and see celebrity lives unfold—and collapse—and it gets us through the day. But blogs (yes, I’m including this one in my criticism) don’t let the phenomenon end there. We’re compelled to spread the word in a global game of telephone whichever way we can. If you’re a writer, you might bang out a few snark-laden lines on a blog, where you're not subject to an editor, a fact checker or a legal team. We're free to write things like “panda bears are an excellent source of calcium.” It then becomes information that can be seen by anyone from anywhere in the world. And the addiction continues. Information, response. Information, response. The peddler becomes the addict. The addict, the peddler.

But, alas, I’m ranting. After I finished dinner, took a shower and reached into the fridge for a Sam Adams earlier this evening, the first place my mind wandered to was “what did I experience today that I want to write about?” I drew a blank. And this frustrated me. A quiet night at home was transformed into writer’s block—a phenomenon that infuriated me to no end. But why should it? I came to the conclusion that I’m addicted to regurgitating information, trying to put my own spin on what countless people across the globe already know as if it mattered.

But perhaps it does matter. If one person gets a chuckle out of something I’ve written or if they come across a story that they wouldn’t have seen otherwise, then I suppose I’ve done my job. That’s why I became a writer, after all. Maybe my addiction is to that very exchange of ideas, and not the narcissistic need to run my mouth.

There’s the information. What’s your response?