1. Samosas

2. Aishwarya Rai

3. Bollywood Superman:

Read for yourself here and here. Earlier this week, we got attacked by a meteorite, and then it was covered up with some lame story about National Guard airplanes. I suppose that’s because they don’t want people driving up to Tipton trying to get superpowers or unleash a zombie apocalypse or something.

Here’s a joke that only Birdsong and Troy will get: when the quakes happen at work, it really only feels like George Weliever is walking by.

So…the pope is in the U.S. That’s cool. But all I can think about is the fact that I don’t believe Jesus ever intended us to worship his holy name in the Washington Nationals baseball stadium.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned.

I also wish we had a pope who didn’t look like the evil leader of the Galactic Empire.

(Please note: Yes, it’s satirical.)

Entertainment Weekly, a magazine that continues to endear me for how much comic book-related material they cover, has a terrific feature on their website right now, “Comic Books: The One That Hooked Me!”
In it, over a dozen of the top industry talents show what was THE book that brought them where they are today. I like that in many instances the writers and artists acknowledge that they may have picked up something here and there in their youth that was practically throwaway, but here they detail the one that really stuck.

For me?
That’s easy: The New Teen Titans #16

As a kid growing up in the 70s, I was all over ANYTHING to do with superheroes. I’d follow the adventures of the Hulk, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, you name it, on TV. Mom would buy me the occasional comic book of said characters, and artistically I could never have enough superhero coloring books.

But it wasn’t until the family moved cross-country at the end of 1980, and I started figuring out the monthly schedule of comic books at my new neighborhood’s 7-11. The book that locked me in like a tractor beam was this gem by Marv Wolfman & George Perez. The story blew me away as a kid (no happy ending??), but even more so was Perez’s rendering of Robin, someone I only knew as a guy voiced by Casey Kasem (Super Friends), and portayed in the flesh by Burt Ward (Batman). I don’t think think Dick Grayson ever looked so bad-ass in the yellow cape and red & green tights, but it turned out to be a sign of good things to come for the character. Nightwing, anyone? Plus the other characters who were brand new to me (Starfire, Cyborg, Changeling) were instantly easy to connect with.

So what locked YOU in?

Special thanks to reader Heather Shirk for pointing this one out. Hot damn.

Georgia is trying to pass a law banning the sale of pot-flavored candy to minors, because everyone knows that lollipops are a gateway drug that leads to a life of broken hopes and dashed dreams. And wife beatings, theft, and baby abuse. The candy “promotes drug use,” the proponents of the state senate’s measure say, so regulation is in order. Translation: “It’s kinda, maybe, sort of fun. Kill it.”

I think it’s a bit on the ridiculous side, myself, but I suppose I don’t have impressionable young children to worry about. I don’t have to live in abject fear and terror of every negative worldly influence upon their simple, fragile minds. I don’t struggle with the feeling that I am an absolute failure as a parent because my kids aren’t strong enough to overcome the draw of pot-flavored suckers or the life of heroin-flavored chewing gum and cocaine chocolate bars that is sure to follow.

The one thing I do know: the senator who is pushing the bill most heavily is named Doug Stoner. And that is hysterically funny.

I caught this story live Monday morning during WGN’s warmup to the Chicago Cubs’ opening day.

Seriously, when you make Dutchie Caray angry, that’s like making your own grandmother upset. Way to go, AT&T!

To those not in the Chicago area, this was the best I could find, but here’s what Dutchie’s so peeved about…

If you listen carefully, there’s a little bonus music for fans of In Through the Out Door.

Animal rights activists are endangering us all. First they tried to stop the necessary slaughter of elephants in South Africa, and now they are throwing a fit about the culling of bison in Yellowstone. We cannot have these giant mammals roaming unchecked, breeding at will–they will destroy us. How can these activists in good conscience promote the growth of an enemy animal terrorist army? Evidence of the animal conspiracy is all around us.

Though this bit of hilariousness is by no means a new Internet item, I thought I would share it with other readers, like myself, who discover these phenomenon a little later than everyone else does.

If you can think of it, this man has probably destroyed it. Check out the other videos here.

Betty Boop, Bimbo, and Cab Calloway star in “Minnie the Moocher”

What were the animators smoking when they came up with this, and where can I get some?

Last week a good friend of mine, who occasionally moonlights as a writer, smugly told me to “get it together, sister” and learn to better edit the things I write. She basically implied, more or less, that if I were ever going to become a successful writer I would need to be free of spelling, typo, and grammatical errors. She then taunted me even more by stating that since I had my BA in English that I should, therefore, be a perfect self-editor and that any good writer – one who’s taken seriously and who makes an actual living as a writer - would be able to catch all their mistakes. So in essence she told me my frequently typo-ridden writing, regardless of form or content, was lacking and, basically, just so much crap under her superior shoe (or at least that’s how I took it in a moment of extreme sensitivity).

My first initial insane-o reaction was to pull all her hair out, tell her to F**K Off, and then leap out of the moving car and find comfort in a pint of ice cream. Instead I maturely (and boringly) told her that just because I majored in English it didn’t mean I knew everything there was to know about the degree and that editing my own mistakes has always been my biggest weakness (we have since smoothed things over and I can now appreciate her effort, if not her execution, in trying to help me be a better writer). Go figure! I accept it (despite the fact that I struggle each and every time I write something to make sure it is mistake free, but re-reading and re-re-reading and re-re-re-reading rarely leaves my writing error-free) and I have learned to embrace my shortcoming – even though I curse myself after something has been posted or printed with a glaring typo in it.

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