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Headline of the day: Man killed by atomic wedgie

killed stepdad with atomic wedgie

Click the photo to read the source article.

In case you’ve lived a sheltered life, giving somebody a wedgie is the act of yanking up someone’s underwear by the waistband so that it gets wedged up in the victim’s butt-crack, as depicted below:

wedgie

An atomic wedgie is a wedgie executed with enough upward force to pull the waistband over the victim’s head. The photo below presents a textbook atomic wedgie:

atomic wedgie

Atomic wedgies are hard to pull off (or is the proper term “pull up”?). Most of the time, the underwear rips before you can lift it high enough to get it over the victim’s head. Or so I’ve heard.

Brad Davis, the man pictured at the top of this article, is accused of killing his stepfather, Denver Lee St. Clair. St. Clair’s cause of death was determined to be from blunt force trauma to the head and asphyxiation, and Davis is said to have told investigators that he gave his stepdad an atomic wedgie. The local sheriff, Mike Booth, says that he’d never heard of an atomic wedgie before.

Who’d ever think that atomic wedgies could be lethal? Be sure to read the full account of the case, as it’s full of the sort of funny-in-a-horrifying-way details that only a small town in a state whose name ends with “a” can produce.

Thanks to Justin Kozuch for the find!

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Blast from the past: My “cease and desist” letter from the Wendy’s burger chain

wendys cease and desist

Click the nastygram to see it at full size.

Way back in 2005, I found a segment of a video titled Grill Skills, which Wendy’s used to train its minions on the finer points of burger-making back in 1989. The segment I found featured a really cheesy rap on how to make a Wendy’s burger. It was a product of its time, and silly as it was, in my opinion, it didn’t do any harm to the Wendy’s image.

I posted it on this blog, and months later, got the nastygram pictured above (and yes, Wendy’s HQ’s address is One Dave Thomas Boulevard, a street named after its founder). I recently scanned it, and thought I’d share it with you. Ah, lawyers — why haven’t we followed Shakespeare’s advice yet?

If you’re curious about the video, someone’s posted the full video on YouTube. Catch it before they get the takedown notice! As for the cheesy rap, it starts at the 4:00 mark. Enjoy!

For more about this video, read this archived copy of an article from The Wave magazine.

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Blast from the past: “Bulte in the blogs: A dust-up over campaigns and copyright”

I’ve been in the process of moving, during which time I’ve been combing through my “memory boxes” — banker’s boxes of stuff that I’ve saved as mementoes. One of these boxes contains newspapers and magazines in which I’ve appeared over the years. I’ve been scanning the articles and thought I’d share some with you.

The first one is from the January 23, 2006 issue of Macleans magazine, which contained an article titled Bulte in the blogs: A dust-up over campaigns and copyright. I’ll let the article do the talking:

macleans bulte article

Click the article to read it at full size.

Back then, I made some waves by attending my local all-candidates meeting, where I recorded Bulte’s response to a citizen’s request that she take “The Copyright Pledge”, which is a pledge to ensure that no member of Parliament who takes money from Big Content gets to set or advise on new copyright legislation. She responded with her anti-user rant about “pro-user zealots”, forgetting that those pesky “users” are you and me:

In the end, I played a just a small part in Bulte’s loss in that election. The real credit goes to Michael Geist, that oh-so-rarest of creatures: a lawyer fighting on the side of the angels. I salute him with a filet mignon on a flaming sword.

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A clever office decorating idea

office wall paintings

Found via Hezi Hershkovitz. Click the photo to see the source.

It’s a simple, cheap idea for livening up an otherwise dull wall at the office, and it also points out the locations of the fire equipment.

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Bootie’s best mashups of 2013

a plus d of bootie

Adrian and Mysterious D — also known as A plus D — are the creators of Bootie, the worldwide series of club events featuring the best, most danceable bootleg mashups. I’ve had the pleasure of catching their Seattle gig at Chop Suey back in February 2011, when they let me hop on stage and play accordion on top of a mashup based on The Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams.

bootie best mashups of 2013

Every new year, they assemble their “mixtape” of the best mashups of the previous year, and this year is no exception. They’ve put together an exceptionally catchy set of mashups from 2013, which you can listen to below:

Here’s the list of tracks in the “mixtape”:
best of bootie 2013 cover art

  1. Bootie Intro 2013 – ENTYME
  2. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ft. Wanz vs. Dr. Dre & Rasmus Hedegaard – The Next Episode In The Thrift Shop – ABADER000
  3. M83 vs. Rihanna vs. TLC vs. Seal vs. Carly Rae Jepsen vs. Shirley Bassey vs. Incubus vs. The Eagles – Crazy Diamonds In The Midnight Scrubs – DJ SCHMOLLI vs. LOBSTERDUST
  4. Daft Punk ft. Pharell Williams vs. Justin Timberlake vs. System Of A Down – Bring Your Own Lucky Suit & Tie – THE HOOD INTERNET vs. LOBSTERDUST
  5. Vanilla Ice vs. Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell Williams & T.I. – Blurred Ice – ED HOME
  6. Nine Inch Nails vs. Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me A Hole – POMDETER
  7. Stevie Nicks vs. Avicii – Stand Me Up – DJ TRIPP
  8. Icona Pop ft. Charli XCX vs. Zedd ft. Foxes – I Love Clarity – DJ SCHMOLLI
  9. Pitbull ft. TJR vs. Lipps Inc. vs. Ram Jam vs. Daft Punk – Funky Black Party Starter – DJ TRIPP
  10. Backstreet Boys vs. will.i.am ft. Justin Bieber – #iwantthatPOWER – ENTYME
  11. Red Hot Chili Peppers vs. DJs From Mars – Otherside (Bootleg Club Mix) – DJs FROM MARS
  12. Blur vs. Sia vs. will.i.am vs. Britney Spears vs. Icona Pop vs. Major Lazer vs. Ellie Goulding – Bring The Action – LOBSTERDUST
  13. Taylor Swift vs. Hardwell – Trapped In Trouble – MASHD ‘N KUTCHER
  14. Miley Cyrus vs. Calvin Harris – Wrecking So Close – LOBSTERDUST
  15. The Outfield vs. Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding – Your Love I Need – MADMIXMUSTANG
  16. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ft. Ray Dalton vs. Bob Marley vs. Elton John vs. Ludacris vs. The Doors vs. Styx vs. Pink – Can’t Hold Roboto – MASHUP-GERMANY vs. LOBSTERDUST vs. MASHMIKE
  17. Imagine Dragons vs. Of Monsters and Men – Time For Our Little Talks – KILL_MR_DJ
  18. Sex Pistols vs. The Velvettes – He Was Really Sayin’ Anarchy – CHOCOMANG
  19. Lorde vs. Beck vs. Lil Jon – Royal Losers – DJ TRIPP
  20. Katy Perry vs. Nirvana vs. B.O.B ft. Bruno Mars – Nothing On Roar Bloom – SHAHAR VARSHAL
  21. Massive Attack vs. Muse – Teardrop Madness – DJ Y ALIAS JY
  22. Modern English vs. Rolling Stones vs. John Lennon vs. Screaming Trees – You Can’t Always Melt A Dollar Bill – DJ MIKEA

You can download the entire “mixtape” as a single MP3 file or as individual MP3 files from the Best of Bootie 2013 page.

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My comics from the 1988 “Frosh Primer”

1988 frosh primer 01

The inside cover of the 1988 Frosh Primer, which was mailed to incoming engineering students at Queen’s University during the summer of 1988.
Click the scan to see it at full size.

“Hey, Joey,” said Stéphane Germain, “how would you like to write the Frosh Primer?

It was the spring of 1988, and I was an engineering student at Crazy Go Nuts University. The school year was winding down, but since we would return in the fall as second-year students, we’d be in charge of initiating the incoming first-year students, colloquially referred to as “the frosh”. Orientation Week, better known as “Frosh Week”, was a more civilized version of the opening scenes of Animal House, and a good chunk of is was run by the second-year students (and it’s wonderful, despite what professional wet blanket Russell Smith has to say about it).

Stéphane was Chief FREC, where FREC was short for Frosh Rules Enforcement Committee, the collection of second-year engineering students tasked with initiating the first-years. An incoming student’s first taste of Frosh Week was the Frosh Primer, which served as both a guide to the university and the orientation process, and advance mocking (“You’re so dumb, frosh!”).

“I’d love to, Steph,” I replied. While the previous year’s was amusing, I thought I could do a much better job. “What kind of editorial leeway do I have?”

“Lots. Just use your own common sense,” he said, with a look that suggested that he was beginning to see an oncoming disaster.

“Hey,” I said, “I just want to go for amusing, and maybe tone down some of the stuff so that the incoming girls don’t regret going into engineering.” We had a record number of women in our class, and it seemed as though there’d be even more in the following year. “And I want to drop the use of the word ‘homo’ as an insult.”

“Sure,” he said, looking relieved. He may have commissioned the Primer to the closest thing our year had to a “Bluto” from Animal House, or “Van Wilder” from the film of the same name, but even at that age, I knew the Golden Rule of Funny: if it bends, it’s comedy, if it breaks, it isn’t.

“What’s my page limit?” I asked.

“Don’t go above 50,” he said. The previous Frosh Primer was 28 pages, but he knew I loved to write.

“I want to put in cartoons, and bring in a writing staff,” I stated. Back then, I was known not as an accordion player, but as a cartoonist.

“Sure. Do you need beer for the staff?”

I didn’t expect the offer. “Four cases,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, without even batting an eye. He handed me enough money for 96 bottles of beer.

“Just make it good, use your better judgement, and remember: the frosh must be mocked,” he said.

“Frosh are dumb,” I said, reprising the mantra.

I spent the spring and early part of the summer working on the Frosh Primer, making use of a couple of then-new tools and technologies. The first was a desktop publishing application made by Xerox called Ventura Publisher. It didn’t run on Windows, but a GUI called GEM (most PCs were still running command-line DOS back then). It looked like this:

xerox ventura publisher

The other was a relatively new piece of equipment: a laser printer. It was the size of a small photocopier, could print a letter-size page every two minutes, and sounded like a jet taking off every time it cranked out a page.

Time and resources on the laser printer were precious, so they asked me if I could keep it down to 36 pages of laser-printed material. Since I was making a 48-page booklet, the remaining 12 pages would have to be done using something else. Since I was a cartoonist and had full editorial control, I simply decided to fill those remaining 12 will comics and illustrations.

The table of contents was the last thing to get done, and by then, I’d used up my allotment of laser prints. So, I just cartooned it instead:

1988 frosh primer 02

The table of contents for the 1988 Frosh Primer.
Click the scan to see it at full size.

I decided to start the primer with comics rather than text, as I thought it’d be more fun, and allow for some really silly storytelling and frosh-mockery. I wrote, pencilled, inked and lettered the comic, titled I Used to be a God, whose purpose was to point out to the frosh that while they may have been hot stuff in their final year of high school, they were mere frosh now. And they were dumb. The comic was accented with sidebars written and illustrated by my good buddy George Scriban.

As for the triangle-shaped eyes on the characters, that was an affectation of mine. It came from trying to borrow Phil Foglio’s style from his comics in Dragon magazine in the early 1980s, and eventually morphed into their own thing.

While doing some cleaning up for my move out of my High Park apartment to the wilds of Etobicoke (“Rob Ford Country!”), I found my copy of the Frosh Primer and decided to scan and share some of it. Some of the references firmly rooted in 1988, but I think the comic still holds up. Of course, I’d say that. Anyhow, read and enjoy!

1988 frosh primer 03

Click the scan to see it at full size.

1988 frosh primer 04

Click the scan to see it at full size.

1988 frosh primer 05

Click the scan to see it at full size.

1988 frosh primer 06

Click the scan to see it at full size.

1988 frosh primer 07

Click the scan to see it at full size.

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At long last, I’m posting tasteful nude photos of myself on the internet

joey devilla bath 1

Rub a dub dub!
Click the photo to see it at full size.

I found these photo over at Mom’s place and decided that they were too cute not to post. Also, there’s no harm in owning the search results for the term “Joey deVilla nude photos” — it may come in handy someday.

These photos were taken in the Philippines and are dated January 1969, when I was just over a year old. Enjoy!

joey devilla bath 2

Ladies, please! There’s plenty of me to go around.
Click the photo to see it at full size.

joey devilla bath 3

Just chillin’. Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.
Click the photo to see it at full size.