Categories
funny Geek

The “Hulk vs. Venom” team-up comic book was definitely a product of the ’90s

A scene from an old comic book came into one of my social media feeds, and now I’m feeling nostalgic for comicdom’s most over-the-top decade.

Cover of “Incredible Hulk vs. Venom,” issue 1. An incredibly 1990s-looking cover depicting Hulk and Venom fighting each other while tangled in a web.
Tap to view at full size.

Just look at how incredibly “nineties” the cover of The Incredible Hulk vs. Venom #1 from April 1994 is! Illustrator Jim Craig did a very good impression of Todd McFarlane, who’d left Marvel a couple of years prior to found the even-more-1990s publisher, Image Comics.

The only way it could be more a product of its decade is if it featured someone with a comically large sword (or a comically large number of regular swords) and pouches, pouches, pouches.

The comic starts with the classic team-up plotline of “first we fight because of some misunderstanding, but then we team up to take on a big bad villain.”

This being a comic from that era, writer Peter David managed to fit in an STD joke into the battle:

Excerpt from “Incredible Hulk vs. Venom,” issue 1. Hulk claps his hands together, creating a noise loud enough to take advantage of Venom’s weakness to sound. Hulk says “Which means all it should take to put an end to this gratuitous nonsense is a serious case of the clap.”
Tap to view at full size.

In case you’re wondering why the Hulk is so quippy, it’s because Bruce Banner managed to merge his personality with Hulk’s, resulting in his becoming a big green scientist with a bad attitude. As for Venom, he’d already made the transition from villain to anti-hero.

Venom and Hulk are both in San Francisco to lend a hand after an earthquake. A local TV station gets a letter from someone going by the name of “Dr. Bad Vibes” — he claims responsibility for the earthquake, and unless his ransom demands are met, he’ll make an even bigger one!

Hulk and Venom barge into the TV station during a live  on-air reading of Dr. Bad Vibes’ ransom note and trash-talk him ’80s/’90s wrestler style. This scene also provides us with a view of Hulk’s totally ’90s “rad” haircut:

Page 28 from “Incredible Hulk vs. Venom,” issue 1. Features a scene where Venom and Hulk barge into a live TV news report and trash-talk “Dr. Bad Vibes.” They end their taunting with “We’re going to beat (clap) you up!”
Tap to view at full size.

In case you’re too young to remember, Hulk and Venom’s simultaneous “beat (clap) you up!” line comes from the “Hans and Franz” skits from Saturday Night Live at the time:

In the end, Hulk and Venom find Dr. Bad Vibes, who actually can’t control earthquakes. He’s a delusional guy with a cardboard box labeled “Earthquake Machine.” He sent his threatening letter prior to the quake and by comic-book-coincidence, the earthquake followed, with “hilarity” soon ensuing:

Dr. Bad Vibes, a meek, broken man, holding a cardboard box labeled “Earthquake Machine.”

What a decade!

Categories
funny Geek

The title sequence for “Star Wars: Andor,” 1975 style!

“Andor” title card, done in a cheesy 1970s font reminiscent of “Space: 1999”.

What if Star Wars: Andor was broadcast in 1975 instead of 2022?

Auralnauts — the people who’ve been remixing Star Wars scenes to great effect for years — have answered this question by creating their own title sequence for Andor, and from the downscaled video, cheesy title graphics, 1970s synthpop, and Very Serious Narrator providing a summary of the show, it’s 1970s-a-riffic!

Andor’s face against a 1970s-style background of neon/laser trails.

“Starring Diego Luna” title card, with a suitably downscaled image of Andor shooting a laser pistol.

Title card: “Based on THX 1138 by George Lucas”

Here’s the video. Enjoy!

Categories
Money

The Three Laws of Money

Poster: The Three Laws of Money. 1. MORE money is better than LESS money. 2. Money NOW is better than money LATER. 3. REAL money is better than FAKE money.
Tap to view the Laws at full size.

I remember hearing The Three Laws of Money from OpenCola’s cofounder John Henson when I worked there — 2000 through 2002 — during those high-flying days at the end of the dot-com bubble. He said he heard it from someone else, but I can’t remember whom.

In light of everything that’s happened with cryptocurrency this year, I thought I’d post this and remind everyone of rule three.

Once again, the Three Laws of Money are:

  1. MORE money is better than LESS money. Obvious, but sometimes we need to be reminded of the obvious. More money means you can buy more goods and services, have more influence, and invest more to increase your money supply.
  2. Money NOW is better than money LATER. This is a greatly simplified summary of the time value of money: a dollar (or pick your favorite currency) today is worth more than the same dollar in the future.
  3. REAL money is better than FAKE money. And real vs. fake isn’t an either-or thing, but two ends of a spectrum. The more people that accept a kind of money, the more “real” it is. As the de facto world reserve currency, the U.S. dollar is very real. The Iranian Rial, the cheapest currency in the world at the time of writing, is less “real”. I will leave determining the “reality” of cryptocurrencies as an exercise for the reader.
Categories
funny Internet Finds The Current Situation The More You Know...

Your math might be a little off, dude…

Tweet by @murvfx: “Elon Musk spent $44 Billion on Twitter. The World's population is 8 billion. He could have given each person $5 billion and still have money leftover. I feel like a cheque for $5 billion would be life changing for most people. Yet he wasted it all on Twitter.”
Tap to view the original tweet. I screen-captured this because (1.) It’s so embarrassing — if it were me, I’d delete it, and (2.) there are better-than-even odds that Twitter might experience outages soon.

Twitter user @muravfx posted this:

Your “math sense” should be tingling at this nonsense. Here is some literal “back of the napkin” math I did to see how much everyone on Earth would get you evenly split $44 billion among them:

5.5. As is $5.50 — five dollars and fifty cents. Not 5 billion.

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me

Tell your kids this was Parliament/Funkadelic

Tell your kids this was Parliament/Funkadelic:

…and tell your kids this was Bootsy Collins:

(Actually, it’s me and the band from the Tampa Bay Ukulele Getaway, which happened a couple of weekends ago.)

Categories
America It Happened to Me

It took TWO YEARS, but my renewed NEXUS card finally arrived!

For people who often travel between the U.S. and Canada, the NEXUS card is so incredibly helpful. It says “this person is a citizen of Canada or the U.S. and has been pre-screened for faster processing.” Not only does it mean quicker U.S./Canada border crossings, but it also includes TSA PreCheck for quicker security clearance for flights within the U.S..

My NEXUS card expired during the pandemic in 2020, when a number of government services on both sides of the border either slowed to a crawl or stopped completely. I applied for a renewal back then, and…waited.

The NEXUS program has been delayed for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol wanted American NEXUS officers to be armed while working in Canada, because America’s the land of gun care and health control.

One flight to Canada, two flights to Salt Lake City, one flight to London, and two years later, my NEXUS card arrived a good two years after I applied for renewal, and wow, am I glad to have NEXUS privileges again.

Categories
It Happened to Me Tampa Bay

Scenes from this morning’s bike ride

Seminole Heights’ seal, which depicts a two-headed alligatorI do a 10-kilometre (6.2 miles) bike ride as often as I can — typically 4 or 5 days a week:

At least once a week, I stop by the Seminole Heights branch of Spaddy’s, which is a coffee truck in an open-air courtyard:

The place is decorated with all manner of tchotchkes. Here’s the newest one:

I took a perch on the picnic table at the back of the courtyard, where I took this wide-angle shot…

…and while enjoying my Heights Cold Brew (cold brew with a dash of condensed milk), I worked on a proposal for my next article for the Auth0 developer blog. While writing, I noticed this rather cute grafitto that someone left on the table: