MERRY CHRISTMAS!

This always makes me think of Christmas;



Everyone have a great one.

SANTA IS REAL!!!

I hear people who have lost that Christmas Spirit. I think it's the children who help to keep that alive and what right does anyone have to take that away from them? Even Jesus knew the power of pure belief when he said to bring the children to him. It's an unwavering, total immersion in the belief of something. Want to know why this is important?
Read this;
PHARR, Texas – A Texas man has been arrested after a 9-year-old girl wrote to Santa Claus asking that a relative stop touching her and her sister.

The Monitor of McAllen reports that a man from the town of Pharr was arrested Friday and is in the Hidalgo County jail.

A criminal complaint says the girl turned the letter in at Cesar Chavez Elementary School. Authorities interviewed the girl after a school counselor reported the letter.

The complaint says investigators believe the molestation occurred over a period of four years.

The man is charged with continuous sexual abuse of a young child and could face as many as 99 years in prison if convicted.

If those little children hadn't believed in Santa unconditionally and wrote to him then there is no telling how long this abuse would have continued. I know that our founder here at Penguin Comics would have read the story and cried for the children and then laughed because they were able to stop abuse by just believing in something.
This holiday season when you are sick of the commercialism and all the hype, just look into the face of a child who truly believes and realize that that is all that matters.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
Oh, and the picture? This is what I envisioned Santa looking like after he got the letter from the children and went to pay this sick fuck a visit. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

ANYONE REMEMBER THIS GUY???

I'm referring to the fat bastard in the picture above, film maker Kevin Smith. Remember the good old days when he would write in his blog everyday and tell us the minutiae of his life? Remember when his blog was funny and not just an attempt to push product? Hell, we didn't mind him pushing said product because he kept in touch with us like a cousin that we liked. It was like having another member of the family albeit a really funny member of the family.
When did it all go south? I blame Zack and Miri. He went to make that flick and kept to himself. After the intensive blogging for Clerks 2, this quiet was unnerving at best. Sure, eventually he threw us a bone once in a while, but his blog has been silent like Bob since November 5th and that was to pimp some comic that he and Walt Flanagan did with some dude named Batman. Pretty damned lame.
I remember him pimping Red State and complaining that there was no money in place. I'm pretty sure that that didn't stop him from making Clerks, his best film so, why should this be any different. If he wants to do something different he needs to put his neck out there and not rely on the safety net of The Weinsteins. Or here's a better idea; sow everyone how wrong they were and finance the thing yourself. You did it with your best movie why not try that again?
Another solution is go to your mindless, rabid fan base. If you asked them all to contribute via PayPal you would have more than enough cash to make the film you wanted.
Of course since Mr. Smith is in some bizarre cone of silence of late there is no way of knowing what is going on.
The other thing that worries me is his weight. The behind the scenes stuff I saw for Zack And Miri showed me a huge Kevin Smith. I wish no ill on the man so I hope that he's not dealing with weight related issues. I have on a number of occasions offered to help him lose the weight and keep it off for good. No reply from the Smith camp on that one. Instead he goes for that liquid diet that is just incorrect. The offer still stands Kevin. Just get ahold of me via this site. I'm sure that since I've bashed you one of your mindless legions will discover this post and get it back to you in the most negative way possible.
I just had to get this out in the open because I always liked Kevin Smith. The Kevin Smith that made movies that I could relate to and laugh about and have fun with. The communicative Kevin Smith who would tell us just about anything.
Now we get bupkis.
That's all I got.
I gotta go.

'N' -From the new collection of stories by Stephen King: JUST AFTER SUNSET

When King releases a new book, I can honestly admit that I'm right there ready to slap down my money. There's just something about The Master of the Macabre that draws me in each and every time, regardless of the outcome of the previous tome. Yes, there have been some missteps ('Dreamcatcher' was disappointing, 'Duma Key' had one of those endings that was almost too far fetched even for the subject at hand...), but by and large, his books never cease to snatch me, tie me up, and take me along for some of the wildest rides I have ever been on, literary-speaking. Now, I'm even a bigger sucker for King's short story collections. There has not been one of these I have been overly upset with, and over all I have loved each and every one. So, when the new book, 'Just After Sunset' was released last month, I got my ticket punched immediately. As I begun to tackle each individual chunk on its own accord and merit, it became obvious that King has taken the 'female perspective' firmly by the reigns and is leading it, stealthily, where he wants it to go. Even with 'N', the story I'll be focusing on today, is told ultimately through the eyes of a woman. And this, friends, is a damn good thing.

'N' is having some downright debilitating OCD issues; touching things in even multiples, placing items in little even-numbered circles, and making sure that anything and everything he comes in contact with or actions he takes throughout the day are done as far from the use of odd numbers as humanly possible. Dr. John Bonsaint is a psychiatrist who first encounters 'N' after his life has become such a train wreck that any normal functions has since ceased to be. Dr. Bonsaint, after some gentle persuading, finally listens to 'N' as he tells his tale of just how his life has fallen prey to obsessive-compulsive madness. ~ Right about now, a little bit of H.P. Lovecraft and his C'Thulu mythos squats firmly in the passenger seat and prods King's story telling into unhuman and inky-black directions typically unseen by the author. In the back seat, well it's the author-referred Arthur Machen and his Great God, Pan story that slips its directions into the course as well. ~ 'N' has discovered something quite odd in an otherwise normal set of stones looking vaguely like a mini Stonehenge, but why is there a spot for an eighth stone when he sees only seven? Well, a quick look through a camera view finder in hopes of capturing the blasphemous monument on film provides the answer: there are eight, but not to the naked human eye. And thus begins the need to count, list, touch, and create everything into even numbers: protection. 'N' becomes the unwitting gatekeeper for a creature so horrid, so wretched, that to see only its eye and pulsating head is to drive one to utter madness. And 'N' has come to the end of his frayed remnants of sanity.

'N' is by far, and without a doubt, one of King's most powerful and human (yet, at once, inhuman) stories. It hits home so potently for those of us (myself included) with even a minor taste of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and begs the question: is it our actions, however insignificant,that are really maintaining a sort of balance to the Universe, or are we just completely insane? A must read, as is the rest of the book. King is back, and he is in fine, fine form.

S-

PRISON BREAK SEASON FOUR EPISODE FOURTEEN

I never miss an episode of this show. I make time for that hour to watch it. The kids know it and Martha actually likes this season so she watches it with me. Anyway, I'm not here to recap the episode, go watch the thing yourself. What I am here to do is comment on how the company has made a fatal mistake as of this episode.
If you haven't watched it, stop reading now. And why haven't you? Remember when television was on when it was on? Sure, you could record the thing, but it was always easier to just make the time. Before these Tivos and other recording devices. Now people just fill up the hard drives on these things and never watch anything. Instead it just gets deleted because you couldn't make the time.
Excuse me while I clamber off this soapbox, will you?
Anyway, Theodore T-Bag Bagwell has found himself in a precarious position. Working with Homeland Security agent Don Self to sell Scylla to the highest bidder, he has been put in charge of Gretchen's sister and daughter. T-Bag is a well documented pedophile, but this is the old T-Bag. This T-Bag has tasted the good life of being a corporate executive and it makes him happy. Now he is being treated like less than a human being by a number of people and he is starting to fray around the edges. It all comes to a head when a bible salesman comes to their door and T-Bag decides that he's a company man and conks the guy over the head, ties him to a chair and beats him for a confession.
He doesn't get one and it becomes certain that this is just an innocent man caught up in a bad situation. In the end T-Bag makes an honorable decision and lets the sister and Gretchen's daughter go. He even gives them money to speed them on their way. Then he unties the bible salesman.
And then it hits the fan.
Turns out that his first instinct was the correct one and the bible salesman knocks him out and ties him up to take him to the company.
What the company doesn't realize that in that simple act of betrayal they have unleashed the beast known as T-Bag. I can't see this character ever redeeming himself after this magnitude of betrayal at the hands of the company. He will become the monster that everyone already thinks that he is and if he isn't watched carefully during his capture, will turn into a death dealing abomination the likes this series has ever seen.
Of course this is all speculation and with only two more episodes left in a series that has already been threatened with cancellation, I have no idea how they can resolve this entire issue, but it will be interesting to see how they try.
Robert Knepper deserves an Emmy for last night's performance and if they can't see that then Hollywood isn't only blind; it's retarded.

GOODBYE FORRY

Just one of those things you hate to do. Forrest J. Ackerman fed my horror film frenzy as a child and even when I got older. Now he's gone and if that wasn't bad enough, Bettie Page is in a coma after a heart attack.
Oh and it won't stop snowing.
Goodbye Forry. I will miss you.