THINGS COMICKAL AND RANDOM

All I need is someone with the right fingerprints...

I ... really don't think having one of these talk would be helpful, exactly.

Man, this takes me back to the days of auld...

Hey, someone found a purpose for New Coke. (Granted, a somewhat anachronistic purpose.)

Not a web comic, but may I just say: EEEEUUUUWWWW! Some things are just wrong!

And in conclusion: It's actually not the fact that he managed to get the Machine on national television -- although that's pretty impressive. It's not that, despite the fact that this is clearly planned, Jay Leno still manages to be thoroughly nonplussed by the whole thing.

No, honestly, it's the thing with the shoes. The fact that he calculated so very carefully just the right way to completely piss off the MLB hierarchy while still remaining barely within the letter of the rules. You have to appreciate someone like that.

Though the beard thing is a little weird. Seriously, I wonder if that actually works?

The eternal problem of the superhero.

Aw, how ... um, sweet?

Either this is some seriously acid commentary about the state of the nation and of "the gay community" ... or something was lost on the way to the punchline. Or possibly both. (NB: Reading the lead-in strip -- which has some genuinely and unambiguously acid commentary -- might help.)

Not that the whole LeBron thing isn't worth mocking mercilessly ... but this is perhaps just the teensiest bit ... late.

That just can't end well.

Well ... yes. Yes, he was.

That last panel is nicely wistful, isn't it? (Click on the comic to enlarge.)

Not a comic, just commentary: I'll bet they cast him as the Governor. It would be a limited time, but also very high impact. (Not that I will be watching, oh no no no no NO. I don't need to see that particular nightmare made even more lifelike -- for certain values of "life", of course.)

And in conclusion: Best Football Predictions Show EVER.

EDIT:
elsewhere/grim amusements: they go to rio! de janeiro! (a substantially reworked and expanded version of the entry below.)


BBC SPORT | Olympics | Rio to stage 2016 Olympic Games:

Brazil will become the first South American country to host the Olympics, after the city of Rio de Janeiro was chosen to stage the 2016 Games.

Rio won a majority of the 95 votes at the meeting in Copenhagen, eliminating Madrid in the final round. Tokyo and Chicago had been knocked out earlier.

Earlier, Brazil's president told IOC members "it was time time to light the Olympic flame in a tropical country".

Chicago's early exit was a surprise, with bookmakers making them favourites....

I would like to thank the Chicago City Council for being so extraordinarily reluctant to guarantee the costs of the games that even the IOC had to notice, despite later delivering and reaffirming said guarantee. (Also, no cookie for the city council for that craven cowardice and caving to Hizonner da mayor.) I would like to thank the USOC for being such outstanding dickwads that they announced an Olympic cable network, while having disputes with the IOC not only about that very selfsame network, but a major ongoing dispute about the amount of revenues allocated to the IOC by the USOC. I would like to thank President Obama for dinging his public celebrity and credibility by going to pitch Chicago at the selection committee meeting, as maybe now, he'll get on with the business of governing -- though, given how badly he's been doing in some aspects of that, maybe we'd be better off with a celebrity president, at that. But, honestly and genuinely, I would like to thank the IOC for deciding to go where no Games has gone before.

EDIT: And the actual vote totals have been released and they are ... surprising. From the Venerable Beeb:

First round: Madrid 28 votes; Rio de Janeiro 26; Tokyo 22; Chicago 18 (Chicago eliminated).
Second round: Rio 46; Madrid 29; Tokyo 20 (Tokyo eliminated)
Final round: Rio 66; Madrid 32 (Rio to host 2016 Games)

Rio came within two votes of winning the games in the second round; they picked up the entirety of Chicago's votes, minus one that drifted to Madrid, as well as two of Tokyo's first round votes.

One might guess that I was not in favor of an Olympic Games in Chicago. Being as I live less than a mile from one major venue, and work more or less directly at one of the minor ones ... no, I certainly was not in favor. That's apart from lunacy like proposing demolishing a brand new gymnasium and swimming pool needed by a high school in favor of a velodrome they can't possibly use. That's apart from the lunacy of putting a "temporary" 80,000 seat stadium and possibly an additional aquatics center in Washington Park, currently on the National Register of Historic Places. Because we know how well things work here when they alter structures on the National Register. (Seriously, Soldier Field looks like an alien flying saucer is having ongoing unlawful and indecent congress with a Roman coliseum -- and the coliseum is not at all happy about things, no it is not.) And frankly, this city does not need the opportunities for corruption that awarding Games contracts would create; we do quite nicely with that without additional impetus, thank you kindly!

Apart from that, one suspects that a summer games in Rio is going to be one of the most unspeakably fun things ever to see. Hopefully, they can avoid the pitfalls of Athens, which wound up with several essentially unfinished venues for its games; they've got nearly as much to build from scratch as Athens did.

And now, a musical interlude!



Or, if you prefer something more authentically Brasil (I think):



Or maybe this:

OK, I'm glad that da Bearsss are in the Super Bowl and all, but oh dear GOD I had forgotten what the lead-in was going to be like. There's damn little that's going to keep the Bears from being the top story in local news every day for the next two weeks.

You know, after 21 years, you forget one or two things, like what it's like to watch a city going slowly insane. Strangely, it wasn't like this for the White Sox and the World Series.

But getting through the next two weeks is going to be rough, let me tell you.

ESPN.com - NFL - Recap:

Two swings of the foot by Robbie Gould were all the Chicago Bears needed to offset any shortcomings in Rex Grossman's arm.

And the Chicago Bears got their first playoff win since 1995, moving them one step from the Super Bowl...

Huh.

I tell you true: going in, I thought the final score of this game would be something like Seahawks 28, Bears 13. That the Bears came out of this game with a win is truly remarkable.

That said: the Bears didn't win this game so much as Seattle gave it away. Repeatedly. Literally, with a late back-breaking interception and a late mishandled fourth-down play. And Grossman, for a wonder, really wasn't the problem this time; his one interception wasn't his fault (although his fumble really was -- only an idiot tries to make that pass at that point). The problem was a defense that couldn't shut down the middle -- its alleged strength -- and had problems maintaining containment in the passing game.

It's going to be interesting to see whether or not the Bears can deal with the Saints' offense well enough to win. "Interesting" in the Chinese curse sense of the term, that is. That said, this seems to be the playoff season for weak defenses (and the Bears' defense is wounded enough to be considered weak, with a slide from first in the league to fifth in only its last four games) to rise up and play above themselves. I mean, whoda thunk that Indianapolis, with the 31st ranked rushing defense, would manage to absolutely shut down two powerful rushing games, and could play well enough to win even without strong games from Manning? One would think they were inspired.

Truly, if you go for teams playing above themselves, you're expecting a Chicago-Indianapolis super bowl. If you go for, you know, sanity, you're expecting a New Orleans-New England final.

I completely, totally forgot about this game.

Apparently, so did the Bears.

For two and a half quarters, this game bore all the hallmarks of one team underestimating another that was pretty much loaded for bear (no pun intended). The Bears absolutely, utterly and completely stole this game. What it looked like, more than anything, was one of last season's early games, where the defense only asked the offense not to lose games -- heaven knows, the offense did its level best to lose. SIX turnovers? And even after the defense clawed their way back, it still took a missed easy field goal to win this game.

Of course, what everyone keeps forgetting, because he's been around three years, is that Grossman has only started 10 games. He's going to have young-quarterback clunker games more often than you would like. And the defense is going to go walkabout mentally every now and again -- although, to be fair, they really didn't go walkabout that much. Arizona just had one short field after another to go up.

Well, they probably needed a wakeup call, headed into the softest part of their schedule. I'd imagine this might be it.

How ... unexpected.  Seriously, I thought that this would be a close, low-scoring loss by the Bears, not a blowout by them, and never mind shutting Favre out for the first time in his career. Weirdly impressive performance by the offense.

That said, I kind of agree with Favre: "Yeah, give them credit, but maybe we can do something better. Maybe we just ain't very good. I don't know." Because, seriously, the Bears' defense is just that good, but the offense isn't good enough for this result.

That said, it's interesting to see that the Bears had enough flexibility finally to overcome what was clearly the Packers' strategy: shut down the rushing game as best they could (and with the Bears having 109 total yards rushing, and 3.0 yards per carry, the Pack did a damn good job of that) and force the Bears to beat them through the air ... which they actually did.

Bears blank Pack in opener | Chicago Tribune:

In what might turn out to be the first game of Brett Favre's swan song season, Rex Grossman stole the show early and the Bears defense handed the gunslinger the first shutout of his career.

Grossman came out firing after a shaky preseason, completing his first six passes, the highlight being a 49-yard touchdown strike to Bernard Berrian on the sixth play from scrimmage. Grossman finished with a career-high 262 yards, a passer rating of 98.6 and ran his career record at Lambeau Field to 3-0.

The Bears defense also came in with question marks hanging over it, and responded with three sacks and two interceptions, didn't allow the Packers into the red zone and yielded only one third-down conversion.