Gabe and Tycho and the Boy Who Cried Dickwolf

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Who is that a picture of? It's Hollywood producer Dick Wolf! Get it? Yeah... good times.

I feel that I sort of need to do a "take two" on my previous article.

You see, I keep this blog as a sort of writing exercise, since eventually there will be a proper site here: http://www.9to5.cc/ (right now there's hypnotoad, but we're working on it). Until that site goes live I just try to keep the habit of occasionally writing. I don't really review what I write here, and there's next to no editing (as some of you have pointed out).

With that in mind, my thoughts yesterday may not have been as clear or concise as they could have been, I was also not fully informed about the insanity that was transpiring regarding the Dickwolf Debacle (I was personally leaning towards "Dickwolfgate" but Dickwolf Debacle does have a better ring to it). So in an effort to maintain brevity, I present the following in point form as a footnote to yesterday's article:

• A joke about rape does not mean you're a) a chauvinist or b) a rape apologist/advocate, see Sarah Silverman's take on the Aristocrats.
• The anonymous masses of the internet turning the term "Dickwolf" (either side of the debate is culpable here) into a synonym for rape doesn't make the creators of the term guilty of anything. How many times have idiots gone out and killed people listening to terrible heavy metal? See Drowning Pools 'Let The Bodies Hit the Floor' stupidly associated with shooting spree. The artist is not responsible for what people do with his art.
• The only reason this is an issue at all is that Penny Arcade's audience has expanded to the point that their strip is so widely read that it is now read by people who can't take a joke. As I mentioned yesterday, this is not the first time they've used something offensive for a laugh. Gabe points out they've used: violence, rape, aids, pedophilia, bestiality, drugs, cancer, homosexuality, and religion for laughs in the past, and the outrage was a fraction of this situation. A big audience means walking on eggshells, which is sort of sad.
• Gabe showed enormous hypocrisy when he said he would remove the shirt from the store to make people more comfortable at PAX here, but then tweeted that he would be wearing the shirt himself here. Wouldn't one of the organizers and main attractions of PAX wearing the shirt make people just as, if not more, uncomfortable? It seems like he wants to take a
  stand, showing us all that he supports his own comedy, but just, you know, not a really big stand.
• I went to PAX last year, and believe me, there were t-shirts, conversations, panels and tabletalk that was far FAR more offensive than all this. Geeks tend to speak their minds, even if it's offensive. If that sort of thing bothers you, a giant convention aimed at this subgroup might not be your thing in the first place. On this I agree with Gabe.
• Finally, I have a tremendous amount of respect for PA and their accomplishments, even if they have been slipping in terms of content in the past year or two. I may be wrong, but I really thought that they were better than caving under pressure regarding something that, at its core, is really so trivial. I'm scared of growing up.

To close off, I would like to leave you with today's Cyanide and Happiness, which of course, is a comic where rape is the joke about half the time. Good thing they don't have PA's readership.
-K

See? Dickwolves ARE Funny. Proof.

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See? This comic is not very funny:

Being without your family is just not as funny as being raped by dickwolves.

Thanks to Scott.

Penny Arcade is Losing its Cool or How Dickwolves Ruined The Party: A Cautionary Tale About Having Children and Losing Your Edge

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My final thoughts on the matter here.
Edit: Since some of you are coming in from links and are so lazy as to not check other posts, I thought you might get a kick out of the infamous Penny Arcade comic in question minus the dickwolf rape. It's right here. On this blog. Seriously people.

Despite my best intentions, I feel as though this post will be unable to surpass my previous post in terms of sheer awesomeness, so much so, that I will likely embed the Insanity Wolf image into this post as well.

I'm not 100% sure where to begin with this thing, so I figure I will start it off with a personal experience. A few months ago, I began to vocally complain that Penny Arcade was starting to suck, like, a lot. At one point I clicked through the most recent (at the time) 6 months worth of comics and found that there was really nothing there that was laugh out loud "Claw Shrimp" funny, or "Oooh, low blow to the gaming industry" thought provoking. Nope, instead I found comics that were rarely about gaming, rarely socially challenging, and worse, rarely funny.

On a side note, holy shit, Claw Shrimp is fucking 9 years old. Now I feel old.

A few months ago, a friend of mine sent us a link to some sappy PA news item about Tycho connecting with his mom or something about video games, and how it was beautiful and heart warming and whatever. He also referred to Penny Arcade as "Pennies". We argued a little bit, because I don't go to PA to have my heart warmed. A few weeks later, there was another strip where Gabe yelled at his child for not going outside to play instead of playing video games. We got to the core of the problem, to us, Penny Arcade was ABOUT different things. This friend of mine is a father, and as such, as Penny Arcade lost it's edge and moved into safer, more accessible territory, stopped being about gaming, started being about parenting, and so on, this friend felt like the comic grew with him.

Now, I'm not a father, so maybe I don't get it. To me, Penny Arcade was about being funny, about being offensive, about calling people on their bullshit. One needs just to look at their public feud with Jack Thompson to see how far these guys are willing to push it, I'm sure they got their inboxes flooded with people who supported Thompson, they brushed it off and made more jokes, they didn't compromise, and came out on top. Through those bold moves and continuously entertaining content, they developed one of the most loyal fanbases on the internet.

As the fanbase grew, maybe they started making attempts to appeal to a broader audience, but somehow, it felt very much like they were diluting their content. Maybe it's because they're no longer two single slacker gamers and are now two married, millionaire fathers, or maybe they just ran out of juice, but the PA from today is a far cry from the PA of 5-6 years ago. Sure, they probably have more readers, but one of the big draws for the comic is that they seemed to be writing it FOR me and my friends. We loved their humour, we loved video games, we're opinionated and we're smart and we're offensive, just like them! 3 times a week we'd inevitably be talking about the new strip (we still do now, but more like "Man, this most recent strip sort of sucked...").

So that brings us up to last August, months of crummy Penny Arcades, and then they publish "The Sixth Slave", the now infamous comic where a lowly slave asks the hero to release him from his terrible fate of being raped by Dickwolves. Funniest Penny Arcade in months and it had? Yep, a rape joke, time to flip out.

Now, it might interest you to know that this is not the first time Gabe and Tycho have gone to the old comedy well of rape, they've done it here, here and here as well, and I'll admit, I laughed every time. They're not endorsing rape, they were making a joke, a funny. They made a funny.
From the news items, there was an immediate backlash, Tycho even said:

"Reaction to Wednesday's comic fell, conveniently for my purpose, into two camps: those who found a phrase like "raped by dickwolves" a stunning return to form, and those who felt that we were somehow advocating the actual rape of human beings. It sounds as though we've already satisfied the first camp, but an effort should certainly be made to assuage the latter."

There are two things here that I'd like to talk about. First, the admission that they had fallen from form (and dickwolf rape was returning to said form). It's like they recognized that they were losing some of their spark, and mixing it up a little to get our attention again. Second, I strongly felt as though that second group of people should just stop reading the comic, or maybe they should just start reading the archives until their offended enough to stop reading the comic. Either or. Chances are, if you didn't like joke, you won't like a lot of what you'll find in the archives. So maybe the strip isn't for you.

Move forward to December, and they released some Dickwolves merchandise, in the hilarious form of sports memorabilia (including a pennant!), as though somewhere, somehow, there was a highschool who's basketball, football and baseball teams were separately and collectively "The Dickwolves". I think to think they could be from Fort Dick, California. The Fort Dick Dickwolves. It's a place! Inmates at the Pelican Bay State Prison could be all like "I used to be somebody, I used to be a Dickwolf."

Then, the people who opposed the comic apparently got even more upset, and not two months later, on a Saturday, they pulled the merch from the store. Basically the excuse was that it made people feel uncomfortable and, using PAX as the scapegoat, they didn't want to do that. Not only is this a weak as hell excuse, they've never had a problem making people feel uncomfortable before.

Now, Gabe says he'd never take a strip down, but merch is different. Really? Let's just take a quick look at the merch you're still selling, surely there will be nothing offensive. Certainly not anything sexist, or racist. They definitely wouldn't make fun of religion, again and again.

I'm not saying they should get rid of these shirts, or even that they should bring back the Dickwolves shirts, they can do whatever they want, it's their show. What I'm saying is that by caving to a vocal minority, they've proven that they are indeed losing their edge, they've compromised their creativity and they've backed down in the face of a fight. All of this is completely opposed to what I was under the impression they believed in.

It may be time for me to come to terms with the fact that in 2011, Penny Arcade might not be for me anymore. INSANITY WOLF!

I made a thing

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Girl Talk All Day / Girl Throwing Puppies into The River - Lawsuits Waiting to Happen?

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Just for the record, do not Google "girl throwing puppies into the river", because you will find a video of it. It's not a good way to start your day. Trust me. But still, when we have teenage girls laughing and hurling puppies into rivers, do we really care if Girl Talk is pickpocketing from the music industry's deep pockets? Deep thoughts indeed.

So Pacman Buzzed this link with some rather insightful thoughts about why the industry isn't suing Greg Gillis (Girl Talk) saying that he is the ultimate Robin Hood posterboy of copyright law, and that lawyers from all around the world would gather around him, prop him up on a chair, march him into Time's Square and declare him Galactic Emperor of Musical Copyright laws. This might be part of it. However, I'm also willing to bet that if they wanted, the music industry could easily pony up for some equally powerful and talented lawyers to fight their fight.
They also have a pretty powerful precedent on their side, there's a number of cases where if someone doesn't get properly credited on a sample, there are ramifications. Even artists who stole from Creative Commons liscenced (looking at you Crystal Castles and Timbaland) artists have had to give credit where credit was due. Danger Mouse's The Grey Album (which mashes up Jay Z's Black album with The Beatles' White alubum) caused some pretty intense disputes between Danger Mouse and EMI, at a certain point EMI even held his OTHER album (Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul) hostage, refusing to release it for almost a year until the issue was resolved.

Exactly how the issue was resolved is actually pretty important when we're considering Girl Talk. Basically, the labels backed down when it was decided that there was not going to be a commercial release of the album (and sure enough, it's still available, online, for free, right here).

I'm sure Gillis took his queue from this and released "All Day" for free, on a pay what you can basis. Basically he's saying "Pay for it if you feel like giving me money." He could probably turn around in court (if it ever got to that) and say that people were paying him directly as an artist, and not paying for the actual work. As though we were all just kind hearted philanthropists. Which may be so.

So where are we? Oh yeah, he's not selling the album, so he's not making a profit directly from the copyrighted material? That sounds right.

So if I'm a big music industry fat cat, and someone comes into my office, sits down on the huge padded leather chair across from me and looks at me from across my enormous treated oak desk that overlooks Los Angeles and asks me what's to be done about Girl Talk, the conversation would go like this:

Me: Is he selling it?

Them: Nope.

Me: Let him be.

Them: Why?

At which point I would hold up the picture you see to your right and say:

Me: Do you see these people? I've seen these people for the past 30 years (in this scenario I'm 65), they only listen to demos of bands you've never heard of. But not anymore. What are the odds of these people bobbing their heads to Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA" or rapping along with Soulja Boy's "Pretty Boy Swag"? The odds SHOULD be zero. But they're not. Because of Girl Talk.

And then I would tell whoever was in my office to get naked, put on boxing gloves, and fight my pet monkey.

When I listen to Girl Talk, there's a lot of guilty pleasures that are indulged. Do I want to listen to all 4 minutes of Bananaram's "Cruel Summer"? No. Will I throw my hand up at a club and gesture approvingly to a DJ when he samples it for 10 seconds? Yes. And that's what Girl Talk taps into, he masterfully weaves a lot of ultimately cheesy samples into an enjoyable experience with solid beats (which are also stolen). He takes just the right amounts of music you ACTUALLY listen to, music you're nostalgic about, music with gangster cred that makes you feel less white, and pop music with undeniably catchy hooks that would never listen to in public and whips it into something awesomes.

Taken apart I would say that a good 70% of the music Girl Talk samples I would not listen to at all, let alone on a regular basis (I've been listening to "All Day" more or less *ahem* all day since it came out on Monday). But there I am, music snob and all, on the metro, nodding my head to Lady Gaga (mixed together with Iggy Pop and the Beastie Boys mind you).

And I think the record industry is aware of this. They spend a good portion of their marketing budgets making sure some of these artists get as much radio play as possible, but no amount of spending would ever get a lot of these tunes into my MP3 player. Girl Talk did it. And he's not even selling it. If even a handful of people legally download and pay for Rihanna's "Rude Boy", even if they did so ironically, the record labels win. That's to say nothing about the 371 OTHER songs on the disc (or Girl Talk's previous efforts).

That might be the real reason why, even though he's "shrouded in controversy" the labels just let him do his thing, because bottom line he's probably doing them more good than harm.

PS: Fun Fact, even Girl Talk has never sampled anything from The Beatles catalogue. I guess there are lines you just don't cross.

Imaginationland

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So I was having a conversation with a few of my colleagues about whether or not it was fair to lie to your children and tell them that Santa Claus, the toothfairy, and the Easter Bunny exist. The results were pretty much astounding since people who are staunchly opposed to religion would still instill their kids with a form of faith (in a jolly fat man or giant rabit, both of whom seem to break into your house and reward you based on your deeds). They're like low-rent Jesus replacements.

The worst (in my opinion) was that they said that it was so their children could have a sense of wonder in the world, a belief that there was more to life than there really was. Which is an even harder pill to swallow. Teaching your kids about religion when you believe in it is one thing, misleading your kids so you can confuse them about what is real and what isn't is another.
I find it a very strange line. One of the guys involved in the discussion was like "before I had kids I thought it was wrong to lie to them about the holiday mascots, but now I think I'll do it". Because it makes you feel good to see your child being an idiot and believing in something you don't even believe in? Where's the logic?

Anyways, one of their counterpoints was that I was raised without these things and now as an adult I still have an overactive imagination.

I took that as a compliment.

Is Batman Gay? The Long Halloween

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So, I recently ordered a small stack of books from amazon, namely because I wanted a particular book that I was unable to track down in any local bookstores. Once I get book shopping though, I usually can't stop myself from buying at least 4 or 5 in one go. Naturally, as is the way things go, the book that initially brought me to the site was backordered, so they sent me the other books that I ordered and the original reason of even going online book shopping has still yet to be delivered.

Such is things.

One of the books I picked up was When in Rome, the (if I recall correctly) awesome Catwoman story that takes place in the same timeline as The Long Halloween. Long Halloween being one of my all time favorite Batman stories ever, I felt that before getting into When in Rome, I would re-read The Long Halloween.

That was at some point around dinner time yesterday, and now, it is about an hour and half before dinner time, and I'm done.

It's that awesome.

370 pages long and a work day to get in the way of reading it and I still raced through it, enjoying it just as much as the first time (this would probably be the fourth or fifth time I've gone through it).

You can find a ton of lists and top tens with this book on it, and I'll just share a few reasons why it comes close to the top of my non-existant list.

First of all, the artwork is absolutely stunning. I had the pleasure a few years back of sitting in on a sketch duel between Tim Sale and Alex Maleev, both doing their renditions of the Batman. While Maleev's was without a doubt awesome, I found that Sale's version and style absolutely illustrates Batman the detective (as opposed to the goddamned Batman).

Coupled with what Jeph Loeb's undeniably noir storyline and it's a perfect mix. The silent black and white kill sequences of Holiday particularly lend themselves to the style, and I found myself spending longer on these sequences than any of the pages with words. The visual storytelling of the kills is top notch.

Hard to believe that Tim Sale is colour blind, although it may explain Daredevil: Yellow.

The storyline is also amazing, without revealing too much, it bridges the gap between how Gotham city went from being a corrupt town in the clutches of the mob to a corrupt town in the clutches of the absolute and criminal insane. What starts off as a mob story ala Year One, ends up with the full gallery of rogues coming into the mix, just about every Batman villain worth anything plays at least some role in the story. Which is something I enjoy, I've always said that Batman's cred as an all time kickass superhero is owing an awful lot to the fact that his cast of villains is second to none. This also explains why Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth is another of my favorite Batman stories.

And finally, the story is about Batman the detective. The thing that seperates Batman from a lot of other heroes is that he figures shit out. Superman sees through walls or listens to conversations in other countries to find bad guys, bad guys just sort of find Spiderman, and Iron Man often relies on a secret multi billion dollar organization to do his digging, but Batman? He figures that shit out on his own. Long Halloween spanned 13 issues, and there's maybe 5 or 6 major action sequences. Somebody gets killed every issue, but it's not about the action. It's about the mystery.

I think Batman is at his best when he's a detective and not just a tough guy who likes to dress up as a bat, and this book has that element in spades.

If you have not read it, sit on a dick.

PS: This has nothing to do (as you may have noticed) with Batman being a homosezual (that was a typo, but I like the sound of it). Say it with me... homosezual. Maybe put an accent on the "a" so that it's pronounced "homo-sez-oo-al"? Homosezuàl. I like it.

I digress. It has to do with Scott and the gay hulk.