Two Vegas-ish Funnies For Monday

Every day, I make Miles his lunch and include a note and at least one comic from the newspaper. Often they're not actually funny, but the comics pages these days are slim pickings for belly laughs. These two, however, felt blog-worthy in a Vegas-esque kinda way:

Friday Funnies and Stuff

Happy Friday everyone! Here's some amusement for you to take with you into the long weekend.

First, Stephen Colbert honored the Rosa Parks of Male Sluts:

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Funny part of this: I didn't know Patrick L. Norton actually had a fake LAST name, too!

Next, it shouldn't be funny, but in an odd way, it is. Here's the AOLNews.Com teaser headline regarding the tragic suicide of designer Alexander McQueen:


God, what a drama mcqueen.

Also more odd than funny is that Republican Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian is running this ad even though, perhaps he hadn't heard, health care reform is by all accounts dead:

I mean, if people told Harry Reid this, his best response might be: "Oh, don't worry about it. I already killed that all by myself. We're good."

Meanwhile, Time Magazine slobbers all over Viva Elvis. Evidently when Cirque tells reviewers not to say anything until Feb. 19, they really only mean it if you're going to offer even a single critical statement. Richard Corliss, apparently, could find nothing to temper his exuberance. But what's even stranger is that I didn't realize just how DEEP Viva Elvis actually is. Here's the screen shot from Time...


...and here's a close-up of the caption under that photo:



Oops.

I don't know why I've been away so long from the various comics-related blogs, but this morning, having trouble sleeping, I made it back to the Comics Curmudgeon just in time for this classic. Click on it to read the analysis:


While there, I discovered GarfieldMinusGarfield.Net. The blogger removes Garfield from all the cartoons and suddenly it makes hysterical sense. You have to see several to really get it, tho, so click on these:

And here's the shocker: Garfield cartoonist Jim Davis LOVES it. Not only did he not sue, he sent over his compliments. Wow, huh?

Don't forget to join us at LVRocks.Com from 4-6 pm PT on Saturday for an hour of The Petcast followed by an hour of The Strip. See here for details.

Happy Monday

I thought that was fun. Tee hee.

Also, if you've never heard of Uncle Jay Explains before, it's a perfect Monday morning lift. He does these 3-minute comic news summaries that are always, always, always clever. Here's this week's:



You can get "Uncle Jay Explains" via iTunes, but Jay's site doesn't provide a direct iTunes link to do so. So go here and follow his instructions for how to subscribe.

Meanwhile, my day includes a just-concluded interview with one of the Human Nature guys for this week's show, preparing for a Smokey Robinson interview tomorrow for this week's show, some MJ benefit-related calls and meetings and an attempt to finish a long-delayed piece for USA Today.

Oh, and I also have to call the IRS. Looks like I'm audited. Eeek. Somehow I'm not freaking out. Yet.

10 Vegasish Questions For Monday

As you know, I collect images that are odd, funny or perplexing. So here's 10 head-scratching questions to start off your work week:

1. What "tram" is there now or ever was in the parking garage at Harrah's?


2. Did the rest of the word "Caesars" fall off of the Octavius Tower or did they just think, "Aw, screw it, we can't afford the rest of the name?"


3.What is this? It's immediately north of the Rio on the north side of Twain West. Never noticed it before.

4. Is this really fair warning of a spoiler?


5. How much money did the Steve Wyrick folks spend to put these Lord of the Dance ads all over town only to kill the show even before Mike Weatherford could review it?


6. Why is the Four Seasons allowing Baumann's Rare Books at the Palazzo to showcase its wares in its lobby?



7. Along the same lines, why is Beyonce on the cover of the summer issue of Caesars Player, a high-end glossy magazine for Harrah's high rollers, when she's playing this month at Wynncore?


8. Do you get it? Took me a couple of seconds.


9. Should I 'Friend' this man? Would he Friend me back?

10. Whose hair is more frou-frou-y?

Saturday Funnies...

This was today's Argyle Sweater. Wow. Harsh, huh? There's robust debate in the comments section over at GoComics.Com over whether this was fair, uh, game for a humor.

Strange, too, that in the Review-Journal, the tiger and Siegfried's jacket appeared as orange, not white. Plus, Siegfried's pants, the wall, the cop's gun and shoulder patch are all white. I'll scan in and add to this post later when I get home. (Miles is still recovering from strep and asked me to stay out of the house so the dogs don't go haywire and disturb his sleep.) Anyone have a clue why these color differences occurred? I find it hard to imagine the R-J would alter the comic over local sensitivities, but the fact that the tiger's not white in the newspaper version did have an effect on the joke.

Meanwhile, a couple of other toons I had clipped with Vegas-related relevancy. This March 8 Argyle Sweater is fun given where the new season of Top Chef is being filmed right now...


It's pretty amusing to see the folks on the GoComics.Com site debating who the lady on the right is in the comments section. Clearly, they don't watch the show.

And finally, this Danny Shanahan bit is only funny locally because the Luxor, thanks to desperate efforts by MGM Mirage to make money, does have colorful vinyl siding on it around here...

A Sunday Funny

Loyal readers know I love Argyle Sweater, the latter-day Far Side cartoon by Scott Hilburn. Today's was another winner, although I wonder if any of you keen-eyed Vegas lovers can spot the mistake in the artwork...

The PETCAST is LIVE on Saturday 10-11:30 a.m. PT

Now that LVRocks.Com has a spiffy new studio, we're back on track with The Petcast as well! Join us to listen live and visit in the chat room at LVRocks.Com on Saturday, 4/4, from 10-11:30 a.m. PT. If you're there, you get to ask our guests questions through us. This week's planned lineup includes:

10 am: Gary Roma, documentarian of "Puss in Books" on library cats.
10:30 am: Mutts cartoonist Patrick McDonnell (see above)
11 am: Dr. Tony Woodward, a Colo.-based vet dentist

Join us or catch the podcast. You can subscribe in iTunes for free.

Four Fun Images For Ya

1. Oops. Spotted this on the way home from my eye exam yesterday. (Results, btw: Left eye 20/70, right eye 20/20, no pressing need for glasses though some looked stylish and does not explain (a) my headaches or (b) the fact that I'm a terrible driver. Oh well.)


2. Eye Candy. The clever kids at the Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts School in Vegas created this below out of sugar for a display at the Global Gaming Expo, which is on this week at the LVCC. I've been hunting around for stories, haven't seen anything that really gets me going yet. Everyone's just so depressed. (To find out how to have a relatively inexpensive, delicious gourmet meal at Cordon Bleu, check out the Oct. 26, 2006 Top Secret Tourist Tip of the Week from The Strip podcast.)


3. Who Knew... that Obama's daughter Malia was, uh, white? Sasha looks slightly closer to accurate, but add freckles and bad teeth to the child to the right and it could be a young Chelsea Clinton. Odd, no?


4. I Don't Get It. Maybe it's that I got up too early, but I love the Argyle Sweater comic strip so much and I need someone to explain to me why this is funny. Please?

Isn't This Illegal?

I'm a fan of magician Mac King, who performs at Harrah's daily. He's been a guest on "The Strip" and we're grateful because he's a very interesting, humble guy.

I'm just wondering about this. Mac does a weekly comic strip called Magic In A Minute. In it, he walks kids through the steps for doing simple magic tricks. It's well-illustrated and often quite clever.

But Sunday's strip, I suspect, is illegal. I had to scan it in from the R-J because there doesn't appear to be any place online to show you his most recent entries. In honor of Presidents Day, he, uh, teaches kids how to cut holes in $1 bills and feed it a peanut. Really. Click on the image above to see it more closely.

I found this appropriate site -- LawforKids.Org -- that answers the question of whether it's illegal to deface U.S. currency. It sure seems that way, although the definition on that site of what "fraudulent" is makes it murky. (Click on that link; I especially like the protest from Katie in Colorado who wants to make "buttens" out of "mony." Sigh.)

Intriguingly, the commenters on that site are discussing another money-altering trick of sorts, something called "Fraud" by Daniel Garcia. Here he is doing it on YouTube:



But, regardless, it is certainly questionable judgment to be teaching children in the comics pages to go to get a dollar bill and cut a piece out of it, no?

Lynn Johnston: The Podcast!

As long promised, we've finally posted the audio of my lengthy chat with "For Better or For Worse" cartoonist Lynn Johnston -- in conjunction with the publication of my piece on changes to the comic strip which runs in USA Today on Monday. Hear the chat here or right-click here to save it to your computer and listen to it whenever you wish.

Johnston, author of the most popular comic strip in North America, opens up about which comics she likes, what she thinks of her critics, why she's changing her format so radically, what may happen to the characters, what topics she may take on next and how her perspective has changed since she became so wealthy and famous for her cartoon.

For other perspectives on the comics, I'm a HUGE fan of the Comics Curmudgeon, whom I quoted in the online version of the piece. And this daily blog on FBOFW is addictive, even if I frequently disagree.

On a lighter note...

YAY for Stephan Pastis of "Pearls Before Swine!!!" If only everyone who used WHHSH or WiVSiV ended up as dazed and damaged as Pig in the final frame! If you can't see if because my screen-shot image is weird, go here and see it on the proper site.