Thursday, January 26, 2006

Today, On Calvin's Blog. . .

We steal stuff from X-Play! For those who don't know, X-Play is a show on G4 that reviews video games with lowbrow humor. Well, sometimes they go higher, like their "1st Annual H.P. Lovecraft Spelling Bee", but mostly, fart jokes. Which is fine, it's video games, not 19th Century English literature (thank goodness). It's beloved by all my friends, except Tevion, who won't watch it because he's in love with Morgan Webb. He fears he'll get drunk and depressed during the show and decide to drive to California and abduct Morgan. I don't know what he's worried about. When he's drunk, he can't master the simple concept of sitting in a chair, so making it to his car, starting it, and driving over 1,000 miles? Forget it.

One of their single best creations, is Roger, The Stan Lee Experience! He's the fifth best thing to actually getting Stan Lee to make commentary while reviewing The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction! He imparts upon us great stories from the old days like:

'Kirby (pronounced Koiby) walks into my office and pitches the idea for the Fantastic Four. I said "That's the dumbest idea I ever heard! Get the fuck out of my office!" Not five seconds later, I copyright the idea and the money rolls in like gangbusters. Kirby never got a cent. What a dumbass.'

It's funny because it's probably distrubingly close to the truth. So now, because I'm lazy, I present my five favorite Rogerisms:

'So I call Kirby into my office to pitch the idea for Galactus. I say "He's a big purple guy, who has to eat planets to sustain life, kind of like how I fucked your wife." The analogy didn't hold up, but Kirby, he got the message.'

'So I'm fucking Kirby's wife, when he walks into the office, and we just freeze, and we're all standing there looking at each other, and that was how we came up with the idea for The Moleman."

'So I call Ditko into my office to talk about how he's drawing Mary Jane. I tell him "Draw her more like this", and show him a naked picture of his wife sitting on my lap. He says, "Stan, that's my wife!" I say, "Yeah, your kid took the picture." He drew the best Mary Jane.'

'Excelsior! That means "DC's for douchebags".' (Note: from 1988 through 2000, I whole-heartedly agreed with that sentiment, even if I'd never heard the word 'douchebag'. Depending on how Batgirl ends, I may adopt that philosophy again)

And finally. . .

'We used to prank call Bob Kane. We'd say we was the real Batman, and we was gonna kill him for stealing our idea. Then we'd throw a rock through his window.'

I told you it was mostly lowbrow. Something more substantive tomorrow, I hope.

2 comments:

thekelvingreen said...

Actually, there's something on the new special edition dvd of the 1989 Batman that suggests that this stuff isn't too far from the truth. Stan's on it, and he tells a story about how Kane, after the film was a hit, would call him up and mock him about how his character was a movie star and Spider-Man wasn't. Then Stan laments that now Spidey is a movie star, he can't call Kane up and mock him back. Then he laughs.

CalvinPitt said...

Ouch. That's cold. Was Bob Kane alive when Batman and Robin came out? If I was Stan, I would have called Kane up and mocked him for that piece of crap.

From a lot of things I've read and heard, I get the feeling Stan is trying to cement his place in comics history, like he's worried comic readers are going to forget who he is in 50 years or something.