What’s frightening is, I’d totally see this film

This is from today’s Onion:

BURBANK, CA—Hinting that the gritty new animated feature would close the book on a “beloved friend,” a new Disney trailer on Monday teased the exit of a major character in the upcoming film Death At Pooh Corner. “Fans of the franchise should brace themselves, because Death At Pooh Corner might just be the last time they ever see one of their favorite characters in the Hundred Acre Wood,” said Disney spokesperson Sarah Freeborn, alluding to the preview’s opening shot showing Pooh jerking his head up after hearing a gunshot off in the distance and saying “Oh, bother.”

You can read the rest of it on the Onion’s website.

God, let it be Piglet.

PAD

New York Comic Con

So it turns out I will indeed be attending NYCC. Marvel Comics found room for me at their section of Artists Alley. I will be at table M2 and will have plenty of stuff to sell. Come on by.

PAD

Gun control discussion will never happen. Sorry.

That’s just a fact that liberals have to accept. Just like we will never get rid of the Electoral College. There will be much flailing of hands and demands for action when things go bad (mass shootings, Democrats winning the popular vote and having to watch their opposition be sworn in) and yet nothing will ever be done to change the problem, and the cause for the consternation will eventually slip away into the news cycle.

The people in Vegas have suffered terribly, just as the parents of the slaughtered school children in Sandy Hook did. And the students and parents of Columbine High School, and all the way back to the victims and relatives of the first lone wolf shooter in New Jersey, in 1949, who shot thirteen people dead and wounded three more. The fact is that between mass shootings, individual shootings, and suicides, more Americans have died than all Americans in every war that we have fought combined.

And it’s not going to change, because politicians are too afraid of the NRA to stand up to them. Either you have to swear that you’re not coming after people’s guns, as Clinton did, or you have to waver or flip flop on your stand, as Trump did. (He used to call for assault rifle bans and praised Obama’s attempts to introduce gun control after Newtown, CT; both positions went away when he ran for president.).

Making life easier for shooters, that they can do, which is why they are currently working to allow silencers. Because they’re so worried about shooters’ hearing. My attitude is simple: let them lose their hearing. They’re deaf to complaints anyway, so what use is hearing to them?

Nancy Pelosi even wasted her time sending a letter to Paul Ryan asking for, at minimum, a bi-partisan committee be formed to investigate what would be done to curb gun violence. Ryan’s response was that there was no need to institute laws about gun control as, say, Australia had done, which caused their mass gun slaughter incidents to drop to zero and cut in half all other gun violence. Instead Ryan insists that we must focus on mental health care…which I would believe actually meant something if he hadn’t been trying to do away with the ACA for seven years so no one could have money for seeing a psychiatrist.

Unfortunately I’ve resigned myself to the fact that gun legislation will never change as long as politicians remain afraid of the NRA. Not ever. Not as long as politicians and conservative news pundits declare that a mass shooting is not the time to discuss it, even though that’s a stipulation never made in association with any other disaster or attempted murder. One guy unsuccessfully tried to sneak a bomb through the TSA in his shoes and immediately we all had to take our shoes off going through the airport. No one said, “This isn’t the time to talk about shoe bombs” without presenting a time it would be. But as long as the NRA is around there will never be a time to discuss guns.

I would love to be wrong about that, but I’m pretty sure I’m not.

PAD

United States votes against UN resolution to condemn executing gays

The United Nations put forward a resolution condemning all countries that want to execute people for the crime of being gays.

Thirteen countries voted against it. Thirteen countries basically said they supported the notion of countries killing people because of who they fall in love with.

What countries voted against that idea? Botswana, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China, India, Iraq, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates…

And us. The United States refused to condemn countries executing gays.

What possible reason could we have for doing that? A U.N. rep stated that it was because they felt the resolution was too broad, sweepingly stating that capital punishment should be eliminated altogether. Heaven forbid we shouldn’t throw gays under the bus in order to cling to the notion that killing prisoners isn’t wrong.

Fortunately the resolution passed anyway. Without our help. Don’t worry: the world is getting accustomed to doing things without our help.

PAD

RIP Hef

I really began my career in book sales working for Playboy Paperbacks in NYC. Despite the name of the company, we published quite a few high class novels including a novelization of “Elfquest” by Wendy and Richard Pini. One time his daughter, Christie, came by to visit. That was cool. Never had a chance to meet Hef himself, though. But I will always be grateful to Playboy Paperbacks for giving me my start.

RIP Hef.

PAD

Why the hell are people ragging on “Young Sheldon?”

Facebook has erupted with people trashing this perfectly sweet family comedy.

With a style that is 180 degrees away from “The Big Bang Theory,” “Young Sheldon” tells the backstory of Sheldon Cooper (a perfectly cast Iain Armitage) as he starts his first day of high school at the age of, I dunno, eight. Nine. Something like that. He’s in the same class as his mortified older brother and is immediately ratting out kids who aren’t following the dress code. We see the groundwork being laid both for the pain-in-the-ášš that is his older self, but the same one who has love deeply buried in him that he was able to become engaged to Amy in the preceding episode of BBT. It is filled with tons of sweet moments, and yet all over Facebook people are slagging in, a number of them doing so without even bothering to watch it.

Is this where we are in Trump’s America, where even a delightful new program that should be unassailably adored is slammed by know-nothings who can’t even take a half an hour to see it and develop an informed opinion?

PAD