Retro Nest Comic – November 8, 2012

Posted on June 29, 2017 by

As promised… here is one of my oldies but “goodies” to bide your time while you wait for my new Thursday comic to be posted on Friday…

I obviously had to go back to my first year of drawing these for my inaugural retro comic entry, which was the archaic time of 2012.  About half of them are garbage, but there are also a lot of really quirky comics in that first batch that I still love today.  Here’s one of my favorites that I haven’t managed to gratuitously repost/link to that most, if not all of you have probably never seen before.  This was Comic #28…

For those who didn’t pay attention to commercial breaks in the 80’s, of course this is the ad being referenced…

It’s weird to see a comic without all those goofy recurring gags I throw in them now, isn’t it?  Also, I’m not sure if my drawing style now is better or worse than it used to be.  One thing’s for sure, I had a hell of a lot better scanner when I started doing this than the piece of shit I’m using now…

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Living In The Limelight

Posted on June 28, 2017 by

I’m too old for this shit…

You may recall last year that I brought you the touching human rodent interest story of the pair of capybaras who escaped from Toronto’s High Park Zoo back in May 2016.  The male and female pair of exotic rodents were supposed to move into a new pen at the expense of its previous tenant Chewy the curmudgeonly capy (seen grousing above).  However, in the spirit of Billy and Patty from Rod Stewart song fame, the two young turks instead seized the opportunity to make a run for it and successfully remained on the lam for several weeks.  The fauna fugitives quickly earned the nicknames Bonnie and Clyde, and in turn, their daring escape became the kind of viral story that could even briefly trump (no pun intended) the American political news that Canadians so desperately crave in the midst of a heated election season…

It’s not like you can see a capybara going for a swim in Toronto every day, eh?

The furry transplants from another hemisphere weren’t able to elude capture for very long, which was a minor miracle given the fact that the posse of rodent wranglers that was assembled to bring Bonnie and Clyde to “justice” seemed about as capable as the Keystone Kops.  Nevertheless, the legendary Team Capybara prevailed and managed to capture both Warren and Faye (but not the right envelope) before the end of the June…

And before the batteries in their phone died from taking gratuitous selfies of their awesomeness.

So, you might be wondering what these two little South American hooligans have been up to lately.  Well, thanks once again to a heads up from my Canadian contact Saucy, I am happy to announce that Bonnie and Clyde have indeed hit it off and started a new family!  In fact, in February they became the proud parents of triplets!  And because social media manages to turn everything that can be sensationalized into a really shitty portmanteau, the trio of li’l ones have been dubbed the “capybabies.”

Capybara cuteness time three! (Photo: CTV News)

And because High Park Zoo knew they could milk this story for tons of free publicity, they decided to hold a naming contest for the three amigos.  So what would it be?  Moe, Larry and Curly?  Tom, Dick and Harry?  Dewey, Cheatham and Howe?  Tinker, Evers and Chance?

Losers…

Nope… they were named Alex, Geddy and Neal after the members of the band Rush.  Why?  Because Canadians love their own…

Usually, anyway…

Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neal Peart make up the Canadian rock band Rush, which has been going strong for almost 50 years now.  For all they accomplished together, I guess getting capybara triplets named their your honor is right up there with getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame… and might soften the blow that is the fact that US mainstream radio ignored Rush to the point where the band never even had a Top 20 pop hit despite a laundry list of recognizable songs that all rock fans know well.

Sorry to bust your mean, mean pride Tom, but you only made it up to #44.

We at The Nest wish Bonnie, Clyde, Alex, Geddy and Neal all the best while putting up with all the fame that comes with being the rock stars of Toronto’s High Park Zoo.  And we hope the poor, forgotten and forcibly relocated Chewy is able to cope with the new capys on the block…

STOP PLAYING THAT @#&*( ROCK MUSIC RIGHT NOW OR I’M GOING TO CALL THE MOUNTIES!!!!

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N Is For…

Posted on June 27, 2017 by

It’s the best thing to happen to Tuesdays since I got too lazy to create Retro TV Ad posts!  You walked right smack into the middle of The Nest’s Polaroid tribute to alphabet soup, the Photography A to Z challenge!  We’ve officially gone over the hump today and have started working on the back side of the ABC’s (or should it be ZYX’s?), starting with the letter N!  You know the rules by now…

  • Only photos I took myself will be used.
  • All photos used will have been taken without any thought given to this challenge.

So let’s take a look at some pictures that can either be naughty or nice….

We’ll start with my 1998 blue Plymouth NEON, which has been my pride and joy for almost 17 years now.  You probably wouldn’t love it, but I sure do…

Ody and Spilly making themselves comfortable on my piles of old NOTEBOOKS.

Squirrel with a big NUT in its mouth…

NO SMOKING!  If you want to poison the children, please stand at least 15 feet away.  Thank you…

The Heilig-Meyers NUMBER NINETY Ford Taurus that legendary NASCAR driver Dick Trickle drove on the Winston Cup circuit in 1997 (Hey, it starts with an N when you say it out loud!).  Well, a model of that car, anyway…. the real one probably costs a fortune, and wouldn’t fit on my shelf.

NASTY looking storm clouds overhead.

A local television NEWS crew along with one of my NOSY NEIGHBORS looking over the travesty the city made out of my backyard ditch.  Not how I wanted to get on TV…

My NEPHEWS Chance and Blake waiting to get into a baseball game I took them to in 2011.

Downtown Pittsburgh at NIGHT, from my seats at PNC Park in 2010.

Are you lonely and looking for partnership way out in the middle of fucking nowhere?  Then Country Singles is the NEWSPAPER for you!  I swear to Dog this is real and I took the photo at an Iowa truck stop along I-80…

Statue of NOLAN RYAN in Arlington, Texas… one of baseball’s more legendary pitchers.

A squirrel with NIPPLES…

And a squirrel with NUTS.

And finally, if you made it through this week’s post full of nose tingling N words… please feel free to take in the view from this insanely placed squirrel’s NEST I found at the park last year!  Don’t worry, it’s only about 100 feet up off the ground…… directly over concrete.

O, you say?  O, indeed……. next Tuesday!

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Have A Heart

Posted on June 26, 2017 by

So badass, they named themselves after Christmas imagery.

It’s time to slip you some notes under the desk that the teacher won’t read out loud in front of the class.  We’re giving DJ Scratchy one last spin of the retail turntable to reel off another earworm that has the consumer masses shopping until they drop.  Welcome to the final installment of our June reboot of Mecca Muzak Mondays!  And since we just passed the halfway mark to that biggest of all shopping holidays, today we’re gonna deck the halls with a little Sleigh Bells!

No…. not real sleigh bells.  Even at Mecca it’s too early for that shit.  That just happens to be the name of the duo that’s providing us with this week’s featured tune.

Calm down, ES. You can put the shotgun away…

Sleigh Bells is a….. well, whoever wrote their Wikipedia entry apparently decided they best fit the well known musical genre called “noise pop.”  Yes, that’s almost as comically ridiculous as melodic death metal…. another musical category that actually exists, much to my amusement.  If noise pop is actually a thing, I can’t believe it wouldn’t be used to describe The Flying Lizards rather than a band like Sleigh Bells that produces music that is wholesome enough to be played at Meccas across the nation…

Fuck that wholesome shit with a noise pop cassette!

Oh no…. the Sleigh Bells song that echos through the hallowed halls of you local big box store is anything but cheery mood setting music.  “Rill Rill,” from their 2009 self-titled debut EP, is a rather dark song with an even darker video…. but it was still catchy enough to get me to notice it after about the 10th time I heard it play while at work…

Six six six?  Cut ’em in the bathroom?  How in the heck did this song make the muzak playlist!?!?  Maybe the popularity it got by being featured in an iPhone commercial a few years ago helped.  This might be something you’d expect to hear blasting out of the speakers if you dared to walk into one of those edgier stores in the mall that are lit about as well as a New York City back alley and are staffed by people with hair colors that start with P who are unable to pass through a metal detector naked.  But at your local Mecca?

Geez, I hope this doesn’t get played on Black Friday.

One obscure song deserves another.  This one blatantly rips off samples a 70’s Funkadelic song called “Can You Get To That.”  We asked George Clinton what he thought about his music being “borrowed” to make noise pop…

Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yay!

I hope you enjoyed this month’s brief foray back into Mecca muzak!  Come back next Monday as we reopen the Dusty Vinyl Archive for business once again…

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You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby

Posted on June 24, 2017 by

What all the cool squirrels are doing.

Smoking cigarettes is no longer the cool thing that was seen as ubiquitous in society as little as three to four decades ago.  Even in some of the most conservative states, there are usually more places you CAN’T smoke than places where it’s still OK to light one up.  Between larcenous sin taxes, strict no smoking laws, and of course those fun to read Surgeon General’s Warnings… smokers have become self-made pariahs and the habit may very well be on its way to being weeded out of society at some point in the future…

But don’t tell this squirrel.  He’s gotta be part of the hip crowd.  Hey, is that a cigarette in your mouth, buddy?  Don’t you know this is a public park, and that is most definitely a NON-SMOKING tree!!!!

What’s that you say?  Oh…….. it’s MARIHUANA?

Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?  Carry on, Saturday Squirrel dude!  Just don’t bogart that joint…

Have a great weekend everyone!

Posted in Saturday Squirrel | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments