The Oatmeal published this, Alex Knapp took The Oatmeal to task, and The Oatmeal subsequently responded with a defense of the earlier comic.
Some further tweets and hundreds of thousands of page views later here we are. Freddie calls the Oatmeal’s response shitty, Oatmeal acolytes call the Knapp piece refuted, and oh, by the way, this all centers around Tesla, Edison, and one of the Internet’s favorite past times: reverse idolatry. You thought who you worshipped was worth worshipping, but really this other person is much, much better, and oh aren’t we kind of cool because we’ve got Tesla tattoos on our bellies and the rest of you hillbillies are still talking about Edison and light bulbs. You know how these things go.
And so I was inspired to enter into the fray like any good blogger and post some dribble that’s of little consequence and offers even less in the way of additional nuance. Yes, I’ll tell you up front: there is nothing unusually insightful to follow. The paragraphs below are neither pregnant with discerning analysis nor especially clever or entertainingly caustic. Instead, this post is platonically ideal in its ambition, which is, namely, to amuse myself, and perhaps two or three other people. Continue reading this post…
“They’re a mash-up; they’re insane,” Whedon says. “But the beauty of that is as exciting as the problem of that is daunting.”
Marvel’s The Avengers is an impressive monster. A juggernaut at the box office, Joss Whedon’s film smashed the competition in Hulk fashion garnering a cool $38 million more in its opening weekend than its nearest rival: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.
However, it does seem like these records are being surpassed all the time now. Indeed, last weekend’s usurper comes out only a year after the former champion was crowned, and the Dark Knight Rises, set to release this upcoming July, could edge past both of them.
But The Avengers is more than just a 21st century loom wheel upon which Whedon has been hard at work spinning gold. It’s also the product of a comic book culture that’s been appropriated, remade, and resold to a mainstream audience that had all but forgotten about it. Continue reading this post…
Andrew Sullivan wants Obamaites to more aggressively tout the President’s foreign policy achievements:
“I think the Obamaites need to be more aggressive in foreign policy arguments. Obama ended one war in Iraq, dispatched Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi without a single US casualty, re-set relations with Russia, brought unprecedentedly united international pressure against Iran’s nuclear bomb potential, wiped out much of al Qaeda’s mid-level leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and presided over democratic revolutions in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Bahrain. He restored this country’s moral credibility after the dark period of Nazi-style interrogation under Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld.”
The above resume of accomplishments is in no small part why Peter Bergen calls our 44th President the “Warrior in Chief.” Continue reading this post…
This gives a brief (if overly patronizing and insensitive) summary of what bothered me about HBO’s new show: Girls.
I didn’t know much about it going in, other than I was pretty excited. Anyone who’s been watching Game of Thrones has probably seen a trailer for it in the last month, and the pilot finally aired last Sunday. And a week out the critical cycle is well underway, with initial praise followed by some (mild?) backlash, followed by a breakdown of the pilot’s cultural shortcomings (rather than its comedic or narrative ones). Continue reading this post…
Maribou 
James K 
Rose 
Naima Van Swol 
Matthew 
Kyle Cupp 
Tina Wade 
Mike Schilling 
Jaybird 
