How to Get amazing Kicks from Something "Normal" People Will Never Understand

I had a boxed set of The Prisoner on DVD. It came with a documentary, made while the creator (head writer and star of the show, Patrick McGoohan) was still alive. Everyone they interviewed said he was a gentleman, that it was an honor to work with him, and that people didn’t understand the last few episodes of the show because he was misunderstood and ahead of his time.

Now I have a boxed set of The Prisoner on Blu-ray. That set came with a documentary made after Patrick McGoohan’s death. Many of the people interviewed say that he was a nightmare to work with, and that the last few episodes made no sense because he was making it up as he went, had written himself into a corner, and ended up having to turn in whatever ideas he had whether they made sense or not.

In this case the Blu-ray set makes more than just the picture and sound clearer.

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How to Answer a Trivia Question

TRUE STORY! This idiot comes up to me, asks me this trivia question (can I name all ten Disney movies that have one-word titles). I puzzle over it for a while, then give up and ask him what the answer is, and he admits that he doesn’t know.

That should be illegal, or at the very least, physically assaulting him shouldn’t be.

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How to Tell Someone About Your Dreams

I seem to vaguely remember that I did have a dream about Tim Gunn building a submarine.

I do want to be thin, smart, successful, polite, well dressed, and dignified. I think, on good days, I manage to pull off polite.

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How to make a Fortune in the Halloween Costume Industry

For the record, the Sexy Edgar Allen Poe costume would be a black speedo, a black cape, and a stuffed raven.

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How to Pick Your All-Time Top Five Movies

Yes, I know that Belloq was a Nazi collaborator, and no, I do not in any way condone that. I needed a joke, and I didn’t think it would have been funny to have any of the positive characters be my role model, so I made the choice I made.

In retrospect, I should have picked Marcus Brody. I could plausibly get lost in my own museum.

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How to Understand Your Enemy

The rocket-propelled head-butt would be Rocket Hat’s chief offensive move. He’d probably call it the “War-Head,” just to get that “butt” out of there.

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How to Create a Commercially Viable Series of Popular Books

Panel three of this comic contains one of my rare attempts at actual cartooning. It’s not too bad, overall, but Duke’s hands on the steering wheel need work.

Another idea I had for a children’s book based on a completely inappropriate book for adults was a version of Fight Club called Friend Club. The plot of that move mapped pretty naturally onto the concept of a lonely boy with an imaginary friend—some might say more naturally than it did to the actual concept.

I’ve scrapped the entire idea, because in the end nothing I come up with would ever be funnier than the actual, not made as a joke, series of DUNE coloring books.

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How to Share a Heartwarming Tale from Your Childhood

Everything I say about my mother and the plaster jaw in this comic is true, right down to the little flowers she painted on it.

She also had a pair of earrings that were made of artificial molars.

One of my more prized possessions is an old tooth chart she gave me. It’s this nice hinged case full of individual fake teeth all laid out in neat rows. Back in the day, dentists would use it to compare the person’s real teeth to the samples on the chart, so they would order a good match. I think it’s cool.

When I first got it, I took it to a friend’s house, thinking it was the right mixture of gross and cool for kids to enjoy. My friend’s wife took one look at it and told me to get it out of her house. Later, when we discussed it, she explained that she’d thought it was some kind of Nazi memorabilia. I completely understand her kicking me out, in that case, but’s not a good feeling to have to explain to someone that one of your possessions isn’t evil, just disgusting.

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How to Capitalize on Future Technology

This was a real news story. I read about it eight years ago, and got all excited, but so far nothing’s come of it. Forget flying cars, I want a car that runs on urine.

That’s the aggravating thing about being interested in future technology. We hear about possible breakthroughs so early that by the time science and industry can work together to deliver on the promises, we’re bored with the very idea, and have moved on to something else. For example: there are three different high-quality virtual reality systems I could buy right now, but I’m far more interested in the augmented reality headset Microsoft is working on, which is completely unavailable and has a severely limited field of view.

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How to Evaluate a New Medication

Rick is in the exact same pose in all four panels. I can explain this: see, he thinks he’s telling me about his anti-depressants for the first time in all four panels, and since he’s saying the same thing each time, it makes sense that his body language would be the same in all four panels as well.

His fictional memory loss was a fine cover for my all-too-real ambition loss.

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