Apparently, peanuts are just as vital to man as bread and water...whatta world!
I recently spied this aisle display at a Duane Reade pharmacy on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Yet another warning for any and all enemies of peanuts, it seems the death-nut is now equally as important as bread and water. With aisle arrangements putting my personal kryptonite on par with two essential edibles, it seems only too clear that my nemesis has gained more ground than even I’d like to admit. Time to get this webcomic going and start taking a modicum of revenge against the peanut-beast! Stay tuned, brothers in arms against the legume menace! Stay tuned!
While living in a peanut-filled world, it’s necessary for the legume-intolerant to travel through life with their guard constantly up. After 24 long years on this planet—a world infested with enemy food stuffs around every corner—it’s a lesson I should never forget to heed as I preach it on the interwebs. Sadly, I was duped into dropping my guard this weekend by a little restaurant called Golden China. With their advertised aversion to MSG and a promise their food is cooked in nothing but 100 percent pure vegetable oil, I felt safer than I normally do when venturing into the domain of Asian entrees—it seemed they understood the benefit of proper food preparation. My sesame chicken was flawless, arranged nicely in its take-out container so I could plainly see it hadn’t been infected with legumes. And I grew even more comforted.
Even more vulnerable.
And so, Golden China got the last laugh.
After comforting me with their careful cooking promises and a well-displayed dinner, I felt no qualms about partaking in some eggroll (free with the coupon they supplied me in their take-out menu). Inspection of the eggroll led me to believe it was filled with nothing but cabbage. Alas, it was filled with more deadly fare! After two quick bites, I knew something was amiss. Be it a hidden peanut in the roll or a tainted instrument used in its preparation, the appetizer packed a wallop that landed me in the emergency room.
An iPhone picture made comical warning by my girlfriend Jessi as antihistamines led me to hospital bed dozing.
The moral of this story: Stay vigilant. Or, never trust an eggroll—who knows what it hides inside under its friendly fried exterior?!
In an effort for a little expansion of my voice across the interwebs, I’ve brought over some of my best posts from The Loudest Monkey. All the great marginalia, linkage and numerous reviews are still over there, so for the full, expansive and awe-inspiring blog experience of The Loudest Monkey head over to http://monkey.wizarduniverse.com/. But if you want a taste of Loudest Monkey here at Enemy Of Peanuts, click on the “Loudest Monkey Business” tab under categories or just click here for those highlights.
I can’t remember if my sister suggested we go see it or if a lingering crush on Rachael Leigh Cook prompted me to pursue it, but when “Josie And The Pussycats” came out back in 2001 I took my sister to go see it in theaters for a little brother/sister bonding time. I was in high school and my younger sister Lexie was in fifth grade, so it seemed like a good movie to go see where I could ogle a trio of attractive actresses stepping into the roles I’d watched hours of back when Cartoon Network played loads of old animation—and if it was a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, odds are I watched an unhealthy amount of it—and still clock in some quality time with my sister. The outing was a success, even if the two of us agreed the movie was just so-so, but the main thing we both commented on walking out of the theater was how much we loved the soundtrack.
Inspired, we drove straight from the theater to Best Buy and purchased the 13 track CD.
Meow!
Following the purchase, we drove around in my black GMC Jimmy rocking out like there was no tomorrow through the streets of Chicago’s North Suburbs on that rainy Sunday afternoon.
It wasn’t until a few weeks—or maybe years—later that I decided to investigate and figure out who was responsible for the music on this guilty pleasure. What I discovered is that the talent that put together this album almost justifies it as a shameless love. The voice of Josie is Letters To Cleo singer Kay Hanley, majority of the songs are written by Fountains of Wayne‘s Adam Schlesinger (who performs on the album, as well) and Matthew Sweet is in the mix contributing and performing too! Now that’s an all star pop lineup for a poppy soundtrack from a movie that’s plot focuses mainly on how record companies at the time were constantly assembling hot, new cookie-cutter bands or molding actual bands into marketable machines. The soundtrack takes the semi-satirical drive behind the movie (the big record labels are actually evil empires that pick bands, shape their image and then insert subliminal marketing messages into their songs a la Zack Morris) to deliver catchy pop hits that act as a spoof of the genre itself. The big song on the album, “3 Small Words,” will stand as part of my evidence here, so check it out…
Gotta love that numerical chorus, right?!
It took 6 whole hours
And 5 long days For all your lies to come undone
And those three small words
Were way too late
‘Cause you can’t see that I’m the one
Also, the soundtrack features two hilarious songs from the movie’s boy band spoof Dujour (featuring Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer and Seth Green) written by none other than mutha-lovin’ Babyface!
So, maybe I should be a bit ashamed of how much I still enjoy rocking out to this soundtrack, but I’m not. Hey, sometimes you just have to submit to the pop!
Side note #1: Josie’s love interest in the movie, Alan, sports a soul patch and led me to try the same…not my best facial hair decision.
Side note #2: Years later in college, my love of this soundtrack led to the idea that I should form an all male cover band called Jimmy and the Tom Cats that would play only songs from this album. None of my friends could be convinced this was a thought even remotely resembling a good idea, and thus Jimmy and the Tom Cats never came to be.
While sorting through a bunch of papers—searching for receipts and other tax nonsense after my recent move to New Jersey—I came across a Valentine I received from my lovely girlfriend Jessi.
I’d say this is easily the best greeting card I have ever received, because the premise is so ludicrous, but then I looked closer and remembered the stunning (and possibly prognosticatory) addition made by Jessi back in February (almost a month before this blog’s historic launch).
Note the third enemy: Peanuts!
Further verification that my sworn enmity against legumes predates this blog, as well as verification I have a really swell girl!
In what will likely become a regular feature—in some way, shape or form—on EoP, here’s a comic cover I am highlighting simply due to its inclusion of luchadores!
Moon Knight #29
¡Viva Lucha Libre!
The issue is written by Mike Benson and this whole south of the border arc has featured some incredible art by Jefte Palo (most notable for his work on Black Panther with Jason Aaron during “Secret Invasion”). The cover is by Gabriele Dell’Otto.
I have been flipping through the recent issues of this book mainly for Palo’s great, gritty interiors and got kind of giddy when it dawned on me that luchadores had to be involved—which led to this awesome cover, so early giddiness justified as I’m now a happy man.
“Why do you love lucha libre so much?” you loyal readers are undoubtedly asking yourselves. Well, maybe it’s because I grew up a WCW fan and was very into wrestling when WCW had its huge luchador boom back in the late ’90s. Maybe it’s because there is an enthralling element of mythic tradition surrounding these wrestlers and their masks. And maybe it’s because they can do f–king hurricanranas!
Whatever it is, I love these guys! Stay tuned and I am sure I’ll come up with a better explanation for why I think lucha libre is fantastic, but for now, just know it is something that endlessly fascinates me and I will post about it occasionally.
I’ve been reading Robert Kirkman’s Invincible for years, and I’ve come to prefer current artist Ryan Ottley more than series co-creator Cory Walker, but damn! You gotta show some respect when the guy can return to the book for two-issues and put out gorgeous art like this!
Is your mind not blown?!
Now, this is awesome for a few reasons…
First, it features Allen the Alien, who is probably in my top five comic characters of all time. I don’t care if you’ve got 70 years of DC or Marvel comics history to back you up, something about a hulking, one-eyed, smiley alien is just pure and fun and epitomizes one of the reasons I still love superhero comics. So, yeah, he makes my top five (more on this later, maybe).
Second, while I’ve been a big fan of Invincible for a long while, the book hasn’t been grabbing me like it used to, save the last time I got extremely excited about this book with November’s Allen the Alien and Omni-Man-centric issue #55! As I said back in Wizard Universe’s Thursday Morning Quarterback review column that chilly, November week:
“When an issue kicks off with Mark Grayson (Invincible) and Atom Eve getting clothes-less and cuddly, you know what that means, right?! No, not sex! Well, yes…sex…but more importantly, an issue of Invincible starring the greatest comic character since sliced bread: Allen the Alien! As a diehard Invincible fan, I have to confess that little purple kids murdering people and lovey-dovey Mark and Eve haven’t held my interest much over the past couple issues. However, take me to space and show me my favorite character in the book (Allen the mutha-lovin’ alien!) teaming up with Omni-Man for an epic prison break story where the duo crushes a Viltrumite’s head like a mustachioed grape…yeah, I’m back in, big-time! Seriously, issues like this are why I fell in love with this book—this is Invincible at it’s best! Oh, and Battle Beast returns this ish! Battle Beast! Now, seriously, when do we get the Allen the Alien/Battle Beast Invincible Team-Up ongoing?”
So, rounding out that second point, I love this duo of Allen and Nolan (Omni-Man) and the promise of more is just f–king fantastic!
Thirdly, this book is at its best for me (of late, at least) when it is dropping tidbits or major points about the inevitable conflict with the Viltrumites, so a two-parter that sets the scene for that and features my main men…yeah, I am pretty excited for these two issue!
Maybe my favorite cover ever (seriously!), this piece by Gabriele Dell’Otto kicked off issue #4 (of 6) from Keith Giffen’s masterful Marvel cosmic extravaganza Annihilation. A truly epic “David vs. Goliath” image (in this case Drax vs. Thanos), it also actually teases the issue’s events, a rarity in modern comics. Feast your peepers on this puppy…
Recently, I signed up for Google’s Adsense service and the results of what ads are popping up on my site have been as hilarious as I expected. You see, Adsense scopes out your site’s content and frequently used words to decide which ads to place (when I don’t mess with any of the settings). Now, my site is Enemy of Peanuts (preaching death to the legume menace through blogging, natch!) but Adsense just sees “peanut” a bunch and makes a majority of my ads about the devil-nut and where you can buy it (and oddly enough, about Rachel Ray’s weight loss—could she be an agent of the enemy?!).
So, while I expected this might happen, the irony of this glaring contradiction on the site hopefully brings a chuckle to each and every one of you loyal readers and any interweb passersby that end up at EoP!
(To Google’s defense—I do so love them!—Adsense does pop up some stuff about Charles Schulz’s Peanuts and allergy awareness, so good on them!)
Because who doesn’t love reading about things someone else likes on the internet, I bring you Choice Comic Covers: Or simply, my favorite comic covers. The first entry in “The Chosen” is back from the days when Greg Rucka was taking the ol’ Canucklehead on a series of gritty, street-level adventures like avenging a waitress’ death after she’s gunned down by a man-cult and busting up human trafficking rings. I think I have a particular soft spot for this one as the issue came out right when I was getting back into comics hardcore and I gobbled up every issue of Rucka’s Wolverine. The cover, by Esad Ribic, is simply striking, badass and does a great job expressing what this book was all about back then. Anywho, enjoy!
