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How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
I was rereading Pat's blog looking for what I could have sworn was a very long, very funny description of Ray coming over and dancing with him and Rod, but I couldn't find it. Am I just imagining this, or is it secretly in some other blog? Also, I've always been puzzled by this one Roast Beef one where he's buying a dildo. I could never figure out the context. Is it just him buying a dildo? Is it a prequel to the Perky Pervert arc?

How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Dec 7, 2013

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How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
My impression with Pat is that Onstadt really changed his mind about what kind of character he was, and started quietly nudging him in a certain direction when the interplay with Nice Pete really started to sing, and especially when Rod Huggins comes along. So I don't know, I don't know California very well but I've always sort of believed some of the broader characterization earlier on is overwritten by the more specific and funny version of Pat that develops later on.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

KICK BAMA KICK posted:

Pat's blog is probably the best one, required reading if you haven't already.

Absolutely, I think about sensibilly and his stutter-shuffles and flying heel variations every single day of my lfe.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Javid posted:

I have yet to find one (1) Taco Truck-type eatery which could handle the simple instruction "no sour cream"

I don't know where you live but in Philly I can take my pick of a dozen taco trucks just walking to and from my apartment, work, and the trolley stop, and I've never ever had this problem.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
This is killing me, I'm trying to find one of the flow-chart comics (maybe a text adventure one?) but having no luck. It had Lyle and/or Todd in it, and one of the endings involved stumbling into a van or a flop full of violent racists and meth-heads with the punchline being that it's Todd's heaven? Is this one of the magazine-only strips?

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
Thank you so much. The Lyle flowchart and the Todd flowchart are great on their own but all three together are something holy.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Erebus posted:

If you're wondering what Chris is up to these days, it's apparently hanging out with Bill Oakley and sticking Hot Pockets in an air fryer.

I love this, I love that they're friends, and I love that this is what they're doing. I love this.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

GigaPeon posted:

Bill will be holding the Hot Pocket, but he’ll be passing it to Chris. Both totally smiling...

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

bony tony posted:

And when she hangs with Teodor, we only hear his thoughts.

This isn't really the case with the blogs, but I think Android Blues' point still holds. A lot of her blogs feel a little listless when they aren't taken up with stuff other characters do and say-- her own voice is pretty bare and underdeveloped. I think that old Cat+Girl strip was pretty right-on about the strengths and limitations of Onstad's writing.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Yayyys?

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
It was a catch-phrase from about a decade ago, IIRC popularized via Ru Paul's Drag Race, which threw around a lot of what would now be considered transphobic slurs in the early seasons. Culture changes fast.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Looks like he's putting lao gan ma into burgers so as far as I can tell he's doing better than me.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Whenever I remember his Portland Mercury days I click through and read all his restaurant reviews too. I like his food writing a lot, and I like that you can tell what's also evident just from Achewood-- that he just really likes food and has a healthy respect and insight into food made well.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Pastry of the Year posted:

This is really well-observed and there are a lot of great examples of this.



This is all from one strip.

This is one of my favorite Achewood strips, I think as much as it's easy to look back on some of the dated elements of the series and be like "huh," I think Roast Beef is a super well-realized character and a really fantastic vehicle for Ontad's spot-on and bleak stuff about the American city and town as, like, haunted landscapes where weird characters like the guy dictating to RB just float around with only the most provisional and contingent connections to the rest of the world and anybody in it.

This intersects with his knack for writing food too-- as good as he is at gourmet stuff, I love how intimately and viscerally he gets cheap fast food and crummy little "wipe-down" chains. The line about the "folded over" top on the KFC Corliss has is incredible and conveys so much not only about how the characters' class informs their relationship to food, but about how little sharp moments of sense detail lodge themselves in the brain for decades. Like, of course the folded over top, of course that carried through to the little black narration panel of recollection.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Jerusalem posted:

I loving love this so much, it always blows me away. Pat is such a dick that even his natural fear of Nice Pete eventually fell to the wayside so he could enforce his bullshit rules on him :allears:

The blogs for all the characters were all wonderful but Pat's was something special. Onstad absolutely nailed the character in a way that was simultaneously hilarious, pathetic and utterly infuriating.


Oh no, poor bird :smith:

I've always liked how Pat's character development, aside from his coming out of course, was mostly just Onstad refining what was initially a more or less generic cranky dweeb rear end in a top hat into something very very specific and very very damning of a certain kind of Californian in a certain moment in time. I still often think of the phrase "gravity sensible skitter-cart" and as somebody who was vegan in the aughts I get a shudder of recognition from all the made-up health food brands in his blog.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

CannonFodder posted:

http://achewood.com/index.php?date=12232005
Forget what you know about craveless nori!

I know I've often suffered the consequences of craving nori too much.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

JethroMcB posted:

I tried Lyle's Microwaved Egg Muffin a few years back and liked it so much ("this is so easy!") that I started making it for breakfast every morning. Eventually I moved on, now I have a little nonstick pan that is exactly the right size for making a one egg omelette and a dedicated cast iron skillet for browning a veggie sausage; I make this sandwich every weekday and it takes me about 10 minutes. I eat it at my desk at work with a cup of coffee; by 8:25 AM I fold up the little rectangle of aluminium foil I wrapped it in and lament that the best part of my day is over. Thank you, Achewood cookbook, for getting me started in the right direction.

I think about making The Dogg is Home for myself every now as a treat, before I remember that heart disease took my grandfather down and it's probably going to get me too, eventually.

What brand of veggie sausage do you use? I've never found one I really liked-- I've had good veggie brats and stuff but not a good salty breakfast hockey puck.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Pastry of the Year posted:

has anyone ever attempted to make Blammin' Slammin' Oh Man Am I Jammin' Enchilada Stackers?

I've seen recipes for stacked enchilada stuff-- like kind of a lasagna-- on cooking blogs here and there and, as a kid, in my mom's magazines once in awhile. I think it's one of those extremely not authenticity-adjacent Americana hybrids that Onstad has always had a really good instinct for. Like just this ruthless middle-class instinct to make any and all foods from other cultures into a casserole at whatever cost (I also remember my mom making lots of Mexican Lasagnas and Tex-Mex Pot Pies and Taco Pizzas etc. which, honestly, I uniformly loved).

So yeah the enchilada stacker. I'm pretty sure I could make one, but could I make it blammin'? Could I make it slammin'? And could it make anyone jam? Well I'm not so arrogant as to presume.

How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Nov 13, 2019

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Pham Nuwen posted:

New Mexico enchiladas are stacked and have probably been that way since before NM joined the Union.

Wow, I never knew. It looks really tasty!

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
I had a little doodle one of my students did on the back of an assignment that said "Ace of Grades" on it and had totally forgotten that Lyle strip. I used to have it pinned up on the little corkboard next to my desk but I lost it with a bunch of other cute stuff when I switched offices. I wonder if they read Achewood or if that's just the joke you go to when you're thinking about Motorhead in class.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
Tolstoy was the Tolstoy of being a loser and I say that as someone reasonably fond of him.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Mr. Dick posted:

What is wrong with Ray that he is a cat of financial means and yet the only woman we ever see him with is Tina?

You can (and should!) read about his experiences with other women in the blogs.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
The older I get the more I realize that element of Achewood isn't about youth so much as it is about being friends with a rich guy, and I feel slightly it.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
Ask them if they have stairs in their house.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

projecthalaxy posted:

Thats the nice thing about it having an actual publisher. Since they already have the comics and blogs and so forth, they can virtuously release the book, even as Onstad demands they steal the money instead.

Dark Horse wasn't an actual publisher?

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Pastry of the Year posted:

I loved that story (Ray's "special" Italian restaurant) told from both sides in the blogs, because man, Ray in that instance was exactly how my dad acted anytime he did business anywhere that was very obviously a small business where you probably dealt with the guy whose name was on the sign, and especially the local red sauce and breadsticks joint.

I think finding out the guy cosplaying as all "salt of the earth" with a corny-rear end blue-collar nickname was, in fact, gouging him hard and repeatedly on auto work broke him of that habit, though.

I don't know if Onstad said all he cared to say with those characters, or if going back to the Achewood well would resurrect troublesome ghosts (he's still turning out original art and paintings, though, so who knows) but I would love more text-only pieces written in their voices before the world turns into a cinder.

It's kind of a touching/sad recurring motif in the Ray blogs that he spends a lot of time fantasizing about having a real friendship with people he doesn't have a real friendship with, and that's even there in the entry you're talking about. It's him indulging in a very classically dad-like fancy about being "in" with people at places he likes, but it's also really specifically about Ray's well-established personal hang-ups. I love the blogs so much and I'm so stoked to have access to them in a more easily browseable form soon.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Pershing posted:

Normally I like seeing an Achewood I haven't read before. Now I wish I hadn't asked...drat that last panel hurts!

Yeah but the bookstore guy in the very next strip is one of my very favorite Achewood one-off characters.

In fact my message to this entire forum is that you're wonderful, and you're alive, and you deserve every little bit of happiness the universe has to offer anyone, no matter who or what you like. Never forget that.

Now I'm sorry, but I have to ask you all to leave this thread.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

ullerrm posted:

We have been through this with far too many people. I am sorry. This could have been much better than you made it. "Have it Your Way,©" I guess.

<thoughtfully fingers second onion offense card>

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
There have been nights-- bad nights-- where I've been dangerously close to getting "there is no false power in the universe" tattooed onto my forever body.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
I love Hanselmann and I would never have come across those on my own, thank you so much.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
Owl is a Pat for our times and also a Teodor for our times.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
I've never had the crisps but I want to just note that Vegan Rob's Cauliflower Puffs kick rear end, and you shouldn't judge a book by how much the cover looks like Pat made it.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
Labrador owners may wish to leave the thread.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
Chanterelles are not super expensive, treat yourself the next time you're at the grocery store or farmer's market, you should be able to find them dried at least in a lot of places. You can also approximate a crostini in your own home by cutting a big baguette into little rounds, brushing both sides of each piece with olive oil, and then toasting them. Now you too can soon say "Awww HELLZ yeah," with the boys.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Pastry of the Year posted:

I've been reading the body of work of Charles Portis in quarantine and if you love the language of Achewood, you've got to check this author out. I know he's best known for writing True Grit, but his dirtbag 60s-80s narratives almost certainly have to have been a part of the formative Achewood DNA.

Oh man he rules so loving much. I did a reread of a bunch of his stuff right after he died, Norwood is one of the funniest American novels of all time for sure.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas
Laugh all you want but what if they're telling the truth about UNEQUALED SAUCE.

How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

ManiacClown posted:

If Onstad is stuck at home there's no way he shouldn't be able to work on this.

Onstad doesn't live at Oni Press HQ, and authors usually don't personally print and bind every copy of their books. I regret to inform you that teachers also don't sleep at school.

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How Wonderful!
Jul 18, 2006


I only have excellent ideas

Turpitude II posted:

the bss discord has an achewood channel and they'd prob chuck a thorsby one on there if you ask

https://discord.gg/qPvBT6

I just added one! Go hog wild.

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