The Origin of Saint Shanequa

This was actually something we had to learn at orientation, believe it or not (not Saint Shanequa).

I feel like I should probably pray to the patron saint of backgrounds though, as mine seem to be missing in this strip.  

Orientation

Orientation for any job is usually full of a good amount of bullshit.  Work at a Catholic hospital as I did in NJ and you get a huge helping of stuff that doesn't pertain to your job at all.  One of those nuggets of trivia had to do with the saint which the hospital was named for.  We learned all about her, and like Calculus, I have yet to use that information either.  I was a chef at the hospital, yet I was lumped in with nurses, secretaries, janitors, you name it, we all went through the same orientation provided by a very enthusiastic little guy who apparently loved his job.  It was not one of the highlights of my life, we'll put it that way.

Comic Review: Masters of the Universe The Origin of Hordak #1

                It was a light week this week, so I’ve decided to review the newest spinoff from the Masters of the Universe franchise at DC.  This latest attempt to cash in on the successful relaunch of the licensed property brought to you by Keith Giffen on story (with Brian Keene) and pencils.  This is a one shot issue that explores the origin of Hordak, the leader of the evil horde and the current agitator over in the Masters of the Universe regular series.  Now is this a legitimate comic or just a cash grab?  That’s the $2.99 question.

Cover:

                The cover by Keith Giffen actually has something to do with the story and is not just a stock image of Hordak, though it would have been well within the right of Giffen to do it on a number one issue.  For that I give him extra credit.  The artwork is akin to a very rough Jack Kirby, similar to Erik Larsen but not quite as good in my opinion.  The coloring by Hi-Fi is decent, but I would think that Hordak’s “powers” would cast a little more light onto everything around it.  The coloring does follow a bit more of an “old school” type pattern (very flat with little to no definition added) so it actually coincides with the line art nicely in that respect.

                The main problem with the coloring is that everything starts to blend together, especially since they decided to color the sky an orange-yellow color and that just happens to be right behind a bunch of warm colors.  Nothing really pops.  Even Hordak’s “powers” tend to blend a little because everything has a very washed-out feeling to it.

5/10 – A serviceable cover, but not great.  It does the job, and shows a bit of narrative but could be better.  It looks rushed.

Story:

                The story is touted as the origin of Hordak, but when we see him, he is already Hordak.  Has he always looked like this?  Part of me thinks not because the big reveal in the story is that Hordak and Zodac are brothers.  Zodac looks human, at least as far as Masters of the Universe standards are concerned and yet Hordak is some kind of bat/vampire creature.  Something must have happened at some point and yet what we get in terms of an origin is that Hordak is Zodac’s brother.  How did Hordak come to join the horde?  Is Horde Prime still around?  What caused the transformation and how does he consume souls?  That’s the kind of stuff you would assume that an origin story would answer, not prattle on for twenty pages about nothing.  The biggest kick in the crotch comes from  the end, where Hordak looks like he’s all powerful and ready to take over the universe and it says to check out the regular comic for more involving Hordak.  I just spent $2.99 on an ad for the regular comic book.  Awesome.  There isn’t much more to say, this was a blatant cash-grab.

0/10 – You can’t expect me to give you a high mark when there was no real origin story within the pages, just a build up to try and get me to buy the regular series.  I’d say “for shame DC Comics” but you obviously don’t care about comic fans, so I won’t waste my breath.

Art:

                Giffen’s art is not terrible.  I do kind of enjoy how Kirby-esque it is, especially for a story that is supposedly an origin (and even tells you it takes place one million years before the birth of He-Man).  Having the art feel old-school just makes it feel almost like the comic should have come out in the 70’s. 

                That being said, the art is very inconsistent.  The characters looked markedly different from one panel to the next and it can get jarring at times, pulling you completely out of what little story there is to be pulled into. 

2/10 – I wasn’t impressed.  The little Batman silhouette on the second to last page may have been an inside joke by Giffen, but it just illuminates the point that this is a corporate comic released for no other reason than to make more money.

Overall:  1/10 - This may be the shortest review I’ve ever written but I can’t think of a more appropriate comic to throw the towel in on.

Mail Call

Nope, no midgets this time.  I know, you got your hopes up for nothing.

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Fourteen: The Crying Game

                This episode picked up right where the last one left off, at the tail end of the “cook me anything” challenge.  Mr. Mohawk winds up winning by the narrowest of margins over mixed up Cyndi, which means that he has immunity during the next dinner service and cannot be sent home.  There was probably a 95% chance that he wasn’t going home anyway considering the fact that he is teamed up with loud guy and guy with no nickname.

 Hell’s Kitchen is open for dinner service that night, and the teams get right to prepping their stations.   Of course it wouldn’t be Hell’s Kitchen if the blue team didn’t have some kind of an issue.  This one revolves around loud guy, who can’t let go of the fact that Ramsay hated his surf and turf dish (one in which he cut a filet into little medallions, effectively wasting the majority of an expensive piece of meat).  When the shrimp is bigger than the beef in your surf and turf dish, you’re doing it wrong.  However, loud guy just can’t get over it.  This makes him visibly upset, as in crying (in the confessional area and, more importantly, in front of his teammates) and he has to excuse himself from dinner prep to cool down.  Obviously this is an extreme burden on the blue team as they only have two people doing the work that was once done by upwards of a dozen.  Mr. Mohawk knocks some garnish on the floor and they damn near set the place on fire as something got spilled on the stove and neither of the two remaining blue chefs notice smoke billowing from the cook-top as whatever is on it starts to burn.  At this point loud guy has the audacity to come back in and say something to the effect of “I left you guys alone for five minutes and you try to burn the place down”. 

Fuck you loud guy. 

This is no ordinary dinner service tonight as the chef’s tables will be occupied by Maria Menounos  and Jeremy Sisto in the blue and red kitchens, respectively.  So not only will the chefs have to complete their dinner service as usual, but they will also have the added pressure of doing so under the watchful eyes of “celebrities” (and I use that term in the loosest way possible).  The dinner service actually starts out fairly well, the appetizers in the blue kitchen don’t run too smooth but all of the issues are things that can be quickly corrected (under seasoned risotto for example) except for the fact that Mr. Mohawk, who is running apps explicitly calls out to guy with no nickname for two lobster tails to garnish his two risottos.  Guy with no nickname gives him one and then, when caught in the screw up, blames Mr. Mohawk for not telling him he needed two.  Other than that, appetizers in the blue kitchen go flying out (most likely because Mr. Mohawk is managing the station).  The appetizers for the red team run into a little trouble when mixed up Cyndi starts to lag (which is unconventional for her) but she turns it around by the end.  One of the most interesting exchanges happens between Ramsay and squeaky voice as she apparently can’t keep her tongue in her mouth while cooking.  It looks like Michael Jordan dunking a basketball, except it’s a sweaty white girl that has her tongue hanging out while she’s cooking other people’s food, so maybe not like Jordan.  Ramsay calls her a cat because of this and of course the producers insert a typical cat-noise here.  Man, this show isn’t subtle at all is it?

Entrees, oh entrees.  You are often the bane of the chef’s existence in Hell’s Kitchen, and this time was no different.  Not for the red team, mind you, they do a decent job of finishing their dinner service.  Of course when it comes time to make desserts for the diners, blonde girl can’t be bothered, instead sauntering over to Jeremy Sisto to flirt.  She even has the balls to announce to the camera during a confessional that she wanted Sisto to notice her and maybe give her a call.  Yeah, sure.  You just came off a dinner service so you are sweaty and smell like a mixture of different foods, plus you’re not that good looking to begin with (not to mention that trash heap you call your personality) and yet you want this guy that could probably walk out onto the street and have “10’s” throw their underwear at him to give you a call?  That’s cute.  Lady, you’re a Syracuse “5” at best, so in California that knocks you down to at most a “2”.  Get a grip.

While the blue team doesn’t have to deal with a member of their team that is delusional in terms of their chances with a celebrity, they do have two individuals that are delusional in terms of their ability to successfully cook.  Guy with no nickname kept sending up raw fish while loud guy royally screwed up the meat station.  Not only did he send up two beef Wellingtons (at the same time) one being raw and the other dry and overdone, he also didn’t prep enough extras to cover that.  Instead, he avoided telling Ramsay that he needed more time for the Wellingtons as he made brand new ones (a twenty minute wait as they had to be cooked from scratch).  This caused Ramsay to do something I have never seen him do; he actually went to the red kitchen and borrowed two Wellingtons from them so that he could send the table.  It got even worse (I know, you thought that was the worst it could get, don’t feel bad, so did I) as loud guy, on one of the final tables, was asked to prepare one order of lamb.  That’s all well and good, except the lamb that he cooked was burnt all to hell.  It literally looked like shit.  Instead of taking the criticism like a man and just dropping another lamb, he waffled around, trying to deflect the criticism, or soften the blow to his ego.  Ramsay eventually said “fuck it” and went to cook the lamb himself.  Ramsay just muscled his way onto loud guy’s station and finished the ticket.  Of course loud guy couldn’t let it just happen, he tried to help (he was quickly rebuffed by Ramsay) and even had the gall to ask how to cook the lamb, as if he shouldn’t have known that already considering the fact that we are down to the final seven people.  Ramsay turned this around on him (of course) by making fun of him.  “Should I tell you how to wipe your ass” and other such insults flew from his mouth as he finished the ticket, much to the delight of the chef’s table. 

Needless to say that the blue team lost.  Because Mr. Mohawk was safe, guy with no nickname and loud guy were both up for elimination, with Mr. Mohawk providing the recommendation to eliminate guy with no nickname.  Ramsay agrees with this recommendation (though I would have sent loud guy home, if not both of them).  The red team was tasked with coming up with one chef to send over to the blue kitchen (again) and they chose skinny black girl.  While I don’t quite get exiling one of the stronger chefs to the land of misfit toys, I kind of understand the logic in terms of a long-reaching strategy.

This week we witness intrigue, sabotage and Ramsay loses and eyebrow?  What. The. Hell?

                See you next week!  

Music Review: Alice in Chains – The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here

How much you enjoy, or if you enjoy at all, the newest album from Alice in Chains will probably have to do with if you view this as an actual Alice in Chains record more than anything else.  Musically, the band is still as good as they were in their Untitled (the one with the three-legged dog) days.  The sound is slow and plodding, while also being catchy and just quick enough to get a toe or two tapping along. 

In preparing to write this review, I listened to not only the album prior to this one,  Black Gives Way to Blue, but also Cantrell’s two solo albums Boggy Depot and Degradation Trip.  I knew that this version of Alice in Chains couldn’t stack up with one of my favorite bands from the ‘90’s, so I decided to measure it against something a little closer in makeup and artistic direction. 

The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is unfortunately an Alice in Chains album in name only.  What it really is, is a Jerry Cantrell solo album with some extra heaviness thrown in.  This is not a bad thing as I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end it’s just that label that gets in the way and makes you expect something…different.  It picks up where Black Gives Way to Blue left off in terms of its tone which definitely adds to the 90’s grunge resurgence that Soundgarden contributed heavily to with their release of King Animal months ago.  If you were to listen to Cantrell’s solo albums you can hear a huge similarity here, and one that set his solo work apart from that of Alice in Chains as a whole.  I like Cantrell’s solo work for the most part, I don’t like it as much as Alice in Chains, but I have accepted it as a separate entity.  This is hands down one of the best Jerry Cantrell solo albums I have ever heard. 

It is incredibly hard to judge this as an actual Alice in Chains record.  With no Layne Staley it just doesn’t have the same feel that those earlier records did.  This is not to say that it can’t, because new vocalist William DuVall is more than up to the task.  I saw the band live a few years ago, right around the release of Black Gives Way to Blue, their first album with DuVall, and he did an incredible job of filling the monolithic shoes left by Staley’s unfortunate demise.  There were times within the set, if you were to close your eyes you would swear that Staley’s slight, heroin-addled frame was up on stage with his old band-mates. 

The big question here then, is why is DuVall not being utilized as any more than a second guitar/vocalist?  I realize that lead guitarist Cantrell is basically driving the bus here, and that’s fine, he has earned that right as one of the most iconic musicians and songwriters of his generation.  The thing is, if you want to make an Alice in Chains record, and not just a Jerry Cantrell record, you should utilize the whole band, including the guy that sounds like your former lead singer.  This album is good, but it feels like it has the propensity for greatness if Cantrell just took off the training wheels.  Very rarely do you not hear Cantrell’s voice, and not just figuratively.  Nearly every time DuVall sings, Cantrell is there on the harmony, or vice versa.  This was fine in spurts when it was Cantrell and Staley, but Staley was obviously able to “take the stage” so to speak and really put a piece of himself into the music.  DuVall doesn’t get that opportunity at all. 

That’s what holds this record back from realizing its full potential, the fact that Cantrell is preventing DuVall from really being a part of Alice in Chains.  It almost feels as if DuVall is there to sing the hits at concerts because he has a similar voice to Staley, but when it comes to new music, Cantrell is still either unsure, or downright unwilling to give up some of the power.  Now this may not be for any selfish reasons, Cantrell may be trying to protect DuVall from the hostility that comes with replacing a lead singer, especially one that became the identity of the band like Staley did.  While his motivations are unknown, it is definitely what is holding this album back from being a return to greatness for the band.  They will never be the Dirt or Jar of Flies Alice in Chains, but at this point they are little more than a vehicle for Cantrell’s solo material.

Volunteer

Here we start a new adventure, and this one has a bit of truth to it as well.  My final profession before I moved from New Jersey was a chef at a hospital.  The story itself started out much shorter than it will wind up (pretty much just a vehicle to introduce a couple new characters) but then I got the job at the hospital and started mining that for little nuggets of funny that I could add here.  This story takes many instances of my time there, as well as some of the people I met along the way, and introduces them to the Eat @ Shrimpy's universe.  Much of what you will read during this arc is true with a twist, and I'll point out when the conversations or people are real.  I wrote most of this story while I was down in New Jersey so I was able to capture the conversations when they happened.  In fact, this is the last story that I wrote while I was down in New Jersey, and actually the last story I wrote for almost six years until I started to work on the strip again.  It's an oldie but a goodie.  

This concludes my "Jersey Years" group of stories (Minding the Store, Survive-It, Waffle-Flavored Revenge, Robbin' the Cradle, They Call it Puppy Love - follow the link for the first strip in each story) where I took a small group of strips, many only six or twelve strips in length originally created for an assignment in college, and expanded them to fill out a full storyline.  After this story I pretty much started writing with a specific number of strips and a relatively coherent path in mind from the beginning.  While I think these last six stories stand up pretty well, they only get better from here and by the next story "One Flew" you'll be able to see that.  This last year has been great and it was definitely a feeling out process with the characters and finding their unique voices, but the best is yet to come.