First kiss soft, next one passionate; In World War Hulk, My green homey be smashin' it.

June 19, 2007 8:20 AM

Reviews of Dating Tips...? Comic book review blog Hoopla! takes a break from the funny books and instead reviews internet dating tips. Much hilarity ensues.
posted by Outlawyr (27 comments total)

This hilarity you speak of, it is ensuing elsewhere on the internet, yes?
posted by dersins at 8:29 AM on June 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Pretty goddam funny. Having a hard time shaking this image:

"Although 'Can I smell your roses?' actually can be made to work, if you lisp when you say it with a sort of subtle, pseudo-French accent, gently swaying your hips as you do so, back and forth, back and forth."
posted by hermitosis at 8:39 AM on June 19, 2007

"...most women I've known actually groom themselves pretty much every day. Like cats.


Weird, huh?"

I think we've all learned a little something here today.
posted by Floydd at 8:42 AM on June 19, 2007

Some of that was pretty funny, but as the meat of a FPP....not so much.
posted by DU at 8:51 AM on June 19, 2007

DU, if you found it amusing, then what's the problem? Try to relax a little.
posted by Outlawyr at 8:57 AM on June 19, 2007

Definitely going into the pick-up line repository:

So... Is the turkey good here?

posted by LordSludge at 8:58 AM on June 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

“Wednesday, June 13, 2007”

Hmm. When I got to the tips for approaching women, and especially the "women are like frightened little animals" line, I knew that I had read this before. So either I'm wrong and I'm having deja vu, or there's a problem here.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:00 AM on June 19, 2007

For the record, Officer, there was nothing in my dating tips about having pants on. You can see my mistake. So, could you please let me up off the linoleum floor? It's cold and I think I landed on a turkey sandwich.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:03 AM on June 19, 2007

Worth it for the "my green homey be smashing it..." line alone.

Anyone know why there are no comic books allowed in the month of June?
posted by misha at 9:11 AM on June 19, 2007

EB,
"They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change..."
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
posted by misha at 9:18 AM on June 19, 2007

Anyone know why there are no comic books allowed in the month of June?

Because Stan Lee died this month.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:19 AM on June 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

robocop is bleeding,
Jesus, Lee is just rolling out one embarassment after another, what with this, the Striperella thing, the awful reality show...why is everything he does now God-awful? Marvel needs to just keep him in a glass cage they can roll out when they need him to do PR or at conventions.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:48 AM on June 19, 2007

Oh come on. This? Comedy gold:

That thing about throwing out the random words? That is so true.

A little confession, here. That's a mistake I've made too many times to even count. I'll approach my target, following the three-second rule but not going too fast, and I'll start off great, with some really relevant comment like, "The sky certainly is full of clouds today, don't you think?" and everything will be going great. I haven't triggered her internal alarms; all her defenses are down.

And then... words start flying out of my mouth at random. I'm all "Triggers! Felt tips! Lubrication! Antwerp! Redrum! Follow the leader! Redrum! Redrum!"

And boom. It's over.

So, watch out for that.

Gold, I tell ya!
posted by jennaratrix at 10:09 AM on June 19, 2007

MISHA,
He explains in this post that,

This month - June, that is - is celebrated around the world as a month when people who normally review comic-books take a deep breath, stretch, and think, "Man, I have just got nothing left to say about comics for a while."

He also reviews a toilet plunger, so you might want to check that one out too.
posted by Outlawyr at 10:10 AM on June 19, 2007

Because Stan Lee died this month.

Stan Lee isn't dead, and in fact, animating Paris Hilton is a condition of the devilish compact he signed in blood in order to secure fame and fortune in the late 1950's.
posted by solipsophistocracy at 10:26 AM on June 19, 2007

Because Stan Lee died this month.

Stan "The Man" Lee? Selling out? New and unprecedented!
posted by ormondsacker at 12:18 PM on June 19, 2007

Much hilarity ensues.

You clearly have a very low hilarity threshold.
posted by rhymer at 4:06 PM on June 19, 2007

You clearly are far superior to everyone else. Oh, and here's a bit of good advice I read once:

note: Help maintain a healthy, respectful discussion by focusing comments on the issues, topics, and facts at hand—not at other members of the site.

posted by Outlawyr at 6:51 PM on June 19, 2007

Not at all. I'm sure other there are plenty of people out there who are cleverer, better looking, wittier, better cooks and have a more highly-developed sense of rhythm than me. For all I know, you may fall into one or more of these categories.

However, on the evidence of this post, you do appear to be the comedy equivalent of an easy lay. So perhaps I do have a superior sense of humour.
posted by rhymer at 2:25 AM on June 20, 2007

I guess if I were the only person here that found this humorous your comment might make sense.

But it would still be rude.
posted by Outlawyr at 4:46 AM on June 20, 2007

“However, on the evidence of this post, you do appear to be the comedy equivalent of an easy lay. So perhaps I do have a superior sense of humour.”

The post itself and your reaction to it cannot constitute "evidence". Only a survey of responses could indicate this. You might try a Google search.

I thought the first part of the blog entry was pretty "meh", but that the last part was much funnier and there were gems scattered throughout. Regardless, taste in humor widely varies, moreso possibly than other tastes, and insulting other people because their taste is different than yours is self-indulgent. I think some comics are not funny at all and I wonder why other people find them funny, but I generally don't feel that I need to insult other people for it.

It seems that my weird certainty that I'd read the second-half of the blog entry before must be the result of a powerful deja vu experience. I don't have those that often, and they're usually a lot more vague. This one was pretty strong and focused, just like a specific memory I couldn't source. Quite weird, though most if not all of us have experienced this. Memory researchers think that the explanation is just what my above description implies and which is a common lay theory: that it's a short-term memory being mistakenly tagged as a long-term memory. IIRC correctly, there a very short-term "cache", a few seconds in depth; then short-term, a few minutes, then long-term. I guess the miss-tagging happens as things move from the cache to short-term and we recall them from short-term.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:04 AM on June 20, 2007

Oh, look. alright, I'm sorry if I hurt Outlawyr's feelings.

But a couple of points:

The post itself and your reaction to it cannot constitute "evidence".

I'm pretty sure they can and do.

I also think the whole "that's just another point of view" argument has flaws aplenty and is some ways rather cowardly - it smacks of a lily-livered relativism. I still believe the humour in the post was by most standards (and not just my own) pretty lame and that it wasn't worthy of much. Moreover, I was prepared to say so, straight up, albeit in a way that might be offensive to sensitive types who dislike sarcasm (which is - dare I say it - another form of humour).
posted by rhymer at 3:06 PM on June 20, 2007

I think it's funny.
posted by Nathanial Hörnblowér at 5:06 PM on June 20, 2007

“I'm pretty sure they can and do.”

As a single data point, which is as weak as it comes. It may be evidence, but it in no way warrants a conclusion in its basis.

“argument has flaws aplenty and is some ways rather cowardly - it smacks of a lily-livered relativism. ”

Luckily the truth of something doesn't rely upon whether or not you find an argument supporting it courageous.

Reactions to individual examples of comedy vary widely. Even whole classifications of comedy aren't universal within a single culture, much less cross-culturally. Everything isn't relativist and everything isn't universalist. And there are degrees of relativism. The response to a particular example of comedic writing falls pretty far into the "widely varying" side of things.

This is true of most, if not all, aesthetic responses. Luckily for your argument about its quality, this sort of comedy is looking for a particular reaction from a reader. So, in theory, you can evaluate how successful it is in doing so and then label it bad or good. But you'd need to conduct a sound survery to determine this. You're making the judgment based upon your own individual response. I guess you're not an empiricist and perhaps you think you can determine all of the universe's truths from self-reflection and your own experience. Good luck with that.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 6:52 PM on June 20, 2007

Why do I feel as if I've just had an undergraduate philosophy essay thrown at me?
posted by rhymer at 3:37 AM on June 21, 2007

Because you don't understand what he wrote, and that's probably similar to what you felt when reading philosophy as an undergrad.

Just a guess.
posted by Outlawyr at 4:20 AM on June 21, 2007

See: I told you that you might be cleverer than me!
posted by rhymer at 4:35 AM on June 21, 2007