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Later next month, I am going to see Patton Oswalt live.  In celebration of this grand event, I present to you 5 of my favorite Patton Oswalt jokes.

5. Tivo

I think this is a pretty great, short introduction to Patton Oswalt. It’s off his first album, Feelin’ Kinda Patton, and includes excellent analogies for his new favorite invention. Grape Job!

4. Rats & Orgy

This is actually two different bits from his new album, My Weakness is Strong, but it’s all in one video and they segway nicely into each other. This is pretty amazing since one is about Rats and the other is about an Orgy. The description of the appearance of the rat and what happens to it is incredible. Ditto for the realization and explanation of social protocols in the Orgy.

3. At Midnight I will Kill George Lucas with a Shovel

Off of my favorite Patton Oswalt album, Werewolves and Lollipops, this is actually the first Oswalt joke I ever heard. If you have any anger about the Star Wars prequels, then you will love this video. You will also never view Angelina Jolie the same.

2. Sky Cake

Also off of My Weakness is Strong, Sky Cake might be my favorite explanation for the origin of religion. I’ll probably use this argument next time I find myself in a theological debate.

1. America has Spoken

Off of Werewolves and Lollipops, America has Spoken is probably the most famouse Patton Oswalt bit. Someone is finally able to put in to words the feelings most of us have about KFC’s Famous Bowls.

I’ve been reading a lot of comic books lately, so I thought I’d post what I’ve read recently and my thoughts on each so far.

The Walking Dead
I’m thru the first 51 issues and I absolutely love it.  The Walking Dead follows a group of survivors during a zombie apocalypse scenario.  While the premise is simple, the characters are memorable and the storyline brings up a lot of social issues.  Also, the writer, Robert Kirkman, isn’t afraid of killing off any of the characters.  This is probably my favorite ongoing series.

Ex Machina
I was already a fan of Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man, so I decided to start reading his Ex Machina run.  Ex Machina takes place in a post-9/11 New York where The Great Machine helped prevent the 2nd tower from being hit.  The Great Machine is a super hero who has the ability to “talk” to machines.  The Great Machine reveals his identity as Mitchell Hundred and proceeds to run for Mayor of New York City.  He wins the election and that’s where this series picks up.  I’m thru 29 issues of Ex Machina and I actually like it better than Y: The Last Man so far.

Fables
Fables, by Bill Willingham, is a series that looks at famous characters from fairy tales and shows them all living in the same environment.  They are forced out of their homelands by the adversary and form a community in New York City called Fabletown.  While they live in the real world, the rest of the world isn’t aware that fables are living amongst them.  

There are some great moments in this series, such as the revealing of who the Adversary is and the arcs with Bigby, Boy Blue & Flycatcher are great.  I’m currently 69 issues into this series. 

Daredevil
I’ve read most of the Frank Miller run on Daredevil.  I read both volumes of Visionaries (#158-191), Born Again, Love & War and The Man Without Fear.  It’s interesting to see Frank Miller grow during the Visionaries run, but Born Again is probably his best work.  The truth is, everything here is great,  I think Love & War is really underrated.  

I also read Jeph Loeb’s Daredevil: Yellow, which is also good.  I still prefer Miller’s The Man Without Fear as an origin story.  I plan on starting the Daredevil reboot soon, since he’s my favorite super hero character.

Animal Man
I’m currently two volumes into Grant Morrison’s Animal Man run.  I can’t comment too much on this since I still have one volume left, but there are some really great issues in this series.  The most obvious being The Coyote Gospel.  This series looks a lot at animal rights and the relationship between creator and their creations.  It’s all very interesting and is a worthwhile read.

Next up to read:

• The Sandman – Neil Gaiman
• Batman: Year One – Frank Miller
• Batman: The Long Halloween – Jeph Loeb
• Batman: The Killing Joke – Alan Moore
• Batman: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth – Grant Morrison

Yesterday was my first day with HeroClix.  Joe, Meeks and I went and picked up our first HeroClix characters.  Joe went with a Fantastic Four starter kit and some booster packs, Meeks and I split a Marvel Brick and then each bought different booster packs.

The best part of HeroClix might be the opening of the booster packs.  Meeks and I alternated which individual boxes we got inside the brick we split.  I got pretty lucky with The Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and Colossus.  Meeks was not so lucky, he ended up with guys like Kingpin.

The game itself is pretty complicated.  We played three different games, each game we added a new layer of complexity.  At first we just went with movement and attacks, then we added Range attacks and finally Abilities.  Even with all of that, we still need to play again with Team Abilities added.  Gameplay itself is kind of like an advanced version of what I used to do as a kid with Army men.  Characters move and attack, but there are skills, attributes and scoring.

I won two of the three games, mainly because of The Incredible Hulk and Lightning Lord.  Tombstone was probably Joe’s most valuable character and Black Panther was Meeks’ favorite.  The average game, with learning the rules and everything, was probably about 45 minutes to an hour.  I’m guessing it will be closer to 30 minutes once we understand all of the rules.

There are few things about HeroClix that makes it much better than Magic: The Gathering.  All of the characters are from comic books, so a lot of them you are familiar with.  They aren’t characters that are a universe that you only know because of the card (such as Magic).  Secondly, you play each game with a cap.  Each character has a point value assigned to them, so you build the best team you can underneath the cap.  If I play a 200 point game and I want to use Hulk, he’ll take up 147 points.  This keeps the game from becoming an arms race (such as Magic) where whoever spends the most money wins.  Finally, these are small 1 inch figurines, so they are much more impressive than just a card.

Overall, it looks like a fun little hobby I’ll play once or twice a month.  It also makes me even more interested in comic books.