If you appreciate Achewood, please support Chris Onstad (shop; gallery art.)
The First Pitch Monday, April 30, 2007 • read strip Viewing 132 comments:

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Yes! Its about time mingus showed up

i bet he pitches real slow

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I know he murders people when he writes nice pete.

and he wrote all of pat's dialogue during his gay era.

And as for Lie Bot, Chucklebot, and Vlad...that's right. Human tissue over a robotic endoskeleton.

this string is genius in harmony.

that was me before i lost my password!

He got Phillipe's dialogue from... no, no, that's crossing the line I think, and I don't want to implicate him in pervesities of that nature.

Well I was going to say he wrote Phillipe's dialogue when he was Five but apparently you find that monstrously offensive.

oh my god the hair goes all the way to the tip of the bat. it's beautiful.

that is, in fact, the genius of onstad.

I didn't notice until you pointed it out. Genius!

I think everyone has had that moment of intense dreadful panic when you realize that Dee Snider and Rob Halford are not, in fact, in your backseat howling to pull a U-ie, that it's actually your bald donut spare talking, and that you are baked out of your mind. Maybe on PCP too, can't say for certain, I don't remember my son's birthday parties too well.

Roads with songs coded into them require specific speed limits, if you drive too fast it's like playing a 33 at 45, all sounding like an Alvin and the Chipmunks record.

I remember seeing something about that on Top Gear I believe.

Sorry Ray, Japan already beat you to it.

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Don't jump the chaka khan

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Grill Softball==Meeting a new Molly in heaven?

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I KNOW. It really is incredible. I actually recall, having a similar thought about trolleys attached to giant ribbons of magnetic tape during a cannabis-fueled adventure.

And it might stop everyone from speeding on account of how driving too fast would make the song sound awful. Two birds, one stone.

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Cobble Stoned?

Those first three panels could be a comic unto themselves.

God, I miss so hard being stoned.

"D A P"

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DAP indeed. That is how we do it in the dirty dirty, or so I've been told. I don't keep up with street trends these days.

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I love how Elvis' hair floats down throught the second half of the strip.

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Uh, Cornelius.

aka cornelius

Cornelius!

The robot with the monocle wins my chubby.

The best part is the poke-out of Nightlife's head, implying that he's either been watching this intently since day one, or he just got done shitting in that newspaper litterbox Charles made him.

Actually, the Mingus CATalog, didn't train a cat to use a litter box, it trained a cat to use an honest-to-god human-style toilet. (There's even a picture in Charles Mingus: More Than a Fakebook )

closefriend's post was actually accurate, since the first step in Mingus's pamphlet involved teaching the cat to use a homemade litter box filled with shredded newspaper.

ive heard about the road idea before, it's been set up in a few areas, i think in europe, hmm, time to find out

First time I saw it was here:
https://amasci.com/hoax.html

Ray blew my mind. AND MINGUS IS BACK!

The first panel with Nightlife peering out from the bleachers is priceless.

I very much agree. He clearly holds that pose for at least five seconds before properly coming out.

I thought it was fantastic 'til they brought out Mingus, then my mind exploded and art as a field of endeavor came it an end, happily.

Who pitches towards bat
with living legend, hair towards heaven
Who is that cat

SHAFT!

Awww Hells yeah.

I think this is the best birthday strip ever. Thank you Chris.

happy birthday, a dude.

Your avatar makes that comment all the more amusing. Yeah, have a fun one.

my comment? my avatar? i realise only now that, when it is very small, it is hard to tell that the picture is of molesworth dressed as a girl, chiz chiz.

no I meant a_dude's avatar... Being Mingus, You could easily suspend disbelief and think that the real Mingus is thanking Onstad for making a strip featuring him, on his birthday.

ray is a big thinker. i'll bet they have a whole cabinet for his patents at the patent office. all picking up the phone and, realising it's him, carrying right on with their coffee, just going 'uh-huh, yeah, okay, sure thing mr smuckles'. the cabinet is probably more like a compost bin. people need to stop dismissing this cat. he is possibly a genius.

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I rated this a 5 just because it has Nightlife Mingus in it.

Mingus is so... um... something, that his words have no balloon.

...apart from when he's addressing somebody.

Is this like how John Shaft obsessively mutters the words to his theme tune all the time I wonder.

The characters usually don't have word bubbles when they're singing. For example, this strip .

incredible--both ray and mingus. now i say it's time cornelius gets stoned and has some fantastically dignified philosophical musings while grilling.
also, it's about time somebody made that road... maybe when achewood gets a theme park or a video game. what songs would you encode onto it?

Cornelius is already stoned, man. Look at his eyyyes.

Can't you... SEE?

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I don't know...I could see that turnin' out pretty badly.

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snozzle narcotics approves of the rude 'stached dude

does the alt text work for anyone else in opera? anyone?

The road-a-graph only plays bob segar

just like in real life.
thanks, oldies 92.1!

What the hell people

5, due in large part to the fact that two little lines under the eyes can tell me which characters are and aren't stoned.

Well played, Onstad.

Mingus's shades are large enough to cover the telltale lines?

this story line is really touching. i'm digging it :)

I think Mr. Onstad must be reading our comments; didn't someone remark earlier in the "Stoned Lightning" arc that it cried out for a Nightlife cameo? Plus, everyone was going on about how they want Stoned Lightning shirts, and he's actually making the shirts! Eerie/cool. (Hey, Chris! Thanks for all the amusing distractions on the road to the grave (a road that will hopefully play "radar love" if driven on at 55 mph))

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He. Definitely. Is. (Lames: badge of honour)

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it's like we're all being eavesdropped on by god. or santa claus. gives you a bit of a sense of reverence and a bad case of the goosebumps.

You don't think he introduced the shirts so that he could sell them? I don't care, it's a cool shirt.

It's my soft spot for folk who show up with something already rolled when I'm already thinking stoned thoughts. Please don't touch my soft spot.

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Getting cats high in order to sell t-shirts is not what makes achewood great.

swerve!

I just have to point out that Nightlife Mingus is NOT a good sign for Roast Beef.

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Yes, the return of Nightlife Mingus is most welcome. It should also be pointed out, if it hasn't been already (I haven't read all the comments) that Onstad is one letter away from being an anagram of "stoned."

Also, ONSTAD U = ASTOUND.

Nice.

No fair I had that highway groove music idea first.

Alan Moore did a Future Shock (short strip in 2000AD, the greatest Brit comic of the Twentieth century) with a similar concept.

A band (which bore some resemblance to Disaster Area) has a custom planet built - a huge flat disc with a single spiral canyon running from edge to centre.
The canyon is populated with genetically engineered beasties, each designed to sing a single note with perfect pitch.

After the creatures have settled in, a space ship with a mile-long diamond spike on the bottom descends and flies along the canyon, using its mega-stylus to bring havoc and destruction to the note-beasts, causing them to howl out the song that the planetary record was designed to play.

It could only be played once, of course.
And Moore never explained how the sound of the planet was broadcast through space.
But still...

Onstad is definitely checkin what we write, but if the Elvis bat gets swung.... I aint gonna know what to think.

Man, Onstad don't need your jive, birthday boy.

For folks who are otherwise law-abiding citizens, the act of buying reefer is a pretty weird thing, fraught with social anxieties. What if your dealer has some crazy jive handshake he insists on making you perform with him, even though you are a suburban white guy with a corporate job? Do you accept his invitation to burn one right now, even if you have other things to do, because you don't want to offend your best connection? Will the cops find your number in his cell phone when they eventually arrest him?

Of course, if you are Ray, and you are accustomed to buying black market ape meat from a guy in Sierra Leone, selling your soul to the Devil himself, and your connection is a hip cat in a porkpie hat with a goatee and '50s-era IBM engineer glasses, you have none of these problems.

I believe Ray gets his weed from Teodor, who in turn gets it from Little Nephew.

Who probably steals it from Ray.

The power plant at the center of a perfect universe.

It would only take a few facts about the real world being different for the road idea to actually be a usable idea. Also much awesome that Mingus showed up. "I believe that would be you."

I said previously "give me nightlife mingus or give me death". I can only presume Onstad did not want to lose a loyal customer because he refused to draw the best character in literary history.

it's difficult to rate each individual strip. achewood takes careful setup, and some are in and of themselves not as funny or valuable as a whole arc is. you wouldn't rate one panel when it is only there to make the rest of the strip awesome. i dont know about this strip rating business.

maybe "Rating the Arc" will be the next step in Achewood evolution

*satan waaants you to tuuurn arooouund!*

Ah, but what song?

Highway to Hell?

I would love to drive a car with a needle sticking down into the ground and a big bronze speaker on top.

ah, who can't respect a cat who can man the throne

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...says Keith Moon's head in a jar?

i've seen worse. i've seen funnier. er more funny

I do believe that stoned Ray is going to be the funniest thing I see all week. Thanks, Chris.

"a stone in the rain that is pink"
Beautiful.
I think the road song would have to be something with a recognizable bass line. Hmm "Iron Man" could work, too. Or maybe the start of "Like Spinning Plates".

Thats the best fucking poem

The feelin' I'm getting from this one is that Mingus' jazz riff/poem is like the stoned league's "Star-Spangled Banner".

I hope it is easier to sing.

There is only one onomatopoeia that could represent the sound made by the meeting of Mingus and Ray's fists, and that onomatopoeia is Dap.

my feelings on you people are in the toilet. can't believe my sincere request to know who connie is was marked lame so many times it's been wiped. don't you people know who i am?

I KNOW I had a comment in this thread badmouthing Mingus, but I guess it got voted off the island for being too lame. But you know what? I was right, folk - he smashed Ray in the brain AND then peaced without apologizing. Still my least-favorite Achewood character. BAD NEWS.

Yeah, Mingus is kind of a tool. Dude can string a rhyme together, though.

Ray is indeed on to something.

FUCK! Dammit Dicklaurent. I read this and I thought.

I have to make that comment
I have to be the man that links to this. But you fucking beat me to it.

You win this round.

SLAP DAP

I, too, have dreamt of a road that sings to me as I nod off and start to veer towards the guard rail.

A year later, it was completed.



I'm definately hearing Miles Davis tunes every time Nightlife talks...

Anyone else noticing that the bat is, well, kind of transparent?