Skabs almost moved to New York for a job over the course of three days.

I... took a vacation to Florida.

So I guess my part doesn't really count, but the next page should be LESS delayed.

It has been awhile, a phrase that is quickly becoming my mantra.

This weekend we went to our first anime convention that wasn't populated by 20,000 people. This was quite a culture shock, as coming from Otakon we would've never expected to see a convention with less than a hundred people at any one time. Joel and I were invited as guests early on, with Skabs quickly being added to the roster. We got to do exiciting things like participate on podcast panels, which was pretty fun, hold our own "meet and greet" panels, to which nobody came, and work really really hard to make a good webcomics presentation, also to which nobody came.

Which is, I'm hoping, not the fault of US so much as the convention was just too small to populate every event, considering pretty much everyone went to see Martin Leung the videogame pianist. How can you argue with drawing power like that?

It was a pretty fun weekend all in all, though I feel bad for Joel, Jerry, and Skabs having to drive six hours Friday night and go right back on Saturday night while us leftovers went out to a bar, reminisced about fandom, slept, ate at Denny's, and went home at a reasonable hour the next morning.

Delays in pages as of late have been because Skabs and I are rethinking the way the rest of the chapter is layed out (this chapter, by the way, is the last in the book, save for a short epilogue). As such, pages in the future should be more prompt now that we've got things ironed out to be just the way we want them. "More prompt" is a relative thing around here, but I think we're pretty confident about holding to a weekly schedule.

I asked this question before, but I'll ask it again now that we've got a little more under our britches. Are there any webcomics out there that you'd like to see Front Beat advertise with? Are there any webcomics with a similar theme whose readership you think would mesh well with Front Beat's? If so, you can feel free to e-mail us at Dave@frontbeat.com.

I'm a little apprehensive about advertising before we get a whole book under our belts, and I always have been, but the silly thing about webcomics is that you need fans before the whole thing gets done. Since Skabs and I don't exactly what to sit around letting things stagnate for for two and a half months (best case scenario), I figure we should get some new people in. I mean, look at that image up there! Doesn't it just look like delicious candy? Who could deny it? Not me!

It was disappointing, but that's no big surprise.

As I said on our podcast, I wish I knew then what I know now. I will try to specify more clearly what I mean here than I did there. Basically, coming into Otakon I understood that people were there to buy anthropomorphic pictures of Vash the Stampede as a bunny rabbit, or sultry-eyed versions of... whoever's popular these days. I guess that teacher guy from Naruto is pretty high on the female hit list.

So already we're starting with a leg behind everyone, trying to sell posters that don't have a branded, trademarked character on them. But I willed myself into blindness, thinking that our art and quality was so superb (and the posters really are great) that no one would DARE resist buying them.

That's problem one.

Problem two is this: people aren't going to buy a poster for a show/book they don't know about... at least not without having a naked chested girl-man on it. It doesn't matter how sweet your robot is, or how surly your chica, people will not buy it if they don't know what it's from, which severely contradicts my life experience with... me. I would buy things sight unseen, but I hardly represent the median anime fan demographic.

Problem three was elucidated by Joe Brudlos of Alpha Shade, who's been doing this as his job for, what, two years now? He tells me that if anything sells at a convention its your book, and he doesn't even bother bringing more than 20 or 30 posters to a con. Sage advice, would that I had heard it sooner. Poster sales, as I am told, are better relegated to internet purchases.

And soon said purchases will be available. Paypal (as much as it pains me to use it, there is no alternative) is being a pain in the behind.

Otakon from the podcasting perspective was great, however, and it is my suggestion that if you are a fan of anime you indulge your ears with a bit of this and a bit of that.

Progress continues to be painfully slow as we gear up for Otakon, but things are coming along splendidly. The posters should be arriving any day now, and I'm excited to see the final product. Part of me is nervous that they'll screw up Skabs's beautiful colors, but I know that's just the idle worry of being a cheapskate and not paying $100-some bucks for a hardcopy proof. I know in the end they'll be fantastic. It would be a crime to turn something so perfect into anything but.

If you're interested in what the poster looks like and haven't been reading about it on our forums then take a gander at this:

I'm a fan, I'll say that much.

We've been spending our time on all sorts of things, poster related and otherwise. If things go well we'll have quite a bit in the way of display material at this upcoming Otakon. Table banners and poster board and business cards, oh my!

And as you can see we've been working on a new site design too. I like it, I think it's a lot simpler and cleaner than the original, and lord knows that on the internet people don't exactly care for clicking through numerous byzantine links. Simple and clean, like that song by the same name!

For now many SEKRET PORJECTS have been on the back burners. Sometime this week, or next week perhaps, we'll be putting out a short story directly related to the Front Beat universe for those types of people who crave a little more from their comic (and don't mind reading 30 pages of just text).

This short story has been a long time coming. Our hope here has been to keep people around with supplemental material since a comic like ours simply can't update on a M-W-F schedule, at least not without Skabs quitting his job and working twelve or sixteen hour days for free.

Now don't get me wrong, I WANT him to, but he keeps complaining about little BS things like 'rent' and 'food', so until the hippie dream of free food and clothing comes around I guess we'll just have to deal with what we can get. Take heart in the fact that I consider this a very nice looking page. And, don't quote me on this, but I've heard that some bullets MAY be fired in the next one.

Anyway, about the short story: should this thing catch on I'm looking at about a month turnaround for these things. I'm hoping very much that it WILL catch on, and I have a very positive attitude because it seems to me the type of people who would read our comic are the type of people who would obsess over the details of its universe. If you're the type of guy that doesn't mind sitting down with a good Phillip K. Dick novella then you'll probably find a welcome home in us...

Er, if anyone actually cares about that anyway...

Fudgecicle In My Pants!

by: Nataraja

Fudgecicles. Are they not delicious? Are they chocolate? Are they ice cream? Some pleasant amalgam of the two?

No my friend, they are heaven: solace and refuge.

Because I have quit smoking, and I think I'm going to lose my mind without them. I retreat to constant snacking whenever I try to quit. If I don't, I fail in about an hour flat. Fudgecicles are well-suited to the task, because they are distractingly tasty and you can expend nervous energy chewing on the stick afterward.

So verily, fudgecicles are manifestly delicious to me today.

But I do wonder: What exactly are they?

They are not straight chocolate. Indeed, they are clearly not a candy bar. But neither are they really ice cream.

So I'm not quiting for my health, as clearly this strange carcinogenic chocolaty substance is no more healthy than catching dried leaves on fire and inhaling them.

Theoretically I'm quiting because I can't afford $140 a month any more.

I'm gonna need that money to cover my fudgecicle habit.

On a final note, spell checker does not recognize fudgecicle. One of its first recommendations to me?

Testicle. Which I don't think would be quite as stirringly scrumptious.

Yesterday was Mother's Day as I'm sure you all well know. I think it's kind of a crock, because I know -I- don't get two birthday celebrations in a year.

At the same time, if you factor in that you're doing double birthdays every year against the fact that your mom raised you for most likely a minimum of eighteen years... what's cooking a single extra dinner every year gonna do to you?

Yesterday was also my older brother's graduation, he now holds a Masters in... I don't know, Computer Science or something. I just remember him leaving lunch early a whole bunch of times to get to class, suitably leaving me with a rather hefty bar tab in the process.

I kid, I kid!

The interesting thing about graduation at the University of Pennsylvania is they ALL have free food afterwards, and there's at least fifteen different graduations. I know a few of the ins and outs because I used to work for a catering company, but the basic principle behind my ideas are pretty much common sense. Wear a nice shirt and tie and proceed to gorge yourself at every college graduation you can find.

I recall fondly swiping food from my erstwhile employer, sort of a supplementary income to garnish wages that really weren't up to the task at hand. I was one of probably seven or eight people on the catering team that actually worked for the restaurant. The rest were high school kids, who basically had nothing to lose and, because of this, most would do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. You'd be lucky to get an ounce of work out of them without backing one into a corner and swallowing it up like a baby gazelle.

My personal favorite were the two fifteen year old girls who thought doing 'Whippits' out of cans of spray-on non-dairy topping was a good way to earn their pay. Nothing made my heart soar more than watching them get stiffed out of $60 of their pay at the end of the day.

Well, actually, what made my heart raise to that ultimate plateau of joy was watching them cling to their ill gotten gains without REALIZING they had lost out of all that money. Ooooooh... hilarity ensues, my friends!

See, catering people are busy because the invariable rule of catering is no more than 40% of your staff is actually motivated to do work. It could be a different 40% at different times, but the rule is generally true. Catering people don't have TIME to ask if you belong there, and you reap the benefits for that.

And really, if Penn can afford to pay their President a million dollars a year, they can afford to put a few flank steak skewers in your stomach.

Good luck next year! Steal what food you can! And be nice to your mothers!

So, without further ado...

What Happened to Lizard Man?

by: Nataraja

New podcast is up. Druids are mentioned. Joel reveals a passionate love for Soul Calibur stories. Dave proves once again that he knows more about the world of Silent Hill than the creators. Cow-eyed, not kawaii.

Lets talk about Wii.

Everyone is talking about it, it seems. Every video game site and forum, every tech site, a few band sites, many webcomic sites, and every blog arrayed on the vasty sulfuric plains of the internet – the ether is abuzz with...

Well, what exactly?

A host of bad puns. You can see several examples of such here. By examples of course I mean examples of me beating the smear on the pavement that used to be a dead horse. But even if you don't check our forum, I'm sure you're already googling for the puns. It's the kind of thing we just can't avoid looking at, like the pile-up I gawked at on your way to work this morning.

Not surprising.

Anything else?

There have been some noises made here and there. Amidst the puns are two camps of fanboys (they always come in pairs, like turtledoves). We have the fanboys who are amazed at Nintendo's creativity. And then we have the fanboys that feel somehow betrayed by this bait and switch or are embarrassed by this apparent insanity on behalf of their beloved company. But the rows of pitched tents don't end there, my friends.

There's also the subset on the opposite end of the spectrum; these same noble gamers who long ago dismissed Nintendo as too kiddie. The response in this outfield position is just as predictable, and if there's an increase in pithy witticisms regarding the name, well, this is simply par for the course. This is about the only group that does not lie within Nintendo's target market.

Because you see their target market is everyone. Hence the name.

“'While the code name Revolution expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer,' Nintendo reps said in a statement yesterday. 'Wii will break down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else.'”

Gibberish, neh? So it would seem.

The final groups is as always the largest, and you, faithful reader, are likely among us. The reserved. The wait-and-see. Exactly where you were before the announcement.

But there's an uneasiness even amongst this even-minded group. The concern runs as to whether or not the big 'N' has finally lost its marbles, because the name and the weird statements that revealed it don't make a whole lot of sense.

Words have power. This is no surprise to anyone who speaks; if words had no power, we'd still be grunting at each other in caves rather than over beer at 3 in the morning. And Nintendo has shown time and again that it has, as a company, the skill with which to occupy our minds over time. Years back when the Playstation was first released there were a flurry of games produced intended to provide the fledgling product line with a mascot, an icon which would be indelibly tied to our conception of Sony's product. Almost every attempt by any game company has failed. Sega did well with Sonic, but the sheer level of success enjoyed by Nintendo with its big three mascots – Mario, Link, and Samus Aran – have never been duplicated.

Nintendo has never been very good at appearing “cool”, at least to North Americans. What the company has managed to do instead is simply become instantly recognizable. And part of this art of marketing poker played for keeps revolves around words.

We've been referring to the Revolution as such for quite some time now, and while the bulk of us still maintain the wait-and-see attitude, and are skeptical as to whether or not the system will truly usher in a revolution, simply saying that word, which already has meaning to us, has the effect of keeping us both interested and optimistic.

And now the bait and switch, and everyone and their mother is talking about the system. Free press. But more importantly, now everyone's saying “Wii”. And the same effect caused by “Revolution” may very well occur. “We” is one of the first words we learn. I've used it and its related tenses (our, us, etc.) repeatedly in this post. More than I need to, even. Perhaps the subject matter weighed on my choice of phrasings and tone. Such is the power of words.

Saying “We” and weird poems however will not bring home the bacon. If they can follow up with some killer demos (and not tech demos) at E3, then this may shape up to be a very intriguing year.

Speaking of which, if you love humor and dinosaurs then you might want to check out One Dinosaur's Oblivion, which is a tale of honor, redemption, and dino-prostitutes in Bethseda's new Elder Scrolls game for the PC.

Anyway...

Things should start returning to a more normal pace, or so we hope. With the very exciting release of the Silent Hill movie this weekend Skabs is going to be coming down, and since he's staying until Monday so we can do karaoke (theoretically?) we should be able to get a good bit of work done inbetween. I figure there's no WAY we can go out and have a couple beers -before- the movie, so that's plenty of time to work in the afternoon. And if we curtail the festivities just a little then Saturday and Sunday should be a treasure trove of activity for us. Which is good, because I'd like to get a weekend of focused work in as well, as this one was sort of all over the place. I've been to like a thousand Easter dinners (actually only two), and while stuff like ham and mashed potatoes and lasagna and green beans and asparagus and stuffed mushrooms (I made those) and porkchops will find no complaint with me... it's very hard to be productive when you have to squeeze it in at one or two hour bursts between family dinner and the show of this indie band you "JUST HAVE TO SEE!!"

Still, things are looking better each day. We now return you to our regularly scheduled... schedule (I hope).

The indie band was pretty good, too, but the mashed potatoes were better.

I guess a certain someone's slacking. When's the next page due? Maybe tomorrow? Or Wednesday by the latest I'd imagine. Preferably tomorrow. This certainly has nothing to do with the fact that when Skabs came down on Saturday night we devoted very little time to the comic and very much time to drinking beer.

Myself more so than others at the table, but the AFL game was on and the Philadelphia Soul wrangled a (not so) decisive victory against the Dallas Desperados. Truth be told they really sort of won on accident, but after they had that incerception stripped away from them in the last 2 seconds of the game my heart about exploded out of my chest.

I'm even a dork where sporting events are concerned. Seriously, who watches Arena Football?

JON BON JOVI, that's who!!

We actually did do quite a bit of discussion on the comic as the night goes on, but planning pages and working out character arcs and junk like that doesn't really affect you in the here and now. Maybe I should take a tape recorder with me and spoil all the crap that you people so dilligently wait to read every week. We love ya for it, fer sure!

So anyway, what would you like to see from me on the writing tip? Obviously my facilities are relatively limited on the drawing side, but I can at least produce side content to keep you occupied while pencils are sharpened and mice are clicked. Something on the wiki, perhaps? An updated bio on ESORC? Perhaps I should plug my efforts into updating the site design? Who knows! It's a whole new world out there!!

Drop me a line or, even better, post on them there forums! I promise to crack the whip a bit harder. Action is in the cards!

It's pretty good, huh?

A lot of people will vaunt the virtues of peanut butter. They say it's a good, cheap source of protein. That's total BS though. First off tuna has more protein than peanut butter, it doesn't contain like 10,000 grams of fat, and it provides a more substantial meal (especially with the combination of peas and macaroni). Second, if you wanna get nutrients on the cheap then vitamans are really the only way to go on the subject. Jerry buys protein by the -vat- and I think it costs him approximately 0.16 cents a serving. Now, when mixed the stuff has the smell, taste, and consistency of doggy poo... but that's besides the point. If you want it on the cheap, supplemental nutrition is really the only way to go.

Eating peanut butter is all about the experience. It's equal parts deliciousness and nostalgia. Who doesn't look back on those jolly of elementary school with some fondness? Your mother would pack you up a nice PBJ sandwich and send you on your way.

Well those sandwiches sucked. I'll tell you how to make a peanut butter sandwich.

1) Spread between 1/8 to 1/4 of the jar on one half of the bread

2) Repeat

3) Delicious!

That's all you need to do. In my heyday Jerry would look at my sandwiches with awe, like a legume-based monolith of flavor. In the perfect peanut butter sandwich neither side of the bread will -dare- touch each other, though we all know that adjacency is one of the main things that bread lusts after. Dare to dream, potato bread, but you'll find no solace where I am concerned.

The experience of peanut butter is all about the flavor, the fond memories, and the clogging of arteries with fatty substance. The mere mention of it can send a man into a frenzy. So many options! Chunky, super chunky, smooth, honey-dipped, chocolate and peanut butter. The ease of peanut butter and jelly in the same container. Do we dare?

I saw Crash the other night and, I gotta say, I don't get it. But that's not going to stop me from spoilerifying the hell out of it for you. So if that's not your sort of thing then you might wanna avert your eyes and whistle cutesy songs while this newpost is scrolling by. If you don't have any cutesy songs then allow me to suggest this. It's quite charming.

So anyway, Crash. The more I think about it, the more I start to dislike it.

Face it guys, the movie was just extraordinarily heavy handed and melodramatic. What happened to movies making a point by being subtle? If you're watching stuff that's intentionally over the top, like the brilliant horror/suspense flick Haute Tension, then goofy crap like a (hot) girl hiding in a gas station while the killer sweet talks the attendant is fine and dandy. It's sort of a different game in a movie like Crash, that purports itself to be serious and then does retarded grab like that scene of the hispanic guy hugging his recently shot daughter for like THIRTY SECONDS and then realizing that she's completely unharmed. As if to further insult the movie watching populace they insert a scene a little later on where the daughter of the merchant who shot the Hispanic locksmith's daughter finds the box of bullets he was using.

OMG GUYS! THEY WERE BLANKS!! LOL, GG!

As if we couldn't have figured it out in the beginning of the movie when the sneering gun merchant asks her if she really wants those bullets.

Though my movie watching partner told me her friends (or friends of friends) thought the girl actually DID have an 'impenetrable cape'. If those were my friends I would've slapped the hell out of them.

That's is just ONE scene in the movie that goes to great lengths to piss you off. Other real winners including Don Cheadle's mother breaking down and crying when she sees her (other) son's dead body, like the way every black mother has in every movie since the dawn of time. Way to go outside the norm there, Crash!

And where are the sympathetic white characters? There isn't a one! They're all either incredibly bigoted or outright indifferent. The only spark of hope you get is from Ryan Phillipe, and they flush that one right down the toilet ASAP. I don't even count the other white cop, who by some random chance manages to be the first on the scene to an accident that happens to involve the same black lady that he molested the previous night at a traffic stop. People sure are lucky in Los Angeles! And now that he's saved the black lady all this racism doesn't count no more!

Also Sandra Bullock and Brendan Frazer really sucked and had no point in the movie at all, except for Ms. Bullock to espouse how her Hispanic housekeeper was her beeeeeeeeeeest friend after learning the error of her racist ways because she... fell down the steps? Makes sense to me!! I wish Brendan Frazer had a bigger part, I like him... he needs to stop appearing in crappy movies (i.e.: everything he's ever been in).

Props to Larenz Tate, though, who was really awesome. Minor props to Ludacris, who was good... but forced through that incredibly lame scene with the Asian immigrants.

And I guess Skabs potentially has a nice paying job right in his home town. Feel free to congratulate him, if you must, he sounded pretty positive about it. What's funny is the story he related to me on the subject: the headhunter basically told him to do everything with his resume that I TOLD HIM TO DO. No goofy images, no goofy fonts, no freaking PDF formats, all that jazz. I was willing to defer to Skabs, of course, because I am not in the art industry, so what do I know? This guy is probably the except to the rule and I bet every other company in 'the biz' wants goofy crap all over your resume (i.e.: I'm wrong), it's at least momentarily gratifying to know you're right. And if Skabs gets a job out of it then more power to him. We should all be so lucky to get a job doing what we love.

On that topic, I have a story for you:

What's up with the webcomic "community"? As someone steeped in 'indie' culture I know the symptoms only too well. Bands you enjoyed last year have become passe, not because of any lack of quality but because of the terrifying motto of "selling out". As if the desire to be paid actual money for something you love is this bizarre anathema to those who don't have the talent to make good on their dreams.

At a local convention where Skabs and I were trying to pimp Front Beat a couple months ago a young man came up to me. Because we shared a similar interest (webcomics) it was immediately decided that he and I were best friends forever (BFF, I believe the acronym is). If you've ever bought a videogame only to be waylaid into an Escher-esque conversation on a GameStop employee's TaruTaru White Mage Level 75 Hexastriker then you understand what I'm talking about.

So this young man, seeing that we are obviously comrades in arms, takes it upon himself to tell me exactly what is going wrong with the 'industry'. People like Penny Arcade are selling out and now they're not as funny as they used to be. MAYBE the latter point is true, or maybe I just don't like the way they use their humor nowadays, but I think it's safe to say that the two guys who run it have not made an extreme change in style for the eight years it's been around. Gabe's still an jerk, Tycho's still overly loquacious. Obviously it's working for them. I would pay COLD HARD CASH to get a thousandth (1/1000) of the hits they do.

I am a friendly guy, generally speaking, So I try to phrase that reply in such a way as to be inoffensive. But sometimes the electrical impulses from my brain to my mouth skip a step somewhere and end up coming out all wrong. I can't say my tone was exactly argumentative, but I've probably approached people in nicer ways before.

Well now we've come upon what every fanboy DREAMS OF: the argument! But I am sly to his ruse. He darts out telling me that they suck now, that they're jerks, and they never do anything for the community. Like lightning was my riposte, replying in a tone so dripping with sarcasm that a favorite shirt of mine was ruined by the sheer aura of it. "Sure," I say, looking him square in the eyes, "they -are- jerks. Those jerks that run conventions for their fans, offer their comic on the internet for free, and organize $500,000 charity drives for sick kids in hospitals. The IGNOMINOUS BASTARDS!!"

So cowed by my reply he has no corner to turn. Spouting off standard fanboy drivel about 'Agreeing to disagree' he moves to scurry away, but not before I find myself showered with a dozen business cards of other webcomic authors who are, and I quote him quite verbatim, "Keepin' it real."

Later in the convention he attempted to work his wiles on me again, asking me how I could stand wearing a Bungie hat (and therefore supporting Microsoft, he intimates...?) and not spend $2 on this guy's Pocky. I find the tentpoles of this argument hard to grasp. On the one hand, Pocky totally sucks and is a waste of money when I can just buy a candy bar for a half the price and those are actually good (I'm partial to Three Musketeers). On the other, Bungie makes pretty good games and Microsoft makes reasonable operating systems. Soooooo... I guess I just don't understand. But I wasn't about to be taken down by such babble, I had a food run to go on!

If I ever start acting like that, shoot me.

Most days I don't even eat lunch!

So now we've got this cute little wallpaper that you can set as your desktop. And I wholeheartedly think that you should! The depth of color, the light and shadow, the bullet holes! All these things combine to make one wonderful whole that screams 'filler content!' which, as I'm sure you'll agree, is certainly better than the alternative (nothing at all!) I know some members of our beloved forum have been wanting on this thing like the dickens. Like the dickens!

And who am I to deny a request like that?

Wallpapers are a funny thing. My laptop, I think, will be forever devoted to this:

(Yes, I am the only person in the world that would put Le Tigre adjacent to Del Tha Funkee Homosapien)

It's a wallpaper of my own design! But admittedly that's not showing much skills besides the ability to cut a picture out and paste it somewhere else. Still I love its simplicity, and it makes for good Priss-love.

As for the desktop computer, it vacilates. If I had my way this lovely mug would be planted on it at all times:

At the time we were using it for 'reference' material. Now it's only there because her "sexy, but not too indecent" visage works like a mystical shamanic charm. While its there it radiates an aura of protection that prevents my desktop from getting taken over by the (EXTREMELY) creepy, oversexualized pictures of 15 year old Emma Watson that keep magically showing up on it. Who would do such a thing?

I don't know, but I don't want to meet him in a dark alley.

To better understand the page above, you might consider reading a thing or two I posted down below. It's not a requirement, but I figured you might want to enrich your Front Beat experience.

April 29th, 2040

Francis Miller

More post-y stuff later.

a happy birthday to our friends and forum-goers Ben and Joel. Joel, of course, you might recognize from our audio rantage, and Ben is his (momentarily) younger twin bother. Both are stalwart men if I ever I knew them. Though their birthday has yet to take place (tomorrow), it is my stalwart hope to attend a night full of karaoke, chicken wings, and boozing with them. The time I spend in the company of those two "freres plus bon" is never quite enough. Birthday times are happy times. I remember last year, being surprised by Ben and his then-fiance Gwyn on the very same Birthday Eve. Joel ate so much pie and ckae that night that he felt obligated to tell me he spent the better part of the 4 AM - 5 AM hour vomiting in a toilet. Amanda, his roommate at the time (and a very pretty girl!), revulsed with shock on having to recount the tale. To this day she still seems anxious when the topic of cherry pie comes up...

So, karaoke tonight.

We happen to know a place that will furnish you with unlimited beer and hot wings for $10 between the hours of 8-10. They're smart and only give out new trays of wings at designated times... but consider that you can get about five trays of wings (at six wings apiece) if you plan it right and you'll understand that it's not really a bad deal. Beer has no such restrictions, and the taps flow freely... though you're restricted to glasses (no pitchers) between 9:30 and 10:00.

Guess what everyone does at 9:25?

If you want to know how to pick up girls, it is karaoke without a doubt. Something about a grown man singing in a falsetto just -turns- -them- -on- and if it weren't for the fact that Ben is married to a very lovely lady then I'm sure he would have no chance at fending off the teeming masses. I, on the other hand, am not so lucky... I have not the wit or wiles of Benjamin White. But, for some reason, girls absolutely ADORE when you make a fool out of yourself in public. And so: my renditions of the "Princess Jasmine" lyrics in the theme to Aladdin while Ben accompanies me as the more masculine role never fails to slay them dead.

Also, it seems that at 1:30 AM something about Young MC'S "Bust a Move" slays them dead. Never did I purport to make the rules, but I am a surprisingly adept follower. More than once I've been body-checked by an overzealous 19 year old blonde who just HAS to sing the female part. The same token applies to the 40 year old fat black women. "The Track", as we call our place of imbibery, does not discriminate by such petty things as race. I cannot guarentee you'll get phone numbers, and if you do they may not be the phone numbers you'd WANT, but the experience of fame, however fleeting, is worth the price of admission.

It's actually sort of an interesting spectacle to watch. West Philly is a very diverse neighborhood, and the bar scene is split almost down the middle between college students (mostly ones that attend USP) and community folk (like myself, Ben, Joel, aaaand... a whole bunch of black guys. We're sort of the odd ones out) But what's really funny is the college students come there to drink and maybe sing, the black guys come there to sing and -maybe- drink.

And do they sing!

Imagine if you will two diametrically opposed stereotypes. The drunken, overweight frat boy who slobbers all over the mic as he slurrs the lyrics to Freebird, or some equally played out song. Following him, invariably, is a black guy whose voice is so resounding that you wonder why he's wasting time in some snot-hole bar. Jerry once sang Air Supply's "All Out of Love" just for fun. Not 30 minutes later a man by the name of Eric took the stage with the exact same tune. I think he did it entirely with the intention of schooling Jerry and, by the gods, he suceeded!

I have never owned a cat before, nor have I spent a significant amount of time around a cat. To be honest, I always thought cats were hateful creatures. They mope around all the time, spend like eighteen hours a day sleeping, and are rarely affectionate save when you are scooping their food into a bowl.

Needless to say, I am a "dog person".

So we got a new roommate, and she had a cat. Ordinarily I would be completely indifferent, but due to our apartment's rather prevalent mouse problem it's safe to say I was a little enthused about the prospect of having a rampant poop factory running around our domicle. At least cats can be potty trained.

This cat was more aloof than any cat I could have ever conjured up in my mind's eye, like the protypical, promordial cat archetype from which all lesser cats were based. In fact, the only time it would BOTHER to lavish attention upon you is when it when it was feeding time. This cat has the peculiar trait of wanting to be petted and carressed while it is eating.

I think you can imagine my response to that. It was something like "That's retarded," followed by "and I'm not going to do it." It would not be out of the question to say that I may've thrown in a "nuts to that," at some point during the conversation.

As far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't have the self-preservation instinct to EAT FOOD without someone telling it how great it is while it's chowing down then the thing can dang-well starve.

But the mouse problem dried up, so I was pretty happy with the cat experience. You just had to ignore the plaintative mewls.

Also Jerry LOVES taking pictures of himself harassing it. I find this moderately amusing as well.

So Jen, who's sort of a bleeding heart as I gather, picks up these other two cats who she's holding until her friend can grab them. Well the friend doesn't want the cats... so guess who's got two new cats!

The one I have named Porkchop (against Jen's wishes) lives under my bed 24/7. He's like a ninja, somehow secreting food into his belly when nobody's around. When I say he lives under my bed 24/7, I MEAN 24/7. I have seen this cat approximately three times in a month, and the only time I've ever actually interacted with it is at 5:00 AM when it decided that it had to pee and I needed to open the door RIGHT NOW. Well, better than the alternative.

The other cat I've named Jaunty (also against Jen's wishes). Jaunty is in heat.

This is as extra-ordinarly fun as you could imagine. I was able to put up with the freakish mewling and overt affection towards anything with a rough edge, but this morning I woke up to a curious thing. I sat down on the couch, as per any other morning, and started tiking away on my laptop. My bleary eyes adjusted slowly and I realized there was something quite bizarre flekked all over my computer screen.

It was vomit.

Then I realized I was sitting in a puddle that could've either been pee or, worst case scenario, -more- -vomit-.

A guy can dream.

So I'm mega-late on this post. Busy weekend.

Have you heard of Quizzo? It's a bar fad that's been sweeping the nation for many years now. For our out of country readers: Quizzo is a bar quiz that convinces people to come in out of the cold and spend disproportionate amounts of money on alcohol. I'm sure there's something like it in Europe too, the methods of imbibing don't vary all that much from country to country.

So Quizzo, I'm realizing, is remarkably unfair. It is just in the past couple of weeks that I've started playing with just one partner at a local establishment, one that holds no rules on team limits. So the two of us will finish at a (moderately) impressive 14 points while teams with as many as TWELVE people will grift their way to something like a 30 point victory. Considering it takes them six times the people to double our points (and sometimes I don't listen to my partner when I'm told to write things), I guess we should be pretty proud of ourselves... but it still sucks coming in like fourth place! Better than LAST... but still.

Also this bar has cutesy additions to make Quizzo "more fun". Like a picture round, and "exciting" additions such as sound bytes from movies and artists that you have to name. Big tip: identifying Goldie Hawn in a fatsuit for 1 point is not fun. Playing a game where you identify 16 people as the celebrity they most -resemble- is sort of fun, but it garners you no points. Quizzo is one of those things where you sort of have to play by the rules. It's unfair! But that's just how it goes.

What I'm trying to say is: if you're ever in Philadelphia, don't go to this specific bar's Quizzo. We only go because it's Sunday night and, really, what the heck else is there to do on a Sunday night anyway? Spending $40 on sub-par entertainment kind of sticks in my craw, though. If you're in Philly, I'll show you where the fun Quizzo is.

So I guess it took me almost a week to write this up. It's been a pretty busy week, all things considered.

Sorry to forum-goer Nataraja, who I imagine is the only person who even bothers to read these things. But it's here now, however uninteresting it's gonna be.

Busy day at work today. You might not know the nitty gritty, you don't really need to. I'll just say that I work in fiber optics, and my job is very detail oriented. If everything goes right with a task it's something that takes twenty minutes if not, it's something that takes four hours. Or eight hours. Or twelve hours.

So a good majority of my life over the past week has been trying to get one of these 4 hours-to-infinity jobs done, which I finally accomplished today (big weight off my back). I come back to the office and speak with the co-worker with whom I share the space. Apparently there's "big news".

My boss's boss has been fired. Let go. Downsized. Right-sized, whatever they call it.

Normally this wouldn't be a big deal. He was an okay guy, but he didn't really seem to have a clue about "the biz", and what's more... well he was REALLY good at dragging his feet on key things. So nice guy... a bit of a windbag, but okay. Shame he got canned, but not a huge surprise. It really shouldn't affect me in the slightest.

Except that I'm not officially a full time employee, my part time hours are running out (because I work 40-50 hours instead of 20), and the guy who was supposed to set the paperwork in motion is now out on his ass. It's possible in the near future I will run out of workable hours, and I will not have a job.

As you might guess, this puts me in a bit of a predicament.

I'm not gonna say I'm worried or nervous, you can't really use those words to describe me. I never really matured all that well emotionally. The short of it is: I don't mince words. I have emotional settings of happy and angry and nothing inbetween. So forgive me if I've soapboxed you a little too long, but this ain't exactly the kind of conversation you persue while in the pursuit of liquor and sex. Not really my style.

Thinking about pie today.

Skabs once told me that he hated pie, all pie, with a furor like the world has never known. Whether or not he was being facetious I could not tell you, but the fact remains that the statement was made. I queried if he even did not like chocolate pie, which as you know is not actually a pie at all, but a loosely constructed graham cracker shell in which to contain deliciously chilled chocolate pudding.

The question that comes to mind is: How could -anyone- hate pie? Or even routinely dislike it? My only answer is that perhaps they are not so keen on the sloughy composition of fruit and oozing sugar-based juices that most pies are comprised of. This strikes me as undenbiably silly, and what's more there's plenty of pie alternatives that don't involve that queerly organic goo-based substance. Chocolate pie, as per my example, and the fan-favorite pumpkin are pleasant exceptions to the rule. In fact, given my choice, I would say that I prefer those types of pies to the more mundane varieties like cherry and apple.

But still I'm left to ponder what turns a man against pie? Could it be because of cake? On the internet, for sure, there has been a long standing rivalry between the two, but I don't think this necessarily has to be. I don't find the two substances mutually exclusive, though for my money the worst pie is eons ahead of the worst cake. The reverse is a much closer race, I've had some spectacular tin-based products and I've delved into my share of positively superlative frosting covered cakey wonders.

In the end, I would not be able to pick which I thought was better, but in these exciting times we live in there's no reason why I should HAVE to. I am free to eat whatever dessert I please, and it is a right on which I indulge myself frequently.

So I'm thinking about what I should say and I basically got nothing.

I'm pretty happy with the progress Front Beat is making at the moment. Not that we're at the point where we're setting quarterly goals for ourselves or anything, but we're moving along at a good clip, many of the major players have been introduced, we're all set to move into the third "act" of the Heinraker story arc. Will this be the final one? It's possible... but that's something between me and Skabs, to be revealed with time!

I've learned a few things in the 5 months we've been doing this so far. Most prominent is this: nothing is ever as fast as you want it to be. By now in a perfect world we'd be brimming with hits, forum posts, people would be sending us money and beer and women of ill repute.

Things haven't quite worked out as such, but that doesn't mean I'm disappointed with the slow-but-steady progress that's been going down at frontbeat.com. It overjoys me just to see people posting in the forum about whatever silly things they enjoy. Most of these posts go in Caturday, sure, but that's what it's there for! I enjoy watching every single one of you spill your nonsense, and I hope you enjoy watching me spout out mine. If you're reading this far, you probably do.

By the end of the month I'm gonna do some more advertising. I think breaking page 50 is a pretty critical moment in things, and I imagine we'll get a little more notice now than we did in August when we had a whopping sixteen pages. Back then, I thought that was a lot. Compared to people who try to pimp out their "joke a day" three panel comic with four strips up, I guess it is, but with the catalog we have now it seems almost laughable. What were we THINKING? We were young, impressionable, and just wanted to be the cool kids on the block.

I think as far as 2005 goes, we had a pretty good 4 or 5 months. I have nothing but excitement for the future. It seems like Skabs refines his technique every day, much to my chagrin as I shake my fist at the sky and shout about deadlines and M-W-F update schedules. I have learned how to effectively utilize spellcheck and that in and of itself is very cool. Even in half a year we've gotten better, and we'll get better still!

Keep reading guys, we think you're pretty cool. If you've got anything to say, there's plenty of links that will let you get your opinion out. E-mail, forum, it's all cool.

In fact, it's probably better if you're not. Less embarassing for yours truly.

Since I am spectacularly late with this news post I will try to make it as interesting a read as possible. I can not promise that, but it is my sole desire that by the end of this you feel something suffuse over you not unlike what might happen over a generous turkey dinner. Thanksgiving, for our American readers (of which few are very vocal!)

So let me think...

There's a story that manages to include itself into most conversations with people who have not heard it. The situation is only exacerbated if the other major player in it, Greg Guffanti (also known as my heterosexual life partner), is around to involve himself. It's a story of love, tears, a semi-cute redheaded Irish chick who I totally didn't "get with". It's unfortunate, I know, but I don't think the circumstances were necessarily conducive to that sort of thing anyway.

Also, I'm crazy.

Sit back. I'll tell you the tale of the $400,000 falafel, which can also be referred under the name 'Good-Bad Luck'.

Good-Bad Luck is a bizarre phenomenon that seems to center itself around me, my good friend Greg postulates also that those related to me are afforded some measure of protection. Good-Bad Luck certainly helped him when he accidentally bumped that van full of handicapped people while on the way to pick me up.

Since you're not hear to read a dissertation I'll just give you the short of it. Good-Bad Luck is when something bad happens, but it's never as bad as it SHOULD be. In fact, the bad effects of any situation are almost always so miniscule as to be entirely outweight by the AWESOME story you get to tell later on. This is practically exclusively how my life works. I Tend to say I get laid by accident. This is entirely true. In fact, 90% of what I do in the world seems to be based purely on chance. I'm not outrageously smart, cute, or funny... but yet I have quite a bit of fortune on my side! If someone asks you whether you want to be smart or lucky, pick lucky every time. It's worked for me so far!

So we're having a barbeque, right? If there's one thing I was born to do it was to eat seared animal flesh and drink alcoholic beverages. Beer is prefered, of course, but there's a myriad of other substances that will get the job done equally well. This was back in that heddy time when I really had the desire and inclination to get smashed on a regular basis. Those days are long since passed, but they were fun while they lasted. My curious physiology that prevents all but the most massive hangovers probably contributed to my excessive drinking, but that's neither here nor there right now.

So: on to the aforementioned Irish chickie. This girl's peculiar and outlandish handle, Aoife, sent shivers down my spine, but I have always been a sucker for names that are difficult to pronounce. Compacting matters was her rather thick accent, another attraction which I have no compunctions voicing to the internet public.

But this is not a story about my frequent and abortive efforts at getting laid. Dear reader, it's so much more than that.

So this Irish chickie, Aoife, it turns out she's a vegetarian. Gregarious guy that I am (and believe me, beloved reader, they made the word just for me) I suggest a non-flesh based alternative. It just so happened at the time I was working on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, much like how I am now, and I had struck up quite a relationship with a specific few proprietors of local food trucks, a Philadelphia staple. One in particular was a man named Rami (or possibly Sami) who operated a truck serving Middle Eastern cuisine at 40th and Locust. He's still there to this day and, if you have the chance, I would suggest availing yourself of his services. You will not regret your decision.

My suggestion, falafel, is quite the delicacy. Though I know not the whole of its preparation technique, I do not particularly care to. The end result, comprising various vegetables, some sort of paste, and something which I think is called 'tahini sauce' will melt in your mouth like the sheer butter of youth.

Suitably placated by my suggestion of this cocktail snack-turned-entree, we hop into the car and are off! The crew included myself, and Greg of course, I suppose good people like our friends Andrew and Brendan were in the back of the car as well. It's possible that Aoife was in attendance, but it's been some many years. I could not honestly recall.

I suppose this is the point in the story where I tell you that I am driving the car, and I do not have a driver's license. Fortunately I am not intoxicated at the time, drunk driving is not really my style, but that's small consolation when you consider the fact that what I'm doing is still pretty illegal. I was a stupid kid, what can I say?

Everything would've worked out fine, were it not for the mail truck illegally double parked on the corner. Overcompensating for it, I swerved out of the way before swerving right back. But I swerved too far on my second swerve! By the time Greg, my stalwart companion, is able to get out the words "Dave I think you're a little close..." it is already too late. BAM! goes the car. But of what we hit we are uncertain.

The realization dawns when we see the sideview mirror on the passenger side has disappeared. I'll leave you to drawn your own conclusions, reader, but I think it should be easy enough to guess. A quick survey of the surrounding area shows that OUR mirror has simply been popped out of place. It's the other car's mirror we should be worried about. It's shattered.

And the lady was sitting in her car.

So I hit a parked car. Super great!

By some providence we manage to convine this woman, who takes it upon herself to tell us that she was waiting in her car to pick her daughter up from soccer practice, that good buddy Greg was attending to the movement of our motor vehicle. How she would actually believe us, considering he quite clearly got out of the passenger side of the car, is beyond me. I guess it's possible she didn't, maybe we were strong arming her and didn't even realize it!

Smart fellows that we are, we play off each other as if we were some Vaudevillian act gone wild. With barely a word between ourselves we hit a simpatico. I pro-offer the woman my phone number, which is a seperate line away from the parental unit (and thus safe from me getting my ass handed to me) whilst good-guy Greg gives her his address. Greg lives in a portion of the city where addresses have no meaning and do not corelate in even the slightest way to the street they reside in. The idea here is that she can't just show up at the house. She'll have to call.

After much bickering we calm her down and convince her not to involve the police. We'll pay for the mirror, blah blah blah, we go get our sandwich and return. I pound beers for all I'm worth, which is quite a sight to see, and then proceed to flip hamburgers on the grill with my bare hands while Greg regales the party goers with the story of our bizarre situation. Down below, in the basement eating area, Andrew (the female diplomat) tries to convine Aoife that she should come with us to our next locale, the pool. "We won't be nearly as crazy there, really," he promises, not realizing how frivolous his claims will seem momentarily. Almost as if on cue I bellow from the backyard "Grease me up woman! I'm goin' in!"

That was some kind of time, but you know what was the best part?

She didn't eat the effing sandwich.

I like Halo.

I like it a lot.

I am willing to admit that the game has its share of flaws, notably the fact that a good majority of the second half of the game is playing the first half of the game over again, only backwards, and what isn't an outright repeat is The Library. And nobody likes The Library. There's probably a good reason for that.

Also there's like four monsters in the whole game, not including subdivisions by type, and this is a fact that has caused me to rail endlessly on and on against in other games. Need I remind you that Call of (the) Cthulhu was crap? Probably not, because Saturday's podcast will mark the third time we've spoken about such a subject. This minor infraction on Halo's part is mostly rectified just because the enemies are so dang smart. Not smart like you or I are, dear reader, or even as smart as the monkey who does sign language (I think s/he's dead, though). But they are smarter than 99.5% of every other FPS monster out there, which means they will actually dive behind cover once in awhile, or try to flank you. This is a sharp contract to the standard fare of the FPS, whose sole genetic imperative is to run at you with an undying fury, unloading its gun until you shoot it with any of a dozen weapons that might as well all be the same weapon because they all do the exact same thing anyway

Well... except for the monsters in Quake II. THEIR sole genetic imperative was to run mindlessly into a wall until you shot them in the back enough times to make them keel over. Smart guys, those iD people.

And on the subject of futuristic weaponry, Halo was no slouch in that regard. Very little redundancy existed in the Halo-verse. Even the human and covenant autofire weapons, the Assault Rifle and Plasma Rifle, respectively, were quite different from each other. The assault rifle allowed you to lay down a constant stream of "the smack" at the expense of acccuracy, while the plasma rifle could almost function as a long range weapon while losing something in the duration of its bursts. And while I'm sure that Halo wasn't the first game to map grenades to a seperate button, it sure is one of the more visible ones. And hey, what do you know? A whole bunch of other games are doing it too now! Too bad they, like that atrocious 40k First Person Shooter for PS2, blow the mad donkey chunks.

Don't even get me started at the cinematic qualities of the game. I can't even think of very many games pre-Halo that really drew you into its world. Deus Ex was pretty good, but the cutscenes in Half-Life always felt tacked on. As fun as it was to jump around on stocking shelves while the scientists were talking about you (and boy, was it!) it just doesn't feel like I was in there hanging around. It's really super cool to have a face (or a helmet) to associate with your FPS avatar. If he's got a cool voice (and my main man Master Chief sure do) then that's just all the better for him. There are moments in that game I would get physically exicited, leaping from my chair to slam my palm against starlwart Halo co-op companion JL's in a feat of ritual that was once know as the "high five". The final escape on Warthog, your servile everyman of an army jeep? Mere icing on the cake. I still remember fondly watching the kilometers tick off the distance marker. Were we gonna make it? Did we make it?

Well you can just ask my buddy JL.

(we did)

The soundtrack was no slouch either, though you really only need to listen to Perilous Journey and the first half of Brothers in Arms. Other tracks are great, to be sure, but the two of those will carry you through any long night and into the joyous morn.

I think Halo's a lot better than people give it credit for. It's a lot like Christmas, you have to ignore all the tinsel and the holiday sales and people blasting Bing Crosby at four in the morning, but there's something really great at the core of all that. So too is it with Halo. You have to dredge through the fourteen year old fans who will spew racial epithets at you over Xbox live, none of which I will reprint here for the sake of respect, and you have to protect yourself from being waylaid by Gamestop employees who alternative love OR hate the game and will take whatever opportunity they can to give you thirty reasons why that is the case, but if you can weather the storm there's a real chestnut in there somewhere.

And it's a chestnut that has co-op play. What more could you ask for.

If you don't read our forum (and I wish you did!) then you would have relatively little idea on what's been going on over the past couple weeks and, specifically, what happened this very weekend.

I applied the name "Weekend of Power" to the past couple days. During this time we managed to rescue artist Jonathan Skabla from the wiles of Bensalem and immediately went to work banging out comics for you. I don't know if you've noticed, but updates have been relatively sporadic over the past couple of weeks.

Well no longer!

Our new plan is to get together one weekend a month and put together as many pages as possible, to reduce to the workload during the actual month itself. What this means to you is that (theoretically) there will be no more late updates ever again. I'm not going to make any promises, because you know how spotty we can be, but rest assured that you've got a good two weeks of pages sitting on my computer and waiting to be unleashed at midnight every Monday and Friday.

It's an exciting time to be alive!

Now we only managed to get three pages done over the weekend, mostly due to Skabs having to bug out early to attend his "Aunt's" "birthday" "party" (as if such a thing exists), but that still puts us in better standing than we've been in since the beginning of the comic. This means we only need to get a page done every 5 days to be right on top of the game. After the next Weekend of Power, scheduled for the first week in January, we should actually be able to start building up a small backlog. Maybe every other month we'll be able to update more than twice a week! But for now, don't worry about what the future will hold. I just want you to live in the present and enjoy your on time updates.

The concept of 'dutch' is one that is foreign to me, such as I have been raised with only the most classical upbringing on such things. Consider, if you will, a full meal (complete with appetizers and dessert, as these courtship 'things' usually go) as sort of a downpayment for extra fun-time at the end of the night. As such, it is the duty of the partner with only one functioning chromosome to provide for his lady friend much as it has been for thousands of years. In many eons past, I imagine, the greatest caveman warriors with the largest dinosaur steaks would logically be entitled to the most primo pieces of cavegirl booty. This was a very sexy thing, as hot cave girls are indeed just that, hot, and through this atavistic attraction to each other humanity's place in the world was secured. Logically the best hunter genes would be mating with the best 'booty' genes and it would produce some pretty hot (though notably sloped foreheaded) caveman babies.

And the survival of the human race is secured!

I suppose somewhere around the 1970s, yes, before tiny men without dinosaur steaks like myself were born, girls started to get the idea that they could pay for things too. I am informed that it was in this area that ladies were first allowed to purchase things on those small plastic rectangles of despair that we have named 'cards of credit'. I would guess that it gave the feminine subdivision of our race a sort of joie de vive that was heretofore not present in their lives.

And thus the first Saks 5th Avenue shopping spree soon ensued! Also, many Cosmos were imbibed.

There may have also been very sexy dicussions about lingerie and experimental kissing as is generally only present in the most tawdry (say: ribald, if it is your preference) of 'adult' genre classics.

It's a very pretty dream, I know.

Before I digress too farther, back to my original point:

Thus the idea of not paying for a lady's meal is still relatively new to me. I would never ASK someone of the fairer sex to do so, but I have recently discovered that they will sometimes offer to do it for you AND still give up the "mad lovin'" at the end of the night. This is a discovered that I am not exactly in tune with yet, but the prospect of paying for only ONE $60 meal (drinks included) over the course of a weekend instead of two is something both titilating and somewhat salacious to my relatively naive and virginic palette. If sex can be appended as part of some ethereal contract while at the same time saving me a substantial hunk of change, then I see no reason why this could be declared as foul play.

You heard it from Front Beat first: Girls will pay for themselves and still be willing to give up the love when the time is nigh and without a significant excess of charm on your part.

If you've been wondering what the fan-service/frontbeat crew has been up to, then I think this should elucidate matters quite a bit. Thanksgiving is my favorite holdiay bar none, and this year I managed to fineagle myself into two thanksgivings OTHER than the standard one. Every year whoever of us is around gets together on Friday to gorge ourselves on yet ANOTHER thanksgiving feast, as if the first wasn't enough.

Some of the jokes won't translate as well to you as they should, but suffice it to say it's a night of fun, games, and turkey. This year was unique in the fact that we actually ate BEFORE midnight (however, only about a half hour prior) and someone took at least one bite of pie. Usually by the end of a six hour cooking spree most of us are too wiped to do anything but cram mashed potatoes into our mouth and pass out on the couch.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy!

But now that we've all resumed our places in the normal world you can expect them updates to keep flowing in the way you love to feel the flow (slow and erratic). If you're trundling right along from one of our ad campaigns this week/month then I welcome you with open arms and, as always, exhort you to post your love for us (or international cheese trends) on the forums. It's bound to be a good time!

The conclusion of our current scene is fast approaching, as if you didn't already know by conspicuously placed incendiary devices, and I have a feeling that there totally might be more boobs on the horizon!

I work at a job that avails me access to multiple computers. The one I am most currently parked in front of has a keyboard of a rather pernicious disposition. For some unexplained reason certain functions are reversed. For example, holding (Shift) and hitting (2) will provide you with not the expected (@) character, but a rather surprising quotation mark ("). The reverse is also true, with the (') key shooting out a surprise (@) onto my internetting screen. Needless to say any attempt to check my internet mails from this beelzebubian monstrosity is an exercise in futility.

But what's even MORE insane is that the non-Shift functions are perfectly normal. Look!

''''''''''''

222222222222

I guess that doesn't really prove anything. You'll probably just have to take my word for it.

So what's up people? It's Monday!

While Skabs and I whittled away the weekend with the standard alcoholic binging, we still managed to get the page out... on time even! Anyone who says drunks just sit around and waste their lives obviously doesn't know the right drunks.

Just please don't ask to see my liver.

If you're traipsing along from one of our many ad campaigns this week then allow me to formally welcome you to our small portion of the Inter Net. It's been described as a delightful combination of touching and traumatising. Sweet and sour, if one were forced to apply such a 'sobriquet'. Much like the chicken that bears that very moniker, Front Beat is best consumed in large doses with serious amounts of MSG.

Last night, while frantically working on the page, it was Skabs that suggested we insert another panel. Page 41 already on the breaking point with an astounding 6 panels, I postulated that it might serve us better to divvy them up into two seperate pages. Skabs quickly went to work with the fervor of a thousand dying suns to produce the first panel you can set your eyes on in page 41. It's thanks to his Heruculean efforts that you have not one, but two pages of Front Beat to dissect on this fine November Wednesday. Though I had my own personal commitments to attend to (6 am wake-ups for stupid contractors at work) I perserved through the midnight hours, type-setting and doing goofy little things with stroke and such exciting colors as "gray", while Skabs clicked the mouse button like a man possessed.

Right now Skabs is sitting next to me playing this infuriating video game where the people respond to you every time you click on them. This is compounded by the fact that they're all either ridiculous orc people who talk like they have a pound of cotton in their mouth or they're Dark Elf girls that apparently only know two phrases. "I got it" and "I SAID I got"

Oh my! She's so sassy!

I'm, quite literally, going mad.

I suppose work is going at a luxurious clip. Eventually tonight more content will be banged out on our side, which gives you something like a 19% chance of a page going up 12:00 AM Monday morning!

Now, I'm not gonna make any promises, because that's not really our style... but I would say that it's not ABSOLUTELY insane to look forward to it.

As promised, Front Beat relishes in its first female character. Oh, she's so sassy! And we got her in before page 40, which is good. I don't know about you fellas, but I kind of felt like it was getting to be a sausage party up in here. Something had to be done.

And, considering I'm the guy that WRITES the thing, I guess the ball was soundly in my court, as it were.

So hello Athens! We hope you'll stay with us for many years to come. Your snide comments and snarky mannuerisms melt even the hardest heart. Will you ever be able to curb your licentous trends towards sadomasochism

OMG SPOILERS!! O_O

It was a lot like that James Caan movie "Misery", except without the creepy lady beaking people's legs with sledgehammers. Unfortunately, this means he was also without the pain killers and delicious soup that Mr. Caan so salaciously enjoyed.

I'm willing to call that about a 50-50 trade.

Chapter 4 is off to a racuous start already. I hope you enjoy as always.

Enjoy.

Don't worry about it, the real deal will arrive later today.

Chapter 3 is quickly coming to a close. It's been short ones recently here at Front Beat, but that is poised to change sooner rather than later. Plus, I heard through the "grape vine" that there's going to be some serious boobage in the upcoming pages.

So if that like, turned you on or something, you can go away. This ain't no comic for no 'weak dudes'.

However, if you are only moderately INTERESTED in breaking up the sausage fest, then that's something else. Answer this simple question:

Do I like the Major from Ghost in the Shell because:

a) Her no-nonsense, results driven attitude is a positive role model for all women who feel disenfranchised

b) She's tough without being a bimbo whose boobs bounce around on every possible occassion.

c) She hasn't exhibited a hint of the standard anime "Oh! Accidental Lesbianism is so FUNNY!" gene.

d) She has to get naked to turn invisible and BOY those two seconds of animated breasts are the only thing in my life that makes it worth living right now. I have no friends, no love life, and a curious lack of hygiene.

e) I am a robo-phile.

If you answered d or e, get the hell off my website. Everyone else can stay.

PS: Don't take from this that our next character is "The Major", or anyone even remotely similar. It's just a girl.

With Friday the weekend dost arrive.

'ere the night time hours I shall imbibe.

It is on this juice that I do thrive.

Yuengling Lager, Porter, or Black and Tan.

By these drinks does one become a man.

Remember well your night time moments of laughter.

When thou dost wake the morning after.

Thoust shalt not feel like such a man,

Whilst holding your ankles dead on the can.

And it looks like we're in a bit of a spat because of the party we hosted on Sunday post-convention in Philadelphia. The party that an amazing FIVE people showed up to.

Originally posted on Fan-service.org:

Well. It looks like I'm going to get sued by the con organizer because we decided to throw a party. Apparently it constitutes a breach in contract because we rented a table to sell merchandise, not promote a (completely legal and free) party. Even though there's nothing in the contract that prohibits handing out flyers.

As one can guess, I'm all kinds of set to blow up at this jerk, who is quite clearly grasping at straws because his convention didn't go as well as he'd hope. Now he wants to strong-arm and use whatever draconian tactics he can to draw money out of people who never did nothing to nobody.

But that juice is the font from which we draw our magnanimous gifts!

It's about time we see what those Sentio guys were up to! And so more of the mystery is revealed! ...or is it?

I suppose we've got a couple ad campaigns out there somewhere on the internetting web. Should you be coming from one of them, then it must be my duty to welcome you! You have come at an excellent time, wherein the story has once again begun to unfold. Our detectives have been chided by the higher ups and they're not going to take it anymore! Where will they go? Who will they see? What will happen next?

I guess you'll just have to wait until Monday to see.

...or maybe 2 AM Tuesday morning...

For those of you that post in the forums, please continue to do so. Every one of your posts brings a smidgen of joy into my otherwise listless and hollow existence. Though he tried to hide it, I'm sure I saw Skabs break down into tears last night at the words laid out on the screen.

He was also watching 7th Heaven, though.

For this we do apologize, but we have only been doing this for a month and a half, now. We're still going through our growing pains. But every day we get closer to our goal! And as we work out a more detailed schedule for ourselves, the schedule of the comic can only improve.

Or so the saying goes.

With this page the exposition's passed and the comic's over. We hope you've enjoyed the ride!

...

Just kidding!

Monday will arrive with a fresh new start. Front Beat: Chapter 3 will bring us up to snuff with characters Tate and Reyes. We'll see new locales, new faces, and perhaps even the surprise appearance of the infamous Robosaurus.

Skabs has returned from Canada older, wiser, and with slightly less liver constitution than when he'd left. He neglected to return with the maple syrup and Canadian bacon I had requested, but that's okay. I learned in the interim that Canadian bacon had very little to do with bacon at all! As a show of attrition, Skabs did furnish upon us our very own pet beaver. I have taken it upon myself to name him Marissa St. Clare, after the famous actress/karate ninja of the 1950s. Perhaps you've heard of her?

I will reiterate how excited it makes me to see people posting in the forum, and hope it continues for many years to come, until Skabs and I are old men who can't remember when or why or what a "Front Beat" is. By then it will be the 2050s and we will have our OWN eight-fives to deal with!

We're in the meat and potatoes of the exposition now, the mere thought of it running shivers up and down my spine. As I've said, if that's not your thing please perservere. Two more pages and we'll return you to your regularly scheduled robo-drama.

As I type Skabs is in Canada, attending an animation festival while he looks for a job in the industry. Unfortunately, he was only able to get me a two page backlog which means we won't have a page to update on Monday. We hope to make this up by putting up at least one page on Wednesday, and then we should be back on schedule.

But for now I guess I should be content that it's 9:00 AM and we have a comic.

And hopefully you will be too!

So it goes!

However, like my curious predilection towards killing dinosaurs (and zombies), this does not drive him AWAY from landscapes but instead forces him to spend inordinate amounts of hours in front of the monitor trying to fix every little detail.

Also I feel bad covering up Skabs's nifty explosion with my 2 minute Text layer.

Also, I'm glad it's up because it means we're committed!

So you'll notice I've got a little vote banner to the side there. It'd make me super-duper happy if you clicked that every day and we moved up from like #547 most popular comic.

I'm considering making vote incentive comics to showcase my "elite" drawing skills. Most likely these will involve stick figures, a thesaurus, and copious references to poop.

This would've been out earlier today (well, really, last night) if it wasn't for this stupid thing called employment and the fact that Photoshop crashed and I lost all my work 20 minutes before I had to be at my job.

So it goes! We're back in the saddle now and Skabs is moving like tiny race horse.

For everyone that got one of our nifty free CDs, welcome! I hope you've enjoyed your cooking recipe of choice. Were I pressured to choose my favorite, I would say the Meatloaf recipe could easily be referred to as "all the way live".

We also hope you're liking the comic, which is still ramping up as we speak!

Unfortunately, there may be a slight delay as Skabs is trapped in the horrible town of Bensalem without his laptop's power cord. I plan to make a lighting quick foray into the wilderness to return the thing to its rightful owner (and also go eat Arby's), but I cannot assure you that we will post a page today, as much as I would like to.

I guess what you're looking at here is the grand opening of Skabs and my little web comic, Front Beat. It is unlike the vast majority of web comics in that it is a serial comic with a ploted out story and all that junk. Obviously we're not the first. There's other very excellent non-humor based comics out there (like one of our advertisers, the saucy Alpha Shade). We're clearly not going to be the last. But all the same, we've added our own jumble of words and drawings to that number and hope to one day be as delightfully salacious as some of the ones out there.

Now, I realize that the content is a little lacking at this moment. Believe me, you don't know how much work goes into something of this measure until you try it. If you're desirous of more Dave-related writing or Skabs-related art in the interim between updates you need only visit fan-service.org, which is a repository of humorous and semi-humorous babble about anime, video games, and the communities that attach themselves to such hobbies. As for us, we'll just keep plugging away here. So far, so good!

It is our foremost desire to entertain, but I would be remiss in not mentioning that we do have ulterior motives. As per our custom, the fan-service crew is once again going to show up at Otakon. However, due to poor planning, we don't have an art table to sit at! If you're a kind soul with an extra spot at one of your tables we will gladly compensate you with cash and/or beer for the rights to share it. See... Otakon just isn't as fun if we're not hanging around in the art room. Know what I mean?

If you've got something to offer, feel free to e-mail me at Dave@fan-service.org.

Heck, even if you want to meet up at Otakon, for whatever reason. We tend to throw a pretty kickass party on Saturday night. Here's our general appearance:

You'll recognize me wearing either my trademark "VM02 Da Nang" hat, or my sun-beaten "Bungie" cap. Also, I'm easy to spot because I'm absolutely ADORABLE.

Skabs is a young ruffian, full of spit and vinegar and with a sizeable beard to match. If you see this rather hirtuste mans, with biceps that look as if they were given to him by Apollo himself... wuh oh! Ya just found Skabla!

But seriously, have fun rooting around in our garbage. If you posted in the forums I would consider it a delicious and personal pleasure. And keep coming back! For the next few days, there ain't no stoppin' this crazy train we're on.

I guess what you're looking at here is the grand opening of Skabs and my little web comic, Front Beat. It is unlike the vast majority of web comics in that it is a serial comic with a ploted out story and all that junk. Obviously we're not the first. There's other very excellent non-humor based comics out there (like one of our advertisers, the saucy Alpha Shade). We're clearly not going to be the last. But all the same, we've added our own jumble of words and drawings to that number and hope to one day be as delightfully salacious as some of the ones out there.

Now, I realize that the content is a little lacking at this moment. Believe me, you don't know how much work goes into something of this measure until you try it. If you're desirous of more Dave-related writing or Skabs-related art in the interim between updates you need only visit fan-service.org, which is a repository of humorous and semi-humorous babble about anime, video games, and the communities that attach themselves to such hobbies. As for us, we'll just keep plugging away here. So far, so good!

It is our foremost desire to entertain, but I would be remiss in not mentioning that we do have ulterior motives. As per our custom, the fan-service crew is once again going to show up at Otakon. However, due to poor planning, we don't have an art table to sit at! If you're a kind soul with an extra spot at one of your tables we will gladly compensate you with cash and/or beer for the rights to share it. See... Otakon just isn't as fun if we're not hanging around in the art room. Know what I mean?

If you've got something to offer, feel free to e-mail me at Dave@fan-service.org.

Heck, even if you want to meet up at Otakon, for whatever reason. We tend to throw a pretty kickass party on Saturday night. Here's our general appearance:

You'll recognize me wearing either my trademark "VM02 Da Nang" hat, or my sun-beaten "Bungie" cap. Also, I'm easy to spot because I'm absolutely ADORABLE.

Skabs is a young ruffian, full of spit and vinegar and with a sizeable beard to match. If you see this rather hirtuste mans, with biceps that look as if they were given to him by Apollo himself... wuh oh! Ya just found Skabla!

But seriously, have fun rooting around in our garbage. If you posted in the forums I would consider it a delicious and personal pleasure. And keep coming back! For the next few days, there ain't no stoppin' this crazy train we're on.

I guess what you're looking at here is the grand opening of Skabs and my little web comic, Front Beat. It is unlike the vast majority of web comics in that it is a serial comic with a ploted out story and all that junk. Obviously we're not the first. There's other very excellent non-humor based comics out there (like one of our advertisers, the saucy Alpha Shade). We're clearly not going to be the last. But all the same, we've added our own jumble of words and drawings to that number and hope to one day be as delightfully salacious as some of the ones out there.

Now, I realize that the content is a little lacking at this moment. Believe me, you don't know how much work goes into something of this measure until you try it. If you're desirous of more Dave-related writing or Skabs-related art in the interim between updates you need only visit fan-service.org, which is a repository of humorous and semi-humorous babble about anime, video games, and the communities that attach themselves to such hobbies. As for us, we'll just keep plugging away here. So far, so good!

It is our foremost desire to entertain, but I would be remiss in not mentioning that we do have ulterior motives. As per our custom, the fan-service crew is once again going to show up at Otakon. However, due to poor planning, we don't have an art table to sit at! If you're a kind soul with an extra spot at one of your tables we will gladly compensate you with cash and/or beer for the rights to share it. See... Otakon just isn't as fun if we're not hanging around in the art room. Know what I mean?

If you've got something to offer, feel free to e-mail me at Dave@fan-service.org.

Heck, even if you want to meet up at Otakon, for whatever reason. We tend to throw a pretty kickass party on Saturday night. Here's our general appearance:

You'll recognize me wearing either my trademark "VM02 Da Nang" hat, or my sun-beaten "Bungie" cap. Also, I'm easy to spot because I'm absolutely ADORABLE.

Skabs is a young ruffian, full of spit and vinegar and with a sizeable beard to match. If you see this rather hirtuste mans, with biceps that look as if they were given to him by Apollo himself... wuh oh! Ya just found Skabla!

But seriously, have fun rooting around in our garbage. If you posted in the forums I would consider it a delicious and personal pleasure. And keep coming back! For the next few days, there ain't no stoppin' this crazy train we're on.