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Arts & Entertainement

by Miki Thomas

I don’t know about you but I love a good laugh. The web is chock full of truly funny and imaginative sites that show great comic talent and technical expertise. However, the best sites do not have a GLBT theme. Those GLBT sites that would fall under the "humor" category are mostly centered on comic strips.

One site in particular I checked out was Fags in Space. Having cut my teeth on comic books, I was looking forward to reading some GLBT-themed sci fi. The site itself was a technical marvel but the strip was a major bust. It not only was simple-minded, but it dragged every dumb and tired gay cliche out into the open. To read some truly funny GLBT comics, check out Comicazee, the cyberhome of some of the best gay and non-gay alternative comics, such as Dykes to Watch Out For.

Perhaps the most popular of the truly funny sites is Bert is Evil!, an expose of the Muppet whose relationship with Ernie on Sesame Street has been the subject of much speculation. If this site is correct, there is much more to Bert, and it has nothing to do with his sexuality. He has dealt drugs, corrupted sweet and innocent Muppets like Elmo, and been implicated in the death of that beloved storekeeper, Mr. Hooper. And that’s not all!

This site has become so popular that there are now several mirror sites. The original site at Fractal Cow couldn’t handle all the hits without Dino Ignacio, the webmaster, paying $200.00 a month to keep Bert is Evil! open.

If, after checking out Bert is Evil!, you feel a need to further wax nostalgic for your childhood, visit Gobler Toys, the site that features the toys "you don’t remember!" Among the toys featured are Kiki, the Fashion Tiki, the doll that wards off evil spirits while your little girl dresses it in the latest fashions; Play Dead Coffins, the toy that allows boys and girls humiliated by baths and early bedtimes to "teach [their] parents a lesson" by playing dead; and the Gobler Wobbler, an egg-shaped safety device for accident-prone toddlers. Makes me wish I had a Gobler toy growing up.

However, yesterday’s children become today’s adults who have to work for a living. If you are stuck in a job that isn’t all that wonderful, there’s nothing more satisfying than to poke vicious fun at it. Since I work at a bank operations center, I was excited to find the

site for Humungous Bank. It is a dead on parody of the banking industry by a couple of Canadians who wanted to spoof the ad campaign of a local bank. You don’t necessarily have to work at a bank to appreciate the humor; anyone who has dealt with the faceless conglomerate that is the modern bank will find the site right on target.

Do you feel that there aren’t enough causes in this world to get riled up about? This site will give you not just food for thought, but a whole new appreciation for that most plain and common of modern devices — the shopping cart. According to its Web site, the Center for Shopping Cart Abuse Prevention is "dedicated to preventing the pervasiveness of Shopping Cart abuse." Among the site’s features are photos of terrifying acts of shopping cart abuse (not for the squeamish!), a top ten list of the biggest abusers, and a 12-step program for abusers to learn to treat the majestic shopping cart with respect. After visiting this site, you’ll never bang around that shopping cart while grocery shopping ever again.

There are those sites that are on the web because there were some extra megabytes to fill up. I guess that is Butts Across America’s reason for being. This site is composed of photos of people mooning the camera at different American landmarks, such as Arcadia National Park in Maine. You could say that these people are saying yes to crack (yes, I know — just keep your groans to a minimum).

My favorite site is the Gallery of Regrettable Food, an in-depth study of those old cookbooks from the ‘30s through the ‘60s that were the brainchild of government agencies trying to pique interest in lima beans or of company test kitchens, who probably never actually ate their creations. The cookbooks are reproduced in all their garish glory as the Webmaster asks "What were they thinking? How did they eat this bilge?" You’ll never look at your grandmother’s cookbook collection the same again.

If you want to create a humorous site aimed at the GLBT community, you can’t do better than to use the above sites as examples. Hmmmm — I wonder if Gobler Toys ever made toys for sissies and tomboys?