V Dubs, Ja.

V is a letter that just seems...odd. Not like X odd, W odd, or even L odd, but odd. Back in Roman times and in tiny fonts at the end of movie credits, V signified the number "5." Whenever you see "I.V." together, do you mean the medical stuff, or the number 4? So the word "Shiv"...would it be pronounced "Shiv" or "Shore?" I prefer "Shiv," it's more awesome that way. Unless you're on the business end of it, then it'll suck.

V can mean a few other different things. It's the Peace Sign, it's pointing down, it can win a fight with [] but not O, and you can put it on someone's head to ruin a picture.

Obviously, I can't of anything else that's funny to say about V. Here are some words that start with it.


Vault: One of my favorite sodas ever. It's green, its addictive, and its delicious. I don't remember what exactly turned me onto this drink, but I'm glad I found it. I remember watching it on the WB11 Morning News about how it was like the love-child of a soda and an energy drink, but costing the same as a Coke (it was made by Coke, after all). That sold me, as I found it in the St. Joe's Cafeteria's soda cabinet later that day. To this day I credit myself for starting the Vault craze at my college, as I was the first person that I noticed to actually try it. Within days, I saw several people hooked on it. Now look at it...it grew up so much.

People have asked me why I love Vault so much but despise Mountain Dew, which looks exactly the same. My answer: I have no clue. Do they have similar tastes? It still won't spin me towards dewing the Dew, but I'd like to be filled in on this.

Vault even has a brother, Red Blitz, which is also delicious. It's red and has a berry flavor, unlike Vault's Green Citrus. The discovery of Red Blitz also led to my obsessively collecting Coke Points due to a little label on the bottle that read "COLLECT 8 CAPS FOR A FREE VAULT!" And so I did. I'm 50 caps away from that Coke Machine, whose offer will probably expire before I obtain them. Either that, or the "Machine" is the size of a keychain, which would suck.

You should have seen my reaction upon discovering Vault in can form. Any version of Vault beyond 20oz Bottles is a rare find, and Canned Vault is one of my favorite forms of the drink. I swear, it's as if Coke managed to successfully create Slurm. It's that awesome. I'm not even going to describe the inevitable orgasm I had when I discovered it in Fountain form at a White Castle. That's for your mind to decipher, which I hope that the image is already horribly embedded in.

Vault also has the claim of being the reincarnation of Surge, a similar drink from the 90s. I missed this one on the first go-around, seeing as I was in Elementary School at the time and wasn't a big soda chugger back then. Remember, "Reincarnation" is different from a "Resurrection." A Resurrection is more like the next entry.

Vanilla Coke: Huzzah! When this drink was taken off the shelf in 2005, Vault took its place as Top Soda in my book. But now it's back, and it, Vault, and Red Blitz now share a sexy three-way for the #1 Caffeine Injection. This drink is...amazing.

Sure, Coke & Pepsi have had their share of Soda gimmicks, like Cherry, Lemon, Lime, Diet, Low Carb, Clear, Black Cherry, Splenda, New, Zero. But Vanilla was by far the best one. People have been adding Vanilla to their soda for years, but it took til 2002 for Coke to finally have that idea put into production. A detail to note: Pepsi didn't come out with Pepsi Vanilla at the same time to begin the argument of which came first. Pepsi instead introduced the now-gone Pepsi Blue to compete with Vanilla Coke. I'd talk about the awesomeness of Pepsi Blue, but the P entry was last week and I completely forgot about this drink. Maybe some other time.

Pepsi Blue was later shelved in favor of the expected competition that was Pepsi Vanilla in 2003. As a frequent drinker of Coke and Pepsi, along with their Vanilla Brethren, I can perfectly describe the differences in the tastes (yes, there is one). Vanilla Coke was an odd mix of both Coke and Vanilla, with their powers combining to form a tasty Megazord of sorts. I'd say Voltron, but you need 5 flavors for that one, and sodas don't usually have a Torso flavoring. That's Dr. Pepper's job. Pepsi Vanilla, on the other hand, somehow managed to taste like Pepsi, with Vanilla in it. It's like first "Mmm...Pepsi!" Then "OMG, VANILLA!" then "Pepsi...again." Repeat until you suck out the last droplets of the bottle. I thought both sodas were excellent.

Sadly, unlike Coke's revival of the Vanilla, Pepsi ended up shelving theirs for some reason. The Diet version still exists, but I'm not going anywhere near that crap. That's a Mom Drink if you ask me.

Venture Bros.: One of my favorite cartoons on the air right now. What started out as an adult parody of Johnny Quest, has ballooned into an awesome canon in its own right, parodying the Superhero/Adventurer genre as a whole. To Geek out...well, you just have to watch it to really know. It's a show that basically played out like this:

Lame Super Scientist Dad, Hunky Killer Bodyguard & Two Dorky Kids go out on adventures and face off with random enemies, space aliens, and Monarch Butterfly-Themed Supervillains. The general feel is if a show like Johnny Quest took place in reality. There's the ridiculous notion with Supervillains having lame names, but there's always more to them than meets the eye. Anything that seems arbitrary or completely dumb always has a deeper plot or interesting story to go behind it.

The show's main antagonist, The Monarch, is a prime example. At face value, he seems to be a show's obligatory "Lame Supervillain That Makes The Other Supervillains Look Better," but as the series progressed, it's been the total opposite. He may seem demented, but he's also human. He's capable of love, he feels pain, he knows when something's lame and when the time to strike is. He even made my Top 50 Greatest Villains List. Part 1, anyway. Expect the other 3 parts when this whole "Things That Start With ___" debacle is over.

No other show would've made two random Henchman into full-fleshed and interesting characters. One is a fat nerd that got kidnapped at age 15, the other a tall lame man with sex issues who sounds like Ray Romano. The same goes to two characters known as the "Murderous Moppets," who seem to be random sidekicks to Dr. Girlfriend (now married to the Monarch), but as Season 3 has been progressing, there seems to be a deeper, hidden agenda to them.

The other villains on the show are especially lame. Taking a cue from shows like The Tick (where the show's creators were writers on), the entire premise of a villain is based on their name. The Mad Fop, Sgt. Hatred, The Intangible Fancy, Truckules, The Zoocreeper, Dr. Killinger, Crime-o-Dile, King Gorilla, Helicoptro, and such. This is all thanks to the organization that the villains belong to, The Guild of Calamitous Intent. It's how The Legion of Doom would fair in the real world, being a bureaucratic organization more in tune with keeping the status quo between heroes a& villains and less angled towards world domination.

I can't really say much more of this show unless you watch it. It's one of those shows where it won't make sense unless you watch every episode thanks to the 2nd & 3rd seasons. The First Season has an easier job, you could easily tune into any episode aside from the last 4 and still know what's going on. Each passing episode writes a new page in the ongoing story. Each week saying to yourself "What's gonna happen next," while delivering hilarity and geekish awesomeness.

Watch this preview of Season 3 and see what I mean:



Four episodes into Season 3 and I can officially tell you that yes, it has put out. I'm also a member of the "Shirt of The Week Club," where Astrobase Go releases a new T-Shirt each week that relates to that week's episode. I've only ordered the shirt from Week One, which has the logo of The Guild of Calamitous Intent on it. It's in the mail as we speak.


VH-1: MTV's retarded stepbrother. Back in the day when it too used to play music, it was an inferior copy of MTV's once greatness. Once MTV went "Reality!" where they used nobodies to host & star in every show, VH-1 took it one step further. All of their shows star nobodies that used to be somebodies. For some reason, that makes their shows slightly better. Slightly.

What I'm typing about for this channel is its "I Love The ___" Series, where washups from the respective decade that is being snarked on and unfunny comics that will work for the least amount of money possible remember stuff that happened years ago. Their pay is roughly the same amount as hiring R. Lee Ermey to open an envelope.

It started all fine with "I Love The 80's," which was great since they managed to get several 80s celebs, and the snarking was justified. Plus, a lot of cool stuff happened in those 10 years. The production values were made on the fly, commentators that we haven't heard of until those specials, and learning about how to cheat at Rubix Cubes. I'm dead set that this special is what kicked off that whole "80's Nostalgia Trend" of '03-'06.

Because that series was a hit, they made a 2nd special, but about the 70's. Different decade, different topics, different celebs. Problem: most of the great commentators from the first special were either toddlers or not born yet during that decade. Kelly Rowland, I'm looking in your direction. Thanks to Soleil Moon Freye in the original series, we learned that you were born in 1981. What the hell were you doing in the 1970 retrospective raving about Snuffy? Plus, one of the regulars was a monkey. What the Vuck? Then again, it was the 70s, and Random Monkeys were all the rage.

Since everyone watched that one too, but admitted that it wasn't as good as the 80s one, they made a Second "I Love The 80's" special, and then a Third. These were actually good, but nowhere near as awesome as the original.

And then went and made a 2nd "I Love the 70's," which was somehow worse than the first one. What was the point of "Who's Got A Farrah Do," but "Burt Reynold's Mustache" sort of cancels it out.

After those, there were two specials about the 90's. Which is fine except they were done in 2005 & 06, not long after the 90's ended. Why didn't they save it until...now?

But both of those specials were good in themselves, especially compared to what they're running now: "I Love New Millennium." Yes, the snark is back but...why now? The decade isn't even over yet! And even then, why are we waxing nostalgic about Glitter NOW? Isn't this what "Best Week Ever" is for? For E-List comics needing work to snark in real time so we wouldn't have to do this?

But you have to admit...what if they do snark on '08 and '09? This special was recorded well in advance, well before the stuff that happened in the last 6 months occurred. It would be kind of freakishly interesting for them to "remember" stuff that hasn't happened yet. And due to this pre-emptive snarking, it will cause a rift in time, causing those things to not happen. And we were SO dead set on Head-Copters being a 3-week fad next September. Thanks a bunch, Rich Eisen.




Only V more letters to go counting this one! I should stop writing these at 2am, my creativity seems to wane around that time.

(EDIT: This post happen to be post #L. Only L more to 100!)





That old-school Viacom logo was creepy as hell, wasn't it? Not as bad as DiC's but still pretty freaky.