The Best Part Of Waking Up

Part 1 of a probably two parter.

If you don’t already own everything in my store… what… what’s wrong? Are you ok?

Joss Whedon signs a multiyear deal with one of the largest entertainment companies in the world (Disney/Marvel/ABC/Haliburton/Goldman Sachs/Yu-Gi-Oh Cards, Inc.), directs a billion dollar movie and still makes time to have fun making stuff with his friends. This guy… this is my kind of guy.

COMMENTERS: What do you think of the Much Ado About Nothing trailer? Legitimately good film or a feel good fun time friend gang having a friendly feel good funtime, no harm, no foul, but not a great movie? What other classic works would you like to see Whedon or other geek film makers adapt?

John Carter Of Veronica Mars

I’ve been meaning to watch Veronica Mars for several years, but I’ve never actually gotten around to it. I guess I should get on that.

I’m always happy when someone finds a way to circumvent the established systems that are in place for keeping people from getting their creativity out to the people that would appreciate it. Garageband, iTunes, YouTube, Kickstarter and a host of other softwares and services (including the Internet in general) that mostly didn’t exist a decade ago exist, in part, to shake up the status quo of the creative industrial complex and break down the barriers between content creators and their fans. They also exist to make large amounts of money for their owners and shareholders.

See, that’s the thing. The systems by which creative people are given license and funds to create a thing and distribute it to their audience aren’t changing all that much. It’s just that we’re slowly removing redundancies, levels of arbitrary approvals, and decreasing the number of obsolete middlemen in order to take a 50 step process down to a 5 step one. I want to make this. Do you want it? Ok, give me money and I’ll do it and then you can have it. Here, I made it like I said I would. Thanks. That’s pretty much how it’s always been, accept now those are the ONLY steps (in most cases), instead of just the major milestones between dozens of other, smaller ones. That isn’t to say creating a thing like a show or a book or an album doesn’t require hundreds of steps, and hours and often times people. It’s just that there are fewer INDIVIDUALS that can tell you, “No. Stop this,” and you’d actually have to stop.

The Veronica Mars Kickstarter (which funded on its first day and is currently hovering over $3 million) is a different beast than your typical crowd funded project. Instead of a person or team with an idea to make a thing, and all they need is money and time, this is a studio owned property that’s jammed up sideways with the typical Hollywood bullshit red tape. Rob Thomas doesn’t own his show, which means some WB exec said, “We’re not going to give you $2 million to make a movie for a cancelled show that no one cares about. Come at me with a pitch for an adapted fairy tale but with hot teens and we’ll talk business. Now it’s TIME FOR COCAINE!” And Rob Thomas said, “A) I do not front Matchbox 20. That is a DIFFERENT dude. And B) How about I get the Internet to give you $2 milly? Then can we do our movie?” And that exec probably replied, “SURE WHATEVER IS IT HOT IN HERE TO YOU IT’S PRETTY HOT TO ME I DON’T THINK IT WAS THIS HOT BEFORE I DID ALL THIS COOOOCAAAAAAAAAIIIIINNNNNNNNNE!!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! AAAAAAAAAAGHGHGHGLGLGLGLG!!!!!”

I honestly forgot what I was writing about during that last part, so I’ll wrap up by saying that this is the first step in a BIG BIG change in how very expensive projects get made or whether they get made at all. There will certainly be some (probably A LOT) of people that take this idea and try to replicate its success in extremely dumb ways, but there will probably also be quite a few worthy projects that get off the ground because of it. I don’t think we’ll get a Serenity 2: Zombie Wash In Space from Kickstarter any time soon, but I bet we get a few more proper finales to some unduly truncated TV shows. It’s a BIG baby step in the right direction.

COMMENTERS: First off, are you psyched for this Veronica Mars movie? Did you love the show or overlook it as “Buffy without monsters” like I did? Second thing: What property do you think would best benefit from a Kickstarter resurrection? A cancelled show, a long rumored and eventually shelved movie project? A video game sequel that never happened?

Pluto’s Lament

I read about some science that happened last week and figured while everyone was all “SUPER HAPPY HOORAY SCIENCE!” at least one guy was probably still all “BOOO SCIENCE! BOOOOO!”

I know comics have been sparse for the last week. I’ve been working on some updates to the website, which has taken up quite a bit of my mental and physical resources for the last few days. Even though the comics are the main thing you come here for, the website is the cage that holds them. And, as anyone who’s ever tried to put something in a cage can tell you, that cage better be ship shape before you start putting people in it… things… things go in cages. Or animals. Never unsuspecting motel guests…

You may notice that the site is now 3 columns instead of two, and the comic area is much larger. Going forward I’m going to be posting the comics at 1000px wide instead of 820px. That might seem like a small change, but I think it really makes a difference in how pretty the art is. The rest of the stuff I’ve spent 12 hours a day working on will be imperceptible to you unless it breaks. Is this what it’s like to work in IT? No one notices your work unless something breaks? Guys, that sounds awful. You Fancy Coding Bastards should call each and every one of your clients ever single day and tell them, “Your shit still works. You’re welcome.”

COMMENTERS: So I guess we’re pretty close to understanding why stuff has mass. Neat. What’s your favorite (not necessarily the most important or life changing, just your favorite) scientific discovery? I don’t mean inventions and what not. I mean, “We used to think it was this way, but now we know it’s THIS way,” type of situation. Which one do you think caused the most shake up in the average person’s daily life? Which was the hardest to accept?

Post: Apocalyptic

Just give it to a German. Any German. Even someone that looks German. They’ll know what to do. Maybe just set it on a Mercedes. I’m sure it will get where it’s going. OK, how about you tie it to a horse that pointed towards Germany? They can swim pretty far, right?

I feel like Germany treats mail from the US with about as much respect as McDonalds treats the cards you stick in the suggestion box. With a sort of “We really appreciate your enthusiasm and we’ll take it under consideration. [wink]” kind of attitude. Every time I send a t-shirt to Germany I let it go with the same hopefulness and trepidation as a parent dropping their kid off at college. I hope it goes interesting places, finds out where it belongs and doesn’t get molested, torn in half and thrown down a well.

The weird thing is Italy and Spain are actually worse than Germany as far as items actually reaching their destination, but almost no one ever orders from those counties. Perhaps they have just come to accept that anything they order online needs to already be on their continent in order to have a fighting chance. I suspect all international mail entering Italy is “inspected” with “machine guns” by “mob-owned police” on “Vespas,” if you catch my meaning. More than likely, all mailboxes in Spain sit atop holes that lead directly to a vast network of underground furnaces. Spain probably ran out of oil in the 70’s and has been powering their entire infrastructure with heat generated from burning US parcels.

As in all things, Australia is always the wild card. Sometimes t-shirts get there in as little as two weeks, with nary a dingo ding on the corners. Other times the customer waits about 3 months, I give them a refund, an additional 3 months go by and I get the original package back in the mail looking like it has been securely affixed to the undercarriage of a dune buggy for the last half year. Or perhaps an Australian postal worker, having found himself stranded in the Outback, and having long since eaten his wallaby partner for sustenance (due to the unforeseen lack of naturally occurring bloomin’ onions), fashioned all of the parcels he was carrying into a crude shelter and clothing. Nearly a year later, after his bleached bones are found buy an Aboriginal bone trader, his packages are returned to their point of origin. At this point I realize that my envelope was obviously used to construct the bathroom floor, or perhaps a shoe that was only used for walking in vast fields of kangaroo shit.

UK mail from the US only takes a day or two longer than it does within the states. Hell, the Postal Office probably prefers delivering there as opposed to, say… Wyoming. What’s crossing an ocean when you don’t have to be in Wyoming? Canadian Customs can be a bit tricky. They tend to hold random things for a month or so, then eventually just send them on to their destination with no indication as to why they sat motionless for so long. I don’t think it matters, however, since the average Canadian has VERY low opinions of Canada Post and reacts to months delayed packages with a cheerful, “Oh well sure it was a birthday present and sure it was 9 weeks late, but hey, it’s not so bad, eh? All that matters is that we had fun waiting, eh?”

COMMENTERS: Have you ever had an international shipment eaten by THE GREAT ATLANTIC KRAKEN? Any other postal or shipping related mishaps?

Method Man

Emerald City Comicon is THIS WEEKEND in Seattle. It is my favorite show of the year and I will be at the Blind Ferret Booth (#1106-1108) all weekend. Check out the new mini-banner/ price sheet I made for ECCC on my Tumblr.

I will have a lot of the stuff pictured in the ad below with me at the con, but what I really want is for YOU to have it. In return I want to have your dollars.

OK, I know this is crazy bonkers banana sauce, but hear me out Hollywood. How about for the next Oscars you hire a professional entertainer to host? Maybe someone who is used to being on stage in front of a lot of people. Maybe someone who doesn’t come off like he is reading his bad jokes for the very first time in front of 100 million people. Maybe, oh I dunno, a comedian? Or a seasoned veteran of the stage? Someone who isn’t constantly shouting, “I REALLY DON’T BELONG UP HERE!!!” with his eyebrows. The 2013 Oscars were a crap stabbing train wreck. Perhaps not quite as train wrecky has last years “Which host has greater contempt for the other?” contest, but the train was thoroughly and irrefutably wrecked.

Seth MacFarlane has a fantastic voice, and he’s managed to become the highest paid comedy writer in history (despite having relied on the same 7 jokes for the last 15 years), but Oscar host is a job he is in no way qualified for. His subpar hosting performance could have been saved by some top notch writing, but they seem to have gone instead with NO writing. I found myself staring at nearly every bit and bit of banter with the face I usually reserve for Five Gum commercials. A sort sideway eye-SQUONK that says, “I know what all of these things are individually, but when you put them together in this way, I suffer complete cognitive disconnect from whatever emotions you may have intended to evoke, or message you were attempting to relay.” Did anyone have any idea what the dudes from The Avengers were talking about? If the real Avengers were that unrehearsed and disorganized, you know who would be hosting the Oscars? MOTHER FUCKING THANOS. That’s who.

When Daniel Day-Lewis took the stage to accept his Best Actor Award (which at this point really shouldn’t be applied to any particular film since he is just THE. BEST. ACTOR.) he seemed to either have rehearsed his jokes so much that they seemed completely off the cuff and hilariously perfect or HE’S JUST THAT GOD DAMN WONDERFUL. My vote is for the latter. I was really hoping D-Day-Lew would have just decked MacFarlane right in the beady black shark eyes and, as his foe lay gobsmacked on the floor, let out a John Lovitz-esque, “ACTING!”

COMMENTERS: Speaking of method acting, or The Method, as purveyors of douchebaggery might call it, have you ever kept up a falsehood for so long that it eventually became true? For instance, did you ever pretend to like something (say to impress a potential partner) that you eventually really liked it, or at least knew so much about it that you were nearly an expert?

At my last real job, one of the requirements during the interview was than I be proficient in Photoshop (a particular proficiency that I totally lacked, despite what my resume might have said). I had to fake it nearly every day with tricks like the “I know how I would do it, but how would YOU do it?” technique or the “Yeah, I can do that [QUICK GO WATCH A TUTORIAL ON YOUTUBE]” process. I did this so much so that I did eventually become somewhat of a Photoshop expert. Now it’s the main medium I work in for my comic-maker job.