Revised Company Policies

[reddit-me]“Yarrr! Tell Steve, it be me 15 minute break. Ye’ll be findin’ me in Davey Jones’ Break Room feastin’ on a Hot Pocket and a tankard o’ Mr. Pib.”

[There are a few new additions and updates to The Store. Check it out!]

So, The Pirate Bay was acquired by a “legitimate” company that plans to transform it into a “legitimate company.” I’m sure they’re banking on name recognition from all the media exposure and lawsuits to bring the honest non-eyepatch customers around. Remember how well that worked for Napster? [hint: not well]

YOUR COMMENT CHALLENGE: Assuming The Pirate Bay was a retail store (see the above comic for precident), give me some scenarios that might play in said store. How about bathroom signs that say “Employees must wash hooks before returning to work.” Or maybe OSHA guidelines demand all peglegs be made of spruce or maple.

A Princely Pursuit

I’ve been listening the Harry Potter Audio Books by Jim Dale while drawing for the past few weeks. I just started book 7 today and I’m already sad that I’m nearly done with the series. I can’t recommend this audio book series more. Jim Dale absolutely brings each and every character to life with an individual voice and distinct personality. I don’t want to gush too much about how thoroughly I’ve enjoyed each book so far, but I do have to say a sincere apology to anyone I mocked over the last decade or so for getting too involved in “a children’s book.” I didn’t know, ok? I didn’t understand.

With this new found infatuation with the source material, I am finding myself increasingly distraught with the movies. This is odd considering the movies were my introduction to the franchise and what got me interested in the books. It’s like REALLY enjoying your cousin’s Zeppelin cover band, then hearing the real thing and realizing cousin Randy probably shouldn’t have been playing a banjo with vacuum cleaner attachment.

I know you can’t properly film a 700 page book for budgetary and attention span reasons, but some of the omissions and alterations in the movies are just lazy. Entire characters are distilled to one or two lines of dialog and often attributed to the wrong character. Most of the frustration I felt with the series was actually due to issues the movies would address but then leave hanging. I’m excited to see the adaptation of “The Half-Blood Prince” on the big screen, but now I realize not to expect it to be too faithful to the books. If it’s a good film, I can enjoy it for what it is but I’m not expecting them to cover everything. I actually do anticipate that I’ll be staring puzzled at the screen for most of the movie when key plot elements are glazed over or left out entirely.

But Wait, There’s More

[reddit-me]Of all the recent celebrity deaths, the only one I’ve really cared about is Billy Mays. As the comic states, I was in sales for 10 years and I did fancy myself an inventor when I was younger. I have notebooks full of “inventions” that I hoped would one day be sold on TV or in stores. Both of these aspects of my past made me instantly respect Billy Mays. From a sales-guy perspective I recognize that he busted his ass traveling with trade shows to make a living for his family and eventually, through perseverance and perfecting his craft, he made it big. I appreciate the “self made man” entrepreneurial spirit that he epitomized. From a wannabe-inventor stand point, I have to praise him for giving average workshop and garage tinkerers like me the opportunity to bring their products to market and make their fortunes.

These sentiments might seem odd coming from me if you only know me as a webcomic artist, but you can’t do a job for 10 years without learning to love it (or aspects of it) just a bit. That’s a side of me people don’t often see, but it’s there. I guess I feel like Billy and I were kindred spirits in that respect. Plus I tend to “project” when I talk, which he made into an art form.

I’ve really been enjoying his show “Pitchmen” on Discovery. I would assume the show’s future is uncertain at this point, but I encourage you to watch the first season to see what a kind and talented man Billy was.

If you have any warm thoughts to share about Billy Mays, I also encourage you to share them with his son, Billy Mays III on twitter at @youngbillymays. He’s obviously having one of the worst weeks of his life, but he’s been saying that the kind tweets from Billy’s fans are cheering him up.

Godspeed, Billy.

Tribute to Billy Mays and His Silliest Infomercials
‘Infomercial King’ Billy Mays Dead at 50
RIP Billy Mays Dead at 50 [Via Billy Mays III on Twitter]

More Than Should Ever Meet The Eye

[reddit-me]Not content with simply giving the world robot pissing, robot farting and robot dicks (that shoot lasers), Sir Michael Bay (not really a knight) decided “Transformers 2” wouldn’t be complete with robot balls. That’s classy film making right there. Michael Bay doesn’t really have to respect us as an audience, though. He continually shovels shit down our throat holes with a Cybertronian Mecha-Shovel and we thank him with millions and millions of dollars, ensuring even more frequent and violent throat shovelings in the future.

Anyway, Josh live-Twittered “Transformers 2.” Here it is unabridged. !!!POTENTIAL SPOILERS!!!

Starting transformers2. Liveblog ahoy! Harry potter 6 trailer now. 9:49 PM Jun 24th
First transform most visually confusing thing I’ve seen in my life. 2 awful one liners. 10:03 PM
Sound design is bizarre. Like half the sounds are missing. 10:04 PM
Aaaaaand we have dog humping. 10:05 PM
I’ve now seen robot dick and robot farting. 10:08 PM
Camera just spun for almost a full minute. 10:13 PM
It just dawned on me. I have no idea what is going on. 10:20 PM
Innappropriate parental drug use. 10:24 PM
And we have lapdance 10:29 PM
Holy shit. First actually funny joke. 10:30 PM
Wait. Why are we on Saturn?!?!? 10:36 PM
I never thought I would feel sorry for Shia lebeef. I was wrong. 10:40 PM
Nobody told me there were cylons in this movie. 10:46 PM
They just drove out the door of a factory in the middle of the city and were instantly in the middle of the forest. What? 10:54 PM
It was just daytime in Paris and the middle of the pacific at the same time. 11:02 PM
Holy racist robots batman 11:13 PM
Wow. Jockstrap shot even *I* didn’t want to see. 11:15 PM
Standing in mid DC. Walk into a building. Walk out of building into fields surrounded by mountains. WTF 11:19 PM
THEY ARE GONNA BLOW UP THE SUN! 11:26 PM
Ladies and gentlemen. We have midget. 11:29 PM
Like 40 people have survived epic crashes. WTF. 11:58 PM
BALLS! 12:05 AM
I’m done. Sam just went to robot heaven. Seriously? 12:10 AM
That was better than Terminator Salvation. 12:17 AM

I’d like to point out that I in no way endorse TruckNutz[tm]. I link to them only that you may know the enemy and fear it.

Explomance

There was a rumor /news story that was quickly debunked that Michael “Can we make an explosion explode?” Bay was retiring from the action film genre and moving on to other pursuits. Whether there was an ounce of truth to the story or not, doesn’t concern me. Explosions as an art form and story telling medium, on the other hand, do.

[If you dig this comic, check out THE BOOK!]

What other genre’s should “Splode ‘Em Up” Bay take a crack at? How would the movie’s play out?

Roger Ebert’s scathing review of Transformers 2 [somewhat related and entirely hilarious]
Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie [the best Transformers 2 Review according to Josh]
Nedroid’s Transformers 2 Review [the best according to me]