Archives

That Boy Ain’t Right

Here are some things: 

  • People have asked for a print or poster of the Sesame Street comic. You can click “Buy a Print” under any comic and get a very nice, high quality print mailed to you in regular or gigant-o-size.
  • If you are at NYCC right now, head over to booth 950 (Blind Ferret) and buy some of my stuff why not?
  • Here is the most recent HE Podcast: Episode 90 “BONE TOKENS!” 
  • Dallas Fan Days is next weekend and I am going to be there in the artist alley. Not in the main hall, but up on one of the higher floors (four, I think) where all the celeb panels are held. I will have books and shirts and sketches.

DO NOT get me wrong. I have enjoyed immensely every Bryan Fuller created show I’ve ever seen (especially Dead Like Me and the cancelled-by-fox-after-only-4-epsisodes Wonderfalls). All I’m saying is the guy has a particularly morbid ouvre. It shouldn’t come as a shock that your shows keep getting cancelled when the subject matter typically concerns the two main thing the average American’s don’t want to have to face: mortality, questioning of their belief systems concerning God and the possibility of an afterlife. This illustrates, however, just exactly how watered down the “average American” forces all of our art/media to be. Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me were highly introspective and unreasonably creative shows that deserved mass audiences. They were shows that, while not forcing you, certainly ASKED you to think about “the big questions.”

I can’t say I was looking forward to The Munsters reboot, Mockingbird Lane, but I was at least going to give it a chance considering its pedigree. I’ve only read the synopsis and seen the promo images, but it just seemed like a needless grave-robbing (pun entirely intended [puntirely puntended]) of a once-popular franchise. Now the series has been canned and the pilot is going to air as a Tv movie sometime around Halloween. I’ll still watch it, but I’m not expecting a miracle. Is it completely insane that I think a modern Adams Family reboot would work better than The Munsters? They were just dark and ghoulish without being actual Draculas and Wolfensteins and what not. Seems like there would be far fewer limitations in bringing them into the modern world and having the show be sustainable without having to be sensational or ultra-campy.

 COMMENTERS: What’s your favorite TV series that delved into the darker side? Is there a show that mixed horror, comedy and relatability better than others?

The Perils Of Companionship

Here are some things: 

Farewell, Amy and Rory. You were cute and ginger and stubborn and I liked you a lot. Go along, Ponds.

COMMENTERS: How do you feel about the Pond’s exit? Spoilers are fine. It’s been a couple of weeks, right?

DON’T READ THE COMMENTS OF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS!!! 

 

Brought To You By The Letters P, B And S

Update: New Lofi comic for 10/8/12! 

PBS is great. Sesame Street is particularly great. As the parent of the young child, I can’t even explain the profound impact that show has had on my daughter and her development. She learned numbers, letters, social concepts like sharing, courtesy, apologizing, honesty, etc. all while being engaged and entertained. Of course my wife and I proactively taught her those subjects and concepts as well, but just think about how much more relatable they were and how much more easily a 2 year old could understand them when we were able to say “You have to share. Remember how Elmo felt when his friend didn’t share?” Sesame Street is not just a TV show. It’s an institution and  an invaluable national resource.

I know Sesame Street, and particularly Big Bird, are the topics being thrown around the media right now, but I can say with 100% certainly that PBS produces the highest quality children’s programming available and THE ONLY children’s programming that consistently entertains and educates my exceptionally bright child. I’ll give you two examples out of the dozens that come to mind. Curious George is focused on problem solving through experimentation and doing. After she watched an episode, she often disappears into her room or our craft area and emerges 30 minutes later with a contraption based on whichever episode she just watched. “Look! I built an automatic kitty feeder just like George!”

Her favorite show right now is Word Girl. It’s about a superhero that uses her vocabulary to defeat villains. In addition to having above average writing for a kids’ show, it is also voice acted by some of the top comedians in the country (Maria Bamford, Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, Chris Parnell, etc.) Last week, after watching an episode of Word Girl, she ran into the kitchen, grabbed a pencil and some paper and started writing a play. She wrote pages of lines for each character, assigned my wife and I parts and we sat down as a family and had a table read before bedtime. It was, in a word, adorbs. But more so, she was exercising her creativity because she was inspired by what she had seen on PBS.

Watching these shows makes her brain move in new directions instead of just keeping it subdued for 30 minutes while we cook dinner. Anyone that looks at the minuscule government subsidy that PBS gets and doesn’t see the value (or doesn’t even understand how much it is) probably didn’t watch enough PBS.

COMMENTERS: Any particular memories of Sesame Street as a child or a parent? 

NOTICE TO COMMENTERS: PLEASE do not use this as a forum to preach your politics. I don’t want to know who you’re going to vote for or why. I don’t want to know what you think about the President or the opposition. This site is where I make comics based on my personal opinions. If you want a place to yell opinions at the Internet, go elsewhere.  This spot is already taken. If you chose to ignore this request, your comments will be deleted and you will be banned from commenting. 

Form 1040EZOMGWTF

If you are going to New York Comic Con, find booth 950 (Blind Ferret) and pick up some of my t-shirts while you’re there. After you pick them up, take them over to one of the nice gentlemen behind the table and exchange money for them. Then you can take them home!

I am a chronic procrastinator. It’s one of my character flaws that I have decided not to fight anymore. Life is quite short and I have plenty of other flaws that I stand a better chance of improving upon over the next 50 years or so. It’s good to let a few of the minor ones win so you can focus on the really self-destructive ones. I hear people say they “work best under pressure,” where as I “work ONLY under pressure.” If I have 6 months to complete a goal (at home, in business, internally, whatever), I will find no reason to act upon said goal until roughly 94% of my allotted time has expired. Somewhere around 70% time expiry, I begin feeling like shit and constantly chastising myself for NOT doing the thing I’m nearly out of time to do. Despite my self-berating, my lizard brain knows that I still have more time before things get super critical and refuses to let me act. Once I hit that final 6% of time remaning I go into hyper-stress mode where I continually talk about the thing I have to do, talk about how I’m NOT doing it and talk about how stressed out I am because of all the things I’m not doing. Then, usually the night before the thing is due, I do the thing. Then I feel good for maybe a day. Then I have a new thing to NOT do. And such is my mobius of frustration.

So it should come as no surprise that this is also how I handle my taxes. My CPA knows to file an extension every year, and I end up turning my raw data into him (data that takes me about 12 hours to collect, collate, categorize, etc… data that would take about 1 hour a month if I handled it all throughout the year instead of all at once) about a week before the IRS would send me to jail. I did it this way this year, and last year and every year before since I was technically self-employed. Get a paycheck from a faceless global corporation makes your taxes SO much easier. Then again, you can’t right off business movies, or business Twizzlers or business Twizzlers Pull’n Peel which are better than regular business Twizzlers and require a separate form entirely if you intend to report them to the IRS.

COMMENTERS: Are you a procrastinator, procrasturbator (someone who looks for things on the Ineternet to distract them from the work they’re supposed to be doing), or a get-up-and-goer? Anything particular thing/habbit/app/site/device that kills or aids your productivity?

Yippee Ki-Yay Younger Looper

Guys, I make a lot of books and t-shirts and plushies and what not and you are totally welcome to go procure some or all of that stuff for yourself or your loved ones. You can also get a a high quality print of any comic in regular or giant sized sizes.

Looper was… [ehem] SUPER DOOPER! Sorry, I had to. Thanks for being a trooper. Pooper scooper, Sterling Cooper.

Seriously though, Looper was exactly what I want from a stand alone sci-fi movie. It brings you into it’s world, quickly establishes why it’s different, how it’s futuristic, etc. then it tells a human story with the gimmick (in this case, time travel and a bit more) as the back drop. The futuristic aspects of the story are small elements of the narrative and while they make it possible, they do not overtake or even lead the story as it progresses. In Looper the characters (FANTASTIC performances by Joseph Gordon Levitt, Emily Blunt and a stunning/terrifying young boy) and their choices are the focus. So many one-shot sci-fi films get this formula backwards. It’s like someone writes a cool idea on a napkin (100 years in the future, money is all gone and people use hip hop dancing as currency), then scrambles to write another 119 pages just to make that idea take 2 hours to play out on screen.

My favorite part about Looper is that it was filled with actual “nearly didn’t see that coming” surprises. This was due mainly to the fact that the first round of trailers fooled you into thinking they were serving up the entire plot (young Bruce Willis has to kill old Bruce Willis from the future) on a silver platter, when in fact that only covers about the first half of the movie. The main story is much smaller, much more character-centric, and has nearly nothing to do with time travel. The current trailers are showing more of the 2nd half plot, but nothing that actually clues you in as to what’s going on.

As far as original sci-fi stories go, I have absolutely nothing but praise for this film. SURE, if you question the time travel premise even a little bit, the whole thing falls apart, BUT that’s why we have the old saying, “You can’t spell TIME TRAVEL BULLSHIT without BULLSHIT.” Leave it alone. Let it be. Enjoy the movie. It’s great.

Side note: The makeup effects better win somebody an Oscar. You don’t really get the full impact of JGL’s transformation into young Bruce until the two are face to face on screen for the first time. It’s rather shocking.

ADDITIONAL Side note: If you HAVE seen Looper, go read this interview with the writer where he explains many of the loose ends that might have nagged at your geek-brain.

UPDATE: 

COMMENTERS: What did you think of Looper? Also, what is your favorite/least favorite stand alone (non franchise, series, tv spin off, etc) cinematic sci-fi situation?