It occured to me that Jimmy needed some kind of souvenir from his wilder days – and not something easily faked – because even though we know modern day Jimmy as forthright and kind, there needed to be some evidence to back up his claims as a womanizer. A poorly thought through series of tattoos seemed like the appropriate solution.
I imagine a lot of women will probably look at this comic and be really, really turned off by the idea of a guy sporting a sleeve of crossed out names permanently etched into his arm. But there’s something to be said about the appeal of a bad boy, too, right? Oh! But who could hope to tame him?
There’s not much more for me to talk about today and I feel conspicuous cutting today’s blog short. But at the same time, I stayed up WAY too late last night working on the comic after my night class and I’m pretty sure my eyes are focusing in two different directions.
So enjoy the comic and be sure to come back bright and early on Friday for another BIG REVEAL from Jimmy’s sorrid past! Wanna take a guess as to what the big reveal might be? Leave your comments and we’ll see who is right!
WHOA! Didn’t see that one coming, did you? Well, maybe you did. But I like to think you didn’t. Who knew that Jimmy and Charlie’s past intersected so much earlier than we thought? And, by the way, in case you aren’t familiar with Charlie’s backstory or why she’s important, you can read her origin story here (hey, just closin’ the loop for the new readers!)
I know introducing Charlie as the “woman who changed everything” for Jimmy raises all sorts of questions. For example, if Jimmy and Charlie used to be together, why haven’t we heard anything until now? Why hasn’t Jimmy tried to approach Charlie when she’s visited the theater? Don’t worry! We’re going to get to all of that in the next couple of weeks.
I would say this is about the half-way point for the storyline and I’m really excited to tell the rest. What’s been revealed at this point could be a game-changer in the future and redefine some of the relationships in the comic. This is the point where we start to pick up speed!
I think I’d better stop while I’m ahead so I don’t reveal too much more!
As for this weekend’s movies, I want to try and see Clive Owen in The International because I’m really interested in seeing that shoot-out they filmed inside the Guggenheim. But it’s going to be pretty difficult for me to get away. Not only because Saturday is Valentine’s Day, but Sunday we’re having everyone over to celebrate Henry’s second birthday! Henry’s actual birthday is the 18th (and I’ll be talking more about him then.) But for the celebration, it’s just easier to get everyone together on Sunday. As such, not a lot of free time for movies. We gotta scrub down the house and get things ready!
That’s all for me today. So, what do you think about the big reveal? Are you excited to learn more? Where will things go from here? Share your thoughts in the comments and I’ll see you back here on Monday!
When I told Cami the punchline for today’s strip, the first thing she said was “How could Jimmy NOT know he was ripping off The Wild One? He’d have to be some kind of idiot.”
And the point is… yeah, he was.
But I also defended my position thusly:
When Rob Halford from Judas Priest started running around in black leather pants with a black leather vest and black leather arm cuffs with spikes on them, people thought he had invented a new style to go along with the emerging sound of heavy metal music. So influential was his look that thousands of metalheads adopted the style and it remains as one of metal’s most predominant, signature looks.
The think of it was (and this came to light years later) that Halford was a homosexual and the new style he was promoting came directly out of the leather daddy clubs in the UK. Scores of the hardest of hardcore metal fans were running around dressed like leather daddies.
So, as it relates to Jimmy, one guy starts a trend (Brando in The Wild One), another guy adopts the trend, then another guy and then another guy. By the time it reaches someplace like, oh, say, IOWA, no on really know where the trend came from. It’s adopted as a matter of course.
Don’t believe me? Go to Cedar Falls sometime. They’re still convinced that grunge music JUST happened a few years ago. “Hey! Have you ever heard of this band called Nirvana?”
Wow. That’s a lot of references to popular music for a comic about movies. Mitch Clem? I’m gunnin’ for ya!
I’m hoping everyone out there had a great Valentine’s Day. I had a particularly excellent weekend. Not just for the cherubic holiday, but because we also got the family together and celebrated Henry’s second birthday. We had a great time and he did, too. Wednesday is his actually birthday and I think I’ll post a picture of him to share with you guys then. I think it would be a nice little tradition to show you his picture on his birthday. It gives everyone a little peek into how he’s doing. I love my kid. I think he’s awesome.
Wanna know who else is awesome? Cami. Why? Because she gave me one of the best Valentine’s Day gifts EVER! A Netflix account!
So, it’s official. I am now officially the last person in the world to get a Netflix account.
I don’t know why we held out so long. I’m usually an early-adopter of those kind of things – especially when it comes to movies. But… I don’t know. We never got on the bandwagon. It wasn’t because we didn’t understand it or because it was too expensive. It was more because, well, it seemed like there were just other things we should be spending our money on.
Of course, never mind that we pretty much stopped renting movies entirely during this period. I can’t remember the last time I was inside a Blockbuster.
But, yeah, it was long overdue and now we finally have one. I went though the site for a couple of hours this weekend adding films to my queue and ranking others. The first movie we’re supposed to get in the mail is Man On Wire – the documentary about Frenchman Philippe Petit who walked a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center shortly after their completion in 1974. I had threatened to make that my first rental if I ever got a Netflix account during a couple recordings of The Triple Feature and I wanted to make good on that threat. I’m excited to finally see it.
Incidentally, we’re recording an episode of The Triple Feature tonight at 9PM CST at TalkShoe.com and I think this week we’re going to put our Oscar predictions in stone before the big telecast on Sunday.
We informally made our picks a few weeks ago when nominations were announced. But tonight we’re announcing ALL of our picks in EVERY category with NO wiggle room. The reason? We’re putting a little something on the line. A wager, of sorts. Basically, whoever comes in with the least amount of correct predictions has to draw a guest strip for the other two guys on the show.
So, if I lose, I have to do a guest strip for Multiplex and Joe Loves Crappy Movies. If Joe loses, he has to do a guest strip for me and Gordon. And if Gordon loses, he has to do a guest strip for Joe and I.
So be sure to listen live at 9:00 PM CST as we committ to record our picks to win at the Oscars this Sunday. There’s a lot on the line and it should be a really good show! See you then!
In order for there to be some kind of progression to the story, I knew Jimmy’s checkered past would have to come back into play. But I was having trouble succinctly interjecting a scenario that wasn’t basically a simple misunderstanding that would have felt at home on an episode of Three’s Company.
That’s why I upped the stakes emotionally by revealing Jimmy and Charlie to have been briefly engaged. I didn’t want to make it easy for him to explain it away.
It’s no so much the betrayal of this one kiss. It boils down to the difference between saying you’re cool with your loved one’s past indiscretions and being confronted with it face to face. It’s going to be too much for Charlie to handle and you’re going to see that in the upcoming strips.
I don’t want to get too much more into it. I want the story to reveal itself in it’s own time. But I think you guys are going to be pleased not only with how this situation is resolved, but how it continues to play into past events within the Theater Hopper universe.
Switching gears… I wanted to announce that I am at home this morning. Don’t worry, I’m not sick. I’m taking the day off! But it’s not a day off in the traditional sense.
No. Today is still a work day!
I presume you guys remember my hard drive crash last fall and how I staged a donation drive to help aid in the data recovery? As part of that donation drive, I promised to those that donated original art of various sizes and complexity. Some of those people have received their art, but the majority have not. Between my job, Henry, night school, the holidays and everything else… it was all too overwhelming.
I was feeling pretty bad about myself for making people wait this long when they were so quick to help me in my time of need. So I decided to commit to taking a major chunk out of my artistic responsibility “to do” list and am taking a day off work to get things done!
I’m not saying I’ll be able to get all the artwork done that I need to. But I should be able to get a sizable chunk out of the door. This will help not only to take some of the burden off my back, but help me more easily communicate with those of you still waiting for your commissioned pieces.
Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay. I will do right by you and your generosity. You WILL get what you paid for.
That’s it for me today. Time to belly-up to the artist table and get to work!
With thanks…
I think I’m starting to accept this “no punchline” thing. This is The End Game. Now you know that Jimmy and Charlie used to date, that they were engaged and that a random indiscretion (at no fault to Jimmy) appears to have torn them apart. The only scene that’s missing is the final confrontation in the ladies restroom. At this point, I think jokes are only going to slow us down. But hopefully I’ve established a mood going into the last arc of the story line.
So what else happened this weekend? Oh, it looks like the Oscars were on last night! Did you catch it?
Despite not having seen… most of the nominated films, I was really excited for this year’s Oscars. I don’t know why. And even though there weren’t a ton of surprises, I was still satisfied with the big show.
Some gut reactions:
I thought Hugh Jackman was perfectly serviceable for such an outside-the-box choice for host. He was somewhat needy, but certainly didn’t embarrass himself. That opening number brought down the house! He was working his ass off on that one.
How good was that little song and dance routine at the top of the show? I went from visions of Billy Crystal and thinking to myself “Ugh, a musical number.” to “Ha, ha! That was great! More musical numbers!”
Unfortunately, his little team-up with Beyonce at the half-way point played more like a Broadway review. What is this? The Tony’s? When he emphatically exclaimed “The musical is back!” I kind of slumped back in my seat and said “Not likely.”
I mean, the thing just went on and on! Meanwhile, performances of the Best Song nominees only get 90 seconds a piece! ACTUAL NOMINEES get the bum’s rush for this crap. Bad move.
I thought the Pineapple Express parody with Seth Rogen and James Franco was hilarious. Probably the highlight of the night (no pun). If this doesn’t tell James Franco to abandon the James Dean posturing and aggressively pursue comedy full-time, I won’t know what will.
I thought Ben Stiller’s riff on Joaquin Phoenix was stupid, disrespectful and past it’s expatriation date. Wandering around stage while the nominees for Best Cinematography were being read? C’mon, It’s not The MTV Movie Awards.
The biggest surprise of the night? Sean Penn winning Best Actor over Mickey Rourke – who I assumed was a lock. You can’t really be unhappy with the outcome, though. Penn’s a great actor and Rourke brought his career back from the dead. Everyone wins.
As far as my Oscar ballot looked at the end of the night, I was 12 for 12. I could have done a lot better, but I had two strikes against me:
I went out a limb and picked Viola Davis for Best Supporting Actress and Michael Shannon for Best Supporting Actor under the assumption that Hollywood was going to take the opportunity to promote new talent. Also, both performances were very brief in their respective films and I had this nagging feeling that if they were that good in such a limited amount of time (against acting heavyweights like Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet) they deserved to win.
Instead the awards went to Penelope Cruz and Heath Ledger, respectively — both of whom odds makers were already behind.
I don’t know what to say about Ledger’s win except I guess I lost the faith on that one. Is it really a “supporting” performance, though? He pretty much owned The Dark Knight from the minute he stepped on screen. He certainly didn’t “support” Christian Bale. He blew right past him. For the sake of argument, do you think he would have won were he still alive? Would he even have been nominated? Just questioning it, that’s all.
Because here’s the thing: The Dark Knight was the second most nominated film last night with eight. All of them except Ledger were in technical categories and they were shut out in all of them except Sound Editing.
Clearly the Oscars has no love for comic book movies. Not even those that gross $1 billion at the box office world wide. So what made Ledger’s turn as the Joker such a prominent standout? Again, I’m just spit-ballin’ here.
The Dark Knight being shut out of the technical categories was the second deficiency in my Oscar ballot. I figured if they weren’t going to be recognized for anything else, voters would acknowledge the economic achievement by handing the film trophies in the technical categories. So much for that.
For the full list of nominees and winners, you can access them here.
At any rate, we’ll be talking about the Oscar winners and losers tonight on The Triple Feature and we’ll find out how my Oscar ballot stacked up against Gordon and Joe’s. There’s a lot at stake. The two with the lowest number of correct guesses have to produce guest comics for the winner. I could be in for some extra work this week! You’ll have to tune in tonight at 9:00 PM CST to hear if I lost!
In the meantime, what did you think about last night’s show? What moments stood out for you? Were there any shocks? What was your favorite moment? What was your least favorite moment? Leave your comments below!
Oh, noes! What’s Charlie gonna do?
I’ve been setting up more than a few of this Friday cliffhangers during this storyline, haven’t I?
Well, once you see what Charlie does on Friday, we’ll catch up with everyone in the present next week. Hopefully, we’ll learn more about why Jimmy is still hanging around. Stay tuned, people! We’re in the home stretch!
Not much for me to talk about today. Well, except that maybe my Netflix experience. Still goin’ strong!
I realize that I didn’t talk about Man on Wire when I said I would last week. Man on Wire was the first film I rented from Netflix and also happened to be the winner of the Best Documentary award at the Oscars on Sunday.
I liked the movie a lot. It was arranged with a very tight narrative with a great blend of reenactments, interviews and original footage.
In case you’re not familiar, the subject of the film is Philippe Petit, a French tightrope walker who walked the span between the twin towers of the World Trade Center shortly after they were completed in 1974.
The movie is more about the planning stages of the walk more than the walk itself. So the filmmakers are able to milk a lot of tension our of the reenactments as the original parties explain their actions as if it were happening in real time. The walk itself feels like some kind of hazy dream, but certainly a one-of-a-kind moment that seemed to impress and capture the imagination of everyone involved – even the authorities, who could do no better than to charge Petit with trespassing
Petit comes off like an eccentric in his interviews or perhaps a hyperactive child. But I admire anyone who feels compelled to create art to serve a higher purpose. He performs his walk not for profit or fame (although those things come later), but to inspire others to dream. Ah, existentialism as only the French can make it!
I kind of wonder if hanging around Petit in real life would be exhausting. But I have to admit I was charmed with his magic trick and balancing act at the Oscar’s when he delivered his acceptance speech.
In the words of Best Week Ever, “please be in our lives every day.”
As for the next movie in our queue, Cami reserved Henry Poole Is Here. I’m not sure why. I thought we were being diplomatic with our choices. I rent one, then she rents one — back and forth and so on. She says she rented it for me! I don’t anything about the film, but I’m happy to watch it all the same. It has Luke Wilson in it, so how bad can it be?
Don’t answer that.
I’ll be back later in the day to pose a question to everyone about contributing transcripts of the comics to the site. Until then, talk amongst yourselves. Who here has seen Man on Wire? What were your thoughts?
Well, that’s pretty final, don’t you think?
I know it’s kind of a contrivance to have Charlie go nuclear in the overreaction department, but there are two things to consider here:
- Plot efficiency.
- The honest assessment that some girls have a zero-tolerance policy on screwing around.
On the second point I would like to reinforce that there is certainly nothing wrong with having standards. And who knows? Maybe Charlie has been jerked around by womanizers before? As we learned from her introduction story line, she doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
But we’re not going to explore that here.
As I mentioned on Wednesday, next week will take us out of flashbacks and we will learn how Jimmy ended up working at the theater that was ground zero for his greatest heartbreak. One week after that, I should have everything wrapped up.
Thanks, by the way, for indulging me these last few weeks. I know Theater Hopper is traditionally about bringing you the funny, but it’s good to flex a different set of muscles from time to time. Hopefully I’ve been able to compensate with enough dramatic tension to hold your interest.
Thanks, also, for the outpouring of support on the whole transcription effort. I posted a blog entry late Wednesday night and woke up Thursday morning with e-mails from a dozen people write in offering their services. I’ve assigned coverage up to January 2005 and still have more e-mails to sort through. I feel confident that we’ll not only have coverage for the entire archive of comics, but we’ll have them transcribed in short order. I honestly wasn’t expecting that this would be something you guys would be excited about, but I’m glad you proved me wrong!
If you’d like to see which months are still available – along with the items I am offering in compensation for your help – you can read about it here.
Not much for me to talk about movie-wise this weekend. Nothing new in theaters except Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li – both of which look like a couple of turds on wheels to me.
I’m sure the Jonas Brothers movies will rake in significant box office by attracting the tweener crowds, but I saw some footage of Street Fighter and WOW, was it bad. Wire-Fu was nakedly evident and the fight choreography was stilted and tired. To add insult to injury, the editing was atrocious. Pulling wide on shots that revealed too much of the wire work and claustrophobic, “eat the camera” close-ups that kept you from seeing what was even happening.
It’s probably not getting worked up over. If it doesn’t star Raul Julia and Jean-Claude Van Damme, why bother, AMIRITE?!
I was thinking this would have been the weekend for a more ambitious movie to try and get in front of Watchmen before it lands in theaters next week – some middling Sandra Bullock or Kate Hudson comedy that didn’t stand a chance of making a ton of money in the first place. But I guess the studios look at Watchmen like it’s the 800-pound gorilla. Make way.
I kind of wish I could have wrapped up this story line sooner so I could get hip-dip in the hype surrounding Watchmen because – like it or not – after two weeks, I think it will be over. I don’t think Watchmen has legs. Advance reviews have been too polarizing and it doesn’t sound like fanboys are going to be happy with it beyond a pure visual interpretation. At this point, the burden of proof is on Watchmen to impress me. I’m not turning over on this one as readily as I did Iron Man. I am cautiously optimistic.
What about the rest of you? Are you ready to submit to Watchmen? Have you read any of the reviews online? Have they influenced you at all or is Watchmen critic-proof? What’s your impression? Leave your comments below.
At this point I’m trying to build Jimmy back up into the selfless person we all know him to be, so I figured his reasons for working at the theater where he was so brutally dumped needed a dash of sympathetic irony.
I really wanted to go more in depth with Jimmy’s realization of what he lost and his expression of how much Charlie meant to him. But at the same time, emotional hand-wringing is like standing still from a pacing standpoint.
So the idea is that Jimmy is paying for his sins at the scene of his greatest failure. It’s also the scene of his “rebirth” into the nice guy we’ve come to know him as.
I don’t know if there’s much more I can say about it than that.
Be sure to listen to The Triple Feature this evening. We record live at 9:00 PM CST over at Talkshoe.com. With any luck, our good friend Joe Dunn will be back in the saddle this week after missing out on our Oscar recap last week.
Odds are good we’ll be talking about Watchmen, since that’s about the only thing going on in movies this week. So if you’re looking forward to seeing it, spend an hour with us as we pontificate its importance.
One other thing – and I know it doesn’t have much to do with movies – but does anyone plan on watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon when he takes over for Conan O’Brien tonight?
I’m not a big fan of Fallon’s, but I’m interested to see if he can emerge from this as his own man. So much of his shtick to me seemed stolen from Adam Sandler — what with his bits on Weekend Update with his guitar during his early days at Saturday Night Live. He seemed to mature a little when he was promoted to reading “the fake news” on Weekend Update a few years later, but he was pretty much Tina Fey’s puppet.
He did the movie thing. No one bought into it and he’s become almost a curious footnote in comedy known more for cracking up during sketches on SNL than actually being funny himself.
But I’ve been reading a lot of the press surrounding the show and it seems like he’s very enthusiastic about the show. Some of the stuff they say they plan on doing sounds a little unconventional in the late night format, but they really seem to have their sights set on the next generation of fans.
Conan O’Brien will always be *my* late night guy. I remember staying up to watch his first show and even though I was only 15 years-old, I could tell how awkward and nervous he was. A bunch of his jokes bombed in that first week. But the shows got funnier and he honed his own self-deprecating brand of wackiness and now he’s moving on to The Tonight Show. He graduated.
I guess the point I’m making is that if someone like Conan O’Brien can make it – a performer NO ONE thought would be around after a year – is it possible Jimmy Fallon can do something positive for himself in late night?
So what do you think? Will you be watching tonight? Do you have any bias against Fallon? Do you feel like you should watch – like it’s a tiny historic moment? Leave your thoughts below!
What the?!… Did I manage to sneak in a punchline into today’s emotional reunion between Charlie and Jimmy? I think I must have!
For me, the pleasure of drawing today’s strip was drawing Tom’s reaction panel-to-panel. I pictured him reacting to Jimmy and Charlie’s relationship drama as if it were happening on a movie screen in front of him. “This is so much better than a movie,” would be the subtext running through his brain.
Not to pat myself on the back too hard, but I kind of like the turn of the phrase “Kiss each other on the mouth.” It’s kind of like when Liz Lemon says “I want to go to there” on 30 Rock. Eh, maybe not.
All things the same, if I could come up with a design for that slogan, would you be interested in that as a t-shirt? I’m asking because pre-orders for Theater Hopper – Year Three have pretty much stalled and I’m lacking the money I need to send the finished book to the printer.
I could wait for advertising revenue to make up the difference, but the economy has severely limited advertising budgets, so I’m not seeing much return there. I figured I could whip up a few new t-shirts and try to make money that way. Y’know, spend money to make money.
Truthfully, I’m overdue on trying to produce a new shirt. I don’t know if it was complacency, fear or maybe a little bit of both. But it seems that I can’t come up with an idea that sells as well as the Spoiler shirts. Other shirts sell okay, but not so great that I can reorder them and keep selling them. Usually, I do one run of a new design, sell out and then you never see it again.
I had someone write me earlier in the month asking about the Johnny Number 5 t-shirt I was selling on the site a few years ago. Y’know “Don’t trust robots?” It was never a big seller, but the people who bought it seemed to love it.
I’ll admit that I’m probably not setting the world on fire with some of my designs. I mean, the Spoiler shirts are just a block of text. But for some strange reason, they work. Design is always something I’ve felt I could improve on.
The other problem is coming up with a good concept. You can’t do something too “inside” or specific to the comic (although that appeals to the the hard core supporters) and you also can’t do something so general that you could buy it from some other site.
I think I have a concept that might work: You know those movie quotes randomly rotating at the bottom of the page? I had the idea of graphically representing them on t-shirts so that they look cool to people who aren’t in on the joke, but make the person wearing it feel a little more special because they know the reference.
The first one I was going to attempt was from Reservoir Dogs when Mr. Blonde asks Mr. White “Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite?”
It would probably take too much to explain the different elements I want to incorporate into the shirt, but there would be some photo-realism to it so you’re not walking around with a huge cartoon across your chest.
I mean look at the shirts from comics like Octopus Pie or White Ninja (really any of the TopatoCo line of shirts). They’re not firmly aligned with the “branding” of the comic they’re associated with. I want to try and do something similar here.
What do you think? Do you think this is a good idea? What famous movie lines would you like to see represented in a graphic format? What about Jimmy and Charlie? Do you think they’re going to get back together? Do you think they’ll take Tom’s advice to “kiss each other on the mouth?” Leave your thoughts below!
Well, that’s the end of it. Now you know the story of Jimmy’s and Charlie’s past. Will they get together in the future? Time will tell. But for now, consider this chapter closed.
Sincere thanks to everyone for indulging me these last few weeks. It was important for me to do this. I know longer story lines aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but they help me from going stir crazy. It helps me shake the cobwebs off, creatively-speaking. It’s easy for me to fall into a “talking heads” kind of situation and these longer story line with their specific demands help me break free of that.
I suppose if I wasn’t completely afraid of alienating people this storyline could have gone on a little longer. There were a few contrivances that I used to get the characters where I needed them to be. But, compared to when I first introduced Charlie and wandered, lost in the desert for two months, I think this was a nice piece of economical story telling.
Agghh. You know what? I feel like I’ve been defending this story line since day one. I need to stop that. The majority of you – and I’m talking, like 95% of you – have been great. So encouraging and helpful. I really appreciate it. I need to stop apologizing for doing a longer story line.
I have a bad habit of defending myself before I’m even attacked and I can see that being very annoying to people who are already on my side. So you know what? This story line was AWESOME and I had a blast doing it.
What else is there to say? Well, I’m working on a t-shirt design for “KISS EACH OTHER WITH YOUR MOUTHS” and I’m going to see Watchmen this weekend. Other than that, Cami is having a girls night out and I’m going to do more comic stuff this evening.
It’s been a stressful week for me. I had my first performance review at my new job, my first physical in 15 years, a midterm and worked hard to try and end this storyline in a way I could be proud of. I had a lot on my plate. So I think now I’m just looking forward to relaxing a little bit.
We’re back to regular comics on Monday. It’s a safe bet I’ll be talking about Watchmen.
THANKS AGAIN AND HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!