I gotta hand it to Wilson Parker. His guest comic today felts totally in-sync with the kind of bizarre rants that I would not only produce for the comic, but like debate in real life with friends.

I also think Wilson hit on a universal truth about the three-breasted prostitute scene from the original Total Recall. If you’re not going to at least try to improve on the original, what’s the point?

I don’t know about the rest of you, but that scene left an indelible mark on my childhood. When I was growing up, we didn’t go to the movies very often, but we would rent stuff on occasion. Christmas was a big at-home movie watching holiday for us. My Dad would rent four or five movies and after we’d open presents, we’d watch them.

One year, he rented Total Recall. Now, let’s see… Total Recall came out in 1990, so I would have been 13 or 14 years-old at the time. Kind of an important time in a young man’s development.

Lo and behold, it’s the three-breasted hooker scene and I’m watching this movie ON CHRISTMAS with my Dad… AND my Mom.

You know when you’re younger and you watch a movie with your parents with embarrassing content? You want to crawl under a rock and die. That scene was my first exposure to that. Heck, I can remember a few year’s later when Cami and I were dating. We watched the original Austin Powers with my folks and I remember being mortified during the scene at the end where Austin and Agent Kensington hook up.

Maybe I’m just sensitive.

Incidentally, Wilson has a comic of his own called Unwinder’s Tall Comics. I highly encourage you to check him out and say thanks for this fantastic guest strip. Thanks, Wilson!

Switching gears, I was actually kind of interested in seeing the remake of Total Recall. The cast looked interesting and I’m really starting to appreciate Colin Ferrell as a genre actor. But the reviews haven’t been encouraging. For the most part they say the movie just kind of sits there. Not good – especially for an action movie.

But then director Len Wiseman is no Paul Verhoeven. That’s like comparing Dear Abby to Hunter S. Thompson. It’s simply impossible to out-weird that gonzo Dutch bastard.

Switching gears again, I wanted to address something that should have happened this week… but didn’t.

Sunday was Theater Hopper’s 10th anniversary. The milestone felt pretty underwhelming to me. Frankly, I didn’t realize it was the 10th anniversary until a day later.

It’s funny, because an anniversary is something I used to make a pretty big deal about on the site. I remember the 7th anniversary coming and going with more fanfare.

Perhaps I didn’t make a big deal about it because Monday was the day the comic was supposed to end. Obviously, that didn’t happen.

I’ve outlined the reasons why in earlier blog posts. I basically miscalculated how many comics I would need to finish the story – even though I had been producing double-sized comics for several weeks. But, yeah. I blew the deadline.

I kind of wonder if it’s self-sabotage. But it’s not. It’s just poor planning. So you guys are the benefactors of my poor planning. Revel in it.

I’d say I have maybe 5 or 6 more comics until I wrap things up. When I do, I hope you guys will be there to send Theater Hopper out with a bang. I’ll be sure to keep you updated as doomsday draws closer through Facebook and Twitter.

As for this week’s comic, I’m working on it. It’s a single-panel strip. But there’s a lot of action and detail I need to build into it, so it’s taking longer.

I’ll be glad when it’s done, though. Because it means I can stop adding fire and smoke effects to everything. That stuff takes a long time!

Thanks again to Wilson for the great guest comic and tiding everyone over with teh funniez. I appreciate it!

See you all soon!