Check out this piece of original artwork by Casey Weldon. It's a poster for the fictional movie at the end of Pee Wee's Big Adventure and it immediately brought a smile to my face.
The artwork is acrylic on wood and Mr. Weldon is selling it for $900. That's a little rich for my blood, but it has inspired me to re-watch Pee Wee's Big Adventure immediately and without delay.
Most likely because I am an immature jerk (or possibly because I'm still riding high on puns after Monday's comic), I kind of feel like I could have stopped after the first panel in this comic. I'll leave it at that. I don't want to spoil the joke for you.
Long-time readers of the comic know that this isn't the first time I've explored the concept of porn parody titles. I don't know why the idea entertains me so. I guess because it's kind of adorably naive on the part of the pornography companies, isn't it? Their idea is to make a movie that sounds KIND OF like the popular movie you ACTUALLY want to rent... in hopes of what? That you're not looking closely enough? That you're illiterate?
Or is the idea that this is as clever and self-referential as pornography gets? I don't know. I just think it's weird.
What's even more weird is that this is the fifth (the FIFTH!) comic I've done about Kick-Ass without actually having seen the movie yet. I didn't get a chance to check it out while I was in Chicago for C2E2 this weekend. So, hopefully, I'll have the opportunity to see it Friday after everyone has gone to bed. Cami has no interest in seeing the film, so she won't mind if I sneak out to watch a late showing.
Speaking of C2E2, I know I promised you my recap yesterday. It's coming! I'm still working on it! I was working on it in between Pearl's naps yesterday and just kept going and going and going. It's over 2,000 words at this point, which is kind of crazy. But when you have a good experience like I had, you want to share all the details.
Stay tuned for that recap. It's coming soon. Hopefully today.
That's all for now! Ta-ta!
Well, there you have it! Brandon J. Carr's smurfing last contribution to his series of guest strips. I think it turned out pretty smurfing good, don't you?
Actually, I'm a little disconcerted at how well Brandon can draw a Smurf...
BUT NO MATTER! Brandon really came through for me and I can't appreciate it enough. Thank you, Brandon, for your excellent work.
I think everyone should visit and bookmark Brandon's site so they can stay current on what our dear chap is working on next. Yes. I think that will do nicely...
As you know, Avatar comes out today. But, for me, it's almost been an after-thought. I haven't really been anticipating the movie like I'm being told I should. I don't know. Neither the concept or the visuals have hooked me just yet. When the comparisons to Delgo and Fern Gully cropped up with the first teaser images of the film, it left a bad taste in my mouth. If Cameron is supposed to be one of the most innovative filmmakers in the business, these comparisons to kids films shouldn't be at the front of everyone's mind.
I've given a few reviews a cursory glance and the majority of them are overwhelmingly positive. People are really tossing around the "IT'LL CHANGE MOVIES FOREVER" praise. Maybe it will, maybe it won't.
I guess I'll say that I've been half-purposefully keeping my head in the sand on this one. Because I do have faith in Cameron's vision and I think I'd rather be surprised by what I see on-screen than what is being described to me in a review.
Despite the fact that I'm not entirely enthusiastic about the film, I still want to see it. Does that make sense? Keep in mind Cami and I just had a baby two weeks ago and I think my brains are leaking out of my ears.
If anything about Avatar has surprised me, it's that Cami told m that she was excited to see the film. I don't know if that's because she's at home with Pearl, is watching more television and has been exposed to more commercials for the film than I have. But I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth! I fully expected seeing this one by myself a few weeks ago!
Speaking of Avatar Cami and gifts, it's likely I will see the film on Sunday with Cami as my parents watch over Henry and Pearl. We're going over to their house this weekend to celebrate my 32nd birthday - which is actually on Monday, December 21. The Winter Solstice, baby! Shortest day of the year!! Woo?
If you'd like to get me anything for my birthday, boy would a pledge to the Kickstarter fund raising campaign for Theater Hopper: Year Three would be nice. I mean, really, really nice!
As of this writing, we're 66% funded with 13 days to go. I'm getting VERY nervous about the time we have left in the campaign. I'm approaching it mentally as if we only have 10 days because I'm really afraid that the holidays are going to negatively affect fund raising efforts and people will forget to pledge.
Take this opportunity to pledge today! Right now you can get a copy of Theater Hopper: Year Three for $15, signed and numbered by your truly. The important thing to remember is that YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO GET THE BOOK FOR LESS. If you pre-order the book by pledging to the Kickstarter campaign, you don't have to pay for shipping! If (and when) the book is published and put up for sale here, shipping becomes a factor.
So take advantage of this offer while you still can! And if you're feeling extra generous, just look at all the other rewards for pledging larger amounts. Lots of great stuff!
I'll leave it at that. I don't want to push too hard.
In the meantime, let's talk about Avatar a little bit in the comments section below. Who is excited to see it? Who is skeptical? Will it really "change movies forever" like they say? Leave your thoughts below!
Thanks again to Brandon J. Carr for an excellent series of guest strips this week and thanks to you for coming to the site and checking them out!
Have a great week!
Sorry that Monday's comic was so late. I was basically wiped out after driving home from the Chicago Comic-Con on Sunday evening and didn't have time to put anything together. I would have drawn and posted the comic sometime Monday afternoon except Monday's are the days that we keep Henry home from day care and I watch him. So a Tuesday comic it is.
My first thought with this blog was to embed the video from the infamous parody PSA from the first season of the animated G.I. Joe cartoon show. But the language is a little salty and this is a family site. So I'll leave it up to you to look it up on YouTube instead.
If you've been on the internet at all in the last 5 years, you probably know exactly what Tom is referencing in today's comic. If not, just look up "Porkchop Sandwiches" and it will become clear real quick.
If you're still hankering for some video giggles, check out The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Funny or Die. It features cameos from Zach Galifianakis, Alexis Bledel, Billy Crudup, Julianne Moore, Tony Hale, Alan Tudyk, Vinnie Jones, Henry Rollins and non-other than Sgt. Slaughter himself!
Back to the comic, it guest stars Joe Dunn from Joe Loves Crappy Movies. Our tables were next to each other on Artist Alley and we made plans to see G.I. Joe with the rest of the Digital Pimp Online crew, Zach Miller from Joe and Monkey and Jennie Breeden from The Devil's Panties. Our good friend Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex couldn't go that evening because he had won tickets to see the Arctic Monkeys in concert. I guess it was a sold-out show. So, good for him.
Anyway, before seeing the movie that night, I told Joe in real-life exactly what I said to him in the comic. His response was one of moderate disdain and amplified for comedic effect for this comic. I always like to portray Joe as more exasperated and annoyed with me than he is in real life. But, as they say, all humor is rooted in truth. I'm sure there were several times this weekend where he would have given anything just to shut. me. up.
I thought the movie we went to was fine. I thought it was better than Transformers 2, which is kind of faint praise. But I was able to keep up with the action and despite the wooden acting and transparent CGI work, was able to enjoy myself.
I guess you could say the trailer for the movie had lowered my expectations to the point where anything would have been acceptable. Does that make G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra a good movie? Of course not. It's horrible. But the action moves along at a steady clip and there are a few fun, over-the-top moments.
The things I was most surprised by were the number of deaths and the amount of civilian property damage going on in this thing. The destruction the Joe's leave in their wake is catastrophic. I can't imagine ANY "covert" agency staying under the radar for that long when cars are being jack-knifed 50 feet in the air everywhere they go.
As for the convention, it was a good time. Always a treat to see and talk to old friends. Of course everyone who stopped by the booth was exceptionally friendly and usually the first thing people would ask was "How's the hand." It was nice to know that people were concerned for my well being. I appreciate it.
If you're a new reader coming to the site for the first time, welcome! Not sure where to tell you to start. But I hope the site finds its way into your bookmarks and that you come back to visit us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I promise to update on time from here on out.
Not much else to talk about at the moment. But be sure to come back on Wednesday for more comic goodness! See you then!
If you've been following me on Twitter the last couple of days, you'll know that I was inspired by my friend Gordon McAlpin's excellent parody poster for Memento that I finally got off my rear end and put together a parody poster for Iron Man that I've been thinking about for months.
I think it turned out pretty well...
I'm proud enough of my work that I'm printing up 50 copies and plan on selling them as 11 x 17" prints at Chicago Comic-Con this weekend. We'll see how they do. If I have any left over, I'll sell them here. If the demand is high enough, I'll print up more! Either way, I thought you guys might like to see it.
Don't forget: I'll be at Artist Alley table #3414. Please come by and see me. I'll be selling copies of both books, all of my t-shirts, the Iron Man parody poster and original sketches.
I look forward to Chicago Comic-Con all year and with the stars aligning between the convention, our 7th anniversary and 1,000 comics... I think this is going to be a good show for me.
I was at a complete loss for what I was going to do for today's comic. None of the recent crop nor forthcoming releases have inspired me to make satire.
So I retired to my "thinking room" and spent a little time pondering the subject of Easter movies. There really aren't any. I don't know that there SHOULD be any. I just noticed there aren't any. And, thus, a comic was born.
I guess my mind wandered onto the topic because as we were leaving our house to have Easter lunch with my family, I noticed dozens upon dozens of cars parked near the two large churches near our house. They were everywhere. Parked on the street, parked in the lots of nearby businesses. It's never this busy. Not on an average Sunday.
So Easter is one of those big church-going holidays and - conceivably - families will then depart to participate in Easter egg hunts, eat ham and chocolate bunnies and whatever else odd traditions have emerged from this holiday.
The point I'm making is that the holiday is a gathering of sorts - of community, of family.
So why aren't there very many movies that speak to this?
Think about all of the Thanksgiving movies out there. You know the basic outline. The family black sheep returns home for the holidays, everyone is stressed out, comedy ensues. You could easily transpose that formula onto Easter gatherings.
I mean, okay... so Easter probably isn't a big travel day. And it's not like people are given days off from work so they can go be with their families on Easter, or whatever. But you get the gist.
For those of you complaining that it's too secular, explain all the Christmas movies out there. Most of them are more about Santa or gift-giving than the actual holiday and Easter is complete with it's own set of bizarre traditions. So religious persuasion really isn't a factor.
All I know is that every year ABC plays The Ten Commandments around Easter and I can't figure out why. What does Old Testament Bible have to do with New Testament death and resurrection of Jesus? Or did someone lose a bet to Charlton Heston?
I could be completely talking out of my rear end because - admittedly - I'm not a big church goer, I don't understand the Easter tradition... It's just always been something we've done as a family. I can't imagine I'm the only one in this boat?
What do you think? Why do you suppose there are no great Easter movies out there? Or maybe there are tons and I'm missing out? Let me know!
Last bit of business, don't forget to check out The Triple Feature podcast tonight over at TalkShoe at 9:00 PM CST. I don't know what we're talking about since I missed last week's show, but I'm sure it will be enlightening. How is that for an endorsement?
Sorry, I feel a little scatterbrained. I'm starting a new job today, so I'm mostly focused on that. But I'll try to have it put together by tonight's show.
See you there!
It may seem a little cheap to do a parody of the ";I'm A Mac..."; tv spots, but when Live Free or Die Hard slaps Justin Long in their movie as the comic sidekick to Bruce Willis, that's low-hanging fruit too delicious to ignore.
In the commercials, Long represents the slick, hip future of computing to the stodgy, bland PC. Willis's John McClane character is the analog equivalent to action movies. It makes sense they would try to ";freshen"; him up a little.
From what I'm hearing, thought, LFoDH does a good job with it's action set pieces in a low-tech way. Not a lot of CGI cartoon physics. They're doing it old school - which I admire. No one works harder than a stuntman.
I don't know if there will be room in our schedule this weekend for LFoDH. Cami recently finished reading The Wal-Mart Effect and it inspired her to go back and re-read Fast Food Nation. This has put her in a very specific frame of mind, so I think she's got her sights set on seeing Sicko this weekend. I kind want to see Ratatouille, but that's because I'm a socially irresponsible bastard stuck in a state of arrested development. Adorable rodents! Awww!
If you want to get the reaction of someone who saw LFoDH and loved it, check out the most recent Joe Loves Crappy Movies. As Joe puts it, the movie is ";the balls."; It's cool to me that he enjoyed it so much. I'm sure we'll be talking about it on Monday's Triple Feature.
Speaking of The Triple Feature, I didn't give you guys the second half of the clue for our Evening contest. So here it is:
";POWER";
Be sure to download Monday's show over at TalkShoe to get the first half of the clue. Take the compiled clue and mail it to me at theaterhopper@hotmail.com along with your name, age and mailing address. One lucky winner will be chosen at random to receive a make-up bag, a cook book and two posters from the movie Evening. Happy hunting!
Switching gears, I just wanted to give everyone a status update on my computer situation.
First, let me thank EVERYONE who left comments in Wednesday blog or e-mailed me personally offering solutions. I wish I had time to thank you all individually, but the outpouring was so strong, that's not possible. So if you took time out of your busy day to help me diagnose the problem or made yourself available to me through e-mail or by phone - thank you. Each of you went above the call of duty and I appreciate it.
Long story short, I ended up finding the Windows XP installation discs I need to repair my machine. But it turns out my hard drive was physically degraded to the point where it wouldn't accept it. I contacted Dell customer support to help walk me through things and we tried the repair console first. But it didn't take, so their recommendation was to do a complete reinstall. That didn't take, either. So I was forced to buy a new hard drive.
Even though I was keeping all my Theater Hopper stuff on another smaller internal drive (so I think it's safe) this whole episode has put enough of a scare into me to make sure I have backups of that data in multiple formats. If I ever lost my original artwork, I would probably give up completely. It would be like someone pulled the string out of my back.
That said, we're not completely out of the woods yet. I had to complete today's comic using my laptop, but I was running into errors THERE as well. I have a... copy of the Adobe CS2 Suite and for some reason, the version of Photoshop I had on my machine was saying that certain registry information wasn't matching up. I tried re-installing it, but had no luck. I eventually had to load a... copy of Photoshop 6 I had lying around to get my work done.
This makes me a little nervous about getting the programs I need back on my desktop after I install my new hard drive. So if anyone knows where I might find a... copy of Photoshop CS2 (or, even better, CS3) send me an e-mail and we can chat.
It's been a long week. That's about as much as I can say. Everyone enjoy their weekend and I'll see you here on Monday!
