EDIT: (Okay, I’m keep the original post up but we are no longer accepting suggestions. Thank you all who participated. Hopefully some of your suggestions will be used when the show airs.)
First I’d like to thanks Sara J. Monge for contributing a few more show suggestions. She sent me an e-mail. She asked me if we could use more. I e-mailed her back telling her we still could. I’m not sure if she got my return e-mail though. So just in case you didn’t, thank you. I’ve already summited the suggestions to production. So that everyone knows what shows she suggested, I will repeat them here, that way everyone know what has already been suggested and there are no repeats:
The Homer They Fall– Homer is a boxer. He gets hit over and over, but doesn’t fall down (4F03).
Two Bad Neighbors-Homer fights with Pres. Bush (Sr) and also falls at the end of the episode w/ Eisenhower
Homerpalooza-Homer gets hit with Cannon Balls and an inflatable pig (3F21)
Itchy & Scratchy & Marge– Maggie hits Homer with a hammer & the red paint runs into the drain parodying Psycho. (7F09)
Had a meeting yesterday about stepping up on our work load. It seems we’re falling behind. Personally I’ve been doing well just about every week so I don’t know what the problem is.
My Director Lance brought in a sculpture of Batman he made off of a drawing my friend Paul made years ago. It turned out really great. At some point they’re going to take pictures of it and put it on Paul’s blog. When they do, I’ll let you know so you can see it. It’s great. People were going in and out of his office all day looking at it. It’s always fun to be surrounded by so many creative and talented people. You never know when they’re going to surprise you with something like that.
COMIC CON 2008
Having rid myself of the Hulk (see last week’s post), I continued on my way around the Con. Past by a booth with an interesting sculpture under glass.
Then as I went up and down more aisles, I came across two clone troopers oddly guarding a cardboard box that was labeled “George Lucas’ Good Ideas”.
When I was a kid, I always wondered why the Millennium Falcon toy wasn’t to scale with the action figures. Well, now I know.
For the second year in a row, the Dark Horse booth had a large partition with a life size line up of the characters in one of their Star Wars expanded universe comics, drawn by one of my favorite artists, Adam Hughes.
The Sideshow Collectibles booth is by far one of the best booths at the Con every year. You see all kinds of fantastic sculptures, props and things. It was amazing this year. They had life size Hellboy busts, and Ironman helmets and all kind of amazing things. There is just too much to see at the Con.
After I was done going through the whole entire floor, aisle by aisle (which took me four hours). I decided to sit down for lunch. All the seats were taken in the designated eating areas and I couldn’t find an empty spot along the walls to sit down and eat because they were also being used. After looking for a while, I finally found an uncrowded place to sit and have my lunch at.
After my lunch, I got a bit sleepy so I decided to take a nap. I had made a friend earlier in the day and he hooked me up with a place to sleep.
After my short rest, I decided to go see some panels. After all, the panels are one of the best things about the Con. That’s where you get to find out the latest news about upcoming movies and favorite Sci Fi or Fantasy TV shows. When I inspected the Con’s program guide, I discovered, to my horror, that Thursday’s panels had none of those things scheduled. All the high profile, cool panels where happening the next day and on Saturday. I was crushed. I couldn’t believe it. I was going to miss out on all that cool panels. So that really stunk. I should make sure I come on a more panel friendly day next time.
Since there was no panels to go look at, I decided I was going to go see some Anime on the screening rooms. As I walked over to them, I checked the schedule to see what was playing. I didn’t recognize any of the shows so that didn’t help much. I was in the mood for something with Sci Fi action. I went in to a screening of something that sounded promising but it was something with characters talking about relationships and it was really dull so I left that room and went to another. The other room’s movie looked like it might at least have some action in it but the characters kept stopping the action sequences to have these long monologues about something completely incomprehensible, so it didn’t keep my attention. I started trying to come up with something to do. I decided in the end that, since I was at Comic Con, I might as well buy some comics.
I went back down to the dealer’s hall, and started off on my search for some cheap trade paperbacks. I figured, since there are many comic stores selling comics there, they must have discounted trade paperbacks to compete with each other for customers. Turned out, that was not the case. Not only where the comic stores at the Con few, but there was only ONE store with trade paperbacks that were being sold at a discount. You’d think Comic Con would have more comics. I was amazed at the lack of them.
I read a friend’s copy when I was in high school and I enjoyed it, but the story was too smart for me at the time. I don’t think I truly understood it. Now that I’m older and have a point concrete world view, I’m curious to find out how I would react to it. Since I don’t own a copy, I thought I’d buy it there, since I saw so many of them earlier that day. Turned out, by the time I went to buy one, the whole Con had sold out of them for the day. I couldn’t find a copy anywhere.
In the end, after wandering around, feeling disappointed, I ended up buying House of M trade paper back written by Brian Micheal Bendis and The Settlers of Catan Card Game. The other trade paper backs I saw that I wanted, weren’t discounted enough and I figured, I could probably get a better deal on Amazon.
So I left the Con. It was 4:00pm.
On my way back to my car, I happened to pass by a large crowd taking pictures up a flight of stairs. I looked up and saw a large army of Ghostbusters getting their pictures taken.
When I got in my car, I was still disappointed about not getting the Watchmen comic, so I intended to stop off at the comic store by my house and get it there. An hour, forty minutes later, I got back to my town and drove to the comic store, only to find out, that they had run out of the comic also. Foiled again!
Not exactly the Comic con experience I was hoping for, but at least I got a few good pictures out of it.
PODCASTS
So my friends Greg and Jennifer Willits, from Rosary Army and That Catholic Show fame droped a huge bomb on all their fans on this weeks podcast: Show #238. I recommend you listen to it because it’s great the way the tell it. All I’ll say it that it involves Sirius Satelite Radio and 15 hours a week.
Congrats Guys! Sorry I didn’t draw you a picture but I found out too late in the week to meet my blog deadline.
RANDOM SKETCH
I was at work last week when I randomly started thinking about Munchkin. It made me smile and then I got this image in my head so I decided to put to paper:
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EDIT: (Okay, I’m keep the original post up but we are no longer accepting suggestions. Thank you all who participated. Hopefully some of your suggestions will be used when the show airs.)
Okay, so I guess this will be my last post reminding you about helping out the show. See the post: Calling all Simpsons fans, the show needs your help. Nethack and other Rogue type games for more details. This week, production began looking for the clips to put in the animatic. Luckily we had some suggestions from people inside the studio that we can work with (I made sure Josh Lama’s suggestion was in the pile they took with them). Once we are done with the first pencil test pass of the show, we’ll get to see how well the gag works . We won’t be done with that until sometime late next month.
Been working hard, getting my scenes done this week. I’m doing pretty well actually.
Usually, the week after Comic Con, (more on that below) everyone is talking about the Con and we all show each other our loot. Not so much this year. My friend Tommydid give me a copy of an artist’s sketchbook that he bought there and ended up not liking the drawings in it as much as he thought he would. I was happy because it so happens I almost bought that very book, but ended up changing my mind at the last minute. Cool.
COMIC CON 2008
Went to Comic Con last Thursday. Been looking forward to it for a while. I was hoping to have a very inspired day, like I did last year. I packed up a lunch, a bottle of water, took my back pack and I left my house at around 7:00am so I could be there around 8 or 9. I live about two hours away from San Diego. For the first time since I’ve been going, I took the 15 fwy south instead of the 5 fwy south. The biggest reason for this decision was because I live closer to the 15 fwy so it was more convenient. It was interesting. A little more scenic than I anticipated. Although I missed the hour and a half long view of the beach you get when you drive down on the 5 fwy (it’s purdy).
The Con doors opened at 9:30am. Got to San Diego around 9:00am. Parking, as usual, was a pain in the butt. Luckily, I was able to find the place I parked in last time easily enough. The fifteen dollars I payed to park there was like a punch in the gut though. Still, I was paying for the convenience of not going around for an hour looking for parking. I got out of the car and headed for the convention center. Didn’t take long before I was passing by stormtroopers and pirates, while trying to avoid the ninja turtles that where passing out fliers on the side walk. That’s when I realized that, once again, I had forgotten my camera. I’ve yet to remember to bring it. Lucky for me, my phone has a dissent camera so I took it out and prepared to take pictures. Unfortunately by the time I did so, I was stuck in the middle of an enormous mob of wall to wall people. It would have been great to have taken a picture of it but, since I was smack in the center, I couldn’t get a good shot of it without it looking like only a small handful of heads. The mob was there because it was attempting to cross the street to get to the Convention Center. After traffic cops herded us all across the street like a bunch of cattle, I finally made it to the Convention center.
As you can see. There were quite a few people already there and the Convention hadn’t officially opened yet. I managed to find the professional’s pre-registration area so I could get my badge to get in. Unlike last year, I actually remembered to pre-register. Last year it took me two hours in line to get my badge and I had to pay. This time, it took about five minutes and it was free. YAY!
After waiting ten minutes, it became 9:30, the Con was officially opened and we were let in.
Once again, as it always does, I got overwhelmed by the Con. I found myself just about right in the middle and I had to decide which direction I should go to start my trek down every aisle.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take a good panoramic shot of the Con for the above picture because I wasn’t thinking of making a panoramic shot. I’ll just say that, if you want to know what the other side you don’t see looks like, it’s just as endless as the side you do see.
I picked a side and I was on my way. The side I started in made me feel as if I’d suddenly gone to the wrong Con. I thought I was at E3 instead. It was all video games there. Lots of video games that will be coming out soon. I didn’t stay long. Most of the video games I saw, didn’t interest me much. A few of the cinematic videos of the games where really nice thought. They really caught my eye. The Warhammer Fantasy MMO video, for example, looked awesome. Why don’t they make CG movies like that?
In any case, I walked up and down the aisles for an hour or so when I finally came up to the Stuart Ng booth (the one with all the European comics) where I got inspired last year. I looked around and was horribly disappointed that I found nothing at all that caught my eye. That’s never happened before, and I left the booth pretty sad.
Except for a Dalek that was set loose on the Con floor to exterminate all life…
…nothing caught my eye in any of the rest of the aisles either, until I got to the center of the Con. That’s where all the big flashy shinny booths are. Lots of fun stuff to see there.
First, I happened to discover that someone just happened to have dropped an Iron Monger suit. It was just sitting there and no one was claiming it so I thought I’d take it. Problem is that the thing was too big to carry and when I tried to get into it, I found it to be trickier then I thought. .
Disappointed I walked on. Then I saw that, once again, someone had accidentally dropped a James Bond car in the middle of the Con. So again, I thought, since no one was claiming it, I’d take it home, but there was no keys in the ignition, so my plans were crushed.
That’s when I heard the Hulk yell at me. He was angry because he said I was trying to “steal thing”. I told him it was “finders keeper” if someone dropped things and didn’t claim them. He got angry at me. You don’t want to see him when he’s angry.
So I had a few more adventures at the Con with some other superheroes and a few Star Wars characters, but I think I’ll save that for next week.
TO BE CONTINUED…
MOVIES
WARNING: The following review of the new Batman movie contains spoilers. I really couldn’t talk about this movie without doing so. It has too many interesting moral things in it that I wanted to talk about. So if you haven’t seen the movie and you don’t want it spoiled, please do not continue reading. You have been warned.
I saw the movie Batman the Dark Knight on Wednesday of last week. Overall I liked the movie. It felt like a modern Batman comic book instead of what people think Batman comic books are like. It was very smart and I liked the moral dilemmas presented to the characters through out the movie. One thing that all superhero movies should do is exactly that (have big moral dilemmas). Superhero stories are best when they are morality plays (like Westerns and Samurai movies). I don’t know why people making superhero movies don’t get that. The first Superman movie would have been much much better if they had left Lois Lane dead. Turning the world backwards in time was a total cop out. Same with the first Spiderman movie. Mary Jane or a bus full of kids? I’LL SAVE THEM BOTH, TA DA! Stupid, very very stupid and shallow too. When this Batman movie presented a similar dilemma, it did it right. I was happy with that. There has been a consistent depth to the latest two Batman movies that I’ve really enjoyed.
The Joker was finally done right. He was just like the comic book Joker. About time! Heath Ledger was great in the role. I don’t know how they could possibly cast another person to play the part. That’s going to be tricky. He was really great.
Great action in the movie, great cast. I liked Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, he came across as very heroic. I hope that Two Face isn’t dead. He was very cool (in a bad guy way). Having the Joker “create” him was a very interesting take.
There is so much to like about the movie. It’s great. You can sit down and analyze the movie and get a lot out of it.
The Movie also brings up a very interesting point about Batman. Is Batman an effective hero? According to the movie, he is not. His use of fear and violence to solve problems doesn’t actually help the city, it merely causes more fear and violence. I will say this though, at least they finally made a Batman movie where Batman doesn’t kill the villain. That’s something I hated about the Tim Burton Batman movie. In that movie Batman murders the Joker, which of course makes him just as bad as the Joker. Not in this new movie. They get Batman right…well…almost.
Having liked so much of it, I did have issues. Some of these issues where clarified after I talked about the movie with some friends of mine at work. I thought the movie felt long. A friend of mine thought this was because it was not written and edited cleanly enough. It wasn’t a lean movie. I’m not sure if I agree with him though. I would need to watch it again to make sure. I personally think that part of the reason it felt long was that it had a very unconventional structure. I don’t know how many Acts the story had but sometime midway through the movie, every time one ended and another Act began, it felt like the movie should have ended there. As a viewer, you never had the ability to anticipate the movie’s end and it made the movie feel really long. Again, I think repeat viewings of the movie might fix this problem.
Okay, now for my biggest problem with the movie. I propose to you that the movie was pretty much about the hope there is in all people to do the right thing. In spite of the fact that through out the movie, many people fell into the Jokers “morality traps” and chose to do an evil in order to produce a good (which is a BIG no no). In the climactic “morality trap” of the movie, the people of Gotham on the boats ended up doing the right thing. This showed the Joker that the people of Gotham are not animals but humans capable of making good moral choices. If that’s the case, why throw it all out the window in the last five minutes of the movie? What I mean to say is, why didn’t Batman and Commissioner Gordon have any faith in the people of Gotham when they found out the “truth” about Harvey Dent? Especially since only a few minutes before, the people of Gotham proved they could face dire circumstances with flying colors. It seemed really forced and unnecessary. Not only that, but the movie did a lousy job of making you feel that Harvey Dent was seen as a great hero by the people of Gotham. The characters kept, telling us he was, but never actually showed it (like they did with Batman and Gordon’s son). So not only did it feel forced to me, but then they added insult to injury by scandalizing Batman and Gordon by having them lie to the public. To me, story wise, it came across as if Batman and the Joker had exactly the same view of humanity. Are the people of Gotham so weak? They live in Gotham for goodness sakes! Out all the places to live, that city should produce the strongest of people.
Did the Joker win in the end? I would propose to you that the answer is, “yes” but not for the reasons the movie itself gives. I propose that the Joker would not have won if the heroes would have had faith in the people of Gotham to deal with the truth. Since the Joker managed to break the heroes’ faith in people completely, they chose to compromise their virtue and decided to deceive everyone. This is suppose to make Batman seem heroic and tragic. I propose that when the situation is looked at objectively, without the dramatic musical montage and voice over, it just makes Batman, look like he wants to be a martyr, just to be a martyr. “Oh look at me, I’m such a tragic hero.” This guy has major psychological issues. I didn’t buy it. It didn’t work for me.
Obviously, the reason they ended the movie that way, was just so that they had an established conflict for the start of the next movie. They could have come up with something more consistent to the story of the movie than that.
Okay, that’s my rant. Still, I trully loved the movie. I just left the theater very angry because of those last five minutes. I think I left the movie theater far more energized and excited after seeing Ironman, in spite of the fact that Ironman was nowhere near as smart and wore it’s themes on it’s sleeve. But then, the Batman movie was not meant to fill you with happiness and joy. It was meant to be a great morality play.
COPYRIGHT PROTECTIONS
Yesterday the Orphan Bill was almost Hotlined. Luckily enough people called their Senator and put the Bill on Hold temporarily. I received the following e-mail explaining what happened:
FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS’ PARTNERSHIP Senate Orphan Works Bill Put “on Hold”
We’ve just received word that the Senate bill has been put “on hold.” In fact, there appear to be multiple holds on it. Senators who “hold” hotlined bills do not have to identify themselves nor give their reasons for holding it. Holds are temporary. We don’t know how many of you contacted your Senators on such short notice this afternoon, but many, many thanks to all of you who responded so rapidly. Most people are unaware of the process called hotlining. In the past it was used to pass non-controversial legislation, but increasingly, it’s being used to pass bills whose sponsors don’t want to see debate. An excellent article in Roll Call explains the process. Here’s an excerpt:
Senate conservatives are upset that the leaders of both parties in the chamber have in recent years increasingly used a practice known as “hotlining” bills – previously used to quickly move noncontroversial bills or simple procedural motions – to pass complex and often costly legislation, in some cases with little or no public debate. The increase was particularly noticeable just before the August recess, when leaders hotlined more than 150 bills, totaling millions of dollars in new spending, in a period of less than a week.
The practice has led to complaints from Members and watchdog groups alike that lawmakers are essentially signing off on legislation neither they nor their staff have ever read…
In order for a bill to be hotlined, the Senate Majority Leader and Minority Leader must agree to pass it by unanimous consent, without a roll-call vote. The two leaders then inform Members of this agreement using special hotlines installed in each office and give Members a specified amount of time to object – in some cases as little as 15 minutes. If no objection is registered, the bill is passed.
– From ‘Hotlined’ Bills Spark Concern By John Stanton, Roll Call Staff September 17, 2007 To read the full article, go to: http://tinyurl.com/3p8x2u This is the second time the Senate Orphan Works bill has been hotlined this summer. The previous hotline came on June 5, the same week artists descended on Washington to urge lawmakers to oppose this controversial bill. The bill was put on hold that time too.
Since bills can be hotlined without prior notice, we’ll all have to stay vigilant throughout the rest of this legislative session. Thanks again to all of you who responded so quickly.
Over 60 organizations, representing more than 250,000 creators, are united in opposing these bills in their current form. Illustrators, photographers, fine artists, songwriters, musicians, and countless licensing firms all believe this bill will harm their small businesses. Read the list:http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00273
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