So here we are again. Let me welcome you, the precious few who grace our blog with your eyes, to another Friday.
I’ve been puting (or is it putting, like miniature golf?) off a blog update until I had a comic to accompany it, but the situation has become so dire that I feel I must post regardless. Last weekend, I completed the final illustration in what will come to be known as the Hundred Day Job. It has taken until today to finish the “fixes” requested by the director (Him: “The masts on the boat look crooked.” Me: “That’s because the boat is listing to one side.” Him: “The boat looks straight.” Me: “That’s because the front and back of a Man o’ War are angled.” Him: “The masts still look crooked.”).
Thus, today begins my reign of terror. Er, freedom. Yes, today I strike out as a free man and rediscover what I used to fill my time with besides pictures of pirates. So far, Becky and Final Fantasy XII are doing a pretty good job.
Patrick Rothfuss is continuing to garner both praise and spite (like any upstart bursting onto the scene with as much panache as he has) as well as unbelievable opportunities. I’m sure it won’t be long now before a gilded messenger arrives at my apartment to invite me to a castle-warming party at Rothfuss Keep in Scotland. It’ll be right next-door to Anne McCaffrey’s place, and the only difference will be that all the dragons there will be addicted to narcotic tree sap.
Good gravy, what if the “Kingkiller Chronicle” becomes as big as the Harry Potter Books? I think if that happened, you’d never see Rothfuss without a top hat. He’d have a plethora of them, and they’d be different heights to indicate his mood.
Well, we can all hope, can’t we. Now we just have to make King Sheep Productions a household name, and we’ll be set too. See you Monday.
Hello Blog-readers,
If you don’t live in Pullman WA, then you are probably not aware of a little tradition we have here. One of our local theaters plays 3rd run movies every Thursday for two dollars. Needless to say, cheap entertainment in this town is something special. So, to encourage other people to go see these movies, every wednesday I send out an email that chronicles what various reviewers have to say about the film. That’s the backstory, here’s the important bit. This week’s movie is Fantasic Four 2. I ended up with a few extra jokes at it’s expense, so here is the ‘unedited, directors cut’ of my email in case someone wanted to read my edited jokes. Enjoy.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer – The Audian – 6:15 pm – 2 buckaroos.
Okay, we all know this movie is poo. How can it not be? It’s a sequel to a festering obscenity of a movie. So, by comparison, poo is good. Poo is great. But, let’s not forget it’s still poo. All that’s left is the question of stink. Will it be hillbilly swamp poo where one whiff instantly ignites nose hairs or will it be innocuous and almost amusing baby poo? So which is it FF2:ROTSS, what kind of poo are you?
“If you swept the cosmic dust of the superhero boom into a flimsy dustpan, you’d have the Fantastic Four franchise.” Scott Brown Entertainment Weekly
Dusty cosmic boom poo.
“It’s a good thing Jessica Alba is easy on the eyes because she belly flops onto the craft of acting like a big black anvil.” Mark Ramsey MovieJuice!
Acme products poo.
“Superficial, unimaginative and inert. The so-called heroes are pompous, one-note caricatures who have the depth of gnats, and are just as irritating.” Dustin Putman TheMovieBoy.com
Gnat-gonna-make-Alba-happy poo.
“At times silly and then serious, this Fantastic Four is the cinematic equivalent of multiple personality disorder.” Misha Davenport Chicago Sun-Times
Psycho Sybil poo. At last, a superhero movie that we can lock in the basement and make eat eraser heads. “It puts on the lotion or else it gets the hose again.”
“Fantastic? Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Thrilling, engaging and totally adequate are more fitting adjectives to the latest superhero special effects bonanza.” Phil Villarreal Arizona Daily Star
Thesaurus poo.
“Sentient humans should stay away; all others may enter confident that their IQs are already in the Chernobyl-fried range and will not be affected, except for downward.” Stephen Hunter Washington Post
Insult your audience poo.
“KAPOW! The world’s most boring superheroes return to lull us back to sleep in a sequel that could put the makers of Nytol out of business.” David Edwards Daily Mirror [UK]
Product plug poo.
“Impressive not because of anything that’s said, but for the realization that you’re watching the screen be dominated by Jessica Alba and a piece of CGI without ever once experiencing the urge to gnaw through your own shoulder.” Steve Schneider Orlando Weekly
Cannibal poo.
“Surfing down the face of a building or opening bottomless holes in the Earth? Yes! Lamenting the loss of his loved one and trading therapy sessions with Sue? No!” Brian Orndorf OhmyNews.com
Simplified review structure? Yes. Amusing and original? No. I can’t decide. Is this monolog poo or more of that Sybil psycho poo?
“Fantasy pictures needn’t be bound by the constraints of real-world logic, but they can’t survive the quotidian blandness by which this one is smothered.” Kurt Loder MTV
Kurt Loder’s poo. No, smarty-pants poo. He must want to look smart if he uses ‘quotidian’ when speaking to an MTV audience. You get the picture. We need wrap up poo. The honor goes to the Onion AV club.
“Many complaints were lobbed at Fantastic Four but no one ever suggested it was too smart. Yet it would seem that everyone came to the sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, determined to dumb it down.” Keith Phipps Onion AV Club
And thank god they did. The dumber the movie, the more brain cells we save for other essential habits like sniffing glue and banging our heads on things. Thank you FF2:ROTSS, you and your blissfully long acronym title have saved the day again.
PDJ
Today’s Kingdom Heights is dedicated to the four-year-old boy sitting three seats away from me at “Ratatouille” and his parents who believe that a public theater is the same as the living room of their trailer park hovel.
Well we have returned from the family reunion weekend. By “we” I mean my wife and I, and by “returned” I mean survived. The most exciting parts went like this.
Friday – Arrived in Boise, ID at 10pm to discover that our luggage had been held in Seattle for “additional screening” by the stupid TSA, but due to my father’s speaking engagement at the reunion, we have to leave the airport. After an hour of family history slides, we returned to retrieve the bags. “Why were the bags held for inspection?” I inquired of the nice baggage service lady. “Oh, they just do that sometimes if there’s anything in the bag they can’t recognize, like a ball of tin foil or something.” Apparently, travelling with wads of foil is more common than one would think. In bed by midnight.
Saturday – Woke up at 6:15am so we could be fed and on the road by 8:15. We spent 12 hours touring various spots in and around Weiser, Idaho relevant to family history. One of these spots included the old Rock Creek ranch where we walked 1/4 mile through brambles and thistles to the ranch site. An unfortunate communication gap occurred which hid this hike from our knowledge until it was too late to pack actual shoes. Hence, my wife and I walked in sandals. After the trek, it was decided that pizza should ordered in time for us to enjoy it upon our return to Boise.
The rest of the relatives returned while my father, great Uncle Richard, Becky and I took care of a few more errands before getting back on the road to Boise. It was, therefore, 9pm when we arrived exhausted, dirty, thorn-ridden, and hungry to five remaining pieces of cold Hawaiian Delight and eighteen relatives eagerly awaiting more of the slideshow presentation. In bed by 11:30.
Sunday – We meandered to consciousness around 9:30am and missed the continental breakfast, but received the keys to my dad’s rented Dodge Magnum so we could go find food. Driving the Magnum made me think I should be representin’ or at least beckoning for people to holla.
The dessert for this weekend? We got to the ticket counter at the airport and found out our flight was over-booked, but if we volunteered to be bumped then we would get two free tickets anywhere Alaska or Horizon flies. Since, starting in October that includes Hawaii, we volunteered, got bumped, and received our tickets and two vouchers to buy food and snacks while we waited for our flight. We spend one voucher on food and blew the other on magazines and candy, returning to Seattle in the front row of seats on the jet.
So, to sum up, there is a God.
Can’t wait for TaylorCon ’08.