"What's Next?!"

Comic Con 2011 Aftermath

2011-08-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

It has now been a few weeks after San Diego Comic Con – a much needed recovery time after such a complete sensory overload, and now I can actually look into the big bag of swag that I collected. My bag has the cast of the television show “The Big Bang” and is big enough to carry a Great Dane puppy. Inside are pounds of free magazines, faux tattoos, posters and other things thrust into my hands by silicone-chested muses, or other costumed barkers standing at the various booths.

Looking at my treasures I am struck once more by the nagging thought, “What did I actually do for the four days?” To remedy this quandary, I reflect on the events and the sights and sounds.

The first day is the actual day you go and get your passes that you went online and registered for in March; being a professional, I also have the advantage of going to “Preview Night,” but more on that later. The lines moves rather briskly compared to the regular folks who have been camping over night in the cold and grumbling of the homeless who are mad that their spot has been taken by someone who actually has a home with running water. Once inside you are handed your large bag with the featured show(s), movies of the year blazoned on the side and the event book the size of a small phone directory.

As I said earlier I will be attending Preview Night; this event is not part of the regular convention experience, but for the professionals and their entourage, it is included. The regular folk can attend, but they do have to pay extra for the privilege, much like Governor Brown’s “Fire Protection” scheme. The concept of Preview Night is sort of a convention-lite – less crowds but still fulfilling. It is a 3-hour speed trial of the convention so that attendees can see where all the cool things are so they know where to park their bags and costumed forms for the four days. Also where you will be spending the hard earned cash they have been saving up since last convention to buy stuff that continue to fill up their rooms or apartments. Fun Fact: some attendees save up between $1500 to $3000; think of all the Starbuck’s lattes that would buy.

It is the first day of the actual convention and the hunt for parking begins. Seasoned attendees know that to obtain the best spot you must arrive several hours before the convention opens, say around 5:30 AM-ish is a good time. If you have seen the show MonsterQuest: Search for the Yeti, that was easy compared to the search for parking during the convention. If you have missed the window for good parking then you will be driving around for hours and eventually settling for a spot two cities over, (helpful hint: bring water and plenty of snacks).

The opening of the convention is like the original opening of Ellis Island – with hordes of people from another reality, not another country crammed into the halls and balconies awaiting the opening of the doors. There are Klingons, pirates, overweight Spartans and much, much more and some have actually showered too!

Once the doors have opened and you are pushed along inside it doesn’t look any different than Preview Night except that now there are more people and celebrities! One note should be mentioned that people are much ruder than on Preview Night – reminding me of my vacation in New York City, right down to the strangely dressed people. Now you are caught in the primal lemming urge to follow the person in front of you – all thoughts of the night before are lost in the mass exodus towards the free stuff. I have learned over the twenty-five years I have been attending to follow the largest person I can find and let them cut a path throw the crowd. Never follow a hot babe in costume, they are always stopped for pictures, also don’t follow any costumed person, some didn’t get the shower email.

As you weave in and out of each aisle you are accosted by free stuff and sometimes you stop for something really cool, (I collect old pulp novels from the 1950’s – and I read too). And if you are lucky you find a real treasure and pay five-times its original worth only to learn that if you had waited until the last day of the convention you could’ve gotten for its original price. But hey, its Comic Con and you don’t know if it’ll be there tomorrow!

But Comic Con isn’t just about buying stuff and taking pictures of people dressed up as – whatever, there are also panels and seminars, movie previews with the actors to answer questions and build up their audience base when the film comes out. There are workshops on how to build your own Sandspeeder using things you find at Home Depot, or how to sew up costumes that are guaranteed to win you the awards at the Masquerade on Saturday night. See, it isn’t all just fun and going into debt, there are upsides to this too.

So I have separated my three treasured pulp novels, the autograph from Matt Smith and Karen Gillan from Doctor Who from the large pile of stuff I really don’t want, but the buxom women in the shiny skin tight outfit assured me I really wanted. As I think back on those four days here is what comes to mind:

Loud noises both human and electronic
Silicone breasts in spandex
Lots of stuff I cannot afford
Natural breasts in corsets
Rude people hyped on Red Bull
People living their dream fantasies in a public place
More breasts
Celebrities charging for their autograph
The fall of modern civilization through video games
Breasts

Yup, that about covers it. Well, I better fill out my registration for next year – maybe it will be different…

Cougar-Mania!

2011-01-05T15:16:00.000-08:00

When a fellow male instructor told me that over the weekend he was attacked by a cougar, I was certain he did not mean a member of the genus puma, concola, Felidae family, but the new fad term given to an older woman seeking the sexual company of a younger man. Not that there is that much of a difference really.

The online Urban Dictionary defines a cougar as: An older woman who frequents clubs in order to score with a much younger man.

This to me seems to be a role reversal of the male goings on during the late Victorian/Edwardian social clubs in the heart of London. In such clubs men of wealth and means would cavort with young ladies. The difference being that they had to be kept behind closed doors - the men still had to keep some air of respectability. Today’s cougar however doesn’t need to stay behind closed doors. There are web sites where they can chat with one another, special Happy Hours at restaurants and bars, and even I suspect Cougar Cruises on many bays throughout the United States.

Now being a curious individual, always wanting to know more about the changing world around me, I wanted to find out more about this rising fad of sorts sweeping the nation and the talk show circuits. And after scanning the various web sites that cater to this growing group of female predators, for isn’t that what a cougar is really? And watching the various talk shows excerpts on www.hulu.com where known cougars were paid money to go on national television- specifically during the time period where would-be cougars are likely to be watching, to gain tips on how to become one, I have made the following observations.

Firstly, not all older women can be cougars, judging from the media and television anyway, only those that have money and are still reasonably attractive. However, as we have learned with men, loads of money cancels out looks 85% of the time. This is not to say that an unattractive older woman cannot be a cougar, it just means the type of younger male she will attract will not be Johnny Depp, more like Barney Rubble.

Now I did not come to this observation from a male chauvinistic perspective, this is from my extensive research, and watching those in the know; Oprah, Tyra, Maury and of course the true leaders of American morals - The View. From these I have learned that the conventions of the past are gone – no more hiding your desires in the backrooms, NO MORE! Get it out in the open where you can brag to your girlfriends that you are better than they are! But remember, men must still keep it in the backrooms because it is perverted and ugly when they do it.

Another point I was curious about concerns the age group of the perspective male consort. As we see in the news, having relations with males of the age from 16 to 13 years is illegal – spelled statutory rape, and would only land you on the cover of newspapers, MTV, VH1, TMZ, and paid offers of appearances on any of the shows listed above from my research. So therefore the conclusion to be drawn is that the proposed male must be of legal age and preferably with some facial hair. True that our Edwardian males would align themselves with ladies of 17 years, but those were also ladies who had no money and had many suitors, young and old, to pay for their lodgings. The play by Alexander Dumas Files “Lady of Camille” is a shining example of this sort of thing. The term for these ladies was courtesans.

Then I was struck by a thought, wasn’t there a name for men who dallied with women of a mature nature, and often were paid for their time with gifts and trinkets? I believe the term was gigolo. A gigolo is a male who wished to live a carefree life without any true means of support except for that of an older woman who had more money than he had. All he had to do was to be seen with her, make her feel young, and perform certain services – and yes, I mean that kind too. The point being that this man was looked down upon by society as being nothing more than a male prostitute. But with the new approved vogue of cougar-mania, this man now is no longer a cheap, ugly male hook…, sorry, gold digger, but a sympathetic male who sees a need within a certain sect of society and fills it, (see the perform part again if you missed it).

In conclusion, my hope is that with this new social double standard of the cougar-mania, and the world embracing this step backwards, and will allow the men who have long hidden their needs, can finally come out of the backrooms with THEIR sensitive young female consorts and march blissfully forward hand in hand into the new age of media moral approval and paid talk show profits.

Now if you’ll excuse me – Desperate Housewives is on.

An Animal's Point of View

2011-01-03T14:07:00.000-08:00

It is a widely held opinion among the wildlife community that the human race must in fact really dislike the planet Earth. Now this may come as a shock to the human race at large, but it has been a real concern of the animal population since man came out of the trees and began to walk upright and started building civilizations. As far as the animals are concerned, Earth Abuse pretty much started with the establishment of cities, and man believing he is at the top of the food chain.

Now this has not been the case for all of man’s history, the Native Americans, certain African tribes and even the peoples of what has been termed, “backward” cultures, have learned to live with nature and the animals, taking only what they need and wasting nothing. But with the rise of modernization and technology, plus the added increase in fast food franchises, this has all gone by the wayside.

Now it should be stated that all of the human race are not at fault for this problem, in fact it is only a small section of the human population that is of the biggest concern, and if you who are reading this, and are not part of this section, then you can just sit back and laugh at those who are. The groups at fault are those that drive cars, live in environmentally controlled homes, and have cell phones and more than one computer in their environmentally controlled home. These are the people that the animal kingdom feels are the ones who have decided that their world should evolve into a large waste dump, and the quicker the better.

Have you Ever Thought About…

When a seagull dives down to gather food as has been their nature since they evolved from flying lizards, in the crisp and vastness of the ocean and becomes entangled in a plastic multi-looped death trap that is not of nature, but tossed overboard by a passing boat carrying party goers out for a cruise complete with alcoholic refreshments, then it is taken as writ that the seagull should take offense. Even the dolphin swimming behind the boat that swallowed the empty can and choked because his fellows can’t actually help him extract it, due largely to the lack of hands and arms to perform the Heimlich Maneuver.

Another such incident occurred when a young deer comes to a stream and lowers her graceful head to sip from a clear stream to taste only dish soap from a campsite where a family has just finished their meal and have cleaned the dishes in the stream just a few yards up from the dear, again one would see the animal kingdoms point. Also the fact that a bear happens to come by to help his friend the deer put stumbles over an empty cardboard carton filled with empty beer cans left by some college kids out for a quiet drink and “forgot” to take it with them, thus causing the bear to fall and injure himself.

Past Earth-to-Waste-Dump Achievements

Let us not overlook the other forms of human quick-destruction elements that have affected the animals:

• Deforestation – home loss for tree living animals, well as oxygen depletion for all life

• Toxic waste – one three eyed fish is a joke, but 6 million dead ones is not

• Air pollution – no it hasn’t gone away, it just not a big a fad problem as in the 60’s and 70’s

• Increase in human population- more people means more need to kill animals for McRibs

But the biggest and most frightening of all is EXTINCTION. This is the one that concerns the wildlife of Earth the most. To put it into terms humans can understand, one day your school or office is filled with all manner of ethnic mixing you can think of, can you picture that? Now let us say that the next day one section of the whole office, say the Asians, seemed to get less, and this continues to the next day, and the next. By week’s end all the Asian are gone; your best friend, your fiancé, your favorite hot girl at the coffee cart. Do you see that picture now? That is what it is like for the animal kingdom, fellow beings gone and never to return, not pretty is it?

Closing Thoughts

So when you see some trash left at a campsite, or along the side of the road while you drive by with your GPS telling you in that annoying HAL 9000 voice, how to drive and where to turn to find tasty McRibs, feel safe and secure in the knowledge that the quick path to planet-to-waste dump is moving ahead as planned. And if you are waiting for a bus or trolley and a bird just happens to leave a bit of waste on your shoulder, don’t get angry, he is just saying, “Thanks for nothing, Mr. High on the food chain.”

Going For Broke - Literally!

2010-11-03T13:52:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you a story about a man named Jed. A poor mountaineer who barely…

No, wait a minute, that isn’t the right story.

Sorry, wrong book.

Ah here it is.

Hello and welcome to Prof. Bob’s Story Time. Today’s story is about how not remembering history will land you in a huge heap of cow poop.

Are you ready children? Good here we go.

A long time ago, in the country known as USA was a beautiful Golden Land known as California, where the people lived a golden life and whose gross income was that of a small emerging nation. In this Golden Land where the sun always shined and the young women walked around in what would amount to three sheets of Kleenex on strings, there was happiness everywhere you looked. There were strong industries that supplied jobs aplenty, top rated colleges and universities, nice tract houses with swimming pools, home of the movie stars and more wine than all the winos in both New York and Chicago could drink in a year. In other words a modern Eden, (remember the women in the Kleenex and strings?).

The Golden Land was so popular that ten thousand people moved there from the eastern part of the country each year to get away from the crime and cold weather that made everyone angry and mean towards their fellow men. In California everyone was tanned and smiling, at least that is what all the television shows and movies showed you, so why not believe them? They wouldn’t make stuff like that up would they?

Also in this land was a smaller subdivision of Magic called Disneyland, built by a man who sought only to bring family entertainment to all, but like so many great thinkers and dreamers, his land would fall into evil hands, who would subvert it for the sake of money and profit. But that is another story for a later time.

At the time this story begins the elected leader, or GOVERNOR of the Golden Land was Ronnie the Reagan, who had once been an actor in the movies and was very business savvy having run the Screen Actors Guild for many years, so he knew how to make the land better. To this end he had stored money collected from many forms of taxes to build an emergency fund in case of disasters or any bad things that might happen to the beautiful golden land. He had worked long and hard to make the land prosperous and free of federal aid. But his term was coming to the end, and the people looked towards choosing a new leader.

Now as with any mythical and magical place where there is happiness, beautiful beaches and those women dressed in next to nothing; there was evil lurking on the sparking California horizon. This evil had clothed itself in a guise of YOUTH and NEW HOPE. He was indeed a youthful fellow, but he was the son of the governor who had almost bankrupted the Golden Land many years before Ronnie the Reagan had taken office. This youth was known as Jerry the Brown Jr., (his father being Jerry the Brown Sr.). He was young well educated and raised in the Golden Land, he spoke well and except for the severe dark eyebrows that looked like they needed a weed-whacker to trim, he looked youthful. He was a child of the generation “Free Everything;” free love, free food, free mindedness, free, free, free. This point will come back later to haunt the people of the Golden Land.

Well, as you may have guessed he won the election and became the new Governor of California.

All seemed well until he actually started to do things, and then things went not so well. He decided he didn’t want the nice big Governor Mansion, so he sold it and moved into a luxury condo. Then he decided that the welfare regulations were too strict and made them easier for those in need. This backfired, because other states learned how easy it was to get on welfare, (the only real requirement was “are you breathing?”), and that you didn’t have to be a long term resident of the Golden Land to qualify. So they began sending their welfare dregs to the Golden Land so that heir states could boast lower welfare costs while California’s went up. Now the cost of welfare began to rise and those who actually had jobs were now paying more for those who didn’t want jobs from other states that had shown up asking for all the free money.

He started many other such programs, even waging a war on political corruption in the form of the dreaded magic paper called PROP 13, which didn’t stop the corruption, just moved it to another part of the state legislature. All these programs fell nicely into his free thinking stance he had said during his campaign. Slowly but surely while no one really was watching the reserve funds that were established by Ronnie the Reagan were almost gone. The media who had once been his friend, now referred to him as “Governor Moonbeam” because of his hippy attitude that was no longer youthful and new, just costly to the tax-payers.

Luckily for the people of the Golden Land his term ended, before the state had to file for Chapter 11.

Since his time many new Govenors were elected some good, some corrupt and one impeached, until a true hero came on the scene: The Govenorenaitor! He was big, he was strong, and he spoke broken English! He was the poor emigrant who made it big. He was an icon of the age, his presence moved mountains, if not, he would move them himself! He even married a member of the great royal house of Kennedy! He was the true symbol of the Golden Land!

He was a no-nonsense leader. He changed the rules for welfare it wouldn’t be bleed dry, he focused on balancing the budget to help save the Golden Land, but at every turn he was stymied by those who still followed the “Free for All” thinking who had survived from the Moonbeam times. He tried to fix the problem that had been laid on his really muscular shoulders. He was making headway, but it was slow moving at best.

Last night his reign ended. And now the darkness has returned…. Moonbeam is back! He isn’t youthful anymore, he isn’t new anymore, his forehead does look like the full moon though, and he still is preaching NEW HOPE.

But deep in the pile of papers he carries with him to the Governor Condo he once occupied decades before, there is one that is tri-folded neatly and crisply, almost lovingly like a cherished heirloom. In bold letters typed clearly under the title are the words: “Chapter 11 – The State of California.”

A New Resolution

2010-10-31T11:17:00.000-07:00

Sorry I have been away so long from bloggong here, but I have had to expand my income to help the current administration pay for its $14 trillion debt it belives we need. So with my free time almost nothing and my ability to get any sleep, I will try to post new blessaies (term Taken from Stephen Fry), from now on - starting as soon as I get some sleep, grade papers, walk the dog and find an actual day off.

So for my followers, all four of you, keep the faith as I try to do better. For anyone who becomes a follower, GREAT! THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

Now that being said, here is what you will see as you follow along; more observations and commentaries as I am now embarking on a writing career to finally finish my list of things to do before I croak. I am working on a short story for submission to a magazine, as well as to get on a writer for a online magazine, so if you know anyone who is looking PLEASE TELL ME... (sound of begging added here).

There will also as always be cartoons for each blessay as you have seen before since I am a cartoonist I love to illustrate my stuff to add a good right to the jaw, so enjoy those.

Well it is off to job #2, but I wanted to let you guys know I am still here.

P.S. I am going to add "Oprah" and "breasts"to key words to see if my viewing goes up - you just never know.

Obama: Year One

2010-02-13T11:37:00.000-08:00

I did this cartoon after listening to President Obama's State of the Union

Your 15 Minutes Are Up!

2010-01-27T23:25:00.000-08:00

I am beginning to think I must give the wrong impression to people, judging from the emails that I get in my inbox.

Aside from the ones telling me that I need to revitalize my “manhood,” reduce my home loan payments, and the never-ending ones from a rather scantily clad young woman named “Sparkle,” who wants very much to meet me online, I am concerned about the emails I get from people who actually know me!

This all came about one evening while I was checking my three email accounts, (yes, I need three email accounts, doesn’t everyone?), I spy one with a subject line that read; “You will love this!” Fearing that in is another email from Sparkle, I right mouse click the message to get the properties of the sender to make sure it is not from her, or a radical terrorist group whose method of bringing America to its knees is through corrupting Gmail accounts.

I see it is from one of my students, still vaguely apprehensive I open the message. The message simply states that said student saw this video and immediately thought of me. Below the message is pasted a hyperlink in the familiar Bob Ross happy sky blue colored html-speak. I pause for a moment, considering if I should open this link or not, granted it did get past my security software, but then again can you really trust software that sounds like a drunken Scotsman…

I click the link and I am taken to the Mecca of the Damned – YouTube! There on the screen is a grainy pixilated video of a woman lip-syncing to Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” dressed like the pope. I am not saying I was offended, in fact I chuckled, and then asked forgiveness for my sins, but I thought why post this. I mean, her face was visible; she must want to get dates, go to college, get a high paying job, and to have a happy life, right? All of these things were now in jeopardy because she thought it was funny and felt that the world would be a better place by posting it on a site for the mentally challenged.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not against YouTube in principle, on the contrary I can watch clips from shows and films I remember from my youth, it is a great place to watch movie trailers to see if I really want to spend the price of my monthly rent on dinner and a movie. What does disturb me is that it has become the repository for those people that have no life, a vidcam and the burning urge to share their sad existence with the entire world.

I miss the old days, (the late seventies and eighties), where such people were confined to shows like Montel, Jerry Springer, and the founder of it all Phil Donahue. Shows which the media now fondly refer to as Reality Television, proving that the media does live in an alternate reality. The only great show that was worth watching at that time was the Gong Show, a sort of spastic version of American Idol. These shows allowed those people you wouldn’t invite to Christmas or your child’s birthday party to achieve their, as quoted by the late Andy Warhol “15 minutes of fame.”

What is even more interesting is that they were paid to debase themselves on national television, (back in the eighties the going rate was $2000 for appearance on Geraldo).Imagine that, you would be paid a large sum of money to destroy your credibility as a human being! No wonder those types of shows are still on today. In today’s sagging economy, you could make your house payment by say, launching your child in a hot air balloon… nah, who’d pull a dumb stunt like that.

Anyway back to the “YouTube: Mecca of the Damned”. This site is the godsend for the people who missed out on the whole Gong Show thing, or maybe they’re the children of those people, (shudder). With the use of a low cost camera or vidcam mounted to the monitor, anyone can upload whatever they want! You can see a man singing in the shower, a dog that farts the national anthem, or my favorite the little child telling mommy how it will kick a monster’s @$$! (The last one was given legitimacy by being shown on America’s Funniest Videos). That kid is probably being scouted by the WCF as we speak.

Now all this sounds funny and whimsical, but I don’t think that these people have fully thought out this whole thing. Yes, you could make your career break like Katy Perry, or you can kill your career, hope for employment, marriage, etc, just as easy. Just imagine if YouTube was around 1998, “Sherman set the Way-back machine…”

You are sitting in the congressional hearing; President Clinton sits at a microphone facing the speaker of The House:

Speaker: “Mr. President, these allegations of your involvement with the young woman Monica Lewinski. Are they true?

Clinton: “Define what you mean by involvement Mr. Speaker.”

Speaker: “Let me show you this video we found on YouTube…”

Clinton: “Shit.”

My question to these people is, “Have you ever considered your acts of stupidity and juvenile exposition can be seen by anyone at anytime!”Moreover, it never goes away unless you remove it from the web, (but then again the damage is already done, so what is the point really). I have a friend who is in Human Resources for a major studio in Hollywood, and she told me that they now check applicant names on YouTube, MySpace and Twitter to see if the applicant is right for their studio or for right for an opening at the local sanitarium.

And it is not only the professional sector checking these sites, it is also the colleges and universities as well. Did you ever stop to think the reason you were not accepted at that Ivy League school could be that funny video taken while stoned at your friend’s high school grad party may not have been a good thing?

My point is this, today’s youth have grown up in a world where the 15 minutes of fame, is the Holy Grail to the easy life and piles of money; and they are willing to risk it all to obtain it. Thanks to the short-cut-to-graduation school system, (where history is the memorization of dates, not to show us how our actions affected our future); they don’t understand the long-term effects of their actions. What seems funny today is not going to be funny in a job market tomorrow, and where only the smart are employed in high paying jobs, while the rest are working at Starbucks for minimum wage.

Barista: “What can I get for you…?”

Customer: “Hey, aren’t you the girl in that video singing “I Kissed A Girl” dressed like the pope?”

Barista: “Shit.

"What Next?" Panel Toons

2009-12-22T22:23:00.000-08:00

This panel cartoon is from a series I submitted to a magazine. It still makes me laugh....

Here is another one that I got in trouble when religious co-worker saw it...

"But Their Mouths Move Funny!?!"

2009-12-15T16:49:00.000-08:00

Teaching animation department at a California art school is a challenge; the day to day dealing with students who are right brain dominate, but logic impaired. Who consider Monster energy drinks, Doritos a well balanced meal, and who have the attention span of a fox terrier on Prozac.
There is one question I am asked on a regular basis, “Why don’t you like Japanese anime?” This question is second only to “Which end of the pencil does the writing?” and my all-time favorite, “You mean I have to actually draw something?!?” Trust me; I am not making these up.
The reason for the rather odd enquiring into my animated entertainment preference, and its persistently being asked, is four years ago, when asked the question, I stupidly answered, “Not really.” Like Bill Clinton’s infidelities, it has never been forgotten.
Now I understand that I am from a different era, and that what was entertaining for me is different from what the youth of the last 15 years considers entertaining. Being born at the tail end of the Baby Boomers era I grew up watching Bugs Bunny, Pink Panther, The Flintstones and even the first three seasons of Scooby Doo, before the formula writing plague hit. Come on, you knew who the ghost was after the first five minutes, you just kept watching because Daphne was hot. I just think that when a character speaks, their mouths should move correctly, don’t you? Come on, even Scooby Doo’s mouth moved properly, and he didn’t even speak English, “Raggy, oh Raggy.”

What I am getting at is believability. If you were in Starbucks and ordered your venti Caramel latte, upside down with an extra shot, no whip because it makes you feel bloated; and the barista looked at you, his mouth moving like it was on fast forward and the speech followed after he stopped, you’d be freaked out right? When I was a kid, my brother and I would get up before our parents and watch cartoons with the sound really low. The animation was so good you could almost lip read what they were saying. My ex-brother-in-law actually did this because he was partially deaf as a child and no one knew it. True story. If he’d tried that with an anime cartoon, he would have probably ended up talking like Scooby Doo, “Ray Raggy, where is Fellma?”
Beyond the mouth-moving thing, I think there should be a spark of realism to cartoons so we can relate to it, (But not too much, take the big hoopla in the 1970’s over cartoon violence, but that’s for another time). The point is that there needs to be something familiar so the audience can say, “Hey I can relate to that,” or “I felt just like that!” The situations should look familiar to us so we can laugh at them even after the cartoon has ended. Case in point; the whole jumping up and hanging in space for minutes on end with a 70’s disco light show going on behind the character while he swishes his weapon around like an angry marching band baton twirler. Could you really see this happening? If I was walking down a dark alley and a ninja, (they always hang out in dark alleys, didn’t you know that?); dropped down in front of me. Then before he attacked, jumped up into the air and hung there while a light show from nowhere began. I wouldn’t know whether to applaud, swear off drinking cheap beer from Bev Mo, or just walk away. Granted that when Wile E. Coyote fell off the cliff, his neck stretched out a bit too far, but hey, it was an exaggeration to elicit laughter, not an animator’s acid flashback.
Don’t get me wrong, there is some very good Japanese animation out there, and I have actually been amazed by the craftsmanship of them, even Disney has financed several and the quality is awesome. The stuff on television today is like the McDonalds of cartoons; looks good, but is bad for your brain and your colon. For me, cartoons need to be entertaining and not something that hurts my head to watch it. The classic cartoons of the 1950’s and 1960’s had good writing, clever dialogue and even bits of history thrown in, (I learned about gas rationing long before high school history class, take that anti-animation naysayers!), all subtly mixed in. When you turned off the set you felt like you’d just had a good meal but weren’t too full. Anime shows leave you feeling like you had a full meal, and then you’re thrown on a corkscrew rollercoaster, while a psychotic chimp hits you with a salmon. Fasten your seatbelts, keep your arms, legs, lunch inside at all times, and don’t mind the chimp.
Moreover, why are the anime cartoons so serious? You would think that since the Japanese command the majority of all products bought by California teenagers in the San Fernando Valley, they’d be happier. Especially if you consider that the California economy is the size of a small nation. The subject matter is too dark and sinister. What they do think is funny is just unsettling. Have you ever seen that cat-thing in the Poky-Mon show? Burr! I get the whole high-tech thing, it is the reflection of their culture after the Second World War, and since all art is the reflection of a culture, yadda, yadda, ya, but can’t they move on? Even during the same war, our cartoons were still funny!
I admit I liked the Macross series that hit American shores in the mid-eighties; the one where the motorcycles turned into battle-suits. I hear Toyota is actually working with that concept to help with American rush hour traffic. I wonder if it’ll come in a hybrid model.
Well I better get going; a student missed the electric pencil sharpener again and stabbed another student through the chest. Wait a minute; he’s jumping up …now he is hanging in mid-air… hey, where’d that light show come from?

Christy Brinkley

2009-12-13T14:09:00.000-08:00

Style Experiments

2009-12-09T22:27:00.000-08:00

Here is another experimentation with style. I have been getting into the "retro look" of my childhood. It is along the lines of Ralph Bakshi and the Terrytoon cartoons of the 60's.

2009-02-08T14:58:00.000-08:00

Just to let the blog universe know that I am also up for comission work. To see more of my work vist the following sites: www.celticviant.devaintart.com or www.graphicsmash.com/index/flex_time.html

2009-02-08T14:56:00.000-08:00

More new stuff. This one was prompted by hearing news of the passing of Steve Gerber; writer, creator of many of Marvels best selling characters, (Like the two shown above), as well as writing for "Batman: The Animated Series." He will be missed.

2009-02-08T14:53:00.000-08:00

Since I have been away from Blogspot for some time I have embarked on trying to push my art to a new, "fun" direction. Since getting a gig doing illustrations for a corporate client, I have been trying some digital ink and painting.

"Hollywood Originality:There is a Recession On!"

2008-09-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in class, one of my socially conscientious students asked boldly “Why is there a lack of originality in films and television today. Now being the almighty, (yes some of my students believes this, and who am I to argue), and taking a tip from the congressional book of interview replies I said, “Because there is a recession on.” To which the student looked at me with an expression that resembled one given by a silver-backed gorilla given a frozen dinner and a coke.
As I drove home that night, skillfully piloting through traffic like an eagle, I reflected the question with renewed curiosity, not unlike Sherlock Holmes deciphering the Case of the Blue Carbuncle or Indiana Jones on The Last Crusade. Upon my return home, I kissed my wife and t my daughter then immediately went to my office and sought the repository of all known human knowledge, GOOGLE.COM. I had formulated my course of action in solving this mystery; feverishly I typed in my search question,

Hollywood, originality

The little spinning circle in the toolbar spun fast, then slow, then fast again and then it paused. I held my breath, the pause meant it had found something; would my quest be this simple? The screen erupted with a huge list of sites all asking the same question; what I believed was a small mystery was more like a global conspiracy! I clicked on sites and read the ideas and hypothesis of the noted professionals and theologians. Each had reviewed the problem and had their answer, but none had gotten to the heart of the issue.
So I then moved onto sacred ground and dug deeper into the darkness of the pit and unearthed truths that were frightening and terrible. I had called a friend at a major studio, I will refer to her as Dark Angel, and she agreed to meet me. We met in a parking garage near Santa Monica, and she arrived at the appointed time. She stood behind a concrete pillar and spoke in a low gravely tone, (she had a cold and she didn’t want me to catch it), I asked her the question once more. She told me that the reason for the lack of original ideas in the entertainment industry is that those in power are the rebels of the seventies and were taught to believe that they could do better than those who had gone before. But they had one tragic flaw, their Achilles Heel to use a classical metaphor, was that they were the first of the T-Generation, (the “Television” generation, children born in the years 1958 to 1968. I read about in Newsweek), and thus that had become their template.

I shuddered; my generation had created this monster. We who created the internet and Napster, we who perpetuated the desktop computer age – we had wrought this!
I pressed her for clarification. She coughed and blew her nose like a jazz musician; then she went on to tell me that since the seventies the American entertainment industry was in a rut creatively, and to pull itself out it “borrowed” from one of our allies from the Great War, (the one with the Nazis and Japanese, remember?). They would borrow the show concepts, change the names and call them new. This cunning plan worked until the shows they borrowed were shown on PBS. Now their secret was revealed!

But retribution never came, instead a mutual agreement was signed and the cross pollination began without a hitch.
“But how does this explain what is happening today?” I asked as she once again trumpeted. “Like any drug you become addicted, you can’t stop!” her voice clearing slightly. It seems that now they wait until a property, (industry term for a show, idea, Las Vegas hotel, etc), has gone through a full cycle of re-runs or showings on cable television, the idea can be used again. But the rattlesnake inside this concept is that the American entertainment juggernaut has been programmed to believe it can do anything better because we are Americans! Thus the explanation as to why shows created overseas are better than those we copy over here, they are vastly more intelligent than we are, (This is proved by the I.Q. scores of European children and anyone living in the middle of the country).

Dark Angel coughed again and then rushed off because she was out of Kleenex. But I had my answers, and it wasn’t hard to take it from there, oh no, I had the tools to finish my quest. I returned home, sat down, did more research into the industry, and learned what had been going on for the last two decades. Once a year the American film and television industry sends representatives to a convention in Great Britain, where they show all the television shows and concept shows from around the world. After the convention, the representatives return home and inform their superiors of what they have seen.

Now that the original shows from the convention are appearing on cable television networks: SciFi Channel, A&E, USA, HBO, Spice Channel, the Entertainment machine has devolved to the basest form of life, CANNABLISM. This is where the television generation aspect rears its myopic head – it uses those shows from the seventies as the food for its huge profit hungry desire. And not just for television, much worse, for major motion pictures! Scooby Do, The Brady Bunch, Bewitched, and more on the way. And it doesn’t stop there, the now gluttonous beast has moved to another form of media loved by the T-Generation – comic books! But the latter was for purely monetary purposes. The reasoning is that if you look at the average printing of a comic book, (X-Men sells 500,000 a month at roughly $3.50 each) times that by the price of a movie ticket = a trip to the Caiman Islands for some lucky producer and his mistress.

So as I power down my computer and wander sleepily out to the living room where House is just coming on, I sit and wonder – is this original or Marcus Wilby, M.D. on prescription drugs?

The Lost Creative Gene

2008-06-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

Since the first primate sat in his darken cave while the night sounds of creatures too horrible to imagine crept outside its doorway, the need for creativity has been a major part of the life of humans. I was at a function with my family and as if on cue someone will ask the standard “let’s make conversation” question concerning what do I do for a living. When I answered I was once more given the answer, “Oh I wish I was creative. I don’t have a creative bone in my body.” I tried to explain to the rather garishly dressed individual that had cornered me at the bar where I was trying to numb the effects of the event with a black and tan, that everyone is creative in some respect – cooking, craft making, computer hacking, almost anything can be a form of creativity. The person’s vacant stare spoke volumes as they moved away in search of less cerebral strained conversation. But the conversation had sparked a cord in my anthropological trained mind and set me on a course of action; a hunt for the missing link itself, lost since the dawn of Microsoft – genuscreativitus.

As with all anthropological studies, we begin with observation and hypothesis: to the general populace of the planet Earth creativity is the ability to draw, paint and put things on paper, but nothing else. I have learned over the years that this is not the case. As a teacher at an art school, I found that many forms of creativity are untapped and go on all the time. For example, the excuses you hear for why homework is not finished are the things of great fiction – and in some cases, science fiction. Gone are the days of dogs eating homework as a form of criticism of their master’s work, now a cybernetic box with vast storage capability has replaced man’s best friend as a critic of ultimate wisdom and knowledge. And we cannot forget the miniature leech that can be inserted into the larger box that can steal the knowledge and then conveniently be lost in a car, apartment, pair of pants, a dog's butt – wherever! But I digress.

I decided that I needed to go back to the source of all knowledge, a dark place few have ventured into – the Public Library! In that air-conditioned repository of lost knowledge I began to research my subject and find a clue as to when the creative gene was first bred out of the human animal. My research led me to the conclusion that it had begun to die out around the time of the early seventies when all television was just re-hashing of old ideas and disco had become the fad of the day. Up to that point in time humanity had reached the moon, lasers technology was invented, and Star Trek was an original idea. The latter would fall down in the eighties when Paramount decided to revive the idea because they couldn’t think of anything better to do.

In the last part of the seventies, a young filmmaker sparked the world with an idea that was so creative and new that it triggered the almost lost gene into activity – Star Wars had come out and changed the world. It was a fun entertaining film that made even the laziest of bipeds want to achieve something more. Though the story was as simple as any children’s fairytale, it resonated within the human brain with fire. The effect was almost like a plague, it seeped into television, literature, and politics, even into everyday thought. “We could achieve anything as long as we believe!” became the new idea. But this was not to last. Throughout the early part of the nineteen-eighties, the genuscreativitus was being reborn within the human race, but in the background gaining strength and power was the beast. Like all evil beasts of legend and folk tales, this beast started as a small thing that would gain power and grow. Its mission was not clear but it would be pushed into the light and be seen as not an evil but as a savior. This vile creature and robber of creativity was known as The Web. Like the Hydra of Herculean myth, it had many brains in many heads across the world and it grew more as its followers grew in power and cunning.

It was fed the archive of human knowledge, it was given access to all the homes and offices of the world and in the year 2000, when it was believed that it was in danger – humanity showed its true colors and saved it from a dark death. Now that the beast had been saved and its presence was established in every home, (statistics show that every home in America has at least three computers hooked up to digital cable, and every three out of five people have internet access on their cell phones), the creative gene was being bred out.

How does this affect creativity you ask as you sit there in your bedroom staring at the big glowing box in front of you reading this text? Creativity is the ability to see something of the outside world and to absorb it into your psyche and then reproduce it as something new. Creativity is an internal process that makes civilization leap into the future with a higher ideal. Now I know what you are thinking, “I can be creative, but I can’t think of anything right now. I just ate and my creativity is low after eating Doritos, microwave burritos and Monster caffeine drinks.” That is my point, when we become comfortable we become lazy, and when we are lazy we are not creative. The creative gene thrives on excitement and external stimuli from being out in the world; not inside playing computer games or watching the Food Network 24/7. It is living everyday thinking about what you can aspire to becoming. Bluntly put – LIVING!

And so, my journey comes to an end and I am still without a definite answer for all the garishly dressed people I will meet at parties and functions. Genuscreativitus is slowly becoming a recessive gene within the human spirit like hair color and height. Oh, there will be some families where the gene strain is stronger than in others assuredly, but soon even they will become very rare as the need to go outside the house and experience the world becomes a podcast on YouTube or iTunes. But as long as there are those who are clever enough to use the Hydra’s many tentacles as a way of voicing and showing their true creative natures, and exulting the virtues of experiencing the world outside the blue glow of many heads of the Hydra, there is still hope.

Next: “Originality – There’s A Recession On!”

Planet Starbucks

2008-06-26T19:09:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or is Starbucks set on world domination?
I was driving down the main street where I live on a mission to the grocery store for a missing ingredient for my wife; and as I passed the Mecca of capitalism, the Target shopping mall, I noticed a sign reading, “Coming Soon – Starbucks.” As I stopped at the light just 100 yards down from the sign, I looked over to see that the small bookshop on the opposite corner was now a Starbucks. I continued towards my destination and noticed that in every mini-mall along the boulevard had a Starbucks coffee café tucked nice and warm inside with the large green shield marking its territory.

My fear began to surface upon entering the grocery store to and seeing that familiar green shield glowing above a crowd hollow-eyed people muttering words like “grande with room,” “extra scorching hot”, and “venti.” There blocking my path was a miniature version of Starbucks! It stood there like earth-toned monument to caffeine supremacy. I averted my gaze lest I fall pray to its power. I made my way to the bakery section, as an overly cheerful voice asked me if I wanted a coffee drink, (Starbucks has made even buying coffee politically correct). After finding what I came for I walked around the back of the store just to avoid going past it again.

Starbucks’ mission of conquest doesn’t stop at the invasion of markets, malls and airports, oh no, Starbucks is now producing movies! Not just any type of movie either, but a family movie about a little girl winning a spelling bee. Why you may ask? Consider the sizes of coffee you can order at a Starbucks – what language is “venti” from? They have contributed new words to the English language why not produce a movie to help you pronounce and spell them. The hidden agenda is clear, start building devotees among the young, keep the cycle going.

Not since the scare of the seventies when plans for Walt Disney World were splashed across newspapers all over the world had the planet feared a large corporate monster engulfing them. The fear of a company run by a mouse, a bad tempered duck, and a dog in over-sized overalls spouting family values and the American dream struck them to core with dread. This fear spawned a novel based on this concept, called Westworld which naturally turned into a hit film. It was a great idea, a big theme park where you could interact with androids, kill them or have sex with a babe you could never get in your life. It would be like playing World of Warcraft, but you could really die. In the late eighties when mouse and his team broke ground on Tokyo Disneyland, and were looking into a nice central spot in Europe, the world truly believed that it would be a Disney World after all. However, the low sales from Euro Disney halted the mouse and posse’s world dominance.

But secretly in the shadows a forgotten goddess and her minions were waiting.

In 1971, Seattle Washington, in a small market the empire had begun. By the middle of the eighties while Disney was breaking ground Walt Disney World, Starbucks was beginning to expand into the North West coast. While Mickey and his band were setting up stakes in Tokyo, Starbucks was inching farther south to the land of gold and movie stars! In the nineties, the goddess was fully in control of the West Coast and began looking hungrily eastward. What followed were agreements with Barnes and Nobles, airports and the large grocery market chains. Where the mouse had failed, Stepford wives like baristas and Arabica beans succeeded. Not since the Nazi Blitzkrieg, has there been such a precise surgical strike against freewill.

“You’re just being paranoid,” I hear you say, well here are some facts to browse while you sip your grande, double-decaf mocha with whip:

Stats:
1Coffee houses in all 50 states and 36 countries; 9260 total.

2”The Company's objective is to establish Starbucks as the most recognized and respected brand in the world.
To achieve this goal, the Company plans to continue to rapidly expand its retail operations, grow its specialty sales and other operations, and selectively pursue opportunities to leverage the Starbucks brand through the introduction of new products and the development of new distribution channels.”

Let me leave you with this thought as you drive to your job or school, count the number of Starbucks you see in a day, and then tell me it is not a plan for world domination.

1 and 2 were both taken from the Starbucks website at www.starbucks.com