24 Hour Comic Day

I occasionally like to work under the pretense that I have artistic talent. This is only remotely true, at least in my head. I took art lessons as a kid, and was fairly prodigious at the time, but anymore, I hate half the things I draw. But this is a digression.

Recently, I felt well enough about my meager talents to participate in the Lincoln Edition of 24 Hour Comic Book Day. For those not in the know, it was organized by Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, one of the few true theory books about comics. This is the web site of the national day. As the Darestates:

To create a complete 24 page comic book in 24 continuous hours.

That means everything: Story, finished art, lettering, colors (if you want 'em), paste-up, everything! Once pen hits paper, the clock starts ticking. 24 hours later, the pen lifts off the paper, never to descend again. Even proofreading has to occur in the 24 hour period. [Computer-generated comics are fine of course, same principles apply]

No sketches, designs, plot summaries or any other kind of direct preparation can precede the 24 hour period. Indirect preparation such as assembling tools, reference materials, food, music etc. is fine.

Your pages can be any size, any material. Carve 'em in stone; print 'em with rubber stamps; draw 'em on your kitchen walls with a magic marker. Anything.

So a group of people gathered at the Hi Way Diner in Lincoln at 8 a.m., and got to drawing. As we went along, we invented a Classic Rock Radio game like: If Rush plays, draw a unicorn. If Van Halen plays, incorporate whatever lead singer is singing into your work. So David Lee Roth appears somewhere in mine.

We had fallen soldiers, AWOLers and five victorious ... victors who were done with the Dare with an hour-and-a-half to spare. One gentleman even posted about us on his blog. I'm the homely one in the black faux-Egyptian thrift store tee.

So thank you to Neal for organizing it. We all really appreciate it.

This post would be incomplete without cr0mics, of course. Here are the two scanned ones so far:

Mine

Justin's, author of the auspicious Revolt Puppy, a comic-in-progress that reminds me a lot of Love and Rockets

So far sight unseen are Neal's 18 completed pages of a Planarian Man prequel, as well as the completed works of Andrew, who drew a comic about an alcoholic John Henry who battles a robot; Aaron, who just wrote about not understanding "Star Trek"; and Marcus, who made a wonderfully nihilistic comic in the vein of "Tank Girl" artist Jamie Hewlett.

So enjoy my comic, and let me know what you think of "The Monsters are Due in Dundalk."

Nebraska monsters

I went on a big, nerdy expedition to the Nebraska History Museum to see their exhibit on Nebraska oddities. I took a picture of their Fortean Research map. Here's what I found...



clockwise from top left:

Alkali Lake Monster

Alkali Lake is located in Nebraska. The Indians of this area told the white settlers of a creature dwelling in the lake. In 1923, J.A. Johnson reported in the Omaha World-Herald that he, along with 2 friends, saw the creature. He also states that he knew of 40 others who had also seen the animal. The 3 saw the creature while camping near the lake. The saw the creature 3/4 out of the water and about 20 yards away. They described the creature as being 40 ft long, dull gray/brown and a horn-like object between it's eyes and nostrils. They said it looked similar to an alligator but was bigger and heavier than an alligator. When the creature noticed the men, it thrashed it's tail about and then dove under the water.

Sasquatch

I have no link on this one, but for a few years Neal has been working on a documentary about this. His site is here and it has about a sentence about the documentary.

Ghost?

I don't know what the fuck this is. Is it a ghost? Cthulu's retarded brother? either way, it points to North Platte on at least one of its lines, signifying that some malformed thing was spotted there, and in Lincoln, Omaha and probably a reservation.

A cloud

That's right. A fucking cloud. I see clouds every day. I don't put them on a monster map, though, even when they look like that spider thing at the end of It. A Google search reveals nothing. Fucking Google. Start anticipating my thoughts! I don't care how vague the search "mysterious cloud" nebraska is.

A Mountain Lion

The mountain lion captured in urban Omaha is more likely to go to a zoo than to be released back into the wild, a state Game and Parks Commission official said.

I also remember a report of some black panthers in the Eastern end of the state from about 1993. I'm not talking about the Huey Long kind either.

Mothman

Jacques Vallee (Anatomy of a Phenomenon) found a letter from a William C. Lamb in the files of the Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center in Dayton, Ohio. Lamb gives some specific details: "on February 22, 1922, at 5:00 A.M. in Hubbell, Nebraska" Lamb was out hunting and "following mysterious traces when he heard a crackling noise followed by a high-pitched sound and realized that a circular object was flying above his head, masking the stars." Lamb ducked behind a tree and watched the object sink behind a depression, presumably landing. A "magnificent flying creature" then appeared, which landed like an airplane.

A Mutilated Cow

Larry Jurjens was checking his herd of about 100 cattle
Aug. 19, when he found a dead 11-year-old Black Angus.

Jurjens said the cow's left eyeball was removed, the bag and
udders had been removed and there was a large excision in the
rectal region. None of the internal organs were removed and he
said the cuts seemed to have been made with surgical precision.
The tongue had also been removed, with the incision made far
back into the throat.

A UFO

I have an entire folder of print offs about this. The most interesting is this one...

Galloping towards it with all their speed, they were astounded to
see several fragments of cog-wheels and other pieces of machinery
lying on the ground, scattered in the path made by the aerial
visitor, glowing with heat so intense as to scorch the grass for a
long distance around each fragment and make it impossible for one to
approach it.

If anyone finds out about the cloud or has any other links to provide me, I'd sure appreciate it.

I could have bought a lot of beer with that money

Last night, I was at a local bar talking to Robby about terrible movies, essentially, and the movie industry's push to make the Vatican an over-arching bad guy as of late, such as in J.J. Abram's Mission Impossible III and Ron Howard's The DaVinci Code. After commending me for my work in MI3 (I am Philip Seymour Hoffman, after all), the table got to talking about terrible movies when it dawned on me ... I have seen some complete and utter shit in theaters. So here is my embarrasing list:

Movies
Battlefield Earth
Confidence (to date the only movie I have walked out of)
FearDotCom (didn't hate it, actually)
Failure to Launch
The Family Stone
Twister (THREE TIMES!)
The Hot Chick
Unleashed (I didn't hate this, it's just far too ridiculous to be called good)
Deep Impact
Armageddon
Dante's Peak
Waterworld
Star Trek: Nemesis (seriously, what the fuck was that movie?)
Planet of the Apes remake
Tomb Raider
The Fast and the Furious
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
Anaconda
Godzilla remake
Independence Day
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)
Last Action Hero
Mortal Kombat
Street Fighter
Wild, Wild West
Speed 2: Cruise Control (to this day I haven't seen Speed)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake
Daredevil (can this be held against me if it was the cheapy theater and someone else paid?)
Spawn
The Flintstones
Anger Management
Titanic (AND I had to sit next to my grandmother during it, making for the most uncomfortable nude scene ever.)
Bio-Dome
Stealing Harvard
Orange County

I have listed 35 films, and there are at least that many that I have forgot. If a movie is, on average, $7, though, with inflation that is approximately $245 of money gone to movies.

The Ghostbusters are McCarthyist Homophobes

First of all, in this episode, "The Boogeyman Cometh," I must make my point first with photographic evidence. Note the comparisons between the Boogeyman and a certain poster-child for gay jokes, Liberace.




Funny ... they seem to have the same wardrobe. And though in the episode, they try to make it seem as if the Boogeyman is a menace who must be stopped, I am here to present speculation that this is not the case at all – that, in fact, the Boogeyman has been set up as part of a vast, right-wing conspiracy seeking to peg homosexuals as analogous to monsters, boy-hungry, slobbering beasts who need to be stopped, as the end of the episode proves, by nothing short of total destruction.

In the beginning, the Ghostbusters are sleeping after a day of fighting mob don ghosts, once again charicaturizing a set of people, in this case New York Mobsters. The specific ethnicity is never explicitly stated, but it can be inferred that it is either Italian or Jewish. In either case, there is a rampant charicaturization of the said ghost that rampantly runs as a stereotype.

Now, as the Ghostbusters, four grown men who all share a room, are asleep, their secretary informs them of a case ... two little kids are having a boogeyman problem.

Here's where our problems begin. As they formulate their plan, their stated goal becomes a clear-cut case of a witch hunt, or at least ex-gay programming. They decide they need to keep the Boogeyman, and the homosexual male in the process, in the closet. In fact, they need to drive him so far in that the Boogeyman, or the homosexual male, cannot ever possibly escape.

Now, some may say "The Boogeyman is just a monster who happens to dress like Dorian Gray. You're overthinking, John." But at this point, I ask you to look at him not as a solid character, but much like the Jewish/Italian mobster, we must look at him as a stereotype and an exagerration. They are trying to cull the dregs of the charicature barrel by feminizing his features with big lips, teased up hair and dandy-esque suits. Sure, to many it will simply look like a product of cheap Korean animation. But this is what it looks like to me ...



By forcing him into the closet, the Ghostbusters are enforcing a homophobic agenda, one they are ensuring they spread to the youth of America by making an example of the Boogieman. They aren't really busting ghosts at all – in fact, this is a witch hunt of the worst kind. Venkman, Spengler, Stantz and Zedmore are starting to look a little too in the end.

Now, of course, there is the fact that they aren't real characters. This, in fact, roots back to the writers and animators, and to their ultimate source of funding, which is probably Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan or the Illuminati.

But we must all be wary of the attempts by these four men who randomly run through the bedrooms of small children, and never let their hateful message indoctrinate itself in our minds. After all, for every Boogeyman that loses, that's one more win for the Pats.

Dear Internet,

Dear Internet,

I think you and I have grown apart over the years. Sure, your message boards consume my time, and your video sites provide me with entertainment. But your networking sites have grown into a beast, ravenous and hungry for the next person to consume. It's become a disease 1000x more potent than pornography, and just as voyeuristic.

I got sucked into your Friendster first, then the Myspace and Facebook. Maybe I even signed up for a couple others I've forgotten about. But it's reached the breaking point, Internet. because I just came across My Death Space, and it feels like I've found a door I shouldn't have opened and nobody should have built in the first place.

Why, Internet, did you allow your scions to create this? What's the purpose of a site that loosely connects dead people through a site they went to? It doesn't seem all that clever. It just seems like a collection of Thanatos drive fascinations tackily claimed as a "tribute." The causes of death are included, and a little bit about it. If it proclaims to be a tribute, why do you link to a YTMND Page on a Teenage Girl's Suicide?

Death is an inevitable part of life, and is probably taken too seriously. But here, it's taken almost as something else entirely. It's a collection of murderers, murdered, suicides and accidents. The only common bond, in fact, is Myspace. This makes me wonder how anyone conceptualized this site, and why.

So, dear Internet, if I'm going to encounter death in your throes, can't it at least be in a form that actually confronts it rather than exploits it, like say the YouTube rebroadcast of Mr. Hooper's death on Sesame Street? It made me cry a little, and think a little, but didn't make me scratch my head or feel a little vomit in the back of my throat. If you want confessional, go to Post Secret to see how to do it in a way that has something genuine behind it.

Sincerely,

John Wenz

P.S. - Can you find a way to get a torrent of Larry the Cable Guy, Health Inspector out so Ben and I can watch it without giving that ass-hat our money?

Ladies, gentlemen, mom and dad - I have entered a new era of nerdiness. I am posting this blog post from DASHBOARD!

Since getting my Mac, I haven't messed with Dashboard much, but tonight, I looked through the available Widgets. And now, it has gone beyond the usual Dictionary/Weather features I used to use it for. Now, Wikipedia is staring at me, and a Live Journal widget. I've set up a Noodle Board, and AllRecipes will tell me how many ways I can mix and match my limited spice collection with scrap chicken parts.

The future is now kids - and it's as unproductive and awesome as ever.

Happy V-Day!

Squid and the Whale

After waiting, waiting, waiting, then throwing in the towel, giving up and saying "fuck it, I'll wait til March for the DVD" a miracle happened - my local theatre monopoly finally brought in The Squid and the Whale.

The movie is essentially the story of a marital dissolution. Director Baumbach has already worked his way through this - sort of, barely, or at least touched the surface of it - in Kicking and Screaming, a film I have fawned over in this very blog. Jesse Eisenberg's character, Walt, is a younger Grover - young, vaguely disillusioned and completely unsure of anything but the homeostasis. Now, this is probably because both Grover (the protagonist of Kicking and Screaming) and Walt are partially based on Noah Baumbach himself.

The movie isn't as funny as Kicking and Screaming or Mr. Jealousy. It's claustrophobic as all hell. In Kicking, Olivia D'Abo's character, Jane, talks about how Grover and his friends never talk about the heavier topics in life, that they waste hours obsessing about cartoons. Finally, Baumbach gives his sort of "answer" to that, finally, in his own way, breaching the real core of what, to this point, has fueled his work, even including The Life Aquatic.

Another glass ceiling

I saw Brokeback Mountain tonight with some friends. For all the parts that made it painfully obvious that Ang Lee was prostrating himself for Oscar season, the movie is pretty genuine. The beginning is a bit choppy, especially to the lead-up of their first tryst, but once this hurdle is overcome, the film has a realistic and genuine emotional quality to it. I realize I'm using a bunch of buzzwords to describe something that goes beyond such things, but hey, that's how I roll. I couldn't help but think of people from North Platte as I watched it though, strangely. It reminded me a lot of farm kids I went to school with, not with the gay thing, necessarily, but that kind of rural mentality.

As I watched it, I began to hope that it becomes a real breakthrough in cinema. Gay characters in movies and television are treated as accesories, hairdressers, interior designers. As of late, it's gotten better - Happy Endings, which I rented recently, seemed to portray realistic relationships instead of the usual stereotypes. They need to break the Will and Grace's Jack mode and branch out as far as how they utilize gay characters, because right now, in many movies, they seem to be a mere backdrop or prop instead of a genuine character. Maybe part of it is that Hollywood just doesn't know what to do at this point. But not every gay character needs to be Corky from Waiting for Guffman.

I just sincerely hope this sparks screen writers to add real depth to all of their characters, regardless of orientation, because we, as a cinematic culture, are far too stupid. As I exited the movie and saw Clay in line for it, the guys behind us tried to guffaw and say they should warn people not to see it. And it's this mentality that will always keep movies stupid. People will continuously work towards being as positively stupified by their movies as they can be, and refuse to be made uncomfortable, to be forced to think, to be engaged in something wholly. Instead, we'll just get another Sweet Home Alabama nugget of spoon fed celluloid turdery.

Hail to the King

There are now compression formats available to make video more accessible and distributable. Being mildly tech-saavy, I decided to be a self-serving bastard, and use such technologies to further my own semi-award winning film. So, courtesy of You Tube, here is Hail to the King.