!!!!!!!!!!!

Edit: Apparently no browser actually likes that embed code. If it's not working, go here to see the trailer for the new season of The Venture Bros.

Cos-less Cosplay

I hardly ever go onto MySpace these days, but a couple of weeks ago I went on to leave a birthday message for my nephew Jeremy.
While there I noted that my friend Wendy Potter had posted some pictures of herself as Queen Etherea from The Venture Bros. - one of the many villainous identies assumed by the masculinely-voiced Dr. Girlfriend/Dr. Mrs. The Monarch/Lady Au Pair - and I was suitably impressed by what a good job she did with the costume.
So much so that I decided that I should draw one of the pictures (which were taken by her friend Action Bastard) of her in costume.
Or, more accurately, out of costume:



I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out (and so was Wendy when she saw it). I put a lot of work into it, and used some new (to me) styles and techniques to get just the right look.

Does This Excite You? Not Really, But The Monty Python Thing Is Cool

I didn’t get much sleep last night – seriously, if someone out there has a Voodoo fetish doll of me and is sticking it with pins when I’m trying to sleep, knock it the hell off – so the odds that I’ll post anything coherent or in any way meaningful are even worse than they are when I’m well-rested.
So, in lieu of an actual post, please to enjoy the following video clips.

Does this excite you? No, but it does make me laugh (and kind of skeeves me out):


(Found via a comment thread at Slacktivist)

Note how bored the guy playing the organ looks, and watch for the little blonde kid who clearly can’t believe what he’s seeing during the seemingly impromptu musical number.
Whenever I hear/read about “glorified bodies,” I always picture people who look like the not-quite finished clones of Hank and Dean on The Venture Bros:

Also, I don’t really view losing my junk and turning into a Ken doll as “glorified.”
BTW, in the Left Behind books it’s stated that everyone in a glorified body is set physically at the age of 32 or 33. Sure, that’s a plus if you’re 60, but what if you’re, say, 21?

Why I love Monty Python:



(Found via Mark Evanier’s blog)

And finally, you had to know that the final Bush-era episode of The Daily Show would have some great moments. Watch the full episode here.

Then The Russian Army Dundudunda....

When I got home today I had a mild headache, so after watching last night's episode of The Venture Bros. on the DVR I decided to take a nap.
The nap got rid of my mild headache. Unfortunately, it did so by transforming it into a major headache, the kind of oppressive headache that makes your neck hurt and makes you feel sick to your stomach.
So, given that watching the letters swimming around on the screen is intensifying the pounding of my head, I think I'll draw this entry to a close.
Oh, and the title of this post has nothing to do with the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia. It's a line from the song Headache by Liz Phair. It seemed appropriate.
(One of the things I like about the song is the lazy, listless way in which she sings it, as though she's singing it while she has a headache. The nicest touch is in the line quoted, when she actually mumbles.)

The Venture Bros. - The Amazing Shirt Of The Week Club

What's Not To Like?

Last night I went to see Hancock with Scott and – eventually; he showed up after the movie had started – Casey.
Despite how well it’s done at the box office, most of the reviews I’ve seen of the movie have been negative.
I don’t get it; the movie was extremely entertaining, and Will Smith was his usual likeable self (as was Jason Bateman), and, also as usual, Charlize Theron was hot. So what is there to bitch about?
I mean, yeah, it wasn’t some dense existential exploration of the nature of heroism and the human condition, but it had a solid plot, a lot of humor, and some great effects.
(And some amount of existential exploration of the nature of heroism and human nature thrown in for good measure.)
The high concept aspect of the movie was, I think, brilliant, and was executed much more effectively than the equally brilliant high concept behind My Super Ex-Girlfriend (which I also liked).
As a comic book geek, I’m probably biased, as I’m frankly thrilled to see Hollywood coming out with original material that puts a new twist on elements that, while not directly adapted from the comics, are at least drawn from them, without resorting to the tired old clichés that have been the hallmark of Hollywood’s treatment of comics for decades.
So, yeah, I liked it, and I don’t know what’s up with the people who panned it.
Other than seeing the movie last night, things have been pretty uneventful since my last entry.
I’ve been doing some thinking about designs for a new version of the Heroic Portraits site that can serve as an improvement in quality over what’s in place now, and as something of a placeholder until I either miraculously become skilled in Flash, or hire somehow who has the skills that I’m unlikely to miraculously develop to build a new site.
Tonight looks to involve more of the same.
Tomorrow evening I’ll be seeing Hellboy II with Scott and several other people. All I can say is “It’s about damn time!” We’ve only been waiting four damn years for a sequel.
(I will say that the direct to DVD movies that have come out in the interim have been excellent. But then I’ll add, “More of those, too, please!”)
I neglected to mention that on Saturday, after watching the awfulness that was Tribulation Force, Scott and I watched a few episodes of The Venture Bros. as sort of a tonic, or as a kind of palliative.
It did the trick.
I watched a couple more episodes after Scott left, and found my mood much improved and found myself feeling much better about the collective worth of humanity after watching Tribulation Force – which is supposed to be hopeful and inspiring – had left me with a feeling of soul-crushing hopelessness and despair for the state of the world.
My point? Despite the extreme, over-the-top, casual violence, and the deplorable, but intensely human, behavior that can be found in every episode, The Venture Bros. is better for your soul than anything related to Left Behind and the nihilistic, death-obsessed, utterly inhuman, culture that produces and consumes it.
Or, to put it another way, Go Team Venture!
Of course, now that I think about The Venture Bros. and Left Behind, I can’t help but think about how awesome it would be to see Brock Sampson beating the crap out of Buck Williams and Rayford Steele (most likely beating one with the other).
(Note to Christopher McCulloch and Doc Hammer: make it happen! Also, seriously, you need to get Bruce Campbell to guest star as Ash on an episode.)
Still, here’s the next best thing: a collection of the 10 Best Brock Beatdowns.

Why Don't Somebody TELL ME Dese T'ings?!!!

Since I've started the whole five day work week thing I haven't been up on Sunday nights watching Adult Swim, so I'm a bit out of the loop on the current programming schedule.
Earlier today when checking out Scott's fancy new "Blog Roll" gadget, I followed the link over to Polite Dissent and learned that the new season of The Venture Bros. has already started.
In fact, it's already two(!) episodes in.
Since learning that I've downloaded both episodes and enjoyed the hell out of them, and set my DVR to record.
Anyway, I was annoyed about not knowing this, but excited to learn about it, and am now mightily pleased to announce that so far the show continues to deliver.

Clearly Not A Labor Of Love

Today Scott and Stacy had their annual Halloween party, albeit somewhat late – or incredibly early.
I went as Hank Venture from The Venture Bros.
Only Scott actually recognized my costume (and deemed it “awesome”).
I’d considered simply not shaving, dressing all in black (which used to be de rigueur for me anyway), wearing one of my leather jackets, mussing up my hair a bit, and saying that I was Neil Gaiman, but ultimately decided that Hank was a better choice.
I had to settle for wearing a bandana around my neck, as I’m not aware of any place that sells actual neck kerchiefs (I said “kerchiefs.”).
While I was at the party it was decided, not entirely by me, that I would hold my housewarming party on November 13.
After I got home I sent on an evite, explaining that it would be a pot luck affair, but that I would provide snacks, drinks, and some sort of hot dish.
It occurs to me that I should have encouraged my guests to bring a different kind of “hot dish” in addition to whatever food they bring.
(Ideal housewarming gift: a hot chick with a lot of money and low standards.)
On the topic of low standards, after I’d watched that crappy Alien Abduction movie – or at least as much of it as my DVR would allow me to – I did a search for some pictures of the star, the relatively attractive Megan Lee Ethridge (to me she looks kind of like a younger, prettier version of Tilda Swinton). She’s got a very tight body and when she wasn’t nude or in a very short hospital gown in the movie, she was wearing a rather Tomb Raider-esque outfit that complemented her slender frame nicely (especially with how far up her backside those tight shorts were wedged), and I thought that any screen caps from it would be useful as *ahem* reference photos.
In the course of finding pictures from that movie I found some additional pictures from another movie in which she appeared nude, and, coincidentally, found that said movie was airing on Universal HD the next day, so I set the DVR to grab it.
Tonight I watched it.
I frequently encounter creative endeavors – movies, books, comics – in which I find myself wondering how it is that there’s no one involved in the process who, at some point, says something like, “You know, no human being would ever say anything like that or behave that way, ever. Maybe you should fix that.”
Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter’s Cove was one such “creative” endeavor.
While it had effects that were superior to those of Alien Abduction, it was, in many ways, much, much worse.
This was due in large part simply to the fact that it was a low-budge slasher flick, and as such couldn’t be anything better than what it was, but there was also that element of no one telling the people making it that most of what was happening just didn’t make any sense.
Obviously there’s a requirement for suspending disbelief with regard to the supernatural elements, but I’m not talking about the basic concept not making sense. Whatever you think of said concept, it did have a certain internal logic, but the problem was in the details.
Case in point:
In the course of the movie, the titular character takes his titularity to a titty bar. While there, he rips off a bouncer’s arm and proceeds to use it to beat him to death. Okay, fine. No real problem there – he is a zombie pirate, after all – and the effects were actually pretty decent.
But here’s the thing. I haven’t really been to all that many strip clubs, but I have been to a few strip clubs many times, and at no point have I ever seen a dancer get off the stage in the middle of a performance and spontaneously give a patron – zombie pirate or otherwise – a lap dance. At the very least, she would tell him up front how much a lap dance costs.
However, that’s a relatively minor complaint. Where the really big glaring issue comes into play is when he kills one of the other dancers by chopping her head off while she’s hanging upside down on the pole. The camera pans up to follow the spray of blood, and we see that, mounted on the ceiling near the top of the pole, there is a security camera. The position of the camera is such that all that would fall into its line of sight is the area around the entrance to the club, in front of the stage. It would not be able to record anything that happens on the actual stage below it.
However, when the police chief reviews the tape later on, we are provided with multiple angles that it would be utterly impossible for the security camera to provide. “Coincidentally,” said angles were exactly the same as the POV of the camera that was filming the movie. How would a camera that was behind the bouncer manage to record footage of the bouncer getting his armed ripped off from in front of the bouncer?
I understand that there were budget constraints, but how expensive would it have been to shoot that scene from an angle that would align with the security camera rather than re-using the same footage?
In another moment of brilliance, the two teen protagonists who have figured out who Roger’s next victim is going to be surreptitiously and are not in any particular state of excitement make their way to the victim’s house, quietly walk up to her front door, and then, rather than just ringing the doorbell and calmly – but forcefully – explaining the danger to her, start banging on her window and screaming at her like crazy people.
Oh, and as is noted in a review of the movie on IMDb, apparently if you have a pencil and paper and need to copy a list of names – not as any sort of keepsake, mind you, but simply for the purposes of getting a copy of the list – the best approach is to make a rubbing, rather than, say, simply writing them down on the piece of paper.
I know, I know: it was just a shitty movie and I’m over thinking it, but just because something is being made cheaply doesn’t mean that it has to made so shoddily.
After all, when you’re making a cheap movie, the odds are you aren’t doing so because you expect to rake in the cash. Your primary motivation is probably something along the line of bringing your vision to life. You aren’t doing it to get rich; you’re doing it because you have a passion for it.
Why, then, would you not at least try to do it as well as you possibly can? If you’re going to make a movie, why not at least try to not make it a bad one?
I suppose the fact of the matter is that in this case, as in so many others, the people behind it did try to make it as well as they possibly could.
Is making a shitty movie the actual goal? Do they set out not wanting to make a decent movie?
I mean, sure, even with their best efforts it’s unlikely that they would have made the Citizen Kane of zombie pirate movies, but certainly they could have made something better than what they did.
The Ed Wood Syndrome probably comes into play, and the people behind it probably just didn’t realize how bad it truly was, though honestly, I can’t see how they could not realize that, and again, my mind boggles at the thought that there was no one around at any point who bothered to tell them, “You know, this really sucks. You probably shouldn’t make movies, or should at least try a little harder. Or at all.”
Oh well; I already devoted more time to the movie than it deserved simply by watching it, so there’s no point giving it any more.

Addendum:
Supporting visual evidence for the tightness of Megan Lee Ethridge’s body:

Those abs are amazing.