Bet You Can't Digest 'Em All!

Artist Sarah Becan is serving up some good eating at Know Your Pokécuts of Meat.

Rob

Oscar Grouch

For all the bitching I did about not getting to see the Oscars last night, I should note that I was actually able to see most of them: Cablevision & ABC settled (I've heard rumors of a little FCC armtwisting) and the signal resumed 15 minutes into the broadcast. Right after the opening sequence, which I need to get around to seeing. But happily, Kathy & I were able to sit on the couch and watch the awards.

Not that the show was great, by any means. I really liked the tribute to John Hughes, and there were a couple of great speeches (Sandra Bullock's was funny, and I completely agree that Christoph Waltz won the unberbingo -- I was thinking the same thing). And the uncomfortable hijacking of the mic during the Short Doc award speech for Music By Prudence was certainly memorable. But for all bitched about not seeing the show, I can't say it was worth the anger.


Here's Alan Sepinwal's take on it. I agree with every word of his criticism of Hamish Hamilton, particularly the stuff about the reaction shots. No shot of Clooney during Bullock's speech? No Streep?

And one more link for you: If you want to see the winning animated short, Logorama, click here. (Thanks to the archive of Roger Ebert's Oscar tweets.)

Rob

Speak, Team Venture!

Jackson Publick and Michale Sinterniklass talk about Venture Bros. at San Diego. If you're a fan (and you should be), you might like to see this.

"I can't tell if you guys love to hate the moppets, or if you just hate the moppets."

Rob

Batman: The Brave and the Bold

March, 2009.

It looks much lighter than recent Batman shows (to say nothing of the new movie!) -- and man, is it ice cream to me. And that theme music!

Rob

Chiang's Angels

These are Awesome.

Yes, they are.

Rob

Riiiiing...

30 seconds, well spent.



Rob

Via Rachelle.

No Neck Joe

Slept wrong last night. My neck has been killing me all day. I've got tilt, but not much rotate. I have to turn my entire body to see very far to either side. You should have seen me backing out of my parking spot tonight.

It reminded me of No Neck Joe, that lovable neckless kid who was constantly being teased by cruel bullies. I can't find any videos on YouTube (neither can the animator), but there's one on MetaTube. Hopefully this will explain to Kathy why I'll shout "No! Neck! Joe!" on odd occasions.




Poor little No Neck Joe.

Rob

Venture Bros. Returns June 1

And if I had a time machine, that'd be the next time you'd see me, too.


VB creator Jackson Publick has lots of details.

Rob

The Mr. Bill of Prehistory

One of the cool things I've discovered about Hulu is that you can choose to embed only part of any video. You can clip it from the front or the back, however you like.

To celebrate this feature, here's Scrat, from the opening of Ice Age. The little guy always cracks me up.





Rob

A Strange Visitor From Another Planet...

...wishes you a happy Monkey Tuesday.

Rob

Do You Need To Know How To Draw The Venture Bros.?

Why, yes.

Yes, you do.

Artist Stephen DeStephano posts the first four pages of his Venture Bros. tutorial, with more to come soon.

UPDATE: Part Two's up! Brock Samson!

Rob
(Via Blog@Newsarama)

Back to the Cult

I made it to another meeting this week -- my first in two weeks, since I skipped the one right before Thanksgiving. The week prior, I weighed in at two pounds higher than the week before, and wound up in a black mood for days. As Dan Bern sang,

Some wild creature has taken command
I gave him the keys
And he's stomping through the house
He has a very busy itinerary
He does not have much time for You.

Those lines always come to mind when I get into my ugly, self-absorbed moods, which thankfully don't come too often. (Usually I have pleasant, self-absorbed moods.)

Anyway, I stepped onto the scale today expecting a modest to enormous gain, what with Thanksgiving dinner, the reunion, the gallon of gin that I drank...and found out that I'd lost a pound. Which is awesome and unexpected. My only explanation is that it must've been some sort of magical bird my mom cooked up.

Could it have been the one that appears about a minute into this video? I think it was.



(And really, how bout that video? Could I tie things up any better?) The world is one big circle. Ouroboros, baby.)

Rob

Let's All Go To The Lobby (And Get @#&#ed Up)

Via Jim the Bastard, here are some (scary, scary) tips on movie theater etiquette courtesy of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Mastodon.



Watch it quick; it's likely Cartoon Network will pull this from YouTube right quick.

Don't make me cut you with a linoleum knife.

Rob

What is...The Nozzle???

Been meaning to link to Stephen DeStefano's blog for a while now. He's a comics artists and animator who's been working on the Gold Standard of Whacked-Out Cartoon Shows, Venture Bros. And every now and then, he posts some behind-the-scenes art.

Like these sketches of facial expressions for Brock.

And these mysterious Season Three teaser images. ("The nozzle"? What?)

And these awesome Big Venture Posts!

There's plenty of other cool stuff on his blog, too. Look around.

Rob

Go Team Venture!

Jackson Publick reports that they're finished with the writing of Season Three of Venture Bros.

He's also got some gorgeous shots of the Venture Compound.

IGNORE ME!!!

Rob
(via blog@newsarama)

Despicably Inconceivable

It occurred to me the other day that, much like Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow is a cross between Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew, there’s another live action performance that’s just as informed by a Warner bros. character—perhaps even moreso. I mean, aside from species, is there any real difference between Wallace Shawn’s Vizzini in The Princess Bride and Daffy Duck?




















The two characters are a perfect blend of smug certainty and exasperation, and I’d be very surprised if Wallace Shawn didn’t have a certain fowl in mind when crafting his performance.

Rob

Sushi vs. Spinach

Baron Bizarre on the Captain Comics board pointed me toward this video. I hadn't posted one in a while, so enjoy this animated throwdown: Popeye versus Anime! (And thanks, Baron!)



Rob

Respooling

A couple of strategically placed days off gave me a long weekend this week, and looking back, I don’t really have any complaints about how I spent my time. One thing I did, which I don’t make a habit of, was to watch a few movies I’ve already seen. I don’t revisit stuff often – and even less often just for myself. Sometimes I’ll watch a movie again with Kathy to see what she thinks of it, but that experience is different than just going back to the movie itself, just me and it. And, because I got my guitar out of the shop all stringed and ready to go, and because I can’t play worth a damn, going back to some old favorites seemed like a good way to pass the time while I taught my fingers some scales. (As it turns out, yes and no: my fingers caught on, a little bit, but I eventually just put the guitar down and watched.)

The first movie of the bunch was The Incredibles. This is a 2-DVD set, and I’ve yet to go deeper into it than the movie itself, but I will. I’d seen it in the movie theatre, and remember being impressed with it. I also remember being exhausted and dozing off for a stretch. It turns out that stretch was considerable – there are scenes that I didn’t remember at all, and others that were put into much sharper context. It’s interesting – some of the story is presented almost as if Mr. Incredible is cheating on his wife. He isn’t, of course, but at the same time is hiding the renewed thrill he’s getting from his return to crimefighting. It’s an interesting conflict, and well-resolved, I think. I’m also very sympathetic to Dash’s sentiments that “If everyone’s special, no one is.” Overall, it’s a really good movie. (But as friends have pointed out, not appropriate for really young kids, as it gets pretty scary.)

The second film of the bunch (and one of my favorites of all time) was Miller’s Crossing. Looking back on it, it seems of a piece with the Coen brothers’ work in its totality, but at the time, I think they’d only done Blood Simple (which I hadn’t yet seen) and Raising Arizona (which is as wacky as it gets). Consequently, no one really knew what to make of this when it came out…but man, is it good. Like the Continental Op in Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, Gabriel Byrne’s Tom Regan lets a gang war blossom around him – only unlike the Op, Regan has a rooting interest in Leo (Albert Finney), the tough-nosed political boss he’s been advising for years. But Leo’s getting soft, and rival boss Caspar (Jon Polito, Homicide’s Detective Crossetti) is getting stronger by the day. The plot is complicated, as good noir always is, and it’s not made any easier by the dense gangland jargon: “What’s the rumpus?” “Take your flunky and dangle.” This is a beautiful, brutal film, and its rewards are many.

The final movie I revsited was Heist, a David Mamet film starring Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo (who is so much cooler than most movies he’s in), the inimitable Ricky Jay (I will watch anything with Jay), Danny DeVito, Sam Rockwell and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet’s wife, who’s a regular in his movies. Her performance in The Spanish Prisoner still has me saying “Crikey” every now and then). Like Miller’s Crossing, a lot of Heist’s charm is in its stylish dialogue. Jay gets most of the best lines: “He’s so cool, when he sleeps, sheep count him.” and a great little rant about how it’s okay to rob the Swiss because he hates their clocks. But in watching Heist again, I noticed that the actual Heist sequence is wordless for a few minutes, as Hackman and Lindo communicate only in gestures. This, I now realize, is a homage to Rififi, a French film that’s the prototypical heist movie (a remake of which, I now discover on IMDB, currently in production as an Al Pacino vehicle). Rififi’s heist sequence runs 32 minutes without a line of dialogue or music. I doubt the remake will be so daring – and with Mamet on script (and directing), I can’t even imagine anyone trying with Heist. Thirty-two minutes without a completed sentence, maybe.

One other thing: There’s a moment in Heist, early on, when Rebecca Pidgeon is wearing short little cut-offs. The camera briefly lingers on her as she walks away, and you are for a moment absolutely certain that David Mamet loves his wife’s butt. Who says there’s nothing sweet about lechery?

Rob

The Crustacean Speaks!

Bill West, voice of Dr. Zoidberg (and so many other characters on Futurama and a zillion other shows) was on the Paul Harris radio show the other day. I love hearing interviews with voice actors -- you never know who's gonna pipe up next. Go listen.

Rob

My First Embedded Video! (Will It Work?)

I saw this cartoon at a sick and twisted animation festival in Baltimore years and years ago. And all I could remember was the name, which cracked me up. So I hereby present: "Jean-Jean and the Evil Cat." Thought you might like it.



Cheers!

(And in that spirit: check this out.)

Rob