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Not Necessarily the News

Is Richard Lederer writing for the CTV news these days?

Last night they piled pun on top of pun in their exposé of ice cream’s deadly health risks.

“You’ll scream when you find out what’s in your ice cream!  Is summer’s favourite treat a coronary in a cone? We’ve got the scoop on some chilling facts that will leave you cold!”

I wonder what would happen if they took the same approach to less frivolous news matters.

“Health Canada coughs up some facts on SARS that will take your breath away.  Tune in at 11 if you’re dying to find out.”

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RobotJohnny.com Version 5.0

After months (dare I say years?) of inactivity on my website, I finally release to you, the public, a new version of robotjohnny.com.

It still needs some tweaking here and there, but it’s otherwise ready for your consumption.  As you can see I’ve jumped head first onto the blogging bandwagon.  Now you might ask why. 

“Why, Robot Johnny?  What was wrong with the previous site?”

Well it wasn’t being updated enough and although it was serving its purpose as a place for people to download my fonts, I stopped getting any enjoyment out of it—it became quite stagnant.  So turning this site into a blog not only gives me a reason and a method for continuous updating, but it also means I’m instantly trendy!

So now we’ll see how often I can update this sucker now that I’ve implemented Movable Type.  Of course, the success of this new format relies on the assumption that complete strangers care what I have to say about anything and everything, but heck, if Sally Housewife can post pictures of her cats on the web then I can post a few thoughts on illustration and design.

That’s the Internet for you.  This is my hill and I am its king.

So eat up.  All the fonts are still here, and yes I’ve promised it before, but there are new fonts in the works and on the backburners of the font kitchen.  And those of you looking for the illustration and sketchbook galleries can soon find them at martz.ca.

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Wizarding getting out of hand

When Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released it wasn’t rare to see at least 5 people on any given subway car reading the book. But today I saw the most extreme case of Harry Potter Fever yet.  A man trying to parallel park his car used one hand to manoeuvre his car into the spot while the other hand was propping open a Harry Potter paperback—just in case he missed one moment of the adventures at Hogwarts.

What’s scarier, though, is knowing that he was reading the book before deciding to stop driving and park the car.

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Looney Tunes on DVD

Finally, after years of collecting DVDs, I can finally get my hands on another one of my “DVD Holy Grails”.  On October 28th, Warner Brothers is set to release *The Looney Tunes Golden Collection*, a 4-disc set containing 56 classic shorts.

Understandably, the shorts are not being released chronologically, but thematically.  This set in particular is more of a “best of” collection than anything else.

According the list of shorts, there seems to be a good selection of what are surely people’s favourites, but with only 56 out of over 1000 shorts that Warner produced from 1930 to 1960, I’m bound to be disappointed that some of my favourites aren’t included—namely _Rabbit Hood_ and _Duck! Rabbit! Duck!_ (especially frustrating since Chuck Jones’ other two installments of his “hunting season trilogy” _Rabbit Fire_ and _Rabbit Seasoning_ are included on the set, and chronologically out of order for that matter).  I hope that’s just a sign that we can expect more Looney Tunes DVDs in the future.

Hopefully Warner Brothers will take note of how Disney has been presenting its classic shorts with their _Walt Disney Treasures_ sets and continue to release more sets of what are the best and funniest animated shorts ever produced.

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