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My Dream Jeopardy! Categories

Tuesday, October 7, 2003

I’m stealing this idea from Ben, who in turn, stole it from someone who stole it from Douglas Coupland.

If I was on the Jeopardy!, the seven categories I’d want to compete with, as announced by Mr. Alex “No Moustache” Trebek, would be:

1. Elvis Costello
2. Junk Food
3. Being Snarky
4. Robots
5. Cartoonists
6. Star Wars
7. Wordplay and Puns

And for final Jeopardy!:
Homestar Runner

(note: Like Ben, I’d have chosen the Simpsons as my final Jeopardy! category, but I didn’t want to look like a copycat...)

What would yours be?

16 Comments

Step Right Up and Behold the Mighty Silver Discus of Untold Powers!

Monday, October 6, 2003

I love it when I’m looking at the back of a DVD that is a clearly a bare-bones, movie-only feature-poor release.  Invariably the studio will try to market the movie as LOADED WITH SPECIAL FEATURES! 

Why, it’s practically bursting with supplementary material!

But, of course, after careful examination, the aforementioned “special features” usually turn out to be an exciting combination of COLLECTABLE BOOKLET! and INTERACTIVE MENUS!

Holy shit, I’m really getting my money’s worth here!  I will surely experience CRITTERS 3 the way the director always intended—WITH 2.0 STEREO SOUND! and SPANISH SUBTITLES!

What I love even more is that every single title on DVD is either a Collector’s Edition, a Special Edition, a Platinum Edition, or—if we’re really lucky—a Special Collector’s Platinum Edition!

NOW WITH SPECIAL KEEP-SAKE PACKAGING!

I haven’t seen such blatant hype over selling a product since I was swindled into a buying a bottle of Cousin Horatio’s Medicinal Snake Oil at the county fair.

But I couldn’t help myself.  It was only $39.95 and it came in what I was told was a collectable bottle that clearly stated: NOW IN LIQUID FORM FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY.

Hell, I couldn’t NOT buy it.

9 Comments

William Steig Dead at 95

Saturday, October 4, 2003

New Yorker illustrator William Steig died last night in his home.  William Steig created beautiful childlike illustrations that were romantic, playful, and sometimes very abstract.  He was also the author of several children’s stories, including one that was turned into a really awful movie.  For more information on William Steig, I recommend reading The World of William Steig by Lee Lorenz.

4 Comments

Creepy Ghost Girl:
The New Horror Movie Cliché

Friday, October 3, 2003

I love horror movies, but recently I’ve noticed a trend that must be stopped!  This trend is quickly becoming a tired cliché (are there any other kinds?).

What cliché am I talking about?  A cat jumping out at a tense moment?  Every main character dying off one by one leaving a lone heroine to just barely escape alive?  No, I’m talking about what I like to call the Creepy Ghost Girl

I’m sure the first real instance of Creepy Ghost Girl was in The Exorcist in which an ordinary sweet little girl is taken over in a demonic possession.  Suddenly sweet little girl ain’t so sweet no more.

And it was scary.  It really was.  But now EVERY horror movie that comes out seems to have a Creepy Ghost Girl in it, undoubtedy under the assumption that we’ve never seen it before.  Like I’m going to wet my pants with fear thinking, “Wow, I was expecting a wolfman or something, but I sure wasn’t expecting a little harmless girl.  That shit is eerie!”

Creepy Ghost Girl also usually acts calm and serene, she’s usually dressed in a nightgown, and she speaks in an otherwordly ethereal voice.  Usually she says things like, “Go back!  You should not have come here.” Or else she’ll say “Please help me,” and then either evaporate or walk away in a quick, disjointed skeletonlike manner as if to remind us: she’s Creepy Ghost Girl.

The poster for a remake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead seems to be the latest offender.  But Creepy Ghost Girl has also been popping up in the trailers for Matrix: Revolutions and Halle Berry’s seemingly cliché-ridden Gothika.

Now, you may feel free to substitute ‘ghost’ for ‘zombie’ or ‘alien’ or ‘vampire’ as you see fit.  Creepy Ghost Girl’s resume includes such hits as The Ring (and its American remake), Dark Water (and its inevitable Ameircan remake), Ghost Ship, Fear Dot Com, the Sixth Sense, The Others, Stir of Echoes, 13 Ghosts, Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, Resident Evil, Angel, and, of course, The Shining. (Note:  after compling these links I found that 6 of them are Warner Brothers movies.  Why does that not surprise me?)

So might I suggest other types of creepy ghosts, such as the effective Creepy Grandma in Exorcist 3?  What about a Creepy Ghost Hamster?  Or a Creepy Ghost Mortgage Broker? 

Please!  If I have to see another little girl with hollow eyes named Samantha whisper to me, “He’s coming for you.  He’s coming for you all!” only to slink off into the shadows again I might just stop watching horror movies altogether.

10 Comments

Everything’s Coming Up Rosario

Thursday, October 2, 2003

Luckily for me, my frivolous, yet in-depth graphical analysis (seen below) of the campaigning parties’ websites also agreed with the political side of Robot Johnny.  This morning I did my part to help reelect my riding’s popular MPP by placing an X next to NDP candidate Rosario Marchese.

I voted.  Did you?

3 Comments

The Sketchbook Journal:
Some of This Week’s Faces

Thursday, October 2, 2003

3 Comments

Overheard at the R.E.M. Concert

Wednesday, October 1, 2003

6 Comments

Leadership By Design

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

The Ontario election is this Thursday.  It is my right and my privilege to vote, and I find like any voter, I like to be well informed on what the political world likes to call “the issues”.

What issues affect me, the young, urban designer?  Education?  I’m done school and I don’t have any kids.  Taxes?  I don’t own any property, nor am I a corporation.  Auto Insurance?  I don’t own a car.  I’m not a senior, a child, First Nations, a woman, a Francophone, homosexual, or homeless.

Well, dear God, what issues am I supposed to find important?  I guess I could base my decision on the quality of their web design.  That would at least tell me which party has an eye for colour and aesthetic.  That’s important in a global economy, isn’t it?

So let’s get down to it:

The Liberals
Well, it’s not hideous.  But it’s nothing too special.  The Reds’ site is well laid out, information is easy to find, and I dare you to tell me that Dalton McGuinty isn’t a happy-looking fella.  He sure is that. 

They seem to have videos available, so the Libs are embracing the technology at least.  Unfortunately, it’s Windows Media and Real Video.  I’m not even gonna touch it.  Yecch.

All in all, get rid of the messy hard-to-read top banner and you’ve got yourself a perfectly functional site!

The Conservatives
Yowza!  What’s worse—a splash page with bad typography, or a splash page with Ernie Eves’s smiling mug?  How about a splash page with both!

Once inside, the PC’s site has a crisp corporate look to it.  Coincidence?  We have a useless piece of flash throwing buzzwords at me like “strength” and “leadership”, and the site is laden down with reams of information all displayed in an unnattractive manner.  It’s a good thing these guys are such pricks or else I’d feel bad that they have such a sucky website.

Maybe one of the MP’s told Ernie, “Hey, I got a nephew who knows computers!” and that’s how this mess was made.  Who knows.  Either way, the design looks like it was left over from the dot com crash when everyone wanted to look corporate and respectable.  “We’re profitable!  No, really!”

The New Democrats
Am I seeing things correctly?  Attractive site design, good typography, simple intuitve navigation… the NDP’s on the right track!

Video in Quicktime!  And with thumbnail previews!  And MP3s, too… nothing like a little street cred!

If I can find only one real problem with the site it’s that the photo of Howard Hampton that’s on EVERY page makes it look like he has to take a crap.  Lighten up, Howie!  Take a page from the book of McGuinty and smile a little!

The Green Party
Oops!  Another splash page!  That, plus Frank de Jong telling us all at the debates to go out and vote on the 3rd (hint: the election is on the 2nd), the Green Party isn’t off to a good start.

Now, I appreciate and understand the message of the Green Party, but does the website have to look like it belongs to a landscaping company?

Another problem I’m finding is that several links take me to a pop-up window with information from what looks like a previous site design.  So bonus points for social justice and environmental responsibility, but a couple demerits for consistency in design.  I know you hippies hate looking corporate, but even raging against the machine can benefit from proper branding.

The Communist Party, the Libertarian Party, the Family Coalition, and the Freedom Party are all equally hideous in ways that are best left unsaid.  Go take a look and see for yourself.

Heck, the Provincial Confederation of Regions Party has a “404 Page Not Found” for its site.  Way to campaign, guys.  I mean, if you can’t even keep a website running, how can I trust you to provincially confederate my regions?

The Result:

The winner by a long shot is the NDP!  Following them are the Liberals, then the Green Party, and trailing at the end are the Tories (not including all those ugly “lesser” parties, of course).

But, as far as non-partisan election-related sites go, Elections Ontario is pretty slick.  Contemporary typography, professional photography, and the understanding that a website needs to be more than a bunch of Word documents with the same background colour and some clipart make this site the real winner.  It’s a great looking site.  Too bad I can’t vote for them!

13 Comments

Brand X

Monday, September 29, 2003

In a move reminiscent of the release of Windows XP, OS X, and Macromedia’s MX suite, Adobe has tagged on some pointless acronyms to its product line-up in lieu of actual version numbers.

The latest versions of its creative products will be named Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, etc…

CS stands for Creative Suite, so at least there’s no X in the acronym.

On the plus side, Illustrator (I’m sorry, Illustrator CS)will finally have some built-in 3D features.

7 Comments

Peanuts!  Get Yer Peanuts!

Monday, September 29, 2003

It’s news like this that makes me squeal “Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Ohmigod!” like a little kid.

Fantagraphics is going to be reprinting every single Peanuts strip from its entire 50-year run in a series of chronological hardback volumes!  I can’t even tell you how excited I am at the thought of this.

At two volumes per year, it will take 12 and half years for the entire set to be completed.  And according to the article, half of the first volume has never been reprinted since its debut back in 1950.  That’s a real treat for me because I particularly love the earliest strips.  Schulz’s drawing style hadn’t yet evolved to its simplistic shaky perfection, the gang was more innocent and childlike, and Snoopy actually looked like a dog.

As a bonus coup, Toronto cartoonist Seth will be designing the books.  Other than maybe Chip Kidd who designed the gorgeous Art of Charles M. Schulz book I can’t think of a better choice than Seth.  Apart from being a known collector of comic art and comic-related books, Seth’s own artwork itself harkens back to the 1950’s with its Saturday Evening Post look (I also just read news somewhere that Schulz’s pre-Peanuts comics from said magazine will be published in the coming year as well!)

Fantagraphics is currently putting out complete reprints of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat.  With Peanuts on the way in 2004, I wonder if we can expect any other complete archival projects like this.

I’ll cross my fingers for Walt Kelly’s Pogo and EC Segar’s Thimble Theatre (aka Popeye).  I’ll also be on the lookout for this heavy brick of a book. 

I’m going to need to get a new bookshelf. Good Grief, Charlie Brown!

7 Comments

The Sketchbook Journal:
Who Are the People in Your Neighbourhood?

Friday, September 26, 2003

Here’s an entry from my revamped sketchbook journal.  Instead of documenting my oh-so-exciting life in comic format, I’ve decided that every day I will draw someone that I’ve seen on the street, on the subway, at work… Here’s the lady that prompted the idea:

In my previous journal I had to think back through the day to what I could turn into a comic.  This new journal makes me contantly aware of the people around me—I’m always looking at faces, thinking of who and how to draw them.  So for that reason alone I think that this is a much better project.  Anything that makes me constantly think of drawing is a good thing.  I’m off to a Bingo parlour tonight which should prove to give me some interesting faces to work with.

5 Comments

Seek and Ye Shall Find (But Be Careful What of What Ye Seek)

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Like all bloggers I can’t help but be amazed and amused (amuzed?) at some of the search terms people are using to find my site.

Of course, some of the searches are relevant to my site and its posts.  For example, my name yields the number one (and number 5) search result on Google.  Various combinations of the words “Shatner”, “Crest”, and “Dancing” similarly get the the topmost ranked results for my post about the Star Trek star’s teeth-whitening commercial.

But then there are the odd ducks.  The non-sequiturs.  The ones that don’t make quite as much sense. And I’d be remiss not to note that most of these searchers are on the hunt for material a little more, shall we say “questionnable” than I have to offer.

With that, I now present to you, my top ten favourite search terms that good, honest surfers like you yourself employed to find my site:

10. “man enticing donkey”
9. “free porn and cartoons without having to sign up or anything”
8. “signs of cheating teens”
7. “robotic fetish”
6. “picture of monkey spanking”
5. “delightful cocktease”
4. “adult male spanking”
3. “boobery”
2. “Ben Affleck jerking off”

And my number one favourite, which makes no sense at all, since I don’t think any of these words have ever appeared on my site:

1. “santorum is a mixture of lube and fecal matter”

After doing some searching, it appears that these words (santorum being a term created by Dan “Savage Love” Savage to defame anti-gay senator Rick Santorum) magically appear in the search results of other bloggers as well.  How, I do not know, but it’s amuzing nonetheless.

Putting all these terms in one post like this will no doubt serve to muddy Google’s results even further.  But in all honesty I can’t wait until someone finds my site searching for “Ben Affleck’s donkey santorum”.

6 Comments

Dude, you’re getting a…. Dell?

Thursday, September 25, 2003

So Dell is coming out with a competitor for the iPod called the Dell Digital Jukebox.  Looks kinda familiar.

The name’s a little dull, wouldn’t you say?  Even now if someone says the word “iPod” heads turn and ears perk up.  It’s cool.  It’s sexy.  It’s it.  I can barely get the words “Dell Digital Jukebox” out of my mouth without stumbling over my own tongue.

With any luck it will be as successful as the e-Power.

10 Comments

Touched By An Angle

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Earlier this week, someone bought me The Samurai Jack premiere movie from my wishlist.  I had never seen it before, but always knew it was something I would like. And last night I purchased the new Disney Sleeping Beauty DVD.

One movie is a timeless fairy tale with a princess, a dragon, and chirpy forest critters.  The other is a violent kung-fu action movie set in the future.  They are different movies for different audiences, but they have one thing in common that draws me to them—the stylized art direction and character design.

Both films employ a very unique sense of design with sharp angles and stylized graphic backgrounds.  More than most other animated films, watching these is truly like watching moving illustrations.  The look of the films are unapologetically flat and two-dimensional and in this age of vibrant computer-generated 3D animation, this retro look (or in the case of Sleeping Beauty, modern) is a welcome distraction.

With traditional animation slowly being overshadowed by CGI, I think animation designers should continue to experiment with unique styles to keep things fresh.  As poor as Disney’s recent films have been doing financially I give them credit for a few inspired designs, specifically the Al Hirschfeld-inspired stint in Fantasia 2000 and the Mike Mignola-styled character design in Atlantis.

The same goes for 3D features as well.  If I want realism I’ll see a live-action movie.  Animation offers limitless potential, and for a medium that’s almost 100 years old, there’s still a lot that can be done.

So keep pumping out singing animal movies.

I’ll be watching the Powerpuff Girls.

4 Comments

One Bug Down

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

I just fixed a bug with the site that wasn’t allowing cookies to work properly on the comments page.  So if you’re a regular commenter you should see that the “Remember personal info” button now works properly and you won’t have to continue typing in your email addy.

However, for some reason now with Safari there is a new bug in which the page area below the main top graphics is a few pixels too long on the right side so that the white area juts out a little.  The site looks fine with Explorer on the Mac… any other browsers seeing this?

That will have to wait for another late-night coding session.

4 Comments