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Archive for December, 2007

The Nimies, 2007

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

As the year comes to a close we all experience what must be a great deal of introspection about the world and our place in it. We take measure of the hopes we’ve had fulfilled and the dreams we’ve seen realized, and catalog anew those for the coming year. As the sun sets on 2007 I’d like to examine what has brought me to this place in the Universe that my life now occupies, in hopes of better plotting out in what direction I should lead my soul in 2008. Join me as I fan the flames of remeberance and guide you through this year gone past. My your upcoming journey through this next year be emboldened by my journey now past, and let our paths cross in the future before us both.

Here’s my list of shit that happened in 2007, presented in award form.

Nimies for Entertainment

Best Film I Saw This Year

The Fountain. This film is a work of art — visually breathtaking and emotionally captivating. Also, it stars Rachel Weisz, who’s smokin’ hot, and Hugh Jackman, who’s ~~so unbelievably sexy~~ Wolverine.

Best Film I Saw This Year That I Actually Understood

Hot Fuzz. If you haven’t seen this movie then your life is utterly futile.

Best Crappy Asian Film I Saw This Year That Was Redeemed by Heavily Featuring Gong Li’s Titties

Yes please!

The Curse of the Golden Flower. Terrible movie, filled with gloobs.¹

Worst Film I Saw This Year

For Your Consideration, the latest film by Christopher Guest. I’ll remind you what I said when I first reviewed this film:

This is the worst fucking movie ever. Imagine a giant robot with egg beaters for hands doing dental work on you without any anesthesia. This would be the movie that giant robot dentist masturbates to.

I stand by that.

Movie I Wish I Saw

Control, a film about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, highlighted and reviewed by Khoi Vinh.

Note, this isn’t the same as Kontroll, which is a Hungarian movie set entirely in a subway, though I’m sure there are similarities.

Best Play I Saw This Year

The Oath by Jacqueline Goldfinger.

What? You’re surprised that I would go to the theater? I’m not some uncultured asshole. I mean, didn’t you see how I gave an award to that foreign flick with Gong Li’s titties in it? Exactly.

Best Webcomic of the Year

Penny-Arcade’s “The Littlest Hashshashin”, in which they imagine what Assassin’s Creed on the Nintendo DS might be like. “Give Hugs” indeed.

Best YouTube Video I Found

No question: Soundwave: The Touch.

Nimies for Memorable Quotations

Most Dubious Use of Quotation Marks

Here.

Best Quote I Made Up This Year

I rule all you bitches! – Mayor McCheese addressing the burn ward of the Ronald McDonald Children’s Hospital

From “My Personal Heroes”.

Worst Line from a Movie

I suffer without my stone. Do not prolong my suffering.

– Galvatorix, from Eragon.

Remember when John Malkovich was a reputable actor? Me neither.

Best Line from a Movie

MOTHERFUCKER’S DOWN!

– said by Special Agent Wick in War, in regards to the witness he was taking into the station getting shot right outside the door of the bar they caught him in, while standing there making the “he’s dead” neck slicing motion instead of, you know, chasing down the killer.

You need at least two beers to watch War.

Best Real Quote from a Real Person

Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the limits of their knowledge.

– Mark Twain, as seen above Jake’s desk.

Nimies for Blog Related Stuff

Best Blog Post I Read This Year

Seth Godin’s, “Two Kinds of Don’t Know”. This post is directed towards PR flak, but I think the lesson here — about fear and the excuses we make to mask it — is universally relevant. It’s well worth reading.

Most Devastating Blog Post I Read This Year

Khoi Vinh’s “The Start Is at the Finish”, which has forever ruined film credits for me, as I’m now hyper aware of how they’re rendered. Damnit! Apparently no one ever taught Khoi that with great blogging comes great responsibility.

Best New Blog I Discovered

GreatWhiteSnark.com. Well, technically he found me, but I’m glad he did because GWS’s humorously geeky news and views has quickly become part of my morning routine,² and has inspired posts of my own. It’s easily the best geek-centric blog out there (and there are a lot of those).

Best Blog Post That Linked to Me

Fake Steve Jobs’ “We’re trying to make our retail experience a little more annoying”, in response to my “Terrible Shopping Experience at the Apple Store” (which happens to be my Mom’s favorite post). I’m as funny as I am ridiculously handsome, but I must painfully admit that Fake Steve Jobs is funnier than me, as that post shows. I don’t care if he’s not a real fake person, I love him all the same.

(To everyone that linked to me, many thanks. You’ve all been added to my feed reader, so maybe next year you might earn a Nimie of your own.³ )

Most Baffling Blog Post of the Year

How the dooce did Steven Fisher get the little back glyph into this url? I don’t even understand how I’m able to link to it. How does the Internet know what it means? I’m not sure even I know what it means. I’m so freakin’ baffled!

The sad thing is I didn’t even realize what Steven did until John Gruber pointed it out, which, I suppose, illustrates quite well the intelligence of the parties involved — the guy who was super-smart to do this, the guy who was smart enough to notice it, and me. I love lamp.

Best Sport

The aforementioned John Gruber, for not punching me in the face despite my being a total asshole. Granted, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know where I live, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he devised a sinister Perl script to recursively pinpoint my location using some fancy-pants regular expressions, which would allow him to commit said face-punching, and then throw down a witty line like, “Consider yourself marked down!”

That would sweeeeeet!

Nimies With Regards to Capitalism

Best Hardware Purchase I Made This Year

MacBook.

Best Hardware Purchase I Made This Year With Someone Else’s Money

iPhone!⁴

Best Software Purchase

TextMate. I know Coda is like the biggest thing right now, but TextMate is the best straight text editor you can buy, and you really don’t need more than that (and a brain). Once you get used to TextMate’s ability to automatically wrap selected text in quotes and parenthesis you’ll find it difficult to live without it. Apple needs to incorporate that into OS X… you know, after they fix what’s screwed up with Leopard.

Worst $10 I Spent

He eated it.

Lost on a bet to Justin for successfully, and effortlessly, eating two 1-lb Fuddrucker’s hamburgers that were merged into an abominable double decker.

There wasn’t even any puke.

Nimies Pertaining to Nima

Worst Decision I Made All Year

To turn my back on 16 years of Qwerty touch-typing and learn the Dvorak keyboard layout. My typing speed, according to this test, went from 115 words per minute to 65. My fingers do feel more comfortable, though.

Best Decision I Made All Year

To quit my job.

Finally, the Grand Nimie

Best Thing I Did All Year

Create this blog.

It’s been a year of ridiculous posts, angry posts, and reflective posts, with a sprinkling of awesome comments from a multitude of people (some sane, some not). All in all it’s been a blast, and I thank you all for reading my blog and not karate chopping me in the neck because of it.

Happy holidays!

See you in 2008, folks!

If you think I’m somehow kidding about how boob-centric this film is, just check out the IMDb photo gallery for the film.↩
Wake up, get some coffee, check out greatwhitesnark.com, figure out who’s house I’m in, find my pants, etc.↩
As a rule I add anyone who’s posted a comment or linked to me to my feed reader. And, to be honest, I’ve found a lot of really great blogs that way. So thanks, y’all.↩
Thanks, Mom.↩

Tags: Year in Review
Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »

Dinosaurs, Asian Cinema, and Helvetica

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

Gary Hustwit’s documentary Helvetica explores the details of what is easily the most popular typeface in the world. It is a fascinating look at not only the prevalence of the Helvetica, but also how it’s use informs about our culture. The film is gorgeously shot, is well edited, has a great soundtrack, and features a lot of amazing interviews with interesting, and informative, subjects. Hustwit really did a magnificent job with this film¹, and I think everyone — even people who couldn’t care less about Helvetica, typography in general, or design — should see it. It’s easily one of the five best films I saw this year.²

There were two things in the film that really struck me. First, Helvetica might possibly be the greatest typeface ever designed. It’s ubiquitousness is a function of it’s near universal applicability. The film goes to great lengths to give a fair voice to a dissenting view on that, but it all rolls back to the truth that every time they show Helvetica on screen it feels so nature and perfect that you forget that there might be other typefaces that could have been used instead. After acknowledging that the myth of Helvetica as the ultimate font isn’t true, typographer Jonathan Hoefler says the following:

There’s something about it that has a feeling of finality to it. This is the conclusion of one line of reasoning, was this typeface, and perhaps everything after it was secondary in some way.

I find evolutionary dead ends to be fascinating from the standpoint of: how does one continue forward when one understands that they will never exceed what has come before? In this regard, how does a type designer approach the task of creating a new sans-serif typeface when Helvetica is staring them in the face?

Matthew Carter, designer of the famous Verdana and Georgia typefaces, says, quite elegantly, in the film:

It’s very hard for a designer to look at [Helvetica's] characters and say ‘How would I improve them? How would make them any different?’ They just seem exactly right. I’m glad no one ever asked me to second guess Helvetica, because I wouldn’t know what to do.

I think there is such a thing as a perfect piece of art. That’s what typography is — a work of art. I think the question of how you move forward from a perfect work of art as what defines you as an artist. That Carter went on to produce Verdana and Georgia speaks to the quality and strength of his artistry.

Of course, this sort true in all areas of art. In film, I immediately think of the Chinese movie Infernal Affairs, and Scorsese’s remake of it, The Departed.³ Infernal Affairs is a marvelous movie. The tone is perfect. The character arcs are perfect. The plot is perfect. It is a perfect film, and every single change that Scorsese made in The Departed was, I believe, to the detriment of the story. The only thing that really worked in The Departed’s favor was the spectacular view of Boston, which is to say that the film just looked different, but not necessarily better. I don’t understand what Scorsese was thinking. What was it he was trying to get out of remaking Infernal Affairs? I guess the answer is, “an Oscar,” but what does that say if your crowning achievement is a copy of someone else’s far superior work? I guess Scorsese can start a club with the guy who copied Helvetica to make Arial.

I think this is true in writing as well. Having studied molecular biology, whenever I mentioned an interest in writing someone (like my mom) would inevitably suggest that I write a story about science. “It would make a great story,” they would say. Yes, it would. In fact, it did. It was called Jurassic Park. The story is about molecular biology, and dinosaurs. Seriously, how could I possibly compete with that? There is nothing you could clone that is more interesting than a freaking velociraptor. As a result, I have zero interest in even considering to write a scientific — let alone molecular biology based — story, because I know nothing I write will ever be better than Jurassic Park. For me, I see it as a futile endeavor, and I wonder if typographers don’t feel the same about sans-serif fonts.

This brings me to the second point of interest in Helvetica — the film takes time to examine the use of type in posters, flyers, brochures, corporate logos, street signs, government documents, album covers, MySpace, magazine covers, and soda advertisements, but there’s no mention of books. In fact, there’s only one mention by David Carson of anything even remotely related to the use of type in an article of text (granted, it’s a spectacularly awesome use of type). What does this mean for writers?

Now, I understand that in a film about Helvetica there’s not going to be much, if any, mention of literary works, where Times and it’s siblings rule. That’s not really the problem. What worries me is that the type designers themselves tended to speak about type — in general, and not specifically Helvetica — strictly in terms of its value to graphic design. This is consistent with what I’ve observed outside the film, where typography is correlated to graphic designers, and not really to writers.

The reason I got interested in type was because, as a teenager, whenever I would get writer’s block sitting at the computer I’d start fiddling with fonts. If I couldn’t imagine the next part of the story in Times I’d try it in New York. If that was a bust I’d move on to Palatino. As an adult, I’m interesting in how the typeface can affect the way in which my writing is communicated.

The way type communicates in short flashes — as in a poster or logo — seems clear to me, and Helvetica does talk about this. For a novel, which can communicate a variety of different emotions and ideas between its pages, I think this becomes more complex, and beyond what my limited understanding of typography allows me to see. Do typographers think about this when they design a type? And, I wonder, what can I learn about typography that can help me as a writer? Can it help me at all?

Ultimately, my problem is that I don’t know any typographers. Ideally, sometime in the next, oh, ten years I’d like to get a chance to sit down with a typographer with some beers and nachos and talk about how it is they approach their work. I find it difficult to even conceptualize the thought process of a type designer, and that strikes me like if a builder didn’t understand the thought process behind the guy who makes hammers. Type is the tool I use, and the people who make it are a bit of a mystery to me. In the case of Helvetica, it’s creators Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann might as well have been sorcerers. Helvetica really is a thing of wonder.

I don’t care what your political views may be, but there’s no way you can see a film like this and think that Michael Moore is anything more than a hack. This is quality documentary filmmaking here, folks.↩
It’s available from Netflix, and if you have a Windows PC you can even watch it streamed through the “Watch Instantly” feature. Honestly, I installed Windows on my Mac Pro just to use this feature, and I’m glad I did, as the original Battlestar Galactica is also available via “Watch Instantly.” Woot!↩
You do know The Departed is a remake, right?↩

Tags: Typography, Writing
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

‘The Darjeeling Limited’, among Other Screenplays

Monday, December 17th, 2007

Following in the footsteps of Paramount Vantage, Fox Searchlight has put up a bunch of screenplays to their more reputable films (that they hope will get Oscar nods), and also the script to The Darjeeling Limited, which Jackie so correctly noted felt like “Wes Anderson trying to make a Sophia Coppola film” (understandable, considering two out of the three screenwriters are of the Coppola bloodline).

I find it a nice coincidence that I watched Mira Nair’s film The Namesake last night, and now I can read what’s sure to be a well-written script.

Tags: Screenplays
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Everyone Should Write

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

Writing is neither noble nor great. You struggle to create something out of nothing, which most people will then judge superficially and with total disregard for the blood, sweat, and tears you lost in creating your work. Worse, they’ll judge you based on their perception of the subjective quality of the work you produced (as they did, or did not, understand it). To write is to ask for an emotional, intellectual, and sometimes spiritual ass-whooping.

But everyone should do it.

Wait, let’s back up…

I was rummaging across the Internet over the weekend and found myself briefly on Shawn Blanc’s Christian-oriented blog, The Fight Spot. It has a very nice looking graphic design, so I took a look around ~~to see what I could steal~~, and I came across his post “Ink”, in which he reveals his thoughts on writing, and shares his desire to write a book.

He writes,

For years I entertained the idea of writing a book called “The 2911 Factor”. It would be based on Jeremiah 29:11, that God has thoughts and plans to prosper us. It would be a book about discovering and walking in our destiny. I was talking to Anna about this last night and she said I ought to wait until I can’t not write a book. That seems like a good idea.

No, it’s not.

Many of you know that I’m prone to wild fits of unjustifiable rage, but there are a few things that I feel legitimately compelled to actually fight against: scientific misinformation, cruelty to our fellow man, gingivitis, and people who want to write not writing.

The reality is you can always not write. The willingness to commit to writing is not strengthened by the mere passage of time. Writing is a brutal, unyielding, and perpetually difficult thing to do. I’ve written three novels and, believe me, it doesn’t get easier with time.

Shawn hits upon why writing is so hard,

Many great men and women have helped shape history through their written words. Theologians, poets, novelists, etcetera, have impacted thoughts and lives of countless individuals. There is something noble about writing.

You and I aren’t great men. Sometimes great men aren’t really even great men. Yet, great works do exist, and that is the standard by which every writer’s work is set… in their own mind.

That’s the wall that I believe keeps people from writing. It is the fear that the work that they produce isn’t going to impact the thoughts and lives of any, let alone countless, individuals. It’s the fear that what they write just isn’t good enough. The perceived nobility of the art presents a threshold people get scared to cross.

Shawn basically gets at that,

Do I really want to wait another 5 or 10 years until I have something to say enough to break it up by chapters instead of h3 tags? That seems like an awful long time. But on the other hand, who am I to try and crank something out simply because I feel an itch to write? That surely seems like a waste of perfectly good trees.

This concern — that their writing will amount merely to wasted paper — is what I see frequently holding back people who should be writing. It is a crippling fear that has to be overcome. How do writers do it? I believe successful writers — not to be confused with people who write successfully — overcome this impediment by two different methods: egomania, and gross egomania.

An egomaniac is a person who believes that their writing is important to the world because they wrote it. That their thoughts and feelings matter so much to the world that immortalizing them on paper for others to behold automatically, and unquestionably, makes the world a better place in which to live. These people are most certainly delusional.

In contrast, a gross egomaniac is a person who’s read the great works of others, knows that their work will be judged against those standards, and couldn’t care less. It doesn’t matter if everyone else hates their work, because the opinion of everyone else is irrelevant, if not stupid. These people will write because they feel the need to do so, the world be damned. Obviously, these people are also quite delusional.¹

But let’s hold on for a moment. Egomania is such a such a harsh word, and it carries around a lot of negative baggage. Instead of egomania let talk about confidence.

That’s what this is really about. The first type of writer I described is confident in the value of their thoughts and ideas, and the second is confident in their abilities. Confidence in those two regards (though not necessary to the extremes I described) allows us to overcome our fears and our doubts. It lets us create.

The question then becomes, “How does one become more confident in their writing?”

By writing.

Ah, so now you realize just how frightfully delusional we writers can be. But I am, unfortunately, quite serious. The only way to become confident in your ability to write is to sit down and start.

But where to start?

In high school I took an amazing creative writing class taught by the sweetest little-old Greek-lady in the world. The first day of class she promptly announced a contest for the week: we would all go home and write a short story three-to-five pages in length, we’d bring them to class and share amongst our classmates, and we’d take a vote to rank the stories in terms of their quality. The winner of this contest, she explained, would be the story that the class decided was the worst in the class.

Let me be clear, our assignment was to write the worst story we possibly could. Spelling mistakes and poor grammar weren’t allowed; the story had to be bad.²

This exercise accomplished two goals: it allowed us to think about what makes writing bad (and, therefore, what makes writing good), and, more importantly, it got us writing. All our fears went out the window. It really didn’t matter we wrote a bad story, because that was the whole point.

I believe this is the mental hurdle people have to get over in order to really start writing: you have to accept that your writing can be bad. You measure success by completion, not construction. This is the stated goal of NaNoWriMo (Nation Novel Writing Month), which is why I so highly recommend to people that are interested in writing that they participate in NaNoWriMo when they can. Not being hung up on whether your work is great or not allows you the creative freedom to create something great.

Several months ago Khoi Vinh wrote in the incredibly honest “On Blogging Well and Writing Poorly”:

One thing I worry about though, is if by becoming a better blogger over the years I haven’t also stunted my progress towards becoming a better writer. I often describe my persistence in this medium as predicated on my generally unflagging compulsion to write. I’ve certainly grown some as a writer while authoring Subtraction.com, but how much closer am I to writing the book that I want to write, to penning the articles that I want to publish, to developing a more insightful critical voice? Had I not preoccupied myself so many evenings and weekends hammering out hastily composed, poorly self-edited and only glancingly critiqued passages, would I have come any further along as a good writer than I have? To answer that honestly, I’d say I suspect that the answer is yes, I would have come much further. Which is to say that becoming a better blogger hasn’t made me a better writer.

I can’t speak to Khoi Vinh’s lack of development as a writer (though I think he’s a pretty good writer, in any case), but he’s probably right, and he’s definitely hitting the nail on the head. I think the only way to develop the skills to write a book is to actually sit down and write a book. You have to do it. I did, and in the process, I learned a lot about how to structure a story, set pacing, develop characters, and, ideally, how not to end the story at the half-way point. You simply cannot swap in one type of writing (blogging) for another (long-form fiction).

For these reasons, I implore you, Shawn, to just sit down and write. Don’t wait. Write your heart out. And try not to think about the great work of others, or the rising cost of paper. As Stephan King would put it, write with the door closed.

I guarantee you, and anyone who’s got the desire to write, if you do, you will be better for it, even if what you write is a pile of crap. I’ll stake a beer and some chicken wings on it. That’s a powerful statement right there, because I love my beer and chicken wings. But my love of beer and chicken wings — and cheapness — is not as strong as my belief that everyone should write… and so should you.

Yes, all writers are delusional. That’s why they come up with such imaginative stories. Duh!↩
Though I definitely tried, I didn’t win, as my story was deemed “so bad, it was good.” The story that did win was about a teenaged boy that had brutally over-dramatized problems with his parents. The only detail I recall was at one point he yells to his folks, “But I want to be a fireman!” in response to their question about the marijuana they found under his bed. It was awesome.↩

Tags: Writing
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Transformers Vs. Gobots

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

Around 1995, when I first got on the Internet, I found a hilarious story about an encounter between the Transformers and their cheap K-mart knock-offs, the Gobots. Every now and then I check the web to see if it’s still floating around, and it doesn’t seem to be, which is a shame.

So, now that I have a little corner of the Internet to myself, here is a reprinting of that story, written by person’s unknown, many years ago. Fan’s of 80s cartoons — and Gobot haters — rejoice and enjoy.

Transformers Vs. Gobots

Long ago, before Transformers came to earth…

A group of Quintessons named Lari, Moh and Ker-le decided to take an expedition to a far off galaxy. Unfortunately, their ship malfunctioned and they were thrown off-course. They crash-landed somewhere in the constellation we know as Triangulum. Desiring to reproduce their lifestyle on Cybertron, they tried their hand at creating robots to serve as gladiator slaves. They failed. Their pathetic creations, whom they termed Gobots, were pale imitations of the Autobots and Decepticons.

Despite their pathetic nature, the Gaurdian Gobots and the Renegade Gobots managed to throw off the yoke of their oppressors. They named their planet Gobotron, after themselves, and in the year 1988 ad they came to Earth. It took them a long time to develop space travel. Here is their story:

One day Bumblebee was strolling in town. No one noticed or complained that there was a giant foolish robot walking around town, because Transformers live in fantasy land. He was shocked to see a new Decepticon robbing a Burger King! Bumblebee may not have seen this particular Decepticon before, but he knew how to treat their kind!

“Stop!” he shouted, drawing his blaster. “Return that Whopper Junior at once!”

The Decepticon turned “Who are you to stop me! I am Cy-Kill, leader of the Renegade Gobots!”

“Cy-kill?” thought Bumble. “That’s a stupid name!” he screamed back at Cy-kill.

Just then a second Decepticon, or Renegade Gobot, stepped out of the Burger King.

“Quick” barked Cy-kill. “Cop-tur, turn into a copter!”

Bumblebee perplexed, watched Cop-tur “transform.”

“He didn’t change at all,” thought Bumblebee. “He just layed down!”

“Drat,” mumbled Cop-tur. “I forgot my rotor blade!”

“Damn you — How can you forgot that?” responded his leader.

“Hey — it’s a separate part. I always lose stuff — I didn’t get mad at you when you lost your wheels!”

“We’ll have to fight it out” resovled Cy-kill.

“Too bad you don’t have any guns,” pointed out Ironhide, pulling up from the drive-through window.

“Foiled again!” screamed Cy-kill! “Why couldn’t we come with guns like you guys?”

In response, Leader-One walked in. “Because Gobots are meant to be good!”

Bumblebee was confused again, “I can see that you transform into a plane, sir, so why didn’t you fly here?”

Leader-one was embarrased, “Due to my poor design, I lack the structural integrity to actually fly. I only turn into a model plane. And I have no gun either.”

Ironhide, never one for words, promptly killed Cy-kill and Cop-tur, and for good measure, Leader-One as well.

The rest of the Gobots were destroyed shortly thereafter, many by small children armed with rocks and sticks. As the Transformers related the tale to an amused Optimus Prime, he said “I’m glad they’re not on our side! Go-bots, huh?”

Bumblebee, for the last time, was confused, “Why is your name in Latin?”

Tags: Transformers, Writing
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

5 Lessons I Learned From My Failed Webcomic

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

Shortly after starting the blog I had a nifty idea for a webcomic about a pair of insects living in Heaven: Angel Ants. I started posting the adventures of Grayson Eleanor Antly and Redford Javier Antington III — or Gray and Red to their friends — here in March, and by May I’d spun it off to it’s own website, angelants.com. For a while it even looked like Angel Ants might supplant this blog as my chief means of ~~poisoning the world~~ expressing myself creatively.

Well, fifty-eight comics into it’s run and I’m officially putting the kibosh on it. This is partly because I think the last comic I made makes for a dramatic and perfectly tragic ending to the series, and also because I’m creatively bankrupt. I’m sure the 20 regular readers the comic found over its lifetime will be crushed, but soon move on to better things.

But, as the title of this post suggests, I’m not writing this as a public obituary or an invitation to a failed-webcomic-pity-party. I learned a lot while doing Angel Ants, and even more as it crashed and burned before me. I hope my utter and complete failure can assist you somehow in some way¹.

1. My Sexiness Is Limitless, My Creativity Is Not

“Meeting With the Big Guy”

Having the two pictures on God’s desk, and of those two people in particular, was probably the best thing I did in the entire comic’s run.

When I first started doing Angel Ants I loved it. It was a kind of writing I’d never really tried before, but one that I quickly found compatible with my own personal sensibilities. Also, it let me tell religiously-inspired fart jokes.

At the height of Angel Ants I could conceive, plot out, and even write out in my head an entire strip while driving to work. It became a fun activity I could do while doing other, less fun, activities, and there really wasn’t a noticeable increase in pedestrian deaths in the area. Heck, I didn’t even need to wear pants! And I think during this time I came up with a lot of really great characters, like Robot Kenny Loggins and Dr. Dread, and stories, like Red doing theater.

The problem was that around the end of August it stopped being fun. What seemed to be a bottomless well of ideas went dry, and how. I think part of the reason for that was my creative focus was being pulled elsewhere, but for whatever reason making the comics became work instead of a joy. Instead of eagerly awaiting the next Tuesday or Thursday to post the comic I’d made days before, I found myself dreading those days, knowing that I would have to go home and clobber together some piece of crap.

Here’s the thing: life is short and I’m already up to my balls in things I don’t love doing. If I’m going to do something else I don’t love, then I’m at the very least going to need to get paid to do it. Ideally, I’d like to get paid doing something I love to do, but that’s a separate issue. When the comic stopped being fun, I needed to stop doing it. I only have a limited amount of creative energy, and I’m not going to waste it on hard work. What little creative energy I have is expensive, in spite of its generally low quality.

That’s not to say the subsequent comics were bad, but it became struggle to make them, and the more I struggled with Angel Ants the less I could energy I had to focus elsewhere. I had to weigh the costs, and Angel Ants became too expensive.

2. Working Around a Weakness Can Be a Strength

“Danger Zone”

Robot Kenny Loggins is probably the creepiest robot ever, second only to Michael McDonald.

I’m not an artist. At least not in the “drawing of ants” sense. I learned that in my first, very pathetic, comic strip. I knew that if I wanted to do more comics — and I did — that I would have to work around my weak art. So, like many hack artists, I went digital.

What evolved was a mixture of bad hand drawing, bad vector art, and bad photo-collage, resulting in what I think became a really good looking comic. Granted, I think some of the comics turned out better than others, but overall I became really happy with the look of the comic, and in some cases the art became the primary draw to the strip.

Just so we’re clear, the art wasn’t that good, and there were a lot of things I couldn’t do because I couldn’t figure out how to make it look like I wanted it to, but I also want to be clear that I didn’t stop because of the art. The art actually helped keep me on board, because it let me make strips that didn’t work solely on the basis of the writing.

I’m still not a good artist. I still couldn’t hand draw a comic to save my life. But knowing that limit, and finding inventive ways around it, ended up giving me a powerful tool to use.

3. When Mistakes Happen, Fix Forward

“So What Did Happen to Morty’s Payot?”

The ant-face close-ups hold a very special place in my heart.

A glaring graphical mistake lead to what turned out to be my favorite strip. In the comic “Suboptimal Q & A” Morty, the Jewish ant, invited the great Optimus Prime to visit Red’s theater group to give them some acting tips. This was around the time of the Michael Bay Transformers film, and I think it’s kind of a funny comic. However, the morning of the comic’s posting all I heard from readers was, “What happened to Morty’s payot²?”

What happened? I totally forgot to draw the payot when I put the comic together. It just totally skipped my mind, and while I didn’t notice the omission, everyone else in the world did.

My first reaction to this news was embarrassment, because as bad as my art is, it certainly isn’t sloppy. Now, all the webcomics howto websites say that you should edit your comics to fix any mistakes so that you’ve always got the best versions of your comics up. I think that’s pretty sensible advice — I wouldn’t leave a post unedited if I found some spelling mistakes in it. Fixing it was the sensible thing to do.

So I fixed it forward.

That is, I didn’t go back and change the comic to include Morty’s payot, I created the next comic to explain, logically, why Morty was missing his payot in the first place. “So What Did Happen to Morty’s Payot?” not only answered that specific question, but it also presented a logical explanation for why Morty would bring Optimus Prime in as an acting coach in the previous comic, and it allowed me to ape the hilarious video of Michael Cera supposedly getting fired from the film Knocked Up, AND it allowed me to do a callback to Red’s infamous ability to squirt fire out of his nipples (aka “blazing teats”). Win, win, win.

You can’t always fix forward — for example, when you punch your girlfriend’s dog in the face — but I think in most creative endeavors you can, and I think you’ll find yourself with a better product in the end. I think I did.

4. Friends Can Help 40%, You Have to Make Up the Rest on Your Own

“First Date”

It was in talking with my buddy Jake that I got the idea to have Red in the Vader mask.

I got more that a few ideas for comics from my friends. In some cases my friends gave me a small nugget of an idea, and in others I was given a great deal of help, but ultimately your friends can only help you so much, and you have to always remember that it’s up to you to make the magic happen. Contrary to what one might think, comics don’t just write themselves, draw themselves, or rethink themselves to make sure they have a proper punch-line (or two).

At the end of the day it’s just you and the work you’re doing, and it’s up to you to make it the best you possibly can. To that end, you’ve got the walk it alone. Unless you get someone else to do your work for you, which is kind of a dick move. Unless you give them credit.

It is, though, really reassuring to know that your friends are there to help as much as they can. I think that kind of personal support is really necessary for making art (or what passes for art in the digital age).

5. Not Everyone Knows Who Admiral Ackbar Is

“A Hiro’s Calling”

Future Hiro Nakamura and Party-Time Admiral Ackbar meeting face to face — a perfect storm of geekery.

I thought introducing Party-Time Admiral Ackbar was an absolute stroke of genius. I patted myself on the back until my arm was sore, for sure. So imagine my surprise the day of publication when half my regular readers expressed to me that they “didn’t get it.” Didn’t get what? It’s fucking Admiral Ackbar!

Well, the truth is not everyone knows who Admiral Ackbar is, shocking that may be, and if you don’t know who Admiral Ackbar is then there’s really not a very strong joke in that comic. That is, Admiral Ackbar showing up in the comic is the joke.

The lesson I think most people would take away from this is, “Know your audience, and cater to them.” I don’t think that’s the right lesson to take away from this, though. Instead, two strips later I tried going down the same sci-fi character-cameo route, to a much more positive response.

So what was different? Clearly, NBC’s recent (at the time) marketing blitz of “Save the Cheerleader, save the world” was much more accessible to non-sci-fi fans than a character from a 24 year-old movie, but more over the key difference is that in second comic the joke doesn’t depend on knowing any of the geek references. Hiro could be just some time traveler, and his catch-phrase could be something I made up. The joke isn’t about him, it’s about Red’s reaction to him, and then Hiro’s subsequent reaction. That it’s Party-Time Admiral Ackbar that Hiro turns to in the end is, I think, extra funny, but it could have just as easily been Gray he turned to (that was the original idea, btw).

The trick is to know your audience, but as long as an accessible base is laid, you can add layers of content to address more narrow types of people. Your audience is served, and you retain the creative freedom to explore the more geeky sides of your personality.

All Good Things…

“Angel Ants VS Dr. Dread”

I’ll miss this.

You know, stopping Angel Ants has been a really hard decision, especially in light of recent renewed positive reinforcement from (get this) my parents, but I really don’t feel like continuing it. My stint as a cartoonist was short, but for a while it was extremely enjoyable, and, you know, I think some of the work I did wasn’t half bad. Would I do it all over again? You betcha! Would I do it again in the future? Possibly. Would I ever want to make a career out of it? No. Would I recommend someone interested in giving cartooning a try to do so? In a heart-beat.

I’ll miss Gray, Red, and the gang. I’m going to leave the site up, as a record of what I did accomplish, and the fun I had, while it lasted.

Let me finish by thanking everyone who read and supported Angel Ants. If it made you laugh, then it was all worth it. Even though no one ever sent me any money for doing it.

If so, please send me money.↩
Those awesome Jewish hanging curly hair things.↩

Tags: Webcomics
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We Don’t Need Another ‘Heroes’

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

That’s it, I’m convinced Heroes creator Tim Kring is murdering my soul on purpose, and that the success of the first season of the show was accidental. Great White Snark passed along an interview Tim Kring just gave TV Guide, and is has filled me with all kinds of Godless rage.

From the interview:

Immortal Adam was teleported by Hiro (Masi Oka) into a coffin buried in the same Japanese cemetery where his father Kaito (George Takei), who was slain by Adam, is also buried. “It’s poetic justice to have Adam end up in the same graveyard as Kaito,” Kring notes. “We’ve given the audience no reason to believe that Adam can figure a way to get out of there. The fact that he can live forever makes this the most gruesome of internments. If this happened to any of us, at least we’d know we’d soon have the mercy of death. Not here.”

No reason to believe he will escape? Have you seen Kill Bill Volume 2?! A fucking zombie can claw itself out of the ground in, like, a couple hours, you’re telling me this guy who can live forever is never going to get out of the coffin? Granted, his escape might be slowed by the fact that it won’t be fueled by a primal need to consume brains or a lust for revenge (oh, wait), but even taking that into account I’m fairly certain he can get out of that grave by the third fucking episode of season 3.

This is elementary bury-someone-alive mechanics here.

Witchy, bitchy Elle, who wound up saving the lives of Mohinder (Sendhil Ramamurthy), Maya (Dania Ramirez) and little Molly (Adair Tishler), clearly sparked when Mohinder called her a hero. “Kristen Bell gave us the perfect reaction in that scene,” Kring says. “For a moment there, Elle sees she’s been given an opportunity to use her powers in a good way. And she absolutely likes the sound of that word ‘hero.’”

Yes, turning your bad ass characters into do going pansies is exactly what you should be doing right now. It’s not like the characters of dubious motivation are always the most interesting ones. And by “not” I mean “most certainly absolutely are!”

Elle was interesting because she was so devilish. No one wants to have sex with do-gooders.

“We’ve introduced a cadre of them over the course of the show and we’re going to see them rise up,” Kring says. “Just as the heroes have found each other to save the world, the villains will do the same with the opposite intent.” And their numbers may be legion.

Given how heroic the “heroes” on the show are I completely expect the “villains” to spend most of season 3 helping to get kittens out of trees and walking back and forth between New York and Texas. How many fucking road trips can you have on one show?

And, look, the Legion of Doom doesn’t work. It killed Justice League Unlimited (in it’s third season, coincidentally). We don’t want fifteen pussy villains running around being lame, we want one super powered villain that’s smart and manipulative that require the heroes to band together to fight. Like Sylar in season 1, only smarter, or Adam in season 2, except not completely and totally lame. Just kill Peter and Sylar and add Magneto to the show. It will be awesome.

Will Sylar (Zachary Quinto) be their ringleader? After being electro-zapped by Elle, Mister Eyebrows escaped to a back alley and skeevily injected himself with Claire’s (Hayden Panettiere) blood. Then, in a wicked salute to Popeye, he telekinetically grabbed a can of spinach and said, “I’m back!” “Sylar getting his power back does not bode well for our heroes,” says Kring

I didn’t bring this up in my previous post, but let me see if I understand this correctly: Sylar gets hit with a bolt of Elle’s bioelectric fury, crashes through a window, and then still manages to outrun Elle, because she has a broken arm? She has a long range projectile attack! Sylar had no powers! What is wrong with you?!!

Setting that aside and getting more serious for a moment, let’s talk about what should have happened.

You have Sylar in the alleyway shooting up with the super-healing blood. He then sees his wounds magically heal before his eyes. Then he focuses on an empty can of spinach in across the alley. He reaches for it, summoning up his long dormant power. The can telekinetically flies into his hand. He smiles and says, “I’m back,” in that douchey way Quinto has mastered.

Then you hear in the distance something like, “About damn time.” Sylar leaps to his feet looking down the alley for the source. “Who said that?” he demands to know as the camera pulls in on his sneering face. Then we hear a faintly familiar sound, and we see a rush a blood stream down Sylar’s face. His eyes go blank as he collapses out of frame, revealing a dark and foreboding character standing behind him (preferably a really hot chick, because the show still needs more of those), who smiles and answers Sylar’s question with something like, “Your superior.” Hell, have her say “It’s Miller time!¹” Whatever.

THAT IS HOW YOU FUCKING INTRODUCE A NEW VILLAIN!

So to review:

Legion of Doom = bad
Mysterious and diabolical new villain who’s first appearance might not really make any sense but is still awesome = very good!

If you cannot get these basic storytelling concepts down then I highly suggest to you, Tim Kring, that you pack it in and just let the show end without subjecting us to more of this crap. You are raping and killing my inner-geek. Please stop.

An obvious reference to Howard Miller, the clock manufacturer.↩

Tags: Heroes
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Am I the Only One Actually Paying Attention to the Story on ‘Heroes’?

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

Seriously, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Yeah, I get that Tim Kring admitted that he screwed some things up and that the show’s writers were probably worried about going on strike, but is anyone at NBC even watching this show to see if it makes any sense?!

1. What the Hell Happened to the Haitian?

One minute he’s teamed up with HRG to take down The Company, and then when he might actually be useful to the story he disappears. I mean, HRG’s family is being hunted by The Company, they have his daughter, they’ve sent a super-powered sociopath to kill him, but he’s going to give the Haitian the day off? If evil super-powered assholes were after me and my family I’d have the badass guy who can neutralize anyone’s super-power nearby. Like, I’d let him stay in the freaking guest-room. I’d cook him waffles in the morning. We’d hang out, like all the time.

Granted, they pulled this same crap at the end of season 1, but, you know, fool me once…

2. If You Travel to the Future With Your Girlfriend and You Accidentally Leave Her There Why Don’t You Just Go Back and Get Her?

He looks confused. Maybe he just watched the finale too.

Am I smoking crack, or does Peter have some high-grade learning disability we need to know about? If you jump to a disease-filled dystopian future and accidentally leave your girlfriend there why would you be obsessed with preventing it from becoming disease-filled and dystopian? Why wouldn’t you just go back and get her? You know, since fifteen minutes after you returned to the present you regained all your memories and realized you have the power to travel through fucking time.

Or, at the very least, when the little Japanese guy who you know for a fact can travel through time shows up you could say, “Hey, so, like, I totally accidentally left this chick in a disease-filled dystopian future. Could you, like, go pick her up before they send her to a dystopian concentration camp or something?” It’s not like the little Japanese guy doesn’t speak English — he just told you the Neil Patrick Harris look-a-like you’re hanging out with killed his dad. FYI.¹

3. Didn’t Kensei Swear Revenge on Hiro?

Did my brain just invent that scene? I don’t think so, because it was pretty poorly written even for my brain. So Kensei did swear revenge on Hiro. Then Kensei lived for 400 more years, changed his name to Adam Monroe, and forgot all about taking revenge on Hiro. I mean, Adam’s evil master plan had nothing to do with Hiro, he had other reasons for killing Hiro’s dad, and when Hiro is knocked out and laying in front of him while Peter storms off Adam does zip to take his revenge on him. You remember, the revenge that he swore he would take.

4. Are These Assholes Actually Going to Do Something Heroic?

Getting your comic books back requires great heroism… Oh wait, your comics burned up in the fire? Along with your mom? Sucks to be you.

Look, heroism is not changing your mind at the last minute and not releasing a deadly virus that will kill 90% of the human population even though you’ve spent the last five episodes doing your best to release it because you’re a moron. Heroism is also not dragging your mom to a tenement to save your idiot cousin who decided to try and get your comic books back from thugs who stole them only to be captured and tied up in spite of having super-powered Kung-Fu skills, especially if your mom ends up dying in an explosion so that your idiot cousin can live (you’re losing a mom, but gaining an idiot cousin that you already had).

The only actual act of heroism I’ve witnessed since Heroes came back on the air was when the pan-sorority swim team’s bus got lost and the girls needed a place to stay so I let them stay at my place and the next morning I drove them to compete in nationals and they won first place because of my rousing and inspirational speech in the girl’s locker room before the meet. Also, there was some sex in there somewhere. Hot sex. Sans pants!

5. Wasn’t Peter not Able to Control His Nuclear Powers?

Season 1 finale, Peter nearly blows up half of New York City because he can’t control his powers.

Season 2 finale, Peter uses his nuclear power to irradiate and incinerate the deadly dystopian-future-causing virus, which, incidentally, is the first time he’s used his nuclear power since he almost blew up the city because he can’t control his frakking powers!

6. Maya’s Brother Didn’t Have Some Kind of Power of His Own?

The entire friggin’ season the stupid ass Wonder Twins were running around trying to get to New York because Maya’s insta-kill power could only be controlled by holding hands with her ugly-ass brother — who seemed to be sucking he power into himself or something — and then we find out — just kidding! — she could control her power all along and her brother gets stabbed to death by the bad guy?

WHAT?!

It’s bad enough I had to watch this sorry-ass road trip in the first place, but I’m almost positive Maya’s brother had some kind of power of his own. He was unaffected by her evil death power, and there was that visual effect where her creepy black eyes would transfer to him when her powers would stop. What the hell was that?

7. So, Like, No One Can Die?

Ironically, when the coroner’s report comes back we learn that Nathan didn’t die of gunshot wounds, but rather from the one thing magic super-powered blood can’t cure — boredom.

HRG was dead. The Company transported his corpse to their secret facility, took his clothes off, hooked him up to an IV of his daughter’s blood, and he comes back to life. Sooooo… when Nathan gets shot three times in the chest I’m supposed to care because…? His brother, who can also heal, is literally cradling his body. Can’t he just pop a vein and bring his brother back right there at the press conference? Wouldn’t that, you know, kill two birds with one stone since they want the world to know they have super-powers?

Oh, that’s right, Peter’s mentally retarded. Sorry, I forgot.

8. Blood Can Heal People?

Wait, didn’t these powers have something to do with the brain? Didn’t Claire (and Peter) die when their brains were punctured? What the hell does blood now have to do with anything? Now look, I’m not suggesting they should be using brain juice to heal people, but an occasional spinal tap would make sense. It’d take the show all the way to 11 (yeah, I went there).

9. Is Nathan a Congressman or What?

He spent the entire season just farting around, occasionally with an Al Qaeda looking beard, but when he wants to throw a press conference in Texas all the major news outlets in the state show up? So is this asshole still a Congressman or not? And if he’s not, why the hell not? I mean, aside from the fact the beard thing.

And in a related note, what happened to his wife who was paralyzed and then was healed so she could walk again? I mean, did anyone notice that she could walk all of a sudden? No one wondered about that? At all? Anybody?

10. Why Did I Watch This Fucking Show?

I have no one to blame but myself. And Tim Kring.

I am left with an overwhelming sense of, “WTF was that?!” There’s bad, and then there’s incomprehensibly bad. Heroes leapt past that — it has become the islamo-facist of TV shows. Somewhere on Earth a baby seal is being raped by a walrus, and I’m pretty sure Heroes is to blame. Heroes punches teenaged girls in the balls. Heroes is a no good.

So when does Battlestar Galactica start up?

Elena, a Spanish woman we used to work with, once told us a story about how she would get emails from her boss that would end with “FYI,” and she didn’t know what that stood for, So she guessed it meant, “fucking you idiot!” That’s how I mean it here.↩

Tags: Heroes, Things That Suck
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