Isaac Hayes performs the Theme from Shaft live, then shakes hands with Keanu Reeves.

How the stage keeps from collapsing under all the liquid cool, I’ll never know.

I went out today to pick up a new CD – something I thought I wouldn’t do again. But Weird Al has a new album out, and he’s not listed on iTunes – so it’s off we bound.

I decided to pick up the CD from the one store I knew for a fact would stock it – K-Mart. How did I know they would stock it? Because they announce it every ten minutes over their loudspeaker. Why do they stock it? Hell if I know.

Now, if your community is anything like mine, then you’re lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to have both a Super Wal-Mart and a pre-Super Wal-Mart. It’s been years since I went into the Pre-Super Wal-Mart, so I thought on my way back that I’d stop off and scope it out. I justified it to myself by saying I was checking to see if they had any Micron pens – but we both know that there’s no way they would actually stock them.

Pre-Super Wal-Mart still does enough business to justify staying open, even while there’s a Super Wal-Mart across town. But, apparently, they don’t do enough business to justify cleaning the store any more.

I don’t know what it was, but the instant I stepped into the store through the manual doors (Pre-Super has automatic doors coming out, but none going in), some sort of smell or essence or something hit me smack between my eyes – which promptly blurred and started to water. I don’t know if it was the smoke from burning Miscellaneous Meat Products coming from their hot dog stand, if it was ages of cigarette smoke still clinging to the walls and shelves, or if it was some caustic chemical fumes that had found their way into the ventilation system from the garden supplies. I’m inclined to believe the last option, considering that the farther back in the store I got (away from the hot dog stand and toward the garden supplies), the worse it got.

The result was that my typical leisurely cruising pace through the aisles of the stores sped up to just below a sprint. After all, I didn’t want people thinking I was getting misty-eyed over finding new He-Man toys on the shelves.

All right – so I shed a couple of tears of joy when I found the toys in a Blacksburg Target. That was months ago. I’m past weeping with joy and into gleeful euphoria now, thank you very much.

By the time I hit the electronics section, I was about to abandon ship and call off the trip as a total loss. My eyes were stinging pretty hard by then, and my nose had just started to run. Prices in general were in line with the Super Wal-Mart – the store was just skankier and more crowded with less room on and between the shelves. They didn’t even have the new Weird Al CD (although they had plenty of copies of “American Idol’s Greatest American Love Songs”).

Then I saw it.

Can I get a Hell Yeh?

So, yes. I escaped Pre-Super Wal-Mart with my sanity and health intact, carrying the glory of Adam West and Burt Ward’s Batman flick snug in a cheap plastic bag. My eyes cleared up the instant I hit the parking lot, and I knw that no matter how great the find was this time, I would never be back again.

Trace at Snark sent me out for this test. I still don’t know what to make of the results…

take the nerd test.


and go to mewing.net. a nerd utopia.

In other news, I spotted this on my brother’s webpage. He’s got this “Live Feed” thing that pulls my latest headlines down, and…

I swear, it was completely unintentional.

It’s amazing. It really is. First, we get The Real Cancun unloaded on us (the pain, the pain), then stories come out that a major studio has actually optioned Girls Gone Wild for a new major motion picture event. Is our culture steadily collapsing? Are we witnessing the rise of a new culture, one that’s based on the commercialization of stupidity, excess, and stupidity in excess?

Could this mean anything else?

“He’s just a sk8r boi, she said ‘c u l8r boi’....”

Now, let’s get down to brass tacks, here. The story at hand is a story of divisions between cliques and cultures. The skater boy (oh, excuse me – “sk8r boi” – omg lol rotflmao gmwas wbawbawba) falls in love with a girl who is secretly in love with him – but she winds up turning him down because her friends don’t like him. Later, he becomes a rich rock ‘n’ roll star and the girl he loved wishes she hadn’t turned him down.

In short, the entire story of the song (and, presumably, of the movie – seeing how Paramount wants to “remain true to the spirit”) is your typical high school revenge fantasy in which the lone outcast gets snubbed by the popular crowd and grows up to show that living well is the best revenge, every dog has its day, etc. etc. etc. It’s the sort of thing that high school wannabe rockstars fill their notebooks with when they’re being told they should be more concerned with long division.

What’s disgusting is not the story as much as the method of delivery. The history of film is loaded with examples of films based on songs – Alice’s Restaurant, Ode to Billie Jo, and the like. The difference is that each of these songs actually had something compelling about them that led the imagination down a road where you saw an entire movie could be supported.

“sk8r boi” – while a catchy enough tune – has a generic storyline with no real surprises or turns. However, it’s a big radio hit.

The story has been done in countless teen romance movies many times over. It has been done in magazines geared toward young readers, it has been done in thousands of creative writing classes every year, it’s been done by bands playing high school proms, it’s been done over and over in scratchy ballpoint in the pages of black-and-white composition books. It’s been written by skater boys, cheerleaders, goth girls, punks, football players who weren’t their team’s star, actors who struggle to make it big, actors who are big, misunderstood musicians, troubled teens, well-adjusted teens, greedy screenwriters who couldn’t even remember what it was like to be a teen – troubled or well-adjusted. William Shakespeare wrote it. The Greeks wrote it. It has been written into the ground and it will continue to be written over and over by millions of members of each generation.

But it will be hip and cool when it’s released in conjunction with a top ten single.

Who says Hollywood is out of ideas?

Today’s 404 is an illustration of exactly why I wanted to start the comic over again. This page of sketches is a (very) rough draft of an exchange that’s part of a longer story I’m hoping to tell. In particular, this page centers around the character of Chiaro – an Oni.

People who work in media – particularly in film or video production – are familiar with transitions. In the case of sequential art, transitions are even more important. Unlike film, which moves from shot to shot, sequential art requires transitions from frame to frame. Part of pacing is in the transitions, as well as the style of storytelling.

The upper half of the page practices aspect-to-aspect transitions. All three images are from the same scene, but all three represent different aspects of the image. The first image is the scene as a whole. While it has a similar effect to a zoom in cinema – focusing the image down to one, particular aspect – it is a different pace from a zoom. It moves you about the room, drawing you in gradually.

The lower half of the page consists of three images connected by moment-to-moment transitions, this time directly mirroring the zoom effect. The three images are of the same aspect of the scene, each one one moment different from the rest. Through three images, the pupil grows larger, the eye fills more of the frame, the fire dances in reflection, and slowly we come to see the image of somebody burning.

The two styles of transition are juxtaposed to create an entire scene. Using the aspect-to-aspect transitions, the scene is introduced – given a place and characters to play it out – while the climax of the scene is drawn out in near-slow-motion by use of moment-to-moment transitions juxtaposed with fragments of the final sentence.

At least, that’s the theory.

My brother has an excellent geek quiz. But he’s also pointed out this one, on which I scored 51.47929% – Super Geek.

The fine folks at Keenspace are overworked and underpaid – doin’ it for the love of the art. So I’m finding ways to keep my patience in the face of domain name problems.

I found a workaround that’s good temporarily, but ultimately lacks flexibility. So, you can warp on over and check out my way-too-big-to-be-that-sloppy comic relaunch. And I’ll update you when everything’s fixed.

Ah, yes. More details and a Link were forthcoming on the comic strip page, weren’t they?

Well, that’s the wonderful thing about our modern, push-button world. The world of instant gratification, where things happen the moment you click “send”. You can identify a technical problem, access your account, enter the correct information——and be told that it will take up to 72 hours for your changes to take effect.

GRAAAH! HULK SMASH PUNY HUMANS!

Now that that’s out of my system – 404: An Anti-Comic Strip is not quite ready yet. A problem with image paths and domain name servers is currently keeping the new strips from loading on the main page. But it’s all right. Things are going to be okay. I think.

In a vain attempt to fill up the vast amounts of leisure time that come with starting writing and acting careers and running, what, four? five websites? I have decided to try to re-launch my failed comic site, 404: The Comic Strip.

More details and a link to come.

stuff.co.nz reports (and CNN has it on their ticker) that Tim Burton is talking about directing a new Willy Wonka movie.

I’m torn.

On the one hand, Tim Burton is practically unmatched in Hollywood for his combination of whimsy and malice – not to mention an absolute sense of the absurd. In other words, I can’t think of anybody else who could actually pull it off.

On the other hand, I’m still stinging from the whistling cat o’ nine tails that was Tim Burton’s take on Planet of the Apes. How a movie can sting that much, I’ll never know – but at least it wasn’t Batman and Robin.

The rough part, however, will definitely be the casting of Wonka. Gene Wilder is probably more in line with the age Wonka was supposed to be these days, but the disadvantage of that is that he’s no longer as spry as he was. You need somebody with the same kind of calm exterior masking a manic energy. Jim Carrey’s too rubbery – and, besides, he’s already ruined one segment of my childhood. Robin Williams? Once upon a time. But he’s played Peter Pan already, let’s let that one go. No, just as Tim Burton’s the only man I could imagine directing the new Willy Wonka, it seems to me that there’s only one man who could come close to filling Gene Wilder’s shoes.

Alan Cummings

Of course, that’s not my decision to make. I’m just right.