Okey-dokes

I rushed out to Wal-Mart today to get some stuff especially for this blog post. Unfortunately, drumrolls only come in packs of 10, but I was able to pick up a couple of fanfares on sale. Why all the big to-do? Because my flash got posted to the Albino Blacksheep frontpage. I'll say that again in case you got distracted or were looking away during that last sentence. My cartoon was posted on the front page of Albino Blacksheep today! I'm so excited about this, the hopeful beginning of a career with animation. So go watch it, you crud-sucking pus monkeys.

Naught

I don't really have much to say right now. Thus, the post dearth. I've just started work on another cartoon, the contents of which will stay pretty much a secret to everybody until it's done. I will hopefully have a telephone interview this week with the Concordia Language Villages for work this summer. I will be visiting lovely Lawrenceville later this week to say good-bye to my good friend Chris, who will be leaving for California, Alaska, and parts unknown in about a week's time. I plan to attend the Beale Street Music Festival in early May in Memphis, and then to do some sort of hiking/camping with my friend Justine. My plan would be to drive from there up to Minnesota if I get the job and take a leisurely, sight-seeing sort of drive. Look at some national forests along the way. Visit the Twine Ball and the Spam Museum. Hang out with some friends I studied with in Berlin who live up that way. And then work, coincidentally with a couple of those same friends, at the aforementioned summer camp. Then, when that's over, I drive back down, pack up my whole life and move it to North Carolina. I dunno yet about my cartoon getting on Albino Blacksheep. They haven't updated since I've submitted it, but we'll see. I guess I'm sort of doubting it will make their frontpage. If it doesn't, I'll link to the address where they let me upload it for their submission forum.

That is all.

The end

Today marks the end (sort of) of about a year's worth of work. It wouldn't be completely accurate to say that I completed the cartoon I've been working on, though I don't want to go so far as to say I've given up on it either. I've completed the cartoon itself, minus a few tweaks here or there I know I need to make. It's about three minutes long, and almost everything I'd hoped it to be. I wanted to have a thing during the credits of the main robot character, the Helping Robot, dancing (yes, doing the robot dance, of course). I wanted strobe lights, one of those light balls that has different colors, General Grievous twirling glow sticks, and a few other jokes as well. But in the end I decided that my skills weren't up to par, it would take me forever to do it anywhere near well, and truthfully, I was getting tired with the cartoon. I want to move on to other projects that have been bouncing around in this head of mine (because there's lots of room in there, har de har har). I don't know what to feel at this point. I was expecting to have to do a minute's more animation, and now all of a sudden I'm done, because I'm...what? lazy? dejectedly aware of my low ability with Flash? tired of waiting the 1 and 1/2 hours for the file to save? Yeah, probably.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to showing it to my little brother. I think he'll enjoy it. And hopefully, one day, when I have a cartoon website and am good at Flash, I'll go back and add in all the stuff I wanted to and make it look nice and shiny and oh so much better. Until then, it's done, and I'm satisfied with the work I did. Be sure to click on the above picture for a better look. I'm proud to say that I personally came up with half of the characters shown. Hopefully I'll be posting within the next week a link to the cartoon itself. I'm going to try to get it hosted at Albino Blacksheep.

Jokes: they're not just for breakfast anymore

Jokes are something very important to me. They're pretty high up on my list of important things in life, right up there with keeping sharp things away from my eyeballs and remembering to never, ever smell it when some guy says, "Hey, smell this." I really enjoy making other people laugh. I like to get to know people well enough to feel them out and know what tickles their proverbial funny bone.

(Fun fact: the "funny bone" takes its name from Latin word for the long bone of the arm, Humerus. Get it? Humerus? Humorous? Ha ha. The ancient Greeks believed that there were four basic humours, or liquids, in the body. But you don't hear anyone calling bile "funny juice", do you?)

But I think the main reason I make jokes is to make myself laugh. It's one of the basic ways I enjoy life. I want to keep being able to laugh no matter what situation I'm in. I want to see the irony and laugh about it, even if I'm getting the short end of the stick. I like to laugh at myself when I realize how stupid I'm being or when my ego starts acting up.

However, because of my insane amount of funny intake, I have somewhat of a refined palate when it comes to humor. I find that I am the toughest audience for my jokes. I've gotten to a point where many of the things I come up with don't amuse me all that much. Then, of course, I get to laugh at myself for being such a dork, but it also pushes me to be funnier. F'rinstance. I wanted to do some sort of picture for St. Patrick's Day, like I did for Valentine's Day. I didn't want to use the same idea as last time, and have Wendell the Worm biting off a leprechaun's head, so I tried to think of something else. I thought about Lucky the Leprechaun (of Lucky Charms fame) looking back over his shoulder, holding a box of cereal, and about to open a door, saying "They'll never find me here." On the other side of the door would be the typical group of kids, but holding various implements of destruction, like a board with a nail in it, a chain, a hangman's knot, or a steel pipe. Or maybe have "Lucky Charms: they're tragically malicious!" underneath the drawing. Aside from the fact that I'm sure it's been done before, when I started drawing it I just couldn't convince myself it was funny. I like my humor to be somewhat original (barring stealing really good jokes, which I consider to be one of the fundamentals of the trade). So then I thought up this scene: a rainbow, and at the end of it, instead of a pot of gold, a shiny toilet (maybe a gold toilet), and underneath it would say "Happy St. Potty's Day!". And I don't think I need to tell you how dumb that is. Besides, I ran out of time and energy.

In conclusion, there's a couple of things that bother me about the Lucky Charms commercials. One is that these kids never have any adult supervision (though that can be said about most cereal commercials, barring Apple Jacks and older Honey Comb ads). These kids were obviously never raised to think that stealing was wrong. They never think to offer to buy the Lucky Charms. Conversely, Lucky the Leprechaun is sitting on a goldmine. Why doesn't he ever realize the financial possibilities of his cereal? It's not like he has a pot of gold or anything; his only asset is an endless supply of Lucky Charms boxes. Lucky should wise up and start selling the cereal to the kids. But on the other hand, that probably wouldn't make too entertaining of a commercial, much less a funny advertising mascot. Forget I said anything.

Now I'm confused

I was in a Publix store just the other day and saw a number of advertisements for Six Flags. Each sported an image of that agile geezer, Mr. Six. In a previous post I (somewhat sadly) announced the passing of this cultural icon. Could it be that he's back? Did Daniel Snyder change his mind? Was it changed for him?

Though the decision was probably made because the Mr. Six character indeed has gained the theme parks a financial boost, I guess maybe I'll change my mind a little bit about how much of a jerk and dope Daniel Snyder is. I find that I am inclined to dislike anyone related to football. Why? Because when I was a kid, they would show college football on Saturday mornings on CBS. That wouldn't have been a problem, except that whoever did the scheduling for CBS decided to allot only two hours to the football games. The games, however, would invariably go over that allotted time and also include post-show summaries and crap like that. As a result, I usually only ever got to see the ending credits for The Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys (starring Howie Mandel), a show which I doubt will be coming out on DVD any time soon. Grrrr...

Library Adventures Part Two

One of the things I do in my position as night supervisor at a college library is to straighten up the place before closing. I pick up books lying around, push chairs in, shut down computers, etc. Usually I have to move some of the larger chairs around because about every other night or so somebody decides they need a big cushy chair in a remote part of the library building. I've put chairs, study carrells, and even fire extinguishers back where they belong.

It gets frustrating quite often. About a year ago, the college decided to cut back on its budget in every single department possible. That meant firing about 8 people campus-wide without any sort of warning, as well as telling our head of food services that she would have to work with a smaller amount of money for the coming year. She said she couldn't do it and quit shortly after that. So the college decides to hire Aramark to do the food service. Part of the package deal is that they get to put a coffee shop in our library. Not a single one of the librarians here wanted that, but not a single one of the librarians had a vote in the matter. So now there's trash all over the place every night at closing. I have to throw away empty (and sometimes full) cups of coffee, muffin and cookie wrappers, you name it. I remember back to the first day of middle school, when our teachers told us that no one would be cleaning up after us anymore. Maybe it's the way I was raised, but it's hard for me to understand what's going on in the mind of someone who leaves trash on tabletops in a library.

I didn't really come here to rant, though. I was just using the opportunity of a captive audience (namely, this keyboard and computer screen) to do so, because it would be much frowned upon by my boss if I were to write any sort of editorial to the newspaper to the effect that going to a private university should mean that you're mature enough to clean up after yourself. *Ahem* On to what I originally set out to talk about.

Aside from books, chairs, and trash, I pick up whatever is left behind by students and community members. If it's anything substantial, or something that would be missed and looked for later on, it goes in our Lost & Found pile. Anything less I tend to keep. Normally it's just pens. I now have a massive box of pens, pencils, and markers, half of which come from this library. During our winter break, I went through the Lost & Found, trying to find out if the owners could be identified. When they could, I sent emails informing them as to the location of their belongings. If not, it was trashed, recycled, or kept by me. Mostly what I kept were the books. Textbooks, easy reading, you know, stuff college kids use and lose. I sold quite a few of them on Half.com, and made an extra little $40 or so. I also gave my stepdad a really nice watch that managed to stay here for about two months (I think it might have been a Fossil).

But what makes my day sometimes is when I find something funny. Once, it was a piece of paper in a trash can. Was I rummaging for scraps or something? Do they not pay me enough? No, but I do try to make sure that paper makes it into the recycle bins rather than the regular trash cans in an effort to give half a crap about the environment (which is half a crap more than most people here). This particular piece of paper's back side was entirely filled up with random words, most of them repeated four or five times. "Crevice crevasse crevice crevasse crevice crevasse" sticks out in my mind. The other day I found the little note card that you see above. I think it speaks for itself, so I'll end this post here.

Döner...or something

Y'know what I miss? Yeah, Döner Kebap. It's the fast food I fell in love with during my time in Berlin. Wikipedia can describe its contents, history, and regional variation a lot better than I can, so read more about it there. I liked them so much partially because of the taste, partially because of how cheap you could get them if you knew where to go. I've heard that there are about 1,500 Döner stands in Berlin alone. At the shopping centers and train stations, you'd normally expect to pay anywhere from 3 to even 5 Euros. There was a place just around the corner from my apartment building, though, that was having their "5-year anniversary" sale the entire four months of my stay, and you could get a Döner for just 1 Euro. I'm guessing they're still celebrating that 5 years to this day.

Where I would normally go, though, was the stand just underground the Friedrichstraße station, right by the subway platforms. This particular stand was having a 2-year anniversary the four months I was in Berlin, and their offer was 1.80 Euros for what, in my opinion, was the best Döner I knew of. I typically bought 2 or 3 a week, and eventually the guy who worked the stand and I would have little conversations. Being (historically) a Turkish food, many stands are run by Turkish--what should I say? immigrants?--many are probably second- or third-generation by now, but this guy was a more recent immigrant. He had a heavy accent, and truthfully, my German at the time was probably just as good as his was. I hope someday that I'll make it back to Berlin and that guy will recognize me when I get a Döner at his stand.

Mysteries of the Universe, Part Five

Looks like I can't put off posting to this blog thing any longer, because it's time once again for Mysteries of the Universe, the monthly feature where I delve the depths of the blah blah blah you know the drill by now. This month, we look at a man whom many of you may remember from a hip show on Nickelodeon about a decade ago called The Adventures of Pete & Pete, starring Pete, Pete's brother Pete, and me, Ellen--I mean, wait, no--WHGT! JGTH! Yes I'm awesome!

Anyway, the very first half-hour episode they did for the show ("What I did on my summer vacation") centered around the character of Mr. Tastee, the man who showed up in the Tasteemobile the first hot day of June every year, ready to peddle his Blue Tornado Bars, Lemon Licky Nubs, and Orange Splurto Sticks to the sweaty youths of Wellsville. The plot of the episode went thus: Pete, Pete, and Ellen decided they'd like to get to know the real Mr. Tastee, who seemed quite lonely. Mr. Tastee was, in fact, intimacy challenged, and resisted their efforts. He eventually convinces them that he's just part of summer itself, and promised to come back the next year.

But Mr. Tastee never did come back, not that year, or either of the next to seasons. He was referenced briefly in another episode, but that was it. Given, I understand, he's not a strong enough character to keep around for more than the one episode focussing on him. Any more would have overdone it. And The Adventures of Pete & Pete seems more to be about memories of childhood itself, how so many of the things we experience in our youth are completely absurd and defy explanation, yet manage to be so singularly wonderful, partially because they'll never be recaptured. And besides, giving Mr. Tastee an identity within the show wouldn't make sense; it would ruin his character. (Though it is hinted that his real name might be Leonard; at least, that's what the rich blind woman on the street where the Petes lived--played by Kate Pierson of the B-52s--called him.)

But I decided that, even if the brothers Pete and their friend Ellen could not discover Mr. Tastee's identity, perhaps I could figure out who the actor inside that great big swirly head really was. I went over the entire internet with a fine-tooth digital comb to bring you the answer. I didn't find it, of course, but I found out where to find it. I saw somewhere online that the DVD commentary for the episode revealed the actor behind the mask. So I popped the thing in and watched the episode again. Of course the creators of the show didn't tell until the end, but tell they did. Mr. Tastee was played by none other than Toby Huss, who also played Artie (the strongest man...in the world!) up until the third season of Pete & Pete. That is, Huss played the body of Mr. Tastee, not the voice. And when you look at Mr. Tastee's movements, you can tell. I'm not sure who did the voice--they only say in the commentary that one would find his name in the credits, but there are three different possibilities, after you rule out the producer's kid's cameo and Clem.

Perhaps, as the older Pete says at the end of the episode, "some things are supposed to stay a mystery".