George Lucas is a frog-necked bastard

All right,....

I know it's all fashionable lately to rip on George Lucas but seriously,... I am sick and tired of him destroying my cherished childhood memories by animating their corpses and parading them around with cheap new packaging.

I mean, the new Star wars trilogies were bad enough, but with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull I think Lucas has successfully completed his descent into madness.

Sitting through that film was the cinematic equivalent of watching a bunch of thugs prison-rape a kitten.

And I was on board at the beginning! After seeing the trailer, I was cautiously optimistic. With signature Spielberg directorial styling that made me remember why he is the greatest shot maker in Hollywood I was willing to forgive the strong scent of cheese coming from it and go all in for another adventure with Ford and company.

I was willing to give Lucas the benefit of the doubt with the insane turn he's taken with the way he handles the characters he's created.

I didn't care that Harrison Ford was almost sixty. He still looked damn good and as long as he was wearing that fedora, carrying the bullwhip and brandishing that .45 caliber six shooter I was gonna follow him into Hell.

Then I saw it.

I don't know what was worse,...the shitty dialogue, the painful green-screen shots or the fact that he dusted off the Close Encounters alien for a cameo at the end.

But it was a great learning experience.

I learned that Shai Lebouf can control monkeys and swing on vines like Tarzan, (take that Glen Keane).
I learned that Russians are Nazis in brown uniforms.
I learned that the Ark of the Covenant is in Area 51.
I learned that refrigerators can not only keep your eggs fresh and your milk cold, but if you hide in them, instead of suffocating, you can avoid a nuclear blast and fly!
I learned that Karen Allen is just happy to be there even when she's in mortal danger.
I learned that two Mexican jumping ninjas guard every Mayan, (or whatever jungle civilization it was), temple.
I learned that crystal skulls deter giant killer ants better than Raid.
I learned that Mayan Indian assassins have their friends spackle them into stone walls to wait for intruders, (how do they pee?).
I learned that when you gain ultimate knowledge, your eyes catch fire and you die.

But most of all, I learned that George Lucas is a dumb turd.

If those God-awful Mummy movies were a cheap imitation of the Indy movies, this latest Indy movie was a cheap imitation of the Mummy movies.

I don't know why I'm surprised. There have been glimpses of the madness of king George for years. There was The Star Wars holiday special, ("Don't worry Chewie! We'll get you home for life day!"), and Howard the Duck.

Once George got unlimited power where no one could tell him no, we got The Ewoks, Jabba's Muppet palace and that f**king Jar-Jar Binx, not to mention that happy, blonde, bowl-cut haired kid who played baby Anikin, screaming "yippee" every ten minutes and easily the happiest slave I've ever seen.

The truth of the matter is, George Lucas is a demented Producer, an abysmal director and a person completely uncontaminated by talent. He is however, without a doubt, two things for sure.

He is lucky,...

and he is a great businessman.

And now he has so much power and autonomy that even Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg have to swallow his shit just to have fun making movies.

But where is my argument? At present time, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull has grossed nearly half a billion dollars in just two weeks.

And with numbers like that, you can be assured we will be seeing another Indy movie soon enough and I'm sure they're fast at work on the next script.

Perhaps the title will be, Indiana Jones and the ass-hat who doesn't know how to write for the characters he created.

Here's an idea, George,....why don't you go down to that government warehouse, drag the Ark out of that crate it was sealed in, pop the top, and take a good long look inside.

Maybe it'll clear your head.

My contribution to Christmas

It is with no small amount of satisfaction that I write this.

I say this because, as a child, there was no greater joy than watching Christmas specials.

It was always an event. I would sit down in front of the television and wait for that "Special" teaser to swirl around the screen as the bumper music played, and shortly thereafter, the opening credits of whatever Christmas special I was waiting for would begin,...signifying thirty minutes, (or in some cases a whole HOUR), of yuletide bliss and enraptured joy.

Whether it was the soulful soothing jazz of Vince Gauraldi, (which enamors me to this very day), in the Charlie Brown Christmas, the balladeering warble of Burl Ives in Rankin/Bass's Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, or the thundering rumbling bass of the mighty Thurl Ravenscroft as he admonished, "You're a mean one,....Mister Grinch", (not to mention snow mizer and heat mizer), it was nothing but magic from Thanksgiving weekend until December 25th.

So being a part of something that maintains and adds to the tradition I hold so dear to my own heart is a great Christmas gift in itself,...quite possibly the greatest one I've ever been given.

So check your local times and listings with your local ABC affiliates on November 28th because my Christmas special will be on TV!

After a loooooong and sometimes weary road, and what seemed like an endless gauntlet of opinionated higher ups, my buddy Gary and I, (along with a staff un-matched in talent), were fortunate enough to complete the project Shrek the Halls for Dreamworks and ABC/Disney.

Gary Trousdale, (director of Beauty and the Beast and Hunchback of Notre Dame fame), directed this half hour special and I was head of story on this aka a sort of second in command.

Gary and I also wrote it and got "screenplay by" credit.

The special is about Shrek trying to craft a perfect first Christmas for his new family without letting them know he's never done it before. Everything goes smoothly until, in typical holiday fashion, Donkey shows up with the rest of the "family" to wreak havoc with Shrek's Christmas vision.

ABC has acquired the rights to air it for the next fifteen years and so, up there my work will sit, along with the other Christmas holiday greats like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph and Frosty.

And while I may not feel worthy to sit among these classic giants, I certainly am honored to.

To think that some little kid may sit down this November 28th in that great anticipatory haze as he waits for a Christmas special that I helped craft fills me with almost as much warmth as watching those specials myself.

So Merry Christmas to all,...and to all, (as Shrek would say), a GROSS night!

F**king retard

Been a while.

For the three of you that read this blog, I apologize.

This little news item makes me crazy. Stuff like this seriously drives me bug-shit.

Those of you who know me are aware that I am an artist. I draw and write for a living and I draw, write, sculpt, and do molding/casting/woodworking as a hobby.

In fact, from the age of three on up, I've worked with about every medium known to man from oils to egg tempera, from pencils to pastels.

Long story short, an art teacher was fired from a school, here's the link if you wanna read it and get angry right along with me.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-vegan_25sep25,1,1437189.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Now, it's not what you think,... normally you would assume it was some callous, ignorant school administration who would rather fund the neanderthals on whatever team du' jour passes for athletes at their school and who were just laying in wait for the art instructor to show the kids the statue of David complete with flaccid penis so they could use it as an excuse to shitcan them and buy more,.....balls.

But this time, ladies and lads, it was the art teachers fault. Yes that's what I said. The ART teachers fault.

Short story long,....the teacher, who has recently, (as recently as JANUARY), been reborn as a zealot vegan has been using his class as a recruiting platform for his militant vegetarian views as well as the ever-so-fashionable "animal rights" agenda.

Now, not only did he evade the questioning of school officials as well as admonish the kids NOT to tell their parents about the curriculum shift, but he also said he wouldn't return to the classroom unless Fox River Grove Middle School served only lunches free of animal products

he was quoted as saying, "You are ruining my world and eating my friends,"

What,.....an asshole.

Are you kidding me? The kind of judgement this man displays makes me ecstatic that his services have been dispensed of.

Let's get something straight, captain activism....if you are an art teacher, you are there to teach ART!

ART, YOU TUMBLING NIMROD!

You are there to show them Da vinci, John Singleton Copley, and Weyeth! Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael and all the rest of the turtles who painted!
They should experience the beauty of The Mona Lisa or Watson and the shark or The Daughters of E.D. Boit

Not the latest "fur is murder" campaign! Seriously,...we art teacher types have it bad enough as it is! They all think we're loopy and not quite right. They use words like odd and "eclectic" and "quirky" with the same tone of voice they use when saying words like crazy and weird or maybe even creepy.

The muggles don't know what type of importance to assign to us and they have no mental faculties to assign a fair value to it, yet more often than not, they are the ones in charge.

We art-types spend a lot of time alone, covered in paint, lost in music, and deep in the throes wielding an intangible power a 10th of the population cannot understand and another 30th don't give a shit about. And we art-types teach poetry, art and music to their kids.
We're already starting off under a suspicious eye and then shit like this goes and happens.

So thank you, Mr. fashionably Vegan, recently re-born, animal activist, fruit and salad zealot. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for perpetuating the stereotype.

And after this whole miserable bollocks, the animal rights groups have to pipe in and let us know that His efforts gained praise from them.

Oh good. Because they're fantastic folks too.

Interesting reading...

http://www.rajuabju.com/literature/peta.htm

And as for this Warwak guy,....I'd like to smack him repeatedly in the face with a porterhouse steak while I dance around him in circles, kicking him and singing Russian peasant revolt songs.

Sound like some bizarre assault? A nasty pre-meditated attack on a fellow artist?

I just call it performance art.

They're coming,....to transform my summer.

I'll admit it.

I caved. I tried to hold out as long as I could. I said all the right things that a film-educated artisan of the movie industry was supposed to say. Michael Bay will just glitz it up,...it'll be all frosting and no cake, the dialogue will be trite and schmaltzy, the "humor" will be weak,...the designs are largely preposterous, Bumblebee is not a classic VW Beetle, what the f**k is up with Megatron? Why isn't he a gun? Or at the very least, a plasma cannon or something?

But then,......then I saw the new trailer,....and it had more shots of the robots, like Starscream transforming in mid-air and stomping onto a pile of cars.....and I got an eye twitch.

And then Bumblebee transformed and stood up into scene and my eyebrows, (well, eyebrow, really), went straight up, and finally,....Optimus Prime showed up and as he transformed from eighteen wheeler to battle robot mode, they hooked every one of the little boys residing inside the men watching this trailer in that theatre right in our hearts.

Because when Prime transformed,.....he made,..."the sound".

The SOUND.

And by sound I mean the one I don't have to explain to the fans out there but for the un-initiated, it's that glorious richly modulated series of ratchetings and clickings that accompanies an Autobot or a Decepticon when they're doing their thing.

It's a call to battle, a warning bell, and an "I am coming to kick the energon out of your tailpipe" all rolled into one!

The Choo-choo-chaaah-chaaah-choo! sound that accompanied any one of us with a Jazz or Wheeljack or soundwave in our hands as we desperately rushed to finish transforming the thing before we stopped making the sound.

With that one sound, it told me that Michael Bay knows everything he needs to know about making this film a hit. He's putting in all the little things that he knows are so big to our generation exactly where they should be and he knows what they are and when to hit you with em'.

That's why when I saw that,.....the little twelve year old me came shuffling in, right shoe untied and with a box of Lemonheads in his back pocket, and he kicked that cinematic soapbox right out from under me.

I came crashing to the ground and landed painfully on my shoulder but before I could pick myself up or regain composure, he grabbed me by the ears and simply said, "Opening day, July fourth." (except fourth sounded like fawth because the twelve year old me still has a Lynn/Boston accent), and he wandered off to make Megatron out of Legos.

So, my wiser me has shown me the light and apparently I have resigned myself to going to see this movie and loving every minute of it,....warts and all.

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings"-Optimus Prime; leader of the Autobots. :)

V for Vendetta is the best movie ever.

Seriously.

I adore this movie. V for Vendetta, based on the eighties graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated primarily by David Lloyd is a post apocalyptic dystopian view of London after a huge global war has ravaged the planet and given rise to a facist government.

The movie, while in this bloggers opinion is only a minor departure from the graphic novel, does not set well with Englishman Moore, as he believes that the film has twisted his premise to be a not-so-subtle reflection of the Bush administration.

Indeed it has, but it still works and serves it's purpose shockingly well. The parallels between this story and what is currently manifesting in this country will chill your blood and serve, through new the opiate of the masses known as entertainment, (or edutainment, if you prefer), to open the viewer's eyes to the creeping hand of facism all around them.

From the government engineering a crisis in order to enable a conservative leader, convinced he's doing God's work and with no regard for political process, to take control, to the various scenes of the populace being spied on, and to boot, a very Cheney-like VP named "Creedy", the horrifyingly clear picture of what this country could become is crystal clear.

Throw in a host of brilliant performances, including the ever stunningly beautiful Natalie portman as Evey Hammond, Hugo Weaving as the Fawlksian "V" behind the mask and the maniacally brilliant John Hurt as High Chancellor Adam Sutler and you've got ninety minutes of entertainment whose message may just keep you up at night after you see it.

But most assuredley you will find yourself, as this voracious and vocal veteran of the venal vein of volitile cinema does, quoting fondly in rememberance of Guy Fawlkes,.....

Remember, remember the fifth of November,

The gunpowder treason and plot.

I know of no reason the gunpowder treason,

should ever be forgot.

V for Vendetta is a must see.

Oh look! It's a media witch-hunt!

It's been a while,....

Been busy with work, so for the four or five of you who actually read this journal, I apologize, and I appreciate you checking back here from time to time.

I fully intend to be more active with this thing in the second quarter of this year we call 2007.

So,....Imus.

Imus, Imus, Imus,......cowboy hat-wearing, seven hundred year old Don Imus.

I am NOT a fan of Don Imus. I am a life-long Stern fan.

And being a Stern fan, I am well aware of Imus's horseshit over the years, but that being said,....

The recent firing of the low-level "shock jock" is complete bullshit.

In the same world where Limbaugh can call Obabma a "halfrican-American", where Hannity and Colmes can spew their hate-speech, where noted trans-sexual succubus Ann Coulter can call a Democratic presidential candidate a "faggot", do you mean to tell me that Imus, goofing off like a frat-boy and calling a few women on a basketball team "nappy headed ho's" is worth firing the guy?

Fire Imus cause he's not funny.

Fire Imus because his ratings are down.

Fire Imus because he is too Goddam old to still be in broadcasting but DON'T fire him by standing on some hypocritical moral high ground when scads of other broadcaters around him continue to say far more offensive things and MEAN it, to boot.

And, (here I go,...I'm gonna say it), why on God's green Earth is ANYONE subserviant to a hate-monger like Al Sharpton? Can you tell me that? Any time someone make anything close to what someone considers an "anti-black" statement, Al Sharpton and that mush-mouthed dipshit Jesse jackson come out of the woodwork calling for firings and retribution.

Let me remind those out there that may have short memories that this is the same Jesse Jackson that referred to New York as "Heimie, (Hymie?) town".

Yet despite his anti-semetic statement, he was allowed to apologize and it was waved away because allegedly he, "made that remark in private".

Oh! I SEE! It's okay to be a blathering racist in PRIVATE.

Horseshit. Complete and utter horseshit. I do not like Imus or his show but I know a sacrificial lamb when I see it. I don't know WHAT he's being sacrificed for,.....but I know it's a Witch-hunt.

The double standard continues!

There is a God!

The Police announce a reunion tour.

http://www.antimusic.com/news/07/feb/1303.shtml

Quite possibly the best band of the eighties and certainly my favorite from that decade

Sting, Stuart Copeland and Andy Summers.

I'm kicking myself that I missed their performance at the Grammy, (which I didn't even know was on), awards.

I dunno why,.....by this point in my life I should be way past getting excited about stuff like this,...with mortgage, career, adult crap, etc.

But my enthusiastic inner sixteen year-old is doing cartwheels. I may just have to grab my best friends from high school and check out one of the concerts.

In a music world populated by the likes of that celebutard K-Fed, getting a shot of The Police is like finding an oasis in the Gobi desert.