Wait, I Remember Now... This Was Supposed To Be A CASUAL Blog...

I made a mistake last week. In a post I have since deleted, I proudly declared how, basically, I was going to be treating this blog as a part of my overall business model and force myself to post new and interesting stuff in it every day! So, of course, I immediately became very busy with my comic work and was too tired to have much of anything funny to say and wound up not posting all week. Go me.

Thing is, prior to that, this blog was making me feel really good, posting whatever the heck I feel like whenever I felt like it. It's a genuinely good outlet for ranting and saying things I don't have room to say elsewhere, and I think it only works that well if I keep it casual. If I reach a point where I'm naturally posting every day, great! If I try to force it, though, it takes the fun out of this and could also hurt my other projects which demand much more of my time than this.

Howard The Duck - Should He Live Again?

Howard the Duck was a 1986 movie made by Lucasfilms. It starred a duck named Howard (of course) who lived in a universe where duck lives as man (insert dramatic thunderclap), but is brought to our universe by some sort of science fiction macguffin. It was based on the character of the same name from Marvel Comics who actually dates back to 1973. While the comic character still turns up from time to time, the movie was considered a horrendous, career poisoning flop.

One major issue with the movie (beyond the story, script, and all that jazz), is simply the duck suit effects. Not only is Howard not convincing or particularly emotive, he's unpleasant to look at. He is also incapable of letting loose with his quack-fu, a manner of martial arts that should easily take down the likes of even Chuck Norris. In this movie, there's no way he can unleash a proper fury.

But what about today?

Ignoring for a moment the obvious option of traditional animation (as pointed out by several critics at the time), we now have fairly convincing CGI and motion capture technology. If you'll recall Yoda in the Star Wars prequels, the technology does exist to make someone like Howard into a convincing fighting bad-ass. It also would allow him to be more expressive and natural in general.

Now, I'm not suggesting you could take the same script, toss in CGI Howard and call it a day. Hell no. I'm suggesting that the lack of limitations imposed on Howard by virtue of him not being some guy in a suit would give greater flexibility to what's done with him, and give the writer's more to work with. There could be cool action sequences, the comedic timing would be better... actually, they could use a similar script and it would be better. It wouldn't be good, but the basic addition of range to Howard would improve on the original.

It could still suck even with a new script and CGI, but this is ultimately my point: I believe there are movies out there that were crippled by the technological limitations of their time. The limitations affected both where they could go with the script and how scenes could be executed. Are there flops out there that, given modern technology, should possibly be given another chance? If so, is Howard among them?

How To Solve All Celebrity Scandals Forever

I've been hearing a lot about celebrities behaving badly lately. Every time I turn on celebrity gossip shows, they're talking about celebrity gossip, and frankly, I'm sick of it. I watch these shows day in and day out waiting for them to give me the damn football score, but they never do!

In light of this frustration, I have decided there is only one solution: end celebrity scandal forever.

Over the past couple of minutes, I have considered the best ways to accomplish this. My first solution was to make everyone celebrities, because when everybody is a celebrity, no one will be. I would have accomplished this by giving everyone on Earth their own reality TV show, but that fell through when I realized there would be nobody left to film it all. Tripod technology must advance to brave new heights before this gem of an idea can shine.

My second, insanely brilliant solution was to buy out all the news networks and replace them with increasing numeric incarnations of ESPN, thereby guaranteeing that someone, somewhere would give me the damn score. Unfortunately, all that appears to be in my piggy bank at the moment is a button for a jacket I no longer own and one extremely territorial spider, so I don't have the necessary funds to pull this off. I'm considering getting a paper route to rectify this.

My third solution, one ordained by the heavens themselves and delivered unto my brain by a heavenly choir, was to encourage all celebrities to move to Las Vegas. I have been informed that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, so should the celebrities misbehave, we won't have to hear about. Whatever misbehavior they indulge in will be engulfed by the black hole that is the glittery Vega strip, sparing the rest of us the misery and torment of learning that many of the celebrities we love and idolize are over-glorified jackasses.

Of course, while these are all good ideas, it has just now this very instant occurred to me that I can probably find football scores online, which would probably be a lot easier. Let's see if I can find the one I was looking for...

Ah, here we go! 12.

IM Chat - BatFigure's Productivity Advice

DanTheShive: Ah, instant messaging. Is there any activity more worthwhile?


BatFigure: I'm Batman.



DanTheShive: GAH! What the hell? You have an instant messenger?

BatFigure: Of course I do. I'm Batman.

DanTheShive: No, you're not. You're a Justice League Batman figure I bought from a comic book store and are in no way a threat to DC and its various trademarks and copyrights.

What do you want, anyway?