Yesterday I was explaining the premise of Curb Your Enthusiasm to somebody, and today I watched a bunch of clips on YouTube. The thing that Larry does best is end his seasons with a serious kicker–it’s the punchline for the uber-joke that was being told for the last couple of months. Like, what about that third season?? Or the sixth season (which I still haven’t seen, but have heard enough about to feel like I had)??!! And then, through watching clips, I came across this LD-Marty Scorsese stuff. And it’s funny. It’s a great sendup of gangster movies. But it doesn’t look at all like Scorsese shot it. Then I thought about how HBO shows tend to look cheap. They’re written wonderfully, and with terrific acting and directing, but most of them look like they’re shot with a camcorder in a basement. A couple exceptions are Flight of the Conchords and especially Sopranos. (And I know there are others, but I’m not about to do the kind of research that it takes to write something well! So deal with it!!)

Maybe this low-budget style makes it easier to pay great actors, and allow great writers to take as long as they want to come up with something. And maybe it’s essential to the improvisational, or live performance, quality of Curb and Tenacious D. Anyhow, once streaming HBO exists officially, all I’ll do anymore is watch it.

Now I’m back in New England, but not the mountains of Vermont yet, folks, for now I’m in the swamps of Connecticut. I’m in Mom and Dad’s living room, and he’s workin the P90X while I write. This morning Caitlin did the woman in the gray suit commuting thang on Metro-North down to The City. She and I watched Schmavatar on Christmas, and I’ll admit it was interesting, especially that crazy bio-luminescent flora and fauna, and the only times I felt overly aware of the fact I was looking at CG were the times when real people were in fake helicopters. There was some really dumb dialogue, beat-you-over-the-head parallels to the Iraq war, colonialism and the environmental movement. But still, it’s nice that somebody is addressing (and entertaining) a mass audience with these liberal polemics. And there were some really exciting action sequences, and a cool alien concept that I won’t divulge lest I be called a spoiler. I forgot to mention this galling fact: the Na’vi subtitles were written in…PAPYRUS!When I get back to my home/office computer up north, I think I’ll post the full Captain Walton, since its plot so closely parallels the Av’s, right down to hot, blue alien babes and mining for rare crystals.

Oh, here’s another diary doodad I forgot to show ya! A bit cutesy, yes, but that’s what sells, kid.

All my blog friends have been blogging awesome/hilarious stuff and I haven’t been reading it! Even Devon returned from nowhere. Sorry Devon, I don’t think you’re awesome or hilarious. jaykaying, oh my g! So now I’m writing too.

Here’s the deal. Basically I’ve just been drawing portraits of BFFs lately. One for what’s become the defunct-est artists’ community/blog I’ve ever seen, and the other for, of all places, Slate!

A couple weekends ago Jen played me this song. It roolz. Love the weird operatic soprano.

I just want to properly acknowledge all the sites that linked to the Inspiratomatic, especially Pop Candy, Neatorama, Fecal Face, Buzz Feed, The Presurfer, Ueba (in Portuguese and in English), QBN, Boar’s Head Tavern, the How Design Blog and The Little Chimp Society. This is not to mention all those social bookmarkers on Stumble Upon, Twitter, Facebook, Del.icio.us, etc. Thanks.

And check out the young Abraham Lincoln who must journey through time and space to end injustice wherever, and whenever, it stands! (Comic coming up at I am the Last VCR.)

You may have noticed that this and the last posts’ drawings are particularly sexual and wiener-oriented (I checked the spelling Cait, it is “ie,” not an exception to the rule – I <3 U), blame Alfred Kubin. A few weeks ago Caitlin and Danielle and I went to the Neue Gallerie and looked at a show of his drawings and watercolors. It had sort of hokey mood elements, like creepy silhouettes behind windows and a room with period artifacts and brooding German music, but this stuff actually did its part in adding to the atmosphere, especially because it was relegated mainly to the hall and away from most of the artwork. I had no idea the man existed until Danielle said we should go see the show. Exquisitely disturbed, monstrous stuff. Sex and death and terrible beasts and bleak landscapes.

And speaking of terrible beasts, you can bet this wang would have been longer if I had known from the beginning that this was a horse man.

The Inspiratomatic has gotten a really positive response from my dearly beloved, so I got a domain for it. I’m gonna see if it can’t make at least a minor splash in the Blagoblogosphere. Just a heads up. So look out!

Speaking of Dr. Strange, I drew a picture of him (below). In my never-ending quest for accurate detail and my nerdy desire to stay “on model,” half way through doodling the occult surgeon, I looked up drawings of him by co-creator Steve Ditko on the Google. I had read through his adventures in the Marvel Essentials format, which is a big soft cover, black & white newsprint book. I thought the crazy character designs and psychedelic dreamscapes were basically the coolest thing to ever happen in super hero comics. Then, thanks to the Google and Sanctum Sanctorum Comix, I saw it in color. Whoah. God bless those little old ladies in Connecticut that meticulously cut out all those halftone screens in these acid candy rainbow hues.

Here’s that follow-up I promised. These are marked as copyright of Field Publications, but it looks like they belong to the Dr. Seuss Collection at the University of California, San Diego. They’re from a collection my mom found at a used book store called Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel. It’s by Richard H Minear and was published by The New Press, New York, 1999.

Apparently the good doctor drew political cartoons from 1941 to ‘42 for PM, a liberal New York rag, before he joined the service making instructional and propaganda films. Seeing this many of his drawings back to back to back pointed out how clearly Seuss used the silhouette to improve legibility. It’s a classic trick of cartooning and animation, that an action is clearer if it can be judged by the shape of the figure against the background (this is also a trope of character design). So, rather than sipping a drink held in front, cartoon characters turn their heads sideways and gulp it from an uplifted hand. Anyhow, the dude gets it.

I’ve also been reading Popeye and Krazy Kat and Little Nemo comics lately, and I feel like I could stand to incorporate some of the frontal, theatrical nature of old comic strips into my own work. I tend to compose cinematically, with camera angles and a sense of space, but I’m really drawn to the clarity and elasticity when the characters are at the front of the frame, and the scenes are behind them. This is something that’s worked for book illustration since the illuminated manuscripts. But what do I know? Maybe my overly-rendered backgrounds are my thing. Maybe I’m more a product of the movie theater than the stage.

Okay! That’s enough art school blah blah blah for today. Here are those drawings I’m ripping off:

I’ve kept meaning to do a Stephen Colbert-style celebratory post with confetti and balloons on this subject for quite a while now, and my previous entry reminded me to do it. Please, consider the following (from the VH1 website):

Now, please dig this incredibly prescient comic from late in aught-six:

This was inevitable, of course. After the bell bottoms of the late Nineties gave way to the Eighties revival which was replaced by early Nineties grunge and hip hop cool, where else could we look for semi-ironic cultural inspiration but our own goddamn decade?? And so we have. Bless you, VH1. I can’t wait until cargo pants are back in style this fall.

Basically, as always, I have Blog Guilt. My man Dan is actually pulling through (well, he has for 2 whole days) on posting a song and a drawing every day, or some bullshit. So, in honor of him, and so as to not go 2 full weeks without posting, I present a high point in music and in animation:

I’m resisting the idea of posting illustrations on here, cause that’s what a website’s for, right? But, I’m not exactly updating that very fervently… I just don’t know. My roommate thinks I should toss up storyboard work on here, cause it’s work I won’t put on the portfolio, but it’s drawings I’m working on that are filling up my day. I just don’t know how to feel about that.