shutupcang's Xanga

Happy New Year!

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 09:35:20 GMT

Obviously this isn’t a comic, but I was working on ADN41 and the possibility came up that I wouldn’t use this drawing afterall. But I liked it a lot, so rather than consign it to oblivion I thought I’d put it here. That’s Maggie there working on her New Year’s resolution. It’s been a week and a half. How are your resolutions going?

omg rock star??

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:48:33 GMT

Yah so, I've got band practice tomorrow with a couple consultants from my office. We're doing a company gig at the end of November and I'm already nervous. I mean, what the fuck do I know about music?

Okay, but to be very honest I'm quite happy with myself. Bass guitar in most of rock is no sweat, but three of the songs in our set are fairly involved in comparison, and I had to transcribe the tablature for two of them. Playing a song is one thing. It's infinitely more satisfying knowing that you figured it out yourself.

Set list:
Tom Petty - "Learning To Fly"
Neil Young - "Like A Hurricane"
Nirvana (David Bowie) - "The Man Who Sold the World"
The Band - "The Weight"
Foo Fighters - "Everlong" (acoustic)

test

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:29:47 GMT

Christmas came early

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:31:32 GMT

Some anonymous donor out there knew what I needed and provided it. Whoever you are, I am touched and exceedingly grateful. And if you are who I think you are, do you realize the irony of this gift?

A PSA for the ladies

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:24:01 GMT

If you say to a man, "You look like my nephew. Because you look young. It's a compliment," it's not a compliment. No part of that is...complimentary.

The Dark Knight

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:27:40 GMT

Overall I liked The Dark Knight, but there were some instances of extremely poor cutting, poor writing, and really bad plot conceptions. Let's go through them.

BEGIN*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*

When Rachel Dawes is threatened by the Joker, District Attorney Harvey Dent asks her who she trusts, and she replies, "Bruce. His mansion is probably the safest place in Gotham." Now this hearkened back to a very poorly edited scene earlier in the film in which Bruce Wayne is holding a fundraising party for Dent. The Joker easily crashes this party and...I don't know...presumably kills everyone at the party after Dent, Wayne, and Dawes escape. The movie completely ignores the aftermath of the invasion. It is this incredibly lousy scene that ruins Dawes' line about the safety of Wayne Manor. Do you call that security? I can only assume that the party was not held at Wayne Manor, but the film didn't do a very good job of letting me know exactly where they were at the time. I mean, hell, there was a helicopter pad AND trap doors for Bruce to escape into and change into Batman. Wasn't that Wayne Manor?

It was apparently central to the Joker's plot to be in prison and then escape from prison. Jim Gordon, while questioning the Joker in the interrogation room, decides he wants to play good cop-bad cop and for some reason this necessitates removing the Joker's handcuffs. Now, I'll allow for this because it does produce an intimidating effect, but what I won't allow for is the incredibly stupid decision of putting a cop in the interrogation room with the Joker after Batman beats the shit out of him. What kind of moronic police force would do that? Had they never heard of locking the door? Director and screenwriter Christopher Nolan wrote this in just to provide a hostage for the Joker's escape.

I accept that the Joker is some kind of criminal genius and is able to be in so many places without...*ahem*...being noticed, but Harvey Dent is not a criminal genius. And yet, once he turns into Two-Face, he can seemingly pull off the same random appearances that the Joker does-- again-- without being noticed. *cough* Showing up randomly in a bar, lucky enough to find his victim there even though throngs of Gotham's citizens are amassed together like herds of buffalo? Wow, able to sneak into Maroni's car without Moroni's driver noticing? Able to survive the car accident after he shoots the driver? Wow. Oh, and he comes up with this moronic thing about chance with his lucky two-head coin. It looks like something he got out of a collector's edition of Monopoly. So he's in a hospital bed and he sees his shiny coin looks fine after the fire and he's happy until he flips it over and sees the other side is messed up. So he starts wailing like a baby. Now let me be fair; I understand this isn't an easy thing to write for, so Nolan did one very smart thing and that was cut out the sound during this scene, cuz otherwise I would've rolled my eyes so far around I'd've gone blind and missed the rest of the movie.

END*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*

There's a little more I could talk about I guess but I'll stop the negatives here. A couple things done correctly:
1) replacement of Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhaal, who looked crazy-adorable, 2) the end of the chase scene which looked like an homage to Tim Burton's Batman, 3) Heath Ledger's light touch on the Joker, and 4) the overall message and theme of the film, which gave The Dark Knight its title.

All relative

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:21:19 GMT

"4 teens, all good students and athletes." / "...star students and football players."

A statement like that might make some people wonder aloud at the thought of a violent crime. But if you've ever been to high school and aren't delusional, you should know that a "star student" has a B average and "athlete" is also known as "prick."

Quote of the century

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:29:46 GMT

"youlll never guess what i found in my nose after the fair :o!"

This one's over my head

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:13:28 GMT

Okay, so you're a member of an Iraqi death squad and you find out this kid is gay. And you're like, fuck, Allah hates gays! So then you decide the best way to punish him is to have gay sex with him everyday.

Should've Hired Me

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:59:29 GMT

So this public official creates an anti-gay comic book in Oklahoma County and I have to say it's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. It's more like he photocopied stuff out of his notebook and stapled it together. He even has a spelling error displayed prominently during an interview on CNN. I mean really, can anyone take you seriously?