I am posting this at 11:11 on 1-1-11 because it seemed like a good thing to do.
When it comes to New Year's resolutions, I'm pretty boring because I have the exact same New Year's resolutions every year. The same five goals going on for heaven only knows how long. This year is no different, except I am working on some projects which will definitely add some excitement to my 2011. More on that later.
Here's my score card for fulfilling my resolutions in 2010...
Here's hoping that the Pop-Tart people keep making new flavors so I can fulfill my resolutions again this year!
And now for what's new this decade...
I work. A lot. And while it's work I love, the fact that it's non-stop and never-ending has sucked most of the joy out of what I do. This year I am trying to rediscover the joys to be found in creativity by coming up with projects just for me. Five new projects to go with the same five resolutions I do every year. Five projects centering around stuff I like to do, but don't get to do so much any more...
And here we go...
DAVE'S FIVE PROJECTS FOR 2011
• The Hard Rock Project. I owe the Hard Rock Cafe a huge debt for continuing to inspire me to travel to new places. When I think of all the awesome cities I've discovered that I would have never visited if not for a Hard Rock being there, my gratitude knows no bounds. Coming up with a project to celebrate my love of Hard Rock collectibles wasn't easy, but then I saw my closet packed full of their T-shirts and the HARD ROCK 100 PROJECT was born. For 100 days I'll be wearing a favorite Hard Rock T-shirt from my collection and sharing the photo both on my DaveCafe fan site and my DaveCafe Flickr feed. Here is Day One (which you can read about by clicking on it)...
• The Artificial Duck Project. After losing my T-shirt printer, twice, I kind of let the Artificial Duck Co. store languish for a year. That's going to change. I've been working on some new T-Shirts and will be getting that set up at yet another printer soon. But that's not all... more totally sweet crap you can't live without is being planned and should be appearing this Summer.
• The Writing Project. After being invited to RW's house for pizza and plenty of good conversation, I realized that I wanted to start writing again. I used to write stories all the time, and loved the escape I got from it. But then my blog kind of took over all my writing time and I stopped. This Spring that's going to change in a big way. You'll be finding out all about it sometime in March.
• The Drawing Project. Before computers took over all my design work, I used to draw, paint, and even sculpt. Don't get me wrong, I love designing on the computer, but it's not the same as "getting your hands dirty" with a pencil and a drawing pad. Proving that one thing leads to another, The Writing Project led to me finding The Drawing project. It's been a lot of fun, and should also be debuting in March.
• The Secret Project. Yeah, this one is going to take a while... most of the year, in fact. I'm waaaayyyy over my head this time. And loving every minute of it. So far.
And that's it. Plans are already in motion.
Here's to an interesting 2011.
I have never told the whole story of how my blogging mascots, Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey, came to be. I thought perhaps I would save it for their tenth birthday in 2012, but something has come up to change my mind. Thanks to an offer too good to refuse, I managed to purchase a custom Gowalla stamp featuring the DaveToon Duo. For those not familiar with Gowalla, it is a location-based social networking game where you can follow where your friends go, collect location stamps, find interesting new spots, and keep track of the places you've been.
Until recently "custom stamps" were only available to "landmark" spots like The Eiffel Tower or to spots that the Gowalla Team liked (usually in Austin, where they are based). But there was an entry-price stamp test program I signed up for and, voilà, Blogography has it's own stamp...
My logo on the left, the Gowalla stamp interpretation on the right (enlarged 250%).
And now the story of how I cam up with Bad Monkey and Lil' Dave. So I can do a good job of it, I've got back through all my old file archives and pulled out all my early sketches and drawings, so you can see how things came together from the very beginning.
Surprisingly, Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey were not created for Blogography. They were originally drawn up to solve a problem at my other blog, DaveCafe, which is a travel journal and review site for all the Hard Rock Cafes I've been to.
The problem was that I love the Hard Rock, and I felt really terrible when I had something bad to say about one of my visits. Trying to distance myself from my own criticism, I came up with the idea of having an alter-ego who would talk about anything "bad" which would leave me to be the hero and talk about all the good stuff from my visit. Since I've long been fascinated by monkeys, I thought that it would be cool to have a kind of "Curious George" sidekick... but wicked-crazy instead of curious to deliver the bad news.
And thus the idea for "Dave and Bad Monkey" was born while I was in New York on July 13th, 2002.
When starting out on a project like this, I often fill an entire page with a "base" element (in this case, a head-shape) then draw up numerous variations around it. At this point, I was mainly concerned with getting the hair right, but was also working on the eyes and nose. The mouth was always going to be a simple slit from the very beginning, as the Dave character was supposed to be "neutral" when delivering his review...
As I drew more and more variations, I was refining the hair to be more styled. In the beginning, it's simple shapes and pen-tool scribblings, but ends up having curves to look more realistic. Once I got to the last head, I thought the hair was getting a little too perfect. Which doesn't really look like me at all. My hair is a perpetual mess, and so I went back and redrew the last row to have a more spikey look in the bangs.
Below is a close-up of some of the characters above. Originally, the eyes were all round, but I went back and started trying ovals. I wasn't sure of the right size so I played with that as well...
After filling the page and getting to a hairstyle I liked, I realized that my head-shapes were too vertical. Computer screens are wider than they are tall so I wanted a character which would economize height. Working on a copy of the file, I turned all the heads horizontal and rearranged the hair and facial features to fit...
The wider head made Dave look much, much younger, so I toyed with the idea of adding a five o'clock shadow so he'd look more like an adult.
At this point, I thought the round eyes made Dave look stoned so I changed everything to ovals. Then I became convinced that the oval head-shape was lazy, and started playing around with the idea of using more of a squashed-egg look instead. Once I did that, the rounded hair was starting to look "over-styled" to me again, so I went back to my original concept and started messing around with simple pen-tool spikes for hair...
After a number of head-shape iterations I decided to go back to an oval. The egg-shape made his cheeks look pudgy, and I liked the simplicity of an oval better. Wanting to simplify things further, I removed the lines in the ears. I had abandoned the five o'clock shadow for a while but eventually came back to it because I thought it made my character more unique...
It was around this time that I became obsessed with the nose. Up until this point they had all tapered at the bridge in order to add depth to the shape. But I disliked having something so pointy on the face. The only thing spikey was supposed to be the hair, and so I re-drew the nose with a consistent pen width. It still bothered me, but at least it looked "right" on the face now. The last thing I worked on was the hair. Since Dave was flat I liked the idea of making the hairstyle two-dimensional. That way I could just flop his hair to make him point in the other direction.
After roughly two hours of sketching across six Adobe Illustrator pages, I had narrowed down the design to two choices...
At this point, my decision was easy. The rounded hair looked like a strange comb-over and seemed a bit ordinary. The spikey hair was more cartoony, interesting, and reminded me of one of the greatest cartoon characters of all time, Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. So all that was left was to create a Bad Monkey sidekick. There was no sketching this time around. I removed the hair and face from Dave, shrunk it, then just drew a monkey face on it. The total design time for my monkey pal was probably five minutes...
The problem was that he didn't look very "bad" and came across as kind of sedate. I thought the beady round eyes would add a little crazy, but it wasn't enough. Thinking I was over-thinking things, I went ahead and published the cartoon heads at DaveCafe and went to bed.
Then couldn't get to sleep. It really bugged me that Bad Monkey was getting short changed, since using him as a scapegoat was what caused me to create the cartoons in the first place. Rather than do variations of a dozen different monkey heads, I just kept tweaking and fine-tuning the drawing I already had. I remember adding spikey fur on his head, but he looked too much like Dave. Eventually I thought I'd just draw him screeching with his mouth open because it was the only way I could think of to make him look a little insane...
And just like that, I had found Dave and Bad Monkey!
Except not quite.
When I reduced the heads down to size, Dave's mouth looked a bit like a grimace, so I redrew it as a smile. And hated it. His nose, which had always bothered me, looked like a blob when outlined in black, so I changed it to something more subtle. I wasn't terribly happy with the end result, but it was getting very late, so I went ahead and published them anyway...
And that's how the characters would stay for nearly a year.
Tune in tomorrow for the exciting finale...
Can you feel the excitement? Can you? Well I'll see you tomorrow then!
Here it is... PART TWO of the story of how my DaveToon blog mascots came to be! If you haven't read Part One yet, you'll probably want to do that first.
Right off the bat, I'm going to have to apologize for lying to you yesterday. I had promised that I'd be sharing NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN images of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey in 3-D but, alas, I'm going to have to wait until tomorrow so I can get a few problems with the 3-D to 2-D rendering sorted. It will be worth the wait though, I promise!
Anyway, getting back to the story... Bad Monkey and Lil' Dave had been languishing on my Hard Rock fansite, DaveCafe, for just over a year. Then, in September of 2003, I was preparing for a trip to visit Hard Rock Cafes in Reykjavik and Stockholm. A fellow Hard Rocker in Japan had once given me his "Hard Rock business card" and I decided that was a handy thing to have. I could put my email and website address on it and hand it out to Hard Rock fans I meet. My cheap-o ink-jet printed cards ended up looking like this...
At this point, the DaveToons had (literally) become my calling card for DaveCafe. But it was this humble blog where most of my time and effort were going. Finally, inevitably, on February 11th, 2004, worlds collided. I had written a Blogography entry where I mentioned a monkey showing up at work with an ebola virus, and it occurred to me that I could make Bad Monkey be that monkey. But he and Toon-Dave were only heads, so I had to slap together some bodies for them. Since I thought it was important for people to know where they came from, I put the DaveCafe logo on Toon Dave's shirt...
You'll also note that I had to figure out how to make Toon-Dave's head turn, which was a lot more complicated than you might guess. It took hours for me to figure out how that might work, since he's so firmly rooted in two dimensions. Eventually, I just slapped an ear on the side of his head where I thought it should go, then worked the hair around it.
Now that Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey had more than just heads, it was time to redesign my DaveCafe site. I announced the coming change around the end of February, 2004...
And the site went live in April with Toon Dave doing all kinds of interesting stuff...
For the next couple of years, Toon Dave continued to make dozens of appearances at Blogography. Bad Monkey made zero appearances. He was meant to embody negativity over at DaveCafe, and I made a conscious effort to keep him there. About the only thing new to happen was that Toon Dave got a very important addition to his anatomy in January of 2005 (I thought it was pretty impressive, but Avitable would take it to an entirely new level a few years later)...
While not really "new," in June, 2005 I decided I wanted to try my hand at animating DaveToons. With absolutely no experience, I started studying what it would take to make them speak. The idea was to create a cartoon talk show called Dave's Bad-Ass Blogography Show...
The following month I played around with the idea of making them move using Flash...
It was a fun experiment, but proved far too time-consuming for me to take seriously. Maybe one day I'll find the time to actually make a complete animation. Maybe.
2006 was the year things started changing. First of all, Bad Monkey made the first of many, many appearances in January. I finally found a use for him where he could be as bad as he wanted to be...
Granted, it was a pretty crappy appearance. Bad Monkey's body was just Toon Dave's body colored brown. Still, it was a start.
And then things really changed.
When DaveToons first started appearing in Blogography, they were specifically designed to be as fast and easy to draw as possible. Toon Dave didn't have hands, he had mittens. Fingers take time to draw. Bad Monkey didn't look like a monkey, he looked like a person dressed as a monkey. Lanky limbs and tails take time to draw. Everything was colored flat and boring. Shaded color takes time to draw. I was perfectly happy with all the DaveToons looking crappy because they took almost no time to slap together.
But eventually it started to reeeeaally bother me. The more appearances they made on my blog, the more upset I'd get that they didn't look as good as they should. So on May 6th, 2006, I spent a couple of hours and started over from scratch. With a DaveToon I titled Best Friends, Toon Dave and Bad Monkey were reborn...
It took about a year for the transition to fully take effect, but the look had finally been fixed. Now that the look was fixed, it was the name "Toon Dave" that was bothering me. Toon Dave was no longer just a toon version of myself. He was an entirely different character with an entirely different life. Fortunately, when I guest-blogged over at Hilly's Snackiepoo blog in August of 2006, the solution was at hand. She called her mascot "Lil' Snackie" and so "Toon Dave" became "Lil' Dave" and the name stuck...
After that? Well, I briefly played around with animation again...
...but Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey would stay pretty much the same throughout their many new adventures over the next two years.
The next "Big Thing" wouldn't happen until the end of 2008.
And it was SO big that nobody ever saw it. Until tomorrow. Tomorrow, at long last, NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN images of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey in 3-D! And exactly WHY were Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey in 3-D two years ago? Well, that's a very good question. And I'll explain that tomorrow too!
I have to warn you though, it's a very sad (and very expensive) tale, so bring a hankerchief.
At long last... PART THREE of the story of how my DaveToon blog mascots came to be! If you haven't read Part One yet, you'll probably want to do that first... and then Part Two is right here.
Okay. Okay. I know. I made a promise that yesterday I would reveal for the first time anywhere NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN images of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey in 3-D. But, because of some kind of technical problems with a software upgrade, I couldn't render them into 2-D pictures. So last night I made a few phone calls to get that sorted, and here we are.
But before I reveal the images, you're probably wondering exactly WHY Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey would be rendered into 3-D in the first place. That's a very good question. There's actually two reasons...
Now, you have to admit that either of those reasons were awesome enough for me to want to get 3-D models made. Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey dolls? AWESOME! A Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey video game? AWESOME!
And so I paid a very talented computer animator a lot of money to make the models.
Unfortunately, neither of these awesome projects came to be. I'll explain what happened in a minute, but let's get to the 3-D renderings, shall we?
First up... BAD MONKEY! Note that his tail is sticking straight out. This is on purpose, because it would be animated bouncing up and down as he walked in the video game, and it was easier to do this if it were starting from a straight position. The animator would curl it when he defined how it would move in the walk cycle...
Pretty sweet, huh? It took a LOT of back-and-forth with the animator to translate a
And then there's Lil' Dave. Who needed to start out naked with no hair for video game reasons I'll explain later...
And here he is with clothes. The hair wasn't finished exactly right at this point, but it was getting close...
So the models look great, what's the story?
THE DOLLS.
The dolls were going to be very cool. VERY cool. Their arms and legs would move. They would have fun accessories. They would have awesome packaging. They would come in three versions (called "Colorways" in the biz)... 1) Classic Dolls, 2) ZOMBIE Dolls, and 3) Limited Edition BLANK "Paint Your Own" Dolls. Unfortunately, the company handling the job went out of business. My dream of having Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey vinyl dolls (along with an $800 deposit) vanished overnight.
THE VIDEO GAME.
If the loss of the vinyl dolls was tough on me, the loss of the video game was devastating. In addition to being out the money I invested in having the models made, I was out hundreds of hours in pesonal time. I wrote the game story. I helped design game levels. I designed the level maps. I drew hundreds of concept sketches. I painted hundreds of object textures. I invested time working on things like "walk cycles" and "cut scenes." Then one day I got The Call. The school was converting to some kind of learning internship agency. The theory was that this would be better for the students because they'd be getting hands-on experience at real gaming companies. The reality was that there wasn't enough internship positions to go around. So even if the guy working on my game could get an internship, he would then be working on the company's projects and not mine. Instead he lost his education financing and had to stop working on the DaveToon game so he could find a new school.
This was a real shame, because it would have been a pretty cool game. It was designed to be relatively easy, so young kids and adults with no gaming experience could play. But it was still funny enough that even a gamer would want to play to see what happened. The story revolved around Lil' Dave trying to avoid an invasion of robot monsters and solving puzzles so he could find his way home. Along the way, Bad Monkey would show up to help... and sometimes hinder... his progress. Lil' Dave replenished his health by finding chocolate pudding cups hidden around in the game. You couldn't really "die" while playing, but you could get thrown into "Zombie Mode" if your health ran out. If you couldn't get out of "Zombie Mode," you'd turn into a ghost (with no hair or clothes... just a glowing outline), fly back to the beginning of the level, grab a new body, then have to start over.
And there you have it. The NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN images of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey in 3-D!
And the really sad story as to why you never saw them.
Maybe one day somebody will come along and want to work on the game again. Or maybe I'll get bored sometime and write a blog entry with the NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN sketches, paintings, bits and pieces that I spent a big chunk of my personal time working on in 2009. The good news is that you might finally understand what I was trying to say with this entry. And this entry.
So what's next for Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey?
Well... there are always possibilities. I definitely plan on new T-shirts. There will absolutely be more DaveToons on Blogography. And there are other things... secret things... I've got ideas for which may or may not happen.
When it comes to Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey, you just never know.
Welcome to a totally unexpected... PART FOUR of a series detailing the evolution of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey over the years. I say unexpected, because I thought yesterday was the end of it, but I got some emails and questions, so I thought I would extend another day.
First of all, a look at what could have been with the "colorways" of the DaveToon vinly dolls I was working on before the company closed-up shop. Here's the painting instruction sheet I made for the manufacturer (I removed the paint color notations so you can see the characters better)...
The dolls would have come as a set in a custom-designed box with a clear plastic window in the front and various "accessories" tied to a background card behind them. I hadn't actually drawn the box, because I was waiting to get the final shape, but I had sketched out some concepts based on an old G.I. JOE box I had found. The idea was to make it look slightly "vintage" and show all the features and accessories as EXCITING FEATURES on the back and sides. The box would be the same for all the versions, but a space would have been reserved to sticker the three variants...
And that's as far as I got. I was supposed to get prototype dolls and a bunch of other stuff for the deposit I payed, but I never saw any of it. For those who asked, the pricing is a tricky business, because I hadn't gotten information on duties and taxes and shipping fees. My goal was to sell the "Classic" dolls for $15-$17, the "Zombie" dolls for $22-$25, and the "Custom" dolls for $30-$35... but that could have gone up or down depending on how everything ultimately got costed out. Considering a single 6-inch doll usually sells for around $40, I thought my pricing was pretty good. The idea wasn't so much to make money, but to simply cover the costs of making the dolls... just because I wanted them! Oh well.
One of the most popular questions I continue to get is "How do you draw your DaveToons?" I had answered this question in a smart-assed way back in September, 2006 (NSFW!)... but it's probably time to give a serious answer. While I don't have time to create a comprehensive "How-To" showing every last detail as to how things are done, what I CAN do is run through all the steps it takes to draw one of my characters...
BUT FIRST, FAIR WARNING: I will absolutely concede that this will look a heck of a lot easier than it actually is. If you are not familiar with Adobe Illustrator, then you should understand that this is a program that takes years to master. I have been drawing with Illustrator most every day for over twenty years and there are still things I have problems with. I just want to be sure that somebody reading this doesn't think "Wow, this is simple! I'm going to draw cartoons too!" then run out and spend $600 on Adobe Illustrator only to find out that it's not quite as easy as all that.
With that having ben said, you can see the basic concepts that go into how I approach the "DaveToon Look" in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
And so I had a few spare minutes and decided to update my blog software.
Things haven't quite gone as planned, so now I'm having to restore from a backup and try to figure out what went wrong.
Bad Monkey is on the case...
Avitable recently wrote a blog entry titled "What's Better Than That?" (which was a continuation of a blog entry he made in 2010) where he asked his readers to contribute a "greater than" chain of items. I came up with a few random topics, but felt uncomfortable just tossing them out without any explanation, so I decided to make a blog entry of my own.
For reasons I will never understand, I have a big problem with drinking out of anything made of plastic. I hate drinking from plastic containers of any kind. The feel of it is wrong, and the idea of it touching my teeth freaks me out. For this same reason, I don't use plastic drinking straws. Unless I've got a plastic cup, then I use a straw because it's a lesser amount of plastic touching my mouth. Ideally, I want to drink out of something made of glass. Paper cups are okay too. Of course, just about anything is okay compared to plastic. Hideous plastic.
I'm not talking about a style of cuisine. I'm talking about food in a country. With this in mind, Italy is the country where I most love to eat. Pizza, pasta, gelato... all my favorite foods are Italian. The problem is that Italian food seems to always diminish (or outright suck) outside of Italy. Take my favorite dish, for example: Fettuccine Alfredo. At the original restaurant where it was invented in Rome, it's made from impossibly thin noodle ribbons mixed with lots of butter and parmesan cheese. THE END. Go to Olive Garden here in the States and suddenly "Fettuccine Alfredo" becomes these thick, gummy noodles covered in a weak cream sauce that's got some garlic and other shit in it. THAT'S NOT FETTUCCINE ALFREDO! It would be like ordering a hamburger and getting a slice of chicken between two slices of turnip. After Italy, I like eating best in Spain and right here at home in the USA. The worst place I've been to eat is Korea. Not because the food is necessarily bad, but because vegetarian options are severely limited. After four days of kimchee and pickled vegetables, I didn't want to eat anymore.
All of my favorite music is stuck in the 80's. That's when Depeche Mode, The Thompson Twins, OMD, New Order, The Smiths, Erasure, Duran Duran, and loads of other bands I love were at their peak. No other era of music even comes close. Though I have to say that I've really been liking the latest stuff I've been hearing from the likes of Matt & Kim, Foster the People, Mackintosh Braun, and such. Add in the awesome new album by OMD, and the 2010 decade is off to an exciting start. Then comes the 1990's, which I like pretty much because the earliest parts were a continuation of the 80's, and a lot of bands I love continued to release new stuff. That was also when the "Seattle Sound" exploded and I loved being in the middle of it all. After that I'd have to go with the 1960's, simply because that's when the Beatles were dominating. From there on out... meh. I thought the 2000's were pretty lame for the kind of music I like. And the 1970's were polluted with really bad disco, which I hated, so badly that I took refuge in the emerging punk rock scene. As for the future? If the great stuff I've been loving recently continues, I'm looking forward to the decade.
Here's the deal. I love Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. These two movies alone are more beloved by me than all other sci-fi in the universe combined. But then Return of the Jedi came out and fucked up everything because George Lucas wanted to sell cute Ewok toys more than he wanted to tell a compelling story. Even so, The Star Wars Trilogy sat at the very top of my list... until the prequel trilogy was unleashed. Thanks to Jar Jar Binks, Annie Skywalker, and stupid-ass shit that reduced Star Wars to idiotic burp and fart jokes, the unthinkable happened. Star Wars was ruined for me. As much as I tried, I couldn't un-watch The Phantom Menace. It was then that my love of Star Trek (the ORIGINAL cast series and films) grew brighter, eclipsing Star Wars in a way that was previously unthinkable. Sure I thought that the sequel series kept getting worse and worse (Voyager was so awful I stopped watching), but the bulk of the Star Trek Universe is pretty good stuff. Even so, everything else in sci-fi falls way, way behind Star Wars.
I understand why most of the world thinks Disney is the premiere source of animation on earth... honestly I do. The golden age of Disney spans decades, and has given us some of the most breathtaking animated features ever seen. But the films of Hayao Miyazaki are mind-blowing. They use animation as a way of telling stories that are truly revolutionary and remarkable. Animation allows us to break the bounds of reality. But Miyazaki breaks the bounds of imagination. I dearly love and treasure his every work, and when you take his entire oeuvre you get something unmatched in brilliance, eclipsing even Disney. Then along comes Pixar, whose work I also love. They simply don't know how to make a bad film, and may eventually overcome Disney in terms of masterworks. No list of animation favorites would be complete without Aardman, responsible for Wallace & Gromit and other genius. If I were to continue, I'd have to put Satoshi Kon on the list. Possibly Dreamworks. I'm sure there are many others.
You simply cannot exceed the greatness that was the original "Bond Girl"... Honey Rider as played by Ursula Andress. She set the benchmark for everyone that would follow, and has one of the single best entrances into a film ever made. Over the years new Bond Girls would come and go... some of them cool (Pussy Galore), some of them hot (Mary Goodnight), some of them bizarre (Xenia Onatopp), some of them boring (Octopussy), and some of them just plain bad (Christmas Jones). But the ones I always liked best were the Bond Girls who were beautiful and badass. I loved Melina from For Your Eyes Only because she was ruthless in her revenge, and equaled Bond in smarts. Jinx was played by Halle Berry... so enough said there. And Michelle Yeoh's turn as "Wai Lin" was so kickass that I found myself praying that the character would be reprised in the next Bond film. When compiling my list, I was surprised that there were very few Bond Girls I actively disliked. Most of them rose above the typical "damsel in distress" crap that women usually get relegated to in films like this, which I didn't realize until now. Interesting.
Shocking, I know. But seriously... nobody can touch them. Nobody comes close. For now.
And now?
As I write this, it's 8:11pm on April 19th, 2011. Thanks to events in Terminator 2, Skynet has just become self-aware and we're all doomed. I, for one, welcome our machine overlords.
Anyway...
You know how when you go to eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup how you have to go through all the hassle of removing that stupid brown paper cup? What a horrible waste of time! Who wants to mess with that crap? I buy Reese's Peanut Butter Cups because I want to eat them... not because I want to play around with stupid paper!
Well, the people at Hershey must have felt my pain and frustration, because they've released NEW Reese's Minis. Tiny little peanut butter cups that are UNWRAPPED, just like God intended...
So now there's no time blown on futzing with that stupid paper cup. You can just tear off the top and pour them into your mouth directly...
Now THAT'S how I eat a Reese's!
Annnnnnnd... SHIT! My entire website is down. Either Media Temple is dicking around with things AGAIN, or Skynet really has become self-aware, and I will never be able to post this entry!
Looks like Blogography has been terminated.
UPDATE: Annnnnnnd... we're back.
I've been mostly out of touch for the past several days, which is what happens when you spend every waking minute trying to get caught up with work before leaving for a week.
So I can then get behind all over again.
Two of my favorite lovely ladies in the blogosphere are celebrating milestone birthdays!
Becky turned 40 yesterday! I first met Becky at TequilaCon 2008 in Philadelphia. Since then we've bumped into each other at blogging events such as Avitaween and ConFab (where I learned that Becky packs a knife, and will totally cut a bitch for reals). By the time we first met that fateful day in May, I had already known Becky for months (thanks to the power of the internet) and thought she was awesome. But her online awesomeness pales when compared to her in-person awesomeness. Meeting Becky is not just a happening, it's an event. An experience. You fall in love with her instantly and become insanely jealous when she's talking to somebody who's not you. Despite turning you into a psychotic stalker, I highly recommend The Becky Experience if you even have the opportunity.
CRAZY-ASS BECKY TRIVIA MOMENT! For years on the internet, Becky was known as "Hello Haha Narf." When she first started appearing, I remember people asking me what in the hell that meant. I told them I didn't know. But the truth is I really did. Pinky and the Brain is one of the greatest cartoons ever made, so of course I know that "Hello Haha Narf" was how Pinky started his letter to Santa in the Christmas episode. To this day I have no idea why I lied. Maybe because I thought it was Becky's story to tell. Maybe because I liked the idea that I knew something about Becky other people didn't. Maybe I thought it was funny. Or maybe in addition to turning you into a psychotic stalker, Becky also turns you into a lying liar who lies. The world may never know.
Suebob turns 50 today! Unfortunately, I haven't met Suebob in person yet. I came really close in 2007 when she was going to come to Dave L.A. but didn't for some reason. Probably because after she said she was planning on coming, she took a minute to actually read my blog and decided for her personal safety and sanity that she shouldn't. And that's okay. I totally understand. If I read the crazy crap I write on Blogography, I would be afraid to meet me too. So no hard feelings. You go ahead and have a happy birthday, Suebob, and try not to think of me sitting at Lucky Strike sobbing quietly while asking everyone that passes "Where is Suebob? Have you seen Suebob?" Because I will be okay. Eventually. =sniff!= For the past 50 days, Suebob has been featuring charities on her blog where people can make a donation in lieu of a present (including my favorite charity). They are worthy organizations all, so please drop by and donate to somebody on her list if you have a few bucks to spare.
CRAZY-ASS SUEBOB TRIVIA MOMENT! Suebob's blog is called The Red Stapler. I actually have a red stapler at work! It's a beautiful Swingline 747 stapler that I bought way back in 2002 and it still operates perfectly today. I think Swingline made red staplers specifically because Milton had one in Office Space, and it looked so cool that everybody wanted one. At least I know I did... but I had to wait three years before I could buy one.
Happiest of birthdays to you both!
My blog died last night.
And a part of me was wanting to let it go.
That lasted about fifteen minutes. Then I started freaking out at the prospect of eight years of Blogography being flushed down the toilet. So I started going back through all the steps I took to upgrade my database to see if I could figure out what went wrong. When that didn't pan out, I started pouring over my backups to see if I could reconstruct the data. No luck. So I gave up.
Today I looked at it on my lunch hour, but gave up again. Then after work I finally called tech support.
An hour later, everything was back to normal.
Just in time for me to start packing my suitcase...
I've got a loooooooooong day ahead of me tomorrow.
Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person alive.
Had a fantastic evening with some fantastic blogger friends here in Atlanta...
And though I tend not to use the word "adore" very much... Anissa Mayhew, whom I adore and love more than chocolate pudding... was in attendance after too many Davelantas past. We missed you.
Missed you bad.
It's hard to believe that it was two whole years ago you were nibbling on my balls* at The Cheesecake Factory you naughty minx you...
And then this year, as if to prove that we can't have an Atlanta blogger meet without somebody being in the hospital, Geeky Tai-Tai decided to get pneumonia.
Hope you're feeling better, Geeky Tai-Tai!
*Deep-fried macaroni-and-cheese balls... get your mind out of the gutter, people!
People can make fun of Amy Winehouse and mock her death as much as they want. It won't change the fact that she was a remarkable artist who created music that a great many people, including myself, really loved. A month ago I was lamenting that she hadn't come out with a new album in five years and was crossing my fingers that something would be released soon. Now, it saddens me greatly that anything we get... if anything at all... will be released posthumously.
I am not going to deny that she had serious problems and did some crazy shit. Amy was a very troubled and tortured person, and dealt with it the best way she knew how. Unfortunately that involved a lot of abusive behavior that would be tough for anybody to survive. But not one bit of it made me enjoy her music any less. Because no matter how out-of-control and batshit crazy she was in her personal life, in her songs she made perfect sense.
I'd say that I will miss her music, but the truth is her music isn't going anywhere. I just wish so badly she would have stuck around to make more of it. And, on that note, my favorite of so many favorites...
The rest of my day was $600 in repair costs for my car's brakes.
Hanging out with my sister on a flawless afternoon.
Meeting up with some remarkable Pacific Northwest bloggers.
Life is the bittersweet joy and hurt of it all. I am so incredibly blessed to have friends and family to make even my worst days good again.
Oh how I wish Amy Winehouse could have found the same.
I am mostly bored now-a-days.
Which is odd, because I am never lacking for something to do. Most of my waking moments are spent working, but in-between I still watch an occasional television show or catch up with the internet or view a video or read a book or something. How can I be this bored if my days are so packed? What else am I looking for?
I honestly don't know.
But it explains why I am constantly taking on new projects even though I don't have time for them. It's why I got RW to join me in creating Thrice Fiction. It's why I went ghost-hunting in Kentucky. It's why I do volunteer work that sends me to Hawaii. It's why I fly around the world visiting Hard Rock Cafes.
It's why I blog.
But despite all my efforts, it never seems like enough. Now even the crap that used to excite me is starting to become boring, which sucks. Maybe I need to start skydiving again or something?
Only time will tell.
If I don't end up bored to death, that is.
As I've mentioned several times to anybody who will listen, my favorite podcast is Hey! That's My Hummus! which is a creation of my most excellent blog friends, Mr. Shiny and Faiqa (both of whom are on a blogging sabbatical while they're working on the show, so I linked to their Twitter feeds).
If a Jew and a Muslim walked into a podcast you get, well... "Hey! That's My Hummus!" It's an awesome show filled with respectful discussion of numerous topics with a humorous slant. If you're not listening to it, you should be.
Anyway...
With Faiqa being in San Diego for BlogHer, Shiny asked if I would like to "virtually guest-host" a
So I agreed, and you can listen to my episode right now by clicking on this link!"
It's an awesome show because it has both me and Batman in it.
Oh... and Faiqa and Shiny too.
BONUS! BEHIND THE HUMMUS SECRETS! (spoilers! listen to the podcast first!)
As I was looking through my email in-box this morning, I happened across a message that, from all appearances, was spam. After all, how many real emails do you get where somebody is offering you an all-expenses-paid trip out of the country? And all I had to do in return was write articles about my journey and take some pictures (i.e. what I always do when I travel). Talk about sounding too good to be true! Free travel would have to be at the top of my dream list!
Amazingly, the offer turned out to be legit. They found my blog, liked my travel writing and photography, and wanted me to be a guest corespondent for them... all to a really cool destination.
Alas, I couldn't work the trip into my schedule.
Damn.
Needless to say, I was bummed the rest of the day.
Not that I have cause to complain, mind you. I already travel quite a lot... it's just having to pass up on something FREE that's bothering me.
Argh.
Broked again.
As this is November 1st, it's time for MOVEMBER, when a lot of guys will be trying to raise money for prostate cancer research and other men's health issues. They will do this by asking people to sponsor them as they valiantly use their ability to grow facial hair for the betterment of all mankind.
Since I am already sporting facial hair out of sheer laziness, I've decided to have Lil' Dave take up the challenge, and I'll post his progress throughout the month...
But, since cartoon characters can't enter the fundraising bid, I'm asking that you please sponsor everybody's favorite sometimes-inappropriate dad blogger... Michael "The Muskrat"...
Photo taken when I went ghost-hunting with The Muskrat. He's the one on the right.
You can visit his MOVEMBER page by clicking this link. Please consider making a donation if you can... every little bit helps!
And then...
So I wouldn't have to drive home, then turn around and drive all the way back to Seattle for work today, I crashed at my sister's house last night. And while I did shave an hour off my commute, I still had to battle Seattle's horrendous traffic this morning. This meant over an hour in my car listening to the radio.
Big discussion of the day? Kim Kardashian deciding to get a divorce after 72 days of marriage...
Now, I fully admit that I don't know much about this woman. Probably because I don't give a flying fuck about the idiotic "reality television" garbage that's taking a shit all over my television. All I know is that her and her sister get paid millions of dollars to act like morons on TV, and Kim Kardashian got paid millions more for some kind of two-part "Wedding Special" that aired on the E! Network.
Then, a little over two months later, she decides that she doesn't want to be married after all. I'm assuming she gets to keep all the money from her "TV Special." I'm also assuming that this crap will guarantee that her reality show gets picked up for another season so she can whore out her divorce for even more millions.
Well, more power to her, I say. If people are so fucking stupid that they want to watch this shit on their televisions, then you go, girl. Get yourself paid. I have no problem with Kim Kardashian exploiting her excessive messed-up "life" for profit.
But what had me screaming my head off at the radio as I was driving down I-5 is how this "One Man, One Woman Union"... despite being a complete sham and a cash-grab... is considered the "only acceptable form of marriage" by hate groups like The National Organization for Marriage. Whereas a committed gay couple wanting to get married is not.
In all seriousness, I am sick to death of this stupid shit.
All these assholes who have nothing better to do than crap all over other people's happiness by dictating whether two consenting adults can or cannot get married in a country founded on freedom can just go fuck themselves. Sideways. Then die.
Nonsensical stuff like this gets me so angry I can barely see straight. I spent most of my morning in an absolute rage. While I was working I was composing a blog entry in my head... ranting endlessly about how full of crap people like Maggie Gallagher and Rick "Piece of Shit" Santorum are for their hypocritical lunacy. It was going to be my most profanity-laden, explosive blog post ever.
But then I checked my Twitter feed while on a break and saw that somebody had re-tweeted this gem from Star Trek's Lt. Sulu, George Takei...
Exactly.
EXACTLY! Thank you Mr. Takei.
So-called "traditional marriage" between a man and a woman has been doing a great job of fucking up things for decades all by themselves. With a skyrocketing divorce rate now exceeding 50%, blaming the gays for ruining things is about the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.
Which makes sense, because the people cramming this bullshit down our throats are about the stupidest fucking people I've ever heard.
Here's hoping they all die out real soon now so the rest of us can move on.
I'm in Atlanta 3-5 times a year now, so I stopped doing the whole "Davelanta" blogger meet-up thing. I was getting paranoid thinking about everybody going "Shit! Dave's going to be here AGAIN? Wasn't he just here a couple weeks ago?!?" So instead I just Blog/Tweet/Facebook when I'm going to be in town and let people "opt-in" if they feel like meeting up... or "opt-out" by pretending they never saw it.
Except I found out that some people never saw it for reals and got left out, so I feel bad. Maybe if I sent out an email telling people when I'm here and asked them NOT to come, they wouldn't feel obligated to show up, but would come anyway if they really wanted? I dunno. Miss Manners doesn't offer any advice for this kind of stuff.
Anyway... I did end up having a terrific evening with The Muskrat, Whipstitch, and Coal Miner's Granddaughter tonight. We did the usual catching up and talking about what's going on in our lives, but this time there was an entirely NEW activity... reading aloud your favorited tweets. That ended up being good for all kinds of laughs because, apparently, the tweets that most people mark as a favorite are the funny ones. Good times.Muskrat, that magnificent bastard, showed up sporting his Movember mustache. This means it must be time for an update as to how Lil' Dave is doing...
As always, if you can donate a few bucks to a very worthwhile cause, please visit The Muskrat's Movember Donation Page. Every little bit helps!
And now, I get to revel in the joy of doing nothing, because my work has been moved from Sunday morning to Monday night. Sweet! Doing nothing is one of my most favorite things to do!
Though I think everybody knows the odds of me actually doing nothing are fairly slim.
Sometimes I hate being me.
Except when I get to have dinner with awesome blogger friends like tonight. Then it's pretty awesome being me.
If you've been following this blog, then you know that my good blogging friend The Muskrat has been participating in Movember to help raise money for prostate cancer and other cancers which affect men.
In order to help him get even more donations, Avitable and I are having a contest with FABULOUS PRIZES!!
All you need to do to enter is go to The Muskrat's Movember Page and donate $5 (or more if you want!) and leave a comment below letting us know you contributed. That's it!
After Movember has ended, we'll draw a winner for the following prize package worth well over $100...
• A CUSTOM DAVETOON and AVITATOON!
That's right! If you're our winner, Adam and I will each draw a cartoon just for you! Both toons will be printed on high-quality paper and sent to you ready for framing You can see a previous DaveToon winner here. ($ priceless!)
• A 12-MONTH AVITABLE WALL CALENDAR!
Adam has filled a calendar with twelve whole months of Avitable hotness for your monthly viewing pleasure! Contains profanity and partial nudity, so you know it's good! ($12)
• ARTIFICIAL DUCK CO. STUFF!
I've still got some hats, T-shirts, and playing cards left... and I'll assemble a nice selection of Artificial Duck Co. merchandise chosen especially for you! ($50+)
• THRICE FICTION MAGAZINES!
As if all that wasn't enough, you'll get two beautiful printed copies of the first two awesome issues of THRICE FICTION magazine! ($15)
• SHIPPING!
Whatever gift package you choose, it will be shipped free of charge within the USA. If the winner is outside the USA, they are responsible for any shipping charges over domestic shipping costs (you can just PayPal it to me after I get the pricing from the post office and email it to you).
And there you have it! Please donate to this very worthy cause and you might just win!
REMEMBER! All you need to do to enter is go to The Muskrat's Movember Page and donate $5 (or more if you want!) and leave a comment below letting us know you contributed. That's it!
This is it! The final stretch of Movember is upon us!
First I'll update with how Lil' Dave is doing, then I'll tell you how you can enter to win AMAZING PRIZES for a mere $5.00 donation to help fight prostate cancer!
Hey! That filled in there pretty good! Surely that's worth a donation to The Muskrat's Movember Page, right? AND IF YOU DONATE NOW, YOU CAN WIN AN AMAZING PRIZE PACKAGE!
All you need to do to enter is go to The Muskrat's Movember Page and donate $5 (or more if you want!) and leave a comment either below or on the original contest page letting us know you contributed. That's it!
After Movember has ended, we'll draw a winner for the following prize package worth well over $100...
• A CUSTOM DAVETOON and AVITATOON!
That's right! If you're our winner, Adam and I will each draw a cartoon just for you! Both toons will be printed on high-quality paper and sent to you ready for framing! ($ priceless!)
• A 12-MONTH AVITABLE WALL CALENDAR!
Adam has filled a calendar with twelve whole months of Avitable hotness for your monthly viewing pleasure! Contains profanity and partial nudity, so you know it's good! ($12)
• ARTIFICIAL DUCK CO. STUFF!
I've still got some hats, T-shirts, and playing cards left... and I'll assemble a nice selection of Artificial Duck Co. merchandise chosen especially for you! ($50+)
• THRICE FICTION MAGAZINES!
As if all that wasn't enough, you'll get two beautiful printed copies of the first two awesome issues of THRICE FICTION magazine! ($15)
• SHIPPING!
Whatever gift package you choose, it will be shipped free of charge within the USA. If the winner is outside the USA, they are responsible for any shipping charges over domestic shipping costs (you can just PayPal it to me after I get the pricing from the post office and email it to you).
And there you have it! Please donate to this very worthy cause and you might just win!
REMEMBER! All you need to do to enter is go to The Muskrat's Movember Page and donate $5 (or more if you want!) and leave a comment either below or on the original contest page letting us know you contributed. That's it!
Don't you hate it when there are tons of things for you to blog about but nothing you can actually post? That's me today.
And now I'm tired and want to go to bed. But since I have to blog about something, I just decided to go for it. Post all the crap that's been wearing me down and be done with it.
Hopefully.
So here goes nothing...
Got a panda from my bag of Fritos and ended up stapling over the whole spaghetti stain. At first I thought "bless my credit card" but then I wonked about Latvia and thought "two seahorses on that dog vomit!" So now I say folding box the whole cheesy bread and poop waggle that burrito sauce. I'm just not blarg on that swamp cooler (if you know what I balsamic vinegar). I wish I wasn't so pirates about the electric razor, but what can I pillow case? She's such a whore.
Fonzie collated my banana clip, but I was raving with the bugle in a gift box. That undressed the whole glovebox, which meant the sunglasses had to reverse engineer Willie Nelson. Needless to pickle chip, that wasn't skipping the video tape on that blanket. So now summer squash is plunging the futon and plastic bag is vacuuming the entire moon base. This has fleegboggled the beer headphones and pencilled a sound of my spice rack. If things were any mason jar I'd have to ski to hockey jersey or I'd violin their oil filter. You can't fishing trawler this bunny puppet and expect doggie treat for my force field. What an asshole.
So there was bonsai peppercorn and Tupperware bowl on slippery feet. It was taco seasoning. But then revolver the nuclear waste and all I could newspaper was my gummy bear. I iron the butter lettuce to shark tank but the paved Zamboni never pup tent or revenge. This has subway the stairwell... and not the flushable parrot cage. FOR CHARCOAL FILM CANISTER!! What romper kitten hoe wanders that?!? Fedora grout? sandwich collar? I have no fucking clue.
Hand sanitizer. Air sickness plumber lightbulb. Carrot. Who cares?
Loading dinosaur every souvenir retro-banana, which Cozumel the finger-paint. Now muddy water tarantula the foomlargo ALL THE ANGELA BASSETT! Fall the microphone damage, because penmanship has no plaid internal. Now rubber brake crying, if marble staple poison would ever magnification warp drive into crisis hand swamp. They're pressure celery, but it's not like I can do anything about it.
Whew! Feels great to get that all off my chest. Maybe now I can get a decent night's sleep.
For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.
Overall, it was an okay year. Launched a new magazine. Got to escape the country and go to Venice, Spain and Australia. Got to meet one of THE BEST BANDS IN THE WORLD, Matt & Kim, in London. Didn't kill anybody. And any year you don't have to kill somebody can't be all bad, right?
JANUARY
• Did a three-part series on the evolution of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey, including a look at what could have been.
• Wrote an essay on Violence and America.
• Decided that I needed a new zodiac sign.
• PENIS!
• Explained why it doesn't suck to be me when it comes to travel.
FEBRUARY
• Had an amazing day in Marbella, Spain.
• Ate some PATATJES MET!!
• What the world needs now is Unity and The Golden Rule.
• Had to take an unexpected detour that ended up being worth the inconvenience.
• Was horrified by the monsters who believe that a child lucky enough to have two daddies who will love and cherish him forever is unacceptable... but a child who is orphaned, unwanted, or unloved is somehow better off. Little Samuel is home at last.
MARCH
• One of the biggest events of my year: launched Thrice Fiction Magazine.
• Took a break for a vacation in Venice, Italy.
• Had the absolute best birthday of my life when I got to hang out with Matt & Kim in London!
• Oh yes. Now that he's home, it sure looks like having two dads for parents is ruining poor little Samuel's miserable life.
• As if meeting Matt & Kim wasn't amazing enough, I got to see OMD in concert AND got to attend their rehearsal before the show!
APRIL
• Found out that Donald Trump is nothing but a big liar on the Pee-Wee Dave Show.
• Gave a behind-the-scenes look at how the cover of Thrice Fiction came to be.
• Speculated that I'm not the only one whose life has been put in danger by a baking addiction.
MAY
• Went to Hawaii for work... and my Puka Dog addiction.
• Wondered for the hundredth time why Americans aren't rioting in the streets when they have so many good reasons to do so.
• Everybody panic... IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!
JUNE
• I'm corrupting America's youth, one breakfast at a time.
• Had some Photoshop fun in the face of a riot on "Don't Give a Fuck Day."
• Showed some love for National Chocolate Pudding Day.
JULY
• This year, a Very Special Davelanta.
• Went ghost-busting at the most haunted place in America.
• MEGA CAVERN AND HOT BUTTERED BALLS!
AUGUST
• Rick "Piece of Shit" Santorum loves cock.
• My sleep routine leaves a lot to be desired.
• Decided to help out the Republicans with political advice via Happy Endings.
• Was traumatized to find out THIS happened to one of my favorite restaurants on earth.
• Took a short break for some hero worship.
SEPTEMBER
• Saved a baby and pondered the fickle finger of fate.
• Finally managed to take that Trip to Australia that I always wanted.
• Hiked around Uluru (Ayer's Rock) as the Lord of the Flies in the Australian Outback.
• Fulfilled a life-long goal of diving The Great Barrier Reef.
OCTOBER
• Got to spend the morning with Mooselet and Koalas.
• Um, yeah... went sailing in Fiji.
• Took time out for some EXTREME snorkeling with sharks and sea snakes in Fiji... then hung out with dolphins.
• Went purple for a very good reason.
NOVEMBER
• STUPID DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME explained on Guy Fawkes Day.
• WHORE!
DECEMBER
• DEATH TO THE WILHELM SCREAM!!
• A deer tale... a feel good story if there ever was one.
And that about wraps up 2011. Not a bad year, I guess. And you?
Hope your 2012 is a good one, and thanks for reading!
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