funkymama

This past school year, I showed my classes selected bits and pieces of the 1998 NBC TV miniseries The Odyssey.


As a tool for illustrating difficult sections of the epic poem, the movie has its' strong points (the Calypso scenes are pretty good, and also was hilariously clear that most of my male students want to bone Vanessa Williams) and it's unbelievably weak points (wooden acting all around, awkward CGI that hasn't aged well) but I remember enjoying the spectacle of the thing when it first aired.

It got me thinking... what happened to the high concept TV miniseries? When I was growing up, there were plenty of 'em... both new and in reruns. These days, not so much.

I remember loving it when our cable provider finally hooked us up with the SciFi Channel and I was able to watch the Nazis-as-aliens run amok series V on four consecutive nights. Ditto The Day After, a blearily depressing take on nuclear holocaust in America. There were other series that ran on a similar theme- I've heard mixed things about Amerika, a "What if the Russians won the Cold War" series whose concept really sparked my imagination.

For a number of years in my teens, ABC was committed to making quality high concept mini-series, usually opting to adapt Stephen King novels for the small screen with mixed results. When those King minis were good, the were stupendous. I'm an unerring fan of their adaptation of King's gigantic good-vs.-evil opus The Stand. Even if it was less satisfying for those who loved the novel, ABC's version if IT has fans even today- my students referenced Pennywise as one of the scariest modern day monsters during an earlier lesson on the monsters of Greek myth.


For a TV movie that was made almost twenty years ago, and when you consider the budgetary restraints a production like that was under... for jaded teenagers who have "seen it all" when it comes to horror movies to even remember Pennywise is a big thing.

It must be said however, that for every good King mini-series, there was something like The Langoliers, a strange melange of time travel and bad CGI monsters that looked a lot like Pac-Man. Also, the mystifyingly boring remake of The Shining was pretty self-indulgent and languid. Still, more of the King minis were good than bad, and that's something.

NBC too was in the game, albeit with taking a "classier" route with adaptations of classic literature with the best special effects of the time. NBC's version of Gulliver's Travels with Ted Danson was decently accurate, if I remember correctly. At the very least, they addressed more of the various destinations that Lemuiel Gulliver encountered than most adaptations usually do. I also enjoyed their version of Merlin (starring Sam Neill) so much that I bought a DVD of it in college... although, admittedly, I found it in one of those giant bargain bins full of DVDs at my college's local Wal-Mart.

I suppose the day of the network television miniseries has seen its end, at least in a way that even attempts to cater to my interests as a viewer. ABC and NBC have had "world in peril" meteor mini-series on this summer, but they weren't appointment television, by any means. The major networks have seemingly ceded the genre to cable and pay television, and I've enjoyed a bunch of those (HBO's John Adams absolutely floored Ellen and I last summer) they don't have the same feel as some of the series I listed above. It's a pity in that when network TV got it right with a TV miniseries, they became a phenomenon.
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The internet was invented by military bigwigs so that we could share pictures and videos of cats.

1. What is your favorite vegetable?
2. What is your favorite salad dressing, sauce, gravy, or condiment?
3. What is your favorite culture's food (American, Chinese, Creole, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Soul Food, Southern U.S., etc.)?
4. What is your favorite beverage?
5. What is your favorite food?

1. I like broccoli a lot. Green beans when they're in season, but we eat more broccoli.

2. Caesar dressing is usually what I use on salads. I don't eat a lot of gravy outside of Thanksgiving.

3. I like Mexican food best these days, or more specifically, Tex-Mex.

4. Water. Boring, but that's pretty much all I drink. Occasionally I treat myself to a gallon of Newman's Own Lemon-Aided Ice Tea, but those are fewer and further between these days.

5. Ellen makes a chicken pot pie that I love, but if pressed, her pork chops are my favorites.

I've been enjoying The Onion AV Club's AV Q&A in the last few months. Today's topic, first jobs and the pop culture memories we associate with them, got me thinking.

My first job was working as a clerk at Scotts Corners Pharmacy. When I look back on being a teenager, I have quite a lot of regrets, but I can say this about my clerking job: at least I appreciate it it. I recognized that it was a rung above flipping burgers at McDonald's and I felt pretty lucky to have found the position. That's not to say I didn't gripe about it; certainly I did. I probably felt like it was a rite of passage complain about working, even if the main part of my job was to stand behind a counter and ring up prescriptions for the elderly. Scotts Corners was antiquated when I got the position. I don't know anything about business, but I have a feeling that the two guys who owned the place were getting steamrolled by the big pharmacy chains. A Walgreens had just moved into town a few miles down the road and while I don't specifically remember anyone ever talking about the place, the specter of low low prices hung over our pharmacy like a fog.

Still, it was a great job because of the magazine rack. Scotts Corners probably wouldn't be your first stop if you wanted some reading materials for a vacation or a long car ride, but if you found yourself stuck with their selections, you were actually in pretty good shape. We offered a small rack of magazines, a decent sized shelf of current mass market paperbacks, and saints preserve us, an honest to God comic spinner rack. I pilfered comics like mad, but none of them really made an impression one me- I was more interested in independent books at that point and while it was fun to keep in touch with what was going on in X-Men (Wolverine replaced by an alien Skrull!) and Superman (Superman takes over the world in a multi-part storyline that managed to be both epic and boring at the same time), I would say the paperbacks made the biggest impression on me.

Remember, these were mass market paperbacks. We went heavy on the airport favorites: Grisham, Crichton, and King... and if it wasn't by those three authors, in order to find a place of prominence on the shelves, it had to be about a serial killer, some kind of convoluted mystery, or a movie novelization. Stephen King's Bag of Bones came out in paperback right around the time I was working at Scotts Corners and I've always thought that book was a real return to form for the writer. All the Thomas Harris novels were rereleased to paperback around that time (probably in preparation for Hannibal, the ill-advised sequel to The Silence of the Lambs) and I remember picking my way through those. Robert Bloch's Psycho was also rereleased to take advantage of the stupid Gus Van Sant remake, and I ate that one up.

I think my attitude toward books was pretty well molded but being in charge of laying them out for customers probably gave me a less reverential attitude toward the written word. I love so-called "high" literature, but the kinds of books we sold at Scotts Corners were the kinds that people would really read in leisure. I think that impacts my tastes to this day.

The pharmacy also had an impressive collection of Harlequin Romance novels, none of which I read but all with impressive, off the wall titles. My personal favorite title, from here to the end of my life, was The Pregnant Virgin, a title that practically jumps off the shelf and says "How the fuck can you NOT read this book? Pregnant Virgin? How? It can't be religious, because this is a romance novel." The book could only serve to be a let down.

Also, while I was working, we would inevitably listen to 92.1 Lite FM (playing the best mix of yesterday... and TODAY) and for some reason when I first started working, THIS Savage Garden song was in HEAVY rotation.



It's unbelievable that this is a song to begin with, but it's double-unbelievable that it was a song off the soundtrack for the retards-in-love movie The Other Sister... and kind of offensive, if you think about it.

If you're a longtime reader of this screed, you know that I'm a regular bear for Christmas television. I will plan my whole day around catching the version of A Christmas Carol that stars soap opera actress Susan Lucci as Ebenezer Scrooge, it's that kind of sickness.

I now have a new holiday goal, and even though it's six months until the holidays, I want to share it with all of you.



I MUST SEE THE EPISODE OF AARON SPELLING'S HOTEL WITH TORI AND THE ROBOT. I can't handle that this is a real show that people watched on television. It's not a parody, it's not a joke... it was meant to be taken (semi) seriously by human beings.

Yesterday's strip is the comic in question.

This is Uncle Chris' Bargain Week here at the comic! Today's tip: If you live near one (sorry East Coasters) head over to Half Price Books' website and sign up for their e-mail list. They're having a big sale next week and they'll send you awesome coupons for it. 50% off one item next Sunday! I find awesome stuff at HPB all the time. Last week I got the first Starman Omnibus for $16 bucks and today I bought Lucy Knisley's Radiator Days for $6!

I totally totally totally hate this comic, but I ended up drawing a follow up tomorrow which I like a little better. That means I have to use this piece of crap today.

I don't know if this helps anyone out, but Southwest Air is having a big sale today. If you book a trip now for sometime in the fall, you only pay like $30 to $90 bucks one way, depending on how far you're going. It seems like a hell of a deal; if I were a swingin' single, I might book something now and figure the rest of it out later. I know it's short notice but check it out.

I've always been far more a fan of newspaper comic strips than comic books so DC's Wednesday Comics #1 has my interest. In short, it's a standard sized comic book that folds out into the size of the Sunday funnies. It seems like its attracted a lot of talent in the superhero biz and I'd like to sample it at some point. Aside from that book, there's a whole lotta nothin' coming out this week.

In general, I've been skipping out on writing DVD release previews because nothing super interesting has been coming out. I mean, I liked watching Parker Lewis Can't Lose when it was on TV, but I don't think I'd buy it on DVD and nor do I have anything remotely interesting to say about it. That being said, there is something coming out this week that I've been dying to see for years, but never had the chance: the 1922 silent film version of Sherlock Holmes starring John Barrymore.

I remember reading about this movie years ago in some ancient book about Holmes, written when the film was still considered "lost" and thinking that I would love to be able to see it someday. Sherlock Holmes is available in The John Barrymore Collection, which includes a bunch of other silent films featuring the actor, or on its own separate disc. I am certainly not in a position where buying either the collection or the disc are an option, but it looks awesome.

When we lived over on Mason Road, mowing the lawn was a problem. We rented the house and it came with an ancient gas powered, ripcord start lawnmower that I could never manage to get work properly. Eventually we hit upon the fact that the spark plugs were dying but as a consequence of this, I didn't mow the lawn very often. Our next-door neighbor had a ride on lawnmower and he more than gladly mowed our lawn for us most of the time with no thought of repayment... believe me, I asked him on more than one occasion. As a consequence of not mowing the lawn on Mason Road, Ellen has absorbed this belief that I hate mowing the lawn and that I will do anything to get out of it.

This is untrue. While very few people LOVE mowing their lawn, I certainly do not mind it... but at the same time, there are times when I'm going to refuse to mow the lawn. At 12 noon on a blisteringly hot day, for example... or the day after a monsoon. I will probably not mow the lawn. At the same time, Ellen views these refusals as my trying to weasel out of my husbandly duties, which couldn't be further from the truth. For example, yesterday it poured so I could only mow the front yard today; a fifth of our backyard is still submerged in rainwater.

Yesterday was the Fourth of July and we spent it, as I have for the past two Fourths and as Ellen has for the past decade, with Sarah's family. This year was very different from years past in that Sarah's grandmother has moved. Before this year, Fran lived on a farm in Kentucky that was, and I'm not even being hyperbolic when i say this, breathtakingly beautiful. Truly, cameras didn't even do the farm justice; it's going to be one of those places that I remember forever, and I only spent a handful of days there. Fran's getting on in years and she decided to move locally to be around the rest of her family; in fact, she is living in a big, beautiful house with Sara's mother Terri and Terri's girlfriend Lisa.

The new house is a fixer-upper, but it has the potential to be amazing. I think it's a good thing Fran moved... but I'm willing to bet that this year's Fourth of July celebration was hard on everyone there. Meeting at Fran's on the Fourth was a tradition for Sarah's family, and they have been generous enough to extend that tradition outward to whomever they love. Like I said, Ellen's been going for over ten years and so have most of Sarah and Chris' college friends. The farm has a pool and a generous amount of land on which to camp out. I always loved visiting myself. Still, the new house pales next to the accumulated memories of the farm.

I had a good time though. I got drunk and played Jenga and 1990's Trivial Pursuit. It was probably a good thing that it was miserable out; I think it comforted everyone to think that here we had this huge house with a basement bar, ping pong table, and various other distractions where as a rainy day at Fran's Kentucky farm would have just driven everyone inside her tiny house and made for a miserable holiday. As it stood, a good time was had by all.

(I'm playing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and it's pretty much exactly the kind of Star Wars game I wanted when I was 12 years old. If I were twelve, I could probably get past stage 4, but whatever, it's fun.)

Here's a drawing I did for captain_slinky many moons ago- it took me awhile of unpacking at the new place to send it out, but send it I did:

I'm excited about MTV's plans to bring their late 1990's Beavis and Butthead spin-off Daria to DVD.


MTV has previously released the two Daria TV movies to DVD with a couple of episodes included as bonus features, but this looks to be the first time a complete season set is in the offing.

I always found Daria interesting in that usually when it comes to spin-offs, the producers of the new show try to retain at least some of the feeling of the original series, if not flat out try to make it a second half-hour of the show from which they're spinning off. For example, The Jeffersons and Maude may have been about as far as you could get in some respects from All in the Family... but a viewer of those shows, you could be reasonably sure you'd be getting a similar tone and type of humor from each episode. I can't imagine any hardcore B&B fan being pleased when turning on the first couple of episodes of Daria. It was sort of a bold, risky move when you think about it.

While at first a little one-note, Daria gradually became a incredibly soulful portrayal of teenage ennui, in particular, smart teenage girl ennui, a demographic that's rarely catered to even in today's television landscape. The show wouldn't have worked if they had kept Daria a one-note snark machine, but as the episodes progressed, the writing and performances revealed hidden depths to the character, not only through her actions, but with her interactions with other people. Among other things, Daria's also a wonderful essay on how important real friendship is when you're growing up. The show is also pretty darn funny too.

I'm worried about what MTV's planning on doing with many musical cues and score; as was the case with a lot of MTV series in the Nineties, they liberally borrowed popular music of the day for episodes, making for a monetary and logistical nightmare in terms of obtaining music rights for DVDs.

I occasionally ran across the odd episode of Daria being re-run on the teen cable network The N and found some of the episodes to be eerily quiet. I suppose they'll probably swap in some cheaper fare which would be serviceable, I suppose... but occasionally the music on Daria tied directly into the joke and losing that would be a shame. Then again, when the show was on the air, MTV would sometimes make running changes to the music even in the first or second airing of an episode. One memorable Daria episode taking place at a wedding featured a scene set to Celine Dion's "My Heart WIll Go On" exactly ONE time. I remember because I watched that episode when it first aired... and then for some reason, watched it the second time it aired a few days later, when the song had been lifted out, presumably because of some issue with the movie Titanic.

I can't help but want to see the episodes as they were originally presented, but it doesn't change the fact that I loved Daria and would welcome a collection of the episodes. Hell, MTV finally got The State out, didn't they?
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A few months ago, I posted a tour of our house from before we bought the place. For some reason, it got a ridiculous amount of views on YouTube, so I can only assume that the interest in there for this new video, which is a second tour of the house... only this time, you can see it furnished with all our stuff.



For those that don't feel like watching the video (and believe me, I understand), Elliot's being SUPER naughty through this whole thing. He eats my eraser!

1. Number One is Friends Only. Sorry, lookie-loos.

2. We're tight on money this month and not realizing it, I bought a bunch of stuff that I don't need. Honestly, I barely spent $40 dollars... but we live on one salary more or less and that can sometimes tip the scales. I don't think it's anything to throw up alarm about but sometimes it sucks that I don't have "just for fun" money anymore. Melissa and I were talking about this earlier today when were were numerating the financial follies of some of our friends and family members. While I know a lot of people who are responsible, hard-working, and productive members of society, I also know a remarkable number of people my age who just... do nothing. They do nothing and they have no goals.

I just couldn't handle living like that and it frustrates me. I could never figure out why until a few weeks ago when I was talking to Ellen about a mutual acquaintance of ours who's sort of going nowhere right now in their life. I was talking about how I couldn't understand why it annoyed me, the choices this person had made; they certainly didn't affect me in the least!

Ellen shot back that the reason she thought it annoyed me was that I spend my life working with young people who will NEVER have the kinds of opportunities our friend had. To see someone not be able to use those resources gets under my skin. Ellen is so smart.

...anyway, we're short on money.

4. This will be a comic this week, but whatever: I was cooking Elliot some fishsticks for his lunch this afternoon and for some reason the smoke detector went off. It wasn't smoky at all but the noise scared the shit out of Elliot. How do I know this? I know this because he started screaming and shaking when the beeping started. I also know this because when I picked him up he cried "Daddy! I scared!" Now, he's not even two yet, so we don't get a lot of complete sentences. We get some here or there... but the kid must have been freaked out to the point of verbal articulation. I've been carrying that around with me all day.

3. I rented the movie Ghost World from the library. This is one of the few movies I managed to see in theaters in 2008 but I wanted to rewatch it for the audio commentary; I'm a big fan of Ricky Gervais' audiobooks and I thought it would be a laugh. It's also a pretty cute movie in and of itself. Imagine my surprise when I found myself getting downright sad looking at all the beautiful shots of New York City in the autumn throughout the flick. I'm not going to pretend like I had a great love affair with living in NYC; by and large, I enjoyed living in Boston far more. Further, New York City was always just such an omnipresent part of my life growing up that it was easy to take it for granted.

I miss my family. I miss my friends. Those are givens... but I also really miss New York sometimes.

And just so this isn't a total bummer, here's A couple of reasons why I SHOULDN'T be depressed right now.

1. I went to Half Price Books and I found The Starman Omnibus I've been wanting to check out. I've never read Starman and while the hardcover looked awesome, I didn't feel like dropping $50 bucks on the book. I am OK with picking it up for $9 dollars (half price less $16 dollars from selling back old paperbacks). I also bought a comic I'm going to bring with me to a comic book convention in October.

2. I made fettucine alfredo sauce tonight and it came out pretty good. It's a very heavy sauce and I'm pretty sure I can improve on it next time... but as a first attempt, I think it came off rather well.

3. I have traded so much awesome stuff on Swaptree over the past two days. I'm getting the hardcover edition of All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder (a comic I think is fabulously trashy), a hardcover copy of Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir, and a couple of other cool things.

The iMac is a Father's Day gift; Ellen let me choose either a new computer or upgrading our cable service to include DVR. I chose the iMac because right now I pretty much use the laptop that my school issued to me exclusively and I'd like to leave this at school next year. Also, I can't look at pornography on this computer. Drag.

I have new favorite Minimates, everybody.


Also, I bought this animation cell on eBay for $8 dollars.


That is all.

There's nothing that's really grabbing me and making me take notice this week, although I'm looking forward to Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's Batman and Robin #2. I really liked the first issue. I will probably end up reading Captain America: Reborn in trade at some point; I've been picking up Brubaker's Cap run in trades and I enjoy reading it that way. I can't say I have a lot of enthusiasm for bringing original Captain America Steve Rogers back from the dead but I should probably reserve judgement until I actually read the comics... which will probably be around this time next year. Check back in 2010 to see what I thought!

I should post something!

Elliot wakes up at around 6:30 or 7 every morning, but it seems like on my days, he usually opts for the former. I swear, on the days when Ellen has to wake up with him, sometimes he sleeps a half hour PAST when he usually gets up... but with me, he's usually up and at' em as soon as possible. It's probably because I let him watch his fifteen minutes of Elmo right after breakfast, whereas Ellen likes to wait until later in the day. Right now we're watching "Elmo's Potty Time" which is way too graphic for my tastes. All the Muppets are talking about "pee pee" and "poo poo" and Elmo's dad has a porno mustache.

I had to get up early today anyhow though; I agreed to substitute for someone at Middletown's summer school today. I got a call yesterday while we were out at the library and while I wasn't going to do it at first, at some point in the evening I decided to go in and do it.

I had a small freak-out last night because I realized I need to renew my teaching license a lot sooner than I had to. It's a two year license that I earned in 2007 but I didn't get my actual paper license until 2008... so I thought I had a couple more months. I think I got everything in the mail that I needed to this morning, but it's nerve wracking. I usually keep a good tab on stuff like that, but I guess I dropped the ball. Hopefully it won't be a problem down the road.

• 07:28 The strawberry-infused butter we bought at Jungle Jim's yesterday is awesome! Well worth the $4 dollar splurge. #
• 07:31 @BRIANMBENDIS I've rented it SIX times and never watched it. #
• 09:54 I don't care if my dentist is a Republican but he always talks about his politics when I'm at his mercy. #
• 14:43 This is the most amazing comic I've seen in weeks: bit.ly/MjGL0 #
• 14:58 Got home from dentist, slept for four hours (thanks anesthetic!), and now I feel fine. Never would have guessed it from how rough it was... #
• 16:39 @kelbellene I just had an old girlfriend suggested to me in the same way. I don't have her e-mail, I'm not friends with her anywhere else. #
• 19:27 I am super impressed with The Apple Store's LiveChat feature. I got help in no time at all! #
• 22:17 Ellen raises her fists and yells "Pizza Mia!" during a Pizza Hut commercial then laughs for TEN MINUTES at how funny she thinks she is. #

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I am all moved! I friggin love my new place and I have internet again! It's been a month without it at home, and while I can sneak some things at work I was pretty much twitching by the time they hooked it back up. That's literally the longest I've gone without internet since 1993 when my Dad was all "Hey Coll want to get addicted to something your friends haven't even heard of" and I'm all "HELLZ YEAH DAD as long as you don't mind me constantly hanging out in plain text chat rooms pretending I'm a old man! 'Get off my lawn!'"

It came with a book of ALL the websites on the internet. Yes that's right. A 200 page book. I wish I still had that thing. I remember being amazed. How could all of that book exist in the air? I felt like I was breathing it in. The internet was so big. The first site I visited was the Animaniacs website with my friend Brandy. It took us three hours to load the home page and who knows how many more hours it took for us to load singular 2 second audio clips but holy crap it was the most amazing thing ever! I had an email address long before I had anyone to write to. Almost all my real life relationships were born first of pixels—eventually transitioning into friends, collaborators, and really a nice handful of good kissers.

I love the internet and I love my Dad for being the gadget guy he is. When I was in elementary school he got me a cd player, as large as a record player. I had two cds, both miscellaneous hits from the 60's. I freaked out when Ghost came out and it had one of "my songs" in it. I loved that cd player so much I somehow got a ton of peanut butter inside of it. I'm not sure how exactly, but if you're going to break something there are less tasty ways to do it.

Where was I going with this? Sorry got sidetracked by OOOOOOOOOOoooOooH MYYYYYY LOOOOOVE getting restuck onto the inside of my brain, likely with that peanut butter. Oh yes...jobs!

WEB DESIGN-Y PEOPLE! I have jobs for you! One is ridiculously awesome and good paying! One is more of a favor, but I've saved a good chunk of money to give you and it means everything to me.

Job #1:
First Second :01 Web Designer for Webcomic Project: So we just signed up the amazing Mr. Mark Siegel's new book...aka our leader who also happens to be an incredible artist. I am literally giddy to see the art and what I know of the story makes me even giddier! Giddiest perhaps? I've been wanting us to get :01 into the world of webcomics and this is pretty much the perfect book to play with and post online!

Speaking of which...did I ever show you guys this amazing comic? Mark did it to honor everyone's favorite Scott Pilgrim. Click for the full amazing 2-page thing:


( More info about the :01 job! including specifics and payment )

Job #2:
(aka the i beg of you all! I want to give my dad an awesome gift for under $500! job...but also one that will give you money over time)

(psst that's my dad, the heartthrob at the top of the crystal pyramid...need to find me the larger version of that pic)
My Dad was a professional drummer by the time he was 15, playing with musicans twice his age who were known all over the world. He's been playing pro every weekend ever since, a drummer for hire who never needs to rehearse because he is that amazing. He's SO DAMN GOOD but, like the awesome guy he is, in the late 70's he chose a family and a steady job over his dreams of rocking out. I think that's why the movie ANVIL! hit me so damn hard...because I knew my Dad could have made it. I don't have a doubt in my mind. But he chose us over fame, and while I love him for it, I want him to play and write songs again. Hey speaking of ANVIL...

Why yes that is Me, Mikey, and the lead singer of Anvil, LIPS! Seriously an awesome show, and man did I still cry at the movie even though it was the second time I saw it. From laughter, from sadness, and from "holy crap they are the best friends in the world-ness". Anvil is an absolute inspiration to anyone who's ever wanted to create.

But back to my Dad...now after 35 years of teaching, he's retired. He really REALLY needs a new pretty website for his recording studio (http://www.frontiernet.net/~venable/ is the old one...see I told you we had the internet FOREVER ago). For his retirement gift I want to hire someone to build it for him. I would do it myself, but I'm so damn slow!

( More info about the Site for My Dad job! )

In other news I am feeling so creative lately it is shooting out of my ears. I am on a strict "write 7 pages everytime I try" diet that's got my YA graphic novel almost complete! I also am desperately itching to really REALLY restart a podcast....but I need help.

1. Who occasionally wants to make a podcast with me? Something new and Un-Fluff (because honestly how will we ever top Fluff?!) I recorded three new shows already, one with PLDM, one with Scott Bateman, and one with Ed when I was in Japan. The ones I recorded were very Fluff style, but I want to do something new! Maybe have some sketches, maybe make it more Daily Show style with correspondents, maybe do it 40's drama style. I'm not sure, but I do know I really love radio and while Annie, Liam and I are working on a ridiculously cool new Vid-cast, I still love audio and fake radio shows. Let's make one!

2. What should the new show be called? I was going to just call it Fluff Radio i-i but I'm feeling like I need a whole new name for a whole new show. What do you guys think?

Who's up for creativity?!

Two last things:
1. It is the birthday of the amazing JESS FINK. I am wearing sequins writing this in her honor. Seriously one of my favorite people in the world AND one of the most talented. Here we are at the MOCCA ladies fest, just waiting for people to throw cupcakes into our faces.




2. I will likely go on and on about MJ soon, since he had a massive role in making me who I am (aka someone who knows he "remember the time" breakdown dance by heart). I won't say it now, since you are all sick of hearing about him, but I WILL say a) I own MOONWALKER on DVD (the japanese one since you can't get it in America) and b) I also own CAPTAIN EO. There needs to be a viewing of these two magical things at my place very very soon.

Anyone who ordered a comic: They went in the mail today. I definitely did not anticipate the number of people who bought comics, nor did I realize just how much drawing I had to do for people. I let people request drawings this time and man, if I ever do another print comic... that will definitely NOT be something I do again! Not that it wasn't fun, it was just very time intensive and people had some VERY specific requests. At any rate, they're in the mail now so you should see 'em by the end of the week!

• 09:12 Elliot is slowly. inching. his cup. off. the table. I ask him why and he says "Don't know!" and offers me a cereal bit. #
• 09:42 The kid says: "Daddy? TV. Elmo!" I feel I should be worried, even if he only watches 15 minutes a day and we sit with him the whole time. #
• 12:24 One hundred and seventy seven pages left to go in my funny book masterpiece. #
• 12:55 Watching A River Runs Through It while drawing comics. Why wasn't Emily Lloyd in more movies after this? #
• 13:51 @DanielEfton I greet the mailman with no pants on... I greet the milkman in the nude. #
• 13:52 @crynyd @befanee People are being surprisingly mean to Billy Mays though! #
• 13:53 @amandamello is very far through the snow. #
• 13:55 Baking bread and planning a trip to Jungle Jim's. I'm trying to think of something exotic to buy for dinner. #
• 19:00 Fancy butter, cheeses, and bread was bought at the gourmet grocery store. Tootsie Pop Drops too! #
• 20:18 Me: "When did making cakes become a badass job for tattooed people?"
  Ellen: "Probably when having tattoos became totally not badass." #

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