Rising Up from the Asses

(Illustration Friday: Phoenix)

Ding-dong, Saddam is dead. It's chilling watching the CNN video of him being led to the noose, knowing he had few minutes to live before dying at the choice of someone else. No, it was not worth all the civilian and military lives that it's taken to get to this point in the most ineptly executed war of all time. However, I can only hope that as they put the noose around his neck, it crossed his wormy mind that the terror rising within him was the same felt by all the innocent men, women and children he had executed. The war goes on, (and on and on and on) but his obscene page in history is finally closed. Please treat his body like that of executed Nazi war criminals; cremate him and spread his ashes to the four winds so there is never a monument to him or what he stood for.

On a happier note, Joe dragged me to see Happy Feet, and I was so pleasantly surprised. It drags on here and there and is a mite heavy in the ecological moral department, but all in all I was blown away. Three pluses I saw as a CGI animator: 1) Feathers. Lots of them. Very hard to do. 2.) Snow means footprints- and in a film about a dancing penguin, it's not just a shot here and there. Again, very hard. 3) THE HUMANS WERE LIVE PEOPLE. Sorry, but I'm always jolted a little bit out of my suspension of disbelief in realistic CGI movies because no matter how hard you try, it's very hard to make people look like anything other than puppets.

On a slightly downer note, I received (at my request) The Richard Donner cut of Superman II. (Again, all hail General Zod.) As one of the fans who clamored for it's release, I can honestly say that I actually prefer the theatrical version- with one small exception: the re-inclusion of Marlon Brando. Jor-El's original scenes were much better than those re-done in the theatrical version by Lara, and add a reason- and a price- for the return of Superman's powers.

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night.

TTFN
-Tony

Let There Be Peas on Earth & Let It Begin With Me

Probably the only way I'll find peace in this lifetime.

Once again, Illustration Friday has wussed out & tried to be as PC as possible at Christmastime (at least it's not as blatant as last years "Holiday.")



So have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanuka, a Krazy Kwanza, a Super Solstice, & a Festivus for the Restofus. (Sadly, there's no Flying Spaghetti Monster holiday for this time of year.)

TTFN
-Tony

Won't You Please, Please Help Me!

No matter how bad things get, always grab for that branch!

If I could change something that would help the world, I would pass a law that all programs, when uninstalled, must COMPLETELY remove themselves from the computer, without leaving behind any files whatsoever. I recently had to uninstall Firefox. I reinstalled it to find that I still had the same problem. I deleted Firefox's folder. The problem remained. I scanned the computer and found at least 5 different Mozilla folders hidden (as in, XP hid them until I told it not to) in my "Documents and Settings" folder.

Uninstalling IE is impossible, no matter what Windows claims. Uninstall it, and the exe file is still there. Delete the exe file, and it will magically reappear again.

Why oh why does AOL need to COMPLETELY TAKE OVER MY COMPUTER just to run?

Sigh.

TTFN
-Tony

PS- Happy Birthday, Jennifer. You help, believe me.

I'm it, I'm it!

Being an oblivious schmo, I hadn't realized that the beautiful & multitalented Robin had tagged me. There seems to be a quadruple motif here.

4 Jobs I have had:
1. Movie projectionist in Bernardsville, NJ. This is probably the most fun I’ve ever had, at least until the owners of the small-town theatre where I worked decided to found Clearview Cinemas & made us wear bow-ties, wouldn’t let us play our guitars in the lobby in-between movies anymore, and chopped up the theater into three large-screen TVs…
2. U.S. Army PFC. ‘nuff said.
3. In high school I did odd jobs for an elderly man- he’s long since passed on. One day I was cleaning out his basement. Under a pile of junk, underneath a blanket, on a moldy, dusty card table I found a cardboard box containing the ashes of his wife. They had been there since she had died, 10 years before. The old man (George) stepped in to see how I was doing and said, “So, I see you’ve met my wife! Just leave her there.” A few months later we painted his house. After we re-hung the curtains, he looked up and said, “You know, Florence would bitch to no end about these curtains, but what the hell- she’s in the basement with a blanket over her head!”
4. I was a Waldenbooks & Sbarros manager in Hilton Head Island, SC. (I snuck an extra job in there!) It was obscene how Sbarros paid me more money to make pizzas than Waldenbooks paid me to drive me insane.

4 movies I could watch over and over:
1. The ORIGNAL (1967) Bedazzled. “Juuuuulie Annnndrewwwwwws!”
2. Kentucky Fried Movie. “The popcorn you’re eating has been pissed in, film at eleven!”
3. Monty Python’s Life of Brian. “I have a gweat fwiend in Wome named Biggus Dickus!”
4. Brazil. “We’re all in it together, kid.”

4 places I have lived (apart from where I am now):
1. Basking Ridge, NJ. Lived there for 18 straight years, came back 3 years later for 2 more.
2. Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Nice place to live, you wouldn’t want to work there.
3. Washington DC (Army)
4. Monterrey, CA (Army) If I had the money, this is where I would settle to spend the rest of my life. Of course, my parents & in-laws would hate me forever for taking the grandkids so far away…

4 TV shows I love:
1. Doctor Who, classic & new. (Tom Baker is a God.)
2. Family Guy. I’m male.
3. Babylon 5- the greatest TV show ever made. (The first four years, anyway.)
4. The Venture Brothers. Come on, make a third season already!

4 places I have been for a vacation:
I’ve never been away on a vacation. When we were kids living in NJ, we used to go to my grandparents summer home in Shirley, Long Island once a year for a week. Ironically, while it was a 3 hour drive back then, it’s about twenty minutes from where I live now.

4 websites I visit daily:
(I’m taking Robin’s out here & stating these are SITES not BLOGS.)
1. Youtube.com
2. i-am-bored.com
3. NYDailyNews.com
4. can’t think of one.

4 favourite foods:
1. Tuna Salad on Rye
2. Ooodles of Noodles
3. Turkey Legs
4. Gala Apples

4 places I would rather be:
1. The Moon
2. Monterrey, CA It’s perpetually 75 degrees there.
3. The 5^th astral plane of Venus.
4. Somewhere I’ve never been. Antarctica, maybe.

4 people I am tagging:
This is a universal call to all who wish to be tagged. Meme away.

TTFN
-Tony

FIN-A-F**K-ING-LLY!

(Not remotely what my card really looks like.)

After 8 years and 9 months (4 as a helper, 4 as an M-Journeyman + 9 months of makeup time for unemployment & when I was out with my bad back) I FINALLY have my A-rate! It will be another three years before I can take the A test and have the stigma of the letter M removed from my card, but even then, I'll still be making the big $, and will be allowed on A jobs. Amen.

I'd like to thank someone who helped me with all my union stuff, et al. Like most superheroes, he wants to retain his secret identity & remain anonymous. But I wanted to publicly say thank you. Though we have our difficulties at times, I appreciate all you've done for us. Couldn't have done it without you.

TTFN
-Tony

IF: Mask

We all wear a variety of masks all the time. For example, today I put on the mask of a good Catholic father when Joe had his first confession. I recited everything in the program, genuflected, stood up, knelt, etc, etc, etc. I listened, standing, while the priest read the gospel, the parable of the shepherd:

"One day, Jesus told his friends this story: "There once was a shepherd who had one hundred sheep. One night one of the sheep was missing. The shepherd was very worried because he loved all his sheep very much. He decided to leave the ninety-nine sheep on the hillside and go off to look for the one lost sheep. He looked everywhere.

After a long time, he found the lost sheep caught in a thorn bush. The shepherd freed the sheep and carried it home on his shoulders. The shepherd and the sheep were full of joy."

And a little voice in my mind whispered, "...and that night, the shepherd and his wife had lamb chops. And yea, it was good."



TTFN
-Tony

I Want a Monster to Be My Friend

Probably the most sexually charged song in the history of children's television. Original & unedited, not the politically correct EnVogue version.



TTFN
-Tony

Facelift!

After almost two years, it's time to change my blog avatar. All hail the new avatar:


In a few more years, I can try out for a Rankin & Bass Kris Kringle!

Bearded men I've always wanted to be:

The Master (#1) from Doctor Who -the great late Roger Delgado.


General Zod from Superman & Superman II -Terrance Stamp


And of course, the great late Frank Zappa (seen here on the album cover of Sheik Yerbouti- probably the greatest name for an album of all time.)

Feel free to suggest your own.

TTFN
-Tony

"For might makes right, until they've seen the light..."

It's drawings like this in my notebooks that prompted many "are you ok?" talks from my parents in High School. Drawings like this made other kids think I was cool. Drawings of Daleks and the U.S.S. Enterprise quickly balanced out that sentiment. I've always wanted to draw a cover for Heavy Metal. Of course, to sell an HM cover I'd have to get some scantily clad bimbo to pose for me first... (If there are any scantily clad bimbos reading this, please feel free to audition.)

Dear Google: MY BLOG WORKS FINE THE WAY IT IS- STOP PESTERING ME.

I originally colored this with the paint program on my Ipaq. When I saved it, it not only caused my Ipaq to freeze, but I could not get it to work again without doing a hard reset. Fortunately, almost all of my data was on the storage chip, but it's still, in the words of Borat, "A pain in my assholes." Next time I buy a PPC I'm defiantly going with a Dell. At least it'll have buttons to play the Gameboy emulator with instead of my Ipaq 4705's useless touchpad.

Although the gears of my mind have been squeaking in the middle of the night like a hamster's exercise wheel, may I say that because of my Jen, Joe & Mandy, I'm the luckiest schmo in the world. They just make everything worthwhile.

TTFN
-Tony