I've been focusing pretty much all my writing efforts this week on the comic itself. Bobbes's Big Day has the potential to be one of the funniest chapters in Moron County's history, and I want to make sure it meets that potential. So, today, I'm giving you another classic Buzz Comix story, wherein Clyde, Bobbes, Fred, and Francis play a game of Monopoly. It takes place sometime before the Saint Sancho's arc. Enjoy!
(Clyde, Bobbes, Fred, and Francis are all playing a board game.)
BOBBES: G… Eight…
CLYDE: Bobbes, we’re playing Monopoly.
FRANCIS: Okay, my turn. (rolls a dice). Seven. (moves his piece). Ooh! Chance! (Picks up a card). You win a beauty contest and… get AIDS?! Trade your racecar for Fred’s thimble, or die a painful death. What the…?
FRED: Oooh. Better do what it says! If you die you lose your money. Also, I think there’s a rule on the back of the box that says I can kick you in the nuts.
CLYDE: Give me that.
(Clyde swipes the card from Francis.)
CLYDE: This card has clearly been vandalized with a permanent marker.
FRED: Lies! Lies and slander!
CLYDE: Let me see the rest of these.
(Clyde picks up the cards and starts going through them.)
CLYDE: You are being booked on tax evasion. Give all your money to Fred for safekeeping. Uncle Moneybags touched you inappropriately. Automatically forfeit your turn to Fred. When did you do this?!
FRED: Oh, right. Like I break into your house at night and tamper with all your board games so I’ll have a better chance of winning when we play them. What kind of pathetic loser do you take me for?!
BOBBES: Yahtzee!
(Everyone looks at Bobbes.)
FRANCIS: He’s just in his own little world, isn’t he?
CLYDE: Okay… this one’s just creepy. Take off your clothes and dance for Fred?!
FRED: Hey! Someone like Jessica Alba, or Liv Tyler, or your brother’s hot fiancé might play Monopoly with me one day. I am now prepared for that eventuality.
FRANCIS: Fred? Do you honestly think about the things you say? Or is it all just a big game of improvisational madlibs you play in your head?
FRED: You know what? Screw this. It’s my turn now.
(Fred rolls a twenty-sided die from Dungeons and Dragons).
FRED: Ha! Nineteen! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! I landed on the “Fred wins instantly” space!
CLYDE: You’re in jail!
FRED (pulls out a permanent marker and starts scribbling on the board): FRED… WINS… INSTANTLY…
(Bobbes rolls some dice.)
BOBBES: Yes! Triple word score!
(Bobbes pulls out a scrabble bag and starts throwing letters on the board.)
CLYDE: Bobbes, for the last time, this is Monopoly! (Clyde frantically tries to keep the various hotels and houses in place despite the chaos).
FRANCIS: Oh, just let him have his fun. This game’s pretty much shot to hell anyway.
FRED: You know, this wouldn’t have happened if we had played Risk like I wanted.
CLYDE: Fred, the last time we played Risk, you screamed “Napoleon shall rise again,” knocked all the pieces off the board, and ran off.
FRED: I’m just sayin’, is all…
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Game Review: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal
Launch of the Screaming Narwhal. It’s a funny, well written game, but the game play itself is boring and needlessly convoluted. Given Telltale’s track record, however, it’s still worth checking out, if only because the rest of the series will surely improve on it.
Telltale Games, for those that don’t know, is a gaming company founded by a bunch of guys from Lucas Arts from back in the good old days when they didn’t just make Star Wars games. Lucas Arts used to be one of the most prolific contributors of the adventure game genre, and brought us games such as Sam and Max Hit the Road, the Monkey Island series, and Day of the Tentacle. Telltale Games has, in the last three years or so, tried to pick up the mantle, and has produced several episodic adventure games (essentially 1 or 2 hour games that cost a small amount of money, and add up to make a series. Kind of like the Half-Life episodes, only they didn’t give up after the second one). I was a fan of these games both in my youth and now. The Sam and Max games Telltale makes nowadays are funny as hell, and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People captured the humor of the Homestar Runner-verse almost perfectly. So, when I found out they were making a new Monkey Island series, I jumped on it.
The Monkey Island series stars a pirate named Guybrush Threepwood, who, depending on player’s choices throughout the game, is like a cross between Jack Sparrow, Bugs Bunny, and Homer Simpson. Most of the games task him with saving his wife (and usually much more competent pirate) Elaine from his undead pirate rival, LeChuck. If the game sounds childish… well, it is. It’s like an interactive Saturday morning cartoon. It’s still very well written and funny, however, and that makes it okay.
The first game in the series, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, starts with Guybrush facing LeChuck in a final showdown in the middle of a stormy sea. This first section serves as the tutorial, and already the game runs into its first problem: movement.
Note that I’ve played the PC version. Allegedly, it’s also on consoles (either Wii or Xbox 360, I can’t remember which and can’t be assed enough to look it up), and I really can’t speak for how good or bad the controls are on it. On the PC the control is unpleasant. You move Guybrush by holding the mouse button. This causes a weird joystick thing to appear onscreen, which you rotate by moving the mouse. This, in turn, moves Guybrush. Now, before I had to do this, I didn’t realize it was possible for something to be slow and unwieldy at the same time… but now I do. Make no mistake, Guybrush will walk into every obstacle and wall in your path, and he will do so at a snail’s pace. Fortunately, this is an adventure and puzzle game, not a platformer, so this doesn’t make the game unplayable. After all, there are no enemies to dodge, you can’t fall off platforms, and the few timed puzzles in the game are generous enough that if you know what you’re doing, the slow movement rate won’t be an issue. But it’s still a pain, especially considering how well Telltale handles movement in its other games, where you click where you want to go and the character goes there automatically. Also, if you double click, the character runs. I have no idea why Monkey Island couldn’t do the same thing.
Anyway, after the tutorial, a series of terrible things happen, and Guybrush is stranded on Flotsam Island with a possessed hand that punches him and others, gives rude gestures at inopportune moments, and is just generally a dick. For a while now, the game proceeds in typical awesome Telltale fashion. You meet pirates and banter wittily with them, you start a bar fight, and you repeatedly try and fail to board a ship in frequently humorous ways. Eventually, however, your travels take you to the epitome of the game’s shortcomings: the jungle.
Telltale does not do wide open spaces well. This was established in the first episode of Strong Bad’s Cool Game, and it’s even more apparent here, where you must navigate more than a dozen similar jungle screens using the aforementioned crappy controls. For most of the jungle puzzles, you have to follow either animal sounds or the wind, kind of similar to the Lost Forest in Ocarina of Time. If the only speed you can move is a slow walking speed, these kinds of puzzles are a living hell. It takes forever to get from screen to screen, and if you screw up… oh, GOD HELP YOU if you screw up, then you have to start the whole thing over again.
There is a map screen that tries to alleviate the jungle levels a bit. If you find a specific landmark important to the game, you can use the map screen to travel there automatically. But it’s also irritating. The only way to activate the map screen is to arrive at the jungle entrance, and the map is not clearly marked. You see a bunch of trees, with random buildings and ruins sticking out of them. These ruins are not what you click on. No, what you have to do is pixel hunt through the trees, until you find the very specific, often very tiny, part you click on to get where you need to go. The only cue that you’ve found the right place is that the name will appear when you hover over it with the cursor, and if you blink, you’ll usually miss it.
Now, it probably feels like I just ripped this game a new one. After all, I just spent several paragraphs detailing how bad the game play is, and I didn’t even get into how esoteric some of the puzzles are (mostly the one with the cheese and all the creepy pedestals). But I’m actually willing to give this game a bit of a pass. The writing and jokes were good, and that’s really what Telltale Games is about. Also, this was the very first Monkey Island episode Telltale has attempted, and it always takes a little while for them to find the mark on a new series. After all, the first Strong Bad’s Cool Game was just as bad as this if not worse, but the rest of the series turned out to be great. And Sam and Max, inarguably Telltale’s most successful series to date, didn’t really find its stride until “Abe Lincoln Must Die”, which was the FOURTH episode.
So I’m willing to give Monkey Island another chance when the next game comes out. If the second game doesn’t improve on the first, I’ll write it off. But if the rest of Telltale’s games are any indication, I’m sure it will.
Telltale Games, for those that don’t know, is a gaming company founded by a bunch of guys from Lucas Arts from back in the good old days when they didn’t just make Star Wars games. Lucas Arts used to be one of the most prolific contributors of the adventure game genre, and brought us games such as Sam and Max Hit the Road, the Monkey Island series, and Day of the Tentacle. Telltale Games has, in the last three years or so, tried to pick up the mantle, and has produced several episodic adventure games (essentially 1 or 2 hour games that cost a small amount of money, and add up to make a series. Kind of like the Half-Life episodes, only they didn’t give up after the second one). I was a fan of these games both in my youth and now. The Sam and Max games Telltale makes nowadays are funny as hell, and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People captured the humor of the Homestar Runner-verse almost perfectly. So, when I found out they were making a new Monkey Island series, I jumped on it.
The Monkey Island series stars a pirate named Guybrush Threepwood, who, depending on player’s choices throughout the game, is like a cross between Jack Sparrow, Bugs Bunny, and Homer Simpson. Most of the games task him with saving his wife (and usually much more competent pirate) Elaine from his undead pirate rival, LeChuck. If the game sounds childish… well, it is. It’s like an interactive Saturday morning cartoon. It’s still very well written and funny, however, and that makes it okay.
The first game in the series, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, starts with Guybrush facing LeChuck in a final showdown in the middle of a stormy sea. This first section serves as the tutorial, and already the game runs into its first problem: movement.
Note that I’ve played the PC version. Allegedly, it’s also on consoles (either Wii or Xbox 360, I can’t remember which and can’t be assed enough to look it up), and I really can’t speak for how good or bad the controls are on it. On the PC the control is unpleasant. You move Guybrush by holding the mouse button. This causes a weird joystick thing to appear onscreen, which you rotate by moving the mouse. This, in turn, moves Guybrush. Now, before I had to do this, I didn’t realize it was possible for something to be slow and unwieldy at the same time… but now I do. Make no mistake, Guybrush will walk into every obstacle and wall in your path, and he will do so at a snail’s pace. Fortunately, this is an adventure and puzzle game, not a platformer, so this doesn’t make the game unplayable. After all, there are no enemies to dodge, you can’t fall off platforms, and the few timed puzzles in the game are generous enough that if you know what you’re doing, the slow movement rate won’t be an issue. But it’s still a pain, especially considering how well Telltale handles movement in its other games, where you click where you want to go and the character goes there automatically. Also, if you double click, the character runs. I have no idea why Monkey Island couldn’t do the same thing.
Anyway, after the tutorial, a series of terrible things happen, and Guybrush is stranded on Flotsam Island with a possessed hand that punches him and others, gives rude gestures at inopportune moments, and is just generally a dick. For a while now, the game proceeds in typical awesome Telltale fashion. You meet pirates and banter wittily with them, you start a bar fight, and you repeatedly try and fail to board a ship in frequently humorous ways. Eventually, however, your travels take you to the epitome of the game’s shortcomings: the jungle.
Telltale does not do wide open spaces well. This was established in the first episode of Strong Bad’s Cool Game, and it’s even more apparent here, where you must navigate more than a dozen similar jungle screens using the aforementioned crappy controls. For most of the jungle puzzles, you have to follow either animal sounds or the wind, kind of similar to the Lost Forest in Ocarina of Time. If the only speed you can move is a slow walking speed, these kinds of puzzles are a living hell. It takes forever to get from screen to screen, and if you screw up… oh, GOD HELP YOU if you screw up, then you have to start the whole thing over again.
There is a map screen that tries to alleviate the jungle levels a bit. If you find a specific landmark important to the game, you can use the map screen to travel there automatically. But it’s also irritating. The only way to activate the map screen is to arrive at the jungle entrance, and the map is not clearly marked. You see a bunch of trees, with random buildings and ruins sticking out of them. These ruins are not what you click on. No, what you have to do is pixel hunt through the trees, until you find the very specific, often very tiny, part you click on to get where you need to go. The only cue that you’ve found the right place is that the name will appear when you hover over it with the cursor, and if you blink, you’ll usually miss it.
Now, it probably feels like I just ripped this game a new one. After all, I just spent several paragraphs detailing how bad the game play is, and I didn’t even get into how esoteric some of the puzzles are (mostly the one with the cheese and all the creepy pedestals). But I’m actually willing to give this game a bit of a pass. The writing and jokes were good, and that’s really what Telltale Games is about. Also, this was the very first Monkey Island episode Telltale has attempted, and it always takes a little while for them to find the mark on a new series. After all, the first Strong Bad’s Cool Game was just as bad as this if not worse, but the rest of the series turned out to be great. And Sam and Max, inarguably Telltale’s most successful series to date, didn’t really find its stride until “Abe Lincoln Must Die”, which was the FOURTH episode.
So I’m willing to give Monkey Island another chance when the next game comes out. If the second game doesn’t improve on the first, I’ll write it off. But if the rest of Telltale’s games are any indication, I’m sure it will.
Monday, July 20, 2009
F***ed up Friday Commentary
F’ed Up Friday, much like Full Contact Golf, is a chapter I hadn’t planned to do until a couple of weeks before I did it. However, unlike Full Contact Golf, I improvised pretty much the entire thing on the spot.
Much like Full Contact Golf’s scene where Nina uses Clyde as a human shield, I had a specific gag in mind that I built the rest of the chapter around. In this case, it was Nina trying to light a cigarette. Funny as this was, it had to be prefaced by this conversation, which was pretty difficult to write. I’ve never smoked enough to have an actual nicotine addiction, so I had to guess what one feels like based on descriptions from people I know that do. It’s probably inaccurate, but I figured without first-hand knowledge, I might as well err on the side of a boob joke. Since this is comedy, I figured such a minor transgression would be forgivable.
This chapter was hard for me because, like most male writers, I sometimes have a difficult time writing female characters. I try to get around this by basing them on real people I know (various girls I met in school) and imagining how they’d react to a given situation. However, the situation Biff and Nina find themselves in during this chapter is completely bizarre, and I was drawing a blank using this tactic. I tried doing research on how body-switching type stories are handled in other fiction. Unfortunately, material I found was useless for a variety of reasons. The original Freaky Friday film involved switching between a mother and daughter, which was too different from what I was doing to be helpful, and most stories I could find that were between two people of different gender were either downright obscene (which I don’t want Moron County to be), or had a romantic subplot between the two characters. Since I don’t write romance very well, and don’t want Biff and Nina openly interested in each other this early in the comic’s run anyway, that was out. As a side note, an intriguing story I found during my research was a guest comic in Sluggy Freelance where Torg and Zoe were switched for a week but, due to the nature of the technology, can’t remember it, and the story is told via flashbacks as they try to find out what happened. I briefly considered doing that, but decided not to because:
a.) I wouldn’t be able to without pretty much ripping off the Sluggy Freelance story entirely, and
b.) There is another chapter I’m going to do in the near future that’ll be told via a series of flashbacks, and I don’t want to overuse that gimmick.
What I ended up doing was simply having the body switching be a background element, and the chapter’s main focus turning out to be something else, in this case, the Vandesdelca project. This was another last minute decision. Up until a week before the Vandesdelca project was revealed, Fred and Bobbes were originally going to make their way to the giant robot wing. They’d accidentally activate one of the experimental ones, it would chase them outside, find Cartoon Billy’s drill, immediately fall in love with it, and start humping it vigorously, much to Billy’s terror and dismay. Then Clyde would have fixed the toaster. While I admit the robot bit would have been pretty funny, the chapter would have become pure filler, with no real purpose to the overall story other than reminding the audience that Cartoon Billy exists. This is important because I plan for him to be the main villain of the next major story arc, but it shouldn’t be the only reason for the chapter to exist. So, I decided to reveal a little bit about the big mysterious project Connor’s looking for. Not a lot; just enough for it to serve as a deus ex machina that raises more questions than answers.
Much like Full Contact Golf’s scene where Nina uses Clyde as a human shield, I had a specific gag in mind that I built the rest of the chapter around. In this case, it was Nina trying to light a cigarette. Funny as this was, it had to be prefaced by this conversation, which was pretty difficult to write. I’ve never smoked enough to have an actual nicotine addiction, so I had to guess what one feels like based on descriptions from people I know that do. It’s probably inaccurate, but I figured without first-hand knowledge, I might as well err on the side of a boob joke. Since this is comedy, I figured such a minor transgression would be forgivable.
This chapter was hard for me because, like most male writers, I sometimes have a difficult time writing female characters. I try to get around this by basing them on real people I know (various girls I met in school) and imagining how they’d react to a given situation. However, the situation Biff and Nina find themselves in during this chapter is completely bizarre, and I was drawing a blank using this tactic. I tried doing research on how body-switching type stories are handled in other fiction. Unfortunately, material I found was useless for a variety of reasons. The original Freaky Friday film involved switching between a mother and daughter, which was too different from what I was doing to be helpful, and most stories I could find that were between two people of different gender were either downright obscene (which I don’t want Moron County to be), or had a romantic subplot between the two characters. Since I don’t write romance very well, and don’t want Biff and Nina openly interested in each other this early in the comic’s run anyway, that was out. As a side note, an intriguing story I found during my research was a guest comic in Sluggy Freelance where Torg and Zoe were switched for a week but, due to the nature of the technology, can’t remember it, and the story is told via flashbacks as they try to find out what happened. I briefly considered doing that, but decided not to because:
a.) I wouldn’t be able to without pretty much ripping off the Sluggy Freelance story entirely, and
b.) There is another chapter I’m going to do in the near future that’ll be told via a series of flashbacks, and I don’t want to overuse that gimmick.
What I ended up doing was simply having the body switching be a background element, and the chapter’s main focus turning out to be something else, in this case, the Vandesdelca project. This was another last minute decision. Up until a week before the Vandesdelca project was revealed, Fred and Bobbes were originally going to make their way to the giant robot wing. They’d accidentally activate one of the experimental ones, it would chase them outside, find Cartoon Billy’s drill, immediately fall in love with it, and start humping it vigorously, much to Billy’s terror and dismay. Then Clyde would have fixed the toaster. While I admit the robot bit would have been pretty funny, the chapter would have become pure filler, with no real purpose to the overall story other than reminding the audience that Cartoon Billy exists. This is important because I plan for him to be the main villain of the next major story arc, but it shouldn’t be the only reason for the chapter to exist. So, I decided to reveal a little bit about the big mysterious project Connor’s looking for. Not a lot; just enough for it to serve as a deus ex machina that raises more questions than answers.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The Biff Show
You might be able to tell this is another old Buzz Comix vote thing. Either you've read it before, or you know that public access television doesn't exist anymore (in all fairness, it may not have existed when I wrote this either; I just don't like doing research for these things). Either way, enjoy The Biff Show, and I'll see you next week.
(Biff sitting in the living room, in a tuxedo. There is obvious fake applause in the background.)
BIFF: Hey, everybody! I’m Biff, and welcome to…
(The camera follows a bee flying around the room.)
BOBBES: Bumblebee! Bumblebee!
BIFF: Bobbes! Focus on me! Over here!
(The camera quickly moves back to Biff.)
BOBBES: Sorry…
BIFF: Welcome to the show. I am joined today, as always, by my lovely assistant Nina.
(Nina walks in.)
NINA: Biff, what’s with the camera? Oh, god… please don’t tell me you’re doing this again…
BIFF: On today’s episode…
NINA: Oh god damn it…
BIFF: I’m going to show you how to perform a vital civil service: namely, how best to warn friends, family, and even complete strangers that a child in your neighborhood or school… is ugly.
(Cut to a montage of various normal looking children that Biff, for some reason or another, considers ugly.)
BIFF: Yes… ugly children are a plague on our nation’s moral health. By allowing these poor heathens to exist without ridicule, we are endangering the very fabric of society by making these children think that being ugly is okay.
NINA: There is something wrong with you…
BIFF: Exactly, Nina. So, when you see an ugly child, don’t keep it to yourself! Let the world around you know, loudly and with as much coarse laughter as you deem necessary, “Hey, everyone! I am looking at an ugly child!”
(Montage fades back to Biff and Nina. Nina looks disgusted, but Biff is oblivious.)
BIFF: But sometimes, you encounter a child so ugly, you need to take drastic measures to warn the entire world.
(Biff holds up a picture of a perfectly normal little girl.)
BIFF: Take Clara Marshal, who attends preschool with my little brother Booker…
NINA: Biff, stop this. Now.
BIFF: Clara is incredibly ugly.
NINA: She’s not ugly! She’s adorable! What’s wrong with you?!
BIFF: She’s so ugly, in fact, that drastic action must be taken. That is why yesterday I purchased ad space on a billboard out on the interstate, so that her ugliness will immediately be made apparent to passing motorists.
(Cut to a billboard with Clara’s picture on it, including the caption “This is an ugly little girl.” After a few seconds, cut back to Biff and Nina.)
NINA: Biff… that girl’s parents yelled at you for a very long time…
BIFF: That’s all the time we have for now. After the commercial break, stay tuned for the panel discussion between myself, Clyde Alperson, Fred Mudhart, and Francis the Robot on why fat women should be treated as second class citizens, followed by a celebrity interview with a hobo that thinks I’m Tracy McGrady. It’s all here on the Biff Show, part of Moron County public access!
NINA: I swear I’m going to burn that camera…
(Biff sitting in the living room, in a tuxedo. There is obvious fake applause in the background.)
BIFF: Hey, everybody! I’m Biff, and welcome to…
(The camera follows a bee flying around the room.)
BOBBES: Bumblebee! Bumblebee!
BIFF: Bobbes! Focus on me! Over here!
(The camera quickly moves back to Biff.)
BOBBES: Sorry…
BIFF: Welcome to the show. I am joined today, as always, by my lovely assistant Nina.
(Nina walks in.)
NINA: Biff, what’s with the camera? Oh, god… please don’t tell me you’re doing this again…
BIFF: On today’s episode…
NINA: Oh god damn it…
BIFF: I’m going to show you how to perform a vital civil service: namely, how best to warn friends, family, and even complete strangers that a child in your neighborhood or school… is ugly.
(Cut to a montage of various normal looking children that Biff, for some reason or another, considers ugly.)
BIFF: Yes… ugly children are a plague on our nation’s moral health. By allowing these poor heathens to exist without ridicule, we are endangering the very fabric of society by making these children think that being ugly is okay.
NINA: There is something wrong with you…
BIFF: Exactly, Nina. So, when you see an ugly child, don’t keep it to yourself! Let the world around you know, loudly and with as much coarse laughter as you deem necessary, “Hey, everyone! I am looking at an ugly child!”
(Montage fades back to Biff and Nina. Nina looks disgusted, but Biff is oblivious.)
BIFF: But sometimes, you encounter a child so ugly, you need to take drastic measures to warn the entire world.
(Biff holds up a picture of a perfectly normal little girl.)
BIFF: Take Clara Marshal, who attends preschool with my little brother Booker…
NINA: Biff, stop this. Now.
BIFF: Clara is incredibly ugly.
NINA: She’s not ugly! She’s adorable! What’s wrong with you?!
BIFF: She’s so ugly, in fact, that drastic action must be taken. That is why yesterday I purchased ad space on a billboard out on the interstate, so that her ugliness will immediately be made apparent to passing motorists.
(Cut to a billboard with Clara’s picture on it, including the caption “This is an ugly little girl.” After a few seconds, cut back to Biff and Nina.)
NINA: Biff… that girl’s parents yelled at you for a very long time…
BIFF: That’s all the time we have for now. After the commercial break, stay tuned for the panel discussion between myself, Clyde Alperson, Fred Mudhart, and Francis the Robot on why fat women should be treated as second class citizens, followed by a celebrity interview with a hobo that thinks I’m Tracy McGrady. It’s all here on the Biff Show, part of Moron County public access!
NINA: I swear I’m going to burn that camera…
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Finch-Lechter Debates
So, I had a blog posting on censorship planned for this week (a question from a reader got me thinking about the subject), but it's a bit more difficult than I thought to get my thoughts together on it. I did promise to update this blog once a week, though, so I want to provide you all with something.
A while back, when I still did vote incentives, I'd occasionally post short stories and scripts. One of my favorites was a short script where Biff and Nina argued about who would win in a fight between Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mocking Bird and Hannibal Lechter.
Since it's currently not available anywhere else online right now, and a fair number of you probably haven't seen it, here it is in all its glory.
NINA: I’m sorry, Biff, but there’s no contest. It wouldn’t happen.
BIFF: But he’s a lot smarter than his southern accent would lead you to believe. Plus he’s an expert marksman! What if he had a gun?
NINA: Biff, seriously. There’s no way Atticus Finch could beat Hannibal Lechter in a fight. It’s just not possible.
BIFF: Sure he could! He’s one of the greatest literary heroes of all time!
NINA: Yes, because of his morality. Morality would be a weakness against someone like Hannibal. Atticus would be so horribly shocked by Hannibal’s deeds and mannerisms that it would give Hannibal an advantage.
BIFF: I think you’re underestimating Atticus’s resolve. He stared down an entire angry mob, after all.
NINA: Biff, maintaining your moral high ground in the face of a bunch of racist idiots isn’t nearly on the same level as staying toe-to-toe in a fight with a cannibalistic serial killer. Besides, even if Atticus could handle Lechter on an emotional level, he’d still stick to some code of honor when fighting him. He probably wouldn’t even USE his gun. Hannibal would still win.
BIFF: Hannibal has a code of honor too. He left Clarice Starling alone after he escaped from the mental facility.
NINA: Not in the sequel.
BIFF: The sequel sucked!
NINA: That’s not the point. The point is, even if Hannibal has a moral code, which he doesn’t, it is significantly more flexible than Atticus’s. He would have no reason or inclination to engage Atticus on anything even remotely resembling a level playing field.
BIFF: Well, what if there was something at stake more important that Atticus’s honor? What if Hannibal were holding his kids hostage? He’d use his gun then for sure.
NINA: Well yeah, then it could go either way. But that’s not really fair. You’re just making up conditions now to give your side an unfair advantage.
BIFF: It’s a legitimate concern! Hannibal would definitely go after Atticus’s kids first. He’s all sinister and crazy like that.
NINA: Probably, but that’s not the issue here. Look, Biff, I want the good guy to win just as much as you do, okay? But in a straight fight, Hannibal Lechter would completely destroy Atticus Finch without even breaking a sweat.
BIFF: Oh yeah? Well, since we’re considering information from sequels to be fair game here, what about Atticus from “To Kill a Mocking Bird II: Boo Radley’s Revenge?”
NINA: …What?!
BIFF: You know, when Atticus turned into a fifty foot radioactive mutant that shot lasers out his eyes.
NINA: That movie never existed.
BIFF: You sure?
NINA: Yes. I’m sure. I’m sure because no just and loving god would ever allow that movie to come into being.
BIFF: So… Scout never grew up into a hot lesbian that dressed like Tank Girl? I just dreamed that entire film?!
NINA: Okay, this discussion is over.
BIFF: Well, what if he was also working with the kid from Clockwork Orange…
NINA: OVER!
A while back, when I still did vote incentives, I'd occasionally post short stories and scripts. One of my favorites was a short script where Biff and Nina argued about who would win in a fight between Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mocking Bird and Hannibal Lechter.
Since it's currently not available anywhere else online right now, and a fair number of you probably haven't seen it, here it is in all its glory.
NINA: I’m sorry, Biff, but there’s no contest. It wouldn’t happen.
BIFF: But he’s a lot smarter than his southern accent would lead you to believe. Plus he’s an expert marksman! What if he had a gun?
NINA: Biff, seriously. There’s no way Atticus Finch could beat Hannibal Lechter in a fight. It’s just not possible.
BIFF: Sure he could! He’s one of the greatest literary heroes of all time!
NINA: Yes, because of his morality. Morality would be a weakness against someone like Hannibal. Atticus would be so horribly shocked by Hannibal’s deeds and mannerisms that it would give Hannibal an advantage.
BIFF: I think you’re underestimating Atticus’s resolve. He stared down an entire angry mob, after all.
NINA: Biff, maintaining your moral high ground in the face of a bunch of racist idiots isn’t nearly on the same level as staying toe-to-toe in a fight with a cannibalistic serial killer. Besides, even if Atticus could handle Lechter on an emotional level, he’d still stick to some code of honor when fighting him. He probably wouldn’t even USE his gun. Hannibal would still win.
BIFF: Hannibal has a code of honor too. He left Clarice Starling alone after he escaped from the mental facility.
NINA: Not in the sequel.
BIFF: The sequel sucked!
NINA: That’s not the point. The point is, even if Hannibal has a moral code, which he doesn’t, it is significantly more flexible than Atticus’s. He would have no reason or inclination to engage Atticus on anything even remotely resembling a level playing field.
BIFF: Well, what if there was something at stake more important that Atticus’s honor? What if Hannibal were holding his kids hostage? He’d use his gun then for sure.
NINA: Well yeah, then it could go either way. But that’s not really fair. You’re just making up conditions now to give your side an unfair advantage.
BIFF: It’s a legitimate concern! Hannibal would definitely go after Atticus’s kids first. He’s all sinister and crazy like that.
NINA: Probably, but that’s not the issue here. Look, Biff, I want the good guy to win just as much as you do, okay? But in a straight fight, Hannibal Lechter would completely destroy Atticus Finch without even breaking a sweat.
BIFF: Oh yeah? Well, since we’re considering information from sequels to be fair game here, what about Atticus from “To Kill a Mocking Bird II: Boo Radley’s Revenge?”
NINA: …What?!
BIFF: You know, when Atticus turned into a fifty foot radioactive mutant that shot lasers out his eyes.
NINA: That movie never existed.
BIFF: You sure?
NINA: Yes. I’m sure. I’m sure because no just and loving god would ever allow that movie to come into being.
BIFF: So… Scout never grew up into a hot lesbian that dressed like Tank Girl? I just dreamed that entire film?!
NINA: Okay, this discussion is over.
BIFF: Well, what if he was also working with the kid from Clockwork Orange…
NINA: OVER!
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Hobos, Onions, and Futurama
Coming up with stuff to write about is difficult for me. Writing itself isn’t inherently difficult; it’s just that all of my creative writing talent tends to get directed towards Moron County. I had a couple of ideas rolling around, but dismissed them all just as quickly, as they involved research, and I’m not really in the mood to do that this week. So, I did what I always do in situations like this, and asked one of my friends to give me a writing prompt. Specifically, I asked my former college roommate Mr. Spiffy (real name unnecessary for the purposes of this article). He gave me this little gem to work with:
“So, last night I went on my first date in six months, and the first in even longer that the girl was actually attractive. It took a little while for the conversation to get rolling, and once it did, a hobo wearing three necklaces and a sleeveless turtleneck - in June - walks up complaining that he's "lost his onion," and derails the conversation while capturing her attention for 20 minutes. And he was drinking water - at a bar. Dirty, smelly hobo hippie.
Okay, maybe it wasn't 20 minutes. Maybe it was only 2 or 3. But it's the principle of the matter, you know?”
Then, before he answered, I remembered that Futurama was coming back, and I could do a blog post about that. So I will. But I wanted to include this story because I thought it was funny.
So, Futurama’s coming back. Comedy Central renewed it for 26 episodes, to air sometime in 2010.
Believe it or not, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, ever since its premature cancellation in 2003, I have always been under the impression that any Futurama is better than no Futurama. This attitude came to a head when I actually rented the horrible Futurama videogame, which was about as good as most licensed games (which is to say, it was a festering turd). Then the Simpsons, which had admittedly been on a slow decline in quality that I was intentionally oblivious to since high school, started getting noticeably bad. Then Family Guy got uncancelled, and it is, in my opinion, one of the worst things on television (American Dad is okay, though).
Then it was announced that there were Futurama movies coming out. I was excited and terrified at the same time. But that terror was unfounded. Bender’s Big Score was everything the show was and more (and I’m still looking for an mp3 of the “Trinity going to war” song, so if someone can hook me up in the comments, that’d be sweet). Then Beast with a Billion Backs was alright. Then Bender’s Game was… well, flawed, but still better than most stuff on television these days. Then Into the Wild Green Yonder was excellent and, in my opinion, wrapped up the series perfectly. Yes, the entire cast were wanted fugitives at the end, but I think that’s a perfectly suitable ending for a Matt Groening cartoon.
But now that it’s back, I’m not sure. My reasons for this are many.
As newspaper comics, the Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy illustrate, fictional media has an inherent best-by date where, if it doesn’t end, it starts to go bad. Granted, a lot of these examples can be explained away by reasons that have nothing to do with longevity. Most newspaper comics that suck are not drawn by their original creators, and are in fact done by a committee of octogenarians that understand newspaper censorship standards more than real life (except for Garfield, whose creator is just out of ideas, and Marvin, which is created by the souls of the damned). And South Park and Family Guy have just become highly transparent soap boxes for the libertarian Matt Stone and Trey Parker and the hyper-leftist-atheist Seth MacFarlane respectively, which I’d have no problem with if it weren’t at the expense of humor.
Simpsons, however, has gotten bad in the sense that Garfield has. It’s out of ideas, and is now just an empty shell of its former self. The characters are now buffoonish, one-dimensional caricatures of themselves (due to a process TV Tropes refers to as “Flanderization”). In fact, Simpsons has gotten so bad in its later years that it’s starting to undermine what it’s already accomplished. Plots are getting rehashed (a Simpson has become a co-owner of Moe’s Tavern more times than I’d care to count), and every episode for the past twelve years has had a special guest star. It’s beginning to reach the point where voicing a character (or yourself) on the Simpsons is the equivalent of getting a tattoo in the celebrity world. It’s what all the cool kids are doing, and in a few years it’ll make you look like a jackass.
My fear is that Futurama will become just like this. There’s also the fear of political leanings trumping comedy, but Futurama has shown itself resistant to that in the past. Sure, there’s an environmentalist message here and there (“Crimes of the Hot,” Al Gore’s appearances in “Bender’s Big Score,” “Into the Wild Green Yonder” and its entirety), but the show kept its humor through all of those. No, the bigger concern is that it’ll become like the Simpsons. However, there’s hope.
Futurama has an established continuity. Things change from episode to episode. Sure, episodes are self-contained, but there’s a storyline that holds things together. Simpsons lacks this, which means that unlike Futurama, everything is ret-conned at the end of every episode. This prevents character development, which leads to characters getting Flanderized. American Dad also has elements of this, which makes it suck less than Family Guy (the fact that Seth MacFarlane has ironically moved his politics from American Dad to Family Guy helps too).
So, I believe there’s hope for Futurama. I’m trying to be optimistic about it. Problem is, I was also optimistic about Family Guy when it came back. So you can see where I’m concerned.
“So, last night I went on my first date in six months, and the first in even longer that the girl was actually attractive. It took a little while for the conversation to get rolling, and once it did, a hobo wearing three necklaces and a sleeveless turtleneck - in June - walks up complaining that he's "lost his onion," and derails the conversation while capturing her attention for 20 minutes. And he was drinking water - at a bar. Dirty, smelly hobo hippie.
Okay, maybe it wasn't 20 minutes. Maybe it was only 2 or 3. But it's the principle of the matter, you know?”
Then, before he answered, I remembered that Futurama was coming back, and I could do a blog post about that. So I will. But I wanted to include this story because I thought it was funny.
So, Futurama’s coming back. Comedy Central renewed it for 26 episodes, to air sometime in 2010.
Believe it or not, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, ever since its premature cancellation in 2003, I have always been under the impression that any Futurama is better than no Futurama. This attitude came to a head when I actually rented the horrible Futurama videogame, which was about as good as most licensed games (which is to say, it was a festering turd). Then the Simpsons, which had admittedly been on a slow decline in quality that I was intentionally oblivious to since high school, started getting noticeably bad. Then Family Guy got uncancelled, and it is, in my opinion, one of the worst things on television (American Dad is okay, though).
Then it was announced that there were Futurama movies coming out. I was excited and terrified at the same time. But that terror was unfounded. Bender’s Big Score was everything the show was and more (and I’m still looking for an mp3 of the “Trinity going to war” song, so if someone can hook me up in the comments, that’d be sweet). Then Beast with a Billion Backs was alright. Then Bender’s Game was… well, flawed, but still better than most stuff on television these days. Then Into the Wild Green Yonder was excellent and, in my opinion, wrapped up the series perfectly. Yes, the entire cast were wanted fugitives at the end, but I think that’s a perfectly suitable ending for a Matt Groening cartoon.
But now that it’s back, I’m not sure. My reasons for this are many.
As newspaper comics, the Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy illustrate, fictional media has an inherent best-by date where, if it doesn’t end, it starts to go bad. Granted, a lot of these examples can be explained away by reasons that have nothing to do with longevity. Most newspaper comics that suck are not drawn by their original creators, and are in fact done by a committee of octogenarians that understand newspaper censorship standards more than real life (except for Garfield, whose creator is just out of ideas, and Marvin, which is created by the souls of the damned). And South Park and Family Guy have just become highly transparent soap boxes for the libertarian Matt Stone and Trey Parker and the hyper-leftist-atheist Seth MacFarlane respectively, which I’d have no problem with if it weren’t at the expense of humor.
Simpsons, however, has gotten bad in the sense that Garfield has. It’s out of ideas, and is now just an empty shell of its former self. The characters are now buffoonish, one-dimensional caricatures of themselves (due to a process TV Tropes refers to as “Flanderization”). In fact, Simpsons has gotten so bad in its later years that it’s starting to undermine what it’s already accomplished. Plots are getting rehashed (a Simpson has become a co-owner of Moe’s Tavern more times than I’d care to count), and every episode for the past twelve years has had a special guest star. It’s beginning to reach the point where voicing a character (or yourself) on the Simpsons is the equivalent of getting a tattoo in the celebrity world. It’s what all the cool kids are doing, and in a few years it’ll make you look like a jackass.
My fear is that Futurama will become just like this. There’s also the fear of political leanings trumping comedy, but Futurama has shown itself resistant to that in the past. Sure, there’s an environmentalist message here and there (“Crimes of the Hot,” Al Gore’s appearances in “Bender’s Big Score,” “Into the Wild Green Yonder” and its entirety), but the show kept its humor through all of those. No, the bigger concern is that it’ll become like the Simpsons. However, there’s hope.
Futurama has an established continuity. Things change from episode to episode. Sure, episodes are self-contained, but there’s a storyline that holds things together. Simpsons lacks this, which means that unlike Futurama, everything is ret-conned at the end of every episode. This prevents character development, which leads to characters getting Flanderized. American Dad also has elements of this, which makes it suck less than Family Guy (the fact that Seth MacFarlane has ironically moved his politics from American Dad to Family Guy helps too).
So, I believe there’s hope for Futurama. I’m trying to be optimistic about it. Problem is, I was also optimistic about Family Guy when it came back. So you can see where I’m concerned.
Monday, June 15, 2009
An Introduction
My original idea for this blog post was to discuss the GIFT theory first proposed by Penny Arcade, and relate it to my desire to write this blog under my own name. I wrote the first paragraph, thought about it for a few days, and decided it was pretentious and self-serving; almost as much so as using the words “pretentious” or “self-serving,” or using semi-colons in a sentence. So I won’t be doing that. Instead, I’m going to introduce myself straight-up.
My name’s Grady Phillips.
This is what I look like:
Not the best picture, perhaps, but just the right mix of badassery and drunk-looking fat guy that you have an idea of who you’re dealing with. Note that when I represent myself on internet forums, I use this picture:
A little dishonest, I guess, but it showcases my artistic talent, limited though it may be. People ask where the picture came from, and that gives me an excuse to talk up my webcomic, which is my pride and joy in the creative sense. Speaking of which:
You probably found this blog through it, but if not, go check it out. I’ll wait.
And that’s about as much anonymity as I’m giving up. This is the internet, after all. I’m not stupid.
I’m starting this blog because it’s something I wanted to do for a long time. Realistically, I’ve always been a writer first and an artist second, and while I’m trying every day to improve my artistic ability (as you can hopefully tell by seeing Moron County’s evolving style), I certainly don’t want my writing skill to stagnate. So that’s what this blog is for.
Every week, most likely Monday, I’ll try to put something new here. As a warning, I have many interests, so there’s no telling what any particular blog post will be about. Maybe I’ll talk shop about
And that’s about it. Keep reading the comic, and I’ll have something intelligent to write about next week.
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