As a fan of film, and being originally from Southern California (and having had a few brushes with almost fame) I am a movie and TV trivia nut.  I just can’t help it.  I can tell you the simple stuff like Buddy Epson(Green Acres fame) was originally cast as the Tin Woodsman in the Judy Gardner Wizard of Oz , but he was allergic to the aluminum based makeup and they had to recast.  I can tell you some of the more escoteric stuff like Armeggeddon is so factually incorrect that it has been used as a managers training video at NASA with a requirement that they pick out those things that are scientifically incorrect with it (I believe at last count, there were something in the neighborhood of 256 inaccuracies). 

I just eat up this information.  Typically I will watch a movie, then go scouring in the internet for trivia or production information.  When I first heard of TVTropes.org  it was actually from reading another webcomic.  I didn’t check it out for some time and finally about six months ago (right around the time I was suffering Tweetics burnout) I found it and was instantly intrigued.  It is a wiki, but without the formality of that other wiki.  It is self referential, it is fun and through it I discovered this term referred to as “Lampshading” and I just started to think about that and what that would mean if consciously used as a Mac Guffin (Sometimes spelled McGuffin-a term coined by Hitchcock ), what would it mean for a story?  I suppose what you might have here is Meta-Fiction, who knows.  But it has been a hoot to play with.

Hiya everyone and anyone that still checks over here periodically for updates,

Within the next week Tweetics will be changing its name and focus.  The site will be retitled Random People Comics with less of a focus on Tweets and more of a general focus on humor.  I want to apologize to all those that have waited almost five months now for something new.  What began as a break because of exhaustion became a hiatus and I can assure you it will not occur again. 

Additionally, the update schedule will change to Tuesday and Thursday with possible Saturday updates.  I am going for a more manageable volume and pace that I can also entertwine with all those other annoying life occurances (work, kids, etc…).

Thanks for your support,

Jason

(above pictured is one of the projects I have been working on, a Zombie and Robot extravaganza)

Thanks for your support and talk to you in a few weeks,

Jason

Original Tweet by @Chewsoowei: Winked At The Pope Stomped The Grounds Of Vatican City, Swept Through The Vatican Museum, Gawked At The Wall Of The Sistine Chapel.

A special thanks to Jonas Carlson for his 360° Photo tour that I used for reference for the interiors.

 Original Tweet From @benjaminpacini: Berlusconi–media mogul–blames the Italian media for his problems? He calls Obama ‘tanned’ and blames the papers? I <3 Italian politics.

Silvio Berlusconi is really just my model of everything that is wrong in politics anymore.  Yes, he is corrupt.  Yes, he is a liar.  But more than anything, he feels that he needs to be a celebrity before he is anything else (then again, he is a Media Mogul, so I suppose that is an occupational hazard).   He tells people that he doesn’t really like his job, but does it out of a sense of civil duty.  Okay, fine, i would be down with that, but is there any real denying that the man is simply a camera whore (perhaps not the best choice of words considering that he is also being busted for philandering).  I wonder, honestly, how much of this is just politics in today’s society.

I remember reading a tweet some time ago with the writer saying “I forgot, is Obama our president or a celebrity?”, and it really got me to thinking…what does it really take to make it in politics?  I am betting that the average American does not read the voters pamphlet that is sent to them before they vote.  Instead they look at all the “Vote for Royce” signs along the freeway and simply go with those thoughts and beliefs.  It is easier, by far, to just look at a few brightly colored signs than it is to find out what is about those brightly colored signs.  It is easy to believe the credibility of an organization called “Americans for a Constitutional Government“, because-really-shouldn’t we all be for a Constitutional Government?  The implication if you don’t support this group is that you are not, in fact, for a real government.  It is all about perception and I don’t lay this simply on the sholders of the GOP, they are just the ones that have figured out better how to stimatize people (after all, FDR basically started this whole thing with his Fireside Chats-it is all about appealing to your audience, not about actually having anything constructive to say).  The GOP are great at simplifying things to a “If you are not for us, then you are against us” level and it really is distracting and disturbing at the same time.  To be a politician in this climate you almost need to be a celebrity.  It is the required level that you need to achieve so you (as a politician) can be the colorful sign amongst all the not so colorful signs.  It is the reason that the idea of Brad Pitt running for Mayorare not that far fetched when we hear about it (Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Al Franken have all been politicians, Brad Pitt is basically Amnesty International).  

I think when it comes right down to it, the reason that our politicians are rapidly becoming celebrities is that it makes them easier to identify and categorize.  Sarah Palin was a trial run (I think Bobby Jindal was supposed to be too, but that went way wrong) of the kind of iconographic politician that we are going to see more and more of.  A politician that is marketed as a lifestyle, and not a voice. 

I am a bit scared of what things are going to become.

There is that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where all the knights are singing about Camelot and it flashes to the guy in the dungeon who is capping to the beat without the benefit of the music and I have always found that just darn amusing (it was also the first time my son had ever seen that movie and while he found it super amusing, he didn’t quite understand the ending).  But what it really got me thinking about was more of the subject of today’s Tweetic.

There is this sort of old world mystery to Europe that America only has a bit of and even that is only sparse in the 13 colonies.  And I wonder how many people have the same impression of the prison system that Lee might have.  Where when you are thrown into jail, it is complete with moldy brickwork and hanging skeleton.  Or perhaps, it is simply that a greater majority of people have not been in jail at any point so we use television and movies as our source material.  That being the case, it is a bit sad if someone has seen nothing but Women in Prison films or other softcore exploitation films that portray the prison experience as some sort of sado-masochistic sexual fantasy.  Or, perhaps, there is this niche of people that feel that Jailhouse Rock is perhaps a better place to mine for information.  While The Count of Monte Cristo is probably not necessarily the truest representation of a European prison, I think that film allows our fantasy of what an old world prison is, to exist in what we see as some sort of “gritty” manner (although, come to think of it, I think the majority of the cast was English, so once again we must live through a French book with a British cast).

The fact of the matter is, we probably don’t want to really know what the inside of a prison looks like.  Not because it is so horrible that we couldn’t deal with it psychologically, but instead because it is generally so plain that it would rather ruin our impressions.  Just like neither Roots nor Gone with the Wind really pinged the “Slave” experience, I don’t think The Green Mile or The Longest Yard really set it down.  Chances are, something more like The Chamber is where we get a better representation of the Prison Atmosphere.    But do we ever really want any real Reality in our fantasy? Is it funnier to see extreme characters in a real setting or extreme characters in an extreme setting?  I think a mix of both, maybe.  The movie wasn’t great, but I think Showtime did a great wink and nudge to the entire notion of glossing up an environment for the purposes of entertainment, and it is worth a look if you can rent it for .99¢ at Blockbuster.

Where do you think that cinema has taken a rather mundane environment and “extremed” it?

Many moons ago I was heavily involved in the Southern California rave scene.  I was at every party every weekend.  Had the huge pants and the beaded bracelets and the whole thing.  It was a giant part of my life.  The only bit of which that still survives is a real love for electronic music.  But during this time, a website that I used to frequent would organize Raver Day at Disneyland, and it is from there that part of today’s Tweetic comes from.

My last Raver Day was in 2000 (one of the first Raver day’s that were organized) and it was amazing.  Probably 200 ravers all assembled in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle and we took over the park for the day.  Everything and anything that you could imagine a bunch of phat pant wearing, brightly colored kids doing…well…we did it.  It was marvelous.  We rode space mountain at least seven times that day.  We took over the dance floor at Tomorrowland Terrace and we even got banned from Toon Town.  It is no joke!  There is/was a little alcove just as you enter toon town where, presumably, mothers and families can sit and relax before they enter yet another themed area.  It happened to be one of the meet-up points for our rag-tag group of misfits and somehow, it turned into an impromptu music session.  A bunch of ravers, equipped with whistles and a strong desire to hear a great bass beat all started pounding a 160 bpm 4/4 rhythm on garbage cans and improvising melody with whistles until Disney Security came and busted us up (we were doing pretty well with our set too, it was kinda disappointing).  When we left the area, one of our number-a girl named Joey-was missing.

It turns out that in addition to being banned from Toon Town (how they were going to implement that, is still beyond me), they had deemed Joey’s actions Jailable.  She was sent to Disney Jail.  The details of the even are somewhat sketchy, but she said she was sat in a room with all grey walls, a table and a picture of Mickey on the wall-crying.  She was never particularly specific about what it was that had happened to her, but she had noted that she was questioned and badgered and finally released.  Since then, her tale of Disney incarceration has become a bit of a tale for Ravers,  Something like a Keiser Soze fable for Ravers, “don’t screw around at Disneyland or you will go to Disney Jail”.   It tends to be one of the great mysteries of my early 20’s (that, and how crossing the Parade route is like crossing a freeway…as one of the Disney Security told us).

For those of you who didn’t get a chance to check it out yesterday, please head over to Nerd Report Radio and listen to my interview with Emily and Sabrina.  It was a great time and they were super gracious hosts.  There are some other great interviews that they have done and I would really suggest giving them a listen.

Currently Listening To: Wild Thing

I was reading a mock list for Webcomic beginners a few weeks back and I began to really think about the #33 that another author had put on that list (you will find a few from me on there and a few from Jack Cayless as well) and I realized that for the longest time, in comedy we did not expect our comedic foil to actually suffer permanent damage from any sort of pain inflicted on them.  I think that the last few generations have had a sort of Loony Tunes approach to comedy: People can suffer unimaginable damage and it is funny and they don’t have to have more than a black eye following it.  I think about it and I realize that I am as much a perpetrator of this sort of logic as many others.  Several comics ago, I had Lee bitch slap Jerry with a laptop and there were no immediate repercussions.  I think this sort of sensibility is just ingrained in how comedy and action were looked at for at least the last 20 years and that has all started to change.  Now, our comedians and our heroes have to suffer actual consequences for their actions.

Part of the Modernist philosophy is that the hero can still be heroic.  Captain America can exist in a glossy happy place where he fights for Truth and Justice and all that jazz and that is fine.  Perhaps he could have problems because he was frozen in a block of ice for years, but for the most part he was an incorruptible symbol, much like Superman.  The post-modern school of though, which many alternative creators come from (which I tend to draw Tweetics from) believe that not only should our protagonists suffer if they are hurt, but those actions should have long term consequences on them.  If a man was frozen in a block of ice for 50 years, and suddenly he is unfrozen-completely out of time, should he not be suffering from some severe psychological issues as a result?  If Arnie goes and fights some invisible alien, and his entire team is killed, don’t you think that some sort of PTSD will kick in afterwords?  Furthermore, if there are no after effects, what does it say about the psychological profiling that was done on the Military’s behalf?  I find it a curiosity that many people have, cynically, started asking these questions.  What was it about the 70’s-early 90’s that made it where people wanted to forgo all semblance of reality and instead put their hope that a man could fly? It wasn’t a sense of awe and wonder, but escapism perhaps?

I tell you, here at Tweetics, I will crush dreams.  If a piano falls on Jerry, guess what?  He is fucking dead (or badly injured).  That is my promise to you.  If a character goes to jail, guess what?  He will be sodomized by a carrot.  I will not negate reality in my humorist musings on world domination, oh no. No, there will be no boyscout like Kal-El in my strip, reality and humor put together.  That is what you get from me….what do you call that anyway?

I am not sure if it is coming through, but I recently stopped inking with a pen and started doing all the outlining and coloring work exclusively with a Bamboo Pen.  I had really come to want that sort of thick consistent line that could only be achieved from years of technique with an india ink setup or a graphics tablet (although I have the equipment for the first, I opted to spend my time on the latter).  However, my adventure with Wacom’s product was not simple one.

I have been thinking about buying a graphics tablet for a while now, pretty much since I hit comic #50, but have been putting off the expense simply because I didn’t want to incur the cost.  I am not cheap, mind you, but I was raised that you don’t buy something to replace something else until the first thing is broken.  I have been using a fine tip and then mostly an ultra fine tip sharpie for most of the comic (although, the first two comics were “inked” with a grease pencil), and had gotten used to how they worked and the time it took me to do that work.  Finally, one day, a buddy of mine said that he would give me his old Intuos GD with a 9 pin serial cable.  For those of you that have owned a computer in the last decade, it is the serial port that most mice and keyboards would connect through (they look like a VGA port).  I was estatic that I would have an opportunity to acquire such an excellent piece of hardware and immediately looked into serial–>usb adapters.  They were a bit spendy (approximately $40), but it seemed to me that 40 bucks was still 30 bucks under what the cheapest Wacom product would be for me, so I waited in anticipation for the electronic wonder to come to my door.

And Waited

And Waited (my friend is very reliable, but is getting married soon, ergo his brain is not all there).

And finally it came.  It came and I rejoiced.  I headed straight for my local Radio Shack, bought up the only Serial–>USB adapter that they had and ran home to install it on my system.  It was 6pm at the time, which means that on the outside, I would be inking and coloring my first comic with a pen inside of 30 minutes. It took me three and a half hours.  Three and a half hours and I had to do a system restore on my computer three times.

What I didn’t realize is that I had a few things to contend with.  First, I had to install the drivers for the Serial–>USB converter.  Then, I had to install the Wacom drivers.  The problem was, Wacom didn’t support Serial–>USB conversions in their drivers.  So, no matter what I did…I couldn’t get the tablet to work.  Windows, in all its wisdom, would recognize that the pad was there, but it just wouldn’t let the drivers do what they were designed to do.  Windows, in short, was being a little bitch about the whole thing.  Really, it was protesting and throwing up error messages like they were insults.  It was taunting me to try something else, it was begging me to take my life (and my OS) in my own hands and see what I could throw at it.  Well, throw I did.

The next day at work I spent any free time that I had combing various forums, blogs and geocities accounts trying to find an answer to my problem.  Surely I wasn’t the only one with this problem?  Before you tell me that you have a solution, bear in mind I am running Vista…an OS which requires its own solution.  As it turns out, I was not the only one with the problem.  No, I was one of many that have been chided by the overbearing big brother that is Microsoft for having the audacity to use hardware that was being sold before MS decided to release the clust f*** that is Vista.  I was further being shunned by Wacom (US Wacom that is) for using an adapter to make their hardware function.  I run the added issue of having a computer that has a slim form factor, so the one extra PCIE slot that I have, currently houses a rapidly aging video card.

Despite the best efforts of Wacom and (primarily) Microsoft to ward me from my dream of a graphics tablet that I didn’t have to pay through the nose for, I persevered.  I spent the subsequent three hours after I had gotten off work editing my registry, altering the behavior of Windows Defender and even installing two separate versions of the Wacom driver because one wouldn’t work.

In the end. Through 5 total system restores. Through 6 different installations of the Intuos GD driver. Through a real desire to resume smoking as a habit, Windows Vista-the bitch that is-beat me. It made me want to cry not in small amounts, and I finally said “screw it” and went to Staples that night.  I picked up the Bamboo with not a small amount of pleasure and proceeded to install it on my system, “oh happiness”.  That night would be the night I inked my first Tweetic digitally.  That is…of course…until Adobe Photoshop crashed on me.  That is right, the damn thing crashed every time I opened it.  I couldn’t understand it.  Having already been in a rather sensitive emotional state, I cried.  Yes, I did, I am I am not afraid to admit it.  I cried and uninstalled that driver.  But then a miracle happened!  The Bamboo continued to work, even though I lacked the driver.  I am not sure what happened.  I am not sure if Vista looked at me and said “you are, in fact, a sorry sack”, but the pad worked!  I was giddy, I opened up photoshop and began working on the file that I had imported two days before.

Then, well, then I got greedy.  I forsook the kindness that Vista had showed me and I went to the Wacom site to download the new drivers, believing that perhaps the Bamboo disk I had was a bit old and that was what caused the problem.  Nay.  Vista forsook me as did my HP All In One printer.  You see, after installing those drivers, I could no longer scan.  You see, I wanted to pressure sensitive tips that are one of the real benefits of a graphics tablet, but it seems that Microsoft and HP chose to smite me once more, and alas, out went the drivers (but still with a functioning pad).

Where am I now?  Well, I can’t double click because I can’t get the timing right.  I have tried to install those drivers a few times, and it seems Vista is annoyed I try at all.  But, I am slowly getting better with my hand/eye and tonight I discovered the beauty of “faux finish” brushes.  Sigh I will, one day, have my damn cake and eat it too.