This one gets its own entry because it has to do with the comic itself. Fancy that, eh? Anyway, it deals with Flerpnip's Green Lantern companion. You might be wondering about Andy's comment of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Eyeball!!!" in the Tag-board. (If you're not wondering about it, well, start, because that's what I'm talking about). Because basically, that's were the character design came from.

It all started back in 6th grade Language Arts class (a term to encompass more than just English...there was reading comprehension and all that other stuff). Our assignment through the semester was a certain number of creative writing projects...stories, poems, etc, and I was having a difficult time trying to think of something to write about. So I tried a trick I learned from cartoons. After another one of Wile E. Coyote's schemes failed, he laid on the ground and mindlessly doodled on the ground before being struck with another idea. At the time, I thought he gained inspiration from the doodle itself, so I thought I'd give it a go. Basically I spent some time doodling in the corner of my folder (inconspicuously, of course). Eventually there was a little picture of an ambulance driving over a sewer grate, dropping some eyeballs out of the back and into some mutagenic sludge. And thus the Teenage Mutant Ninja Eyeballs were born. (Hey, give me a break, I was in the middle of my Ninja Turtle phase back then). I never used this particular doodle in my assignments, though. In fact, I'm not sure it even worked for me...at least at the time.

Flash forward one year to pre-algebra class. Someone next to me noticed my doodle of one of these guys on my book cover, and drew me up a doodle of his own...basically a fleshed out version of the same thing. (My original just had sticks for arms and legs.) Not that this is a terribly important step in the story, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Another year later, in English class. The assignment for the last quarter: write a story. That was it. And I remember spending a significant portion of the class not knowing what to write about. So I thought about how I had the problem before, and I remember my stupid little doodle. There were no restrictions on the assignment on whether it had to be fiction or non-fiction, so I thought, "Hey, let's go with it." And I furiously banged some lame story...because I had wasted so much time before, I had to work very quickly to get it done on time. And I didn't even get it done on time, I know I handed it in late. And what a steaming pile I wrote, too. I mean, I even included a part where one of the Eyeballs had to pull a choice of levers, and one of them said, "Not that one...that'll release the plot of this story!" Yeah, THAT bad. I still wince when I think about it.

At some point previous to that assignment, my brother and I spent some time expanding on the character designs and drawing them on a chalkboard. This mostly involved either designing them with some kind of pun based on their names, or just changing what they are to some other random animal/object. In addition to our appropriately-colored Eyeballs (Don, Mike, Leo and Ralph), we had: Splinter as a board of wood (get it? HYUK HYUK), Bebop as a bee, Rocksteady as a rock (not like the original Rock Soldiers from Dimension X, but your basic lump of stone with arms and legs), the "Bat" King, Ace Squirrel (flying squirrel instead of a duck...looking suspiciously like Rocky), ...um...Baxster Stockman I took "bax" like "backs" and made him a spinal column, in keeping with the body-part theme...Casey Jones I took similar to the legendary railroad engineer and made him a train engine (with cowcatcher and everything)...Krang was a giant frog...the Technodrome was a giant "NO" with tank treads and eyeball thing on top...I think Shredder might've been a food processor...and I know there's more. I don't know if this showcases my creativity as a child, or my insanity.

Fast forward to today, where I've decided to resurrect a childhood doodle into a fellow Green Lantern. We'll be seeing more of him and others (OMG SPOILER) later on.
posted by Tim at 2:03 AM

All right. My superiors at work have asked me to attend a mandatory meeting on Friday at 6:00 am. Normally I'd be excused from this sort of thing, since I don't even report to work until 12:30 pm (I'm fast asleep by 6), but for whatever reason, this is an exception, so I have to deal with it as best as I can. That includes getting as much sleep as possible, which leaves me no time to get a comic done on time. So I'm going to blog out some thoughts that have been circulating in my brain for a little while, in a lame attempt to have some kind of update for Saturday. At some point I'm going to have consistent 3-update weeks, dammit :P

First off, as is my tendency to talk about things much later than I should, a quick congratulations to the World Series Champion Chicago White Sox. It a little disappointing that they went through the Red Sox to get there, but at least another garment-themed team won. Also, more importantly, the Spankees failed to win again.

It's also nice to see another team finally end decades of frustration. I know most Chicago people are Cubs fans, which makes me feel that - for just this time, at least - everybody in Chicago should enjoy this. Simply BECAUSE the Cubs are now the losingest baseball team ever, Chicago should celebrate now...who knows when (or even if) they'll see another championship baseball team again?

Speaking of near-century-old phenomena, what a wacky hurricane season, huh? I don't mean to be callous by saying that. I just seems like we had more and more powerful hurricanes than we've ever had...or at least since either we've been watching them, or since we've been naming them. And that seems true for almost any natural weather thing to happen. It seems a lot of coldest-day-on-record, hottest-day, most-rainfall, most-snow, etc. kinds of records all are either almost 100 years old, or have been recently broken. If things like this go in a cycle, then I guess I've got some pleasantly mild weather to look forward to in 50 years or so. :)

A couple of smaller, random thoughts...

There's a new radio station around here (or at least, relatively new, as far as I can tell) - 93.7, Mike FM. Their slogan? "We play everything." Well, not EVERYTHING, I've noticed...no country or classical or Indian sitar music or anything, but that's not the point. In their self-promotional bumpers, they'll occasionally weave in current events. In one I heard recently while flipping through the stations, I think it was referring to the whole Harriet Miers debacle. Talking about themselves, they said, "We're a good judge of music."
And I thought, "You play everything. You say as much no less that 500 times a day. If you play everything, then you're not judging any of the music that goes through...it could be crap music, but you have to play it, because you play EVERYTHING!"

Also saw an ad for the new movie Zathura on TV. In the critic blurbs they flash across the screen, someone described it as "one of the most original movies in years". Or at least "original", I remember that much, at least. Why? Because the movies isn't original in any way whatsoever. It's "Jumanji in space"! They even tell you "from the people who brought you Jumanji" in the same damn ad!

Speaking of movies, I was also thinking about Walk the Line, and being surprised finding out that it was Joaquin Pheonix playing Johnny Cash. Well, more accurately, just how much he sounds like him. And that he doesn't seem to have his trademark creepy-darkened-eyes thing happening...which is a good thing. I had similar epiphanies before...like "Holy crap, that's Will Smith?!" (in Ali) and "Holy crap, that's Jamie Foxx?!" (in Ray).

I also wanted to complain a little bit about Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it as much as the next person. But they've become far too popular for their own good. They've seemed to have developed this sense of entitlement. In one of their bumpers a couple weeks ago, they were going over their ratings. The line was, "What, no millionaire love this week?" Like they expected to get at least a million viewers....it's such an arrogant line. And then they show the numbers for the top three shows of the week. Two of them were Family Guy reruns. And they wonder why they aren't pulling in the numbers they used to? Adult Swim got popular by broadcasting reruns of Futurama and Family Guy. Then they got lucky with ATHF and Harvey Birdman (and probably a couple others). But now they're wondering where their precious 18-34 male viewers have gone when they're offering up such gems as Tom Goes to the Mayor and 12 oz. Mouse. God, I hate 12 oz. Mouse. That steaming pile barely qualifies as an animated cartoon...the voice "acting" just sounds like a couple of guys who get completely baked sitting in a room with a microphone recording every grunt, sigh and inane conversation. I was literally falling asleep in my brave attempt at watching the show. And I'm horrified to see that they have an "alternate version" showing after the new episode this week.

I will admit that that I'm giving Squidbillies the benefit of the doubt. From what I've seen so far, it hasn't been completely not horrible. Although you'd think will all the time it's spent in development, it might at least look better. And, of course, I haven't seen The Boondocks yet. That I'm still reserving judgement on. On the plus side, the animation looks good. Even if it seems to be heavily influenced by anime. However, I don't read the comic strip (as my local paper doesn't carry it), but even if it did, I wouldn't read it anyway, because I don't really go for that kind of political or racially-focused content.

As I'm typing this, I'm at work on Thursday evening (but don't tell anyone). I'm wearing a gift that my sister gave to me a couple years ago for my birthday: a blue Simpsons T-shirt with "Mr. Sparkle" on it. I know I've worn this shirt to work before (though I usually try not to if I can help it...or at least not while we have important visitors), but today, for whatever reason, I've had people comment about it for the first time. Once someone identified it as Mr. Sparkle, and twice I've had to explain who/what Mr. Sparkle is, or what the writing means (which I can't say, really, because it's in that faux-kanji). I just think it's weird that today happens to be the first time I've gotten comments about it. The same thing happened when I wore my Green Lantern shirt too. I wonder if I should try wearing my Corn Boy shirt to work and see what kind of reaction I'd get? hee hee
posted by Tim at 1:25 AM