Tuesday, November 22, 2005

A Little Late 19th Century German Philosophy, Slater?

Ok, so I pretty much cribbed this title from “Dazed and Confused” … and if you didn’t know the real quote is, “A little foosball Slater?” said by Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) to Slater (Rory Cochrane) outside of the Emporium right before Mitch Kramer throws the bowling ball through the car window.

An aside from the comic strip, I just got the “Dazed and Confused” deluxe edition on Friday with a bunch of cut scenes. We (Kim, Jamie, Aly and I) watched them before we put the movie on, and it completely made the movie different.

How? For one thing Benny (Cole Hauser) was more a dick, he calls a couple of Asian kids “gooks” and talks about how the country is going to hell, there was more of a division between the jocks and the stoners, there was a scene where Benny really lays into Pink (Jason London) about quitting the football team and there was a scene were O’Bannon (Ben Affleck) shows up at the Moontower keg party.

These scenes made the flick much more dark, especially the Benny moments. Without his cut scenes, Benny seemed like a good-natured big guy, one of those tough dudes that really was a nice guy. But with the added scenes, he was a xenophobic dick. And it was cool to see Affleck leave the Emporium in a huff, the incoming freshmen winning their battle, if only for the night. With him returning to the party, the paint on the head scene really doesn’t mean too much.

Anyway, the original is a great flick and the new and improved version is pretty cool too, if you have an extra $15, go out and get it. You won’t be disappointed.

Ok, now to my comic strip. I have to admit, when I was plotting this out, I wasn’t really pumped about the art, especially coming on the heels of last week’s entry. Like I’ve said in other entries, after doing the inking, I think that it actually came out pretty good. There’s a few things that I’d change if I had to do it over again, but overall, the art is decent.

What am I talking about? What comic strip? What the hell does plotting mean? Check it out here: www.room19comics.com and all will be revealed.

The bottom line is this; there are some strips that are carried by the art and others that are carried by the writing. This strip falls into the latter category. I think it’s a clever turn on Nietzsche’s philosophies and working the Sox into the mix is always a bit fun. I think that one of the funnier parts of this strip is the juxtaposition of the Sox and something completely unrelated, namely the rantings of a syphilis-filled Friedrich Nietzsche.

When I originally wrote the idea for the strip, I was knee-deep in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and really looking for the message behind that book in other areas of entertainment. Although I never said what Eddie said, I was toying with the idea of punctuating all of my sentences with “Thus spoke Byron Magrane”, before realizing that everybody a. wouldn’t get the joke and b. think I was a complete retard or insane, or probably both.

So, I let my alter ego say it with the results happening just as I imagined that they would.

BTW, this is the first week in a while that a t-shirt graphic isn’t an old-school hockey logo. It’s the “A” from the title of the Avengers comic strip. Out of all of the comic logos that I grew up on, the Avengers were the best. I think I like the angled A and the way that there is an arrow in the middle (BTW, that’s where the word “The” was located, as in The Avengers). I’m just throwing that out there … I don’t know what it means in the long run.

I’m hoping that today I can post a book report on the last five books that I’ve read. I am really behind in this, so hopefully you’ll come back and take a peek.