SPEED RACER

Strokes of genius:

1. Pop’s wrestling ring.

2. Racer X keeps his “anime” voice.

3. Car combat. Duh.

Weak:

1. Asian men are all sell-outs.

2. That kid. Ugh.

3. Corporate (re: all of the) subplots coulda been truncated.

Consensus:

Yeah, so there’s no point of reference between what’s considered mundane and spectacular in this movie-universe’s physics. Who cares? It’s an easy hump to get over if you retain any semblance of that thing from your childhood called “a sense of wonder.” Much better than Indy 4.

This is my attempt at doing a “Yacin the Faun“-type narrative (thanks to Derek for introducing me!). For now I’m calling it “Pug of Ages.” It is about a giant pug/pachycephalosaurus hybrid that tends to a flock of sheep, in case you can’t tell what those weird shapes are in the above painting.

One time when I was at Comic Relief, Rory and I started talking about means to get in the “biz.” He tells me about self-publishing, and finding difficulty in explaining a concept so that my ape-like mind could understand, he pulls out Larry Young’s “True Facts” from his voluminous shelves. “Here this guy wrote what I’m trying to say. I will look it up for you,” says Rory except with better words, because Rory was a facundious dude. After a few moments searching for the concerned text, Rory calls up the book’s publisher and bitches them out for not including a table-of-contents, those idiots.

(EDIT: Woah, I skimmed the above paragraph again and it reads like a diss towards AiTPlanetLar, which was unintended. I got nothing but love for the publishing house that brought “the Couriers” unto existence. Mainly I wanted to relate a really vivid “Rory moment” I had. Here was the man, over a span of like ten minutes, inspiring a comics-noob to follow through on the urge to create, giving some really meaningful advice, then asserting his influence on the bidness with a spontaneous phonecall. I was pretty impressed.)

I didn’t know Rory too well - I just frequented his store, helped at a con or two, and was good friends with some of his employees. But Comic Relief changed my life, and Rory Root is Comic Relief, and it was terribly sad to hear that he passed away yesterday.

The Ting Tings are too much. And plus Katie White in the “Great DJ” video wears her bangs like Megan from 100 Bullets. Jeez.

Some practice.

… except for when they forget to draw in Ashitaka’s nipples.