Friday, March 26, 2010

The Doodles of Ed

I have a new doodle blog! You may have seen these doodles before, but I'm writing about each of them and giving a little behind-the-scenes insight into each one. I'm starting from my oldest doodle (from back in 1988) and working my way forward. I've been posting for about a week now, and I'll try to enter a new blog each day, so subscribe or add me to your Google Reader and we'll see what happens. Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

'Captain America' Actor Announced!

After nearly two years of speculation, The Hollywood Reporter broke the news on Monday that Chris Evans will be playing Marvel Comics' iconic hero Captain America in the big-screen adaptation. Unfortunately, the only two people who care about this are Chris Evans and Marvel Comics.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Smurf You, Katy Perry

I read today that Katy Perry has been tapped to voice Smurfette in the upcoming big-screen adaptation of The Smurfs. Because I really needed yet another reason to not see this movie.

Friday, March 19, 2010

...And Here's A Picture Of Me From Next Week

I got a message from a random guy on my Facebook account. He was referring to a photo of me and my wife. He wrote,

"I think that is a picture of you from when you were younger."

Well, congratulations, Sherlock. But every picture of me is a picture of me from when I was younger.*

*Thanks, Mitch Hedberg.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Jesse James is an Idiot

He's bigger than me. He's stronger than me. He could easily kick my butt. But I don't care.

He's still an idiot.

Grrrrrrrr!!!! I Want a Degree!!!!!!!

Depending on what they're selling, advertisers are usually pretty good at selecting photographs that match the product they're pushing. Selling an iron? Here's a picture of an iron. Promoting a concert? Here's a picture of the band. Trying to get you to meet girls in your area? Here's a picture of an under-aged teen we stole from Google.

Trying to get people to enroll in an online college? Um...well...all I have is this picture of an angry old dude. Good luck.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

ACLU: Get a Hobby

So here's what's going on:

Last week the ACLU sued a high school in Mississippi.

You see, it's prom season, and a girl at Itawamba Agricultural High School announced she was going to go to the prom with her lesbian girlfriend wearing a tuxedo. The school let her know that the prom was for guy-girl couples and so, naturally, the girl and the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the school.

Naturally. That's the next logical step to take in the process. Why bother talking to the school board or setting up a conference? There's money (and headlines) to be made here.

So the school said, "OK, fine, this is more trouble than it's worth. Prom is canceled, maybe a private organization will hold the prom instead. This is getting crazy."

So now the ACLU is suing the school again, trying to force them to have the prom.

You're having a prom? I'LL SUE YOU.

You canceled the prom? I'LL SUE YOU.

I can just see the ACLU in their Fortress of Spinning Wheels, shaking their gentle fist, "You won't escape us! Bwwaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha! Have the prom, cancel the prom, we don't care, we're suing someone."

I'm looking forward to next week, when the ACLU sues Mattel for not producing a Kendra doll, a female version of Ken, which, as we all know, stifles a girl's opportunity to explore all of her options.

The week after that, the ACLU will sue McDonald's for only serving Coke and discriminating against Pepsi. McDonald's will then serve Pepsi and will in turn be sued by the ACLU once again. The ACLU will claim they are only "trying to reach their pointless lawsuit quota for March."

The ACLU will then get its own half-hour sitcom on the WB, called "Them Wacky Bungholes." They will also get a 1-hour reality series on FOX (airing after American Idol) in which two contestants are introduced to one another. The first person to sue the other person is hired by the ACLU. The following week, they will be fired.

They will then be sued by the ACLU.

Meanwhile, millions of ignored starving people die, child trafficking continues, and Lady Gaga continues to fool people into thinking she's actually a female. But at least the ACLU got to sue a school because of their prom.

I Should Have Known This

This is an embarrassing blog to write, I'll be honest. I hate to uphold the stereotype of the naive American, but I had to write about this because my lack of education surprised even myself.

When I was 30 years old, I learned that England was on an island. I never knew it was not connected to the north of France and the west of Germany, and when this information finally dawned on me (I don't recall the exact circumstances of how I learned this) I felt like an idiot. How could I not know this? In my head I apologized to all Europeans for not knowing what should have been a very obvious geographical fact.

A couple of days ago I was looking at a map of Europe in a book I'm reading and suddenly became very confused. This couldn't be right, could it? I stared at the map and stared at the map and then double-checked Google maps to make sure that the book I was looking at hadn't altered the map for it's own humorous and/or fictional purposes. They hadn't. The map was accurate. Apparently England and Scotland are on the same island.

What?

I always thought (or at least, since I was 30, I thought) Ireland was its own island country, then Scotland was on its own, then England, and then all the rest of Europe was together on the rest of the continent. Nope. There's Scotland and then riiiiiight at the Southern end of the island is England.

This seriously blew my mind. I was alone at the time, but when it clicked in my head I still shouted aloud to no one, "I'm 40 and I just found this out?!" (I'm actually not 40 until the end of the year, but still.)

This time I am making my apology public.

I'm sorry, Europe, for not knowing your geography better than I should. I swear I'm not one of those stupid, self-absorbed Americans with no respect for anyone else. I love you guys. I suppose I could take the easy way out and blame the public school system, but who knows. More than likely while the rest of the class was studying geography like they should have, I was too busy replaying episodes of The Muppet Show in my head.

I promise to try to do better.

Monday, March 15, 2010

A Message from a Pervert

Shortly after posting my funny video about my friend being able to pick up Jell-O with their feet, I received this private message from a YouTube user going by the name gervilinf2010:

"i want see more about her feet"

Congratulations, pal, you're today's Perv O' The Day! You've earned a year's supply of cool hipster glasses and an additional year's stay at your parents' house free of charge! But wait, there's more! You've also been enrolled in Adrian Cronhaur's "Basic English for Mongoloids 101" at your local community college.

A winner on so many levels indeed.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Taking a Quick "Tom" Out

We interrupt this seemingly endless stream of posts about last year's trip to Ireland to direct your attention to the extremely talented cartoonist/caricaturist Tom Richmond. Not only is he a regular contributor to MAD Magazine (and countless other outlets), but he has a blog he keeps up on a regular basis. How he has time to crank out these amazing works of art and keep up a blog, I'll never know.

I like to pick up the pen and doodle from time to time. Sometimes I'm actually happy with how it turns out. And sometimes, I'm not. There's a reason I've always referred to myself as a "doodler" and not as an "artist": I recognize the fact that I don't have the patience to do what it takes to actually better my craft. I think I could be pretty good, I just don't wanna work at it. Wow, how bad does that sound? But at least it's honest. I grab my pen and I draw and whatever happens happens (I know I'm supposed to pencil it out first and get that rough sketch going, but by the time I've drawn something once, I've pretty much lost interest and want to move on.) Usually if I try to doodle someone and it doesn't work out by the second attempt, I'm over it. I wonder if there's a such thing as artistic A.D.D.? If you don't think so, then let me introduce you to the guitar I bought but never learned, the keyboard I bought but never learned (except for Dana Carvey's "Choppin' Broccoli;" I taught myself that and I'm pretty proud of it), and the ukulele I borrowed but never learned.

Which is why I love Tom Richmond's blog (you thought I lost my place, didn't ya?). If nothing else, his blog shows exactly just how much of a pro he is. You can't read one of his entries and not get a feel for how much he loves what he's doing. It's his passion, and it shows. You gotta admire that. This guy doesn't just doodle. He works.

For someone like me who enjoys the How-They-Did-It bonus features on a DVD as much as the film itself (and sometimes more. Hello, Forrest Gump), Tom's blog is a great peek behind the curtain to see what the wizard is doing and how he does it. He writes about projects he's working on, posts rough sketches to show before-and-after progress, and even supplies a sketch o' the week. Tom also blogs about things he finds interesting and passes them along, which is how I found out about (and ended up submitting to) National Doodle Day.

Every Sunday he fields questions from his readers and, not only answers them, but he answers them. Growing up a MAD reader myself, I always wondered about the caricaturists who drew the TV and movie parodies and the people in the background of the cartoons. Were they also caricatures of real people, or just figments of the artists' imaginations? Well, today I got my answer.

If, like me, you love your Google Reader (or whatever blog notification updater thing you use) then you'll want to add Tom's blog to your stream. You won't be disappointed.

Ed's note: It just hit me that Tom is the second MAD artist I've gushed about in the last three months (I wrote about my encounter with Sam Vivano back in December).  Apparently there's something about that publication that attracts good people. Either that, or I'm just looking for an excuse to read MAD and almost be 40 at the same time.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Re-Visiting Ireland 4

A continuation of the expanded series of our Ireland trip from last year. Instead of condensing all of our footage into a few short movies (as I did in our daily re-caps), I am stretching our footage out into shorter, easily-digestible vignettes in order to include scenes that were cut out of the original series. Enjoy!































More to come...

Monday, March 08, 2010

Oscar 2010: Best/Worst Dressed List!

Who was dressed like a hottie (or a nottie) at last night's Academy Awards?

Who was wearing what on the red carpet?

Who are people raving about and who are people sniggering at?

Seriously, who gives a crap?

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Brag on Dad

Parents have the right to brag about their kids. Sure, people without kids might get tired of it, but they still have that right. And likewise, kids have the right to brag about their parents.

For example: