This particular photo reminds me of a picture of the author you’d find in the back of a true crime book about some weird murder in the 70s.
Last week on Thursday I caught what I think was the first official time Upright Citizen’s Brigade’s Chris Gethard performed his one-man show Chris Gethard’s Magic Box of Stories. If you’re unfamiliar with Mr. Gethard’s skill set, here are some bullet points from his resume:
Suffice to say, Magic Box of Stories was fantastic. Gethard always has insane true stories to tell, and he tells them in a hilarious fashion. Magic Box compiles all of those stories into a literal box, from which audience members will pull cards, dictating what tales of adventure will make up the night’s roster of stories. And if that wasn’t enough, each story has a video clip to accompany it. . . Gethard video taped his mom’s thoughts on each and every story he tells.
So friendly!
I’ve been going to UCB for several years now, and while some of the faces on stage have changed, I’m happy that Chris Gethard is still there and still amazing every time I see him. I know that, at one point, we (Ben and I) thought about trying to get Gethard to do a voice for a cartoon, but I think we got shy about it or something. If you live in New York, see his show this Saturday, December 27th at 8 PM. I’d like to say I’d be there, but I’m going to be playing the role of the good boyfriend that night at a Broadway show. But I am confident this show will have other performances, and I’ll be at those, since the titular box promises a somewhat different show every time.
I got this picture when I Google Image Searched “Magic Box.” I was honestly hoping for pictures of vaginas.
And as always, available for download at the main For Tax Reasons site. You will be rewarded for freeze framing on a few insert shots towards the end of this episode.
It’s kinda crazy that the original IM IN UR MANGER short is over a year old at this point, and over two years old from when we first started writing it. Thanks for watching, and link the shit out of this new short. I think it’s fair to say Part Three will move through the pipeline significantly faster. . . Ben might kill me for saying this, but expect it come the end of January.
Much love, Internet! I’m so glad we finished this thing.
Spoilers: It’s a new episode of Ronin Dojo Community College DX, and it’s gonna be delivered to you this Monday, December 22nd. It’s all coming together. The FBI plays for keeps.
This episode is going to blow your mind. Probably because it doesn’t make a lot of sense. . . YET. Don’t worry, it will soon. After Episode 4. I hope.
Hey, remember when I posted a lot about comics? I know, it was fifty bajillion years ago. But there was a time where I was invested in this thing we call the superhero comic book industry. Specifically, the DC Universe.
I’m going to sound like a sad, pathetic motherfucker from here on out.
Well, here’s what I read now: Green Lantern and Justice Society. That’s it. That is IT. I dropped Superman and Action once the New Krypton story was announced, just before Geoff Johns announced he was leaving Action to write something I’m sure no one needs. . . yet another miniseries retelling and refining Superman’s origin. Of the two series I was left following, November’s JSA Kingdom Come specials were great, getting me excited comics for the first time in months. And Geoff was still steering the monthly to greatness, so I was confident that, as reduced as it had been, my comic habit would survive, even in this economic climate.
But, oh wait, fuck my life. Geoff Johns has been writing JSA for nearly 10 years. Longer than we deserved. But it is crushing to see him go. In 2002 (maybe 2003, it was before Teen Titans launch), I went to Wizard World Philadelphia and met Geoff Johns. I attended a panel highlighting him and his work, and promptly decided the man was a genius. On Sunday afternoon, the last day of the convention, I hunted around for some deals and bought every single trade paperback available of the JSA run he shared with Goyer. I dug up the issues that had not yet been collected, and bought those. And from that moment on, JSA was always in my monthly stack.
I will remember you. Will you remember me?
And now, it probably won’t be. Who knows, maybe the next team will be a good match for the book. But looking at DC books recently, and knowing how they have completely failed to grip me, I don’t think this will end well.
Banged out for the sake of having something new to coincide with the Otaku Generation interview, here is a new mini-short, showing what happened to Jerry after the end of the first Digital Pirates of Dark Water episode. The second episode is going up in mid-December, but chew on this until then.
The fine, fine fellows of the Otaku Generation podcast, having contacted us long ago about an interview, finally got Ben and me to guest on their show. Ben and I sat huddled around one mic on Monday night for two hours, getting interviewed, made to feel special and just having a good time. I pretty sure we never actually explained what the hell we actually do or what are cartoons are about, but I did get to talk about Degrassi, Exo-Squad, and the skateboarding cartoon we’d like to see Japan make. Thanks so much to Alan, Bryce and Jefferson for having us, for being awesome hosts and for letting us ramble down conversational paths to nowhere.
So give it a listen to hear my real voice, not my voice actor-ing one, and judge if I’m funny without the benefit of rewrites. And maybe you’ll like what you hear and tune back in, and you’ll have another podcast to listen to on the subway.
I wonder what a Chimera’s face looks like when its happy or sad, instead of “RAAAH, KILLKILLKILL!”
The game is gone already, back to Gamefly, and Mirror’s Edge is here in its place. I ripped through the boring single player in two or three days, railroaded from gunfight to gunfight, and despised almost every second of it. Really, there are myriad of things despicable in this part of the Resistance 2 package. Level design, story, enemy behaviors, art design. . . all bitch worthy elements. And I’m sure you can find those rants elsewhere on the internet. Garnett Lee also had a brain hemorrhage on the 11/7 1Up Yours episode talking about it. It’s recommended listening, as 1Up podcasts always are.
But here’s the complaint I want to lay stake in as my own: If I ever have to see a gun that shoots saw blades in a realistic sci-fi shooter again, I’m going to lose my shit. In no future or alternate past or any dimension or universe will anyone or anything ever build a device like the Splicer, ever. It is a “badass” gun, and by “badass” with quotation marks, I mean totally lame, in the way that “badass” hoodie you got from Hot Topic is lame. It’s included in the game to amp up the gore factor, knocking off limbs when it hits enemies. I’m never attracted to games for the violence, or at least haven’t been since I was in elementary school and Ted Williams got Mortal Kombat for the Genesis the night of his family’s Christmas party. So maybe that’s why I’m not seduced by the Splicer.
The other possibly reason is this. . . it’s an absurdly impractical and cartoonish weapon in a game that tries to be somewhat gritty and grounded in the realities of an alternate 1950s alien invaded America. You’re going to carry around stacks of metal saw blades for ammo? Really? You want to put that extra weight on a soldier instead of just stuffing his pouches with relatively lightweight bullets? And you’re going to electromagnetically charge the blades to make them ricochet around (which I don’t get how electromagnetically charging them will do) after you fire them? Are you serious? Does the electromagnetic charge let the saw blades know not to ricochet back and hit you in the face? Come on. Stop it. Save it for Ratchet and Clank, Insomniac.
“Resistance” must refer to the desire to resist including any original or iconic elements in the game.
Oh, the 8 player co-op stuff was fun. Any comparisons you’ve heard/read to a WoW dungeon raid are SPOT ON. Only it’s easier and faster to run through a Resistance 2 level. More immediately rewarding. Would have been worth putting time into if there were not a billion games coming out every week. I may be on hiatus from work for a few weeks, but there’s only 24 hours in a day, and some of them have to be spent off of the couch.
This was something we were playing with doing for a while now, while we were in the midst of animating the new Ronin Dojo. We wrote a bunch of political scripts only to see them dated and stale within a week, before we could start animating. Instead we finished Ronin Dojo, and with 3 weeks until the election, went balls out and knocked these two cartoons out.
We got called “Democratic fags” in a private Youtube message for the first one. We did receive some well thought out hate mail, but that one is my favorite. It’s very, VERY hard for me personally to resist getting involved with some of the absolute fools who comment on the videos. There are a remarkable number of people who just fail on every level to get the joke or accept satire. I think some people now think we are socialists who don’t even know what socialism means. Oh well. The nice thing about alienating your fans is knowing you had fans to begin with.
Our apologies to Hasbro, by the way. Vote Barack on November 4th.
This particular photo reminds me of a picture of the author you’d find in the back of a true crime book about some weird murder in the 70s.
So friendly!
I got this picture when I Google Image Searched “Magic Box.” I was honestly hoping for pictures of vaginas.
I’m going to sound like a sad, pathetic motherfucker from here on out.
I will remember you. Will you remember me?
