The Return of Stickman #1323

There was no new item that inspired today's strip. I just live close to Puyallup, WA. And the Puyallup Fair is the largest fair in the state of WA, even though it is not the State Fair. Since I live so close I usually go to the fair every year. Sometimes I don't make it to the fair because I forget when it starts and ends. I'm definitely going this year.

The Return of Stickman #1322

About the only think I left out of this strip from the news article is the involvement of the weatherman.

The Comic Critic Reviews Kentucky Fried Movie

There was so much I wanted to put into this strip about Kentucky Fried Movie, but couldn’t. I wanted to touch on how Saturday Night Live started in 1975 and how that show must’ve influenced the creators of this film. I wanted to say how I thought Kentucky Fried Movie obviously led to other successful movies like Airport and the whole Naked Gun franchise. And how those movies in turn led to an ongoing outlet of parody movies, even parody movies of parody movies.

And as I was mulling all of that over, I just couldn’t help but remember my own experience in the theater watching this film. I had no idea what the film was about. I’d snuck into R movies before with my friend and was confused as to why he made sure to bring his mom along as a chaperone this time. My friend’s family didn’t own a television, and to my knowledge they never went to movies. But maybe my friend thought a nice little comedy would be just the thing to loosen his mother up.

It wasn’t until the first blatant sex scene (one of many) that I realized he’d planned the whole scenario so that we would definitely get into the show, and that I would be a body buffer between him and his mom. As I once again thought over the evening (for I’d thought about that mortifying night many times over the years), and the lengths my friend went to accomplish his scheme, I had to admit the whole story was just as funny as the movie itself. So it made sense to work my personal story into the strip.

The Return of Stickman #1321

Why is it everybody has moose troubles but me? While this strip was inspired by this news item it's not 100% factual.

The Return of Stickman #1320

Sometimes it's easy to tell when somebody's elevator doesn't go all the way to the top, are not playing with a full deck, have a screw loose, or are just plain bonkers. And while the general public has to put up with them during in-face-time I feel for those poor immediate relatives that have madness as part of their daily routine. And, yes, this was inspired by a real news story.

The Return of Stickman #1319

Today's strip was inspired from a friend in Australia. She'd been corresponding with an American stationed in Nigeria and had a question for me. "In the USA do you use the word Movies or Cinema?" I responded that I personally found the word Movies was the more frequently used word. But that might be solely a regional thing. Oh, by the way, I just inherited $20 million dollars and it would be a huge help if I could get it out of the country for 24 hours.

The Comic Critic Reviews Metropolis

Part of me wishes I could have been there for Metropolis’s debut. It was a time of explosive imagination. It was at the very start of film. No rules had been set to govern it; no preconceptions were available to hamper it, even the definitions of new words to describe it were in flux. And into this brand new media came this extravagant science fiction drama, filled with cultural, philosophical, ideological, and artistic references, some old and others just entering public discussion. It’s no wonder that nearly all of its imagery has become iconic. Yet, because Metropolis’s influence on the science fiction genre was so enormous, part of me is grateful that I wasn’t there in 1927. If I were, I couldn’t help but compare everything that came afterward to that first awe-inspiring viewing experience.

A little personal note here. I have a tremendous love for movies. But if I collected a DVD of every movie I enjoyed, there wouldn’t be any room in my house for furniture. So, it was a strictly survivalist decision to limit it, using personal nostalgia as my guiding factor. After a lot of thought, I realized two qualifiers that would allow a movie to enter my collection:

1. Any pirate movie.
2. Movies in which robots are the primary focus or are heavily featured.

You might think that the first thing I did was pick up a copy of Pirates of the Caribbean, but you’d be wrong. I established my video collection rules two years before Pirates of the Caribbean was released. No, the very first was Metropolis.