I've written about how much I like The Rocketeer before, and it'll only get more apparent in the future. That's why I loved this video so much. A team of French animators put it together to celebrate the memory of creator Dave Stevens and the 20th Anniversary of the Disney movie of the same name.
I hope Disney takes a cue and John Lasseter tells Pixar to get to work. But since that will probably never happen, this will have to do.
The Rocketeer 20th anniversary from John Banana on Vimeo.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
THE TRUEST SENSE OF THE WORD
Fuck Ryan Dunn.
Let's just get that out of the way right off the bat.
Ever since the JACKASS star died in a car wreck Sunday night, the Internet has gone into a "Oh, what happened to Ryan Dunn was such a shame. He was SUCH a good guy" frenzy.
And you know what? He probably was a good guy. I'm not going to lie, I've been a fan of his since the CKY skate video days. My friends and I would watch it almost nightly, wherever we were. My friend Clark was in the hospital with a broken back about 10 years ago (from his own CKY stunt of trying to slide down the bubble over the U of U practice field) and while we were waiting for him to get out of surgery, we popped that video in the waiting room VCR and forced everyone to watch it.
I saw all three JACKASS movies in the theater and made sure to catch each episode of the show when it aired on MTV. I loved those dudes. They seemed like cool guys, guys that we'd want to hang out with. And that was their appeal. You wanted to hang out with these dudes, wanted to be friends with them, wanted to be in on their crazy stunts. And they made a fortune from that. They made more money than I'll ever see and probably had more fun than I'll ever have. I can't knock them for that.
But I can knock Dunn for getting drunk (.196 Blood Alcohol Level which is well above the legal limit of .08) leaving the bar and deciding it was a great idea to drive his Porsche 130 MPH with someone in the passenger seat. Because that's just a shitty thing to do.
Maybe I have a biased opinion, though.
A friend of mine was killed when a drunk driver entered the exit ramp of the freeway and hit her head on, killing her instantly. All my high school friends spiraled straight down to shit with alcohol, heroin, cocaine and whatever else they could get their hands on. Not even one of my closest friends dying of a drug overdose stopped them. They all ditched the funeral as soon as possible to try and get higher than they already were.
Those are the things that made me who I am today and why I'm still straight edge.
To be honest, I don't care if you drink, smoke weed, drop ecstasy or shoot heroin. It's your life. Do what you want.
But I'm also not going to feel bad for you when it bites you in the ass. It's all in the game and those are the risks you take.
And that's especially true when it comes to driving drunk. I have absolutely no tolerance for it and you deserve every bad thing that happens to you if you do it. You won't get any sympathy from me.
Which brings us back to Ryan Dunn. I know people are sad because it feels like a guy we all knew just died and that hurts.
But the bottom line is that he did it to himself. He did it selfishly and recklessly and behaved like a Jackass in the truest sense of the word.
Let's just get that out of the way right off the bat.
Ever since the JACKASS star died in a car wreck Sunday night, the Internet has gone into a "Oh, what happened to Ryan Dunn was such a shame. He was SUCH a good guy" frenzy.
And you know what? He probably was a good guy. I'm not going to lie, I've been a fan of his since the CKY skate video days. My friends and I would watch it almost nightly, wherever we were. My friend Clark was in the hospital with a broken back about 10 years ago (from his own CKY stunt of trying to slide down the bubble over the U of U practice field) and while we were waiting for him to get out of surgery, we popped that video in the waiting room VCR and forced everyone to watch it.
I saw all three JACKASS movies in the theater and made sure to catch each episode of the show when it aired on MTV. I loved those dudes. They seemed like cool guys, guys that we'd want to hang out with. And that was their appeal. You wanted to hang out with these dudes, wanted to be friends with them, wanted to be in on their crazy stunts. And they made a fortune from that. They made more money than I'll ever see and probably had more fun than I'll ever have. I can't knock them for that.
But I can knock Dunn for getting drunk (.196 Blood Alcohol Level which is well above the legal limit of .08) leaving the bar and deciding it was a great idea to drive his Porsche 130 MPH with someone in the passenger seat. Because that's just a shitty thing to do.
Maybe I have a biased opinion, though.
A friend of mine was killed when a drunk driver entered the exit ramp of the freeway and hit her head on, killing her instantly. All my high school friends spiraled straight down to shit with alcohol, heroin, cocaine and whatever else they could get their hands on. Not even one of my closest friends dying of a drug overdose stopped them. They all ditched the funeral as soon as possible to try and get higher than they already were.
Those are the things that made me who I am today and why I'm still straight edge.
To be honest, I don't care if you drink, smoke weed, drop ecstasy or shoot heroin. It's your life. Do what you want.
But I'm also not going to feel bad for you when it bites you in the ass. It's all in the game and those are the risks you take.
And that's especially true when it comes to driving drunk. I have absolutely no tolerance for it and you deserve every bad thing that happens to you if you do it. You won't get any sympathy from me.
Which brings us back to Ryan Dunn. I know people are sad because it feels like a guy we all knew just died and that hurts.
But the bottom line is that he did it to himself. He did it selfishly and recklessly and behaved like a Jackass in the truest sense of the word.
Monday, June 20, 2011
END OF DAYS
This blog is about to get a lot nerdier.
Since the summer of 2004 I've been freelancing for City Weekly. I've done a few things for them like album reviews, band profiles, comedy writing and event previews but what I mostly did was write about comic books. For a long time it was a steady rotation of once a month, just like clockwork. At first it was strictly reviews and usually went like this - one 450 word piece and two 100 word capsules. Mostly I tried to review comics that I really liked and thought more people should be reading. I never liked reviewing shitty comics because to me, the point was to get as many people reading comics as I could. So that meant highlighting all the good stuff that was out there and I thought I did a pretty good job of that.
One of my favorite stories about this was, one week after I had written a review of the awesome NORTHLANDERS by Brian Wood (which just got cancelled and inspired another post to come) my friend Josh was at the comic shop talking to the owner. The door opened and this guy that looked like he didn't read comics came walking in holding something in his hand. He held it up and it was a copy of my review, ripped out of the City Weekly and just said "I want this book."
Hearing things like that made me happy. There's been a few other times I've gone in to the comic shop and the owner would tell me that something I wrote was selling a lot of books and it would make me feel good.
Once the rotation of my column started getting more and more irregular, I started branching out a bit more and writing pieces that were more essays than reviews. I'd pick something that was going on in the industry and write about it for a bit. It was fun, but since I never had a clear idea of when I was going to get to write, I decided to steer clear of posting comic related stuff on trevorhale.com just in case.
But last week I got an e-mail from the A&E editor, the guy who's essentially been my boss for the past 7 years telling me they'd signed a deal with Big Shiny Robot to take over the Geek Culture aspect of the paper which included comics.
I was a little bit bummed, but not shocked. Bryan Young, one of the founding editors of the site has been working hard for a long time building that site in to what it is today and he's done an awesome job of it. I can't say I'm the biggest fan of some of the writing on the site, but I do respect the guys, what they do and how hard they've worked at it.
I'll still be freelancing from time to time for City Weekly, but that also means that this site is going to have a lot more comic related stuff on it now.
Just a fair warning.
Since the summer of 2004 I've been freelancing for City Weekly. I've done a few things for them like album reviews, band profiles, comedy writing and event previews but what I mostly did was write about comic books. For a long time it was a steady rotation of once a month, just like clockwork. At first it was strictly reviews and usually went like this - one 450 word piece and two 100 word capsules. Mostly I tried to review comics that I really liked and thought more people should be reading. I never liked reviewing shitty comics because to me, the point was to get as many people reading comics as I could. So that meant highlighting all the good stuff that was out there and I thought I did a pretty good job of that.
One of my favorite stories about this was, one week after I had written a review of the awesome NORTHLANDERS by Brian Wood (which just got cancelled and inspired another post to come) my friend Josh was at the comic shop talking to the owner. The door opened and this guy that looked like he didn't read comics came walking in holding something in his hand. He held it up and it was a copy of my review, ripped out of the City Weekly and just said "I want this book."
Hearing things like that made me happy. There's been a few other times I've gone in to the comic shop and the owner would tell me that something I wrote was selling a lot of books and it would make me feel good.
Once the rotation of my column started getting more and more irregular, I started branching out a bit more and writing pieces that were more essays than reviews. I'd pick something that was going on in the industry and write about it for a bit. It was fun, but since I never had a clear idea of when I was going to get to write, I decided to steer clear of posting comic related stuff on trevorhale.com just in case.
But last week I got an e-mail from the A&E editor, the guy who's essentially been my boss for the past 7 years telling me they'd signed a deal with Big Shiny Robot to take over the Geek Culture aspect of the paper which included comics.
I was a little bit bummed, but not shocked. Bryan Young, one of the founding editors of the site has been working hard for a long time building that site in to what it is today and he's done an awesome job of it. I can't say I'm the biggest fan of some of the writing on the site, but I do respect the guys, what they do and how hard they've worked at it.
I'll still be freelancing from time to time for City Weekly, but that also means that this site is going to have a lot more comic related stuff on it now.
Just a fair warning.
Friday, June 10, 2011
BREAKING BAD
Been home all day burning through Season 3 of BREAKING BAD. If you like awesome television with fantastic storytelling and actors that kill every moment they're on screen, you need to be watching this show.
And when you're all caught up, if you're a story nerd like I am, read this interview with the show's creator Vince Gilligan. Lots of showrunners come off as pretentious dicks, but this guy is so humble that it makes the show that much better.
But don't read it if you're not all caught up, because they talk about some pretty major aspects of Season 3.
Now I've just got to bide my time until Season 4 starts next month.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
RELAXING
The airport runway on the island of St. Maartens is remarkably short, ending just feet away from Maho Beach. Since the runway is just barely long enough for jets to land, pilots have to fly extremely low, nearly clipping the fence as they descend. Tourists ‘relaxing’ on the beach often have planes pass a mere 30 feet over their heads.
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