After more than six years, Shaenon Garrity brings Narbonic to an end tomorrow, Dec. 31. Today was the last regular four-panel strip, while tomorrow’s finale is her traditional New Year’s comic in the style of Little Nemo.
While putting together Volume 4, I’ve been re-reading key storylines from the middle of Narbonic‘s run. It’s amazing how well and how far in advance Narbonic‘s story was planned and executed, with a punchline every fourth panel — a funny one, at that. And through it all, Shaenon made it look easy. It’s a towering achievement.
Hey, game developers, here’s yet another reason to spend time and money on quality control: if you don’t, some enterprising blogger will turn your buggy game into musical theater.
That’s the low-res YouTube version. If you follow the link back to Cabel’s blog, you’ll get a high-res Quicktime video along with his explanation of the whys and hows.
I watched all three hours of the first-ever live-action Discworld screen adaptation, the Christmas-themed Hogfather, which aired on Britain’s Sky One a few days earlier. It’s a surprisingly high-budget adaptation, too — the Halmi clan, who were behind all those ’90s Hallmark productions of classic stories like The Odyssey and Merlin, were credited as producers, which should give you an idea of the production values.
THE GOOD:
The cast is fantastic. I love the treatment of Mr. Teatime as a sort of deranged hobbit with a Johnny Depp-Willy Wonka voice. Death works well with a tall, robed dancer’s body and Ian Richardson’s voice. Joss Ackland seems like more of a kindly Dumbledore type than the ruddy and blustery Archchancellor Ridcully, but he’s so charismatic that after a while you no longer care. The actors alone are worth the price of admission.
I may be in love with Michelle Dockery, who as Susan Sto-Helit is sort of a goth Kate Winslet.
Hogfather is one of Pratchett’s weakest Discworld novels. Most of what’s wrong with Sky One’s version is also wrong with the book. It might actually be TOO faithful — novelistic rather than cinematic in its pace and structure. In other words, it’s slow and sometimes confusing.
Three hours is a little long for a story this slight.
Much of Pratchett’s humor is found in narrative asides and footnotes that simply cannot be translated to the screen. No adaptation, live-action or animated, will be as funny as the book, unless the filmmakers somehow find a way to translate that humor.
My family still lives in Denver, which was just hit with a massive snowstorm that dumped 24″ on the house and shut down the city for two days. My dad just emailed a collection of photos:
My sister’s car is under there somewhere.
Meanwhile, here in Tucson, the weather is sunny with a high of 63 F…
I feel like I scored with my ideas for Ron & Vern’s gifts this year, and now that we’ve done our exchange, I can share them here.
For Ron, a 12-pack of Two-Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s. Or as he might want to start calling it, 1-Point Chuck. Ron is on Weight Watchers, which counts a glass of wine as 1 point against his diet versus 2 or 3 points for his favorite beers. That was a big reason for the gift, but deep down I’m just amused by the idea of gifting someone a goddamn CASE of booze. For the unfamiliar, Charles Shaw is surprisingly tasty wine for only $2.99/bottle.
For Vern, a set of Horrified B-Movie Victim action figures whose entire purpose is to cower in fear of her other action figures. She may set them up around Cthulhu or Godzilla — I’m not sure which yet.
Since I stopped buying newspapers about seven years ago, I haven’t really followed any newspaper comic strips beyond a few stretches of Dilbert, Boondocks, and Doonesbury. My only exposure to Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse has been via the satirical commentary of The Comics Curmudgeon, where Johnston-coined slang such as “foob” and “roadside” have become running gags.
But Shaenon Garrity is still a daily reader and a huge fan. Yesterday she posted a long, excellent rant about why she — along with every other reader under the age of 50 — “hates Anthony with the fire of a thousand suns,” and specifically hates the inevitable Liz/Anthony pairing.
The Comedians of Comedy show kicked some serious ass. There were even more noteworthy comedians than I had anticipated — Morgan Murphy, who I knew only by reputation until Tuesday night, and Bob Odenkirk, the other half of Mr. Show, also performed. A long list of comedians each did 15-20 minutes of their acts, entirely made up of material I’d never heard before, for one 3+ hour marathon of comedy.
I chatted with a really cute girl while waiting in line to get in, then we hung out inside and watched the show together. (Hi, Kristie!) She snagged a pretty good location to the left of the stage; we were close to the performers and the stage was raised, so the only times we couldn’t see were when a cameraman got in front of us.
Oh yeah, did I mention the show was being taped for Comedy Central?
The only part I couldn’t see was a Zach Galifianakis bit with premade signs, which were mostly pointed toward the other half of the audience. We did get to see the final sign, which read “KILL DANE COOK” and elicited a huge cheer from the crowd.
David Cross and Jon Benjamin did a video/live-action routine that culminated in a rendition of “Let’s Give ‘em Something to Talk About.” A guy right in front of us was pulled onstage where they pulled his pants halfway down and dry-humped him while they sang. Afterwards a suit-type came around to have him sign a release form. Poor guy… or lucky guy?
Anyway, the show was hilarious.
I didn’t do much else while I was in LA. I took an airport shuttle instead of renting a car, so I was confined to walking distance from Santa Monica & Doheny. I mostly killed time reading, playing Nintendo DS, and buying $8 drinks. Boozing ain’t cheap in Beverly Hills/West Hollywood.
Some of you may recall that a year ago I built the Couch Potato 3000, a WinMCE-based PC that records and downloads TV and plays, rips, and burns DVDs. If you’re interested in buying something similar, check out the Hannibal Deuce +. It does everything mine does (including the dual-tuner DVR card), plus it’s a lot more machine for only a little more cost: DVI video output, much better audio, and a 500GB hard drive, all running on a stable Linux base. If the CP3K ever dies, I might replace it with one of these.
I haven’t read any of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden novels, but I know people who love them, and they might be interested in this teaser for the Sci-Fi Channel series coming next month. Looks… somewhat Angel-ish, actually.
Suddenly half my online pals have comic books coming out. Jim Massey is writing Maintenance, about the janitorial staff at a mad science lab, for Oni Press, while Dan Evans is co-writing an all-ages fantasy/western called Texas Strangers through Image.
Michael Crichton is a douchebag. If I ever complete a novel, maybe I’ll include a character named Crichael Michton who spends the whole story blowing a goat.
Sometimes I stop and wonder why I’m dropping $300+ (flight, hotel, shuttle, ticket) on a comedy show. My reasoning? I’m a fan of most of these comics, I’ve never seen any of them live, and none of them will ever come to Tucson. This way I can see them all in one hopefully-excellent night.
I won’t have Internet access until my return Wednesday night, but I’ll probably email some camera pics in the meantime.
