Home | Archive | FAQ | Characters | Links | Omake | Email Me
Comic and Rant for Saturday, March 30, 2002
WARNING: Contains Dirty Runic Message |
Yes, campers, that’s an actual product! The strip refers to two of my many bad habits, first, my tendency to collect barbecue sauces and second, my tendency to read and eat at the same time. I’d like to point out, however, that while many of my own books have BBQ, spaghetti, taco or chocolate sauce stains, I take care of books lent to me by others (but where’s the humor in that?). I’ve noticed that this week’s Doonesbury storyline is reminiscent of a recent conversation I had with someone. We were discussing Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, and after I mentioned that I haven’t gotten through all the extras on the DVD yet, he said that he was still looking for a copy of the movie with all the extras. I pointed out that the best price in the area was probably at Best Buy, he clarified that he meant a free online copy, with the added defense that he’s just a poor college student. Now when I was his age I’d sometimes (make that “often”) copy rented videos, but I’d sometimes buy them as well, and I could at least rationalize that I’d paid something for them (namely the rental fee, and maybe the effort in walking to the store). Also, my selection was limited to what I could find in the local video store, whereas a bootleg download is available to anyone with an internet connection. Am I rationalizing? Yes, but you gotta admit that what I did was on a smaller scale and didn’t involve anyone else. Once I got into Anime I became more ethical, partially because most of the other otaku I was involved with were also ethical (and would, for example, be reluctant to lend me anything if they thought I was gonna copy it), and partially because while the loss of a few thousand sales wouldn’t really hurt Warner Brothers, the loss of a few hundred sales could be the breaking point for AnimEigo. Of course, it also helped that the late lamented Allen Street Video was thriving. ASV was a local store that specialized in non-mainstream titles - foreign films, cult movies and, of course, a rather substantial Anime section (due in a large part to suggestions from PSSFS and manager John Biddle’s willingness to take them). Sadly, State College, PA (for those who haven’t figured out where this story takes place) later got a Blockbuster and a Hollywood Video, and that, combined with the competition from a local chain called Mike’s Video, forced Allen Street to close its doors. To be fair, ASV made some mistakes, like not having an overnight drop-off slot (some people I talked to said that’s why they didn’t rent there) and they didn’t accept a Penn State Student ID as a form of ID for a membership, which decreased the potential customer base significantly. Meanwhile, and much to my disgust, there’s a little pissant video store just across the street from the university that not only lacks anything even remotely obscure, it actually categorizes films alphabetically by “star!” It’s still around, though, because they accept PSU Student ID and have a porn section (ASV had some H Anime and some rather erotic art films, but no “real” porn section). There’s no way a vid store in a college town can go bankrupt if it carries porn, unless its too far away from the campus (State College had a pair of “A to Z Video” stores that went out of business despite decent size porn section - uh, at least according to what a friend told me - because they weren’t within easy walking distance of the campus). On a very tenuously related note, I’ve once again found instances where what I though was common knowledge turns out not to be. I was reading a webpage on the old comic strip The Katzenjammer Kids, and the page’s writer said “It is a little known fact that the original drawings were all in black and white. The color was added during the printing process ...” I thought virtually everyone knew that. I mean, if the artwork was colored ahead of time, it would be a time consuming and expensive PITA to reproduce with a newspaper printing press. Apparently I’m wrong. Even more surprising is a Knight Ridder news article I read Thursday where John Leguizamo talks about the voice acting he did for Ice Age: “I said, ‘Where’s the picture that I have to synchronize my voice with?’ and they said ‘There is no picture.’ ” Now maybe I shouldn’t surprised at how many people don’t know that modern American animation synchronizes the animation to the voices, not the other way around (and yes, I know it’s different in Japan, or in some old American animation, or with dubbing ...), but c’mon, John! You’re supposed to be a show business professional! Of course the article’s writer, one Michael Janusonis, proves himself to be even more clueless when, after mentioning that most of the celebrity voices were recorded separately, asks “Wouldn’t it be easier to just bring everyone together once and then record the whole thing?” I don’t think I even need to explain what’s wrong with that, right? Maybe Mike G. was right when he said that most mundanes don’t have room in their heads for info like that because they’re already too full of sports rules and trivia ... Before I forget again, as I’m sure those of you who give a smeg know, MGM (who own the James Bond franchise) have successfully sued (more-or-less) New Line Pictures over the original title for the third Austin Powers movie, “Goldmember.” New Line has retitled the film “Licence to Shag,” and if you click here, here or here you’ll see why MGM can’t do much about it. As many of you also know, Disney has the rights to all the Ghibli films made before The Spiriting away of Sen and Chihiro (a.k.a. “Spirited Away”), and their policy seems to be to sit on them for as long as possible. Perhaps to combat this, the Japanese Ghibli DVD’s have included English subtitle tracks. Jeff tells me that Disney has gotten wind of this and complained, and thus there’s a good chance Whisper of the Heart won’t have any. He wants to take out a full page ad in Variety to shame Disney into relenting. What do you, the people at home, think? That’s about all for today, except to say that if you want to translate the text, use The Hobbit as your guide - the tables in the back of LoTR make no sense. |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||