A classic groaner skit from the Comedy Club.
Lights up on three "ethnic minorities", scrubbing each other.
VOICE-OVER: "Ethnic Cleansing."
Lights down.
Well, goodnight, good morning, or good whateevr, I've gott get some shuteye for the big grand finale show tomor- er, TODAY! And if you don't come back to this website I'kll think of you when I chunder later thismorning. (-:
Dear Diary, and All You Voyeuristic Types Who Read Other People's Diaries,
The final show rocked, and I wasn't even hung over. It pretty much went off
hitchlessly and then we all scampered off to the afterparty! (On the way there I
saw two smashed-up cars and a policeman redirecting traffic at an intersection,
and those who had been past said intersection 20 minutes earlier said that they
hadn't seen it - so I must've just missed out on seeing a head-on [from the safe
perspective, this time!].) Among the awards given out, I was awarded "Most
Convincing Fake Beard" (it's real, I tell you!), the "Post-It Notes" award for
sticking FUC posters everywhere, and "Best Resemblance to a Wookie on an ID
card". Yeah. Beat THAT, Peter "BAFTA" Jackson, Russell "Oscar" Crowe and George
Dubya "Nobel Peace Prize" Bush! (-:
And now for "Beyond Belief: Fact or
Bollox?" with Jonathan Frakes.
"Is clairvoyance true? Or are predictions of
the future based on card-reading or even slightly less conventional soothsaying
techniques all just a load of superstitious mumbo-jumbo? Over the next two
months, we may find out for sure."
"Our first story follows the (boring) life of one Andrew Kepple, who, at a
Comedy Club show afterparty, had his future told by 'Madame Hilaire' (see
"McBrothel's") and her do-it-yourself Tarot Card kit."
Well, anyway, the outcome of the Tarot card reading for my next two months was
this:
1: I am to have an argument with one of my flatmates on the subject of money. This will somehow lead to a focusing of creative energy into some task...Oh yeah, a quote (from me this time, it actually happened in a conversation on Friday night):
2: ...which was interpreted as me drawing lots of cartoons.
3: However, my neglect for much else besides cartooning may have "consequences" that will give me a loud wake-up call. I will have to sort out some priorities!
4: If I play my cards right, I may prosper financially for my hard work. (As ya do.)
5: I'll meet a crazy, whacky, out-of-this-world nutbar who will give me some important advice or inspiration that I will take with me thereafter.
6: Um... there was something else but I can't quite remember what it was. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Could've been something to do with a skink, a brick and a mushroom cloud. Time will tell...
Don't forget today's GCW cartoon!
Challenge: Not that anybody actually ever responds to anything I write on this page, but - send me an image of your couch (or somebody else's couch) exploding and I'll post them here. I've always wanted to explode a couch but never had the couch to do it with - or the explosives... unless aerosol cans + meths + firelighter crud = the kind of explosive that could blow a couch apart. I haven't tried that one out on a couch yet!
In other boring news, The Chasm of Chills is soon going to become home to a REGULARLY UPDATED Commander Keen comic, hosted by ThisStrife.com (WARNING: it won't load in Netscape), because the guy who runs that website liked CK:10 Years On so much that he has offered me FREE hosting on ThisStrife, where he has his own Quake/Duke Nukem parody comic. He said it was to help me display my work to a larger audience... but we all know that he really wants me to join ThisStrife to thereby increase the quality of his own website - ha ha, just kidding, Pete.
Fade-through effects...
The Dramasoc show Albuquerque Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Script
was going well, and the Saturday evening performance would be followed by the
21st birthday celebration of Hilary, one of the actors whom you may remember
from such shows as "FUC", and from such tarot card readings as mine. The theme
of this party was "Manga/Anime/Japanese cartoon characters". There was talk of
some people becoming various Dragonball Z characters, but I decided go back to
my Pokemonic roots of web-cartooning (my first ever web comic was part of a
gruesome but hilarious anti-Pokemon website) and become Ash Ketchum. After all,
he has the same initials as I do.
So on Friday night I shaved off my facial
fungus - which was difficult since I couldn't find my shaving foam and had to
use shampoo instead - and woke up late the next morning, too late to bid
farewell to Dagmar, my German flatmate who was heading off on a tour around the
South Island before going back to Germany.
So, off I went to have my hair dyed black. Most places would have charged a
bit more than $50, but I found one place that claimed that they could do it for
$35. So into town I drove, parked just short of the traffic jam district, and
trotted off down the street in the the instictive direction of where the
Capello hairdressing place might be. (Now, I don't usually go to
expensive hairdressers, a $10 barber's is all I need for a decent haircut, but
other people who've had their hair dyed have all insisted that one should get it
done professionally.) So there I was, just about to cross the road when who
should be strolling up on the other side to cross in the opposite direction but
Dagmar, in search of some lunch before meeting her travelling companions and
continuing on the so-called Kiwi Experience.
Christchurch is no small village - it's larger than all the other cities and townships in the South Island all put together, which makes unlikely coincidences like this all the more astounding.
I turned up to the Raiders of the Lost Script performance that afternoon
wearing all black clothes and, just to confuse everybody, sunglasses. Ever the
psychological experimentalist, I strolled in and asked politely if anybody here
knew where Andrew Kepple was. There was a short pause, then one of the
performers pointed and gasped. The next thing I knew, two or three others were
pointing and yelling. I removed the shades and everybody roared, gasped,
laughed, screamed, demanded to know what the hell I'd done with Andrew Kepple,
compared me with various celebrities and generally gave all of the desired
reactions. The Chewbacca Andrew that they thought they knew had become a Tall,
Dark Stranger. In fact, that will be my new motto. "Taller, Darker,
Stranger".
But where was I? Ah yes, the Ash Ketchum costume worked fairly
well. Photographs of the occasion will be posted here when the films in question
are developed later this week, and I WILL have sufficient spare time to update
this website soon.
So go and dye your hair black if you know what's good for you. And if you don't
know what's good for you, or if your hair already is black, bleach it.
That's right, kids -- If Andrew jumped off a cliff, you should do the same!
Tee hee, I thought I was so smart. Perhaps I was. At least I got one back for all the cyclists who've ever been verbally abused by drive-by hooligans. The next logical step is to pack a water pistol to get one back for all those cyclists - and pedestrians - in this fair city who've ever been victim of drive-by liquid abuse. And then there are those who have endured drive-by egg attacks from hard-core vehicular hooligans. Sigh. So many injustices to avenge, so little weaponry.
Good, Bad & Ugly for this week (and last week, also): Comic Book Supervillains!
It's time for geriatric Andrew to reminisce about those happy, carefree days of his childhood in the 1980's, before video rental stores existed, when McGyver was a new TV show (but my parents wouldn't let me watch it), and mobile phones were called "mobile" because the only way you could operate them was to hang them from the ceiling...
When I was a young 'un, my parents had a "lifestyle block", where we kept a few
sheep and pet lambs. Now before you all start laughing and making smart comments
about Kiwis, let me go on. All of the sheep were given names, usually by myself
or my siblings, and we could tell them apart by their faces. (I SAID STOP
LAUGHING, DAMMIT!) Anyway, one of the flabbier ewes was white with black
speckles on its face, as if it had been eating mud pies. So it was named Mudpie.
One day Mudpie went off to the freezing works.
Later, Mudpie came back
from the freezing works, in little pieces inside plastic bags that went into the
freezer.
Later still, the little pieces of Mudpie went into the oven and got
cooked.
How we laughed and joked happily about the fact that we were eating
Mudpie.
Looking back on that, the phrase "soylent green" comes to mind,
accompanied with ominous music from the string section. Here we were;
two-point-four happy, cheesy, rosy-cheeked kids with our happy, cheesy,
stereotypical parents in the late 80's - early 90's, sitting around the table
like something out of a cheesy American Golden-Age propaganda poster, eating
something that was once our friend. And joking about it. And laughing
good-naturedly. I still don't feel even the remotest guilt about that, and that
just makes it all the more convincing that humanity has gone down the
tubes.
Or perhaps that I am not the best representative of humanity. But are
YOU? Aw, c'mon, like YOU'VE never eaten one of YOUR friends for dinner.
This post-ironic poster of a Cheesy Retro Family that I made in 2000 is the sort of disturbingly twisted cheesiness that I'm on about, and the forerunner to GCW's "Cheesy Family".
And here's what else I have to say about it:
Visual: 5/5!
Plot: 2/5 (But who cares about plot? The subplot with Scrat the
proto-squirrel/weasel/scavenger-thingy was the best bit!)
Storytelling: 3/5
Sound: 3/5 (Ray Romano as a mammoth = good. Stereo effects = unnecessarily tacky
and pretentious as any other movie, but otherwise okay.)
Funny: 4/5 (1/2 a mark courtesy of the Tae-kwon-dodos!)
However...
Predictability: (5/5)
Message: Nobody has perfected computer animated physics yet, but the animators of Ice Age have injected a little bit of the cartoon physics from days of old into it. The non-human creatures' movements and facial expressions make the animation of "ANTZ" look like "Jimmy Neutron", it's that good. See this if you want cartoon eye candy. Otherwise put yourself in cryogenic storage for about a year, then defrost, and go turn on your TV.
Other News:
* The possibility of my presence at Armageddon '02 looks decreasingly likely
* GCW cartoons down to one per week
* New Keen comics coming in April
* More GBUs... soon
* My cat's breath smells like cat food!
* Albuquerque Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Script
* Pokemoronic photos
* SPUDDY DIES!!!!!
A classic groaner skit from the Comedy Club.
Lights up on three
"ethnic minorities", scrubbing each other.
VOICE-OVER: "Ethnic
Cleansing."
Lights down.
Me as a geritatric Blofeld, and Javier as a golden-aged
Sean Connery / James Bond. (Set in a retirement home.)
Now I know I've been slack with comics of late, so since we're on the topic of
reminiscing, here's a golden oldie from days of yore: Why DID the Chicken Cross the Road?
And if you don't think that's particularly funny, then
take a look
at this.
In other exciting non-news, one of my flatmates has disappeared and isn't paying
her bills; also her cat is left at the flat to sponge off the rest of us. "The
Prophecy was true!" Madame Hilaire said something about an argument with a
flatmate about money. IT'S ALL BECOMING TRUE...
28/03/02: (Visitor Counter = 1271)
Rightyo, let's get right down to the guts
of this update: A new GCW cartoon, for Easter - Let Him Be Crucified!
And speaking of Easter, have you ever wondered how they make Easter eggs? Why,
they cross a chicken with a rabbit, of course.
But then, have you ever
wondered how they cross a chicken with a rabbit?
You HAVE? You sick
chuzzwazza! But for those of you who haven't wondered, here's a little
somethingorother that I made a while ago. It explains all...
Pretty cool, eh?
Too bad I can't find my younger brother's cartoon that he
drew many years ago, about a rabbit called "The Keaster Bunny" who... ahem...
"poohs" ballistic Easter eggs. Heh-heh.
WHOOOOOOOOSH.... *Background appears to dramatically close in behind me in
the old "zoom in but move back" cinematic cliche*...
(How could I ever have doubted the Tarot Cards?)
