Block Out the Haters

“Don’t listen to people who make fun of charcuterie. They’re just jealous that you got to eat a cracker with salami and cheese on it and they didn’t.” -Brigham Larson, 2024

That Time Bad Lip Reading Made "High School Musical" Infinitely Better

 

Today I had the absolute pleasure of re-watching Bad Lip Reading's twisted take on High School Musical, the legendarily mediocre Disney Channel movie that spawned an entire tidal wave of legendarily mediocre Disney Channel movies. I was swiftly reminded why it remains one of my favorite videos in the history of the Internet. Watch it right now.

Some iconic quotes:

• "Oh, beaver jogger in the night, how did you get so wet?"
• "My friends congratulated me on my cool hallway stance."
• "Derf called you Mousey but that was just Derf being Derf."
• "She's a robot. We can switch her off in a dungeon, and then we can go get bagels."
• The entire "Darryl the Pony" bit, which lasts all of fifteen seconds and yet remains one of Internet humor's greatest triumphs.
• "That's a baby sheep."
• "I'm one of them rodents without fur."

I posted this because I feel it my duty to spread this joy. In spite of it being released almost eight years ago, undoubtedly a large part of the population has not yet seen it. I aim to change that. Maybe we could turn this into a charity.

Can of Worms

Is there a reason for ChatGPT to exist? Sure. Is there a way to integrate it into everyday life and functions without meaningfully driving people out of work? Definitely, I would say. It’s been done terribly and everybody is rushing headfirst into this without any consideration, but I’m not opposed to text-generative AI at all.

AI-generated images though? That’s a can of worms that shouldn’t have been opened. Misinformation and devaluing art is what it leads to, and little more. Definitely more trouble than it’s worth.

Which brings me to Late Night with the Devil. This is a horror-comedy film being released by IFC that’s garnered some positive buzz lately, garnering an endorsement from the one and only Stephen King and a rare 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. It has a fun concept, a promising cast, and generally seems like an all-around fun time.

The problem? Instead of hiring artists to bring their vision to life, the film reportedly features obviously AI-generated visuals throughout, which the producers have confirmed. That’s one less job given to a talented artist and one more shoddy piece of artificial, inhuman nothingness with too many fingers in this world.

A Letterboxd reviewer of this film wisely advised viewers to not let this film be the start of accepting this kind of behavior in the entertainment industry. It may seem harmless for now, but the creep will set in until it doesn’t even take people to make movies anymore, and nobody cares. Send people a message that this isn’t okay. That we expect real artists, not Sam Altman, to be supported.

Thank you. And to the producers of this movie: do better.

Boots

 

These boots are made for croccin’

And that’s just what they’ll do

One of these days these boots

Are gonna croc all over you

Sunday-Only Comics

I think that it's rarely a good sign when a great comic strip goes Sundays-only. Part of what makes the newspaper strip such a beautiful format is its combination of brevity with the ability to run long-term. You can tell a big story in short, meticulously paced daily chunks. A Sundays-only strip? No chance. Not only do you not have the advantage of being short and sweet, there's no real advantage to trying to serialize a story. A lot of what made a strip work can be lost.

Look at Doonesbury. I'm not much of a Doonesbury fan, but I see why it's become a staple of the comics page. Garry Trudeau is a solid writer and a good cartoonist. Since going Sundays-only, though, it's mostly devoted itself to the satirical aspects, losing what made the daily strips work: its characters. Doonesbury is basically Trudeau's political blog now. It was before to some extent, but it combined it with very well-rounded, even three-dimensional characters to convey the political ideas. In going Sundays-only, Garry Trudeau got rid of the best part of his strip.

Another example is FoxTrot. Don't get me wrong: I adore FoxTrot. I'm subscribed to the mailing list and I read FoxTrot Classics on GoComics every day. At its peak, its writing is some of the best the comics page has ever seen. But in 2007, it went Sundays-only. It doesn't have enough space to let its characters live their lives anymore. We can't have hilarious storylines like Fun-Fun Mountain, or Jason accidentally admitting he likes a girl. Instead, we're treated to brief sketches of the Fox family's life, maybe a bit with Jason parodying the latest tech fads. It's still amusing, but it's nowhere near the heights that the strip reached back in the 90s.

Of course, Sundays-only strips are not even close to the greatest threats that newspaper comics face. Local comics-carrying newspapers are still dropping like flies, more and more newspapers are choosing to run old strips instead of amplifying young cartoonists, and "zombie" strips resurrected after their creators die continue to be a scourge on the medium. But letting strips lose what made them work just for the sake of continuing isn't doing comics any favors, either.

That being said, I will continue to read FoxTrot always and forever because Bill Amend is a legend.