Some Christmas Pictures...

Our Christmas Eve dinner--that's grape juice in the wine glass, by the way...

Part of Isabella's present from April...

My new hat--well, not new, but Karissa got it for me for Christmas...

Aiden's 1st birthday party--Isabella's trying to help him open his gift...

Isabella's cookies

A Comic? Not Yet! A Movie? Pick One ya Mamzer!

My classes are alllllll done! Now I can sit back and relax a bit...what? What do you mean I still have to put a comic out? Crap. Alright, I'll get back to work. Coming up pretty soon, I'll post my comics final. It's yet unifinished, but I'm getting it done. I like it so far. Eventually, Golden Brown will return. I PROMISE! Just sit tight.

My sister was in the hospital for a few days two weeks ago, having some surgery. She was a little stressed, but she went through it okay and got out on the weekend. She got to bring her family up to stay at Travelodge, which was cool cause they'd never stayed here yet. My mom came, too.

We went to Karissa's mom's place this weekend, it was pretty fun. It was weird, though, because her mom moved after Christmas last year, so this was the first Christmas in their new house. Isabella got lots of princess toys, and a Barbie with a penguin sewn to her pajamas.
After getting home Sunday, we unpacked quickly so we could mak it (very very late) to Aiden's birthday party. We missed his unsuccessful try at eating cake, but he didn't mind. Isabella helped him open his gift from us, we all had cake & ice cream, and anything before all that, you can wait for April's post to read about.

Tonight, we're doing Christmas Eve at home. Y'know, family stuff and junk. This weekend we're going to my dad's place to do X-Mas #3. I'm not going to be able to fit my fabulous cardboard upright bass into the car (did I mention it works?) to show Derek, but I told him we could possibly just make another one in DL. I think he's just excited to get to use his garage for man stuff, like making cardboard instruments.

What the hell have I been watching this time? Not so much as you'd think. On TCM, they played Haxan, which is a kickass Danish documentary about witchcraft made in the 1920's. I used to rent this one all the time when the movie place in Devils Lake was still called "Video Max". Possibly the coolest, creepiest Devil I've ever seen in an old movie.
I didn't watch Haxan, though, I have the DVD. I did catch the movie after it.
The Seventh Victim- is about a girl who is trying to find her missing sister in Mahattan. There's a secret husband, a love triangle, and Satanists. Sounds cool, right? Not so much. The acting is alright, but at the end, after the girl's sister escapes their clutches (really, they're just embittered high society folks), the husband and the missing girl's psychiatrist basically chew them out for having strayed onto the wrong path. What worse is that they're buying it! Wow, it was really easy back then to convert Satanists! All you had to do was quote from the Lord's prayer about forgiving people their trespasses, and they just give up their evil ways.
Silent Night- Ironically I found this movie by chance on the Trinity Broadcast Network and I loved it. A German woman and her son flee to a hunting cabin in the woods (where else would a hunting cabin be?) to keep distanced from the war. Not long after three American soldiers lost from their unit barge in, one wounded, needing lodging. After some tense arguments, she lets them stay so long as they put their rifles outside. Not long after that, some German soldiers lost from their unit show up. More tense arguing between them, the woman, and the Americans, and a temporary truce is offered. It's Christmas Eve, and the group finds themselves having to sit down to Christmas dinner with eachother. Honestly, not a likely situation at all, but the movie was well acted (including German language barriers and heavy accents) and the tense moments were actually tense.
SLC Punk!- I know I've mentioned this one before, but it's a fucking cool movie set in the '80's about a couple of guys from Salt Lake City, Utah who live the punk lifestyle to its fullest and promote anarchy and chaos. Matthew Lillard played his role perfectly.
Suburbia- This is low budget flick that was made in 1984 and a couple weeks back on TCM Underground. It's not well-acted, but it's still a cool movie, very extreme subject matter at times. Mainly it's about punks squatting in an abandoned house in a bad area populated equally with wild dogs. Weird thing about this movie? A very young Mike B. "the Flea" makes his acting debut.

What am I reading? I'm currently reading about Moundbuilders and Women of the Third Reich...and Fangoria.
Signing off,
Irving Jackalman
(I don't know why Jackalman when I'm a werewolf-type schmeckel; so silly this name is!)

Cancer At the Pit Stop

This is an Editorial illustration. According to various news stories, night shift workers like myself are at higher risk for cancer than regular day people. According to these stories, my circadian rhythm is off, and my production of melatonin is fucked up...or something.

Anyway, read the illustration to get the point.

Who Is Awesome?

This guy!

I'll have my editorial illustration done for class soon, I'll post it then. I'm still working like a bitch on my comic stuff, just be patient. Another page of Red Riding Hood will be up by about 9AM this morning (I just finished it a few hours ago).

What have I been watching? Let 'er rip:
-Mad Cowgirl-- No idea where this movie was made, there's quite a few Asians, but it's primarily an American movie. A beef inspector sleeps around a lot and thinks she has Mad Cow disease. She obsessively watches Kung Fu movies and progressively becomes unhinged. The men in her life obsess over her, and put pressure on her to be with them. She freaks out, kills a bunch of guys, and we are left no less confused than when the movie started.
-Attack of the Crab Monsters --I caught this as part of TCM Underground's lineup last Friday. Scientists find themselves stranded on an island with intelligent killer crabs which are hard to kill (and evn hardr to sautee). It wasn't half bad, and the gore factor for being a lat 1950's movie was actually pretty decent.
-The Killer Shrews-- No, it's not about a bunch of angry republican women, it's about oversized rodents (actually dogs with masks) who want to eat people. It wasn't that great. The bunch of oil drums they welded together to get away were kind of cool.
-Green Slime-- This one might be for you, Jas. It's about a group of scientists going into space to destroy a meteor headed for earth. They bring back some slime, and everything goes to shit quickly as slime monsters overrun the place. This movie has it's own theme song. Yeah, that's right. It's very own Charlie Fox theme song. The effects are horrible, and the scenery in th opening 5 minutes makes me nostalgic for Mystery Science Theater 3000.
-Dracula (The Dirty Old Man)-- Oh shalom, a Jewish Dracula! At least, that's the impression one gets from listening to this guy talk. Same with the wolf guy he calls JackalMan. This movie is on a whole other level of horrible. There isn't much of a plot, listening to the dialogue between Dracula & Jackalman is like watching a Hebrew Popeye cartoon. And yet, the movie is funny as all getout. For the first half of the movie, I thought someone had taken a movie and overdubbed their own voices over it as a joke, like in Enter the Fist. But no, this is essentially the way it was supposed to be. Oh, and there's tons of 1960's-all-natural-real-titties-big-hips-nudity. As Fred Fredburger eloquently put it, Yes.
-Guess What Happened to Count Dracula?-- Dracula's son and a bunch of othe ghouls open up a night club and prey on girls. Whoop de shit. No nudity, boring dialogue, and Dracula looks like a young yuppie douchebag with a face I hate. This was the second in a double feature (the first was Dirty Old Man).
-Sex and the Single Vampire-- This was a featurette on the previously mentioned DVD. This is only worth mentioning because it was basically a porno starring noneother than the legendery John Holmes. This is actually one of his earlier movies! A group of groovy swingers make themselves at home in an old house belonging to an "uncle". The uncle turns out to be Count Spatula (Holmes), who ends up kidnapping all the men and tying them up in the basement. He then gets out his big dick and fucks all the women. Well, they fuck him, he kind of just lies there and enjoys it. Afterwards, he oversleeps and turns into a skeleton. Even in death, he is amazed by the awesome night.
That's it. That's all I got right now. One last thing, though. Last night, Isabella was telling me to go to 'time out'. I threw myself on the floor in my best imitation of a tantrum. She walked up to me in her goofy underwear and sweater, holding a glass of eggnog in her hand. Looking down at me, she shook her head and said "You're such a dork."
I guess now I know how she feels.

Good Ash, Bad Ash?

This is an assignment for Illustration, where we had to draw a celebrity and put them in an element fitting to their character or current situation. I chose Bruce Campbell, and made part of him possessed by the 'evil' in the woods from the Evil Dead movies. I left out the gun & chainsaw, because this is Bruce Campbell, not Ash, but I think he'll always have a little deadite in him.

RIP Dime, 3 Years

Sledding in My Neighborhood and a Little Red Riding Hood

Last weekend we went to Devils Lake for the weekend. On Friday night, we stayed at my dad's & watched Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. My mom's exboyfriend used to play this movie all the time when I visited, because he knew it annoyed me. Many years later after their breakup, it makes me feel nostalgic, though a little sad that he wasn't there to see it too. For all its mindless action, it is a kickass movie. I wanted Karissa to see it, but like a little bitch she went to bed early.

On Saturday, we went to Tab & Derek's place and hung out with them before going to the 11th Frame where we had a little more fun. I never did get to see Derek's garage yet, maybe next time.

On Sunday we met my sister at the KDLR radio tower to go sledding. It was cold as a motherfucker, but we had a lot more fun than I thought we were going to. Isabella took to sledding right away and only got mad at the end when I told her we had to leave so she could take a nap. I got on some sleds, too, and found out I need practice to go down a hill right.

What else have I been watching lately?

The other night I caught Violent Midnight on AMC. It was released in 1964 and takes place at a girl's school in a New England town. A serial killer is on the loose, and the movie takes you through a few good twists and turns before really fucking with you at the end. For a cheaply made indie movie, it was really good. Plus there are many ladies trying to get naked, and while none really do, I applaud their efforts.

Last night I watched Grim Reaper, released just last year. It was mediocre. A stripper (who does NOT appear naked at all) gets hit by a taxi and is saved from death to wallow in an old non-functioning mental hospital by a doctor conducting mass-hypnosis experiments. There is a lot of confusing parts of it and the grim reaper himself is stalking the stripper, because he feels her soul is owed to him...or something. Really, how fucking hard is it for a supernatural embodiment of a completely natural process (not to mention inevitable anyway, so what's the point in running from it?) to kill a stripper? It was not insanely bad, it just wasn't very good.

Anyway, I got the second page of Red Riding Hood up for the week, enjoy!