Tag: silhouette

MORONE

Why does Pete get to hang around on set? Oh, yeah: he’s the screenwriter! He must be still working on the screenplay, since as far as we know it hadn’t been finished when they jetted off to Ohio, then New York, then back to Ohio for all the Cliff Anger bullshit. When it comes to settling a discussion, “Let’s ask Pete” is right up (or down) there with “Let’s flip a coin.”

Gravit-ass

Epicus Doomus
June 21, 2016 at 11:45 pm
So, is Mason all stupid again now or what? He was kind of douchey when Les first met him, then he became a beloved Westview fixture, then a benevolent student of lost films and now he’s an idiot again?

What do a percussionist Prince protégé, the Boss’ backup band, a lowercase poet, and mass–energy equivalence have in common? Besides the most commonly used letter in the English languages, not much at all. “Gravitas“? Does Mason even know what the word means? Sheila E’s a helluva performer, but is more famous for her musicianship than her “dignity, seriousness, or solemnity of manner.” As Epicus points out, for all the “strip time” Mason gets, we don’t know much about him besides the fact that he’s a handsome movie actor. Is he making a joke here? The guy who writes and draws him sure isn’t.

People Who Need People

[Dionne] Warwick, for years an aficionado of psychic phenomena, was advised by astrologer Linda Goodman in 1971 to add a small “e” to her last name, making Warwick “WARWICKe” for good luck and to recognize her married name and her spouse, actor and drummer William “Bill” Elliott. Goodman convinced Warwick that the extra small “e” would add a vibration needed to balance her last name and bring her even more good fortune in her marriage and her professional life. In retrospect, the extra “e,” according to Dionne, “was the worst thing I could have done… and in 1975 I finally got rid of that damn ‘e’ and became ‘Dionne Warwick’ again.”

Perhaps Mason’s sudden-onset name change mania isn’t a symptom of his bipolar disorder. Recall how Les fed him that story about Pavarotti’s superstitiously carrying a bent nail for good luck (before planting one for Mason to find, in order to give him the confidence to get through a table read for Lisa’s Story). It wouldn’t take much to convince such a gullible sap that tacking an “e” onto his surname could bring good fortune…or maybe even “a new interview with People magazine“! Because, you know, that project he was involved with the last time People mag came knocking? Les and his fucking “kill fee” put the kibosh on that.

Thank You Vera Much

TheDiva
June 16, 2016 at 1:02 am
Cliff Anger gets a huge tribute in his honor, while his costar is just trotted out and expected to fawn on him the way everyone else does. Yep, sounds about right for this strip.

Eww! Old people flirting! Hard to find much else to say about today’s installment…Mason’s expression in panel one is not so much “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone” but rather more like he’s just lit a stinkbomb and is off to watch the ensuing hilarity from a safe distance. “I always wondered what…” And we’ll always wonder what Cliff was about to say before Vera cut him off mid-sentence.

Explosions, Smoke and Chaos (Oh My!)

Link to today’s strip.

I’ll take a guess that we won’t see any of those explosions, smoke and chaos.  Heck, we’ve been told about them, isn’t that enough for our ungrateful little hearts?

I still can’t imagine what a high school graduation ceremony has to do with a space adventure film.  I guess that’s a failure on my part, because Pete Rossini is such a great writer that he never writes terrible things.  He wrote The Amazing Mr. Sponge, for God’s sake!  That’s as awesome as you can get without crushing someone’s windpipe.

It’s hard not to notice how the whole Starbuck Jones keeps diminishing.   First, it was an epic space adventure with a hero who flew to alien worlds with his robot side-kick.  There were aliens and death capsules and an octo-shark.   It looked like it might be something…fun.  Entertaining.  Something expansive and open for adventure, like the Star Trek universe.

Then it started shrinking.  Shooting in Cleveland?  Well…okay, some CGI overlays could make it appear futuristic.  A present-day school bus in a scene?  By accident, and the director wants to keep it?  Um, well, I dunno…

And now we’re shooting a contemporary graduation ceremony.  That seems to have done it–Starbuck Jones has been brought down to earth.

Should the Starbuck Jones movie ever see the light of day, it will consist of Starbuck and Jupiter sitting on the couch watching TV.  They’ll be dressed the way suburbanites dress today.  They won’t say a word to each other, and we’ll never get a look at what they’re watching.  And it’ll go on for two hours.

Or, you know, it might be something fantastic.

That seems to be the consistent nature of Funky Winkerbean:  lower your expectations.   No, no, lower than that.  Holly travels to complete Cory’s comic book collection.  Will she learn to wheel-deal, develop her killer instincts?  Nope, people will just hand them to her.   A Funky-Dick Tracy crossover?  Oh cool, maybe shoot-outs and a murder!  Nope, Dick and Sam will haul boxes of comic books.  And now Starbuck Jones is taking place at Westview High.

I will give the strip this:  it has really taught me the limits of my imagination.  Every time a story begins, I posit that it will be the dullest, least-creative thing I can imagine.   And I’m always wrong.