Shame Day: Dark, Gritty Fan Art of Beloved Childhood Characters

I was in a dark place when I wrote the post I am least proud of: Fame Day: Creativity [and Imagination]. It’s not that I don’t think it’s a relevant topic, especially right now when it’s more common to see children in front of screens than playing make believe with their toys, it’s just that at the time I figured that writing it was the easy way out. As luck would have it, all of that segues really smoothly into today’s topic-

I hate dark and gritty fan art because it is both uncreative and lazy.

To be totally transparent, I was a high schooler once, so I did think these were really awesome once upon a time. It wasn’t until much later when I realized that if you want to take a beloved childhood character and make it appeal to a large section of the internet you have three simple options:

1) Make said character a killer/capable of killing.

There are altogether far too many gritty Inspector Gadget pictures out there.

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2 Broke Girls, S3E15 “And the Icing on the Cake”: A TV Review

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I don’t know if I made it clear last week, but I really like Deke’s dumpster house. It evokes the whole Tiny House Movement that’s going on which actually helps make it appear less cartoonish, and it also proves just how much I loved The Boxcar Children when I was younger. All that being said, the prospect of there being a wine and cheese party in such a small space just oozes with promise, sort of like how the garbage outside of Deke’s place oozes with . . . other things.

In the hands of a more capable director and more creative writers, I’m ideally thinking the crowd from fellow CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, the majority of this episode could’ve taken place in the green dumpster no problem. There were so many interactions to work with, what with the whole diner crew plus Deke and Chef Nicolas and Bebe. Unfortunately the focus was pulled to the two title and the Pastry Schoolers don’t really mix in with the Dirty Diners [those are their gang names now and I stand by them]. Continue reading

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

This is the final panel of one of my favorite Calvin & Hobbes strips, though as you can see it works just fine on its own as well. Ignorance is an issue. It always has been, and it probably always will be. The issue is that today it seems that misunderstandings about the nature of tolerance and free speech, as well as the prevalence of Postmodernism, have really given it a haven the likes of which hasn’t existed before. But we’re not here to dissect just where ignorance is coming from in modern culture, we’re here to talk about some of the absolutely dangerous myths that it’s producing and why they are just plan wrong.

I. “Vaccines Cause Autism”

Chances are pretty high that you’re already familiar with this one, and while most folks are fully aware of just how untrue this myth is, it remains nevertheless one of the most dangerous ones out there today. I’m not just talking about the preventable deaths of thousands of people (which is justification, of course, in and of itself) but about the potential damage it can cause. You’re not just exposing yourself to infection, you’re allowing yourself to serve as a potential carrier to infect others.

And of course, this is exactly what’s happening now.

See NPR’s article on the subject here.

Look, I could spend all day rehashing article after article after scientific study demonstrating that no, vaccines do not cause autism, and no, the substances which make up most vaccines are more prevalent in plenty of other substances- but let us, just for a moment, entertain this superstition as being real.

So what if vaccines can cause autism (which they don’t)? Continue reading

Kids and Fame and Justin Bieber’s DUI

We live in this amazing age where information is so readily accessible that you actually can’t avoid learning about some things, at least not without going pretty far out of your way. So I guess it’s not surprising that this was one of the first things I heard about yesterday:

Court is a great photo opportunity, apparently.

A lot of people are probably wondering how a little kid who used to dedicate his songs on YouTube to homeless friends he made while busking


turned into the guy who spits on his adoring fans.

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What Happened To MusclesGlasses?

musclesglassesmilkA lot, and I’m telling you, a lot of people want to know what happened to MusclesGlasses of Epic Meal Time fame. For a while it was all you’d see in the comments sections of their YouTube videos, and a good number have found this blog by googling the character’s real name, “Alex Perrault”.

According to an article on New Media Rockstars Muscles stopped appearing as early as January 2013, which meant that for an entire year EMT has been without one of its strongest presences [besides that of Harley “The Sauce Boss” Morenstein himself, creator of the show]. For 365 days and change the show has been missing its most voracious eater,

bordering-on-problematic drinker,

and rap battle champion-

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Fame Day: Hyperbole and a Half and Depression

For Christmas my lovely sister-in-law gave me this book:

I then proceeded to read pretty well the whole book over the next few days. Some of my favorite stories focus on her childhood shenanigans, including the time she ate an entire cake,

and the time she thought dressing in a dinosaur costume gave her special powers-

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