I’m sticking my neck out on today’s strip. If you’re not familiar with the annoying ad campaign for AFLAC, you’re S.O.L.

For those not in the loop, the ads feature a duck voiced by Gilbert Godfried is attempting to extol the virtues of supplement insurance to clueless humans by screaming the name of the company at full volume. Typically, these individuals are sitting on park benches, oblivious to the helpful tips of this thoughtful water foul. Instead, they dismiss his quacking like so much noise.

Anyway, it’s a long way around for a joke, but I figured AFLAC = Affleck — what’s the difference? If all else fails, you’ve got a duck calling me a jackass. You don’t see that everyday.

I went to see How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days with Cami last night. It was my penance for dragging her to see Daredevil. How this system works, I don’t know. She was asleep during Daredevil for at least 30 minutes. Hey, I didn’t fall asleep during Maid in Manhattan!

There was too much to make fun of! 🙂

But I digress. How to Lose A Guy was actually much better than I expected. A lot of my other guy friends were dragged kicking and screaming and came back reporting it wasn’t that bad. I thought they were full of it. Now I am a member of their chorus.

The film is loaded with standard romantic-comedy cliches, but you don’t really mind because the execution isn’t insulting to the audience. Clearly it presents a stylized version of New York where things are glossy and fabulous and there are about 3 black people in the entire city, but what are you going to do?

Dialogue is really the strong point in this movie. All of the characters are intelligent and well-spoken. Sliver-tongued, they string together sentences confidently and sincerely. It’s a refreshing twist on some of the leaden garbage that passes for prose these days.

Watching How to Lose A Guy reminded me of how good an actress Kate Hudson really is. Remarkable for her age, she’s already surpassed her mother, Goldie Hawn, in terms of pure, radiating talent. I gotta go back and watch Almost Famous for a second helping.

Matthew McConaughey wasn’t half bad, either. He can’t act his way out of a paper bag if things get too complicated, but when the writers get out of his way and allow him to work his charm, he is entertaining to watch.

I’ve finally decided to end the “What Would You Buy” survey. The results were about what I expected. The majority of you – over 1/3 of the 300 who replied said they would like to donate, but didn’t have money. The next closest contender was a t-shirt with 17% of the vote.

I would like to make t-shirts, but I’m kind of on the fence about it. I have a lot of concerns about quality. Sure, I could slap a logo on a t-shirt sold from CafePress, but we all know those shirts are second-rate crap and will start fading after three washes,

Brunetto Shirts, on the other hand, are high quality silk screened tees that will stand the test of time. The down side, is that I need 40 pre-orders from you guys before I can put in my work order to Brunetto.

Unless there are people flooding my inbox clamoring for them, I think for now, I’m going to shelf the idea of doing any merchandising. I may do some stickers down the road. Wallpaper sounds nice. I just need something equivalent to dipping my toe in the water. Something where I don’t have to put a bunch of money up front.

In the meantime, the poll has changed to “Which Film Will Win Best Picture?” It’s pretty self explanatory.

Last thing I’ll mention: Checking my referral logs through my counter, I noticed I was given a brief mention over at Briworld. I don’t know how many people are tuned in to this web comic, but it’s high time more people know about it.

I love the art style of the characters and if I could get the crew of Theater Hopper to look more like them, I would. Check out Briworld. It’s a real treat.