Archive for January, 2007
20 items.
It’s a new year and, as you may have noticed, there is a new coat of paint on the old joint. Welcome to the all-new Theater Hopper!
People who know me are aware that I’ve been kicking around the idea for a redesign probably since last October. At least, that’s when I started working on it. I’ve probably have ideas or at least loose sketches lying about since early last year! But, of course, life gets in the way, you self-publish a couple of books and, well… where does the time go?
Part of the goal behind redesigning the site was purely cosmetic. As you can see, I’ve widened the content area of the site to a little over 900 pixels wide. My counter statistics were telling me that the majority of you were viewing the site at 1024 x 768. So many of you were, in fact that the two resolutions below it (800 x 600 and 640 x 420) COMBINED couldn’t compare. To me, that’s a lot of wasted real estate. Especially considering that those of you viewing the site at a resolution LARGER than 1024 x 768 outnumber those below that resolution by a margin of nearly 3 to 1.
That’s kind of technical. And I’m getting away from my point.
The other goal behind the redesign was to get the site to a point where it could kind of generate it’s own activity and help maintain traffic flow. As you may recall, Cami and I are having a baby in February. Clearly my resources will need to be dedicated to my family at that time. But I also didn’t want to abandon the site or come back to comics faced with the challenge of rebuilding what I had lost.
To that end, we have introduced several new features!
First is the Mailing List. Sign up and I’ll be sure to notify you every time the comic updates. This is a great little reminder in case you don’t check the site every day. Don’t worry, I’m not going to spam ya’. It’s just a little extra customer service on our end!
Second is the “Mail This Comic to a Friend” feature. This is so those of you who are already fans of the comic can help me spread the good word. It’s a very easy e-mail form that lets you include a message along with the link to the specific comic you’re referencing and a great way to tell people about that HILARIOUS Theater Hopper strip you read today without having to open your mail client!
Third is the excellent “Rate This Comic” feature. (I’m really thrilled about this one.) It’s simple – just navigate yourself to the comic you want to rank, click on the link and place your vote on a scale of 1 to 5. This is a great piece of instant feedback that I can use to figure out what you guys like to see in the comic! Eventually, once we’ve collected enough votes, we’re going to post a link to a Top 50 page so you can see the most popular Theater Hopper strips of all time!
Again, this will be a great advantage to bringing new readers to the site. Instead of seaching through the archives as a means to being introduced to the site, they can check out the Top 50 page and see if there is anything to their linking! Hopefully, with your feedback, we can hook ’em and bring new readers to the site!
Last, but not least, we are introducing a brand new Commenting feature in the blogs. Now you can leave INSTANT feedback for each of the comics and the individual blogs. This is a major coup for me. For a while now, I’ve been posting a lot over on my LiveJournal page. Mostly because I enjoy the feedback I get from the readers. I thought to myself “Why can’t I have something like this for Theater Hopper?” So, with a little help, we brought the feature to the site! My goal is to post more often to this space and really bring the blog back to the foreground again.
This feature will be great for people who want to leave feedback about the comics who might be a little intimidated by sending an e-mail or joining the THorum Of course, my hope is that if you’re posting, you have a strong enough investment in what’s being communicated to return to the site more often to see how others have responded to what you’ve left behind!
There are also some smaller touches we’ve added to the site including a the weekend box office office estimates for the Top Five films of the week, courtesy of Box Office Mojo as well as a few new pages that haven’t been added to the site yet – permanent homes for information about the history of the site, the cast, my contact information, press I’ve done and which conventions I’ll be appearing at. You’ll see announcements about these new areas as they are added!
Also be sure to check out the new store! All of your favorite goodies are there, but we’re streamlining the ordering process and also adding a permanent section that allows you to bundle different items together at a reduced cost! That’ll be the first part of the site besides the home page to be up on two feet in the very near future.
If you guys are feeling up to it, I would love for you to take advantage of the commenting feature to get your thoughts about the new site design. Test things out. Play with it a little bit. I’ll be making changes and additions to the site all month and I would love to get your opinion about what we can do better.
With all of that said, I need to take a special time out and call attention to all of the help I’ve been given by a wonderful guy – Dave Buist, creator of the online comic Taking the Bi-Pass.
Dave has been an invaluable resource to me over the past month. He’s the guy that actually wrote the code for all of these wonderful applications. He helped me out immensely by creating databases to manage everything and he did it with great enthusiasm and efficiency. Often times, Dave went above and beyond creating features for the site that I hadn’t even considered.
As a small token of my thanks, I have attached a permanent link in the footer of the site to give credit to Dave for his enormous contribution to the site. Without him, none of this would be possible. Please show your support for Dave’s hard work by visiting Taking the Bi-Pass, bookmarking it and adding it to your weekly reads! Thanks, Dave!
That about does it for now – although I’m sure more will come up later. Again, take a look around, rank your favorite comics (use the archive search function if you need to!), leave comments and let all of your friends know about the exciting changes happening to the site.
2007 is going to be better than ever!
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It took me two and a half years, but finally – TRIUMPHANTLY! – Pimp Tom returns!
Long time readers might remember Pimp Tom’s first (and previously last) appearance in March of 2004. Fan reaction was strong at the time and Theater Hopper’s first t-shirt we made bearing his image. Puzzled strangers the world over asked in unison “What’s ‘Ten Bucks’?” Old time fans? This one is for you.
After the holiday and the conclusion of the eligible awards period, you can’t help but feel a little used. Studios are all about unloading their “best” films at the end of the year for two reasons. Box office gold (because everyone has some extra free time to spend in the theater when they’re on vacation) and Oscar gold (it’s the latest studios can have their films in theaters and the greater likelyhood that voters will remember their offerings come nomination time). Then the first of the new year rolls around and you’re treated to such winners as Code Name: The Cleaner. Seriously – why does Cedric The Entertainer still get work?
There is such a vast ocean of garbage being dumped into theaters at this time, I feel like I have to hold my breath until Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth surfaces somewhere in a theater near me. Rescue me, Guillermo!
It’s day three since the big redesign and people seem to really like the new design. Most people either seem to be reacting to the over-abundance of red, the tiny type or portions of the site being cut off. I’ve enlarged the type a little bit. You’ll have to tell me if it’s easier to read. I’m still toying with the color scheme a little. I’ll probably try to weigh it down a little more. As far as pieces of the site being cut off, I think I know what’s causing it. Something to do with how the site has been centered using the style sheets. But I haven’t quite figured out how to fix it.
In the meantime, my priority is finding time to update the store and I’m adding content back to the site as fast as I can. A few people commented that some of the navigation on the top of the page doesn’t work. That’s because I haven’t created the content for those pages yet. But it’s coming soon and I’ll notify you when it’s live.
Many thanks to those of you who have been playing with the comic ranking system. If you’re curious, we have a page that lists the Top 50 strips that can be found here. We’ll give it a permanent home soon enough – once we’ve collected enough votes to make the list a little more rounded out. I’m thinking of going back to my good friend Dave Buist from Taking the Bi-Pass who wrote the application and seeing if we can also list the number of votes an individual strip has received. What else would you like to see on this page? Let me know in the comments section of this blog!
The list has a good mix so far, but I think people have mostly been ranking the most recent comics and they haven’t been searching through the archives and ranking their favorites. If you don’t see your favorite strip on that list anywhere, type in a few keywords in the archive search field, dig it out and have your voice be heard!
By the way – thanks, too, for all of you who tested out the commenting system in Monday’s blog. It was very rewarding to see 23 comments on the very first blog! Let’s keep it up! I invite you to give it another whirl! Tell me which films you’re looking forward to in 2007! There’s gotta be some good news after the requisite drought of the first few months of ’07, right?
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I took some advice on how to adjust the CSS that runs the site from the comments section of yesterday’s blog. I’m telling you, I’m in love with this new feature! The instant feedback is great and so helpful!
I believe these suggestions have cleared up the problems people were having with the horizontal scroll bar that shouldn’t be there. Some people were sending messages saying that about an inch of the left side of the site was being cut off completely.
Are things better now? Let me know in the comments!
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You might be wondering who the nebbish young man Jimmy is talking to in this strip. He is as Jimmy addresses him. His name is Cecil and he works at the movie theater!
I have no idea if I’ll ever use Cecil again. I would have used Victor, but since he’s the manager of the theater and in the position of authority, I would have been forced to use him to deliver all of the dialogue. I would have hated to do that. I prefer to keep Victor as mute and menacing as possible. So, to solve the problem, I put Jimmy in the driver’s seat and gave him someone that even HE could push around!
I don’t know if I got everything I wanted out of this joke. All I know is that when I saw the trailer for Code Name: The Cleaner, I could already imagine the sarcastic tone of the reviews. “Cedric The Entertainer is the star of Code Name: The Cleaner and he more than lives up to the title. He makes sure all the theaters are cleaned out on opening night!” Seriously, this thing has “DUD” written all over it. How do movies like this get the green light. It certainly can be on the limited charm of someone like Cedric The Entertainer.
I don’t have a lot to share today except to give you guys the heads up that we’re bringing back the talkcast next Monday, January 8th at 9:00 PM CST. There will be a little graphic in the upper left hand corner above the comic to remind you. That’s where you can expect to see important site news in the new redesign, so keep your eyes peeled.
I will be co-hosting with Joe Dunn from Joe Loves Crappy Movies and Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex. We feel like we really hit on something during the last talkcast we were all together in and this time we’re going to give it a try with a bit more spit and polish. We’re going to try to keep the show to an hour and we’ll have specific topics to cover. In between segments, we plan on taking your calls. For the most part, we’ll be talking about movies. But there will also probably be a little discussion about our web comics as well.
One problem we’re having is trying to figure out a name for our broadcast. We figure if we’re going to make a serious attempt at this, we need a catchy name. We’re tripping over ourselves trying to come up with one. I keep thinking of movies with the word “three” in the title. Three Men and a Baby. Three the Hard Way, so on and so forth. “Trifecta” was a word that cropped up that we all liked, but we can’t anchor it to a concept that says “Hey, we talk about movies and draw web comics!”
Do you guys have any ideas? If so, leave them in the comments.
I also want to take the opportunity to remind everyone to sign up for the mailing list. I’m making a habit of sending an update notice with every comic, so it’s a handy little reminder if you don’t make Theater Hopper a daily visit LIKE YOU SHOULD!…
Anyway, sign up and I’ll be sure to send you a note about the talkcast next week. We’d love to have as many people participating as possible! It’s a fun show!
Not too many movie plans for Cami and I this weekend. That is, unless one of her girlfriends gives the baby a DVD to watch, or something. Saturday is the baby shower. I’m looking at it on the calendar and saying to myself “Already?” The fact that the shower is tomorrow indicates that the baby will be here VERY soon. We weren’t really thinking about it at all during the month of December – what with the holidays and everything. But pretty soon January will be over with and then come Valentine’s Day, we can expect to bring our baby boy home. It won’t be long now!
That’s about it for me. I hope everyone has a great weekend!
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Jan08
I know it’s not incredibly inventive to joke about Harrison Ford being of retirement age when he puts on fedora for a fourth time this summer. In fact, I’ve commented on his decline as an action hero before. In my opinion, he needs to move onto more character pieces and leave the action movies to the young bucks – whoever they might be.
Frankly, I’m seeing a disturbing trend when it comes to trotting out these old action stars. Slyvester Stallone was first out of the gate with Rocky Balboa. He’ll do it again in Rambo 4: Pearl of the Cobra in 2008. Bruce Willis is dusting off John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard this summer. As reported last week, they’ve settled on a script and Harrison Ford will be playing Indiana Jones for the fourth time in 2008. It’s only a matter of time before Arnold Schwarzennegger’s term as California governor expires and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that he’ll throw his hat back into movie-making since all these other old guys are doing it. It’s riduculous and it has to stop. To that end, I’ve dedicated myself to making fun of this new trend in ’07 where ever I might see it.
Quick bit of news – we’re bringing back the talkcast.
Be sure to join myself, Joe Dunn from Joe Loves Crappy Movies and Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex tonight at 9:00 PM CST when we debut our new joint talkcast appropriately titled "The Triple Feature." The three of us will be getting together for an hour every Monday night at 9:00 PM to discuss the latest movie releases, comics and pop culture. We’ll be taking your calls throughout the show, so be sure to visit the TalkShoe web site about 15 minutes before hand so you’re in the room when we start broadcasting.
I think Joe and Gordon are itching to talk about Children of Men, which I’ve yet to see. But I can probably talk about the site redesign, or something, if things get slow.
If you want a sense of what to expect, you can download the first three shows from last year. They’re a lot longer than what we plan on doing in ’07, but Joe and Gordon made appearances in a few of them and you can download them to get a sense of how we interact. They’re a lot of fun to listen to!
I didn’t get an opportunity to make it to the theater this weekend. Cami’s baby shower was on Saturday afternoon and we pretty much spent all day Sunday organizing everything and washing clothes. It’s a crazy time to be alive! Can you believe A Night at the Museum took in $24 million in it’s third week? That means its box office is up to $164 million. Does that mean there is a sequel in the works? It’s the runaway hit of the holidays! Have you guys seen it? What did you think?
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I don’t mean to whine, but I’ve noticed a discouraging occurrence.
I’ve made it my goal in 2007 to keep you guys updated every time I update the site. The way I would prefer to do this is through the mailing list. It’s very handy reminder, especially if you don’t check the site that often.
But since I’ve been keeping up with my resolution, I notice one or two people drop off the mailing list each time I send a message. Don’t get me wrong. There are people signing up, too. But I notice people dropping off IMMEDIATELY after I send the mailing list and, well… it’s hard not to get a little discouraged.
Is there something in my e-mails that is offensive that I don’t know about? I’m really trying to enhance your experience with the site by providing more services, but if this is one that is complicating things and lessening your enjoyment of the site, let me know!
If, on the other hand, this is the first you’ve heard about our mailing list and you want to sign up, you can do so here – as well as learn about other avenues through which you can enjoy Theater Hopper!
Thanks for your support!
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It’s not often that my little movie-centric corner of the internet crosses paths with vapid pop music, but I thought this was a prime opportunity to bring Truman out of the doghouse. I mean, c’mon… Sexyback? SexyBARK?! Genius!!
Even though I’m excited about this comic and find it both adorable AND hilarious, as I was drawing it I kept thinking to myself "Mitch Clem is totally going to disown me as a friend." Incidentally, Mitch is counting down his Top Five Albums of 2006 over at Nothing Nice to Say. There, a little plug makes up for all the bad taste in the world. Right, Mitch?
I think the idea of casting someone like Justin Timberlake in a movie like Alpha Dog is kind of laughable. It’s basically a movie kind of like The Outsiders where rough-and-tumble street kids who are vaugely attractive and sensitive get in over their heads. It’s The Outsiders, but with more felonies.
Justin Timberlake signing up for the production is stunt casting at work. The guy is as scandal-free and as exciting as Pat Boone eating a mayonnaise sandwich. A movie like this is an opportunity to play against type, stencil on a bunch of tough-looking prison tattoos and do a lot of sit-ups. I guess there was some heat around this movie when it premiered back at Sundance at this time last year, but I think the hype window has since been closed shut. I don’t know anyone interested in seeing this.
Monday night’s inaugural broadcast of The Triple Feature was a resounding success. In case you aren’t familiar, Joe Dunn from Joe Loves Crappy Movies, Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex and myself are getting together every Monday night at 9:00 pm CST to talk for an hour about movies, comics and pop culture. On Monday’s show we discussed Children of Men, Indiana Jones 4 and the proliferation of aging action stars and, finally, the movies we’re most excited to see in 2007. If you missed the broadcast, you can download a copy for yourself here. Check it out. It’s only an hour long and I thought the time went by really fast. I feel that Joe, Gordon and myself have great chemistry and I feel it’s very unique that the three of us being having the highest-profile of creators within our particular web comic sub-genre can get together like this and exchange commentary like this for the benefit of our fans.
Be sure to join us next Monday at 9:00 pm CST when the three of us will be discussing the Golden Globes as well as Mike Judge’s follow up to his cult hit Office Space – Idiocracy – and how it was totally mishandled by it’s distributor. We didn’t get an opportunity to take any calls our first time out, so we’re restricting the topic list to make room for more of your live feedback. Be sure to participate!
A couple more pieces of site news. You might have noticed that I added a few social bookmarking links to the bottom of the blog. They’re links to del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Comicne.ws and Digg, respectively. Feel free to use them or ignore them, but I got the idea to add them when I started to see more referral hits from StumbleUpon. I figured if there are people out there interested in helping to spread the word about Theater Hopper, I’ve want to give you the tools to do so!
Also, I left a blog about my use of the mailing list and how I had resolved to send out a message every time the site was updated. I was discouraged when I would see people drop off the list literally minutes after I send these messages and I wondered what I had done to offend them! I got some really good feedback from that post, many people replying and explaining that they check the site daily anyway and the extra updates are kind of a nuisance.
So how about this for a compromise: Instead of sending you three e-mails a week that detail the site updates, I send you ONE e-mail a week at the end of the week that recaps everything? If you haven’t been to the site in a while, it’s a good way to get caught up all at once. If you come to the site every day, it’s a nice little reminder that might prompt you to check out Monday’s comic a second time, but I’m not cluttering up your inbox?
Sound like a deal? Let me know in the comments below!
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Jan12
There was a lot of dialogue in today’s comic. So if you need to get up and get a drink of water, or something, before reading the blog post, go right ahead. I’ll wait.
…
Back? Good.
I’ll concede that I am probably not part of the target audience for Stomp The Yard. But I don’t think it makes it immune from the similarities in the other two movies I mentioned in today’s strip. The comparison may not be as airtight as the last “movie mash-up” I uncovered, but watch the trailer from Stomp The Yard and try to tell me it doesn’t hit the same emotional cues as Drumline and You Got Served.
Both Stomp The Yard and Drumline feature know-it-all kids from big cities “slumming” it at a southern university with an African American majority in the student body. Both have something to prove. Both learn a lesson in humility and the importance of teamwork. You can pretty much guess how it ends.
Stomp The Yard and You Got Served both have… well, dancing. And that’s pretty much where it ends. Because, as I recall, You Got Served didn’t have much of a plot to begin with except to give Omari Grandberry a launching pad to an acting career that never really went anywhere. So there you have it.
This weekend I am desperate to see either Children of Men or Pan’s Labyrinth but Cami doesn’t seem to want to have anything to do with either of them. It’s not so much an issue for Pan’s Labyrinth. It’s not showing around here yet. But I’ve heard increasingly good things about Children of Men and I was encouraged by it’s third place showing at the box office last weekend. It would be nice to see a film with a little pedigree. We’ll see what happens. I think we’re supposed to get a foot of snow out here this weekend.
Have any of you seen Children of Men or Pan’s Labyrinth? What was your take? Is there anything this weekend you’re interested in seeing? If so, what?
Talk to you soon!
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I was reading this article over at Reality Blurred that reports that Survivor creator and executive producer Mark Burnett will produce a live broadcast of this year’s 16th annual MTV Movie Awards this June.
I’m not exactly sure why I find this significant other than when I was 13 and MTV was still relevant to me, I used to think the MTV Movie Awards was some of the most subversive stuff going on. At the time, there wasn’t the proliferation of superfluous awards shows like there are today (perhaps MTV is to blame for this) but what they were doing at the time with this broadcast was a wonderful way to undercut the seriousness of ceremonies like the Oscars, which were anything but fun to watch.
I loved how MTV spiced things up by doing sketches about the Best Film nominees during the program. The Brady Bunch re-enacting the famous interrogation scene from Basic Instinct and Will Ferrell giving Justin Timberlake and Sean William Scott a run for their money as The Architect from The Matrix Reloaded (“Ergo! Vis a Vis! Concordently!“)were stand-out classics.
But somewhere along the line, the MTV Movie Awards lost their way. They started pre-taping the awards ceremony and by the next day, all the “winners” were online – totally removing any need for me to see it. I never really cared who won the awards. I just liked the spontaneous vibe of it all. The celebrities didn’t care because it was MTV, so they could kind of do what they wanted. Sort of like The Golden Globes, who have since adopted an “anything goes” mantra by allowing alcohol at the tables in the hall to get celebrities good and liquored up before they take the podium.
At any rate, I was pleased to hear Burnett was returning to the live format. I may actually have to watch it this year. But I will have to be discreet. I don’t want to tip off the Cool Police who will no doubt kick my door down and drag me out onto the sidewalk for a beat down using their Blackberry’s. I’m too old to be watching MTV officially.
What’s your favorite MTV Movie Awards moment (if you have one?)
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It’s possible that I could get into a lot of trouble with this comic. So, at the risk of ruining in the joke, I’ll explain myself that everyone wishes they could make a speech like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at least once in their life. Tom is no different. It’s just that the issues he’s passionate about at a little more… pedestrian.
Incidentally, if it makes anyone feel better, eagle-eyed readers might notice that the man in the last panel who puts Tom in his place bears a passing resemblance to Tom’s latent dream scape manifestation of his white guilt. So, is today’s comic a dream? If you’re offended, the answer is “Yes.”
In all seriousness, this isn’t meant to diminish the great work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He’s a personal hero of mine and I find him damn cool to boot. In 2004, I traveled to Memphis and visited the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel and it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. I don’t know why I feel the need to trot that out like it’s some kind of pedigree. I just want to make it clear that I mean no harm.
I would say there is a certain amount of white guilt that I’m given the day off for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Maybe it’s because I’m from a different generation or maybe it’s because of the whole race issue, but I don’t feel like I’ve “earned” it. Who am I to take advantage of this holiday? Some punk white kid from the suburbs? All I know is the history. I can’t say I lived through those times even as an ancillary witness.
At any rate, if I’m going to feel guilty about it, I might as well try to spin it into something humorous. This is just one of those ideas that got in my head and wouldn’t shake loose. I had to see it through. Hopefully, everyone understands that Tom is supposed to be the idiot in today’s comic. You know, kind of like how Stephen Colbert makes fun of conservatives on The Colbert Report by portraying himself as the worst stereotype of one.
Am I digging myself deeper by trying to compare myself to Stephen Colbert? Funny, too that this would be the first comic I come up with after someone asked me in Friday’s comments section why comic Tom doesn’t have more African-American friends. I think this is what my doctor mean when she diagnosed my “self-destructive tendencies.”
Onto less controversial matters. Cami and I are currently having work done in our basement, so it’s more than likely that we’ll be seeing movies today. I got great feedback about Children of Men and a lot of encouragement to see it. I felt like I had all the evidence I needed to talking Cami into seeing it, but then my good friend Mighty Mitch Clem suggested that perhaps a movie about humanity suddenly not being able to concieve children and the several references to miscarriage that follow would not be appropriate for a woman 8 and a half months pregnant. I appreciated the head’s up. So we probably won’t see the movie until after Baby Brazelton is born. We’ll probably see something like Dreamgirls, instead. After all, since it has all this hype around it and people seem to think it’s going to walk away with an armload of Golden Globes, we should probably see what the fuss is about.
Speaking of The Golden Globes, tonight myself, Joe Dunn from Joe Loves Crappy Movies and Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex will be hosting our second talkcast under the nome de plume of “The Triple Feature” over at TalkShoe. We’ll be discussing The Golden Globes LIVE as they are being broadcast and provide real-time reporting that will factor into our picks for the upcoming Oscar nominations. On the other end of the spectrum, we’ll also be talking about Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, which was completely mishandled by the studios when it was left to flounder in a handful of theaters for 7 days without any advertising late last year. The movie was just release on DVD last week and we’ll be discussing that as well.
I encourage everyone to visit The Triple Feature page at TalkShoe and tune in tonight at 9:00 pm CST to listen to the show. It’s only an hour long and we’ll be taking your calls, so join in!
Have a great day!
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