There are some pretty serious problems in the world. But, really – who cares, right? Britney Spears just Botoxed her forehead!

Okay, I know that’s a little sanctimonious. But I’m making fun of myself just as much as the culture that spawned me. Jared’s discriminating taste in regard to a celebrity he chooses to focus his hatred on is a fairly minor concern in the large scheme of things. But how many people do you know retreat into the world of celebrity-bashing when the Real World becomes too oppressive. Exactly. They have a whole network that revolves around it, for goodness sakes!

Has anyone noticed that I’ve been trying to mix things up with the panel arrangement in the last few strips? Something I overlooked during my time with Juice was creative panel arrangement. In the strips I would have to repurpose for the publication, I would have to remain really rigid about the four-panel layout. Because instead of the two-on-two stacked arrangement we have on the site, it was four panels wide in print.

All part of those pesky “patterns” I fell into.

At any rate, I’m really enjoying mixing it up a little. It’s weird to keep drawing Jared so exaggerated. But I suppose since now I’ve established that he’s aggressively bi-polar, I can get away with it.

I’m very excited because I finally scheduled a day off for myself Friday, November 9 to work on the redesign of the site. My good friend Brian Arnold has got us all hooked up through WordPress and now it’s just a matter of me sitting down and designing a page template that I’m going to turn over to a generous reader by the name of Keith Solomon who will transform it into something I can use for WordPress.

Believe me, this is going to be great. The archive system will be beefed up, there will be a calendar on the home page, the commenting system will be back and we have WordPress’s power running the whole thing.

Optimistically, once I get this up and running, I might bring the THorum back, too.

It’s time to circle the wagons. Theater Hopper had a great year in 2006, but 2007 was a little fractured for me. I really want to take the time to make this site a destination for people again – a community. Because that’s a big part of why I got into this in the first place.

Anyway, I guess I can’t share anything more exciting than “I’m taking a day off!” I can’t say for sure when the changeover to WordPress will occur. But I have my sights set for January ’08. Stay tuned.

That’s all for now. Have a great weekend, everybody!