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!