I couldn’t really think up an appropriate incentive sketch that fit the them of today’s comic. So instead, I just did a few quick facial studies. Click here to vote and view them. You might get a kick out of it.

Quick note on the voting – you guys are a dynamo! Yesterday we were at number 8. I placed the call and you guys answered! Now we’re number 2. That’s amazing! Keep up the great work!

Having recently celebrated Labor Day and the “official/unofficial” conclusion of summer, industry big wigs are left to pour under the numbers and try to come up with the reason that this year’s crop of so-called blockbusters returned some of the lowest attendance figures in nearly 10 years.

Several among them will try to pin the blame on a diversified market where video games and satellite television are stiff competition for the Hollywood dream factory. But I don’t buy that jive.

A cynic like myself might be quick to point out the increasingly difficult conditions audiences must endure in order to even enjoy a movie these days. Trailers that give away the plots to movies, television commercials in front of the feature, rude people on cell phones, crying babies in rated “R” movies, exorbitant ticket and concession prices and over-all lousy service.

But the fact of the matter is, your average audience member will put up with quite a lot of the content is worth putting down the money and the time for.

Example: In the fall of 2003, when I was desperate to see Lost in Translation, the only theater showing it at the time was a small (yet ancient) art house called The Varsity just off campus from Drake University downtown. The conditions in this theater are deplorable. Some may argue that’s part of their charm. I argue these are people who don’t wear shoes in winter and consistently reek of patchouli.

But I digress. I sat on a busted seat with a spring up my ass while the image was out of frame for two hours. I complained, sure. But not nearly as loud as I would have if I were forced to sit in similar conditions and watch Nick Cannon in Underclassman.

My point? If the film is quality, the rest of those distractions don’t matter.

Clich