Posts Tagged ‘Henry’
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Henry Finn Brazelton was born at 1:27 PM on Sunday, February 18, 2007 weighing 9 lbs. 2 oz. and measuring 20.5″ inches.
Incidentally, his head measured a little more than 14″ inches around. A “normal” baby has a head circumference of about 11″ or 12″. – victim of the famed “Brazelton Head Syndrome” or B.H.S. A condition in which you a born with a friggin’ huge noggin. Seriously – it has it’s own weather system!
Subsequently, medical professionals in attendance concur – THAT’S a big baby.
For those of you monitoring “Brazelbaby Watch 2007,” the wait is over. Cami performed like a gladiator through 30 hours of labor including 5 hours of pushing before Henry was delivered by C-section on Sunday afternoon. I am beside myself with pride. Never once did she complain and she gave to me a beautiful baby boy. Both Mother and baby are doing great.
I know you may have been looking forward to a new comic here (and there will be one on Wednesday). But since this has been a moment that I’ve been building up toward and involving you guys in for several months, I thought it would be a nice thing to take this time and celebrate it with all of you as well.
Many thanks for your previous messages of support. We’ve saved every one of them and it means the world to us.
It’s been a long ride for the three of us. I think we both got about 4 hours of sleep between us in the last 48 hours. Stay tuned, though. It’s a great story and we’re looking forward to telling it!
With love,
Tom, Cami and Henry
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Finally, Tom and I were able to catch an Academy Award-nominated film: Slumdog Millionaire. And, it didn’t disappoint. I felt myself biting my nails, crying, laughing, turning away in disgust (at the jumping in a lake of poop scene) and cheering for the main characters of this movie. One thing that amazed me was the director’s unapologetic snapshot of the human condition of the Indian people over the last twenty years. The child actors in this film were outstanding. Their performances made me want to hold Henry just a little bit tighter when I hug him each night before he goes to bed.
Speaking of Henry, we’re entering a phase of Time Outs, him asking “why?” and for some reason, jumping on furniture every chance he gets. Instead of sitting and participating in his regular Saturday morning music class, he announces “I’m running away!” and hightails it out the door. Is this a sign of things to come or merely a phase? Judging by the perpetual twinkle in his eye, and his bionic-man energy level, I’m guessing we’re going to be dealing with things like this for a long time! We can’t believe he’ll be two years old next month, and I don’t know about you all, but I’d love to see him appear in the comic once in awhile.
What do you think? Would adding Henry to the comic mean it’s finally jumping the shark? Or did it scale the heights of sharkdom years ago?
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This was a post I was supposed to write yesterday. But due to a hectic, stressful and overloaded schedule, it didn’t happen.
Yesterday was my son Henry’s birthday. And as I did the year before, I thought it would be nice to post a picture of the little guy so everyone can see how he’s doing.
Henry is doing very well having recently had tubes put in his ears for the second time and his adenoids removed to correct chronic ear infections he was having earlier in the winter.
Since Henry turned 2, we finally cut him off from pacifiers and we’re dealing with the ramifications of that right now. He really didn’t use them very often except when we put him down at night and he would use them to calm himself down. Now that they’re gone, he has to find other methods to relax. So he’s been shooting heroin into his eyeballs for about a week now.
I kid! I kid!
Every Saturday we take Henry to a music class where he learns rhythm, songs and dancing to a beat. It’s been paying off. He often sings “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and it’s tonal doppleganger, The ABC song.
He’s a bundle of energy, that’s for sure. HIGHLY verbal and bossing us around already. He’s deeply addicted to Mickey Mouse Club on the Disney Channel and listening to Daft Punk in the car. In fact, he demands them by name! Well, almost. “Robot rock, Daddy!”
My son is awesome.
Happy birthday, buddy.
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I was up late Sunday night working on today’s comic and right now I’m at home watching Henry as he’s now going to day care three times a week.
As such, I’m going to need a little bit of sleep before I dive into the blog post that will accompany this strip. I have a couple of important things to talk about and I want to be sure I have my ducks in a row mentally before I proceed.
You can expect an update to the site in the afternoon while Henry is down for his nap and I can dedicate a little concentration to what I need to say.
In the meantime, please enjoy this interview of Shia LaBeouf from last Friday’s Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. Apparently, Shia was being paid each time he used the word “outrageous” because I counted 6 times his vocabulary made employ of the word.
Then again, I probably shouldn’t be surprised considering how fond he is of repeating certain words.
Enjoy. It’s outrageous!
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Over the holiday weekend, we engaged in a “first” as parents and took Henry to his very first movie – The Polar Express in IMAX at The Science Center of Iowa.
Every year The Science Center shows The Polar Express on their gigantic IMAX screen as a holiday tradition. I’ve seen the movie on TV, but never really enjoyed it (Those dead-eyed children… So creepy!). After seeing it in IMAX through Henry’s eyes… Well, I feel a little different about the movie.
We’ve been wanting to take Henry to a movie for a long time, but we wanted his first movie-going experience to be a good one. A lot of the children’s movies that were out this summer didn’t inspire confidence and, actually, we were going to wait for Disney’s The Princess and The Frog until we realized the movie was coming out the Friday after Cami’s scheduled C-section.
But when Cami suggested The Polar Express, it seemed like the perfect solution. Because right now, Henry is really into trains and just last week he saw Santa Claus at the mall. Perfect!
More importantly, we wanted to do something special for Henry before the baby is born because his world is totally going to turn upside down once that happens.
We showed up a little late to the movie because Henry’s napped a little longer than we expected. So when we arrived, it was already dark in the theater. As I scaled up the steep incline with Henry in my arms, he whispered in my ear, “I wanna go home, Daddy.”
“It’s going to be fine, Henry. We’re going to see a movie!” I assured him.
“I wanna go home.”
We plopped Henry into the seat between myself and Cami as the movie fired up. We were worried that the IMAX experience would be too intimidating for Henry. At the very least, we fretted that the sound would be too loud and might scare him.
Let me tell you, Henry did great during the movie. He didn’t fidget in his seat, he didn’t wander around, he didn’t scream or cry. The movie kept his attention throughout its 99 minute running time. He smiled, he laughed and he squealed with nervous anticipation during some of the film’s more harrowing sequences.
If you’ve seen The Polar Express, you know it’s a little bit of a roller coaster ride. During these action scenes, Henry would clench his fists and tense up his arms. So Cami and I made sure to lean in close and remind him it was just a movie. Putting my hand on his chest to reassure him, I could feel his heart pounding through his chest.
After the movie, Henry told us totally unprovoked “That was a good movie!” When we asked him what his favorite part of the movie was, he said “the Elf center” – presumably the scenes involving the three children running around on conveyor belts as they try to get back in time to meet Santa.
As parents, I think we (collectively) put a lot of pressure on ourselves to provide a “perfect” experience for our children. Sometimes we lose sight of the experience they’re having versus the experience we WANT them to have. It’s a definite tight rope walk between living vicariously through your children and (if you’ll pardon the pun) railroading their own experience with your own expectations.
These thoughts aside, I feel our experience watching The Polar Express was absolutely perfect. It couldn’t have gone any better. I’m not just talking about Henry’s behavior in the movie (because, really, who can predict what a two year-old is going to do at any given minute). Instead, I’m talking about what he seemed to take from the experience. Looking over at him as he watched the movie, he really seemed to be enjoying himself.
That’s all I could have asked for.
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In what is quickly becoming a tradition around these parts, I wanted to take a moment to mention my son Henry. Yesterday was his birthday and he turned 3 years-old.
I don’t talk about my kids in the blog, but I like the idea of writing about them on their birthdays. I have this vision where someday my kids will Google me and read all of the dumb crap I’ve written over the years. But then they find these articles about their birthdays and think “Hmm. Maybe the old man wasn’t such a jerk after all.”
One can hope.
I’m amazed that Henry is already 3 years-old. It’s cliche, but the time slips by so fast. I imagine time will only slip away faster and faster after this.
Henry is doing well these days, but, as always, he’s a handful. He’s constantly running around, banging his shins and begging to watch one of his “shows.” These days, that either means Wow Wow Wubbzy or Chuggington.
Henry is doing very well since Pearl was added to the mix three months ago. It’s safe to say he loves his baby sister. He constantly wants to look at her, hold her and give her kisses. Sometimes we have to ask him to knock it off. Henry’s sense of personal space hasn’t really formed yet. So he thinks nothing of running up to Pearl and patting her on the head while she’s sleeping. Such is life.
The big news in our house with Henry these days is potty training. At this point, he pretty much understands the mechanics of it. He can go to the potty, drop trou, do his business, button up and wash his hands by himself. The only trick is getting his legs to listen to his brain when it tells him “Bladder full!” or “Time to poop!” Henry is often fully engaged in whatever it is that he’s doing. So asking him to stop and take a break almost always results in a tantrum.
For his big day, Cami and decided to take Henry to Chuck E. Cheese and we couldn’t have been more thrilled with his behavior. It was fun to watch him wander around and take in all the sites. He was fascinated by every game, but had no idea how any of them worked. When we asked him if he wanted to play, he’d say “No!” in a sad tone that inferred “I don’t want to miss looking around at other things.” It wasn’t until about hour 3 that he kind of settled in and started playing on all the games and rides.
Late in the evening, exhausted after playing all night, Henry looked up at me and said sweetly, “Dad? Thank you for taking me to Chwuckee Cheeze.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
Happy birthday, Henry. I love you, buddy.
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Daddy weird, you guys. Daddy VERY weird.
Well, this is it. The end of an era. The culmination of over 10 years of work. The very last Theater Hopper comic.
Incidentally, it was Cami’s idea to bring the kids into the comic for the finale. I hadn’t considered it until she suggested it, but it was really the perfect way to end things.
Henry turns 6 years-old in February. Pearl just turned 3 in early December. It’s been a conscious decision of mine not to include them in the comic, even though people have asked me for years to introduce them.
Not to be selfish, but I didn’t want the comic to be about them. Ostensibly, when you introduce kids into the comic, it becomes a lot harder to place any focus on the adults without making them look self-obsessed at best, negligent at worst.
But, hey! Now that the comic is done, I can through those rules out the window, right? It was also a little bit of fun to brush up against the 4th wall one last time.
SAYING GOODBYE
I’ve been wrestling with this blog post for a while. I’ve kicked around versions of it in my head for weeks, started and stopped it a million times. Drafted and redrafted looking for something to properly encapsulate what I’ve accomplished with the comic up until this point.
Ultimately I decided to scrap that and speak from the heart. It’s served me well over the last 10 years. Why stop now?
In nearly every interview I’ve ever given over the years, I’ve frequently been asked the same question: “Why did you start Theater Hopper?” It’s not a bad question. It gives the rest of the interview context. But I always cringed at answering it because I thought it let people know right off the bat that I was a complete fraud.
A little pretext: You talk to some cartoonists and they talk about how drawing was ALL they ever wanted to do. They slugged it out for years drawing comics in their high school or college newspapers, fanzines and getting turned down again and again by the syndicates – never really finding success, but never giving up on the dream.
Now, I’ve been an artist for as long as I can remember. I drew comics featuring my friends back in Junior High. But I never identified myself as “A CARTOONIST.” I was just a guy who liked to draw.
Theater Hopper was almost entirely a fluke. At the time I created it back in 2002, I was trying to teach myself web design. I figured I would be more invested in this process if I had a site that required content and upkeep.
At the same time, I was just starting to get into web comics. I discovered Penny Arcade in a copy of the Official Playstation Magazine. Discovering Penny Arcade led me to PvP. Looking at Jerry, Mike and Scott, I saw three guys who were a lot like me – regular dudes working day jobs looking for a way to be creative. I figured, “If they could do it, why not me?”
Fast forward 10 years later and I’ve had one of the richest, most unbelievable experiences that I could never have possibly hoped for.
I’ve met a lot of cool people through this comic. I’ve traveled the country visiting with them in person at conventions and I’ve traveled the world talking to with people online about it.
Most importantly, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve broadened my horizons through relationships that I didn’t expect a comic about movies to cultivate for me. I learned a lot about what makes other people tick. I learned a lot about my own shortcomings. I see people better now than I used to.
Maybe that’s a part of maturing. Maybe it’s inevitable for all of us. Certainly 35 year-old me is more wise than 25 year-old me. Just as 25 year-old me was better off than 15 year-old me. But I like to think Theater Hopper accelerated my understanding of the world a little bit.
To that end, I want to take a moment to thank some of the people I’ve interacted with over the years who helped Theater Hopper become what it. If I’m leaving anyone out, please know that it’s not intentional. There’s just a lot of ground to cover in 10 years!
THANK YOU
CARRINGTON VANSTON – You’d think if you were starting a movie comic about movies that you would stop to look around the internet and see if anyone else came up with the same idea first. Well, as the last 10 years of this comic can attest, I am an idiot. It wasn’t until months after I had established Theater Hopper that I came across Carrington’s Movie Punks. I wrote him an e-mail and begged forgiveness – not knowing that it was permissible to have more than one web site on the internet covering the same field of discussion. Thankfully, he gave me his blessing. Without that, Theater Hopper would have been over before it even started.
ZACH MILLER – After making amends with Carrington, I started to step out into the wider world of web comics. Zach Miller from No Pants Tuesday and Joe and Monkey was one of the first web comic friends I made. Zach was never shy about telling you his opinion and we ended up exhibiting at a lot of conventions together over the years. A great guy.
MITCH CLEM – If I remember correctly, Mitch (most famously of Nothing Nice to Say) was already in Zach’s orbit by the time I met him. We all started our comics at roughly the same time, so it seemed reasonable that we could help each other out. Like Zach, Mitch and I would exhibit at conventions a few times over the years – even though it was never really his scene. That said, I have probably never laughed harder in my life than the times I got to hang out with Mitch Clem.
You know the people in your life who you get along with instantly, absent any real knowledge of their background or personality? Mitch was one of those guys in my life. We just got each other’s humor really well… even if I did have a knack for annoying the crap out of him.
GORDON McALPIN – Most people who read Theater Hopper probably read Gordon McAlpin’s Multiplex. It makes good sense. Both of our comics are about movies to an extent, so we just kind of fell into each other’s orbit. We solidified our association when we teamed up with Joe Dunn (more on him in a second) to form The Triple Feature podcast.
Gordon has always been the pragmatic smartass pal that I’ve turned to bounce idea off of. Gordon has a real knack for storytelling and knows how to take a good idea and make it great. He’s always been an excellent friend and confidant. If I didn’t feel that way, I wouldn’t have turned Charlie and Jimmy over to his care. Look for them to show up in Multiplex in 2013!
JOE DUNN – I know of no other artist more prolific, amazing and humble as Joe Dunn. A large collection of his work can be seen at Digital Pimp Online, but the guy has been everywhere the last few years. I consider him to be one of my main artistic inspirations. Much like Mitch Clem, Joe is one of those guys that I’ve been fortunate enough to just click with. We’ve shared a hell of a lot of laughs together.
C2E2 in Chicago this year was my last convention. I’m not sad about leaving the insanity of the convention circuit behind. But I am sad that I won’t get to hang out with Joe Dunn again anytime soon. The man is awesome, sincere and a great friend.
COMRADE F, DAVID BUIST, TYLER MARTIN, PHILIP HOFER – Each of these guys had a hand in developing the back-end systems that kept Theater Hopper up and running over the years. They were frequently the recipients of panicked e-mails when I had touched something on the server that I wasn’t supposed to touch. Their insights and service were invaluable to the growth of the site over the years and I appreciated each of them for their hard work.
BRIAN ARNOLD – Much like the gentlemen listed before him, Brian was integral to the success of Theater Hopper behind the scenes. He provided hosting and support, coding knowledge and expertise and all around awesomeness. More than anyone else, I have leaned on Brian for his help and he has never asked for anything in return. As I’ve gotten to know him over the years, we’ve come to learn that we have had many similar experiences and share a philosophy about life that you don’t find too often in others. We joke that we are almost like brothers. The bottom line is that Theater Hopper could not have existed for as long as it did without him.
THE THORUM – When Theater Hopper first started out, it has a forum community much like every other site did at the time because – hey – that’s what you did. Over the years, people came and went, but there was always a core group that kept the conversation lively and fluid. They came to christen our forum the “THourm,” and we were a happy little family.
As the site began to grow, I was unable to dedicate as much time as I had previously to the community. To be completely honest, I flaked out. When the THorum was attacked by a particularly nasty hack, it pretty much ended things for good. I tried to reignite the THorum a couple of times later on, but the spark wasn’t quite there. By that time, social media had come along and online conversations started happening in different places.
However, there are still people from that core group that I talk to almost every day. People like MadMup, Andelyn Harrison, Frogglin, bd, JClark, Meags, ADSquirrel, abe, Angela Elmore, Bishma, Scootles, Charley and more. If I’m forgetting any of you, please forgive me. I’m trying to keep a lot of names straight in my head right now!
The point is, these are the people who first came to support Theater Hopper and they are people I still talk to a decade later. I feel very fortunate for that. If I could give each one of them a Golden Danza, I would.
I know that means nothing to the rest of you, but that’s kind of the idea.
MY FAMILY – This kind of goes without saying, but what kind of monster would I be if I didn’t thank my wife Cami and our two beautiful children Henry and Pearl for supporting my dream the last 10 years?
The extraordinary late nights, the groggy mornings, they frayed patience and short tempers. The sacrifices I made pursuing this dream were very real to my family. I think it would be over-dramatic to say they suffered for it, but it wasn’t always fun. Especially those long weekends away when I was at some far-flung convention.
Now that it’s done, I feel confident that I’ve created a body of work that does them justice. I know that I’ve accomplished something real when my 5 year-old son Henry looks over my shoulder at the comics I’ve drawn and starts to create his own comic strips. He has a love for art that I’m not sure I had cultivated they way he has at such and early age – and I can’t wait to see where that takes him.
Cami, in particular, deserves a lot of credit. She’s been my sounding board when I’ve been frustrated or dejected. She’s been patient and understand when she really didn’t have to be either of those things. She saw what Theater Hopper meant to me and gave me support. I’m beyond lucky to be married to her and make every effort to tell her that often. I only hope she realizes how deep my well of appreciation and love for her actually goes.
WHAT’S NEXT
Since announcing that I was ending Theater Hopper in January, several people have written to me and asked me what’s next.
SOCIAL MEDIA
I should say first of all that – just because I’m ending the comic – doesn’t mean I’m going away completely. I’ve been online too long now to quit cold turkey, so you can find me in all of my usual haunts.
Drop me a line on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tombrazelton. I’m always down for a little conversation.
You can also stay up-to-date on what I’m working on by checking out the Theater Hopper Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/theaterhopper. Yeah, I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense to maintain a Facebook page for a comic that doesn’t update anymore, but I’ve got a good thing going there. Over the last couple of months, I’ve been transitioning the page as a hub for me to share cool movie-related things I find.
Whether that be the occasional picture or an article about the state of Hollywood that I have to comment on, you can find it there. Every now and again, I throw an old Theater Hopper comic from the archive into the mix to keep things interesting. I update there pretty frequently, so if you aren’t following the page already, now is a good time to check it out.
And, of course, you can always e-mail me at theaterhopper@hotmail.com. All of my e-mails are being forwarded to one account these days, so I see everything still being sent there.
Now let’s get to the meat and potatoes…
THEATER HOPPER eBOOKS KICKSTARTER
One of my greatest accomplishments with Theater Hopper in the last 10 years is fundraising and producing three print collections of my work. Theater Hopper Year One, Two and Three were great experiences for me and I really appreciate the people who helped support my dream of seeing Theater Hopper in print.
By my work is not done.
Now that the comic is over, I’m shifting my sights to producing SEVEN NEW BOOKS – Theater Hopper Year Four through Ten. The only hiccup is this: Since I’m not producing the comic anymore and I won’t be going to conventions to sell them, producing printed editions is out of the question.
So where do I turn? I’ve decided instead to produce the new material as eBooks. The up front costs are lower, the storage problem is no existent and I can sell them in perpetuity on an as-needed basis.
The books will be very much like the print edition. Each comic from each year will be presented along with commentary. So the books will provide readers with unique insights into the history of Theater Hopper and how I developed the comic. You’ll learn what jokes work, what strips bombed and what I learned along the way.
Since I don’t have a lot of experience producing eBooks, I plan on turning the production over to a company called Graphicly. They’ll be able to take my spreads and convert them into practically ever eBook format known to man. These books will work on the Kindle Fire, iPhone + iPad, NOOK Color, NOOK Tablet, NOOK Touch, Android Tablets, Android Phones and the Kobo VOX Reader. Turning production over to Graphicly will allow me to focus on the content and produce books faster.
Of course there is a cost associated with this service and that is why I am crowdfunding through Kickstarter.
You guys might remember that I raised funds for Theater Hopper – Year Three through Kickstarter and we made goal. I needed $3,500 to produce a print run of 500 books.
For the Theater Hopper eBooks, I’m asking for $3,000 to pay for the production of SEVEN NEW BOOKS. I think that’s a far better deal, don’t you?
Check out the campaign here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tombrazelton/theater-hopper-ebooks. Watch the video, listen to my pitch, read the story about the project and check out the rewards. Once the project goes live, I’ll update the campaign page with information each week. I’ll also be posting updates to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, so that’s another way you can stay up-to-date.
I think this goal is very reasonable and – with your help – we can make short work of it. Once completed, it will help to ensure that Theater Hopper can be enjoyed by existing fans and potential new fans that haven’t even discovered the comic yet. It’s a way for the comic to live on.
I’ll add here (only because others have asked about it) that it is my plan to keep this site up and running, fully in tact, until I am unable to afford hosting. Hopefully that will be a very long time. So if you ever want to come back and visit the archives, they’ll be here for you.
Last but not least…
MIDWESTERN NICE
I’ve kept this pretty close to the vest, but I DO have a new project that I will be working on in the future. It’s called MIDWESTERN NICE. Click that link and you can visit the new site.
What is Midwestern Nice? I can’t go into details other than it will be a very personal project and I think you guys will like it. But the time isn’t right to unveil it right now.
Instead, what I think is best at the moment is for me to decompress a little bit, hopefully start working on the Theater Hopper eBooks in the near future and then reveal Midwestern Nice when I have it set up exactly as I like it.
Sign up for the mailing list and I will keep you up to date on all news related to my new project. I won’t be hitting you with a ton of e-mails, so you don’t have to worry about it right away. But it’s a good way to stay connected.
THE END
And that, my friends, is how they say “is that.”
I’d like to thank everyone who has visited the site in the last 10 years, who has offered criticism and feedback and who has taken the time to share their thoughts and ideas with me. It has not gone unnoticed and I have made every effort to engage with you where I could. I’ve been the richer for it.
I think I’m at a point where the full reality of ending Theater Hopper hasn’t sunk in – despite the fact that I gave myself a year to make peace with it. But I know – should I go off the deep in in a few weeks from despair and regret – you guys will still be out there and I’ll calm down a little bit.
Like I said, I won’t be going too far. But for now, this is… the end.
With thanks.
Sincerely,
Tom Brazelton
THEATER HOPPER
2002 – 2012
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