Posts Tagged ‘Jared’
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Hey everyone! I haven’t written a blog in quite some time, so I think it’;s time to re-introduce myself. I’m Jared, real life friend to Tom since the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were swimming in a fishbowl. In the strip, I am immortalized as Tom’s other other-half; appropriately named Jared.
I live in Des Moines, Iowa with my lovely wife Patti. We just bought a house (hence the absence of all free time and presence in the forum.)
I work in the media department of a major insurance company. I shoot and edit video, assist people with A/V equipment, and I am the admin for the company’s video conferencing network.
Every once in awhile, I write blogs for this website detailing the latest gut feelings about the recent films I have consumed. I don’t know if anyone reads them, but I try to make them at least a little bit interesting.
If you want to contact me, please do so at brinkmeyer@hotmail.com please reference Theater Hopper in the subject line so that your message doesn’t go the way of the make money fast while enlarging your penis messages. I’d be happy to hear from you.
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This may be tedious, but it is my duty to talk about the movies I have recently watched. It has been awhile, but here it goes!
Bend It Like Beckham I was in a great mood when I saw this film in Uptown Minneapolis while visiting some friends. The movie kept me in a great mood. At first it teetered on the edge of becoming another Big Fat Ethnic Farse, but the movie turned out to be enjoyable. There were a few moments and concepts that I couldn’t quite believe, but my wife explained my questions with a simple answer it’s because they were in love. Whatever. Anyway, Keira Knightley should be enough for any guy to want to watch this film.
Finding Nemo Great film. Go see it. Great for the whole family, even if your whole family consists of two twenty somethings.
One Hour Photo Cool film. Good story and a nice visual style. I was really uncomfortable during the trespassing scenes, which is good. I like it when I can become involved in a movie.
Serendipity I did not want to watch this. I thought it was a girl movie. Either I was wrong or I am a girl, because I really enjoyed this. Kate Beckinsale was great, as well as the rest of the cast.
Down with Love Clever. I liked this movie, and thought Ewan McGregor was great. It was interesting how they picked up the style of the early 60’s and roasted them at the same time. Like the movies of the time, it is light and carefree. Definitely not a thinker.
Men in Black 2 Fun. I found this Blockbuster to be quite you guessed it enjoyable. (I’ll try to stop saying that about every movie.)
Joe’s Apartment I didn’t see it before and now I remember why. The House of Large Sizes T-shirt was the highlight of the movie. House is a band from my college town that I have seen maybe 11 or 12 times.
To Die For Someone should tell me what happens at the end, because I fell asleep. It wasn’t bad, just past my bedtime.
Just Married Great movie. Being just married myself, (less than a year ago) I found many of the situations very familiar. Ashton Kutcher is awesome and Brittany Murphy actually looked good.
Punch Drunk Love I hated this movie while watching it. I keep randomly thinking about it though, and now I have convinced myself that it is a really good film.
Pinero If I had watched this film two years ago, I would have loved it. My life has changed enough to not feel the empathy I used to with the type of characters in this film.
They Pretty scary. The alternate ending is the one I prefer.
Darkness Falls Very similar to They. It was only 75 minutes long. What’s up with that? I thought the story should have been more developed. The documentary on the dvd about the real story is spooky.
That’s all for now. To all the Americans out there have a great holiday. I’d like to thank the Brits for yet another day off from work. Cheers!
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Well, it’s moving day in Jaredandpattiland. The movers have completed their duties and we are left whith piles of stuff. Now we just have to figure out where to put everything. That’s the fun part, but I am anxiously awaiting the day when I can relax and start living a “normal” life again.
Last night I was cleaning red paint rollers in the bathtub and red water began creeping up from the basement drain. I was a bit crazed as I ran through K-Mart at 9:55, trying to locate shop towels and a plunger. The old man I asked to assist me in procuring these items tried to show me some sort of super plunger, but I just grabbed the cheap kind, said “thanks”, and rushed to make my purchases. Back at home, the red water had receeded, but moral was at an all time low.
I hope to catch Pirates of the Caribbean this weekend, but I’m not sure it will happen.
P.S. I am a big Johnny Depp fan, so I especially dig this strip!
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My wife and I also saw Bewitched on Saturday night. Patti wanted to go to it bad enough that she endoured the Friday night show of Land of the Dead.
Bewitched – Be Boring. Okay, the inherent problem within the story is that Will Ferrell’s character gets too much screen time and Nicole Kidman’s character doesn’t do much of anything. I felt this was echoed and even magnified for the actual movie.
Some of the effects were cool – such as Michael Caine’s appearances in the grocery store, but it would take many more tricks to make this film interesting.
The end of the movie is a little sketchy for me as I was fighting sleep. I was doing those little head bobs during the last fifteen minutes of this movie, but I’m fairly certain I only missed a bunch of talking and an obvious ending. This A-list cast couldn’t wiggle their noses and save this script.
Land of the Dead: I am a fan of this series and am also pretty certain that the dead will walk one day, but this film was just okay. I’d say it was much better than Day of the Dead, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead (original or remake). If they have spent so much time with Zombies and are short on supplies, why do they fire 30 rounds on full automatic into the torsos of the Zombies? Use your head man! (and shoot theirs!)
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Do you guys remember last Wednesday’s comic where I was talking about Wallace & Gromit and how cool it would have been if I could have made a short stop-motion animation film for you guys to enjoy?
Well, I didn’t have the resources at my disposal, but I’m lucky to have well-connected and creative friends.
After reading my blog on Wednesday, my good buddy Jared took it upon himself to create his own stop-motion picture for you guys and it’s totally awesome. I didn’t ask him to do it. He just had the itch to do something really cool for you guys.
It must be seen to be believed. Ladies and gentlemen, "A Clay In The Life" by Jared Brinkmeyer.
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Mar22
GUEST STRIP – FRED GRISOLM
March 22nd, 2006 |- Comics »
- Comics »
- Guest Strip
(7 votes, average: 7.71 out of 10)
Today’s guest strip comes from Boxcar buddy Fred Grisolm – the very excellent author of the equally excellent Hate Song.
Some of you might read Fred’s strip and say he was stealing a page from Brandon J. Carr’s guest strip from last friday. To which I would say "Stop flappin’ yer gums about things you don’t know nothin’ about!" Fred developed his comic totally independent of Brandon. They never looked over their desks to see what their classmate was doing. Scout’s honor. Just goes to show how great minds think alike!
Either that, or there is a powerfully strong undercurrent of homoerotic tension running through Theater Hopper that I’m totally unaware of putting out there.
I really like Fred’s strip because I thought he did a really good job of capturing my writing style. Something about the pace of this one felt right. Kind of like how I would write it. Fred is right on the money when it comes to serial killer movies with the newspaper clippings on the wall. Can we find a new cliche to exploit, please?
At any rate, thanks to Fred for an excellent comic. If you liked his work here, check out Hate Song where he consistently knocks it out of the park.
Changing gears, I’m back from vacation and it’s good to be home. Well, good and not so good.
The thing I hate about taking vacations is that time doesn’t stop on all the crap going on back home. When you get back to work there are a ton of messages to follow up on, you have to do all the laundry from the trip, catch up on the bills… all that garbage. Honestly, it stresses me out to the point I was stressed at BEFORE the vacation. Thank goodness it’s a short work week. At least I don’t have to do Friday’s comic, either. That gives me a little breathing room.
Walt Disney World was – of course – totally excellent. Although I’ll be glad not to have to side-step fat parents pushing double-wide strollers for a while.
WDW gets a bad rap for all the long lines you have to wait in to ride the attractions. And even though it was Spring Break, I think we got off pretty light. We didn’t have to wait in too many lines that were longer than 15 or 20 minutes.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Magic Kingdom, but is there a more disproportionate wait time vs. ride time for any other attraction than Peter Pan’s Flight? Seems to take two hours to enjoy a ride that’s maybe two minutes long.
I’ll tell you something that really cheesed me off about our visit. Cami and I were really hyped up to ride Pirates of the Caribbean, right? We loved the ride when we went with our parents in our youth, but when we went 6 years ago for our honeymoon, the ride was closed down for repairs. So this time, we were ready to go. Guess what? It was closed down AGAIN! We found out later it was because they wanted to make the ride more like the movies and were adding in scenes with Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow. Double-ugh! That would have been really cool to see. But not this time. So now I guess I gotta wait until Cami and I have kids who are old enough to appreciate the expense and planning that goes into a Walt Disney World trip before I can see the ride again. Of course, by then it’ll probably be 2020 and the ride will be under construction again to replace the audio animatronics with holograms.
That’s another thing. For the life of me, I don’t understand why parents bring their babies and small children to Walt Disney World. I wanted to punch every sleeping child in a stroller. Have they no idea what their parents went through to bring them there?! When I have kids, I’m going to wait until they’re 20 before I take them. Then maybe they can chip in for a plane ticket!
I don’t mean to make it sound like we had a bad time. Far from it. Cami and I had a great vacation and it was really good to go down there any enjoy it together. We got to see everything we wanted to see and had a great time celebrating our 6th anniversary. I have some more to say about the trip, but nothing I really need to share in this space. Keep an eye out on my LiveJournal page for some extra thoughts about the trip!
Until then, see ya’ real soon!
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Today’s comic was extremely cathartic to draw.
I dunno. For the last few days I’ve been hustling really hard to bring awareness to the book – and I would say so far things are going well. But sometimes you need a break from it, am I right? Today I just wanted to get away from that for a little while and pour myself into the comic. It felt good to get a little bit of that stress and worry of my back by parlaying it into cartoon violence.
I know the perspective is a little wonky on this one. I was trying to do this kind of top-down angle on Jared to give his uppercut more dynamic force. It didn’t really work out, but I think you get the gist of what’s going on. I mean, he’s pucnched the head of a Benbot clean off it’s shoulders! Isn’t that worth something?
I’ve never done a full splash like this before. I’ve played with panel number and size in the past, but never taken a full-step back and utlized the whole canvas. What a freeing feeling! I most certainly have to add this to my arsenal of tricks for the next storyline.
I wanted to show a lot more robot carnage in today’s comic, but there just wasn’t enough room to show Jared dismantaling all of these dopplegangers in a tiny self-storage unit. I decided one powerful image would have to do the trick.
I’m planning on wrapping things up tomorrow. May is on the horizon and a lot of tentpole pictures are coming up that I want to talk about. Specifically, all this Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes baby crap. Did you hear their daughter was born last night? Hey, what else is going on in Cruise’s life right now? Isn’t Mission Impossible: III supposed to open on May 5? What an AMAZING coincidence!
NOT.
You know in some underground bunker somewhere Cruise is mega-pissed that Katie couldn’t hold the baby in an extra week or two so they could get maximum press coverage.
Maybe when this whole Ben Affleck thing is over, I might turn my sights onto Cruise. Considering the extent of his excentricities, I could have a lot of fun with that.
More news later. Some thanks I want to send out. But for now… rest.
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