Why is Tom carrying around pictures of Billy Ray Cyrus? Vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics to find out!

Incidentally, it seems like Tom carries around a lot of pictures. Weird, ain’t it?

I was spending so much time worrying about Seth Rogen and Observe and Report last week, that I literally gave no thought to the juggernaut that is Hannah Montana: The Movie. Why would I? I’m not a 15 year-old girl.

That said, I don’t think you’re likely to see such a clear case of counter-programming in theaters all year. Morally ambiguous raunch-fest versus squeaky clean inoffensive pop trash. I guess pop trash won out.

It’s kind of pointless to criticize the film. The audience is built-in from years of Disney brainwashing and I’m not the target demo. In other words, it’s not for me.

Although I do remember seeing the trailer for the film a while back and thinking it was pretty clearly designed to be a transition piece for Miley Cyrus away from the Hannah Montana character and toward her own development as a performer. Y’know, because tweens get confused.

Am I seriously wasting time analyzing this?

I guess we have this weekend to look forward to with Crank: High Voltage. It looks to be as offensive and stupid as they come. But darn it if that trailer isn’t a bit of propulsive good fun.

A few quick things I’ll mention…

Last week I posted about being dropped from the Google index after some hackers hid some links in the footer section of my site. I submitted an appeal, but there was no guarantee that Google would take a second look at me within the next 30 days.

Well, on Saturday it looks like they reinstated me.

I didn’t receive any communication from them about reinstated, though. Which I thought was weird. I guess they must have things automated to a certain degree. Their spiders pick up these junk links and a script sends out an e-mail.

Still, it’s frustrating when there are a million purposefully malicious sites out there that Google punishes victims like myself who get hacked. I appreciated the head’s up because I didn’t know the code was there. But they were pretty swift to pull the plug. I suppose maybe some webmasters are less motivated when Google is trying to nip this problem in the bud.

I want to thank everyone who lent their support and helped spread the word about Google pulling me from the index. Specifically, thanks to Comix Talk and Comic Mix. I appreciate the coverage.

Changing gears a little bit, I forgot to mention last week that I was interviewed by the podcast Seattle Geekly while I was in Seattle for the Emerald City Comicon. Visit their site and download Episode #9. I’m somewhere around the 1:08 mark, but the whole show is good. You should download the rest of their shows as well. It’s not specifically comics-related, video games-related or movie-related. They cover the entire spectrum of all things geeky. It’s a very well written and well produced show. Check it out!

Speaking of podcasts, I’m not exactly sure if we’re recording The Triple Feature tonight at 9PM CST or not. Gordon is moving to a new home and is unavailable and the show suffers a little bit when only one of us has seen the movie. I, unfortunately, haven’t be able to get out in the last few weeks to see anything.

If anything changes, I’ll be sure to let you know here or you can follow my Twitter account for the latest. But for the time being, just assume we’re on a short hiatus while Gordon gets settled in his new digs.

That’s everything on my end. Hey – just for conversation, what did those of you who saw Observe and Report this weekend think of it? Was it as disturbing and upsetting as reported? It didn’t do very well at the box office. It came in 4th place. That seems to be the trend for dark comedies. Do you think the movie will find a wider audience on DVD? Cult status? Leave your comments below!