I received some comments today that prove just how ignorant and mean some people are. And how bad they are at spelling and grammar. Or constructing a cohesive or persuasive argument.

Instead of just letting the comments languish back under the original posts, here they are, at the front of the Forum, for everyone to read. Please feel free to go defend me, either there or here!

Regarding my first Mallard Fillmore is Unfunny post, this:

headonhigh@yahoo.com

this is the most obsurd thing i have ever hear.
bruce tinsley could quite possibly be one of the funniest men to ever write a comic strip.
it might be because you are a liberal and you can’t get real humor, but rather wait for liberal newscasters and celebrities to tell you what is funny.
and as for your flawed logic, that is what is really funny. if someone takes a baby hostage, that is their fault if the baby is killed, bottom line.
you are a bleeding heart liberal and you treat terrorists as poor souls who have been wronged and need special treatment.
in case you didn’t know terrorists are called terrorists because the create fear and terrorize innocent people.
i can only imagine if someone like you ran this country.
you would probably take all the money from people who earned it and give it to people who sit on their asses all day.

Then, regarding my second Mallard Fillmore is Unfunny post, this:

headonhigh@yahoo.com

gays should be treated well as all other people, yes.
but that doesn’t mean that they should be able to “marry” if you want to call it that.
if someone told me i wouldn’t be able to marry a woman i wouldn’t freak out and call it a huge deal. i would just be with that person for the rest of my life as if i were married.
gays just like to over react.
and as for the abortion thing.
calling killing a human a CHOICE is stupid.
your mom should have CHOSEN to have aborted you.
and mallard fillmore is still hilarious.

What’s so funny about this person’s comments is that they reinforce my arguments. I don’t have to say anything else! But I will.

Notice how the comments have no subtlety, no examination of facts or details. I often concede a point or two in my original posts, because nothing is black and white. But this person can’t even grasp black and white. Only white. And then he or she doesn’t even understand white. It’s pretty sad.

When one’s arguments rest on phrases such as, “your mom should have CHOSEN to have aborted you,” one should realize one’s an idiot. And to give me a definition of terrorist when I already talk about that in the post is, needless to say, stupid. All I can do is smack my hand to my forehead and think to myself, “This is the kind of ignoramus that thinks our government is doing a good job, even though our government is, by this own commenter’s standards, itself a terrorist organization.”

Oh, what fun. Anyone else who can’t string two words together want to comment?

Hello, thundering hoards of readers!

Robb has posted some pictures from the 2nd episode shoot of Life from the Inside. I know, you’re just SEETHING with curiosity, aren’t you? What the hell is this? Why won’t I stop teasing you? Oh, why, why, why?

I think I’d like to waste some time trying to help you all waste time. So here are some tidbits that have been hovering around me today.

First: I motioned a while ago how the RIAA was complaining because a defendant in a file swapping case demanded that a neutral third party pull the data off her hard drive instead of a party chosen by Sony and the RIAA themselves. Well, the judge does not agree and he tells them so oh oh ooooh. Take that you RIAA babies!

Next up: It’s The Google!

Then: Wanna know why the current Congress is considered by some to be the worst in history? Then read “The Worst Congress Ever: How Our National Legislature has Become a Stable of Thieves and Perverts—in Five Easy Steps” in Rolling Stone. Yes, Rolling Stone! If politics trumps music in a music magazine, you know our government sucks. I haven’t finished reading the story yet, but I found out about it because the author was on Democracy Now this morning. Read the transcript, if you desire.

Meanwhile: Wired has a fun bit about Hemingway’s six-word short story and how it led them to commission new six-word stories from other writers. I dig Alan Moore’s! These are kind of like sudden or flash fiction, but shorter.

Finally: I re-visited a site I had scribbled down on a Post-It some time ago, and remembered why I had done that. It’s the site of Kazu Kibuishi, whose art I love. It was mostly Copper that drew my eye. Wow, I wish I could draw that well! (The first Copper comic, “R. Pack Fantasy,” is at the bottom of the page, and the newer one go backward from there.)

I tried posting from my phone, but something went awry. So here it is unlive:

Matt and I are at the Instinct 9th anniversary party, W hotel, Westwood. What’s a gay “bash” without good-looking underwear models?

“But wait! What’s that you’ve got there? It looks like you’ve got a case of the humans!“

My friend Jimmy just sent me this link to a card option on Apple’s iCards site. In case it ever moves or gets pulled, here it is (click for full size):

As I told him, these little glimmers of hope and acceptance make me smile in this current world of close-minded bluster and hatred. Is it sad that something like this stands out as unusual in this supposedly advanced day and age? Or should I be happy we have gotten to this point at all? Whatever the answer, it made me smile.

I’m late to the game on the Military Commissions Act of 2006, so instead of ranting myself, I’ll let the tack-sharp Keith Olbermann do it for me.

Thanks, again, to Alan for sending me this.

As promised, here’s the picture of Steve Jobs:

(I did the “STUDIOS” lettering on the slide there because it was pretty lousy when I got the graphic… Seeing that and Steve Jobs in the same picture is pretty cool for me.)

I did not post anything on The Forum for so long because I was working production for the BVHE Sales Meeting at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood. It was a nice show. We got to see the original voice of Wendy and Alice, Kathryn Beaumont, in a live, on-stage interview with Leonard Maltin. (I even got to use my “Voice of God” skills to introduce them!) We also had the creator and producer of Grey’s Anatomy on stage to talk and answer questions. We also got to see The Guardian with Messrs. Costner and Kutcher. It was okay.

At the end of the Sales Meeting, we walked away and left our equipment set up, because the very next week was a huge Walt Disney Studios “Senior Summit” that Chuck and I were lucky enough to be asked to work. Since we had the whole A/V set-up in place and we knew how to run it, why not just use both our equipment and our highly-tuned and super mad skillz?

The Senior Summit was much more flashy than anything we puny BVHEans get to do. It was hosted by Dick Cook, the Studio Chairman. There were lots of interesting things to hear and see. We got to watch three movies: The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D (okay movie, pretty cool 3D); The Prestige (good; very intriguing and mysterious); and Déjà Vu (preposterous). We got to see Jerry Bruckheimer, John Lasseter, Alan Menken, and Amy Adams. John showed us clips from some upcoming Pixar movies. Ratatouille, the next movie to be released, looks fantastic. As one of the techies on the show, I got to see some clips from a robot movie Pixar is working on. In the end, the clips were not shown to the audience, however, so I feel kinda lucky to have seen them.

The night before the second day, we were asked to make a few extra cards for the screen. One said, “…And there’s one more thing.” Well, I knew exactly what that meant, and all night, I was silly-goofy excited that one of the surprise speakers that next day would be Steve Jobs himself. I did not hope too hard, though, because Steve is not one to just pop on down to give a talk to a bunch of executives.

The next day was pretty exciting. Robert Zemeckis came to talk about a “beyond motion capture” technology company he was starting up with Disney. (The technology was used, to creepy effect, in The Polar Express.) Then Johnny Depp came up to chat with Dick and answer questions from the audience. And finally, as I had hoped, Steve Jobs came up on stage.

And boy, did he talk! Not in length, mind you, but in honesty. He pulls no punches. The basic gist of his talk (I do not call it a speech because it was so laid back and casual) was that Disney is the only studio to have a true brand, and we’ve squandered that brand for years. Instead of nurturing it, we’ve abused it. Specifically, he talked about quality, echoing the concepts Dick and John had hammered home the day before. Releasing low-quality sequels to our famous and beloved movies may produce great financial returns in the short run, but in the long run, we bankrupt our savings account.

See, Steve said loyalty to a brand is like a savings account. In the case of a studio, when it releases well-done, smart, story-driven movies that people love, the public makes a deposit into that “loyalty” account. But every crappy movie or sequel after that causes people to make withdrawals from that account.

It was very smart, very TRUE, and I only hope Dick and everyone else in power here makes an honest effort to worry about quality over quick profits.

Then Steve took questions from the crowd, which was pretty cool. He answered questions on the iPod, the iTunes Store, his role as board member and largest share-holder, and other sundry topics. His answer to every one was enthralling. To me, anyway.

Of all the people in the world, Steve Jobs is not only the one guy I have always wanted to see live, but he’s the one guy I never thought I would see live. I did get to sit in on a video conference years ago when the DVD release of Monsters, Inc. was being discussed here at Disney… it was the meeting where it was decided to produce a new short exclusively for the DVD (Mike’s New Car). But a video conference is not the same as seeing someone on stage in front of you. I was contained on the outside, but revving on the inside the entire time he was on stage.

Hello, friends.

You may have heard just a tiny bit about “the project.” Which is called Life from the Inside.

Well, good news: Robb has posted some pictures from LFTI, whose second shoot was this past Sunday. Now you can get an idea of what’s going on. Though not much of an idea because, you see, no one wants to spoil the surprise.

The pics are straight from the video capture, so they are anamorphic. As much as I wish I had lost some weight before shooting, I’m eating Milanos as I type this, so the anamorphic is about as thin as I’ll be for a while.

Yes, I LIVE! And though I have SO much to put up here, I am late getting to bed. What does that have to do with anything? I’m late because I’ve been up watching old Sesame Street stuff on YouTube. My God, could it have been a more brilliant show? Do enjoy these classic bits, before Elmo came and ruined everything.

The Mahna Mahna guy in the rhyming mood:

That is truly classically hilarious. I love how the blue guy gives that surprised double-take every time the purple guy comes in. And as a kid I always thought the first time the purple guy says “bread” was friggin’ hilarious. “BrrEEEAAd.”

Now, I had forgotten about the little bug Muppets until I saw this one:

This is not the one I remember, but it’s the only one I’ve seen on YouTube. The bug family that licks stamp glue together sticks together. HA HA HA!

This next one is weirder than I remember, thanks solely to the synthesizer soundtrack. But it still brings back a bazillion memories.

To this day, I often recall the singing orange when I see those big rubber bands around the office.

Then there were the Martians:

I’d like to find the grandfather clock one, too. Oh, wait, here it is:

Those are brilliant puppets!

Then, of course, was the musician who’d hit his head on the piano in frustration:

Sadly, all I see of the Mary Had a Little Bicycle one is this:

Oh, that’s rich! That banging the head on the keys! How many times did I recreate that when we got a piano in the house?

Now, if only I can find the chef who falls down the stairs with the messy desserts. I also re-staged that awesome scene over and over and over in our house, using pillows or Tupperware lids as “desserts.” They didn’t hurt when I’d crash into them falling down our stairway. If anyone finds the chef online, please pass the link(s) along!

Well, hope youve enjoyed this long-overdue post. I’ll put up some pics of Steve Jobs soon.