Tomorrow:

Me:
Nervously excited.

Thursday night my Uncle hosted a Boy’s Night of Poker, nachos, wings, pizza and beer. It was a nice change of pace.

Friday I spent almost the entire day working on signing/sketching pre-order copies of the book to get them sent out this week. After doing 80 book sketches my hand and wrist weren’t sore, just my neck from craning over the books as I drew. I hope people like them. My parents and grandmother were instrumental in getting envelopes labeled and stuffed – it was quite the little factory operation we had with envelopes and address lists strewn all over the living room of my grandma’s house.

Example of a sketch done on the first page
for a pre-order customer.
There’s a chance I won’t have enough copies to cover the launch party and all the pre-orders with this first batch of books that’s arrived, but more are coming in soooooon. If you want to pick your copy up before the launch party, the Beguiling comic store has advanced copies for sale this week. The regular Diamond distributed copies should be in stores soon, barring US customs snafus.

The rest of the weekend was surprisingly relaxing. With American Thanksgiving in full swing, all of Udon’s US clients were completely silent, giving us a chance to catch our breath. I’ve been playing some Wii (Zelda, Rayman and Wii Sports are so good!), cleaning up around the apartment and trying not to get wigged out about the impending book launch.

On a semi-related note I have a couple requests for people here reading my LJ:

1) If you’ve enjoyed the story online or after you get your copy of the book – please post any positive feedback to the new Amazon.com pre-order page for the book. Regular bookstores won’t be getting copies until February, but it’s important to build up positive buzz before then.

2) Does anyone want to start the Wikipedia page for Makeshift Miracle? I don’t know exactly how the site works and I don’t think a person is allowed to create it for their own work, so I’m hoping someone else can get that rolling. If that’s you, then I thank you heartily.

More application portfolios for the January Animation start came in on Friday. For some reason that hand-in session had an abundance of people show up late and show that they couldn’t read basic instructions on the portfolio format, what was expected or that we didn’t want the original pieces of artwork. Anyways, now I’m going through the portfolios themselves and, like every other time, the hits are hits (thankfully, there are more hits than usual in this batch) and the misses are… well, you know:

– Figure drawing means drawing a real person (like we stated in the portfolio hand-in info sheet), not grafitti style doooooodz covered in blood holding spray paint cans.

– I wish I was joking about the number of applications that have Dragonball Z drawings. I feel like a broken record. What makes it sad-funny-sad is that not a single one is good, at all. They’re always floating figures screaming their brains out while they burst with energy. It’s like some kind of Dragonball Z hive mind. In my personal hell they’ll be showing Dragonball on a continuous loop on every TV in sight.

– Every picture in the portfolio being violent somehow. Clenched fists of rage, people punching or stabbing each other, swords cutting off people’s limbs.

– Photocopies of doodle pages from someone’s sketchbook, including random cartoons of some gun-totting jetpack wearing sci-fi mecha thing. Partially cut off on one of the photocopies is someone’s contact information, but not the applicant’s… so they used this sketchbook page to take down a friend’s number and used that same doodle page as a portfolio piece. Awesome.

– Horned anime character looking psychotic, with blood dripping from his hands and scratches on the wall behind him.

– More figure drawing done from porn. One of the pieces shows a woman reclining on a chair in a thong (but no bikini top) with a ‘come hither’ look. Life drawing models don’t look at you like they want to suck your dick, honest.

– The object and room perspective components as photos instead of drawings…. I have no adequate response.

– A drawing test with the words ‘I have no portfolio’ written on it. Well, at least they’re honest.

Okay, good news!

The customs process actually went super fast. The books were released yesterday afternoon, so we are A-OK for the Launch Party.

The first 80 book pre-orders will start getting autographed/sketched today. I’ll be trying to ship them out in waves over the next week or so. The next shipment of books to Toronto should come soon, at which point the remaining pre-orders will all get taken care of.

Got this note from our shipping receiver:

“I am sorry I am advising you so late but I have just been advised that your shipment will be pulled for exam by Canada customs. I will let you know as soon as everything is settled.”

That shipment is the chunk of Makeshift Miracle books that I need for the launch party and to start sending out pre-orders. So they’ve arrived here in Toronto, I just can’t get them yet. How long this exam takes and what’s involved, no one seems to know. We’ve been advised not to bug them as then it could coincidentally take even longer to be completed.

Lovely.

Cross your fingers everyone, or this book launch party could be lacking the actual books.

The Wii is running full steam… thoughts so far:

Console – Initial set up was a cinch, as was connecting to my wireless router and downloading firmware updates. The machine looks and runs great. When my component cables come in the mail it’ll look even better on my TV, but even now it’s quite sharp.

Wii Sports – This game is so simple, yet horribly addictive. My arms are sore from Tennis and Baseball, but it felt awesome. Bowling feels the most natural out of all of them, with Tennis a close second. The refinements Nintendo made to the game even from when I tried it over the summer at E3 are pretty substantial. Considering it’s a pack-in game with the system, it’s a winner through and through… probably the easiest way to get a non-video gamer to try video games and love them. I can’t wait to play 4 player simultaneous Tennis matches.

Monkey Ball – I haven’t delved too far into this yet, but what I have tried of it was quite fun. Once you get used to the controls directing the balls down the ramp makes sense. The challenge level ramps up pretty fast, so this one looks like it will keep me on my toes.

Rayman – The crazed rabbits are amazing. The mini-games I’ve tried so far are solid. The whole thing has a great attitude and innovative uses for the Wii controller scheme. This is a game that’s going to have people jumping around my living room like idiots.

Zelda – Haven’t had a chance to do much more than the initial little bit. No combat yet, just learning the controls. It’s smooth so far and the remote-nunchuk controller combo feels pretty intuitive as I chill on the couch and explore.

Mii’s – The Mii avatar maker is a freakin’ hoot! Creating simplistic caricatures of friends, family or whoever and sending them to other users on your Friends list is great. I’ve made little Mii avatars of Me, my brother, my parents, a couple friends, Ghandi, Elvis, Hitler, Einstein, Freud, Jesus and Samuel L. Jackson. It makes for an eclectic looking baseball team in Wii Sports, lemme tell you.

Wii Glee:

Good to his word, Clarence hooked a few Udon-ers up with a pre-order at Square One’s Microplay store. Thanks, Clarence!

Just got through the door. Unpack and hook up time.

Even from the trailer I wasn’t sure I wanted to go see Borat, but when something gets a 92% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and almost universal beaming comedic praise, I figure there’s something more going on, that I’m going to see something genuinely funny.

There’s a whole area of comedy that I don’t seem to “get”. It never has the desired affect on me and I end up more annoyed than amused almost every time… and that’s exactly why I hated watching Borat last night.

I absolutely loathe humor generated through brutal embarrassment. Maybe it’s because I grew up a timid little dork who sometimes got picked on or caught in awkward situations, I don’t know. But watching normal people get confronted by an insistent inappropriate asshole doesn’t doesn’t fill me with glee or make me laugh. I gather no joy from watching people struggle through those moments.

The weirdest part is that a lot of reviews about Borat are claiming it shines a light on bigotry in American culture – racism hidden just under the surface until people feel they can get away with saying what they really think. That’s horseshit. 3 of the people Borat talks to are outwardly bigoted (literally one for each of the major taboos – sexism, race and sexual orientation) and even those are enhanced by the editing. Every other one is implied because they briefly agree with the terrible stuff Borat is saying or politely ignore it to carry on with what they’re doing.

When confronted with a disruptive foreigner spouting bigoted sentiments in semi-capable English, would any of us try to extensively educate them on the spot – let alone on camera?! Probably not. We’d do our best to get through the situation with a bit of grace and continue our day – that doesn’t mean we’re bigots on our way to the next Klan meeting. Most of the people Borat deals with show a surprising amount of patience for his shock-value-laden actions and words. They put on a pretty good face and just try to finish the interaction. When six polite people invite you to dinner and you shit in a plastic bag and show it to them, they’re going to react very awkwardly while they think it’s a cultural mistake and then with anger when they realize it’s intentional. That’s not humor as far as I’m concerned. Saying awful things about a village of people and having them smile for the camera as you do it because they don’t understand your language isn’t funny either. You gave poor villagers a bit of money and told them to smile and dance for the camera, that’s all they know. Calling them whores and rapists to their face doesn’t make me laugh.

I’m shocked at the mountains of praise Borat’s getting. How could so many reviewers be doubled over with laughter at this? I was ready to walk out at one point because the concept of punking ordinary people was getting so foul and out of control.

Oddly, I generally find the Jackass TV show and movies extremely funny. That may seem incredibly lowbrow given what I wrote above, but here’s the night and day difference for me – in every Jackass skit the morons choose to endanger themselves and do stupid shit while we watch them carry it out. Pain, stupidity and embarrassment – they’ve got a clear understanding of what they’re in for and they do it anyways. Some of it makes me gag or shake my head, but there’s never any doubt or guilt. It’s slapstick taken to a ridiculous over the top extreme. Again, the only bits of Jackass I don’t like are when they involve unsuspecting normal people into their shenanigans.

Borat shows that some Americans are stupid, bigoted assholes and the rest are pretty normal embarrassed people capable of some amazing restraint. That’s no comedic revelation or worthy of praise.