Incidentally, I sure hope I don’t find out how insanely popular this video game reviewer is.

• Pushover Bruce Banner gets laid off at his dead-end job.
• Bruce dates a hippie. Their relationship consists mostly of arguing and making out.
• Mounting failures and everyday frustrations make SH bitter and also kind of a dick.

And most of all…

• Our hero is sarcastic.

Talk about life imitating art! If only someone had kept writing these I may have had some warning. Oh wait. But what gets me is I didn’t see this situation coming and I wrote it.*

*I will catch endless hell from one Nick Shaheen if I don’t mention that he also wrote the script, and that I’m an ass for taking out all his best jokes. Nick, nobody was going to get a joke about Meredith Baxter-Berney.

Jamie Hewlett’s design and animation support the themes established in the Demon Days album which this DVD is derived from. The premise, shown in broken 52″ flatscreen TVs hung askew on puched-in, graffitied walls, and studio recording equipment connected through a dizzying rat’s nest of patched, mismatched cables, states that all the money and success you enjoy will not stop the world from falling apart, and all those creature comforts will too succumb to systemic decay.

It was while immersing myself in this (fantasy… I hope) world that I noticed it had something in common with a few other games I enjoy: Super Mario Galaxy, Mario 64 and Myst.

Each environment is an island unto itself (sometimes more or less literally so). Each game establishes a series of very detailed worlds, each with its own flora and fauna, themes and internal logic. Each is a puzzle; constrained but with enough room to allow the visitor to move freely, to explore and interact with this unique, peculiar environment. It’s comforting to know that the experience is bounded, but not limited — there can still be a great deal of variation inside its isolated shores, and maybe finding out what those limits are is part of the fun.

And is it a coincidence that they all involve islands?

This reminds me of when I asked an artist friend to paint me a picture of “an enclosed space”, not really knowing myself what it meant (neither did she, which is probably why my fine art collection is floundering).

Whether it’s Noodle’s flying windmill island, the Stoneship Age, or Mario making his way across the Gusty Garden galaxy, I find something captivating (no pun intended) about each game’s world.

I needed to make the logo bigger.

Enter Printfection. Though it has the look and feel of a beta of Windows Explorer, Printfection handles the nuts and bolts of creating merchandise better than CafePress: lower prices, multiple pricing levels for items, better image management tools, the ability to sell multiple designs for each clothing item. And yes, you can make the logo bigger (up to 4.67″ high)! All Printfection needs to do is fix their clunky and occasionally unclear interface.

But the most important question is: how do the shirts look? I took a chance on Printfection’s $2 t-shirt offer and printed up a quick Puma Man shirt for myself. Printfection doesn’t seem to handle solid, non-web-safe colors especially well, which resulted in a shade of yellow something like the one here. But switching to the similar #FFCC00 for the color of the text seemed to fix that problem.

The PUMA MAN tee is perfect for wearing to the gym, as if to say to the world, “I’m out of shape and a huge nerd!”

And there’s a shirt depicting the cold-war kid’s drawing Dan Danger, available in special commie red:

Bigger logos, smaller prices. These as well as womens’ styles and other apparel are available all at a reduced price at my Printfection store!

Don’t let the fact that I’ve never fathered a baby have any bearing on my credentials in this matter. By now you should already know not to take my advice.

The Goons over at Something Awful have already put it to good(?) use, so check out their labels here, before they get reposted on Ebaum’s World or something.

(In addition to my winnings in Vegas this weekend) I learned this Sunday that one of my Emergency 411 cartoons was selected to be in The Animation Show! So of course I’ll be there to see my tiny, tiny video on the big, big screen. I had already caught the show last year at the Nuart theater in Santa Monica and can’t wait to see what’s been added since, as well as see who the other mobifest winners are. You can still see all the videos submissions over at mobifest.net where my Skydiving video — much to my amazement — graces the front page.

If you’d like to go, The Animation Show is this Tuesday at Laemmle’s Music Hall 3, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Tuesday, April 3, 2007 at 7:30 PM.

On top of all this, my site got a mention on the Animation Show journal, in particular a cartoon Nick and I did on that jaded green giant, the Sarcastic Hulk. Check out the awesome quote:

…you’ve got to spend some time over at his site timtoon.com. In particular his “Sarcastic Hulk” is one of the funnier tv funhouse style revamps i’ve seen in a long time

All it takes is a little positive feedback to get me movin’ again. Now I can’t wait to start on another SH clip. One that has the Sarcastic Hulk, y’know, actually in it.

By now you must be asking yourself, “Gee, where does he get his ideas?” Well, that’s just gonna have to be my little secret.

Catch the first two Emergency 411 episodes after the bump.

Atomic Bomb

Call the Emergency 411 hotline for information on how to build (and detonate!) your own thermonuclear device — on the cheap.

Skydiving

Call the Emergency 411 hotline for information on what to do when falling from a plane.

You work your ass off at the high-energy physics lab, trying to buy the good life for your mouthy, hippie girlfriend, only she doesn’t respect you, she’s too busy “rebelling” against her military brass father. Maybe he didn’t hug her enough as a kid, so now she’s taking it out on him by protesting his corrupt military-industrial corporation. The very military contractor you work for. And to top it all off, on the one day you get bombarded with a lethal dose of gamma radiation, you find out your company just cut your healthcare.

It just makes you so… so… snide.

See what happens when a guy who couldn’t take it anymore… takes it A LITTLE MORE!

SEE the comic book that I lost the originals to!

READ the script with all my co-writer’s best jokes cut out!

Three “original” stories:

• Smash TV
• Green-Eyed Monster
• The Job Interview

Copyright-infringing action!

Hulk think never going back to Cartoon Network after making friends with girl you pitch show to must be road to success!

Oops.