Arms Longstrom Delay

Arms is going to have to wait.

I just got home from my hockey game and my hands are too shaky to properly illustrate this episode.

I draw this stuff with the mouse, and it didn't go very well at all when I tried to illustrate about five scenes.

I think I'm going to have to save Arms Longstrom for whenever I work midnights. I have absolutely no free time during the day to illustrate this stuff.

Where is Arms Longstrom?

Welp, a few of you have given me some choice words as to how you feel about the current delay in release of Episode 4 of The Story of Arms Longstrom. (Reese, I'm looking at you in particular.) I've got the storyboard written and all my ideas on paper. I've made it that far. I'm beat lately.

I get up early. I get home late.

Yesterday I had planned on working on the first half of the illustrations for episode 4, but my aunt was having some printer troubles, so I headed there directly from work. I got home at about 8:30pm and after a day of eating a fruit cup and water, I was starved. So I eat, check fantasy scores, watch Pokemon Diamond & Pearl and go to bed. Tonight I'll be headed back there to finally get this printer working again, so I'll not be in the studio for the umpteenth day in a row.

The good news is that I've freed my entire Saturday (sans 11:30am hockey game) of ankle-biters so I'll finally have the time it takes tol illustrate the whole episode. That'll take most of the afternoon to do. Saturday night we have a HUGE Uniontown bar crawl planned. I'm really looking towards loafing around the mean streets of Fayette county with a less-than-sober crew.

I'll sit in with Monte Lowe sometime on Sunday and get him to narrate the thing. He's not much for honoring the Sabbath day by resting, so I think it'll be relatively easy to convince him to come talk into a plastic tube for an hour or two.

In the meanwhile, Charles Holman (who happens to go WAYYYYYYY back with me) has been giving me some extremely good advice as if he were my would-be voice coach. He even went as far as to type up a rather long email, citing examples of what I need to work on and how I can improve Monte Lowe from a viewer's standpoint. This has been some excellent advice from an even more excellent friend.

Thanks again, man. Whenever you get home, hopefully we'll get some time together to work a bit more.

This has been a computerblog by the one, the fun -- Crock.

What's Really Good

So, Rollo decided to tell me that he's not cutting his hair until I cut mine. I think this is a noble idea. Not much could get me to cut my hair at this point in my life. It's shaggy. I'm shaggy.

We filmed part of our upcoming short this past weekend. It's got three distinct segments (filming-wise) that require a different amount of manpower for each segment, so we got the easiest one out of the way. We'll probably try to use the upcoming weekend to finish the other two segments. Rollo's gonna be editing this one and it has a TON of promise, so look forward to a resurgence of titanic proportions.

I still haven't had time to write this week's episode of "The Story of Arms Longstrom" and to be completely honest, might not happen this week. I've been exhausted. In trying to get back to a normal work schedule that I find myself so drained that I'm in bed by 8:30pm each night. With the time I try to put into the illustrations, it'll be a lunar month before I've got my bearings back about myself. In fact, I'm struggling mightily to stay awake right now.

Crock & Murph news is so cold right now, you'd think it was Bo Jackson's illegitimate son who's laboring away in the minor leagues of two-plus sports. Every time I call Murphy, he gets cell phone reception for about a minute and a half before his phone drops the call. This leads me to ask myself questions such as "Is he constantly standing next to a microwave?" or "Did he drive to Montego Bay to try and reunite himself with his long lost love --- the ocean?" or did he simply steal saran wrap from a local convenience store and he's manipulating my fragile mind by crackling it it my earpiece as soon as he gets bored with my call? All very distinct possibilities.

In the meanwhile, I dare you to find another podcast as good as Crock & Murph. You just won't succeed. We're what's really good.

Game Boy Color!

My new (oldish) Game Boy Color just arrived a few moments ago!

I'm at work now, but Reese is testing it at the moment. She seems to be very satisfied with it.

More on this development as the information becomes available. Stay tuned.

POKEMON TONIGHT BABY!#@$!

The Last 48

So, over the weekend I had to kill a lot of time.

I started on Saturday by playing World of Warcraft from 8am til noonish in an effort to try to regain a normal sleep schedule. Three weeks of midnight will wreak havoc on a notorious napper like myself. At about 5:00 in the afternoon, I woke up and went to my hockey game. Earlier in the day I had learned I was playing goal this week, which is never fun for anyone involved. See, as much as I enjoy playing goal, I'm a serviceable goalie at best. Just ask me about the 2004 season. Better yet, ask Chuck about it. I'm sure he'll be less flattering towards my abilities. Haha. Regardless, we still won the game 8-6. Not bad for a team with no substitutes.

That night I tried to play "Lets drink Miller Lite until anything Loren Michaels produces is funny." I got about 1/4 of the way through the movie "Black Sheep" before Rollo came over and rescued me with his XBOX 360. He's got a shitload of old games from the era when video games were up-and-coming (80s-90s). Looking back at it, now, Golden Axe was hilarious.

Sunday I spent hanging out with Heather's family. Really, though, all I did was sit on a front porch at her house with some dude's band and drink Coors Light until I couldn't see straight. That was a LOT of beer! Eventually I went home and passed out.

Good weekend!

Awesome Excellence

Well, here's a rundown of my awesome excellence. (ie: What I've done this week so far)

I've slaved over the SUYM Characters page for damn near every night this week. It's almost done and just needs a few more minor details ironed out before I publicly release it. Enjoy the suspense!

Earlier this week, I completed writing the script for episode three of The Story of Arms Longstrom. Just a few minutes ago, I completed the illustrations for it. I'll probably sit in with Monte Lowe tonight to get the audio recorded. So, again, we're looking at a Tuesday (July 17th) release. Enjoy more suspense!

Wow. Now that I look back at it, my week was pretty lame. Two tasks? That's it? I did manage to squeeze a video game in there somewhere. That's just a time waster though. Whatever.

What's on my plate for this weekend? Probably gonna wake up early on Saturday (that's 1:00pm for you ill-informed folk - look, I've been working midnights) and finally go finish a film that's been in the works for what seems like years now. Rollo and I get to do this with the new cam as this will be it's maiden voyage. There's even gonna be a champagne-splosion to christen the thing!

I have a hockey game at 7:30pm on Saturday. That'll be lovely. Then, afterwards, I'm going to spend exactly $5 at Campy's on the way home and buy two 40oz. Miller Lites. I will then drink them in a hurried frenzy (after I get home) and pass out sometime before Rollo gets here and when he leaves. I don't get to drink much anymore, and damnit, I deserve a 40 or two. And if its one thing I know, 80oz of beer will get Crock mighty, mighty drunk.

Sunday I'm gonna hang with Heather and her family.

BOOYAH! for my well-planned-out weekend and awesome excellence in productivity!

Styx & New Stuff

Went to the Def Leppard on Saturday, and MAN it was a great time. The absolute best part of it (not to take away from DL) but the second act was BY FAR AND AWAY probably what I enjoyed the most. For the record, Styx performed as the second show that night.

Here's a bit of background: Rollo bought this song by Styx on iTunes a few months ago. Its a live version of Renegade that was performed as the encore of a show from the early 1990's where, at the end of the song lead singer begins to ramble about how he loved performing in St. Louis so much that the entire crowd should "get on the bus after the show and we'll all go to Kansas City and do it again tomorrow night." Well, they pretty much did the exact same thing here at the Post Gazette Pavilion. Now, they follow THAT little bit of nonsense up with a jingle-esque way of saying goodbye. In the song Rollo bought, they sang "We-gotta-go now Saint Leeeeewis, Musssorraahhhhhhhhhhhhhh" and, to a much lesser extent, they did the exact same thing with "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, it was amazing. You really can't begin to imagine how hard I laughed when they did this! I couldn't believe it, and I've been reliving it ever since.

"Uncle" Pete got a lot of pictures, which he gave me exclusive permission to post to my Flickr, though I hate posting other people's pics as my own. For now, you'll have to sort through Rollo's, Reese's and Pete's pics by using either Facebook or MySpace. I doubt I'll Flickr any.

New stuff for this week include:

• A new Crock & Murph Podcast
  
• A new episode of Arms Longstrom
  
• A new camera - arriving later this very week!

Be sure to get back to me regarding the new Arms Longstrom. Let me know what you hate, love or don't care for.
shutupyourmouth@gmail.com

That's really all I have for now. More to come later.

Arms Longstrom

Last week I was writing down my thoughts and ideas for the week, and I decided that since making movies can't continue at the moment, that why not rush a not-so-refined, storybook-esque film onto the SUYM scene.

What I came up with was "The Story of Arms Longstrom", a series about a super hero stick figure with excessively long arms who uses this unique trait to help solve problems.

The story is not well drawn. It doesn't have any background (fictional or literal). It does, however, have imagination and a decent storyline. It's also narrated by Monte Lowe - the resident financial analyst for Crock & Murph in the Morning... (It's good to see him getting his life back together.)

I imagine that I'll produce three or four of these episodes. That'll give me enough time to guage the interest in the series and determine if its worth refining and keeping current.

This reminds me, if you're reading this - please download the first episode and leave me some feedback. You can email me at shutupyourmouth@gmail.com, or the email address in my profile here. I check both of them several times daily.

Otherwise, this first little cartoon was extremely fun to write and produce. I'm currently trying to think of creative ways to update Arms' appearance while keeping it simple enough to reproduce consistently. I've also got a primer ready for the next episode which I'll probably release sometime next week.

What I haven't decided on is how I'm going to continue the series each week. I'll obviously pick up from where I left off going from the first to second episode. I don't think they'll all be a two-part series, though, especially during the evaluation stage.

This series is vastly different from anything we've ever done on SUYM so far, and hopefully we'll get to keep Arms Longstrom in the fold for a long while.

Let me know if you like it.