2005 was a pretty tough year for a lot of people I know. Of course the peeps in Louisiana and Texas had it rough with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey called it quits. Richard Pryor and Peter Jennings died. Heck, the Christmas holiday alone was horrible for three of my buddies at work: one guy had to put his dad in the hospital for a ruptured bowel; my buddy, John, had to take his dad to the Ohio State University hospital due to complications with his chemo treatment; and another co-worker lost his grandfather on Christmas Day. These guys can't wait to see 2005 disappear.
All this tragedy makes me feel kinda guilty, though, because I had a pretty good 2005. The comic is picking up speed, my wife is doing well at school, and we both have good jobs. I'm excited for 2006 for both personal and career reasons.
However good or bad 2005 was for you, it's almost over! Here's hoping all of you have a safe and happy 2006!
The Chronic *What* cles of Narnia . . .
I forgot to post my review of The Chronicles of Narnia for you guys. I saw the movie while I was visiting family in Michigan over the holiday, and all I gotta say is that the movie is super rad.
One of my gifts for Christmas was an illustrated guide to the making of The Chronicles of Narnia, and I was happy to see that Doug Gresham was highly involved in the making of this movie. Doug was C.S. Lewis' stepson and he currently looks after all of Lewis' works. He's very picky and protective of how Lewis' writings are interpreted for movies and the like, so I was glad to see that he was involved with the film. I was very happy with adaptation of the book, and I'm sure Doug had a lot to do with that.
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I hope you guys have a fun New Year. Be careful tomorrow night. If you go out and have a few drinkies make sure to have someone drive you home. The crazies are out on New Year's Eve.
Oh, and add me to your Myspace friends list. I love hearing from you guys. :)
Every morning when I get up I check my e-mail and the YHT site. It's usually at this time that I check out my Myspace site, approve friend requests, and reply to messages and comments. Imagine my surprise when I found that I had a friend request from Derek Webb, former guitarist and singer of the awesome band Caedmon's Call!
Do you know what this means, people? Freakin' Derek Webb, who is one of the best folk singers out there in my opinion, has requested my friendship on Myspace. That means that there is a small chance that Derek Webb reads my comic strip, which is totally awesome.
So, if Derek Webb is reading this, DUDE YOU ROCK! My bros and I used to sing along to your Caedmon's Call songs on long road trips all the time! When we started a band we listed Caedmon's as one of our influences! I saw you at Indiana Wesleyan University and you played a concert with your wife, Sandra McCracken! It was awesome! You melted my face with your acoustic rock fury!
Sorry to go all fanboy on you people, but it I was pretty excited this morning. If you want to hear some awesome Christian music that isn't candy-coated praise songs, pick up Derek's She Must and Shall Go Free. It's pretty convicting. He's got a few more solo albums out, but I don't have them . . . yet.
We're Home . . .
Trish and I arrived home last night at around eight o'clock in the evening. We unloaded the car, called our parents, and then crashed in our respective places - Tricia in our bed and I in front of my computer. Trish was nursing a headache and called it an early evening, while I stayed up and played Guild Wars and Need for Speed Most Wanted.
We had a great time in Port Huron this year. Trish has a great family and we had fun visiting with everyone. Luckily for me, it was a rather warm Christmas in Michigan. It didn't snow while we were up there, and what little snow was already on the ground was being washed away by an occasional rain shower.
I have to go back to work today, and Trish just finished taking the Christmas tree down. It's kind of surreal to see it all ending so soon, especially since we spent so much time preparing for it and hyping it up. Oh well. Christmas 2006 will be here soon enough . . .
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I hope everyone's having a great week. Leave a note in the forum if you get a chance.
As promised, here is the list of things I received this year for Christmas in the annual Christmas Holiday Haul:
- Two sweaters - Two pairs of dress pants - Two hooded sweatshirts - An Ohio State t-shirt - A golf survival guide - Miracles by C.S. Lewis - The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis - Elizabethtown Musical Score CD - Elizabethtown Original Soundtrack CD - O.A.R.'s Stories of a Stranger CD - The Illustrated Guide to the Chronicles of Narnia by Perry Moore - AMC Theater Gift Cards - Guild Wars PC Videogame - Need for Speed Most Wanted XBox Videogame - Express Gift Card - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory DVD - Batman Begins DVD - King of Queens Season 4 DVD - Seinfeld Seasons 5 & 6 Collector's Edition DVD - Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring Extended Version DVD - Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Extended Version DVD - Star Wars: Clone Wars Vol. 2 DVD - Serenity DVD - The Exorcism of Emily Rose DVD - Jack Johnson and Friends DVD - Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind DVD - Princess Mononoke DVD - Spirited Away DVD - Kiki's Delivery Service DVD - Castle in the Sky DVD
I still have a little bit of Christmas money left and I plan on grabbing the extended version of The Return of the King. I think I made out pretty well this year.
Feel free to leave your Holiday Hauls in the comments section of the blog, or in the forum!
Christmas is over. It came and it went and now we must begin reparations. I hope everybody enjoyed a great holiday, and I hope Santa Claus filled your stockings with everything you wanted.
As promised, I will list my Holiday Haul for this year later today. I'm still in the great state of Michigan (you have to say that when you're surrounded by Michiganders), and we're getting ready to do some post-Christmas shopping. I received some money for Christmas and I plan on burning some of that today. When we return this evening I'll post my Haul.
Last night my brother-in-law and I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I wasn't expecting much from the movie, but I was surprised by how fun it was to watch. It's a straight up "popcorn flick", but it had an interesting dynamic with the husband and wife working for rival assassin organizations unbeknownst to each other.
Tonight we plan on seeing The Chronic *What?* Cles of Narnia when we get done shopping. I'll be sure to post my review of it.
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Have fun eating leftovers and playing with your new gifts. Tune in later this evening for my full Holiday Haul. In the meantime, feel free to discuss your Holiday Haul's on the message board.
Once again my busy week has gotten the best of me and I've forgotten to update my blog. I apologize, peeps. I'm gonna make it up to you:
Make sure to tune in Sunday for an extra YHT comic strip. I'm going to post the Christmas strip I drew for the latest issue of Zoinks! magazine, so make sure to ch-ch-check it out.
Also, make sure to stop by on Monday when I list my entire 2006 Holiday Haul. I did this last year and it was fun for me, so I'm gonna do it again whether you like it or not.
I hope all y'all peeps have a happy and safe Christmas! Make sure to drink your eggnog in moderation, and don't hang out too long underneath the mistletoe - it makes you look desperate.
Christmas is my favorite holiday season, so I thought I list a few of the reasons why I love this time of year:
- Every year at this time, my Grandma makes Chex mix and it is the chron-diddly-chron. And just so you people know, my Grandma was makin' Chex mix before Chex mix was cool. In fact, I have it on good authority that my Grandma invented Chex mix. I even found some top secret notes in her attic from Ralston. I didn't read them because they were top secret, and that would be an invasion of my Grandma's privacy. You'll just have to trust me on this . . .
- Harry Connick, Jr. is a musical genius, and it just so happens that he has one of the best Christmas CDs of all times. It's called When My Heart Finds Christmas, and if you don't own it then I hope only ugly people and/or relatives kiss you underneath the misteltoe this year.
- The Charlie Brown Christmas Special. It's complete awesomeness wrapped into a half-hour package. It's so awesome that my wife and I own it on DVD for multiple Christmas viewings. Which brings me to my next favorite thing . . .
- The Charlie Brown Christmas Special soundtrack! Harry Connick, Jr. is a musical genius, but even his musical genius couldn't usurp the Yuletide power that lies in the soul of Vince Guaraldi. This is hands down the best Christmas album of all times, and I will take that to the grave with me!
- I like to give presents. I know this is cliche, but the older I get the more I enjoy the "giving" part of Christmas. This week's strips are based on my desire to give presents to my wife before the designated holiday. It's just that sometimes I know I got my wife something kick@$$ and I want her to open it. Is that so wrong?
- I like to get stuff. I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm not gonna be one of those guys who's like, "It's not about the receiving. Please, don't go all out for me. Seriously." No. If you ask me what I want for Christmas I'm gonna be like, "I want the two-disc collector's edition of Batman Begins! And I want it in widescreen - don't give me none of that fullscreen crap! If you get me fullscreen I'll throw it in your face, Grandma!"
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Only four shopping days left, peeps. Traffic is getting worse and the store selection is almost wiped out. Better make a mad dash to Walgreens.
It's only Tuesday and this weeks is already proving to be ultra busy. How busy, you ask? So busy that I forgot to write a blog entry yesterday. So busy that when one of my buddies at work asked me why I didn't write a blog for Monday, I argued with him that I did. After a couple moments it dawned on me that I had neglected the entire blog area entirely. And for that I apologize. Here's a few quick highlights before I jet for the evening:
- My father-in-law and his girlfriend are stopping by this afternoon on their way down to my wife's grandparents' house in Virginia. We'll have Christmas with them tonight and go somewhere to eat (speaking of which, I'm starving right now).
- Harry Potter references are running rampant at work now. Ever since I got a couple of my buddies hooked on H.P., we've been using all kinds of terms from the book to explain the goings-on at work. For instance, when one guy made a mistake today, my buddy, John, told him that "the Sorting Hat must have made a mistake when it sent you to our sheeter." Later, one of my friends was frustrating me, so I pointed my finger at him and yelled, "Crucio!" It didn't work - probably because I don't have a wand.
- Ben got me the extended version of The Fellowship of the Ring for Christmas. If I get any Christmas money I'm gonna buy the other two movies to complete the collection.
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That's all for today, peeps. I gotta get back to being semi-productive. Leave a note in the forum.
Like most artists, I have several influences that have helped me form my "style" of drawing. Most of my influences are the old standards like Bill Watterson, Charles Schulz, and Pat Brady. I'm also influenced and inspired by the comedians Brian Regan and Dane Cook. These are just a few of my artistic influences and inspirations. Heck, any kind of media can cause me to get the "cartooning itch" - a really good movie, a great song, an intriguing book . . . the list goes on.
However, of all the artists and creators out there who influence me, very few of them are webcartoonists. I'd have to say there are only two webcartoonists that influence and inspire me. The first is Scott Kurtz. You can say what you want about the guy, but he has a great comic strip. Whenever Andy wears a band shirt, I rip of Kurtz' block-style lettering for the band name. He's also got an awesome rant on his site about how he wanted to quit PvP early on, and I totally identified with it. So Kurtz is up there for me.
The second webcartoonist is probably the most influential to me. Paul Taylor of Wapsi Square is the best cartoonist on the internet, and I will take that to the grave with me. His comic (along with PvP) is one of the handful of webcomics that I actually read everyday it's updated.
The other day I was surfing the Wapsi Square website, and I started reading Paul's comic process for the umpteenth time. Then I started flipping back through his previous comics and I noted something about how he draws his strips that I decided to start doing with my strip. I implemented it this week, and you'll see a lot of it next week, too.
If you read Wapsi Square you'll notice that Paul rarely puts two people together in a single panel. Instead, he allows a single character (usually the one speaking) to fill up the panel. This is an awesome technique because it allows the artist to better "act" with his characters. In the two weeks I've been using the technique I've noticed that I have a lot more room to let the characters gesticulate and make facial expressions. Today's comic is a good example of that.
So, anyway, Paul Taylor rocks. Dig it.
XBox 360 Funniness . . .
The Daily Show had an awesome "Trendspotting" segment with this dude, Demetri. Basically, Demitri was exploring why the XBox 360 is the hot item this Christmas season. During the segment he went to a Best Buy and had a conversation with a district manager that went something like this:
Demitri: So do you think that the XBox 360 will bridge the gap between parents and the children they don't pay attention to?
District Manager: Umm . . . sure. The XBox 360 has several multiplayer games, so parents can play with their children.
Demitri: So if parents want to kill their children, they can do it in the videogame without actually having to kill them in real life?
District Manager: Well, yes . . . but they'll have to buy the games from us and we do ask for I.D. when purchasing "M" rated videogames.
Demitri: Do you ever card a forty-year-old guy buying videogames and say, "Look . . . you're forty years old. It's time to get a girlfriend."?
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The weekend is here. Hope your Christmas shopping is almost finished, because Christmas is next weekend, sucka fools.
I don't have much time to write out a long blog today, so I thought I'd make a few quick comments:
1. World of Warcraft has officially been uninstalled from my computer. After two nights of playing the game until three in the morning, I realized that the game had to go. It's not unusual for me to play a videogame until the wee hours of the morning, but those games have endings. WoW would just continue to go on out into infinity . . .
2. I've been letting my buddy, John, read all my Harry Potter books. I started lending them to him about a week-and-a-half ago, and he's already halfway through book five. He said the funniest thing I'd ever heard in a long time yesterday. Perhaps it was because he's a thirty-something-year-old man who's getting emotionally involved with the Harry Potter characters. Anyway, as I walked past him he stopped me and said, "Umbridge is a f****** b*tch!"
After we joked about Umbridge's b*tchiness, we discussed what would happen at the end of book seven. I told John that I think Harry is gonna die at the end. John looked at me with a straight face and said, "She [J.K. Rowling] can't do that."
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I hope everyone is having a good week. Mine is going pretty fast. Only a few more shopping days left until Christmas!
I finally got to play World of Warcraft. I had been trying to download the 10-day trial for the past month and a half, but the download kept timing out on me. I gave up on the endeavor until a guy at work told me he'd download it and burn it to a DVD for me. He did, and I installed it on Saturday night.
However, when I went to log on to the game with my account information, the game needed to download a patch - a 252 MB patch. It was already late in the evening and I didn't feel like waiting for three hours for this thing to download a patch, so I shut my computer off and figured I'd never play the game (I'm impatient).
When I got to work, the guy who burned the DVD told me that the patch was on the DVD. All I had to do was install it. Elated, I went home and installed the patch which took about 45 frickin' minutes. Afterward, I logged back in only to find that there were three more patches of various sizes to download and install to my computer before I could run the game.
After two more hours of downloading and installing I was finally able to log in, create a character, choose a realm, and wander around the world of Azeroth and see what all the hype is about. For the record, I created a warrior night elf and I was playing on the Draka realm.
The ten-day demo only allows you to get to level 20. After a couple hours of gameplay I was already a level 5, which I thought was cool. I like how the game has the XP bar to let you know just how much more experience you need to reach the next level. I'd never played an MMORPG before and I was somewhat anxious about the experience - would people attack me all the time or chide me because I was a noob? But none of that happened. In fact, it was quite fun to see all these different people wandering around the same small section of world I was in.
I completed two or three quests and killed a lot of small animals to increase my levels and gain items to sell. I tried to be social with people, but no one returned my waves or replied back when I spoke to them. Having never played an MMORPG, I'm not sure what the ettiquette is on these games.
Overall, there's only one word I can use to describe this game: addictive. And it's for that reason that I'll never own it. In fact, I probably won't continue the ten-day trial. I was up a little too late last night playing the game, and I can't be doing that crap with all the stuff I gotta get done before Christmas! I'm just glad I can now say I've played the game and, from what little I've played, it's everything it's hyped up to be.
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Hope everyone had a good weekend. Even though it's Monday, just tell yourself that Christmas is just around the corner. Hopefully that'll make the week go faster. :)
Well, it's the end of Birthday Week, so I thought I'd discuss some of the things I've learned and experienced this past year. There's quite a lot of things to discuss!
It's neat to see how much I've progressed as a writer and an artist since the comic first started. A lot of artists and cartoonists don't enjoy looking at their earlier work because it looks so primitive compared to where they are at currently. I enjoy looking at the older strips because I like to see my progression. I have a lot of memories tied to certain strips. For instance, I may look at a certain strip and remember thinking "This is the best strip I've ever drawn". Needless to say, I have at least one or two best-strips-I've-ever-drawn a month, and, in my opinion, each one is better than the last.
On the flip side, I can totally tell the strips that I half-a**ed. So that's probably the first thing I've learned: it can be hard to draw a comic strip five days a week while juggling a marriage and a full-time job. Plus, I'm a procrastinator which helps nothing. The strips that look weak to me are usually ones I had to speed through or I just wasn't having fun drawing. Sometimes I dread drawing a certain comic strip because I know it'll need a lot of detail or a strange camera angle, so I might hack through it and send out a comic strip that I'm not totally proud of. I've learned within just the past couple weeks that if I take my time with a comic and get those details that the particular strip needs, the cartoon is more fun to draw and I'll get it done faster because I'm not sitting around putting it off.
I learned that comic book conventions are fun, but you need to be prepared. I had never been to a comic book convention before Wizard World Chicago this year, so it was quite a learning experience. I'm usually pretty extroverted, but I was pretty much an introvert whenever people walked up to the table. Maybe it was because I really didn't have anything to sell and no one knew who I was. Who knows? All I know is that next year I'm gonna have my poop together and we're gonna have a lot of fun at the cons I attend. Even the comic book signings will be even radder (Is "radder" a word? It is today!) .
Earlier in the year I wrote down a list of goals for each character (Andy, Katie, and Steve) that I wanted to accomplish by the end of 2005. I learned that I can't do this. I didn't achieve one goal that I had written for any of my characters, but that's okay. I think the comic has turned out better for it. The only character remotely close to meeting the goals I had planned for him is Steve, but I totally changed everything that was supposed to have happened. So I don't know if that counts. That was a learning experience for me, because I learned over the course of the year that I need to let my characters "breathe". I just need to write and let the interactions happen themselves. Sure, there's things I want each character to achieve and experience, but I don't want to put a set-in-stone time limit on the goals anymore. For right now I'm just gonna point the characters in the direction I want them to go, set them up for the specific milestone I want them to reach, and hope they get there in a timely manner. :)
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Well, it's been a fun and introspective week. I appreciate everyone humoring me as I rambled about the past year and my excitement for the next. I really appreciate all you guys, your e-mails, your forum posts, and your Myspace messages. It's always nice to hear from you and hear what you have to say. You people keep me going.
Have a safe weekend! Fifteen shopping days until Christmas.
I thought I'd take a few moments to explain how my relationship with Viper Comics came to be. It's a neat story.
In 2003, I lost my job at Sprint PCS. The affiliate company I worked for went bankrupt and had to layoff a couple hundred employees. My number was up. It was shortly after that that I decided to really focus on making a career of drawing comic strips. I lost my job at the end of July 2003, and my first submission to newspaper syndicates was dropped in the mail sometime during September of 2003.
For the next year I had myself in an established routine of writing, drawing, and submitting. Each incarnation of You'll Have That was slightly different than the one before it. The form rejection letters soon turned into personalized rejection letters. Instead of getting a "Dear Contributor" letter, I was getting messages from comics editors at major syndicates telling me what to work on. Even though they were still rejection letters, the personalization of them kept me encouraged.
I even received a lot of encouragement and support from cartoonists. I've received hand written letters from Jim Borgman (Zits), Patrick McDonnell (Mutts), Rick Detorie (One Big Happy), Jef Mallett (Frazz), Jim Toomey (Sherman's Lagoon), Rina Piccolo (Tina's Groove), and Michael Jantze (The Norm) among others. Mike Peters, creator of Mother Goose and Grimm, called me on the phone twice. All the constructive criticism and encouragement I was receiving from these professionals was overwhelming and inspiring. I keep all their letters in a drawer next to my drawing table, and I still read them when I start to feel like I'm a hack.
In the summer of 2004 I decided to start submitting to comic book publishers. I figured that there's probably a growing niche for comic strips in comic book format, and that was evidenced by the popularity of PvP and Liberty Meadows at Image Comics. There were only two comic book publishers that I wanted to submit to at that time, and that was Image and Viper.
I read the submission guidelines on the Image Comics website and sent them a packet of strips along with my fifth submission to newspaper syndicates. The Viper website said that they weren't currently accepting submissions, so I made a point to patrol the message board in hopes that they would open the floodgates. Jessie Garza had posted on the message board at that time that Viper would have an upcoming announcement concerning submissions, so I bookmarked the Viper website and checked the message board daily for the announcement.
On October 2nd, 2004 my wife and I were married. Two weeks later on October 14, Jessie Garza made an announcement on the message board that Viper was looking for a webcomic. How much more perfect could that have been? I was just looking for an open call for submissions, but here's a comic book company specifically asking for a comic strip.
I whipped up a comic submission for Viper and tossed it in the mail. Exactly four days later, I came home from work at 11 PM and found an e-mail from Jessie Garza in my inbox. Here's what the e-mail said:
Wesley,
Our art director just contacted me and said he would like to make your comic strip our first web comic....I'll contact you by phone tomorrow... with more details....
jessie
I read this e-mail probably fifty times in a row. Then I jumped up in the air and yelled quietly so as not to disturb my wife who was sleeping. I seriously did this. I seriously jumped into the air and yelled under my breath. After this I decided to wake my wife up, so I ran into our bedroom and jumped on the bed. I told her the news and she forgot all about how ticked off she was that I woke her up at midnight. Then I called my mom and woke her up out of bed. She was excited, but she still sounded tired. So I told her I'd call her back the next day.
The following day, I talked to Jessie Garza for about twenty minutes on the phone. We discussed the plans for the comic strip and what they expected from me. I told them what I wanted to do to make the comic and this website as awesome as possible, and they've been supportive of all the ideas I've had for this site since day one.
The website debuted on December 6th, 2004. A few months later the message board started to erupt with posts from forum regulars. Traffic has been steadily increasing, and opportunities for publishing YHT outside of the website and comic books have been presented. I couldn't have asked for a better year!
It's kind of surreal when I think back to the beginnings of this website. That was such an awesome period of my life, and it was such a whirlwind time. I started a new job, got married a few months later, and then landed a publication deal a few weeks after my marriage. It was stressful, but it was an awesome kind of stress that left me smiling each night and still does.
This year has been so rewarding and I'm so psyched to see what 2006 brings. It excites me to see how far the comic has come in one year, and I believe it can only get better. I don't ever see myself running out of ideas for these characters, and I know there's a lot of things I want to see them do. I've got the fuel and I've got the drive, and Viper is allowing me to make it happen.
2005 was an awesome year, but 2006 is gonna blow the pants off of it. :)
As a webcomic creator I read a lot of webcomic news sites. Several times a day you'll find me surfing through Digital Strips, Comixpedia, and Websnark. I just like to know what's going on out there in the world of internet cartoons. I like to see what other creators are doing, and, if I think it's a good idea, I'll rip those creators off. :)
A lot of times I roll my eyes when I see people posting about webcomics that have turned a year old. I think to myself, "Big deal." Bill Watterson was at it for ten years. Bill Amend's been at it for more than fifteen. Charles Schulz rocked his drawing board for fifty years! A single year is a flash in the pan compared to these guys who, unlike most webcartoonists, drew (or currently draw) comic strips every single day.
Well, I have to admit that my feelings on this subject have changed. You'll Have That turns a year old this week. Tomorrow, in fact. And it does feel like a sort of milestone in the comic's creation.
If you had asked me a year ago where I thought YHT would be at the end of 2005, I could have only hoped to have as much nominal success as I have now. My traffic is much smaller than most webcartoons (I believe I get less than 2000 unique visitors a day), but the numbers have been growing steadily since we started the strip. They spiked even more when I went to the five-day schedule. I get awesome fan mail, and the YHT message board has got to be the nicest and most civilized message board I've ever been a part of. I'm even part of a great webcomic collective.
I attended my first comic book convention in 2005. Heck, I even had my own in-store comic book signing at my local comic shop. I felt like a freakin' rock star that day!
One of the most surreal parts of 2005 is actually quite simple: I had to start a new notebook for comic strip writing. That's right. I've got a single-subject notebook full of comic strip thumbnails. When I finally filled it up, I sat in my chair and stared at the book trying to fathom how I was able to cram it full of my ideas. What blew me away even more was that I still have tons of ideas and plans for this comic strip!
As awesome as 2005 has been, we're gearing up for an even greater 2006. We'll have not one, but twoYHT books hitting comic shop shelves next year. We've got a college newspaper and a couple alternative magazines interested in publishing YHT, and an opportunity to broadcast YHT to an extremely popular handheld device (more details on this as stuff is ironed out).
Now I don't mean to sound cliche, but I know I couldn't have had this much success without you guys - the fans. I haven't made any money drawing this comic strip outside of selling the original artwork, so it's your e-mails and message board participation that keep me going.
So I'd like to take a moment to thank you guys from the bottom of my heart. Thanks for reading my comic on a regular basis. Thanks for voting for my comic when I make a big deal about it. Thanks for visiting my myspace site and adding me to your friends list. Thanks for sending me some of the nicest and most encouraging e-mails in the whole world. Thanks for helping make the YHT message board the busiest message board on the entire Viper forum by far!
I honestly thank God every night for all the awesome feedback I get, and then I ask Him to give me more. So keep sending your myspace messages, e-mails, blog comments, and forum posts telling me what you think. You guys are what keep me going, and that's the truth.
I bought and read TheLion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last night. I am quite a fan of Clive Staples Lewis, but I'd never read any of the Chronicles of Narnia. I'm totally psyched about the movie coming out, so I felt it my duty to read the book before seeing the movie.
I gotta say, I'm pretty hopeful for the movie's adaptation of the book. If you've ever read the book, you'll know that it's not very long. It's less than 200 pages and I read it in one sitting. I'd say that in some parts the movie will have to embellish the action more than the book did. Lewis jumps from scene to scene, and the action moves very quickly. He doesn't waste time describing battles. One of Lewis' battle scenes pretty much went like this: "There was a battle among these guys, and this guy eventually won." Boom. Next scene.
Anyway, I can't wait for this flick to come out. I will be seeing it in theater fo' sho'.
Harry Potter and Factory Workers . . .
I work in a factory. Mind you, it's a pretty clean factory and I hardly ever sweat. But there's a lot of factory workers there. Factory workers come in all types and sizes. You've got your hardcore Harley riders, your hardcore hunters, your hardcore hillbillies, and a few hardcore idiots (unfortunately, these are everywhere). One thing I've noticed among all the social classes of factory workers is that Harry Potter is universally appealing among all of them. I've got a couple of my buddies at work hooked on the Harry Potter books, now, and we sit and talk about the movies.
Both of them ride Harleys, one of them hunts, and the other likes to drink beer. One of them has tattoos while the other supports his love of all things Ford by wearing his Ford ballcap and driving his large Ford truck. Both of them rock out to Harry Potter. I dare you to tell these guys that reading Harry Potter "isn't manly". You may find that you've been "stomped another mudhole"!
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It's the end of the week! I hope everyone has a great weekend. :)
The YHT Book of the Month for December is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. To read more about the selection and why I chose it, visit this forum thread.
