Summer movie blockbuster season is beginning, and I’m calling for a movie based on the game Rock Paper Scissors.’ Full-length features based on games isn’t a new thing anymore: you saw the movies based on Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots and Battleship, and you will see Angry Birds, but Rock Paper Scissors is still up for grabs. Yes, there’s a parody video, and of course there was a lame romantic comedy with the same title, but isn’t it time that it gets the full Hollywood blockbuster treatment?

Of course it is. After all, it is probably the world’s second oldest game, the oldest being taking consumers for total suckers. It wouldn’t even have to be a Michael Bay production – it could just be produced by those ad firms who do the toenail fungus and chest congestion adverts. But who would get cast in the role of Rock, or Paper, or Scissors? Here are somesuggestions:

On name alone, Duane Johnson is an obvious fit for the role of Rock. If you’re going for the ability to anchor – I mean, drag a movie down, you’d have to give the nod to Brendan Fraser. And if you were looking for a completely immovable face, Bruce Jenner.

For some comedic relief in the role of Paper, how about the self-confessed “pale” comedian Jim Gaffigan? Or, if you want to take pale and add the paper-like character traits of being flat and suffocating, Robert Pattinson or the Olson twins?

Jackie Chan would be ideal in the scissors role for his ninja-like ability to shred the opposition. Or Sarah Silverman for her cutting wit. If they’re not available, any of the Kardsahians could fill the role, because like scissors, you can always find a cheap pair hanging around when you need to.

I drew this in my sketchbook a long time ago. It’s an usher telling a well-dressed couple that their seats are not in the orchestra pit, but the mosh pit. Yeah, go ahead and groan. I never drew it up for submission because I didn’t think it was worthy. First of all, you have to include both halves of the joke in order for it to work (orchestra/mosh) which means you’re telegraphing the punch line to the reader in advance. And it looks like the couple is getting pranked. Pranking is funny, but not in cartoons. That’s best left to Ashton Kutcher.

But opera vs. mosh pit was still a funny juxtaposition. That’s because mosh pits are outright stupid. Someone should do a different cartoon about them that has more to do with what actually goes on there. I’m not opposed to them. If you’re young enough or drunk enough they’re a great way to blow off steam. I prefer the crazy skank-dancing ones to the ones where people line up and batter each other like angry rams, but it is funny how they spontaneously materialize if the conditions are right and then disappear, almost like the Northern Lights if the Northern Lights had tattoos up it’s arm and grew up listening to System of a Down.

True story: somebody tried to kill me in a mosh pit once. The person kept pushing me into the trombone player, hoping that I would get knocked unconscious with the instrument (it was a ska band – how did you know?). This year at SXSW I was standing well outside of a mosh pit watching people crowd-surf with their backpacks still on. It made me wonder whether mosh pits were less dangerous now, or whether this was just good multi-tasking. I mean, if you’re crowd surfing for more than two minutes then it’s as good an opportunity as any to get some good reading done.

The point is, I never liked this cartoon. And then one day I saw something that had an opera box in it. I don’t remember what it was, specifically, but I had it on the brain when I came across this sketch again and suddenly the problems were solved. The visual cue for the opera box is better than the verbal one for the orchestra pit. That’s the last thing you expect the woman to be looking down upon. And she’s not getting duped. She wants in herself, which is a lot funnier idea from a humor standpoint because it makes you look at her again and say “wha-?”

From there all that was left to do was draw the revised scenario, which appears in the New Yorker this week. I had to use reference because I’ve never been to the opera before. Maybe someday I will get to go to one and dive into the crowd from the balcony.

]]> http://wordspictureshumor.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/more-than-you-need-to-know-about-this-single-cartoon-really/feed/ 0 drewdernavich mosh1 mosh-pit1-1 trombone mosh2 mosh3 mosh4 http://wordspictureshumor.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/sxsw-2013-what-was-that-again/ http://wordspictureshumor.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/sxsw-2013-what-was-that-again/#comments Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:19:48 +0000 drewdernavich http://wordspictureshumor.wordpress.com/?p=897 Continue reading →]]> I just got back from attending the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, TX once again. My feet are swollen, my ears are ringing, and my stomach just said “go ahead – I dare you to eat another pulled pork taco.” And I want to go back to sleep. But it was all worth it. I got to see long-established artists who I had never seen before (Nick Cave, Kelly Hogan), buzzy up-and-comers who were worth the hype (Rhye, Savages), and I also got to stumble onto previously unheard-of acts that were satisfying (San Cisco, Heliotropes). It’s all about trade-offs. Yeah, I missed a shot to go see Prince and A Tribe Called Quest, but in that time I scurried around to see nine bands at six different venues, and when do you ever get to do that?

For a music fan it’s an embarrassment of riches, really. It’s almost like you don’t even need a guide. You just think of a band you like that put out
a record in the last year or two and voila! there they are, playing two blocks away. You only have to fight your way through all the ”Free Hugs”and the sidewalk drummers and DJ Babychino, supposedly “the world’s youngest DJ” and the DJ who additionally sounds like a fancy coffee drink.

Anyhow, with two thousand bands performing it does become a challenge to figure out who you want to see, and it’s even more of a challenge to figure out who you did see. So I made this list to help me remember.

I also took some video, since the Flip camera hasn’t given out on me yet, and put together my own little highlight reel from this year’s experience, below. It’s best viewed eating a pulled pork taco and drinking a Shiner Bock.

Which brings us to the cartoon this week’s issue, which is here. I still had the remnants of this setup swirling around in my caffeinated brain when I thought of this idea. It would have worked if it had taken place on a desert island, as I had originally imagined, but then it might have gotten confused with that other piece of cartoon context, so it’s just the great generic outdoors.

As far as what it means, I’m still not sure, but I think the pictures below will explain it comprehensively. 

I had been trying to fit a “Peeping Tom” into a cartoon for a while. It makes me laugh that there’s this specific nickname for a voyuer, because there’s no Jaywalking Sam or Shoplifting Linda. But those cartoons never worked out. One day, though, as I was thinking about somebody trying to identify something unidentifiable in a police lineup, I swerved right into the abandoned Peeping Tom idea. And it’s creepy, too!

You can see that in my original notebook sketch, I had the alleged perpetrators peering over a wall. This doesn’t make as much sense as having them look through a set of blinds, which in the end is what I decided was the more appropriate scenario. I don’t have those kind of blinds, though, so I had to find some to draw from. But it was pretty easy! All I had to do was secretly peer into my neighbor’s window.

It wasn’t until I sent in the finished art for this cartoon that I realized that it was kind of a sequel to this cartoon by my friend Matt Diffee. Of course, his idea in no way influenced my drawing in the first place, because us cartoonists produce 100% original ideas that are completely without precedent and are singularly unaffected by anything else in the culture. Except when they’re not, which is basically all the time. But you knew that already.

I did my first magazine cover last fall, for this hotel trade magazine (which just went to press). It was a nice change to work in color instead of black and white, but it can be intimidating – there are almost twenty different colors out there that you can work with, I bet. back me up on this, illustrators! It was also refreshing in that I had to show something besides an obvious sight gag. So, no talking elephants at bars. The image had to match the tone of the article, which was a fairly straightforward piece about what American hotel chains are doing to appeal to foreign travelers.

A snapshot of the working process is below. At first I drew a single business traveler, then we decided upon a family instead. Also, my gestures (like the man with the remote) were initially a bit too overstated. And after dropping in the logo of a specific airline on the shopping bag, we decided it would be better to show a fictional airline, whose logo I had to create. My friend commented that it reminded her of Adrian Tomine, which I was pretty happy about. It all worked out in the end, don’t you think?

You knew it had to happen at some point right?

I’m a sucker for Christmas music, and I try to upload a mixtape every year with the good and interesting stuff that I’ve found while poking around the internet and the used CD racks. Last year I was amused to find an outer space-themed Christmas record, but once I did, I was not surprised to find lots of other nutty “Christmas in outer space” records, because yeah, the internet. And once I found those I came across a whole galaxy full of low-hanging fruit just there for the taking: Star Wars holiday albums! Star Trek ads! William Shatner! NASA recordings! Spacey electronic music! So yes, I’ve jumped the shark a bit with this mix. It had to be done. But there’s lots of good stuff here, and I did more mixing and editing to make things move along. Give it a shot.

Mixes from previous years can be found and downloaded here.  You can listen to my outer space Christmas below or get it right from Soundcloud.