I'm getting closer to a final version of an animated Johnny. After jogging back and forth across my living room about 50 times now, I think I have the gestures close to what I want, so it's time to render them more cleanly.

I just got done watching all 56 hours of the Special Deluxe Director's DVD Boxed Set Edition of The Two Towers. That's the version where they glued together literally every piece of film laying on the cutting room floor, including clips from other movies.

I had three thoughts:

1) Helm's Deep = GIANT PILLOW FIGHT!! ("Ouch, watch the zipper, man!")

2) At Helm's Deep, why didn't the Riders of Rohan -- you know, the HORSE LORDS -- use their horses?! That was like Green Lantern saying, "Nah, I don't feel like using my MAGIC RING this time around." In fact, in the "last ride" scene, four riders easily took out over 80 orcs. With that ratio, they would only need 125 riders to beat all 10,000 of the enemies.

3) The whole arrival of the elf army was jarring. So jarring, in fact, that it made me think... WHAT IF... Peter Jackson ran out of budget and needed some kind of army to show up anyway. And he asked ME what to do...

Ok, here's who we bring in: The Beaver Men of the North-North-West. It's easy: you bring in 100 extras wearing black bathrobes from Wal-Mart (Martha Stewart brand, cheap); and they're all sticking out their top front teeth. Then you paint whiskers on them with matte black Testor's modeling paint.

For extra believability, you just fall back on the old standby of having Aragorn refer to them by some Elvish name: "Welcome, my Beavarronalin Brothers!" And you only have to change one line: From "Those are no Orc horns!" to "Those sound like Beaver Horns to my ears!"



Ok, it was all about Helm's Deep, but that's the only scene worth watching anyway.

I picked up some modeling clay while I was out Christmas shopping...

Red Dot = Me

Green Arrow = 3.6 Earthquake





This one didn't rumble like the others... it was more like a boom. I think I prefer the rumbling kind...

Ok, it's actually Johnny number 3, but I tend to be futuristic.

This should look familiar...



In a case of life-imitates-art, I had a bug in the code for the bugs to multiply, causing them to double in quantity every 250 milliseconds. Yeah. After that, my computer wouldn't turn off. I had to flip the power switch to the entire apartment complex just to reboot Windows.

Yesterday, while the rest of the world was slaving away in cubicles for their corporate masters, I went hiking in the Presidio. Just because I could. (Okay, some lucky people get to slave away for their corporate masters IN the Presidio.)

I hiked the Ecology Trail to Inspiration Point. And yes, as I looked down on the bay, I was indeed struck by a blinding flash of insight: Johnny needs a moustache!



Some Photos