My Kung Lao meme

WHO CARES WHAT RACE SPIDEY IS

Oh yes, I have this blog I am supposed to update and throw cartoons up on. Well, lemme see what I can talk about... Oh. I have it...

So about five or six years ago, I wanted to make a Phantom Of The Opera-style character for AMPUTHEATRE. He is after all one of the classic monsters, and he for sure needed a representative Slasher in my horror fighting game opus. Trouble was that the actual Phantom doesn't really have any abnormal powers. He's just a music teacher with a scarred face, and AMPUTHEATRE already has a wildly uneven beef-stroganoff-face-to-GQ-looker ratio.

So I delved a little bit into Phantom folklore, and found out that Tony Todd once portrayed him on Broadway. At this time, Bill Cosby was making headlines for NO, NOT THE RAPES; he was approaching any podium that would have him and order black kids and black performers to stop swearing, pull up their pants, and quit embracing the thug life. So an African-American phantom determined to educate the inner-city youth on Shakespeare clicked with me...

And Fantome is one of the better characters in the game, I feel; his move set is cool and his man-catcher theater hook is quite iconic. Plus I got to make a black villain without falling on obnoxiously overdone stereotypes. Which is nice.

So what I want to ask myself today is this: Would I have conceived Fantome if Andrew Lloyd Webber said "NO; THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA IS WHITE, HE'S ALWAYS BEEN WHITE. TONY TODD CAN'T PLAY HIM, FUCK OFF"...? I can't say for sure.

Shorter Stan Lee: We made Spider-Man's costume full-cover so he could be any race, BUT HE'S WHITE. Does it genuinely matter?

...Why are so many of you comic book fans so creatively incarcerated and weirdly conservative? You swallow so many notions about these goofball stories, like rings that can affect anything except yellow things, a pair of glasses making Clark Kent indistinguishable from the train-hefting man-god, and the fact that DEATH FLAT-OUT DOESN'T WORK IN COMICS because these costumed cretins just come back twelve issues later.

Creativity will always blossom, just give it a chance. Make a black Spider-Man.

Hell, they made Jesus a white dude...

Perky & Slick 2015-2-23: "PASACAH"

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Perky & Slick 2015-2-18: "The Return Of Frankenstein"

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Cheez-Its are EVIL

...Hello there, Deep Fried visitors! As I currently stuff myself with Hot & Spicy Cheez-It crackers (my wife is trying to kill me) I thought it best to kind of tell everyone what's been up lately.

Hopefully you guys are enjoying the cartoons. I get a few likes here and there- and thanks to sweet people like you, I'm earning a decent chuck of change from it. It's good to be doing it again... I always told myself I shouldn't due to the dichotomy of being an artist who builds figures of no sociopolitical slant who then turns around to draw something the complete opposite. But [back of palm to forehead] perhaps my own demons have always proved the worst.

Hope you Northeasters are surviving this cold all right. I wanted to hold AMPUTHEATRE today (it being Friday the 13th and a national holiday) but too cold fuck it... Wanna see what else I've been doing?

...Fairies! Each of these stand 2" high. They've got their own section in the Etsy store and I'm wanting to make their section as robust as the Dragons shelf in the Hungerford studio. Go buy all of these. It's important.

Perky & Slick 2015-2-10: "Unholy Profanity"

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Perky & Slick 2015-1-30: "Grammy Awards"

New Perky & Slick! Support this comic with as little as $1/month on their Patreon page! (Yeah, I know it's late. S'matter? I can't have a bad week; where's that written?)

Perky & Slick 2015-1-20: "Why Don't You Draw Mohammed"

This week, an answer as to why Mohammed never appeared in P&S, followed up with a COUNTER-question! Support this comic for as little as $1/month on their Patreon page!

Perky & Slick 2015-1-12: "Hebdo Von Frankenstein"

This week, can Kirby DeLauter Von Frankenstein's monster speak sense to the crazed mob? Read it embiggened here and support this comic with a pledge as small as $1/month on their Patreon page!

Perky & Slick 2015-1-6: "Avus Blasphemus"

 

This week, we look at a recent anti-smoking ad. Support this comic for as little as $1/month on their Patreon page!

Movie Review: "The Sacrament" (2013)

Happy New Year, everyone! Hey, let's hope 2015 is going to be better than what came before, eh...? I know! I doubt it, too!

One of my wife's top topics is the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, so with one final Holiday evening of a self-imposed Nothing To Do (no really: final! I gotta get my ass in gear), we saw "The Sacrament", which has been on both Netflix and several Best Horror Films of 2014 lists for a while now. Putting aside my trepidation of director Ti West, we fired up the XBOX and let Magnet Films and producer Eli Roth do their thing: Recovering drug addict Caroline has holed herself up at a drug-free retreat called Eden Parish. When she invites her fashion photographer brother Patrick to check it out, he arrives with Sam and Jake from VICE Magazine because there's clearly a story in here. There's also armed guards, an abused little girl, and an enigmatic religioso called Father whose paranoia kicks in by the arrival of the journalists- all of which turn Shangri-La into Shit Outta Luck in just shy of twenty-four hours.

West creates an excellent atmosphere. The first half oozes with dread, and the second is nail-biting terror- exceptionally difficult to pull off in bright daylight since the climax occurs at morning, but damn. He also gets solid, creepy performances out of my actors, and this "found-footage" movie doesn't feel found-footage: there are quick edits and crisp cinematography that really captures the feeling of hiding in the woods from fuckers out to kill you.

So what is my problem with Ti West? I don't think the guy is particularly creative story-wise. The Sacrament is an almost by-the-numbers Cliff's Notes of the Jonestown Massacre; all West left out was a selfless congressman. (Back when politicians did their jobs, it was Leo J. Ryan, California-D, who braved one assassination attempt to personally rescue the cult members and died to a second.) West has said that this film is his most horrific one yet, which isn't too hard when quoting cult leader Jim Jones directly. My wife has seen documentaries on Jonestown, and pretty much kept piping up "Yep! THAT happened!" "Yeah! The 'Please Help Us' note; THAT happened, too!" "Yeah, Jones TOTALLY said that!" throughout the viewing. Which is fine, but I can't really call it original. Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of The Lambs were all inspired by Ed Gein; you don't end THOSE movies with nipple belts weighing on your mind.

But, for those unwilling to see real photos of a field in Guyana where you can't see the grass for the corpses (until 9/11 happened, Jonestown held the record for most killed American civilians), The Sacrament shines as a means of awareness towards a terrible tragedy. And one day, Ti West will receive a unique, innovative screenplay to direct, and that horror film is going to knock it out of the park. 5/5 cyanide syringes.


...Oh, and I have a great idea: how about we, as a society, stop goddamn saying that obnoxious accusation of conformity known as "You drank the Kool-Aid!" Really. Not because the drink was actually Flavor-Aid, nor because of sensitivity to the survivors- for the record, there were a lot of last-minute epiphanies and they were all answered with bullets to the head. I mean, feel free if you want to keep using it, but consider this: willingly drinking poison was the fifth insane thing these people did. What does that say about you!? "Well, I can see why you thought this guy in dark glasses was the Nazarene; I have no problem with you selling all your shit to build him a compound in East Bumblefuck, Whereverthehell; I completely understand leaving your home, your career, your family, and everyone you know to live there in a tent with tropical insects; and I'm totally down with letting strangers have their way with me sexually and violently! But you lose me on the cyanide! Dude! You have so much to live for!" So the next time the rest of society gets in line for an iProduct or votes for the candidate you dislike and you just have to say something, do us all a favor: bray like a sheep...? 

Besides, Kirk fucking Cameron, a man who does not believe in evolution, said "You drank the Kool-Aid!" to his fellow Christian Christian in his execrable Holiday movie (ha, ha!) Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas, for not Jesus-ing everything up as much as he did. HE said it. There is FOOTAGE of him saying it. That automatically means it is no longer cool or funny. You don't want to be like Kirk Cameron, do you? Stupid question!

You KNOW there's a off-radar compound and a mass suicide bubbling up in this asshole. Give him ten or fifteen years.

Perky & Slick 2014-12-29: 2014 Year! In! Pictures!

This week, the toothy twosome look back in horror at 2014! Support this comic with as little as $1/month on their Patreon page!

Movie Review: "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas"

Merry Christmas, you horrors of the night! Want to know what I thought about Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas...? (I put off writing about it for a bit; I thought I might draw a cartoon about it. But nah.)

Yes, Virginia: The Gil-Monster saw the lowest rated film on iMDB ever- AND HE SAW IT IN THE THEATER;* BOW DOWN BEFORE ME, JOR-EL!! Hearing that this beast was playing at the local Regal outlet, I saw it as a personal challenge! So my wife and I went on a cold Monday matinee to inhabit the theater with one other person sitting back and center- to make sure no one was going to set fire to the screen, I suppose.

The movie- and I use that term pan-galactically loosely as it's barely over an hour, even with credits and outtakes- opens with Kirk Cameron sitting at an easy chair. Sporting a gruesome beard that could only accompany a GPS-enabled ankle bracelet, Kirk espouses the joys of both Christmas and hot cocoa to an empty theater (save for me, my wife, and an old guy sitting back and center to make sure no one was going to set fire to the screen, I suppose). Exotic locations, like his real-life sister's living room and the interior of a SUV parked in a driveway, are where we are transported through the magic of film.

We spend a glut of the running time in the latter as it's where Christian, Kirk's fake brother-in-law, sulks because he, like a lot of people, gets sad at Christmas because that damn tree in his living room and that fat shitheel in the red suit steals Jesus' thunder- unlike a lot of people. In a moment that deserves to be in every horror film, Kirk climbs into the passenger seat and plays Six Degrees Of Jesus Of Nazareth with everything Christmas-y. For example, Christmas tree lots are just like the Garden Of Eden because of all the trees in them- only with a lot less warmth, nudity and animals. Instead of doing the logical thing- which is gunning the engine, driving headlong into a tree, and casting this former fucking conservative child-star homophobe FUCK out his windshield- Christian agrees with every one of Kirk's batshit bonkers allegories. Returning inside, he slides headfirst into the presents and a dance party ensues. There you go.

As short as this film is, it's also astonishingly PADDED. The camerawork is atrocious, with long slow-motion pans of Christian and his "wife" filling out the denouement, and a rock where the baby Jesus was born is dissolved to twice in the same scene.  And the message... ugh. The message of this film is that so long as you can tie whatever you're doing to the Bible, it's all right. Be as materialistic as you like, says Kirk- really- because Christmas Day was the day that Jesus took material form. Uh-huh? UH-HUH...? There are even more slow pans on the turkey and the feast and Kirk's sister's fine china to emphasize this. And even the outtakes suck.

Irony: one of Christian's beefs with Christmas is the money squandered on expensive one-off gifts, instead of food and clothing for the needy. Never once does he complain about the million or so spent nurturing Kirk Cameron's insanity with a selfish ego vehicle. There's a reason Rotten Tomatoes is tearing him a new one... 0/5 notions that a worm's-eye-view of the presents beneath the tree resembles the skyline of the future city of Jerusalem.
 

...Speaking of worms, here's the first-born Seaver child busting one to "Angels We Have Heard On High", hip-hop style. Note Kirk's "O" face what with the floor being the most physical contact his crotch has received in years.


*The Merritt family would like it known that the money that would have gone towards theater admission to Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas was instead donated to the starving children of the city of Panem; i..e., given to the first week gross of Mockingjay, Part 1. We felt Kirk Cameron could never be so gauche as to actually charge people to hear his message, given its importance.   

Perky & Slick 2014-12-22: "Effigy: The Motion Picture"

 

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Perky & SLick 2014-12-15: "Seasonal Passive-Aggression"

This week, don't be a dick; the holidays are stressful enough! Support this comic for as little as $1/month on their Patreon page!
 

Perky & Slick 2014-12-8: "The Force Awakens" Trailer

 

This week, something concerning a trailer to a movie or some shit; I can't keep track. Support this comic for as little as $1/month on their Patreon page!

Perky & Slick 2014-12-1: "The HPD Theory"

New Perky & Slick is up for 2014-12-1! Support this comic for as little as $1/month on their Patreon page!

Perky & Slick 2014-11-24: "Car Insurance"

 

Uploading Perky & Slick today because of the holiday! Happy Thanksgiving you guys! And please pledge and/or share this!

Matadors and gorynychs

New Perky & Slick is up at its usual place. You know how it works? You can either wait until Thursd- Wednesday in this case, due to Turkey Day- or you can read it now by becoming a patron on Patreon! As little as $1 a month will go a long, wonderful way, so please support this comic in whatever way you feel comfortable whether by pledging or sharing!


Greetings, Rochester Mini Maker Faire attendees! Welcome to the Chenille Macabre blog! I'm still in awe over how huge that show was, as my assistant will tell you. Did you manage to get a good look at the Gorynych I contributed to the raffle? I think it's pronounced "GORE-ee-NYKE", and I should have printed that on the publicity card I provided so as not to embarrass the announcer.

But apparently she had trouble saying "Chenille Macabre", so what can you do.

So this week marks the beginning of Holidays at The Hungerford, when from 10am-3pm each Saturday- starting on Small Business Saturday and ending prior to Christmas Day- the Blue Toucan Studio will be open to the public. I'll be there for a majority of them- and dammit, let's see if we can't get some AMPUTHEATRE going at a few of them too, huh? Geez, I miss that game... Come on down; follow the link in the sidebar!


So: follow Chenille Macabre on Facebook, and join the AMPUTHEATRE Facebook group so you'll know when a game is happening! That's it for now; enjoy the rest of the site!

Perky & Slick 2014-11-17: "Net Neutrality"

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