Oceanic Air has cancelled all flights after the disappearance of Flight 815. Also, check out the hot new band... Driveshaft.

When I was a kid, someone once told me that during the asteroid battle in The Empire Strikes Back, one of the asteroids is really a rotating potato. And although I've heard this a million times, I've never actually seen it. It was, however, my first experience with movie Easter Eggs. Later I would spend hours watching the pirate ship fight sequence in Goonies looking for a hidden R2-D2 that would never show his face. (he's apparently on deck when the ship sails away)

Most of the Easter Eggs we heard about when I was a kid were just wishful thinking, or coincidences, or mistakes. Although, because of Spielberg and Lucas' friendship they would reference each other's movies all the time. But these days, people my age are making Star Wars films. And those guys carry on the tradition by putting elaborate Easter Eggs in their movies. (via boingboing)

Today Justin from Atlanta Magazine was back at the office. We first met Justin when we were moving out of Williams Street and into our new office in East Atlanta. In addition to writing an article about Matt and Adam, and our new cartoon... he actually helped us move, except for the stuff in my bosses garage, the stuff covered in spiders... he didn't move that stuff so much.

Since then we've pretty much settled into our new place. I have to say, it's awesome. While Williams Street was a hive of activity, filled with super talented people we all respected. Our portion of the building was relegated to a tiny windowless cave. But we didn't mind, we were in Williams Street. Now our office is a bright sun-filled oasis of creativity. Plus my boss in going to build a horseshoe pit in the back yard.

check it:

I've been taking photographs of models for our new cartoon. We're going to base the characters on the faces of real people we've hired. My boss set up a little studio in the back room. My little digital camera has never been treated so professionally. I'm surprised at the quality of the images it takes when you have a tripod and enough light.

When I was in Philadelphia for the Film Festival, we spent one afternoon at a Comic Book shop on South Street. This was mostly so Dana could sign autographs for people, but the rest of us signed as well, even though most people really had no idea who we were. Despite that fact, I did get to meet some really cool people, like a group from "The House."

From what I could tell, "The House" was just a house where these guys lived, only they called it "The House." That made it important, and special, I totally got it, because I used to live in a house with 5 other guys from our Improv Troup. My friend Lucky called the house "Bongo Nacho Supreme," and those were heady, special days. The days before Sean made that great trek across this country, Rene had just gotten a real job, and I didn't even have one. When Z would kill himself trying to keep the place clean, and Koby would visit almost every weekend. The time before we all wanted to strangle each other, those were some of my favorite times... my god the parties. anyway, it was great.

The guys from The House had us sign all kinds of stuff to put up in The House, like a ping pong paddle, and a Whitney Houston album. I liked them so I gave them all clunkyrobot stickers. About 2 weeks ago I got an email from Steff, she had visited this website, she saw some of the handcrafted stuff we've been doing. She'd been doing something similar.

She'd been making Plushies, so she sent me one.

His name is Pillowface, and he is the 4th Plushie SteffBomb has ever made. It's really well made. I was won over by the little details, on the back he has a little hand sewn butthole. In his right hand he carries "detachable food" connected via velcro. It's simple but really cool. I love it. It reminded me of the Ugly Dolls that have become pretty popular, but probably started off the same way. One person hand sewing every single plushie, that's awesome.

SteffBomb says she's trying to get a website together to sell some of these, I'll post that site when it's done, but until then if you are interested in buying one of Steff's hand sewn Plushies email her, she's super nice.

I've agreed to send her a "mystery package" in return that may or may not contain a t-shirt. Now I just need to print the shirt that may or may not be included and send the package.

This morning we got to see a pre-screening of the new Star Wars movie.

It was a reward for Cartoon Network doing such a great job on the Clone Wars cartoon series. We didn't have anything to do with that cartoon, we don't even really work for Cartoon Network. So we were happy just to be invited. Much of Adult Swim was on hand to represent.

Yeah, I'm not going into specifics. But the movie was great. Of course, there was stuff I wanted more of, and some other stuff I wanted less of. But overal I had a great time.

The screening was at 10:00am, when we got there we could already see a grouping of tents and campers amassing. This was the shanty town of the nerdy star wars line geeks, waiting in line for tickets and seats to the first public screening. I felt a little guilty that we got to see the movie 2 full days early while these guys were camping out like real die hard fans. But that feeling passed quickly as we made jokes about how they were "cooking up their Chewbacca shaped pancakes for a forceful breakfast."

Actually... on any given alternative Earth time-line, that would be me making Chewbaccakes in a tent with my smelly friends.

C-Dub finished painting the first of the Tyranid Warriors for our diorama at The 70-30 House in East @L. He hand painted all of these, then used a "dipping" process to give them an added layer of detail. Here they are in their macro photographed glory.

Be sure to check out the whole series of photographs here.

Always look behind bad hotel room art. You never know what you'll find. (via metafilter)

repeat.. we have gravel.

We've been doing a lot of drawing at work lately, so the diorama hasn't been updated very much. I did get a chance to glue wash some fake gravel to the playing board. The whole board now needs to be painted black. Then we'll work on adding the fake grass to the open pathes.

Meanwhile, Casey is still painting miniatures. When the first one gets finished I'll post a photo here.

The History of Sampling by Jesse Kris (via metafilter)

I don't always agree with Roger Ebert's reviews, but when he doesn't like a movie, it always makes for an entertaining review.

"To call "A Lot like Love" dead in the water is an insult to water."

This weekend we went out with our friend Andisheh. Andy is a big fan of Neil Hamburger, and Neil was doing his "routine" at the Earl in East Atlanta.

Neil Hamburger is a comedian who is famous for being famously bad. Really really bad. His jokes are either setups for highly offensive and unfunny punchlines, or they are so unoriginal that you can easily figure out the punchlines before Neil says them. But that's not the point, at least not entirely. Most of the point is in Neil's delivery, which is just as bad as his jokes. Somewhere in between the terrible jokes and the even more terrible delivery the funny happens. Or it's supposed to, or it's not supposed to, or both. Andy says that Journalists looking for easy categorization of Neil will often invoke the "kaufman-esque" label. But that's for convenience sake I think.

Here is a clip, and while this clip doesn't recreate the experience of sitting through an entire set of Neil's "jokes" it may give you an idea of how uncomfortable he can make you.

While Neil was funny by not being funny, I have to admit I was almost out of laughs by the time Neil got on stage... why? Because of Neil's opening act.. The Pleaseeasaur. Who or what is Pleeseasaur?

The Pleaseeauar show consists of one man, two overhead projectors and at least 6 costume changes. It was amazing, it was fast, and it made me laugh out loud the entire time he was on stage.

When we walked into the room Pleaseeasaur was in the middle of his song "You've got the Tough." But he really won our hearts and minds when he sang the seminal song: "Pizza Bros. and Sons Inc." He had one of those rigs that makes it look like there are three people in a line, when really there is only 1 guy in the middle of two stuffed mannequins. Those are the Pizza Bros. and Sons. The song began with the line, "He's from the wrong side of the tracks... and, He's spoiled to the max!"

Other highlights included the song, "Warning: These Cobras are Totally Cool!" which from what I could tell was about a school bus breaking down in the desert and being attacked by cobras wearing sun glasses. And also "Johnson and Johnsonstien" a law firm that will sue for you in a court of law if you get bitten by a stranger's dog, or fall down your friend's stairs.

Check out his tour page, and seriously if he coming to a town near you go see him, you won't regret it.

My bosses recently bought a house in East Atlanta, we've moved our entire operation there. There's a fireplace with a mantle in the "Living Room." It is in this house that we are planning the early stages of our new cartoon. It's shaping up to be a really great cartoon. But like I said, we are still in the planning stages, and until we go into full production mode there are often times when there is not a lot for all of us to do.

Last week my boss sent C-Dub and myself out to various hobby shops to buy, on the company dollar, about $180 worth of Warhammer 40k miniatures... It is our mission, C-Dub and I, to build and paint a diorama for the fireplace mantle. Space Marines on one side, Aliens on the other...

So this is what we've been doing at work for the past 2 days:

The fireplace mantle that will someday be a fully rendered bloody battle scene depicting a futuristic struggle between humanity and an overwhelming alien menace... stay tuned.

I've been building the Space Marine base out of foam core. I've been following a basic "bunker" style of building, as well as adding little details like the comm array which have been stolen from other model kits. This is called "kit bashing" by model making nerds.

C-Dub has been pruning these miniatures from their sprue trees and piecing them together. The next step will be painting them in full detail.