Wow…although I disagree with a lot of cartoon-syndicate man Daryl Cagle’s decisions, I agreed with his recent analysis of the front page of the LA Times. While I didn’t care to take the time to see if his font count is correct, I agreed that the front page looked like a mess, or as I’d like to put it, like a font book threw up on some newsprint.

Today, Cagle linked to a blogger’s dissection of his LA Times analysis (actually, Cagle claims he linked to it on March 20, even though what he’s linking to wasn’t even written until the evening of March 21). The blogger concluded that, while he agrees with the spirit of Cagle’s argument, Cagle was just flat-out using some incorrect information to make his case. And quite significantly, the blogger says

Given the snarky, nit-picky nature of the original critique, I feel it’s not out of line to examine these supposed 22 different fonts with the same diligence.

Well guess how the classy ambassador of his syndicate responded to that.

I’ve gotten reaction to my “Ransom Note” piece on the LA Times (below) from some of our more anal readers (my emphasis) who are graphic artists; they point out that some of the fonts that I have counted are not actually different fonts, but are different members of font families, such as: italic, extra bold, or condensed siblings with the same font surname. Here’s a link to some guy who thinks this is a very important distinction. I say, tell it to the pastor’s sister-in-law with the new Macintosh.

That’s right – in Cagle’s world, depending on things like facts means you’re anal. Pointing out that he’s wrong makes you anal.

I love that he called him anal. Because, you know, Cagle’s not. It’s not like he scanned in a front page, labeled 22 points on that page, wrote a couple hundred words about it and posted it. What the blogger did was so completely different and anal compared to what Cagle did.

And as the blogger so beautifully points out, maybe a guy who’s going to claim that the LA Times is a visual mess resembling a random note…

…shouldn’t run a site that looks like this.

Sometimes it’s just better to admit when you’re wrong.

I overhauled nealo.com (my cartoon site) tonight. I replaced its outdated CuteNews core with WordPress, which I’ve been debating doing for about a year now. The best way I could find to transfer the CuteNews data to WordPress was to do an RSS-import, which doesn’t transfer all of the info, so I still need to go through about another 400 cartoons to recategorize them and fix their broken links.

It should make the site a bit more versatile, and it’s a lot easier to find someone to make a WordPress site pretty for you than it is to depend on yourself to make a CuteNews site worth looking at (I adapted the equiX theme for nealo.com).

Next big project – moving this cheeksofgod.com blog from blogger to WordPress…

From editorial cartoonist Andy Singer, posted at the Cagle Web Log:

Q: What’s the difference between a professional cartoonist and a large pizza?
A: A large pizza can feed a family of four.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here before, but cheeksofgod.com is also home to The Legion of Doom comic blog, where six contributors (four of them regular) review comics and opine on the industry. The blog was started more than a year ago, but it really only hit its stride in the past six months or so. Not to say it wasn’t a good read before, but everyone has been contributing so much content lately that it’s probably averaging 2-3 new posts a day and racking up around 170 unique visitors per day as well.

Wednesdays are new comic book days, and so each Wednesday includes a review of the weekly DC series 52 by contributor Doom Delouise. Thursdays are home to Jean-Claude Van Doom’s Worst to First weekly review. Saturday is when the Book of Doom review is posted. Each week a rotating member of the Legion will choose a new comic (with the selection usually posted Tuesday or Wednesday) and the team reviews it. Mondays are Fin Fang Doom’s Meaningless Awards of the Week and Tuesdays are Jim Doom’s The Doomino Effect.

Scattered throughout that weekly schedule are graphic novel reviews (the Library of Doom), movie reviews (Doom and Doomer) and other commentary on news and trends in comic books. We’ve been getting more attention in the oversaturated comic blog realm, which is hard to do considering pretty much any geek with a comic book and a computer can run a comic blog. And even if you’re not big into comics, it’s usually an entertaining read.

Sara and I are going to Las Vegas this week. We get there Monday evening and leave Wednesday afternoon.

My goal is to eat at In-N-Out 10 times. I will count one “time” as the ordering and consumption of at least one double double. Most “times” will probably consist of a double double, fries and a Diet Coke with no ice, however, if I can only handle a double double and a drink, I’ll still count that as a “time.”

Sitting down to eat, finishing my food, and then walking outside and coming back in to get a drink will not count as a “time” unless I order and consume another double double upon returning.

Eating a 4×4 will not count as two “times.”

My previous best at the over-consumption of In-N-Out was on March 12, 2005 when I ate there three times in one day. This will be a much greater task.

All the editing is done on The Bad Seed. Right now, I’m waiting for a few test clips to render so I can put them on tape and watch them on an actual TV to check on some color correction and other image adjustments.

In the fall of 2003 I pitched this project to Sharon Teo as an independent study. I wrote the script about a month later and cast Joe and Lee. After meeting several times with Joe, Lee and Scott, we started actual production more than a year later in October of 2004. Here’s a blog post I wrote about what was “a milestone in production” back in January 2005. Two years and a month later and I’m finally finishing the thing. It’s funny – in that post I wrote “The Bad Seed will probably be just shy of two years when it is completed.”

Thanks to everybody who has helped – assembling the credits has shown me just how many people are involved in making a no-budget student film.

I’m supposed to be editing right now so instead I ended up looking on YouTube for clips of The KLF (one of my favorite groups of all time).

Here is the video for “What Time is Love,” the White Room version. They’ve done so many different versions of this song I lose count, but this is the UK version of the video.

The videos off the White Room were all very similar. Here are “3 A.M. Eternal,” probably the biggest hit in the US, followed by “Justified and Ancient,” the song that featured Tammy Wynette on vocals.

This is the video for “America, What Time is Love?” yet another version of the aforementioned song.

Here’s a news clip on the Acid Brass project, in which a brass band performed covers of acid house classics. The KLF’s “What Time is Love” is featured in this piece.

Inspired by Acid Brass to create yet another revision of their classic “What Time is Love,” the KLF reformed in 1997 as 2K to release “***K the Millennium,” which includes my favorite church hymn as well as samples from “Theme from Shaft” and “Don’t Take Five.”

Enjoy!

This short film was created by my friend John Thorson, with whom I have collaborated on four pages of a comic entitled “One Man Army” and many other ideas that will never actually be finished (if started). So John made this movie and I wanted to spread the cheer.

One quick warning – there is some strong language in text form, in case that affects when and where you view it.

Hopefully the answer to that is yes, because I just don’t want to wrap my mind around how you could read that question and answer no, but I was just wondering if anyone reads this blog. I don’t mean this from any kind of self-pitiful perspective, because I know I don’t actually update it all that often. I’m just curious. Most of the comments I get are from spammers, and I’m not sure they’re actually taking the time to read the blog. Call it a hunch.

So what I’m asking of you is, if you ever stop by to read this blog, please leave me a comment on this post. You don’t need to identify yourself or make an actual comment, but maybe just say “Hello” or “I occasionally visit” for the purposes of my unofficial census.