Today I just had to make fun of InuYasha fans, specifically. But to be fair, I had to throw in a reference to DragonBall Z as well. Why single these series out? Experience shows me that most people who are fans of these "animations" have severe mental problems. I use the word "animation" lightly because there is nothing animated about any of these programs. InuYasha is basically a bunch of still images with mouths animated onto them, with intermittent speed lines thrown in to create the illusion of actual movement. But what truly makes these shows special are the diehard fans.

One day my brother and I were standing in line at the Sam Goody, waiting for the non-english speaking cashier to ring up another teenybopper's Britney album, and my eye caught sight of the bargain bin, filled with InuYasha memorabilia; posters, figures, and even a bunch of the DVDs. This prompted a discussion between my brother and myself about the overall quality of the series. You see, during my brief employment at DC Comics in their CMX Manga department, I had to do tons of research on not only series, but of authors and their related works. Rumiko Takahashi is probably one of the most famous and wealthy comic artists in Japan. Unfortunately, every character in her works seem to oscillate between "angsty love-smitten depression" and "angry". There is no middle ground EVER. So keeping in mind the overall poor quality of the show from not only an animation and story viewpoint, but also from a FUCKING HORRIBLE VOICE ACTING side as well. Every episode comprises of two characters shouting each other's names in 2-frames per second mouth animations. Back to the story, the overall conversation ends with me saying "InuYasha anything is a bad idea."

Apparently, this discussion didn't settle well with the people in front of us. So the lady WITH SUBTLETY says to her friend in a loud voice, "Gee, I didn't know we had a couple THESPIANS in our line." Now, normally I would have called her on her use of the word "thespian", which boggles me to this day as to what she believed it meant. However, after seeing that she was a typical InuYasha fan, I realized that God had punished her more than enough. She was short, fat, had a face that her mother probably didn't even love, thick glasses, a pentagram on a string, and she was wearing one of those black shirts that has the wolves in the snow in the forest at night because that is so spiritual and natural and it shows how in tune with nature you are despite living in suburban California. The hardest part was not laughing in her face.

Tom Cruise needs to shut the fuck up. It's amazing that people give so much credence to celebrities. Really, we should stop asking these people about their opinion on shit and instead ask the experts. Julia Roberts does not know shit about deficit spending, nor does Britney Spears have a clue about the moral issues facing China. Stop asking them, they're actors.

However, this isn't stopping the Scientology nut from proclaiming himself an expert in all things mental. (Surprisingly, if he did know so much about human psychology, he wouldn't be a part of the "church" of Scientology to begin with. Stuff like that is in the same veign as Jim Jones and Heaven's Gate according to psych textbooks.) He also isn't making a good case for himself after jumping all over Oprah on national TV, as well as denouncing Brooke Shields and all people who need medication to help their clinical depression. So then Cruise goes on the "Today" show, and attacks Matt Lauer on the issues of psychiatric medicine as opposed to talking about something he knows about, like... gee, I dunno...HIS GODDAMN MOVIE.

"You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do."

Yeah, Tom, you are a psychiatric expert. That's why you're jumping up and down like a fuckin' maniac on speed, making an ass of yourself and pissing off the director of your movie because you're spending you time lambasting a large percentage of the US population with your insanity rather than promoting the film. Maybe he needs Ritalin. But wait, he can't take Ritalin, as he attacks Matt Lauer again, who was trying to bring up the point that he personally knew people who were helped by the drug.

"Matt, Matt, you don't even--you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, OK. That's what I've done."

Yeah, Tom. You've read scientific papers on actual university testing. It's scientific, just like Scientology. No, wait, it's NOT LIKE SCIENTOLOGY, YOU DUMB FUCK. Look, nobody is going to believe you. They've seen your shitty movies, and there is nothing leading any of us to believe that you ever graduated preschool. Seriously, have you SEEN Mission Impossible 2? Again, you're hardly making a good case for yourself.

Tom, and all you goddamn celebrities out there: SHUT UP. Nobody cares. You're actors, not experts. Shut up and let experts talk, because they know what they're doing. You are just a bunch of shmoes who happen to be in movies, that's it. Grow up out of your stupid little high-school construct you guys have created and get a life.

And to the American public: Stop caring about these people and what they have to say. Maybe if they realized that their opinion doesn't matter any more than anyone else's, they'd stop trying. Stop reading People and pick up the New York Times. Your brain will thank you for it.

Alright, today I must once again consult Wikipedia for some fun and interesting material about my current target in today's strip "And So Nobody Cared". Today's source of satire is David Blaine. Many people remember Blaine for his famous stunts of "staying alive in a box of some sort". The most famous of these is the time he was suspended in a glass box over London. What made this such a special event was not the fact that he survived 44 days only on water in a glass box suspended up in the sky, but the ways in which people attempted to aggravate him during his trick.

Newspapers reported that eggs, lemons, sausages, bacon, water bottles, beer cans, paint-filled balloons and golf balls had all been thrown at the box. One man was arrested for climbing the scaffolding supporting Blaine's box and attempting to cut the power and water supply to the box.

I can't believe someone took the effort to actually climb up on a tower just to do that. And as if this wasn't enough, some other people got a little more creative.

A hamburger was flown round the box by radio-controlled model helicopter.

Going to these sorts of lengths takes a special kind of deranged human being. As if tossing food at him wasn't enough, they have to find new technology to DANGLE food in front of him. This type of asshollery is an art and by george do the Londonders have it mastered. For as much of a douchebag as David Blaine is, these people really knew how to return it in kind.

However, I find it funny that he could be dead in a box in the middle of a high school quad for 5 months, and nobody would even do anything. Am I the only one to find this sort of callousness hilarious? Probably.

Right now it's really late, so I think I'll post my daily "bitch subject" tomorrow.

I hope people remember who Lorena Bobbit is, because I referenced her in today's comic "Made by Mattel". Lorena Bobbit is a woman who became a news sensation for castrating her husband. Thanks to the magic of the internet, and wikipedia, a seemingly limitless spew of information can be found on the subject.

On the night of June 23, 1993, Bobbitt cut several inches off her husband's sex organ with a kitchen knife as he lay sleeping in their Manassas, Virginia, home. She then drove off with the severed appendage and flung it out her car window. Police performed a diligent search and located it, and it was then surgically reattached.

The sad thing is, this isn't the most disturbing aspect of the entire affair.

John also faced charges stemming from accusations of assault against Lorena. He was acquitted of a charge of marital sexual assault in September of 1993. After his reattachment surgery, Bobbitt briefly became a porn star, appearing in the movies Frankenpenis and John Wayne Bobbitt … Uncut, in part to finance the operation which reattached his member. In "Frankenpenis," Bobbit played a character who was made with spare parts, much like "Frankenstein" whose penis unexplicably comes off during a rousing session of intercourse. Bobbit then moans, "oh no, not again." Siskel and Ebert gave the movie two thumbs up.

I guess this just goes to show the overall tastelessness of America at large. Did some porn director just walk up to him as he was recovering in the hospital, saying "Yo, Johnny, baby! I heard about your accident and I just thought right away, 'this man has a career in porn!'" I guess there's a market for a guy who had is FUCKING PENIS CUT OFF. Who in the hell gets aroused by that crap? It sounds like a bad 80's sitcom replete with a retarded catch phrase "oh no, not again". But that's not the most disturbing part. Why in the hell were Siskel and Ebert reviewing a movie called "Frankenpenis"? The only reason I can think of is that they felt compelled to mention this national-scale shame because of John Bobbit's status as a pseudo-celebrity.

Well on to other matters...

Williams Street must be stopped. Someone needs to tell them that they're not funny, for their own good. After watching 12oz Mouse last Sunday, I started to question my own sanity. "No, a TV network would never knowingly broadcast a show of such poor quality. I know some shows are bad, but nothing this apocalyptically terrible! NEVER! WHY GOD?! WHYYYYY?!" Hell, even Aquateen Hungerforce has its moments, but this was 15 minutes of an awkward pause. They took the time and energy to produce a show out of bad art that appears to have been drawn on a bar napkin, and then apply written dialogue so devoid of humor that Rugrats is witty in comparison. Seriously, just because Home Movies got some humor from the awkward situations of everday life doesn't mean you can too. The entire thing reads like an inside joke, and you can be sure that the guys at the offices were laughing their asses off, completely unaware of the fact that nobody outside that room (who isn't on drugs) will be amused. All of the awkward pauses are just an excuse for being lazy with your writing and animation, which seems pretty damn effortless to begin with. My god, this show is even worse than Tom Goes to the Mayor. I never thought it would be possible.

Do us a favor and stick with showing episodes of Family Guy and Futurama, because they know what the hell they're doing and they're prettymuch entirely responsible for your success. If you want to sink your funding into original programs, at least invest is something good like Robot Chicken and the Venture Bros. Because those at least require effort.

In today's comic: "International House of Bullcrap", I not only made fun of the insanity of "holy manifestation", but also referenced an older program called "The Carol Burnett Show". It's quite surprising how few people in my generation remember this one, and it's quite a shame. This program was made back when variety shows were actually funny. The improv work of Harvey Korman and Tim Conway were top-notch and it was actually entertaining in that "I don't want to take a bath with an electrical toaster after watching this show" sort of way. See, we don't have anything like that anymore. No, instead we get shit like Saturday Night Live and MadTV. While I will have to admit that I enjoy MadTV more than SNL, it's the equivalent of saying that I'd rather freeze to death and suffer the sleepy demise of hypothermia, rather than burning alive under the hot sun in the desert. Watching an episode of SNL these days is like watching a corpse of a former great star being manipulated on stage by a retarded puppetmaster who had too many people tell him that he was funny. You know, like those Dirt Devil commercials with Fred Astaire dancing post-mortem in the most shameful display of marketing ever conceived. Saturday Night Live sustains itself on nostalgia for the time that it used to be amusing. It was the time back in the days when we had the first George Bush in office, back when the show didn't have the luxury on riding the success of the past, puttering across the finish line. MadTV at least has the balls to be edgy without being completely stupid. (Note the use of the word "completely".)

Let me ask this question: Has Jimmy Fallon ever been funny? Seriously, Family Guy really pegged him well in that episode a couple weeks ago. When you're acting on a TV show, or in a movie, DON'T LOOK AT THE FUCKING CAMERA, YOU RETARD! And don't laugh at your own goddamn jokes, it makes you look like a tool. It's nice to know he moved on to the next level of most post-SNL actors: failing at a serious acting career in Hollywood. If "Taxi" is any indication of his abilities to choose a script and act it out, I'm pretty sure he'll be running back to the "small pond" mediocrity of the SNL stage very soon.

What the hell has happened to "Weekend Update"? Come on, Norm and Colin did better jobs than the current shit we see now. If I wanted to see someone mock the current news, I'd watch The Daily Show, where it's funny, insightful, and current. Guys, you get a whole week to write a joke. Don't you think that with a whole week you could do a better job than John Stewart, who only gets less than a day and still manages to be hilarious? Seriously, Penny Arcade is more current that you guys, and they only cover video games.

Didn't Saturday night used to be a great night for television? Now I find myself wasting my time on Cartoon Network with their anime bullshit, or Comedy Central, or Nicktoons Network where I can map out specifically where Nickelodeon became the depressing, empty husk of a network that it is today. Even better, I can always switch over to Court TV and watch people get murdered for an entire evening.

I guess all I can say is this. Please, Mrs. Burnett. Please come back to television. We miss you. We miss you and Harvey Korman and Tim Conway and Vicki Lawrence and all the other people my generation can't be bothered to remember. I'd even welcome you guys back if you were potatoes.

Welcome to the "Go For It! Productions" Blog. Here's the place to see the behind-the-scenes world of "Go For It!" and various other future productions. For the most part, this is the place for all the extra notes for the comics and various rants on subjects that feel pertinent and/or amusing (yet not long enough to be a rant on the main page). Read, enjoy, and comment if you please!