Any Day Now

It turns out I’m having trouble drawing this one.  Here’s a preview, though.

Since Admin doesn’t work Friday he’ll put his silly comic strip out on Thursday night, which means the wee hours of Friday morning.  Oh what amazing trouble will I have gotten into by then?

Hi I’m Thanh Vu and this is my first blog post!  Yeeha!

We got avatars w00t w00t!

Although I should love Halloween– and indeed, it is just about the best non-Holiday there is– it is a constant reminder of unrealized potential.  I tend to be a little ambitious in my ideas and costumes are no exception.  The only problem is that this is an area of my creative universe that I can’t seem to get myself to put a lot of effort into.  I mean everything I wanna do takes so much darn time!

Still, I won’t reveal to you my ideas because one day I’ll get them done.  I think.

Speaking of costumes, what do ya’ll think of this story about America’s Next Top Model?  Tyra Banks apparently thought it would be great to celebrate Hapas– biracial folks that I affectionately refer to as Halflings.  So of course the logical thing to do was make up the girls to appear half-African and stick them in a field.  XD

I’m not sure about the blackface part but I actually like most of these photographs.  Is this not racist because it’s tasteful?  Was Charlie Chan racist?  Were Marlon and Sean Wayans racist for appearing in whiteface and chickface in the movie White Chicks?

I’m not sure, but I feel like blackface stories have been cropping up more and more lately, and even though everytime they do there’s a mini-controversy, the frequency of its appearance must mean that it’s really not that bad anymore, especially when the term blackface now applies to what would more appropriately be called “brownface” rather than the classically racist pure black, white lipped minstrel look of the 19th century.

Of course whenever you say something there has to be a contradictory instance appearing right about now.  Oh look, there it is!  Australians on the featured TV show appeared in classic blackface as the Jackson 5.  Is this racist?  It’s a step closer, in my opinion, if this was actually a good performance then maybe I could think differently, but as Harry Connick Jr put it, we’ve spent so much time trying to “not make black people look like buffoons” and this performance is pretty much all buffoonery.

But here’s something else that bothers me about the Australian story.  While the commenter at the end of the video I linked is in definite agreement with Connick Jr, I can’t help feeling like Connick played the asshole American telling “foreigners” how to do things.  The irony here is that Connick Jr himself has been a part of a blackface act on Fox’s Mad TV.  Furthermore, the featured YouTube commenter spends a decent amount of time talking about “those clueless Australians” as he breathlessly stands up for racial harmony.

Laugh.  Out.  Loud.

Anyway, just had to get that out there.  It’s Halloween.  Go have fun!

Madam Ilham is intended to have an accent and imperfect English, which hopefully explains her unusual grammar.

It’s amazing what the addition of an accent does– not necessarily in comics but in everything, especially movies.  A New England accent makes you sound tough.  A California accent makes you sound like an airhead.  Indian accents make you goofy and an English accent either makes you erudite or evil.  Meanwhile, an Asian accent makes you sound….Chinese.

In my freshman year of college I had a calculus professor with a really thick Norwegian accent.  He pronounced “angle” literally as “angel” and that was about the most decipherable thing he ever spoke.  The class emptied out pretty rapidly and despite knowing I was going to ditch, I showed up for the first few minutes of class anyway.  I’ll never forget one time I was getting out of my seat and walking up the stairs of the amphitheater when I just happened to glance behind myself to see him staring right at me, his eyes sad and moist like a puppy pining for its mother.  I panicked briefly, half wanting to run and half wanting to sit back down.  Eventually I managed to turn away and walk briskly out of the lecture hall, never again returning to the class except to attend exams.

See, now if he only had a smart, English accent then things woulda been just dandy.

I’m not sure when it became tradition that Christmas sweaters should be ugly, but it seems this is a big enough thing for people to have parties about them.  And for whatever reason, white people are fascinated by them.

It occured to me as I drew this strip that sketching Thanh with some chub was vastly entertaining, and in fact I find her rather cute with the belly.  I remember an old study that showed that men’s preferred weight for women was significantly higher than the weight women perceived men to prefer.  You girls just keep that in mind.

On a related subject, Photoshop Disasters recently brought to light an…unusual Ralph Lauren ad featuring a model altered to be grotesquely skinny.  A small hubbub ensued along with an apology, only to be topped off with the firing of the model in question, supposedly because she was overweight.  But wait, it gets better.  On Wednesday, PsD found yet another Ralph Lauren image ’shopped to be ultra thin.  As usual, it’s time to attack the fashion industry and media portrayal of “beauty.”

To me, if girls look to runway models as role models for their health and their careers then I say it’s the price they’ve chosen to pay.  No one’s twisting their arms and these girls aren’t victims.  In today’s world, when we have a clear understanding of the digital falsehoods– from movie special effects to airbrushing to autotuning– that pervade everyday life, there’s simply no excuse.

Ideals are a good thing; they drive us forward and make us ambitious, so it’s okay to admire that size zero model.  Just don’t forget you’re looking at a mirage.

It’s amazing what small things can hold up progress, like drawing certain anatomical features that are not ordinarily visible, and this strip was particularly challenging because of them.  Would you believe that I couldn’t even find the angles that I needed at a foot fetish site?  Ay caramba…

I watched Zombieland on Friday.  It was much better than I expected and overall it was fun and entertaining, but much like other stories of apocalypse and survival, I was left to consider what I would have done had I been in the shoes of these characters, and I can tell you without a doubt that I would’ve murdered this cast of misanthropes at the first opportunity.  There are really only four characters– and I’m sure I’m the only person in the world that feels this way– but three of them needed to die: Wichita and Little Rock simply for revenge but also for being morons, and Columbus for being a whiny, pussy-whipped little bitch.  Okay, I wouldn’t have killed Columbus, but I would’ve kicked him in the face.  The only good character was Tallahassee, played by Woody Harrelson.

If you never watch Zombieland, you should at least try to get a hold of the opening credits, a montage of death and panic displayed entirely in stunning slow motion.  It’s really not a good indicator to the rest of the film, but is pretty darn impressive on its own.

News post pending.

I’d like to thank Natalie Huynh over at Milk Carton for stepping in to make today’s strip extra special with her beautiful colors.  I can’t even stand how cool this looks.  In fact, I just might kill myself trying in vain to ever follow up this act.

Okay, I won’t kill myself, but here’s what I will do, and that’s provide a high-res version of this comic, which you can get by clicking right here.  Thanks again, Natalie.

And as long as I’m recognizing talent in this post, I might as well give another shout out to ADN’s editor, Gerald Pan, who invests a lot of thought into making sure that the comic comes out as a worthwhile piece of material.  If you ever read a strip and thought it was dumb, it’s because Gerald was on vacation.  So thanks, Gerald.

Wow, is it me, or is this starting to sound like an acceptance speech?  Don’t worry, I won’t go much longer.  I’d just like to also thank– wait a minute… Kanye!??!