THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Last week I managed to not only rough out Act 2 but also Act 3 on show 21.  I spent this week trying to tighten up the roughs on both boards. I managed to finish Act 2, I have yet to finish Act 3.  I’m not sure my revision partner will get to Act 4 and I might end up getting it at the last minute. I hope not. We’ll see.

WEBSITES/COMIC BOOKS/CATHOLICISM

I’m usually not a fan of “Catholic religious comics”. The ones I’ve been exposed to have  really been way too sweet with Saints that are so perfect they might as well be walking icons. They’re so perfect they’re inhuman and the stories are so preachy and contrived, they are completely unrelateable.

If they aren’t that, then they are so serious, humorless and full of suffering that, reading them is like subjecting yourself to torture.

I myself have thought about creating a Religious comic in order to see if it’s possible to create an appealing, compelling, fun and entertaining one. Well, I’m happy to say that I don’t have to do that, because someone already HAS.

Mitchelle D’Souza, a cartoonist currently (as of the time of this writing) living in Canada is working on a Fatima Webcomic, and it’s exactly that.  It’s appealing, compelling, fun, entertaining AND FUNNY. I LOVE it.  It hits all the beats I wanted to see in a Catholic comic.  If I make a Religious comic, I hope it’s half as good as this.  Reading it really made me smile. The characters are human, and full of flaws, which makes  you really feel for them.

It’s a comic that retells the true story of the extraordinary events that happened in Fatima in 1917  to three Shepherd children.  It’s all told through the eyes of the youngest of the three, Jacinta. Her antics are just really fun to read.

Here’s a sample page from the comic:

If you’re Catholic or interested in history, or are really into Fatima. If you want to put a smile on you face to see Jacinta do silly things, you should read this comics.

To read the comic CLICK HERE.

VIDEOS

Have you ever seen two comedian battle over who can do better impersonations over their super fancy lunch?  I love this. They guys are so good.

WARNING: Contains bad language:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nafTdTbfcNc

WRITING

It’s moments like these that I wonder why I decided to go with an action story.  There’s nothing worse than sitting down, knowing you have to write action and not knowing what the heck to write.  Trying not to repeat myself while attempting to write something interesting was a huge pain. Perhaps I was approaching it the wrong way, I don’t know.  All I know is, that this was very difficult for me.   In the end, I think I DID repeat myself a bit.

It’s hard because the point of the fight was not the fight in itself but the outcome of the fight, namely, the prevention of Rob being able to eat his hot dog and the knocking away of the hot dog from Rob. In fact, I kinda started in the second part of the fight before I wrote the first part. I don’t know why. It just seemed like a way to get started.

The entire fight was just a stream of conscientiousness kind of thing. I didn’t know what I would write until I wrote it.  I’m just glad I was able to put something down.

You will notice that the small synopsis below is different than the original I wrote a few weeks earlier. I moved the stepping of the hot dog moment into this act as opposed to next act. I thought it would create a much more climatic low point for act 2.

Scene 6 (Inequity/Projection)

• • Finding himself friendless and trapped, Rob decides to eat his hot dog there and then only one of the monsters causes the hot dog to end up a few feet from him, safely on it’s plate.  The bad guys close in. Ignoring the Sorcerers, Rob goes for his hot dog only to have the Other Male Sorcerer step on it, leaving Rob stunned for a second. They laugh seeing that they’ve won and look forward in anticipation to the glory they will receive. (Act 2 climax).

Outdoor Shopping Area – Day continued

Trapped, friendless and alone, Rob sees there’s no hope for getting away.  The Sorcerers and creatures slowly make their way closer, relishing the situation.  Rob has reached the point of not caring about anything anymore except getting to eat his hot dog.  If they aren’t going to let him leave, and they’re not going to leave him alone to eat his lunch in peace, he might as well eat it in the midst of all the chaos.  He’ll eat as he fights. At least that way, he can get what he wants in the end. It  may not be the most ideal way to eat, but he’ll get to eat.

Rob expresses this out loud to the Sorcerers, and it actually hurts their pride to be taken so lightly by him. Especially considering the situation he’s in.

He grabs his hot dog, opens his mouth and is about to take a bite. Before he can get to it, he ducks under a Winged Ape’s claw.  He quickly climbs over a bench and hides behind a tree putting in between him and the Ape.  He goes for a bite but finds another Ape behind him who tries to smash him with both it’s fists.  Rob moves out of the way and almost drops his hot dog. He then dodges a tree that was hurled at him from an Ape. The plate was hit off of Robs hand and goes flying through the air. 

Rob runs after it and catches it. Before he could catch his breath his looks up to see the Viper Creature’s fanged face lunging at him. He doesn’t have time to leap and he finds himself prying open the Viper Creature’s jaw with one hand and his two feet, while holding on to the plate with his lunch the with his free hand. The Viper Creature begins to fling it’s head around, trying to get Rob  to stop.  Rob tries to hold on to his hot dog while keeping from being smashed.  His strength begins to give out. He could only hope he could let go of the jaws fast enough to not get caught in them.

He let’s go and goes flying through the air. He lands hard on the ground, almost right back where he started in between the creatures and the Sorcerers. The plate gets knocked out of his hand when he lands, flies through the air, bounces and lands safely a few yards away; hot dog miraculously still on the plate. Rob sits up.

Everyone stops to look. They all turn to look at each other for a beat.

Then chaos.

Ice flies toward, Rob who dodges it.  Rob runs toward one Winged Ape. The other Winged Ape slashes at him  but he was using the other Ape to crawl and leap off of.  One Ape slashes the other sending it reeling.  Rob sees  fireballs coming his way, at the same time he sees the Winged Ape that was left standing coming at him. The Viper creature spins around to get at him as well. He heads in the direction of the Viper creature as the fireballs land behind him. The fireballs continue to follow him landing on the Viper creature’s body and it hisses in pain. He heads toward the hot dog, jumping on the viper’s body as it tries to get him off.  Fireballs still hitting it.  The Winged Ape flies up to reach Rob, and Rob leaps off the Viper Creature as a fireball hits the Ape which land in the spot he had just vacated.  The fireball blast sends Rob tumbling to the ground. He looks up and sees his hot dog a feet away. He scrawls to reach it. Right as he about to get it, a foot slams into it and smashes it. The hot dog is nothing but mush and completely uneatable.

Rob looks on shocked. He can’t believe it. After all that. The ONE thing he wanted. The ONE thing that made the intolerable situation he’s in tolerable.  He slowly looks up, his eyes following the foot that had smashed his hopes. The veiled  face of the Other Male Sorcerer stands about him. His shoulders chuckling in amusement. Rob lowers his head in defeat. He gives up. They won.

The Sorcerer mocks Rob, like a bully in a playground. Asking him if he’s going to cry.  The female Sorcerer laughs. The Lead Sorcerer frowns at his colleagues’ childishness. The Other Males Sorcerer, glories in their triumph over Rob, as he announces out loud to the Lead Sorcerer how they will gain honor and prestige from all the other Sorcerers for doing what no others had been able to do before them. The Lead Sorcerer responds, telling the Other Males Sorcerers that even if it’s so, they should at least behave with dignity and have some semblance of honor in their triumph.

The Other Main Sorcerer, tells his boss that he’s giving Rob all the honor he deserves and proceeds to kick Rob in the face.

END OF SCENE

The last kick to the face was just to add insult to injury (or is it, injury to injury?).  At this point in the story, I’m hoping the audience is emotionally ready to see some justice done.

Since I wrote the above, I thought about it a bit, wondering if I could improve it somehow. I’ve decided to leave it that way it is for now BUT it’s not set in stone.  I think if I change it, I will go with another version that I thought up recently.  I was thinking that, instead of the bad guys trying to hurt Rob, they might just be trying to destroy the hot dog deliberately. That would actually change the dynamics of the fight quite a bit and might even make it more interesting to watch.  I’ll think about it some more and decide on what I’m going to do at the storyboard stage.

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