My love for Chuck Jones and all the amazing things he gave us is no secret. I’ve been involved with the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity since I first entered an art competition they sponsored. I got second place in that contest, and it led to being asked if I’d build a new site for the center, a non-profit organization Chuck founded in 1999 to foster art education.

That was nearly a year ago.

I’m happy to announce, though, that I just launched the new site, and I don’t mind saying it’s pretty cool. Due to the content requirements, we decided early on to build the site in Drupal, an open-source content management system (CMS). This was my first attempt at building a real project with it, so I was pretty excited to learn new stuff as I went.

Some of the noteworthy content on the site is:

• A full filmography listing all the films Chuck worked on. This includes photos, videos, the year it debuted, featured characters and Chuck’s role on the film (director, writer, etc)
• A full character database, cross-linked with the filmography. So in other words, you can view the Character page for Bugs Bunny and see a list of all the films he appeared in (in which Chuck was involved).
• A full calendar of events system
• A hybrid photo/video gallery system
• A blog with comments
• Paypal donations page

So there were a lot of moving parts, when you break it all down. You might wonder why it took a year to complete the site. Well, there were a lot of factors, namely that I had to design and build the entire thing all by myself in my free time. Plus, the folks at the center have had their hands full in the last few months with things like the Chuck Jones Experience in Las Vegas. I think we all wanted it done a long time ago, but things happen.

And even now, the site isn’t really done. There are still rough edges and a lot of tweaks to be made. And I’m continually tuning it to run faster and perform better. But as a one-point-oh release, I think it’s pretty good.

On a personal note, it’s been unbelievably exciting to be working on an official Chuck Jones property. Chuck is one of my artistic idols and my driving motivation has been to make something he would’ve liked. Hopefully I’ve accomplished that. If not, I can only hope I get another opportunity to try again.

I also wanted to give a huge thanks to Craig Kausen, Chuck’s grandson and manager of the project. I truly think Chuck’s spirit lives on in him, and talking to him for five minutes, you can’t help but get super excited to be part of the team. Also big thanks to Robert Patrick (no, not the Terminator guy), director of marketing for the Center and Linda Jones Enterprises. Robert is the man behind the content and has been feverishly working to make sure the site gets populated with good stuff. I’d also like to thank the board for agreeing to hire me for the project, and not getting too impatient. (Note: I must admit, when I saw the list of board members and saw names like John Lasseter, I got heart palpitations. Just that many more people that would be viewing my work that I couldn’t let down. No pressure whatsoever)

I also am planning a much more in-depth article talking about how I built the site with Drupal 7 and how it all went together. So for the geeks among you, look for that soon.

Next up, another painting for the Red Dot Auction!

At some point, I’ll probably do more in-depth reviews of some of the current crop of shows, but I thought I’d share this tidbit. The other night I was clicking around and landed on “My Ghost Story” on the Biography channel. It didn’t seem too compelling to me. A couple people were investigating an old lighthouse, supposedly haunted by the ghost of a little boy and…a cat.

They did some EVP work (electronic voice phenomena), where they set up a recorder and record ambient noise as they ask the “spirits” questions. Usually, any sounds captured are just gibberish, or are so vague you could twist it to make it sound like anything. In this case, they captured what actually does clearly sound like a cat meowing. Whether it was a ghost cat or just a neighborhood stray remains to be seen, but I’ll concede it sounded like a cat.

Now, one common technique on these shows is to show a faux computer screen with the audio waveforms of the sound, and a caption at the bottom with the words the investigators think were said by the ghost. It really reinforces their power of suggestion. In this case, even though we clearly hear a cat, the editor still thought it necessary to spell out the word “Meow” on the screen.

I don’t know why, but this struck me so damn funny. Just me? Okay, fine.

Click here to jump to the point in the show where they make this amazing discovery.

1. There is no such thing as strategy

When you first start playing a Call of Duty game, you might be tempted to try to be strategic, or otherwise use your brain. Forget it. Anything clever you may think about doing is immediately nullified by every other asshole on the map running their crazy asses off. Some players have memorized certain patterns based on where enemies are likely to spawn. Others are just like rabid, headless chickens. Either way, the second you start to think in this game, you’re getting popped.

2. Stop for more than 3 seconds and you’re dead

Related to the item above, most of the time you’ll be playing against people running like maniacs. The way the maps are designed, there’s almost nowhere you’re not vulnerable from behind, so you’ve got to keep moving. Hold still for more than a couple seconds and you’re sure to get shanked. The real downside is that eventually you’ll have to resort to adopting their style of gameplay to survive.

3. When given a choice of directions to go, you’ll always pick the wrong one

This one never fails. When entering/exiting a building, cave, tunnel, etc and faced with going left or right, more often than not, you’re going to make the wrong decision. Check the radar on your mini-map, listen for the direction of gunfire, watch for shadows and check the phase of the moon, but when you walk out that door, you’re getting it in the back.

4. If you run up against someone sporting gold-plated guns, get the hell outta there

This is the sign of someone that’s played WAY too much of this game. They’ve Prestiged (hit the level cap and started over), multiple times and earned gold-plated weapons. When you see one or more players using these against you, it’s best to just pack it in and join a new game.

5. “Matchmaking” is a myth

Again, related to the above, forget about anything resembling matchmaking. In any normal universe, this would mean that you’re put into matches with other players based on everyone’s “skill” level. But that’s not the way it works. I’m not really sure what kind of algorithm they actually use, but I’m pretty sure my two-year-old could come up with something better. I’m routinely thrust into matches where I’m going up against players at double my XP level.

6. You will be called “bitch” or “fag” at least once per session

Pardon my French on this one, but it’s the reality of playing violent multiplayer games against white, 12-year-old gangsta wannabes that have been playing this game for 36 hours straight in their grandma’s basement.

7. Knives will always trump bullets

If there’s one thing to know about Call of Duty gameplay, it is this. You can unload an entire clip in a guy’s face, but if he can get to you with the tip of his knife, you’re toast. Nothing is more frustrating that rounding a corner, coming face-to-face with an opponent, and before you can squeeze the trigger, you’re taken out by a slash of the knife. To add insult to injury, as you watch the “kill-cam” replay, you see that he barely even made contact. In fact, he probably was facing a totally different direction. Want to get kills? Get really good at knifing. Unfortunately, that’s something I never think fast enough to do…until it’s too late.

So there you have it. 7 things that piss me off about these games. There are many more I’m sure, but I think the real issue here is how I’m consistently drawn back to something that frustrates the shit out of me day in and day out.

Maybe there’s some kind of pill I can take.

I’ve been playing first-person shooter games for quite a long time. I remember scoring a copy of Wolfenstein 3D on a 5.25″ floppy disk at a local computer store and playing the hell out of it. From there, I went on to Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake and countless variations and rip-offs, such as Heretic.

However, once games started going the way of Unreal Tournament and Quake Arena, I started getting turned off. These games were less about thinking than just running at top speed around memorized maps, fragging noobs with rocket launchers. At one point I also tried getting into Counter-Strike, but was just rubbish at it.

So for a long time, I stayed away from multiplayer shooters and opted for single-player experiences, even with games that had multiplayer modes.

Right around when Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out, I decided to get into multiplayer matches and ended up getting hooked. I bought every other game that came out: World at War, Modern Warfare 2, and Black Ops. The latter I got on launch day and with maybe one or two exceptions, it hasn’t left my Xbox disc tray for about a year. And I’ve never once played the single-player campaign.

So naturally, I’ve been excited to get my hands on Modern Warfare 3. I’d seen the trailers and teasers but would’ve still bought it sight-unseen. I pre-ordered it from Amazon, so it showed up at the house on launch day. That night, I played for maybe 3 hours, which is more time than I rarely get to game in a single sitting.

Almost immediately, something felt…wrong. Right off the bat, it was obvious no attempt had been made to fix matchmaking, if there even existed a matchmaking component to begin with. My first match, I was thrown into a lobby with level-30 players, who had obviously bought the game at midnight and been playing it non-stop.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the typical opponent still just runs his ass off like a crazy person around the map in memorized patterns. But in MW3, it seems even worse than ever before. Again, I can’t quite put my finger on why this seems so pronounced in this incarnation, but at least a few times I truly wanted to throw the controller, or at the very least, take the disc out and put it away for a long time.

Another annoyance is that the money-based upgrade system from Black Ops was not carried over. At first it seemed strange in Black Ops, but it ultimately meant that you could buy what you wanted, in the order you wanted it. Sure, you had to wait for some things to be unlocked at certain XP levels, but it seemed like a good system. Now, in MW3, they’re back to the old “level up” system, where you have to keep moving up the XP ladder to get the next best weapon or perk. So it was frustrating to immediately get into games where opponents had “bouncing betty” mines and personal radars already, and I’d be hours away from having the points to even counteract them. And so far, I’ve gotten my ass shot off a lot by guys camping with those stupid personal radars (blatantly ripped off from the movie Aliens, by the way).

And speaking of leveling, you even level up weapons now. Where in Black Ops, you could fairly quickly buy a red-dot sight for a gun, in MW3, you have to level up that gun enough to unlock it. Again, I think the money system in Black Ops is superior, in that you can focus on collecting enough cash to get the attachment you really want.

Oh, and did I mention “quickscoping” was back? Yeah, that too.

If you’re a quickscoper, I fucking hate you.

Modern Warfare 3 does have a few unique multiplayer modes, like “Kill Confirmed”, where you collect dog tags from fallen enemies, giving your team extra points. And there’s the usual stuff like Domination and Headquarters, which I never really got into because they’re magnets for camping snipers. I was also hopeful that add-ons like the Call of Duty Elite service and Facebook integration would add some new, interesting aspect. But so far, I’ve yet to see much integration at all. And the Elite app is a completely separate app you can’t access within the main game.

I’ve been lamenting this to people for a few days, and recently talked to a co-worker (a hard-core COD player) that was telling me he’d opted to go with Battlefield 3 instead of buying MW3. The more he described it, the more I started to think I should give it a try. It definitely sounds like it’s slower paced, and is less rewarding to the run-and-gun, quick-draw players.

I’m going to give MW3 a little more time, but I can’t help but think I’ll be making a switch very soon.

The site is kind of a grab bag of Halloween pop culture including clips from sitcoms, old commercials, movies, games and cartoons. There are some great haunting-related clips from old shows like That’s Incredible, including a couple about Amityville.

The site is all kinds of nostalgia for a guy like me, born in the early 70′s. The author has only posted twice in 2011, but there are tons of great posts in the archives.

(ps: not responsible for many lost hours on this site)

Check out the pics to see all the little details.

Remember that show from the late 70′s, early 80′s called That’s Incredible? For those of you young’uns, it was a weekly show hosted by John Davidson, Fran Tarkenton and Cathy Lee Crosby. In the vein of Ripley’s Believe it or Not or Real People (remember that one?), it had various segments of people doing amazing things or wild stunts. In fact, the show pretty much pioneered the use of the phrase “Don’t try this at home”.

For some reason they also focused a lot on unexplainable phenomenon (bigfoot, etc), as well as the paranormal. I was about 8 years old when the show started airing and remember watching it religiously with my family. To this day, I vividly remember watching one segment in particular. It was about a Toys ‘R Us store in California that was supposedly haunted.

As a boy, I was really drawn in by shows and stories about ghosts and haunted houses. But I was also susceptible to nightmares, as it turns out. I also recall running screaming from the living room one day, babbling to my mother that I’d just seen a ghost…on tv. It was the Brady Bunch where the boys try to scare the girls with a fake ghost. Yeah, I was a cool customer.

Again, no idea why I remember this one episode of That’s Incredible but I do remember that night I had bad enough dreams to fall out of bed. Not sure what made me think about this again, but I was pleasantly surprised to actually find a clip from that episode about the haunted store. Other shows have since featured this same location, but I think this would’ve been the first.

Oh, and this also is probably an early TV appearance of Sylvia Brown, made famous in recent years by her psychic dog and pony shows on Montel Williams. The haunted store is still an interesting story, but it’s rendered much less credible by her very presence.

Remember when I said earlier that there just weren’t many good supernatural horror movies being made? Well, there are a few exceptions, one of which is the 2007 masterpiece, The Orphanage.

It’s the story of a young couple who move into an old orphanage with their adopted son, Simon. It’s the same orphanage the woman lived in as a child, the same orphanage she plans to reopen as a home for disabled kids. Early on, Simon makes friends with an imaginary boy named Tomas. During a party, Simon suddenly disappears and she actually sees Tomas with her own eyes, a chilling figure with a burlap sack mask.

As the months go by, convinced her son is still alive, she calls in mediums and paranormal investigators to find clues to her son’s disappearance. Little by little, she learns of the orphanage’s history and the truth about the boy Tomas.

This film is incredibly creepy and moves along at slow, steady pace. There are no axe murderers, no elaborate torture puzzles to solve. Just an intense buildup to an ending that’s not only frightening, but heart-wrenchingly sad. I won’t drop any spoilers here, but this definitely lives on my list of must-see ghost stories. Wanna know how scary it is? I watched this for the first time on a plane. Surrounded by people. In the middle of the day. And it still scared me.

Oh and did I mention it’s a Spanish production, with English subtitles? I know a lot of people are immediately put off by that, but honestly after a while you really don’t seem to notice. And while the dialogue is well-written, it’s not a particularly verbose film. It was produced by Guillermo del Toro, whose attachment helped secure a larger budget.

Unfortunately, New Line Cinema has secured the rights to make an American version. Seems studios still believe that U.S. audiences are too stupid or impatient to watch foreign films. I just hope The Orphanage doesn’t go the way of The Grudge or The Ring.

Today’s post is about a book and a movie by the same name. In 1972 (a good year, indeed), Ray Bradbury wrote the novel, The Halloween Tree. It told the story of a group of boys who set out for trick-or-treating, only to find that the leader of their group has been spirited away by mysterious forces. With the guidance of a shadowy old man named Mr. Moundshroud, they pursue their friend across different time periods, where they learn the true origins of the holiday known as Halloween.

In 1993, the book was made into a feature-length TV movie starring Leonard Nimoy as Moundshroud. Ray Bradbury himself provided the narration and won an Emmy for the screenplay. I must confess that I’ve only seen the animated movie, but after recently reading another of Bradbury’s books, Something Wicked This Way Comes, I’m looking forward to giving The Halloween Tree a read.

The cartoon itself isn’t anything technically groundbreaking, the animation is actually quite basic as you might expect from a made-for-tv venture. But it’s made up for by Nimoy’s performance and by the absolutely perfect narration by Bradbury, who has an uncanny gift for painting nostalgic pictures of small-town America.

While the movie might be a little too intense for younger kids, I think it’s a good mix of entertainment and education. The characters learn all about customs all over the world, with visits to Egypt, Ireland, the cathedral at Notre Dame and Mexico, where they learn about the Day of the Dead.

Unfortunately, it looks like the DVD might be hard to find at the moment, but I’ve heard they play it on Cartoon Network at Halloween, so keep your eyes peeled. Meantime, you can pick up the book cheap on Amazon.

As a side note, according to Wikipedia, The Halloween Tree originated as a collaboration between Ray Bradbury and Chuck Jones. Too bad that project didn’t turn out; would’ve been great to see what Chuck would have done with it.

I’d love to try something like this on a smaller scale, but I’m pretty sure I can guarantee a lawsuit from our H.O.A.

PS: Don’t get me started on H.O.A.’s.