Umm... Ungh... ONE!

This is exactly how I look when I do a pull-up... except for the onlooker who's all concerned.

No, MY onlookers guffaw. Like, loudly.

Cooking with Braddy: Spinach Artichoke Chicken

You know, if I'm going to keep doing this, maybe I should start taking some food photography classes, cuz my pics usually wind up looking kinda disgusting.

I haven't been cooking much recently, which, I think, has been a mistake.  I've been in kind of a sour mood altogether, due to probably a dozen different factors I don't think I could track down without a spreadsheet.  The act of creation, though, always manages to make me feel better, and cooking is one of the best creative acts I can manage at this point.

Found another recipe on Pinterest a couple of months ago that I really wanted to try.  I've never gotten anything with artichoke hearts outside of a restaurant, and I thought it'd be fun to try at home.  For once, I actually halved the recipe (the original serves 8), so I wound up with a manageable amount of food for leftovers.

The real draw for this dish is, of course, the sauce - cheese, spinach, and artichoke hearts.  It's... it's not bad, but it feels very fragmented, like the different flavors (all delicious) aren't really blended quite right.  I have some sort of resistance to using frozen spinach in my cooking.  I wonder if the added moisture from the frozen spinach would have helped...

Eh, I'm nitpicking.  The recipe was a success, and the chicken's really good.  Plus, artichokes.  Artichokes are delicious.

Big Screen Breakdown: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

These superhero movies are starting to make me antsy, especially the sequels. While Mrvel's films have been consistently pretty good, the number twos in their recent franchises have either been forgettable (Iron Man 2) or just plain bad (Thor: The Dark World). And now, we've got Captain America: The Winter of Our Discontent, an adaptation of what's probably the best CA story since the star-spangled Avenger punched out Hitler. I was super excited, but I worried that the new movie would fall into the same traps as the earlier sequels. Fortunately, that was NOT the case.

• I hope people not as steeped in comic book history can enjoy these movies as much as I do. While it would definitely help to see the first Captain America movie, I doubt it's essential.


• Tonally, this movie's QUITE different from Captain America Número Uno. While the first movie is strongly reminiscent of one of my all-time favorite superhero films, The Rocketeer, The Winter Soldier is far more similar to something like The Bourne Identity. By the way, this is a good thing.


• I know Captain America's the guy whose name is in the title, but The Winter Soldier is almost just as much about Nick Fury and the Black Widow. It's probably the best performance I've ever seen from Sam Jackson, and Scarlett Johansson is just as good as she was in The Avengers.


• The Winter Soldier himself is just as compelling as any villain Marvel's released in the theaters to date. Maybe more so. He's got a personal connection to the hero that makes their final punch out far more than a spectacle. There are deeply intimate stakes beyond just "the world go KABOOM!"


• Can... can Anthony Mackie's Falcon get his own movie? I like that guy!


• Why is Robert Redford in this movie? I mean, he's REALLY GOOD... but he's also Robert Redford. Seems like a strange pick for a superhero film.


• Proof that more characters aren't necessarily bad: I count nine different named characters from the comics. I think fans of Batroc the Leaper might be disappointed, but otherwise, everyone gets just enough screen time and development to make their presence in the movie worthwhile.

• Did I say nine? I meant ten.


• Maybe I'm just getting sensitive in my old age, but the violence in this movie really made me cringe. People die, and since most of the fight sequences are between unarmed characters, the deaths are really personal and sometimes very disturbing. The movie earns its PG-13 rating, folks.


• Best line in the movie: "I do what he does, only slower." I could explain why I love the line so much, but we'd be here all day.


• Verdict: Amurca! AMURRRRRRCA!!!!!

The Host

Dude, I kinda want wings.  Of course, it'd be tough to go through doors...

Just another doodle I put together in a few dull meetings. Oh, and here's another one:

And then here are some more that I pulled over from other sketches and added some detail to digitally.

It's been a while since I posted anything, okay?!

I Want Pudding!

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

Why I'm Still Single 55

Ram Girl Violent

That... that smarts!

I'm really quite happy with this picture. I did the whole thing, beginning to end, on Procreate - the sketching, the background and hatching, even the basic blocking (which I've usually done on paper).  The main difference between this picture and every other I've drawn for scratch on Procreate is the size of the canvas. I cut the canvas in half from its usual size, and I found that gave me much  more control over the shapes I wanted to use.  Good, good happy stuff.

BONUS SKETCH:

BANK!!!

No real story here - just wanted to draw some buildings on the iPad.

Big Screen Breakdown: The Wind Rises

Oh, man, have I been looking forward to this movie for a long time! It's the last film Hayao Miyazaki will ever make (supposedly), and boy was I hoping it'd be good. I'm such a fanboy!

Heck, I got so excited for this film that I actually went whole hog on the movie-going experience and bought me a large soda and popcorn going into the theater.

Big mistake. After two hours, I had to pee... SO... HARD.

But, yeah, there was a movie, too.

• So the plot follows Jiro Horikoshi, the man who designed some of the airplanes Japan used during World War II. Other than a few flights of fancy we see while Jiro is daydreaming or designing, there's very little fantastical going on the film. Basically, there's almost no reason why this story couldn't have been done in a live-action format.


• AND YET... the animation is definitely the films biggest strength. Characters emote in ways that flesh and blood actors can't. The fanciful designs lend a lot of personality to the entire cast.


• Speaking of cast, the voice acting's pretty darn good. Joseph Gordon-Leavitt voices the lead, but you'll also hear John Krasinski, Emily Blunt... heck, even Inigo Montoya's in there!


• To me, the real standouts are the character actors - specifically Martin Short, Stanley Tucci, Werner Herzog, and Mae Whitman.


• Yes, her.


• The film starts off pretty slow, but things pick up right quick once the earthquake hits. Yeah, there's an earthquake, and it's horrifyingly gorgeous how well that scene's animated.


• Tuberculosis is gross.


• There's a LOT to think about in this movie. All Jiro wants to do is create beautiful aircraft, yet the military insists on using his designs for destructive ends, leading almost directly into one of the most horrifying conflicts in human history. The film doesn't moralize for us, but it definitely provides a lot of difficult questions to untangle.


• Oh, and there's a flirting scene with a paper airplane that's just plain GORGEOUS.


• Verdict: Please and thank you.

Question: Why Should I Hate Frozen?

Answer: You shouldn't, because it is awesome and you will also be awesome if you like it.

Also, I would have accepted "Because Olaf is basically awful."

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize that there's a lot to criticize in Frozen. I mean, you can say that you dislike Frozen because you found the plot predictable, or the music was a poor match to the aesthetic, or you thought the women's eyes should REALLY have been smaller than their wrists, or any number of things. Those are all valid criticisms relating to the story itself, its production values, or its character designs - objective criteria that can be evaluated on their own merit and then rewarded with statues of little naked golden men.

What you can't evaluate so objectively is a person's experience watching the film.

I get a little irate every time I see someone comment on the "big gay Frozen" scandal that rocked the internet for about two weeks longer than it really should have. Frozen has a positive message about homosexuality, or it has some gay characters, or it has a ridiculously loud pro-gay radio anthem that's not sung by Lady GaGa, and everyone gets all bent out of shape. Now, I admit that I get bugged over a lot of things, but the thing that bothers me most about "Frozengate" is that this shouldn't even be an issue.

Here's the thing: stories say different things to different people. Frankly, that's the reason I get so fascinated by movies and books and other things. You read a good story, and it'll speak to you in some way. You read that same story ten years later, and you'll get something completely different out of it, depending on where you are in your life at that time. That's why the Bible is full of parables. That's why children tend to take some time learning the Greek myths. That's why people follow Doctor Who like it's a religion and Steven Moffat is the pope/anti-Christ.

So when people condemn Frozen because a lot of people saw a positive gay message in the movie, I sorta flip out. See, how a person reacts to any piece of art is a deeply personal experience. If a group of people have a similar experience, then hooray! They can bond over it. To criticize said group of people because you don't agree with the message they got from a piece of art (or, worse, to criticize the art itself) is a little akin to the exact sort of censorship that smothers imagination.

Two people watch Frozen, and they're likely having two very different experiences. Imagine watching the movie with your friend who is a rabid Disney nerd. They'll freak out over the costumes, the music, and all the pretty princesses. Great. Good. Done. Now watch the same movie again with your other friend, who's studying cinematography. She'll likely pick up on all the camera angles and close-up shots and be really impressed with everything. Again, that's all good. Now pretend that you're watching the movie with a girl friend who's recently had a falling out with her sister...

Changes things, doesn't it?

That's the point. Fiction speaks to us based on where we're at in our lives. So a group of people who have heard all their lives to repress their feelings and hide how they feel are almost certainly going to relate to Elsa and her long white gloves. And there's nothing wrong with that. The same could be said for all those boys who get told not to cry, because that's not what men do. Or the same could be said for... heck, anyone who holds some sort of belief that's not in keeping with majority tradition. They cling to the stuff which speaks to them personally, and that's a perfectly legit reaction to any artistic presentation.

You know who probably would really like Frozen? Cyclops. You know, from the X-Men.

There's one other side of this that really irks me: The most common response I hear from Frozen defenders is to completely deny that any sort of "gay message" is present in the film. The evidence they cite is usually a challenge like, "Ask the children what THEY think." Because Frozen is a cartoon, and cartoons are completely for children, and there are no adults out there who enjoy the movie unless they accidentally stayed awake during the movie while escorting their children to the theater because Frozen is only for the childreniest of children and...

Yeah, that's irrelevant. Let's go ahead and say that Frozen is a cartoon only meant for children (which I don't buy for a second, considering what I know about John Lasseter and Disney animation and all the adult Disney fans I interact with on a daily basis). Child watches the movie, they gravitate to specific characters and ideas. Adult watches the movie, they gravitate to different ideas. Whose experience with the movie is the most "pure"?

They're both consumers of the artistic product. Both are therefore swept up in the artistic process. Both are entitled to their reaction and their opinion, and neither should be devalued for having a different reaction than the other. So the answer to the question is "neither."

Also, I would have accepted "Because Olaf is basically awful." Even though that answer doesn't really match the question.  But flip the syllables in "Olaf" and see what you get.