Train not pictured. My niece is the one on the left. The version I sent to her has a happy birthday message up top.

© Brock Rizy 2010

Karaoke is over. Nobody is singing because they’re too drunk to work the machine. It is sincerely amazing that they had “Somebody Farted” by Bobby Jimmy and the Critters. People bitch because I don’t sing, but they never have songs that I know. Me and my two best dame friends woulda tore the club a new earhole if they had “Keep It Goin’ Louder” by Major Lazer featuring Nina Skye, because I do an uncanny impression of autotune. Our private room is strewn with emptied Soju bottles and shattered affections. We have one of those in-bred circles of friends that you couldn’t bring a member of the opposite sex to without causing at least a little disappointment, if not full-fledged heartbrokenness. Don’t fuckin’ fret. Those shards would be swept into the bin on the way to the next friend in the circle by next month, if not next week. Jimmy brought Giselle (Jizzelle), so Tina is outdoors smoking a cigarette to stave off panic and keep them out of her eye line for, like, five minutes. She’s thinking desperate thoughts like, “If I don’t mean everything to you, then I might as well mean nothing.” Poor Tina.

I am drunk and wearing my cock on my sleeve, so I address Janelle, the tall blonde with the most beautiful backside I’ve ever ogled. What I like most about her is that when presented with a complimentary rhetorical question, she answers it honestly. “Janelle, you’re smart, you’re funny, you get hotter with age, and not in a desperate housewives kind of way. Why don’t you have a husband?”

“Because I’m smart.”

Her tone of voice lets me down, but not easy. In case you’re wondering, the woman with the best ass on Earth does ride the bus. #sexist She should have an insurance plan for those pistons.

Then I overhear Brock, the author of this bullshit, speaking on the other side of the karaoke room. He doesn’t know how to modulate the volume of his voice, so I have to listen carefully. He says, “You can’t mock the overeager audiences of Inside The Actors Studio. You’ve never been starstruck? I remember how I felt when I saw Connie Britton that time in Whole Foods downtown Austin. She wasn’t even answering James Lipton’s questions, she was buying god knows what in her sweats, with no make-up, and that shit still made my day.”

Which is the eightieth time he’s mentioned seeing Connie Britton in Whole Foods. She must give him a huge boner.

I am up for it and Janelle isn’t, so I turn my eye to raven-haired beauty single mother Linda, put my arm around her shoulder and give her an affectionate squeeze. I knew she’d always wanted to fuck me, so I figure I might as well give her what she wants once in her life. Guess tonight’s the night. She’ll get over it when we don’t get together afterward. She’ll have to, or she’ll have to leave the group, and none of us are ready to go.

I was wrong, it isn’t over. When did Tina get back? She starts singing.

Oh, are you fucking serious? They have “Banana Phone,” but they don’t have “Novocaine For The Soul?!” Fuck this karaoke joint. If we’d gone to a better karaoke bar, Janelle prob’ly woulda gone for it, and fell a mighty boner.

Even with all of these choices, I still mixed and matched.

© Brock Rizy 2010

Brock says: Steven New thought up a character he calls the Rescue Raptor. Before he moved to Korea, Kevin and I collaborated on this short comic combining his character with a parody of an old favorite cartoon, to include in a personalized gift mini-comic.

The real Rescue Raptor:

© Steven New, Brock Rizy, and Kevin C. Neece 2010

The crickets were loud that summer.

The crickets were loud that summer. So was my talking dog when he was telling me to do things, and the sounds of the sins of the young people porking in parked cars got pretty loud, too. Their iniquities rang like a tuning fork struck against a lucite encased countertop. It was a pitch that only my dog could hear. I’d like to tune and fork some young dame, but I’d never hear the end of it from that mutt. “Why do you feel the need to bring her back here?” It’s got to constantly nag me to scrub the toilet so it can drink clean water, and to buy the kibble that comes with the bits, instead of kibble just. It’s got to remind me that I’m only one more late rent payment away from living under the hobo troll bridge at Belmont and 94. It’s got two collars, one for taking walks and another for lazing. I’d take him to the shelter but I don’t want him telling his next owner my PIN. I hate it when people say “PIN number,” because the number is already contained in the acronym. Just say PIN. And don’t call it PI number, because we’ll think you mean 3.141593, etcetera, and so on. PIN. Pi is not my PIN.

I’d feel more like a master if this dog was mute. He’s at least as smart as that brain gremlin in Gremlins 2: The New Batch, but he can’t turn a door knob. That unfortunate combination of high intelligence and low dexterity makes for an unhappy pooch, which means I never hear the end of anything. My dog was loud that summer, but the crickets were louder. They kept telling me that it was my turn to invade Iraq.

Keep an eye out for “Swamp Chicken and the Nadir of the North Koreans,” “Pyrotechnic Porno Babies Put Afghanistan On Its Ass,” and “Emily Edison Racists the Ethnic Stereotypes.” Coming soon!

I know. You say, “But BEEow dot com,” using the full name so formally, “America isn’t at war with North Korea!” To you I say, stop shouting. After we figure out we can’t win in Afghanistan and withdraw, we’re going to need somebody to shoot at. Voters will be so sick of hearing about war in the Middle East, that we’ll leave Iran on the back-burner and deploy to the Pacific. Enjoy this preview of rough storyboards from the Swamp Chicken short. One continuous shot:

While on his way to arm himself, Swamp Chicken encounters animals who don’t look like him and offers derogatory remarks related directly to their species. Though it may appear to be a friendly, interspecific wave in the third row, it is actually a rude gesture. Swamp Chicken can be such a sass-hole, but it’s totally justified during wartime. This lone animator’s process is still experimental, so god only knows when we’ll see the first short. More to come!

The cheerleaders were too spirited, the band girls were too brassy, the theatre girls hogged the spotlight, the 4H girls hogged the hogs, and the anime club girls were too withdrawn. Them soccer broads could kick my ass, the student council dames could kiss it. The color guard girls were, well, they just weren’t hot enough to make the cheerleader squad. The science chicks were too controlled, and the math ladies wouldn’t let me divide their legs. The English skirts were too pro-noun and anti-verb, and I was looking to make sweet verbs. Maybe I was being too picky. On the swim team, Valerie looked good to me, in spite of her slight frog eyes. Heather was an amazon, with the body of a goddess, but taller than me, so I don’t know if I can reach around her to unfasten her bodice. When he who has eyes to see, sees sweet, Southern Baptist Alexis it will transfigure his day, but those religious girls are too marriage-minded.

It’s my own fault if I die alone.

Kevin Neece, voice actor (and old friend), will be providing dialogue for upcoming animated shorts. As an exercise, I animated three raw clips that he improvised for his voice-acting demo. Each character is animated from a single sketch.  They’re colored, then divided up into parts in Illustrator and moved using the Flash animation tools.

The Vimeo upload appears to knock the audio slightly out of synch, though I can’t be sure it isn’t just the playback on my own machine.  Also available on Youtube.