By The end of our summer hiatus is fast approaching. Soon Jeremy will be firing up his pencil (he literally draws with his pencil on fire, it is really quite amazing) and I’ll be booting up Photoshop on my new super laptop purchased from the cold, sterile, crowded environment of the Apple store. Honestly, the Apple store is one of the most unpleasant retail outlets to shop in, although I love that employees use their phones to do everything from checking stock to ringing through your purchase.
So as September 4th draws near (I originally posted the 3rd on Twitter, but that’s a holiday, so that ain’t happening) you might be wondering “what have the guys from Inglorious Hipsters been doing all summer?” Or more likely you aren’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the theaters this summer watching a series of mediocre, forgettable films. Summer blockbuster season has become increasingly disappointing over the last few years, I think most would agree. The Hollywood machines has churned out a lot of bad movies during the summer months, but something happened this year that was even worse that a string crappy films. Instead of leaving the theater thinking “god, that was a piece of garbage” I often exited this summer thinking “meh.”
A bad film can at least spark conversation, get a debate going about the downward spiral of the movie industry at least. But films like Snow White and the Huntsman, The Amazing Spider-man, Total Recall and The Bourne Ultisuplegacy were so bland and uninteresting that I stopped thinking about them shortly after leaving the theater (I’m debating whether Dark Knight Rises belongs in that list, probably not, but I couldn’t decide whether I liked it). Apathy is the last response any studio should want from a blockbuster audience, yet it happened with spectacular regularity this summer.
We did things other than watch movies, like shuttling ourselves down the West Coast of the United States. Portland is a nice city with an excellent downtown, if you have a chance to visit the hipster homeland I definitely encourage you to do so. Two city blocks are dedicated just to food trucks! Now a cynic (like me) might say a bunch of stationary food trucks are counter-intuitive to food being on a truck, but the food at the Hawaiian BBQ truck was delicious, so who cares!
I also almost bought a pipe – one of those big long Hobbit pipes – from a nice little cigar shop in downtown Portland. I don’t smoke. Had I returned to Canada with a 2-foot pipe I believe I would have been crowned King of All Hipsters.
There’s been BBQ’s, drinking games (I don’t think Jeremy is ever going to drink again), family reunions, hiking and more. Been a pretty great summer, but we’re looking forward to getting back to making comics for you, the loyal Inglorious Faithful.
See you soon…