Hammer Head

Hawaii Politics

Ahh Tom Brower. The State Representative from Waikiki and Ala Moana spent the beginning of the week as a hammer-wielding vigilante, smashing shopping carts left abandoned (and sometimes still in use too) by homeless people in his district. Brower said he was tired of the eye-sore caused by the stolen carts and frustrated by a lack of action on the part of the city.
For a lawmaker to take the law into his own hands, though, is a bit--comic worthy?
So Brower thinks he can just smash all our problems until they're gone. Homelessness? Check. How about a blazing fire? Well, he'll sure give it a swing...
Brower said yesterday that he would hang up his hammer and cape and call his vigilantism quits. Some advocacy groups and other organizations have called on the House to take disciplinary action against Brower, saying his actions were highly inappropriate for a state lawmaker. To which, Brower replied by smashing a coffee table in half.

009. The Fire Log

This is why we can't have nice things, UH.

008. Now You've Gone Too Far

They can, apparently, take our freedom, but they can never take our Interwebs. That's when they cross the line - not the wire tapping, the breakdown of due process or any of those other things - the Interwebs.
As Sarah Neal wrote in a Ka Leo opinions piece, "The success of these protests floored me. It's just too bad that the protests essentially boil down to this: we were afraid the government was going to take away our favorite toy, and we had to stop it."

007. The Nut and the Tree

The exciting finale to Jimmy Cha's adventures in North Korea - at least for now. It's time to get back to things that didn't happen a month ago. I'm planning to get back to normal, 3 panel, college-themed comics and I have a few ideas in the works, so stay tuned.
I'm also working on an illustration for the opinions section at Ka Leo, who will be running a story about SOPA and PIPA and, more generally, about government attempts to censor the internet and free information. The article is being written by the ever-awesome opinions editor, Boaz Rosen, so it should be a bangarang.

So why would Jong-un show Jimmy his cloning vat?
In this strip, Jimmy finally uncovers Jong-un's plan - but the dictator revealed it by choice. I'm hoping that people pick up on the subtleties in this strip to understand that Jimmy's life is in serious danger here. Jong-un claims to "know what Jimmy really is." Well Jimmy is a spy, which would mean certain death.
But is that what Jong-un is talking about? Or is the dictator just interested in Jimmy personally? The answer could mean the difference between life and death for Cha, and the success or failure of his mission to uncover Jong-un's plans for the future - plans that include clones. Lots of clones. Hope you like it!

006. Dear Leader, Part 2

I know I said I'd have this whole North Korea thing done before school started again. I have no idea why I thought that would be possible considering I was in California and Las Vegas for most of break with no way to make comics the entire time.  So apologies for that.  I think I'm going to end the arc after either one more, double length comic or two regular ones (haven't decided yet). Either way, Agent Jimmy Cha will finally find out what Jong-un is up to. You won't want to miss the evil genius revealed.

005. Dear Leader, Part 1

I swear I have a good reason for having no comic up on Wednesday. I've been working on a short arc about the death of Kim Jong-il, and the succession of his son Kim Jung-un. The arc will follow a U.S. spy as he attempts to gather information on the new ruler of North Korea - things do not go as planned.
This should all be over and done with before school gets back, at which point I'll get back to making fun of Winter Wonderland and Campus Security, as well as sharing some stories from my San Diego/Los Angeles/Las Vegas trip.
Ah yes, and Special Thanks to Dan, for inventing the now-classic "Two Dolphins and a Blunt" pose. I'm not sure if Kim Jung-il likes Dolphins, or Blunts, but I feel like the pose accurately captures his former life-style.

004. Winter Clothes

College is a time for trying new things, breaking down barriers and experiencing life from new points of view. I feel like it took me the first three years of my college career to realize this. Like everything in life, my situation is complicated (though undoubtedly less so than others').  Suffice to say that I spent the last year of college breaking down a lot of barriers that I had left up for way too long and I got to experience some incredible moments because of that.

This year is my last year in college. After that, it's real-world time. I intend to continue on my trend and make the last year the best one by far.  To that end I'm finally doing something that many college students consider essential to their experience: the college trip.

Though it's usually a spring break thing, when you're from Hawaii, spring break is pretty awesome here. So instead, it's a winter break/new years eve/birthday party/road trip week-and-a-half-long, hopefully mind-blowing extravaganza with a bunch of my college friends. 

One thing we realized though: none of us (the ones from Hawaii anyway) have any winter clothes, and seeing as how we're doing this on New Year's Eve, in the middle of the night and outdoors, we should probably purchase some.

003. The Wonderland Issue

Wonderland Entertainment has been throwing events at Wet 'n Wild, the old Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park, for a couple years now. I've been to a Winter and a Digital Wonderland. The two main problems with these events are that they're all the way in Kapolei, which is pretty damn far from UH Manoa, and they're the same thing every time.  

I for one was already getting tired of the events themselves, and that was before Wonderland Entertainment scheduled Afrojack for the same weekend as Porter Robinson, started posting entitled-sounding Facebook posts, and started bringing down bullshit for their main acts. Now, they'd need to bring down someone incredibly awesome for me to still bother going to any of their events anymore. Otherwise, I'm just plain over it and I'd rather support cooler groups like Eightball Hawaii with fresh, innovative ideas. (Edit: thanks to Stanley for reminding me about Livewire too).

But maybe I'm the only one - I've still heard excited kidsos talking about the raving prospects in the weeks leading up to Wonderland's last couple events (though I've heard that the whole Afrojack/Porter thing ended up costing them  money).  Once January gets closer it'll be interesting to see if the hype surrounding the second Winter Wonderland is as big as it was last year for the first (which was awesome because they picked someone dope for it).

(Edit: Dec. 17): Wonderland posted their promotion video from the footage they got at the Afrojack show here in Honolulu. It's a mediocre video and it certainly doesn't reverse my assertions that they're going downhill already. It's only 2 minutes long, the song is alright at best, the "babe factor" (let's face it, an important part of selling future tickets for events like this is showcasing the amount of attractive females that attended your previous events - like it or not) is 'meh', and - despite the videographer's valiant attempts to prevent us from noticing - there, frankly, just aren't that many people at the damn thing. 

Nowhere in this video do we see the typical promo shot - an establishing shot, from as high above as possible, that tries to show the maximum amount of bodies possible.  Based on what I understand to be the capacity of Wet N' Wild during events like this, and based off what we can see in the video, there looks to be no more than a few hundred people in attendance.  

Love Fest Hawaii 2011 (From Go Ventures), I believe, filled capacity, meaning 10,000 tickets sold. 

Considering the costs of bringing an artist like Afrojack down to Hawaii ($60,000 minimum, plus costs for the venue, equipment, staff etc. and with ticket prices ranging from $35 - $50) I'd guess that they only broke even, or certainly didn't make what they intended. Hopefully it'll be a wake up call, and they'll rethink their style and their event strategy.

Like I said on Facebook, my first rave was a Wonderland event with Skrillex as the headliner. It was truly awesome. I wish they'd head back in that direction - or that I could reverse time and re-experience that first night - which is out of Wonderland's control, I'm afraid. 

002. Big-Ass Trucks

Here's a comic about the new trucks campus security has in their arsenal. They are, as the title suggests, large vehicles, but I wonder how much they'll actually help to prevent things like this from happening. I can't help but wonder if the money might've been better spent on something else.

001. Skyrim Jobs

The Sun Also Shines on the Moronic takes another stride on its evolutionary path. With a new blog comes a new and improved comic strip. Some things are the same, some things will never be the same, still other things now contain 50% more gravy.
As usual, these are being run in Ka Leo too, but there it just seems like a continuation of the old strip. Here - here is where the wheat is separated from the chaff.
I hope you enjoy the new comic and that you tell all your friends about how groovy it is.