April Caption Contest

April 2nd, 2013

Congrats to Ethan Clarke for winning the first ever Donkeyshines caption contest! Now it’s time for the second ever Donkeyshines caption contest. The same rules apply this month- you can enter as many captions as you want, and you can vote for as many as you want. At the end of the month, the caption with the most votes will be declared the winner and the writer of said caption will be able to choose their prize from any t-shirt that we have in stock . Since it is my sister’s b-day month, I figured I’d post another old birthday card for which captions can be posted about. This one is somewhat violent:

Lastpiececake500w

OK all! Start with the captions already! And remember to vote! The winner will once again be the caption with the most votes by the last day of April!

Rite of Spring Sale- Save 25% on ALL Orders

March 19th, 2013

According to the calendar, spring is supposed to begin this week. However, if you live in the Northeast like I do, you know this is not what is actually happening. Well anyone who knows me knows that I am not a big fan of winter, which is why I’ve decided to do something about it. I figure the best way to coax the gods into starting the new season is to show them that people are ready for it. How do you get ready for it? By purchasing t-shirts! That’s right, you know that warmer weather is approaching when people start buying clothing they will wear in said weather. Make sense? If not, it really doesn’t matter. The important thing is that from now until the end of the month, you can save 25% on your Donkeyshines order with coupon code: spring25! There is no minimum purchase!

On an unrelated note, my wife and I recently attended a MIT Symphony Orchestra performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Good stuff.

Movie Review- Olympus Has Fallen

March 18th, 2013

Olympus Has Fallen is so terrible I don’t even know where to begin. I suppose I’ll start with the title. Making a sequel to Air Force One is problematic for the obvious reason- If you call it Air Force One II, people might read it as Air Force 12. Of course, if you call it Olympus Has Fallen, then people won’t even know its a sequel to Air Force One. That predicament alone is good enough reason not to make the movie, but it only gets worse from there. I’m not usually one to say something is in poor taster, but I definitely think there is something wrong with putting Harrison Ford in black face and making him up to look like Morgan Freeman. Unless, wait…is this supposed to be a sequel to Deep Impact? OK, that makes more sense, and it explains some of the other parts of the plot that I didn’t get.

The movie starts out with an asteroid crashing in to the White House and taking Morgan Freeman hostage. As you might guess, this asteroid is the great-grandson of the asteroid Morgan Freeman blew up in Deep Impact. After that, the movie pretty much follows the plot of  Die Hard III: Die Hard With A Vengeance, with the Jeremy Irons part being played by Ashley Judd in an asteroid costume, Gerard Butler in the Bruce Willis role and Aaron Eckhart as the Samuel L. Jackson character. I have no problem spoiling this movie for you, but unfortunately, I’m too lazy to tell you more of the story or how it ends. Lets just say President Morgan Freeman and the asteroid talk out their differences and become friends just before the asteroids’ henchmen show up to finish the job by blowing up the earth. The movie is totally boring.

Monthly Caption Contest- Win a FREE T-SHIRT!

March 9th, 2013

Recently, I’ve been looking at some of my old greeting card illustrations and I can’t believe how preposterous some of them are. Some of them are so old that you wouldn’t even recognize the drawing style as something I would have done. Anyway, I thought it would be fun if I had a little contest for Donkeyshines fans to see who can come up with the best caption for some of these wacky drawings. The winner will receive a FREE Donkeyshines t-shirt, any one of their choosing. Have a look at the illustration below and see what you come up with. You can submit as many captions as you like, and you can vote for as many as you like. Get your friends to come and vote, etc. The winner will be determined by whichever comment has the most “Likes” by the 11:59PM of the last day of the month. Being that March is my birthday month, I thought it would be appropriate if the first caption contest would be for one of my birthday card illustrations:

Angryboy500w

OK, so what do you have to say about this one?

Movie Review; G.I. Joe: Retaliation

March 8th, 2013

I wish this was a review about a movie I made up, but unfortunately G.I.Joe: Retaliation actually exists. True story: a couple of years ago, I was contracted by Hasbro through Kaiju Big Battel to act in a demo film by one of the G.I. Joe toy developers. Apparently, he wanted his latest action figure to appear in the sequel, and that’s how I learned there would be a follow-up to the horrible G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. I doubt that the designer’s toy ever saw the light of day, and I hope nobody but his immediate boss saw the silly movie we made. Luckily I was wearing a ski mask the whole time, so nobody will recognize me if it ever shows up on Youtube. There are some “fat kid with a light sabre” moments in there that aren’t quite absurd enough to be entertaining. Luckily, it was an easy shoot, I got a free lunch, and was eventually paid $200 for my efforts. I’m quite sure The Rock, Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum and the rest of the cast of Retaliation were paid a lot more than that, which is why they should all be more embarrassed of their movie than I am of the work I did at Hasbro.

I’ll be honest, I have to give props to the writers of Retaliation for their unconventional plot. The film begins with the immediate slaughter of all the annoying Joes from the first movie. After 5 minutes of screen time, we’re only left with Roadblock (The Rock), Snake Eyes (Ray Parker Jr.), and Jinx (attractive, but not famous half-Asian girl). However, just when you are glad to see no more Wayans Brothers, something preposterous happens. The director decides that, after the success of Magic Mike, Channing Tatum is too popular to kill off. The movie is then sent back into production for another 10 months, and the entire story is re-written. The most notable change is that Duke’s uniform is now nothing more than a camouflage speedo. Where does Channing keep is sidearms and ammo? That is a question this film never answers, although you can probably figure it out if you saw Magic Mike. Anyway, after NOT dying, the crew eventually meets up with Bruce Willis and they all “retaliate” against the evil forces of Cobra. There is another pretty good fight between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, and Jinx does some things that are somewhat sexy and cool.  The Rock says some witty one-liners, but a major disappointment is that he does NOT rhyme his dialogue. Anyone hoping to cling to just a tiny bit of nostalgia about the 80’s G.I.Joe cartoon should stay at home and not waste money on this. Overall the movie is as you’d expect: totally awful. A few good jokes by a washed-up wrestler, and some karate chops by the guy who wrote the Ghostbusters theme song is not enough to make up for all the other shit that happens.

One regret I have is that after my Hasbro stint, I could have warned you all that G.I. Joe: Retaliation was coming. I’m not sure why I didn’t. Maybe I was in in denial, or maybe I just hoped the producers would come to their senses and it would get shit-canned. Really, it’s all YOUR fault. If you guys hadn’t all shown up in droves to see Magic Mike, maybe this movie would have suffered the pre-death it deserved.

Movie Review- The Last Exorcism Part III

February 28th, 2013

The Last Exorcism Part II opens in theaters this week, but who gives a shit. Today, I’m reviewing Part III, which may or may not currently be in the planning stage, or production, or post production, or about to be green-lit by some fatso producer trying to escape the porn industry. I guess I’m just mad that someone would think B Horror shlock is somehow better than porn. Anyway, on to the movie. What we all learned yesterday in the news is that Pope Benedict resigned his post so he could star in this movie. Bad career move, I say. Popes get way more hot chicks than B Movie actors, just ask Bruce Campbell. He barely ever scored when he was doing Evil Dead, but when he became Pope, his life turned around. He now doesn’t have to waste time doing crappy movies, which is why I think it is so weird that Benedict is shelling out over $1,000 to get a face lift to look like Bruce Campbell. I guess he figures it may improve his English-speaking ability and make him a better actor. It will not. Obviously.

The Plot of The Last Exorcism Part III is what you’d expect. A really flexible teenage girl, who is always doing back bends and moving in a jerky manner, is thought to be possessed by the devil. Naturally, a priest is called upon to put a stop to her awkward gymnastics. Benedict throws some holy water, her face gets scalded, then he realizes that they gave him the wrong stuff at the drug store. It was actually sulfuric acid, not holy water. An easy mistake to make, but this priest was already on thin ice for some pee-pee touching he did back in his younger days. He couldn’t risk another scandal, so he needed to find a way to cover it up. Burning the girl at the stake was his best bet, but he had forgotten one thing: The girl’s boyfriend was a fire-fighter! The boyfriend could tell that Benedict was up to no good when he overheard him bragging to Mel Gibson about how he was going to get away with his acid-y snafu. Did I mention that the boyfriend is played by Community‘s Donald Glover? This is significant because it adds a whole layer of confusion to the film. People often think Donald is related to Danny Glover who starred with Mel Gibson in those Lethal Weapon movies. Donald is of no relation to Danny, but that’s beside the point. In this movie, Mel Gibson is played by Chevy Chase, Donald’s co-star on Community. Chevy does a great job acting crazy like Mel, but that’s the only bright spot of the movie. Even with his Bruce Campbell face, Benedict is impossible to understand, and his delivery is terrible. Glover’s performance is a big disappointment, too. I don’t really remember who played the girl, but it doesn’t really matter because she isn’t very attractive. Even before the acid.

Anyways, the movie totally sucks. Don’t go see it, if it ever exists.

Valentine’s Day Part II

February 19th, 2013

The Gorilla Chef digital painting is what I gave my wife as her Valentine’s Day Card. Here is the one she made me:

zoidsnleelav-day

As is our new tradition, she always features our cats in all of the cards she makes. That is Zoidberg driving the back hoe, and Leela is riding in the shovel. This also commemorates the shitloads of snow we got the weekend before Valentine’s Day. Good times.

Gorilla Chef

February 15th, 2013

I finished this year’s Valentine’s Day card in the nick of time, minutes before my wife arrived home from work yesterday. It is a digital painting featuring two of her favorites: A gorilla and our cat Leela.

gorillachef500

I feel a little bad not including our other cat Dr. Zoidberg, but he was too fat to fit in the bowl. I let both cats audition for the part by putting the bowl on the counter, and just letting them play around with it. Zoidberg could get his head and a paw in there, while Leela was able to get her whole self in. Here they are posing together for the reference photo that I ended up using:

leelainbowl500

And here are details of the painting.

gorillachefleela500

gorillachefdetail500

Getfit T-Shirt Contest-Snubbed Again!

February 5th, 2013

My wife and I are involved in this 12-week exercise program affiliated with MIT called Getfit. It is designed to motivate you to exercise by giving you weekly goals in minutes. They also provide a bunch of little events and such to encourage participants to interact with each other for support. One of these events is a contest to design the annual Getfit t-shirt which is given out to all participants after the 12 weeks are completed. As a guy who designs t-shirts professionally, I figured I might as well enter:

getfit_tshirt_RyanKlemek2013

Today, I was notified that my design was not chosen as a finalist. From what I’ve been told, this should not have been surprising news. My design, while meeting all the contest requirements,  was just a little too wacky for the conservative-minded committee that chooses these things. I think they should reconsider their standards. I say, if you are going to give out a free t-shirt to promote your event, why not make it the kind of design that stands out? In fact, I will do my part to help them reconsider by vowing to re-submit this exact same design (with different year, of course) EVERY YEAR until it is not only chosen as a finalist, but actually wins the contest. Full disclosure: this year isn’t actually the first time I submitted this design…

New Postcards! Also, FREE STUFF!

January 24th, 2013

Recently, I ‘ve been into digital painting, and I was wondering how best to share my work with my Donkeyshines fans. Most of these pieces are too detailed to be good on t-shirts, so I thought they might make nice postcards. So far, I’ve printed these two:

goatman450            gorillalien450

A Day in the Park and Interplanetary Adoption are available in the Donkeyshines store in pack of 5 postcards for $7.99. However, there’s even more news! I’ve also recently made Robot Penguin stickers!

robotpenguinsticker190

The stickers are NOT actually available for sale, because I’m giving them away for FREE with all Donkeyshines purchases! In addition, All orders of $15 or more will get one each of the A Day in the Park and Interplanetary Adoption postcards along with the one Robot Penguin sticker. What’s more, all orders of $25 or more will get one each of the postcards and 5 of the Robot Penguin stickers!