1.6 billion dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to. Time was, you could buy yourself a decent-sized banana republic for that kind of cash. Or your very own drug cartel. Or maybe just a fixed presidential election or two.

These days, that’s what it costs to snatch up a popular little website that hosts a bunch of short video clips. Google, the not particularly profitable search engine, has purchased YouTube, the not particularly profitable web site, for an amount of money they might be able to collectively earn back if the world wide web remains alive, well, and utterly unchanged for the next 200 years. And some people still wonder why the tech bubble burst.

The problem I have with Google’s impulse purchase is that the sole asset of YouTube is quick, easy access to all sorts of clips that are mostly copyrighted material. And the giant corporate entities that own these copyrights are fiercely protective of their assets because, unlike Google and YouTube, they know how to make money. YouTube has said that, in future, they’ll be happy to take down any copyrighted clips from movies, TV shows, etc. if the owners simply request it. Expect an avalanche of cease-and-desist letters from a jack-booted army of lawyers to be delivered to the Google head office via a caravan of forklifts any day now. It shouldn’t be too long before every video you might have ever wanted to seek out on YouTube will be pulled down to avoid the greatest shitstorm of infringement lawsuits since the sharks played seek-and-destroy with Napster.

For me, personally, that will suck because it will shut off the only outlet I have to see all those cartoons I wrote last year. Okay yes, I’ve been watching them in Spanish, but it’s possible I wrote the screenplays in Spanish in the first place. I really don’t remember, it’s been awhile.

By the time the lawyers have picked YouTube clean, the only clips left will be all that homemade dreck the users upload. And really, there’s a limit to how many lip synchings, vomitings, and epic two part zit squeezings I need to see. Sure, the world’s largest online collection of self-humiliation video footage is a treasure to be held near and dear by all of humanity, but I don’t think I’d cough up twenty bucks for it, never mind 1.6 billion.

As mentioned, a whole new round of Pucca has been ordered up by Jetix and scripting should begin in only a matter of days. But that’s not the only cartoon work that’s keeping me busy. I’m currently working on Ricky Sprocket, Showbiz Boy, a new series from the creators of Bob and Margaret. Poking fun at the Hollywood machine so famous for swallowing child actors whole seems an obvious fit for me. So far I’m under contract for two, but we’ll see if I can snag any more before all the first season slots are filled.

More of my recent cartoon work has cropped up on the web, this time legitimately. March Entertainment has a second website that has started hosting episodes of Yam Roll. One of mine –  Secret Roommate Man – was selected to be among the first three offered to the steaming public. Split into two parts, you can find it and other Yam Roll adventures here. Merchandise tie-ins are promised in the near future and I’ll have to decide if I want my very own Yam Roll plush toy to commemorate my time spent in the Happy Kingdom.

Actually they’re called “The Elans” – the Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts. To me, geek that I am, they will always be “The Shatners” because everyone’s favourite madman from Montreal, Big Bill Shatner, will be hosting this black-tie event. And I’ll be there, tuxedo and all, at one of the VIP tables, wolfing down a $250 plate of salmon and hoping to hear The Shatner call out my name when the “Best writing in an animated production” category rolls around.

I’m nominated for an episode of Pucca I wrote called, “Treasure of the Comfy Sofa.” Since I’m only one of three nominees in the category, I figure my chances of winning are a little better than average. If only because it will be relatively easy to arrange untimely accidents for the two competing writers, thus forcing their forfeiture. I hope the days I’m spending in Vancouver leading up to the awards will afford me enough time to arrange for a tux rental, take as many work-related meetings as possible, and cut a couple of brake lines. It should be a busy schedule.

I’d be lying if I said one of my top motivations for flying out there on September 11th (always the happiest day of the year to fly) wasn’t to see The Shatner in person. I’m enough of a Star Trek nerd to call myself a Trekkie, but not enough to call myself a Trekker. I grew up watching syndicated reruns and original-cast movies. It was with some measure of delight that I followed local-boy-made-good, The Shatner, as he reinvented himself decade after decade. From James T. Kirk, to T.J. Hooker, to insane fibre-eating parody of himself in breakfast cereal commercials. There’s just something endearing about a celebrity who rearranges his late-period career into an artistic statement that declares, loudly and boldly, “I’m a big star and I totally don’t give a fuck.”

Win or lose, I’ll get my The Shatner fix. And that’s what’s really important here. That and writing more Pucca cartoons. The show has been renewed for another thirteen episodes, and we should start milling them out in October. We’ll be well into the new season by the time I find out if another episode I wrote, “The Itsy Bitsy Enemy Within,” triumphed at the Bradford Animation Festival in the U.K. Yes, another nomination. I’m getting a lot of mileage out of a little Korean girl who steals kisses and kicks people in the head.

It only took three days, but left on my own, my wife thousands upon thousands of miles away, I’ve become a creepy shut-in. To best meet this profile, I’ve adopted fifty stray cats, taken to drinking my own urine, and developed a raging case of scurvy. Despite my caveman existence and embracing the troglodyte lifestyle, I ultimately had to get out of the house on one or two occasions. New movies beckoned.

No one should be surprised that I had to go and contribute to the opening weekend take of Snakes on a Plane. And a modest take it was, falling many millions of dollars short of where New Line expected the internet hype to take it. It seems internet trolls are even bigger shut-ins than me, and will be waiting to download the latest telesync bootlegs of Snakes from their favourite BitTorrent sites.

My advice to them: don’t waste the bandwidth.

How could they go wrong? You take a cute turn of phrase, make it a literal movie premise, and then throw Sam Jackson into the mix as a hero cop who gets to say “motherfucker” once or twice. It writes itself. Or at least it does once you throw it open to the public. Therein lies the problem.

For whatever strange and obscure reason no one will ever fully understand or fully replicate, the online community seized upon Snakes on a Plane as the craptacular summer event movie of 2006 long before its release date. Amidst all the jokes and parodies and tributes, New Line did something unprecedented in movie history. They took heed of their pre-made fan base.

When the target audience started suggesting lines and content via the internet, like a preemptive Rocky Horror Picture Show, reshoots were promptly scheduled and the studio incorporated much of it. The results are what you get when you let a bunch of bloggers write your movie for you. It’s the worst kind of filmmaking-by-committee. It seems the chefs in this too-many cooks scenario have no screenwriting experience at all and therefore neglect little things like setup, structure and payoff.

There are movies that take a silly premise and run with it, and do so extremely well. Another Sam Jackson thriller, Deep Blue Sea, is a prime example. Sharks in a Sealab (as it might be called) runs so fast and hard with its premise, it gleefully breaks every rule of proper cinematic storytelling. But when it does so, you’re left with the definite impression that the filmmakers in charge knew they were setting fire to the rule book because the results are so satisfying. That’s not the case with Snakes. There’s a very distinct difference between good movie crap and bad movie crap. I’ve dedicated much of my life to making this distinction. Good movie crap will kill off the main character of the movie at the beginning of the second act because it’s the most shocking thing they could think to do. Bad movie crap will establish a vicious villain character in the first act, and then forget to ever return to him or show him getting any sort of comeuppance. I’m sure you can guess which movie is which.

But what about the kills? Snakes is a body-count disaster movie after all. You want to know if it delivers, right? Most of the gags seem focused on answering the question, “Where would it really suck to have a snake bite you?” Answers from the peanut gallery where obviously a cacophony of shouted-out body parts. “Nipple!” “Eyeball!” “Penis!” “Ass!” And the studio dutifully threw them all into the picture. Every single one of them. The results are a pastiche of snake sub-species, fang-punctured body parts, and venomous welts. None of them ever really steps up to become “The Signature Movie Moment” you’ll remember to tell your friends about after a good night’s sleep.

If you want to go see a real horror movie that delivers, I highly recommend you make your admission fee offering to The Descent. Even with the truncated North American release ending, it’s the real deal. And it stars more than a few of my kindred pasty-faced shut-in brothers. Give them a visit. It gets lonely in the cave.

There’s news on the Yam Roll front. At least it’s news to me, since I only went looking for some sort of update yesterday. It seems everyone’s favourite cab-driving super-hero piece of sushi now has his own website, complete with demo reel.

The show’s premiere is February 6 at 4:30 pm on the CBC with two episodes (15 minutes each) running back-to-back. When mine will air is a complete unknown at this point. I guess I’ll just have to watch and see like the rest of the world.

Normally, whenever my morbid curiosity allows me, I avoid the AICN talkback. It’s full of puerile, crass, opinionated bullshit from a bunch of sanctimonious film geeks. Seeing as I have plenty of my own puerile and crass bullshit opinions, I don’t need to go looking for more. But sometimes I just can’t look away, especially when there’s a new tidbit about that fourth Indiana Jones movie that’s been in development since before the Earth cooled and the oceans formed. It will never happen, but I’m glad Lucas and Spielberg continue to flog that dead horse because the anti-buzz it generates is so damned amusing.

I’m a sucker for joke Indiana Jones titles that make fun of how old Harrison Ford is and the fact that he hasn’t made a good movie in twenty years. I didn’t read a single word of this talkback‘s content, but the titles made me spit my morning cup of tea all over my keyboard. See if you can guess which one made me lose it for ten minutes straight.