Blue Dong

When I look back at today nothing jumps out at me and screams "blog about me!", so I'm going to give you an older story. It's about me and TR, a guy I work with, and the way we think.

To illustrate this, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the movie "The Watchmen", and what we thought about it. 

"The Watchmen" came out a few years ago, and is a movie about superheroes. It's kind of a dark movie, but it has lots of action and some vaguely mindless violence, and we agreed that we were both pretty happy with all of that. We also agreed on the part of the movie that kind of stuck with us for a while. I'm not certain how to refer to it here, so I'll just use the words that TR and I used when we were discussing it; clean enough for the workroom floor, clean enough for the blog.

The Blue Dong.

(Sorry Mom, it's gonna be one of those blogs today)

Alright. The character of Dr. Manhattan in the movie, and remember this is about superheroes, is no longer human. He's not using gadgets, like Batman, he's not an 'altered human' like Spiderman, he's no longer human at all. He's recreated himself, and so he still has a basic human form, but he's blue, and large, and... naked. Having evolved beyond the need for clothes, for most of the movie, the character of Dr. Manhattan is naked. He's large, and blue, and has, for want of a better word, a large blue dong.

That's not the part that made us laugh.

When they made the movie, they decided that since the dude was so non-human looking, they wouldn't have an actor in make-up running about the set. Instead, they used a Computer Generated Image, or CGI. They usually use CGI to create special effects, etc, and lots of films nowadays have a CGI budget. 

This is the part that made us laugh. It wasn't an actor out there in the buff, dangling and waggling his way around each scene, it was a computer generated man. Someone had to design him. that means someone had to submit a design, and then someone had to approve it.

Can you picture the meetings?

Harry: "Okay... this is what I've got so far."

Bill: "Oh, that's pretty good! One thing... we want people to be able to see this thing from the back row. Can you make it a little longer?"

Harry: "Sure, I can do that, no problem. What about the hang angle? Is that okay? I had the team working hard on that part. That and the veins."

Bill: "The hang angle is great! The veins are a bit much for me, but then I'm no expert in this stuff. Hold on - Denise? Can you come in here a second, please?"

Denise: "Yeah, Bill?"

Bill: "Check out the veins in that thing. What do you think? Too much? Not enough?"

Denise: "Wow! Um... ok... well, can I see it walking around a bit? "

Harry: "Sure, just let me hit 'Play' here."

Denise: "Okay ... Whoa! Wow, look at that swing! Okay, the veins are good, but that swing just looks painful!"

Bill: "My God, you're right! Okay, Harry, keep the veins, but tone down that swing. It looks like he's threatening people with it!"

Harry: "Okay, Bill. I'm on it! Well ... not really on it, but you know what I mean. Jerry? Come here, Jerry, we're changing the dong!"

And they all turn toward the corner where Jerry is sitting. Jerry's the 14 year old computer graphics genius they have working on the project who hasn't stopped blushing or giggling since he took this job!

Yeah. To TR and me the thoughts afterward are actually more fun for us than watching the actual movie!

Talk to you later!