Not to get all Joey’s Blog on you, but let’s talk fonts for a second.
I fucking hate the papyrus font. Its hideous. I’ve hated it for years, and I’ve ranted about my hatred into many an uncaring ear. It’s a Microsoft Word font that looks dated the second you type a letter. It is supposedly elegant, but using a Microsoft Word default font to define your “elegance” is like putting on one of those “hot body in a bikini” shirts then telling everyone that you actually DO have a hot body.
My first time coming across the font, I was around 16 years old, and I was looking for something to use on the cover of a CD-R I was burning of a Camel album. Camel is a faux Pink Floyd shitty band and burning CD’s of their music will inevitably land you in Papyrus territory, the domain of shitty bands, christian bookmarks, organic groceries/perfumeries/drycleaners, and uhh…things like this:
via Papyrus Watch
Anyway, as I made my awful Camel CD-R packaging, I came across the font and thought, wow! What a great font to use for the COVER I’m DESIGNING for this awesome PROG-ROCK CD-R I’m burning! Are you starting to see the mindset of a Papyrus user? So I finished the cover, looked at what I had done, marveled at my genius, then (thankfully) caught myself, realized how fucking stupid the whole thing was, cancelled the CD in Nero and put on Formulas Fatal to the Flesh by Morbid Angel.
Ahh, with that, we can move forward.
Anyway, In college I used to work at an internet radio station. The station was staffed by bookish weirdos, date rapists, and kids in back braces. It was the Garbage Pail Kids (Ryan West excluded) running online shows for their parents and two other mutants in their hometown of Beloit, WI to hear. I’d like to think I was one of the few “cool” kids involved, but really I was just another variation on the dork/dweeb/spazz theme. There was one kid, whose name I will change, lets call him (Z)Evan. I absolutely despised Zevan, partly because he was a smarmy little prick with a face that could fit a thousand fists, partly because he loved ZWAN, and wouldn’t shut up about it. Ok, it was mainly because he loved Zwan…seriously…who listens to Zwan? People who like the Papyrus font.
Anyway, there was some kind of design discussion going on, and I pulled out my old routine blah blah blah papyrus, and he looks me straight in the face and says “Oh man, I LOVE the papyrus font”. Blood filled my eyes, my hands turned to bricks. If only he knew how close he came to becoming a vessel for my years of misplaced anger. That close.
Between the Camel incident, the countless awful coffee shop signs and business cards emblazoned with it, and the fact that THIS kid was a supporter, my hatred was eternally sealed. I would hate the Papyrus font for the rest of my natural born life, and anything written in it would immediately be translated to “This (book/movie/album/organic cous-cous) was created by a Zwan-loving asshole”.
Or so I thought…
Lets switch gears here for a second. I’ve covered “Things I Despise”, now lets swing to the other end of the spectrum. If you were to ask me, at any age (from age 8-27), what my favorite film of all time was, my answer would be invariably ALIENS. On an off-day, it would be Predator, but for 364 days out of every year of my life, Aliens has been my favorite movie. It’s near perfect in its pacing, characterization, script, story, production design, cinematography blah blah blah. Simply put, it rules. Next to Robocop, I think it is one of the greatest action movies of all time, and I will never bump it from my number one spot. I could go on for hours, but I will spare you.
A little bit further down the list of Awesome Movies I Will Quit Work to Watch on TBS is Terminator 2. Its SUPER Blockbuster-y, but not because it cheaply plays on our desires to watch stuff blow up, but because it tackles big subjects like time-travel, the end of the world, our perceptions of the word “villain” and comes out at the end with only the tiniest bit of cheese dripping from it. Then there is the first Terminator, which is way darker and grainier than you remember. In terms of tone, its the better movie.
Anyway, amateur film analysis should be written in the papyrus font, so I will cool it for a second. But, to make the connection, all of these films were created by James Cameron. James Cameron has made some great fucking movies. Aliens, Terminator (1 and 2), The Abyss, even Titanic has its place. Now, he’s coming out with Avatar.
And what is that font at the end of the trailer? BOOM! PAPYRUS! JAMES CAMERON JUST KICKED THE WORLD IN THE FACE WITH A SIX BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE (“he spent our entire economic stimulus package on Avatar” – Ogre) WITH A SIX DOLLAR MICROSOFT WORD DEFAULT FONT. What is this? Is Avatar a movie or a vegetarian three bean cruelty free lentil chili?
Fuck you James Cameron. You’ve thrown me into the greatest crisis of my life on earth. To date.
I can’t lie. This movie (though the script and plot was obviously written entirely in the Papyrus font as well) looks awesome. I’m being straight up, drunk-honest here, the trailer gave me chills, especially when the word “ALIENS” came on the screen. The graphics look sick, the action looks almost too big to comprehend, and no matter how much James Cameron is insulting my intelligence by carelessly packaging his own sentiments about The War into a blue-skinned propaganda film, I will still be seeing this movie. Probably more than once. Which brought me to an equation, the mathematical equation at the core of my being that, once solved, will be the agent of my undoing (like a Dan Brown novel, only gay-er and more pointless).
My Love for James Cameron Movies > My Hatred for the Papyrus Font
But not by much.
With that said. Fuck you James Cameron, you could have picked a better font. Also, fuck you, guy who invented the papyrus font, because you brought me to this place. I have now transferred all of my hatred to you sir. Whoever you are, because you allowed your faux-egyptian bullshit font to infect the mind of a decent man like James Cameron, whom I have sworn allegiance to for most of my life (even if I haven’t seen Dark Angel), I am making it my life’s goal to find you and kill you. You can have ZEvan, you can have all of the horrible wedding invitations and sweet-corn-exfoliating scrubs in the world, but shame on you for taking James Cameron. You better be a dead pharaoh or something buried in a pyramid or something. Actually even if you are, I will find you, dig you up and fuck you up all over again.
Fuck you. That is all.