And now, Scary-Crayon proudly presents... It's hard to believe that it's really been a whole year, but it's true -- January 25, 2005 marks the one-year anniversary of the day that Scary-Crayon was "born" to the web. To be honest, while I never thought that SC would be a project that I just threw away or stopped caring about (at least not in the immediate future), I never imagined that I'd be writing this article a year later. Then again, several years ago while I was working on my undergraduate degree at Yale, I never thought I'd be living with my mother at 23 and working in a bookstore for $7 an hour... but HEY! Let's not ruin the festive mood of this piece just yet. No matter how things are going in my personal life, Scary-Crayon has grown by leaps and bounds -- even if most of the people who visit it don't even know that it has articles other than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle anime reviews. Over the past year, we've watched obscure film horrors from the land of Japan, eaten the feces of farm animals, created sandwiches that would petrify the very gods themselves, bravely spoken out against the oppressive Oprah regime, ventured into the strange and unfamiliar world of Star Trek fandom, and even taught women a thing or two about how to tell if a guy just isn't fucking into them. And that's really just the tip of the iceberg, folks -- there's so much content on here that even I'm not able to keep track of it all, and routinely reread articles and laugh as if I were reading them for the first time because I don't even remember writing the blasted things. Sometimes I think maybe the Crayon Monster, SC's official mascot, is penning them in my stead. Point being -- if this is your first time here, take a moment to look around! There's plenty to see and read.  :D So let's get this party started! To kick things off, here are a couple of fun celebratory photos from Mickey Glitter's personal action figure stash: Thanks a bunch, m'chere.  ;)  Next up, a tribute from Greg of Pop Arena: My first encounter with the website Scary-Crayon came while exploring the mountains of India on a free vacation I won in a box of Cheerios. Climbing up steep rocks much like Sylvester Stallone or Chris O’Donnell, I found myself on the top of India’s greatest mountain, in places where no man had stepped foot before. To say the least, I was fricken lost! Having no food or water, I ate my GPS and wandered around aimlessly in the dark. When the sun rose again the next morning, I found myself in front of an ancient temple built into the mountain side. Wandering inside for shelter and protection from the dinosaurs, I found myself in a grand throne room, and in the middle, a pedestal holding up an ancient book. Not realizing later that it might really piss the gods off (it didn’t), I picked up the book and began reading the surprisingly good english. Inside was, well, the meaning of life. The reasons why we exist and what our goals in life should be and, rather oddly, a thousand different ways to cook bubblegum. Amazed, I flipped straight to the back of the book, hoping maybe to find a coupon like you used to get in those Encyclopedia Brown books. Instead, I found a list of references. Along with the Bible, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and a handful of Choose-Your-Own-Adventures, there was one web address: http://www.scary-crayon.com. Quickly, I smuggled the book into my items and flew to the magical land of peppermint elves where tiny mice in little feety PJs live in the tall mushrooms houses with Papa Bear and go out every night to blow kisses to the stars and eat their cotton candy gold. Well, my cat chewed up the book, but I managed to visit Scary-Crayon before losing the address. It had only been put up about a month of two, and only had a handful of articles. Being a webmaster myself, generally the early items on a site turn out to be crap. Not so on Scary-Crayon. From day one, Scary-Crayon has produced quality products for a booming economy and offering dependable services to those in third-world wait I may be talking about something else. Seriously, though, since the very beginning, Wes and Scary-Crayon has brought us some of the best writing the web has ever seen since 1887. From exposing us to such obscurities as the TMNT anime to examining the physics of Gumby, Wes has proven to be the #1 coolest guy of the 21st century. Wes and I have spent many of nights talking about life, hot animated girls and Marvel comics, and I must say, he’s a pretty intelligent and funny guy, and I would recommend anyone to get to know him. Scary-Crayon’s had an awesome first year, and if it’s any indication, we still got plenty of the golden street to walk down. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SCARY-CRAYON Thanks for the encouraging words, Greg! We <3 you too. And now, a word from Brian, webmaster of the recently opened Review the World: Thanks, Brian, and good luck with the new site! Aaand here's a humorous haiku for y'all, given Brian's company in the picture: If Donatello does machines, does that mean they never need oiling? HA! And speaking of Donatello and haikus, here's a haiku tribute from our pal Josh: Hey, watcha making? "An Anniversary gift" That's cool, who's it for? "For Scary-Crayon! Happy Anniversary! Look at the monster." A Monster you say? It looks like a frog to me! "I suck at drawing." It's an excellent likeness of the Crayon Monster, actually! But Josh should know -- in addition to being the artist of this article's marker on the content pages, he's one of the few persons who knows the true face of the beast. Bear that secret to your grave, Josh, and with pride! Hey, curious about how the site got its name? Read on to find out! From the papers of the webmaster, written to an unnamed friend of spectral origin: You see, the site has a hyphen not just in the url, but in the name as well -- which is to say that it is "Scary-Crayon", and not "Scary Crayon", though I don't abbreviate it S-C. However, as I've said, everyone who's linked it as "Scary Crayon" with a space rather than a hyphen need not go rushing off to change it, since one of these days I may just decide to just start calling it "Scary Crayon" without warning and/or explanation and/or for seemingly no reason at all! A site called "Scary-Crayon" needn't follow any proper rules, naturally, for crayons aren't very scary at all. Why, then, would I call the site "Scary-Crayon", you wonder? Why, I should let you ponder that very question for all of eternity! But I'm hardly so cruel, so here goes. It's true, I could've easily called the site "Scary Crayon" and made the url "www.scarycrayon.com", but looking over the sites that I enjoyed at the time and had content more/less along the lines of what I'd post on SC, I saw that most of them had hyphens in their titles and/or urls -- namely, Chibi-Clan Nudity (now Ice Anvil Online), X-Entertainment, I-Mockery, and Encyclopedia Obscura (take note of the hyphen in the site's url -- www.encyclopedia-obscura.com). Therefore, much like a folk singer singing an updated version of a traditional song will keep one of the original verses, even when all of the other verses are entirely new, I threw in a hyphen to mark SC as part of the ongoing "tradition" of random crap humor sites. However, you'll note that while I've explained the presence of the hyphen in the site's name and URL, I haven't at all explained why the site should be called anything relating to scary crayons in the first place, given that, as I've noted, crayons are hardly scary. Indeed, had I not seen what I saw that fateful day, the site might have been called "boulibat.com", for in younger days my father was quite fond of saying that things were "as crazy as boulibats" -- and while to this day I have no idea what a boulibat is, the phrase has stayed with me, and hence I associate crazy things with the term "boulibat", whatever it means. And note the picture above (which is also, more/less, the SC "logo" graphic at the top of the sidebar, and in modified form on the SC splash page) -- which, by the way, is the sight that's just behind and to my left when I'm typing at the computer, and was the image that inspired the name -- the crayon itself doesn't actually say "Scary", nor is it very frightening by itself. Rather, it's the blank, red-eyed stare of the creature behind it -- which I've dubbed the Crayon Monster -- that lends the scene any unnerving qualities it has... yet the Crayon Monster isn't what it seems, and it couldn't sit upright like that without the plush crayon there to support it. Suffice it to say that without the plush crayon there, the scary Crayon Monster would not exist, and without the Crayon Monster the crayon itself wouldn't be very scary at all. So the Crayon Monster (which I guess could be nicknamed "Scary") and the crayon are in a sense wedded, hence the site's hyphenated name, "Scary-Crayon". :) Who would've thunk a name like "Scary-Crayon" required so much thought? But then, I suppose that's to be expected from a site that discusses gender roles and sexual preferences in the context of a Gumby holiday episode. And now, some final words from your humble host... Well, that about does it for this special tribute piece, though if anyone else out there has anything more to say in celebration of SC's first year I'd be happy to continue to add stuff. If you're a regular reader of my personal blog (no official relation to SC), you've probably heard me complain time and time again about how folks don't seem to be reading anything except the TMNT anime reviews, or about increased site costs due to bandwidth theft, or about me spending insane amounts of time working on the site (when I'm not working for abysmal pay), the site receiving only two cash donations in its first year (but armfuls of great swag -- thanks to all of the site's benefactors!), and so forth. That said, despite my whining, I really do enjoy working on the site -- I must, right? given all the bloody time I spend on it -- or at least I've got nothing better to do. And with respect to that last financial gripe, yeah, while if every person who came to the site donated a single dime, Scary-Crayon would pull in more than double what I make working at the bookstore, the truth of the matter is that for folks who want to donate significant amounts there are probably better causes towards which you could put your funds -- the tsunami relief effort, for example. (Which isn't to say that I don't want your dimes... ;)) I mean, as much as I'd like to pretend and wholeheartedly believe that SC is some great, world-saving project, it really isn't anything other than one dejected guy's feeble attempt to give folks a chuckle here and there by spotlighting wacky stuff and exploring it with a modicum of intelligence and wit. I hope I've been successful in that respect at least once or twice in the past year. If not, that really sucks. I have failed! But here's hoping I get a giggle out of you during Scary-Crayon's second year on the web! Ja!  :D -- Wes -- Special thanks to all of the people who've helped out with the site in one way or another over the past year! I'd list you all by name, but you know who you are, and besides I'd probably accidentally leave somebody out and then that person would murder me and then there would be no second year for Scary-Crayon. But to those folks who sent money or action figures or other cool stuff, those folks who put up with me for several days on end when I traveled, those folks who wrote guest pieces for Scary-Crayon, those animals that starred in pieces for SC, everyone who e-mailed or commented in the blog with complimentary remarks or just wrote to talk about stuff and say hi or sent me hot and sexy photographs (ooh, baby!), and everyone who visited the site for more than the blasted TMNT anime articles, THANKS! And assuming you actually read it in its entirety, thanks to those of you who read the TMNT anime reviews, too.  ;)  Without you, Scary-Crayon wouldn't be the site it is today! It would be something else, I guess, assuming it even existed at all! Don't ask me how it would work out -- I lack knowledge of counterfactuals.  :P Psst...wanna make a PayPal donation to Scary-Crayon? Just click the image above! Simple, no? ;)