Nerds in Babeland

We've Moved!

2010-10-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

Hey guys and gals,

We've moved to a cleaner, more organized website so come and join us!

http://nerdsinbabeland.com/

We're super excited about this move b/c it makes it easier for people to navigate/find previous articles and...it just looks cleaner!

Everything else is the same (contributors, twitter, facebook, etc) So, come find our new blog there!

Happy Birthday Action Flick Chick!

2010-10-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

From the Next Woman of the
Web photo shoot by the Bui Brothers

This is a special blog post in honor of Action Flick Chick Katrina Hill's birthday (today!). Action Flick Chick Katrina Hill has been kicking ass online as a female nerd online for years now and won G4TV's Next Woman of the Web award in 2009. At this point, her website will serve as a better bio than anything I write and plus you should be going there regularly anyway (http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/).

Katrina was nice enough to agree to a Q&A session with me when we first started Nerds in Babeland and I think there is no better time to celebrate her awesomeness with fellow nerdy/geek girls than on her birthday. Since starting this blog, I know that I personally have been truly amazed at the strong network of nerd/geek girls online that are working together to bring attention to the fact that, yes, we do exist. There are quite a lot of us out there that have been nerds and/or geeks for a long time (long before it became more popular to be a nerd). Action Flick Chick and her success (in addition to the success of many other geek/nerd girl sites like Geek Girl Network, Geek Girl Diva and Geek Girl Con to name a few) show that nerdy/geeky women have tons of stuff to say about topics such as action, sci-fi, fantasy, gaming, and comics and we plan to share those thoughts! :)

Also, make sure to wish her a happy birthday today! (@actionchick on Twitter)

For the uninitiated, how did you first get into the blog/comic world?

It's all about Rambo, baby! After watching the amazing action in Rambo IV and getting quite a few bewildered looks from guys when I rented it from the store, I decided I wanted to share the action with the world from a female perspective. So I wrote a review on my friends website, rocketllama.com. I received great feedback about the article series, and after awhile I branched off into my own website.

What was the first action flick you ever saw? Did you immediately fall in love with them or was that something that took time?
The first action film I can remember watching all the way through was Die Hard 3. I think I was around 11 or 12 and I loved it. Even before then, I was always trying to watch whatever my brothers and dad were watching which was action/war films, but they always made me leave the room like responsible parents should. I guess my persistence of coming back several times during the film made them give up when it came to Die Hard. From there my love of action films grew over time.

After movies, what is your next biggest pop culture obsession?
Video games!!!

Obligatory question: Favorite action heroine from the cinema?

Milla Jovovich is my favorite, but I have to say Angelina Jolie is quickly rising on my list.

Who is your favorite action hero on tv (male or female)?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer! She is super badass, always steps up to a challenge, and throws in witty banter to top it all off.

Books or Comic books? If you were given $1000 to spend only on items that you can read, what would you spend the majority on?

I would spend that money on graphic novels. I do read some comic books but I prefer to have a longer story all in one novel. I would get inpatient waiting for the next issue of a comic book so graphic novels it is.

To steal a question from your recent interview with the Geek and Gamer Girls, what is the nerdiest thing someone would find upon first entering your house/apartment?

That would be my Bayonetta action figure which is standing right next to my Optimus Prime action figure. I proudly have them on display near the entrance of the house so that everyone can know they are entering a geek's house.

In 2009 you were named G4's Next Woman of the Web. How did that come about and how did that change things in your life both online and off? What do you think of the fact that there is a special label for the next woman of the web but they don't have a label for the next "Man of the Web?" (ie, lets delve into a lil gender stuff :))

The G4's Next Woman of the Web contest was mentioned to me through twitter. I had looked into it before but didn't really get interested in entering the contest until there was a lot positive feedback through twitter. So I slapped together a video in about 3 days and sent it in.
The biggest thing I learned from the contest was how many great online friends I have! Everyone on twitter and facebook all joined together and were promoting me, writing articles campaigning for me, and then voting for me. It was amazing the amount of support there was. Now, I definitely have received more online recognition from the contest which has lead to other kinds of writing offers, photoshoots, etc.
As far as the "Man of the Web" goes, I think there should be one! However, it all boils down to this: There are mostly men in the top positions of companies and fans of G4, and dudes don't want to look at other dudes (for the most part) in sexy outfits. Women are sexy beings and probably get more ratings than a "Man of the Web."

Describe your first Comic Con experience. Did you feel you were treated any differently because you were a woman? Did it effect your enjoyment of the weekend? Did you dress up?

My first comic con I went to was Wonder Con in San Francisco. I was very overwhelmed at how many people were there and by how much stuff was there. I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. Now I feel like I'm a pro. During my first con, I was too overwhelmed by everything to even think about putting together a costume for myself. I was shocked by seeing how many people were dressed up, but after having been to so many cons it all seems normal. I'm glad I started with Wonder Con instead of going straight to San Diego Comic Con. My head might have really exploded!

I don't feel like I was treated any differently at Wonder Con because I was a woman. My guy friends did tell me that people were looking at me funny, and for all I know I could have had toilet paper hanging from my shoe.
However, at this year's New York Comic Con I was trying to play Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and I was with a guy friend of mine. We stood behind two guys playing and after a match they looked at us and one guy moved and motioned for my friend to play. The other guy just looked at me and kept playing. That's okay, I was playing nice and thought I could wait another turn. When my friend got done, he stepped back to let me play but then another dude stepped in. We were both so agitated I just decided to leave rather than get banned from the con for kicking someone's ass. It seemed like they assumed I didn't want to play because I was a girl, and I was just there as arm candy. Well, this is 2010 people, girls play video games too!

Now onto the random, fun birthday questions!

Best birthday present ever?
Seriously, I'm going to say the Elmo Snuggie I got this year! One of my friends was jokingly saying he was going to get me a snuggie for my birthday. I said if I was going to wear a snuggie, then I wanted the most ridiculous looking snuggie they could
find. The big Elmo face is perfect.

Best birthday present of the future?
A role in the next Expendable film!

If you could have any action hero jump out of a cake for you, who
would it be? What would they say when they jump out?
Arnold Schwarzenegger and he would say, "It's not a tumah!"

What is the most ridiculous action hero stunt that you have seen in a movie and/or TV show that you tried to replicate?
A man sliding under an 18 wheeler truck bed on a horse. That stunt is from
a real movie people and boy does it look ridiculous. By the way, that
totally doesn't work in real life. The horse will just get super pissed and
storm off.

How many evildoers' asses have you kicked?
Over 9,000!

Serious question, what are some future/new things you are looking forward to doing with your website?
I look forward to putting out new youtube videos and expanding my Zombie
101 collection of videos. I hope to start adding reviews for a few other
mediums like video games, TV action series, and graphic novels.

What is the one career that you could never see yourself enjoying?
Being a nanny. KIDS! YUCK!

Running a website takes up a lot of time, obviously. If you weren't doing that (or if you could hire tons of minions to run it for you) what would you do with your spare time?
Play video games like a maniac, read a butt ton of comics, and travel to
every comic con/nerdy convention there is.

Guilty pleasure TV show?
The Girls Next Door (sigh) I'm ashamed of myself.

If/when you run your own action hero team (ala A-Team or Expendables),
who would you absolutely need on the team if you were fighting to rid
the earth of vampires? Zombies?
Vampires: Buffy the vampire slayer and the Scooby gang, Van Helsing
Zombies: Still Buffy the vampire slayer and the Scooby gang, Alice from
Resident Evil, and Bruce Campbell

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ACTION FLICK CHICK!

Random Thought of the Day...!

2010-10-18T06:31:00.000-07:00

Hey Hey--I'm back! Miss me much?!? So, how was your weekend? That's good to hear--mine was good too.

Anywhooo.....

I HATE MONDAYS

╔══╗╗╗╔╗╔╦╗╔╝░░░░░░░░░
╚╗╔╝╠╣╠╣░║░╠╣░░░░░░░░░
░║║░╝╝╝╝░╩░╚╗░╦╗╔╗╗╔╔╗
╔╝╚╗░░╦╦╗╔╗╦╗╗║║╠╣╚╣╚╗
╚══╝░░╝╝╝╚╝╩╚╝╩╝╝╩╚╝╚╝

That is all.

ø¤º°Sparkles°º¤ø

Artery Cloggers...terrible for u but sooooo good.

2010-10-15T05:55:00.000-07:00

Mr Doc and I went out to a couple of really awesome haunted houses last night(I will post a review of those later). On the way home we stopped at the only Denny's within 100 miles of where we live, and I discovered something amazing. A Fried Cheese Melt. Basically it's a Grilled Cheese sandwich with Cheese Sticks in the middle. They give you marinara to dip it in. It was delicious but I swear I FELT my arteries clogging as I ate it.

Fringe 3.4: Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?

2010-10-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

Oki dok kiddos, you know the drill by now! Silver titles mean we are back in 'our' world with Faulivia doing the legwork. Which also means we have Peter, our lovable quirky Walter and the non beret version of Astrid at the helm.

This week sees us dealing with the ever elusive shapeshifters and Faulivia's growing anxiety about her ability to actually pull off this alternate identity thing. And oh the cross references and past influences of sci-fi tales of yore really come full circle in this one.

Lest we forget at any time that we are in fact dealing with alternate universes. Ones WITH Leonard Nimoy even! You know where I am heading here.. hiya Star Trek!

We kick off with the sitting Senator who is really a shapeshifter meeting an untimely semi demise after an accident. Shades of Mystique from Xmen anyone? Anywho, seems the SSS (Shape Shifting Senator) was only 'mostly dead'. Dude, they should have totally named him Wesley! But a heavily tripping Walter finds ways to initiate neural activity via exploitation of the half human's emotional connections. The hope is to be able to ask the SSS a few things about who and what he is and is doing. Hello Ash! But where Ian Holm was rather coherent in his 'brains and weird cyborg blood go spodey' state, our SSS on a slab merely spouts off random mutterings pertaining to his upcoming anniversary trip. Oddly his brain shows little activity, but parts of his lower spine light up light an LED art project.

But what does it mean?! Well, time for a food break, seeing as how a newly awakened sleeper shapeshifter is on the way to make the mostly dead dude an all the way dead dude. Newton awakens the guy who has the house and family in the burbs and doesnt wanna give it all up just because his original programming tells him he should. And here we enter the Matrix. Newton is Smith and the shapeshifters possess varying characteristics of the agents and the benevolent rogue programs like the Oracle. So far none of them seem to have our best interests at heart as a collective humanity, but they do seem to get attached to the humans in their lives. I do love candy.. or my wife in this case.

You gotta love Walter's ongoing fascination with food, rather like Rusty from 'Oceans 11' but with less swagger and more childlike awe and loony bin crazy. It's over a box of animal crackers that Walter has his House like epiphany.. of course! The brain is in the ass just like a stegosaurus! Thats why the lower spine was all shiny! You know its a big deal when Walter abandons his pudding.

So while Walter is off autopsying a shapeshifter's ass and letting his pudding get warm, Peter ponders how the senator's wife could have mind fucked herself into believing this thing was her husband despite noticing the small but important changes. Not unlike his nagging questions about 'Olivia's' behavior. But rather than dance around it, he tells her straight out the things he has noticed. A dude who actually vocalizes his concerns? My god this IS science fiction! I kid, I kid. But it is a refreshing change from the normal 'how can we drag this out for weeks and weeks?' usually seen on serial shows.

But before 'liv can answer its off to the lab, Batman! Something's amiss, namely Walter as evidenced by his pudding being at the table without him. The sleeper shifter is there and gives Walter a nasty cut on his noggin. These guys totally remind me of the dudes with the ice pick thingy from X Files. With our adorable mad scientist incapacitated he then removes the bizarre metal vertebrae ass brain mechanism and takes off back to his family. Since he refuses to move on and take another identity, Newton takes him out. Only to be thanked for his troubles by being chased and caught by 'liv and Peter.

Faulivia has a busy night. She slips Newton the digitial equivalent of a cyanide pill (which looks like a wafer thin SD card) while in custody, but not before he hits her where it hurts when it comes to naming her fears about being able to actually pull off this increasingly challenging assignment. Later she summons Peter to her place under the guise of talking, only to seduce him.. most likely in the hopes of making him forget his concerns over her current quirks. I mean she IS from an alternate universe, who knows what they teach kids in sex ed over there?

So we still dont know what on either earth the main big plot is, but we have an idea as to how they are going about it. And now Walter has the whole of Massive Dynamic at his whim, if only he can stay off the LSD long enough to not freak out its best scientists by talking of greater consciousness while taking off his pants. And do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep? I dont know, but seems they have a weakness for actually forming emotional attachments to their families, so maybe Scottish shapeshifters do?

So there we have it, Season 3 Episode 4. But before we take our leave, its glyph time!

Stay tuned for next week: Amber

~kim
Kink In Motion

Stage Combat Edutainment

2010-10-14T19:19:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd share with you one of the MSCD Stage Combat Club's more instructional videos on stage combat. Don't try this at home. But do enjoy!

Motivation

2010-10-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I wanted to talk today about something that I suffer from and I believe most of us out there do as well. It is joked about quite a bit but maybe most of us don't even want to own up to

it. I am talking about Procrastination. It is a serious problem in our lives and really keeps us from fully enjoying anything we do. You may recognize this within yourself if you show symptoms of putting things off, waiting until the last minute, or even anxiety over a due date. Maybe the solution can be getting rid of due dates, but lets face it that won't happen unless you are the one making the dates.

This condition can lead to some other serious conditions like perfectionism and workaholism. If we can get to the root of these issues though maybe we can save others from falling into the same trap most of us have fallen into for so many years. It doesn't have to be your downfall in life anymore.

There is a key ingredient to help most of us restructure our lives and try to alleviate some of the anxiety and stress that comes along with these conditions and that is Motivation. We may be procrastinators but when it comes down to the wire we can put together a presentation for work or school in under 12 hours, that would take most days or weeks to complete. We are efficient in those wee hours of the morning and I am here to tell you that we are powerful. If we could only exude that power in a more organized manner most of us could take over the world.

Here is an example of what I am talking about. First, what is motivation? It is when you get up the will power to go for a goal. The steps I have put together for eliminating procrastination..

1st step: Setting attainable goals within a reasonable time frame.
2nd step: Find a moderate pace to stick to that won't be overwhelming.
3rd step: Stick to that pace until a goal is attained.

The best way to do this is get organized. Create a calendar or a journal for your school work and when you will study, for how long and when things are due. Or if you want to use it for working out do the same thing. It has to be reasonable so you will stick to it though.

The most important thing to remember is that this is always a learning curve for people who suffer from procrastination. Don't get down on yourself if the pace you set has to change or even the goal changes over time. The worst outcome I have seen in my personal experience with dealing with procrastinators is it results in a low self-esteem and putting oneself down. Remember that this is all about you and your growth. Anxiety may ensue as a symptom of dealing with procrastination, but setting up schedules and time frames for attainable goals can alleviate most of the stress set up for the "when" you need to get things done. There may only be 24 hours in a day but that doesn't mean we need to spend the last few of them exerting our energy to get things done.

So here is a question for all of you... What gets you motivated?

Jess Del Pino

(1/2 of Hooked On Ve g, Come on a Veg-tastic voyage with us!!)

Twitter/iTunes

.. honestly though people, procrastination can be your downfall, let's get motivated and talk about it!!

Reminder - Geek Girl Con Auction!

2010-10-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

Just a little reminder that today and tomorrow is the Geek Girl Con Auction!

2 11x17 prints of "Cupcakes?" (as shown here) done by @shibuyababy!!! Email bids to sponsor@geekgirlcon.com by 5pm tomorrow!

Also, don't forget that all of the proceeds from @tishalule1's etsy site go directly to Geek Girl Con.

Search #GGCAuctions for more details

Childhood: It follows you to Adulthood

2010-10-14T11:09:00.001-07:00

As a child I was scared of lots of things, I didn't like the dark, I was terrified by spiders, vampires gave me the willies. Normal stuff for kids.

But one night, when I was about 7, my mom rented the cartoon version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. All I remember is having weeks upon weeks of nightmares about the Headless Horseman.

I didn't think about it again until I was 11. In 6th grade I was in an advanced Literature class and we traveled to a nearby town to see several short stories get the theater treatment. I really enjoyed The Monkey's Paw, and The Tell-Tale Heart. But then, they started telling the story of that ghoul of a German Mercenary, the Headless Horseman. I was so scared I had to leave. The HH scared me so bad, I couldn't even finish the Wishbone version of the story.

My freshman year of college, my parents and I took a trip to Walt Disney World and we attended Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween party. I was really excited about seeing the parade until my Mom informed me that it was led by the Headless Horseman...on a real horse...whose hooves sometimes sparked on the cobblestones. *shudders* So instead we rode Splash Mountain three times in a row. It was tons more fun than having a week or more worth of nightmares.

Even now, 5 years later, at 23, I still am uneasy about anything to do with Sleepy Hollow. I won't even watch the Johnny Depp movie, and he is one of my favorite actors of all time.

Childish it may be, we all have fears, some we admit to, others we don't. But we aren't the only ones with those fears. And it's so much better to share them than keep them bottled up inside.

So to start a sort-of Halloween discussion...what is something that has terrified you since you were a child? Or something that is a newly discovered fear?

NYCC - Day 3 in Photos

2010-10-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

Day 3 for me was mostly wandering the center and checking out the cool costumes people were wearing. I did go to one panel though, for AMC's "The Walking Dead".

Autograph Alley. This was the line to get James Marsters' autograph.

Dungeons & Dragons. There were several campaigns being played throughout the weekend, plus a few tables dedicated to teaching beginners the basics of the game.

Team Rocket

The X-Men. Nice Gambit.

Tomb Raider

Phoenix was what first caught my attention here, but I liked all of their costumes.

Batman & Robin. I thought it was cute that the kid was Batman, even though Robin was the kid in the comics.

Walking Dead panel

First we got some background information from the producer, director, and writer.

Then the cast joined us for insight on their characters.

Project For a New Mythology

2010-10-13T15:39:00.000-07:00

Any of you who are writers (or readers!) should stop my my friend Jason's online 'zine, The Project For a New Mythology. This issue, it's all about the REMIX! That is, take any of the work you like and riff on it! Make sure you let me know if you riff on mine, so I can get all psyched. ~Jenn

http://pfanm.com/PFANM/Volume_4_Remix.html

Why I Dig Paul and Storm

2010-10-13T15:15:00.000-07:00

During a completely tedious and infuriating day at work, my entertainment comes from checking on my Twitter account during breaks.

How stoked was I to see that Storm of the comedy music duo Paul and Storm was engaging their Twitter followers in a short interactive that was reminiscent of Zork. It kept me laughing the entire day and I figured I would share the game with you before it's lost in the annals of Twitter.

[S] You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door and a sign that says "Retweet".

.@just_mike >take sign / The sign is affixed to the house by very large bolts, and can not be moved.

.@zxo >inv / You have: one portable computer device, a sequined glove, and a parrot.

.@jawboneradio >use portable computer device / You take the device in hand. Its display reads: http://bit.ly/czZzn1

.@tanuki_green > Put on glove / You are now wearing the sequined glove. You hear music.

.@Spam286 >Moonwalk west. / You moonwalk west. You are standing in a field. There is a sequined computer terminal and a cannon

.@smokehalo >say “hello parrot” / The parrot says “hello parrot”

To read the rest of the post (and it's a long one), visit my site

NYCC - Day 2 in Photos

2010-10-13T06:37:00.000-07:00

I meant to post this yesterday, but I was too busy being a student. Sorry. Here is Day 2 of NYCC in photos.

The line getting in before doors opened on Saturday was insane. It gave me a chance to check out some of the costumes for the day though, like...

...this guy, who was my first Doctor Who sighting. He was standing behind me, and I couldn't not take a picture. The fez was too cool.

OM Nom Nom, I wants cookies now.

This was the MTV Geek panel. Third from the left is Stan Lee, who announced his new project with them.

The DC Universe panel was in the same room as MTV Geek, so I stuck around to get the latest news on that front.

I saw this person when I was leaving the cafeteria. I didn't expect to see such an epically awesome Codex costume, so of course I had to compliment her on it.

The LGBT panel was in the same room as the zombie panel I was going to, and we were able to sneak in about midway through. I was pleasantly surprised to see the room was packed with people actually interested in the topic, and not just people who were waiting to talk about zombies.

Next was the "Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep" panel. It was quite entertaining.

Pizza time! The guys from the Roddenberry panel decided we deserved some pizza for sticking with them at the late hour.

Roddenberry panel. By the time we were finished, I was convinced I needed to add "Days Missing" to my graphic novel collection. I got to talk to the creator of the series the next day at his signing. He was super nice and a great start to my morning.

Day 2 was full of lots of fun things that won't soon be forgotten. Although that can be said of the whole weekend. Up next, the third and final day. Stay tuned.

Random Thoughts for the Next Few Days...!

2010-10-13T05:47:00.000-07:00

Many have asked, "Sparkles--how do you come up with this stuff?" .....and I reply with a blank stare.

Honestly though...I carry a small notebook with me and write things down when inspiration hits. Sometimes I like to look at people when writing to make them feel like whatever I'm writing is about them OR make them paranoid that I'm some kind of investigator and they are under suspicion. =^)

Most of the time, the funniest bits happen when I am sleep deprived/fighting insomnia. (You're welcome.)

I will be super busy/doing a lot of traveling over the next few days, and won't have time to even touch a computer let alone be close to free WiFi, so here are four little gems that I've been saving......enjoy.

* If you have even one problem and you're not bitching I know you can't be one of my relatives...
*....which brings me to another point... Smother is only an "S" away from Mother.
* Morning, smorning. Have a glass of wine!
* Bacon makes everything better.

ø¤º°Sparkles°º¤ø

Geek Girl Con Silent Auctions

2010-10-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder that the lovely ladies of Geek Girl Con are still holding silent auctions via Twitter. All items being auctioned off are donated by vendors/merchants, geeky crafters, GeekGirlCon organizers and anyone else who wants to make sure this event happens. All winning bids will go straight to GeekGirlCon. No bids are ever too small!

Currently this super awesome leopard purse/tote is on sale through tishalulle1's etsy store. I know I know we spend a lot of money and suggest a lot of stuff on this site but this is for another great Nerdy/Geek girl cause :) Also, everything in tishalulle1's etsy store goes 100% to Geek Girl Con.

New auction items go up around Thursday or Friday. I will continue to post them as they come out!

Search #GGCAuctions for more details

The Nerdist meets Mr. Sulu - Photoshop Contest

2010-10-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

*points to the picture*

Mr. Hardwick and Mr. Takei...they would make awesome companions.

That is all.

The Birth of a Hashtag, a Nickname and a Movement

2010-10-12T08:42:00.002-07:00

So it all began rather innocently as many great things in history do. ;D

It was the early morning hours of Thursday, October 7th, 2010, and I was getting ready to settle in for a marathon overnighter listening to David Tennant on The Christian O'Connell Breakfast Show on Absolute Radio (UK). I casually began to ask my tweeps on Twitter who was present (I wanted to know who I was going to spend the morning with) and people began to tweet me replies. Slowly, we grew to a dozen (myself included) and at that point I decided to stop counting people. A dozen David Tennant fangirls sounded like a good round number. =)
@seduff_asked for suggestions as to what we should call ourselves in trying to get ourselves a shout-out and I made two suggestions. I honestly can't recall the first one but the second one was #absolutedtfangirls. It had a double meaning which I really liked - devout David Tennant fangirls and David Tennant fangirls staying up/getting up early to listen to Absolute Radio. I didn't think seduff or anyone else would really like it that much. Soon several people agreed and the hashtag for our David Tennant Twitter party (the 'party' term coming from @tardis_tara) officially became #absolutedtfangirls.
I reluctantly decided to listen to @seduff_ and sent an e-mail into the station. I didn't want to take the time to write up something intelligent (LOL) only to have it overlooked like every other time I've written in to ANY show/site but what the hell! I even went so far as to make my e-mail fangirlie & cheeky and provided them with my actual city location because it wasn't like anyone would ever read that information on air. Boy, was I wrong!
Around the same time, the Heart Fm show which would include an interview with David, had begun and although I was supposed to be recording it I ended up going back and forth between both radio shows. BIG mistake!
As I was listening to Heart Fm, I decided to save my e-mail for posterity since it was a site-based submission and once I had sent it there was no way of retrieving it. I posted it through twit longer and at about the same time I did that I began to see tweets pop up on my timeline that read "He mentioned us!" "He read my e-mail!" and then I came across a 'Congratulations!' tweet sent my way. Congratulations? I was truly confused and thought maybe someone was congratulating me for having had the nerve to send in the e-mail I'd just sent.
By this time, I had switched back over to Absolute Radio just in time to hear the end of @tardis_tara ON THE SHOW! She was telling her story about meeting David in New Mexico while she was an extra in the upcoming remake of Fright Night and described her brand spankin' new Doctor Who tattoo only to have an awkward silence linger from Christian's end. I was laughing so hard that I tweeted I was pmsl at Christian. <---- Remember this tweet; it will up again later. =D
During Tara's on air appearance, more congratulations came my way and by now it was clear I had missed something big on Absolute Radio! I felt really dumb but had to ask if my e-mail had been read on air and in came the "Yes, they did! Right before Tara!" tweets. I was crushed. It had been my one shot at on air radio fame (LOL) and I had actually MISSED it! I felt like a loser! The loser feelings didn't last long though as I quickly began to recall exactly what I had typed in the e-mail! =O I was now completely embarrassed!
"The #AbsoluteDTfangirls around the globe have joined up for a twitter party to await the coming of the Time God on Christian's kick ass breakfast show!
Sunday can't come soon enough and we look forward to Decoy Bride as well as the epic Fright Night where, basically, Peter Vincent is the hero! OHH YESS!
Love, McFangirl =D
P.S. When the hell is Tennant gonna do a shirtless photoshoot?! We're begging you, David!"
I was feeling really awkward & disappointed that I had missed out on my own 2 seconds of fame and would have to wait hours to listen to it when @seduff_ tweeted a link to a partial audio recording of Christian reading several of our party's e-mails including mine and tardis_tara's interview. I tried not to listen for as long as I could and finally gave in. I was horrified & thrilled all at the same time and learned that I had forced Christian to get his sidekick, Richie, to google 'Decoy Bride' because they didn't even know what it was. That was too funny!
As I was finishing up the audio clip, I was shocked to see Christian's Twitter av sitting in my @ replies feed. It was indeed a tweet from Christian, alright and it read:

I was surprised but will admit it felt really great to know Christian had taken the time to click 'reply' on one of my goodness-knows-how-many dorky tweets that morning to send a tweet-out (??? is that what Twitter shout-outs are called? LOL!) to all of us AND me! ...But MCFANDANGO girl? WTF? That was both hilarious and troubling all at the same time.
As you can see, the tweet got several retweets and then everyone started calling me mcfandango girl. *palm face* While it was amazing a radio celebrity had made up a nickname for me it got really old really quickly and within five minutes, I tweeted that whomever chose to call me that again would get bitten. Several people decided to disregard the 'warning' but no, I didn't actually get a chance to bite anyone. Darn. ;P
The seemingly never-ending waiting went on and then FINALLY David showed up. The interview was awesome and near the end Christian asked David to give the #absolutedtfangirls a shout-out prompted by a tweet (and several retweets) from @tiddytennant which he did, sort of... in his David kinda way. He didn't get the name quite right and no thanks to Christian, erroneously sent it out only to those of us in the U. S., bless his little heart!
The entire experience was awesome and I'll never forget it. I think it really brought a lot of us closer together in our Tennant fandom. =) I'm looking forward to the Tennant/O'Connell "Dream Team" getting back together sometime before the end of the year to bring us all together once again for another 'David Tennant Twitter Party'.
Thanks to the tweets, retweets and the on air 'advertising' the #absolutedtfangirls hashtag got out there and now all Tennant fangirls refer to themselves as such making Twitter lists, using the term on their blogs & websites, and aiding in spreading it even further. I'm very proud & happy that the hashtag got out there and that so many fans the world over have embraced it. It really means a lot to me but I have seduff to thank for asking the initial question that prompted my hashtag answer.
While girls may forever call themselves #absolutedtfangirls this post is dedicated to our DT dozen who will always, in my mind, be THE original #absolutedtfangirls (in random order):
@hypocritter, @vincents_biatch, @MOTDS6690, @JenLeigh82, @TenSuitConverse, @GojyoChan, @beth_evers, @GallifreyNative, @TARDIS_Tara, @seduff_, @BeatlesWhoMuser, and me, @mcfangirl.
Addendum:
Now for the tweet about me pmsl at Christian: About 3 days after the radio show aired, I pulled up Christian's tweet to snag and save for all of time (heheh) when, for the first time, it occurred to me to click on the 'in reply to mcfangirl' link on the bottom of the tweet and to my surprise and one finaly time - embarrassment - Christian hadn't just grabbed one of the tweets I'd sent him and clicked reply, he had actually gone to my profile page and then clicked the link to reply to this tweet:

AWKward! LOL!
I leave you with one last pretty cool story:
On Saturday, October 9th, 2010, David was on Graham Norton's radio show and Graham read an e-mail from a fangirl who wrote that the #absolutedtfangirls said, "Hello!". Graham asked David, "Do you know them?" to which David replied, "Not personally but I've heard it [the term] before.".
Clearly, he remembered us!
I can now die happily as the #absolutedtfangirl! ;D
**An extra special thank you to @seduff_ for her amazing work on the logo featured at the top. You can see more of her work here.**

Doctor Who: The Complete Specials (The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars / The End of Time Parts 1 and 2)

Market Day - James Sturm

2010-10-11T23:34:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, October 7, I went back to Meltdown Comics in order to get my next recommendation. This time I was assisted by Jim Higgins, an independent comic book writer, publisher, and editor. He teaches classes for Meltdown University, a weekly workshop that teaches the basics on being a comic book writer and/or artist. I fully intend to return and sit in on a couple of classes at the very least so that I can write up a review for you lovely people. In the meantime, I get to share my review on the book that Jim recommended, Market Day, by James Sturm.

Market Day is a short, simple-and-yet-beautiful comic/graphic novel that takes place in early-1900s Eastern Europe (right before the Industrial Revolution). It tells the story of a day in the life of Mendleman, an artisan with a growing family (first child on the way) that has made his living selling handmade rugs to the market in town for most of his life. This day, however, Mendleman finds that the market is not what it was and, instead of paying money for finely crafted home-made items, it now sells mass-produced, cheaply made merchandise.

Yes, this story is a metaphor. I don't think I need to elaborate too much in order to demonstrate the similarities between the times. Nevertheless, the beauty of the book is not just that it we can recognize the metaphor. Market Day reminds us that the current moment of economic and social upheaval in the early 21st century has happened before and will happen again, and that we will continue to survive. (That's right, a graphic novel about the early 1900s has the same message as a TV series from the Syfy network about cylons).

When I started reading the book I was afraid that the symbolism would be heavy-handed. Instead, it was quite the opposite. It is really a basic story of a man who finds that his craft is no longer desired and must find a new way to support his family. That is it. One day, one major life-altering realization. Instead of being a heavy-handed "lesson" about the evils of modern society, it is a tragically beautiful story about Mendleman and his coming to grips with a reality where he must do what is best for his family, not necessarily what is the most pleasing to him.

Since the entire book is told from Mendleman's perspective it stays relatively focused on his immediate thoughts and concerns. We watch as he enters the market and he describes the things he loves about the market, the children playing, the smell of the food. Then, as he finds out his handiwork is no longer desired, we see how his perspective on the exact same market has altered to now focus on the starving dogs and cruel merchants. This change in perspective does not feel forced, but rather goes naturally with the progression of the story.

The art is gorgeous. The pictures tell more of a story than the actual words most of the time. In fact, it is not until page six of the book that we get the first bit of "dialogue." Throughout the book there are moments where we will go through multiple pages without any words. I can't really think of a complaint against this even though I am typically a big fan of dialogue/prose. I think the reason it works so well with these types of graphic novels is that it forces you to slow down. When there are no words on a page I find myself spending more time looking at the entire image multiple times. Take in the whole scene. We aren't being told what is important in the image and therefore we have to figure that out ourselves.

Even when there is prose on the page, Sturm oftentimes provides simple, bare frames throughout the book. Once again, this allowed me to sit back and take in the whole page and determine its significance on my own, whether it was the shear distance of the market from Mendleman's home or the process by which Mendleman creates a work of art in his mind from his everyday surroundings.

I'm excited that Jim Higgins introduced me to James Sturm's work. I was already familiar with Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, and Alison Bechdel, but I don't know a lot of the more recent independent comic book writers/artists. I am and always will be a superhero/noir/action comic book girl, but I also really love independent novels. They force me to slow down and really appreciate the comic book medium for what it is, a unique interplay between prose/dialogue and images that can be experimented with in an infinite amount of ways.

The Nerdy Casual Gamer

2010-10-11T20:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, let me preface by saying that I am in no way a “gamer”, but I do like to play video games. I have two of the three major systems in my house. Well, I have 3, but I only have a Playstation 2. We have both the Wii and the Xbox 360. And handheld-wise, we have Sony’s Playstation Portable and Nintendo’s DS. When I say we, I mean - my husband and I. The amount of money which has been spent on video games in our household could probably cure the national debt. Well, maybe not so much - but you get what I’m saying. We have a lot of games for all the systems. Our fearless leader, Miss Woots, had this idea about reviewing all the systems and asked for me to take a stab at it. So here we go. Again, this is from a standpoint of a casual gamer. Not a Fragg Doll.

Let’s begin our tale with the Playstation 2. Now, this system is a juggernaut. Sony has yet to stop releasing games for this system. Why? Because it had sold more units than any of the new generation systems (source). I still use my PS2. However, the only reason I use it is to play my favorite video game series (Kingdom Hearts). We have a few games for the console and we’ve owned it since March of 2003. We have yet had to replace it (*knock on wood*). Why on earth would Sony stop making the PS2 when they’re still selling consoles?

However, should the Kingdom Hearts series make its way to PS3, then this will be the title that will be a system buyer in our household. It’s unfortunate but true. There are many fun games on the PS3, but to me - it’s more about the Blu-Ray player than it is about the graphics. If you want a good Blu-Ray player, and wouldn’t mind playing some video games, then the PS3 is your ticket. The Playstation Network (comparable to Xbox Live’s network) is ok. You can download games, as well as stream movies from Netflix. However, when it comes to networks, I actually prefer Xbox to Sony. I know that I don’t own a PS3, but you can use the Playstation Network with the Playstation Portable (PSP). I would say that the Xbox interface is more user friendly.

Which brings us to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 is a great console. I love having one. I don’t play a lot of games, but the games that I do play, I have a ton of fun. Being able to talk with your friends via “party”, or just sending voice and/or text messages via the console is great. There are many games on that system that are meant for a casual gamer - such as, Castle Crashers and Peggle. I have spent many a night playing those two games with my friends. What’s great about Castle Crashers is that it is 4 person co-op game - you can play with up to 4 friends at the same time. This is one of the main reasons I love our Xbox. Xbox also has made it extremely easy to intergrate your “social network” through the console. When you have a Gold account (an Xbox Live account, essentially), you can access both Twitter and Facebook. You can tweet from you console, as well as update your FB status. For someone as directly connected to the social media network, I loved this integration. M$ gets points from me for this feature. Plus, with the Gold account, you can download trials for games that you may or may not want to play. It’s like a test drive for a car, but for video games. I’m sure we’ve all bought some pretty terrible games in our past. How great is that option? I mean, ‘Family Feud’ sounds fun and all, but is it really? Let’s download it and find out!

I’d like to take a minute and direct our attention to the handheld devices before I move on to the third and final console. I really don’t know what I would do when I go to the doctor’s office if I didn’t have my handheld devices. My DS saved my sanity when my mother was in the CCU a few years ago - but that’s neither here nor there.

As stated previously, I have both a DS (actually, I have a DS, a DS Lite and a DS XL) and a Sony PSP. Both are two very different machines. We purchased the DS a few months after launch (we have both the Gameboy SP and Gameboy Micro). I had gone to e3 in 2003 and played Mario Kart and then realized what a fun system it really was. Eventually, we bought two DS’. And that was a blessing in disguise because a game called “Animal Crossing” came out. I wish I was joking when I tell you that I played that game every single day for 3 years. That’s devotion. Or insanity. Or a little bit of both. There are a TON of games for the DS - my personal favorites are Super Mario 64 DS and then Kingdom Hearts 358/2 (surprised? i didn’t think so). Another great game for the DS - if you like role playing games - is ‘The World Ends With You’. There are Zelda titles, as well as fun games like ‘Scribblenauts’ - where you write a word and then a picture is drawn of that word. So, you write ‘elephant’ and an elephant appears. It’s fantastic! The DS also has the capability of going online - being able to play with players, as long as you have a friend code, for certain games. My love for the DS is never ending. The battery life is about 9-10 hours, give or take. I love the DS so much that when they release the new 3DS, we will be purchasing it for our household. I’d like to say we’ll be able to buy 2 at launch, but at a $300 (as of right now), that’s a little steep. But for sure our household will have one.

Now on to Sony’s Playstation Portable. I really like this system a lot. The graphics are far superior to that of Nintendo’s, however - it is a UMD system. A UMD is like a very small DVD (non technical term). Because it is a disc-driven system, the noise that it produces while trying to load is beyond ridiculous. There was one game I was playing and all I could think was “I think I can, I think I can” as I heard the UMD spinning. One game that I played ‘Final Fantasy VII:Crisis Core’ had cinematic cut-scenes that looked as if I was watching a DVD. Amazing. However, the noise of the UMD spinning is a bit distracting and makes it rather difficult to play the console in bed when your spouse is trying to sleep. Graphics - A+. Functionality - C. But, you can access the web with the PSP. So, there is that. And, you can use the PS Network, downloading games to your memory card (the DS has an internal memory, the PSP requires a memory card). The battery life for the PSP is about 5-7 hours, depending on if the game you’re playing requires a lot of juice (cue The Little Engine That Could).

Now, this casual gamer’s favorite console - the Nintendo Wii. I love my Wii. We’ve had it since launch, and we only just had to replace the hard drive this past summer (that was heartbreaking - losing all of my saved games? I held a funeral for them). The Wii is a perfect machine if you like to entertain. There are plenty of games that you can pick up while having friends over, and anyone can play. We’ve had quite a few parties where we end up playing ‘WarioWare’, basically throwing the Wiimote around like ‘hot potato’. And of course there’s Wii Sports. Who doesn’t love playing 4 person Mii Bowling? I think Nintendo finally found a niche - market to the casual gamers, or people who really had never played video games before. That’s not to say that there aren’t games on the Wii that are meant specifically for gamers (i.e. Red Steel, Goldeneye, etc). However, Nintendo is known for their heavy hitters - ‘Legend of Zelda’, ‘Mario’ and ‘Metroid’. ‘Mario Galaxy’ - both 1 and 2 - are fantastic games. They are easy enough for anyone to pick them up, but as the stages progress, you then find yourself feeling more like a gamer due to the difficulty level raising up quite a bit. If Nintendo were to only make those three games, I’d still be a fangirl. I love those characters that much.

This concludes our casual gamers’ look at the “console wars”. If you have a lot of friends that play the Xbox, buy an Xbox. If you are a person who loves technology and loves to have everything be crystal-clear images, buy a PS3. If you just like to entertain and have friends over, buy the Wii. And hand-held wise, prettier graphics - PSP. Hours and hours of entertainment without worrying if the battery is going to die - DS. I hope that what I’ve told you about may help sway you to purchase that particular console you’ve been eyeing.

NYCC - Day 1 in Photos

2010-10-11T18:23:00.000-07:00

Hey, fellow nerds! I promised you all a huge photo post on NYCC. Since I have over 200 photos that I had to dwindle down to the best of the best, I decided to break it up into 3 parts. This is Day 1.

This was actually a closet with the exterior design of the TARDIS. Not quite the real thing but a close second.

I ran into this girl at the Midtown Comics table. She saw me looking at the Serenity graphic novel and figured it was safe to assume I would recognize her costume. Good guess.

The Onion panel gave us the fake news of the future. It was a lot like the current news, but with more tech and giant bugs.

The James Martsters panel was the highlight of Day 1, for me. He did a Q&A and answered a lot of really good questions. He was super nice to everyone and totally fit in with the rest of us nerds.

Day 1 was a great start to what proved to be a fantastical weekend. Stay tuned for Day 2 in photos, coming soon to a computer near you.

Games of Nonchalance - Real Life ARG

2010-10-11T16:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend was Indiecade weekend in Culver City, CA. In case you are relatively new to the independent games world (like myself), IndieCade is the International Festival of Independent Games. It is basically an entire weekend dedicated to showcasing independent producers and developers of interactive gaming. Unfortunately I was not able to spend much time at the festival as I found out about it late and already had a full weekend, but I fully intend to learn more about it for next year. I did get some super cool pictures and will post them on our tumblr site later on this evening.

Yes, you can see me taking the picture in the TV screen.

In the short amount of time that I was there, I did get the opportunity to meet Sara Thacher, the lead producer and manager of Nonchalance. I intend to have a longer discussion/interview with her in the future and will post that information here once I have it.

In the meantime, I want to introduce you to the basic mission of Nonchalance, which is "to provoke discovery through visceral experiences and pervasive play." My mind immediately went to my experience from the Dexter ARG but this is actually a different ballgame altogether. Nonchalance is located solidly in San Francisco and their most well-known game (Games of Nonchalance) creates an alternate reality in the physical reality of the city of San Francisco.

That sounds weird, doesn't it? Real Life Alternate Reality Game. However, that is pretty much they have created. I don't want to say too much about the game because 1) I haven't had the opportunity to go complete it yet since it is in SanFran and 2) I wouldn't want to spoil the fun. Instead I will direct you to the trailer below and their website.

Games of Nonchalance from Nonchalance on Vimeo.

Why am I so excited by this new discover? Because I think ARGs and games like the one described above have the potential to be one of the next great forms of storytelling. We talk about interactive media and transmedia storytelling but the game that Nonchalance created engages participants in a manner that most video games cannot do (yet). As Sara stated, their focus is on creating a game that rewards on different levels of engagement. Similar to a video game but located in physically accessible space, these games are re-playable and can be stopped at any level without taking away the fun of what you have done already. You don't have to finish the game, even though it sounds like it is pretty badass if you do. And if you do finish the game, you can come back and do it again and explore different elements than you did in the first go around. Again, I can't say too much because I just got a brief overview of the game at IndieCade (where Games of Nonchalance won World and Story Award) but I have a fellow nerd friend that went and finished Day 1 (Michael Andersen from @argn) and he shared his flickr page. (He would have done more but his time in the city was short).

What are your thoughts on the future of games like this? Even if you haven't played it, would you be interested in playing a real life ARG? One that has you walking around physical space, regardless of how familiar you think you already are with that area?

Random Thought of the Day!

2010-10-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

There are many things that can be said about Monday, and none of them is going to be heard on Reading Rainbow anytime soon.
ø¤º°Sparkles°º¤ø

Answer This! Preview

2010-10-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to get tickets to a screening of Christopher Gorham's new film "Answer This" last Friday at the Michigan Theater in beautiful downtown Ann Arbor, and thought I would give you guys a sneak peak!

Written/Directed/Produced by Ann Arbor natives the Farrah Brothers--Mike, John, and Chris--"Answer This!" tells a story about a stalled Michigan University academic named Paul (Gorham). After many years of pursing a Phd. in English Lit, Paul is faced with the impending doom that is graduation. Paul's father, Dr. Elliot Tarson--played by real-life beloved U-M retired English Lit Prof. Ralph Williams--is retiring, which means no more "free ride" for Paul. This sends Paul into a downward spiral, where he discovers the competitive world of Pub Trivia and freshman Naomi--played by Arielle Kebbel.

Like any father, Dr. Tarson has always wanted the best for his son, and using the power that he has garnered over the years working at U-M--he has created a sort of "academic paradise" for Paul. His creation of the easiest path possible for Paul to follow in his footsteps and eventually become his successor at the University means that Paul has never really faced any kind of academic hardship. He's always succeeded in all things at U-M because of who his father is--like becoming a TA for Dr. Tarson despite not meeting the GPA requirement, and also being excepted into U-M's Graduate Program.

But the ride is about to end when Paul learns that his father is going to retire after the school year ends--which means it's time for Paul to finish his doctorate thesis, grow up a little, and use the tools and advantages that his father has given him to make a life of his own....just so long as that life is one of Dr. Tarson II, renowned English Lit Prof. at U-M.

You can kind of guess where the plot goes from there. Paul has loved the game of Trivial Pursuit since he was very young. He and his friend, James (Nelson Franklin) gather regularly and play against one another with Paul's edition of the game that he has had since he was six. After learning of his father's retirement, Paul meets James at their local pub, they get drunk, enter into a trivia contest, hilarity ensues. He uses training for the championship and the cute co-ed Naomi (Kebbel)--who is one of his students, and who he meets for the first time when she asks him for directions to Dr. Tarson's class--as distractions for what Paul feels is his inevitable failure at living up to his father's standards, and filling Dr. Tarson's gigantic shoes.

What struck me first about this movie was not the sometimes predictable, but heartwarming, hilarious plot--rather, this is a movie about Ann Arbor, that was filmed in Ann Arbor, that uses many locals from Ann Arbor, that MAY not be appealing if you don't live/know anything about Ann Arbor. For instance, most of the cheering from the audience happened NOT when Chris & Arielle stood up and said "Go BLUE!" before the film (There was a game the following Saturday against bitter rivals Michigan State--FYI, MSU WON--GO GREEN!) but instead when Ralph Williams came on stage and gave a few words before the film began or when some of the well-known locales were shown through out the movie--the cube, Nickels Arcade, Ashley’s, the Rackham Building, U-M’s graduate library, the Ingalls Mall fountain, etc.

I like this movie--after a hard couple of years, Michigan needs this. We need to get the message out that we're a great place to shoot films, etc., but I'm afraid it won't be as welcomed when it hits the festival circuit as it was in Ann Arbor.

My favorite character--and the person who saved this movie for me--is ICE, played by Evan Jones. Without giving too much away, Ice enters the story after Paul and James realize that they know NOTHING about sports. So Paul suggests they contact his Friend Izzy "Ice" Dasselway because he was the best kickball player in the forth grade, and was the biggest jock in Paul's class. So--he should know a lot about all things sports related........right?

Overall--I give this movie 3 out of 5 stars. Some of the dialog is cheesy, and the plot is nothing new, but I think/hope if you grew up in a "University" town--or any small town for that matter--you'll get this movie. You can substitute your favorite teacher in High School for Ralph Williams, and Ann Arbor for your favorite town--and I think that's part of the charm of "Answer This!".

ø¤º°Sparkles°º¤ø

New York Comic Con - Day 3

2010-10-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are folks - the end of the road. My last day at Comic Con was relatively low-key, but there were enough exciting moments to make it just as good as the rest of the weekend.

8:00am - Wake up for Day 3 of Comic Con! I am excited about the adventures that await, but also somewhat glad it is the last day. To be perfectly honest, I have worn myself out with all this fun I've been having. I might be getting too old for this...

Nah! That's crazy talk!

9:01 - The journey begins with a train platform full of people dressed to the nines for NYCC. We all sit in the same part of the train. It occurs to me that all 3 days this weekend I have met cool people because of this convention.
10:21 - Back inside NYC, but have to get the monies before making my way. This convention is cleaning me out.
10:45 After meeting a friend en route to con, I arrive at Javits Center. We are made to go downstairs just to go back up again. I think this is silly but whatever.
11:09 - Haven't been here that long and already spent a ton of money. Got my copy of "Days Missing" signed and talked to the guys about the panel last night. They threw in a free poster, also signed. Dudes were super nice and gave me a great start to my morning. I also got my screwdriver for the Doctor Who costume I'm working on and discussed the series for a bit with the people running that table. I vow to not spend any more money this weekend, as I am close to being The Broke.
12:40pm - Found some cool prints and decided to break my "no spending" rule. Talked to the artist (Tim Smith) for a bit as well. He was really cool and nice. You could tell he loves his craft and doesn't really care about the money.
1:36 - I feel like half my time here has been spent on lines. Standing in one now, this time for the Walking Dead panel. While waiting, a friend and I come up with new nicknames for each other - basic and expansion. This because her holding onto my shoulder so we wouldn't get separated made me think of an expansion game. We are such nerds! But I love everything about it.
2:34 - After much craziness, and a near riot, we finally get seats for the Walking Dead panel. First we got a 6&1/2 minute clip of footage from the 2nd episode. I'm not gonna lie, Gracie, the series looks pretty bad-ass. I'm looking forward to the premiere on Halloween.

Next, we got introduced to the people behind the show (writer, director, producer). The moderator went through a series of questions about some of the decisions involved (making it a TV show instead of a movie, the choice of doing it on AMC & how the network responded to it, and how it feels to see the thing finally come to fruition. Apparently AMC has been very supportive of this project. They also said they plan on taking this "on every spastic direction we can". It sounds like there will be plenty of surprises while still keeping fans of the book happy. I think it will help that it's on a cable network, because it means they can push the boundary on how far they take it and what they can do without getting hounded by the network.

After we got through a round of questions, we got another clip from the show. More questions followed, this time focusing on casting as opposed to story and production. We then got introduced to the cast, as the actors were added to the panel. Each actor got a chance to talk about their character for a bit and their familiarity with the comic the series is based off of. The panel gave us a good look at the series and its characters without giving away too many details. They eventually opened it up to questions from the audience, then concluded by playing the trailer and telling everyone one final time to watch the show. Their success depends greatly on us, so don't let them down! (That last part is all me, but I'm sure the panel would have agreed).
4:12 - Panel concludes. We wander a bit before another friend sends out the bat signal and I meet them for dinner. Overall I would call this weekend a huge success. I will do a wrap-up and photo blog ASAP (hopefully tomorrow). Until next time, fellow nerds!

It's a Special Day!

2010-10-10T15:34:00.000-07:00

101010 =

(picture credit)

The Apollo Awards: Neat Idea or Cashing In On Nerd Culture

2010-10-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

Let's have a discussion. I have to thank one of my Twitter followers (@dr_lindyke) for inspiring this blog post.

Earlier this morning on Geeky Pleasures, I posted the following press release. Click the clip below or you will be a wee bit lost on this topic.

Clipped from: Geeky Pleasures (share this clip)

Not receiving any feedback, I asked the following question on Twitter:

Clipped from: twitter.com (share this clip)

Which spawned this discussion (if you are viewing this in an RSS reader, you may need to visit the site to read the discussion):

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://twitoaster.com/country-ca/geekyjules/am-i-the-only-1-excited-re-announcement-of-the-apollo-awards-1st-global-online-scififantasy-awards-made-today-at-nycc/"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Am I the only 1 excited RE announcement of The Apollo - Twitter conversation&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

So let me ask you the same questions. Do you think it is neat that geeks and nerds get to nominate and vote for their favourite SciFi and Fantasy films and television or do you think it is just another popularity contest?

Do you see it as geeks/nerds choosing what they actually like without mainstream telling them what is or is not cool or do you think it is profit grab?

Do you like this idea or does it bother you?

Do you think these are awards are filled with irony due to popularity factor and as geeks and nerds we shouldn't care about that?

What other issues do you see with this, if any?

What do you think?

New York Comic Con - Day 2

2010-10-09T23:14:00.000-07:00

This is Part 2 of my 3-part series on Comic Con. Since there's a lot to tell, I'm just going to get right into it.

7:00am - Wake up for another day of geek-tastic fun times. I am dressed and ready to go by 7:30, but need caffeine badly.
7:36 - My uncle meets me at my house. Yes, I have a cool uncle who's also a geek and loves comics even more than I do. He decides he wants to drive into the city. The adventure begins... but first, caffeine!
8:58 - Exit Lincoln Tunnel. Hello, NYC, I'm inside you now!
9:20 - Arrive at Javits Center and am approached by someone who recognizes my Jukebox the Ghost bag. I share my love of the band for a bit before proceeding.

It is madness and confusion. I am herded onto a line, but I know not what for. All I know is there are many people before me. I have to wonder at what ungodly hour they had to wake up to accomplish this feat. I mean, I thought I woke up early...

*costume sighting* - someone behind me is dressed as the 11th Doctor - complete with fez. I like fezzes. Fezzes are cool. I am inspired and start thinking of more costume ideas for Halloween.

9:50 - Doors open and everyone cheers. We slowly make our way in - back to where we started! Apparently before doors officially open it seemed like a good idea to our show-runners that they hide us in the basement. I do not question this and simply make my way to the next adventure.
10:23 - Stand in yet another line, this time for my second panel of the weekend with Stan Lee. This one is called "MTV Geek".
10:55 - Still waiting in line. Had another Doctor Who sighting, this one the 10th Doctor. It made me smile. The more I think about it, the more I want to do a DW costume for Halloween this year. I start planning how to make this work and get even more excited. I wonder if the glow forming inside can be seen by those around me.
11:12 - They finally let us in, and we take our seats. I'm happy because this time I'm actually allowed to take pictures AND I have pretty good seats.
11:17 - Introductions. The crowd cheers loudly for their Brigadier, Stan Lee. The panel begins. Stan Talks about his project with MTV called "The Seekers". It all seems to be very hush hush, but there is going to be a contest to win a chance to work on this thing with them. At least, that's how it sounded to me. I wish I was talented enough to enter: *sigh*

Next we got a preview of some other projects MTV Geek is working on. Some stuff looks interesting, including a comic called Hell Town. At this point Stan Lee leaves, I'm assuming to do his signing. More books are introduced, including a graphic novel called "Agent Mom" that looks like it could be cool and is brought to us by Alaina Huffman *aka* Black Canary on Smallville.

Another book that looks like it has possibilities is "The Gloom" by Tony Lee, which, among other things, involves a monkey with a fez. See, I told you fezzes were cool. And I seriously can't help but think of DW whenever fezzes are involved. Anyone else? Anywho, this book starts in November, and I do believe I will be checking it out. More info on all these things can be found at geek.mtv.com
11:48 - MTV panel ends. We move closer to the front for the next panel, "DC Universe"
12:10pm - DC panel begins to thunderous applause. The excitement energizes the room (although the Metallica music playing in the background certainly helps).

In the world of Superman we hear about "new Kryptonite" that affects us humans instead. *is intrigued* We also get news on Brightest Day and it is hinted that new things will be revealed, but no specifics are given. And in other news, Nick Spencer is taking over for Supergirl at Issue #60 (Jan 2011). And "Earth One" is announced, which gives us a look at Superman at the age of 21, when he makes the move to Metropolis and takes his final steps to becoming Superman. This is something that really peaks my interest, especially with Smallville coming to an end. The presentation concludes there and they open it up to questions.

1:14 - Panel ends. Time to eat.

*costume sighting* - Codex, from the webseries "The Guild". This girl looks enough like Felicia Day for it to be both scary and awesome. I promise the picture will be part of the photo post I plan on doing (most likely Monday).

2:20 - Now that HP levels have been restored, we decide to wander the exhibits. I happen upon previously mentioned Codex and compliment her on her costume. The people I have met so far have been super friendly. It's almost like a little nerd family.

Eventually a friend finds me amongst the masses. I later find out that yet another friend is here visiting from Boston.

After much browsing I discover two deals I could not pass up - the complete Dresden Files for $6 and the Dark Phoenix book for $7 (75% off!). Add 1 to the win column.

5:11 - I think I have covered just about every inch of this place. HP drained to the lowest amounts, I rest to bring levels back up.

(Sidebar - I don't have to tell you "HP" refers to "hit points" and not "Harry Potter," right? We're all geeks here? Good. Moving on...)

5:46 - Bored, I start taking pictures of whatever is around me. I'm getting some good shots when, suddenly, my "low battery" light starts flashing. Glad I brought my spare ones. W00t for preparedness!
6:48 - Waiting in line for the "Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep" panel, I chat with a couple of people about the blog (among other things). Might be seeing them tomorrow at the Walking Dead panel.
6:58 - I am joined by friends from yesterday and we enter the panel before ours, "LGBT Comics, Creators, and Characters". The room is packed. I am pleasantly surprised that this is an issue many people seem to care about. I guess if anyone is going to be accepting of a group that happens to be "different" though, it would be this community.
7:44 - The zombie panel is about to start. They coax people in by saying, "The more of you we can pack in, the more of a threat we can pose to the convention when the apocalypse comes." I know right away that this panel is going to be amusing.
7:50 - With everyone seated, the panel begins. The title of the panel is explained to be a chapter in the book "The Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies" by Mac Montandon, who was leading the panel. He introduced the rest of the participants, all of whom have their own zombie books out. One author had this to say - "Don't buy internet small pox. If you take nothing else away from this, let it be that."

The author of "Paul is Undead" (Alan Goldsher) credits Stephen King for giving him zombie fever. That and Shaun of the Dead. "Zombies and funny - count me in," he says. Robin Becker, the author of "Brains"credits Dawn of the Dead to her indoctrination.

All of the panelists have a great sense of humor about their craft, especially Goldsher and Mira Grant (author of "Feed"). Grant had us in stitches as she described her background in zombies. Best quote came from her - "The zombies are the universal health care of the monster world. There's no participatory stupidity on your part. They're just gonna come for your a$$". She actually had a lot of great quotes, too many to account for all of them. I wish I had my video camera and could have recorded most of this panel.

Eventually "Zombie Strippers" comes up and the moderator takes it as a cue to turn to the audience for questions. The panel offered free books to those who had a question to ask. When free things are mentioned, everyone jumps up. Well, maybe not everyone, but a significant number of them did. I thought the whole panel was really amusing and exceeded my expectations. Kudos to everyone involved.
8:45 - Panel concludes with one last word - Braaaiiinnss! I stay put for the next panel, "Roddenberry is Back".
8:58 - Panel starts by feeding the audience. They figured since it was 9:00 we could use some food, so they got us pizza. I am oddly hungry after the zombie panel.

After everyone gets their food, the real panel starts with a video introducing us to the worlds Roddenberry has created. Next they talk about continuing the legacy that Gene Roddenberry started. One of the big projects mentioned was "Days Missing" - a graphic novel series they are working on. There is also talk of "keeping the spirit alive," which refers to the spirit of their founder, Gene Roddenberry. They mention the documentary "Trek Nation" which was announced is finally done and will possibly be shown at the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas. The documentary is an "autobiography of Gene through the lens of his son". We got a good look at all the projects they're currently working on. Personally, I'm especially excited about 'Days Missing". It involves a character whom nobody knows but is apparently very important in history and has been a part of many critical events ranging all of time. Intrigued? Yeah, I was too. In fact, I thought the whole panel was really interesting, both smart and funny. The only thing that was disappointing was that more people weren't hearty enough to stick around for this one last panel. Oh well, it just meant more food for us...
10:10 - The final panel of the evening comes to a close. Another great end to another great night.

That about wraps up this post. The rest is travel time and writing the actually blog. Gonna go to sleep now and recharge so I can do it all again tomorrow. One day left!

PS - In editing this post I read "travel time" as "time travel". Yes, this is where my brain goes at 2am.

Haven Season Finale - Spiral

2010-10-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

Season finale time! (WARNING: There will be some spoilers)

We start off where we left off last week with Audrey walking down by the water where The Colorado Kid incident occurred. Last week we discovered that Audrey shares the same scar on the bottom of her foot that Lucy (the one she assumed was her mother) had. While she is talking to herself about the craziness of her life, a random man, Max, shows up with a bag from Shawshank Prison. He returned to Haven after being in prison for 25 years and already appears slightly...off. As Max moves around town we see him encounter all the regulars from this season. They all essentially tell him to get the hell out of town. We find out that he was in prison for some killing a family in Haven back around the time of the Colorado Kid incident. He is also suspected of killing the Colorado Kid but that was never proven. He is clearly being established as the next "big bad." After a particularly nasty conversation with Chief Wuornos, the camera pans to the lighthouse on the cove behind where Max is sitting and we watch as the lighthouse collapses.

It is revealed that the lighthouse collapsed due to the cracks that have been showing up around Haven since Parker arrived in town. Audrey is still clearly frazzled from realizing that she is Lucy and so Nathan sends her home from work. Meanwhile, while confronting Duke on Duke's boat, Max takes off his shirt. We see that Max has a tattoo on his inner forearm that is suppose to be on the man who is going to ultimately kill Duke. This sufficiently freaks Duke out and he runs off to find Audrey (with no real luck). Audrey finds out about the tattoo and confronts Max.

Have I mentioned how much I love Emily Rose in this show? She kicks ass.

Anyway, while meeting with Max a waitress accidentally spills hot coffee on Max. He doesn't flinch. Audrey puts two and two together and realizes that Max must be related to Nate (who also cannot feel pain/touch/etc). Max visits Nathan and confirms this for himself. After Audrey tells him about this incident, Nathan confronts his dad, Chief Wuornos. Chief Wuornos reveals what we have all figured out, which is that Max is Nathan's real father.

At this point, it seems fairly obvious that nothing good will come from Max. Until, of course, Max falls into the ground via an extremely large crack that forms as Max is walking/running down the street.

Let me pause again to say that this is why I love this show. It sets something up that seems to be the use of just another TV trope and then crushes it. The entire rest of the episode I was convinced Max would show up again and suddenly be alive due to some special trouble/power that he has. He never does. This all happens about halfway through the episode, thus leaving me to wonder...how much more awesomeness is going to go down?

Well I don't want to ruin ALL the surprises so I'm going to wrap this up. The rest of the episode involves Nathan and Audrey trying to figure out who killed Max/is responsible for creating the cracks around town (since, you know, weird things happen in Haven). At first Nathan thinks Duke did it, but, of course, not-so-much. By the end of the episode we find out who is responsible for the cracks, Audrey tells Nathan that she is Lucy, and Duke finds out that there are thousands of people out there that have that tattoo, many dead but also, most likely, many still alive. We don't know what these people have in common but there is a cemetery full of gravestones with that tattoo on them so it is safe to say that there is going to be a nice long mystery there next season. Oh, and Nathan tells Audrey that he can feel her touch (pretty much the only person he can feel).

Yea, there are cheesy moments. The music at times feels overly melodramatic and there is one moment in particular that came off as a little forced. However, so much happens that is well done that I let those not AS awesome moments slide. Really, this is probably one of the best season finales I have seen this year, right up there with the Justified finale.

First of all, it is beautifully paced. All three characters have their own stuff going on but they intersect nicely throughout the episode without feeling rushed. The connections just all makes sense and work well together. Also, almost nothing happens that involves the "maybe/sorta love triangle." Everything that occurs in the episode is relevant to the mysteries of the town that we've been examining all season. Granted, there are a couple of small semi-romantic moments involving Audrey/Duke and Audrey/Nathan but overall it's just plot-driven momentum. Emily Rose, Lucas Bryant, and Eric Balfour give brilliantly well-acted, nuanced performances. They embody these characters. Eric Balfour does such a great job that I am able to forget that he played that asshole on Six Feet Under. I've not seen Emily Rose in anything before but she continues to rock my world on this show, and Lucas Bryant successfully pulls off the "doesn't feel anything" and angsty "you lied to me all these years" bit without any level of cheesiness (which I imagine is not easy).

Since this is a Syfy original series, the first season is only 13 episodes and a lot of them are still on Hulu or On Demand. The show is episodic enough throughout most of the season that you can pick up with later episodes and still kind of figure out what is going on. This is particularly nice because the show did start off kind of slow but by mid-season it is full on addictive. Syfy picked it up for a second season (woo!) and I can't wait to see it back next summer. Oh, also, this has made me hard-core want to read more Stephen King. I already procured the audio book of The Colorado Kid! That will cover 1.5 trips to and from work for me! Yay!

Supernatural: The Third Man

2010-10-09T20:45:00.001-07:00

[I was very excited to see Ben Edlund's name on the episode -- immediately built up my expectations and I was not disappointed.]

Before the episode began I was thinking about last season, and all of the complaints I read when episodes about the apocalypse were bookended by funny or stand alone episodes. I know we've only had a few episodes this season, but I'm relieved that this type of issue doesn't seem to be a concern. I think they've done a really solid job of broaching this new Dean and Sam life, but at the same time they've given themselves the latitude to create some episodic TV that hints at some of the underlying arc without making every moment dark and depressing.

There were elements of this episode that were kind-of like a Supernatural McGuffin. I think the beginning scenes fall under this. A police officer is in a locker room, post-shower, and notices that he's bleeding. But he's more than bleeding. His skin is falling off of his face. The soles of his feet have eroded and leave bloody prints and when he falls over -- in a swoon? dead? -- his entire body ruptures and blood sprays everywhere. It was a seriously disgusting beginning to an episode. I really had forgotten how gross Supernatural could be. It was awesome, but nauseating.

Continuing with the theme of the past few episodes, we once again get to see the new contrast between the lives and characters of Sam and Dean. Dean's sleeping in the Impala and Sam's all Cape Fear. Dean's dreaming of Lisa and Sam's turned into a man-whore. Dean knocks on doors and Sam kicks them in. Sam finds the case and basically orders Dean to meet him there. Interviews with Sera Gamble and crew pre-season 6 mentioned that Sam was going to be a bit darker -- a bit more like early Dean -- and I guess we're witnessing the effects of that transformation.

When Dean meets up with Sam, Dean is talking to Ben on the phone. It's a nice moment. The writers are assuring us that Dean's reversion to once again being a hunter does not mean that Ben and Lisa will just disappear from our screens. They are continuing to ease us into the Dean transformation of a family man/hunter. It doesn't feel too forced, and yet it also doesn't feel like they're cramming it down our throats.

Uncomfortable Sam moment -- when Dean tells him that Lisa was actually rather cool with him leaving, Sam implied that that's good -- it's best for everyone if Dean's not there. It felt. . .wrong.

In the meantime, another police officer has suddenly been inflicted with a symptom of biblical plague -- as he's sitting in his car, trying to catch drivers in a speed trap, his face breaks out in horrific boils. Gross moment #2.

Dean and Sam check out the body in the morgue and decide to go talk to the partner of the first dead officer -- Ed Colfax. When they arrive at Colfax's door, it's clear that the man is not well. He looks almost jaundiced and can't really carry on a coherent conversation. Sam kicks in the officer's door, much to Dean's surprise, and they find Colfax sitting at his dining room table scratching out the faces of pictures. They have a nonsensical conversation in which Colfax says that God wants all three officers dead. When prodded he explains (kind-of) that the three caused the death of a boy (Christopher Birch) and that they planted a gun at the scene. During this Colfax is scratching his head through his hat. Blood drips down Colfax's face. And then he keels over, dead. Sam removes Colfax's hat and locusts crawl out of his hollowed out brain. Gross moment #3.

The episode then makes a shift. When the boys realize they are dealing with deaths that mimic the Egyptian plague, Dean matter-of-factly says that they should call Castiel. (hooray!) Sam expresses near-contempt for the idea, showing his frustration at the fact that Cas never came when he called -- and he called over and over after his release from hell's cage. Dean calls him anyway -- a call cloaked in some nice Dean parody of a prayer. And, as we all knew he would, Cas shows up. He always did like Dean the best.

And in a fantastic Castiel scene, he does admit that he and Dean have a profound bond, but says that he answered the call because of the type of crime, not because it's Dean. I choose to ignore this.

The boys find out that the plague is being caused by The Staff of Moses -- one of many relics that have been stolen from heaven. I wonder, does heaven have museums? Arsenals? Archives? When they mention that The Staff seems to be causing minor damage, rather than, say, parting the Red Sea, we are gifted with one of the best lines of the episode. His eyes growing wide with sudden understanding, Cas exclaims, "The Staff isn't being used at full capacity. I think we can rule Moses out as a suspect." Bwha-ha-ha.

Realizing that the family of Christopher Birch is probably the best bet for a revenge scenario, Cas beams them there. Initially thinking that the father is the main suspect, all seem surprised when Christopher's younger brother, Aaron, confronts the trio with a sawed-off. . .no, not a sawed-off shotgun, but a sawed-off piece of Staff. Dean comments on the small size of The Staff and Cas explains that more pieces equals more product. Heaven's arsenal is basically akin to illegal drugs. They ask Aaron where he got the staff and he murmurs that an angel gave it to him. Cue much shock.

Aaron tells them, when asked, that the angel asked for nothing in return. Dean, however, has become rather good at being around kids -- and knowing when they are lying. And he knows that Aaron is not telling the truth. He gets Aaron to confess that he sold his soul to the angel. Cue even more shock.

Dean, serving as the voice of the audience, turns to Cas and asks if angels would do something like that. Cas, who seems more resigned than shocked, says that they never have before. Clearly much is amiss in the kingdom of heaven.

In a very upsetting scene, Cas beams them all, Aaron included, back to the boys hotel room. Dean is clearly upset with this, not very comfortable with the kidnapping of a child. Cas explains that he the angel would have left a mark that Cas can decipher, but he needs to read the child. And by read, I mean torture.

Dean, of course, protests loudly and tries to put a stop to the proceedings, recognizing what we all do -- that this is a child and there's something terribly wrong with torturing a child. Cass doesn't care (not totally surprising) arguing that the ends justify the means. He has motives we can't begin to understand, as we don't really have a sense of what is happening in the celestial paradise. Dean looks to Sam for support. He gets none. In that moment you see just how fractured their relationship has become. Sam even goes so far as to physically stop Dean from moving forward to help Aaron.

I'm not sure what your response was, but my heart hurt to see Sam so altered.

Cas, torture completed, seems devastated to realize that the angel who bought Aaron's soul is his longtime friend, Balthazar (one of the Magi). And once Cas discovers this info, one of Raphael's soldiers shows up and engages in battle with Cas. A battle that leads the two to plunge out of the hotel window and down onto Sam's car. They killed KITT!

More beaming as Cas travels them all to Balthazar's house(?), compound (?), villa (?). Dean breaks a tiny bit of the tension by looking around and quipping, "I was expecting Dr. No, not Liberace."

So it turns out Balthazar is from the Fringe universe. Okay, not really, but Sebastian Roche does play Thomas Jerome Newton in Fringe so I was expecting him to be conspiring against Peter and Walter, not Sam and Dean. Also, apparently his design aesthetic really was influenced by Vegas, as he confronts Cas in what appears to be a disco room. Apparently there is a civil war in heaven and Balthazar is a mercenary. He emulates Cas and wants to be a rebellious angel. And to do this he has grabbed as many valuable weapons from heaven's arsenal as possible and has generated a new life. Cas is less than understanding. He just wants his friend back -- one who will fight in battle at his side -- not indulging his own whims and turning his back on the ethics of heaven. Is this the heavenly version of Dean and Sam?

Raphael and his minions show up. There is much angel fighting, including a scene in which Cas begs one of the minions to turn his back on fighting and work to return heaven to its normal state. The desperation in Cas's voice and displayed on his face is tragic. The angel does not listen and is killed. Raphael and Cas battle. It is bloody. For Cas. Raphael is kicking the hell (heaven?) out of him. In fact, it looks rather desperate. Then Balthazar shows up to save him -- and does so in one of the cooler scenes in the episode. Holding up a piece of rock -- it looks almost like rock salt -- he gets Raphael to look at it. Raphael turns into salt -- falling for the same curse as Lot's wife.

However Balthazar has also fallen into the Winchester trap, and the boys capture him in a circle of flaming oil. They ask Balthazar why he would be collecting souls. His provoking answer: "Do you have any idea what souls are worth? What power they hold?"

Dean gets Balthazar to cancel out Aaron's deal and return his soul. And while the boys would have left Balthazar trapped in the circle -- or possibly dead -- Castiel frees him and both angels disappear.

Then, in the tradition of all good Supernatural episodes, we have a moment of Winchester traumatic conversation while standing next to the Impala.

Dean peppers Sam with questions -- what the hell is going on? Why didn't he help stop the torture of Aaron Birch or at the very least lodge a protest? Why is he so different?

Sam has no good response. He dances around the subject of Aaron, saying something lame like he was in agreement with Dean but it was a silent agreement. He also admits to almost being feral from having spent the past year hunting nonstop. It made little sense.

Dean tries to get him to open up and confess to having some kind of PTSD from his time in hell. Dean says exactly what you would expect in that moment -- been there, done that, let me help you through it.

In the most painful moment of the episode, Sam shrugs off Dean's concern, saying that, frankly, he's not at all tortured by his experience in hell. He goes on to say that Dean suffers from his time in hell -- that it had a terrible impact on him -- but Sam's just not bothered. Dean is both offended and devastated.

It's completely hinky. What is wrong with Sam!?!?!? I'm curious to know how all of the Sam-girls are feeling about these developments. It seems like we're not just headed down the regular Supernatural path of the boys having some growing pains in their relationship, but of there being an inherently damaged in Sam's character.

Three of my favorite moments from the episode:

1. CASTIEL! So glad he's back on our screens.

2. Before KITT is killed, Dean and Sam are driving their cars to Ed Colfax's house to interview him. As Sam is driving down the road, Dean comes tearing out of a side-street, cuts in front of Sam, and parks in front of Colfax's house. They both get out of their cars and slam the doors in sync. Sam looks at Dean and says, "Were you. . .racing me?" Dean scoffs and emphatically replies, "No!" and then mutters, "I was kicking your ass." Sam rolls his eyes and says, "Very mature."

3. When Raphael's minion and Cas fall out of the window and destroy KITT, Sam and Dean look out the window to witness the damage. In a pained voice Sam cries, "My car!" Dean looks over, smirks, and says, "Okay, silver lining."

Very Ben Edlund moments.

PS -- How psyched are you for the next episode? It's Jensen Ackles' directing debut. He showed us a few moments of the episode at Comic-Con and he was so excited that he was almost jumping up and down.

New York Comic Con - Day 1

2010-10-08T22:08:00.000-07:00

First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Christine (aka News_on_Shuffle on The Twitter). Hi! *waves at you* This is going to be my first post here at Nerds in Babeland, and I am super excited that it gets to be a special 3-part series on the awesome that is New York Comic Con. I thought it would be fun to do it as kind of a daily journal, especially since this was my first comic convention, and I had a lot of thoughts whirling through my brain as I took everything in.

12:34 - The adventure begins. Leaving for NYC now : )
2:05 - Arrive at Javit's Center. Spend half an hour looking for room with "How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse" panel. By the time I get there it is already full. A screen in the room across the hall that says "Smallville" intrigues me. I go there instead. Turns out it is a panel called "Spotlight on Geoff Johns"
2:40 - A friend calls me 5 minutes after discovering the Geoff Johns panel. I meet her and her friends, and we wander exhibits for a bit.
4:20 - Got in line for Stan Lee panel. 0_o I should have gotten here sooner. The line is ginormous.
4:58 - Finally got seats for Stan Lee panel. Made a new friend while waiting in line. We are asked to watch some guy's sword while he runs back to his hotel real quick. I think to myself, "Only at Comic Con."
*sidebar* - I would talk about The Guardian Project (which was the subject of this panel) and all the juicy tidbits I learned, but they're not planning on revealing details to the rest of the public for a few months, and I'm going to respect that. Also, we may or may not have been threatened. There was wagging of the fingers... and such. I will say though that in describing this new project, Stan Lee said, "It's a little bit exciting," in that way that only he says things. And if Stan the Man is excited, we all should be excited. The project will be fully unveiled at the NHL All Star game on January 11, 2011.
5:45/5:50 - Dinner and more wandering. Had a lovely chat with the CBDLF about Neil Gaiman and why he is awesome and another girl at Midtown Comics about the awesome that is Serenity. I was looking at a Serenity book. She was dressed as Kaylee. It was like kismet... or something.
7:00 - Say goodbye to my new friend and head over to The Onion panel for my dose of hilarity and fake news. The panel brought viewers the news of the future... today. Yes, the news of 2137 can be viewed before it even happens. Maybe we can use this information to prevent our untimely demise... or not. Panel attendants were told the story of how one of The Onion satellites fell into a wormhole and started broadcasting to us the news of the future. Go see for yourself at itunes.com/theonion
8:00 - Panel ends and I prepare to stand in line for the James Marsters panel. I find my friends near the front of the line, holding a spot for me. My friends are awesomesauce.
8:10 - They let us in early and I get to sit through the tail end of Voltaire's show, proving my love for James Marsters really has no end. (sorry to any Voltaire fans I may offend with that last comment)
8:45 - James Marsters takes the stage! He is as charming and funny as I imagined he would be. We talked about a wide range of topics, and since this was the main thing I wanted to see today I took a LOT of notes. Seriously, I could do a whole post on this alone, probably. I'll try to keep it condensed though.

First off, he confirmed right away that his character on Hawaii Five-0 is NOT dead. Go ahead and cheer for a bit... Done? Alright then, moving right along...

Other things discussed included: his role of Braniac coming back for the last season of Smallville (although he has a gag order on that so couldn't really talk about it), lots of Buffy-related things, kissing John Barrowman on Torchwood, his favorite movie (Apocalypse Now), his coolest stunt ever (being lit on fire as Spike on Buffy), Torchwood season 4 (Has he gotten the call from Russel yet? Answer: No, but he [Russell] will. Because he's not a moron), most fulfilling role (Macbeth, and Torvald in A Doll's House), favorite project (Buffy, because of the writing), vampires and how they shouldn't sparkle (Quote: If you're gonna be a vampire, then be a vampire. Don't be nice about it."), his superpower (flying and invulnerability - because he'd fly into walls all the time), Buffy the Musical and how much he enjoyed it, and how it is harder to laugh than cry on cue. He then closed with a song. The whole panel was a great end to Day 1 of my first comic convention. Marsters is a wonderful, delightfully nerdy soul, and a perfect fit for NYCC. His final line of the eveing says it all - "I love you. Every one of you freaks. I love you all."

And we love you, James <3

So, that about concludes my post on Day 1 of NYCC. The rest is just train rides and yet another example of why I despise NJ Transit. It is now 1am, and I am just wrapping up this extremely long post. It's gonna hurt so bad when I wake up early tomorrow to do this all again, but the rewards far outweigh the costs, IMO. See you tomorrow, fellow nerds.

PS - I have a ton of pictures I took, but it's getting late so I think I'm gonna save them for a huge photo post when the weekend finishes. Sound like a plan? Good, I'm glad we could agree on that. Good night, nerds!

Review: It's Kind of a Funny Story

2010-10-08T17:42:00.000-07:00

Craig (Keir Gilchrist) wakes one Sunday morning with the strong desire to take his own life. Instead, he hops on his bike and navigates through the streets of New York to get to the nearest hospital. He is admitted to 3 North, the adult lockdown wing and suddenly feels that his problems aren't so bad.

He tries to leave but is notified that there is a five day minimum for psych evals and he has been admitted at the behest of a doctor (Aasif Mandvi). Unhappy with the situation, he decides to make the best of it. He takes the time to reflect on his depression and figure out how to bring some happiness into his life.

During his stay he is taken under the wing of Bobby (Zach Galifinakis), a fellow patient who is anxious about being accepted into a group home after the end of his allowed time on the psych wing. Craig meets Noelle (Emma Roberts), a fellow teen who is struggling with depression.

The movie takes place more in Craig's head than in reality. It was tragically beautiful. Scenarios ran through his head that were so fanciful, when something outrageous was happening, I was unsure if it was something conjured up in his head. There was, however, this one sequence where Craig is introduced to his artistic side and you are taken through an illustration.

For the rest of this review, please visit my site

Random Thought of the Day...!

2010-10-08T05:14:00.000-07:00

Coffee + Cold Medicine = Existential Crisis.

ALSO--I will have a surprise posting on Monday, but until then....

....Have a Happy....

✭✩✭✩✭✩✭✩✭✩✭✩✭✩✭✩
──╗╗╗╔╝╔╝╦╔╝─╔╝╦╗╗╦╗──
──║║║╠╣╠╣╠╣──╠╣║║║║║──
──╚╩╝╚╗╚╗╩╚╗─╚╗╩╚╝╩╝──
───────────╚╗─────────
✭✩✭✩✭✩✭✩✭✩✭✩✭✩✭✩

ø¤º°Sparkles°º¤ø

Supernatural: Two and a Half Men

2010-10-07T19:14:00.000-07:00

Wow. Wasn't it refreshing to get a very old-school Supernatural episode? It was like the writers, with the episode credited to Adam Glass, anticipated how badly the audience would want Sam and Dean hunting together again. And after the final episodes of season 5 and the premiere of season 6 opened with the focus immediately on one of the brothers, it was nice to see a cold-open that featured a Supernatural strength -- blood, blood, and more blood. And, of course, people in peril.

While the episode opened with the nightmare scenario of a baby in danger with a mother and father brutally murdered, we quickly move to Sam posing as a detective (?) and querying an officer about details regarding the incident. He then makes a phone call to Samuel, suggesting that perhaps the kidnapping of the child is less a supernatural crime and more a perverse human one. Samuel alerts the audience to the fact that there have been multiple child abduction/parent murders in the area and that regardless of the origin of the perpetrator, that heinous crimes are being committed that need to be solved. Sam seems to deflate a bit with this -- again highlighting a behavior that he mentioned to Dean in the season premiere -- he simply doesn't care about the victims -- he's far more concerned with the being responsible for the crime.

In an interesting exchange, Samuel remarks, "You know, sometimes I wonder about you Sam." To which Sam replies, with possible regret, "Sometimes I wonder about me too."

Underlying all of this, I can't help but again feel the inharmonious union of Samuel and Sam. This is a conversation that Sam and Dean should be having. The hunters should be the brothers, not two souls brought back from heaven and hell.

And clever, I thought, to show Samuel in a different light. He seems to care about the abducted children; how cute that he is so frustrated with using the laptop (oh this complicated newfangled technology); how curious that he seems to draw attention to Sam's lack of empathy. Compared to the scenes that will come later with the Campbell clan, it's a tone that almost made me question my concerns about the family.

In contrast to all of this, Dean is struggling to yoke together his past and present life. His decision to remain with Ben and Lisa at the close of the last episode was an emphatic one. The ramifications of this decision are immediately apparent when we first see our new nuclear family. Dean and Lisa are unpacking boxes in a new home. Ben is clearly upset with this sudden unrest. Ben wants to take his bike out and explore the new neighborhood, but Dean clearly is terrified at the thought. He coaxes Ben into staying in the house by laying a gentle guilt trip about leaving Lisa to unload the boxes without his help, and Lisa, recognizing that Ben is going a bit stir-crazy, promises that they will all go out for lunch and drive around the new area. Dean mumbles an agreement, but soon after we see him paying a pizza delivery guy and then locking them all inside.

Dean simply cannot deal with the seeping over of the demon world into the Ben and Lisa world. He is clearly desperate to keep Ben's life from becoming what his childhood was like, forgetting that the whole reason Dean was brought back into their lives was because he had to save Lisa and Ben from a monster. Dean underestimates what Ben already knows and accepts. It used to be Sam who wanted to keep the truth about demons and monsters from kids -- now it's Dean.

Luckily Lisa is once again the voice of reason. Seeing that Dean is trying to keep them under lockdown, she confronts him -- gently of course. She tries to find out what the threat is, and, in a moment of pure frustration, Dean has no answer. In that moment there is no threat, but he doesn't know if and when something might be coming. Lisa asserts, "We have to live our lives." In response Dean can only articulate his greatest fear, "If something happens on my watch. . . ."

It's really such a metaphor for what real life is like. Dean has never cared this deeply about anyone other than Sam and Bobby. And just like a new parent he's coming to the sickening realization that he can't keep them safe always and forever.

This is such an odd little show. An opening scene with buckets of blood and a conversation between two hunters seems so normal, whereas watching Dean unpack boxes and adjust to family life is completely disconcerting.

Back to the babies. . . .Sam and Samuel realize where the shifter is going to hit next and Sam tries to prevent the attack. He gets there too late to save the mother, but not too late to save the baby. We only realize this after he makes a phone call to Dean asking for help. Dean is reluctant, emphasizing that he's no longer a hunter, but Sam says something that gets him to join him. (At this point I noted, "17 minutes and still no Impala)

Dean walks up to Sam's spiffy new car, which I call KITT, looks in the back seat and sees a rather adorable baby. Sam's comment, "Welcome to the party Gutenberg." Who doesn't appreciate a Three Men and a Baby reference?

After the trauma/drama of the last few episodes, the scene of Dean and Sam shopping for baby gear was fabulous. As was the moment that the baby sat screaming while both boys stared at him, unsure what to do to make him stop. It was funny, but I have to question whether they are so inept that they didn't know how to pick him up and hold him? Does that really happen?

The funny stopped, however, when the elderly woman behind them who offered to help turned out to be a shifter looking for the baby. Escaping in the car, but not without the shifter catching sight of their plates, Sam takes them back to the hotel. Dean, who proves to be rather adept with the baby, explains to Sam some of his fears for Ben and Lisa. He shares that he wants to keep them safe -- and that he wants to give them a life different than the one that he and Sam had with their father. Sam says, "You sure about that?" When Dean bristles, Sam explains: ". . .moving them around, keeping them on lockdown. . .that seems a lot like how we were raised." And so the eternal question is posed, "How do you keep them safe and not turn into Dad?"

When it's discovered that one of the fathers of the kidnapped babies is still alive, as he was not living with the mother and child at the time, Sam goes out to question him and Dean stays with the baby. Sam finds out that the man left his wife after she became pregnant, given that the timeline meant he was not the father. When he confronted his then wife she told him that it could only be his, and described a sexual encounter with him that could not have happened because he was not in town. Sam realizes that a shifter posed as the man, impregnating the woman, and she truly did believe she had slept with her husband. It's like a darker version of The X-Files episode Small Potatoes.

As Sam realizes the implications of this, we see Dean, our own Mulder, enjoying the hotel room's magic fingers. The baby starts screaming and before Dean can reach him there's a horrific burst, splat, and blood and goo sprays all over the wall. Dean looks into the crib and the caucasian baby that was there just prior has not morphed into an African-American baby whose image can be seen on the box of diapers. Sam calls Dean to warn him that the baby is a shifter. Too late!

Back in KITT, Sam argues that they should take the baby to Samuel -- that he'll know what to do. Dean is extremely skeptical and argues, "We don't know them." Sam responds, "I do." Trying to appease Dean, Sam says, "Samuel is a lot like you." It is an unconvincing argument.

Another tonal shift.

Sam and Dean drive up to the Campbell home, which is not a home -- it's a compound. There are guards with guns at the gate. It's night, so the entire place is cloaked in darkness. There is ominous music. The room where Sam and Dean meet the rest of the family is spare, grey, and there's not a comforting piece of decor. All I could think of was the episode from season 5 where Dean ends up five years in the future -- a world heavily engaged with the apocalypse, with the Croatoan virus turning people into monsters. The Campbell compound had a similar, end-of-the-world feel.

Like the audience, Dean trusts neither Samuel nor the rest of the Campbell clan, and he is very hesitant to hand over the baby. He asks what they are going to do with the baby, worried that they are going to kill him. Samuel says that they will raise the baby themselves. He asks Dean to hand him the baby. Dean will not. In a very telling moment, Sam asks Dean to hand him the baby. Dean does, and Sam turns and hands the baby over to Samuel. Sam as intermediary? Untrustworthy? A traitor?

Mark, who is usually silent, finally speaks, saying that having a shifter as a hunter will make them very powerful. Samuel asks Christian if he and his wife (whose name I cannot remember) are still trying to conceive. When Christian answers yes, Samuel hands him the baby and says "Congratulations, it's a boy."

The music is still very ominous. Although the words might seem light, the whole scene is rife with tension. The way Dean and Christian are glaring at each other, they are seem headed down the route of being mortal enemies.

Outside things begin to go awry, and Samuel sends Sam and Dean downstairs into a demon panic room with the baby. The shifter storms into the compound, snapping Mark's neck. Oh Mark, we hardly knew ye. . .we hardly heard ye. . . .The shifter cannot be beaten, and in order to save Gwen, Samuel must hand over the child.

When Sam and Dean leave the room and go upstairs, Samuel explains that the shifter is actually the alpha-shifter. Samuel is kind-of like their info-Giles.

Two interesting things: 1. As they leave the compound Dean wonders aloud whether Sam actually planned this -- taking the baby to the compound to be used as bait for the alpha-shifter. The answer from Sam is not convincing -- what has happened to him? 2. After the boys have left, Samuel makes a phone call -- a rather mysterious one of course -- to someone to whom he has promised captured monsters.

Upon returning home, Dean and Lisa have a talk. Ever the perfect girlfriend, Lisa proves that she is completely accepting of the fact that Dean is a hunter, not a construction worker. She argues that she doesn't want Dean there -- she wants him out on the road, fighting monsters, making the world a better place. Dean misunderstands, thinking that Lisa wants him to leave. She comforts him, explaining "If there's a rule that says this all has to be either/or, then how 'bout we break it."

Yeah, Lisa is perfect. But it wouldn't work any other way. It would be way too frustrating for the audience if Dean was trapped with a woman who nags, whines, complains, begs him to stay home, etc. And while she might be too perfect, I think that Dean deserves one bit of happiness in a completely fractured world.

And then. . .EPIC! Minute 56 --- IMPALA!!!!

I will admit it -- I was happier to see the Impala then I was to see Sam!

Questions: Do you think Samuel and Dean are similar? And what is up with this Campbell clan? And who could that have been on the phone?

Fringe 3.3 : The Plateau

2010-10-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

Since I am an eastern time viewer, I'm gonna try and be a good lil blogger and attempt to not spoil anything. So here are a few pics from tonight's episode with possible spoiler info after. Don't scroll to the paragraphs below unless you want to be spoiled!:

I find it very considerate when a victim brings her own flowers to the scene. It`s a good thing, dont you think?

And sorry, but 'Waternate Universe' Astrid always looks like an extra from Starship Troopers to me. What's with the friggin beret?

Ok, so that should be enough screen space that if you are reading this now, its probably not by accident so its 'make with the commentary' time!

'The Plateau' is the third episode of the third season of FRINGE, the title referring to the potential level of Fauxlivia's memory assimilation into the Walternate Universe (sexy red titles FTW!) . So Fauxlivia is back in the saddle, investigating cases of the Fringe Division.

Her first one is that of a series of irregular events that lead to the deaths of 3 people. Timing and apparently ball point pens rarely seen in this universe seem to be everything as the team determines the cause of the 'coincidental'accidents. Their trail leads them to a man with a very low IQ who undergoes drug trials (voluntarily for once!) to bump up his smarts only to get none too happy when the drugs are to be discontinued, leaving him with his previous IQ of 56. So he sets events in motion to disappear those in charge so he can keep his newly amped up noodle. Meanwhile, Walternate shares his strategic plan with Broyles, and Olivia is plagued by visions that along with her forgetting a few things (like a very important oxygen protocol) lead her to doubt her belonging to the Walternate Universe.

It doesnt further the bigger picture plot along too terribly much, but at least we get to see what our real Liv is up to (no more drugs or isolation chambers!), we get a decent 'well now there is a clever way to kill people' episode and bob's your uncle. The really cool stuff this week are the details. I loved the 'War of Aruba' vet beggar. The statue of liberty is REALLY REALLY copper in this world. Gotta say, I like the green oxidation better. But the coolest one? The Glyphs!

Behold the awesome!

The Glyphs code in this espisode spell out BREACH, as in the inadvertent breach of protocol saved Olivia's life. Ooooh geekgasm!

~kim

Fringe Glyph Translator

2010-10-07T15:40:00.000-07:00

Fringe Glyph Translator for Droid

So in preparation for a new episode of Fringe tonight, I wanted to share these awesome apps that I discovered last week while looking for Fringe backgrounds for my Droid (yes, I am obsessed). Basically, they allow you to translate the "secret messages" that are spelled out with the images throughout the episodes.

They have them for both the Droid and iPhone and they even have a website where you can go if you don't have a smart phone and want to do this with your computer. Basically these apps just made me love the show that much more.

Fringe GlyphDecoder for iPhone, iPad

Vintage Ads From the Future

2010-10-07T11:32:00.000-07:00

I love these! Especially this one, as I am something of a Wizard of Oz nerd. ~Prof. Jenn

Mythbusters grace the TV-sphere

2010-10-07T06:01:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, what better way to kick off October Wednesdays than with new Mythubusters? That's right, there really is no other way. Forget the last hour of 'Hell's Kitchen' with that adorable Gordon Ramsey, he can't measure up to 5 of the coolest people with jobs that we all dream of. I am of course talking about Jaime Hyneman, Adam Savage, Kari Byron, Grant Imahara, and Tory Belleci.

So what were our mythbusting heros up to tonight? Dogs. This episode went to the dogs, again. Adam and Jamie went back to see if they could find new ways to try and fool the bloodhound into losing their scent, while they tried to escape from prison. Last time Adam tried spreading his scent everywhere, running through water, and spreading pepper to mask his scent, but none of it worked. This time though it was Jamie's turn to try, and Adam was going to be hunting him down.

With a rousing, slightly edited, speech from 'The Fugitive' from Adam, Jamie was off! His first counter-measure? Red herring. Cans of it to be specific. He dumped a pile of fish in the middle of his trail then took off again, hoping that the scent of the fish would distract Morgan, the same bloodhound from the first attempt. It did, for a minute. Morgan had a nice snack before he was off again, although looking slightly confused. They passed by Jamie twice before Morgan finally picked up his scent in a tree.

Next on the list was for Jamie to don a 'no-scent-suit.' What is this you ask? Well he bathes, rinses and sprays, putting on different clothes that have any other kind of scent on it than his own. Did this work? No, not at all. Morgan found him rather easily. For his third attempt to stay out of the slammer Jamie decides to run through some water. Now anyone who remembers the original episode, from three years ago, knows that Adam attempted to lose the pup by running through water. But as our intrepid hosts tell us, the fans weren't happy with the puddles that Adam was jumping through. This time Jamie was going to be running through a river.

Jamie set off, running through some rather deep and sucking mud. Seemed they'd be able to follow him without the dog. Then he went into the water, sometimes coming up to his waist, zig-zaging back and forth, crossing to one shore of the river and then back over to the other. Then he ran up and hid under some brush. It seemed like this might work, before testing it, as they thoguht that moving water would take the scent with it and make things harder. But good ole Morgan, he jumped right in and followed that trail! Even catching Jamie mid stream in the river. Adam's thoughts?
"At first when I saw Jamie's trail in the mud I was like, Hehn hehn hhen hehn. Then when I got to the river I was like, Awwwww. Then when Morgan found Jamie, I was like Woooooo!"

For those of you keeping track at home, the points do matter on this show, and the score isn't looing good for our heroes. Morgan the blood hound - 3, Mythbusters - 0.

Next Sherrif Adam decided that it was time to find Jamie's accomplice, cleverly disguised as so called volunteers. They had the five guys take the same path out into the field, only separating at the end to go to their designated trees. A path filled with five different scents? Surely this would work! Well, actually, it almost did. The first time it seemed that Morgan was confused, he went to the right person the first time, but he and his handler were getting mixed responses and they checked out the other four. So they repeated it with a different set of thugs, erm, volunteers. Once again, Morgan picked out the right person the first time, but had to double-check the others just to be sure. Can nothing stop this dog?

One last test to be certain. A test to the extreme. Jamie bathed in a tub with plastic laid out, then put on a special, fresh, white plastic suit. He then went to another tent where three experts were needed to complete a 15 step process that included a breathing mask, two other suits, and many many other different chemicals and washes to get off any Jamie smell that might be lingering. They then took 'eau du Jamie' and put it in a spray pack. Jamie took his head start and started to spray his scent all over the field, trying to confuse poor Morgan, then took of running, fairly confident that he was going to win this one. He was wrong. The blood hound barely paused at the discarded spray pack and found Jamie easily lying on the ground in a ditch, out of sight. It seems that the blood-hound cannot be fooled, and Jamie gets to go back to his jail cell that has missed him so.

Our other three sidekicks were testing their own ways to beat a different kind of dog. A sniffer dog, like the ones that go through your luggage at the airport, or the ones that police use to sniff out drugs. Five different dogs were brought in to sniff out "the contraband", of which we the viewer were not allowed to know what is was, but were assured that it was legal. They tested their first dog by hiding the envelope above the wheels of a smelly horse trailer, surrounded by shipping crates and large trucks. There was no hesitation and they now knew what they were up against.

Here was their first plan of action.
Find something smellier than "the contraband" to hide it in. Where did they go? The Prop Co-op. over 30,000 pieces of props for just about everything in one building, and they all created a scent that ever our hosts could smell from the doorway. To make even more of a challenge they put "The contraband" into containers with five od the smelliest items; coffee, peanut butter, perfume, bleach, and citronella.

The coffee went behind some old phones, but the sniffer dog found it within five minutes time. The peanut butter went into a drawer of a filing cabinent, and that darn dog, well he found it even then. These dogs were good, they weren't distracted by the fake scent leads that our hosts were leaving around the different aisles to cover up their dirty work. Even the bleach and perfume gave him no problems! But what about the citronella? Nah, he found it, not as easily, but confidently.

It was time to switch tactics. Bring in a crowd of over 200 people, a rather loud car stero thumping away, and a fast food taco truck. One person in the crowd would be holding the bag with "The contraband" in it. The first 'average joe' also carried a device that worked as a sound repellant for dogs. Every time the dog would come close to our hidden man he would press the button to try and drive the dog away. But it was no use, the dog was so well trained that it hardly deterred him from finding his goal!

Next was an age old tactic, confuse him with pleasure. A female dog in heat was brought in to stand next to our new offender, and this really seemed to throw the sniffer dog for a loop. That's when the law stepped in and pointed out that in normal situations any dog would be removed, so she was removed, and it was no contest, the perp was caught.

Lastly, our sidekicks went for the luggage. Hiding "the contraband" under a false bottom, then filing it with clothes, and some stinky cheese, and salami, and other foods. The real test this time, though? To fool the handler. Maybe he would see the food and think that that was what his faithful sniffer had realyl smelled, and move on. They even went to a luggage store to make things harder. No go, Joe. The handler took everything out and went right for the false bottom. Next on the list? The most horrifying thing of all.

Hiding the contraband with some baby stuff, provided from the new mother herself, Kari. But that's not the worst part. They pu "the contraband" in with a baf dirty diapers, wrapping it up in a week old, stinking, diaper. If I was the handler, I would have just burned the bag, "contraband" and all. But our faithful sniffer found the bag, and our brave handler wasted no time in digging the bag. His face told the story of the smell and his want to go searching, but there was no hesitation when he pulled out the dirty diaper.

The moral of our story tonight, boys and girls? Don't do anything illegal, or try to break out from prison, for man's best friend will also be man's worst enemy. Also, they'll send out the dogs if you try any of their stunts and experiments at home.

Some people give the Mythbusters some flack for not being truly scientific, for not running enough control tests, for not running enough variable tests, which often leads to re-visits of myths. But I say, 'Who cares!' THey put in the time, and the math, so the rest of us don't have to. If they did everything like the others in white coats in pristine labs, the show would not be as entertaining. And who doesn't like to see Adam wearing costumes and trying to win one over on Jamie? I know I do.

Next week, the Mythbusters meet up with the Storm Chasers to test out some tornado myths, that include jet engines. Who's up for that?! Me, me, me!

Happy Nerding!
<(-_-<)<(-_-)>(>-_-)> Megara Noelle <(-_-<)<(-_-)>(>-_-)>

A Nerdy Girl and Her Anime Journey

2010-10-06T21:28:00.001-07:00

So, some friends of mine told me that I needed to start watching ‘Bleach’. Now, I’ve never watched an anime show. I had seen ‘Ninja Scroll’ and ‘Final Fantasy VII:Advent Children’. These are the only two things I had seen that are considered anime. But to me, ‘FF VII’ doesn’t count towards anime - I look at that as a sequel to the video game. But I digress.

A few months ago, I decided to take the plunge. And 253 episodes in, I’m in love. ‘Bleach’ is about as awesome as they come. I don’t really look at it as anime. I mean, I know that it is because it’s animated and it comes from Japan, but to me it’s just an engrossing show. I care for all of the characters very deeply. It’s like I found something to replace the void that ‘LOST’ gave me when it finished in May. And that’s about the time when I began my journey into Kurosaki Ichigo’s life.

I began the show by watching it in its true form - Japanese actors with English subtitles. I know that they show ‘Bleach’ during ‘Anime Night’ on Cartoon Network, but I began my adventure at the beginning of the week, and 'Anime Night' occurs Saturdays at midnight. I wanted to start at the beginning, and I knew if I watched it on Cartoon Network, then I would not be able to do that. I’m sure I could have found it online somewhere, but it felt necessary to watch it in Japanese. Boy, am I glad that I did. The one time I attempted to watch the English dub, I lasted about 10 seconds before I lost it. To me, Ichigo’s Japanese voice is the epitome of sexiness. His English counterpart? A laughing stock. But, this is just my opinion folks.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be taking you down a journey through each of the seasons. There are currently 14 seasons. I’ve made it through 13. Roughly each season is about 20+ episodes. There are some that are much longer than that, and there are some seasons that are much shorter. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I have.

The Serial Killer Experience (Part 2)

2010-10-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

[Part 1 is here.]

Well, I'm back.

Now, let's talk some more about the Dexter alternate reality game. Where we last left off, I was extolling the virtues of a game as interactive as this one without telling you much about the actual game. Often the game's more interesting moments were definitely controlled by the….okay, I just want you to know something. Somehow, without meaning to, I actually typed "controlled by the fates of others." This game is like bedbugs. I can't get rid of it. It has obviously exercised some kind of terrifying mind control over me.

Thematically speaking, what I just said makes some vague kind of sense. The serial killer's self-assigned moniker, F8, is so many different kinds of nerdy pun on the word "fate" that it makes me a little bit nauseous. Just a little bit. Completely curably so with some ginger ale. Whatever the case, as I mentioned in yesterday's half of the post, F8 selects his victims--or as he calls them, "friends"--because they feel they can "influence the fate of others" (his words, not mine). The theme of control is that which threads the game together; it is mentioned time and time again from day one, and was cemented in an early on challenge--an 8-Step Control Addiction Program (I'd pay special attention to this if you're a Dexter fan, as I have a strong suspicion this is going to be the most pervasive element of the game that turns up in season 5). I remember trying to burn a list of all the things I had decided I had attempted to control and nearly burning my iPhone in the resulting flames.

A lot of the game's ridiculous challenges were the result of experimentation with new media. Interactivity meant that you had to come up with a way for users to participate, but in a really active game, it wouldn't have been enough for them to just tweet a few things on a weekly basis. Things had to get more invasive, more personal, and more nonsensical. It's really not a game unless you make yourself feel like an ass on its behalf on many occasions. We decoded ciphers on cakes (which, much to my chagrin, led to someone saying "THE CAKE IS A LIE" every 37 seconds), we played in huge online rock-paper-scissors tournaments, we forged documents, and navigated a remote control fire truck around and watched an 18-hour live stream that included things like garden gnomes, three-legged dogs and dancing eyeballs.

In the end, though, it came down to one last thing, the main event, the aforementioned life-or-death confrontation, and a very simple challenge. Dee and Infinity came face-to-face to have a little chat. Infinity had set it up so that users had to vote via Twitter or Facebook to either #killdee or #killinfinity, and whichever one had the most votes would prevail.

Imagine how surprised I was when, after two months of hearing people bitch about the Serial Huntress and go on about how awesome they thought F8 was, they voted to kill Infinity 65-35.

Maybe one of the most interesting things about this--and something that made me unnervingly suspicious that this was some kind of social experiment above all other things--was exactly how many people voted to save the Serial Huntress and kill the Infinity Killer in the end. I'm not trying to be totally egocentric here, but I spent so much time on this game that by the end I was sure I had a pretty good handle on not only the game itself, but the players in it. It occurred to me, near the very end, that it might be a closer call than I had initially thought it would be when the countdown timer started ticking because I remembered my own initial hesitation, as brief as it was, to #killdee. I thought briefly that this was an opportunity here to question my own moral compass. For the most infinitesimal of moments I actually considered this seriously before I was brought to reality with a bump and the two worlds came into conflict. The alternate reality that had become the actual reality slid back into the alternate reality again. Maybe, just maybe, had these been two real people instead of two fictional characters, I would've made a different choice. But they weren't, and I didn't have to judge which one I would save based on real principles.

After it was over and F8 had died I felt this ridiculous and appalling despair. I was actually really confounded by it because, while I had imagined that if this happened I wouldn't take it very happily, it was actually mildly embarrassing how upset I really was. I sat there reading the message boards in disbelief for several hours because basically what was going on was people were arguing their choice to #killinfinity based on moral grounds and I was responding by shouting four-letter words at my computer. I figured this wasn't a very good basis for an argument so I decided not to say anything for a very long time. I didn't understand it. I felt so betrayed by these people, like they had seriously wronged me somehow. And then one of them, one who had voted to #killinfinity, said something very interesting to me--why are you so upset? It's only a game.

My non-player friend (feel free to take a moment out to voice your shock that I have a friend), who came with me to the kill room and who at this point was subject to weekly updates on the case, voiced similar confusion when I told her the results. "You would think," she said, "that the fact that 'it was only a game' would make people MORE inclined to save the killer. There's no real concern that an innocent dies while a serial killer goes free. Not to mention," she added, "is this not a game that caters to the taste of Dexter fans? Isn't that a show about a likable serial killer? Because I think it is."

And that was just what was pissing me off! Here at last was this wonderful opportunity to be deliciously bad and you didn't have to feel guilt. Having been raised in a Catholic family, I view such things as wonderful opportunities, since I am so laden with guilt as a result that I think "guilt" is something I feel more often than "hunger." Actually, I'm hungry now, but I feel bad about it. But here, with the click of a button, you could actually kill one person and save another for no other reason than that you thought one of them was more charming than the other, even if the charming one was the guy who had killed seven people. And then you could go have lunch and donate your monthly $22 to Children International and no one would ever know. All the fun of murder; none of the clean up! I'm sure Children International would love to read this paragraph.

But when I think about it, the fact that it was a game was perhaps what made his death hit me harder than that of most fictional characters. Look, I am a proud nerd, and I am not ashamed to say that I have sat around and wept over the death of more than one fictional character. I am pretty sure everyone who lived on the same floor as my apartment when I watched the season 4 finale of Dexter thought someone must have been murdered (although SOMEONE WAS). But when I really considered it, trying to figure out why I was reduced to tears because a fictional character I had known about for two months had kicked the bucket, I came to the conclusion that the interactivity was the thing. This was a guy who would answer your tweets. When you woke up in the morning and saw an e-mail from him in your inbox it made your day. I didn't have to do much serious reminiscing to establish that so far, I have not received any other e-mails from fictional characters, even ones in alternate reality games. The alternate reality here had, rather impressively, crossed over rather convincingly into actual reality. This guy, fictional or not, had probably singlehandedly kept my brain from atrophying in a haze of post-graduate nothingness. I felt like I had spent a large part of the last two months trying to actually impress this guy. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact, but I do know that it's true. I wanted his approval. The reason I spent three days on my floor trying to rearrange 56 different sentence fragments into one cohesive statement was some strange combination of zen (which admittedly did end up with my kneeling on the floor and unleashing some kind of primal scream, not entirely unlike what Dexter experiences in that gross bathroom in the season premier) and wanting to prove my loyalty to this fictional guy. After all, this was a guy who had written my name down on a notecard and circled it, which had been found by the authorities when he abandoned his hotel room after almost being caught. I didn't know why he had done it--for some time I theorized that he had circled my name because he didn't like me but he DID like circles--but he had, and I felt like I had something to live up to.

I didn't want to give up on him. I didn't want to let him down, either. I definitely didn't want to run around and desert him. I felt like I owed him something. I felt real loyalty for someone fictional, which is probably why I was so singularly pissed off at everyone who had voted to kill him. I suppose I was under the impression that a lot of other people felt the same way. Maybe I was really really biased; after all, this was my BFF we were talking about--maybe I was slightly too willing to look past some of his faults. O internet, how I have misjudged thee.

After it was over, returning to actual, actual reality seemed like an idea infinitely more bizarre than what had just transpired. Sleeping for 6-8 hours a night? Not sitting on the floor with a shitload of notecards fanned out around you trying to solve a riddle? Google Docs is useless again? Text message alerts aren't often from a serial killer? Seeing video footage and the first thought in your mind not being "would it be easier to transcribe this if I downloaded it and then slowed it down a fraction"? These things seemed like the bastardization of life rather than life itself. Another player said to me, after mentioning that she had taken to carrying the plastic garden gnome she had received from F8 around in her purse (I move mine into bizarre locations around my house to disturb relatives who don't expect to open the pantry and find a gnome), that a normal life was not enough. I sympathize. After it was over I felt kind of like I had just woken up from one of those batshit insane earth-shattering dreams that you sometimes get, where the idea that you have to get out of bed now and brush your teeth and go to work and pretend like everything is normal is seriously ridiculous. For a while you're even pretty convinced that you're dreaming right now. Perhaps the entire thing is inception. Or maybe it's kind of like the end of Labyrinth. I'm pretty much waiting for F8 to jump out of my wardrobe and start dancing. IT WILL HAPPEN. I'm patient.

If you want to see a bit of the smooth-voiced serial killer and his rival, you can check out SerialHuntress.com and SleepSuperbly.com, the two main in-game websites. If you're still curious, check out my recap of the entire game here and part one of this monstrous post here If you're feeling nostalgic, check out Shiny's post about it last month here. And if you're incredibly curious and just the right kind of nerd, check out Modernista!, the creators of the ARG, and their own website's coverage of it here.

And seriously, I promise my next post will be shorter.

5 Reasons Why Manga F*#@$ing Rocks!

2010-10-06T16:45:00.000-07:00

My older brother first introduced me to comics as a kid, and from there my nerdiness grew at an exponential rate. Until one day, like a crack addict trolling back alleys looking for a high, I found myself desperately searching my local comic store for manga. Eventually I caught wise and just got my fix delivered right to my door, which had the added bonus of sparing me the frustration of dealing with the moron working at my comic store. If there is one universal truth in this world it is this: Manga is addictive. It is mind-blowingly awesome, and if you haven’t tried it yet, you need to, you know not what you are missing. In the hopes of persuading others to hop on my nerdy bandwagon, I give you the top 5 reasons why manga f*#@$ing rocks.

#5 They’re Insane.

Japan is where reason and logic go to die, so of course, why would their graphic novels be any different? On a bat-shit insane scale of 1 to 10, most manga plots are about a 20. Yet somehow, because they come from such a crazy culture to begin with, I TOTALLY BUY IT! A boarding school where a secret class of vampires attends school with an unknowing bunch of humans, protected only by the two fifteen-year old school prefects? I’m sure it happens all the time in Tokyo!

#4 Engrish

Oddly enough, western culture crops up all the time in manga, often with hysterical results.

Behold WcDonalds!

#3 Easy Access

Thanks to the inter-webs, those of us too cheap to actually purchase volumes of manga can go online and find fan-scan sites. I would highly recommend these two:

http://manga.animea.net/

http://www.mangafox.com/

#2 You want it, they got it

I know I sound like a used car salesman, but seriously, there are manga’s for everyone. Romance, Fantasy, Drama, Martial Arts, History, Sci-fi, Psychological and the list goes on forever. One word of warning for those who haven’t ever read manga and don’t speak Japanese: DO NOT CLICK ON ANYTHING LABELED YAOI (unless your into gay porn). I’m not joking.

#1 The Art

For my money, the art found in manga is unparalleled. Hino Matsuri is probably my favorite. He has a style that is both exaggerated yet still realistic. He writes fantasy/romance-ish stories that have a way of staying with you after you finish a chapter. A friend of mine, and fellow manga freak, calls his work “sexy”. It’s not dirty or anything, but I think that’s probably the most apt description, it is sexy if not a touch melancholy.

Random Thought of the Day...!

2010-10-06T06:26:00.000-07:00

WebMD is not your friend....unless you want to silently freak out you're dying or have cancer....or think your spouse is cheating because "they" say you have an STD. I think "they" should change their motto to:

"WebMD...breaking up one marriage at a time!" (✿◠‿◠)

ø¤º°Sparkles°º¤ø

Lost Girl

2010-10-05T19:06:00.000-07:00

It's not often Canadians get a cool thing before the states, but it has been known to happen (kinda makes up for Celine Dion, but not quite). This time it takes the shape of Lost Girl, a new series on Showcase. It's kinda early to tell whether this will turn into 'must see TV' or not, but I gotta say the premise is hot.

Lost Girl follows the raven haired hottie Bo. Bo grew up with her human parents thinking her only concerns were the same as your average TV ready hot girl. Turns out there is very little 'normal' about little lost Bo. After she drained her boyfriend to death in their first sexual encounter, she figured out she is in fact a supernatural seductress of the 'Succubus who feeds on the sexual energy of humans' variety.

After that fun little tidbit of information made itself known, she hits the road alone and afraid. If that isn't enough to throw a girl into a serious identity crisis, she then discovers she is one of the Fae. Oh you know, The Fae? No, not the ones from True Blood. Ok kinda, but not exactly. These are the ones from legend that pass themselves off as human as they have for millennia and feed off the unsuspecting non-supes in different ways. Ok, so not that different. The main difference is the freaky red eye thing of the Lost Girl fae vs the angelic looking fae of True Blood.

Being not alone is good, being not alone amongst supernatural creatures you have no clue about is maybe not so good. What's a confused Succubus to do? Bo decides to split the difference until she figures it out and takes the middle path between the humans and the Fae .

With the help of her human sidekick, Kenzi, and Dyson, a sexy police detective, Bo takes on a new task each week. Sometimes its helping a Fae or human client solve a mystery or helping someone who comes to her to right a wrong. She undertakes these little adventures all the while embarking on a personal mission to unlock the secrets of her origin.

Sexy chic, supernatural creatures, sidekicks, ..a freaking modern day Succubus?! Oh yeah, totally gotta see where this one winds up. So far, so good even if it does have that 'we are a brand new show trying to find our feet' thing going on right now. But its got a great premise and looks to have some real potential. And it's got lines like "we're gonna need a safeword" when the beginnings of a three way start to get frisky.

Oh yeah, I'm keeping an eye on this one.

Network:	Showcase ( Canada)
Airs:	Sundays at 09:00 pm
Runtime:	60 Minutes
Premiere:	September 12, 2010

~kim

The Serial Killer Experience (Part 1)

2010-10-05T19:00:00.000-07:00

It begins in a room next to Dick's Last Resort, one surrounded in mirrors with a secret message and covered in an admirable fake blood that sticks to the floor but doesn't come up when you touched it. And believe me, and I am admitting this only two months later, I checked, because I am a fake blood critic of the worst kind. If you are a creepster (unlike me; I am obviously very regular), this is the sort of room you enter and think that this would be a really great place to get away with a mildly noisy murder. No real neighbors, a bar downstairs that distracts from unusual late night foot traffic and noise, and a gigantic convention a couple blocks away with at least 4,000 nerds who definitely waited quite a long time to get into a Dexter panel. If you want to make a scene but don't want to be caught red-handed, where better to do it than at Comic-Con?

Alternate reality games have different types of players just like video games do. You get your button mashers, your dilettantes who'll play anything for a half-hour, the people who will buy a video game console just because they really want to play a single game, and the hardcore gamers who will play a new game without sleeping until they beat it, then replay it until they get the greatest possible score. (The same applies for Harry Potter fans. By the way. I've just worked that out. YOU'RE WELCOME, WORLD.)

To save some time, I'm going to assume you know what an alternate reality game is, both because it has already been mentioned here, and because I am going to link you to the Wikipedia article about alternate reality games. Here you go. I'm also going to assume you have a working knowledge of Dexter (but if not...here you go).

Anyway I used to be one type but now I'm the one who buys the console for the game. I have an overwhelming tendency to get sucked into an alternate reality game to a ridiculous extent when I decide to play, the result of which is that I end up not sleeping and ditching most if not all real world commitments in favor of the game. As such I try to avoid them whenever possible and haven't actually finished one since The Dark Knight. I suppose this is kind of an inherent pitfall in the idea for some people; an alternate reality game tries to create an immersive and interactive experience for the player, which usually ends up immersing some people slightly too much. Especially me. So I avoid them like the plague because they are like cocaine and I am like a person who is addicted to cocaine.

However, it just so happens that Dexter is my favorite thing in the world. Period. Without hyperbole. So I decided to regard myself as being in like an Agent Lundy situation, where maybe I had retired, officially, but I couldn't deny the opportunity to scratch the itch when it presented itself to me in such an irresistible package. There are some combinations to which I cannot say no. Chocolate and raspberry, Christian Bale and Ewan McGregor appearing in the same movie, Jon Hamm and ham, Dexter and alternate reality games.

To attempt to recap the entire game (for Freud devotees, I just typed "came" on accident) would, at this point, take a very long time. Also it would be redundant since I've already done it. At my website. If you really want to read it, even though it's very long, it's here. Also the official recap, which is not as awesome as mine is (YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE) is at HunterPrey.com (BUT WHO IS THE HUNTER AND WHO IS THE PREY??? Food for thought). So I'm going to give you the shorter version, although I can tell you already it certainly won't look shorter. But it is. I promise.

The room of which I spoke earlier was presented to the masses at Comic-Con in July. If you were a super nerd who went to Comic-Con just for Dexter, you already knew exactly where it was and when it opened because you were keeping a list of the challenges in Dexter Game On and which ones you had completed and which ones you still needed to in your notebook (color coded) because you didn't want to waste precious iPhone battery life walking around the exhibit hall at Comic-Con shouting "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY CAN'T I GET ANY WIFI IN THIS GODFORSAKEN PLACE." If you aren't a super nerd, or at least that kind of super nerd, then maybe you found about it in some other way. It was a neat place, and I made a video of it. I'm going to include it because honestly, though my video was taken on a really crappy camera, it's easier than describing it to you. Included with it is audio of the victim being murdered. In case you are wondering, I took that video while listening to that audio at the same time. Did I just blow your mind?

Players are asked officially at the crime scene to help the Serial Huntress aka Dee Pratt try to track down this heinous serial killer, the Infinity Killer, by gathering at her website and pooling all their knowledge together to solve problems that one man could not do alone, assuming he is not VIncent D'Onofrio on Criminal Intent. In and of itself the idea is a pretty novel one because essentially the alternate reality game is that already, so it was interesting to see a character in an alternate reality game almost actually using the unspoken basis of the thing as a model for propelling its action forward. If that makes sense. I mean to say, the reason alternate reality games could only really exist in the age of the internet is because they REQUIRE social networking in order to work. There are so many puzzles and problems in them that the idea that any single person could solve them all unaided is laughable. Players necessarily must convene in order to do it. An alternate reality game is a cross-platform story that actually requires audience participation and cooperation in order to work, and perhaps just as importantly, it works on a real-time chronology in which you have no say. You can't just sit at home by yourself on a really dull Wednesday night and play it. Theoretically I suppose in some games it could actually be done, but the idea is that nobody has all the knowledge that one might need to complete all the challenges. You HAVE to consult other people. "Crowdsourced" crime solving is taking that idea and applying it to the gameverse--that you could just be one woman in a basement trying to decipher all the clues, but you honestly probably wouldn't be able to. You need other people there to tell you this Interesting Thing You Didn't Know that turns out to move forward a stagnant case. It applies in alternate reality gaming, where maybe you have no idea how to solve the puzzle but the person next to you happens to recognize this cipher that the person next to her found hidden coded inside some Javascript that the first two people wouldn't have seen. So why couldn't it apply in a murder case? Two heads are better than one. And you bite because, after a lifetime of media consumption in a generation that happily embraced Silence of the Lambs, the opportunity to play the part of the profiler is alluring.

But into this equation comes a curious new variable--the charismatic serial murderer. He wants to play, too, and he's so much more fun. He's complex. He's mysterious. He tantalizes you with little details but, like an episode of Lost, with each answer supplies even more questions. And if you play right, you can even win a prize. (Which usually turns out to be an actual audio file of him killing someone. Hooray! Who doesn't want the opportunity to explain that one to the unenlightened when it shuffles onto their iTunes?) He introduces himself so much more carefully than the Serial Huntress. When you walk into the crime scene, they hand you her business card. You can call her hotline or go to her website. And he's there, too, but you really do have to work harder. His personality is all over the crime scene. He's written you a message on mirrors in blood. The message leads you to a website, which he's hacked so you can see his profile (his username is F8), where a seemingly-innocuous "dream therapy" video leads you (via another mirror image) to a Twitter account which leads you to a riddle which you have to solve in order to get that kill audio. His methods are, to put it lightly, considerably more circuitous than hers. So now you get to play for both teams. You get to hear F8's side of the story, too, which unfolds ever-so-slowly, like a Mad Men storyline.

In other games, this may not have worked as well, but this is when you remember what we're playing a Dexter game, here. I had typed this whole long paragraph exploring why I thought people actually liked the show, but I deleted it because it has been discussed many times before and we may never truly know the answer. I honestly don't even know why I like it so much. It probably has something to do with the fact that I am also a serial killer. It's just that Dexter asks you necessarily to sympathize with its serial killer protagonist. If you couldn't, then you probably wouldn't watch it. So to ask you to sympathize with another serial killer isn't really a huge stretch.

Retrospectively the method through which they eased him into our hearts and minds strikes me as unreasonably clever. Whether as some form of intentional storytelling manipulation or for other reasons, the first Infinity kills that we learned about--regardless of their place in the Infinity chronology--made him appear to be a vigilante, even if perhaps his guidelines were not as strict as Dexter (having killed an identity thief and a drug dealer). But as time went on it became apparent that perhaps it wasn't so simple; F8 even mentioned it at one point when the connection was brought up: "but you seem to be trying to compare me to someone else," he said, and "i have a feeling that’s what’s keeping you from noticing the thread." By the time you found out that F8 selected his victims just because they exacted control over a fair number of people, and not because they were necessarily bad people, it was too late. You already liked him.

[This, of course, is not to mention how big a nerd he is. I'm serious. Call it what you want, but a great way to appeal to a large group of people who are willing to wake up at one-hour intervals to check some websites and see if anything has changed is to make the character they're kind of supposed to be rooting for a nerd. Over the course of the game you discover that Infinity is actually an IT guy, but this already seemed obvious. Here we had the sort of person who was willing to create 64 Twitter accounts (which means 64 unique e-mail addresses) with portions of one QR code that would lead you to YouTube that would call on you to participate in a YouTube conference…or who inexplicably followed @TacoBell on Twitter…or who would, in a crowning moment of achievement, attempt to rickroll you. I mean come on. This guy was practically one of us, but he happened to also be a serial killer.]

As I have already said, this was not my first ARG, but I have called it the most immersive one I've played and I guess I'll back that up. Every game I was playing before was apparently on such a large scale that it ultimately ended up being impossible and impersonal. I'm not saying that I felt excluded, I'm just saying that I never felt like I was a vital cog in making the machine work. I just felt like I was on board for the ride. I suppose part of that is that this is the first time I've ever been playing an ARG since day one, but the other part is that this one was smaller, complex enough to keep my interest (unlike some of the grassroots one I've tried to play that kind of peter out), and more importantly, offered more opportunities to interact with the characters in the game. Yea, though you could call the Gotham Intercontinental Hotel in The Dark Knight game and speak to the concierge, it's not quite the same as receiving a direct message from a fictional serial killer or being mentioned by name in one of his videos. There is something thrilling about being able to speak so directly to a fictional character. His omnipresence is part of what made it fun. After a certain point, one got the impression that no matter what you were doing in the game, F8 was watching you. And why not? At some point he was probably your Twitter friend, your Facebook friend, invited to your IRC chat, a member of the message board. He was definitely there whenever he presented you with a new puzzle. I think perhaps one of my favorite moments of the game is, during the final life-or-death confrontation, when he actually checks his cell phone because he wants to see what people are tweeting. Now if that's not an endearing combination of nerdiness and devotion then what is?

All right, well this thing is so big that I've had to split it into two parts. Stay tuned for part two tomorrow. [ETA: Here it is.] If you're particularly curious, you can check out a couple of the major in-game websites, like SerialHuntress.com and SleepSuperbly.com. For extra homework check out my own in-depth recap at my website. If you love to know things like this, check out the website for the agency in charge of this campaign, Modernista! (exclamation point theirs, although of course I am thrilled to type their name). I swear after this I will write shorter posts.

Music of the Moment: Son of Dave

2010-10-05T16:58:00.000-07:00

Recently, a friend had posted a few videos of this amazing artist on his facebook page. The videos blew my mind. In fact, here's one. Start it up and either keep reading or groove out then continue.

Oh, and before I forget. Thank you Andrew. I LOVED watching the videos you had posted. You are pretty much my music soulmate.

Amazing, right? He reminds me a little of Tom Waits, without the throat issues. Yes, the video is a cover of the song by Dizee Rascak and Armand Van Heldon, but it shows you pretty much how this man works. A mixture of blues, hip-hop, alternative, and beatbox is what you have to look forward to when you treat yourself...

... for the rest of this review if you dig the artist, please visit my site at www.cranialspasm.com

Uncanny X-Men - Lovelorn

2010-10-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

I'm going to preface this with an acknowledgment that these issues are old-ish. Unfortunately, as much as I love comics, I can't afford individual issues of all the books I enjoy. Therefore I wait until they come out in graphic novel form and, unless it is a must-have like Gotham Central, I typically wait until they come out in paperback. Nothing at all against the books, just a necessity given my economic status :).

So, the plan for these reviews (on Nerds in Babeland), is that I intend to go to Meltdown Comics weekly and get suggestions from the awesome people that work there as to what I should be reading/reviewing. I have loved comics since middle school but I took a break in the middle (around high school/early undergrad) and therefore missed a lot and have been trying to catch up since. Chris (from the Meltcast podcast) has agreed to give me suggestions, because they are awesome like that. They did not ask me to do this promotion at all, just throwing it out there because I love love love comics and graphic novels and I think more people should support comic book shops. This happens to be the one I go to the most but there are other awesome ones in LA. Also, if you have suggestions for books I should read, PLEASE mention them in the comments section! So, yea. Onto the review...

That being said, my first graphic novel review for Nerds in Babeland had to be an X-title. They might not be the same quality as books written by Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, etc, but they were my first comic series. I have a loyalty to the X-Men and, as a result of my childhood, I always viewed myself as a "Marvel Girl." Of course, things have since changed and there are quite a few DC/Vertigo books that are the top of my list in terms of favorite books. Still, my first review had to be an X-book.

Tons of great writers have done X-titles lately, including Ed Brubaker, Joss Whedon, and even Grant Morrison not that long ago. I had never read anything by Matt Fraction and I feel as though the Whedon/Morrison books have been reviewed plenty so I chose to go with Lovelorn upon recommendation from Chris (collecting Uncanny X-Men #504-507). Before anyone decides to pick up this book, I think it would definitely benefit you to read the Uncanny X-Men Manifest Destiny graphic novel to understand what has happened before the events in this book.

My own brief attempt at summarizing: Basically, during the events of the last major crossover, "House of M," the Scarlett Witch caused about 3/4 of the mutant population in the world to lose their powers, thus making mutants an endangered species. For awhile no new mutants were being born, until the events of "The Messiah Complex" (which is the series that Brubaker and Mike Carey wrote). A new mutant was born but with that came the destruction/death of an entire town in Alaska thus, once again, making mutants hated (shock!). Shortly thereafter, the X-Mansion was destroyed...again. Instead of re-building it...again...Cyclops decides to move the X-Men elsewhere and they ultimately end up in San Francisco where the mayor welcomes them with open arms.

Yes, slightly complicated to follow but that's basically what you need to know. Oh, and Kitty Pryde died during Joss Whedon's run of Astonishing X-Men because, well, that's just what Joss Whedon does. So, Lovelorn picks up after the X-Men have been living in San Francisco for a bit. Hate crimes have become prevalent across the US, even in San Francisco, thus further emphasizing the obvious metaphor for gay rights. Lovelorn basically focuses on two characters: Emma Frost/White Queen (who, if you didn't know, is now a good guy and dating Cyclops) and Colossus. Both of them are dealing with serious love issues. Colossus is devastated with the loss of Kitty and Emma is trying to reconcile her past as a villainous with her present life with Cyclops.

I won't get too much into plot, not because it will really spoil stuff but mostly b/c this is a super short book. However, while there are flaws with the story lines, I do really enjoy the new metaphor/direction that Marvel is taking the X-Men. Not that Civil Rights racial issues have been completely solved, but it is time for the X-Men to symbolize another social outcast group and I think this direction will be interesting to follow. As for Fraction's writing, I really enjoy his sense of humor. There are some excellent one-liners throughout the book. My main problem is that, with the great one-liners, there are also some unnecessarily over dramatic moments. Moments where the characters state something that just seems unnecessary and kind of overdoing it. I did enjoy his tactic of inter-cutting scenes involving Colossus' revenge storyline with a similar battle-focused storyline involving the Beast & Angel, but at times it made it a little difficult to follow what was going on in either story. Nevertheless, I enjoyed his writing enough that I would definitely want to read more of his stuff.

As for the art, I am a fan of Terry Dodson. I love the way he draws the characters' features in a way that is both simple and yet has enough detail to depict exactly how that character is feeling. Plus, even though he may emphasize boobs a bit too much on the ladies, I think his women are gorgeous. One of my favorite recent covers for the Uncanny X-Men is the cover with all the female X-Women (shown to the side). It might not be from this specific collection of comics but I had to share it. Love that Phoenix is in a frame behind them all.

So, yea, if you aren't an X-Men fan then I wouldn't recommend starting with this book (go pick up the Dark Phoenix Saga in TPB...seriously, it's amazing). However, if you are a former X-Men fan and feel like just picking up a simple, small book to check out, I recommend either this book or the Manifest Destiny graphic novel before this book. They're both relatively inexpensive (Lovelorn was only $16) and both have excellent art/writing.

Super Edgar!

2010-10-05T13:20:00.001-07:00

This awesome post is dedicated to awesome Edgar (@egspoony). The design was done by Katie Durham and deserves to be posted here in honor of Super Edgar.

Over the past couple of days, some of you may have noticed the nice (snort) blue unvisited link color/purple visited link color that our page was sportin'.

After frying my brain and straining my eyes going over line after line of code, Super Edgar swooped in and saved the day!!

See..Microsoft likes to hijack things by adding "extra" code, and by using Word--it invisibly inserted a bunch of crap on the main page, thus destroying our original format and turning everything to default. There's a really good blog post about this issue here.

So--let's ALL give Super Edgar a HUGE thanks for fixing it. Send him a tweet @egspoony !!

ø¤º°Sparkles°º¤ø

Martin Aircraft’s commercial jetpack looks to take flight

2010-10-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

"Although it may sound more sci-fi than sci-fact, a commercially developed jetpack is actually being eyed for mass production, with plans to eventually release it to the public. Let that sink in for a second. Jetpacks are real, and you might be able to buy one someday soon. Or at least see them among the skies."

You can read the full article here.

That's what I'm talking about! What fan of "The Jetsons" hasn't dreamed of flying with a jetpack?!! Thoughts?

ø¤º°Sparkles°º¤ø

Doctor Who Audio Book - The Stone Rose

2010-10-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

While I'm working on my next graphic novel review I decided to go ahead and review one of my favorite audio books. The Stone Rose was written by Jacqueline Rayner and read by David Tennant. It was the first original novel to feature the Tenth Doctor and was published in 2006. An abridged version of the book was released in 2006 The basic premise is that Mickey calls Rose & The Doctor back to present time England in order to show them something at the British Museum. While leading a group of children on a tour he discovered a 2000 year old statue of the goddess Fortuna that looks exactly like Rose. This, of course, leads Rose and The Doctor to ancient Rome to figure out what it's all about and make sure that Rose models for this statue (in order to not screw with time and create a paradox and all that Timey Wimey stuff).

Of course, while in Rome (oh I hate writing that...brings back nightmares of that movie), The Doctor and Rose get into all sorts of shenanigans, that ultimately result in Rose being in mortal danger and the Doctor getting royally pissed off. I don't want to share much more than that because it would ruin the book but suffice it to say the book is about two hours with of fun times with the Doctor and Rose (and read by sexy voiced David Tennant!)

There are a ton of great Doctor Who audio books out there that I would recommend (my second favorite being The Nightmare of Black Island by Mike Tucker and read by Anthony Head...or Anthony Steward Head for those familiar with Buffy). However, this one is probably my favorite because not only do you get angry Doctor when Rose is in trouble but you also have guest appearances by Mickey and Jackie and a battle between the Doctor and tons of wild animals in the Colosseum (where he, of course, tries not to kill anyone).

Also, the book is full of great lines and the typical dry humor that is scattered throughout Doctor Who TV episodes. Finally, Jacqueline Rayner knows a thing or two about writing about the Doctor since she has been writing Doctor Who novels since the Eighth Doctor.

Now I'm going to sound like a commercial BUT if you are looking for a fun audio book to listen to during your workout or drive into work or whenever, I highly recommend checking out some of the Doctor Who audio books, in particular The Stone Rose and The Nightmare on Black Rock. There are also some good ones done with the Eleventh Doctor, including one actually read by Matt Smith (The Runaway Train), but there are far more based on the Tenth Doctor and quite a number of them are read by David Tennant. He does a great job with voicing the different characters and is overall really fun to listen to. And the stories are well-done and involve all the different companions (some of the Donna ones are hilarious).

Okay, done with my commercial pitch. Oh, and the books are a great way to kill time while waiting for the Christmas Special :). Okay, now I'm REALLY done.

Random Thought of the Day...!

2010-10-04T06:39:00.000-07:00

Feeling rather reckless ever since I found that 1up mushroom...

ø¤º°Sparkles°º¤ø

DIY... Sunday? Pretty Flowers!

2010-10-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delayed post this weekend; busy jackie is busy.

But so anyway.. here I am, about to go to some awesome shindig, and don't know what to do with this mess of hair of mine... BUT.. i have this awesomely shiny red fabric.. so let's make something -

Here, I shall grasp the beloved plastic cup, lay the fabric flat (shiny-side down), and trace some circles on the back of the fabric with a pen. Then cut these out. Important things to know: the fabric needs to be something synthetic that will melt, not burn (seriously). Additionally, I cut four circles, two larger ones, two smaller ones. Then, proceeded to cut four slits in each circle toward the center, but not all the way to the center:

click to enlarge this or any of the following photos

Here comes the fun part.. We're going to take a votive candle, and literally burn the edges of each circles, down the seam of the slits, so that they wilt into a flower petal pattern. It's important to NOT SET YOUR FABRIC ON FIRE. ..just hold it within close proximity of the flame, not IN the flame, and carefully wilt the edges:

Now, we're going to stack those four petal rings on top of each other, and using a double-threaded needle, just sew these together in the center. I used black thread, so that it looks sort of like a shiny poppy. Then, very simply, just take a plain black bobby pin, and slide the top of the bobby pin underneath the thread on the bottom of the flower:

and VOILA!!

Now I'm ready to go to the par-- ...okay, you caught me. I'll be sitting here writing html code all night.. but there's no reason I can't be cute in the process. And seriously.. my dog has already seen my happy octopus bow*

ENJOY! And as always.. if you have comments, questions, or requests about DIY Saturdays, leave a note! If you do one of these little crafts yourself, we absolutely want to see pictures!

♥ Jackie

*happy octopus bow made by JesickaHorror on Etsy

Special Episode 2/4 - Guest Directors - Stephenie Meyer, J.K. Rowling & George Lucas - Mad Dog McGillicuddy and his Rabid Band of Howler Monkeys

2010-10-03T18:40:00.000-07:00

I asked people on Twitter and Facebook what they thought of the possibility that JK Rowling will do another two or three Harry Potter books. We got tons of great responses but one follower, HowlerMonkeys, shared this wonderful cartoon with me.

Good little entertaining way to end the weekend :)

Special Episode 2/4 - Guest Directors - Stephenie Meyer, J.K. Rowling & George Lucas - Mad Dog McGillicuddy and his Rabid Band of Howler Monkeys

A Geek Girl's Mecca

2010-10-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

X Files
Battlestar Galactica

Stargates series

Smallville
V

Outer Limits
Eureka
Fringe
Supernatural

What do all of those shows have in common?

I’m sure you can think of a few, but wait there’s more, perhaps something similar to...

X-Men series

Fantastic Four series

I Robot

The Neverending Story

Blade series

Twilight series (well most of it)

Fear

Night at the Museum

Rocky IV

Aliens vs Predator

Ok ok… I know you all get it by now. All of these films and TV shows have been filmed in beautiful British Columbia. As a fan girl I get an immense amount of pride spotting BC and especially Vancouver landmarks in the movies so many people love.

Quite recently I watched the last bit of “Neverending Story” and for the first time fully realized that the shot was coming in from North Vancouver

My heart was very very happy indeed.

It goes beyond the little things of noticing a specific location in a movie or TV show that you watch. It’s the personal interactions you have with the filming. One of my favourite memories is watching a protest scene with a fireball at the end. The office I was sitting in was about a block away (on the 11th floor of the building below on the left side) but all day I could hear.

Photo by me - the monument is important

“Rah rah rah”

Looking out the window I see people shaking signs

and fists in the air in a very organized manner

“Rah rah rah”

Wooooooooosh - Big fireball shooting up into the sky

Screams!

Exciting to see the first time, and as the day went on the fireball got bigger and bigger and bigger. I could quite literally feel the heat from it if I faced the windows. I was so excited. I knew it was for the most recent X-Men after a quick Google search and could not wait to see it on film. I have to admit I was a bit let down once I realized how little of that fireball we actually got to see, but I can’t help but smile. I saw that being filmed! I was there (sorta); I got to see what was happening!

Another favourite moment was when I was watching X-Files: I Want to Believe. That pivotal scene with Mulder and Scully in bed together, I literally sat up and went “Woah!” My curtains were the same material as their blanket, yeah that's right those are my curtains in the middle image! Guess the set designers went shopping at the Army & Navy like I did.

I know – cool right?

I will admit I have been lazy with filming locations. If I had really wanted to (and with a vehicle rather than a bus pass) I could stake out many locations of films and television series alike. In fact quite recently I was taking our local rapid transit, Skytrain, over what I’m sure is a Smallville lot twice a day. And there are always notices in the local paper about what is filming around town. My friend just told me other day that he saw "Zane" from Eureka by his work. I saw a bunch of "Hellcats" by Canada Place while having appys with my mom and sister.

Sometimes it’s really obvious that what I’m watching was filmed locally. Especially when you see the same faces over and over again. Some sort of Canadian content law like we have on the radio? It’s fun though! And I doubt that I would feel the same way if I were living in NYC or LA where it’s commonplace as well. I think the difference is that Vancouver is made up to appear like all these other cities. To be able to pick out that the Golden Gate Bridge most think they are seeing, is actually the Lions Gate Bridge creates a feeling of pride to live in this beautiful city.

photo by me - Lions Gate Bridge

A few more of my fan-girl moments in brief:

- An episode of Smallville where they didn’t bother to change the street sign for Burrard St. downtown.

- The local buses I have spotted more than once on Fringe, particularly when they are meeting in front of this monument and the camera is spinning around the actors. That monument is actually right in front of the office building I was watching the X-Men scene from, you can see it in the photo.

- Seeing the house from one of my favourite Outer Limits episodes, The SpiderKings, when leaving Horseshoe Bay on BC Ferries

- An old friend from high school worked on the special effects make-up for Freddy vs Jason – he said “doing Freddy Krueger’s make-up was one of the best moments in my life”

- Kevin Durand who was in X-Men Origins used to frequent the internet café I worked at, he’s such a sweetheart

- Seeing the “NYC” subway stop that was recently in a Fringe episode. When I saw it wandering around downtown I didn’t know it would be on one of my favourite shows, then again it’s probably been used a lot.

- And last but most definitely not least, watching the Winchester brothers’ race in a soapbox derby. The screen the camera is aiming at in the beginning of the video was where I was sitting, on the opposite side from the cameraman, so while I didn’t get to see them coming down the road I got a close up view of them on the screen! I was too excited to take pics of my own wanting to see those gorgeous demon hunters!

The list that I mentioned at the beginning is an incredibly small portion of all the movies and TV shows, which have been filmed in and around Vancouver. No matter what genre you’re interested in there’s sure to be some ‘local’ connection for a Vancouverite. Only one aspect of Vancouver being a “Geek Girl’s Mecca” – more to come!

Supernatural: Exile on Main Street

2010-10-02T22:07:00.000-07:00

Hello fellow Supernatural addicts!

Shinyswoots has been kind enough to offer me a place to ramble on about my thoughts and theories on all things Winchester. Since I'm a bit behind, I'm going to write about the first episode (I've delayed watching the second episode until this post is finished) and then I'll post again within the next few days on the second episode. So if I write any questions/theories that were answered/disproved on Friday, you can just laugh at how wrong I am. Also, I'm writing less of a recap and more of a review. I think. Hope that works for everyone.

I would hazard a guess that the question on most fans' minds for the season opener was when Sam and Dean were finally going to reconnect. That last shot of the season 5 finale, with Sam ominously looking into the windows was seared into my mind over the summer. How had Sam escaped from hell? Was he "normal"? Evil? Why was he staring into the windows and not knocking on the door? Luckily we didn't have to wait too long for some answers.

The episode's opening montage was clever -- the music selection even more so. Set to Bob Seger's song "Beautiful Loser," we see Dean wake up from a nightmare just prior to his 7 a.m. alarm with Lisa by his side. After she asks him if he's okay, to which he responds with what I considered a half-hearted "yeah, I'm good," the chorus of the song kicks in.

Beautiful loser/
Where you gonna fall?/
When you realize/
You just can't have it all.

The montage artfully shows Dean using items that in a former life were implements of torture and protection, intercut with blue-toned scenes from past episodes. He reaches for a canister of salt, but rather than sprinkling it around doorways and windowsills he puts it on the eggs he's cooking for Ben. We see a box open that is filled with tools, reminiscent of the Impala's trunk filled with weapons, only to discover that they are tools for Dean's new job -- and, horror, are in a pickup truck, not the beloved Impala. (Okay, maybe only I was horrified, but that shot alone made me very sad.) Tools that Dean used to kill monsters and demons are now used to build houses -- construction rather destruction. Beers from a cooler that would usually be handed to Sam are now dealt out at a backyard BBQ with neighbors. And the memory of Dean teaching Sam how to fix the Impala is now complemented by him teaching Ben how to work on the truck. And finally, we see Dean's nighttime routine: walking through the house, locking doors and shutting blinds as he looks outside one last time, checking to see that Ben is safe and asleep, and finally climbing into bed with Lisa. But lest we think he has become complacent, the camera pans to underneath the bed, where there is a jar of holy water (rosary blessed) and a shotgun that we know has rock salt shells. (And later in the episode we will see that there's a devil's trap under the rug by the front door.)

During all of this Bob Seger's song continued. A song that really could be read as a microcosm of the entire episode for Dean. One year later and Dean still thinks Sam is dead. He has the facade of a normal life, and, unlike many of my compatriots on the node site, I think it's a life that he is happy with. There was never a moment during that opening montage that I didn't think Dean was satisfied with his life. The reason it is so jarring is that it is so normal. And seeing Dean in a situation of normalcy is disconcerting. Our Dean shouldn't be working construction and fixing scrambled eggs; he should be killing demons. He shouldn't be at a bar with his neighbor Sid having a beer; he should be drinking with Sam, planning their next hunt.

And here I think the first stanza of Seger's song, which was fairly muted as the episode opened, is where we can see the similitude between song and character.

He wants to dream like a young man/
With the wisdom of an old man/
He wants his home and security/
He wants to live like a sailor at sea.

Oh to have it all -- to be young and wise, to have home and security, with the freedom to leave it and sail the seas. Because once Sam comes back into his life that is the struggle. Can he be a hunter and have a happy family? It hasn't worked for any other.

Dean has always been a character torn between two worlds. Unlike Sam, who actually escaped and had a few years of normal life, Dean has only been a hunter. Yet twice, in past episodes, we've seen inside Dean's mind and his dreams for a settled life. Once, in the brilliant episode that first introduced us to the djinn, "What Is and What Should Never Be," Dean is given a new life -- one in which his mother is alive and he has a life with a beautiful girlfriend, Carmen, and works as a mechanic. And in "Dream a Little Dream of Me," we discover that Dean dreams of a life with Lisa. In both of those episodes, however, Dean's dreams turn to nightmares. In "What Is" Dean's happiness comes at the sacrifice of his relationship with Sam -- not only are they not close but Sam doesn't even like Dean -- and the sacrifice of all of the people he has saved over the years. He realizes that he can never be happy -- he must continue to martyr himself to the cause. And in "Dream" the life with Lisa is just a snippet, one that he is embarrassed for Sam to see, and quickly turns into his nightmare of confronting the self that he will become once he travels to hell.

As soon as Dean leaves the bar and hears a girl screaming, he quickly reverts to form, arming himself and trying to help -- finding nothing but claw marks and blood. A trail that he continues to follow the next day, until Sid catches him in a neighbor's yard, gun aimed, almost shooting the Glickman's Yorkie. It's the immediate tension between his old instincts and his new life. An instinct, quite honestly, that Lisa seems okay with, as she catches him in the garage attempting to load up on his old supplies. And while he tries to lie to her, he soon confesses and rather than try to stop him or nag him about what he's doing (as would happen in a lesser show), she simply tells him to be careful.*

Oh how crazy the subsequent moments are, as Dean finds himself confronted by Azazel, who proclaims himself shaken free from hell by the apocalypse. It seems completely feasible. And here, again, Seger's song proves prophetic.

Beautiful loser/
Read it on the wall/
And realize/
You just can't have it all/
. . . . .
You can try, you can try, but you can't have it all.

As Azazel slowly chokes the life out of Dean, he mocks him for the choices he's made. Commenting on Lisa's beauty and understanding, saying that Ben is "a hell of a kid," Azazel then threatens to take it all away. He taunts Dean, snarling "did you really think you were gonna get to keep all of this? You had to know we'd be coming for you sometime pal. You can't outrun your past." And then just when all seems lost, Sam jumps through him and stabs Dean in the chest with a hypodermic.

When Dean comes to he is in a ramshackle cabin, with Sam watching him. Dean is, as you would expect, shattered. He thinks he's dead and in hell. When Sam explains that Dean's been poisoned and has been hallucinating -- that Azazel wasn't real -- he then needs to prove to Dean that he's both real and not a demon. It's truly a discombobulating scene. The tone is discordant -- hell the color is discordant. Unlike Dean's return in the first episode of season 5, which was bathed in light (both when he was resurrected and in the scenes with Bobby and Dean), this is all in darkness. Again, like the flashbacks, looking like it was shot through a blue filter.

Sam's mood seems impatient, cocky, annoyed even. He berates Dean's lack of response with an almost tight jocularity, as if he's attempting to be funny but it comes off as flippant and abrupt. When Dean finally realizes that it is Sam standing in front of him, he grabs Sam in a bear hug and there is finally a moment where Sam seems to appreciate the response. On the node boards people have commented that Sam is off throughout this episode (which he is) and have wondered if he has PTSD or perhaps has been infected with a touch of evil from his time in hell. Having watched the episode again, I would argue that Sam's tone comes from a place of guilt.

The first thing Dean did when he was resurrected was find Sam. Okay, technically he went to Bobby first, but that's because Sam's phone was disconnected. Sam has waited a full year to tell Dean that he was alive -- and he only did that because Dean's life was in danger. If not for that, how long would he have waited? Would he have ever told Dean? His quick, impudent tone. . .his barrage of statements before Dean could even take in what was happening. . .his gulping down of salt water and slicing open his arm without prompting. . .I think it's all the action of a guilty brother.**

I realize there's an entire djinn storyline in this episode, but truly it's superfluous. It's simply a means of getting the pieces in place -- and of course serves as a nice callback to "What Is and What Should Never Be." Because what this episode is truly about is Dean and the concept of betrayal. The djinn highlights the threat that Lisa and Ben are under by living with Dean -- a fact that Dean reads as his betrayal -- his failure to protect his new family.***

Then there's also Sam's betrayal. Not only did he not tell Dean he was alive, but he's also hunting with a new group -- members of the Campbell family -- family that Dean didn't even know existed -- including a grandfather who should be dead. One whole year without telling the person who spent their life making sure you were safe that you were alive. Letting Dean suffer through the anguish of that loss without offering him solace. It seems even more reprehensible because we learned in season five how horrid and excruciating the four months without Dean were on Sam. He knows that pain first hand.

But the worst had to be the discovery that Bobby knew that Sam was alive -- had known for an entire year. That seems the worst betrayal of all, simply because you can't imagine Bobby ever causing Dean pain, especially since he has long been Dean's surrogate father. The excuse he gives, that Dean was happier than any hunter has ever been, seemed unfair. Though Bobby's passionate response seemed real.

I'm hoping there will be more to this story. Especially given that Sam's wish at the end of the episode, that they will hunt together again, seems anathema to what he's put Dean through over the year.

So how did Sam escape hell? Who brought him back? And what about these Campbells? Dean's question, "I thought all of Mom's relatives were gone?" was both appropriate and left unanswered. There is a hint at something bigger -- an arc that we're going to explore over the season.

And while another show might give us the happy family together hunting, this felt rough. The scene where the clan gathered in Dean's house, making fun of his new life, was not endearing. It was annoying. (Maybe that's because Dean's my favorite.) Also, they seem like mediocre hunters. They really couldn't figure out how to draw out the djinn? And the hunter initially sent out to protect the house (and by default Ben and Lisa) ended up dead. Of course, there was also that final moment with the Campbells, where they captured a djinn and took her away with them, making sure that Sam and Dean didn't see their hostage, with whom they are going to??? A moment obviously meant to make the audience question the intentions of this odd little family.

What's great about Mitch Pileggi is that he can play both good (Skinner on The X-Files) and evil (Ernest Darby on Sons of Anarchy) with relative ease, so as of now I'm not sure what to think of him. The scene with Samuel and Dean in the kitchen of the house was both sweet "you remind me of your mother" and supercilious "maybe this isn't the time for golf." He also makes a point of consistently reminding Dean that he's a Campbell, which is interesting after all the years of living with the defining burden of being a Winchester.

The third verse of the Seger song:

He's your oldest and your best friend/
If you need him, he'll be there again/
He's always willing to be second-best/
A perfect lodger, a perfect guest.

As I listened to this I immediately thought of Sam. He's Dean's oldest and best friend, and he literally shows up at the moment that Dean needs him, as he's about to be choked by Azazel. Initially he is more than happy to be second-best. Sam has pushed Dean away so that he would finally have the family that he's always wanted. He is just a guest in Dean's life. What interesting is that at the end of the episode he wants to take it all back. He tries to get Dean to leave Ben and Lisa under the auspices that they are no longer safe with Dean around. But Dean's final djinn nightmare, reliving the death of his mother and the infection of Sam, but this time with Lisa and Dean as the recipients of Azazel's wrath, has exactly the opposite effect. He now sees himself as their protectors -- that his presence is the only thing that will keep them safe.

Sam explains to Dean that he wants him to rejoin the hunt because Dean brings to it a human aspect. He cares about people and puts their safety above everything else. It's a quality that Sam used to have but has apparently lost. I also wonder if he doesn't recognize that something is amiss with the Campbell family. That hunting with them makes him less emotional -- less empathetic -- less human.

Phew, I warned you that I ramble on. I'll try to be more succinct when discussing the next episode. Regardless, I'm really looking forward to seeing where Sera Gamble takes us this season. I think she's always been the strongest writing asset on that show -- especially when writing the deep, emotionally resonant episodes. While I'm excited to see some Edlund & Carver eps., especially when we need to laugh, I think that the entire tone of the first episode -- and the way that it completely discombobulated the audience -- was brilliant. Seeing Dean and Sam grow apart because their lives are taking different paths, because they are maturing as a family man and hunter respectively, is hard to watch. Yet it provides fertile ground that hasn't been covered before.

I can only hope that Seger's final stanza isn't some prophetic warning for Dean.

Beautiful loser/
Never take it all/
'Cause it's easier/
And faster when you fall/
You just don't need it all.

*I wasn't sure what I would think of Lisa, but that moment on Bobby's steps, where she really lets Dean know what she thinks of the whole situation, how she thought her year with Dean was the best year of her life, was awesome.

**Side note: I think it's fascinating that this first episode is once again told from Dean's perspective. Think how different the episode would have been if we had seen it all through Sam's eyes -- rather than that opening montage we could have seen Dean's life from Sam's perspective -- outside looking in. And I think we would have felt a bit more relaxed about Sam. Instead, we get to come into this from Dean's place of hurt -- his unease becomes ours. And I think this is one of the reasons the entire episode is completely disconcerting.

***Can I just say that once again Dean has so little regard for his self-worth that all he can see is failure, when he actually does protect his family. No harm comes to Ben and Lisa; in fact, there wasn't even a moment where they were in true danger. Granted, that all could have been different if they hadn't gone to the movies, but he did exactly what needed to do.

My Heart Be Still

2010-10-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

I would like to take this time to introduce you lovely ladies to my newest British obsession, Dr Mark Kermode.

Mark Kermode, also known as The Good Doctor and Number 75, is an English film critic who has a segment every Friday on Simon Mayo's BBC Radio Five Live show. For those of us not in the UK, the radio broadcast is also released as a podcast that is roughly 80 minutes long and shorter clips of individual reviews are put up on youtube. Kermode also has a video blog called Kermode Uncut.

One of the most enjoyable aspects about the podcast is how very intelligent the reviews are. Kermode has a PhD in English from Manchester and wrote his thesis on modern horror fiction. While he can occasionally come off a bit pompous, it is his educated and well spoken manner that makes Kermode's rants so utterly delightful. Even when I disagree with him, Kermode's rants are still a thing of beauty. The podcast would not be nearly as enjoyable without them.

It is also very refreshing to see such a vocal feminist in the media, especially a male one. Mark Kermode is a genuine feminist and it shows in almost every review. He is very quick to point out misogyny or homophobia in films and always takes filmmakers to task for it.

The icing on the Kermode shaped cake is that he also plays the base in the skiffle quartet The Dodge Brothers. Recently they have been touring and playing a live accompaniment to silent films, including one gig where the silent film was projected by an eight bicycle powered projector.

Additionally the man knows how to rock a Quiff like no other.

Geek Link Love

2010-10-02T11:12:00.000-07:00

Bored on a rainy afternoon? I give you links of a geekish nature! Now with added bullet points and categorization! OCD can sure come in handy at times. Now on with the link luv!

Na na na na na na na na na BATMAN!:

Nothing much really, only THE coolest Batman Poster EVER!
Ironic mustaches are so July 2010, now its ironic (and AWESOME) Batman images
Noir Batman Title Cards. Batgirl has never looked so cool
Not just Batman, but comic characters so adorable and tragic it burns!

STAR WARS!:

As Homer would say (the Simpson's dude, not the ancient writer guy) It's funny cause its true
Whimsical Fuckery brings us the crawl to get us up to speed on the Canadian WW11
Geek Girl Lust at its Zenith: Star Wars Burlesque!

Steampunk: Making Brown Cool since.. oh who knows about the darn timelines anyway?:

Steampunk Spuds!
When fandoms collide: Steampunk, Lovecraft and Fashion

Photo Geekery:

Van Gogh gets tilt shifted
Something old + something new = something AWESOME

Letters are fun! Making the alphabet cool again:

Teaching kids (ok, not just kids) cool words and pop culture all at once
The ABC's of Zombie Survival

Fashion, or something like it:

Hoodies and sharks and T-Rex's, oh my!
When you want your safety mask to be more than just functional

Enjoy!
Yours in linkage love,
~kim

NSFW: Cranialspasm chats with Clay Robeson (Hey! It's a pre-podcast podcast!)

2010-10-01T21:07:00.000-07:00

I'm too exhausted to figure out how to add a podcast to my actual website, so I found a place to host it for free. Sorry about the ad at the beginning.

I had the opportunity to interview Clay Robeson, the dynamite mind behind "Frak You". We talked puppets, nerding out, plugging the Node "in non dirty way" and odd Google searches. Probably NSFW. Actually, most likely NSFW.

I also soapbox. What can I say? Interviews = opinions. My opinions may not coincide with all of the other NiB (That's short-hand for nerds in babeland.)

Here's a teaser picture that you will get about 40 minutes in. You're welcome.

If you are opposed to me getting tipsy and talking to Clay, this is not the interview for you. If you want to giggle and hear about upcoming awesomeness... LISTEN!

Here are the links!

Twitter: @StanleySpeaks
Twitter : @George2020

Nebulullaby: http://hitrecord.org/records/40926
Stanley: http://Stanley.CrazyAweso.me
Clay: http://UnHub.com/ClayRobeson
3 Days Later: http://3DaysLater.net
Galaxy Scouts: http://GalaxyScouts.net
(Production Blog): http://prepro.Velawesomeraptor.com
Angel: http://AngelBetweenTheLines.com
Buffy: http://BuffyBetweenTheLines.com

Nostalgia

2010-10-01T18:46:00.001-07:00

I miss when they use to make commercials that told a story. Nowadays, it's all about the angle of the product.

One of my favorite commercials is the Volkswagon commercial for their Cabrio car. It originally aired in the year 2000 (cue Conan), and has always stuck with me. The simplicity of 4 friends riding in a convertible, enjoying the evening together, makes me wish I could take a trip like that. Volkswagon, back in the late 1990s, had another great commercial with Styx and "Mr Roboto" (8 speaker casette stereo system!). 'Pink Moon', however, will always make me long for a simpler time.

Review: The Very Last Songs I Will Ever Record (Part 1)

2010-10-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

Anyone that knows me knows that I have a major lady boner for all things comedy. Laughing about life is a fun and easy way to deal with what comes at you. I surround myself with funny people and when I'm alone, I fill my earholes with sweet sweet comedy recordings. When I was in highschool, most teens were hellbent on going to a rock concert or tour. I was the girl that had to find the closest comedy venue to laugh my face off.

For those of you that follow me regularly on Twitter, you know that I have a major nerd crush on the Nerdist, aka Chris Hardwick aka "Hard" of the geek rock comedy duo Hard'N'Phirm.

This review is going to focus on the Yin to Hardwick's Yang, the Duke to his Nukem, the jelly to his peanut butter, the guitar to his melodica, the duck to his goose - "Phirm" aka Mike Phirman.

On May 17th, Phirm released his debut solo album "The Very Last Songs I Will Ever Record (Part 1)".

If the title hasn't made you laugh yet... I can wait... ... There we go.

On the album, Mike wrote and played all of the instruments on all but two of the tracks. Those two are musicless and are there to teach you valuable phrases in Spanish. Beginners Spanish (Sec. 13) is especially necessary when preparing for the inevitable future.

The lyrics in all of his songs are intense and thought provoking. Take a look at one of the complex songs that he must have spent years writing.

Brings a tear to your eye, right?

In the age of music at the click of a button, it is rare for me to say that I will intentionally sit through an entire album. I will listen to this 13-track hug from Mike and wish I could hug it back.

Do yourself a favor, go to Mike Phirman's website and download the album. There is no minimum payment required, but it goes straight to Phirm's pocket and not to a record company. So toss some monies his way!

Oh! Did I mention there is a very familiar voice that is easy to recognize? Here's a hint: He wears Hawaiian shirts, though I don't think he's ever performed in Hawaii.

Follow Mike Phirman on Twitter. He is made of funny.

Originally posted on my website

How Inception Should Have Ended

2010-10-01T15:01:00.000-07:00

I swear we are not just becoming a site that shares youtube videos but I could not resist posting this little bit of awesomeness! There are a lot of great ones from this group, How it Should have Ended, but this Inception one is one of my favs mostly due to what starts happening at 1:26 and the little bit that follows. Oh man. If you need someway to kill an hour or so, entertain yourself with these guys!

Double Nathan All The Way!

2010-10-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

This was just shared with me by the awesome Edgar Garcia. It's a little old and many of you have probably seen it but if not, heh!

The story goes that on Sunday morning just before SDCC Nathan Fillion started retweeting every DRATW tweet. Edgar got one too many RTs and, as a result, he made this hilarious little video. Enjoy!

My favorite YouTube star

2010-10-01T10:38:00.000-07:00

I bring you a music video. It's for a Ben Folds song called "Saskia Hamilton" about the poet of the same name. Ben Folds commissioned a YouTuber named Charlie McDonnell to create a music video for this song. It is below...

And just for the record...Charlie is ADORABLE.

2010-10-01T08:52:00.001-07:00

From the wonderful mind of David Malki...

ø¤º°Sparkles°º¤ø

Random Thought of the Day...!

2010-10-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

This isn't really a random thought so much as a convo Freddie Fantastic (aka the husband) and I had this morning before getting out of bed...

Me: "Man--hear that rain? It's amazing how it can keep going so hard for so long....."
My husband: "I know, it's inspiring."

ø¤º°Sparkles°º¤ø

PS...Have a Happy....

Fringe: The Box

2010-09-30T19:15:00.000-07:00

'The Box' is the name of the new episode for Fringe airing September, 30, 2010. I so want to make pornographic reference jokes about this, but I wont. Instead I'll point you to the relevant 'pedia for the synopsis. (Has 'pedia become a thing now? Like the verbification of google?)

In addition to some plot progression in the 'this universe' part of the cosmos (as denoted by the return of the silver/gray titles*), this episode was all about character nuance. I love it when that happens.

If that ain't nuance I dont know what is, right? Ok so no, this isnt very subtle. But give me some credit, I held back with the porno references. I have a thing for chicks in wife beaters so you get this fabulous pic!

Ahem...

Walter is skittish as ever. But where you or I might work off nervous energy with baking or sex or gaming, Walter sets out to make cows actually produce chocolate milk. You have to love a show that creates a Walter. He's done horrible, wretched and actual world shattering things yet still manages to make us feel more sorry for him than a puppy left out in the rain. He can't stop his work because it will endanger the one he loves the most and yet it is this very work that has him (and the rest of us) in such peril. He's a tortured soul who gets the best lines:

stepping onto the street in front of a crime scene: 'I used to get a massage at a place just down the street. I used to get off right here....'

Peter has too many hamsters on the wheel to see the snake looming in the corner. He's worried about becoming the pawn in a game that leads to destruction, dealing with his living in a world in which he doesn't belong, trying to find pieces of a doomsday device, and deflecting Walter's apologetic attempts at the explanation of events past. All the while he can tell something is just not quite right with "Olivia", but lets himself get swept up in their supposed new relationship energy to fully explore the wonkiness. Poor guy is just destined for heartache no matter what he does.

Olivia.. well we dont know what was going on with 'our Olivia' in this episode. Presumably she is succumbing to the memory drugs and being assimilated into the Walternate Universe Collective. The Fauxlivia** that's here in silver title land is hard at work being a bad girl. Reading up on pop culture ('Who is BOno?') to try and fit into this world, getting her tat lasered off and stuffing bodies into her bathroom. Anna Torv is a facial acting genius. She makes the slightest little nuances to let us know which 'livia we are dealing with. Olivia has an alluring seriousness about her. Fauxlivia has an eery lightness to her. She smiles more and just slightly askew, she does the suspicious sideways glance thing but does it without making a big deal about it. As Vincent Vega would say, 'Its the little things.'

Nina and Broyles continue to do their 'lets look real serious and take long pauses when speaking' thing. I don't mean that flippantly, they are both quite effective at coming off as aloof and intriguing. But you never quite know WHY they are being aloof. I get the feeling that often even the characters dont even know. I'll never be able to look at that bell without picturing Spock and Molly Brown 'Under the Tuscan Sun'. To tell you the truth, it kinda gives me the shivers. I better stop now before I start making Terminator hand job jokes.

So after hour 2 of season 3 we now know really only about 10 minutes worth of information than we did last week. But the characters made it an hour that makes us want to keep watching. Well that and midgets with exploding heads. You don't even get that on Mythbusters, how can you not keep watching?

~kim

*apparently the sexy red title sequence from last week means we are in the Walternate universe? I still miss the limited commercials and the 'Fringe will return in 90 seconds' messages of the first season.
** I like Fauxlivia better than Bolivia as a name. Plus its alliterative with Fringe. 'Hey do you know Fauxlivia from Fringe?' Yeah this is better, it stays.

Nike and the Wii

2010-09-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to add to my Wii extravaganza from earlier..

So, Nike commissioned something called the Nike 78 project, letting 78 artists take their shoes to innovate and completely change their shoe.. the article is here... and right below is the video to show how it works.. ENJOY!!!

Jess Del Pino

(the nerdy 1/2 of Hooked On Veg..

come on a veg-tastic voyage with us!!)

Zombies! Are they people too?

2010-09-30T07:58:00.001-07:00

When Halo: Reach came out, I thought that would be enough to keep my better half entertained for a while and that we would be trading in our old XBox towards one of my games(namely Fallout: New Vegas)but alas I was mistaken.

Dead Rising 2 came out this past Tuesday and yours truly got sent to go and pick it up after I was sick for most of the day. This is not a game I would ever enjoy playing I don't think but I have to say, the weapons you can create...they are EPIC with a side of AWESOME. My new personal favorite is the homemade lightsaber, created using a flashlight and gems...which you bust jewelry store cases to get to. The ridiculous amounts of zombie carnage warm my heart and make me giggle like I used to while mooning over a boy band at age 10. The story leaves something to be desired but the crazy weapon combos(like the IED made out of a propane tank and nails, or the 2x4s attached to a lawnmower which makes a very efficient zombie grinder), and the really sweet costumes were enough to make me actually put my iPhone down and watch the game.

It's not one I'll play...but I could watch my husband kill zombies with a smile on my face for hours...:)

Let's get on the Wii train...

2010-09-29T23:19:00.000-07:00

Hello all.. I am going to try and show you how exercising can be fun as well as beneficial to your health. Today’s topic is the Wii. We all know it well. Host to many amazing innovations in gaming with their crazy controllers and add on controllers through the years. There was wheel that revolutionized Mario Kart and a gun holder you could put your regular controller in to help with FPS games. There was also an awesome board they introduced to help make the interactive experience come to life. The Wii Board helped bridge the gap between gaming and exercise I feel and even made getting into shape fun. These are my experiences with this idea and how it might be helpful for you too.

As the Wii gained popularity through the years they began to change their target audience to the senior generation by promoting exercise and better hand-eye coordination through their Wii Play games. Eventually they moved onto women with the Wii Fit. Oh the Wii Fit! That little on screen board is my workout friend, although some would say it does yell at you if you fluctuate your weight too much. Basically the idea behind the Wii Fit was to help promote balance and help you get in shape through prolonged low impact exercises. Each time you turn it on you were greeted by the little Wii Board and you could weigh yourself or play mini games and it would keep track of how long you would work out. The best thing is you could set up goals for yourself and it would track your daily progress, as long as you would use it that is.

I found the Wii Fit to be very fun and beneficial to helping me get off my lazy ass and actually getting fit enough to have energy and want to do more intense workouts. I definitely say that is a gem worth your time if you are just starting out. The games are fun and range from step aerobics to hula hoop. I really gravitated to this originally because it helped me with Yoga. The board gives you a chance to hold your position and measure how much weight you are putting on each leg to give you a more accurate idea of how to improve your stances. There are even balance games that make you forget that you are even working out. The on screen people are motivational and there are some pretty fun tips. The more time you log the more games you can unlock and it is definitely going to keep your interest for a while. Like anything though it will get old and you will have unlocked all the games and it might be time for something new.

So, you are more balanced then you were before and you are still looking to workout at home and inside then you can upgrade to the Wii Fit Plus, which has more games and fun. This one actually steps it up a notch and gives you a chance to go even further then before. There are new options to help you keep track of your fitness, like tracking how many calories you are burning and instead of choosing specifically which workouts you want to do there are actually predetermined routines to help you have a consistent flowing workout. The mini games are still way fun and help you gain better hand-eye coordination and balance. I guarantee that as you unlock the rest of these games you not only will be having fun, but you will be getting healthy and more in shape.

If these still aren’t intense enough for you or maybe you made it through those games and you want more then I would say you can step up to the EA Sports Active. This takes the gaming we have been having fun with through aerobics and balance and steps it up even more by adding more of an exercise element to it. You are able to start a plan called the 30 day challenge,

where you can basically spend 30 or so minutes 4 to 5 times a week going through what the game picks for you to do. I actually went through and did this challenge on the most difficult setting there is and after every work out I was sweating and actually felt like I went to the real gym. It is still fun but it definitely takes it up a notch. The sensitivity for some of the workouts are more intense and you are doing more strength training. There are easy modes and easier workouts if you want to create your own routine to follow but I will say that if you want to have a personal trainer in your home I would go for this awesome exercise experience. It also adds a couple of elements to make your workout more intense. You now have a leg strap that you place the nunchuck in when you are doing jogging exercise or squats and you also have a resistance band to help you simulate lifting weights, which you can always simulate further if you make the band smaller.

There was an extension to the EA Sports Active that adds 30 new exercises and 6 new activities to go through. I think what I liked most about this is it is an add on so you can incorporate your old exercises with the new ones. Another thing that is cool is you can keep a daily diary to help you stay in shape through exercise but also keep track of your diet as well. It really helps stress how health is an overall experience that isn’t just about working out, but also about how you eat and treat your body by making sure you get enough rest. The reason this is my favorite is because you can basically create a virtual you that mimics your every move while you make it, like a cyber mirror.

There are plenty of exercise games that have come out since these such as The Biggest Loser, Gold’s Gym Cardio and even kids workout games like Active Life-Extreme Challenge. This console has spawned an entire workout community that would never have existed and even some of the people who were used to using workout tapes have switched to this when their favorite video trainers have gone to the Wii, like Jillian Michaels. Classically I feel like our generation hasn’t been one to be workout obsessed but I think that this gives us all a chance to get a little more in shape without killing ourselves and also while having fun. When I started using the games I mentioned I had not been an active person for many years and this jumpstarted me to wanting to be more healthy but in a more moderate sense. I feel now that as time goes on the games we play are going to promote exercise more discreetly and we will be getting off the couch to get more involved in our games. I can’t wait to get and review the Playstation Move and Xbobx Kinetic because they are totally getting on board with this idea. So, thanks Wii for paving the way!

(Now if only they could get me a DDR in my house I would be set.. haha)

This is what Grandma's Boy was trying to convey.. and I am jealous of it..

Jess Del Pino

(the nerdy 1/2 of Hooked On Veg..

a funny health podcast and soon

to be all around get healthy website)

Subscribe on iTunes or RSS to our podcast

Thanks for reading.. see you all next time,

same bat time same bat channel...