Make Your Own Shape-Shifting Rorschach Mask

So you want to be Rorschach from The Watchmen for Wondercon, but you want to look cool (well, as cool as one can look dressed up as a fictional character). Well, look no further, because someone actually found a way to make a Rorschach mask that moves. Now get out there and creep out some little kids (and a few adults as well).

Patton Oswalt Says Geek Culture Has To Die To Be Reborn

I'm reading this article written by the comedian Patton Oswalt and I'm thinking to myself that this guy has gotten it all wrong. Sure, a lot of the things that us geeks loved as kids, teenagers and young adults back in the 70's and 80's are now becoming mainstream, but that's not current geek culture. That's the foundation on which geek culture was built. 


To use Oswalt's vernacular from his article, us 'otaku' from the past that continued to follow geek culture after others (Oswalt included, as he says in his article) left it, have changed it. We don't hang on to Star Wars with a death grip (especially after Lucas raped it the way he has), and frankly Dungeons & Dragons went out with the 8 track especially when you could build your own maps online. Geek culture evolved past that point that Oswalt (and Hollywood) are stuck in. I mean, have you been to Comic Con lately? 


Hell, even forgetting Comic Con, if you look cosplay conventions, and just the thousands of variety of online chat rooms devoted to any and every sci-fi, fantasy, comic, etc. out there, you'd have to be nuts to say that geek culture needs a reboot. Pop culture...or more to the point, mainstream pop culture may need a reboot, but geek culture is doing fine on its own despite the best attempts by Hollywood and commercialization to warp it into something else. 


The point is, the longer that something is around, the more of a chance that it has to be appropriated by commercial media and either homogenized (example: Star War prequels), or accepted warts and all by the general populace. That's the nature of our society, and it's rather naive to think that this thing you (and quite a large number of other people) loved in your past is going to stay exclusively yours. It doesn't work that way.


One of my favorite quotes on the matter is taken from The Simpsons. Grandpa Simpson is explaining to Homer that one day he too will be out of the loop on what is cool and popular. 

"I used to be with 'it'. But then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn't 'it', and what's 'it' seems scary and weird. It'll happen to you." 

 Of course, Homer disagrees. Grandpa's viewpoint is the way I view both geek and pop culture. The two will rarely meet at the same point in time, as pop culture tends to lag about a decade or two behind geek culture. Oswalt has just been out of geek culture for so long he's forgotten about this, and his article sounds reactionary. It sounds like an old man that suddenly realizes he is old and can't remember how he got there. 


So geek culture, or more accurately, subculture, is still alive and well and thriving like never before. It's evolving and changing so rapidly that new subsets pop up all the time. Some have a brief existence that never see the light of day, some live in obscurity known only to a few, and others break on through and with time become a part of the fabric of the everyday. Enjoy it while you can kids, because eventually everything popular becomes co-opted into the great collective of humanity. 

Ant-Man in Avengers AND Already Cast?

So it looks like Joss Whedon's Avengers movie is picking up steam. It's filming in New Mexico, the Kree/Skrull are rumored to be the plot, and it looks like Alan Tudyk has been cast as Hank Pym. Who's Alan Tudyk, you ask? 

Alan has been in quite a number of movies over the years, including "A Knight's Tale", "Death At A Funeral" (the first, good version made in Great Britain), and "Serenity". In fact, Mr. Tudyk was on the tv show "Firefly" that the movie "Serenity" came from, AND said movie and tv show were created and written by Joss Whedon. He was also on Joss' show "Dollhouse" as well. 

Anyway, rumor has it that he just has a cameo in the Avengers movie, with an end of credits scene which shows....

*****SPOILERS*******

Hank and Janet donning their Ant-Man and Wasp costumes, while a partially built Ultron sits in the background.

******END SPOILERS*********

Of course, this may still be rumor as Edgar Wright (who is, supposedly still the director of the stand alone Ant-Man movie) says that the casting is news to him. There you have it, Marvel movie fans, yet another rumor in the long line of rumor mill rumors from The Avengers movie.

Those Taiwanese News Animators Are At It Again

This time around, the Taiwanese animated news take a few (well deserved) pot shots at the troubled Spider-Man Broadway musical. Have a look:





Enjoy.

James Urbanick (AKA Dr. Venture) Wishes For a Merry Christmas

James Urbanick Christmas Wishes.

Have a listen while you're sipping egg nog with the missus. Enjoy!

Rango. Or, The Animated Movie I'm Most Excited To See Next Year

Usually, for animation, you stuff all the little voice actors into a small room with a microphone (either separately or in groups of 2 or 3) and record their voices. Not if you're Gore Verbinski. If you're Gore, you have your actors act out on a stage what their characters are doing as they deliver the dialog, and then use that footage to animate the characters.

See what I mean? Looks like a hell of a lot of fun.

Google Engineers Have the Coolest Job

Case in point: these guys took a few of the new Nexus S phones, attached them to a weather balloon with cameras, and then set them adrift into the stratosphere. One of the balloons got as high as 107,000 feet (roughly 20 miles) and the camera actually was recording space. Well, see for yourself:





Wow. Just very cool. Enjoy.

Truer Words Have Never Been Spoken

I'm pretty sure a lot of you out there don't watch SNL anymore for various reasons. This last Saturday was kind of dull except for one skit that actually rang true for a change. Julian Assange created Wikileaks to provide information, for free, to the general public on matters that not only concern the general public, but on matters that decide our fate without us having any say in the matter. But who gets Time Magazine's Man of the Year Award? Mark Zuckerberg. The same Mark Zuckerberg that has been caught more than a few times this year selling off his customer's private information to corporations. The same Mark Zuckerberg that keeps releasing his customer's private information without their consent, and the same Zuckerberg that has been quoted as having no qualms about releasing other's personal information for money. 


Frankly, if you don't see the difference between the two, then you might be part of the problem as well. Well, enough tough love talk...here's the pointedly sharp comedy.





Enjoy.

The San Jose Sharks Holiday Commercial

Those goofy bastards may have yet to win the Stanley Cup, but their commercials always seem to make me smile. I'm talking about the San Jose Sharks of course. It seems that the boys in teal have a new holiday-themed commercial that pokes fun at the old KTEL records commercials. Let's take a look...





You really have to love these guys for being this goofy, even if they don't make it to the finals every year. Enjoy.

One for the ladies

It seems that DC Comics has been trying to pull in the female demographic for a little while now. So why not make some jewelry to sweeten the pot even further? In fact, why not make some fugly jewelry in the hopes that women will be attracted to your comic books? Hmm....


Anyway, here's a few shots from the site:


Gotham City Ring

Wonder Woman Bracelet

Catwoman Claw

Supergirl Bling

More Wonder Woman Bling

There you have it. Some seriously ugly jewelry based on comic books made for women by a jewelry designer. I guess we can finally say that comic books have become mainstream, yes?

Google Body

You've seen Google Maps. You've seen Google Earth. Now take a look at Google Body. Google Body is a 3D antatomical representation of the human body where you can view the muscle, skeletal, organs and nervous systems of the human body in as much detail as you'd like. Fairly cool and useful tool to just about everyone.

WTF?!? New Star Wars Force Unleashed game was sequence *I* never saw in ROTJ

So there I am, minding my own business, surfing the 'net when I see it. This...this...for lack of a better word, abomination. Seriously, I wish the guys at Skywalker Ranch and the Presidio would just leave the original Star Wars trilogy alone. Lucas has done enough damage to it already with the " 'special' editions " and the prequel trilogy that turns Darth Vader into a little, whiny, bitch who has the moral integrity of a fifty cent hooker. But no, they have to take liberties, again, with the original trilogy AND fuck up a perfectly good game in the process. See what I mean by watching the video below. 


BTW, if you're playing the game and don't want it to be spoiled, don't look at the video.





Again, I say, WTF?!?

Thor Trailer #1

Not bad. Looks nice. Up until the dreaded words float up "In 3D". Anyway, here it is, enjoy.

Crappy Toys for Christmas

If you know me (and most of you reading this probably do), I like to buy the occasional toy or three from time to time. I thought it would be a nice change of pace to post the worst toys I could find to present here for all those people you really don't like, but are obligated to give a gift to around Christmas time.


First up, The Space Monolith. Nothing says 'I could care less about you' than a rectangular piece of black plastic.

The Princess Maid. Yes, sometimes you need to train the little princesses early to clean up after themselves.

Along those same lines, we have The Cleaning Trolley. Again, never too young to train for a career in custodial management.

These next two gifts kind of go hand-in-hand....The Pole Dancer and the Future Hooters Girl tshirt.

And then there's one that's definitely a sign of the times...Playmobil Security Checkpoint

While technically not a toy, I couldn't pass up listing this item, The Tassles Shirt. Proving, again, that you're never too young to learn a skill that may come in handy at a future profession.

This one speaks for itself, The Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure. Best suited to those friends that have one too many cats in their life, and are two weeks shy of an intervention.

Hopefully I've given you a few ideas to round out your holiday purchases (or what to steer clear of), so get out there and remember that there are only 14 more days until Christmas!! 

Enjoy.

When does a practical joke go too far?

I'm thinking that a practical joke goes too far when it becomes impractical and can do some serious internal damage. Case in point:





Can you imagine being hit by something like that? I can't. But then again, I can't imagine going through all that trouble to build something like that. Here's the build video:





Enjoy.

Daft Punk: Derezzed. The first music video from Tron:Legacy

Remember the 80's? I do. It was a time when MTV came into being and all they played was music videos 24/7. Yup, even before people used the term "24/7". The music video could make or break an upcoming musician(s) and even take down an established one. Well, in homage to that era in time, Daft Punk has released a music video for one of the songs off of their soundtrack they did for the upcoming Tron: Legacy. I have to say, I like it and it makes me fairly nostalgic for a time when it was only people who had talent that made music (yeah, I'm talking about American Idol and that abomination known as Glee). Anyway, enjoy the vid. Later, programs.

World of Warcraft: Catackalysm

No, no, that's not a misspelling. It's a...well, if you watch the first video you'll see that the public education system has definitely left at least one child behind. 




So after seeing that laugh-fest (and yes, it is real, go to YouTube and you'll actually see that the girl tries to defend her pronunciation), G4 decided to have their own little bit of fun with the help of special guest Alessandra Torresani (of the now canceled (and for good reason) Caprica). Enjoy.

Game Reviews - E3 2011 - Comedy

DIY Roomba Sumo matches

So, yet another project I can tackle in my unemployment time...making roomba cleaning robots into sumo robot champions! For those of you who don't know, I currently have two Roomba robots in my employ; Barney and Scooba Steve. Barney (named after the Simpson's Barney Gumble) stumbles around the room like a drunk bumping into everything while attempting to vacuum up the place. Scooba Steve is the floor washer, who is as uncoordinated as Barney, but cleans the floor pretty damn well. 


Anyway, enough talk, enjoy robots fighting each other for the enjoyment of their human overseers. And we wonder why the robot apocalypse will be so unforgiving....

DIY Star Trek Doors

So as some of you already know, I was laid off yesterday in a big workforce reduction act. Officially I'm still on the clock until February 4, 2011, but that hasn't stopped me from planning ahead at what I can do with my free time. Lucky for me, I found the following video:




Yes, the guy has built himself Star Trek doors in his house. Unfortunately, he didn't go the one step further (like I would have done) and add a nice motion sensor over the door to have it open as you approach it. Having to push a button to open the door seems a little barbaric to me. 


Anyway, enjoy.

"Little Squirrel" Leaves Russians Wondering WTF They Just Watched

So alcoholism is a big problem in Russia. They want people to stop drinking and to get some help. Unfortunately, I don't think this is the way to do it. 


According to the Huffington Post, the little squirrel is a play on the word belochka which is the slang word given to delirium tremens, the point of inebriation when people start to get the shakes and hallucinate.


Whatever it is, it's some scary animation. And I'm liking it.

Greedo Was A Lady

Finally! We have photographic proof that the thing between Han and Greedo really was a lover's spat. See this photo below:

Pay particular attention to Ms. Greedo's footwear of choice. After decades of speculation, the truth has finally been revealed.

On next week's expose,  we'll finally get to the bottom (no pun intended) of the rumors of C3PO's porn career after the first trilogy ended.

The Walking Dead tv series boots entire writing stafff

So you're the highest rated cable tv series of the moment, you've only got six episodes for season one and have been greenlit for 13 episodes for season two, there's press everywhere about how great the series is even though it is essentially about a zombie apocalypse, so what do you do if you're the producer? That's right, you fire you're whole damn writing staff. 


Wha? Well, it looks like Darabount wants to go with freelance writers for season two. He may run afoul of the Writer's Guild though since this is a huge Hollywood project and is very high profile. Good luck, Frank, you'll need it...but remember, if you fuck it up, you'll probably never work for anyone other than Stephen King ever again.

Teaser Trailer for Ben Templesmith's "Black Sky" is now up

So the guys over at MTV Splash Page have themselves an exclusive premiere of Ben Templesmith's illustrated movie "Black Sky". You can check it out here.

I'm a huge fan of Templesmith's artwork, and I follow his Twitter feed almost exclusively just because it's damn funny, and the guy posts a shit-ton (yes, that's an actual unit of measurement) of artwork that he's working on and selling. I've been looking forward to "Black Sky" for a while now, as Harry (yes, a blatant plug) over at The Comic Outpost (blatant plug #2) can tell you since he's tired of hearing me ask for the due date on the book. 


"Black Sky" is a 'post-apocalyptic "Band of Brothers" type of thing...with volcanic squid'. In other words, it's kind of like Halo meets H.P. Lovecraft. So being a fan of both post-apocalyptic stories AND H.P. Lovecraft combined with Templesmith's gorgeous artwork, I'm sold on this thing. 


Anyway, take a look at the trailer, and see what you think. I'll leave you with a few of Templesmith's awesome concept art pieces he showed at Comic Con this year.

Don't say I didn't give you fair warning in what is sure to be the next cool thing. Enjoy.

Comic Con, London-style?

Well, if the people over at Kapow Comic Con have their way, they'll be bringing the San Diego Comic Con on over to the foggy shores of London. Too bad it takes place about a week after Comic Con's little sister, Wondercon, takes place in San Francisco, and roughly three months before the SDCC itself takes place in San Diego. 


Maybe it will work for all those people in Europe unable to get to the States to see the original, but then again, maybe the talent involved won't be showing up in numbers large enough to make a difference. 


I guess we'll just have to wait and see, won't we? Oh, and Wondercon tickets go on sale this Wednesday, just as a reminder. Comic Con ticket sales have been suspended for now due to some technical glitch. 

Spider-Man Broadway Musical's First review

So, some people were treated (I guess you could say that) over the weekend to the first showing of the new Broadway musical, "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark". The NY Times has their first impression up over here. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of flaws with the play, including five halts of the play to fix technical difficulties with the flying rig apparatus and a cut back on a good majority of the "special effects". 


Frankly, if it was me paying $140 a ticket, as some people did for Sunday's performance, I would be demanding my money back. Well, first off I wouldn't pay $140 for a ticket to a show. Honestly, that's price is about $100 more than I would be willing to pay to see a stage performance by unknown "talent". Especially from a play that has costume design like this:

Let me just say, I hope this fad of Broadway stage plays trying to adapt big budget movies into mindless dreck dies when this $65 million (and counting) turkey crashes and burns on takeoff.

Lil Robocop

So I found this to be a fairly cool thing for a parent to make for their kid for Halloween. Not only is he in a Robocop costume, but they run around Detroit taking pictures in various places. Pretty funny stuff, and cool too. But the story doesn't just end there.


It seems that a certain Mr, Robocop himself (Peter Weller) saw the Lil version of himself and was cool enough to send him an autographed photo in the mail. In case no one knows what Peter Weller has been up to lately, he currently has been filming a few episodes of "Dexter" in between his day job as a professor at UCLA where he's also finishing his dissertation for his PhD. in Roman and Italian Renaissance Art. Very cool of him to take the time out of his schedule to do something like that just because.


Here's a pic of Lil Robo from the link I posted above.

The Green Lantern Movie's Version of Parallax?

Well, it looks like this image below is more than likely what Parallax is going to look like in the movie. Too bad the rest of the movie looks horrible so far. Yeah, yeah, I get it, the movie hasn't been released yet and we've only gotten the teaser trailer stuff, but if you compare it to Iron Man when the Iron Man teaser came out...well, Green Lantern is severely lacking in quite a few departments. 


The teaser has a comedic tone rather than an action tone. This is what a lot of people (myself included) feared was going to happen when it was announced the Reynolds was going to be Hal Jordan. Jordan isn't a wise-cracking superhero. He's an older, washed-up test pilot that only has a job because his girlfriend's father owns an aviation company. Instead, it looks like the movie is going to try and portray him as a knock off of Maverick from "Top Gun" (please save all homoerotic allegories from Top Gun until the end of the rant). 


Parallax was something that wasn't brought to light in the comics until about 40 years into the Green Lantern run. Starting off with it almost makes me think that Warner Bros. may be trying to bring it's more current storylines (Blackest Night, etc.) to the screen sooner rather than later. Which would be a huge mistake. 


Anyway, I digress. Here's the image I promised earlier:

All righty then. There you have it. Hopefully I'm wrong about the movie, but I guess we'll all find out next summer.

Taiwanese 3D news guys at it again.

My favorite news guys over in Taiwan are at it again. Their animations really make me laugh, but educate as well.

Enjoy.

The Japanese Tradition - Chopsticks

Nice. Plus a little PSA as well.

They have a few more videos like this one about sushi.

Some Words on Copyright Infringement

Ever heard of Cooks Source Magazine? That's okay, neither had I until today. Turns out that their editor, Judith Griggs, thinks that anything published on the internet is Public Domain. Even if it has a copyright symbol attached to it. 


The shitstorm coming down on this company and this woman is absolutely hilarious. Check out their page on Facebook and see what people are planning to post in response to Crook's Source blatant plagiarism and multiple copyright infringements.


Enjoy.

Modern Art Movement Really a C.I.A. Front?

Yup. That appears to be the case. It turns out that the C.I.A. funded the modern art movement as a way to show that Communism was not as free and expressive as they were proclaiming to be. One of my favorite quotes from the article:

The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.

Wow. So from the 50's until the 60's a lot of art was actually funded by C.I.A. decision makers, and not the elected government officials. They funded it like they would any other weapons program. Seriously, if that doesn't put some kind of fear into you, you might want to check for a pulse. 

Yet Even More Cap Pics

While we've seen a few of these before, there are a few new ones that have come up including my new favorite of this one right here:

Seriously, The Powers That Be should just crop this pic and make it into a poster. That's how bad ass it actually is. Here are a few more pics:

Derr Red Skull pre-transformation.

Cap's main squeeze.

Cap in helmet.

Hydra bad guys.

Some kind of weird plane. Can't really tell who is aboard.

Cap all sweaty at seeing a girl for the first time.

This looks like Cap's transformation tank. 

Enjoy.

"Marvel Cinematic Universe"

At least that's what Joe Quesada is calling it. Basically, it's the Marvel comics movies set as comic books, but set in the movie continuity. Does anyone else's head hurt yet? 


So what that means is if you're not familiar with say, Captain America in the comic books, you don't have to go scouring over 60-70 years of comic book backstory (unless you really want to). Instead, you can just follow the movie version of how Cap came into being....but in comic book form. 


What this really means is that Marvel's West Coast branch office will start pumping out comic book scripts from some Hollywood industry people. If that's a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen. What it does mean is that Marvel is finally trying to tie their movies into bringing more people into the fold (not a pun) of comic book readers without having to intimidate the newbies with decades of continuity. 


Sure, Marvel tried this before with the Ultimates universe with limited success, but by tying into multimedia this way, they may actually be able to pull it off this time and increase readership in the process. 


For those of us that have seen the slow decline in readership and sales, this is actually something to welcome. Tell me what you think below.

Walking Dead Reminder

Just a reminder that the Walking Dead tv series premieres tonight on AMC. See the details here.

Trust me, this show is going to rival Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

More Cap Photos

As you can see by clicking here, there are a few more photos up from the upcoming Captain America movie. 


Enjoy.

Captain America on the cover of EW

So are you excited to see Cap in all his star-spangled glory kick some Nazi ass next summer? Yeah, me too. Well, the folks over at Entertainment Weekly decided to put Chris Evans in costume on the cover:

Not too shabby. I like the way it looks kind of propaganda-ish. If you want to read more, and see a video interview Evans, Weaving, and the director, just click here.

Enjoy.

Chaplins Time Traveler?

Hmm....I don't think that's a cell phone, but I do think the guy has a pretty vivid imagination. What do you think?

It's Official!

Yeah, I finally have an official weblink to my page on Facebook. So if you've just stumbled across my blog and want the updates to my ramblings, links, non-sequiturs, weird videos, occasional artwork and just general mayhem, please feel free to hit the "like" button.


That is all.

Alexander Anderson Jr. R.I.P.

The creator of Rocket J. Squirrel (aka Rocky) and Bullwinkle, passed away on Friday at a nursing home while battling Alzheimer's. He was 90 years old. 

Definitely an inspiration to cartoonists and animators everywhere. He will be missed.

Sorry I've been away for a while, but I was waylaid with a nasty cold that just doesn't want to let go. I'll try to post a bit more as I recover.

Panda Lips

So you know I always seek out the weirdly entertaining stuff. So what could be more weirdly entertaining than a woman who has painted her lips to look like a panda face?

Yeah, let the bamboo stick eating jokes fly! 

Marvel Reveals Variant Covers of Various Comics to Promote Tron

Yeah, you read that right. Disney is using Marvel to pump out variant covers of the Marvel characters done up in Tron clothing. You can see it here. A few look kind of cool, but the rest are fairly odd.