Tag Archives: Comic Con

Nerdprom ’08

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Posted by Tim on July 28, 2008 – 11:25 am
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

Made it to Comic-Con last weekend. I’m really glad I went, I had a lot of fun. For some reason I’m surprised about that and I’m not really sure why. We were only there for 3 hours or so, and we didn’t meet any celebrities. We did see a bunch of semi-famous people. I saw Brian Posehn walking around, which cemented my theory about the Comedians of Comedy tour ending in San Diego last weekend to get a free trip to Comic-Con. Also saw John Cho and Kal Penn from the Harold and Kumar movies. They were standing up at the top of the Warner Bros booth giving an interview. I was standing below it waiting for a friend and couldn’t figure out why the hell everyone was stopping and taking pictures of the backs of the two guys standing above me, I just didn’t recognize them at first. The other person we saw was the cheerleader from Heroes. Again, hordes of people stopping in the middle of a crowded aisle to get a picture of someones back. I got some dirty looks when I just pushed through and walked directly in front of all of them. I don’t know how many pictures I ruined, but the hatred in their eyes was all I needed to see to know I did the right thing.

I think this was my first trip where I actually bought comics. In the past I had pretty much just gone to buy Magic: The Gathering cards, to be in the Live Action Role-Playing games (holy shit, I just cemented my geek cred on the internet. What have I done?), and to just be lost in a giant crowd. Some things I was looking for was Batman: The Killing Joke, which is supposed to be a bunch of stories about people who could potentially be the Joker. They wouldn’t ever come out and say, the Joker is this guy and this is what happened, but they can come up with possibilities of who he might be. It was highly recommended by Blair Butler on G4tv and damn, it’s scenarios that are supposed to be so messed up it creates a true psychopath, how can I pass that up. I was also looking for the first volume of Hellboy, jumping on two summer band wagons. But it can’t be a bad thing that the two movies have gotten me back into comics, well maybe bad for my wallet. Anyways both were really expensive, The Killing Joke was $40 at the one place I found it, and I found a really nice Hellboy book for $50. I was willing to spend some money but that was a little much, so I passed.

What I did end up buying was 2 books from a Deadpool and Cable series. Deadpool is probably my favorite character ever, and his writers are always excellent from what I’ve seen. He’s one of the few really grey characters in Marvel I think, he’s just a mercenary with a sarcastic wit and some super powers. So when I saw those two books sitting on the rack there was no hesitation and I just snatched them up then went and asked about the other books. The booth I was at was excellent, their website is torpedocomics.com. The site is stocked pretty well, unfortunately they only have one of the other books from the Deadpool/Cable series on the site. I’m hoping that they’ll update it with the leftovers from the con this week. When I grabbed the books I didn’t see that it was only issues 7-12 and 25-29, I can’t read them out of order either. The story won’t make sense. I did flip through them though, and I really can’t wait to be able to get to them.

So that was pretty much my Saturday, Sunday was an easy day. Helped my pal brew a double IPA, can’t wait to taste it. If I had the chance to drop everything and work for brewery, I totally would. I’m not an alcoholic or anything but when you drink good beer it’s like tasting and being one with a moment in time. Ask anyone who loves good beer. Or go to a beer bar and watch someone come in and order their favorite beer, sit down and take that first sip and just kind of zone out for a few seconds. Maybe I’m being overly poetic, but damn it I love beer.

Out

I am the night

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Posted by Tim on July 23, 2008 – 4:42 pm
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

Watched the new Batman movie last night. I thought it was a really good movie. I’m glad they didn’t call it Batman: The Dark Knight though because the movie revolves around so many characters it would be a disservice to them. Overall I think Christian Bale was better in Batman Begins, but I think that had a lot to do with him not being the sole focus of the film. Gary Oldeman is of course gold as is Aaron Eckhart.

Heath Ledger. It’s been talked to death but now I have to beat this dead horse. I would really be surprised if he didn’t get the Oscar for Supporting Actor. I almost think he should be nominated for Best Actor. The movie wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is without that portrayal of the Joker. Anytime he is on screen you could feel the theater tense up. A lot of the things the Joker does seems to be just to see what people will do, how far they will go, and what they are willing to sacrifice. Which of course makes him truly terrifying because no one wants to be put in the position of becoming a monster. The best scene that highlights this is near the end of the film, on two boats. I won’t say anything more because I don’t want to spoil it for the Google bots that crawl around indexing my site.

Something else that I’ve been thinking about with these films is the difference between Jack Nicholson’s Joker and Heath Ledger’s. Jack Nicholson’s was almost a direct extension of the campy 60′s version of Batman with Adam West. Albeit through the dark lens of Tim Burton. It really is almost exactly the same except with more death. You’ve got crazy schemes to kill or capture the Batman and attempts to make money. Ledger’s Joker is just a dark reflection of the hero, which is interesting because Batman is already so dark. But the only way to do it is to just go over the edge and abandon everything. Batman won’t kill and wants to bring order, this Joker doesn’t care about life and only breeds chaos.

So yeah, good movie. Go see it. Preferably in IMAX.

Other big news. Oh, we have this get together in San Diego every year. You might have heard of it, I think it’s called Comic Con? Is that right? Yeah, google is telling me I’m right. Haha, funny jokes. Anyways, Comic Con is this weekend. I think I’m going to go, I haven’t been in a few years. Last time I went I somehow got into a picture of the Cartoon Network booth and was up on the Adult Swim site for a few months. My brief flirtation with internet fame. My going hinges on free passes though. Yeah, I’m a mooch. But if I have a friend that can’t use it because he’s working then it’s wasted unless someone picks up the torch. I usually miss all the celebrities. One of my friends got to stand behind Quentin Tarantino as he was pitching a fit about not being able to get a cold Coke. He also got yelled at by Patton Oswalt, Oswalt was just messing around with him though. I was there for that and just about pissed myself laughing.

Speaking of Patton Oswalt. The Comedians of Comedy are doing their last show tomorrow night. If you haven’t seen the Comedians of Comedy you should go find it. It’s Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, Maria Bamford, and Zack Galifianakis. It’s a lot of offbeat and dark humor, and it’s really dirty. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a ticket. Instead I think I might go up to the Jumping Turtle for some heavy metal.

I think we lost a member of our D&D group. Kind of unfortunate, but I think he’ll be happier this way. He doesn’t like our rigid rules of checking email on Mondays to find out what’s going on and we usually game at his place. He’s also playing our Warlord, the one bastion of healing. Going to make the end of this campaign difficult, and we’re so close to the end. Probably just a few rooms until we hit the Big Boss. Maybe I’ll just switch to Cleric and take over healing. We’ve got another Fighter so I don’t think it’ll be that big of a deal. He’s not really built for the task though.

I mentioned a while back that one of my pals and I were starting a band. Well that’s looking more and more likely. The drummer he knows is moving in like 2 blocks away from his place so we will be pretty close to each other. Well I’m not that close, but I just need to take care of the vocals when they are done noodling around. I’m looking forward to seeing if I can do it. The most singing I’ve ever done is in a karaoke booth, and Dio always ruins my voice. I came up with what I think will be an interesting art project for it, also makes things easier on me so I don’t have to worry as much about writing lyrics.

Honestly I don’t know what to sing about. I have some ideas but writing then singing them scares the hell out of me. I don’t even know if I could do it on stage, I’m already pretty reclusive. Not that I think we’re going to play live, I would have to be really confident about my voice. If it ever does come to that though I think I’m just going to get a monks robe with a big hood, hopefully so I can’t really see the audience. Also I guess I could take off my glasses. The worst part though is that I can’t drink any alcohol and then do the vocals I do, it just dries out my throat if I’m not careful. So no liquid courage for me.

I think I finally figured out the display I want for the Web section of my site. I’ll talk about that more in a few days, after I’ve gone through some stuff and hopefully implemented it. It’s really neat, and almost looks like something you would do in Flash. But I hate Flash and so would never willingly subject myself to making anything Flash related in my spare time.

Goodbye for now.