Conan smites the WBC on YouTube!

Man the battle stations! Its Sunday, July 25, 2010 and Operation: Cleansweep is off the a good start. My Shock and Awe campaign had yielded excellent results in Zones 1 and 2. The Insurgents will most likely put up a lot of resistance in Zone 3 and I'll Gitmo both their little asses if they try anything.

Hey, speaking of battles...

BATTLEGROUND: COMIC-CON

As I discussed earlier this week or possibly last week if you consider Sunday the beginning of the week and if you do then your life is ruled by a calendar, you sheep, the Westboro Baptist Church decided they were going to go protest in front of the San Diego Comic-Con probably because they they figured they better stop protesting soldiers funerals for fear of eventually getting their asses kicked. My God, that is one long run on sentence. I feel like Henry David Thoreau.

And yes they did protest the nerd prom and, by gum, those nerds protested right back! This is of course the best possible thing to do because the WBC are really just a bunch of little sissies who are hiding behind Freedom of Speech Laws and try to sue whoever they can. They spew forth hate to the point they are idiotic parodies of human beings, and the best weapon to combat them is open mockery.

Now, they tend to go after funerals and the like where emotions run high and there's no chance someone is going to start mocking them due to the nature of the gathering. So what the hell were these morons thinking going to SDCC? They got made into fools instead of being considered the hate group which they are. Good job to the counter protesters.

But this doesn't mean that everything was peacefully at Comic-con. At a movie preview screening one person was stabbed in the eye by a pencil. I know what you're thinking. "Did RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE really look that bad?" But no, it was someone else who stabbed him, apparently after a dispute over a seat. It seems Brody in MALLRATS was correct: just because someone reads comic books they can indeed serve some shit.

This of course caused a delay with convention programming in that hall. Those conventions are tough to co-ordinate. What will celebrities to deal with, various schedules, logistics of all the guests, hate groups out front, and guys stabbing each other in the eye inside I'm now thinking ImagineCon 2000 could have been a hell of a lot worse.

RIDDLE OF STEEL. COLOR OF MONEY

Well, we may never see another Conan movie hitting the big screen, but there's still a lot of love out there for that big, sword swinging, Corm worshiper. In fact a painting of Conan done by the late Frank Frazetta just sold for well over a million dollars. That might just be better than crushing my enemies, seeing them driven before me, and/or hearing the lamentation of their women.

I like Conan, but my interest is really only a passing one. I haven't read all the comics of books. I don't own the movies. I do have to resist the urge to yell "CROM" before swinging a sword at anything. I love Frank Frazetta's artwork. I was saddened a bit to hear about his passing away a couple months ago. The Missus was a bit surprised that a painting of Conan would fetch such a high price. I was a little surprised as well, but it is an excellent piece.

Back in college I knew a guy named Alex would refused to tell us his middle name. This deflected all inquiries about my lack of a middle name. We knew it began with an 'S' and he claimed it was for 'Steven' but we didn't believe him. Then he made the mistake of filling out a form while sitting next to me.

'Shin Quan'. Thank God he was Asian.

This was Freshman year and by God until the day he graduated if ever any of us caught sight of that poor bastard we'd yell out "Shin Quan! What is best in life!?"

And a few times, he'd actually answer.

YOUTUBE GETS SPOOKY!!

Came across this and am very interested.



I know there are quite a few webisodic YouTube Channels, but I haven't come across anything really trying to be straight up spooky. The people behind this do quality work so I have a lot of faith in this project. It seems like the majority of original content I find on YouTube is out for laughs or trying to show off something cool. That's great. Everyone can always use a good laugh. I'd love to see some "dare you not to click away" spook-tacular videos.

MUSIC!!

The last of my three favorite songs. Kinda weird that all three are out of the 80s. Ah well.



That's all I've got for this weekend. Thanks to Linda for being my connection to stuff I don't know. I'm going to get back to slowly cooking in the heat wave that's hit the east coast. The one good thing about this heat is its all the reason I need to say indoors. See you Wednesday.

God Flames Green Lantern with Old Spice!

BAH! Its Sunday, July 18, 2010. I don't care what the time stamp says. I'm hunting about for more info about what projects Stan Lee has cooking up with Boom Studios. I hear there's three of them and it involves Superheroes. When I find out more I'll let y'all know. Pretty sure the big announcement will be at the San Diego Comic-con which i won't be attending due to principle.

This is assuming that having no money can count as a principle.

Oh hey, speaking of the nerd prom...

BATTLEGROUND: COMIC-CON!!

San Diego Comic-Con is fast approaching and while I won't be there the Westboro Baptist Church will be. Guess the biggest villains at the show will be standing outside on the sidewalk holding offensive sign and being prepared to sue anyone who says anything bad about them. I don't think Fred Phelps, the leader of this hate group which pretends to be a church, will be making the trip as he is older than hell and was probably holding signs telling Noah that he is a homosexual and his boat won't save him.

His spawn Shirley Phelps-Roper will probably have something to offer, and she is utterly fascinating. There was this video game a few years ago which I'm pretty sure was named FABLE and in it you play out the life of this character who can be either good or evil depending on your choices and actions. A cool feature is that the character changed in appearance, so if you did bad stuff he looked more evil. Looking at a picture of Shirley Phelps-Roper you can actually see the type of person she is. I know that sounds really superficial, but there's not enough foundation in Kansas to cover the eeeeeeevil.

So, the hateful pricks will be standing outside Comic-con with their signs taking a break from protesting the funerals of soldiers to try to offend more people. They say they're doing it because this convention promotes idolatry. They are, of course, a bunch of morons. I would find it hilarious if some guy dressed as Batman got pissed off and waded into the protesters and started throwing knuckles.

Police: "Can you identify the person who assaulted you?"

WBC douchebag: "He was dressed as Batman!"

Police: "This weekend you'll have to be more specific. Did he have an distinguishing features?"

WBC douchbag: "I don't know! He was wearing a mask!"

Of course, I'm not saying somebody should actually do it. That would be wrong. But if someone did do it, and there happens to be a video on YouTube of it happening, I'd appreciate a link.

FLAMEBAIT!!

As YouTube trainwrecks go this one smells really fishy. So a kid is having a breakdown on her webcam complete with her father in the background yelling over her shoulder mostly at people who apparently said mean things about her in the comments of her videos. This was followed up by another video of the same girl, still in tear, and he father claiming to have "backtraced" the comments and alerted the authorities.

Let's assume for a moment that these videos are legit and the girl isn't just flamebait. The girl in question shouldn't be posting videos on YouTube if she can't handle criticism. Second, her parent shouldn't let her be posting videos once they see that there's adverse crap descending upon their family. This requires half a brain in on of the people in the equation and a bit of backbone in the parents. However considering some of the fabulous things I've seen from teens lately there is a chance that this is legit.

More likely is that this girl is flamebait, meaning she's putting on a show to get a reaction. She's reveling in all the crappy comments and jokes at her expense. She's gleefully viewing the response parody videos. She's very proud that this has gotten the attention of Philip DeFranco and William Ray Johnson. She's quite a little actress and the father's over the top performance just adds to the funny. Its a Glee level car crash, and folks are gleefully buying into it. This is the more likely option especially considering there another video of her chatting online with her friends with all the commentary scrolling in front of her and she's not phased in the slightest.

That or this girl is about five nasty comments away from a bottle of sleeping pills.

This serves as a lesson. This situation could be a real one and there are no shortage of victims of "cyber-bullying". The internet is not the friendliest place and parents need to step in at times to make sure everything is cool and there's no problems, and if there are problems it may indeed be time to step away from the internet.

OLD SPICE OWNS US ALL!!

A couple months ago I saw a link to a video of some show called "The Dish" and I clicked to discover that it was hosted by Danielle Fishel who played Topanga on BOY MEETS WORLD in which she co-starred with Will Friedle who was the voice of Terry McGinnis in BATMAN BEYOND proving let again that life is really all about Batman. In that video I saw for the first time the Old Spice Guy.

That's right. The man who has taken the internet by storm. Rarely has such a display of awesome overtaken so many. It's created quite a buzz online, to which Old Spice Guy was happy to engage his fans. He has shown himself to be of the people, even going so far in his efforts to aid humanity as to propose to a woman for someone. Of course she said yes. There is no refusing Old Spice Guy. Even Alyssa Milano isn't immune to his manly charms, although her response does make me think she's a bit of a gold digger.

This is probably one of the cleverest uses of social media in advertising ever. Kudos Old Spice Guy. I shall now go and create a comic tribute to you in which which you save the world from destruction while wearing only a towel.

I totally need a picture of Isaiah Mustafa telling prince "You're Wrong! The Internet can never die!"

FROM OA WITH LOVE!!

There he is. Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern marking the third comic book character that he's played. There's actually a bit of a stink about the costume. Its computer generated. Reynolds wore a motion capture suit which allowed the CGI whiz-kids to put the suit on him in editing. I've said in the past that I'm not a fan of CGI. Let me clarify: I'm not a fan of CGI in movies when its something that could be done without it like fight scenes, explosions, or Lara Crofts boobs. In this case we have a movie about a guy who can create anything he imagines out of solid green light thanks to his power ring, so this is something that CGI should be used for. So the costume makes for an interesting bit because Green Lantern's in the comics is generated by his ring. So really it makes sense that the same CGI is used to create the costume that creates his rind based constructs. If anything it should make things look more consistent. Credit for using a motion suit so that it is Reynolds actually in action, that scores some points for me.

But will I actually go see it? I'm really on the fence. I like Ryan Reynolds, he's awesome. I like the concept of Green Lantern, but I don't like Hal Jordan as a character. It also may be a bit too much CGI for me to be interested in when I could just rent the animated feature Warner Brothers put out a while back. So, I'm torn.

MUSIC!!

Yet again SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE went above and beyond the call of duty and this time it did so in probably launching a music career. Waitress Christina Perri's song "Jar of hearts" found its way into the hands of choreographer Stacey Tookie, and she used it for one of her pieces for the show. Since then the song has taken off and is doing quite well in the Billboard charts considering she doesn't even have a record label. Here's the piece that launched the song. The dancers are Billy Bell and Kathryn McCormick. Enjoy and don't forget to check out the show on Wednesdays, this show is setting new standards for dance.

billy 9 @ Yahoo! Video

POP QUIZ!!

Can you find the guy who blogs too much in this picture?



Alright gang, that's it for today. Now, off with you!

DnC Studios versus Chicago: the Con Report

This was a really big deal for me as this was the the Con that was in my mind the big one. I could care less about San Diego. It strikes me as being more about other nerd media than comics. This trip was my gift for the year. I cared about nothing else. I just wanted this trip. My wife made it happen.

Johnson has been under siege by a vicious wave of misfortune over the past month. He was hanging in as best he could. He just had to make it to the show. We prepped as best we could. We got out the door later than I had hoped. There was much chain smoking being done as Johnson attempted to decompress. We then confirmed that Goggle maps is indeed the Wikipedia of directions as our directions to the airport led me to someone's doorstep. they didn't have a plane. Still we made the flight, and after dropping down to North Carolina to see people in rocking chairs using their laptops and others gathered around power outlets as if they were campfires in the arctic we proceeded to Chicago.

We stayed at the Rosemont O'Hare which is attached to the convention center by a skywalk, which came in handy due to rain. The hotel was indeed the lap of luxury for the pair of us and the staff treated us like kings. We missed premier night, but got settled in and had a couple of drinks at the bar. We went over our last minute game plans.

The next morning we got up at six and headed down to the complimentary coffee bar. We seemed to be the only guests in the hotel to be stirring at that hour. We discovered later that my phone didn't stnc up with the time zone change and the room alarm clock was off by an hour. Yep, we were up at 5 in morning. Fine, gave us time to pick up the last minute essentuals for working the table: a case of Cokes, a tin of Altoids and a couple packs of smokes.

We found ourselves on the far side of the world in the artist alley, but at least it was a short walk to the can. I was directly across from Tony Moore and Chris Samnee, and was kicking myself for not bringing my QUEEN AND COUNTRY definitive edition for him to sign. We met our neighbors Andy Budnick and his girlfriend Kim. Delightful folks.

Day one was slow and painful. Although we did manage to make about $7.

God bless hot librarians who like Batgirl. You can see Chris Samnee hard at work behind her. Spotting quite a few folks dressed as Doctor Horrible I preceded to do some pictures of the character in hopes of getting some sales. I continued trying up finish out the Twitter event. The major plus side was Linda showing up with Vince and Dylan. Linda's a long time e-friend and this was our first face-to-face meeting. She likes to take credit for my making the trip. While that's not the case, meeting her finally was definitely the biggest perk and made the trip worthwhile.

Our staggering sales certainly weren't.

This was also the day we came to discover our table came complete with a Tom and Jerry booby trap which consisted of 5 gallon plastic buckets which were suspended over us and periodically dripped water down upon us. Nothing like a roof leak and/or air conditioning condensation over what is, in essence, a celebration of paper. We got quite chummy with many of the volunteers.

This Con was in trouble. 100 out of the 135 volunteers that were to work the show never showed up. DC didn't show up. Marvel didn't show up. Dark Horse didn't show up. Seems we picked a great year for our first appearance.

And they seriously need to feed their volunteers too. Poor starving bastards.

Day two was looking up. The Doctor Horrible pics were selling a bit. We got some commissions. I'm surprised we didn't get more considering we were charging $5 for fully inked pictures. My bristol got more use fanning Linda and company who were very warm in their outfits. This was the day of the costume contest so everyone was decked out in their best costumes. Cosmic Boy declared me his arch-nemesis. I answered by pelting him with a wad of tin foil and mocking his magnetic powers. Dick Blick came through for us big time. He was selling art supplies and took excellent care of us. He's got a couple of new life time customers now. I also snagged a copy of Ong Bak 2.

By the end of day 2 fatigue had set in. Johnson was doing well since he ran into Michelle Rodrigez on one of his smoke breaks and got the hang with her a bit.

Day three arrived and I was feeling punchy. I also had questions for one Chris Samnee.

Me: So, with it being day three and everyone's kinda punchy, hypothetically speaking, if you were inking a piece and some one from, let's just say across the aisle here, were to say, hypothetically, chuck a paper airplane at you, what would happen?

Samnee: I'd punch them right in the face.

Me: Hypothetically?

Samnee: Hypothetically, of course.

We then agreed that the guy the Quicksilver costume the day before really should have been wearing underwear. Nothing bonds artists faster than the sheer horror of shiny spandex clad dongs right at your eye level.

I drew a lot on day 3. Did a bunch of pictures. I even managed to walk around a bit. Linda and I walked the aisles. She made some purchases and chatted with folks. I marveled at what a complete moron the kid selling weapons was. It was all a bit of a blur that day and my sense of time crumbled.

That was pretty much it. Coming out of it I determined that a Con is a Con. The mystique is gone, but it was a pretty good show. Johnson wants to do it again next year. We may have to return.