Nerding It Up Family Friendly Style

Who's your daddy? Its Sunday, October 23, 2011, nurture seems to be curb stomping nature, and this is The Side. I made that little comment because no one has discovered a nerd gene and my kids have some interesting behavior.

When your daughter says that the theme to THE BIG BANG THEORY is her favorite song, that's probably a sign.

This is the same daughter who argues against wearing pajamas. I told her how its colder at night now and she needs to wear PJs because I don't want her to freeze her little butt. See countered this with "If I freeze, I'll break that ice like Iceman!" Yes, my daughter's new favorite superhero is Iceman. This is due to Netflix instant streaming letting us watch SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS.

This is not to be confused with the other daughter who refuses to wear anything cute. If its not 'awesome', she won't wear it. 'Awesome' is the new criteria of choice for four year old clothing choices.

That daughter is the same one with her Spider-man rain boots. She wears those when it rains because sometimes its too wet for her Spider-man sneakers. That doesn't really make up for it being too wet to put on her Spider-man helmet and ride her Spider-man bike around the court. We do keep her well-rounded though, as she carries an Ironman backpack to pre-school. Yes, she picked out all of these things herself.

I guess I'm pretty lucky. My kids have glommed onto my interests and seem to genuinely like them. I know this is most likely temporary. Little girls grow up. They'll likely develop a taste for music I can't stand. With my luck, they'll become fascinated with TWILIGHT. But for now, I can enjoy coming home and hearing my girls ask if they can watch X-MEN EVOLUTION or HEATHCLIFF or any of the other shows I really like.

COMIX!!

It was one of those weeks at the shop in which there was absolutely nothing in my pull box. Happens about one a month since the great purge from my pull list. That doesn't mean I haven't been able to check out anything cool. EDUCATION OF A SUPERHERO by Adam Dechanel is launching next month. This one's going to be online and there's still some production stuff going on so I've been asked not to toss out a link quite yet. I did however get a preview of what's to come and I'm definitely digging it. The writing is solid and enjoyable. The art is really sharp. The main character, Julie Meyers, seems interesting. I only got a ten page preview but it sunk a decent hook and made me want to check out more. Dechanel might sound familiar to you. He's written quite a few things including some fun 'choose your own adventure' type stuff on the Superman Homepage. This'll be his first project out on his own, and its one that bears watching and deserves some support. I'll be back to drop the link when launch time hits.

MUSIC!!

Here's one for the ladies, and by ladies I mean my daughter for likes to dance around to her favorite song.



That's all from me for now. I'm going to go hunt down some nice, warm socks and brew some coffee. Catch y'all Wednesday.

The Nozz Sells Out

Hello, Gorgeous. Welcome to my party. Its Wednesday, May 10, 2011, I'm a whore for the masses, and this is The Side. Internet popularity is a numbers games, and yes, that's kinda dumb, but we're all playing it.

WHERE'D EVERYONE GO?

Here on Blogger there's pretty cool features that allow me to see what kind of traffic I'm getting on here. I can see how many pageviews I've gotten. I can see about what time those pageviews happen. I can see what operating system is used, which I thought it was pretty cool that especially since I discovered that some folks check this stuff out using their Nintendo Wii. I can also see what part of the world people are viewing this from broken down by country. Don't worry I can't tell exactly where individual people are or stuff like that. I can also see key words they used that brought them here, or links that brought them here.

Now then, last month I had the most pageviews ever in one month since they started keeping track with 4,251. First time I broke the 4,000 mark and I was pretty excited about it. yes, I know its not terribly much compared to big sites or big name bloggers, but having over a hundred people per day coming through here made me a happy camper.

Then May came around and numbers just absolutely tanked. I'm getting less than half the traffic than I did last month. That's enough to make me wonder what on earth did I do to tick off my readers. However, I do have the tools I mentioned before and I decent analytical mind. I know exactly was happened.

My numbers tanked because of this image.



For whatever reason its fallen off the Google Search map. I was getting a lot of traffic from Brazil and Portugal. Now I'm not. I also saw that the search links had changed a bit. Did a little digging and I found that dozens of people would come through here regularly because of that image.

If you don't know what that image is, its Pocoyo. I was blogging about random thoughts I had about PBS Kids programming. When you've got kids and no cable you end up watching a lot of it. And I like Pocoyo. Stephen Fry narrates it, so it must be educational, right? He is British after all.

So, is their a sudden complete lack of interest in Pocoyo? Is there a Pocoyo scandal of some sort? Kind of doubt it. Its probably just that the image from this blog doesn't appear near to top of searches for Pocoyo pictures anymore. Not sure, why but that's just how it rolls. I did lose a follower when all this happened, but I don't know if those two things were related.

So really what I have now is the numbers my traffic would be minus the Pocoyo factor. These are the people that come here moreso for the content I put in, and my opinions on it. So are mere numbers worth flooding a post with pictures of a cute cartoon show? How shallow would that make me?

Yeah, like I ever claimed to be deep.

BREAD AND CIRCUSES!!
Who loves Pocoyo?

This guy right here!!!

Greatest cartoon ever!!!

(That's not counting anything Bruce Timm did.)

POCOYO! POCOYO! POCOYO!!

I'm just giving the people what they want, and they want Pocoyo.

MUSIC!!

Sell out? Me? Naaaaawwwwwww....



That's me selling my soul to the Google search engine for today. I'm going to keep my eye on the numbers to see if they go up. Will Portugal and Brazil love me again? Guess we'll find out Friday.

Toy, Toys, Toys From the Attic

YO JOE! Its Sunday, April 10, 2011, I'm kickin' it old school, and this is The Side. Its been a bit of an oddball week. However with all the stuff swirling around my nerdy brain one thing kept popping back up: toys. And old ones at that. Sure enough I got an old toy chest from my neighbors for the little loin spawn, and there was a couple of really beat up TRANSFORMERS in there, that'll likely never roll out again.

That's a sign if I ever seen one.

PRODUCT PLACEMENT

Stopped off at a Farm Fresh to use the bathroom because when your commute is about an hour long then you do what you gotta do. Walked by the DVD bargain bin and found DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH for about four bucks. That is the great thing about blu ray, I can get DVDs really cheap. This show came out in 1985, which was while I was overseas, and as far as TV goes you didn't have a lot of options. So I'd only caught a few episodes of this show. I got the DVD and have checked out a little of it. Fun stuff.

There's been a lot of blasts from my past this week. A house I was doing some painting in had some old "choose you adventure" type books. I always take a peek at bookshelves if I get a chance. One of the books was the old G.I.JOE ones in which the reader is the new member of the team and they have to decide about the mission they go on against Cobra. My brother had a few of those when we were kids.

There was also the radio phone topic Mike and Bob did this week about which did the listeners like more G.I.JOE or TRANSFORMERS. It was a pretty even split, but I think the Joes had a slight lead.

So it seems like a whole lot of 80s nostalgia going on, and looking back I think it had a lot to do with the toys. The majority of cartoons back in the 80s were shilling for toy lines. What was interesting is that each of these toy lines had their own very detailed canon. The back stories to some of these things was phenomenal, and you could play along. You not only could get the little Bumblebee Transformer, but you could watch his adventures on TV, and read about him in the comic book. Same with a lot of the different toy lines.

There was more successful series and toy lines like THUNDERCATS, SILVERHAWKS, MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, and of course the previously mentioned G.I.JOE and TRASNFORMERS. But there's also ones I really liked that didn't catch on quite as well like THE INHUMANOIDS, THE BIONIC SIX, THE CENTURIONS, and THE SKY COMMANDERS. I loved all the fluff stuff surrounding these toy lines even if I never bought any of the toys. Although loving these shows and their comics did make me want the toys. I really dug THE CENTURIONS and THE SKY COMMANDERS, but it was a serious chore to find the toys around here.

I do think the big winner from all these 80s toy lines was G.I.JOE. They had more stuff. It was relatively affordable, at least the figures were. I think it was a bit a tie as far as quality of their cartoon show in comparing it to TRANSFORMERS, but the old Larry Hama comic book from MARVEL really blew the doors off all the other toy related comics back in the day. I still remember the big hunt over issue 21, "Silent Interlude". Snake-Eyes are already a big favorite among fans of G.I.JOE but that really put if over the top. Then came Storm Shadow and every kid out there had to have that figure. I never had any G.I.JOE stuff myself, but I have to say it was pretty cool. My brother was a big collector. I got a kick out of reading all the little file cards that gave details about the characters on the back of the packages.

G.I.JOE and TRANSFORMERS both have received the big Hollywood treatment in recent years. I saw the first TRANSFORMERS movie and didn't like it. I just couldn't shut my brain off to enjoy it. I skipped the G.I.JOE movie, but it didn't really look great to me. Fans still went out to see it them all though. If I had my way I'd make a G.I.Joe movie that was a little less over the top. No dodging missiles in power suits or that other silliness. We have all the elements there for a really cool spy-fi/shoot 'em up flick. I'd reign in some of the more over the top elements and have another go at it. It would probably do better at the box office and get better fan reception. I think the problem is that they tried going too big, and sometimes that's good, but you've always got to be careful of going over the top with it.

Good old childhoods. I'm not saying the stuff I had around as a kid was better than previous or later generation, but it was definitely some cool stuff. It was to the point that even the toy catalogs were entertaining. I kinda feel bad that there's not things like this for my kids. Ah well.

MUSIC!!!

Presenting Stan Bush: King of the cheesy 80s movies power ballad themesongs. BOW TO THE KING!!



Alrighty, that's the ball game for today. I'm going to go transform and roll out to fight for freedom wherever there's trouble. See y'all Wednesday.

Dracula on PBS cartoons!

By cracky, its Wednesday, August 25, 2010 and today is special, because today its not all about Batman. That's right, today the Laundry Crisis takes a rest. My harebrained theories on possible connections between Darkseid and The Black Glove are cooling gently.

Today is a day without Batman.

Because today... its really all about Spider-man.

PBS MAKES YOU THINK!!

There was a time that when you were a kid and you get out of bed at an insane hour of the morning you could turn on regular television and be entertained, even on the weekdays. VOLTRON was on at six in the morning and, by Buddha, I'd be up to watch it. And VOLTRON wasn't alone. I truly think I'm the only person who remembers THE BIONIC SIX because I was the only nutter up at that time of the morning watching television. And there was HEATHCLIFF, M.A.S.K., and BEVERLY HILLS TEENS... not that I would watch BEVERLY HILLS TEENS, but I had the option! We didn't have cable, but there was stuff to watch on TV even as a kid in the mornings on the weekdays.

But things are different now. Now almost everyone has cable, or satellite TV or whatever. Everyone but me. And the weekday cartoons have died off. I think one channel shows one cartoon and the rest of the morning its infomercials. The other stations all have their morning news shows. So what do you do if you want to watch cartoons in the morning and don't have cable, especially if you have little kids in the house? You turn to PBS. Because you have to. And because I have to, I have thought about it way too much. And because I have a blog I can now inflict these thoughts upon you.

* I am fascinated by the Man in the Yellow Hat on CURIOUS GEORGE. He works in museum, has a nice condo and a house in the country, and is a published author. He's been on expeditions to the antarctic. He was chosen to go into space on a mission. This guy must have a resumé as long as my arm, and I'm still not entirely sure what he does for a living.

* While I'm thinking about CURIOUS GEORGE, I know he's a cute little monkey, but I live in constant dread of the day he grows up, tries to achieve his male dominance of the house hold and goes off on the man in the yellow hat like the opening scene of 28 DAYS LATER.

* I wonder how much it costs to go to the private school that SID THE SCIENCE KID attends. They're fully stocked with a ton of educational stuff, have an great facility, and only four students.

* I have finally adjusted to the fact that dinosaurs and brightly colored on DINOSAUR TRAIN and that they ride on a train that goes through tunnels that can take them through time. The fact that they all talk was pretty much a given. However the undersea train station just killed me. I still can't figure out how the hell they built it.

* I often think that the residents of SESAME STREET live in constant fear of the monsters that reside there. I think they put up with all the counting and such to keep them pacified for the sake of the children. What with seemingly all power creatures about that can change you into things and control the weather its smart to stay on their good side. I just know that the day the garbage truck finally shows up, Oscar will start the uprising.



* I don't know if POCOYO is very educational, but the fact that its narrated by Stephen Fry makes me feel smarter.

* I find myself worrying horribly about Cliff Hanger on BETWEEN THE LIONS. That poor bastard has been stuck there for a while. I do admire his tenacity hanging on for so long instead of just giving up and plummeting to his demise. That and his grip strength. I admire that too.

* I enjoy THE ELECTRIC COMPANY much more than I probably should. The only reason i watched it as a kid was because Spider-man was on it. The new show is a lot of fun but there is a distinct lack of Spidey.

I just read an article about people hooked on Cable. At first I just wanted to dismiss them as pathetic losers, but really it seems like we're all getting 'pushed' into getting some pay TV service or another. Big thing like switching over air broadcasts to lame digital signals from the superior analog signal, to small things like a lack of decent cartoons to watch. It just feels like the fix is in sometimes.

I wonder what Clifford the Big Red Dog would do.

A BRIEF WORD FROM UNCLE STAN

COMIX!!

Got an early peek at DRACULA: THE COMPANY OF MONSTERS #1 from BOOM Studios and I freaking loved it. Maybe it hit me at just the right time having watched a good chunk of BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA on TV last Saturday during their Keanu Reeves marathon. Maybe it was just my basic geek nature. This first issue sets up so much great stuff that I'm salivating for issue 2. Wirters Kurt Busiek and Daryl Gregory split this story nicely between exposition on Prince Vlad the Impaler in the 15th century and a modern day corporate drone on an assignmnet that he doesn't understand.

Scott Godlewski handles the art chores nicely on here. He manages to not only nail down the modern day setting but also the 15th century history lesson. Not a bad range at all.

This has a pitch perfect horror movie set up. Normal guy just keeps getting in deeper and deeper in the a weirdness that he wants no part of. It didn't end like I expected, but that just got me more eager to see the next issue. Honestly, I was expecting this book to be about Dracula somehow now in the 21st century and running a company. They wisely twist this into a corporation looking to make Dracula their latest corporate asset.

They're looking to wake the devil. Expect all hell to break loose when they do.

MUSIC!!

Because today, its all about Spider-man.




That's all for now. Please enjoy the remainder of the WTF portion of your week. See you Friday. Behave yourselves. And if you can't, put it on YouTube.