Hate me all you want

but I'm actually pretty stoked about the My Chemical Romance album coming out next month.



I've always been a fan of My Chemical Romance. They have a fabulously tongue-in-cheek sense of humor about themselves that I think a lot more bands should take to heart. they have fun onstage while being fun to watch, making them easily my favorite band to see live.

Anyone who knows me at all will pick up immediately on the aesthetic vibe of this video being pretty much what the inside of my brain looks like. It's like a ten year old boy circa 1995 on a post-Halloween sugar high trying to explain the Tank Girl movie, but without the kangaroos. There's nothing about it that I don't absolutely love. Plus, death by Power Glove. I mean, COME ON. The only way you could possibly hate on this is if you hate fun.


A word of warning, though: the song is catchy as all hell and WILL get stuck in your head.

the best calendar of 2011 is already up for preorder!

Those of you who know me already know that I can't say enough great things about OtakuBooty.com, my favorite social networking site for people who are completely functional adults and just-so-happen to have some nerdy interests. I've met some amazing people through OtakuBooty, and will absolutely continue to support it even in these tough economic times.

With that said, the economic strain is absolutely being felt over there, and the owner/admin is doing everything in his power to keep the site running at a nearly nonexistent subscription price. That's where some incredibly giving members of the site stepped in.

The ladies of Pixelette Pinups in Atlanta, GA had the great idea to put together a pin-up calendar to benefit the site. All of the photographers, models, and stylists are members of Otaku Booty who donated their time, effort, and in some cases even flew across the country to be involved. Many of the models dipped into their own pockets for costumes and props, and the Pixelette studio had to shut down to paying customers for several days to get all the photos done in time.

From what I've seen so far and the other photos that Pixelette host on their site, the calendar is sure to be phenomenal. It will, however, be only a limited print beyond what their preorder count is, so click the banner above and reserve a copy now!

an interval of silliness (VIDEO NSFW)

this is probably the shortest video that Happy Harry Toons has posted to youtube, but it's easily one of my favorites.

have a great weekend, everyone!

it's a bird! it's a plane! it's another sketchdump!

what ever happened to puppeteering as a form of entertainment?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mark Hamill on the Muppet Show circa 1980.


REMEMBER ALDERAAAAANNNNNN!



part two

part three

viewing this for the first time since childhood has confirmed something for me:

Family programming really WAS better when we were kids*. It's not just the nostaglia rose-colored glasses on this one. Then again, there was an infinitely higher demand for programming for the entire family before the internet.

If you're old enough to remember before the internet became a household thing, I want you to meditate on that for a second. Think about that first dial-up modem and the screeching sounds it made when you connected. If you were the first cool kid on the block with a computer, remember having a limited number of minutes each month that you could be on line, like cell phone minutes.

Now try and picture how you're going to explain to your kids someday that you're older than the internet.







*(I use the term 'we' in the vaguest sense, as none of us at YourGeekWorld.com were born yet when The Muppet Show was canceled in 1981, though it was still on the air throughout most of our childhoods.)

the ultimate team-up, coming soon!

oh, that's right.

Dr. McNinja and Axe Cop. Together for six pages!

read the full story on Comics Alliance.

and the award for 'weirdest shit on the internet' goes to...

I've spent the last two years with the same nagging question in the back of my head every time I peruse the internet. Is there anything out there that makes less sense than jedichefs.com?

After many exhausting hours of research, I've resigned myself to the fact that, as far as pages written in English (excluding fetish porn), there really isn't.

So, what's their deal?

I honestly have no idea. I've been poking around the website for over an hour, and I'm still not sure. I do, however, know that they raise money for Cancer Research UK, So I suppose that even nonsense has its merits.


I think the part of Jedi Chefs that's most confusing is the Celebrity Jedi Chef page, which is an alphabetized list of image galleries featuring pictures of celebrities, primarily from sci-fi shows, donning the website's signature floppy chef hats and wielding lightsabers. For the most part, the celebs look just as confused as we are, though some of them seem to have excellent sense of humor about the whole ordeal.

Alan Tudyk, for example, is looking a little scared. His former 'Firefly' co-star Sean Maher, however, seems to be taking it in stride.
The number of celebrities they've managed to get to take these ridiculous pictures is staggering. A considerable amount of the casts of Buffy, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Stargate SG-1,various Star Treks, the new and old Star Wars trilogies, and folks from all over Doctor Who fill the list, making me wonder if perhaps the YGW Away Team needs a silly gimmick to get us some celebrity endorsements. I'm pretty sure there isn't anything the guys wouldn't be willing to do if it meant a picture of them with, say for example, Felicia Day.


I don't know what confuses me more: what's going on, or why so many geek celebs are in on it!

2010 Movie Roundup: what we loved, what we hated, and what we can't wait to see

So, at the start of the year, 2010 looked like it was going to be a pretty good year for cinema, especially if you're a nerd. Sure, we aren't getting another Star Trek until 2012, but we had some great stuff to hold us over in the meantime. We had intentions of doing in-depth reviews of all of these films when we saw them, but quite frankly, Tyler and Phil just didn't have enough to say about most of them, and you probably don't want to read the six and seven paragraph tirades that my overpriced film education would have wrought upon you had I been left to write alone. So, here we go.

WHAT WE'VE WATCHED THUS FAR

IRON MAN 2
YGW RATING: 10/10

HOLY SHIT. HOLY SHIT. THIS FUCKING MOVIE. This is one that even when we'd agreed to do a single roundup blog about the movies, we were still going to give it's own entry, but all we had written was HOLY SHIT AWESOME over and over again. We went in trying not to expect too much, even though the first one is arguably the best comic-to-film adaptation since the first Spider Man (and we all know what a disappointment THAT franchise turned int0). But I think we all know that, unless a stoned monkey wrote the script, it was going to be entertaining at the very least. And I would watch Robert Downey Jr. watch paint dry. So, at the very least, I would walk out happy.
Well, RDJ was just as phenomenal as he was in the first movie, and the dynamic with Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Pots was just as snappy and thick with sexual tension as it was in the first film. Add in a somewhat bland but tolerable turn by Scarlett Johansson (is anyone surprised? Really?) as the seductive SHIELD agent Black Widow and a great job from Don Cheadle (which, I mean, is anyone surprised by this?) as Lt. Rhodes a.k.a. WAR MACHINE (OH MY GOD YES). Also, Mickey Rourke being.... well, Mickey Rourke. Sure, he was ridiculously camp, but that's just WHAT HE DOES. For him, this was surprisingly subtle (though not by any other standard).

OVERALL: sure, I could go on for a few more paragraphs about the ill-fitting costumes (what was up with Scarlett Johansson's boobs being completely squashed into unnatural positions in half her outfits? Nothing hot about pancake tits!) or the lack of continuity with whatever the hell was wrong with Mickey Rourke's fingernails (half-inch thick gray acrylics in one scene, perfectly normal, clean nails in the next. Good job, makeup department!) or even about the complete disregard for physics in some of the effects, but honestly? It's a COMIC BOOK ADAPTATION. And it's a sequel. And I didn't want to gouge my eyes out. On the contrary, I enjoyed it so much that some of the glaring mistakes didn't even strike me until the second or third viewing. This is a new milestone for cinema as we know it.

CLASH OF THE TITANS
YGW RATING: 7/10

A word of background on this one: Tyler and I are huge fans of the original film. His dad made him watch it a hundred times as a kid, and the only movie my grandma and I might have watched more times than this classic was possibly Wrath of Khan. So it comes as no surprise that we were immeasurably excited to see it remade with better effects and LIAM FUCKING NEESON and RALPH FIENNES together for the first time since Schindler's List.
However, we also were very much aware that there was really no need for a remake, and the currently overwhelming theme of 'rebooting' older films with fresh casts, better effects, and infinitely worse scripts quelled our excitement into more of a cautious optimism.
And it's a good thing we didn't get our hopes up, because the whole film was pretty...underwhelming. Nothing new was really brought to the table, except for the whole mess with Io, which was kind of convoluted (in the original myth, Io gets turned into a cow, not given eternal youth. The change in the myth makes no sense and is obviously done only to serve the plot) and the original got by fine without her, so why bother? At least the performance from Gemma Arterton is infinitely better than in the other film we recently saw her in: Prince of Persia. If nothing else good came of this, at least we now have the line "UNLEASH THE KRAKEN!," which we have added to our repertoire of unnecessarily enthusiastic exclamations to yell at eachother in completely inappropriate situation, along with Eric Bana's "FIRE EVERYTHING!" from last summer's Star Trek reboot. Yes, we are children.
OVERALL: not bad, but not exactly groundbreaking. The new effects were certainly a nice update in some places, but going all J.J. Abrams on everything the gods ever touched was sort of annoying, and may have given us retinal damage.

SHUTTER ISLAND
YGW RATING: 9/10

Okay, so I really don't care about Martin Scorsese anymore. Which isn't to say that I don't appreciate his impact on film, but I just don't care for most of his stuff. Perhaps it's a generational thing, or just personal taste. I don't know. The Departed was the first one of his films that I genuinely enjoyed since Cape Fear. But to each his own, I suppose. Either way, I wasn't expecting much from this one, even though my mother has been hounding me to read the book for a few years now because she knew I would love it.
Well, mom was right. At least, I loved the movie, so I can only imagine that the book is even better. But we're here to talk about the film.
I wouldn't really describe most of the film as being subtle, but the subtleties in it are what really make it. Slight, inexplicable changes in color palette and tight editing tweaks really give a sense of discomfort and disorientation, and that's where the movie thrives. At several points in the film, Tyler and I had to ask eachother if there was something wrong with the film, or if our eyes were playing tricks on us, only to realize later that it had been deliberate on the part of the filmmakers. If that isn't incredibly effective filmmaking, I don't know what is.
The acting in this was pretty top notch as well, but not unexpected. Leonardo DiCaprio seems to have really come into his own in the last few years, and is completely convincing and watchable even in the most unwatchable movies (that means you, Revolutionary Road). Ben Kingsley is also, as always, amazing. And keep an eye out for a cameo from Jackie Earle Haley.
We don't want to say much about the film because we don't want to give anything away, and the story, though a bit predictable in places, does keep you on your toes to the very end.

OVERALL: Worth seeing for the atmosphere alone, but probably just one time, as most of what makes it great really won't have the same impact on a second viewing.

KICK-ASS

YGW RATING:9/10

So, for some unfortunate reason, I am the only one here who has seen Kick-Ass. How this happened, I will never know.

For that reason, I'm going to refrain from doing an extensive review until everyone else has seen it. I will, however, admit to absolutely loving it. I haven't read the graphic novel, though, so perhaps I'll try to get that done by the time the boys see the film so we can have a proper critique.

PRINCE OF PERSIA
YGW RATING: 8/10

Tyler, Phil and I all went to see this one together opening weekend because we were just so goddamn excited (by which I mean that I was excited and they were vaguely interested, so I dragged them along). All three of us were huge fans of the game it was supposedly based off of, and the boys both really enjoyed the rest of the trilogy, though I lost interest about two hours into the second game and never finished it.
For those who haven't seen it, the movie is relatively faithful to the original for the first twenty or so minutes, until the shit hits the fan. The Prince is still the adopted son of the King who is invading Azad (changed to Alamut in the film), even if he has other biological sons in this version who play pretty big roles (in fact, the eldest brother's role feels more like the King from the game than the King from the film does). The antagonist role, played brilliantly in the film by Ben Kingsley, has changed from the turncoat Vizier of Azad to the king's jealous brother. The role, however, remains very similar in spirit. However, once the characters are established, everything goes completely off course.
My biggest qualm with the film is that the sands are never really released. No sand monsters, just weird middle eastern faux-ninjas and lots of running away. The action is still entirely enjoyable when you can find it, but the majority of the film is talking, running away, and wide shots of the scenery, making it feel more like Lord of the Rings in Persia than like the game. The dialogue isn't bad and the pacing stays pretty solid, but the whole story is kind of convoluted and confusing if you go into it having played the game and expecting, at the very least, to see the same idea. Also, without giving away too much, the ending makes a genuine attempt to remain faithful to the game, which, given the changes made to most of the story, makes it feel a little silly and, well, completely jump the shark.
As far as the acting, Jake Gyllenhal impressed us. We really weren't expecting much from him at all, and we were pleasantly surprised to see him pull it off. (And if you had qualms with his or anyone else's pseudo-British accents, we kindly ask you to play the game again. It's one of the few things they kept authentic and consistent throughout the movie, so I'm not hardly going to take points off for it) Ben Kingsley was excellent as always, and most of the supporting cast of character actors did their parts well.
The only thing we disagreed about on this one was Gemma Arterton. We agreed that the dialogue for Farah (renamed Tamina for the film) was very faithful to the spirit of the game, and that Arterton's delivery was disappointing, sounding like she was reading and downright bored for most of the movie, except which she was screaming unconvincingly. Where we disagree is that I don't think she looked the part at all, and Tyler didn't take as much issue with it. When she is initially introduced, it is said outright by the the titular prince's brother that she is supposed to be the most beautiful woman in all the land. Now, she's a pretty girl, but not when she's been makeup-coated into the unnatural abomination she was transformed into for this role. The girl is naturally either ginger or a very light brunette, and has a freckled, pale complexion that belongs on a Irish Spring commercial. She also has a very unique face shape which, though usually pretty, looks awkward and mannish with the haircut she was given for the film (which makes no sense to me, as not only is it unflattering, but it isn't the character's normal hair anyway). If she had knocked it out of the park with her acting I probably wouldn't have noticed or cared, but when someone is cast as a lead in a high budget film and can't act, it makes me wonder why they were cast in the role at all.

OVERALL: a fun, family friendly action movie. If you need an excuse to retreat into an air conditioned theater for a few hours to escape the heat, not the worst decision you could make.

LOOKING AHEAD: WHAT WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD

I think it might be physically impossible for this movie to be more perfect for us. It's based on a graphic novel series of the same name and just as chock-full of video game references. I mean, Shigeru Miyamoto got to see a rough cut screening of the film and liked it enough to give the filmmakers his blessing to use music from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Come ON. This movie looks so good that I'm starting to get suspicious.

THE LAST AIRBENDER

You know what? you might as well just take a peek at our blog from a while back about just how excited we are to see this movie. Nothing has changed, aside from a new trailer. We're still disgustingly excited.

THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE

Oh, hi there, Jerry Bruckheimer. What was that? You're going to ride the coattails of the sucess of the Harry Potter franchise by making a knockoff starring Nicholas Cage?

As much as I HATED the very idea of this one from the very beginning, it's growing on me. Mostly because it looks fun. And while the Potter films are becoming increasingly dark and are still interesting, they aren't really the most fun you can have with the genre. And over the years, my hatred for Nicholas Cage has reached the singularity and is starting to turn into some sort of twisted love.

INCEPTION

Hey, remember how we talked about how much we're starting to love Leonardo DiCaprio? Well, this looks phenomenal. And I mean, look at the rest of the cast: Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Lukas Haas. And of course, it's written and directed by CHRISTOPHER FUCKING NOLAN. This sounds like the perfect storm of psychological thrillers.

YGW on Guilded Age!

So, the awesome Phil Kahn of Guilded Age (not our dear monotone friend from the YGW Podcast) asked me a few weeks back if I wanted to do a guest strip for his amazing comic, and I was more than happy to oblige. Unfortunately, it turned into a week and a half of me staring at photoshop and praying for a punchline to descend from the heavens, and the night before I promised to have it for him, I slapped something together and made a bad World of Warcraft joke. Ah, well!

In Phil's newspost accompanying the guest strip, he mentions YourGeekWorld (specifically this blog) and also OtakuBooty.Com, where we met. Contrary to the name, the site is really more of a subscription social networking site for all sorts of nerds, not just the animu folks, and not really a dating site per se (though I know some pretty cool folks who have ended up in relationships or even getting married to people they met through the site). Their forums are probably my favorite haunt on the web, and worth a look if you're ever bored, though you can only access one tab without a paid membership.

the comic of the day has a permanent home here.

Phil just informed me that the comic was also featured in the weekly comic roundup on WoW.com

Matt Smith: not just a Doctor

also, apparently, something of a rock star.

What exactly HAS the Doctor been up to?

WARNING: THE VIDEO CLIPS IN THIS ARTICLE ARE EXTREMELY NSFW

So, Tyler and I were having a discussion about Paul McGann and how much we loved him in the Doctor Who feature film. While I was on the phone with him, I took a quick peek at McGann's IMDB page, hoping to find something we might have heard of, or that we would be able to find on Netflix.


And then we found this.



The funny part? We've seen this one before. Lesbian Vampire Killers was easily one of our favorite films of 2009, a horror comedy on par with Slither and Shaun of the Dead in terms of high-budget hilarity. Did you spot him?

How about now? (skip to about 1:30, or for a longer scene featuring McGann, jump to about the 7 minute mark)




That's right, he's the fabulously deadpan Vicar. And disturbingly enough, doesn't look any older than he did in 1996 as the Doctor.


Now, the movie is absolutely worth watching even without him. The stylish editing and cinematography could make it fascinating to watch paint dry, but the humor (which varies from disgusting and slapstick to deadpan wit) remains consistently entertaining from start to finish, even if the female leads are some of the worst actresses to ever deliver dialogue onscreen outside of a porn.

But if we needed any confirmation that McGann was the coolest Doctor, we've certainly got it now.

Star Trek TOS and Ke$ha go together pretty well, actually,

oh. my. lord.



further proof that I need a life: I can identify almost every clip in here by episode title.

the greatest tumblr in the history of tumblr

Nimoy. Sunset. Pie.

that's right, folks. The entire tumblr is a collection of images involving Leonard Nimoy (mostly as Spock), sunsets, and pies.

be still, my heart!

Have we mentioned how much we all love Doctor Who around here?

Because we really, really love Doctor Who.

I had vague recollections of having watched the old show on PBS with my grandma (who is also the amazing woman who introduced me to Star Trek), but I didn't even know about the new series until after David Tennant took over in season two. A friend and I watched most of "Tooth and Claw" on the screen over the bar at T.G.I. Fridays and even without the sound, we were hooked.

I really enjoyed Tennant's run on the show, which comes as no surprise, as I was one of the very, very few who preferred Davison over Baker in the original show (Tyler and David Tennant himself being pretty much the only other people I can think of who felt likewise). When I got around to watching the backlog of Eccleston episodes that I'd missed, I wasn't surprised to love him, either. After all, I'd enjoyed him on Heroes, and in Elisabeth and Gone in 60 Seconds (shut up, I have a weak spot for movies with awesome cars in them).

So far, I'm a little underwhelmed by the writing quality of pretty much every episode of the new season that veteran writer and new executive producer Steven Moffat hasn't personally written, but I have faith. Mostly, because I absolutely adore the characters of Amy Pond and her bumbling fiance, Rory, but also because I've been really, really enjoying the performance of Matt Smith, and have faith in his continued ability to make terrible writing watchable.

Pretty much the only complaint I have about him is that I'm having a difficult time drawing him. I think it's his general lack of eyebrows that throws me off. Ah, well. Perhaps I just need more practice.

for those of you unsure of where you stand

here is a handy flow chart, courtesy of fellow nerd bloggers Opaque Lucidity. you can view the original here.


Sorry about how quiet the blog has been as of late. PAX and Anime Boston took more out of us than we'd anticipated, and I've been busily digging through boxes of old photos in preparation for a cosplay retrospective that should be going up soon, prompted by some of the silliness in the YGW Review for Anime Boston, which will be up here as soon as Tyler finishes censoring our terrible language.

Ever wondered what a fat man dancing to Beyonce in a unitard looks like?

Well, now you know.


I fucking love this guy! look at him rock out!


UPDATE!

when the YGW Away Team and some friends were talking about this video during a late night trip to Ihop, someone at another table overheard us and showed us this on his laptop. Apparently, this video is even older news than we thought, because Beyonce herself knew about it, and brought the guy onstage at a show last fall!

HUNTING FOR GHOSTIES

So, Tyler, Chris, myself, and another friend went on an 'adventure' earlier this week, and ended up on a creepy back road that Chris insisted he'd been on before, and ended up unknowingly driving deep into the wampanoag reservation in the Freetown-Fall River State Forest, which; well, to call it disreputable would be a harsh understatement. Had Tyler not spotted the sign as we were leaving one of the most dangerous areas in the region, we would never have had a clue that we'd just cheated death.

Upon getting home, Chris decided to see just how much trouble we could have been in, and did a bit of googling. Turns out, we were mere feet away from the Hockomock Swamp, square in the middle of the Freetown Triangle, one of the most concentrated areas of paranormal sightings in the world.

So, naturally, we had to go back.

I packed a native american exorcism kit and a camera. Tyler brought a night vision monocular and a flashlight. We were good to go. Well, except for the part where our Mystery Machine for the evening (a beige oldsmobile coupe) was low on gas, and neither of us had eaten. So, our adventure began in Fall River, in the Harbor Mall parking lot, where I stopped to deposit a paycheck so we could put gas in the car.


Next stop: Stop and Shop for gas. Alas, they were closed. Unthwarted, we moved on to Taco Bell so Tyler could get some quesadillas. Not wanting to risk death by stomach ulcer, I opted to get Wendy's. After ten minutes of waiting in line and not even getting to order yet, I lost my patience, and we shot up the road to stop for gas.

I made the mistake of making Captain Kirk get out and pump, so of course, one of his exes pulled up to the next pump. Ten minutes of awkward conversation later, we had a full tank, and made our escape. We were almost ready to go ghost hunting, but I still had no food! So, we detoured into the very same parking lot we started in so I could get Burger King. Now we were ready to go find us some ghosts!

Our first stop for the evening was Route 44 in Rehoboth, so we could track down the Red Headed Hitchhiker, made famous by Charles Turek Robinson's book "New England Ghost Files." Unfortunately, we couldn't seem to find any information more specific than that he showed up on that road in that town, so we decided to be thorough and drive the entire length of it. Twice.

Now, the first thing you should know if you decide to go looking for the Hitchhiker is that 90% of the stretch of Route 44 that resides in Rehoboth is occupied by businesses and homes. Car dealerships, package stores, and restaurants litter the roadside frequently enough that it's hard to find a stretch of road that looks like the kind of place where someone might find a hitchhiker, much less a phantom one.

About two miles from the Seekonk line, however, there is a long corner that looks feasible for a haunt, with fields and forests stretching out beyond the guard rails. We slowed down for this leg of the trip, pulling over a few times to let impatient drivers get by. No dice. We made another pass, pulling over to take pictures and scan the area with the night vision monocular. After about ten minutes of sitting by the road, we gave up and decided to move on to our second landmark of the night: The Hornbine School.

First, it's worth noting that nothing traumatic ever happened in the Hornbine School. It didn't burn down with a class trapped inside or anything that might justify the rumors that the school is haunted by phantom children.
Second, it's also worth noting that all roads that lead to the Hornbine School are terrifying, pitch-black, twisting country back roads that wind through old, run-down farms and overgrown woodlands, all of which look like they were taken straight out of a particularly effective horror movie.
We were genuinely creeped out for the entire ride through rural Rehoboth. We decided to leave the radio off so that any little sounds would scare us half to death, genuinely wanting something terrifying to happen, even if it was just a deer jumping out of the woods. Alas, no such luck. The trip to the Hornbine School was painfully uneventful, and upon arrival, we discovered that the windows had been boarded over for the winter, so even if there were creepy ghost children giving us the stinkeye from the windows, we wouldn't have seen them. Disappointed, we didn't even get out of the car, agreeing to return in the summer when we might actually be able to see something.

Conclusion? A return trip in better weather is needed. Possibly with Scooby Gang costumes.

Get Your Comic Published In Five Easy Steps

1. Find a famous person to latch onto and ride the coattails. Bonus points if that person is a relative!

2. Trace your favorite comic panels and use them with little or no alteration. I mean, the originals sell thousands of copies worldwide, right? Maybe you can borrow a little of their success!

3. Take distinctive character designs from popular manga and mash them together, or mask their blatant plagarism with minor alterations. How could Greed from Fullmetal Alchemist look cooler? Give him a facial scar! How could Kenpachi from Bleach look any cooler? Give him white hair and change his clothes! Who is more popular in horror manga than Alucard from Hellsing? L from DeathNote! Put Alucard's mouth on L and you'd have a bloodsucking, crime fighting machine that will fly off of shelves!

4. ????

5. Profit!






So, for those who haven't heard, Gene Simmons' son, Nick Simmons, recently got a comic published in which pretty much every panel is a trace from Tite Kubo's long running hit series Bleach. According to this livejournal community, Kubo has been made aware of the situation, but wether he or VIZ (who own the U.S. distribution rights to Bleach) plan to take legal action is still unknown.

Kirsten Dunst is a Japanophile? Not Really. She's Just Pretending.

If you didn't already hate her for her run as Mary Jane in Spiderman, now she's taking being an annoying tool in a whole new direction: cosplay, and molesting random passersby in Akihabra. All while performing an overproduced cover of a song with racist connotations about the very people she is invading. Talk about class.

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/music/watch/v19838048wrs3Dgdy


Her 'serious business' sex-face is pretty hilarious, though. Especially with the blue wig.

Geeking Out at The Garden Show

8:30 am is not a time of day I see frequently. However, my mother wanted to go to the Rhode Island Flower and Garden Show. So, armed with a camera, I headed out into Providence.


It didn't take us long to get to the convention center (which was familiar territory, as it's the home of Digital Overload and attached to the Providence Place Mall via skybridge), but the line at the door was long, and full of old ladies who smelled like funeral homes, so we both had migraines before we even made it in the door.

Once we were in, the layout was confusing and poorly labeled. For example, all of the lectures were in one room, but finding it took nearly twenty minutes because the maps they handed out at the door didn't have the lecture room clearly marked. Everywhere we turned, the elderly stopped short in the middle of narrow hallways and made getting to where we needed to be all but impossible. And to make matters more frustrating, when we finally made it to the fifth floor for the lecture, it turned out to not be what was described at all. What was billed as a lesson in landscaping on a low budget turned out to be an hour long slideshow in which a professional landscaper gloated about his own personal backyard. The transformation was stunning, but after about ten minutes, we guesstimated that between the amount of plants he'd purchased, the ten foot waterfall he'd built, the well he'd dug and the amount of heavy machinery he'd rented, he was already pushing a quarter of a million dollars. We decided to leave and go check out the floor show.


Now, my mother and I usually go to the Boston Flower and Garden show, which is considerably larger and on a higher budget, so I tried not to get my hopes up. She had been to the Providence Show with a friend last year, and insisted that, though smaller, Providence was just as high quality.

Neither of us have a clue what the hell happened between last year and this year.

The main exhibition hall of the convention seemed extremely promising. We entered into a massive, darkened chamber full of strategically lit concept gardens that blew our minds for about twenty seconds, until the old couple in front of us tripped on their own feet because the lights were far too dim for a con catering primarily to housewives and the elderly. We were surrounded by old people who couldn't seem to operate their own feet, screaming children who didn't want to be there, pouting teens who were being dragged along by their excited mothers, and husbands who could not more obviously have better places to be.


There was no order to the movement through the exhibition floor, which would be fine if it wasn't so cluttered that two people couldn't easily pass through any of the walkways simultaneously. Claustrophobia winning out, we wriggled our way past the first fifteen feet or so of the massive room.

It was then that we realized we had already seen every concept garden they had.

This may have been the most depressing moment of the convention thus far. Concept gardens are easily my favorite part of garden shows, and this one was sorely lacking. I'm not sure what the overall theme was supposed to be, either. There were cactus topiary arranged to look like elephants, park benches covered in old records, buckets full of musical instruments dumped in piles of wildflowers, a beautifully rendered gothic cemetery covered in gerber daises (Poe is surely crying in his grave over that nightmare) and some of the most run-of-the-mill garden accessories I've ever seen outside of Home Depot. There was even a concrete lawn deer. I'm not kidding. My grandmother's neighbors have sported one of those eyesores for years. In fact, in high school, Tyler and I decided to wage war on their horrible lawn ornaments by loudly attacking them with makeshift spears. I have a hard time believing that that horrible thing has been there long enough to have come back in style (were they ever even in style to begin with?). We were one Mary-On-A-Half-Shell away from the average Tiverton, RI front lawn.

From this, we were unceremoniously dumped into a small playground for the surely bored children that had been dragged to this godforsaken place. It was small, it was shabby, but at least it wasn't boring anyone to tears simply by existing. Thus far, it was probably the best part of the convention.

Once we passed the playground, we had somehow been transported to a flea market. Now, don't get me wrong, no convention is complete without vendors. But for every booth selling something relevant to the theme of the convention, there were three trying to sell you car insurance, homemade tchotchkes, and some As-Seen-On-TV kitchen device. Of the easily 30+ booths there, we found one selling seeds, three selling plants, and two selling cement lawn ornaments. The only other pseudo-appropriate booths were home improvement vendors loitering near their demo hot tubs, vinyl siding, and windows.

As we turned to leave, however, I heard one of the depressed husbands who had been shuffling along beside us chime up in pure joy.

"Oh my God, it's Mr. Spock!" he beamed.

And there it was.


Part of what was easily an eight foot tall and twelve foot long sand sculpture we somehow had missed on the way in, wedged between the playground and the concept gardens, a sculptor was putting the finishing touches on a massive and startlingly detailed portrait of Leonard Nimoy giving the vulcan salute.

I must have spent twenty minutes watching the sculptors work with the biggest grin on my face. On one side of the sculpture, Mr. Spock accompanied Fred Flintstone, the Woodstock logo, and a surfboard in a Mt. Rushmore-eqsue tribute. The ends of the work were bookended by Rosie the Robot holding up the Apollo 11 and Big Bird leaning against a tower with 'Groovy' etched into its side. The reverse side proudly displayed the Beatles, James Bond, and more of the Sesame Street crew.
Freestanding from the main sculpture were several peace signs and hands, including a pair that were playing an etch-a-sketch, and an incredibly detailed rendition of Neil Armstrong. The rock behind him (also made of sand, of course), had the 'one small step' quote etched into it. The only element of the entire scene that wasn't carved in sand was the american flag beside the astronaut. The sign just outside the massive sandbox declared that the work was done by Steve Topazio of Sandtasia.
After a considerable amount of gawking, my mother finally dragged me off to another panel. This one, though boring as sin for me, was at least informative, and she got out her notebook and listened intently while I putted around online on my cell phone. Once that was over, we did the best thing we'd done all day: we left the convention center to go to Charley's Subs in the mall for lunch, and we didn't go back.

what does the internet sound like?

There's a pretty interesting website, CodeOrgan.com, which converts website code into music. Type in a URL and go!

Spy & Pyro

The guys of Albino Blacksheep have done it again! If the embedded video is cut off, check it out here.

Robert Pattinson Allergic to Vagina; Teenage Girls Worldwide Mourn

JustJared has brought a particularly hilarious interview with the Twilight star to my attention. Normally, I couldn't give a shit less about this guy, but the headline caught my eye.

you can read the entire article at Details Magazine's website, but be warned, the only thing more NSFW than the language is the accompanying photos.

Star Trek sketchdump

happy valentine's day! have some TOS scribbles.

The Last Airbender

check out the trailers on the official site right here.

You can get a good look at Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, Iroh, and Yue in Trailer #2 (and can I say how big of a fan I am of the firebender armor?)




however, if you want a peek at Appa, check out the Big Game TV Spot. It's literally about 2 seconds, but if you look carefully, he's in the top left corner at 00:09.







points of interest from the two newest trailers:

- HOLY SHIT IT'S APPA! spot on!
-Sokka and Katara look better than I expected. Also, the fairly legit-looking Inuit outerwear is a plus. (anyone who cries about their coats not being blue is getting a punch in the face).
I mean, look at her. LOOK AT HER. I don't even LIKE Katara as a character and I'm stoked.
- IROH! definitely the biggest design change. I'm not sure how I feel about the dreads. Zuko, on the other hand, looks pretty good. I'm glad they decided to take the facial scar down a notch so as not to risk him looking like a juvenile Bond villain. I'm hoping that they kept his season 3 hair in an attempt for consistency (although if it doesn't change every 5-10 episodes, what will the Ember Island Players make fun of him for?). So far, the Fire Nation is looking pretty good.
I mean, look at the Dragon of the West, doing his stuff in what I'm assuming is the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole. It's difficult NOT to be happy with that. And whoever that is on the left appears to be in Fire Nation attire, and if you look very closely, has sideburns. Zhao? I hope so!

-YUE. Damn. As a character, I found her to be a somewhat boring little MacGuffin, but her design was always great. I'm happy to see her translate well to live action.


Yes, M. Knight Shamalamadingdong is still directing it, but I have to say, I'm impressed thus far, and the killing blow to his films has always been the shit writing, not the directing. Ignoring the trademark poorly-planned twist endings, everything he's made thus far has been pretty visually interesting. Also, the original creators of the show are still attached to it as executive producers, so I'm hoping they managed to keep his screenplay in line. I'm going to go with 'cautious optimism' on this one.