We're a geek culture podcast and blog covering video games, music, food and more. We are the kinds of people who evangelize whatever we are into - it could be anything - but it's usually pretty geeky. We're casual, conversational, NSFW and hopefully interesting. We hope you enjoy it.
I've been doing a ton of video game inspired drawings recently on panoramic watercolor paper (6"x18" to be exact) and by popular demand I am now offering them all as high quality gicleé prints! We've got prints inspired by Super Mario Bros 3, Earthbound, Metroid and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. Each print is archival quality on heavy Rives stock and they all came out gorgeous if I do say myself. These are all editions of 10 and are selling fast, so be sure to grab yours while you still can! Click the images to go to their respective pages on Etsy where you can zoom in and get more information if that's the kind of thing you like to do.
Here we have a stark contrast to the robots I encounterdaily which rumble on kicking up dust, flipping through corroded copper wire and Soviet-era munitions. Instead, a blend of Daniel Faraday and GQ, clinical demonstration with minimally exposed innards. This fits everything I want in modern day robotics, an amalgamation of polish and lack of control bottled to order, ID card still unbent and shiny.
Feeling a bit wary about the impending holiday season? Not really sure what to get your geeky significant other, or maybe you just inhereited a butt-load of money from a recently departed relative and need stuff to spend that sweet sweet cash on? Well then! We've put together a little holiday gift guide for the geek in your life, perhaps it will help. These are all products that either we have used or have some sort of informed opinion about. They've got the Weekly Geek stamp of approval.
USB Turntable - This Ion USB turntable is actually the one I myself own. It's inexpensive and attractive in your home theater setup, and is the perfect starter turntable for someone who's into music and wants to start collecting vinyl (the superior medium!) While most vinyl albums come with a little mp3 download code these days, having the USB turntable is a great solution. Buy an album, rip it, and feel superior in your versatility.
The Elements of Cooking - This book is like the bible for the hobbyist home chef. Full of professional kitchen terms and wonderful essays on the basics of cooking, Michael Ruhlman breaks it all down into easily digestible pieces. This is a great book for beginners to get their feet wet, but is also a fantastic resource for the experienced or semi-experienced home chef.
A nice chef's knife - This Chroma knife is actually the chef's knife I use on a daily basis. Having a high quality, super sharp knife is essential to your kitchen. There's nothing like having high quality tools. You'll cut yourself less and cause yourself less emotional pain with a sharp knife, and I haven't really found any better than these. Not only are they sharp, they are designed by Porche and are damn sexy. Spend the money on a nice knife and it will last you forever.
Achewood - There's no better gift than the gift of truly excellent literature. Introducing someone to a work that they'll relate to and cherish not only makes you an awesome friend, but it makes you the awesomest friend. Achewood is my personal favorite comic strip, and it should appeal to anyone who listens to the podcast or reads the site. It's a bit weird at first, but this hardcover volume is the perfect introduction. Beautifully printed and annotated, it's a great primer into one of the best imaginary worlds created in the last 10 years.
Tokyoflash Watches - Most people don't buy watches for themselves, and most nerds don't know from fashion. Tokyoflash watches are ridiculously cool. As a matter of fact, they are so cool that anyone who wears them instantly ascends into an energy being and lifts off this mortal plane. They are that cool.
V-Moda Vibe Earbuds - There's nothing like having a great pair of headphones. These V-Modas will last you a few years and are high-end earbud quality for a mid-range price. The nylon cord is a plus - it won't bounce like crazy while you walk, and is less prone to tangling. Love these earbuds.
360 Chatpad - With the new Facebook and Twitter Xbox 360 updates, you're probably going to need a better method to input text. We've got a couple of these chatpads for our controllers at home and they're pretty handy and unobtrusive.
Arduino Starter Kit - If your geek is interested in electronics, there's no better way to get them addicted to programming LEDs than with an Arduino starter kit. All the components you need to make flashy blinky things are right here. Careful though, it's a slippery slope. Pretty soon they're going to be hacking into all sorts of things around the house for the sake of "improvement". Your toaster will never be the same.
Wall Decals - These decals from Blik are an easy way to add art to your walls. They're large, restickable and quite clever. These Super Mario decals can turn your room into world 1-1 and honestly, who wouldn't want that?
Weekly Geek "Huzzah!" T - Clothe your loved one in the best geek apparel there is. And as a bonus, you get to support the best geek website there is. ;)
Every week we feature our community members' excellent photography (or art, or whatever) culled from our Flickr pool. Why not submit your own geeky or otherwise interesting photos to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool? You'll get your photo featured on the site with the added incentive that I'll pick one photo a week to win a Weekly Geek T-Shirt. Runners up get some sweet Weekly Geek swag. Click here to join!
Wind Waker-styled Adult Link Custom Figure by RandomCreations
Every week we feature our community members' excellent photography (or art, or whatever) culled from our Flickr pool. Why not submit your own geeky or otherwise interesting photos to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool? You'll get your photo featured on the site with the added incentive that I'll pick one photo a week to win a Weekly Geek T-Shirt. Runners up get some sweet Weekly Geek swag. Click here to join!
Serious Eats recently ran a series called "Hot Dog of the Week" where they featured a vast and delicious-looking array of regional tube steaks. Each of these posts was accompanied by an illustration of the featured dog by Hawk Krall. Mister Hawk (or Mister Krall, as the case may be) is now selling prints of a few of the more notable depictions, including the Tiujana Dog seen above. Bacon-wrapped goodness.
Each print is 27$ (+S&H) and you can snag a selection of four for $100. Check 'em out here.
Every week we feature our community members' excellent photography (or art, or whatever) culled from our Flickr pool. Why not submit your own geeky or otherwise interesting photos to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool? You'll get your photo featured on the site with the added incentive that I'll pick one photo a week to win a Weekly Geek T-Shirt. Runners up get some sweet Weekly Geek swag. Click here to join!
Weekly Geek video correspondent Andrea documents this year's Seattle BrickCon festivities. BrickCon is a gathering of grown-ups who still love creating with the ubiquitous little things, with an exhibition floor displaying expertly pieced together models. The event also has community building activities, presentations and other LEGO-related activities.
Check out Andrea's video which shows off some impressive LEGO mecha, minifig dioramas, and even some of Angus MacLane's LEGO CubeDudes (featured previously on SuperPunch). Looks like a fun event for the hardcore LEGO fan.
A couple of years back Lifehacker ran a seriesofposts displaying user-submitted shots of readers' Go Bags (what you grab and haul every day) and their disgorged contents. I sat entranced for hours, leering over this voyeuristic yet impersonal display of things usually hidden away. Eventually I made my own.
More recently several editors shared the contents of their laptop bags and a similar spell was cast, I simply had to know each and every gadget and velcro wrap and oh my my is that a stainless steel thumb drive?
Hit the jump for a taste of madness. Or better yet share your own Go Bag over in the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool.
Every week we feature our community members' excellent photography culled from our Flickr pool. Why not submit your own geeky or otherwise interesting photos to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool? You'll get your photo featured on the site with the added incentive that I'll pick one photo a week to win a Weekly Geek T-Shirt. Runners up get some sweet Weekly Geek swag. Click here to join!
Back in 2007 when we first heard about Tesla Motors opening up dealerships around the country, I never thought I'd get an opportunity to actually drive one. Tesla is a company fighting hard to bring the electric car to mass market, starting with their Tesla Roadster. The roadster could be described as a sporty little golf cart on steroids, but then you'd be missing the point. It's a remarkable piece of technology, but prohibitively expensive at around 100k. Tesla plans on releasing a sedan in 2011 which will be moderately less expensive, but the price doesn't really matter. What matters is that a car company has emerged that wants to do something different.
I'm going to get to the test drive in a second. First, I want you to go to the Tesla website and see what dealerships are near you. Is there one within 50 miles? Good. Now call them. Schedule a test drive. It is so very very worth it.
Now, I am by no means a car buff. I drive an efficient little Scion xA and I am quite happy with it. I don't have to do anything to it to make it go beyond filling it with gas and giving it the occasional oil change, it just goes. I value this in an automobile beyond all else. I want it to just work. The Tesla definitely fits this bill. The roadster basically just has one moving part to its engine: the spindle. The engine is fully electric and is powered by a bank of lithium-ion batteries, the same ones that power this laptop I'm typing on right now. Instead of having to replace one giant battery (and and expensive one in the case of the Prius) you can take them out individually and get them replaced. The batteries supposedly have a 8-9 year lifespan, however, so you probably won't be replacing them any time soon. The Tesla is also completely upgradeable. Because it's mostly electronics and software, you can literally just go in and get the firmware flashed as technology advances and improve the efficiency of your car. Say Tesla develops a way to squeeze a bit more life out of the battery, or a bit more performance out of the already incredible engine, just go into your dealership and tell them to make it so. There's even iPhone apps being developed that interface seamlessly with the car.
It never requires an oil change. It costs around $4 to fully recharge and a single charge lasts around 250 miles of straight up driving. You can get a charging station installed in your garage which charges you fully within 3.5 hours. It comes with a portable charger which you can use at any RV hookup, or as the dealer I talked to pointed out, any Target store (Target apparently always has an RV hookup in the back). It is electronically locked at 125mph, though the dealer tells me it can go up to 200mph. That is ridiculous. As a matter of fact, everything the dealer told me sounded completely ridiculous. I was literally laughing out loud as he told me this stuff because of how magical it all sounds. Like Tesla the man, Tesla the car company seems to be tapping into some mystical space energy to achieve their goals. I was geeking out hardcore.
But how does it drive? I can honestly say that I have never ridden in a ground vehicle that could accelerate so fast, outside of a roller coaster. When you go zero to sixty in five seconds, you can really feel it. This car has G-forces as you accelerate. It's an incredible thing. The steering feels a bit tight and the deceleration is slightly awkward but I can tell it would be easy to eventually get used to. It has no real shifter, as it has no real gears. Driving the Tesla is as easy as driving a Power Wheels.
If you have a chance, I highly recommend trying one of these out. Even if you feel like you could never afford one, you need to experience what is essentially the car of the future. You owe it to your 10 year old self to drive an electric car named Tesla. This is the future, man. Live it. See how happy Jinny is? You could be this happy too.
Every week we feature our community members' excellent photography culled from our Flickr pool. Why not submit your own geeky or otherwise interesting photos to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool? You'll get your photo featured on the site with the added incentive that I'll pick one photo a week to win a Weekly Geek T-Shirt. Runners up get some sweet Weekly Geek swag. Click here to join!
Every week we feature our community members' excellent photography culled from our Flickr pool. Why not submit your own geeky or otherwise interesting photos to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool? You'll get your photo featured on the site with the added incentive that I'll pick one photo a week to win a Weekly Geek T-Shirt. Runners up get some sweet Weekly Geek swag. Click here to join!
I recently participated in Tenacious Toys and Delicious Drips' custom toy show Who's Da Bomb?!, where we were tasked to customize Toy2R Kozik Mini-Bombs any way we like. Seen above is my entry, Beppy the Happy Bath-o-Sphere. Check out the rest of the entries on Tenacious Toys' site, there's some spectacular customs from over 80 amazingly talented artists.
As astute readers may have noticed the Penny Arcade Expo was last weekend, and it took Seattle by storm. I attended with our fearless editors Chris and Jinny and was left as amazed and exhausted as they were by the whole event. I got to see some great games, stunning cosplay, and meet some cool new people.
As the exhaustion prevented me from getting into fresh new foods yesterday I humbly submit a few of my favorite photos from PAX in lieu of an article on cooking. Click through below to see my favorite photos, or check out my PAX 09 Flickr set - and of course check back next Tuesday for your regularly scheduled dose of dish!
You may be familiar with Tettix, the incredible soundsmith who composed the Weekly Geek theme song, but you probably aren't aware of the extent of his geekery. It takes someone with serious nerd cred to compose something like Technology Crisis, but the nerd gene runs deep in this one. Here's Tettix's costume constructed for this weekend's DragonCon. Wander from Shadow of the Colossus never looked so good.
When: Friday, September 4th @7:00 PM Where:Six Arms
We're going to be at the Six Arms brewery on Friday, giving out Weekly Geek buttons and stickers, eating some burgers and enjoying a pint. Won't you join us?
A gentleman in Connecticut had been buying magazines- mostly men's magazines- for several decades, from the forties to the early seventies- and deconstructing them. He would take them apart, and then he would make a new magazine from the remnants of several, arranging the pages to highlight certain stories and downplay others. He would staple the pages back into the cover, and then he would cross out whatever stories weren't in his version with a wax pencil. Finally he would stamp his name on the cover and number the whole thing, presumably for his "library."
Quite a sharp contrast to the scanned comic backups I've been consuming this month. Absent are the yellowed pages, dog-eared spreads, and general abuse / defacement that naturally translate to affection. I'll take what I can get out here but it's like comparing a fluorescent buzz to the sun.
I agree with Mr. Kupperman (certainly you own and treasure a copy of Snake 'n' Bacon, right?) in the value of his score, an inorganic snapshot of a different generation combined with one member's personal interpretation by way of amorphous grease pencil and personalized stamp.
As I type my external hard drives grow hot to the touch and I imagine the satisfying drag of a melting was pencil across its aluminum chassis, making my mark should any happen across it decades from now.
You can see more of these scanned covers, an admitted source of inspiration to one of my favorite comic authors, here.
When Alexei Pajitnov first ordered a load of bricks from Karpov Abramtsevo's workshop, workers there were wondering who could be interested in all those right-angled blocks. No one in 1985 could have imagined those concrete Tetriminos would become world famous and constitute Russia's deadliest weapon against Reagan's America.
A series of images by Marc da Cunha, for AMUSEMENT, depicting the industrial underpinnings of some of our most treasured videogames; revealing the toil, sweat, and craftsmanship that goes into their construction. We may call these games but, as you can see, they are indeed serious business.
T-shirt winner! Phaedra Computing - My two year old geeking out - by skinnerofmonkies
Every week we feature our community members' excellent photography culled from our Flickr pool. Why not submit your own geeky or otherwise interesting photos to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool? You'll get your photo featured on the site with the added incentive that I'll pick one photo a week to win a Weekly Geek T-Shirt. Runners up get some sweet Weekly Geek swag. Click here to join!
Every week we feature our community members' excellent photography culled from our Flickr pool. Why not submit your own geeky or otherwise interesting photos to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool? You'll get your photo featured on the site with the added incentive that I'll pick one photo a week to win a Weekly Geek T-Shirt. Runners up get some sweet Weekly Geek swag. Click here to join!
I know a bunch of you lovely humans are great photographers, so why not submit your geeky or otherwise interesting photos to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool? You'll get your cool or otherwise geeky photo featured on the site and win a T-Shirt and some Weekly Geek swag. Click here!
This is a robot attached to the brain of a silk moth, sensory input transferred and interpreted to mechanical activity by way of electrodes and algorithms. Scientists in Tokyo are experimenting with this insect-machine hybrid as a method to "steer" the apparatus towards whatever it is a silk moth is attracted to.
I work in sight of unmanned aerial vehicles being piloted from half a world away, satellite dishes belch terabytes not 20 feet from where I now type, and I feel as though the Gibson I've been reading is more in line with this tech than anything seeing action in my locale.
And why shouldn't it? The same cockroaches I battled daily in college have been walking this earth for something like 300 million years and their ilk have learned a few things along the way. Equally useful is the lack of insect interest groups, exclamatory protests of cruelty and abuse absent as the test subjects lack the anthropomorphic features and perceived intelligence that spare larger mammals from the test slab. Why create something new when a time tested, nature approved template is available in ready supply?
Today's coal mines demand new canaries, chitinous exterior a plus.
Further reading exposed me to existing projects, such as the DARPA funded HI-MEMS which is
"...aimed at developing tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing micro-mechanical systems inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphosis."
We have scientists growing insect cyborgs folks, taking advantage of an existing evolutionary process to yield low cost, highly effective hybrid machines to do our terrible bidding. Surely it won't be long before swarms of these Insectobots patrol our airports seeking out chemical traces of explosives or casually infiltrate the previously private world of high level commerce like in The Fifth Element.
I, for one, embrace our future Insectobot overlords.
__
Each morning brings a bevy of information as the substantial girth of my RSS reader swells the night prior, periods of inactivity marked in unread counts that threaten to overwhelm no matter how much careful feed pruning is enacted. As such there are few sites I check religiously, daily content that is actually anticipated and consumed in a manner opposite the pulse and glide technique I employ for sites lacking the same prestige.
Man, we're only seven days into August and there's already a fresh steamy load of weird-ass search terms actual people have actually used to actually get to this site. It just boggles my mind thinking about someone taking the time to sit down, open up a search engine and type these phrases in, expecting results. Then clicking on this website, perhaps with a glimmer in their eye, hoping for it to deliver exactly what they were searching for.
My notes are in bold. Here goes:
mysterious dance of chaos and love
what do you do when your bored of your old video games get boring but you dont want to sell any of your game (Google won't help your existential crisis, friend.)
anime about poop
chris furniss loves david bowie (it's true, I do! This one is relevant.)
wish fye video store have quest for the seven holy dildos
why are republicans fat?
you computer man fix my pants
order a tapeworm
crusties
titanc saling game
paranoid bumper stickers
how to act a indie (I DEMAND TO KNOW HOW TO ACT A INDIE)
Submit your geeky or otherwise interesting photos to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool and get your cool or otherwise geeky photo featured on the site. Prizes are involved. Click here.
Unlike a few of my Weekly Geek cohorts, I grew out of Magic: The Gathering in my early teen years. For whatever reason, the game simply couldn't hold my interest in the same way it kept my friends captivated for years. However, in spite of having no real use for them, my cards safely tucked away in their plastic sleeves, subsequent cardboard boxes, and redundant boxes for boxes of cards. At some point during the period spanning then and now, my boxes of boxes of sleeved Magic cards made their way into the hands of cardsharp magii who would make better use of them.
It is only now I have realized the grave error of my ways.
SomethingAwful forums member, TheYellowAnt, demonstrates a particularly clever use of Magic cards which serve only to take up the space of former Magic: The Gathering players that have yet to part with their monstrous menagerie of cardstock creatures. With a craft knife and a little patience, the sleeves upon sleeves of cards become artwork any geek could be proud to hang on their wall.
For those still locked in card combat, TheYellowAnt's crafty ingenuity serves as the smartest life-counter I've seen, which you can see in the video below.
It's no secret that I enjoy dressing up like video game characters at PAX. This year, I'm dragging Jinny along for a joint Fallout cosplay. I'll be posting the costumes (and instructions on how to make them!) but first, let's talk accessories. Nothing ties a costume together like attention to detail, so I decided to whip up some little Fallout doo-dads to stuff in our belts. I've made some Nuka-Cola caps, a bottle of Buffout, and some Med-X. And you can, too! Here's how to do it:
Print the template and cut out the cap tops. Paint some rubber cement on the underside of the paper and on the top of the bottlecap. Let it dry. This technique allows for maximum adhesion. Be sure to get the edges! Touch up the sides with some red paint. Use a spray sealant (matte or gloss, doesn't matter) to make them shine.
Med-X
You'll need: Small syringes, spray paint (get the stuff formulated especially for plastic)
Print out the template to the size of your bottle. I've made the template a standard size, but you can shrink it to fit any size bottle you'd like. If your bottle isn't black, you can always spraypaint it. Buffout bottles in-game are black with a white lid, but really any bottle will do. Use the same cementing technique for the label you used on the bottlecaps. Fill with candy and give to small children! They'll love the sweet delicious taste of Buffout.
Up next: Wasteland wanderer costume, Raider costume and some nice shiny glowy Nuka Cola Quantum. Stay tuned!
The Weekly Geek community's lookin' goooooood. Last week we asked you to submit a photo of your favorite outfit in the Weekly Geek flickr pool to win one of these great shirts from Robit Studios and you delivered! We've got a bunch of classy lookin' listeners, I tell you what.
Danton D. in customized Up 3d glasses and a kickin' pixellated paisley hoodie
Zonugal, in his "Confidence Outfit"
Lior, who really really loves Spiderman
Chesh, whose epic moustache perfectly compliments his classy vest and tie combo
n0brein, who apparently lives in a fashion catalog
Rocco Anthony, who rocks the newsboy hat and vintage tee
Second place goes to n0brein, who will receive whatever shirt the first place winner didn't choose!
Thanks to everyone for your participation, it's nice to see geeks breaking the baggy black t-shirt stereotype. Winners, please give me your mailing address so you can get your prize.
I just completed my entry in Tenacious Toys' recent Mini Bomb Custom Show Off. I am calling him Beppy the Happy Bathysphere. Though he's more like a little submarine guy than a bathysphere. He's based off of a Kozik Mini Bomb, and was augmented with Sculpey and paint. The coins even glow in the dark! Because I am a nerd like that.
I changed the design of the Mini Bomb pretty drastically for this one, but I really wanted to do something a bit more sculpted, a bit less just painting on a bomb shape. I didn't want to draw a face on the bomb and call it good, you know? This was also the smallest custom I've painted yet, and really forced me to be more careful in my detailing. So much fun, so much delicious learning. Many thanks to Tenacious Toys for starting this!
I like to think that Weekly Geek listeners are a fashionable bunch. We take more care than the run-of-the-mill geek when it comes to appearance, even if we just slap on a t-shirt it's usually a dang good one. That's why we're teaming up with Robit Studios, purveyors of fine hand-printed apparel for our first Geek Chic contest. We've got two great shirts to give away, as well as a handful of Weekly Geek stickers and buttons for the runners-up. The winner will get their choice from these two lovely shirts, Chance of Reign and Old School. Second place gets the shirt the first place winner didn't choose. So, how do you win these things?
Show us your best outfit and post it to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool. We're not looking for wacky, we're looking for style. What do you have in your closet that makes you feel like an absolute rock star? It doesn't have to be a suit and tie, or anything formal. The winners will be chosen on July 16th. We'll pick out whoever looks the fanciest.
In addition! If you're interested in purchasing some of the shirts from Robit Studios, use the code weeklygeek at checkout for 10% off! Not bad, yo.
Lively Scene from "Ponyo on the Cliff by the sea" by jasohill
Submit your photos to the Weekly Geek Flickr Pool and get your cool or otherwise geeky photo featured on the site. Prizes are involved. Click here. (Oh god please no more Perler bead creations unless they are COMPLETELY AWESOME)
For your approval, a steam engine of enthusiasm in black, defining light source replaced with twin beaming orbs framed in plastic. I give you mine own Muse, Adam Savage.
A while back the nefarious Ross linked Mr. Savage's talk on Obsession, in which our hero reveals not one but two rainy-day craft projects gone awry that exemplify his own power of focus and palpable will of force. He proceeds to make something out of nothing.
It's times as these, sinking in a pool of writer's block and isolated at a timeless swamp, that I listen to Savage talk and find inspiration. In the above clip he speaks on Failure, an odd topic in light of his own widely recognized success in model production, special effects, and, of course, television.
Still Savage's relation of professional failure, often in the grip of a crushing deadline, only makes me like him more. If he has failed, and persevered, then maybe so can I.
Both talks bear watching. If not now then perhaps later when you need a lift, a middle-aged fiery-haired catalyst to jump start your creative doings. Save this on your iPod, a virtual defibrillator to be applied in case of emergency.
It's a new month, which means a brand-new batch of crazy search terms people actually used to get to this site! Raise your hand if one of these is yours. Don't be shy, own up to your freakishness. Freaks. Truth be told, I'm probably messing with some pretty dark forces by posting these search terms. I may be creating an infinite search loop within the space-time continuum. Given our generation's love for all things post-apocalyptic, this shouldn't be too much of a burden for you.
how did orville redenbacher invented popcorn
geeks by the pool
question mark suit free stuff
how do you pronounce lior
gay and geeky retarded cartoon characters
video clips funny video hidden camera positions and very embarrassing for adults only
fiction stories about mutant chocolate bar causes controversy in local grocery store
I've been getting requests for this for some time, and they're finally here! We've got a whole batch of Weekly Geek stickers fresh from the printers, ready for your waiting hands. Stick 'em on your computer, on your car, your cat, whatever! Put them all over the place, but be sure to take a photo of where you stuck your sticker and submit said photo to the flickr pool.
How do you get one of these awesome, hand-cut stickers? Just make a donation via Paypal for at least a dollar (to cover postage) and I'll ship a couple out to you. An easy and fun way to support the show, for sure.
Once upon a time, a year prior to a certain bombing of a certain harbor named after the June birthstone and Roosevelt still ruled over our fair republic with an iron fist, a clumsy teenager named Archie Andrews was crapped out on the comics stage as the retarded brainchild of a man with the rather dubious name of "Bob Montana". For over 60 years, the badly written, poorly illustrated and cheaply printed Archie Comics is still churned out monthly. Like buttermilk, nobody knows who consumes it, but somebody's got to, because they sell it.
Well, actually, I take that back. That's my churlish Internets persona talking, the spawn of a 21st century irony, a childhood where Archie's Riverdale was a hopelessly backwards neverland of malt shops, Model T jalopy races and that weird crown-hat-beanie thing that Jughead wears. Truth be told, I have something of a fondness for the absolute brainless mush of Archie and Pals, and I'm known to occasionally pick up a digest. That they're called "digests" is somewhat bizarre, since "digest" implies that somewhere there are individual copies bought and sold on a regular basis.
Still, there's an art to reading Archie Comics. First off, you must know the rules of this strange little continuity:
- Archie as a teenager in school exists concurrently with Little Archie, Paranormal Investigator Archie, and whatever the hell happens over in the "New Dynamic Look" Archie. Time is always subjective, but usually at least 15 years behind the current fads. You know something is no longer cool the second Betty adopts it: they're just now getting in-line skates.
- Archie and friends are basically commedia dell'arte interchangeable characters. In one story, Archie can simultaneously be the most popular kid in school and an utter graceless buffoon. Do not try to rationalize characterization. You will fail.
- Archie exists in a permanent purgatory, which he can never escape, no matter how hard he tries. Jughead is the omniscient overlord of this universe. Betty and Veronica are his tormenting demon-harpies, ripping his flesh off and his heart out daily. Like Phantasm, Archie thinks it will all be over when he dies, but in truth he reincarnates as a hideous troll being named Little Archie and the process starts over again. Actually, the Phantasm motif is pretty constant throughout, only Veronica's father is Angus Scrimm.
- Archie has met The Punisher. And it was played straight without the slightest ounce of irony. Even weirder, Riverdale was The Punisher's first stop on the way to Gotham City. Figure that out.
This month, however, it has been announced that Archie will finally choose between Betty and Veronica, and he has chosen Veronica. This has happened before, although not with rings, with one of the greatest cop-outs in history: Cheryl Blossom. While I won't go into the details of the inane Cheryl Blossom's dunderheaded existence, just suffice it to say that it was bad. 61 years in perpetual adolescence and finally the eternally chaste Archie is going to get some.
I can't help but think he's making an enormous mistake. I guess it's not my Hell to live. Unlike Gilligan, who had the Skipper to fall back on when forced to choose between the down-to-Earth Mary Ann and the sultry (but utterly unlikeable) Ginger, Archie has not only Betty and Veronica to choose, but also had to weed out such non-runners as Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats.
However, in these woeful economic times, maybe Archie is making a good choice. Veronica is wealthy and clearly capable of keeping him in chocolate malts and sweater vests for the rest of his unholy and miserable existence. Archie's life is almost Miltonian in agony. Any small bit of comfort he can get is probably more than enough to keep him from staring into the brutal realization that Jughead is the unflinching demi-lich Acererak in his own personal Tomb of Horrors.
I think I have sufficiently pumped more nerd in this opine than has ever been delved. Feel free to print it out and shellac it to a chair for future generations to behold.
Ultimately, I suppose that I have a soft shell for Archie because no matter how hard it tried, it still never changed. It was a solid rock of stasis in a steady stream of cultural devolution. I'm not sure I feel comfortable with Archie Andrews having a sex life (although I suppose... no... premarital sex has clearly never been an option for the poor guy, although I'm sure there are plenty of pics on /y/ about it). I don't think the world is ready for the the sex-howl that shook Riverdale.
Being a success on the internet should be like the equivalent of waking up one morning as Quasimodo: people should be throwing rotten cabbages at you as you are wheeled down the streets, you should be chased into cathedrals with pitchforks and torches, you should be found dead in a Parisian catacomb, clutching the dessicated corpse of your beloved Gypsy woman of choice.
You should never want internet success. This is why the internet sucks, and blogging sucks, and Twitter sucks, and everything sucks and you suck and I suck. Sucky sucky suckaroo Magoo.
First off, the lack of journalistic ethics is somewhat dumbfounding in the blogging community. Do they still call it "blogging" now? It seems like that would be one of those terms that would be outdated 5 days after it's coined, like "Surfing the Information Superhighway" was circa 1994. Blogging requires absolutely no training, no statement of sources, and relies almost solely on gossip and hearsay. If you're a conservative blogger, 99% of your "articles" will be thinly cribbed Free Republic rants. If you're a liberal blogger, 98% of your "articles will be thinly cribbed Huffington Post rants. Yes, you're 1% better than conservatives, libbies. If you're like me, and you are an e/n opine writer, a full 100% of everything you say or do has already been covered by Seanbaby and Matt Carracappa in 1998, or if you're very clever maybe you can slide in some Charlie Brooker and hope nobody notices your source, and you dread the inevitable when Brooker finds your blog and mercilessly reams you on Screenburn.
The agonizingly annoying thing about blogging, from the perspective of reading, is that so many bloggers actively push the idea that they somehow found these sources themselves. Everybody in the show really does think they're that interesting. Even worse, bloggers have a tendency to supply each other with ego boosts. The highest goal of your average low-on-the-totem-pole blogger (sup?) is to get linked on Kotaku or Wonkette or whatever your favorite blog happens to be, which fill their daily crap quotient linking to other blogs. It's a vicious circle, inescapable except by just not caring.
Second, just not caring.
You're not allowed to be seen caring what other people read on your blog, all the while actually caring what everybody thinks about it. There's the tendency toward the Geocities Site Hit Paradox. If you mention you want site hits, they never come. Nobody wants to read the opinions of a shameless hit gigolo. It's sort of a subtle undercurrent of etiquette that sort of reminds me of the various unstated court politics of the Gormenghast novels. We're all a bunch of toadying fops, standing around waving lacy handkerchiefs and hoping, praying that somebody will notice how much we don't care if they notice us.
There will be no spoilers in this article. It's the very core of geekery. It's the glue that holds our universe together. It's canon, and it is quite an important part of the myriad mythos we love and cherish. The way a mythos' timeline fits together, the relationships between characters, the locations they are able to explore, everything that makes a world feel fleshed-out and real lies in canon. It's also one of the things that drives us geeks mad, especially when an "official" source seems to get it wrong. But should canon really even matter to you?
For writers on a series or a movie based on a beloved franchise like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or Star Trek, the franchise bible is quite important. It facilitates the writing process, helping you remain in the world you set out to tell a story in. For the end-user (reader, viewer, listener, whatever) it is what makes the world feel real. While all fiction requires you suspend disbelief to some extent, canon is the thing we can always go back to and point a finger to when something doesn't seem to make sense. If a story breaks its own rules, it feels disingenuine - like the author maybe isn't taking it as seriously as you want them to.
But then... what about Star Trek canon? The new movie is a reboot of the franchise. All new actors playing old characters meant to refresh the canon. Yet, it's also the first time in Star Trek history where I haven't heard much discussion about where this new bit fits into the canon. Perhaps that's not all bad. This weekend I was checking out the wiki page dealing with Star Trek canon and found this little nugget:
See, people can easily catch us, and say "well, wait a minute, in 'Balance of Terror', they knew that the Romulans had a cloaking device, and then in 'The Enterprise Incident', they don't know anything about cloaking devices, but they're gonna steal this one because it's obviously just been developed, so how the hell do you explain that?" We can't. There are some things we just can't explain, especially when it comes from the third season. So, yes, third season is canon up to the point of contradiction, or where it's just so bad... you know, we kind of cringe when people ask us, "well, what happened in 'Plato's Stepchildren', and 'And the Children Shall Lead', and 'Spock's Brain', and so on -- it's like, please, he wasn't even producing it at that point. But, generally, [canon is] the original series, not really the animated, the first movie to a certain extent, the rest of the films in certain aspects but not in all... I know that it's very difficult to understand. It literally is point by point. I sometimes do not know how he's going to answer a question when I go into his office, I really do not always know, and -- and I know it better probably than anybody, what it is that Gene likes and doesn't like.-- Richard Arnold, 1991
Another thing that makes canon a little confusing. Gene R. himself had a habit of decanonizing things. He didn't like the way the animated series turned out, so he proclaimed that it was not canon. He also didn't like a lot of the movies. So he didn't much consider them canon either. And - okay, I'm really going to scare you with this one - after he got TNG going, he... well... he sort of decided that some of The Original Series wasn't canon either. I had a discussion with him once, where I cited a couple things that were very clearly canon in The Original Series, and he told me he didn't think that way anymore, and that he now thought of TNG as canon wherever there was conflict between the two. He admitted it was revisionist thinking, but so be it.-- Paula Block, 2005
Star Trek's revisionist history dates back to the creator himself, who repeatedly threw things out, brought new things back in, and denounced his own creations as "non-canon". So what's the big deal? Are you annoyed when a series breaks its own canon? Or do you just suspend your disbelief a little while longer?
It's always amazed me how similar horror is to comedy. For example, attempting to present horror on television is an incredibly difficult thing to pass by the network Standards and Practices, since horror is based on shocks, exploiting existing social mores, and imagery that some might consider to be offensive. Horror makes us uncomfortable, because horror shows us what it is we DON'T like. To work successfully, horror needs to be a reaction to what the majority of society rejects.
Vampires, for instance, have ceased to be horrifying to us. Originally, Dracula was a horrifyng example of what people in the 1890s West found scary: backwards and corrupt aristocracy, the liberated woman, the fear of sexually transmitted diseases, and the breakdown of the established post-Enlightenment social order. Dracula was scary because he was all the things the 1890s gentleman might find repellent. Frankenstein's monster, similarly, was a manifestation of early 19th century's worries about the amorality of the inevitable extensions of the Age of Reason's search for progress, and there is a very good reason why it took the wife of the second most prominent British Romantic to write it. The monster represents authority gone wrong, authority that translates into fear, because we have to deal with it.
Like monsters, comedy requires a working knowledge of what it is the majority of the audience finds valuable. Comedians and monsters both rely upon the knowledge of communal truths to operate successfully. The comedian is a living monster, only one we want to know, instead of one we don't. We invite the comedian to make us laugh by pointing out the things we know to be true. Jon Stewart and the kids from South Park are characters that ask questions and speak to authority, questioning it. In the circus, clowns are divided into White Face and Auguste (Red Nose), the two primary characters of the circus clown system. White Face represents the character who makes us laugh because he's smarter than the system, Auguste represents the character who rebels against that system. White Face usually takes the pie to the face, and Auguste usually throws it.
The interesting interplay between Batman and his nemesis, The Joker, reflects this weird dichotomy. Batman is a force of authority outside of the control of mundane confines, and The Joker is a reaction in the opposite extreme, the ultimate avatar of chaos. Horror and comedy meet, and because they are so thinly delineated, they become compelling. The 1960s Batman show was an example of taming the horror... the 1960s culture was no longer afraid of authority, and so Batman became a source of comedy. It wasn't until the Reaganite/Thatcher era that authority became something to be scared of again, and Batman took on new relevance, and The Joker returned to his psychotic roots.
The worst thing in the world is when attempts at comedy don't even try to question authority. Circus clowns have ceased to be funny because they are now a cultural institution, completely unresponsive to the desires of the audience, and have mutated into a common childhood phobia. Whereas generations ago, the clown might have been a visual grotesque, it has now become an uncomfortable form of stasis. The clown hasn't had innovation in nearly a century, and ceases to be amusing.
Comedy Central's Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire is a bit like the circus clown. It's a painfully enormous, overwrought and too desperate exercise in nerd-fan-wankery, of the kind that usually happens in bad sprite comics. I can only assume that Comedy Central assumed they were going to get a Blackadder-esque romp through High Fantasy, but what they got was... something else entirely.
The concept is that Krod Mandoon is the Mary Sue of somebody, and the story is about his team of D&D adventurers of various offensive cultural stereotypes trying to take down the evil and cackling Chancellor Dongolor, played by Matt Lucas, the tedious half-star of Little Britain. Yes, "Krod" is "dork" spelled backwards, and "Dongolor" is a name that basically represents the high-water level of comedy you're going to expect here. Like every good D&D party, there's the dumbfoundingly black wizard, the teenage sex fantasy rogue, a wacky half-human sidekick and, yes, the gay cleric.
Little Britain, by the way, is basically an exercise in which two Oxbridge graduates mock those who need the least mockery: the poor, the gay, and the mentally challenged. The show is utterly puerile trash of the highest order, and yet Krod Mandoon seems to top it. It's really quite amazing if examined from a purely humorless, ironic level. It's basically the Hoover Dam of Unfunny, a gigantic structure built solely to restrain funny from bursting forth.
The whole of Krod Mandoon consists in playing up various high fantasy/D&D tropes, while not doing any of them very well. Krod Mandoon, played by Sean Maguire, is a very well acted source of physical buffoonery, but because Sean Maguire is so damningly attractive, the comedy is short lived. Half the first episode consists of Krod, shirtless to expose the admittedly splendid torso of Mr. Maguire, berating his astoundingly attractive girlfriend for wearing a skimpy costume. If Krod was a little less attractive, and his girlfriend a little less sexy, the conceit would work. Instead, we get an episode of The OC in the middle of what is essentially a parody of Xena:Warrior Princess.
The villain, Dongolor, sits in his palace most of the show and much of his "comedy" revolves around him killing various henchmen non-chalantly as he explains, ad nauseum, how he was more popular than Krod in school. Dongolor would be an interesting character if he wasn't so fucking annoying and plagiaristic. He's basically a word-for-word rip-off of Mike Myers' Doctor Evil, and Matt Lucas' horrendously unlikable sort of comic whinginess is so stupidly painful to watch that it just comes off as agonizing.
The whole show is like this... we're supposed to identify with Krod, who is clearly the Mary Sue character of a fairly interesting, yet unseen, 17 year old nerd. His friends are the characters that a particularly unimaginative group of tabletop gamers would roll up in 20 minutes, and the villains are so ridiculously ugly and sociopathic (yet played for laughs) that they're just as, if not more so, unfunny.
The offensiveness of the supporting cast is at a level unseen. For example, the black wizard is so urban that every word he says is in a Chris Rock impression. The gay character, named Bruce (of fucking course), is mincing and limp-wristed, and so annoying that it becomes even worse when Krod displays obvious homophobic behavior around him. Even Reno 911, which thrives on the consistent mincing behavior of the outrageously funny Lieutenant Dangle, justifies this transgressive comedy by making Dangle the most intelligent and relatable character in the cast. Not so here. Krod seems utterly broken that Bruce is the prison boyfriend of his beloved mentor, and makes repeated pointed remarks about not wanting him around. If these are the characters of unseen D&D players, they're all very young, very shielded, and likely living in Orem, Utah.
The crux of this litany is this: comedy, in the case of Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, has been flipped on its ass and has turned into horror. Authority isn't questioned in this show. The whole show sneers down, as if through the monocle of a 17th century fop, at those who society has mocked for so long and so hard. Racism, homophobia and sexism isn't questioned, it's encouraged by the character of Krod, who has no problem whatsoever engaging in all three at once while the writers try to cast him as a sensitive character. For a network that has some of the most progressive and thought-provoking shows in current rotation, this is just unbelievably painful, not even hitting the level of transgression that it thinks it's aiming for. Staring at this brutally and unrelentingly anti-comedy "comedy" is an instance in staring straight into the face of Hannibal Lector, who is juggling and telling knock-knock jokes, or possibly a jaw-droppingly bizarre re-edit of the Masters of the Universe movie.
Last week we received an interesting mailbag from WANTED outlining a particular flavor of displeasure I completely relate to. While the origin of my own ire varies, the frothy foam that flies from my gaping maw like so much volcanic ash as I vent primal anger is very likely the same.
That scene in Swordfish with the (wine/dancing!?) coding cube, the magic image enhancement flaunted in so many episodes of CSI, and easily half the shit pulled in Hackers (alright, the rollerblades were super hot). Why does this bother us geeks so much? Lightsabers, photon torpedoes, and time travel are gravy but damn the production that allows our hero's clip to magically hold 500 rounds.
Examples of such deviancy permeate every genre, doubly so if an area you happen to have as a profession is the topic abused. For WANTED it was the impossible image enhancement, for me its just about any military film of late. Hell, seeing characters in BSG with their uniforms all open and disorderly was enough to make me cringe. And they were in the future. Fighting robots. In space.
Just as gross exaggeration fuels frustration, a square hit on a niche topic lends incalculable credibility. One such example is the 7-part HBO mini series Generation Kill.
It actually took me the better part of six months to track down Nester, the mascot for Nintendo Power magazine between 1989 and 1993. The first attempt to contact him, via his agent, ended in disaster when it turned out that the address given me was actually a slaughterhouse in Arizona. After hiring a private detective (at Chris' personal expense no less... whatta guy), we finally tracked down the man that for four years stood as the gateway between the obfuscated world of Nintendo's products and the common man.
Facing Nester is an exercise in suspension of expectation. He is a broad, bespectacled man in his early 30s, the only remnant of his child-star presence being the roundish head that made him famous. I catch up with him at an undisclosed location in Tacoma, Washington.
SECKSCAB: It's been twenty years since you premiered in Nintendo Power, as a sidekick to Howard Philips in the "Howard and Nester" comic. Do you still keep in contact with Howard?
NESTER: Sadly no. I haven't seen him since he left Nintendo in 1991. I heard he was working for Lucasarts.
SECKSCAB: Apparently. Wikipedia agrees.
NESTER: I never got to say goodbye. One day he was polishing the gigantic brass Shigeru Miyamoto statue, and the next day he was gone. His desk was completely atomized, after blinking three times.
SECKSCAB: That's... odd.
NESTER: It was like he never existed. Or if he had, it was like he was killed with the Silver Arrows.
SECKSCAB: Were there any other strange occurrences at Nintendo that you can recall?
NESTER: I don't really want to talk about what they did to Donkey Kong.
Awkward silence.
SECKSCAB: So, you left Nintendo in 1993. What have you been doing since then?
NESTER: Just trying to keep afloat, I guess. We try to keep things turning here in Nester Headquarters. I did return on a consultancy basis in 1996 for Nester's Funky Bowling on the Virtual Boy.
SECKSCAB: I'm sorry, I was not aware...
NESTER: Not many are, sadly. Michael Jackson was the only one who pre-ordered it.
SECKSCAB: Really? Did he send you a note or anything?
NESTER: I think he was dismayed at the "Virtual Boy" not exactly turning out to be what his imagination assumed it to be.
Nester sips the cup of coffee that I purchased him, and looks somewhat saddened.
SECKSCAB: What was the high point of your stardom?
NESTER: Referring to my genitals as "The Rumble Pak".
SECKSCAB: Nice.
NESTER: Feel free to use that. Hasn't worked for me in fifteen years.
SECKSCAB: Do you still play video games?
NESTER: I do, yes. I have a Death Knight on Ethelon named "AwesomeKillz", if anyone wants to hit me up. We have a Tabard now. Now accepting all classes and levels, seeking serious players with no drama.
SECKSCAB: So you like World of Warcraft?
NESTER: Keeps me busy, ever since my wife left me. It's just me and the WoW and the Social Security Administration these days.
SECKSCAB: I'm sorry, I was not aware you were married.
NESTER: Twice. I have a son now, Lester.
SECKSCAB: How old is he?
NESTER: He's four years old, (Amy Schultz; localization editor for HAL) is keeping him hostage for the time being. Apparently I'm a "deadbeat dad". So the judge says.
SECKSCAB: That's... er... what was your favorite game you ever reviewed?
NESTER: What the hell does it matter, man? It's all blown to Hell. It's all over. Nester the man is a broken shell and a failure. A heartbroken supertanker full of misery and regret. My spirit has been crushed, every day is a roaring success if I can find the gin.
SECKSCAB: I had no idea.
NESTER: I'm kind of bleak these days.
SECKSCAB: Obviously.
NESTER: No need to be snarky, man. I know the score. I know the motherfucking score. There's something fishy going on in Maniac Mansion. Grab the remote control on the third floor to summon Robo-Duck. It's a bad night for a curse. Dodongo dislikes smoke.
Nester is nodding back and forth oddly, as if his whole equilibrium is off.
SECKSCAB: So then, do you have any projects for the future? Anything that the fans of Nester would like to hear about?
NESTER: I am going to lay a gigantic dook in about an hour. Inform the press. I will accept the laudatory praise of the universe with all due humility.
With his fifteen minutes up, Nester returns to the Suncoast Video where I found him lurking.
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USB Turntable - This Ion USB turntable is actually the one I myself own. It's inexpensive and attractive in your home theater setup, and is the perfect starter turntable for someone who's into music and wants to start collecting vinyl (the superior medium!) While most vinyl albums come with a little mp3 download code these days, having the USB turntable is a great solution. Buy an album, rip it, and feel superior in your versatility.
The Elements of Cooking - This book is like the bible for the hobbyist home chef. Full of professional kitchen terms and wonderful essays on the basics of cooking, Michael Ruhlman breaks it all down into easily digestible pieces. This is a great book for beginners to get their feet wet, but is also a fantastic resource for the experienced or semi-experienced home chef. 
A nice chef's knife - This Chroma knife is actually the chef's knife I use on a daily basis. Having a high quality, super sharp knife is essential to your kitchen. There's nothing like having high quality tools. You'll cut yourself less and cause yourself less emotional pain with a sharp knife, and I haven't really found any better than these. Not only are they sharp, they are designed by Porche and are damn sexy. Spend the money on a nice knife and it will last you forever.
Achewood - There's no better gift than the gift of truly excellent literature. Introducing someone to a work that they'll relate to and cherish not only makes you an awesome friend, but it makes you the awesomest friend. Achewood is my personal favorite comic strip, and it should appeal to anyone who listens to the podcast or reads the site. It's a bit weird at first, but this hardcover volume is the perfect introduction. Beautifully printed and annotated, it's a great primer into one of the best imaginary worlds created in the last 10 years.
Tokyoflash Watches - Most people don't buy watches for themselves, and most nerds don't know from fashion. Tokyoflash watches are ridiculously cool. As a matter of fact, they are so cool that anyone who wears them instantly ascends into an energy being and lifts off this mortal plane. They are that cool.
V-Moda Vibe Earbuds - There's nothing like having a great pair of headphones. These V-Modas will last you a few years and are high-end earbud quality for a mid-range price. The nylon cord is a plus - it won't bounce like crazy while you walk, and is less prone to tangling. Love these earbuds.
360 Chatpad - With the new Facebook and Twitter Xbox 360 updates, you're probably going to need a better method to input text. We've got a couple of these chatpads for our controllers at home and they're pretty handy and unobtrusive. 
Arduino Starter Kit - If your geek is interested in electronics, there's no better way to get them addicted to programming LEDs than with an Arduino starter kit. All the components you need to make flashy blinky things are right here. Careful though, it's a slippery slope. Pretty soon they're going to be hacking into all sorts of things around the house for the sake of "improvement". Your toaster will never be the same.
![Enterprise_meet_Star_Destroyer_by_Kwindu[1].jpg](http://weeklygeekshow.com/img/Enterprise_meet_Star_Destroyer_by_Kwindu%5B1%5D.jpg)
