An Aggregate of Diverse Topics
Dec 15As a nerd who is not a hardcore Trek fan, I have to confess that the new Trek trailer (which isn’t exactly new, is it?) gets me going a bit. As an artifact of the way I viewed TOS, I don’t think I’ve ever really had a grasp on the character behind Kirk, nor have I ever really had it explained to me. There’s something perfect about that very first scene in the trailer that communicates who Jim Kirk is to me, and he’s a guy I think I like. The rest of the trailer tries very hard to communicate this grand, epic sentence, and I like its trailer-appropriate stings of sturm and its accompanying drang (it stimulates the part of my brain that sneaks into Michael Bay movies). However, all of the subsequent fireworks are kind of dross to me after watching some cowboyish little kid drive an incalculably valuable classic car off a cliff for no apparent reason.
If you find Grant Morrison’s work on Batman and/or Final Crisis difficult to follow, you may want to invest in the recently solicited 3-pack of Blank Comic Books. Not to make your own, but to let your mind get invested in a story that it can follow without suffering psychic damage. As to Batman RIP, it was really a bit of a non-ending, no? It wasn’t bad at all (and by that I mean that I think it’s quite good, not just the stock, dismissive “not bad,” but expecting more from it wasn’t unreasonable.
Though I have generally broken up with DC Comics, I still maintain that I will fight anybody who dislikes New Frontier.
Who is Fake Dan DiDio? Who cares? BUT — the heavy-handed, thinks-its-witty-but-actually-isn’t tone of the updates makes me think that it might actually be Triple D himself.
Hearing that One Tree Hill sire Mark Schwann is developing the new Melrose Place is causing quite the hubbub (is that still a word? 23 skidoo!) in the lushly appointed Alert Nerd offices. It won’t be good, but will it be so bad it’s good? We’ll be sure to give you a full accounting.
Oh, and the amazing amazingness that is Grok #3 drops tomorrow. It features the complete lyrics to the Ewok Celebration Song. And that’s only on one of its 69 GIANT SIZED pages.
Grok the Vote: The All-Important Dairy Farmer Vote
Nov 04Moreso than last week’s seminal “The Jackal” this is my favorite bit of pie-in-the-sky West Wing super-idealism ever. We’ll never hear this speech from a real candidate, and that’s a damn shame.
Grok The Vote: President Cosby Addresses the Nation on Healthcare Reform
Nov 03Friends and fellow Americans,
When I was growing up in Philadelphia, one of the kids we’d play with was named Albert. And Albert was fat. So fat. Albert was so fat that we all called him, “Fat Albert.” Not maliciously, you understand. We called Harold Tall Harold because he was tall. We were consistent. That reminds me of the time that Harold and I got on the J bus by accident. It was Memorial Day, and my mother had sent me to the store with a dollar fifty to get a package of hamburger buns so my Dad could grill up some bacon burger dogs. It was seven blocks to the store, but Harold was in a wheelchair from the time when Junior Brown knocked him over the side of the overpass when we were playing street basketball. We all hated Junior Brown. Because we were poor, we had to make up our own games, you know, so I invented a game where everybody stood against the fence with their backs to one kid, and this one kid, see, would pelt the kids with trash and rocks. I called that game “Junior Brown.” Kids today with their video games and their Pokemons and DVDs, they aren’t being raised correctly. Instead of neglecting your kids inside, open the door and neglect them outside. Anyhow, Fat Albert was so fat that he’d have to come into my house through the garage, and as you could hear him coming up the walk – hear him because the earth shook as he took each step: “BOOM” “BOOM” “BOOM” “BOOM,” “Hey Hey Hey, Missus Cosby! Is Bill around? We gonna go play Junior Brown!” – the refrigerator would hide in the closet.
Now, Fat Albert is a drain on our nation’s healthcare funding on account of he keeps getting into humorous accidents because he’s so fat. So what we need to do my friends is increase awareness and promotion of fitness programs in our schools. I have also been asked to remind you all there’s nothing healthier or more patriotic than Jell-O Jigglers.
Good night.
Grok The Vote: Nerdpolitics
Oct 29My life experience is that nerds, as a general rule, distrust politics almost totally.
As we kick off our special election coverage, I think it’s a phenomenon worth thinking about.
Part of it may be some seething resentment about elections being little more than popularity contests, whether the vote’s being cast for President, American Idol or Sophomore Class Treasurer. Hell, Cloris Leachman JUST NOW got booted from Dancing With the Stars and we all know that her longevity on the show had little to do with her rug-cutting ability.
But beyond that basic unfairness, it’s our (geek) media that has poisoned us against government. Superheroes exist to do the job that the government cannot or will not do. OMAC’s corrupt, futuristic World That’s Coming is intentionally not that far away from the world that’s here, and the idea that the only way to save the world is to have Buddy Blank tear it down – there’s an attractive simplicity to it, much like the Objectivism in Ditko’s Question and Mr. A stories.
The cinema we watch, too, is rife with irresponsible government. No matter whether it’s action, sci-fi or fantasy, the idea that the system doesn’t work is at the very foundation of the genre. Star Wars, our ultimate sacred cow, is a six movie fable about the consequences of bad governance.
This is why geeks love Ron Paul. This is why we don’t bother voting. This is why Transmet fans have pegged every Presidential candidate in the past decade as “The Smiler†– because we know that the institution produces Smilers but that the Spiders that keep them in check don’t exist, can’t exist in an ecosystem of influence peddling and blatant pandering.
Another reason? As a bloc, we frequently find ourselves at odds with The Man, be it over the use of white spaces or videogames’ status as murder simulators (in some capacity beyond Jefferson Stolarship totally killing on back-to-back Bon Jovi tunes in Rock Band. That doesn’t count).
I think for cynic nerds like me that this election has been energizing, what with a longshot candidate who wants to change the way things work in Washington on the cusp of victory. And I could probably be talking about either party there.
So there’s my stodgy diatribe welcoming you all to Grok the Vote – coverage continuing through November 4. Keep reading.
