The only thing worse than running zombies – zombie Superman
Aug 19I’m here to say, I don’t know that I like Blackest Night, in principle. Obviously, something is going to save the day – this is unlikely to be some massive DC corporate meltdown, years in planning, and devastating in the way it consumes intellectual properties and franchises.
And yes, there’s a message brewing on the nature of death in the DC universe, and I await that with anticipation.
Amber Benson, 2009 Edition
Aug 19
Earlier this week, we hopped in the trusty Alert Nerd time machine and revisited a vintage Amber Benson interview from (dramatic voice) the year 2000. Today, we’re catching up with Amber Benson, 2009 Edition: filmmaker, Buffy alum, and newly-minted urban fantasy novelist.
Amber’s book, Death’s Daughter, is the first in a trilogy about grim reaper spawn Calliope Reaper-Jones. When Dad goes missing, Callie is forced to leave behind her normal girl life and venture into a fantastical world of vengeful deities, high stakes questing, and ridiculously cute hellhound puppies. There are off-kilter versions of familiar mythological figures, like Kali and Persephone. There is a prissy sidekick faun who isn’t exactly the epitome of helpfulness. There is a brain-scorchingly hot guy named Daniel who may have his own supernatural thing going on.
Why are you still reading this? You could be reading this book.
Anyway, Death’s Daughter is just the tip of the Amber Benson, 2009 Edition iceberg. She’s got both the second Callie tome and a middle-grade book, The New Newbridge Academy, coming out next year. On the film front, she and actor-musician boyfriend Adam Busch (Warren on Buffy) recently co-directed a feature called Drones, which she describes as “an office comedy with alien undertones.” And she Twitters a lot.
Somehow, in the midst of all these goings-on, she had time to chat with me over waffles. Here’s what transpired.
Tell Me About Your Character('s Problems) – Nerdly Advice
Aug 18Months and months ago, I threw out the idea of an advice column in Grok. It spun out of a conversation I had with a friend where I divulged that I was the hand that held the pen of my high school paper’s advice columnist, Henrietta Hawk (well, a hand that held the pen. Ms. Hawk was actually a small team of people). “OMG,” I was told, “you should write an advice column again.”
Depending on your particular preferences, you may choose to chortle, snort derisively or guffaw here.
In college, a good friend of mine who was involved heavily with the campus radio station coerced me into doing a call-in advice show with him – “Loveline except more funny and less helpful” may have been the way it was pitched to me. I grudgingly agreed to it, only to be saved in a perspicacious twist when said friend was thrown off the air.
Which leads me to this post. The idea I pitched to Grok is now going to make its way to Alert Nerd proper in a (semi)-regular fashion. In fact, starting next Tuesday, I hope to deliver the first installment of Nerdly Advice and continue weekly.
Why? Well I am, by nature, a meddler – mainly to distract me from my own dysfunctions. Indulge me.
What do I need from you? I need questions, quandaries, dark secrets and dilemmas. Except for “who would win in a fight between the Juggernaut and the Blob?” Anything from gaming to dating to home repair to scrapbooking to first aid to comic storage. But since it’s me answering and you asking, try to keep them as nerdy as possible.
For your convenience, you can leave your questions (or your friend’s questions or your friend’s friend’s questions) in the comments below, or you can drop me a line at nerdlyadvice@gmail.com.
Vintage Interview: Amber Benson
Aug 17
Time to reanimate the corpses of dusty interviews past in order to make way for interviews…of the future!
Well. That…didn’t sound so appealing, did it?
But, look, I promise it is appealing on many levels, because today I’m posting a circa 2000 chat with Ms. Amber Benson, a geek multi-hyphenate who seriously does it all. She makes movies. She writes books. She plays iconic characters on wildly popular nerd television series, spawning fankid passion, fanfic opuses, and rare variant action figures.
I’m posting this now because I recently conducted an all-new, all-awesome interview with Amber about her amazing new urban fantasy book Death’s Daughter, which is the first of a full-on series. That’ll be gracing Alert Nerd later this week.
But for now, let’s flash back to 2000, when Amber was just entering the collective nerd consciousness as shy, witchy Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And one fine day — before there was an Amber action figure, before Tara and Willow officially became Twillow — she talked to me about the whole Buffy shebang. Please note that I was 23 and apparently thought the enduring legacy of New Kids on the Block made for scintillating questions.
Read on, and check back later this week for the new interview, which contains lots of hyphens and little-to-no boy band content — I promise.
A Really Bad Idea: BSG “Threeboot”
Aug 17
Do we even need to talk about this? Maybe we do.
Word cruised down the Information Superhighway on Friday that Bryan Singer was on tap to produce and direct a big-screen version of Battlestar Galactica.
You may have had the same thought I did, roughly translated as “Whagahuh?” After all, the four season reimagining of BSG spearheaded by Ronald Moore and David Eick only just wrapped up its brilliant run in March. Singer and producer Tom DeSanto were in the running to helm that very reboot series back in 2001 before everything fell apart. (Drew McWeeney’s blog at HitFix broke the story on Singer’s new project, and has great background on the director’s turbulent history with the franchise.) Now Singer and DeSanto are returning to the well that they were themselves going to empty before two very talented TV creators came along and emptied it for them.
