Gareb Shamus's Super Awesome Philly Star Trek Party A-Go-Go 2010

I ducked into the Wawa on Arch Street as I was walking back to my car after my trip to Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con, and as I stood in line to check out with several con-goers, including one cosplayer who looked like the Snooki Polizzi version of the Silk Spectre, I saw that one of them was wearing a “Wizard World Tour” shirt from 2005, listing a titanic FIVE dates.  Today, the slate is upwards of one dozen shows. My, how times change.

While Wizard has changed their branding to ensure that easily confused rubes will think they’re buying tickets for Reed Exhibitions’ (the promoter who produces New York Comic Con, Chicago’s C2E2 and the epic nerd pilgrimage that is San Diego Comic Con) shows, they have not done much to put the ‘comic’ into Philly’s con. Only Zenescope and Avatar had a presence at the show that was outside of  individual creators’ tables in Artist’s Alley.  Instead, a large swath of the show floor was populated by TV and film stars – James Marsters, Ernie Hudson, Brent Spiner and John DeLancie being the biggest draws and having corresponding mobs of fans in their wakes, not to mention the massive queue for Sir Patrick Stewart’s signing.  Vendors appeared to be doing a brisk business as well, and I myself made off with about $200 worth of comics for a fraction of that price. I also grabbed some forthcoming commissions from Jaime Fay (of the third volume of Sentinels and the upcoming NeverMinds, both with Rich Bernatovech) and Avengers Academy artist Mike McKone.

Though I heard I several complaints about the length of the line to get in the door and some ire about increased ticket prices, this year boasted the largest Saturday crowd I’ve seen at this show in the past three years. The lines for the marquee panels, like the Bruce Campbell Q&A or the Star Trek: TNG panel, were expansive. Again, the big draws in the panel programming had little to do with comics apart from Raven Gregory’s “Writing Comics” panel.  As someone that generally goes to cons for the programming and not for the celeb autographs or the shopping experience, it feels a bit like this show isn’t ‘for me’ anymore, but the majority of the con-goers seemed to think Wizard is doing something right.  The crowd had some inventive costumes on display – with lots of Ghostbusters love, too.

As part of the vaunted ‘Con Wars,’ Wizard’s shows are changing their character, but the change just might be for the better in terms of turning attendance and engagement around.

Uneducated Thoughts on the 2010 WWDC Jobsnote

The new phone feels more like an evolution than a revolution. This did not stop Jobs from continually positioning it as a “revolutionary” device. I’m starting to understand where this “reality distortion field” comes from.

I think the positioning of the phone was impacted by the Gizmodo leak. Without that leak, Jobs gets a big gasp and applause from the mere visual introduction of the new form factor and look. Since that was already widely seen and known beforehand, he had to lean harder on the feature set to get the kind of reaction he wants from a Jobsnote–excitement, making way for keen interest, bursting into unadulterated awe, all from the Apple acolytes.

This phone will probably be successful, but I don’t know if it’s exciting enough to impact general consumers in a significant way. If you’re going to buy an iPhone anyway, or thinking about it, it’s a no-brainer. It will impact a lot of fence-sitters. It will probably push those holding out for some kind of Verizon iPhone to just grit their teeth and suck up AT&T’s crappy service. But it’s not the kind of device that makes Joe Wifi drop his Droid in the trash and run out to the nearest Apple store.

Part of that is because I think the reality of the front-facing camera right now and the Facetime app is nowhere near the fantasy that Apple depicts in its new commercial. Unless you and all your loved ones near and far will be there on June 24 to buy the new device, you won’t have anyone with which to schedule time to view your face. The API is open so it’s a safe bet that before the end of this year, there will be a third-party app that brings the front camera to older iPhones, or the web. Until then, your face will be lonely.

That being said, I kinda want one.

I’m starting to wonder about whether Apple should tweak its product refresh cycle. I had no expectations of any big iPad news yesterday, but you know there’s gonna be a new one, and with the tablet market heating up, I’m betting it’ll be out within a year.

But when? If you release it a year from the iPad announcement, you get late January. To me that’s not an appealing time for any kind of product refresh. There’s nothing to hook it onto. Then again, I don’t think there’s anything in particular to hook the iPhone’s traditional June refresh onto.

It might make sense to refresh the iPods and iPads at the same fall event, or to push the iPad refresh to like August, to maybe grab some back-to-school business…which could push the iPhone refresh up to like March, maybe in conjunction with an iOS refresh.

That begs the question of whether there will be another new iPad before the end of this year, maybe incorporating some of the tech we saw in iPhone 4–the retina display, cameras, possibly even a new form factor. That would goose the iPad for the holidays, and maybe lower the low-end price point on the older version, making it a more appealing gift. Unlikely, but the slim possibility is fascinating.

As you may already know, I want an iPad too.

Consumerism as an interactive spectator sport is fun. In a blowhard kinda way.

Two Quotes From Ian Sattler

“We have learned we need to be more mindful of things in the future.”

-Ian Sattler – DC Nation Panel, Heroes Con 2010

“We don’t see it that way and strive very hard to have a diverse DCU. I mean, we have green, pink, and blue characters.”

-Ian Sattler – DC Nation Panel, Heroes Con 2010

I didn’t get to attend Heroes Con this year, so I don’t know if this is the most insulting doubletalk out of the DC Nation panel, but the reaction it seems to have gotten from some of the panel attendees seems to suggest that it was. A close second, the notion that it’s okay to kill Ryan Choi because DC has The Great Ten (a team whose 10 issue miniseries was chopped short after seven issues). Not said was that The Great Ten “are like ten Ryan Chois, people. Seriously. Suck it up.”

Carleton College students transform observatory into R2D2

via dbsw.tumblr.com

Posted via web from Pop Geek

In "The End," How I Found Lost

The final episode of Lost was a profound experience for me.

Maybe it was for you too, or maybe it was a disappointment. Maybe you thought it was kick ass in spots, confusing in others, and were just cheering for Frank Lapidus the whole time anyway, so whatever. 

You’re probably right. I don’t care. Because I don’t think the final outcome of Lost is really about what we can agree was cool and what wasn’t, and the questions we all had in our heads and our hearts that we were hoping would be answered. In other words, if you watched that and really felt pissed that there wasn’t an adequate explanation of the fertility god statue, you missed the point–or at least, I think you missed the point, but that’s up to you, really. You take what you can carry. You leave behind the rest.*

The last fifteen minutes of Lost are many things, no doubt different for each of us, but one thing I think they were for me is a metaphor for how we are meant to come to terms with the show itself. For six seasons, we have watched and wondered; we have speculated and vented; we have engaged a complicated and frequently convoluted “mythology” and a rich tapestry of characters, both of which occasionally beat us about the face and head (OH JESUS NOT ANOTHER JACK EPISODE WHAT IS IT WITH THIS GUY ANYWAY). 

At the end, there aren’t a full set of answers. There isn’t even an acknowledgment of many of the questions. The show has dealt with what the show will deal with. It’s about moving on–accepting what you’ve been given (or not) and waking up the next morning. Or something. You take what you can carry. You leave behind the rest. 

(The only speculation I’ll offer from my personal mental wanderings is that the final scene in the church suggests that what we saw was specifically Jack’s spiritual closure, and not everybody’s; kind of a shame, if true, since all the characters deserve the same fulfillment. But in a sense, from our perspective, they got it; we just perceived it through Jack’s experience. 

(He was always the man at the head of the action, many times placed in the leadership position of the group; he was a doctor, dedicating his life to the health of others. He had issues with his own father, true, but also needed to know that he had brought all these people he became entangled with to safety and good health, away from the island. 

(So we see somewhat incongruous things, like Sayid with Shannon instead of Nadia, or Charlie and Claire cradling Aaron; and we miss other things, like Penny and Desmond’s child. Surely some of these details would be more fulfilling for those specific characters than what was shown? 

(But not to Jack. Jack fought long and hard, up to the very end, to insure the safety of the others with whom he shared the island experience. In his final moments before walking into the light, he knew everyone from that experience was okay. I presume, as long as I’m speculating, that there are similar moments, maybe in similar churches, waiting for all the island’s castaways, eventually.)

At the end of the day, this series was always about the characters as well as the mythology. This last season did explore and resolve some of the mythology issues, but the amount of time devoted to this “sideways” universe made it clear that in the final summation, what would matter most for this show were the characters, and not the many, MANY bits and pieces of plot that floated around them. 

So if you didn’t get the answers you wanted, so what? Did you enjoy the experience of watching the story unfold, of speculating about what may be going on with the island? Did the episodes themselves satisfy beyond the simple progress on some imagined straight path toward a never-to-come final rundown of why everything was? 

Does life work that way? Do you think you’re moving through your days toward some last conclusion someplace where every event of your life will be explained and contextualized into a neat and tidy megaplot? I realize the writers have been seemingly asking us all this time to care about the island’s complicated mythology, but as the show concluded, they were gently guiding us down a different path. If you choose to follow or not, that’s up to you. You take what you can carry. You leave behind the rest. 

In that sense, it reminded me very much of the exceptional Sopranos finale. There was closure to be found; there were plots that ended, characters whose arcs resolved. But in the end, it was as sloppy and unexplored as life itself. What mattered was emphasized and shown; what didn’t matter was ignored. That’s how it goes. 

That two hours of television, for me, was this amazing spiritual thing that glistens and curves in the memory. It also had some goddamned kick ass stuff in it, like the Jack vs. Locke showdown, and Lapidus getting that plane off the ground, and Desmond uncorking the bottle. Jorge Garcia deserves an Emmy simply for his reaction to Jack dying in the cave. Terry O’Quinn needs one too. 

My friend Jeff Stolarcyk said of Lost that “any answers that we’ll accept are going to be the ones we discover for ourselves.” That is the true gift of this show, and this final episode. We are being handed an opportunity to reflect upon six years of crazy and amazing storytelling, and then realize how it all came down to people helping people, and learning to move on, together. Take what you can carry. Leave behind the rest. 

This is a show that has invited us over its six seasons to bring our own questions and ideas to the table, and which at its end gives us one final idea to ponder. You can speculate, analyze, discuss; you can unpack the ways in which the eventual abandonment of the many questions within the mythology was disappointing. In the end, it wasn’t about that. The Beatles had it right: “And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.” 

Move on, into the light. 

* That recurring bit is a shameless swipe from a great Bruce Springsteen song, “Land of Hope and Dreams,” which I think fits this final episode and its message well. It’s what I want to believe about the world and life itself, neatly fit into around eight minutes and change. 

Posted via web from Pop Geek