The Tables Have Turned

PSY: Daddy

Remember a couple years ago when Gangnam Style was THE big thing for like 2 months. That was crazy!

Anyway here's a new song/video from Psy. He's doing that super creepy adult fact on a baby body thing that I can't stand. Maybe it'll work for him, probably not though. I'm sure he's still big in Korea but I can't imagine him having more hits over here in the states. Kinda like Macklemore... Wait, Macklemore is still a thing?

Well, I'll be snookered. I guess there's still hope Psy.

Merry Thanksgiving!

Hey kids, happy Thanksgiving. Remember to put some Booty in the stuffing for me.

Exclusive Links

Fox News Contributor Gets Death Threats After 'Star Wars' Joke. I'm not saying she deserved to get any death threats BUT if Katherine Timpf was to get them they shouldn't be from Star Wars fans, they should be from comedy fans outraged at her AWFUL attempt at humor. Seriously, Star Wars fans are nerds? What are you 12?

Top 5 - Xbox 360 exclusive games of all time. This is a pretty good list. I would definitely have put Shadow Complex on it over Fable III but at least they gave it an honorable mention. Also the Xbox 360 turned 10 years old last weekend. Father time is really coming for us all isn't he?

I added some fake Black Friday deals to this store's weekly in-store flyer. These are all hilarious and over the last couple days they've gone pretty viral. I'm really hoping someone shows up at a Target on Friday demanding their free Falcon.

The Absurd History of Nike Air Technology. Oh man, I remember just how bad I wanted a pair of Nike Air when I was a kid. My parents had enough money to send me to private school but not enough to buy me fancy shoes. Like I was always wearing weird European shoes like Lotto or Diadora that you could find in the bargain bin at Big 5. I'm sure that if I went to school in Turino I would have been super cool.

I think I got my first pair of Nike Air when I was like 17 or 18 and I remember how horrified I was when I realized it was just a fancy insole you could pull out of the shoe (they weren't the visible kind). What a scam.

Captain America: Civil War Trailer

Last night Jimmy Kimmel debuted the new Captain America trailer. It looks cool I guess.

Here's the real deal with Bill McNeil, the comic book mini-series Civil War, that this movie is based on, was terrible. It's absolute hot garbage. It has Iron Man and Captain America picking teams and fighting against each other for no reason. In the whole series I'm not sure a single character makes a decision that one could logically justify from the 30 plus years of comics history that predated the event. What's worse is it pretty much ruined Iron Man for the few years following it. They made him such an unbelievable a-hole..

So here we are, adapting the same story that made zero sense in the comics to the big screen, where you arguably have less time to flesh out all the characters' motivations. Good luck.

Science is Delicious

Let me tell you, if you've been making pancakes or waffles from a box WOOOOO DOGGIE, you have got to cut that out. I started making waffles from scratch and they are so much better than from a box. Also it's way cheaper. Your initial outlay for ingredients is going to be more (eggs, oil, flower, baking powder, vanilla extract, sugar, milk) but the cost per waffle is way way less. It doesn't even take that much time. MAYBE 10 minutes to throw everything into a bowl and mix it all up.

Just trust me, start making your waffles from scratch. You will thank me later.

10 Movies That Stole Their Sets From Other Films

This video from Screen Rant highlighting sets or locations that were used in more than one film or TV show is pretty interesting. I was very excited that I recognized the rooftop garden in NYC that was used in Spider-Man and Daredevil all on my own a couple months ago. Yay, I watch too much TV!

Game of Thrones Season 6 Promo

APRIL. #GoTSeason6 #GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/DSK2xZi9i9

— Game Of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) November 23, 2015

Season 6 of Game of Thrones doesn't come out until next April but why slow down the hype train? TOOT TOOT!

I'm sure there's already some dutiful blogger out there that has examined every centimeter of this picture for clues and spoilers about Season 6. The conspiracy theorist in me says that John Snow will probably play a large role in the events of Season 6, whether that be posthumously or humously(?).

Either way it should be exciting. While season 5 saw quite a few deviations from the books Season 6 should be about 90% all new story. It's been a couple years since I've read A Feast for Crows or A Dance With Dragons but I'm pretty sure there's very little from those books that we haven't already seen yet, minus the subplots that have been completely ditched. I'm sure whatever we see there will be plenty of nerd-outrage and record ratings.

Ceschi: This Won't Last Forever

Ceschi Ramos or Ceschi is a rapper I've heard before but I've never really listened too. Someone in my Facebook feed this morning posted this video for This Won't Last Forever and holy cow, what a great song. I'm definitely going to be looking up his newest album later tonight.

Swim Links

Talking Ten Years of 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' with Two of Its Stars. Good read, BUT I have one bone to pick with Glenn Howerton here. There is ZERO way Dennis isn't a psychopath. He just has to be. I understand that he thinks the character isn't funny if he's a psychopath but you tell me what's funnier. Someone that's repressed their feelings so much that they function as if they were psychopathic or someone that understands the nature of emotions but doesn't actually feel them, leaving them with free reign to exploit other peoples emotions. Also he's an idiot.

Ok, as long as he's an idiot I guess it works either way.

The 26 Weirdest Adult Swim Shows Ever. Great list. The disconnect between the Character Eric Andre played on "Don't trust the B in Apt 23" and Eric Andre on the Eric Andre Show is incredible. Like he should have won all the Oscars or Emmys or whatever awards it is they give to low rated cable tv shows.

Star Wars: Battlefront (4K/Ultra) PC. Wow... just wow. Someone give me like $2,000. Wait, make it $4,000. I need a new PC and a down payment on a car.

The fabled SNES-PlayStation prototype has been turned on and disassembled. In case you haven't heard the story behind this. Before making the Playstation Sony had forged a partnership with Nintendo that would have seen them making CD drives for the SNES and eventually what became the N64. It didn't work out and Sony took all their hardware and made the PS1.

This is what most believe is the only existing prototype. It works! Kind of.

The Ultimate Jason Williams Highlight Reel

Hey kids, remember Jason "White Chocolate" Williams? Here's 3 minutes of him breaking ankles and making defenders look silly. It's just the thing to cheer you up if you're sitting in your office wondering why the new ownership group took all the managers out to lunch but you didn't get invited.

Zoolander 2: The Zoolandering

In the long and storied tradition of posting youtube clips I haven't seen because I'm either too busy to find anything else to post OR I simply can't find anything else to post, here's the trailer to Zoolander 2. Did you know Zoolander came out in 2001? That's like 14 years ago.

Here's how long ago 2001 was. The following arists were in the top 10 of the Billboard hot 100 for 2001: Lighthouse (What?), Alicia Keys, Janet Jackson, Train (ugh), Jennifer Yopez, Matchbox Twenty (lol), Eve, Dido (who?), Lenny Kravitz, and Destiny's Child. Just missing the top 10 were Shaggy and Uncle Kracker. Zoolander was legit hilarious but I think it's says a lot about Ben Stiller's career trajectory that he's doing sequels to hits from 15 years ago. I don't know, he used to be funny, he was pretty good on Another Period and that was just a few months ago. Maybe Zoolander 2 will catch lightning in a bottle again.

Plus, Owen Wilson is still alive. That's cool, right?

Fallout 4 or Masturbation?

Fallout 4? More like Fall Out of your Masturbation Habit...

Ok they can't all be gold. Frankly I haven't even watched this video maybe it's good maybe it's not. I've been buried at work an this came up in my youtube subscriptions and I thought I'd go with it. From the description it looks like Pornhub, am I spelling that right? It looks weird... I don't know, I only use the internet for scientific research. anyway Pornhub says that they saw a relatively big reduction in traffic after the release of Fallout 4.

Good for you gamers, you can masturbate any time. How often do you get to play a massive, wildly entertaining but also wildly flawed mega release from Bethesda? Once every two or three years?

Parallel Links

Triumph The Insult Comic Dog Vs. Canada’s Ed The Sock, And The Problem Of Parallel Creation. Good article by Vince about Ed the Sock and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. I'm one of like 20 non-canadiens who is actually familiar with Ed the Sock and honestly the similarities between him and Triumph had never occurred to me. It's obvious the the guy behind Ed the Sock holds a grudge but I have a feeling it's only because Robert Smigel out puppeted him.

Conan O'Brien: Video Game Salesman. Conan has been doing these "Clueless Gamer" segments for a while now. It's funny I've never thought that much about them but they're clearly commercials aren't they? This last week they went all out with the launch of Fallout 4 and for the first time ever they included a disclaimer that said consideration furnished by Bethesda. I guess this is the ethics in gaming that GamerGate has been clamoring for?

I've never had a big problem when TV shows highlight their sponsors like this but I always appreciate the disclaimer. It's like when you're watching Hawaii 5-0 and every piece of tech they use is from Microsoft or every car is from Chevy. Just come clean with the fact that GM pays you to highlight their crappy compact sedans and lets get on with shooting some bad guys.

Time Warner Cable hopes to lure cord-cutters with a Roku 3 and cheap streaming. Hey, this doesn't sound so bad. If I was off living on my own I'd totally buy a cable plan like this. As it is I'm one of those people that sticks with cable (or in my case Dish Network) out of convenience. I watch almost everything off the DVR because of the kids. I'd probably be ok if I was just stuck with Hulu and Netflix but the sports man.. the sports. I live far enough away from the big city that I can't get local channels over the air and I'm not about to miss out on Seahawks and Sounders games.

2015: 42% of Women and 37% of Men Own a Video Game Console. Wow, knock me down with a feather. It doesn't surprise me in the least that women game just as much as men do but I am shocked that on average they're more likely to own a console.

Jessica Jones: Trailer #2

A couple days ago before I got crazy busy, Marvel and Netflix released the last Trailer for Jessica Jones.

I'm not sure what to add to that. It still looks good? It'll be available on 11/20? You really want me to tell you about how much I like the comic book again or how I'm wondering how they will adapt some of the story lines that involve other big name Marvel Superheroes?

How about we switch it up and I complain about having to work all weekend?

So About Those Steam Machines

Valve's first honest attempt at taking over your living room, the much talked about Steam Machines, are finally here. Or at least one is, the Alienware Steam Machine. I've gathered links to a few reviews for your web browsing pleasure. Long story short, the reviews are mixed.

Don't buy a Steam Machine... yet.

What Valve Got Right And Wrong With The Steam Machine.

Alienware Steam Machine review: A gaming PC for your living room.

Alienware Steam Machine Review: PC Gaming With Console Comforts.

Allow me to summarize all of that. Most people like the controller but don't like the menus. The box looks great but it's not incredibly powerful. The biggest kicker I've seen people mention is that the Linnux based Steam OS the Machines run isn't compatible with all the games available on Steam. Steam's entire catalog for the PC is about 6,000 games but only 1,500 of those are compatible with Steam OS. The Verge shows a great table where you can see that out of the 10 most popular games on Steam only one of them is compatible with the Steam Machine There is an option to use the Steam Machine to stream games from your PC to your TV but that requires a hard line connection between both (which at that point why not just run a long HDMI cable to your TV?).

Honestly none of this sounds great to me. I just don't see where the market for the Steam Machine is. If you already run a high end gaming system you probably already have a battlestation and aren't that interested in moving your gaming to the living room. If you don't have a PC the game selection on the Steam Machine is so limited I don't see what the advantage is over getting an Xbox One or a PS4. Yeah it's more powerful than either of those but it's not THAT much more powerful. Is that really worth the trade off of only being able to play a fraction of the games?

Good luck with this one Valve.

I Hide It

Star Wars Battlefront: Become More Powerful

This video game is going to make a billion dollars isn't it? Like I honestly wonder which is going to make more money. Battlefront or The Force Awakens? I'm guessing even if it is The Force Awakens, Battlefront will turn more profit.

The Greatest Wrestling Entrance of ALL TIME

I know pretty much nothing about Scottish Wrestler Grado but I'll be damned if he doesn't have the greatest ring entrance I've ever seen. This particular entrance from Shug's Hoose Party (????) he channels a bit of Bill Goldberg from WCW but that's not what puts this over the top. It's the 1,000 Scottish wrestling fans singing Madonna at the top of their lungs.

I'm telling you I watched this like 20 times last night and I think I'll watch it 20 more tonight.

Check your Links

I built R2-D2. Oh man, this is one of my two dream projects. First is a full sized arcade cabinet powered by an emulator, the second is an astromech build. I'm like 99% sure I could actually do all the work (minus machining the aluminum dome) but I'm also 99% sure my wife would divorce me if I spent four grand building an R2-D2.

Weird Science’ Star Ilan Mitchell-Smith Talks Babes, Bullies, And Bras, 30 Years Later. I love this stupid movie. It's pretty much any 12 year old's fantasy. Build a sexy British woman with a computer, get super popular at school, throw a kick ass party, have the girl you've been crushing on fall in love with you at the end AND you turn your jerk-ass bigger brother into a slug monster? Sign me up!

Baffled DC Comics Shocked to Learn People Might Want Supergirl Comic Right About Now. This is kind of the most DC thing ever. I don't know what it is about their corporate structure but they always seem like they're never ready to cash in on big events and movie tie ins, or even when they are they somehow muck everything up and it costs them a bunch of goodwill.

Fallout 4 review: Check your next-gen expectations at the vault door. Welp, that didn't take long. Fallout 4 sounds like exactly the kind of RPG I like to steer away from. I have no idea what secret cabal of game developers feels like it's their duty to put gamers through a 30 hour slog before the game really starts to open up and have fun but F that noise. I'll go take my $60 and play Laser Tag instead.

BTW, I played Laser Tag this weekend. OMG that is SOOOOO much fun.

Super Happy Terrific Star Wars Trailer Hour

Hey look, a shiny new international Star Wars trailer, with extra footage and Japanese subtitles! BB-8 Talks! Kylo Ren uses his lightsaber! Poe flies his X-Wing! Chewbacca Blows Shit Up!

Fallout 4: Launch Trailer

You guys tired of me talking about Fallout 4 yet? Good news, it launches next week so after Tuesday you probably won't hear me talk about it that much. Maybe the occasional "oh why won't Fallout 4 run on my PC?" post. Man this game looks good. I'm hoping Bethesda keeps the storyline a bit tighter than they did Skyrim. I played that game for over 100 hours and I'm like halfway done AND I still have no idea what the plot is supposed to really be.

RIP Metal Bikini (1983-2015)

Big rumor going around the internets yesterday is that Disney is putting the ixnay on all "Slave Leia" merchandise. I can't say this is too surprising but it's kinda surprising. On the surprise scale it's like a three and a half.

There was a bit of a kerfluffle when the Black Series Slave Leia figure shipped out a few months ago. A parent raised the internet's proverbial eyebrow with a sort of "look at the smut I found in the toy section" post to facebook. The controversy didn't have much legs because most fans understand that the Black Series of figures is marketed to adult collectors, it's not a kids toy. Yeah they keep them in the toy section but that's more of an indictment on how limiting the merchandise categories of a retail giant like Target can be. HOWEVER...

The golden metal bikini is problematic, it's a sexualized take on a strong female character in a movie that appeals to children. I don't find it offensive but that doesn't mean that there aren't people that do. In fact until that episode of Friends I didn't even know that outfit was supposed to be sexualized. I just thought the whole point of it was that Jabba was a creep. I was one square kid. Anyway, add Disney into the mix and you don't exactly have to check mapquest to see where this is headed.


In case you're unfamiliar J Scott Campbell is a comic book artist, best known for his "good girl" style of art who has worked on and off for Marvel (owned by Disney) for the last 10 years. He does a lot of special covers for Marvel and if there's some sort of ban on the Slave Leia outfit he would know because he's exactly the kind of artist that would be drawing said outfit.

So here we are. Official/Unofficial confirmation that Disney is discontinuing the Slave Leia costume. It's probably for the best but there's something in the back of my brain that is screaming at me that this is a problem. That somehow this is tied into slut shaming. That there's nothing wrong with showing a woman can be strong and sexy as long as it's not exploitative and gratuitous. I don't know anymore... Rest in Piece Slave Leia, I guess we'll always have Comic-Con.

No, That Sounds Right

Kirby Krackle: The Day My Powers Arrived

Here's Kirby Krackle, one of my favorite bands, with their new video The Day My Powers Arrived. In case I haven't blogged about this before they have a new album out that you should totally buy. At least give it a listen, it's really really good. Also if you haven't checked out Bandcamp before you should do it. These days I buy almost all my albums through them. Payment is super easy via paypal and you can get higher quality sound files than you find on Amazon or iTunes. Plus from what I've heard more money goes to the artist when you buy on Bandcamp.

That plug for Bandcamp dovetails nicely into some random musings/site business. Kyle Stevens, the lead singer for Kirby Krackle who I've met twice at ECCC so you know we're like best buds, recently posted something on his facebook page about being frustrated with websites that cater to us nerds not being very receptive to independent artists. His point being that without forward thinking independent artists we wouldn't have these amazing nerdy properties that we all love like Star Wars or The Walking Dead.

It's a fair point. In the race for #content there's not a lot of room for the unknown. It's funny, everyone wants to be the first to jump on the next big viral trend but nine times out of ten a site like io9.com is still going to go with what's already popular.

What's going to get more page views, an in depth analysis of Rick Remender and Sean Gordon Murphy's new sci-fi comic Tokyo Ghost or a list of top 10 facts about Star Wars that you probably already know? Number 6 is a shocker!

So what can I do about it? Well the first thing I can do is change the way I browse the net. Less Gizmodo and more ArsTechnica, Less Newsarama and more TheOuthousers, etc. It's a small thing but nothing is going to change if the sites that promote the same tired content are rewarded with pageviews. The second thing I can do is try to promote more independent stuff here. I feel like I already do a pretty good job of that with music but I can do better when it comes to the other stuff I post. I don't know, I'm just one man with a blog with like 20 regular readers and I'm pretty sure 10 of those are bots.

Anyhoo, you should really watch this video.

Leaked Links

New 'Star Trek' series to blast off on CBS streaming service. Yay for new Star Trek! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO for this subscription garbage. If you hadn't heard yesterday. CBS has confirmed that they're working on a new Star Trek series. They also confirmed the show would be exclusive to CBS's new streaming service which costs like 6 bucks but offers all the CSI and NCIS spin-offs you could ever want. I'm torqued for a couple reasons. First off the majority of CBS's programming is the reason people pay 10 bucks a month for Netflix. Secondly, and I've bitched about this before, I'm already beyond tired of having to pay for and manage, multiple subscription services.

I have a bad feeling about this. CBS's hoping to drive people to their service by offering a show that appeals to the demo best equipped to pirate said show.

Leaked Screenshots for Fallout 4 on the PC. Sweet Christmas, these screenshots of Fallout 4 for the PC on it's highest (?) setting are pretty fantastic. It's really amazing how they're able to render stuff like trees and dirt so realistically, the future is now.

Netflix’s ‘Iron Fist’ Is Now Rumored To Be A TV Movie. Aw man, this kinda sucks. Iron Fist is awesome and his backstory in K'un-Lun is really interesting and after seeing Daredevil I'm positive Netflix and Marvel could translate it really well. A TV movie is still better than nothing but I'd love to see the Immortal Weapons or the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven translated to more of a long form story.

Return Of The Jedi Was Great, You Ewok-Slandering Fools. I get it, Empire Strikes back is better than Return Of The Jedi but it's not like ROTJ is bad. People that hate on it are just trying to hard to be cool.

First Look at AMC's Preacher

Last weekend AMC premiered the trailer for a new TV show, Preacher. For those not in the know, Preacher is a comic that ran in the late 90s early 2000s, under the Vertigo label at DC. I have like 30 issues and I can't remember a thing about it. I'm sure it's good otherwise I wouldn't have collected it for as long as I did. Also it was written by Garth Ennis who is a pretty good writer (he's responsible for my favorite Punisher run ever). I'll have to sit down and reread the comics.

This is pretty amazing analysis right here, isn't it?

The trailer itself looks interesting enough. A preacher who's into kicking ass, what's not to like about that? AMC has a pretty good track record with it's dramas, even the ones I don't like still get critical acclaim (looking at you Mad Men) so I'll check out the first few episodes at least.

Ash vs Evil Dead: The Review

For the sake of this review lets say I added Starz to my satellite TV package and didn't download this episode by elicit means...

Last night after the kids went to bed and my wife was still on her way home from the Sounders game, I sat down and watched the first episode of Ash vs Evil Dead. Talk about a show that delivers exactly what it promised. It's 45 minutes of silly, gory fun. A perfect mix of the gore and horror from the Evil Dead 2 and the humor and adventure of Army of Darkness. (Minor Spoilers to follow)

There's a scene in the first half of the episode where Ash, still working as a stockboy, is told by his overbearing boss to carefully put away a box of lightbulbs. In classic Ash fashion, he almost immediately spills them everywhere. With a lot of writers/actors/directors that's the end of the joke. Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell extend the joke by having Ash step on more bulbs in an effort to discreetly dispose of the broken bulbs in the most half ass manner you could imagine. It extends the scene by all of 20 seconds but it takes what could easily be a throw away physical joke and turns it into a character moment. It's that kind of detail that has made all the Evil Dead movies so special and it's exactly what I wanted to see in this series.

This isn't to say the series is perfect or going to be perfect. In the first 20 minutes they were dangerously close to Stifler in American Pie 3 territory, where Ash is almost a parody of himself. They pull him back in the last third so no harm no foul. I'm looking forward to how the story unfolds over 10 episodes (plus the second season they've already been renewed for!). Writing for a TV show is much different than a movie but both of the Rami's have a lot of experience with TV so I don't see any reason not to be bullish on Ash vs Evil Dead.

10/10. Would torrent subscribe to Starz again.