Archive for June, 2009

New at ThinkGeek, the shirt for Twitterers who haven't yet quite pinned down their perfect avatar, the tiny image that captures who and what they are. Or, as ThinkGeek suggests, the perfect avatar for disguising who and what they are.

Sometimes people say stupid stuff. Sometimes people Tweet stupid stuff. The difference with the two is that teh Intarwebs is forever. Sure, you can delete it out of your stream after you've realized it was a Bad Decision, but, as many subjects of federal investigations have discovered, digital never really goes away. That's why we've created the "You Don't Know Me" Anonymous Twitter Shirt. Spend the last 140 characters bitching about your boss? Take an inebriated TwitPic that's suitable for your MySpace page? Never fear! Abandon your old feed and create a completely new identity. Sign up for Twitter anew, fresh as a newborn babe. And please — don't mess it up this time.

Either way, cool shirt.

So, I made the final round of NYCMidnight's "Tweet Me a Story" contest. So, the remaining writers all got the same word last night to use in our 140-character stories. So, the word was "tear."

Here's what I submitted, with titles added afterward for fun:

Last Call

"Aren't you skydiving?"

"Yup."

"You're calling from midair? That's sweet!"

"I love you…" he said, watching the tear in the fabric spread.

Father Knows Best

"But I loved him, daddy!"

"Wipe that tear away, honey. Other boys will respect you more."

"How do you know?"

"Because they'll see his body."

Anything for You

"You said you were too happy to write tear jerking songs?"

"Yeah?"

"I just stole your truck to go sleep with your sister."

"Oh, I love you!"

Interestingly, all of them are about love, one way or another. Noticed that after I submitted them. Here's what I didn't submit, and why.

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Professor Farnsworth: "Yes? I see… Good news, everyone! Those asinine morons who canceled us were themselves fired for incompetence. [The crew cheers] And not just fired, but beaten up, too…and pretty badly. [The crew cheers doubtfully] In fact, most of them died from their injuries. [The crew remains silent. Bender laughs] And then they were ground up into a fine pink powder.
Fry: Why?
Professor Farnsworth: Oh, it's got a million and one uses. [Pours some down his pants] Ah, that soothes the fire.

Sometimes shows do come back…

Just announced, Comedy Central has placed an order for 26 new episodes of Futurama to run over two seasons. Apparently the four 2-hour movies released during the 7-year hiatus of the show helped, and I'm glad to see it. The last movie left the crew of Planet Express with an open-ended future, so it'll be great to see where they go with it.  Much as I loved The Simpsons, Futurama quickly took over as my favorite cartoon.

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A century ago, when times were tough (as they are now) and jobs were scarce (as they are now) and people needed inexpensive entertainment to get through their days, the pulp magazines were born. They were filled with lurid tales of adventurers and detectives, ape men and wild women, science fiction and romance, true crime and fantastical yarns. Science fiction was born here, and noir detective stories. Readers were transported to deep jungles and cursed pyramids, desert islands and mad scientist lairs, and they got to forget their lives and all the uncertainties of a post-world-war world for a little while.

Now, things are getting tough again. And we could really use some cheap entertainment again…*

Enter "Steampunk Tales." This collection of 10 stories by award-winning authors takes you back to the days of Victorian inventors who never used muscle when a gear would do, and never met a piston they didn't like. Steam-powered computers, mechanical men, dirigibles and anything that can be thought up by a human mind and realized in brass, iron and leather.

As for the stories themselves – like in the original pulp magazines, some worked for me, some didn't. Some, like  "Project Moebius-5" and "Tempus Fugit," had great promise but ended abruptly and poorly. Some were experimental and had excellent passages, if not plots, like "The Anachronist's Cookbook" and "The Man and the Robot." "Benedice Te" was a rollicking good adventure, "A Grain of Sand" was a decent inventor's tale, and the world of "The Reanimation Emporium" is one I'd like to read more stories about. One or two of the rest I didn't finish, but overall it wasn't a bad evening spent.

"Steampunk Tales" will be published monthly, and will only be available for the iPhone or iPod Touch. Once the 3.0 OS comes out, you'll be able to order new issues from within the app. Just $1.99.

* OK, yes, "cheap" doesn't include the pricve of the iPhone/iPod Touch itself, but work with me, here.

TheSoCal Browncoats always get the cool stuff for their Can't Stop the Serenity auctions, and this year is no different. QMx is offering up a production model of their unannounced "Thrillin' Heroics" Jayne maquette from Adam Levermore's Little Damn Heroes line.

To be clear, this is not a product announcement – we’re not ready to discuss pricing, availability or even edition size of the Jayne maquette. The maquette being offered at the screening is FEP (Final Engineering Proof) #2 and, as those who’ve won our prototypes before know, our FEPs are all truly unique pieces and subject to change before they hit the stores.

That's not all SoCal will have — QMx is giving them several prototype items to auction off — and this year for the first time they're setting up ways for people to place remote bids. Keep an eye on www.socalbrowncoats.com for more details.

Kids Need to Read announced that they're auctioning off some autographed items from Neil Gaiman's Coraline:

Neil has generously given KNTR an autographed copy of the original motion picture soundtrack of the big screen adaptation of his popular book, Coraline!  As if that weren’t enough, he also donated an autographed Coraline t-shirt (adult size extra large)!  Neil wrote a little note on the shirt that says, “Sweet Dreams”, along with his signature.

As always, proceeds go towards getting books on library shelves. Kids need to read!

Also, here's Neil and Amanda Palmer in a bathtub:

The Firefly Blu-Ray DVD set is Amazon's Gold Box Deal of the Day today. Just $39.99 (regular price $89.98).

This is only good today, so don't miss out!

Wandering through Walmart today – in my defense, my power was out and I needed to kill time someplace full of colorful distractions and air conditioning – I found the next step in subscription begging: Buy a T-shirt, get a subscription.

A table full of Rolling Stone licensed shirts, with images from classic RS covers featuring Jimi Hendrix, U2, Run-DMC and more, plus a few with generic guitar and amplifier designs, were on sale for $10. And each one came with a card for a 12-issue subscription, about a half a year's worth. The magazines cost $4.50 apiece off the shelf, and here for the price of 2 of them you could get 12 plus a shirt! And the card was even postage-prepaid! How desperate do your circulation numbers have to be before you offer your print product as a sweetener to sell a shirt?

These came out last year on sale at Macy's for $42, which is more understandable, but now they're on a $10 table at Walmart (at least Macy's hasn't gone any lower than $14.99) and the subscription offer is still good.

Magazine subscriptions amaze me. I was a bit less impressed when I found out that you can get a year's worth of the Stone – 26 issues – for 15 bucks online (no shirt).  The reason why is obvious: most print products like magazines and newspapers make their money from advertising, and to get/keep those advertisers, they need to keep their circulation numbers nice and high. Actual subscription rates are proportionately a much smaller portion of their revenue. They just need you to help make a specific number nice and fat.

Which means if you need or want any magazine subscriptions at all, now's the time. Those deals you see where you can get 2 years of mags for, like, thirty cents and an aluminum can are probably true. Want Popular Science? Don't pay $47 to actually buy the things from a sweaty and possibly diseased retailer, send the company 10 bucks and allow them to mail them to you like a civilized person. Pay $192.50 for a year's worth of Entertainment Weekly? Are you mad? Send them a twenty and make them beg to serve you (may include weekend breakfasts in bed from B-list celebrities, in selected areas). A year of Time would be $277.20 were you foolish/brain-damaged enough to actually pay money for the wretched things, but twenty bucks will get you a subscription, a private guided tour of the juiciest scandals in D.C.  and the junior senator of your choice, to take home. Conde Nast will practically have sex with you if you'll subscribe to anything, dammit, anything.

So I bought a shirt for my son. And I'll send in the free subscription card. If I remember to.

You know those fan-made superhero movie trailers that hit the Internet sometimes and just amaze you with their quality and professionalism? Like the Green Lantern one, and Batman: Dead End and World's Finest and even one for the Thundercats?

This isn't one of those.

That was pretty much my reaction just now. Even though I write about geek issues I don't read all the trades, and somehow I completely failed to find out ahead of time that Ultimate Spider-Man #133 was the last one in the series, to be followed by two one-shot comics this summer and then a new relaunch into Ultimate Comics Spider-Man.

Usually, avoiding spoilers works in my favor. I can be surprised, the dramatic and comedic beats hit as they're supposed to without any anticipation from me so their impact is all the harder. In this case, it was a loud "WTF?!?" followed by some frantic Googling to discover what, indeed, was the F.

Major spoilers coming. If you'd rather skip that, here's the short version: I was disappointed in every way imaginable, and I have to assume that Brian Michael Bendis had a gun held to his head.

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