Archive for July, 2009

Now we're talking. Jason Palmer is offering his amazing Firefly/Serenity artwork on T-shirts, just in time for the San Diego Comic-Con (because you didn't have enough to spend your money on, obviously).

12 designs are coming, but 3 of them can be preordered now and they'll be launched at the con (booth 4504).  Those designs are Mal (charcoal tee for men, raglan top for women), Kaylee in her party dress (pink tee or tank top), and the Big Damn Heroes (light gray crew neck for men, silver babydoll crewneck for women, with a special black version coming, with black foil Serenity logo.

And the designs… you've already seen his prints, so you know they're nothing short of amazing. Ooh, I wonder if we'll get a Joss tee! Fingers crossed, fingers crossed…

All the shirts are made of 100% combed super-soft cotton, preshrunk and tagless for comfortable wear. They come in sizes S-2XL for men and S-L for women, and can be signed by Jason on request. $25 each. Order now!

I missed this when it came out, but thetorchonline.com got Brian Fuller to spill some of the season three secrets last month. Pushing Daisies, which was canceled and closed with a somewhat hurried wrap-up of many (but not all) of the dangling plot threads, had plenty of places to go:

We knew when we were shooting it that it was our last episode essentially. After we got into post and it was like, “Okay. That’s our last episode and it ends on a cliffhanger.” Because, as scripted, the last moment of the show was they open the door, and Chuck says to Vivian and Lily, “I’m alive,” and then it cuts to black. That would set up our back nine arc, which we were going to bring back George Hamilton as Ned’s father, and we just had so many balls up in the air that I was looking forward to bringing down and writing, but we just never got the opportunity.

Lots of details there about Chuck going after her father, and Ned going after her, and Vivian and Lily's split, and Olive's new life, and… Let's say I hope this continues, whether in comics or movies, or whatever. I want the rest of the story. And this is a good start.

Update: three days after ordering and being charged three times, my duplicate "authorization" charges have finally been removed from my account.

So, here's what's going on.

First the countdown till the time we could order the Dollhouse SDCC Limited Edition DVD set ended, but the order form did not appear. Instead, the countdown started counting up.

Then the order form appeared, but it rejected more credit cards than it approved and kept giving errors or blank pages. Problem: refreshing the page, using your back button or pressing "submit" more than once apparently caused it to try your credit card again, resulting in multiple charges on the cards of many fans, me included. According to Fox these multiple charges are "authorization charges only" and will be refunded/canceled within one to two business days, depending on your bank.

And the promised confirmation e-mails were not coming out.

Then they brought down the page and redirected it to the main Fox store while they worked on the problem.

Things seem to be a bit more stable now. One of the credit card problems was fixed (if you typed in 2009 for your credit card expiration date, it only read the 20 part and not the 09 part, causing the validation to bounce) and orders are now going through. Give it a shot!

I just received my confirmation e-mail, about 8 hours after I received my confirmation number.

About the sneak peek of "Epitaph One" we were promised: In your confirmation e-mail you get a JAGTAG, which you must take a picture of with your cellphone and send it to a specified number. Also, you must be a customer of Verizon, AT&T or Alltel, none of which was mentioned by Fox beforehand. Also, your phone must be the right sort to handle the content, which mine apparently is not. From reports it was JagTag's problem, as their own site was giving up errors. A few hours later, I finally received the video to my phone (even though earlier I got a text message telling me my phone wasn't good enough), and there it was: 25 seconds of a confrontation involving a familiar face. And there's Felicia Day! Hi Felicia! By the next day the clip was posted at Dollverse.com for everyone to see.

I don't know what the deal ultimately was, but this promotion had serious problems on every level. Glad to see they seem to have it patched up now — and I don't know if they've ever tried anything like this before — but I'm glad to see the mood among fans is mostly tolerant, with some very understandable beefs.

All of this is to get the limited SDCC edition Dollhouse Season One, numbered, with different packaging (see above) and a note from creator Joss Whedon. Only 5,000 will be produced, and you'll have to pick it up at the con or have a friend pick it up at the Fox booth at the con (#4129) starting Wednesday at 6 pm.for you, and you'll need to provide your friend's e-mail address when you order.  One per customer.

$49.95 for the regular set, $69.95 for Blu-Ray. Or you could just order the regular edition from Amazon for just $31.99 (or $48.99 for Blu-Ray).

Or you could try to win one from me…

Just when I think there are no cool collectibles any more…

Robert Anton Wilson, futurist and writer, died with a large amount of medical debt and his daughter, Christina, is auctioning off some of his belongings. Including this: Robert Anton Wilson's medical marijuana card

As we all know (or should) RAW was a great champion of decriminalizing marijuana. In his late sixties, when his post-polio syndrome started getting bad, he really found great relief and was a staunch supporter of WAMM. WAMM is Wo/Man's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, located in Santa Cruz. His doctor gave him the necessary paperwork and here is his official WAMM card granting him the right to use marijuana medicinally. He is of course, patient #2323. There is no signature, but his picture is emblazoned on the front with a twinkle in his eye…

RAW's work… hell, his attitude… was a huge influence on my teenage years, and I reread "Illuminatus!" every year for quite a while. The concept of fun and delight being a necessary component to any personal, religious, or philosophical belief system ran through everything he wrote and it has stuck with me all this time.

Bookz Pro, on the many ebook readers available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, just updated to be fully compatible with the 3.0 OS, and it's added some functionality. Version 2.6 now includes auto-rotation, a search bar in your library, and the ability to read from ZIP files. This is added to a decent list of ebook reading tools for a program that has set out to be the easiest native text document reader for the iPhone. Bookz Pro has a built-in dictionary, multi-language support, it opens large text files extremely quickly, and it even allows you to password-protect specific books. Bookz Pro is $4.99, the free version (without the dictionary, password protection of appearance mods) is, well, free.

All well and good. But when they updated why did they change the app's icon, which was cool and distinctive (see above left), into something that looks like an "I Can Read!" book? Clipart restrictions? Aiming at the children's iPhone market? Lost a bet? I don't recall offhand if the pro and free versions had different icons before so perhaps this is a way to make the difference more obvious, but jeez.

Interested in an 8"x10" Dr. Horrible poster signed by Joss, Nathan, Neil, and Jed?

Me, too. Good thing there's one available, currently being auctioned off. The seller is "sfaidswalk" so it looks like proceeds will go twards Aids Walk San Fransisco, but there's no mention of that on the auction (eBay is tricky about what you can say, though).

This is a Comic Con 2008 Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog 8 x 10 print autographed by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Serenity,), Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Hauser MD, Harold and Kumar, Starship Troopers How I Met Your Mom), Nathan Fillion (Serenity, Slither) and Jed Whedon (writer – Dollhouse). This autographed print was obtained from Neil Patrick Harris himself. There are less than 100 autographed prints of this kind. It is a VERY rare collectible piece for this new cult classic.The print itself is 8 x 10. I have had it professionally framed and matted using The Painter's Place in San Francisco. The total dimensions are: 13.5 x 14.5 x 2. It is custom finished on archival matte behind museum conservation glass housed in a silver frame. It looks great! The frame really makes the silver signed signatures pop off the page and out of the frame.

Also comes with DVD which is not signed nor has it been opened. Everything is brand new and in mint pristine condition!

According to a recent post at Firefly Ship Works, they're edging ever closer to revealing the secrets of the insanely detailed Serenity model they've been developing. What will it all look like, how will it be mounted, and, finally, what will it cost? But right now they're trying to decide on the name, and they're looking for input.

* Official – she’s being produced with the full support of the studio.
* Studio Scale – at 19 inches, she’s exactly the size a filming miniature would likely have been.
* Film Quality – making a film-worthy model is about more than size. We’re making sure our Serenity has all the details a Hollywood model maker would want on their filming miniature before it went in front of the camera.
* Artisan – each ship will be handcrafted by a professional special effects model maker right here in the U.S.
* SFX – she’ll come with a sophisticated lighting effects package and maybe another surprise or two.

Assuming you agree that naming her the “Official Film Quality Studio Scale Serenity Artisan Replica, SFX Edition” is a bit much, we’d love to hear your suggestions.

Head to fireflyshipworks.com and give them your suggestion. How often do you get to name a spaceship?

It's never made a lot of sense that ebooks – which require no materials, no shipping, no storage, no stocking or maintenance manpower, and no destruction of unsold inventory – often cost as much or more than their print equivalents. eBook aficionados have spent the last 10 years shaking their heads and wondering when the publishing companies would get a clue… when the aficionados weren't simply scanning in the books themselves and sharing them for free, of course.

OK, not all the publishing companies. Baen Books, as always, was ahead of the curve with a sensible and attractive pricing plan from the very beginning. But I almost have to throw them out when complaining about publishers; they keep throwing off the curve. Meanwhile the rest of the publishers priced their ebooks high and huddled together, hoping that it wouldn't catch on.

Then Amazon shook things up with the $9.95 New York Times Bestseller ebook pricing. Suddenly that seemed to be a better deal – it certainly helped drive sales of their otherwise overpriced Kindle – and we saw a chink in the pricing wall.

Now it's spreading, and I hope it continues. eReader.com, one of the oldest ebook retailers, has changed their pricing structure and they're going Amazon one better. Now all new books start at $9.95 or less the first week of their release. After that the books revert to the publisher's list price but will not exceed $12.95. Read that again: will not exceed $12.95. And you can still earn 15% Reader Rewards, rebates which can be applied to future purchases.

Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of their 25th anniversary and their new album "Back From the Dead," just released last month, Spinal Tap is asking the fans to get involved.

David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap are inviting fans to create an original video to be posted on YouTube for one of the following songs off of their album BACK FROM THE DEAD — Hell Hole, Warmer Than Hell, Big Bottom, Stonehenge, Back From The Dead and/or Short & Sweet. Judging the contest, will be Colman Hickey, who created the classic video for Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight using characters made of Legos.

One lucky winner will receive an autographed, limited edition Spinal Tap prize pack!

No idea what the autographed prize pack consists of, but what the hell. More details available at YouTube and you can see a sample contest entry here.

Also they've produced an official Spinal Tap iPhone app. Listen to music, watch videos, get the latest Tap news, and see what other fans are writing on their wall. Free app, but it looks like you'll need to be connected to get anything from it so put it on the phone or keep your iPod Touch near a wifi connection.

If you haven't picked up the new CD "Back From the Dead," you should. Amazon has it for just $10.99 and you get 19 original songs, a one-hour DVD, and a "unique pop-up diorama package that unveils three 12-inch action figures (courtesy of Sideshow Collectibles) of the band along with a proportionally sized Stonehenge." What's not to love?

Announcing BashinginMinds' first giveaway: two Dollhouse Season One DVD sets!

Season one of Joss Whedon's controversial series Dollhouse will be hitting the streets on July 28, but you can win one a week early. All you have to do is tell me this:

Why would you hire a doll?

Please keep comments under 50 words or so, and relatively PG-13. Otherwise, go wild. Please use the form below; entries posted as a comment to this post will not be entered.

Entries must be received by midnight EST on Friday, July 17, 2009, and there will be two ways to win. First, I'll select the best 10 and put those up for a vote, winner gets a DVD set. And I'll select a name at random from all the entries for the other set. Winners will be announced Tuesday, July 21, so folks going to Comic-Con will know if they should be trying to buy one or not…

Read the rest of this entry »