Saturday, May 14, 2005

Geek Saturday

Pardon the light posting -- selling our house in Ottawa, bit of paperwork. What? MADNESS!! Abandon the New Orleans of the north? No, rest assured, once Ottawa's gotten its claws into you, it's like the grip of ... well, a tiny drunken lemur. We've just purchased another home there for, of course, a tiny, tiny fraction of the insanity one pays here in LA. ("It's a HOLE in the ground!" "It's a SHIT-FREE hole in the ground. $850,000.")

Two more years, and I'm out of LA and back in Canada writing comic books and gaming supplements. And relearning the true definition of the word "cold." ("... remember, at this temperature, your eyes will actually freeze in four and half minutes!")

Add to this the lovely wife and I will be travelling to Vegas for three days to hook up with my folks, and I will NOT be taking the laptop. So you'll have to fend for yourselves. I leave you with some eclectic links. When I return, I'll be answering some excellent writing questions, there'll be a brief discussion of the pilot process, and maybe even take a stab at answering a Comments question: "What the fuck DID go wrong on Catwoman?"

First off, I have no idea why he's in my Statcounter so much, but go check out The Groovy Age of Horror for retro 60's-70's horror love.

It's in the Blogroll, but I bet you never go to Alice's Wonderland enough. She's got a link to this discussion of the real-world economy linked to game economies, specifically a study done by E-Bay. This stuff is a doctorate waiting to happen. Or a Deadwood-like gold rush. I call dibs on being the Al Swearingen of World of Warcraft. ("And take this fucking hoople's corpse to Mr. Wu's down in Gnomeragan!")

Somebody who's actually looking at MMO's as social phenomena coould do worse than poking around in Terra Nova.

Patton Oswalt, fantastic comedian and all-around geek lord, presents the Marvel story he can never tell. An intimate understanding of the Hostess Fruit Pies ads is necessary, but luckily Seanbaby.com has a (terrifyingly) complete archive of them here.

How annoying am I as a geek? When I mentioned Patton's bit to my wife, she explained to me that she had no idea what I was talking about. She grew up in Canada, and so never saw the superhero/Hostess Fruit Pie ads. I was in such a geek-gasm, not only did I insist on plowing through with my recreation of Patton's parody, but I then spent several minutes explaining the Hostess Fruit Pie ads.

There are days, I have no idea why she doesn't kill me in my sleep.

5 comments:

david golbitz said...

" I was in such a geek-gasm, not only did I insist on plowing through with my recreation of Patton's parody, but I then spent several minutes explaining the Hostess Fruit Pie ads.

There are days, I have no idea why she doesn't kill me in my sleep."

That poor, poor woman. If we don't hear from you for a while, I think we'll all just assume the worst. ;)

layne said...

We had the Fruit Pie ads up here, although the actual pastries whose felon-foiling flakiness delighted a generation were somewhat harder to come by, at least in my neck of the woods...

Anonymous said...

Say, what would happen if a fruit pie was countered by a Yodel, perhaps updating the battle Crouching Ding Dong, Hidden Twinkie style. With updated scenarios, Dr. Doom could prevail with a burrito, a pack of cigarettes and a Barques, sreaming "Supersize this Reed Richards!"

Alex Epstein said...

Two years, huh?

I better get some shows on the road before you get up here and hog all the CTF...

Alex

Anonymous said...

Seanbaby hosted a Electronic Gaming Monthly pilot for MTV:
http://www.gameinfowire.com/news.asp?nid=3684
http://www.mtv.com/onair/ultimate_countdown/