At the San Diego Comic Convention last month, Hollywood came out in force and played nice with the Con’s fan base. But a strange thing happened. Even the movies that had no established fan base wanted a part of us, the comic book fans. Sure, a lot of movies were at the SDCC, but those were comic book movies (Blade, Fantastic Four, Sin City) or established science fiction franchises (Alien, Predator, Firefly). But even those with no comic book roots or history of sequels came out with their stars and previews and whatnot. One in particular is Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow. They came with their Jude Law and promotional items and even an extended preview.

And they didn’t stop there. They are still trying to woo the comic geeks. Last week, all DC comics came bagged with a promotional CD for the movie and a poster insert. Retailers were not happy. But that’s just another example of how Hollywood now realizes the value of the geek kingdom, even if we’re not geeks of their kind. Yeah. Look who’s crawling our way, now. Our money is just as green as the popular kids, isn’t it?

Speaking of geeks, here’s some interesting takes on the expansion of human females into the geek community. First, a look at the women of PvP and a long one from Comixpedia exploring the whole spectrum of girls trying to fit in with geeks scenario.

God bless them, they make the world go around.

“My mom says I’m cool.”

Well, that didn’t take long. One dud away from his View Askewniverse and Kevin Smith announces he will make a sequel to Clerks. On the one hand, that sounds like fun. Sign me up, I’ll probably see it as soon as possible. On the second hand, can this guy stay on task very long? Where’s the Clerks animated movie? Where’s the Spider-Man/Black Cat mini-series? How about Daredevil/Bullseye: The Target #2?! It’s been a few years since #1 came out. He’s says he’s writing and directing Green Hornet, then ends up just writing it. If he can even get that done. Maybe I should cut him some slack. Maybe I should just stop paying attention to the internet, constantly scouring cyberspace for the next nugget of info in this total stranger’s life. And as much as I moan about his lack of output or consistency lately, you can sure as hell bet I’ll be the first one to pick up a comic he writes. If his Clerks animated movie is on HBO, I’ll subscribe for that month it’s on. When Clerks 2 comes out, I’ll be in the theater opening weekend.

Acclaim is bankrupt. As near I can tell, they have the copyright for Quantum and Woody. Here’s hoping they sell it to someone who will actually do something with the property. That is something that surprises me about bankruptcy, that a court doesn’t force them to sell off concepts. If they sold off their old Valiant line of characters, I’m sure they’d be out of debt in no time. Anybody understand why this isn’t done, or being done?

In the third preseason game, which is supposed to be the accurate gauge of your NFL team, Bengals looked bad. This team’s getting younger but they’re not looking better yet. We’ve also lost some guys for the whole year. Hopefully, we’ll stay healthy after our game this weekend against Indy and start out the regular season on a good note.

“We’re not a couple.”

There will be a “pictorial” featuring video game characters. Man, that seems so stupid. Even dumber than that, most of them won’t even be nekkid. Definately not as cool as Olympic athletes posing. Wow. That was insensitive. Female athletes have a long history of achieving legitimacy and my derogatory comments aren’t helping. Oh, well. No reason to get upset, porn makes us happy.

Speaking of practices and standards: Happy Birthday, PG-13!

“It is a test. You must collect these crystals. And fruit.”

College football kicks off this weekend. Miami (of Ohio) takes on Indiana State today. We’ll see if there’s life after Big Ben with new quarterback, Josh Betts. It looks like Miami will be on TV a good deal this year. It’ll be interesting if they can make it to Ford Field for the MAC Championship and maybe even the Motor City Bowl. We’ll see if UC can continue turning the program around under their new coach. At least we’re not in the bottom 10. Speaking of UC, welcome back, Bob! Don’t mess up!

A good way to get ready for the season is this award thingie from Kirk Herbstreet.

The Bengals have finished a productive training camp at Georgetown. Of course, what team is saying they didn’t have one? I’m sure even the Dolphins are claiming a good camp. Now that I’ve gotten some distance from Cincinatti’s outstanding performance against the Super Bowl champs, something smells fishy about that game. Mort smells it, too, and mentions it in his first chat answer. If the Bengals continue to tackle well, they may clear up last year’s defensive woes.

Around the NFL, QB coaches are popular now.

NFL Draft Countdown has updated their 2005 mock draft.

The 1985 Bears and their Superbowl Shuffle: Behind the Music.

Oh, God! Give it up, already! LA does NOT want a football team! And with your blackout rules in place, you don’t want one there, either. Nothing worse than the #2 market in the country unable to watch your games half the season cause they’re too lethargic to go to games.

“But there was this gang of ten year-olds with guns!”
“Exactly, you are in LA.”
“But everyone is driving around in cars shooting at each other!”
“That’s LA for ya!”
“But the air is green and there is no sign of civilization what-so-ever!”
“He just won’t stop with the social commentary…”
“And the people are all phony!”

First off, don’t be too surprised if I add another category to these reviews. It occurred to me that I didn’t have one that measured entertainment value. Some kind of overall score, perhaps. Originality, maybe? Like I said last week when I reviewed Batman: Dead End, still working out the kinks. Okay, on to this review.

It’s not just comic books that inspire fan films. Actual movies inspire fans to take a shot at their favorite franchise. Somethimes two.

Okay, first off, it’s not the Real Ghostbusters. Fortunately, it’s also not those lame rip-off bastards from the other cartoon show. Man, that just bugged the crap out of me as a kid. Still does! (Obviously) Although, maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh since I guess they were around first.

Okay, back to this movie. It doesn’t have Ray or Egon or Venkman. It features a trio of twenty something guys who use the GB equipment that one of them borrows from his Uncle Ray or Egon. Can’t remember which one. Anyway, they stop a ghost at this bar they’re hanging out in and decide to keep going. They soon find out the reason they have so many ghosts to fight, is because Freddy Kreuger is in town and stirring up trouble.

The movie starts out kind of slow, taking a while to establish themselves as the “Ghostbusters.” It repeats many of the same story beats from the movie, even a homage montage. Or is it a monatage homage? Heh, always wanted to put those words together. The ending is a pretty good showdown between these 1984 powerhouses. (I think the film is even set in the 1980s. I kept getting the vibe that they were trying for a period piece, but didn’t pay too much attention to the little details to verify this.) There were even some funny moments that weren’t ripped off from other movies. But the best parts of FVGB are the off-the-wall parodies of some more recent pop culture invaders. Also, the later excursions into Freddy’s dreamworld, especially with the main character’s roomate, are inspired.

Oh, and be sure to watch all the way through the credits for a nice easter egg.

FF type: Story
Not quite a full length feature, not quite a mini-movie. Running time comes in at a little over 30 minutes. I’ll be honest, I think they should have either cut it down some to give it more punch or expanded things to give it more depth. But not a bad yarn, nonetheless.

Production Quality: (4) Since it looks like a mini-DV cam-corder project, I was going to go with a “3″ score. But the proton pack special effects alone push up the score half a point. The ghost trap and ghosts they fight get honorable mention, too. So I gave them a point back for their effects, which are quite special. It looks like they’re right out of the GB movie, if not better in some cases. Also good use of the soundtrack, too.

Performances: (3) Most of the actors are adequate. There’s a few obvious relatives here but no one really stands out as a stinker. I was impressed by the small crowd at the end of a movie. Getting extras for a project like this seems like it might be hard. I think the actors could have been helped out by the editor, who could’ve trimmed up some awkward pauses.

Fan quotient: (4) You should be able to go into this cold turkey since I think most of the important rules regarding Freddy and ghosts and busting are explained along the way. They use a lot of lines from the original GB movie so, if you’ve seen that, it might make FVGB funnier. Or more irritating, not sure which.

FF obtainment: (5) Very easy to download at TheForce.net. You can also get it at the official site. And for those who prefer IFilm, it’s there, too. Hmm… this might be a “gimme” category. Then again, some points should be given just for filmmakers getting their work out there.

The FAQ on their official site says probably no sequel, but may be reprising their roles in Flash form in Ghostbusters: The Animated Series.

Freddy vs. The Ghostbusters: 16 out of 20.

“I’m your DJ now, Prince-y!”

I’ll actually talk about an event that occurred in my real life. I’ll go ahead and run down what I did last weekend. No, not this past one, the one before that. Yeah, the one over ten days ago. Johnny’s account is probably much better and amusing. And also a lot more timely since he did his the same weekend. Good lord, this is almost two weeks later! What’s the point? I’ve been working on it a while now, and I put enough work into it that I guess now I just want to get it out of my system.

I headed down to Columbus Friday night (not THIS Friday, remember, the one before that) in time for the midnight showing of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. It has held up pretty well, much better than Superman (scroll down past the Candidate stuff) which I had seen at a previous midnight showing. But there were still quite a few giggles for some of the film’s more dramatic moments.

That was Friday. On to Saturday. Okay, so my friend Eric from high school sends me an email many weeks ago: He’s got a plan. A wonderful dream. 16-man Halo. Many times at Johnny’s, we’ve played 8-man Halo, that requires two TVs and two Xboxen. Lots of fun. You math majors out there have already figured out that 16-man Halo would require 4 TVs and 4 Xboxen. Oh, and a hub to plug all the machines into. But you math majors weren’t required to know that. Anyway, for this day, August 14, 2004, we would have the proper equipment.

Johnny, Moe, and I showed up at Eric’s place about a half an hour before most people showed up. Johnny had his X-box gear all packed up, ready to throw into the fray. For the record, I brought mine too, but left it in the trunk. I kept it as a back-up in case someone forgot their’s. After all, how bad would it have sucked for only 12 of us to play at a time because someone had a “senior moment?” It would have sucked very much, thank you very much. We preceded to set up our domain, the basement.

At the same time, Eric’s friend Jesse began settin’ up his gear on Eric’s porch. A special note, despite the Nebraska headgear and Nebraska shirt, he is not a Nebraska fan.

More of Eric’s friends showed up, unfortunately can’t remember any more names. They set up a third Xbox in the kitchen. The fourth was Eric’s, already in the family room position.

Anticipation was mounting. I was getting antsy. I had been thinking about this day for a while now with excitement and trepidation. Yeah, I would do something I hadn’t before. But at the same time, I was worried I was going to get my ass handed to me on a regular basis. I fretted that Johnny, who is clearly the best Halo player I know, would be average compared to the race of supermen we would be facing. Trust me, don’t care about Johnny’s fragile ego, worried about mine. If he’s middle of the road, I would be the roadkill. Fortunately, most of us appeared to be around the same ability level, which made it pretty good. Speaking of Johnny, here’s Johnny being… well, Johnny.

My proudest moments came during Capture the Flag games. Which is ironic since I normally suck at that part. But the first two times we played, I captured the flag and safely brought it back to our base, thus winning the game for our team. Maybe it helped that we were playing on Blood Gulch, my favoritest. A piece of advice for capture the flag, never EVER play on Sidewinder. We’d probably still be playing that game today if we hadn’t have just called it a stalemate after a wasted hour.

At the height of the day, we had fourteen people playing at the same time. I was little disappointed that there were only four levels that could accomidate more than 12 players. That kind of stifled our options. More frustrations started to build. Just the process of getting everyone on the same page, or same level, was a taxing experience. We’d be trying to yell commands up the stairs and there were loooong pauses between games and people would be pushing buttons they shouldn’t and we’d have to start all over again. And we weren’t even shooting each other yet. Definitely caused some aggrevation.

Oh, yeah, and there was Johnny being Johnny. That didn’t help things, I’m sure. I don’t know what it was, maybe the fact that I was in the same room as him or the fact that I was doing quite well myself, but he didn’t rub me the wrong way. I remember one time during 8-man Halo at his place when I was in a different room than him, I wanted to strangle him. I think it really grates on you when the only time you see him is when “Thrillhouse” is killing you dead and the only time you hear him is when he taunts all who have fallen before him.

All in all, I think everyone had fun that day.

Well, not everyone. Sorry, Lucy… I mean Lexi.

I did come away with some good thoughts on how to optimize the fun of a 4 Xboxen day of Halo for future endeavors. If you’re thinking of hosting such a party, listen up. I am the voice of experience. Well, some experience.

First off, communication is the key. Everyone doesn’t have to be in the same room, but try to eliminate barriers between consules. If you can’t do that, assign each console a “captain” or someone in charge to make sure everyone at his (or her, we’re equal opportunity here at the Sock Drawer) station is ready to go at the appropriate times. Otherwise, you have a lot of downtime waiting for everyone else to join in. Walkie talkies would have definitely been a big boost and a great way to avoid climbing up stairs.

Second, have a good idea of what everyone wants. I think there were a lot of different ideas of what would be fun with all these people. Some people wanted team killings, some people wanted kamikazi games, others capture the flag and other games. It’s important to make sure everyone gets a taste of what they want or frustration can build. Preperation doesn’t hurt. Come up with game scenarios before the day in question and even have them created in your consule.

Third, and I can’t believe I didn’t have this first, is food. Eric had this one down cold. He had a good variety of snacks and liquid refreshments available, and also encouraged those who were coming to bring stuff, too. Naturally, I showed up empty handed. We also ordered pizza which made for a good dinner break. Another option might be grilling up some burgers, but that takes away from Halo time.

Speaking of breaks, probably a good idea to establish how long you want breaks between games. Some people like to get right back to the killing, while others are willing to mosey around a bit. Maybe an excess of players and subs make both types of players happy.

Despite some of the little problems, I had a blast and really want to thank Eric for hosting it. That was a brave thing letting all of us gun-toting psychos into your home. Now with this experience under my belt, I’ll know how to prepared for next time. And now, you will, too. Follow these tips, and the only killings that will happen will be on your Xbox.

Okay, only two weeks later, but I got it done. Now you see why I don’t do this. Takes way too long to bring out the details of my life. And they don’t make for good blogging, either.

“But see! That’s what I’m talking about! Now he’ll send Samson after the rest of us and he’ll go totally sickhouse on our asses! I *like* my ass gentlemen.”

From the geniuses who brought you Strong Bad, here’s Peasant’s Quest. It’s especially great if you were big into King’s Quest and other Sierra games in the 1980s like I was. They’re all in a Sierra Museum now on a Sierra Planet. I guess the company isn’t around like it used to be. I went to Sierra.com but that doesn’t look like what I was expecting. Although, the logo looks the same. Sierra used to publish my favorite football game (pre-console, of course) Front Page Sports Football. Ah, brings me back to my floppy disk days.

Back to the Peasant’s Quest bit. I first saw a quick snippet of it during a Strong Bad email. I found the full commercial thanks to this blog entry from All Things Christie. I was given the head’s up on that site from Jeff, Frenchie to those of you who have run over him on the Halo field. He said it was a cool site. I was marginally interested. He said she had crazy stuff and posted often. My interest went up a little bit more. He said her site tipped him off on Grayson waaaay before mine did. That got my attention.

I panicked. Remember, a few weeks ago, I decided fan films were going to be my thing. My thing. I was pretty proud of my Grayson find and was ashamed one of my (very few) readers spotted it elsewhere first. Upon further review, though, her Grayson posting was on July 22. Good. Mine was July 21. Whew. Foolish male inadequacies still in place. You had me worried there for a second, Jeff. Of course, her Grayson posting has a picture and complete explanation of the Robin mythos. Mine was crammed in after some Identity Crisis fallout, buried with other film mentions, and had no matching graphical support.

But she has lots of great stuff there, wonderful finds including a comination of Star Wars and Office Space. As such, she has now been added to the links on the left-hand side.

“So, you physically take the droids from the farmers and sell it back to them?”

I now have the three major football simulation video games. Sort of. I have Madden and NCAA 2005 for the Xbox and ESPN NFL 2K5 for my girlfriend’s Playstation. Which is in Kentucky right now with me still in Ohio. So, it’ll be a while before I can compare them head to head to head. But I have played a bit of each and will be able to compare them… eventually.

I already gave my review of ESPN’s game and NCAA Football 2005 so I guess I should do the same with Madden. It’s hard to do because I’ve only played a handful of games, barely past the bye week of my first franchise season. Of course, I’m the Bengals. But, I’ll go ahead and give some first impressions.

First off, the gameplay is definately a lot of fun. The graphics look very good. I’m a huge fan of mini-camp, even though they excluded my Bengals. It’s a nice way to help beef up some players who just aren’t that good otherwise. The passing game is pretty fun, and you have a lot of freedom before the snap to change the play. The EA Sports Radio feature is not bad. After your game, you can listen to Tony Bruno break down some of the bigger news around your NFL franchise. It’s only a couple of snippets but it gives you a decent idea of some of the other things going on around the league. I love the newspaper addition. I check out USA Today for the big national stories and Cincinnati Enquirer to keep up with my team. The funny thing is, despite my undefeated record, the big story is Jon Kitna stirring up a quarterback controversy. Talk about a huge difference from reality.

Speaking of reality, the real Bengals played at an unreal level against the Super Bowl champs Saturday night. That was the Patriots first loss in 16 games. Obviously, it doesn’t count but that’s saying something. The former Hiesman Trophy winner looked very good against New England, making smart decisions on the majority of his plays. We’ll see if he can continue that past halftime when Carson plays into the second half against Atlanta this weekend. I think this game will give us a much better indicator of how far along the team is. Speaking of the team, pretty much everyone did well Saturday night. Except the punters. Other than that, great game all around. Especially seeing scenes like this one:

Obviously, it was also fun to watch Corey Dillon struggle, even against our second team defense. Sure, it’s petty, but it’s fun.

For those of you not in the know, here’s this season’s new NFL rules.

I leave you with the best sports commercials of the last 25 years.

“Easy there, coach. We don’t want to scare away any of our viewers.”

We’re three issues in and I’m still torn about DC’s Identity Crisis. There have been some good things in the title, and some bad things. Of course, I’m still buying it so the bad stuff can’t be too detrimental… just nagging. In that spirit, here’s a great Identity Crisis #3 spoof. Just scroll down to his Monday, August 16 entry for the parody. I found it last week, laughed myself silly, but held off because you can’t directly link to it. It doesn’t look like that will change, so you’re going to have to filter through his latest entries to get the funny IC #3.

It was the Wonder Years all over again on this weekend’s Justice League cartoon. I thoroughly enjoyed the previous week’s, too. Especially the GL nods to Hal (giant boxing glove) and Kyle (replacing his glasses with a Kyle-style mask).

And people are beginning to look at sequel possibilities for Batman Begins. Looks like it will be the Joker again. Too soon? I just hope he looks better than he does on the new cartoon.

“I make stabby.”

For those of you who know me, this is a scary thing. Sometimes at my job, I go into classrooms and I talk to kids. How disturbing is that?

“Guido’s on the news and he’s not doing the weather.”