Offensive Action Figures.

-  Chris and Matt over at WarRocketAjax have included some of my award categories in this year’s “Gordie Awards”.  WarRocketAjax is a pop cultural podcast wherein two really, down to the bone, unequivocally nerdy dudes talk about comics, video games, BBQ, music, movies, TV, net stuff, etc.  But mostly comics.  The categories they took from me were “Best High Concept”, “Best Rap Verse”, and “Best Last Page (of a comic)”.  To which I would have to answer (in order): the entirety of Hickman’s “Manhattan Projects”, Sadistik on “Wild West” (off Kristoff Krane’s “fanfaronade”), and I’ll have to come back to the last page thing.

Here’s that track (and verse):

And while I’m on the subject, Sadistik has a new record coming out soonish.  February 19th.  Here’s the announcement on his page, along with the track listing and album info/artwork/all that jazz.

-  The BAFTA nominations have been announced.  Not many surprises here.  One flick I was really excited for that didn’t get raving reviews was the crime/screenwriting/Shih Tzu kidnapping comedy “Seven Psychopaths“.  It was nominated for “Best British Film”.  Glad to see Michael Haneke’s new film getting some attention.  Somewhere.  I haven’t seen “Amour” but I’m sure it’s probably challenging as are all of his movies.  “Original Screenplay” is an interesting category, as I could see almost any one of the guys win.  But c’mon, “Zero Dark Thirty” isn’t really an “original” script.  I mean, it is in a sense that there wasn’t a fictional account of those events prior to it existing… but it’s a journalistic take on what happened.  It’s just telling a real story.  And if there’s evidence of that, it’s that the State Department is taking quite an interest in investigating where Boal and Bigelow got their information for the movie.

-  Good Lord.  More people having more issues over Django.  Along with an ultra-conservative co-worker (who’s mad because the movie’s “just about white people getting murdered”) here comes Al Sharpton who’s saying there shouldn’t be figures of the characters in the movies because he says these toys are for kids.  Which they clearly aren’t.  I mean, any kid would be bored out of his mind with an action figure that vaguely looks like Leo DiCaprio in a Hugh Hefner-esque robe with a cigarette holder dangling out of its mouth.  And I’m doubting action figures of characters from Tarentino movies sell all that well.  I think they’re probably geared towards hardcore fans who collect things of this nature, and they’re not widely available.  “”I don’t see any dolls representing Hitler that came from Tarantino’s (Holocaust movie ‘Inglourious Basterds’)…”, Sharpton says.  No, you don’t.  But who gives a shit if there was?

When I have kids I’m not going to let them have a fucking Hitler doll from a Tarentino movie, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t allow such a thing to exist.

-  Sonny

Link JERSEY??

-  Hurricane Sandy as the Fibonacci Spiral/Sequence:

-  I wonder how close this is to the character from 2001…?  Someone has decided to make a HAL9000 robot for purchase and — I’m assuming — mounting on your wall somewhere?  You can preorder it for $500 right now.  LINK.

-  Then we got some what looks to be hockey jersey’s that are really fucking nerdy and awesome at GeekJerseys.com.  This Link jersey is really, really fucking awesome:

Thanks Topless Robot for the tips!

-  The Biggest Expansion of Man In PreHistory?

DNA sequencing of 36 complete Y chromosomes has uncovered a previously unknown period when the human population expanded rapidly. This population explosion occurred 40 to 50 thousand years ago, between the first expansion of modern humans out of Africa 60 to 70 thousand years ago and the Neolithic expansions of people in several parts of the world starting 10 thousand years ago.

-  Warren Ellis FAQ featuring some interesting writing questions.  Such as:

I was wondering if you had any advice regarding making ideas more important. I have pages of different events + characters that I can only develop so far because, after a time, all I can add to them are “WHO CARES?” and “WHY DOES THIS MATTER?” (I’m talking about events characters will go through. “Statues come to life all around Greece” is immediately followed by “WHO GIVES A FUCK?”) Does this ever happen to you? Thank you very much for your time, and sorry if you’ve answered a similar question!Ungh.  This is a really tough one.  There are two ways, maybe, to attack this.

1) One way of doing it, and this works okay for standard dramatic storytelling, is this: what do your characters WANT?  The secondary questions are, what stops them from getting what they want, and how far are they prepared to go to get what they want?  But start with the simple first question.  What your character wants defines how we perceive and feel about them in the story.  Find one thing they want, and see how that feels to you.

2) From a certain view, stories are two things.  There’s what the story’s about, and what the story’s REALLY about.  Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS is about a Martian invasion of Earth.  But it’s REALLY about something else entirely.  There’s a subtext: there’s the thing Wells wrote the story toactually talk about.  What you may be encountering is having a story that’s all surface, or a story with a subtext that isn’t working out for you.  Find out what you really want to say with your fiction.  If it matters to YOU, it’ll matter to other people.

-  PoliFact has a list of “Scariest Lines from the 2012 Campaign” up for Halloween.

-Sonny

Walter & Dude Munnies (Toycutter).

So the dude who runs SUPERPUNCH makes and collects toys as a hobby (though, he surely makes some dough off it).  He’s good, really good.  His toy website is called TOYCUTTER; there he posts all sorts of things often times referencing popular culture.  I thought this was neat enough to share; not to mention I’ve been rambling waaay to much lately and need to get back to links/music/pics/vids/etc.  Here’s Walter n’ The Dude:

-Sonny

Suckadelic Items.

I was introduced to an ironic toy company called SUCKADELIC TOYS by, guess who/where, SuperPunch.  I tried finding their website to link to it, but apparently they don’t have one.  Which is too bad, cause they do some awesomely awesome stuff.  And I’ve been babbeling about serious (kind of) things too much lately.  So here’s a few examples of what Suckadelic does with Star Wars items.  Ok- found the site and it’s posted up there now.  Apparently this all started with a guy who made a mixtape entitled “Star Wars Breakbeats”, which I’d love to get my grubs on.  They started making toys around 2001.  I’m fairly certain most of their stuff is Star Wars themed.  Check it:

An AT-AT Walker (which apparently is never even uttered in Empire Strikes Back. So I’m not sure how anyone knows what it’s called.  Extended Universe, I guess.  Never knew how far EU’s reach actually is) tagged as heck with graffiti I’m assuming from Mos Eisley…

Here’s a version of Boba Fett crucified onto an un-foiled “in attack position” X-Wing, around a celebratory display which reminds me of 1920′s America, specifically the Roman Catholic processions featured in The Godfather II. See, Jesus, Star Wars bounty hunters, mafia movies, history, it all connects somehow…

And this is exactly what it looks like, a “Stormtrooper DJ”:

-Sonny