What used to be Skwiz's Photo a Day and is now not

Time for another Skwiz movie review! I decided to go a week late to see Avengers. There was part of me that wanted to be there for the midnight opening [but my 5:30 alarm beat that one down], plenty of me that wanted to try and go see it opening weekend, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to talk about it with my friends if I went before they could, and this movie must be talked about. Unfortunately, a couple friends still weren’t able to make it when we went on Saturday, so we can’t have a good old nerd round table before we start playing D&D next week (or whenever).

Really early I’m going to say that I give this a 5 out of 5. I loved the movie, but I’m not going to break percentages and give it a six or anything. I’m planning to see it again, and I want to take my wife [who is also my editor, so this may be posted poorly edited or a week or more after the original writing - ended up being a little of both, this went up a week after seeing, but unedited - I’m sure she’ll look at it after we go see it] to see it. I heard someone say, “On a scale of 1 to OMG,” and on that scale I’d give it a solid “BO-zheh moy” [it’s phonetic Russian, and a line from the film, look it up]. I tried to keep spoiler free in my previous movie reviews, but there would be little I want to to talk about if I did that, so there will be some spoilers ahead. I’ll give you fair warning, though; you can read the next couple paragraphs safely.

As I said, I really enjoyed this movie, and it was pretty much exactly what I was expecting going into it based on the tone of the Iron Man, Thor, and (somewhat) Captain America stand-alone films. I’ll admit I still haven’t seen Ed Norton’s Incredible Hulk, but I didn’t feel out of any kind of loop. My dumping into the Marvel universe began with the Spiderman and X-men cartoons of the 90s, and I do have a small box of comics in the basement that I started reading at that time, but I can’t give you exact details on everyone’s back stories, or tell you how they got things “wrong” in the movies, but I do enjoy me some good old superhero action. If you haven’t seen the most recent spate of Marvel movies [with the possoble exception of Incredible Hulk] this movie is not going to make a lot of sense to you. Granted, I’m pretty sure they aren’t really expecting to draw in people with no experience of the characters or other films, but fair warning. There is almost no exposition to the film. Hawkeye gets a little, since he was more a cameo in Thor than a real character, but you need to know who everyone else is, and how his or her personality works,  going in. I liked that this movie wasn’t given over to a tremendous amount of exposition on the characters; it’s the only way a movie with this scope could work, and I think Joss Whedon nailed it.

I don’t think I’m spoiling much by saying that we knew the basic plot going into the movie. We need to assemble the team to fight a threat, spearheaded in this case by Asgardian god of mischief [and Thor’s adopted brother], Loki. That was in the trailer. And that, pretty much, is an entire plot summary: assemble team, beat Loki. If you are now going, “Oh c’mon! How can you give away the ending!” then shame on you. There was no way that the Avengers weren’t going to be able to kick serious ass, and we also know Thor 2 and Iron Man 3 are already in the works, so it isn’t like we can kill off either of them. This simple plot isn’t a problem, however. We’ve already had five movies [because I don’t think anyone is counting Bana Hulk] to establish how our heroes behave, what personality quirks we can expect, and their individual styles of ass-kicking, but now we need to find out how they are all going to be able to mesh together.

*HERE BE SPOILERS, READ ON AT YOUR OWN RISK*

I can’t say that I noticed anything that screamed at me that Joss Whedon directed this movie, but I think he managed to turn what could have been a very boring idea into a great story about people. While the whole world is in peril, the most important thing seems to be interpersonal relationships, between the team members, between Thor and Loki, and even Black Widow’s relationship with her former self. Thinking of the Whedon stuff I know, there is always humor added to situations, because we all know someone who cracks jokes under pressure; it’s a very human reaction to stress, and I think that helps connect us to it. I didn’t feel like it was humor in a way that was inappropriate to the characters themselves, either. Tony has been established as quick witted and always with a joke, which may be mostly Robert Downey Jr., but he made Tony Stark his own, and it sounds natural. The others don’t try to keep up with him, but don’t always let things get by without adding their jabs. Humor in Avengers wasn’t a glue keeping together a bad movie, it was more, to switch metaphors, the chocolate chips you weren’t always expecting to find in the middle of the cake. Tony could have been the only comedic element and it would have held up, but I don’t think I’d be going to see it again if it was five straight men to one clown.

One thing I noticed was all of the “hero fights” in the movie. Thor takes on Iron Man, Cap tried to break it up and gets involved with Thor, Hulk goes after Black Widow (though that was more of a chase than a fight), and then Thor steps in to go toe to toe with the green man, Cap and Iron Man almost go at it, even Black Widow and Hawkeye (the two non “super” members of this team) get to duke it out. These people don’t always get along. They squabble, sometimes to dramatic effect, but in the end they have to learn how to work together, and they do that to even more dramatic effect. I’ll admit I’ve listened to a couple podcasts talking about the movie, so some ideas have seeds elsewhere, but I want to throw them out anyway. There are relationships presented that we can easily relate to. Captain America/Steve Rogers was a man idolized by Howard Stark, Tony’s father, and who almost certainly Tony was always being compared to, and he couldn’t stand up that perfect soldier; this establishes a sibling rivalry, especially in Tony’s attitude, that takes most of the film to play out. Tony and Bruce (notice how I’m trying to use their “secret” identities instead of their superhero titles?) connect on an intellectual level that none of the others can match; instead of Tony needing to figure out how to dumb down what he’s talking about, he and Bruce can expand upon each other’s work and do something the entire team of SHIELD scientists have been unable to do. Once Hulk (who is a different character than Bruce) finds out Thor (should I call him Donald Blake?) can take a licking and keep on ticking, they become a hard hitting one-two combo team. And of course, there is something more going on in Natasha/Clint world than was explored in this film, which bring me to the “things I wish could have been in the movie but couldn’t unless we wanted it to be more than five hours” section.

How did Thor get back from Asgard and why did he wait until that moment to do it? Are there any really special features to Iron Man’s new suit, and what exactly were those bracelets he put on? We got to know about Thor’s girl and Tony’s girl, but what happened to Steve’s; she shouldn’t have been dead yet, right? How was Bruce able to control the Hulk during transformation number two but not number one? And I wanted more Black Widow/Hawkeye story. It almost seemed they were teasing giving Widow her own movie, and I’d really like to get more of the non-superhuman story in there. I think it would be a great counterpart to the superhero films, without all the incredible CG special effects the other films needed to sell their characters.

Going off in a slightly different direction, I loved all the toys that just got thrown around - everything from Loki’s transforming staff to the SHIELD helicarrier. Coulsen picking up a gun that’s effect he doesn’t even know, and then getting the payoff of, “So that’s what it does,” was awesome. We got Hawkeye’s quiver of many tricks, the enemies’ skiffs, and I suppose we could call the flying “battle whales” tech. And of course “Stark” tower is a monumental piece of tech, with the added little bonus of the walking armor removal from the landing pad, just to match Tony’s incredible style.

There’s just so much I want to gush over, and I can’t wait to see this movie again, but the best thing you could do is to go see it yourself. My wife doesn’t do “action” movies, but I think she will get a kick out of Avengers, so try it out, but only if you have some background on these characters. In the end, this movie really seems to be the exposition for something even more massive. We now have assembled the Avengers, they know how to work as a team and why the should, and then comes the mid-credits scene. Again, I’m not a huge Marvel nerd, and, if it was only in comic books, I probably don’t really know it, but my viewing companions knew exactly what was going on when Thanos popped up on screen. After some judicious wiki-ing, he seems like the kind of villain you would need a superhero squad to take on, and I’m anxiously awaiting the announcement of Avengers 2.

And then we wait till the end of the credits. We knew something was going to be there, but what? They had already teased a sequel, shown everyone, even this film’s big bad, had survived the final battle, shown (or said) that the pre-established love interests were alive and well, so what was left. Should I spoil it? Well, if you’ve read this far without seeing it I might as well. Lunch. The team has gone out to lunch in a rubble strewn restaurant that could not have been very far from some of the heaviest fighting. It got a quick laugh as soon as it popped up, and as it went on with no dialogue, no slapstick, another few rounds of laughter. And then Thor takes a bite out of his pita, to huge laughs. It seemed the perfect punctuation to the film.

Thanks for reading, get ready for some more reviews as we head into summer movie season, and let me know if you like what I’m writing.

I think this says blue to me. I took it for blue week on my photo a day blog.

http://bit.ly/HVZn3J

Neither my wife nor I felt like fighting crowds of teenagers, so we waited until last night to go and see The Hunger Games. We’d both read the entire trilogy of books, and we were hoping the movie would live up to the hype.

We actually made it to the theater before the commercials and trailers began, so we didn’t miss anything, but I’m pretty sure that the projector was slightly out of focus the whole time (not a euphemism for being teary or anything, I actually think focus was slightly off). I’m not giving away any important plot that isn’t shown in the trailers, so no spoilers ahead. With a brief text description of the background for the story, we were dropped right into the middle of the story. We first meet Katniss and Primrose Everdeen and are shown the horrors of the people in the days leading up to the Reaping, the selection of one teenage male and female from each of the former United States’, now a totalitarian state called Panem, twelve Districts to compete as Tribute in the titular games. Each District is given a single industry, and all of the inhabitants participate. District 12, the home of Katniss and Primrose, is the coal mining district in the region formerly known as Appalachia. For some reason, I had always pictured District 12 to be less hilly than the setting for the movie, but I did have to agree that it wasn’t a wrong choice, and it fit with the story; it just wasn’t what my head had given me. The movie begins shortly before the Reaping for the 74th annual Hunger Games which were begun as retribution for a failed uprising of the Districts to overthrow the Capitol. Katniss Everdeen is the heroine of the film and the focus of much of the story (I’ll get to more on that in a little bit). Not explained in the film, but present in the book, is the fact that for each year the teenagers’ names are put into the pot an additional time. A twelve year old only has one chance of being as Tribute, a thirteen year old two, and so on. Also, for an additional entry in the pot, a teenager can get extra food for her family.

After calming her sister from a nightmare, Katniss heads toward a fence marked as electric and casually steps through its unpowered strands. She gets her bow and arrows from hiding places in the forest and begins to hunt, which is very illegal in Panem. The extra food from hunting goes to feed her family as well as being sold on the black market to provide them with other goods and services. The illegality of the hunting and the market (called the Seam in the books, but remaining nameless in the film) were not impressed on the audience, and the overt discussion of Katniss’ hunting made it seem a trivial manner. It becomes important later in the story arc (future films) that hunting outside of the fence is a major offense, so I’m not sure how the filmmakers will get around needing to change the perception they have set up. We are then introduced to her hunting companion Gale, and they discuss the upcoming Reaping and Games and how they might try and throw off the shackles of the oppressive government. I didn’t think Gale got enough exposition or was as important a character in the film as he was in the book, which leads to a little less investment in the obligatory love triangle later in the story. Back in town, we are shown an elaborately over the top woman walking through a sea of, as my one friend put it, people dressed like (old order) Mennonites. For those of you not of a middle to eastern Pennsylvania rearing, the girls wear plain dresses and the boys wear simple slacks and collared shirts. Effie Trinket (though I’m not sure she really gets named in the film) is the Capitol representative for District 12 and has come to draw the names of the Tributes out of a bowl. She is very excited, as the Hunger Games provide endless entertainment for the people of the Capitol, who are not reaped for the Games. After a call of, “ladies first,” Primrose’s name is drawn. Knowing the loss would break her mother, and that her gentle little sister has no chance of surviving the coming bloodbath, Katniss volunteers to serve as Tribute. Peeta Mellark, the baker’s son, is chosen the male tribute, and no one volunteers to take his place.

Now to the fast forward part of the review so as to not give away plot. Peeta and Katniss board a train to be whisked in decadent opulence to the decidedly more decadent and opulent Capitol for preparations for the Hunger Games. Woody Harrelson plays the drunk mentor of the pair, having been the only former victor of the Games to ever come from District 12. It felt like everything at this point became more rushed, crushed, and compressed to fit into the film, and a number of the peripheral characters weren’t given enough screen time. Lenny Kravitz was certainly an interesting choice as Katniss’ stylist, but he fit the role well. Donald Sutherland as President Snow, the dictator of Panem, seemed a little more grandfatherly and less sinister than I wanted from the story’s main, albeit behind-the-scenes, antagonist. I had hoped for something… more out of the chariot entrance scene, because it didn’t seem to me to warrant the nickname that stuck with her for the rest of the film. Brief glimpses of the other 22 Tributes are given, and it is easily apparent which ones are going to get more time on screen in the games and which of those you are supposed to hate and love. There a glimpses of some sort of backstory between Peeta and Katniss, and his dramatic protestation of love, on live television no less, leads to the pair being dubbed star-crossed lovers, setting up a bit of drama and tension (delved more deeply into in subsequent books), as well as the love triangle that seems to be becoming a prerequisite of young adult fiction, especially that with a female lead.

And then come the Hunger Games themselves. It is a very literal kill or be killed scenario, and the victor is the last man, or woman, left standing. Teenagers are shown dying, though in most cases the kill shots happen off-screen and only the blood spatter is shown, but the Games are shown as being quite gruesome, and the violence does not seem to be glorified. During the Games themselves, we are often given glimpses of Haymitch schmoozing with the sponsors (who can pay to have items dropped into the arena for specific contestants), or trying to convince the designer of the games of something, and I didn’t remember these things from the book. A little Internet poking when I got home confirmed that there were no scenes in the book that Katniss was not directly involved in. These added scenes helped move the story along without the need for a Twilight-esque inner monologue voice-over from Katniss, but I did feel like they softened Haymitch’s character. I had always had him as older in my head and much more curmudgeonly for more of the story. Of course, he should have only been 42 years old at most, based on his backstory, so that was a problem in my reading, not the casting. Of all the deaths, only one was deliberate on the part of our heroine, and the other seemed more a self-defense reflex than a conscious decision. I wished Rue had gotten more time, as her relationship with Katniss, though brief, felt looser than I had hoped for. Since we know only the victor survives, and Katniss stars in the rest of the trilogy, it is safe to say it is not a spoiler to tell you that she survives, and the 74th Hunger Games end in quite a spectacular fashion.

Regarding the film as a whole, I thought it was well done and that very little was left out. However, this meant that things needed to be dramatically truncated, which left some characters getting the short end of the stick and some situations becoming less tense as they were shortened from hours or days down to minutes or simply overnight. One thing that I understood better after seeing the film, or possibly was a choice of the filmmakers more than the author, was that the main female and main male seemed to switch gender roles. Peeta was the baker, the artist, and the emotional one, while Katniss was the hunter with a rough demeanor. It was interesting to see gender stereotyping broken in a film that is proving to be very popular. I did enjoy the film, and it certainly kept a portion of the emotional impact I hoped for. Those of who you saw the movie first and want more, go and get yourself a copy of the book. You’ll be able to go more deeply into the story and answer some of the questions you may not have even realized that you had. A criticism I had heard was over the extensive use of handheld cameras to shoot footage, even non-action shots, which some viewers found distracting. It didn’t catch my eye at any point, but I do like to sit toward the back of the theater. There was one sequence of strange cinematography, but it fit the needs of the scene, and I was impressed they were able to pull off the feeling of the scene without having an omniscient narrator. When I realized that scene had to be coming up, I actually wondered how they were going to pull it off, and I really liked the choices the filmmakers made for the scene. Oh, and I can’t forget the music! As I had read online, again, about the score to the film, I made sure I was listening for it, being the music geek I am. There were definite calls to bluegrassy, hillbilly kinds of music for Katniss. I enjoyed it, as I like that kind of music, but it wasn’t so overtly banjos and twang that any average pop music fan would be giving it a disgusted look. The music in the Capitol, especially for Stanley Tucci’s over the top Caeser Flickerman, was loud, brash, and, at times, rhythmically disjointed - things just didn’t line up. It fit the style of the Capitol and worked for me.

Since I knew the source material, I was left wanting a little bit more, so I’d give it 4 out of 5. If you don’t know the story, you shouldn’t be missing anything - our viewing companion hadn’t read the books, and he was only confused about the backstory of the world, which is really expanded outside of the first novel, anyway.

I had the great fortune to be able to attend the second show of Nerdist Live Philly at the Trocadero on Friday night for free; I won the tickets in a Geekadelphia giveaway. I have been listening to the Nerdist podcast since late last year when I started a new job and was looking for podcasts to listen to during work. In about three episodes I knew I was hooked, and I’ve waited excitedly to see who the next podcast turns out to have for a guest, or what title was chosen for a hostful. I’ve recently begun digging into the archives to get more of a Nerdist fix in my day.

Friday evening started a little later than planned because those able to attend the first show didn’t want to have to leave without having a chance to meet with the hosts. A quick check of twitter while waiting in line showed a tweet from @nerdist (Chris Hardwick) himself apologizing for not being able to meet with everyone, but it would have pushed the start of the second show back two or more hours, and the Troc asked them to wait for the meet and greet until after the second show. Shortly thereafter the line began rapidly to progress into the venue (in lines of five, for anyone who’s ever been to the Troc).

Having attended standing room only concerts at the Trocadero before, I was pleasantly surprised to see tables and chairs set up on the main floor and a block of chairs off to one side. I chose not to head up to the 21 and over balcony because it seemed to be the destination for most of the crowd already, so I assumed the floor would be little bit more open. After finding a seat, but while still waiting for everyone to file in and for the show to kick off, a screen was down in front of the stage showing a twitter search for #nerdistphilly tagged tweets. I thought this was an interesting way for the audience to interact with each other and the world at large while waiting for the show to start, as well as a fun to see the guys backstage commenting on the voices they could hear sticking out of the general din.

In short order the screen rose, to a loud round of applause, to reveal Chris Hardwick. He asked how many people in attendance had been at the early show and seemed surprised by the number who had decided to attend both shows. After a quick joke that Matt and Jonah would need to come up with an entirely new set, Chris introduced the first podcast host to present his stand-up set, Matt Mira.

Without going into a joke by joke replay and possibly ruining it for those of you who might be waiting for Nerdist to get your town, I would still like to give you an idea of the evening. Some of the highlights of Matt’s set for me included a story about breaking his father’s ham radio antenna and why it ended up buried in the ground in the next town over, why Matt never achieved Eagle Scout (the physical fitness badge), and why Cyclops stopped being his favorite member of the X-men (he shoots out of his eyes, so how does he miss?). After what seemed like quite a short time, Matt checked his iPhone and introduced our next host, Jonah Ray.  

I had never realized that Jonah was quite so tall, at least in comparison to Matt and Chris. The things that stood out for me in Jonah’s set were how he thought fetishes might end up getting started, his underwhelming experience tasting Yuengling for the first time (which predictably generated quite a round of boos from the natives), and a story that culminated in, “Have you ever had ham and swiss on red velvet?” Jonah then reintroduced Chris for our final stand-up set of the evening.

Chris came back out for his short set. Memorable moments included Mr. Farnsworth, the bulldog in the three piece suit, and unwitting “threesomes” in hotel rooms across the country. After his short time, Chris brought Matt and Jonah back to record the podcast.

I also won’t discuss the content of the podcast too much; you’ll be able to listen to it once it goes live, but I will give you a brief overview of the podcast portion of the show. There was a little bit of hostful discussion which led into a mid-show Quemments portion, in which I plucked up all the courage I had to actually go and participate and inadvertently got my friend mocked. Many gifts of artwork were given to the boys, a girl told how she had thought about buying The Nerdist Way but instead decided to steal a digital copy, a handful of comments were given, and a small number of questions were answered (through no fault of the hosts, there just weren’t very many quemmenters at the show). And then the night finished out with the special guest, Skeletor. Listen to the podcast for a wonderful conversation followed by an extra special presentation from Skeletor, who then went on to host a karaoke after party upstairs in the Troc’s balcony.

One last nice surprise was when we were leaving the parking garage recommended on the Troc website. Instead of the $40 or so the sign said I would have to pay for the parking, my validated card from the box office got me out of the garage for only $6. Being a fan of the podcast, I very much enjoyed the evening, and I certainly would have found it worth the price of admission (if I hadn’t managed to win tickets in a Geekadelphia giveaway).

Hi all. I’ve felt like writing a blogish post recently, but I don’t have anything to review for my photo blog, but I did have some thoughts on my most recent cinema experience, so I’m sharing my movie review of John Carter.

When I first saw something about Disney’s film John Carter I said, “Huh. They’re making that into a movie?” I had a passing familiarity with E.R. Burroughs work, mostly through its being referenced in the works of Robert Heinlein. I knew John Carter was a human who somehow ended up on Mars, and the lower gravity allowed him to have seemingly superhuman powers. I knew of the existence of a female named Deejah Thoris, and that was about it. Initially, I had very little desire to see the film. Nothing in the marketing was engaging me, and I thought I might see it once it came to home video, but I wouldn’t be upset if I missed it.

In recent weeks, however, I have seen things popping up here and there, interviews with cast members, new clips of scenes, and I began to think I wanted to see it. I didn’t have such a strong desire that I needed to see it on opening night, or even opening weekend, and this past Saturday I finally had the time to go see it.

As is my normal habit, I arrived about ten minutes later than showtime, not wanting to sit through commercials and trailers, and because my show companion was running late. Unfortunately, we walked in having missed some bit of the movie. I’m unsure what I missed, but I didn’t spend the film lost and confused, so it couldn’t have been too much. I appreciated the use of Edgar Rice Burroughs as a character in the movie, but I wonder how many moviegoers understood the reference. I’m a fan of non-linear storytelling, so getting the seeming end of the story at the beginning was interesting, because I then spent the whole movie trying to see what it takes to get the character to that point.

The movie didn’t come with a requirement of having read the novels to understand all of the nuances, which is good because I still haven’t picked up any of the books from the “to read” shelf on my e-reader. My viewing companion had read the first few books and didn’t go off on a tirade about the movie for being incredibly inaccurate to the source material, but I can’t say from personal experience. The movie was fast paced, and the two hours went by quickly.

With a brief introduction to the title character on Earth, you come to understand a little of the background that has led him to that point of his life and understand the kind of character he has. Through a series of events, John Carter finds himself suddenly transported from a cave in Arizona to a plane with no visible structures. If you’ve watched the trailer, you know that John is incredibly strong and seems to be able to fly, or at least leap huge distances. The film didn’t just take for granted that he would show up on Mars knowing this difference, and there is a brief comedic sequence of him trying to come to grips with the lower-than-Earth gravity. Maybe I need to suspend my disbelief a little more, but with the amount of time spent showcasing the lower gravity, some things jumped out at me as not sticking with that theme. I understand that it was shot under normal gravity, and the jumping scenes were accomplished via CG or wire work, but there just a few times where I had to wonder why something fell as hard as it did, or how John pushing himself up off the ground didn’t always result in an accidental flying leap, only when desired and for comedic effect.

After a very short time, John meets the Green Martians - comparatively tall, four-armed, tusked beings. The initial meeting results in an attempt to communicate across a language barrier, and John accidentally being dubbed “Virginia” by the leader of the Green Martian tribe, voiced by Willem Defoe. I was glad that the Martians didn’t just begin the film speaking English, and I found myself satisfied by the explanation of how John Carter came to be able to communicate. As I said, I haven’t read the books, so I don’t know if it was accomplished the same way as Burroughs described, but it worked for me, especially in the context that it was used…not to be too vague for those of you who haven’t been able to see it yet.

After this short exposition, things shift into high gear as the main plot kicks off. Love interests, evil warlords, shadowy masterminds, and spectacular technology abound, making for an action-packed sci-fi romp across a rugged Martian landscape.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, and am possibly considering picking up the blu-ray when it becomes available. The one sticking point for me, ignoring my little quibble with the lower gravity thing, was how quickly John’s character was able to change from who he was at the beginning of the film to the end of his time on Mars. I believe there was mention by the characters that more time may have elapsed than was actually shown on screen, but it felt like he went from being a curmudgeonly Civil War vet to a champion for Mars in little more than two days’ time. I understand they were trying to get a lot of information into a two hour movie, but it felt to me like a truncated pair of movies, with much expansion of the story getting left on the cutting room floor. Since this was a new franchise for film, it is understandable to want to make a single film, rather than asking the audience to buy into a pair when the studio doesn’t know how the material will be received. The ending was the obligatory sequel set-up I’ve come to expect from most films today, but it didn’t leave any huge, loose ends to nag at the audience. I’d give it a solid 3.5 out of 5, though if forced to a whole number, probably a 3. I’ll probably see a sequel if there is one, but I’m not going to be upset if one never materializes. I have some new novels I’ll be jumping into, and I’m sure I will get my fill of John Carter that way, with no complaints from me.

thisisthelist:

Nerdfighteria, if you have room in the garage of your heart for more than the Tour Van, consider Eugene’s anglerfish car.

(via fishingboatproceeds)

weasleycansaveanything:

John Green: Harry Potter Nerds Win at Life (x)

(via effyeahnerdfighters)

sparklenight:

Kimya Dawson - The Library (with Aesop Rock)

This song is about libraries and namedrops Judy Blume, John Green and other greats from the YA world and it’s by Kimya and I think it’s the best song.  I was just pogoing to it in my room.

(via effyeahnerdfighters)

mostly10:

Put a nerdfighter in charge of buying books for the library at a school, and this will happen.
I regret nothing.
(If you think WGWG is missing, it’s not. It’s just already on the shelves.)

(via effyeahnerdfighters)

honeyintea:

I am not a fan of the Keep Calm posters, so I thought I’d make the DFTBA one oh so much more geeky to my liking.

DFTBA people.

(via effyeahnerdfighters)

fuckyeahgeekgirls:

genericcollegestudent:

oh star wars, the happiness you have brought me

Thanks for the tip, Shawn!

edwardspoonhands:

So John and I were contacted by Len Peralta a while back about being a part of his Geek a Week series. This was more or less a dream come true for me. People who have been featured in Geek a Week cards include Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, MC Frontalot, Neil Gaiman, Weird Al, and Stan Lee.

So, yeah, we said “Yes.” We did a podcast with Len (which is hilarious, btw). Then we talked a lot with Len about what we wanted for our card and we went through a few permutations, before ending up with the final version.

Now the card is done, but in order to get it printed, Len needs to raise enough money to do the actual printing. So he’s put together a Kickstarter page. If you go there and pledge at least $10, you’ll get the card pack that includes our card.

In addition to our card, you’ll get 14 other geeks including George R. R. Martin, Seth Green, Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade, and the cast of the Big Bang Theory.

So Go, Now! YAY!