Midweek Linkspam

I’m sure by the time I finish writing and coding this post, it will not be, as the title says, early morning, but I’m claiming artistic immunity. Or something.

• I’ve only heard through the grapevine about the ‘Fake Geek Girls’ article posted on Forbes, mainly because I didn’t want to raise my blood pressure any higher than it already was, but on my morning travels through the blogosphere I found a great rebuttal to the article on Sexy Videogameland. Even the comments are readable, well thought out, and full of rational discourse rather than the typical “no u suk!11!!!!!!!1”
• I stumbled upon (Not StumbledUpon) Magnet Stories’ Valentine’s Day post discussing relationships and dating in the golden age of social media. In a world where society encourages you to follow all of your friends (and many of your enemies as well – what’s that old saying about keeping enemies closer?) on every social media platform available, you can often find yourself knowing much more than you realize about a potential partner after only one date, which takes away much of the thrill of getting to know someone. Technology has its advantages and disadvantages, as this blog post clearly talks about. There’s still much to learn about the effects of social media and the internet on relationships of all kinds, not just romantic or sexual ones, and this post definitely brings up some good points that should be studied and expanded on in the future.
• Last week, I purchased tickets to see the second revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita, starring Elena Roger, Ricky Martin, and Michael Cerveris. “True Musical Fans,” who often think along the same lines as the “Real Geeks” discussed in the article above, will probably throw their noses in the air (much like the upper class detractors of Eva in this musical), but I am a fan of Mr. Webber’s music. Always have been, and probably always will be, no matter what When I found out about Evita’s return to Broadway, I was overjoyed to imagine I might get the chance to see one of my top five favorite musicals on stage. Did it live up to my expectations? In four words, oh my god yes. Entertainment Weekly reviewed the production about a week ago, touching on many of the facts about this new production that I find especially interesting. Most interesting, perhaps, is the Broadway debut of actor Elena Roger, the first Argentinean to take the title role in a major production. She adds her own special something to role, a certain flair that wasn’t there in performances before. That certain flair is certainly aided by a new orchestration which adds a more Argentinean sound to the production. If you’re in the area, I’d recommend you go see the production on those notes alone, but I can’t end this paragraph without both a nod to Ricky Martin and Michael Cerveris. Martin’s take on Che, the everyman foil to Eva, is wonderful, full of contradiction, good looks, charisma, and a surprising maturity.  He’s definitely come a long way from his boyband/pop singer years. Cerveris is the piece of the puzzle I was most worried about, but he tackles the roll of Juan Perón very well. Eva and Perón’s duet “I’d be Surprisingly Good For You” was one of my favorite parts of the show, and my heart went out to Perón during the last songs of the musical as Eva dies. (Whoops, spoiler alert? Although I’m not quite sure if spoiler alerts are necessary for actual historical events, especiall considering the musical begins with the news of Eva’s death.)
• QR Codes: Not Just For The Uber Geeks. The title says it all. Those squiggly little bar codes you’re starting to see on every surface ever out in public are called QR codes, and I’m a big fan of them. Their biggest draw is as an easy way to grab information from somewhere to store it. From URL’s to contact or event information, as long as you have a QR Code reader (something easily downloaded to your smartphone), you can read it. I even put one on my personal business card which links to my online website and portfolio. I have a feeling QR codes only going to get bigger as more people start using them and more uses are devised, so go play around with them.
• Marvel’s Nextwave is the Rocky Horror Picture Show of comics. It doesn’t sing, it doesn’t star Tim Curry, and the entire main cast of characters doesn’t crossdress (although one character has an entire closet full of dresses…), but it is one of the greatest cult hit comics in Marvel’s history. The great guys over at Multiversity Comics do a great job at fancasting, so I was excited to see they’d tackled Nextwave as their next project. Even more so when I completely agreed with their choices. I would totally watch this movie, as long as the Official Nextwave Theme Song was used.

‘Bending Sounds – NYC Subway’

A love letter to NYC and to the subway system, by Tim Sessler. The writer in me wonders about all the little story’s going on behind every person, every interaction, every piece of music, every little moment we see. It’s beautiful. I’ll definitely be watching for more of Tim’s output.

‘Pray for Japan documentary shows indomitable spirit of Japanese people

This past week marks the one year ‘anniversary,’ if such a happy word such as that can be used to describe the occurrence, of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. To honor the memory of the victims and to remind the world that recovery is an ongoing process, film-maker and entrepreneur Stu Levy released his documentary entitled ‘Pray for Japan’ into limited release this past week. Levy was in Japan when the Earthquake struck and filmed the documentary in between volunteering in the middle of the destruction. The film was shown in multiple theaters across the United States this past Wednesday, and is now out in limited release in New York City and Los Angeles until the 29th. If you live in Southern California or in the Greater New York City area, please go support this film. Not only does it focus on the people directly affected by the tragedy, with no mention of the nuclear problem that I found overtook media coverage as we got further and further away from the tragedy, but all of the proceeds from ticket sales go directly back to the Tohoku area to help continue rebuilding and supporting the area.

Here’s the trailer:

here’s the Pray for Japan website,

and here’s the AMC website listing for the movie.

Thank you so much!

“Rush Limbaugh Calls Sandra Fluke a Slut – Reformed Whores’ Response Video” or ‘Happy Coincidences’

A recurring occurrence in my life is my curious habit of watching popular performers without actually realizing how well known they are. The first time this happened, my cousin’s then-boyfriend-now-husband who worked at Carnegie Hall took the entire family to a performance by some foreign bass-baritone opera singer guy. The entire performance was amazing, but I didn’t realize the significance of the evening until I went home and Googled the singer’s name. For the record, the name on the program was Bryn Terfel,  who I later found out was a rising star in the opera world and is now one of the biggest names in the business.

Recently, on a much less wider but no less important and enjoyable scale, I had the pleasure of attending the G.L.O.C. Mixer this past Saturday, which included so many wonderful and, to a young woman just starting to find her own place in the world and in the big city, inspiring performances. One of the great performances of the afternoon, of which there were many, was a little set by comedic singing and songwriting duo the Reformed Whores.

Their video response to a certain radio “talents” recent comments has recently gone viral across the interwebs, and with good reason. Singers Marie Cecile Anderson and Katy Frame are witty writers, great performers, and all around wonderful musicians, and I’ll definitely be marking their next NYC-area performance down in my calendar.

Wedding bells are going to ring… but for who?

The Avengers and the X-Men may be coming to blows very soon, but who cares about that when there’s a wedding to plan? Marvel released this teaser on Facebook and Tumblr today, leaving X-Fans with another plot to speculate over.

Astonishing X-Men #51. June 2012.

Written by MARJORIE LIU
Pencils by MIKE PERKINS
Cover by DUSTIN WEAVER
ON SALE JUNE 2012

If I was the betting kind of girl, I’d say Northstar and his boyfriend Kyle will be tying the knot, considering Jean-Paul’s place on Liu’s Astonishing team and his being only member in a committed long term relationship. If it is them, this is a great step forward for lesbian and gay characters in mainstream comics, especially if Marvel continues to actively promote it.However, if my thoughts on the couple in question are correct, this will not be the first wedding featuring a gay superhero in mainstream comics. That honor goes to Apollo and Midnighter, who were married in Wildstorm’s The Authority series (issue #24). No matter who it is, I’m definitely looking forward to it. Marjorie Liu is one of my favorite writers in comics at the moment, and her run on Astonishing promises to be very good. Not to mention the potential for drama centered around the service, as no fictional wedding can go down without a problem.

Just this once, the redshirt survives! (Or does he…?)

Before you read this review, let it be known that this is very spoilery for the book itself! If you prefer to experience things without knowing anything that will happen, do not read on. But if you like spoilers like I do, then please read on!

Pushing Daisies 1×01 – ‘Pie-lette’

Ned has a special power. He can bring people back to life just by touching them. However, if he touches them again, he returns them to their dead state. If he doesn’t touch them again, a person in a vaguely determined area around him will die in their place within a short amount of time. This is the premise of short-lived tv series “Pushing Daisies,” all of which is explained in the first five minutes of the show by narrator Jim Dale (who many will remember as the voice of the US versions of the Harry Potter audiobooks), so it’s not actually very spoilery.

Quirky and fun, ‘Pushing Daisies’ is also surprisingly dark in tone, but the show is so stylized that it pulls it off. For example, the body of the protagonist’s dog is shown flying weightlessly through the air after being hit by a truck, but moments later the protagonist brings said puppy back to life.  (Plot Hole: How could Ned go so long without touching his dog again? Wouldn’t someone notice? Yes, I am That Person when you’re watching movies or TV shows.)

The pilot, or ‘Pie-lette’, clips along at a fast pace, stringing along different plot points that will no doubt be continued and built upon in future episodes. The premise of the whole show offers so much potential for future episodes, between the unusual and tragic romance between Chuck and Ned, the everyday goings on at the ‘Pie Hole,’ and the solving of crimes using Ned’s special power. What I really enjoyed about this first episode was how it reveled in the little everyday happenings of life, like the wrong hand touch of Chuck’s aunt by Ned. I find that many TV shows today often brush over the trivial little details about life, but as evidenced in the pilot episode of Pushing Daisies, showing those little moments enriches a series and its characters even more.

The show satirizes the entire “Will they, won’t they” plot point which runs rampant in entertainment today, which is a welcome change to the usual state of romance in television (I’m looking at you, Bones and House.) I also enjoy the fact that Ned is a pie-maker; baking is normally seen as a feminine task, and yet Ned is unapologetic in his and actually enjoys the process of creating the perfect pie. However, the show also focuses on the ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl‘ trope, epitomized by  Chuck, which I dislike for all of the reasons stated in the video linked there.

Ned and Chuck, kissing the only way they can.

If nothing else mentioned in this review intrigues you, check out this show for the colors. Pushing Daisies’ ‘Pie-lette’ is gorgeous: bright, vibrant, perfectly fitting the quirky murky fun of the series. Aesthetically, it’s rooted in the fifties, with hints of the seventies peeking through every once in a while.

Of course, creative endeavors that stray outside the norm tend not to last very long (see: Joss Whedon’s much lamented Firefly), and Pushing Daisies only lasted only two seasons beyond the pilot episode. I’ll definitely be adding the rest of the series onto my watching list.

Quick Announcement

One of my goals at New York Comic Con this year was to network and hope that something good came out of it. So I talked to people standing next to me in line, people sitting next to me at panels, and everyone sitting behind the tables, making friends and getting advice on how to Make It. I met a lot of awesome people and had a lot of awesome conversations, and yes, something good did come out of it. As I was camping out for the Mark Hamill Spotlight panel in the MTV Theater, somehow a conversation started with the group of people sitting around me, including two people with press passes. To make a long story short, [insert geek here] now counts me as their newest contributor! I’ll be writing under the nickname ‘Teacup,’ a moniker given to me by one of my oldest friends. Make sure you go check them out at their site and follow them on Twitter. They seem like a great group of people, and I’m honored to be writing for them!

Artist Appreciation: Emanuela Lupacchino

If you’ve been paying attention to my Twitter feed and to previous posts on Fannish Potpourri, you’ll know that Marvel’s X-Factor is one of my favorite comics right now. It’s hilariously funny, it draws upon the grandest soap opera tropes which the X-Men are best known for, and it’s written by the masterful Peter David, a long time veteran of the comic universe.

Something X-Factor is  known for, and something I feel is one of the strengths of the series, is the relatively quick turnover of artists. Some fans have a problem with it, but I enjoy seeing new and different artists’ take on the characters. With one exception, and I won’t name names, there hasn’t been an artist on the title I’ve hated. Each artist rises to the challenge of portraying the noir sensibilities of this mutant detective agency while at the same time bringing their own style to the book and handling all of the quirks of the Marvel Universe. It’s a lot to juggle, and not many would be up to the task. While I’ve enjoyed most of the artists on the title, I have to point out the incredible talents of one of the newest members of the X-Factor family.

Emanuela Lupacchino started penciling duties on the title with issue #208, which also happened to be one of my favorite titles of X-Factor after being renumbered to fit with a previous run. (Marvel does that a lot. Just roll with me here.)  Since then, she’s penciled a number of issues, and all of them have been fantastic. She’s faced a number of challenges, including Asgardian zombies, potential harbingers of the Apocalypse, and were-creatures of every sort, not to mention the eccentric and unique members of the X-Factor cast, but she makes it look easy. Her art is cartoony, yet realistic. Her artwork is full of emotion and movement, two things I find integral for someone drawing for a script written by Peter David.

Check out this video of her sketching a dangerously sexy Harley Quinn.

You can see Emanuela’s other work on Deviantart, or follow her on her newly created Twitter account. Also, check out her choice of inker Guillermo Ortego on the same sites: DeviantArt and Twitter.

NYCC ’11 – Mark Hamill Spotlight

When I first met Mark Hamill, he stood about four inches tall, lived on a desert planet with two suns, and spoke in a high pitched voice some people might call whiny. I was nine years old and my best friend had brought over the entire original Star Wars trilogy for a day long marathon to introduce me to the series. By the time the credits rolled on Return of the Jedi, I was hooked.

Olly Moss redesigned posters for the original Star Wars series. Aren't they gorgeous?

The Star Wars trilogy, as one of the most popular sci-fi creations of the past fifty years, is a gateway series into science fiction and geekery for many young people. I attribute those three films as my first steps on the way to becoming the geek I am today, as well as the series responsible for my first celebrity crush. Mark Hamill was not unattractive during the time the movies were filmed, even with the minor surgery he received between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back to correct damage done in a car crash. While the crush has since faded (except in a nostalgic way), my appreciation for Mark as an actor has not. So when the fine folks at NYCC announced the man himself would be attending New York Comic Con as a guest this year, I was overjoyed.

One handsome man

Needless to say, the Spotlight panel focusing on him on Saturday night did not disappoint. He spoke almost the entire time, telling anecdotes about his life, his time on the set of Star Wars, and his voice acting roles on shows such as Avatar: The Last Airbender, Regular Show, and, most famously, the Joker for DC’s numerous cartoons and video games.
Highlights of the panel were:

• Mark talked about how he learned that infamous plot twist from George Lucas on set moments before filming the scene and how he’d been instructed to keep it a secret. The story had been told in several interviews before and I’d heard it at least twice, but it was nice to hear Mark himself talk about the experience. One tidbit I hadn’t heard before was the addition of Harrison Ford’s “How come you didn’t tell me?” at the premiere.
• Mr. Hamill seemed bemused when it came to the rabidity of fans when it came to knowledge of the entire Star Wars universe. There were several moments throughout the panel in which someone in the audience shouts out the name of some alien or planet in the Star Wars universe that Mark didn’t know. At one point of the show, he mentions that many of the androids, creatures, and space ships were only given names when the toy companies wanted to copyright them for production. The first part of this anecdote is merely amusing, but the second half says a lot about the business side of the franchise.
• He performed many impressions of his numerous roles throughout the show without requests or, including many lines of the Joker and an improvised monologue in the voice of Skips, his character in Regular Show. This was the part that impressed me the most. I’d known he was a great voice actor, but that knowledge had not sunk in until I’d heard his skills as a voice actor in the flesh.
• A fan requested to hear Mark speak the famous line “Why So Serious?” from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight in his ‘Joker’ voice, and he obliged. He then proceeded to sing a slightly modified version of ‘Happy Birthday’ to an audience member, ending the song and the evening with a different, saltier version of the last line.
• Hamill’s overall enthusiasm and eagerness to talk about topics probably well worn out at this point of his career made the entire panel a very enjoyable experience. He mentioned many times over the course of the hour that he was a big geek as well, having a keen interest in old-time radio drama and a comic book collector since childhood.

When you meet a celebrity you look up to, you run the risk of having your image of this person tarnished by the person they really are. Luckily, this was not the case for any of the people attending the panel on Saturday night.  Mark was a great speaker and hopefully his first visit to New York Comic Con will not be his last.

Still lookin' good. Mark moved around twice to let people sitting behind the poorly placed column in the room see him.

Have you ever met someone famous that you looked up to? Were you disappointed with what you found, or were they just as you imagined?