And no, I'm not talking about Tony Stark. No Heroics is a brand new sitcom about a city just like every other city, with one glaring exception. There are superheroes...everywhere. These superheroes come in all shapes and sizes, some are more popular than others, and they all hang out at the pub on their off hours.
Unforunately, I haven't seen an episode yet. The show is a british sitcom and so far is not available on American television (looks like I'll be searching the internet tonight for it). But from what I've seen from the trailer and read on the show's wikipedia page, the show looks to be an interesting mix of superhero humor, action, and british comedy. Think of it like The Tick meets Shaun of The Dead.
Here's some more details:
It is like our world with one difference there are heroes (or "capes"). The existence of heroes has also had many implications.
sidekick taxes - any superhero has to pay sidekick taxes even if they choose not to have one, these taxes are to compensate those affected when a sidekick makes a mistake such as blowing up a post office.
The SPA - the SuperPowers Authority deals with abuse of powers cases, dealing out punishments including community service, often done with unruly sidekicks
Anti-cape leagues - parallel to neo-Nazi groups in the real world, anti-cape groups (such as the Cape Haters of Great Britain) are prejudiced against superheroes and tell "capist" jokes.
The Fortress - the bar of choice for the protagonists where most of the show takes place, with three fundamental rules: "No Masks, No Powers and No Heroics".
A superhero academy exists where the capes are trained.
And the amount of detail that goes into the show is absolutely astounding. This is a show made by geeks, for geeks. Just watch this video of the show's creator taking us through the set for The Fortress and try to keep up with the sheer number of comics references that fill that place.
If that bar were a real place, it would be the coolest fucking bar...ever. God damn I need to find episodes of this show ASAP!
Above is a promo clip for this Friday's episode of Star Wars: Clone Wars, and it looks like I might finally get to see some of the stuff I was hoping and praying would be included on the show.
The new episode doesn't seem to star ANY of the stars from the Movies. Not a single one. There's not even side characters in the clip. It's nothing but clone troopers and droids. This is the stuff I want to see. Don't get me wrong here, I've enjoyed the last few episodes with Anakin and Obi-wan in them. But let's face facts here, we all know that nothing is going to happen to them. Their lives aren't in any real danger. We know they have to survive because of their roles in the later movies. As a result, their episodes while amusing aren't really filled with a whole lot of dramatic tension. We know at the end of the day the good guys will win.
This weeks episode, who knows what could happen. It's just a bunch of clone troopers. They could all be killed for all we know. This is what will make great episodes to me. I want to see new characters, new places. I want to see the tiny side stories that are too small to be covered in the movies. A small platoon of troopers guarding some remote outpost? Awesome!!!
I've been hoping that there will be episodes that will have nothing to do with the main Star Wars characters. I don't want to see 100 episodes of the same six people over and over. There's a whole galaxy spanning war going on, I want to see the small skirmishes, the minor battles. And it looks like that's what we'll be treated to this weekend.
Woohoo!!! I can't wait. Now if I could just get an episode where the droid soldiers don't sound like mentally challenged five year old's, then I'll be super mega happy.
Oh man, I hope this happens. It looks like we may not have seen the last of Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas.
After having been shut down back in September after 10 years at the Las Vegas Hilton, the Star Trek Experience may be given a second chance at life. The managing editor of accessvegas.com, Ted Newkirk (I'm not making that name up, I swear) confirmed rumors of a possible new location for the attraction recently.
"Chances are good that the Neonopolis is seriously interested because Star Trek: The Experience is a destination attraction," Newkirk said. "People go out of their way to see it."
"The Las Vegas Hilton was NOT on the beaten path at all, nor did it cater to a clientele that would be drawn to STE," he explained. "People sought out STE and found the Hilton. They will do the same if STE moves downtown, but with an added bonus. Downtown already has a built-in audience filling thousands and thousands of hotel rooms. Many of those will go see STE for fun."
I can't say I've ever heard of Neonopolis before, and I've been to Vegas a bunch of times. So after a little searching I found out that Neonopolis is an entertainment complex located in downtown Vegas. It's on Las Vegas Blvd at the very north end of the strip, and thus far it's been a rather dismal commercial failure. So maybe the Star Trek Experience could help breathe some new life into the center, especially with JJ Abrams' new Trek movie coming out next year.
I really hope this happens. I was very sad to see the Experience close down. I loved that place. It was the only place I knew of where you could buy a six-pack of Romulan Ale or a bottle of Klingon Blood Wine. And the food wasn't too bad either. The biggest problem with the place, in my opinion, was its location. The Hilton was way far away from the strip, and you either had to drive over there or take the monorail. It was a pain in the ass to get to.
Having it on the strip, even if it is the far far north end of the strip, would be rad. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed. I miss going to Quark's bar and having a drink. I want to go back there.
Thankfully, the above ad is fake. However, it's reason for creation may be rooted in truth. Rumors have been swirling for a while now that the Barack Obama Campaign have purchased some virtual advertisement space in the videogame Burnout: Paradise. I'm not sure if this rumor is true or not, but regardless, the rumor inspired someone over at Collegeotr.com to create these fake in-game Obama ads as they could possibly appear if Barack decided to buy ad space in other games.
Who knew the faithful companion cube was a democrat? Maybe GLADoS is a republican, and that's why it tells us not to listen to the cube if it starts to speak to us.
The fake ads have been pretty popular. So, not to be (completely) biased, a series of fake McCain ads have been released as well. McCain's ads focused on older games though, which makes sense as the guy is like 105 years old and probably isn't up on the latest generation console games. Despite their lower resolution graphics though, the ads are just as awesome.
It's the warning message at the bottom that really makes this one great.
There are fewer things in this world that are more evil and sadistic as the dog in Duck Hunt. Constantly mocking you for your failures, the dog is a symbol of all that is mean and hateful in the world. Given that, the above image seems almost fitting.
This is hands down my favority Muppet Show Episode. It's got to be one of, if not the best episode ever.
This is the Star Wars Episode of the Muppet Show. In this episode, Mark Hamill appears as both Luke Skywalker (hero of the rebellion) and Mark Hamill (actor who loves to do impressions and sing). R2-D2 and C-3PO are in the episode as well.
This is also the episode that gives us Gonzo in a Darth Vader costume, which is itself a hilarious concept. But what really makes me love this show is the fact that Mark Hamill is playing both himself the actor and Luke the character. This leads to some confusion amongst the Muppet cast later on as they are confused as to why their guest keeps changing personalities and insists that he is not the other person.
There's a bunch of moments to love in this clip, such as Luke musing that it looks like they've landed on a comedy variet planet, or Mark Hamill doing a dancing comedian routine that Kermit doesn't like. My favorite moment, however, is when Luke kicks open a door and barges into the room yelling "Remember Alderaan!!!" He then runs upstairs and yells "Down with the Empire!!!" and storms off stage. I don't know why, but I love that bit. This single scene to me is way cooler than anything that happened in Episode I.
Instead of giving you this episode in clips, I've been lucky enough to find the entire episode, broken into three parts, on youtube. I'll give you part one this week. Tune in next monday for part two.
Over the weekend I was lucky enough to have found a way to weasel my way into attendence of the Spike TV Scream Awards. For those of you unfamiliar with the Scream Awards, they're an awards show put on by Spike TV and they focuse solely on giving out awards to horror films, scifi films, action films and comic books. Think of the show like the MTV Movie Awards, only without the inherent lameness that comes with being a product of MTV. I wish I could say that I have a ton of cool photos to share with you, but as I'm not cool enough yet to have a press pass, I was banned from having a camera and thus only have one or two hastily snapped cell phone shots that I'll post later today.
I'd never been to an awards show before so I had no idea what to expect, but wow did I have a really good time. Typically, I'm not much of a celebrity stalker kind of person. I'm not one to usually get all happy and excited to see celebrities, but I must admit to getting sort of giddy once the show got going due to the sheer caliber of people I found myself around.
The pre-show stuff was fairly slow. Agonizingly slow to be honest. The way it was set up, the general audience that I was a part of were put in these bleachers above the red carpet, on the opposite side of the press that were taking pictures of the celebrities. When I say "above the red carpet" I mean that literally. The bleachers were raised up about eight feet or so from the ground, so we were literally looking down on people as they walked by. This created a big problem though for anyone who wasn't in the very front row, as now all you could see what the person in front of you. If you weren't in the very front, you didn't get to see much. And even if you made it to the front, all you got to see was the back side of a lot of heads since we were across from the press.
All this meant that for the most part, the red carpet bit for me was pretty lame. Other than learning that Billy Corgan has an acne problem on the back of his head, not a lot of fun stuff happened during the red carpet, with one notable exception. Actor Greg Grunberg, the guy who plays Matt Parkman on Heroes, was hosting the red carpet stuff for Spike TV and early into the show he came into the audience, right where my friends and I were standing, and started interviewing us and asking us what kinds of movies or comics we liked. He was a really nice guy and was very funny to talk to, although I was amused to see how much makeup he had on to be on TV. But that's show business I guess.
While I myself wasn't able to take photos of the red carpet stuff, I did find this flickr account which gives you an idea of what it looked like. I was in the raised bleachers in the background of most of these shots.
After a while I did finally manage to make my way to the front of the bleachers and was able to see a bunch of celebrities including people like: Ron Pearlman, Julie Benz, Wes Craven, Stan Lee, Jaime King, Summer Glau and Milla Jovovich. Oh my god Milla and Summer are so hot in person. Sorry, just had to say that.
Once we got inside, the show began with Kate Beckinsale came out and gave a Scream Icon Award to none other than Sir Anthony Hopkins. I definitely did not expect someone as awesome as Anthony Hopkins to be there, so for the show to start out on that note was pretty damned cool. After that the show got going. I'm not going to bore you with all of the details. I'm sure you've see awards shows before, so you know how they work, but here's some rather cool highlights of the night:
They world premiered the trailer for the brand new Remake of Friday the 13th.
Some new Watchmen movie footage was shown.
Tim Burton almost had a panic attack during his grand entrance to the show.
Robert Downey Jr. gave a hilarious pre-recorded acceptance speech from the set of Sherlock Holmes in London.
The Smashing Pumpkins performed a song live on-stage.
Up on Spike TV's website right now they have some highlights of the show up, including the Tim Burton Incident and Robert Downey Jr's speech. Trust me when I say that Tim Burton's entrance was nowhere near as smooth as it looks in the edited video. It took almost 10 minutes to get him from the back of the ampitheater to the stage, and he was visibly not happy about being up there so long. The bucket that had him in was rickety and it looked like he was going to fall out at any second. He looked scared up there.
By far though, the highlight of the evening for me was getting to see George Lucas in person. He comes out at the very end of the show to accept the Comic Book Icon award from Samuel L. Jackson. I've never seen George Lucas before and I never thought I would. So to be suprised by his appearance that evening was amazing. By the time he came out I had been lucky enough to be granted a seat near the front of the stage, so I was only about 10 feet from him. It was pretty damned cool. I managed to get a cell phone pic of him from where I was which I will post later today.
The Scream Awards show airs tomorrow night at 9pm on Spike TV. To help you remember that, here's a countdown thing:
