Heyoo, readers!  Remember, there’s a leap second to consider before kicking off 2009!

I’ll be on my way to Magfest 7 this weekend, and I hope to have a huge roundup of bands playing and games played!  Your resident Crybringer hopes you had a very Merry Christmas (while he celebrates with a new laptop!) and we can kick off 2009 in grand style!  Sing, drink, be happy with friends and good company tonight, and stay safe out there! 

 *ahem!*

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old times since ?

For auld lang syne, my dear,

for auld lang syne,

we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

And surely you’ll buy your pint cup !
And surely I’ll buy mine !
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Greetings, Time Lords!

I hope everyone had a great holiday and that you are all geared up as we approach yet another new year.  I had a good Christmas, but it left me exhausted all the same.  Between that and the upcoming festivities I’m putting together to help welcome the earth’s next trip around the sun, I’m taking the week off.  So, there won’t be a regular “Office” installment this week.

But – as always – I can’t leave my fan hanging.  So, for this installment of “The Docks” I will briefly go over the highlights of what Santa was kind enough to throw at me this year.  I got a nice collection of stuff in general, but these are the ones that stand out:

Dead Space for the PS3

Resident Evil who?  No, seriously – this game should come with a change of pants.  Lots of gore and nothing but layered moments of the wiggins.  And I’m addicted.

Chrono Trigger for the DS

A true classic returns.  I never got to finish this when I had it for the SNES, so I was excited to get this for Christmas.  I’ve been playing this game almost nonstop since I got it.  It’s still a remarkable game, and now it has extra Bosses, FMV sequences, and a few other surprises.  Now I get to never finish this for the DS.  I love it.

The Milennium Falcon

I’ve had to cut down on my action figure collecting for the past few months, but I knew I had to get this baby.  It’s a brand new vehicle for the 3 ¾ inch figures.  It’s bigger than the original, and boasts an array of new features, including an escape pod. This sucker kicks ass.  And no, you didn’t see me playing with my dolls again.  Good!

Planet of the Apes 40^th Anniversary Edition Boxed Set (Blu-Ray)

I got this myself with the help of some gift cards and Christmas monies.  All five films, all in Hi-Def.  And the last two are extended cuts.  It’s glorious.  And you know what else it comes with?  Monkeys!  MONKEYS!!!!!  Get your stinking paws on this set, you damn, dirty ape!

And there it is.  Hope this will tide over all of you drunks while you all stand around watching for a light-up ball to fall to its doom.  Here’s to a great and merciful 2009.  See you next week when I go back to the regular grind.

The Don thinks all aquanauts should be forgot and never brought to mines.

From all of us, to all of you, we at Spwug wish you a safe and happy holiday season.

Season’s Greetings, Vendequm!

I hope you’ve all enjoyed our Christmas journey over the past couple of weeks as we’ve looked upon a couple of the big geek moments of the past and present.

Now it’s time to be visited by the final spirit – the one we all fear the most…

Bah, who am I kidding?  That may work with the Dickensian folk, but we’re geeks.  When confronted with a ghost who can show us the future, we’re all like “Cool, man!  Show me what the Playstation 4 or the X-Box Cosmic look like!  Does Nintendo have full-on Holodeck capability yet?  Has Joss Whedon finally brought back ‘Firefly’?  Where’s my copy of Grey’s Sports Almanac?  I’m gonna be rich!”

Yeah, we are an undaunted and enthusiastic lot.

Still, our visit by the Ghic of Christmas Yet to Come should prove to be at least a little enlightening.  As you’ve seen with the last two installments, I’ve provided you with a look at major highlights in the progress of all things geek and how they’ve shaped our journey down the road of geek culture.

And as everyone already knows who is familiar with Christmas Yet to Come, what I present to you in this installment aren’t of things that will be, but merely shadows of what may be only.  So, you better straighten up, eat yer veggies, and quick mailing dirty socks to the neighbors, or Tiny Tim will never be played by Mary Lou Retton.  Now, let’s get started…

Our knowledge into the future begins in the present, as the seeds of our next technological breakthrough are still being planted.  What’s most unusual and interesting about this particular techno-development is that the cultivation of it has been going on for decades.  In fact, the very beginnings of this long-simmering application date as far back as the late 1800s.

Have I kept you all in the dark long enough?  Not seeing the big picture through your rose-and-navy colored glasses yet?  You gotta concentrate and look past the dots to see the image.

See?  A sailboat!

You got it.  I’m referring to the technological creation known as 3-D.  Most of you are aware that the 3-D phenomenon got a huge kick in the how’s-your-father back in the 1950s. 

Back then it was simply used as a novelty, only to die out for a period of time before coming back to theaters in the 1980s.

Jaws 3-D, anyone?

So, you’re probably wondering how a device used primarily as a goof to get some yahoos into theater seats while wearing crazy glasses could possibly become the next big thing on the road to geek utopia.

I’m glad you asked.  I just so happen to have something that resembles an answer.

The source of our reason goes back to the 1950s again.  Some of you may be familiar with the fact that when the television first became widely available in the 1950s, movie theater attendance began to drop off.  Back then, movies were in the same aspect ratio as what you saw on the television screen.  In order to get folks back into theaters and bring up box office revenues, lots of different tactics were attempted.  Among these efforts were widescreen motion pictures and 3-D films.

One of these stuck around and became the standard for how we watch movies.  The other dropped off the earth periodically only to be brought back every so often for fun and amusement.

The widescreen approach ended up doing exactly what the film industry wanted.  Movie revenues went back up, because folks could only watch movies in such a wide scope in the theater.  The aspect ratio became so popular that eventually it would be adopted as the standard ratio for television as well, something we are seeing today.  Now, everywhere you look you can see widescreen TVs for sale, and the television networks are starting to film all of their shows in that format.

Unfortunately, that brings us back to the problem we had back in the 50s – with home theater systems becoming just as good as (if not better than) movie theaters in sound and picture quality, the box office revenues are once again showing a sharp decline.  Add to that the development of Hi-Def, and theaters are starting to feel bruises that they haven’t felt since the appearance of the beatnik.

So, in today’s technological society, how can the movie industry triumph as they did during the days of the affluent society?

That’s right – 3-D.

What’s interesting is that this method for film-viewing my be the hero to save the theater experience… against the very same hero that saved theater attendance in the first place.  And for the first time since its inception in the 1890s, 3-D films may actually stick around as a mainstream method for watching film instead of just as a novelty device.

Indeed, film-production companies are already starting to get serious about using 3-D.  Movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas have already been retooled to be seen in theaters in 3-D.  And original movies such as Coraline are being created specifically with the 3-D process in mind.

We’re also seeing sections of popular movies like Transformers, and The Dark Knight being made into 3-D for movie-goer amusement.

Where does all this lead?  More and more movies are looking to jump right into the 3-D filming process with both feet, like Tim Burton’s upcoming Alice in Wonderland.  All signs seem to point that this will be the natural progression for how we will regularly view movies.

But not everyone is convinced.  There are still some folks out there, like Devin Faraci of movie website CHUD, that think the current resurrection of the 3-D process is just another temporary gimmick. 

So, what do you think?  Are we seeing the natural progression of film and television viewing?  Or are we just bearing witness to yet another brief resuscitation of a novelty that serves as the motion picture equivalent of jingling your keys in front of someone with a short attention span?  Just keep in mind, fellow geeks, that these are just the shadows of what may be only.  What we see and do today will determine the outcome.  So try not to step on any butterflies, okay?  I want my holodeck.

In the meantime, I’d like to thank you readers for coming along on the journey for this series.  It was fun to write and I hope it was fun to read.  I want to wish each and every geek and Spwug reader out there a very Merry/Happy Chanukah, Christmas, Solstice, Crazy Carl Day, Festivus, Kwanzaa, Chocolatepants Day, Yuletide, Decemberween, Uncle Bunny’s Day, birthday (I’m looking at you, Jesus), or just Thursday.

See you next year!

The Don is walking in a moderate wonderland.  Stupid Virginia.

Season’s Greetings, Wet Bandits!

Last week we were visited by the Ghic of Christmas Past, dropping some 8-bit knowledge on us while I was constantly looking at random folks who may or may not even exist (I’m looking at myself…in the mirror).

This week the Ghic of Christmas Present comes a-knockin’.  What modern-day geekery does this spirit wish to show us?  And will he be kind enough to keep his robe closed so we don’t have to see more than we need to?

Let’s find out, shall we?  All we need to do is take hold of his robe… and mind the creepy-looking children hiding inappropriately underneath.  Just don’t make eye contact and you should be fine.

It took me some time to decide what I thought would be the definitive face of geek for our current position in the space/time continuum.  It needed to be something that is currently a hot commodity, but has plenty of room for growth and not just some fad that would fade out in about a year’s time.  This was something that had to stay the course and would be a constant influence on geek life for years to come.  And although digital cow tipping was a serious contender, I ended up going in a different direction:

This is the time for Hi-Def, baby.

What was ushered in with a modern-day format war is quickly evolving into the way we watch movies and television.  Sure, we’re still a ways off from affordably priced hardware and media so that everyone can get on the Hi-Def train, but what’s important now is that everything we see and do in regards to how we view entertainment is crucial to what Hi-Def will become.

And this isn’t just a rehash of the galactic Betamax/VHS war (or the lesser-known laser-disc vs. DVD “I just shot you in the face” fiasco).  The visual media landscape is changing, to the point were even the lawmakers are getting in on it; as you all are already aware, the US government has mandated that the FCC require all TV stations switch from analog broadcasting to digital by mid-February of next year.  Now, this legislation is in no way forcing the consumer to upgrade to hi-definition.  What it is doing, however, is paving the landscape for what will eventually become the norm (at least until the next revolution in entertainment comes along).

I joined the Cult of Hi-Def earlier this year when my wife and I bought our first house.  It was so incredible to see some of my favorite TV shows in a much higher resolution with such clarity and detail (although I got my TV at the end of a viewing season, so I wasn’t able to catch much).  The biggest impression on me would have to wait for June.  It happened on a day I’m sure you all remember:

The day I got a PS3.

You all thought I was gonna mention something like the first petaflop computer (Roadrunner) breaking the processing speed barrier, didn’t you?  Yeah, you did.  That’s cute.

So, there I was with that new PS3.  My first experiences playing Grand Theft Auto 4 and watching my first Blu-Ray DVD (after spending hours upon days trying to get the PS3 to connect to the internet properly – thanks, Eric) were comparable to going through life with a slight tingle in the back of your head, then suddenly having the flood-gates opened to a bajillion crazy pixies zapping your synapses with multi-colored, psychedelic donuts dancing with pom-poms while blowing large, hurricane-sized chocolate kisses to your nervous system.

In short (too late), it was pretty damn cool.

What’s amusing is that once I started immersing myself in Hi-Def, it gradually became more and more difficult to go back to standard.  I notice the artifacting and other flaws more when I watch standard definition DVDs or TV channels on my Hi-Def TV.  I even thought, originally, that I would be content with just watching the up-converts on some of my standard definition DVDs instead of trying to upgrade my movie collection.  I mean, the up-converts were supposed to look pretty good.  I shouldn’t have to replace all of my movies on DVD with their Blu-Ray counterparts, should I?

Maybe I should.  Though some of my DVDs do look really good when up-converted on my PS3 (Bladerunner is a great example), I found that quite a few of my DVDs went in the opposite direction in terms of quality.  Even DVDs advertised as being “Digitally Remastered for Hi-Definition TVs” weren’t living up to the words printed on the cases.  Imagine my disappointment when Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind looked like crap (both movies happen to be Spielberg films.  Coincidence?).

So yeah – I think I’ve become officially spoiled by the Hi-Def movement currently underway.  I’m not alone, either.  Sales of Blu-Ray discs, Hi-Def televisions and Blu-Ray players are consistently going up while the prices of those same items are finally starting to come down.  We’re slowly making the transition.  I know that we’re still a couple of years away from the total embracement of Hi-Def, but after the digital broadcast switch-over happening next February, the rest of the locks and tumblers are going to start falling into place quicker.

And when those crazy pixies first come for you, heaven help you.

The Don thinks you’ll be alright with your Christmas of white, but he’ll have a Blu-Ray Christmas.

Dear Santa. It’s CB from Spwug!

Yeah, my posting consistency has been oatmealish for the past few months, but I’ve done what I can to provide as much word-on-the-street, fresh-from-the-show reporting. I mean, I could go on and on and on about shmups (and plan to anyway.) But, you gotta admit, a geek report on Coldplay or local student orchestras playing Zelda covers is cool too!

Anyways, I think I’ve been good enough — I haven’t kicked any dogs or set fire to people’s trash cans! And your cadre of elves could use a real workout this time! Money’s tight, Wii’s are hard to find. And these gifts, don’t necessarily come with a price tag.

WHAT I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR IS:

(10) Comiket 75 is right after your big day, Santa. I can take late gifts. My birthday is only a week after New Years. Doujinshi. Lots of doujinshi! Make it happen, St. Nick!

(9) Reduce the number of double-crosses, trick plays and world-shaking plot twists in Heroes for next season. Thank goodness the Sylar/Elle loveaffair was short lived — but she’s dead now! There’s like FOUR other blondes you coulda bumped off! It’s gotten to the point that this staunch HRG fan has to settle on Hiro — and lemme tell you, he’s actually kinda cool this time out. Is it true he writes his own dialogue for the japanese segments?

(8) Bless the gamers and producers of games out there, and bring the Christmas miracle of a XBOX 360 CAVE/AMI library release Stateside! One can only survive on epic FPS’ and Castle Crashers but so long! I want Dododo-Do-do-do *KABOOOOM!* Dodonpachi DOJ & Ketsui to be on my 360 dashboard! Street Fighter HD Remix and IV will put the fighting game pedal to the floor — shmups new & old should be battling right alongside them!

(7) Santa, when it comes to comic books, you deliver! No complaints! No requests! There’s a wealth of online comics, spectacular print comics, and Small Press Expo this year was an early present! Did I mention Small Press Expo? October in Bethesda/Rockville MD for the Washington DC region? Bigger and better every year? Shame on me. Readers need the likes of Wondermark or Remake in their Christmas haul.

(6) Crazy thing happened several weeks ago; up in Alberta, a meteor the size of a pair of semi trucks BLAZED across the night sky and brought it to daylight for a split second. Think you could fix that up for us again? Convince the unimpressed? Avert a potential apocalypse? There are calls for an asteroid shield, and that’d be kinda nice for the house.

(5) More Wyatt Cenac on Daily Show. The guy has to make his own promos.

(4) One of these. How you get it on the sleigh is not a crazy premise, considering the logistics of your one-night-only world tour runs smack up against the theory of relativity.  Make it happen, Santa.

(3) While we’re at it, one of these too. We’re a year out from 2010, THE geek culture year. Who would have guessed we’d have this figured out?! The whole flying cars joke is played out, but jetpacks more than diamonds dug out with the previously requested trencher are forever.

(2) You’ve already delivered me the gift that even fellow Spwug members probably raise an eyebrow at! A decent, if not amazing turnaround for the Baltimore Ravens! Last season was an EMBARRASSING 5-11 drubbing. This year might end at a complete REVERSE of that. 5 MVP bids. A confident coach. Wins to savor, losses to grow on. A fan of the past three seasons so far, I’m going to rest easy and enjoy Christmas Day knowing one gift has already been delivered!

*sob*, thank you Santa!

(1) My number one request — everything else can fall by the wayside for all I care! The one thing I want is to have a spectacular 2009! I’ve got a lot of travel plans, a lot of events to go, see and do and it kicks off almost IMMEDIATELY from January 1st!

Magfest! Ohayocon! Katsucon! A break in the spring so I can prepare for the epic return to San Diego Comic Con!

That’s my list, big guy. In return, I plan on being better than this year — how else can I score enough points to hit your list’s S+ Rank for 2009?

Merry Christmas!

-Your man with the Options,

“Crybringer”

Lunch Bag Art

These kids have the coolest lunches I’ve seen in a while.

Seasons Greetings, fellow Whos!

Well, the holidays are already finally upon us, and no matter what you celebrate – Chanukah, Christmas, Solstice, Crazy Carl Day, Festivus, Kwanzaa, Chocolatepants Day, Yuletide, Decemberween, Uncle Bunny’s Day, your own birthday (I’m looking at you, Jesus), or just Thursday – being a geek knows no cultural difference.  We can all get together and bask in the glow of geek without caring about where we come from or who we are.  We are geeks.  Our love is of all things geek.  If you don’t consider yourself a geek, what are you even doing here? (I’m looking at you, Jesus.)

Think I said the word geek enough?

Since it is the holiday season, I thought it would be neat to do something similar to what I did for October.  No, not kill hobos.  I’m already over quota for the rest of the year and I’ve already been given a stern warning about it.

No, what I plan to do for the next three Thursdays is bring you three festively-infected articles, all part of a grander theme based on the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol”.  The three ghosts, to be exact.  I’m going to cover, in spirit order, a few of the geeky items that were, are, or will be a part of that coveted position called Geek Chic.  Or, as I have coined the term, Ghic.

This week, I’m starting at the beginning with Christmas Past (Yes, I know Marley comes first.  Just drink your holiday beverage of choice).  And to do that, we’re paying a visit to the Christmas that I first got a Nintendo Entertainment System.

I’m sure a lot of you remember when the first NES came out in 1985.  At that point the big video game crash had already happened a couple of years earlier in 1983 (I’m looking at you, E.T.).  The video game market was in tatters, with many (at the time) big game companies left bankrupt.  General consensus was that the video game industry was a fad and had quickly played out its last hand.

Atari made one last effort to keep the video game console market afloat with the Atari 7800.  It featured vastly improved graphics over the 2600, including an upgrade to a 256 color palette.  It was also the first system to be backwards compatible, allowing owners to play all of their 2600 cartridges on it (except you, E.T.).  The goal was to offer home gamers the ability to play games at home that looked just like their arcade counterparts.  Atari was also trying to tie the system into the home computer market by making it possible to upgrade your 7800 to be a home computer.  The attempt was a failure, and the 7800 sat on shelves.

Except for one.  My parents ended up buying one for our household.  It was pretty darn cool (at least I thought so).  I was an old hat at the 2600, so seeing this sleek, streamlined beauty made my fire button fingers twitch.  My eyes gleamed with delight as I played the new-and-improved Asteroids (in 256 color!).  I smiled with glee as I popped in and played my older 2600 (except for you, E.T.).  I thought to myself that it didn’t get much better than this.

Oh, but it did.  Next door, in fact.  Why over there?  Because my best friend Eric and his family had just gotten a new game console that I hadn’t heard of.

You guessed it.  They got a Nintendo Entertainment System.

It was glorious.  I watched them play this game that I had seen just a couple of weeks ago at an arcade in one of the local theme parks.  The game on the TV looked just like the arcade version!!!  That was something completely unheard of at that point in video game history.  The arcade version of a video game always looked superior to a home console version.  What manner of sorcery was this? (I’m looking at you, Ulrich the Wizard.)

I was handed the second player controller.  I got to be Luigi!  Oh hush.  Luigi used to be cool before they made him into this whiny, shadow-cowering goof.  But anyway, Luigi!  I made my way through level 1-1 with a new gleam in my eye – one that beat up the old 7800 gleam in my eye and tossed it into a wood chipper.

I wasn’t very good at the game.  I remember when I first played it at that arcade.  Four quarters and a depressing sigh later and I had only made it halfway through level 1-2.

A couple of weeks later I realized I had not magically improved.  What the heck, sorcerers?  You had the time and the power to make a console game look as good as its arcade counterpart, but you couldn’t sprinkle some magic dust or wave a wand or spray goat’s blood on me so I could have the mad Mario (Luigi!) skills?  Man, I am so not watching Dragonslayer again until tomorrow.  I’ll never show you.

So now we come to the part where I finish playing for the afternoon, and suddenly become very envious of my friend Eric.  So much so, in fact, that I secretly moved in without telling anyone, hoping that Eric’s folks would just assume they suddenly had four children.  Yeah, that didn’t work.  I got caught easy (I’m looking at you, Jason).

Despite uttering my curses at being foiled again, I found myself over at Eric’s all the time, playing Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt (heh heh), Hogan’s Alley, Balloon Fight, and… Gyromite?  Gyromite?  What the hell was that game?  Was the robot supposed to help you?  Because the one that came with Eric’s NES would either just sit there or run off to the middle of town, staging wild riots and screaming something about robot rights.

Months passed while my 7800 continued to collect dust and my best friend’s NES continued to need its cartridges blown into because of dust.  While I enjoyed hanging out with Eric and flattening Troopas and Goombas, secretly all I wanted was an NES of my own (I’m looking at you, mom and dad).

Then it happened.  The Berlin Wall came down.  No, wait… different story.  Christmas came to visit our sleepy little mountain town.  I made my way to our Christmas tree and opened one of the first presents handed to me.  And what to my wondering eyes should appear?  Hang on, there’s a miniature sleigh and some large dogs with antlers in the way or something.  Ah… there:

The Nintendo Entertainment System.

The system that would usher in the revitalization of the video game industry was mine ours.  For a Christmas Past, this one Christmas in particular would signify the beginning of my journey into becoming the gamer I am today.

For now I was playing with Power.

Dedicated to my best friend Eric Collwell.  I miss you, buddy.

No seriously!  The University of Maryland has a student orchestra that exclusively plays arrangements of video game music & themes!

Their 2008 Winter Concert was last night, at the Memorial Chapel at the very front doorstep of the UMD campus, to a faithful crowd of several hundred students, families, fans and of course, game music die-hards!

The show had 10 original arrangements, performed by the now 90+ person GSO.  The evening began at 8pm with a rendition of the theme of Starfox.  The Legend of Zelda’s myriad themes followed, with selections from Warcraft II, Final Fantasy VIII, Chrono Trigger as well.  Beautiful and unique selections all around — the dark strains of Warcraft II, the stirring main theme of Chrono Trigger, etc. — made the show more than just a orchestral shout-out to Mario.  And the post intermission selections were the the highlight of the show.  Stumbling and losing themselves on some key pieces like Starfox and Final Fantasy VIII’s challenging boss theme, the GSO seemed to suddenly hit their stride and handled solos and excellent transitions in melody with gusto.  A lovely piano duet covering the recent Odin Sphere set that pace.

Needless to say, the chorus opening their performance with the familiar “SE-GA!” intro brought the house down.  THEN they went into the Sonic & Ristar medley and earned every bit of applause.  Kirby Super Star was next, and just as the sleeper hit it’s taken from, the jazzy notes was a surprising show of depth (though this was about the worst of the last four selections they played.)

I hope to hand over some links or audio of their perfomance of Xenosaga & Tetris — the GSO’s aim of bringing the two decades of memorable game music shows real, healthy promise judging from those pieces.

In all, the GSO was really gracious, appreciative, and showed a real love for the games and soundtracks they played.  They have only need to improve their accuracy and develop more experience as musicians in general — I’ll be looking forward to their next performance!

This game is pretty neat – you have to shift the motion of the ’sound’ using special circles, the size of which can be adjusted.

Give it a try!

Auditorium