Conventional Wisdom

Dallas Comic Con was a blast! I met a bunch of local Fancy Bastards and hopefully brought a few more into the fold. Josh, Eli and Alex stopped buy on Saturday to help man the booth and make fun of people in poorly constructed costumes.

When the average geek sees a really well crafted comic-con costume, like a Hawkgirl with a hand stitched leather mask and real feathers in her fully articulated wings, they will usually respond with reverence and appreciation for the fine craftsmanship. Perhaps in the same way normal people would regard a hand made credenza or a stupid boat or something. The person wearing the quality costume gets a free pass to play dress up in public and not only get away with it, but get respect for it.

However when the average geeks sees a shitty costume (I’m talking duct tape, kitchen gloves, rough cut, poorly stitched fabric, off the shelf plastic Darth Vader helmets with built in voice changers, etc), the admiration plummets to complete revulsion. All of a sudden you aren’t just critiquing the poor handy work, but you’re making snap judgments as to whether or not the offending cosplayer really deserves to be sucking down as much oxygen as he is. I mean that’s perfectly good air that us decent, functional people could be enjoying.

I think it’s a bit of a double standard but the geek world is laden with hypocrisy. I say of the gentle cosplayer, never ever pity them. For they are the bravest geeks of us all.

[I feel like we covered this subject in depth a while back on an HE Podcast but I can’t remember which one]

COMMENTS!
Share you best or worst cosplay story. This could be a costume you made or just one that you saw at a party or a con.

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There’s The Flashing Magic Screen

I’ll be at Dallas Comic Con this weekend [Saturday and Sunday]. Come say hi!

At least for now, if you click HERE you will see a video regarding the Apple iPad that begins with a quote of outstanding douchery [captured nearly verbatim in panel 1 above]. Apple loyalist though I may be, I admit they are not above criticism. And to suggest that “we don’t know how computers work so they must be magical” fails to impress me on two accounts. A) I know how computers work… EVERYONE except my mom knows how computers work, and 2) even people that don’t know exactly how computers work don’t think they are magical like phoenix tears.

I do not see a demonstration of “pinch to zoom” multitouch and immediately avert my eyes from the iPad as not to offend it’s heavenly gaze. I do not slaughter a goat as to make a sacrificial offering to the iPad that it may smile upon my crops in the coming season or bless my family with many strong sons and beautiful daughters (for selling to rich village land owners). Nor to a steal off into the night and paint myself with the goats blood, dance around a bonfire and chew the hallucinogenic leaves of an indigenous shrub in order to work myself up into a trance-like frenzy in hopes of better knowing the will of the iPad. Those are the actions of someone who looks at the unknown and interprets it as magic. C’Mon Apple. That was just dumb.

Numfar! Do The Dance of Joy

I’ll be at Dallas Comic Con this weekend. Come say hi!

Oh, Steve. You had me at “we are not currently developing a tablet.”

Seems like the new Apple iPad would be fun to travel with. Can’t see much use for it around the house when it really isn’t much smaller than my laptop, but I haven’t laid hands on it yet (which is typically when an Apple product grabs hold of your soul and doesn’t let go). I imagine the UI is crazy fun to play with and developers are going to have a blast coming up with new ways to utilize it. The entry level price point of $499 is also quite tasty, considering the first iPod cost that much. Continue reading→

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One

I’ll be at Dallas Comic Con this weekend. Come say hi!

I wrote this comic after viewing the Star Trek TNG episode “The Icarus Factor.” In it, Wesley Crusher throws Worf a surprise Klingon birthday party on the Holodeck, complete with a Painstick Pinnata. Also Riker worked out his daddy issues by beating the crap out of his old man American Gladiators style. What does this have to do with anything? Nothing. I just like making comics about Star Trek.

The actual comic inspiration came from the fact that Wesley clearly didn’t realize that everyone on the ship was punking him when they encouraged him to sneak around and try to plan Worf’s K’Plahmitzvah. Continue reading→

Cock Zucker

I guess we can all shave off our strike-pompadours [you did grow yours right?] now that Conan has reached an agreement with NBC for an exit strategy. His final show is tonight and I urge you all to watch it live as it airs (no DVR’s) to make this the highest rated episode of The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien ever. It’s hard to feel bad for a guy that’s going to pocket almost $34 million for NOT working (he must have got that book about free government money from the guy in the question mark suit), but it isn’t hard to see that he wanted the show and not the payout. Continue reading→