email me: chris@chris-karath.com
May 2007
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Monday May 28, 2007 9:33:10 AM #
Let's Go Surfing
» Star Wars Clone Wars the Series! Video! Take a look.... very nice 3D animation.
» How many "I'm too sexy" parody's have been made? I don't know but this one from the World of Warcraft is actually pretty good. (especially the credits)
via Neatorama
» The Jetsons opening, Family Guy style.
via Paleofuture
» Nice interview with zefrank. Touches on ze's views on creativity.
» Podcast interview with the author of More sex is safer sex: the unconventional wisdom of economics. Somewhat A Beautiful Mind-esk. Direct link to MP3
Sunday May 27, 2007 4:33:01 PM #
» Hasbro Marvel Legends 2 - Yellowjacket and Quicksilver: Still haven't seen these two figures in Grand Rapids myself, but a friend of mine found them for me while on vacation in Illinios.

Overall a couple nice figures that help fill-in a few missing places on the Avengers roster.
It's good to see family together ;)
Quicksilver and Flash talk about their matching belts.
Edit 10:27pm 5/27/08: Friend Jeff has had some caption fun with a few of my pictures.
Saturday May 26, 2007 11:47:47 PM #
» New DCD figures, I can't say that I'm too excited by these new figures, but they do fill in some periphery holes in my collection... Not a bad wave.
Infinite Crisis Wave 2, Wonder Woman with cape, Firestorm, Wonder Girl, and Donna Troy.
Overall the new Firestorm is probably the best figure of the bunch. The paint job could be a little more detailed, and I'm not sure if he's supposed to be that much shorter than Ronald, but in general, a nice figure.
I really tried to like the new Firestorm, starting and stopping collecting the book a couple times, but there never really seemed to be much to it overall.
The Ronald Raymond Firestorm, still one of my favorites.
DCD did a great job on the classic one.
New Firestorm's base is really well done.
Uses a metal bar to hold him in place too. Nice.
Two characters that eventually will be forgotten footnotes.
(although DC is likely to try to hold onto the new Beetle alot longer I think.)
Three Wonder Women that don't quite go together perfectly. The New Donna is a pretty good figure, much better proportioned than some of DCD's other more recent female figures.
Titan's Together! (I don't have the Elvis Jumpsuit Nightwing and decided to leave the modern one out of the picture.)
I was out of collecting comics for a good portion of the Donna/Kyle storyline.
Donna Troy's hair allows some vertical movement. The Wonder Girl version is pretty limmited to side to side only.
She is an Amazon, so I'm guessing she's probably taller than Kyle.
This was a plot that didn't work completely for me either.
Had I not preordered this Wonder Woman, I would have skipped her.
Her leg joints are very awkward. It's too bad because the head sculpt is pretty good.
» Some Marvel figures will be posted tomorrow.
Let's Go Surfing
» 15 late 80s early 90s cartoon theme songs.
Saturday May 26, 2007 1:36:28 PM #
Previews Solicitations
» DC Comics Previews Solicitations for August 2008. Can you say crossovers and tie-ins galore? CD=Countdown, AA=Amazons Attack, 52 = Duh, and SC= Sinestro Corp. (I debated adding Green Arrow and Black Canary's engagement plot to that list also.)
COUNTDOWN 39-35
COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE #1 (Starring Adam Strange, Animal Man and Starfire- why are these characters still together? dumb. *52)
ACTION COMICS #853-854 (*CD)
THE ALL-NEW ATOM #14 (*CD)
CATWOMAN #70 (*AA)
AMAZONS ATTACK #5-6
SUPERGIRL #20 (*AA)
WONDER WOMAN #12 (*AA)
ALL-NEW BOOSTER GOLD #1 (*52)
BLACK ADAM: THE DARK AGE #1 (*52)
52 AFTERMATH: THE FOUR HORSEMEN (*52)
OUTSIDERS: FIVE OF A KIND #1-5 (#5 is *AA)
BATMAN ANNUAL #26: HEAD OF THE DEMON
DETECTIVE COMICS #835
NIGHTWING #135
ROBIN #165
ALL STAR SUPERMAN #9
ACTION COMICS #855 -Bizzaro World, really?
SUPERMAN #666 - The description says: Superman goes to Hell
SUPERMAN/BATMAN #39
52: THE COVERS HC - Cool! (*52)
BIRDS OF PREY #109
BLUE BEETLE #18 - feat. Teen Titans vs. Lobo
THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #6 - GL and Batman
THE FLASH: FASTEST MAN ALIVE #15
GREEN ARROW/BLACK CANARY: FOR BETTER OR WORSE TP
GREEN ARROW: YEAR ONE #1 & 2
BLACK CANARY #1-2
GREEN LANTERN #22 (*SC)
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #15 (*SC)
JSA CLASSIFIED #29
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #8 (*52)
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #12 - End of Meltzer's run
METAL MEN #1
SHADOWPACT #16 - Zatanna
THE SPIRIT #9
SHOWCASE PRESENTS: BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS VOL. 1 TP
SHOWCASE PRESENTS: CAPTAIN CARROT VOL. 1 TP
SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #33
SWORD OF THE ATOM TP - oohh I liked this as a kid.
TRIALS OF SHAZAM #9
TEEN TITANS #50
JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #36 - Question
DC Direct for January 2008 Two waves of Action Figures and one boxed set. None of which I'm going to get. If you look above, you can see DC Direct is getting a little Hasbro on us and putting out crazy costume variants of the majors, I know these have appeared in comics but there are still so many figures out there they could do rather than these. As for the Box set, yet another repackaging of the big three.
Marvel Comics Previews Solicitations for August 2008 - SPIDER-MAN: ONE MORE DAY SKETCHBOOK ESSENTIAL DAZZLER VOL. 1 TPB D.P.7 CLASSIC VOL.1 TPB
Others- BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #5 DYNAMO 5 #6 INVINCIBLE #46
Let's Go Surfing
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» Interview with Bill Melendez, animator for Disney, WB and UA. via Sandbox.
» Something Awful Children's book photoshop contest.
» New York times article on the new "comic runner/executive producer" positions in comics. ie: Buffy and Countdown.
Formerly a Blog Alert: 5/23/07:
I decided to click on the Nathan Petrelli campaign button on the bottom of my side strip to see if the site was any different now that
Petrelli was elected (and also in case they had an obituary, which they did
not.)
I became intrigued as to who the real congressman of New York's 30th District
was. However, according to Wikipedia, the districts only go up to 29.
Wikipedia has information on the former 30th District (which was removed after
the 2000 Census):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
Someone entered information about Nathan Petrelli into the 30th District already
(cool.)
FYI: Brian
Higgins is the Congressman of the 27th District (which contains the former
real 30th District.)
Sunday May 20, 2007 12:01:31 PM #
Videos
Spent sometime surfing the Youtube... here's some stuff I came accross...
» Green Lantern Power Ring Clips from the failed 90s Justice League TV Pilot.
» Fan made Green Lantern Movie Trailer. Not Bad, Not Bad at all.
» Less good than the above, below is a John Stewart focussed trailer.
» A better John Stewart trailer...
» Simple... Understated fan made GL teaser.
» Nice Fan Made Justice League movie trailer
» Yet another Justice League Trailer
» Ok this "League of Justice" one is never going to happen...
Saturday May 19, 2007 4:10:05 PM #
Let's Go Surfing
» The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence: Mp3 and Video of Singularity Summit at Stanford Presentations. I haven't listened to these yet, but with Kurzweil, Doctrow and others listed, I imagine there is some good stuff in there. I've loaded some of it onto my MP3 player, I might post back more thoughts later if it is interesting.
» Nice interview with Carmine Infantino.
» The last 10 seconds of every episode of Star Trek the Next Generation's 1st Season.
» I have a feeling that Fantastic Four 2 is going to be pretty good. The Trailers are getting better anyway.
» A guy opens and plays with a new Optimus Prime Transformer robot:
» Google has a bunch of simple Gadgets you can create and paste on your blog or share to paste on other people's webpages etc. Create embedded: Photo, Google Grams, "Daily Me" (A Twitter-like thing), Freeform (ie: text and images of whatever you want.), Your current top 5 favorite Youtube videos, Personal Lists and Countdown Clocks. Slick stuff!
» Digg talks on the topic of defending toy collecting Long post/comment/rant from some Digg user on that page included below:
» I find the Republican idea that Once you state an opinion, you can never change your opinion and that to do so makes you extremely stupid (video) is unenlightened to say the least.
» More I'm a Marvel and I'm a DC:

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» Spider-man from the Electric Company. Saw this on the Beat. If you Search Youtube you'll find a bunch of these.
» Saw article on Helio cellphones that you can switch your number at will on their website between different Helio devices. Great idea.
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» Samuel L Jackson to play the villian in Frank Miller's The Spirit film... will "try to stop that Mutha Fnckin man in that Mutha Fnckin mask!"
Thursday May 17, 2007 11:19:59 PM #
Random Non-Sequiters
» Watched too much Greys Anatomy tonight. Caught up on the two hour episode from two weeks ago, last week's episode as well as tonight's episode (4 hours in all, less with most of the commercials and some of the LA stuff fast forwarded through.). Didn't care for the Addision spinoff that was woven into the Two Hour Grey's Anatomy Episode. Technically, as craft, I thought it was well done the way the spun two seperate shows into eachother, but I have no interest in following yet another cast in yet another relationship/workplace drama, so I'll pass on the spinoff when it launches next year.
As far as the final two regualar episodes go, the show has really been hitting the down notes the last few episodes and after the finale, you're really left wondering who to root for?
» Also watched the hour long episode of The Office. Good episode. Not as strong as previous finales, but still good. Suprizingly, I'm still curious to see where the Jim and Pam situation goes next season.
» Skipped my usual reading order and read All Star Batman and Robin #5 this evening. Eh. Art of course is very nice, although I can't say that it is well suited to the story Frank Miller is doing. Friends of mine read it last night over my place for game night and laughed their heads off at the absurdity of the whole thing but I can't say that it did anything for me at all. The off characterization doesn't really bother me, but I also don't really get the point either. Isn't there a project on the internet where this book is completely being "redubbed?". I might have to hunt that down at somepoint.
» Seems like I'm now on the backside of week two of a blogging slump. Mostly the slow down probably as to do with the fact that alot of the things I want to analize right now don't work well in a public blog format. As usual things will likely pick-up again on the weekend.
Sunday May 13, 2007 9:21:32 PM #
» Watched last week's Tim Russert, this evening. Russert's guest for the hour was Lee Ioacocca. At the end of the interview, the conversation turned to a more high level view of life. Ioacocca said (more or less): You Learn, then Earn and Return (give something back). He then added that the Baby Boomers weren't doing it that way, that for them it is: Learn, Earn and Yearn (for more). Interesting interview, interesting concept.
Sunday May 13, 2007 1:01:46 PM #
Action Figures
» Got Mr. T this past Wednesday. At somepoint I'm going to have to customize him with some gold chains and a sleeveless shirt. Still awesome though.

Mr. T, ready to pity.
Powerman and Mr. T. You know you'd buy that book.
"Mr. Terrific huh... You better not shorten that to Mr T."
"I'm sorry Mister J, I'm with Mr. T now."
"You heard her fool!, Laugh yourself outta here."
Saturday May 12, 2007 3:47:39 PM #
Random Non-Sequiters
» I didn't really intend to take the week off of blogging but it did sort of end up that way. There were a few of ephemeral Blog Alerts and musings that I have now returned to the ether, but for the most part I haven't seen a ton of stuff worth blogging about.
» I get the occasional comment or two on my action figure pictures on Flickr. I've now added them as a stream in the sidebar column.
Television run down
Let's talk TV abit.
30 Rock » Wrapped up for the season. Really enjoy the show. It has been interesting to watch it evolve from a Saturday Night Live based show to more of a generic workplace comedy, but even with that more "normalizing track" It turned out to be the smartest done comedy of the past season.
Andy Barker PI » I've only got through 4 episodes, but it was good enough that I'm bummed this got cancelled. At least I have a couple more still to watch.
Attack of the Show » When the net is a buzz about something, this is a great show to see, when the nets a snooze, so is this show.
Battlestar Galactica » BSG had a good season, but I've got to agree with some other chatter I've seen on the net that this show would be well served ending the "pursuit" through the stars plot and find another plot and cast to settle into. How long can the Cylons keep chasing BSG and not catch them and seem credible? There's an Iraq-type fatique setting into the show. Still one of the smartest dramas on television, but it needs an exit strategy (and then a spin-off strategy).
Daily Show and Colbert Report » Daily Show is the meal and Colbert is the dessert. DS is one of the few places for honesty on Television. Some of the "Best Stuff".
Entourage. Very much enjoying the new season so far. Likeable characters and situations that just evolve and flow from an unforced place. There's abit of Seinfeld magic in this show, not necessarily in tone but in the way that the characters never seem to get tiring or overplayed yet.
Greys Anatomy » I'm actually three episodes behind on this, so maybe there have been some changes in the last couple episodes to reverse this thought, but they seem to have painted themselves in a corner hooking everyone up in the ways they have. I'm not sure this show can make the transition from Interns to residents. It's still very good right now. Great dialogue and honest characterization week to week. Seriously a favorite, seriously.
Heroes » Best show currently on television. Period.
Jericho. I really enjoyed the first season and kept collecting episodes on my DVR this entire past year, without watching a single one. A couple days ago I deleted them because I needed the space. I'm sure the show was good but it just got edged out of my viewing habits by too much other good stuff.
Kyle XY » Looking forward to the second season of this starting up next month.
My Boys » TBS site says new episodes this summer. old ones are online
Realtime with Bill Maher » Continues to be a good conversation on topical issues every week. If Jon Stewart is more of an honest journalist/comedian, Maher seems more an activist/comedian. I haven't watched last nights' episode yet, but I have been enjoying the show and it's one of the reasons I get HBO.
Rescue Me » Premieres Wednesday June 13th
Robot Chicken » There isn't near enough Robot Chicken being made. Hiatuses on this show are too long. Star Wars special in June should be cool though.
Rome » Yeah it's over, but I still miss it. "Fetch the German kitchen wench" is still my favorite quote of the past year. HBO needs to get with creating more of this type of awesome. sigh.
Saturday Night Live » Sigh. Needs a breakout star. Samberg is funny, in the digital shorts, but not in any live stuff.
Smallville » Haven't seen the last two episodes yet. I only watch this (with heavy fast forward use.) because I'm a DC fanboy. This show's just gone on too long.
Studio 60 » Bummed that this show got cancelled even though I really only liked to not like it. It truely was the best worst show of the the decade so far.
The 4400 » New season starts Sunday June 17th. This show was already struggling from the get go of last season when they pulled a V the TV Series starchild move and aged Isabelle. The 4400 is in a room that Heroes is sucking alot of oxygen out of right now. Will the 4400's upcoming season regain it's footing. We'll see in 4 weeks. (I hope so.)
The Tudors » Other than last weeks episode (which was pretty tedious) I've been enjoying this Showtime series. It's no Rome, but with Rome gone, it's what we've got.
Let's Go Surfing
» Lucius Verenus from HBO's Rome will star in an NBC Time Travel Series: Journeyman.
» Katie Sackoff, Battlestar Galactica's Starbuck will be A Bionic Woman, not The Bionic Woman, on NBC's Upcoming Bionic Woman reimagining.
» I'm looking forward to an awesome level of over the top bad action and visual spectacle that Transformers the Movie is certain to be. They have however missed the mark with the Transforming robots. They have broken them into so many tiny modular pieces that when in robot form you can't really tell what they were in their vehicle form. They transform too much. In the link above you can't tell that Bumblebee is a car at all.
» Cool Old World Style Map of the Internet. Would have been perfect if it had a dragon on it.
» Nice Weiringo Supergirl drawing.
SUPERGIRL in color by *Wieringo on deviantART
» Rocket with Scotty's ashes fail to reach space and are lost in New Mexico mountain-side. They should have beamed him up.
» Bruce Sterling on Design, 5 mins of video on pay phones and particle accelerators
» Check out this Live Action Mario Video (below):
BTW why is it that so many of these Video Game videos do drug references?
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» NASA Return to the Moon "Trailer?"
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» Jet powered outhouse. What more needs to be said?
» Breakfast fit for a geek, the keyboard shaped waffle-iron.
Saturday May 12, 2007 9:03:41 AM #

I'm doing some surfing and blogging right now, til then... keep partying on!
Saturday May 5, 2007 1:31:34 PM #
Happy Free Comic Book Day!

» Above are the Free Comic Books I got today for Free Comic Book Day 2007! Yay for free comics.
Naturally, I stopped at Apparitions first. Apparitions is Grand Rapids' comic book store of choice for true comic geeks. Apparitions allowed people to pick-up, their choice of up to 5 new FCBD books and you could also take your pick from a bin of of misc books as well as books from Free Comic book days past. A vertible comics buffet. Apparitions did not have any of the free Batman Heroclix figures this year, for that I swung by Goldmine.
Goldmine is a little bit more brightly lit, and probably less imposing to enter for non-comic book collector customers. The downside to Goldmine is that they bag and board everything, making it impossible to browse their racks (And while Goldmine has a friendly staff, seeing Apparitions Staff is truely part of the Wednesday New Comics Exerience, Apparitions also has that "old used book store-type charm" but I digress.) Goldmine's Free Comic Book Day offering consisted of FCBD bags pre-filled with a random assortment of what looked to be 5 to 6 books? I had already got most of the books I wanted at Apparitions so I didn't double-dip at Goldmine. (And lest you think I took advantage of Goldmine for their Free Heroclix only, I did buy two Indy books there that were sold out at Appparitions. So I think karmicly it should be all good.)
A friend of mine went to Whitecap Comics which is near his place. He reported that Whitecap was giving away 2 free books or 1 Batman Heroclix (not both). Not nearly as good a deal as Apparitions or Goldmine. Since Outerlimits is run by the same guy as Whitecaps, I would imagine they ran a similiar deal, but I do not have a direct report.
So how was Free Comic Book Day in your area? Let me know in the comments...
Friday May 4, 2007 11:40:37 PM #
Spider-man 3
[Minor Spoiler Alerts]
I'm going to sound like I'm complaining. I probably am a little bit.
The first two acts are pretty good. Staying Alive Emo Parker is abit much in places, but other than that S3 is generally on par with the first two movies.
Thomas Hayden Church as Sandman is great.
Venom doesn't work. They need to learn from Hitchcock and horror masters, you keep scary monsters in the dark and you let your audience's imagination do the work. You don't put your monster villain in bright light and give him the face of Foreman from the 70s Show, there is nothing scary about that.
The Spider-man action scenes are good. Nice incredibly intricate acrobatics, good stuff. You will continue to believe a man can swing on webs.
They do their best to keep Spider-man's mask off again. They need to keep the mask on. It's off continually. Keep the mask on once and awhile.
I felt bad for Gwen.
Yay! Apartment girl is back!
It's always good to see Stan Lee's cameos, 'Nuff Said.
Now I'm going to get psychological and analytical:
First movie: "With great power comes great responsibillity." This is a great message, and a good lesson for geeks. It's also the foundation of why the character has lasted for Almost 50 years.
Second Movie: "Sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want most, even our dreams." This is not an inspiring message. Giving up one's dreams? Really? While the statement may have alot of reality behind it, it's an awkward tentpole to hang your movie's message on.
Third Movie: "A man has to be understanding and put his wife before himself. Can you do that?" That's the message of this movie. This one's trickier to argue. There is a strong cultural riff they are playing off of this one, but again I think this is a flawed tentpole message to drape a Spider-man movie around.
The messages of the second and third movies do not match and are not terribly compatible with the message of the first movie. "With great power comes great responsibillity."
"Sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want most, even our dreams." and "A man has to be understanding and put his wife before himself. Can you do that?" these are perfectly fine lessons for coping with the realities of life, but these are not messages for a Superhero. These are messages that promote societal conformity. Which is fine. If the majority of society doesn't comform to norms such as these, you are going to have problems with your society. But Superheros aren't about societal conformity. They are power fantasies about one person with the abillity to truely make a difference, not about the best ways to conform to and function within society.
"A man has to be understanding and put his wife before himself." Can you do that?" When Joe Average's wife comes home after a bad day, yes, Joe should stop working and just listen awhile, seek understanding, be truely sympathetic, be there. When Sandman attacks the city, Spider-man, however, needs to spring into action. Saving the city really does take precedence over listening to your girlfriend's bad day, especially when she knows he's Spider-man.
Sure there is a metaphor lesson in S3 for all the guys who think their job is "saving the world". Joe Average isn't saving the world in his cubicle and should spend some thought on "being steady" and "being understanding". Spider-man's job actually is saving the world, it's not a metaphor. "With great power comes great responsibillity." that means you miss some recitals and dinners and instead stop Doc Ock from destroying the city.
That's my rant on that. (...but don't take any of the above the wrong way, this is generally a fun superhero movie and likely the less you are into comics, the more you are going to enjoy it.)
Good action movie stuff . Misplaced messages. If you liked 1 and 2, I reccomend you go see 3.
Thursday May 3, 2007 9:50:27 PM #
Action Figures
» DC Direct's 52 Wave 1 Figures came out this week: Isis, Batwoman, Animal Man, Supernova and Booster Gold.

Nice line-up of figures, slightly on the tall side, but not nearly as overscale as some of the other most recent waves.
YES! Finally Blue Beetle and Booster Gold together on the Action Figure Shelf.
Booster is a great figure. I'm glad they went with the see through Googles that match Blue Beetles!
Bwaaaa haaa haaa! Let's hear it for the Superbuddies!
Dada dada Dada Dada Bat People!
Did you hear about how Nightwing thought Batwoman didn't like him? It turned out he misunderstood when he heard that Kathy Kane didn't like D### (...oh never mind)
Batwoman a little too tall of a figure...
You know what is going to make my Blog's Google hits go through the roof? One simple phrase: "Lesbian Action Figure". It's just the way the internet works.
Let's Go Surfing
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Wednesday May 2, 2007 6:01:17 PM #
Inventing new grammar

» Today at work, during a conversation, I had to invent two new pronunciation marks (perhaps I didn't *need* to, but I did). The marks are used to indicate and describe two specific pronunciation styles.
The first mark is the aliltrophe (aliltrophe) This indicates a syllable that should be spoken with a lilt. In the above word, naughty, the use of the aliltrophe would be appropriate if speaking playfully to a puppy ex: "Who's a naughty puppy? Who's a naughty puppy?"
With the second mark, the embreathasis mark (embreathasis) the meaning changes because the embreathasis indicates the first syllable should be stressed and spoken with a slower sultry breathy intonation ex: "Who's a naughty puppy? Who's a naughty puppy?"
As is clear in the two above examples the proper aliltrophe or embreathasis makes all the difference.
Random Non-Sequiters
» Lots of new DC Direct Figures today... Pictures up in the next day or two.
Tuesday May 1, 2007 9:08:39 PM #
» I'm a Marvel and I'm a DC, Parody Videos. Funny (Even though I'm a DC guy and this is a Pro Marvel deal)