Inappropriate Wrestling Action Figure Sets and Other Unnecessary Crap

Since I've been talking about toys and action figures lately...

The husband and I were talking earlier this evening, while watching a small portion of WrestleMania 23 on DVD, about inappropriate and borderline insulting wrestling action figure playsets. These horrific ideas are as follows:

(and I'll admit that if you're not a wrestling fan, some of these won't make much sense)

1. Hulk Hogan vs. His Couch. Hogan was scheduled to wrestle at WrestleMania 23 in Detroit this year, but shortly before the event, suffered a seriously injured knee caused by GETTING UP OFF HIS COUCH. This, of course, has made poor Hogan the butt of many jokes unrelated to his VH1 reality series, "Hogan Knows Best." How beat up and out-of-shape do you have to be to be taken out by FURNITURE? Honestly!

2. Sean Waltman (aka The 1-2-3 Kid, Sixx-Pac, X-Pac, Chyna's porn co-star) vs. A Bottle of Oxycontin. Poor X-Pac's battles with addictive narcotic pain pills are widely known throughout the wrestling fan world, so this one is pretty self-explanatory.

3. D-Lo Brown and Droz vs. Random Fan and His Beer. Back in the late 90's, a wrestler by the name of Darren Drozdov was paralyzed from the neck down in a match vs. D-Lo Brown. D-Lo's finishing move, called "The Lo-Down" was basically a running powerbomb. Everything was under control, except for the fact that some dumbass audience member threw his beer in the ring at one point in the match, and while D-Lo was performing said finishing move, he slipped in the beer puddle and dropped Droz on his head, breaking his neck and ending his wrestling career forever. Poor D-Lo never quite got his wrestling groove back and is no longer performing anywhere.

4. Lita vs. Danny Doring's Piss. While this is a widely circulated rumor, it's too funny to leave out. Before Lita joined the WWF/E, she was a wrestler on ECW. Now, Lita has quite a reputation within any and all wrestling promotions she worked for for being, well, loose. And not in the flexible and limber kind of way. The rumor basically states that she let (or wanted to have) Danny Doring, another ECW performer, piss on her in a sexual way. Not my idea of a good time, but hey, we all have our kinks.

5. Ultimate Warrior vs. His Sanity. Oh, Warrior Warrior, how many times must you prove to us that you're completely and utterly batshit insane? Is it the revisionist history blatantly displayed on your weblog? Maybe the insulting and derogatory statement he made at Connecticut University, not-so-cleverly disguised as "motivational speaking?" Who knows? Pick a number between 1 and 100,000,000, and there's a stupid thing Ultimate Warrior said to correlate with that number.

6. Randy Orton vs. His Hotel Room. This one is rather recent. Not too long ago, while the WWE was doing a European tour, Mr. Randall Orton was prematurely sent back to the States after causing $50,000 worth of damage to his hotel room. I'm not sure if he had to pay the damages, or if Mr. Bottomless Pockets McMahon covered the charges for him, but this event is just another nail in the coffin that he's building for his career. Too bad, the guy has some pretty nifty tattoos.

7. Sid Vicious/Justice/Sycho Sid vs. His Bowel Control (Or Lack Thereof) Back in 1997, the main event of WrestleMania 13 was Sycho Sid vs. The Undertaker for the World Title. I've seen the match on DVD, but since I don't remember much of it, it must not be particularly memorable, except for one part. 'Taker had set Sid up for his finishing move, the Tombstone Piledriver, with 'Taker's head right between Sid's legs, and good ol' Sid chose that moment to let go of his bowels. I think that's all I need to say about that, but I will congratulate the Undertaker's professionalism... his expression didn't change one bit.

8. (And this is the worst one of all... but I can't help myself) Owen Hart vs. The Zipline, His Cape, and The Ring Turnbuckle. Hoo boy. I'm SO going to Hell for this, but I figure it's been long enough that I can start cracking jokes about it... I hope. In 1999, at the Pay-Per-View Over the Edge (the PPV title itself has never been repeated since the tragedy), Owen Hart, playing the part of the Blue Blazer, a superhero gimmick, was supposed to take a zipline down from the ceiling to the ring. His cape got caught in the harness, and when he tried to free it, the harness clamp released, sending Hart plummeting down to the ring, where he hit his head on one of the rope turnbuckles and broke his neck. He died en route to the hospital. A terrible tragedy, to be sure, but I can't keep this one off the list. I prepare for the potential deluge of hate mail stemming from this last entry, if anyone reads this at all.

On a side note, I was checking my stats on SiteMeter earlier this evening and got quite a chuckle out of someone who clicked on a Google link to my blog from the search words, "Feminine Gay Porn." See, there is an upside to being a female wrestling geek after all!

Fantabulous Toys of the 80s

Even though I was born in the late 70s, I do have some definite clear memories of the 80s. I remember MTV when they actually played music videos (even though I wasn't really allowed to watch it), I remember when Fantasia was released for the second time in theaters, and, as I've mentioned in a previous post, I had a ColecoVision.

There were very few girls my age in the neighborhood where I grew up in Oxnard, but there were a lot of boys in the same age range as me. So naturally, early to mid-80s, all the neighborhood boys were super-into Transformers, GI Joes (the small all-plastic ones), He-Man, and Star Wars action figures. Since I wasn't always interested in hosting tea parties for my Cabbage Patch Dolls and my mother wouldn't spend 50 dollars a week on those stupid plastic charms for my charm necklace, I often found myself playing at the neighbor boys' homes after school.

I got myself a crash-course in Transformer nomenclature, the character dynamics between He-Man and Teela, and the world view of Destro the arms dealer. Now granted, as a possessor of the XX chromosomes, I felt myself a bit out of my league, but quickly learned and adapted, and I must say, I found the slime pools on some of the He-Man playsets to be pretty nifty. Not particularly girly-girly, I admit, but there were more varieties of 3 3/4-inch "action figures" than Barbies at that point in time.

These toys changed my television habits. I started watching the He-Man and GI Joe cartoons, paying particular attention to the actions between characters of the various series, in order to increase the accuracy of play with whatever character I got to play with the next time I went over to the neighbor's house. I found myself cheering the Decepticons while watching Transformers, instead of bemoaning the fact that there were no female characters (until ArCee in the movie, of course). I learned how to transform and retransform various Autobots, Decepticons, Insecticons, and Constructacons, as well as the Dinobots.

My Cabbage Patch Dolls sat sadly, slowly collecting dust.

Years later, my husband bought the He-Man cartoon series on DVD, and was gifted with the 25th Anniversary Edition of Transformers: The Movie. This rekindled my love of those fun little plastic playthings and reminded me of the time that I used to play with them almost daily. I often wonder what happened to the few toys I had from that era. Scattered to the winds, I suppose. Oh well.

I never had any Star Wars action figures. I never even saw the movies until they were released onto VHS about ten years ago, much to my chagrin. The only thing I ever knew about those toys were how much money they fetched in the late 90s at Trueblood's thrift store when my friend Daryl sold them for cash.

Nostalgia makes money on Ebay.

Don't Cry, Spid-Emo-Man!

Hello again!

Today was Mother's Day, so I spent the day with my mommy. We went to my grandmother's grave to place some flowers and say hello, then we were discussing what to do from there.

"Let's do something silly and pointless," my mother said. I suggested we go to a tattoo/piercing parlor and get inked and/or stabbed.

"Too expensive," she replied. "Let's go see Spiderman 3."

Yeah. Silly and pointless pretty much covers it. Now, I'd seen the other two Spidey films. I even own them on DVD. Or used to, then I sold them for credit at Salzer's. I LIKED the first two films. I saw them in the theater, and was entranced by them. Despite not liking Kirsten Dunst in much of anything other than Interview With the Vampire, I enjoyed both movies quite heartily.

Then this confusing CGI-splattered mess of a film comes out. Let me tell you, I was very glad that my mother bought the tickets, because if I had, I would've been out talking to the manager 20 minutes into the thing, arranging a refund or free passes to another film.

It was boring! At several points in the movie, I was thinking, "I wish I had a watch... I wonder what time is it? How long have I been sitting here, squirming in discomfort?" Poorly acted, poorly written, the dialogue fell flat in several places, and I could tell Kirsten was just waiting for the shooting of the movie to be over. She obviously didn't care about the movie, otherwise she would have... well... ACTED! And, hey, Kirsten... with all the money you've made on the Spiderman franchise and all the other shitty movies you made, couldn't you get some orthodontia? I was distracted by her snaggleteeth the whole time.

I appreciate subtlety in a movie. I like having to THINK about what's going on, scouring the film, watching it several times in order to catch subtext. I do NOT need said subtext hammered into my head with a ham hock, thank you very much. Yes, yes, the symbiote suit is bad. It makes you into an eyeliner-wearing, emo-hair having, bitter son of a bitch. I get it. It's not healthy. Okay, stop showing me Peter Parker being an asshole! I understand already! People + black space goo symbiotic clothing = bad!

Now let's go to the next piece of the clusterfuck that is Spiderman 3. Sandman (the Marvel Universe one, not to be confused with Wesley Dodds, Lord Morpheus, or Sanderson Hawkins), is portrayed as a sadly misunderstood wreck of a man, having been forced to a life of crime to try to pay for expensive medical treatments for his poor, sick, cripple daughter. Now, if I remember correctly, isn't Sandman just an asshole? Why try to garner sympathy for him? And just screwing the continuity so that HE'S the man who killed Uncle Ben is just retarded.

I DID like Topher Grace as Eddie Brock/Venom though. That was enjoyable. Topher Grace and the guy who played J. Jonah Jameson were the true stars of the film as far as I'm concerned. Any scene with either of them in it was very much entertaining and appreciated. Too bad they were like poorly-spaced stepping stones across a river of stinky mucky water.

Now, the idea of Sandman and Venom teaming up to take out Spidey was pretty cool, I'll admit, but the fight scene itself was kind of silly. That one shot after Peter puts the good ol' red-and-blue Spidey outfit back on and is web-slinging across town and has the slo-mo shot of him swinging past the American flag? Oh Jesus Christ I laughed my ass off at that gratuitous piece of pseudo-patriotism.

Oh, one other kind of good thing. The redemption of Harry Osborn. I'll give the movie that. But Peter telling Sandman he forgives him, and Sandman turning into sand and floating away on the wind as the sun rises? Crap. Utter crap. What a disappointing ending to a mediocre, at best, movie. Once again, I'm glad I didn't pay to see this movie, or I'd feel really ripped off.

But don't take my word for it. Not everyone agrees with me. I thought it was a waste and want that two and a half hours of my life back, but I know other people who watched it and liked it. I'm just not one of them.

Stuff and Nonsense!

Dammit! I take a few days off, and my readership goes down the toilet. What a letdown.

So I started re-reading the Sandman trades my husband has. I bought him the Absolute Sandman Volume 1 for his birthday last year, but that's his, so I won't touch it. I sat down with Preludes and Nocturnes, relaxed, and enjoyed.

Damn, John Dee/Dr. Destiny is a prick (he shows back up in JSA... and he's STILL a prick. No spoilers... read it for yourself). I didn't realize, the first couple of times I read it, that John Dee's mother is the mistress of the black guy who leaves him, takes the ruby, and the demonic protection pendant... and Mrs. Dee gives the pendant to John. But that's what I get for looking at pretty pictures and skipping over some of the dialogue.

But... if I had possession of the Dream Ruby, I can't say I wouldn't take advantage of its power and manipulate people with it. But I'm a bastard. It would be expected. God damn... the stuff he does in that diner. It's gross, but entertaining. I'm always fond of watching people suffer if it's not real.

And I'd forgotten all about the little Death mini-story at the end of the book. I love Death. She's a great character. No wonder I've dressed up as her a few times for Halloween and own both of the miniseries trades. She's like the ultimate Goth chick, no? Also, The High Cost of Living and The Time of Your Life started my infatuation with Chris Bachalo's artistry. He's one of the only reasons I've continued reading the X-Men title, despite the convoluted and ultimately boring storyline. His art is just yummy. Too bad he draws positively appetizing women and really ugly men. His men just always look goofy. Maybe it's just me.

I'll read the rest of the series and report on my newest findings at another time. I regret that I didn't discover this series until after it had ended. It was my friend Daryl, who was obsessed with both Death and Tori Amos (the template for Delirium, or so I've heard) and had all the issues, as well as not a few posters and the original Sandman Tarot deck. I spent one night, wired on snorted diet pills, reading every issue he had and thirsting for more when I was finished.

Morpheus is kind of an asshole though, isn't he? I mean, what he did to Nada... that really sucks. But, I guess if you're the King of Dreams, your ego is a bit out of control, and anyone who tells you, "No." needs to be punished. But that bothers me. Oh well, at least I got to see the resolution of that story in cute Manga form in Jill Thompson's At Death's Door. It was also interesting to see the closing of Hell from Death's point of view.

But if I had to pick one member of the Endless to brand as my favorite, I'd have to choose Delirium. I based a Vampire character on her, silly ol' geeky ol' me. Her name was Giselle, she was an eternal 8-year-old (mentally, not physically) Malkavian who got into all kinds of trouble... but that's another story for another post. Suffice it to say, I've always been enamored of the more romantic idea of insanity, not the reality; the reality is just too messy.

I really wish I'd started reading the Sandman comics earlier in my life, but the covers were just too abstract and weird for me to really comprehend what was going on. The comics I liked to read at that point in my life were comics that gave you a good decent idea of what was going on inside by what was going on on the cover. Except for that stupid X-Men comic that pissed me off so much. I even bought that Uncanny X-Men where Ilyana Rasputin died just because the cover said, "If you buy one X-Men comic this year, THIS MUST BE IT!" so I followed the instructions and was disappointed with a poorly-written, sloppily-inked sop-fest with a barely digestible dialogue between Jean Grey and Jubilee.

This post has kind of been all over the place, but that's what happens when I post stream-of-consciousness crap. It's literally that. Crap. Like a brain dump. Enjoy!

Adventures in Geekiness!

Hello. I've returned. I hope you haven't missed me too much (well, okay, I hope you missed me somewhat).

I've been sharing geeky stories of my past, so I might as well continue that trend until I have something more current to share. My memories are kinda neat, because I didn't, at the time, realize that each new geeky experience I had was another link in the long, long chain that is the girly-geekdom I wear today.

When I first heard about Dungeons & Dragons secondhand from my brother, who had just started playing, I was fascinated. As a child and young teenager, I spent most of my free time playing around in my backyard in an imaginary kingdom, full of fantastical creatures, gallant knights, and evil sorcerers. So when I first heard about D&D, I was amazed. There was actually a REAL GAME with REAL RULES for what I'd been doing all along? What fun! So naturally, I became the whiny, clingy younger sister all high-school age boys HATE having around, and I started bugging my poor brother until he let me meet his gaming friends and one of them was kind enough (or took enough pity on me) to start a small campaign with just him, my brother, and me. I was elated. I wrote a list of potential names, races, and classes of my future character, and started counting the days until I finally got to play.

I chose a fighter-mage-thief, high elf (I think we were playing Greyhawk), blonde, purple eyes... and she HAD to be pretty.

Of course, when I was just playing by myself in my backyard and my imagination, there weren't any real rules, and weren't any real restrictions, except the ones that existed in my brain and limited the ideas I could come up with. I didn't have a clear sense of exactly what I was doing, and I admit I wasn't fully prepared for the reality of the game (if there is such a thing). I wanted a sword with jewels in it, and was regretfully informed by the DM that it would cost all my gold and I would basically be running around naked, unshod, with no equipment whatsoever, but I would have a really pretty and basically useless sword.

One 10-minute pout later, and assurance from the ever patient DM that when I acquired enough loot to buy said jeweled sword, I could, I settled in with my boring-sword-wielding character and announced myself at the front gate of the city I was trying to enter to start my glorious career of adventuring.

Upon being asked by the watch at the gate who I was, what I did, and what I was entering the city for, I, having absolutely NO SENSE of the environment of the D&D world (and having a marked lack of grasp of reality in general), my 13-year-old self puffed up and announced, "My name is Karynna (Yeah, yeah, so what? I was 13), I come to your town in search of adventure, and I am a thief!" See? No grasp of the in-game reality, or reality in general. WHO THE CRAP WOULD ANNOUNCE THEMSELVES AS A THIEF AT THE CITY GATES?! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

My poor harried DM took it in stride, however. Other than that, I have very little in the way of memories about that game. I don't think it lasted all that long. Shortly thereafter, however, I had gained a little more footing in the world of D&D, and joined the rest of the group, spending Friday and Saturday nights from about 9pm to about 4am playing various games in various TSR universes. I remember the 8-hour Drow of the Underdark binges. I remember playing a 7-foot-tall elven gladiator in the Dark Sun universe. I played almost every D&D universe out there, but my favorite was Forgotten Realms. I played SO MANY games set in Forgotten Realms.

I loved Forgotten Realms. So many nifty gods and goddesses to worship, to be clergy of. 9 times out of 10, if I was playing a Forgotten Realms game, I was a priestess of some god or another. You got neat powers!

I even played a Spelljammer game a few times. NEVER EVER EVER have a Spelljamming ship powered by a wild mage. Bad, bad news. And never use a Wand of Wonder in ship-to-ship combat. Just never give a wild mage a Wand of Wonder. Ever.

My favorite alignment was always chaotic neutral (or chaotic convenient, I always called it). You could get away with anything if you were CN. I had my good characters, I had my evil characters. Only play an all-evil campaign if you've got a lot of time to kill and don't mind getting next to nothing done. You're too busy plotting to kill the other members of your party to actually focus on the goal of the adventure itself.

My husband, along with some other friends of mine, are always talking about starting another D&D game up. I'm all for it, though I'll have to re-familiarize myself with 3rd Edition rules. I miss gaming, I won't lie... but character creation always takes so long with me; I can never decide what I want to be. Maybe I'll just take the shortcut and do a random-roll character.

...Nah. I'm too much of a control freak for that kind of crap.

Sweat, steroids, and tanning booths.

I have another confession to make.

I watch professional wrestling. And in a double-shot of guilty pleasures, I read (but never bought) the atrocious WWF comic books that came out. You know, the Undertaker comic, where the whole wrestling thing was actually just an outward illusion to us fans, because he was really battling undead zombies in the ring or whatever. I don't remember what the Kane comic was about, because it was just retarded. And, horror of horrors, the Chyna comic, which may have been moderately entertaining at the time it was released, but after seeing her Playboy spread and subsequent adult film "One Night in China" I have absolutely no interest in anything having to do with that psycho Joanie Laurer ever again.

When I first started watching the WWF, it was back in 1999, and my friend at the time Ahzriel introduced me to the wonders of professional wrestling, or "sports entertainment" as it is called today. At the time, all I saw of it was a homoerotic soap opera on steroids. Half-naked, oily men getting into compromising positions with one another between segues of poorly-acted, poorly-worded promos. The part of me that is fascinated with gay porn was very interested in it. I believed the storylines, was more interested in how cute some of the wrestlers were and how their tights accentuated their packages than in the actual athleticism that goes into being a professional wrestler, or "sports entertainment superstar".

In short, I watched wrestling like a girl. It wasn't until I met my husband and started watching wrestling with him that I started to learn a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes. I found out about "works" and "shoots" and "kayfabe". I started reading wrestling websites. I started seeing the psychology behind the sweaty grapple-fests. I began to see wrestling from a more masculine point of view.

It got to the point where I could start making fairly accurate predictions of which way things were going to go. Instead of cheering the popular guys, I started cheering the hardest workers. I learned to see the value of being a "heel" instead of a "face"... and wrestling became a whole lot more than a homoerotic soap opera on steroids.

I'm watching WWE (they lost a lawsuit from the World Wildlife Fund and changed their name) right now, as I type this post. Now, I'd be lying if I told you I am as entertained now by wrestling as I was back when I started watching it, but, as in anything, the world has moved on, and the edge-of-my-seat cliffhangers of yesteryear are gone, and what remains is a pale shadow of the exciting shows I remember.

I've thought about quitting watching it, I've thrown many a lightweight, soft object at my television screen when something incredibly stupid happens that just pisses me the fuck off, but I can't. I still have hopes that one day, something will happen that will bring wrestling back to the peak they were at when I first joined the fandom.

But I won't hold my breath. Blue isn't my color.

*This post is shorter than normal because we buried my grandmother this morning and my heart just isn't in it. I'll be back tomorrow.*

Digital entertainment at its laziest

I've always enjoyed video games. My earliest video game memories are from way back when I was a sweet, chubby, dimpled little 3 year old and my brother got an Atari (I can't remember what version) for Chanukah. Mom and Dad hooked it up in the basement/playroom and I watched him play Pac-Man and Baseball and Missile Command. I tried to learn how to play the games too, and Mom made him let me play them, but hand-eye coordination isn't at its best when you're only three years old, so I assume I wasn't that great and probably threw quite a few tempter tantrums in the interim.

At age four, however, I finally started getting the knack of playing games. While Pac-Man and Space Invaders were still beyond my ability to grasp, I found that there was one game I wasn't too shabby at. I can't remember the name of it right now, but it was a two-player combat game, with tanks and battleships and things of that nature and you moved around and shot one another. Maybe someone who was old enough to have clear memories of that time could educate me with the name of that particular game. All I remember is that if you lifted up the console and dropped it back down with the game in the console and the console turned on you got a playable error level that was stupid and pointless, but kind of fun all at the same time.

After we'd left Pittsburgh and moved out to Oxnard, my brother got a ColecoVision for either his birthday or Chanukah that year, and I have clear memories of watching him play Mr. Do. I don't think I ever played that game, but there was another game for that system that used the Alfred Hitchcock theme music as its theme music and had something to do with food, and devils and angels, but I'll be damned if I can remember anything beyond that. I played that one a few times, I think, but I may have been too obsessed with my Cabbage Patch Doll at that point in time. I DO remember when we got another Atari system... this was the one with the built-in keyboard and optional (and additional) tape drive. I played the HELL out of some Joust on that system, and my brother played some weird-ass game called 'Oil Well'. I remember this because he used to say 'Oil's well that ends well' all the time. Yeah, I didn't think it was all that funny either.

When my mother got remarried in the summer of 1986, my brother and I got an NES for Chanukah. We got the deluxe package, with Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt (and the light gun), the stupid little robot thing, and the game that came with it (I think it was called GyroMite). Duck Hunt was a great game. I sucked ass at Super Mario Bros., but I had some early talent for shooting things. GyroMite was just too god damned complicated for me, so I just sat back and watched my brother play it for hours on end.

The next year, The Legend of Zelda came out. I STILL love that game. When they re-released it for the GameBoy Advance, I made my husband go out and buy it for me, and I played it over and over and over and over and over again during down time at work. But back when it was on the NES, I just (once again) watched my brother play it. It was just as interesting to me to watch it as it was to play it. I offhandedly wonder just how long my mother had to search various toy stores to find that shiny gold cartridge around Christmastime that year. She may have had the patience to do that (she did that to get me my aforementioned Cabbage Patch Doll), but I definitely would not have. Thank god I was too old for Tickle Me Elmos when the chaos surrounding them occurred.

We never got a Super NES, or an N64, or a Sega, or any of those other consoles. By then, Tetris had come out for the NES and that's pretty much all we played. The entire family played it. My stepfather claimed it was 'educational' and that's why he played it, but at that time, the internet was in its infancy and my brother had a Prodigy account so he felt that video games were too young for him.

The next game system I familiarized myself with was the Sega Dreamcast. Yeah, big gap there, innit? But with that system (that belonged to my husband) I was introduced to the wonder that is Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. I wasn't very good at it, but it was a fun game and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Even bailing was entertaining.

Soon after that, the wonder of the world that is XBox came out, so naturally I got myself a Sears card and bought one. I never got into Halo, I don't like 1st person shooters (my talent for Duck Hunt notwithstanding) but there was a version of Tony Hawk for the XBox and I got rather good at it.

Then we discovered the PS2 and the plethora of RPG-style games developed for it. Now, with those kinds of games, I don't really have any interest in PLAYING them, I just enjoy WATCHING other people play them. It's kind of like a movie. My favorite PS2 RPG to watch was and is Dark Cloud 2. That game is just too interesting for words.

You do things in the past, then visit the future, and see what your past actions have caused in future events. What a concept! It's like reality, but digital! My poor husband would play that game for hours, and eventually I'd fall asleep on the couch watching him play.

Now, we have an XBox 360. My husband has been playing Oblivion on it for well over 100 hours now, for both of our entertainment, between sessions of playing Guitar Hero 2 (I play that one too). He's almost done with the main quest, and I do believe he's been playing it for about 6 hours straight now. I've been watching him play it while I've been writing this post. Such a pretty game, so in-depth and detail-oriented. I'm sure it's been as much pleasure for him to play it as it's been for me to watch it. Besides, it has the added bonus of Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean as voice-over artists!

So if you have a 360 and a LOT of free time on your hands, and haven't played it already, I heartily recommend Oblivion for your time consumption needs. Enjoy!

ch-ch-ch-changes, among other little ditties

I've received a few critiques of my blog, and am now trying to alter things in order to make those nay-sayers happy. IS THIS OKAY NOW?

It's going to be difficult, retraining myself to hit the shift key when appropriate, but hey, technically speaking, you readers are my customers, no? I also changed the template. Apparently, my blog as it was bore a few resemblances to another one here, and that in and of itself is a bad thing. So please, dear readers, comment on this particular column with any other problems you may have with the way I'm doing things here, if applicable.

I kinda like it here in my cozy little corner of the intarwebs. I find myself feeling rather accomplished when I check out my blog on Site Tracker and see the total of people visiting. Most of said visitors only visit my page for 0.00 seconds, but I'm going for quantity, not quality, so my ego is satisfied.

For now.

Anyway, onto the meat 'n' potatoes of today's writing exercise!

Way, way back in 1987, when I was a young, charming lass of 9, I took my first wobbly steps towards femme-geekhood, by way of primetime television. Star Trek: The Next Generation aired its dubious pilot, and, without knowing towards which I reached, I was hooked. I watched almost every episode the night it aired, discussing them at Sunday school later that week with another girl just as enraptured with the series as I was. Without knowing how unerringly, stunningly nerdy the whole thing was, we discussed theories, characters, alien races, attractions between characters, attractions TO characters (hey... we WERE girls, after all). Together, we wrung every tasty drop of juice out of that series that we possibly could.

I cut my geek teeth on that show. Through seven seasons, I watched every episode I possibly could, mourning the weeks where other obligations would keep me from parking my kiester in front of the television the minute that gloriously symphonic theme would start. At the end of the final episode, I cried. It was over! Of course, the next Star Trek series had started by then, but I'll talk about DS9 later.

Once the series was over and done with, I lost touch with it. Until, about 10 years later, I walked into Salzer's Records used DVD section to find Season 3 for sale. I bought it without a second thought and carried the package lovingly cradled to my chest until I got it home to watch it. I made it my temporary life's goal to collect the entire series.

Over the next couple of months, I scoured the used section of Salzer's, and every time I saw a shiny silver box, I gravitated towards it, snapping it up with alacrity if it was a season I hadn't acquired yet. After depleting the used versions, I bit the bullet and found a few missing seasons at Best Buy, ignoring the hefty price tag (did I mention I'm Jewish and like to save money?) in order to feed my Trek hunger. I fell asleep to episode after episode, sometimes watching two or three in a row before bed, not getting to sleep until many hours after I'd actually gotten IN bed.

When Spike TV bought the syndication rights to Next Gen, I immediately set up the TiVo Season Pass to record each and every episode aired, despite the fact that I owned the box sets. It was still Star Trek, it was still good, and I got to watch 6 episodes in a row without having to change DVDs! The lazy part of me was happy with that little arrangement.

A year or so later, by way of a friend ALMOST as into the series as I was, I discovered the novels. Unaired episodes! How neat! After many many years of watching the episodes, I could read the books and play out the scenes in my head, so I didn't even miss the lack of visual stimulation in that particular format.

To this day, if any friend of mine has a Star Trek universe question, I'm the first person they call. A dubious honor, to say the least. Nice to be recognized for my knowledge, kind of annoying to know that I'm the first they turn to. It's kind of like having 'GEEK' tattooed on your forehead, but it's better than no recognition at all.

nerdiest. crush. ever.

comic books are fun. they're pretty to look at, easy to read, and even if you're illiterate you can get a good ballpark idea of what's going on just by looking at the pictures. and nowadays, they're printed on glossy magazine paper! even my cat likes comics, if by 'likes' you mean 'sits on'.

because the colors are so vivid and bold, and shiny, and the stories are told in such easy-to-digest mouthfuls, it's easy to find yourself lost in the world of whatever comic you're reading. sometimes, in a particularly well-written title, you can find yourself looking out through the eyes of the main character, feeling what s/he feels.

suspension of disbelief is god in all works of fiction, comics in particular.

admittedly, when i was first taken to the local mecca of all things comic book, i was in my early teens, so naturally i gravitated towards the x-books. they're like comics 101. i picked up an issue of the x-men restart title. you know, the 'blue team' one. asian psylocke, gambit, rogue, i think beast, and i can't remember everyone else now. oh well. i remember being attracted to the book because the cover had rogue and gambit ALMOST kissing on it. now, in my vague, undereducated brain, i remember rogue's power was the touch-initiated draining of mutant abililites, personality, etc. of people, and that she had no control of said power. so naturally, i thought 'how the HELL is she gonna pull this off?'. upon purchase and subsequent reading of the issue, i learned what a 'teaser' was. they didn't kiss. what crap.

over the next couple of months, i continued to buy that particular x-title, rather confused about the psylocke/kwannon drama, having absolutely no idea what the hell was going on. but i admit, i kept buying the issues for rogue and gambit.

i almost cringe... well, okay i DO cringe to remember it, but i was obsessed with them. not HIM, not HER, but THEM. at 15, i ate up fictional sexual tension with a spoon. yum yum. i even made a marvel character that was the the product of rogue artificially inseminating herself with gambit's dna. HOW RETARDEDLY NERDY IS THAT CRAP?!

upon reflection, that character was pretty cool. she absorbed energy from other people (just like her mommy!) and when she reached capacity, she'd spontaneously combust. except i found out later there was a dc universe character called the human bomb. and here i thought i'd been original. well, i'd been kind of original. she didn't sweat nitroglycerin or anything.

so i don't know if that quite qualifies as a comic-book character crush, but i think it's pretty close. or at least the closest i'd gotten when i was the age in which comic book character obsession was somewhat normal.

as i got older, my tastes matured as well, and i started reading the dc vertigo trades of sandman and hellblazer. i started developing attractions to both morpheus and john constantine. yeah, they were assholes, but they were kinda neat all at the same time. i got tired of the 'mon chere's and wanted a man on paper who wasn't afraid to say 'fuck'.

i'm not attracted to any comic book characters anymore. i think i reserve my attractions to television show characters now.

polyhedron love

so many shapes. so many colors. so many games. so many uses. playing dungeons & dragons? better have the whole set! got a star wars game coming up? how many six-siders you got? did you remember your off-color one for your wild die? marvel? gurps? vampire? hope you brought your d10s.

they were pale sea green, pearlescent plastic with white numbers on their faces. i remember the first set i ever bought. i was 14, excited as hell, about to embark on my first purchase towards being a real gamer. full set. d4 through d20. i even remember the silly little rituals i went through in order to guarantee they'd roll the way i wanted them to. i spoke to them (yes, i really did). i offered them a place of honor if they were good to me. i carried them in my pocket the entire first week i had them, just so they'd get used to me. then friday night rolled (ha ha) around and i got to use them for the first time. i petted my shiny little d20 and threw it across the table for the first round of combat.

oh, how those pretty shiny little pieces of gamer geekiness failed me.

i think i almost cried. i just spent six dollars and twenty-five cents of my mother's hard earned money to critical miss and lop the hand off of one of my compatriots? WHAT KIND OF GAME IS THIS?! my poor little elven fighter-mage-thief turned into a low-rent butcher without even the talent or intelligence to tell the difference between the stinking horde of kobolds and the cleric of our group? all by one single toss of a 20-sided die? such betrayal!

and the sale was final, too.

those dice never treated me right. locks i'd thought i'd picked spontaneously developed deadly poison traps. sea green pearlescent plastic bastards. somewhere out there, there was a geometrically-shaped deity laughing. first-level random encounters became bloodbaths. the party'd take a walk out to the local tavern and end up in ravenloft.

bastards. all seven of 'em.

i gave up on them and went out to buy another set. purple and black, numbers etched in silver. i gave the sea green pains in the ass to a friend (who never seemed to have a problem with them, incidentally. bastards.) and played exclusively with the new set. i guess sea green was never my color.

i bought my star wars six-siders in vegas. i mean, what's a better place to buy 'traditional' dice than a place where people lose money rolling them? admittedly, i didn't use them much, as at the time i played star wars i hadn't even seen the movies (bad geek. very bad.). but hey, they worked pretty well. i had absolutely no idea what was going on, but yeah. they worked.

it was my d10s that got the most workout. between marvel superheroes, the few gurps games i played, and of course, vampire... well, i'm surprised the numbers didn't wear off.

i don't have my dice anymore. i don't know whatever happened to them. on the rare occasions i do game, i use a handful from my husband's vast collection.

i use dice now more for randomly choosing which movie to watch than to decide the fate of any fictional character.

but i still remember that first exhilarating rush of owning my own set.

and the crushing defeat which followed.

bastards. if plastic polyhedrons have a hell, i hope they're melting.

obligatory introduction post

hello!

i'm new. i'm new, i'm a girl, i'm a geek.

i decided to start this little blog in an attempt to present geekdom from a female point of view, without dissolving into 'OMGZ gambit is sooooo hawt!!!!!!' followed by a bunch of pointless emoticons. with any luck, i can present the female geek point of view in an intelligent way that even my bitchier male constituents cannot sneer at or look down upon. i'm not sure if i need to flash my geek credentials, if there's some sort of password or secret hand shake i have to perform in order to be taken seriously, but i can list a few of the geekiest things i've done in my life, which i shall attempt to elucidate on in columns later in the life of this blog.

i read comics. no, not manga, not shoujo, not yaoi. i play role playing games, and have played them for over 10 years now. i play video games. i watch professional wrestling. i don't know how geeky professional wrestling is, but i'm sure there's some random sub-category of geek out there that professional wrestling fits into. i'm a huge star trek fan, and yes, i have read star trek slash fiction, but more for the humor factor than any sort of serious contemplation of what a troi/riker/crusher(wesley or beverly, depending on how your proclivities lie) sandwich would be like.

now that i've flexed a few of my geek muscles, perhaps i've acquired your attention.

i can't guarantee what the frequency of new posts is going to be like, and i can't guarantee that you'll be entertained or even moderately amused by my columns here, but i do promise that i'll try to at least present my point of view in a clear, concise manner, without dipping too far into the pool of inane vapidity that other femmegeeks like to swim in.

so i guess i'll start with the geekiest thing i've ever done. why not enter the confessional with the most atrocious action on your lips?

i'm a LARPer. vampire only, thank you very much. no foam-rubber padded longswords or velvet pouches filled with glitter 'spell components' here. no, purely world of darkness, angsty-teen, blood-trait spending nonsense. i admit it. i've looked the code of milan up on the internet, trying to figure out a way for my character to do something completely against sect rules without violating the primary precept of said sect. i've spent hard-earned money on sourcebooks so i could get a better idea of how my character should act in a specific situation. i've spent hours in front of the mirror before a game, trying to get my hair/makeup/clothing just right to represent my character in the closest way possible. except prettier. and thinner. vanity is all in LARPing. why else would you be able to buy traits like 'gorgeous' and 'seductive'?

it's such an easy way to pretend to be something you're not, and of course, if you're a moderately attractive female, there's no end to the list of fellow players to 'scene' with. it's a good way to hone your improvisational skills, too. it's no small feat to come up with several different ways to kill/maim/eviscerate an imaginary enemy in order to keep the storytellers entertained (and to earn bonus freebie points to buy more 'gorgeous' traits with!).

but aren't all role playing games about pretending to be something you're not? it's just not taken as far in most others. no one but a LARPer is going to spend 200 bucks at hot topic to buy an outfit they'd only have the guts to wear twice a month in someone's backyard. no one but a LARPer is going to find a cosmetic dentist to make prosthetic fangs to wear twice a month in someone's backyard (well, LARPers and vampire goths). no one but a LARPer is going to make a mix tape of songs to listen to for 'inspiration' (one more time, all together now) twice a month in someone's backyard.

while all role players will get into deep philosophical discussions about their characters' motivations, attitudes, and mentalities, only LARPers create yahoo! message groups so they can continue their adventures between games, or spend hours in IM playing out small scenes between themselves and storytellers. and yes, i'll admit, i'm guilty of most of that stuff. i just never had the money to buy the prosthetic fangs.

despite all that, LARPing IS a fun way to spend every other friday evening. except, of course, if there's combat you're not involved in. then, you get to spend hours staring off into space, only to find out that 3 minutes of game time have passed. then (if you're me), you spend the rest of the night chain smoking and drinking soda until game is called and everyone reconvenes at carrow's.

silly, isn't it? but not so bad in the greater scheme of things.

i mean, after all, wouldn't the world be a much better place if ALL disagreements could be settled by rock/paper/scissors?