Jumping on the Twitter Bandwagon

Since many of the podcasts I listen to seem to constantly be talking about Twitter, I decided to sign up and integrate it into my blog. Maybe 140 character posts are the solution to blog entropy?

By the nature of my job, probably not much in the way of updates during the day but hopefully I’ll develop some habits to to twitter (or is it post tweets?) in the evening and weekends.

As a side note, the WordPress 2.5 admin look and feel is pretty nice. To bad I’m mostly compelled to upgrade for solutions to exploits and not to get access to new features.

The Favorite Hero I Never Collected

Iron Man Now PlayingFirst, I’ve got to say that the Iron Man movie is fantastic! It’s been a while since I’ve been compelled to see a movie a second time and IronMan has certainly given me motivation to do so. In some ways, it’s a pretty standard superhero story: hero is transformed from who they were, hero experiments to determine his capabilities, hero has some early trials, hero has a showdown with a Big Bad. It’s intelligently written, there’s a lot of smaller dialog that just flows (maybe improvised?), and the action is not the over-the-top hyperkinetic style that has plagued a lot of actioners these days. Plus, the suit of armor is nicely detailed and at least movie-plausible in how it’s functioning. Watching Robert Downey Jr. spring into action as Tony Stark in the armor sent a thrill like I was seven years old again.

As a kid, I loved the idea of Iron Man. He was like a pocket version of the giant Japanese robot toys I collected. While it would be great to have a giant robot and fight against giant monsters, it just seemed more practical to have a briefcase with power suit easily on hand. I mean, I could never hope to have a Mazinger or a Combattra in my closet… but IronMan armor could work! Yes, it would fit right next to my t-shirts and Luke Skywalker Dagobah fatigues. I would pour over the Marvel Universe entries for IronMan and all the other powered armor heroes and villians: Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man, Guardsmen and so on. My quest for fictional stats would even spill over to ever loosely associated tech like the Avenger’s Quinjet, Ultron and Alpha Flight’s Guardian. When I wasn’t reading about Iron Man, my Mego and Secret Wars series figures got a lot of use, right up there with Spidey.
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Spidey Catch Up for March

This past weekend I caught up with my Spidey comics reading including ASM up to 553 and Ultimate 119. I deliberately stayed clear of picking up any comics at WonderCon since I’ve got a subscription with my shop and it was a few weeks since I last visited.

Brand New Day continues to bug me. The artwork is fine. I actually rather like Salvador Larocca’s more realistic style and prefer it to some of the other artists’ work. “Spidey’s Braintrust” of Bob Gale, Marc Guggenheim, Dan Slott and Zeb Wells are doing a good job at trying to restore a classic Spidey story feel. The bits and pieces do harken back with the right verbal punches, JJJ squirming to get out of the hospital, things just no going right for Peter one way or the other… but all together it’s hard to get invested in Brand New Day.
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WonderCon

WonderCon 2008 Show Floor The California convention season got started for me this weekend with WonderCon. WonderCon is produced by the same group that handles Comic-Con and the Alternative Press Expo (APE). After existing in Oakland for a number of years, it migrated over to San Francisco’s bigger venues. Unfortunately, it’s coincided with the Game Developers Conference the past two years and has been squeezed into Moscone Convention Center‘s South Hall after a turn in the newer and visually impressive West Hall. The South Hall fits well but the layout makes the overall show feel cramped and the location for some of the smaller panel rooms is not ideal for good foot traffic.

WonderCon has become mostly a TV and movie panel show for me while I concentrate on shopping and autographs at Comic-Con. Compared with the insane lines at Comic-Con, it’s relatively easy to get a good seat and see actors, writers and directors of current and upcoming genre shows. This year had well known television shows and movies like Get Smart, X-Files 2 and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles represented. Actors and creators like Steve Carell, David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Chris Carter and Anne Hathaway took the time to show up and answer audience questions. It was a nice, relaxing weekend.

Pictures from the panels and the exhibit hall are available for your enjoyment.