This Week in Geek (9-15/07/07)

Buys

I needed some white shirts and I'd once promised my friend Mark Engblom that I would purchase some of his designs from his Cafépress store, so I did just that. I've got a yes shirt ("It's so crazy, it just might work!"), a no shirt ("I say thee nay!"), and a maybe shirt ("All this power and yet I'm helpless!"). So something for each of my moods. Thanks Mark!

Postmodernism is kind of the order of the day (see below), so I got me three Douglas Coupland novels: Generation X, Shampoo Planet and Hey Nostradamus! Already started on that last one and it had me at hello (or at "I believe.."). I bought yet another copy of Slings & Arrows Season 1 for a friend's birthday gift (yes, I loved it so much, I bought it more than once), and to top off my order, a little something for myself: Jim Jarmush's Ghost Dog -The Way of the Samurai, starring Forrest Whitaker.

"Accomplishments"

Had an improv show this week (with fellow blogger Bass, incidentally). We were meant to create a "postmodern meditation" in three acts using nothing but the offered sets and some beautiful lyrical videos shown before each one. Yeah, pretty challenging. It also managed to be a transformative experience. Is this geekery? Well, seeing as one of the postmodern tenets we chose to exploit was the window into a subculture (the very essence of geekery), I'd say yes. Since we're improv players, we made it about improv and used the play's structure to tell a very personal story of growth from the easy comedy stuff to the challenging things we're doing these days. The show basically explained its own reason for being. I've written a 5-page analysis of the thing, it so inspired me, but I won't bore you with it here. Major props to the entire team, both on stage and off.

But I also got up to some more classically geeky things. For example, I flipped Martin Scorsese's Casino. I'm going through a lot of his films right now, and Casino was dear to some of my friends' hearts, so I heard about it often enough, but hadn't yet watched it. I was a little non-plussed by it, to tell you the truth. Watching the extras made me appreciate it more, however. Scorsese's notion that the film, just like Las Vegas, was about excess - excessive colors, cutting, music (wall to wall), voice over... - is at once its problem and its reprieve.

Comics? I finished a second hardcover of Invincible, up through issue 24, or as I might call it, the subplot tome. Wow, there are so many. And yet, it all reads seamlessly. A page of Atom Eve ending a famine in Africa after not seeing her for a long while is just enough, and all the quirky stuff will eventually pay off, you just know it. I can't wait for volume 3 to get to my mailbox later this month.

I also read through the first trade of Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli's DMZ and immediately started on the second. This stuff is GOOD. If you don't know it, it's about a second American Civil War, and Manhattan is pitched as the no man's land between the two sides. Matty Roth is a journalism intern sent and lost into the DMZ, through who's eyes the stories unfold. It's a fictional war, but it brings a lot of what's happening elsewhere right to our doorstep. I was surprised at how powerful it could be, but then I'm a huge fan of Joe Sacco's Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde. Blogosphere, you steered me well once again.

And if you're keeping track of my other projects, I got Lyndawithay up from level 56 to 58, which means I can finally go into the Outlands. Yes, it's World of Warcraft... IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!!!!
Also made some cards for my Doctor Who CCG, 9 in all, finishing off the few cards from The Daleks I needed to do, and then relaxing with some "reject" cards mostly pulled from League of Gentlemen comedy sketches, like so:
Which reminds me, I finally framed 6 autographed pictured of Who actors I'd gotten from a friend in the UK who plays the card game and also gets a chance to visit a convention now and then. (He's an extra in The Empty Child!) He sends me these from time to time, which is awful nice of him. I already had Tom Baker (4th Doctor), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) and Louise Jameson (Leela), and now I can add Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Deborah Watling (Victoria), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Katy Manning (Jo Grant) and Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler). Now I just have to find a hammer and they'll be on a wall! Thanks again Simon!

Website finds

So I've been reading Michael Fleisher's Batman encyclopedia, and it's the kind of crazy project I might have dreamed up. I do wish someone would attack the DCU like this again, though in its entirety. Instead of dividing things per hero (which is awkward because appearances in unrelated titles are not covered - for example, JLA is not covered in the Batman tome), maybe per decade/era. You could pick up the legend of long-running heroes in that decade, or retell it if things were substantially changed. The stuff I think about when I'm fighting insomnia. But wait, aren't there Wikis for this sort of thing which might satisfy my craving? All I could find with my cursory research is Supermanica, which means to cover everything about the pre-Crisis Superman thoroughly (and it does go outside the Super-titles). Can anyone suggest sites with a level of anal detail similar to Fleisher's books?