Hello

to all of you just checking CCG out for the first time, please join us on facebook. the website is a work in progress, but facebook is where all the action is for now!

Code Monkeys

I'm about 6 months late on this story, but G4 did not renew Code Monkeys for a third season! I can't understand why, this was one of the few good shows they had. It's not as if they're replacing it with new content, since they don't generate any regular TV content except for Attack of the Show and X-Play. G4 has become nothing more than a syndication channel; cops, cheaters, old 80's movies; yet if you look at their website, they have 7 webshows they could easily turn into TV shows. Why not just play repeats of Attack of the Show, or create some new TV content? We're not looking for million dollar sci-fi production, just something to watch that has to do with video games and technology.

At least TechTV would make some filler shows, and then run repeats of them.

Check it out.....

So I've been slacking for the past month now. I've been meaning to write something for the blog but haven't. I could think of nothing thus far worth sharing with you all.....until today. A friend of mine had been bored at work lately and decided to make his own comic strip. The first was so surprisingly funny and well received that he's just been whipping them out for the past month. After posting on facebook and gaining a bit of an audience he created a blog to showcase them. These comic strips are nothing short of hilarious. I don't want to give anything away. You really have to see for yourself.

http://jrock07.wordpress.com/

GeekFaction: Models

When I was a kid, one of the highlights of Christmas was going to see the Wise Ave Firehouse train garden. The other was setting up a 16' x 4' train garden with my father in our living room. I love a world in miniature, the only thing that would have made either of those two better, was if they were little more true to life, I wanted more realism.

I told my wife that when we bought a house, there would be a HO model railroad in it somewhere. Now that we have a home, there is a table, and a work area in the basement. I haven't got a lot to show for the past year or so in terms of complete projects. But, I figure I've got another 60 years to finish it, and I'm in no hurry. I'm doing it slowly and honing my skills, so it can be as realistic as possible in the end.

(My prototype brick wall technique)

Railroad modeling is detail oriented, obsessing over realism, with the greatest achievement being when someone looks at a picture of it and doesn't know if it's real or a model. However, I've come to find wargaming miniatures much more interesting. The "scratch building" wargamers are doing blows away what railroaders are doing in terms of creativity, detail and interest grabbing elements.

One of the best sites I've come across is Necromundicon. There's no kits on here, all these pieces are scratch built from junk laying around. If I had to compare all my work against his, I'd just give up the hobby right now because his work is amazing.

Also check out TerraGenesis, most of the threads on TG contain Work-In-Progress pictures of the models as the people are building them. If you've ever wondered how modelers get such great looking stuff from junk, this is the page to check out.

Once your amazed at the structures, you'll probably want to make some characters, Musketeer Miniatures isn't updated enough in my opinion, but what posts are there are solid gold, especially this tutorial on his creation of a Pirate.

Just in case you think all wargamers are playing with Orcs and Knights, check out The Warfactory for an assortment of various genres of miniatures.

All that being said, I don't even own any wargaming miniatures, or go to any games, I just admire it as an art.

8-bit trip

A stop-motion Lego tribute to 8-bit video games

Geek Show Podcast

My job has me driving all over Baltimore, DC and Virginia, which sucks. What sucks harder is listening to the radio. It's not the bland standardized music that makes me insane, is the annoying commercials. In marketing they say repetition is recognition, which is why they'll just spout off the same 1-800 number 4 times in a row, 6 times an hour. But for me, it was the reason I bought commercial free satellite radio, and then moved on to a full schedule of Podcasts.

One of my favorite podcasts right now is The Geek Show. 5 or 6 geeks sit around a table for an hour or two a week (sometimes they also upload mid-cycle additional content), and talk about the latest comic book news, sci-fi movies and TV, and any other assorted geekery that's going on. Lots of inside geek jokes about Saturday morning cartoons and quotes from Star Wars make this an exclusive for our people.

When I first started listening, the story that got me hooked was about one of the guys driving down the sidewalk on a little scooter. He saw these two jocks, and one had on a Cobra T-shirt, so drove over and stopped in front of them and said accusingly "Quick, who's your favorite member of Cobra!" and when the guy didn't have an answer, he yelled "HA! Posers" and burned out on his little scooter. The visual image that left in my mind, of a true fan of a franchise defending it's honor, and the fact that he was yelling at guys twice his size, then relying on a scooter to get away, locked me in.

Go into Itunes, find The Geek Show and subscribe to it, you're here reading this, so I already know you'd like it. Even if you don't subscribe, go to their website and listen to their interview with Chris Claremont, who wrote The Uncanny Xmen for 17 years (1975-1991), and is now returning to pickup where he left off.

Full Moon Fever! The Wolf Man Trailer

The Website Is Down

The website is down has been around for a couple years now, and although some people think there are 'web rules' that say you shouldn't blog about old items, I disagree.

Episode 1 is the best of the bunch, it's 10 minutes long and seriously funny if you've ever had to provide any sort of tech support. "Did you try rebooting?" "Yeah, three times, just like you said, I always reboot three times".

On their blog, they have a section Datacenter from hell, that has some pretty funny posts from sys admins. This takes me back to the early days of the internet, when entire websites would be nothing but text files of jokes. A popular section on those sites was always the Sysadmin from hell, about sysadmins torturing their users, or the You're too stupid to own a computer stories from the tech support trenches.

PS3 getting undead goodness!!

For those of you who have yearned for some good ole fashioned zombie killing via your PS3,

you're in luck.

At GamesCom today, Housemarque (the folks who brought us Super

Stardust HD) announced Dead Nation, a zombie gore-fest exclusive to the PS3. I can't even express my excitement over this. I finally broke down and bought Left4Dead for PC (since the good folks at Valve

keep making amazing games exclusive to 360 WTF!!!), but I really

want something that I can play on my console. Hopefully this will

answer my prayers. If they happen to throw in multiplayer and some

trophy support, then we may just have a certifiable zombie classic in

the making!

Check out the awesome trailer!

Harvard Professor lectures about the science of zombies

A random thought about zombie evolution spurred a discussion on my personal facebook page the other day, which has lead me to further ponder the subject. I'm attempting to create a plausible explanation for past zombism, and how it can evolve going forward. During my research today, I came acorss this 40 minute video of Dr. Schlozman of Harvard Medical school.

Click here to watch it on The Boston Phoenix

The Walking Dead: The Series !!!!!!!!

I can only hope that:

a. this actually happens

b. they don't fuck it up

c. Robert Kirkman is involved and doesn't let them fuck it up

Read the full article here.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118007161.html?categoryid=10&cs=1&nid=2248

GeekFaction: Comics

Considering there's so many factors that go into making someone a "geek", I figured I'd do a few posts about those things which define us best, and maybe grab the interest of the rest of us for entry into new areas of geekdom.

My first comic book was Avengers #333 in June of 1991, I bought it (well.. my mom bought it), because I used to draw all the time when I was a kid, and I wanted to get a look at comic book format. This lead to a major consumption of Marvel, DC, and Image comics over the next few years, leading to my last comic book, Uncanny X-men #317, around october of 1994. From what I've heard, this was around the time the big comic book revival was ending. Stan Lee said in an interview that they started making too many multiple collectors covers, citing Xmen 1, and really milking the readers....they got greedy.

Over the years I've kept up here and there with the major plot developments, and have even read a couple web comics, but haven't been in a comic store in nearly 15 years now. I've been thinking of comics as a solid form of media lately because there are no special effects budgets, no need to cater to the mass media (maybe a little on major titles), and that for many science fiction titles, I find a visual component important. The Difference Engine was a good read, but I'd appreciated it more if it were in some visual form.

A friend from work recently gave me The Watchmen comic book and movie to enjoy, and enjoy it I did! I flipped through the book and quickly got interested in a few groups of pages, but didn't want to start the process of reading the whole thing, so I gave it back to him. Not long before that, while waiting for my wife at Borders in Timonium, I found my way over to a graphic novel section, a section that actually amazed me at how large it was. Again, I leafed through a few of the collections, but didn't buy anything.

I like to read, but like I do with most of my hobbies, I go through ups and downs of how much reading I get done. Once I finish my current book, and I'm not busy writing blog posts, or playing Xbox; I think I'll go pick up The Watchmen, or maybe something else.

Any suggestions on what titles might draw me back into the fold?

Legion Trailer

From imdb:

After a terrifying biblical apocalypse descends upon the world, a group of strangers stranded in a remote truck stop diner in the Southwest unwittingly become humanity's last line of defense when they discover the diner's young waitress is pregnant with the messiah.

Holy shit that movie looks crazy. In a way it kinda reminds me of Garth Ennis' Preacher which is one of my all time favorite comics. Now there's a move I'd like to see done well.

Legion is scheduled for release on January 22, 2010. I should also mention that it features Baltimore's own Charles "Roc" Dutton!

Source: AICN

Ghostbuster Joins Heroes Cast

Ernie Hudson is set to play a Baltimore detective on the next season of NBC's Heroes. He'll be joined by other new cast members Robert Knepper (T-Bag from Prison Break), Rick Worthy (Simon from Battlestar Galactica), and Ray Park (Darth Maul).

I was fairly disappointed by the last two seasons, but this one looks like it has potential.



Source

The Venture Brothers

Are you watching The Venture Brothers? No? Yet you're reading a blog called CharmCityGeek? I can only imagine then that your reason for not watching is based purely on ignorance, or an unfortunate allergy to awesome.

Due to ignorance, I only recently started watching it myself. Increasingly, I would hear my friends talking about how they couldn't believe they hadn't started watching it sooner. I'd initially balked at the show since the actual Venture brothers didn't seem all that funny, they actually seemed pretty annoying from the parts I saw, and I couldn't imagine watching episode after episode of these two doing their intentionally lame Hardy Boys act.

After reconsidering, and sitting down to watch a few episodes, I learned the secret truth of the Venture Brothers.....are you ready for this? It isn't really about the Venture brothers at all, it's about their neglectful failure of a super scientist father and his blood thirsty bodyguard (who if voiced by geek superhero David Putty...I mean Patrick Warburton, who also briefly played The Tick on the live action series.)

So, why is The Venture Brothers so good? In addition to it's visual homage to late 70's, early 80's Hanna Barbera animation, It's full of esoteric references that the average viewer won't get but are written into the show so well, that he won't even realize he's missed something. Occasionally quotes like "Kill them all! God will know his own!" work their way in. To the average viewer, this is just an oddly placed bit of dialog; but to the history geek, it's slyly snuck in quote from the Crusades.

More commonly, quotes like "Uh...and I thought they smelt bad...on the outside", endear the show to any Star Wars fan close enough to catch a whiff of tauntaun intestine.

Consider this your heads up, this show is one of the best fanboy produced shows out there! Season 4 is starting up in November, so you've got a few months to hit up Netflix to get caught up before then.

TMN(HD)T!!!

Courtesy of IGN, the one game I have been waiting on for quite sometime. Next-gen high-def 4-player Turtle action!!
Coming Soon!!!

Nintendo reboots another classic!

For those of you who enjoyed the original (that game was

fucking hard!!!) Nintendo is going to be releasing a new

and improved version of the classic, A Boy and His Blob,

for the Wii console!

From: www.destructoid.com

Watch this movie POOZER!!!

The latest entry in the DC animated films catalog is Green Lantern - First Flight. The first thing to catch my attention was its PG-13 rating. Seriously, PG-13 for an animated comic movie? Well it didn't take me long to understand why. This flick is bad ass! Hal Jordan is portrayed with all the swagger and confidence he exudes in the books. While Sinestro is as hardcore as they come. A brilliant storyline makes this a great watch for fans of the series or for anyone just jumping on board. With the recent casting of Ryan Reynolds for the upcoming live action motion picture, First Flight will make for a great introduction to the characters and worlds of the Green Lantern universe. If you ever enjoyed Batman - The animated series or any of the DC and Marvel television shows, this is a MUST watch for you! Other great recommendations are Superman/Doomsday and The Justice League - New Frontier.

Iron Man and Wolverine Anime Trailers

From the official press release:

Marvel Entertainment Inc., has partnered with renowned Japanese animation studio Madhouse (Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers) and multiple-Eagle Award winner Warren Ellis to create four all new anime versions of classic Marvel Super Heroes. Get an exciting first glimpse of IRON MAN and WOLVERINE, two of the planned four series!

These Marvel Anime TV series are being created as a way of merging the beloved Marvel Super Heroes of western culture with the bold animation tradition of Japan. The resulting product will be four visually groundbreaking anime series featuring popular Super Heroes redesigned and repurposed as emerging from the fabric of Japanese culture. The series is expected to begin appearing on the Animax channel in Japan in spring of 2010.

I think the Iron Man trailer looks really promising. Wolverine looks a little strange but kind of Ninja Scroll-ish which isn't surprising since Madhouse was responsible for that as well. Now I'm really curious about what the other two projects will be.

Cult Film Art

(The Jerk)

Crazy 4 Cult 3D is an art show paying tribute to classic cult films. The artwork is on display at Gallery1988 in LA until August 8th, but you can view it all online here. Definitely worth checking out.


(Fight Club)


(Battle Royale)

The Fastest MOVIE alive?!?

For me, this could the most exciting news of the entire summer. My personal favorite superhero, The Flash, is getting the old Hollywood makeover. And as much as I am on the fence about Ryan Reynolds being cast as Hal Jordan in the new Green Lantern movie, I think DC is gonna really make this one for the fans and get it right. They are bringing on one of the hottest writers in comics to do the script treatment. The man who is responsible for many classic tales in the Flash universe, Geoff Johns. I was so excited to hear this news I dug through a box of old VHS tapes to find the original movie pilot for the TV show from the 90's. DC is really taking the necessary steps to close the gap between themselves and Marvel. With a slew of films in the works, expect DC to be going head to head with some of Marvel's blockbusters in the future. For us comic book fans, here's to hoping they get it right, do the characters justice, and bring our favorite stories to life on the screen!

Weezer 8-bit Cover Compilation Album

From the website:

The songs on this compilation have mostly been created using original videogame hardware running home-brew software, and vary radically in style, from minimal 'one man and his Game Boy' compositions to 8-bit inspired full band performances. Pterodactyl Squad proudly presents the music of Weezer as you have never heard it before.

Tracklist:

1. Island In The Sun (Belmont's Revisal) - videogame orchestra
2. Holiday - Anamanaguchi
3. El Scorcho - Tugboat
4. The World Has Turned And Left Me Here - Bit Shifter
5. You Won't Get With Me Tonight - PDF Format
6. Hash Pipe - seal of quality
7. In The Garage - OxygenStar
8. You Gave Your Love To Me Softly - :(
9. We Are All On Drugs - Rabato
10. Jamie - Unicorn Dream Attack
11. Come To My Pod - Mahamajama
12. Why Bother? - I Fight Dragons
13. Buddy Holly - nordloef
14. I Do - arcadecoma.

Download it for free

[via Offworld]

A Link To The Future

After a VERY long conversation the other day, I felt it necessary to shed some light on the kingdom of Hyrule!

Now back to fighting Horsehead.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/100/1000772p1.html

Coming Soon!

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night, No Evil Shall Escape My Sight. Let Those Who Worship Evil's Might Beware My Power -- Green Lantern's Might!

DC comics looks to smash the competition this summer with the new series "Blackest Night". After resurrecting Hal Jordan in 2004, DC now has a powerhouse line-up in the Green Lantern Corps. They will now face their greatest adversary ever, Black Hand now wields the power of the black lantern. Able to raise the dead to build his Black Lantern Corps of the undead, expect to see some fallen heroes resurrected as nightmares! I don't want to give anything away, but if you have ever been a Green Lantern fan or DC comics in general, you need to get into this. They just started Flash Rebirth, which brings Barry Allen back from his "death" in "Crisis on Infinite Earths". DC is hot right now and comic fans should be pumped. Blackest Night features some of the darkest subject content I think I have ever seen in the regular DC continuum. If you want to jump on board here's the list:

Prelude to Blackest Night:

Titans 15

Green Lantern Corps 38

Part One

July

Green Lantern 43 (Prologue)

Blackest Night 1

Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps 1, 2, 3

Green Lantern 44

August

Blackest Night 2

Green Lantern 45

Green Lantern Corps 39

Blackest Night: Batman 1

Blackest Night: Superman 1

Blackest Night: Titans 1

September

Blackest Night 3

Green Lantern 46

Green Lantern Corps 40

Blackest Night: Batman 2

Blackest Night: Superman 2

Blackest Night: Titans 2

October

Blackest Night 4

Green Lantern 47

Green Lantern Corps 41

Blackest Night: Batman 3

Blackest Night: Superman 3

Blackest Night: Titans 3

The State

Today I purchased a treasured comedy classic. The complete 4 season collection of The State. The Mtv sketch comedy show was an instant classic and still has me rolling today. Anyone that picks this up should definitely watch episode 2 from season 2 IMMEDIATELY! Thats the episode featuring "super friends" and "eating muppets". All my friends in their late 20's and early 30's, don't deprive yourself of this comic genius. I'm outta heeeeerrreeee!

Blackest Night gonna pwn this summer!

Any Green Lantern or Geoff Johns fans need to get into this now! If you were fortunate enough to pick up issue 1, you get a bad-ass Black Lantern ring!

Mission Statement

I would love for this to be a pretty exciting page for cool goings on and what's hot in the nerd community. If this sounds like something you're interested in hit me up @ thnx4thepoison@aol.com subject CHARM CITY GEEK. I would love to hear from you and get some input. If you can comfortably quote at least half of Back To The Future, we need to talk.