Hello, faithful friends. I know last week was rough without your fix, but daddy is back with more of the good stuff. Unfortunately, all is not well in the kingdom of Nerds. The House of Mouse has taken the axe to the House of Ideas. Brand new shiny shows have been shuttered before they were even unlocked. Even iconic underpants are collecting unemployment these days. On the flip side, video game goliaths are expanding their market and superheroes find new ways to produce new jobs. You’ll find this and cake in this week’s Nerd News Roundup! Continue reading →
Hola! Today our news is going to cover boys; gross, nasty and potentially Cootie-infected boys. Sure, some of us clean up well and you girls might even LIKE a few of us but underneath it all, there lies a fart factory with cheeto-dusted fingers who has considered Febreeze a perfectly reasonable alternative to doing laundry. Today we honor those brave guardians of gross, those knights of nasty and those sentinels of sick. There are boys covered in (or becoming) mud. We’ve got boys that manage to turn everything into one huge mess after another. We even have one boy so eager to play a video game that he wanted to be born right on the convention floor. All this and we introduce DC Comics’ newest intern in this week’s NERD. NEWS. ROUNDUP. Continue reading →
Hello, good people of Nerdsylvania! I know that I’m preaching to the choir when I tell you that nerds come in all colors, shapes, genders, sizes and levels of cleanliness. But, sometimes it’s necessary to have a bit of a refresher course every now and then. That’s why this installment is so important. This week we learn that DC still loves the ladies, Spider-Man has a brand new enemy, The Game of Thrones welcomes a new resident or two and something about Perry White is different. All this and the Demon King of England in this week’s NERD NEWS ROUNDUP!
Comic-Con how-to guides for what to see and where to go abound. A lot of them will give you great advice for food, clothing, sights and sounds. This is not that kind of guide.
You see, one of the things people never address is the behavior of some of the convention goers. The vast majority of the people at Comic-Con are excited fans and are genuinely enthusiastic about the presentations given. Continue reading →
Good news everyone! Besides hearing the previous sentence in Professor Farnsworth’s voice, I’ve also found a fresh batch of the nerdiest news around. This week, we’re going to learn that you really should just grow up and one woman completely unwilling to do so. We’ll unlock the “secret” of Marvel’s upcoming comics. And finally, we’ll take a look at some coming attractions. All this and Godzilla in this week’s Nerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrd News Roundup!
Nerds from around the globe (especially Nerdopeans), gather round and feast your eyes on this week’s tales of tragedy and triumph. This week comicdom lost one of it’s pioneering artists and a the studio that dared to lead us into the uncanny valley is hell to work for. Meanwhile, a Superhero icon shows us her bloomers and a director put his money and explosions where his mouth is. This is the Nerd News Roundup!
Welcome to the first edition of CrassCartoons. As you all know, I love cartoons, so I thought I would share some of the cool stuff out there with my fellow nerds and adult children. Hopefully, we can do this every Saturday.
First, let me explain that I am not pretentious enough to call this animation. While some cartoons indeed transcend into high art, that is usually not what I am discussing. I like plain, old cartoons. The kind you watch while hanging out on the couch, eating pizza, and maybe enjoying a bong hit if you are so inclined.
I am not a historian on this topic by any means, and I am not a particularly good fangirl, but I will do my best to find interesting stuff to share. Please send me any suggestions at crasstalk at gmail dot com so I can include them in future installments.
This week I am going to discuss one of my favorite cartoons ever Home Movies,which started running on UPN in 1999, but was picked up by The Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim in 2001 (the show ended production in 2004). The show was produced by Soup2Nuts studios, which also did Dr. Katz, and like that show it was originally created using Squigglevision. However, the show went to flash animation from the second season on.
Here’s an example of what Squigglevision looks like from the first season of Home Movies. Note: Contains an awesome cameo by Mitch Hedburg.
Home Movies was created by Brendon Small (who shares his name with the main character) and Loren Bouchard; it was produced by animator Tom Snyder. The series follows the adventures of Brendon Small an eight year old aspiring film maker. Brendon makes movies with his two friends Melissa and Jason and lives in a slightly absurd world of elementary school politics and imperfect adults. Supporting characters include John McGuirk, the soccer coach, and Paula Smalls, Brandon’s down to earth mother. Each episode usually follows Brandon through some sort of kid difficulty and features a movie that Brandon and his friends are working on.
The show features smart, sarcastic writing and dialogue-driven plots. It features the voice talent of H. John Benjamin (Dr. Katz, Archer, Bob’s Burgers), Paula Pondstone (later replaced by Janine Ditullio), and a great rotating cast of cameos by comedians like Mitch Hedburg and Louis C.K. The show also features fun musical numbers that are a preview of Small’s later work on Metalocalypse.
Here’s a couple of fun clips.
Home Movies also has probably the best two gay cartoon characters ever, Perry and Walter.
While the show has been out of production for a number of years, it still runs occasionally on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim and clips can be found all over the internet. I will leave you with this full episode, which I think is one of the best, and seems like an appropriate shout out to greater Nerdom to wrap up our first installment.
Hello Crasstalk. I think it is pretty obvious by now that The Grand Inquisitor loves her damn cartoons. I am sure it has nothing to do with the years of various recreational chemical use. However, in an age where so much television is “unscripted,” animation is one of the few genres where good writing and story telling still actually matter. Also, explosions, lots of explosions. Hopefully in the near future, when I have a little more time, I will be writing a regular cartoon column. I am writing a cartoon column starting this Saturday. However, for now I will just ask your opinion so we can all compare notes.
So my eternally youthful friends, what is your favorite cartoon? It can be a series, a movie, or a stand alone special. It can be short or long, classic or new.
I don’t even know where to begin. I actually really don’t watch TV except for animation, so it is hard for me to choose (seriously, it has taken me an hour to finish this paragraph). However, just in sheer hours of enjoyment I am going with this one. (Warning: NSFW).
Always tasteless and often offensive (even to me), South Park is also smart and frequently challenges the assumptions of its own audience. Here they are joking about something that is really hard to make a funny joke about.
A long time ago, on a web site far, far down in page views, a group of rebel commenters won an early victory against the evil Dentonian Empire. Breaking the fourth wall, they began sharing personal photos, first of their homes, then of themselves. As the Death Gawk imploded, crushed under the weight of a giant Trident ad, the rebels fled to far corners of the Internet, finding safe harbor on a host planet, Crasstalk. A new hope was born, and with it, an urge to strengthen the alliance through photo sharing.
That’s right kids, on both counts: I’m a closet nerd and it is PhotoPhriday! Tonight’s theme: geeking out. What makes you a nerd? Something you read? Something you collect? What are you currently geeking out over?
Uploading pictures takes a simple Jedi mind trick, since there is no insert picture option in WordPress.
Just follow these helpful tips, adapted from previous PhotoPhriday instructions:
This is the magic computer code you use to make pictures appear: [img src=”PHOTO URL HERE”]. NOTE: Replace the brackets with the carrots < >.
And it’s a URL, not photo file. Crasstalk doesn’t accept files from your hard drive – only from the Internet. You can upload your photo to Facebook, Flickr, TinyPic, or any other online photo hosting site to generate a URL for the photo.
Also, be sure to add a few words of text with your picture so it doesn’t get tripped up in the site’s spam filter.
To pick up an image online, right click (or ctrl-click on a Mac) on an image of Carrie Fisher When She Was Hot and select “View Image.” Copy-and-paste the URL and plug it into the img src html code.
To upload the picture of Carrie Fisher When She Was Hot you found, this is what you type (again, replacing the brackets with the greater than and less than symbols < >):
