Posts tagged nerdgasm

Best Holiday Ever

1 year ago

by Michael in sustenance

Hi Hi Hi there me droogies.

The title of this post says it all. I freaking love Halloween. If you read my last post you will see why. With any luck you took my advice and partook of one or more of the activities I recommended. Without getting arrested…

Sean, Jenn, Sheldon, Joel, Davida and I, went to the Silver Snail Halloween bash and it was quite the party. Just about everyone in there had fantastic costumes. It’s nice to hang with people who put as much work into costuming as I do when it come to Halloween outfits. I mean it’s only one day a year but it’s one day when you can be anyone you want to be, so why not go big? The Silver Snail will give you a hard time if you show up with no costume so it was good that I fit in with the others. The word on the street is that next year the party will be invite only and costumes have to be good for admission. I guess it makes sense since they go through the trouble of catering the party, giving out sweet prizes and offering free admission.

The only peeve I have about Halloween is half-assed costumes and the clear winners this year were people running around as characters from Mad Men and the Clark Kent/Superman getups. Both costumes are basically just suits, with a couple defining characteristics that let the wearer get away with saying it’s a costume. Dressing as Joan Holloway is nothing more than a red wig and a pen on a string, while doing Clark Kent is just a superman T-shirt under a suit and your left over 3D glasses from the movies with the lenses removed. Craptastic.

Here are some of the really good costumes I had the pleasure of getting a picture of. You can see even more on my Flickr page! Also make sure to check Sean Ward’s Halloween roundup for a whole lotta awesome video.

Happy Halloween!

Fan Expo Tragedies

1 year ago

by Michael in My Life

Epic Win

MY first time at Fan Expo was definitely an experience. Look, let’s get things straight here: I may not seem the type but I’m actually a big nerd. If there was a sci-fi, comic and fantasy Jeopardy I think I could throw down pretty soundly. So don’t act too surprised that I was tooling around Fan Expo wearing a Superman t-shirt picking up comics. This is not my first “con” mind you as I’ve been to PAX and the Emerald City Comic Con, but Fan Expo was just unreal. This thing blew anything I’ve been to right out of the water. The artists and companies that attended spared no expense and really transformed the Toronto Convention Centre into a whole other world. The only bad thing was that so many people showed up that the line was massive and the fire marshal was not letting anyone in. Good thing I didn’t have to wait long in the heat.

I got to meet Adam West, Julie Newmar, and Michael Dorn and hang out with the Batmobile, hold Captain America’s shield and chill with my good pal Sean Ward while helping him with his daily vlog. I really enjoy vlogging with Sean and I think after the SafeKidZone and SafeTREC launches I will be sprucing up my youtube channel and doing the vlog equivalent of Gonzo journalism – since Hunter S. Thompson is my hero. Here’s Sean’s coverage of the expo with a cameo by me and @laurenonizzle:

We also got to feast our eyes on some pretty epic cars on the weekend of the expo! One of them may very well become the next NusMobile if things go well. The Batmobile’s ok I guess but its jet turbine engine really guzzles gas. On the other hand the Delorian is efficient on fuel but not very responsible since going back to the future could undo the fabric of time. So I think I may go with the Lexus CT200h that I saw at the Lexus Live event since I can get the batmobileish gadgets and the Delorian fuel consumption without causing damage to my gas budget or the space time continuum. As the Lexus marketing team says: it’s “Thrilling yet responsible.” Check out Seanward.net for our video from the Lexus Live event by clicking right here.

Carol Zara as: Carol Zara

If I could describe Fan Expo 2010 in one word, I would say it was a “nerdgasm.” The last time I used that word I was watching Scott Pilgrim and it was appropriate. I’m sure there were quite a few bloggers hanging around there covering all the artists, celebrities and hot chicks in spandex or Princess Leia bikinis and other various wicked cool things but I wanted to take a different angle. One thing I’ve noticed about all comic cons I’ve been to was that cosplay (dressing up as your favorite fictional character at a convention, for the uninitiated) is a big thing. What’s just as common though is the siginificant number of folks who either half ass their costumes or just can’t pull it off because, let’s face it, the costume doesn’t fit right. Tragic. For the con veterans reading this all you need to think of is that pimply, obese guy with the bad goatee in a Batman cowl and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

I don’t want to come off as a jerk though. At first I was taking candid shots of these people without their knowledge but early on in my photo hunt I realized that they are all too happy to be photographed and are actually pretty swell folks who just love all things nerdy and awesome. I guess my beef is that I tend to be a details Nazi when it comes to Halloween costumes so I get all OCD when I see a costume that completely misses the point of the subject matter it’s emulating. It’s not really a “haha look at those nerds thing” really. Even I have a guilty pleasure in that I download episodes of Naruto Shippuden every week – so these people are, in a way, my brethren. I’ve not yet gotten into cosplay at comic cons, but I do LOVE halloween, so maybe it’s up my alley. Maybe.

Here are the good ones.