LIFE DOWN HERE ROCKS

So, my day yesterday was brimming with the awesomeness of continuing a two day long Scrubs Marathon that was developing into a full blown coma ... of awesome. 

Then I was hit up by Michelle Blanchard, lead singer of Life Down Here asking if I was going to make it to her show. Being oh-so wonderfully suave I sputtered, checked the dates, realized I had been invited for some time ago and lost track of the dates, and told her I'd totally be there. Then I went on a mission to make it to her show or bust. Fortunately, not only did I find a friend who was totally down to go, he had a great time, saying "Just by listening, you'd never guess they aren't already a major band." 

Which is good, because she isn't the kind of girl you want to piss off.

So the show was, in a word, amazing, as always. It's not too often (but not too rarely) they make it out to Vegas, so getting to catch them made for a great time. They were high energy, they have damn good songs (several of which were brand new), And the guitarist, Jeff Dennis wasn't sick this time (he played a hellova show even when he was), and Michelle has a great rapport with the crowd.

And awesome purple hair ... just throwing that out there. 

Not much more I can say before I devolve into generic groupie fawning and salivation, so here's the stitch, Life Down Here is a Los Angeles based "audibly pop-punk with a hardcore edge" band who's released one album, "The Beginning" which you can order from their website (the Digipak CD + Hoodie + Baseball Tee),  iTunes, or listen to on Spotify. 

After the release of their album, the band released the music video for their kick-ass song, All That You Are. 

Who doesn't love punching glass?

Life Down Here is definitely a band worth keeping an eye out for. And believe you me, when they head this direction again, you'll hear about it from me much sooner than a day late.

Viva la Life Down Here!

~ Godzello

TENACIOUS D'S NEW ALBUM, RIZE OF THE FENIX

Freud would have a field day with this ....

Well folks, from the days of Tribute to the Pick of Destiny, I am here to tell you that Jack Black and Kyle Gass are back, the D is back, it is the Return of the D. Okay, maybe writing this as the first stages of sleep deprivation begin to set in was a bad idea. Or maybe ... it's an AWESOME idea.

That said, Tenacious D's 3rd album is being released  May 15th and is reportedly "The greatest album ever recorded by anyone," according to the band's promotional video, "To Be The Best" released by the band and made by the band. Also, if the video is to be trusted, marijuana has been legalized. To any of my Spicoli fans out there, I would recommend fact checking that claim before celebrating with your doobie snacks. Snoochie boochies. 

They've traveled through space and time, my friends, to rock this house again!

The album's namesake single, Rize of the Fenix, can be heard here, on the band's official Soundcloud.

~ Godzello

MICHAEL BAY'S TURTLE BLASPHEMY

Ten cool points to anyone who still remembers the theme song.

 Any nerd worth his salt, and quite a few who aren't, know what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are. They're mutants. It's in the name. It's hard to miss. 

Evidence suggests that Michael Bay could miss the ground if he threw himself at it.

Smug bastard.

Rumors of a Michael Bay Ninja Turtles filled many a Transformer/Turtle fan with fear. How many more pieces of our childhoods was this man going to bastardize and mutilate? Well, we all waited with bated breath. Maybe he could maintain a level of respect for the source material, maybe he would have the gorram decency to -- nope, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, regular turtles in the New York sewers mutated by the mysterious ooze and raised to be ninja by a mutated rat ... are aliens.

Aliens?

ALIENS!?

Riiiiiiiiiight.

If ever there was a doubt in my mind that Michael Bay was one of the few people who could stick his foot in his mouth and his head up his ass at the same time, it has been laid comfortably to rest 6 feet under the last layer of ice under Lucifer's ass in hell. 

The good news is fan outcry has been loud and fast (much like the joss-whedon-less Buffy reboot and the Mass Effect 3 endings). You never know, maybe someone will take heed. I mean ... I doubt it, but I can dream right?

Even the name has been changed to Ninja Turtles. "They made the title simple."

"The characters you all remember are exactly the same, and yes they still act like teenagers." But they're not teenagers. Apparently they're aliens who have a maturity deficiency.

"Everything you remember, why you liked the characters, is in the movie." Like them being teenagers, and mutants. Oh wait.

"This script is being developed by two very smart writers." I hope he doesn't mean the jack-asses that worked on the Transformers films.

"HE'S NOT GOING TO LET YOU DOWN." You'll see me in church every Sunday before you'll see me trust Michael Bay on that one.

I'm going to go re-watch the 1990 film & 80s cartoon and eat pizza. Cowabunga Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fans. Cowabunga.

~ Godzello

WASTELAND 2: RPG FANS REJOICE

Old-school cRPG fans rejoice

It’s been a busy set of days, folks, what with school, work, life, the universe, everything ...

... and possibly a weekend in Vegas.

Pretty awesome, if you ask me, but I’m totally back, and I’m not the only one. The Godfather of Post-Apocalyptic RPGS is back! That man is Brian Fargo, a man who blazoned the trail for so many of my oh-so beloved 90s RPGs, and he’s hard at work on Wasteland 2. 

But before I get into that, I have a short anecdote that directly preceded the writing of this article, just to get you in the same mood that I’m in. 

           I met a kid (I consider anyone younger than 25 a kid) at the Community College I attend who began gabbing about video games, & Skyrim in particular. I listened tolerantly, and offered basically the same response I reserve for evangelical Christians, which is that I am a Godless heathen who smokes crack and worships the Dark Lord. 

           Actually, what I said was, "I miss 90s RPGs. Now those were fun." 

          But considering his response I might as well have gone with the first one. At the very least it would have been more amusing. "BS, man! You don't know what fun is! I'm getting my [_____] to 100 by making and selling knives in Skyrim. That's fun." 

           <blink-blink> "What about the story?" 

           "F*** the story!" 

And in that moment I could feel the Twilight Zone of modern gaming sucking me in with its brown dust, cover based combat, and basically all those other things that I found myself rooting about when Zero Punctuation pointed them out. And I didn’t like it. 

So back in the good ol’ days, all the way back in 1988, Interplay released Wasteland, the spiritual predecessor to the Fallout franchise, the Adventure Game of the Year and was inducted to several “Hall of Fame” lists. 

Hell, this game predates me by a few.

According to Brian Fargo, Wasteland, “It was one of the first games to have a real sandbox world with cause-and-effect on both a micro and macro level. It also had moral dilemmas, ones where you were making choices, tough moral choices that had consequences that rippled through the entire gameplay.” 

Shiny. 

Brian Fargo, after much mishap working to pitch the sequel to no avail, and has now turned to fan funding through Kickstartercrowdfunding. He has reassembled much of the old team from the original Wasteland for work on this sequel, including bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole, and one of the co-creators of the first game, Jason Anderson, one of the co-creators of Fallout, who is working on plot and character, and Mark Morgan, composer for the original Fallout doing the soundtrack for Wasteland 2. 

In the first twenty-four hours of the fan-funding going live they reached $600,000, and as of this article, they’re up around 1.5 million dollars. Check it out here.

It’s an amazing thing to see the support of fans for seeing the kinds of games they loved and that they grew up with being brought back. Maybe with fan-funding and digital distribution, we can see a return to the form of game that I love, so that I don’t have to tolerate the generic Xbox 360 musclehead that roams the halls of Community College.

~ Godzello

THE DOCTOR'S NEW COMPANION

Timeline of a Timelord.

'Ello, e'rybody!

Welcome back, friends, family, strangers, whedonites, aaaaand-- my beloved Whovians. That's right folks, we're going international! 

Welcome to the longest-running science fiction television show in the world, ignoring the fact that the science in the show is the equivalent of soft serve ice-cream, but we're not here to reverse the polarity or jelly-babies! We are here to talk about the farewell of Amy and Rory, the Eleventh Doctor's faithful companions. 

Can you guess which character is more important of the basis of simple framing?

In the show's mythology, the Doctor has always had a companion, if only so that he'd have someone to explain the technobabble to, or for someone to scream and get kidnapped by the baddies. Well, since the transition of the show from Russel T. Davies' character-driven, emotionally-traumatizing stories, to the whirlwind of chaotic intricate plotlines that Steven Moffat brings to the table, we have been dished up a full on serving fish fingers and custard, the oh-so sexy Scottish lass, Karen Gillan and the easily relatable everyman, Rory, played by Arthur Darvill. 

... Not to mention the absolute zaniness brought to the table with Matt Smith's youthful exuberance and possible senility. 

One has to wonder if they give him a script at all, or just let him loose on set ....

So here's where I personally stand. I never liked Amy. She was fun and had plenty of redeeming qualities ... but she had little of the resonance I had with Rose, Donna, or even Sarah Jane Smith. Several things irked me about her. She kissed the Doctor on the eve of her wedding, and it was okay because ... the Doctor had a time machine? Call me old fashioned and stodgy ... hell, call me a crotchety old man (all my friends do, the li'l bastards), but that annoyed me, if only because Rory was a nice guy. 

I totally believe that he knows what he's doing.

Amy also annoys me with her rather constant habit of trying to undercut whatever wackiness the Doctor is doing. It's not too different than what Rose or Donna might have done ... but it lacked any of the vulnerability that they brought to the table, a certain reliance on the Doctor that they expressed, which, in a way, made it acceptable. Amy snubs the doctor while refusing to admit, (most of the time) that she was and still is the girl who waited. 

And lastly, if Rose could settle on a Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor to live with, you'd think Amy could put up with the Eleventh Doctor's Ganger for the period of a single bad day. I mean, the Meta-Crisis genocided an entire culture and got a kiss, the Ganger had a different pair of shoes and got the boot. Amy's a harsh critic. Harsher than I am ....

"I can't even tell you what I'm thinking right now." ~ Captain Jack Harkness 

To get to the point, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill announced that they are returning to the show during the seventh season, and, according to head writer Steven Moffat, their "story is going to come to a heartbreaking end." He also revealed that they are bringing back the Weeping Angels and said that, "Not everyone gets out alive and I mean it this time." 

It is certainly an ominous revelation. I fear what may occur should Moffat ride to the glorious emotional apotheosis enjoyed by much of the Davies era and most Joss Whedon shows. It could prove to be "an interestin' day," as Jayne Cobb might say. 

So, with the Doctor whirling about on his own, it's only natural to expect a new companion. We now know this companion will be Jenna-Louise Coleman.

Woah, her shirt totally forms a parabola.

According to Moffat, "It's not often the Doctor meets someone who can talk even faster than he does, but it's about to happen. Jenna is going to lead him on his merriest dance yet .... Even by the Doctor's standards, this isn't your usual boy meets girl." Jeeze, and after the convolution that accompanied unraveling the Amy-Rory-River-Doctor family tree that is quite the tall order.

I get the feeling that she's excited.

Jenna had this to say, "I'm beyond excited, I can't wait to get cracking; working alongside Matt I know is going to be enormous fun and a huge adventure." Speaking of a huge adventure ....

The Three Doctors, 21st Century Edition, anyone?

Allons-y!

~ Godzello

'GOD BLESS AMERICA' LOOKS FANTASTIC

What's not to love?

Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, the film God Bless America, is scheduled for theatrical release April 6, 2012, and looks absolutely fantastic. Starring Joel Murray as the terminally ill Frank who decides to spend his remaining days on a mass killing spree and Tara Lynn Barr as Roxy as a young teenager who joins him on his quest, God Bless America takes every last person who deserves a bullet between the eyes ... and puts a bullet through their eyes. 

       

From rude and obnoxious celebrities to the Westburo Baptist Church protesters to people who talk in the theater (the ones who go to a special level of hell along with child molesters), no one is safe from Frank and Roxy's mass killing spree.

If this concept alone doesn't make you even slightly giggle, you either have infinitely more patience than it's worth, or you're one of the bastards who deserves the same fate as Frank and Roxy's other victims. Ponder on that a while, my friends. And while you do that, I'm going to look forward to the release of God Bless America, April 6th.

~ Godzello

NEW DR. HORRIBLE SAYS CREATOR JOSS WHEDON

Warning ... here there be Whedonites ....

Many winters past ... it was the 2007-2008 Writer's Strike ... a dark time ... a cold time, where reruns were the only salvation we, the Nerd people, could find, and many a decent show was put on the chopping block for reasons beyond their control. (thank the Gods Supernatural made it through). But one man stood up! One nerd said, "No!" He said, "I cannot in good faith abandon my people!" He said, "We shall make a Musical Tragicomedy Miniseries (in three acts) starring Doogie Howser (Neil Patrick Harris), Captain Tightpants (Nathan Fillion), and that really hot ginger from The Guild (Felecia Day)!" That nerd was Joss Whedon.

And I'll be damned ... he did it.  

JOSS WHEDON IS MY MASTER NOW

And now that his plate is really full, what with unleashing the mega-super-awesome-needs-to-get-here-naow Avengers, the dervish production of Much Ado About Nothing ... the poster to which leaves me completely befuddled, and promoting the release of the horror-comedy The Cabin in the Woods, Joss Whedon has released word of the upcoming production of the next installment to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog this summer. 

Queue excited, "Eeeeeee!"

"We are hard on it. It's been a really tough year – couple of years – partially, I'm happy to say, because of work," Whedon reported, also stating, "We do have a number of songs written. We have a whole outline."

Also titular Dr. Horrible actor Neil Patrick Harris has been like, "'How long?' We're all just sorting of waiting, but the waiting will stop."

All I know is, in the words of Barney Stinson, "It's gonna be legen—wait for it ... DARY!"

~ Godzello