The King of all White Boys

I've been on a collected editions kick as of late. I've gone back and re-read such Jim Starlin fare as the Infinity Gauntlet and his Silver Surfer issues (specifically his "Rebirth of Thanos" arc), as well as taking some looks at Alex Ross and Jim Kruegar's Project Superpowers. To top it all off, I finished up the first volume of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus as well. In between the reading ...

A lot of people think Lost jumped the shark last season when they began to incorporate time travel into their episodes. On the other hand, there are others that believe it jumped the shark way back in season three when Jack, Kate and Sawyer spent way too much time in the Others' village doing not much of anything. Although I won't point to a particular moment that I feel entails "jumping the shark," I ...

Chapter three of Douglas Rushkoff's Life Incorporated is one that hits solidly home for me. Back in September I moved from the overcrowded state of New Jersey to the Western side of Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley - out to the country. Now I'm not that far from a metro-area. Harrisonburg (home to James Madison University) is 25 minutes away (with all it's strip malls and corporate stores). If I'm feeling especially ...

Let me start this review by praising John Major Jenkins for his intense scholarship and dedication to the Mesoamerican culture. If there's one person who should be consulted in any effort to understand or speculate on the various cultures of Central and South America, it is he. Jenkins' opinion is highly thought out, scientifically tested and comes with a solid passion for the material. In many ways, he is more qualified than those scholars ...

As I mentioned many moons ago, I intend to go over Douglas Rushkoff's book Life Incorporated, piece-by-piece. I'm a little behind where I intended to be, but it's not like his ideas or observations are going to be outdated any time soon. An examination of chapter two of his book makes this fact very clear.

The second chapter is one to use as a rallying cry for anyone opposed to predatory practices ...

In lieu of my edict to not post television show reviews until a certain concept or arc can be reviewed in whole, you'll also notice that I haven't been posting comic book reviews either. There's a two-fold reason for that. For one, most of my comics are ordered from Midtown Comics, and unfortunately I keep getting them later and later as the weeks go by. This doesn't bode well for timely ...

The absolute best part of Jonathan Wells' Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design is the quote on the front cover from Ann Coulter: "Annoy and godless liberal; buy this book!" Coulter is the Howard Stern of political conservatism. I probably disagree with about 90-95% of what she says, but she's always fun to listen to. You have to appreciate political bluntness. It's so rare today.

As a disclaimer, this book was ...

Everybody loves a good apocalypse meme. That's why the 2012 one is so popular right now. The millennium came and went without even a harrowing Y2K glitch, so we have to hitch our self-destruction and self-loathing onto another upcoming event. 2012 just happens to be that event.

A while back I finished reading Daniel Pinchbeck's 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. Though I have mixed feeling about the book, the cultural examination was fascinating ...

Well... not all reviews are getting canned from this blog. I've decided that too much of my time during the week (when I actually get time to blog) ends up going towards reviewing television episodes of Dollhouse and Fringe. Now I enjoy writing those reviews, but too often I feel obligated to make sure I get those out, even if I have a better blog post on the burner.

Furthermore, the reviews often end ...

My good friend Taylor Ellwood of Imagine Your Reality (a business and social media coaching company) was nice enough to interview me for his radio show on Blog Talk Radio. We spent about an hour talking about technology, social media and the services of my new company Overmortal. My headphones and microphone made me sound a little distant - and my dog barks for no reason at certain points - but the interview went well, and we ...

This show has been officially cancelled... and that's a shame. No, this isn't Joss Whedon's best work, but this showing has become very entertaining, and in a world where most sci-fi drama's follow a specific script, Dollhouse continues to offer surprises around every turn.

The genius is in the pacing. Whereas many mythology-driven shows only have a handful of secrets and continue to dwell on and manipulate those mysteries, Whedon is ...

Every once in a while you need a good episode that plays off of a classic science fiction theme. This is that episode. Borrowing pretty liberally from James Cameron's Alien movies, this episode of Fringe finds the team investigating a crashed freighter with illegal immigrants that had giant hook worms bursting out of their stomachs (up through their mouths however - not actually through their stomachs).

This was another non-mythology episode, which is a pretty ...

My break in writing from my blog usually coincides with my travels for my job, but there will probably be a slightly more extended break in certain aspects of my writing. More specifically, comic book reviews may be absent until releases get back on track. Thanksgiving pretty much broke my rhythm. Since my comics usually come from Midtown Comics (with no alternative in my immediate area), my comics are usually delivered on Saturday. With the ...

DRM is gay. And not gay in the homosexual way - though it may be that too. No. Gay in the gay way. In fact, DRM is whatever term gay people use to say something's gay. It's that ridiculously stupid.

Yesterday I started up my Zune software to listen to some tunes. I was in the mood for something a little on the New Age electronica side. Enigma. Deep Forest. Delerium. Bands like that ...

There are some companies out there that run their business on vengeance - plain and simple. These are the companies that you just do not want to do business with - or even work for. It's nice to want to "crush" the competition, or make comments about putting the other company out of business, or perhaps running them over with the "bus;" but the truth is, these comments are really just ego masturbation meant to make ...

This was probably the best Fringe episode of the current season. We don't learn a whole lot about the Observers, but what we do find out is brain food for any geek or show mythology buff.

In this episode, one of the Observers kidnaps a young woman, which sparks Olivia and the team to try and track him down. Meanwhile, this Observer stirs up trouble with his associates by interfering in the natural course ...

How about that? Reviews on a Thursday? How can it be? I was up in New Jersey this week, so I suspended my Midtown Comics subscription, opting instead to stop by my local comic shop and say hello. It also meant that I actually received my comics on a Wednesday instead of the Saturday delivery that I've been getting with Midtown. I definitely miss grabbing issues fresh off the rack.

• Adventure Comics #4: This ...

Episode Zero has dropped, but don't get too excited. This is just a rough cut of ramblings, injected with the clip of when I was interviewed by Alice Cooper for the Nights with Alice Cooper radio show. There's a decent amount of commentary involved though, so enjoy; and please ignore sounds resulting from hitting the mic and the various "uhh's" and "you know's." We're still working those kinks out.

I'm becoming very much disenfranchised with Midtown Comics. I signed on to their subscription program because there aren't any quality comic book stores in my area of Virginia, but Midtown Comics has been disappointing me with just about every obstacle that pops up.

This time, I ordered the trade paperback for War of Kings: Road to War of Kings, and unlike the last time I ordered separate comics and payed for two shipping ...

After a couple of weeks off and then a missed episode, I'm back on point with the Fringe episode reviews, and this episode brings us back with a non-mythology episode.

Everything about this episode was pretty much standard fair - disgruntled child, mind control, lead character being forced to shoot another character. In fact, I'm pretty sure I saw most of the elements of this episode in a few different episodes of the X-Files ...

I was going to write about something else today, but seeing as I've been slacking when it comes to watching Fringe, I was lacking of a review (I should get that up tomorrow). Since the past two days have been posts of fiction that I've written, and today is friday, I thought it'd be nice to throw out a little "Friday Fiction."

Friday Fiction was something that my old Internet colleague Klint ...

It would be an engaging predicament had this all been popcorn movie fare. The audience would be leaning forward right about now with suspenseful anticipation, waiting for the miraculous moment of triumph in the midst of an emotional clash. Unfortunately there's no camera lighting or any director's clapboard to ease my own tension as my mind slowly awakens wondering in which poor soul's tome I am buried. I can taste the wretched ...

I stood there, arms, legs, and chest bleeding incessantly from the callous grip and vengeful tearing of wild thorn bushes and razor blade leaves, wishing things had turned out differently, wishing that the wounds of the hsin healed as quickly as the wounds of the flesh; even if scars are left in their wake.

I wadded in three feet deep swamp; mud, muck, and sludge forming a prison of fluidity, jailing me for sins of ...

Things did not go as planned this weekend. I had missed the episode of Fringe on Thursday night (DVR'ing it), and didn't watch it later in the night like I normally do. I didn't watch it Friday either, but figured Saturday could be a day of television and comic books and I could get two blog posts done by the time everything was all finished.

The first problem I ran into was ...

This post is late. This post is beyond late. In fact, I'm actually writing it on a Tuesday and back dating it for Saturday just so I don't mess up my naming convention. To add a little more fuel on the lateness fire, this post consists of comics for last week and the week prior. I spent some time in New Jersey recently, and it forced me to put my mail on hold ...