Sexy Comic Book Day!

May have got my wires crossed there, I just have "so much to talk about" in this installment.  Alright, so I'm back at university and May has just arrived.  And what happens on the first Saturday of May every single year?

Yep the one day you get something free at the comic book shop is about to arrive and here I am stuck where the comic book shop is boring.  And small, even compared to Chaos City.  Instead of moaning, I would like to write about the benefits of the day and why for all you non-readers, FCBD is an occasion in your honour.

FCBD.com

You may want to refer to Daniel Meier's fantastic blog Mindless for an article on why Dexter, the hit televised crooked cop shop, could and in fact should be a comic book character.  He makes a wealth of excellent points on the compatability of Dexter and the superhero genre.  This is legit though I am slightly surprised this is how Mini has defined a comic book, as a super hero book, given that his first comic purchase was Marvel's 80s adaption of Blade Runner, a decidedly anti-heroic story.  Sadly he has highlighted a major misconception that the medium of the graphic novel is spandex and superpowers exclusively.  Do not misunderstand me, I am in the business in large part because of these heroic paragons (though I prefer metal suits or kevlar to spandex, they might stop a bullet).  I am also in it for giant robots and licenses from video games and films.  But even that is not the scope of comic book.  We have crime and noir books, life affirming tales, we have paper forms of webcomics which follow MOSTLY normal people.  There is even the sublime. 

And we haven't even TOUCHED Japan yet.

So tomorrow, do go out and check the comic book shop nearest to you and pick up something which you think suits you.  Because this day is for YOU, the comics uninitiated; the perfect gateway into and exciting and eclectic media.  Get your first free because lord knows they're expensive once you're buying them regularly.  Check out the comics that will be available on the link under the logo.  Adam West comic book!

Another thing I wanted to speak about was the numbers rating system that causes much contention (I'm guessing in kitchens?).  Men seem to approve, finding the translation of women's (and I quote) 'levels' into numbers to be militarily precise and easy to quantify, because we're men.  And women find that numbers are so impersonal they will deny all similarities between the numbering and their own personal comments about attractiveness of their desired gendre. 

Staring blankly at lecture notes I mused about my own standpoint of the system and I think my balls momentarily disappeared as I realised that really the number system, as good as it is on an impersonal level, cannot be applied to individuals you are actually engaging with on a more than visual level.  I can only imagine the number system being an obstacle to relationships as you realise your buddies will be judging your chosen companion on the objective scale whereas you have been blinded (perhaps the wrong word, in fact probably the wrong word) and are on a subjective scale. The realisation that you too are being judged must be unpleasant.

But then with virile bounce my testes returned to their resting place, finally coming to my senses that the personal rating and the impersonal level coexist perfectly.  I'm unsure how to explain this in words but I think the personal scale is a far more important indicator NOT of physical attractiveness.  Two people of the same 'level' or 'rating' will find themselves rating the other higher surely.  So what we have is really a great mechanism to match compatible people, provided they're not giant egoed head in the clouds wankers.  Nobody in mind when I wrote that by the way, totally innocent!  Thoughts from both genders please?

With that fantastic ramble out of the way I felt I should create a playlist of sexy music.  So armed with my sexometer I figured I would comb iTunes.  Here's some of the results, filtered for stuff I already mentioned in my 3 Blog Post 30 Song Challenge!

Destiny - Zero 7
Go With The Flow - Queens of The Stone Age
Funktion - Jamiroquai
Electric Intercourse - Prince
Last Night A DJ Saved My Life - Indeep
Inside of You - Hoobastank
Bodies - Cee Lo Green
Drinkin In LA - Bran Van 3000
Pour Some Sugar On Me - Def Leppard
Summer Romance (Anti-Gravity Love Song) - Incubus
Evidence - Faith No More
Pretty much anything by Maroon 5.

13 minutes to midnight, I keep my promise to myself and to all twitter followers.  Well done for making it down this far, I'm certain the quality of written communication was low this time but what can you do, I am a busy man.  Hope to write something more exciting next time, might have to be exam related and judging by the email I just received this will not be a victorious tale.  Until next time...

My life as a geek.

So I said I was going to avoid doing any 'life blogging', but I find that this week I will be discussing a very important part of my life and a quasi-crisis of faith I struggled with half a year ago.  This is all far more serious than I'm making out.

Since basically all the people reading this are geeks in some manner (whether you're looking at TV, comics, film, Sport [yes, the extent to which people follow sport here IS geeky, I'll remember the most recent lineup of The Wreckers and watch some cartoons, and you tell me the current Spurs squad and watch hours of football]) you'll appreciate that I am in fact what many would call a geek.  So when I say to you that in October I lost faith in ever wanting be be identified with geek culture would probably come as a shock.

I had left behind all but one Transformer for my transition into adult life, I had packed with me some fairly innocuous popculture referency t-shirts, I was parted from my Xbox and I was chucked in with a group of random people who I had to work hard to not freak out due to society's general disdain for geek culture.  In a world where I'm insulted by an advert for STA travel on Spotify because I am the type that plays video games (i.e. pretty much every guy there is) is the tip of the geek-hating iceberg.  This is a world where the majority of the people watching Big Bang Theory believe what they're seeing are jokes, rather than the plain references to comic books, film, science and gaming that they are.  It's a world where at school, some kids are looked down on by their dim-witted colleagues for working hard and being intelligent.  University was a place to reinvent ones self, they always said, and having arrived at the Freshers Fair I was happy to abandon that geeky part of myself as soon as I glimpsed the sci-fi and table top gaming table.  These people were unusual.

I again persevered, wandering into the free anime society screening and signing up to their mailing list.  I was confronted by what looked like the same people as the sci-fi society, now with one wearing a masquerade mask inspired by an anime I will never know of.

And I doubt he was going to be as cool as Ezio, a man pulling. it. off.

I was treated to some cool anime, yeah, and was happy to leave when the time came (for whatever reason that was).  I felt no affinity with these fans of anime, talking throughout the film and sticking to their apparent close friendship circles, a fact I am certain of thanks to my now friend Berin who was there that day and who I now share a flat with.  The emails were also discouraging - greeted with 'Hello fleshlings' from chairman 'The Steam Power Chair Snell', I felt understandably disillusioned in associating myself with a man who I had no doubt disfunctioned socially with the rest of humanity.  For whatever reason we never went again, and I felt relieved. It was a faily worrying couple of days, knowing that the societies I stood a chance of enjoying in principle were now ruled out.  Coupled with the busy drinking and socialising schedule I felt distanced from my geeky roots.  Seemed like the thing to do, to quote Malcolm Reynolds.

Slowly but surely we started up CoD again and everyone got pretty hyped about Black Ops for whatever reason, despite our incessant complaints about Modern Warfare 2.  I slipped back into my plastic crack habbit when new Transformers finally started coming out over here (now we're beating the Americans!  What up?).  I met a guy who buys those damn toys even more than I do who also manages to live a normal life. My new flatmate after Christmas turned out to be a proper computer geek, a pen and paper rpg player and a Jesus Impersonator and yet still kept it real. 

Looks like this I shit you not.

Not everyone with a vested interest in science fiction or robots or technology was a social pariah.  My concerns had abated.

Skip forward to last weekend where I was lucky enough to attend Kapow! Comic Con at the Business Design Centre in London which was actually my second convention.  Unlike Star Wars Celebration however this was not simply an exercise in wringing cash from attendees, which should have been the first indicator that this was going to be something a bit more friendly.   It was one of those experiences where nobody detracted from the experience; there was a sense of camaraderie and mutual respect that you don't get on the street or in the shop.  It was a sense of unity I had seldom felt outside of people I knew and liked, and a feeling of unison of thought only really matched by yesterday's Jamiroquai gig.  Nobody was out to step on each others' toes, except the staff but that is another matter and it actually gave us a common enemy.  If the world was like that I think we would be alright. 

My faith that being a geek does not proclude a normal life, nor lead to association with people like those weird Doctor Steel people we saw, has been restored.  I realise I'm not embodying the dream of acceptance, but this is not a denial of their rights.  Accept choice guys.  Finally I will return to the beginning of this post and the idea that everyone is a geek.  I know we all are, but just think how much better it would be if there was no such thing as 'geek culture' but 'culture'. 

Play us off Cee Lo.

Great Harry's Blog Taste, Zero Regrets.

Go on google and type in "'Best Served Ice Cold' Blog". I'm near the top on Google.  I disapprove.  Can you tell I've got work to do?


Oh yeah and welcome to Best Served Ice Cold.  Would anybody like a frosty beverage?


In a somewhat follow up to my Blade Runner inspired post, I am linking to Cracked who do these things far better than me.  Another marvellous Cyberpunk movie from the 80s, this time Japanese animated epic Akira, is being made in American Live Action.  See how it's going to be ruined forever here.  I think anyone who knows anything about this film or the manga would agree that Harry Partridge's parody would be a world-ender.

I'm called Travis now?

I'm thinking the music aspect of this blog has been successful, so I'm gonna attempt to say something musical in each entry.  Behold.  As twitter followers (i.e. most if not all the readers) might have seen I decided I had put of listening to Primus for too long.  I like metal, I love funk, what's not to love?  Unfortunately unlike Rebecca Black I had not had 'my bowl' that day and so, like Mike Patton's less awesome project Mr Bungle this was another of these avant-garde, experimental things which will be better to the stoner crowd and confounding to my illegal drug free self.

Don't do anything I wouldn't kids, including cheeba cheeba.

But Spotify comes through again with 'Related Artists' and from whence came Buckethead.  Look him up, a rather enigmatic and sinister figure.  I was expecting more of the stoner experimentation from my own preconceptions, and again when the biography told me he produced 'underground and experimental music'.  I was surprised then to find the most popular tracks and apparently the latest album Captain Eo's Voyage, doubtless named for MJ's movie, was absolutely beautiful and peaceful.  Not a whole lot I can write to explain what its like, I wasted my vocabulary screaming at the Pokémon game today, but please take a listen. I understand his fingers are ungodly fast, all I know is they're basically created for the electric guitar.  On futher listen, some of his stuff is VERY in the school of Mr Bungle.  Take care out there.

I'm gonna leave you with the earliest Jamiroquai vid I know.  Glad they got rid of Nick Van Gelder he was boring. 1992, what brilliant quality video.  And what a long time ago that was!  Do you feel bad that bassist Stuart Zender was 18 here?

The Very Best

Permit me to travel back 11(!) years.

It is 2000.  I am 9.  I have just received an awesome Pokémon Gameboy Colour and Pokémon Gold Edition.  It is an amazing time of my life, strategy guides, trading, battles, adventures.

Generations.

And now, with the death of the save battery in my old cartridge the next generations has stepped up to fulfil the epic task.  100 hours gone, 9 hours 30 on the new restarted clock.  In no particular order, I'm hoping to train a Donphan, have a kickass Pidgeot, complete the Unown thing which I'm certain I never managed before and I guess I want to catch 'em all.  For sure though, I feel like a little kid again which is no good now I'm attempting to write essays and revise for exams (see Stevo's new blog, Studenting, for the perils of essays). 

Now with that tackled here's the end of my 3 Blog Post 30 Song Challenge!

21 A song that you listen to when you’re happy - C'mon and Love Me by Kiss!  This song reeks of satisfaction.  I could also have picked the 1986 version of Can't Stop This Feeling I Got by Prince which came on as soon as I found out I made it into York last year.  70s Kiss always makes me happy.

22 A song that you listen to when you’re sad - Beautiful Girls by Van Halen.  David Lee Roth is a totally radical man, and when I'm down in the dumps I just wanna turn up a fun rock n roll song.  Kind of humerous, definitely lighthearted, lift the spirits!  Don't mention Hoobastank or Breaking Benjamin...

23 A song that you want to play at your wedding - Crucial by Prince.  Yeah he's back.  This song is lovely.  Look out for the version with Miles Davis on if you're into it, I think the song is better without horns.  Could have chosen a lot of Prince songs for this one, he does a ballad well.  No doubt I'll have something more tasteful ready in the next 20 years! 

24 A song that you want to play at your funeral - I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead by Mogwai.  Kind of sombre but in a way uplifting I find.  Would suit a funeral I think.  On the other hand don't want to make it more miserable, but to play a really happy song would be distasteful.

25 A song that makes you laugh - Bobby Brown Goes Down by Frank Zappa.  Very very close to the line, still not sure which side it sits on.  But it is a funny song for real.

26 A song that you can play on an instrument - Honestly cannot.  Sorry to leave this blank, looks like I have failed the challenge.

27 A song that you wish you could play - Are You In? by Incubus.  Yes another repeat offender, I would love to break out the bass and do this one.  Also in the running was another Incubus track, Here In My Room which I think is beautiful.  Piano.  Well I suppose I own a keyboard.

28 A song that makes you feel guilty - Until You're Over Me by Maroon 5.  Eek did another repeat.  My music taste is mainly insular I guess.

29 A song from your childhood - Pokémon World.  See what I did there?

30 Your favorite song at this time last year - I'm A Legend Tonight by Kiss.  Ending on a repeat what a shame.  But it is true.  I look back to the blog posts of last year and find that Kiss was on heavy rotation and I remember this kickass song was going on.  You may remember this song from a few blog posts back, I was listening to it on the train.  It wasn't exploding enough to be fitting for this song though.  Paul Stanley is a God.

Well there you have to folks, the key to my failing to do anything good this week and the culmination of a musical voyage through memory.  Look out for more posts in the near future.  Peace.