Nerdy Bits

I stumbled across this post over at The Park Bench the other day, and it really made me feel like maybe my nerd-girl credentials are a little dusty. Mostly because I don't know who the fuck Liz Lemon is. But I have been slacking off a little lately in the nerd department. I mean - what if I got all NORMAL? The shame.

So, here's what's going on in my Nerd World lately.

Champions Online, the next big superhero MMO, is now in open beta (that means anyone can give it a go)(if they're willing to sit through a several-hour download, that is). So far, I give it a resounding 'meh'. I really, reeeeaaallly wanted to love this game, because superheros and MMOs are my 'thing', and I'm getting a tad jaded about my beloved City of Heroes, after a mere 4 years of playing it.

I know! I'm so fickle. Anyway, there are lots of clever things you can do in Champions (burrowing under the earth as a travel power? Okay, that's pretty cool), but most of the missions seem like a grind (kill X amount of X) and my artsy brain just can't get past the fact that it requires some video-card-on-steroids to render a game that's essentially in 2D. We get that it's a comic book game, you don't have to put a thick black line around everything. Honest.

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Season 3 of The Guild came out on Tuesday. For XBox Live subscribers, anyway. Which I am not. So if you ARE, please shutthefuckup until it's available to the rest of us, m'kay?

(If you're unaware, which I was until recently, The Guild is a web-based series about a group of MMO players. Each episode is 3-5 minutes long. Even if you don't play MMOs, it's a freakin' hilarious look at the weirdness that has evolved out of relationships over the internet. Like, say, BLOGGERS. Ahem.)

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Dollhouse, Season 1. Yeah, I know it came out on DVD a little while ago, but I just got around to watching it now. I wasn't super pumped about it. The plot sounded like an excuse for a lot of scantily clad women, and I always considered Eliza Dushku to be one of the few weak links in the Buffy series. I mean, anyone can play "bad girl with a vulnerable side", and she didn't even do the 'vulnerable' part that well in my opinion. But Dollhouse? Rocks. Eliza Dushku has totally upped her game, and the storyline so far is fan-fucking-tastic.

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Faunasphere, that strangely addictive little web-based gem of a game that I wrote about a while back, is now live. Anybody can sign up and play for free, and they've added a spooky new world: The Swamp.

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The first in Kevin Smith's new Batman series, The Widening Gyre, came out on Wednesday. The story has definite potential, though not so much the art.

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Apparently Frank Cho and Doug Murray want ME to draw their upcoming comic, 50 Girls 50. ME! Well, okay, not me specifically. If you're a comic book artist, they want you to take a shot at illustrating the first 6 pages of the script, and they'll pick a winner.

Hey, I draw comics.

Fancy that.

What I did over the weekend, by Keely, age 9 (at least in my head)

I think I'm actually nervous about it

For Christmas, my parents gave me this cute little handmade gift certificate that entitled the bearer (me, duh) to one day's babysitting each month, provided I used that day to do something creative. In other words, I can't use it to nap or clean the house or watch the second season of Battlestar Galactica. I have to Be An Artist.

It's August, and I've only managed to claim 2 of those days so far (Apparently they don't stack. I should have read the fine print, I was totally psyched for dropping my kid off for a week). So, riding the wave of creative mental energy from my holiday, I corralled my father into supervising my spawn tomorrow while I Draw Some Comics. I'm just going to sit, and draw.

Now...if only I had any idea what to draw.

Lighting the Proverbial Fire

So I think I mentioned that lately I've been in a bit of a creative funk. Luckily for me, my mom reminded my sorry ass that she had signed us both up for a weekend workshop on bookmaking. I got to leave the spawn with Grandpa (Grandpa, nervously watching X waddle around with precarious balance: "He's not going to fall and land on his head or anything, is he?" Me: "Um...yeah, pretty much constantly. Just keep him away from sharp objects, you'll be fine.") and spend a glorious 6-1/2 hours at a fun workshop hosted by Martha Cole. There's nothing quite like spending the day surrounded by enthusiastic little old ladies women of vintage to get your creative juices flowing.

(My mother probably just wrote me out of the will there).

Plus, I finally have something to post for Maternal Spark's Monday Muse! Yeah!

7 observations about the Neil Young concert the other night

1. Neil Young can still rock out for two solid hours, but apparently that's his limit, because after that he kinda phones it in (one song encore, Beatles cover. Because he's short on material?). But hey, he's 60, I hope I can rock out for two hours when I'm sixty. Hell, I'll be happy if I can stand for two hours when I'm sixty.

2. The median age at this concert made me feel an awful lot younger than at the Alice Cooper concert. Even though not nearly as many of them ducked out before the encore. Or maybe they did, they just couldn't move that fast.

3. Pot still smells good.

4. I know I'm not 'super cougar' status, because apparently there's a requisite uniform of entirely monochromatic clothing, some of which should be leather (but not all, because that would just be tacky). If I start dressing in shiny wine-coloured leggings, a wine leather jacket, wine-coloured boots, and a wine purse, I'll know I've Arrived.

5. There was an artist on stage, at the back, painting for almost the entire concert, completely oblivious to the raging rock concert going on around him. Nobody ever explained what the hell he was doing, but if he's getting paid? I want THAT gig.

(Okay, I just googled it. Apparently you have to be a roadie for 20 years first. I'm not so keen now).

6. You know it's an old-school crowd when they actually hold up lighters, not cel phones.

7. Even Neil knows most of Neil's songs sound the same.

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