A Grand Time to be a Geek, a retrospective

     The twelve year old me (circa 1990....something) would be amazed with today.  When I was twelve,  the only cable channels of note were ESPN, CNN(Bo-ring), and HBO (which seemed to be a non-stop run of The Karate Kid part III, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Driving Miss Daisy). If you told me there are whole channels solely devoted to such things as Science Fiction (correction....was), Kung-Fu Movies/the Martial Arts, or Gaming/Geek Culture ,   I would call you a liar.  If I wanted to buy an Anime video or rare book that I couldn't find at my local mall's Sam Goody or Waldenbooks (respectively),  I would either have to travel all the way to New York City to a Tower Records (RIP) or Kim's Video.  If you told me that there is something called the internet and that I can get all of these just by sitting on my ass with one click of a mouse, I wouldn't believe you.  Finally, if you told me the twelve year old me that there was a massive event called Comic Con, which brings in the big industry leaders and personalites of comics, graphic novels, anime, video games, television, and movies all into one place, (a place where some companies will launch their new product lines) I would call you full of shit.  An event like this would be few and far between.   Now, it seems like every city has a Comic Con variant of some sort.  Before Comic Con would have been attended by the die hard fanboy( or girl) that could recite every origin story in their respective universe.  Now, it is attended by the casual fan that probably discovered a favorite superhero character from a summer blockbuster.  It is great to be finally accepted.  With what will be a recurring theme to this blog (then vs. now), I will first explore movies.

Great Geek Cinema courtesy of New York City

I will be going to my first Comic Con in New York City later on this week.  Even though the San Diego event is the premiere one in terms of popularity and well........ the fact that it is THE Comic Con (if you say that you're going to Comic Con people will know or assume that you're going to the San Diego event), I'll say New York wins out as the cooler, much nerdier city.  Let San Diego have their Del Tacos and year-round sunny weather.  Here is some great geek cinema courtesy of the Big Apple. The landmarks and their location are include, just in case you have time to check it out.  Much more thorough map (and my initial inspiration for this very posting)...here.

How each Summer Blockbuster should have ended

Here's a roundup of the summer's biggest hits should have ended:

Lessons Learned from 80's Musical Montages

Despite what you read in the history books, Sylvester Stallone and 80's synth-rock can be attributed to the fall of Communism.

        

            
               Growing up in the 80’s, you were constantly bombarded with important lessons. From public service announcements advertisements to cartoons, you were constantly exposed to a  lesson of some sort.  This trend continued with movies of the day, more specifically, during the musical montage portion of the movie.  It is the portion of a movie where the protagonist goes through a pronounced change.  In real time, it could be in the span of a long period of time (days, weeks, months), but to the moviegoer, this could be during the span of 3-4 minutes, or however long the song is.  So let’s find out these integral life lessons.