Geek Stuff

Should I do a Star Trek movie marathon? Yes. Yes, I should …

April 11, 2016 11 Comments

And it starts in five minutes. Something came over me the other day. It might have been Netflix suddenly throwing Trek in my face. Maybe it’s the result of a space slug crawling into my ear. Don’t know. Whatever it was, it resulted in a feeling I’ve pretty much never had in my life: “I should watch some Star Tek – and a LOT of it!” If that sounds like a knock on Star Trek, it’s not. Rather, it’s just to say that I’ve never been anything more than a vaguely casual Star Trek fan. I watched most of the original series as a kid, saw many seasons of The Next Generation and one or two of Deep Space Nine with my old man, saw…
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Films, Geek Stuff

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Now I’m on Youtube. What have I gotten myself into?

April 6, 2016 12 Comments

I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. When my buddy Tig Carson asked me to do a nerdy video series with him, the idea excited me because doing nerdy stuff with friends is always a good time. Tig is the curator of Nerd Out With Me (follow them on Facebook here, and Twitter and all that jazz), and the author of A Space Story, a Hitchhiker’s Guide-esque science fiction adventure. I have fun talking about geek stuff with him. The idea of a video series sounded like fun, too. We’d talk about old toys and cartoons from our youth and whatever. It would be a good way to spend an afternoon. Then we set up a spot and filmed some material as a…
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Geek Stuff, Videos, Works by Eric

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Meet Robert Kirkman, the Man Behind The Walking Dead

February 24, 2016 0 Comments

The following is an excerpt from Dissecting The Walking Dead: Slicing Into The Guts of Television’s Hottest Show, available in paperback and for Kindle. Dig it: Robert Kirkman is a Kentucky boy. There is no mistaking him for anything but. He is one of TV’s hottest properties of the moment, yes, and for the last decade he has also been the dominant force in creator-owned comic books, but talk to him and he’s still the same quiet, considered dude he’s always been. Thick beard, plain T-shirt, eyes that make you believe he’d rather be anywhere but in the spotlight – his appearance hasn’t changed much over the years, even if his bank account has. Oh, he’ll sport a decent sports jacket now instead of a…
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Comics & Graphic Novels, Geek Stuff, Television

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Why without George Romero, there is no The Walking Dead

December 7, 2015 4 Comments

The following is an excerpt from Dissecting The Walking Dead: Slicing Into The Guts of Television’s Hottest Show, available in paperback and for Kindle. Without George Romero, there is no The Walking Dead. His 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, invented the modern zombie genre. Robert Kirkman himself has said on many occasions that his comic series and television show is essentially an extended take on Romero’s legendary film, borrowing all its core elements and reimagining them as an ongoing story rather than a single night of terror. In other words, if you want to understand where The Walking Dead comes from, you must understand Night of the Living Dead and the Romero mythos. As I examined in a previous post, Romero didn’t create the…
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Films, Geek Stuff, Television, Works by Eric

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Zombies, Mythology, and the Origins of the Zombie Genre

November 29, 2015 4 Comments

The following is an excerpt from Dissecting The Walking Dead: Slicing Into The Guts of Television’s Hottest Show, available in paperback and for Kindle. Shambling corpses with ragged clothing still clinging to their grey, rotting bodies. An unsteady, drunken walk. Long, pitiful moans and an aching hunger for human flesh. The image is by now so familiar even people with no interest in the genre know it inside and out. These are zombies. But zombies weren’t always depicted this way. Once upon a time, the zombie was something much different, a creature linked with black magic and Voodoo and having nothing to do with eating flesh. It seems as if they’ve been around forever, but our modern view of zombies is actually a relatively new creation. The first recorded use of the term “zombie”…
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Geek Stuff, Television

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