Musings from the basement...

Why punctuation matters

A panda walks into a restaurant and takes a table. The waiter thinks it’s a bit odd, a panda walking into a restaurant , but he approaches it nonetheless. The panda grabs a menu, opens it, and points to a cheeseburger. The panda gets his cheeseburger, savors every bite, even wipes its mouth with a napkin. Then the panda pulls out a gun and shoots every person in the restaurant. Everyone except for the waiter. Soaked in blood, he can only ask the panda, “Why?” The panda pulls out an encyclopedia. It flips the book to the P section, places it on the bar, and points to his picture. Then he turns and walks out the door. The bartender leans down and reads the entry…
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Breaking Bad, my new must-watch TV

It hasn’t been easy finding a new must-watch show. The Walking Dead didn’t do it for me, Lost reached its finale (I posted several times about this show), and the excellent Game of Thrones aside, HBO’s awesome television shows, well, haven’t been as awesome of late as they’ve been historically. Even two series I hotly anticipated, The Pacific and Boardwalk Empire, were very good but did not make me feel compelled to watch every night in a marathon of viewing. (I tend to watch one show at a time, an episode a night, in a long marathon. I love TV that way.) That’s why I’m glad I discovered Breaking Bad. Because hot damn is this show good. If you’re not familiar with Breaking Bad, it…
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Reading/signing event = fantastic!

Geek Wisdom

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Geek Wisdom reading/signing event on Friday. Stephen and I not only had a great time reading from the book, talking geekery, and geeking out ourselves for the standing-room-only crowd at The Raconteur, we met a load of enthusiastic and talented fellow geeks. There were far too many to name or remember, but I do want to plug a few. First there was Jason Grossman, who had his incredible art on display. Jason is young, driven, and very talented. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing his stuff in the future. There was also animator and illustrator Jimmy Harrigan, who has a nice portfolio that is worth your time. And then there was Megan Brennan, who has a…
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The Year of Hitchcock podcast is back!

After a long, fatigue-driven hiatus, Jim McDevitt and I finally got back behind the microphone two weekends ago and recorded all-new episodes of The Year of Hitchcock Podcast. We’re excited to say that we recorded enough episodes to release them every two weeks for the next few months. We’ll be discussing landmark films like Vertigo, The Birds, Psycho, and The Man Who Knew Too Much during this stretch of episodes. We initially began doing the podcast as a weekly companion to our book, A Year of Hitchcock (which will soon be available in softcover at a much lower price). Whereas the book is approachable but serious, accessible to casual fans but also worthwhile for Hitchcock aficionados, the podcasts quickly became looser, more casual, more irreverent,…
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Hey NJ people, Geek Wisdom event on Friday

Geek Wisdom

Stephen Segal, editor and coauthor of Geek Wisdom, and I will be at The Raconteur in Metuchen on Friday from 8 to 11 p.m. We’ll be discussing geekery, reading from the book, and juggling flaming hamsters. It will be a sight to see. The Raconteur is located at 431 Main Street in Metuchen, NJ. You can check out the event on Facebook. We’d love to see you there. Unless you’re a stalker or otherwise disturbed person who wants to skin us and wear our flesh, in which case the event has been moved to The Book Rodeo in Camden, NJ. See you there, crazy flesh-wearing person!