Beyond My Geeky Life

Before reading the rest of this post, go watch the trailers at the following pages if you've not seen them yet: This International Star Wars: The Force Awakens  Trailer Has Tons Of New Footage Even more brand-new Star Wars footage We now have just over a month to go before The Force Awakens hits the theaters. The excitement keeps building, but there is a lingering feeling that we've seen all this before and were let down in the end. I remember the build up for Episode 1 and how in the end we were left with a film that did not come close to being what all the hype promised. So why do I think it will be different this time? Looking at the trailers there is a lot of obvious differences. To start off with the bad guys this time look like they will ave to be taken seriously. The new Stormtroopers look to be badass add aggressive. We are not getting stuck another batch of worthless solider like the battle droids, who were at no point anything close to a threat. I ca...

With just a over a month before the new Star Wars movie hits the theaters, with what may be a record crushing opening weekend with a predicted 600 million world wide ( http://www.imdb.com/news/ni59122843 ) we are seeing a big push for merchandising at all levels. As a collector I am enjoying seeing all that is coming out and as budget allows I am picking up new pieces for my collection. So one area of merchandising I don't see myself going after however is the Star Wars themed CoverGirl collection. http://www.covergirl.com/cosmetics/starwars-collection While I find it to be an interesting marketing concept, I just don't see myself picking any of it up. I'm not a fan of throwing a logo on just any old thing to make it collectible, and this seems just barely a step above that. I am sure it will sell well though, I'm just not going to go after any of them.

For those of you who have been living under a rock this last week, yesterday was Back to the Future Day. In BTTF2 Doc and Marty travel to the future from 1985. The date they travel to was 10/21/2015. Needless to say the geek community took full advantage of such a well known movie having an actual date that reality catches up to in their lifetimes. My boys and I got out to a local library and watched BTTF2 with a bunch of other people as we snacked on BTTF themed goodies. They also had trivia and activities for the kids. It was a lot of fun. My youngest and I got interviewed for a piece that will get broadcast on a local station. We then went home and played the BTTF card game. I love the fact that a one shot geek holiday has made it to that level of mainstream popularity. There was coverage of this day everywhere you turned. It shows just how huge geek culture has become. This is just more evidence that the geeks are set up to take over the world.

I am a collector of a great many things. My house is packed with my collections. I have major collections such as Star Wars, action figures, comics, DVDs, and books. Then there are my minor collections like wind-up toys, Minions and Little Green Men form Toy Story. I have been a collector for as long as I can remember, it is for me and so many others, a way of life. But not everyone understands this way of life. While most people who come over are impressed by my collections, I have encountered people who see my level of collecting as being hoarding. They are unable to grasp the passion for collecting and instead write it off as someone just keeping and becoming attached to a bunch of junk. I am not going to go into what hoarding is here, but you can go do the research and learn what actual hoarding is. It is a real serious condition that can screw up a person life. It is noticeably different from actual collecting though. I can look through my collections and find v...

Today marks 100 days until the official release of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. And right now Star Wars seems to be everywhere. This last Friday was Force Friday, basically when all the new Star Wars merchandise was allowed to be sold. While the new figures were blowing out of stores like crazy, in fact you would be lucky to find much in the way of merchandise on store shelves right now, there was a good deal off classic trilogy items mixed  in with the new movie pieces. There were a few prequel items, but those were very few. The companies putting the merchandise out clearly do know what movies matter. Unlike the crazy amount of everything that was throw out there for the prequel merchandising insanity, they toned in down a great deal this time. While there is a lot of items released, it seems they were more controlled in making sure what was being sold had a little more thought that just slapping Star Wars characters on everything, although some of that did still...

We all know that for the most part Hollywood is not big on being original. Sequels and reboots flood our theaters constantly. With that comes both the good and the bad of it all. With Jurassic World I was not sure if we would get the good or the bad with the film. I was not into the hype and originally planned on waiting until the film made it to video before seeing it. JP 2 and 3 were disappointing, so I had little faith that JW would be anything more. Also with how Hollywood is making it obvious that there is no way to match the originals when they let a franchise sit for two decades, as we have seen with so many sequels (Or prequels) as of late. I have been let down so much by the big franchises. And while I consider movies like Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls to not be the worst in the franchise ( I find Temple of Doom to actually be a worse move) it was lacking. There was a lot of build up to finally getting a new adventure in that universe after all that time. I have lea...

For those who don't know, I am a fan of comic books. I have a good sized collection that spans around sixty years, maybe more, especially if you count reprints and collected works. If so, then I have comics from over 75 years ago. I have read the first appearances of many characters, including Bat-Man, Superman, Namor, The original Human Torch, The Fantastic Four, just to name a few. I have some idea of the evolution of comic books into what is on the market today. I won't claim to be an expert or even one of the most knowledgeable of comic book fans, but I feel I am able to form some fairly well thought out opinions concerning comic books. As I said I have read some significant first appearance issues now from all eras of comic books. The more I have read from the various ages (Golden, silver and modern) the more I see where the big changes have happened. With that I have no doubt at all that there is one comic that really can be said to have had the most influence as to whe...