I Succumbed to the Urge... I Will Geek Out This August 2016 Comic-Con in Tampa

I am wary of the budget woes I currently have, but I need to enjoy life once in awhile, dammit.

Also, the Tampa Bay Comic Con has a couple of presentations on writing that Saturday August 6th I wanna follow up on.

Also also, with the release of Pokemon GO, I'm sorely tempted to see if the convention hall will have working WiFi and a ton of PokeStops. Here's hoping there's a Lure drop of EPIC proportions that weekend.

Alas, I WILL NOT Cosplay this year. It gets too hot and sweaty and carrying the lightsaber everywhere gets complicated etc. etc.

I will document the atrocities as best I can.

Reminder: Local Authors Event in Wesley Chapel THIS Saturday May 21

Update 5/21: I am here now. I will document the event as best I can and post a follow-up later tonight. Please check back then. Hope to see you all here in Wesley Chapel!!!

One more time: I'll be at the Barnes & Noble bookstore at the Wiregrass Mall in Wesley Chapel FL, north of Tampa, on Saturday May 21 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM.

If anybody wants to show up - and it will be great to have people come and support the local authors and readership in general, please and thank you - please do.

As part of this weekend event, I've gone and turned two of my eBooks into FREE downloads for Nook eReaders: Body Armor Blues and Hero Cleanup Protocol. All I ask if you download either one and if you like the stories, please give them a review. More reviews means increased shopping views.

Click here to the B&N store link.

Click here to the B&N store link.

Hope to see you tomorrow!

Reminder: Barnes & Noble Local Author Event May 21st

Just noting that the Barnes & Noble Wesley Chapel bookstore has the official notice for their Local Authors event on Saturday May 21st from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM. Link here for more info:

Here's a map to the location, it's north of Tampa just east of I-75 on State Rd 56 (it's the first exit past the Pasco County border if you're driving north on the interstate).

There's going to be about 25 other authors there to promote their works, and it would be real nice if we could get a lot of people showing up to support our writing and to support reading and books in general.

Thank ye! I hope to see you all there (yes even the Chinese Spammers I kept getting about 5-6 years ago, c'mon people it's only 3000 km away!)

What Did I Do To Upset the Canadians THIS Time?

'Cause here I was checking my blog traffic this morning and I came across activity coming from Canada.  So I follow this link back:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-kc-libraries-trade-barbs-over-jays-royals-playoffs-1.3282719

and I find that someone added this blog address (and in the Canadian format wittylibrarian.blogspot.ca rather than the .com of the GOOD OLE USA) to one of the comments.

And the CBC news site has locked the Comments down, meaning I can't get on there to defend myself.

Because I don't want to get into the middle of a fight between Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals fans.

Listen up, Canada.  I'M A TAMPA BAY RAYS FAN.

/cries

Cross-Post: I Survived the 2015 Tampa Bay Comic Con, And My Nephews Survived It Too.

Sharing over to the entry I wrote at the other blog I run.  Link here.

Here's a photo or two I didn't post on the other article, just to entice...

The food lines got packed after noon time, partly because it started raining heavy, like a wall of rain, around the same time.  It kept raining well into 4 pm, and there were reports of flooding on certain streets in the downtown area.

Much like last year, the line to get in on Saturday morning - always the busiest day for what I know - went way out along Channelside.  It went under the Harbor Island bridge.  And I got there about 7:30 in the morning.  One of Tampa Convention Center's glaring weaknesses: lack of covered entranceway space, and a not-large-enough foyer area...

I Survived Tampa Bay Comic Con 2014: The Prelude (with Update)

I return to you with tidings of great geekery which shall be to all people.

Namely, that Tampa's Comic Con has gotten a little bit bigger and lot more fun.

Also, per my previous post about the fan squee for Batgirl's new outfit, I found one cosplayer yesterday who already (within two weeks!) made an excellent version of it!

SNAP-ON CAPE!  squeeeee

That said, my full review is unfortunately going to be on my other blog - I have made too many other comic-con postings over there, so gotta go with where I've got the traffic going - so I will provide a link to that as soon as I've finished writing it.

P.S. gonna go see Guardians of the Galaxy this morning as well.  There's been too much good buzz about it to hold off longer.

UPDATE: the link to the Comic-Con review is up!  Also, I saw Guardians this afternoon.  Good movie, has some obvious jumps in narrative that looks like a lot of deleted stuff waiting for DVD/Blu-Ray, funny as all out which is what we need in summer action movies more often...  But Dear God... they wanna bring back (SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT!)?!  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO gasp wheeze OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO cough cough wheeze gag insert additional choking noises here

...somewhere in this galaxy, George Lucas is laughing at his revenge on us all...

Why Artists Went Fan Squee Over Batgirl's New Outfit

Just as I'm getting ready to attend next Saturday's Tampa Bay Comic-con, there's been a bit of interest in the comics industry about a revamped look for one of the big names in the DC Universe.  Batgirl (technically the second one, Barbara "Babs" Gordon) is getting a new look:

Edit: the artist is Babs Tarr (Babs is drawing Babs!).  She's a big deal.  Check her out.

The response has been epic.  Within a day (I am not kidding), fan art from professional and independent graphic artists flooded the Intertubes.

Part of it is due to the outfit being so damn sensible: instead of it being a glorified swimsuit, or spandex form-fitting distraction, the new outfit is practical.  Leather jacket and armor.  Regular boots (although the laces may be a weak spot!).  The utility belt (no Bat goes without one) uses an additional leg strap to keep it and the main pouch secure.  The cowl doesn't get trapped over the ears.  Above all: THE CAPE.

Fans are divided over the idea of a cape.  Some supers can't be one without it (Superman in particular).  But in terms of practicality...  The movie Incredibles spells it out:

NO CAPES!

Batgirl is going to employ a simple, sensible alternative: snap-on, snap-off cape (via Sam Logan).

Fans are ga-ga for the snap-on.  My favorite response so far has been from Mike Maihack.  He's done a handful of Batgirl-Supergirl (in canon and fanon Babs and Kara are BFFs) one-sheets before, and with the new uniform he couldn't resist:

in Maihack's tellings, Kara's a bit of a fashionista, much to Babs' dismay...

See Kara popping that snap-on?  Yup.  Fans dig the snap-on.

As for the other reason fans are going ga-ga...

Part of the response is due to the background of Barbara Gordon herself.  Ever since her inception in the mid-1960s (the Silver Age), Barbara's place among the fandom has been usually well-received.  When the Killing Joke happened - the infamous issue where the Joker paralyzed her by shooting through her spine - the horrified response was universal (even the writer Alan Moore - himself a master Deconstructor, he dissed the capes too - regretted the move).  Bat-fans within the industry quickly worked to make Barbara a new heroine - Oracle - while the fans working via fanart and fanfic came up with stories of her regaining the use of her legs.  It took yet another multiverse Crisis (DC unfortunately has gotten into the sad habit of rebooting itself every 3-4 years now /headdesk) to return to an earlier reboot making her college-age again and back to mobility.

The fan-love for Barbara comes from her origin.  The reason she became Batgirl was because she was a fangirl in costume (from the Hero Sandwich blog):

Artist Carmine Infantino

One things the comics creators try to do is develop a character/hero the potential audience can relate to.  When it became clear that kids were superhero books' biggest readers, the publishers created "sidekick" pre-teens (Speedy, Robin, the Newsboy Legion) to act as in-story surrogates.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes you'd get a Scrappy.

In Barbara's case, she was relatively unique.  Most sidekicks - and heroes that mentored them - came from damaged backgrounds, suffering some terrible injustice or fleeing a deadly fate that would become a motivating factor in their decision to dress up and fight crime.

Barbara was on her way to a costume ball, dressed up as her favorite superhero, when she has to stop Killer Moth - yes, villains from the 1950s and 1960s were a bit lame - from kidnapping Bruce Wayne.

She's pretty much an ascended cosplayer.

Hence the fan-love.

I wonder how many costumers at the Tampa comic-con are gonna have snap-on capes... (don't look at me. I'm gonna try to fit into the Jedi outfit mom sewed for me).

NFL Draft Day Blogging 2009

Hola, to all three people who might even know this blog exists. :)
Today's a huge day for me as a Bucs fan, I'm gonna be following the NFL rookie draft this afternoon. I'm gonna see about liveblogging it, which means constant EDIT updates to this particular post. I'm gonna see if I can do it, and how many updates I can do before the computer decides to kill me for overloading its CPU...

Some notes beforehand, I've made my predictions (based mostly on the Bucs NOT trading down from the 19th spot, something they're hoping to do) and am now waiting to see how far off I am in mah guesswork.

I'm primarily hoping the Bucs go for Percy Harvin as a need pick for WR. But I'm not blind to the Bucs' needs at DT and DE, so if the team goes there (possibly DT Peria Jerry) I won't have any problems.

What I will have a problem with is if the Bucs go with selecting a rookie QB like Josh Freeman with the 19th overall pick. Half the scouting boards (including that pompous ass Mel Kiper) have the Bucs going that way even though 1) Bucs have a decent roster of veteran QBs already and 2) Bucs have needs elsewhere. These jokers can't even argue that picking Freeman would be a Best-Available Pick (as opposed to Filling-Need Pick) because Freeman is ranked around the 50th spot with most scouting boards. These scouts seem to think the Bucs are screwed at QB because they don't like Leftwich or McCown or Griese. Phooey on that.

Early notes: Detroit has locked up the first overall pick to QB Dennis Quaid, uh Matt Stafford. Teams looking to trade up include the Giants who are hoping to snag WR Darrius Heyward-Bey before he goes to other WR-starved teams. Arizona has WR Boldin on the trading block, and apparently are dropping their demands so much that a smart team could snag Boldin, keep a decent early pick and still get a rookie they wanted. So DON'T expect the Bucs to make that move. ;-)

Draft officially starts in 4 hours. I will post UPDATES! Stay tuned.

Update - 3:42 PM. Currently at a Buffalo Wild Wings. Wireless works. Laptop now on battery power. See how long it lasts.
Most of the talk on the car radio was on the ridiculously rich contract Stafford got, and for the locals arguing about the need to trade down with the two teams most wanting to trade up (Arizona, NYGiants).

4:52 - Big shock with the Jets trading up to get Sanchez. Big question now is how this affects the next QB on the list (Freeman). With DE Jackson going ahead of other big names at the DE spot, there's a possibility the DE lineup will see a lot of activity with the next 12 spots...

5:37 - Didn't realize Denver needed RB. Wonder if the Bucs have a shot at LB Cushing... Biggest shock so far is still the Jets trade, but seeing some of the DEs slip from Top 5 to tenth and eleventh means there'll be more defensive end players on the board to tempt the Bucs...

6:01 - I call riot. FREEMAN?!?! WE TRADED UP FOR FREEMAN?!?!?! WE NEEDED DT! WE NEEDED WR!! WE COULD HAVE TAKEN OLB FOR GODS SAKE!!!!! GAHHHHHHHHH!!!!

It's official. We suck.

9:00 - I doubt the Bucs can work out a trade to get back into the Second Round, so this is it for the day. My grand experiment in liveblogging the event kinda goes nowhere and I end up frustrated with the team once again. Sigh. It's a good thing there's a Star Trek movie coming out on my birthday I can geek out over in two weeks...

As a Bucs fan, I needed to post this

Yes, I'm a football fan. When my family moved to the Tampa Bay region, it was just as the Tampa Bay Bucs were starting up (rather miserably). I was nine when 1979 happened, and the team got good overnight and all the fans were thrilled. I stayed a fan through the Dark Times of 1983-1996, through the good times of Dungy's construction of a winning franchise, through the ups and downs of the current Chucky regime.

And in all that time, as all the jinxes and curses related to the Bucs (couldn't win, couldn't win in the postseason, couldn't win in the cold, couldn't win on the West Coast) fell to the wayside, one jinx remained.

The Bucs, in all that time, never ran a kickoff return for a touchdown in regular or postseason play.

While it's tough to run a kickoff (or punt return) all the way back, it's not *that* hard: every other team (all 31 of them, including the newbies) has gotten one. Even the Houston Texans have one, and they're only 5 years old at this point.

It got to be something of a running gag. All the game commentators would snark about it, the networks would flash the league statistics about it, and everyone would chuckle and feel bad about the poor Bucs and their special teams players.

And then, the Atlanta Falcons came to play the Tampa Bay Bucs in Tampa, this December 16, 2007.

A backup practice squad guy had been bumped up to kick return duties because the regular guy, Mark Jones, was out with injury. The new guy was one of those little-known, bounced-around-the-league kind of guy. Micheal Spurlock was his name. Number 17. Stores don't even sell his jersey number.

Michael Spurlock took a kickoff at the 10-yard-line and never looked back.

Other men will write better poetry about it (or will craft video homages with fan photos and video EDIT: link is gone sorry). Children will go to bed dreaming of it. Old men will weep and know that they had lived long enough to see the day. Our long national nightmare is over.

As a Bucs fan I will be walking on sunshine this whole week. Not because the Bucs secured a postseason berth with this win over Atlanta. Because Spurlock finally made a kickoff return for my team.

This is why we watch sports, and why we make athletes heroes from time to time. This is why No. 17 jerseys with the name Spurlock on it will be manufactured today and sold out by the end of tonight.

Because of hope fulfilled.