Unlike some other reviewers we have chosen to wait until 2009 was actually over to kick out our retrospective on the last twelve months. This week we talk about the highlights of our geek year including books, movies, TV, comics tabletop and video games, whether we thought they were the best or just underrated and worthy of more attention.

We also have the Seattle area geek events, geek news, a new contest and the return of Dare Shannon to Watch a Bad Movie!

Our Geek Week

• Read review copy of Mark Henry‘s latest book Battle of the Network Zombies
• Finally getting around to reading Nick Harkaway‘s The Gone Away World
• Listened to audiobooks of Gil’s All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez, and Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber
• Watched a lot of movies, most of which are reviewed on Ask a Geek Gal
• Played more Lef 4 Dead 2 on the PC
• Played quite a bit of DJ Hero on XBox360
• Breaking news: 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons is still fun
• Watched Sherlock Holmes
• Watched Avatar
• Watched the series premiere of Demons on BBC America

The Year in Geek 2009

• Comics
  
  • The Two Percent Solution by Eric “Otis” Singletary, Nate Murphy and Ryan Hobson
    

  • Rotten by Mark Rahner, Robert Horton and Dan Dougherty
    

  • The Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross
    

  • Buffy the vampire Slayer Executive Producer: Joss Whedon, Editor: Scott Allie
• TV
  • Mad Men Season 3
  • True Blood Season 2
  • Lost Season 5
  • Dexter Season 4
  • Breaking Bad Season 2
  • Battlestar Galactica Series Finale
• Tabletop Games
  
  • Poo (2009)
  • Dominion (2008)
  • Pandemic (2008)
  • Race for the Galaxy (2007)
• Books & Audiobooks
  • Books
    • Breathers by S.G. Browne
    • Road Trip of the Living Dead by Mark Henry
    • Wings of Creation by Brenda Cooper
    • Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
  • Audiobooks
    • Under the Dome by Stephen King
    • Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber
    • Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Seth Grahame Smith and Jane Austin
    • Infected/Contagious by Scott Sigler
    • The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
  • Authors to Watch
    • Matt Youngmark (Zomboclaypse Now)
    • A.P. Stephens (Stolen Moon of Londor)
    • Ken McConnell (Null Pointer)
• Video Games
  • Left 4 Dead 2
  • DJ Hero
  • 1 vs 100
  • Torchlight
  • The 3.3 patch for World of Warcraft
• Movies
  • Matt’s Picks
    • Top 5
      • Avatar
      • Coraline
      • District 9
      • Paranormal Activity
      • Zombieland
    • First Runner up that didn’t quite make the list
      • Watchmen
    • Movie I enjoyed more for the potential it represents rather than for the movie itself
      • Star Trek
    • Movie that was better than I expected it to be
      • Sherlock Holmes
    • Movie that I wish had been better than it was
      • Wolverine
    • Best movie from 2008 that I saw in 2009
      • Pontypool
  • Shannon’s picks
    1. Zombieland
    2. Star Trek
    3. Sherlock Holmes
    4. Inglorious Basterds
    5. Dead Snow

Dare Shannon to Watch a Bad Movie

This week’s bad movie was Ice Cream Man (1995)

If you want to dare Shannon to watch a bad movie, e-mail us at seattlegeekly@gmail.com or call us at (206)201-2352

Check our Dared Movies Page to see what is on the list and what Shannon has already watched.

Next week’s bad movie will be Tokyo Zombie (2005)

News

• The People’s Choice Awards were given out last night.
• The Producers Guild of America was on a sci-fi high in its first-ever slate of 10 nominees for best pic
• Sony postpones ‘Spider-Man 4′
• Thor release date moved up to fill Spider Man 4′s slot

Events

• January 15, 2010 8 – 10pm Neptune Coffee 8415 Greenwood Ave N Seattle – Where No Trivia Night Has Gone Before with Seattle Geekly! Join us as we host a night of trivia covering Star Trek in all its incarnations. Test your knowledge and win some prizes!
• January 17, 2009 1 – 5pm Green Lake Games 7509 Aurora Ave N Seattle – Game Night with Seattle Geekly! Wind up your weekend with some boardgames and prizes!
• January 8, 2009 9pm Seattle University Bellarmine Residence Hall 1111 East Columbia St, Seattle – Dollhouse watch party 3.0. Join the Seattle Buffy Meetup Group for a Dollhouse watch party. Great way to meet fellow Whedon-philes!
• January 8 – 9 & 15 – 16, 2010 11pm The Grand Illusion 1403 NE 50th St, Seattle – The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). On a dark and stormy night newly engaged squares Brad and Janet experience car trouble. Desperate to get out of the pouring rain they stumble across the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a flamboyant transvestite who is hosting the annual convention of visitors from the planet Transsexual. Throw on your costumes and come do the Time Warp again… and again and again!
• January 8 – 22 8pm Historic University Theater 5510 University Way NE, Seattle – Wing-It Productions presents Clues. Whodunnit? Even we don’t know! Clues is a thrillingly improvised murder mystery where you decide the clues and killer. Performances Thursday and Friday nights.
• January 10, 2010 9pm Skylark Cafe 3803 Delridge Way SW, Seattle – Live performance by nerdcore rappers Death*Star
• January 10, 2010 7pm Theater Off Jackson 409 7th Avenue S, Seattle – Radio8Ball with Mt. Eerie and Celebrity Skype-In Guest Calvin Johnson. Part experimental theater, part rock and roll cabaret, part mystic mind-expansion. The Radio8Ball Show is a night of live rock and roll divination hosted by Andras Jones featuring a different live musical guest every night. In the stage show the songs are chosen by spinning a large wheel that determines which song the artist plays as the answer to the questions posed by audience members.
• January 14, 2010 10:30pm Rendezvouz Jewelbox Theatre 2322 2nd Ave, Seattle – Sepia Chord presents a night of steampunk music with performances by Ghosts Project (with guest Nathaniel Johnstone), Soriah and Adrian H & the Wounds. tickets are $8 at the door, 21 and over show.

For more northwest geek events and conventions see our Events Page and our Conventions Page

Contest!

As we mentioned it before, Torchlight was one of our favorite games in 2009 and the great folks at Runic Games here in Seattle gave us a code for a free download of Torchlight that we’ll be giving away to 1 lucky listener!

Torchlight is an amazing action-RPG (think Diablo and Diablo II) with a very cool fantasy/steampunk aesthetic. The graphics are beautiful on higher end systems but the games scales amazingly well and is still extremely enjoyable even on older machines. It even has settings to run on a netbook! It is currently only available on the PC but a Mac version is due out later this year.

This contest runs from now until Sunday, January 17 and the winner will be picked Monday, January 18

“How do I enter?”
Please register / log in to our website, and leave a comment on THIS POST. You can just say “hi” or whatever! One entry per person please, we’ll delete any multiple or offensive posts. Make sure you use a valid e-mail address when you register so we can contact you if you win!

“How will you randomly pick someone?”
We have D&D dice of all shapes and sizes, even a 100 sider! We’ll roll and see who wins!

We will e-mail the code to the winner so make double sure you use a valid address when you enter!

Music

We’re naming our favorite geeky song of 2009 by playing it all this episode. The song in question is Ring Capacity the Summer Single by comic book rockers Kirby Krackle. We debuted the song originally on our podcast and it has remained on the top of our list of geek songs since.

Next week’s show will be our Winter Movie Preview (with some spill over into spring movies). 2010 looks like it’s going to be a good year for geeks!

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