Norwescon has been the center of our Geek Year for a very long time now and this year was no exception. This week we’re going to try and summarize our convention experience, just to try and give a taste of what went on over what was an amazing weekend. While we were at the convention we also had the chance to catch up with local author and geek scene icon Bruce Taylor, “Mr. Magic Realism”.

All that, plus Shannon watches a bad movie and we have a major announcement about the future of Seattle Geekly

Our Geek Week

• Listened to the audiobook of The Prefect by Alistair Reynolds
• Reading The Unremembered by Peter Orullian
• Finished single player Portal 2 on the PC
• Watched Season 6 Dr. Who premiere
• Almost done with Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• We, along with Julie from 19 Nocturne Boulevard are guests on the most recent episode of the Zombie Mob podcast with McPierce! You should check it out!
• New nook firmware update (Yay! App store!)

Norwescon 34 Wrap Up

THURSDAY
• Matt’s panel ‘Best Board Games for Nongamers’ with Jeremy from Bucephalus Games/Greenlake Games and Julie Haehn

FRIDAY

• Shannon’s panel ‘Fandom in Daily Life’ with Death*Star and Dierde Phoenix
• Shannon’s panel ‘Grrrl Gamers!’ with Julie Haehn, Tamera Mickelson, & Kate Marshall
• Matt’s panel ‘The State of SyFy’ with David A. Page and Judith Herman
  

• Like Water for Quarks
  
  • Bruce Taylor “Mr. Magic Realism”
• The Philip K Dick Award presentation

SATURDAY

• Shannon’s panel ‘Podcasting 101′ with Jim Granger of Pacific Fen Spotlight and Bonehand Steve of The Bonebat Show
• Shannon’s panel ‘Godzilla vs. Zombies’ with Rev. En Fuego and Lilith von Fraumench
• Shannon’s panel ‘Batman vs. Superman’ with Ashley Cook Spencer Ellsworth and Matt Youngmark
• Matt’s panel ‘When Fandoms Collide’ with Karen Rall
• Saturday Concerts:
  • Death*Star
  • Vixy & Tony
  • The Heather Dale Band

SUNDAY

• Matt’s panel ‘Gaming and Community’ with Donna Prior and Liz Courts
• Matt’s panel ‘Plagues, Pandemics and You’ with Miki Garrison and Darry Willis

Pre-registration for Norwescon 35 will be open soon. Keep your eye on the official Norwescon website or follow @norwescon on twitter. We’ll see you there next year!

Dare Shannon to Watch a Bad Movie

This week’s bad movie was Season of the Witch (2011)

News

• Playstation Network Hacked
• PAX Prime 3 Day Passes Selling Out

Music

Music this week was ‘Social Apothecary’ by Death*Star from the forthcoming album A New Dope. Catch Death*Star LIVE at at Rendezvous/JewelBox Theater with Klopfenpop & Sketch of a Monster TOMORROW NIGHT or, if you missed that you can see them Saturday, May 14 at 9:00pm at the Blue Moon Tavern with Gonken and Fro Magnum Man

An Important Announcement

There is no easy way to make this announcement, so here it is. We have reached the point where we are going to have to lower the curtain on Seattle Geekly. The demands of producing the show have exceeded our available resources, both financially and in terms of time. This is a heart rending decision for us and one that we did not come to easily.

I’m sure it seems that this is coming out of nowhere but the fact is this has been brewing behind the scenes for quite some time now. We went through a list of changes we could make in order to keep Seattle Geekly going but what it came down to was the fact that if we scaled it back to the point where it would be sustainable it would no longer be the show we wanted it to be and it wouldn’t be something we could be proud of producing. After long debate we decided we would much rather end at a high point and have the legacy of Seattle Geekly be people wishing we had kept going and done more than keep pushing on and leave a trail of disappointing shows before we petered out at the bitter end. The first rule of show business is “always leave them wanting more” and while we aren’t exactly in show business we felt it still applied.

In addition to the question of the resources required, there have been a few things recently that brought home to us the fact that, no matter how much work we put in to the show, at the end of the day we are still just another podcast and blog in a vast ocean of podcasts and blogs. We are proud of the work we’ve done and constantly amazed by the enjoyment people seem to get out of what we do, but we realized that in the grand scale of things the two of us putting down this project was not going to be the end of the world even for our most dedicated fans.

We said when we started the podcast that if we connected one person with one book, movie, TV show, game or event that they would not have otherwise found that it would be a success and we have had more success in that department than we ever could have imagined. The opportunity to see people geek out over things they found through our show is going to be the hardest thing for us to give up.

We want to thank everyone for all the kindness we have been shown over the past two years and apologize deeply to all those who are feeling like we have let you down. The wonderful thing about new media, though, is that if you decide that there is a geeky podcast/blog shaped hole in your world you can start one! We haven’t done anything here that anyone else couldn’t do at least as well, if not better.

Once this announcement goes out we are going to be unplugging ourselves from the internet for a bit. We’ll be back to answering e-mail and twitters and such in a couple of days, we will be having our last hurrah at Epic Game Day this Saturday and we’ll be back to put out one final show in two weeks. We’ll be keeping the website up and the past podcasts available for download until the end of the year.

We will not be dropping off the face of the planet after this. We have been participating in the geek community all our lives and we will continue to do so. You will still see us at various geeky events around the region and you can still come up and say hi to us if you are moved to do so. The only difference will be that instead of being Shannon and Matt from Seattle Geekly we will just be Shannon and Matt, two geeks from Seattle.

- A selection of some of the great geek events going on in the Greater Seattle area this week -

Kind of a quiet week this week but there are still two events that are not to be missed!

First up there is going to be an awesome night of nerdcore Friday night at 10pm at the Rendezvous/JewelBox Theater, 2322 2nd Avenue in Seattle, featuring live performances by Klopfenpop, Death*Star and Sketch of a Monster. Tickets are only $7 at the door and this is a 21 and over show. This is a great opportunity to hear some great live music but if, like us, you have lamented the fact that so many geek music shows seem to be on Sunday nights you NEED to get out to this rare Friday night event. Let the venue operators know that there is an audience for geek music!

This Satuday is, of course, EPIC GAME DAY at the AFK Tavern, 1510 41st Street in Everett. Epic Game Day is a celebration of hobby gaming, where gamers from both inside and outside the industry can mingle, play games, and enjoy each other’s company. It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional game designer, industry vet, community leader, or a hobby enthusiast – Epic Game Day is full of epic win for all hobby gamers! And did we mention that it is totally free?!? Epic Game Day runs from Noon to Midnight and the schedule of games is available at EpicGameDay.com. We are definitely going to be there and Shannon is even going to be hosting a game of Talisman from 4-8pm. Don’t miss it!

- A selection of some of the great geek events going on in the Greater Seattle area this week -

This weekend is all about festivals and conventions in Seattle!

Running Friday Saturday and Sunday is the first ever Seattle International Film Festival Animation Fascination Festival at the SIFF Cinema, 321 Mercer Street in Seattle. SIFF Cinema will take a look back at some of the best animated shorts from the past few years, recent works from the National Film Board of Canada, the latest feature from the legendary Bill Plympton, the rarely screened Chuck Jones classic The Phantom Tollbooth, a tribute to the classic short films of Pixar, and the Seattle premiere of Academy Award winning animator Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max. More details and specific show times are available at the SIFF website. Passes for the entire festival are $60 or $25 for SIFF members. Animation Fascination is co-presented by The Stranger and 2D OR NOT 2D Animation Festival.

Also running Friday through Sunday is Sakrua-Con 2011 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. Sakura-con is the largest anime/manga/Japanese culture convention in the Northwest and all the excellent programming you’ve come to expect will be back in abundance. Anime theaters, gaming, cosplay, cultural panels, dances, concerts, art contests, AMV’s, industry guests, over 100,000 square feet of exhibits hall, guests of honor and more! The full program schedule is available online. Weekend passes are $60 at the door and day passes are also available.

Last but not least, this Thursday through Sunday is Norwescon 34! Norwescon is one of the largest regional Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions in the United States. While maintaining a primarily literary focus, Norwescon is large enough to provide a venue for many of the other aspects of Science Fiction and Fantasy and the interests of its fans such as anime, costuming, art, gaming, and much, much more. Norwescon features over 500 hours of panel programming, presented by more than 200 panelists, covering such diverse subjects as science fiction, fantasy, science, costuming, art, writing, genre television and movies, as well as a myriad of other topics of interest to fans. Weekend passes are $60 at the door or $55 for Northwest Science Fiction Society members. This is where we’re going to be all weekend and if you want to track us down our panel schedule will be under the fold.

Many people have asked why two major conventions with a high degree of overlap between their audiences would schedule themselves to be on the same weekend. We have wondered that ourselves since we would love to be able to check out Sakura-Con but it ALWAYS conflicts with Norwescon. Long time friend-of-the-podcast DJ Wudi wondered about that as well and he actually does a very good job of explaining it.

The Seattle Geekly panel schedule for Norwescon is under the fold. Come see us sweat in front of an audience!

Shannon

• Fandom in Daily Life
  Friday 11 am Cascade 7
• Grrrl Gamers!
  Friday 1 pm Evergreen 3 & 4
• Podcasting 101
  Saturday 1 pm Cascade 8
• Godzilla vs. Zombies
  Saturday 4 pm Cascade 8
• Batman vs. Superman: Who Would REALLY Win in a Fight?
  Saturday 6 pm Cascade 4

Matt

• Best Board Games for Nongamers
  Thursday 6 pm Cascade 9
• The State of SyFy (née Sci-Fi Channel)
  Friday 9 pm Cascade 5 & 6
• When Fandoms Collide
  Saturday 11 am Cascade 8
• Gaming and Community
  Sunday Noon Cascade 1
• Plagues, Pandemics and You
  Sunday 1 pm Cascade 9

Geek Music is a genre on the rise and the variety of styles under the geek music umbrella is on the increase as well. This week we explore the breadth of geek music with nerdcore MC Klopfenpop, Filk heroes Vixy and Tony and hard rockers Sci-Fried. There should be something for just about anyone!

All that plus some geek news.

Our Geek Week

• Read the eBook of Hellhole by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson
• Watched The Horde (2009) on DVD
• Watched Monsters (2010) on Blu-ray
• Played in the regular D&D game
• Read All the Lives He Lived by Frederick Pohl
• Read Badass: Birth of a Legend by Ben Thompson

Geek Music Variety Pack

• Klopfenpop (interview starts at 14:47)
  • See Klopfenpop live at the Rendezvous/Jewelbox Theater in Seattle April 28



• Vixy & Tony (interview starts at 33:28)
  • Upcoming Vixy & Tony show at the Kenmore Community Club on April 16
  • The Norwescon Concert Series
  • Seattle’s Filk convention Conflikt
  • Emerald Forest Filk Society Mailing List



• Sci-Fried (interview starts at 1:00:32)

News

• Wonder Woman Will Have Shorts After All
• The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Announces 37th Annual Origins Awards Nominees
• FBI Raids University of Michigan Students’ Apartment over WoW Gold Farming

Music

Music this week was ‘We Don’t Need Another Trilogy’ by John Anealio from his new EP Books, Bytes & Bots (buy it on Band Camp) as well as selections from our three interview victims!

Next show: Episode #97– April 28th – Post-Norwescon. We’ll talk about our panels, the concerts and whatever else we can fit in!

Seattle Geekly by http://www.seattle-geekly.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

– A selection of some of the great geek events going on in the Greater Seattle area this week –

One convention this weekend; Just A Game Con takes place in Corvallis, Oregon at the Benton County Fairgrounds. Just a Game Con is 32 hours of straight tabletop gaming from 10am Saturday to 6pm Sunday. There will be open demos of many games and game systems, a War Machine tournament and the Heroclix Kill & Keep competition that pits your team of heroes against the gigantic Fin Fang Foom! Passes are $10 for the whole weekend and kids are free!

More events under the fold

You have another opportunity this weekend to see The Rocky Horror Show which is being performed live on stage at Open Circle Theater, 2222 2nd Ave Seattle at 7:30pm Friday and Saturday and 4pm on Sunday and also Manos: The Hands of Felt which is playing at Odd Duck Studio, 1214 10th Ave, Seattle. Shows are Friday and Saturday at 10:30pm.

Friday

• Fantastic Fiction presents: Jeffrey Ford 7pm at the University Book Store 4326 University Way NE, Seattle
  NW Media Arts and University Book Store invite you to join us each month as we bring to Seattle critically acclaimed writers from across the US and Europe whose work showcases the finest of speculative literature. Jeffrey Ford is a six time recipient of the World Fantasy Award and has also won the Nebula, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. He is the author of the novels, The Shadow Year, The Girl in the Glass, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, and The Well-Built City Trilogy.

Saturday

• Author Signing: J. A. Pitts 2pm at Barnes & Noble Crossroads 15600 NE 8th Ave, Bellevue
  J.A. Pitts appears to promote the mass market paperback release of his book Black Blade Blues

Monday

• Fantastic Fiction presents: Louise Marley 7pm at University Book Store 4326 University Way NE, Seattle
  The good folks at NW MediaArts have welcomed any number of fantastic fantasy authors to its Fantastic Fiction Salons. March 2011 brings the one and only Louise Marley, award-winning author of 10 books, including the most recent, Mozart’s Blood.

  Inspired by the life of Teresa Saporiti, the first Donna Anna. Teresa, an aspiring singer, was turned into a vampire by a Czech aristocrat. As bad as the need for blood are the memories of the victims, which remain with the taker. Teresa has learned to deal with them, but Mozart, whom the baroness bit at the same time, never did and died painfully because he could not bring himself to satisfy the unnatural thirst. In San Francisco in 1906, Teresa meets Ugo, a Silician werewolf with a very curious past of his own. They become partners, guarding each other’s backs. In twenty-first-century Milan, an egoistic baritone thinks he has figured out Teresa’s secret and abducts Ugo to obtain the blood that holds Mozart’s memories.

• GeekGirlCon Trivia Competition 8pm at Dad Watsons 3601 Fremont Ave N in Seattle
  Gather your geekiest friends around and put your thinking caps on! GeekGirlCon invites you to a geeky trivia competition.

  Hosted by Geeks Who Drink, the most knowledgeable geeks in Washington will go head to head in this trivia night at Dad Watson’s for fame, fortune, and ultimate geek bragging rights!

  Teams up to six players. Entry fee is $5 per person. Compete to win 30% of the total entry fees and GeekGirlCon button packs. This is an all-ages event.

  During our friendly competition, they will also be collecting canned food to donate to the Ballard Food Bank. You can get in your good deed of the day and compete for glory and riches – all in one place!

There is a good crop of geeky movies coming up in the next few months and this week we’re giving you the rundown. We’ve got the previews, our thoughts on the films and we’ll tell you whether you should see it in the theater, watch it at home or skip it all together.

We also talk to Danielle from Seattle’s Pacific Science Center about the exhibit Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination and we review the locally-produced documentary Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man.

All that plus some geek news and Shannon watches another Dared Movie.

Our Geek Week

• Playing Poker Night at the Inventory on the PC
• Read Other Kingdoms by Richard Matheson (see Shannon’s review here)
• Playing Knights of the Old Republic on the PC
• Read Deathless by Catherine M. Valente (see Matt’s review here)
• Read Dark Jenny by Alex Bledsoe (see Matt’s review here)
• Playing You Don’t Know Jack on XBox360

Spring/Summer Movies

Sucker punch


Source Code


Super


Your Highness


Sceam 4


Rio


Thor


Priest


Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides


X-Men First Class


Super 8


Green Lantern

Geekly Extras

• Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man



• Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination

Dare Shannon to Watch a bad Movie

This week’s bad movie was Laserblast (1979)

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.

Contest!

Win a Pile o’ Books!

We have a pile of books courtesy of Tor and Ace and we want to give them to YOU!

The books include:

• River Marked by Patricia Briggs
• Glen Cook’s third book in the Instumentalities of the Night series Surrender to the Will of the Night
• The Bird of the River by Kage Baker
• SIGNED COPIES of Paul of Dune and the brand new book Hellhole by Brian Herbert & Kevin J Anderson!

This contest starts today and we’ll be picking the winner during our show on April 14. We will ship the books to you via USPS.

“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!

News

• Epic Game Day II is April 30! Event submissions are open now if you want to host a game!
• Wolverine Pirate Pleads Guilty to Copyright Infringement

Music

Music this week was ‘Geek Rock’ and ‘Far From Home’ by Sci-Fried off their new album Future Tense.

Next Episode: April 14 – Episode #96 – Even Yet Still More Geek Music! Interviews and samples from another selection of geek musicians.

Seattle Geekly by http://www.seattle-geekly.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

– A selection of some of the great geek events going on in the Greater Seattle area this week –

Kind of a quiet this week but there are still a couple of great events going on this weekend.

The Rocky Horror Show is being performed live on stage at Open Circle Theater, 2222 2nd Ave Seattle, this weekend. Shows are at 7:30pm Friday and Saturday and 4pm on Sunday.

In this fresh take on Richard O’Brien’s stage production of The Rocky Horror Show, forget everything you know of the movie and prepare yourself to enter into someone’s dirty little secret.

COSTUMES ARE ENCOURAGED! HOWEVER – WATER GUNS/RICE/ANYTHING ELSE THAT COULD BE THROWN AT CAST IS PROHIBITED FOR THE ACTORS’ SAFETY. Thank you!

* Please note: Due to some nudity and adult situations, no one under 18 will be admitted.

Tickets available at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/162535 $18 in advance, $20 at the door and VIP tickets available for $25, which includes prime seating, being seated by Magenta and served snacks.

Manos: The Hands of Felt opens this weekend at Odd Duck Studio, 1214 10th Ave, Seattle. Shows are Friday and Saturday at 10:30pm.

“The Worst Movie of All Time brought to Terrifying Puppet Life!”

The hands behind “The Knights of Nowhere” return with the story of Harold P. Warren, a man with a dream. A dream of filming a low budget horror film. But time is running out for Hal. Will uncooperative puppet actors, an ill-fated wrong turn and an evil cult spell his doom?

Inspired by “Manos – The Hands of Fate,” Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the story behind “Manos”, MANOS – THE HANDS OF FELT features characters, scenes and songs from the original movie, cut with a healthy dose of puppet mayhem.

Tickets: $12, $10 for students/seniors/TPS/Military/Veterans/Union Members/people escorting a puppet
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/164180 or at the door

Finally, Toy Box Trio is playing two shows this weekend as part of the Moisture Festival. You can see them at 3pm on Saturday and Sunday at Hale’s Palladium, 4301 Leary Way NW, Seattle. For more info and tickets go to http://www.moisturefestival.org/events/view/153.

– A selection of some of the great geek events going on in the Greater Seattle area this week –

We’ve talked about Gamestorm and how much we enjoyed going the last two years and this weekend is your chance to find out how much fun it is for yourself. Gamestorm 13 starts Thursday, March 24th at 2 PM at the Hilton Vancouver Washington and runs non-stop until the hotel kicks them out on Sunday. Whether you like boardgaming, mainstream RPGs, indie RPGs, miniatures, wargames, even video games there will be something for you at Gamestorm. Full weekend passes are $45 and day passes are available.

More events to watch out for under the fold

TONIGHT

• Hugo House Happy Hours for Writers 6pm at Richard Hugo House 1634 11th Ave. Seattle
  Hugo House Hosts Happy Hours for Writers
  Because writing doesn’t always have to be lonely

  This winter, on the fourth Tuesday of the month from 6-8 p.m., Richard Hugo House presents a new program, Write Out, a happy hour for writers to do what they do most-or should do more of: write.

  Each Write Out features a writing prompt offered by a local author, who will also be on hand writing. January’s Write Out features Cooper Canyon Press poet Ed Skoog. Stacey Levine, author of “Frances Johnson,” a Washington State Book Award finalist, is the featured writer in February, and local poet Nicole Hardy provides the writing prompt for March.

  If the featured author’s writing prompt doesn’t work for you, a grab-bag of writing prompts and exercises and a small library of books on writing provide additional inspiration. And to further inspire you, happy hour specials will be available at Hugo House’s bar.

  There are no rules for Write Out-just come any time between 6 and 8 p.m. and write. Hugo House provides pens and paper, but if you have a lucky pen or a favorite journal, you are encouraged to bring it. Laptops are fine, too. Hugo House will have power strips. Light conversation is acceptable, but Write Out is about writing. Bring something you’re working on or start something fresh-just be ready to write!

  Write Out is a free event. More details at hugohouse.org, or call (206) 322-7030.

Wednesday

• Paul & Storm: Nerds & Music 7:30pm at the Triple Door 216 Union Street, Seattle
  An evening of music performances both by and for nerds. (“Normals” are welcome, too) You can think of them as sort of mini-w00tstocks—except without Adam and Wil, and with fewer performers, and with all music acts, and not 4-5 hours long, and not called “w00tstock”. But otherwise, exactly the same.

  Who will be performing in them, you ask? Good question, we answer; these shows will feature our good friends Hank Green (he of the vlogbrothers and the Nerdfighters and the 83,762 other awesome projects) and Mike Phirman (he of the Mike Phirman and Hard ‘n Phirm). I know, right? Will there be other surprise guests? Maybe! It’s not for us to say. (Well, yeah, it is; but we’re just not sure yet)

  Tickets available at http://tripledoor.net/Calendar/Events/March-2011/Paul-and-Storm-w–special-guests.aspx?date=2011-03-23

Friday

• Open Circle Theater presents The Rocky Horror Show 7:30pm at Open Circle Theater, 2222 2nd Ave Seattle
  In this fresh take on Richard O’Brien’s stage production of The Rocky Horror Show, forget everything you know of the movie and prepare yourself to enter into someone’s dirty little secret.

  While on the way to visit a friend, Brad and Janet run into car troubles and find themselves captive to someone else’s idea of “hospitality”. Dr. Frank ‘N’ Furter and his servants invite the young couple into their home for a night of science experiments including experimentation of the flesh. In this down and dirty rock version of the cult classic, madness really does take control as minds and bodies are bent and no one will ever be the same.

  COSTUMES ARE ENCOURAGED! HOWEVER – WATER GUNS/RICE/ANYTHING ELSE THAT COULD BE THROWN AT CAST IS PROHIBITED FOR THE ACTORS’ SAFETY. Thank you!

  * Please note: Due to some nudity and adult situations, no one under 18 will be admitted.

  Tickets available at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/162535
  $18 in advance, $20 at the door

  VIP tickets available for $25, which includes prime seating, being seated by Magenta and served snacks.

  The Rocky Horror Show plays Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sundays at 4pm through April 16

Saturday

• Outfitting the Fleet: The Costume Design of Battlestar Galactica 2pm at the EMP|SFM 325 5th Avenue North, Seattle
  EMP Presents Outfitting the Fleet: The Costume Design of Battlestar Galactica featuring designer Glenne Campbell

  In conjunction with its newest exhibition Battlestar Galactica: The Exhibition, EMP will host a special panel discussion with costume designer Glenne Campbell. Campbell’s design credits include Battlestar Galactica (2003), Caprica, the upcoming Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome as well as many other television and film projects.

  Campbell and her design team will give fans a behind-the-scenes look at the iconic costuming of the re-imagined 2003 series of Battlestar Galactica. From William Adama’s flight suit to Gaius Baltar’s Lab Coat, Campbell will discuss the design process of initial concepts, early renderings, and outfitting actors on set. Battlestar Galactica: The Exhibition curator Brooks Peck will moderate the panel. The discussion will include an audience Q&A session.

  $5 for EMP members; $10 general public. Tickets on sale now for EMP members and 3/9/2011 for the general public. For more info, visit www.empsfm.org.

Sunday

• Dork Forest Live Podcast 5pm at The Vera Project 305 Harrison Street, Seattle
  Come see a live taping of comedian Jackie Kashian’s Dork Forest podcast!

  Special guests include Ed Brubaker, Peter Bagge, Gus Lopez and more!

  Tickets are $8 through TicketWeb

  http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=3575395

- Kick off your week with a roundup of the geek news you may have missed -

One last bit of Emerald City ComiCon news to start off. We got word on attendance numbers from the man himself, Jim Demonakos the founder and organizer of ECCC. He tells us that 32,000 people were at the convention center over the course of the weekend versus 20,000 last year. To put that in a little broader context, San Diego reported 130,000 attendees last year but in my book being smaller than San Diego is not at all a bad thing.

The Monday News is under the fold

Comics

• Stumptown Comics Fest has announced the final list of 2011 nominees for the Stumptown Comic Arts Awards and you get to decide the winners! The nominees include:
  Best Artist:
  • Emily Carroll – His Face All Read
  • Roman Muradov – Etc and A Cave
  • Stuart Immonen – Moving Pictures
  • Brian Hurtt – The Sixth Gun
  • Brecht Evans – Night Animals

  Best Writer:

  • Carla Speed McNeil – Finder: Voice
  • Cullen Bunn – The Sixth Gun
  • Greg Rucka – Stumptown
  • Aaron Renier – The Unsinkable Walker Bean
  • Ben Marra – Benjamin Marra’s The Incredibly Fantastic Adventures of Maureen Down (A Work of Satire and Fiction)

  Best Letter:

  • Johnny Ryan – Prison Pit Vol. 2
  • Madeline Flores – The Girl and the Gorilla
  • Carla Speed McNeil – Finder: Voice
  • Aaron Renier – The Unsinkable Walker Bean
  • Brittney Sabo – Francis Sharp in the Grip of the Uncanny, Vol. 1

  Best Colorist:

  • Brecht Evans – Night Animals
  • Emily Carroll – His Face All Read
  • Alec Longstreth – The Unsinkable Walker Bean
  • Ben Costa – Pang: The Wandering Shaolin Monk
  • Sarah Glidden – How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less

  Best New Talent:

  • Michael DeForge
  • Adam Hines
  • Emi Lenox
  • Sarah Oleksyk
  • Julia Gfrörer

  Reader’s Choice:

  Voters are asked to list up to three of their favorite comics from April 2010 to April 2011. Any graphic novel, trade paper back collection, single issue or ongoing series, small press or online – whatever title has the most votes as determined by the readers will win this special prize.

  To vote in this year’s awards visit stumptowncomics.com/awards_ballot. After voting, you will receive an email which must be confirmed in order for your vote to be counted. Winners will be announced at the Stumptown Comics Fest, the largest creator-focused comics convention in the Pacific Northwest, which will be held April 16-17 at the Oregon Convention Center.

• The Stumptown Award nominated writer Greg Rucka is returning to Marvel with a new ongoing Punisher series. The announcement was made at the Marvel’s Cup O’ Joe panel at C2E2 this weekend. Rucka said that he will be taking a “back to basics” approach on the book;
  

  There is a baseline that is very clear in this character, in my opinion, and I have no urge to f*ck with that at all. In all sincerity. It’s working, it’s dynamite for the character, it defines him well — I’m not going to go in there and mess with that, no way.

  Newsarama is reporting that the series will have art by Marco Checchetto of Squadron Supreme fame and will debut in August.

Manga

• Publisher Kodansha USA announced in a press release that it will be reprinting the entire run of Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon. In addition to “deluxe editions” of the series, which has been out of print since 2005, they will be releasing the two-volume prequel series Codename: Sailor V which has never been published in the United States. The original 18 volumes have been condensed into 12 volumes covering the main storyline, and two volumes dedicated to short stories. They will be released bi-monthly starting in September of this year.

Movies

• Warner Brothers has released a behind-the-scenes teaser video for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 into the wild. Enjoy!
  

Tabletop

• Atlas Games has announced Cthulhu Gloom, the newest addition to their line of “transparent” card games. Cthulhu Gloom can be played either as a stand alone game or as an expansion for the basic Gloom card game. It continues with the basic Gloom mechanic of having players try and inflict the most suffering on the members families they control before engineering their tragic deaths and will also add two new mechanics, Story cards and Transformation cards. Cthulhu Gloom was designed by Keith Baker and will be in stores this August.

TV

• The first picture of actress Adrianne Palicki in her role as Wonder Woman for the new NBC series has been making the rounds (click the thumbnail for full size). Reviews have been mixed from fans and other interested parties. On the positive side, original TV Wonder Woman Lynda Carter told E Online that she liked the new costume;
  

  ‘I think she looks fabulous,’ said Carter, who originated the role in the classic (and oh-so-campy!) series in the mid-’70s. ‘It’s a new look and, jeez, her body looks fantastic.’

  On the negative side we have Fox News. Fox responded to the photo by republishing an article from July about the Jim Lee-designed costume from the Wonder Woman comics on which the new TV costume is based. In the article they complain that Wonder Woman has “been stripped of her patriotism” with the removal of the stars-and-stripes motif of the original costume. I would make the attempt explain to the Fox writers that Wonder Woman is not actually an American but I’m afraid if I did they would start calling for her to be deported.

• Good news for fans of Being Human. Both the BBC and *shudder* Syfy have announced new seasons for their respective incarnations of the series, a fourth for the BBC and a second for *shudder* Syfy. Both versions of the show will begin airing new episodes next year.

Finishing off our ECCC coverage this week, we have more interviews recorded on Saturday and Sunday at the con. In this episode we talk with writer Eric Trautmann, webcomic creators Neal Bailey, Alina Pete, and Rebecca Hicks, artist Echo Chernik, we catch up with Creator’s Edge editor-in-chief Chuck Messinger and Ed Ward the founder and operator of the Paper Windows comic subscription service. We were also lucky enough to sit down with William F. Nolan, author of Logans Run, among many other things, who was celebrating his 83rd birthday at Emerald City!

Beyond our Emerald City coverage, we also talk with with bestselling authors Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson about their new book Hellhole and get the rundown on the upcomming Gamestorm 13 with Outreach Coordinator Jason.

It’s a long show this week but we’re cramming in enough goodness to keep you going as we return to our bi-weekly format.

Our Geek Week

• Listening to the audiobook of Cat’s Claw by Amber Benson
• Played Crush the Castle
• Read River Marked by Patricia Briggs
• Reading Journal of a UFO Investigator by David Halperin
• Watching Face Off on SyFy

Emerald City ComiCon 2011

• Eric Trautmann (Interview starts at 11:30)



• Neal Bailey creator of Cura Te Ipsum (Interview starts at 17:06)



• Alina Pete creator of Weregeek and Moose Head Stew (Interview starts at 22:19)



• Echo Chernik (Interview starts at 26:11)



• Rebecca Hicks creator of Little Vampires (Interview starts at 29:15)



• William F. Nolan (Interview starts at 35:19)



• Chuck Messinger founder of Creators Edge Press (Interview starts at 52:02)



• Ed Ward founder and operator of Paper Windows (Interview starts at 55:48)

Geekly Extras

• Gamestorm 13 (Interview starts at 59:06)



• Hellhole by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson (Interview starts at 1:05:45)

CONTEST!

Win a Pile o’ Books!

We have a pile of books courtesy of Tor and Ace and we want to give them to YOU!

The books include:

• River Marked by Patricia Briggs
• Glen Cook’s third book in the Instumentalities of the Night series Surrender to the Will of the Night
• The Bird of the River by Kage Baker
• SIGNED COPIES of Paul of Dune and the brand new book Hellhole by Brian Herbert & Kevin J Anderson!

This contest starts today and we’ll be picking the winner during our show on April 14. We will ship the books to you via USPS.

“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!

News

• Epic Game Day 2 is April 30!
• First Cast Photo from Ron Moore’s 17th Precinct: It’s a BSG reunion!
• Syfy Renews ‘Face Off’ For Second Season
• HBO Issues First Two Episode Descriptions For GAME OF THRONES!!

Music

Music this week was ‘Avatard’ and ‘Grimm’s Lament’ by H2Awesome from their forthcoming album. Keep an eye on their website for the official release date!

Next show: Episode #95 on March 31st – Spring and Summer Movies: From Suckerpunch to Green Lantern!

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