Here’s a question I never would’ve imagined I’d have an answer to: What does it feel like to have beautiful women dressed up like anime/video-game characters asking YOU for a photo and autograph?

Answer: It feels pretty fucking awesome.

Honestly, easily one of the top ten weekends of my life. Meeting fans from as far away as England and Portugal, signing autographs, doing a panel with Spoony, GPX and the Life & Level guys, hosting my own Q&A panel, watching it get fuller with time and being applauded for broad references to “Babylon 5”, being invited up onstage with the ACTUAL ScrewAttack crew, improvising a “debate” with The Game Underthinker, meeting Keith Apicary, Brentalfloss, The Angry Nerd and the whole crew in the flesh, being treated like a goddamn rock star – or, at least, moderately-noteworthy musician – for posting jokey videos on the internet… EPIC. There’s just no other word for it.

More in-depth type stuff to come but, for now… wow, just wow.

(FYI, I’m doing this from Dallas right now – at the ScrewAttack Gaming Convention, which is pretty damn awesome so far.)

Anyway, the most frequent reaction people are having to yesterday’s casting of Andrew Garfield as the new Spider-Man is how old he is – he’s 27 – compared to everyone else they were looking at to play what was supposed to be a high-school aged version of the character?

Well, you might want to hold your horses: In his writeup of the story, HitFix’s Drew McWeeny (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-6-motion-captured/posts/breaking-sony-pictures-announces-andrew-garfield-for-spider-man) drops some information that’s certainly news to me (if, in fact, it’s news at all.)

Sez Drew: “What we’re hearing now though is that Parker starts the series as a college student, and that makes more sense with this casting.”

So… College-age would mean… the same as the previous movies, just with new actors and an indie rom-com helmer standing in for Sam Raimi? Or is it still “Twilight” with Spider-Man characters? I’m having trouble deciding which bad idea I hate more…

“Spider-Man: The Quest to Retain Movie-Rights” is scheduled to suck in 3D on July 3rd, 2012.

It’s not good.

It’s also not AS bad as you’ve heard.

But yeah, it’s very very not good.

If it makes money, Shayamalan might be “back” jus because he’ll have “proven” he can handle an FX-driven feature. If not… yikes.

http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.5.swf
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/1849-The-Last-Airbender

“Intermission” has more elaboration about Twilight and such: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/7779-The-Problem-With-Twilight

Figures this would come when I’m trying to get some pre-flight sleep…

Yeah, I know this is about a year old at this point…

Are there any of these with Blade?

http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.5.swf
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/1839-The-Twilight-Saga-Eclipse

Because I didn’t have too much to do this week…

Regularly-scheduled episode also scheduled to run on Friday, as well, so nobody freak out.

Original story: http://www.deadline.com/2010/06/alice-eve-joins-x-men-first-class/

Deadline’s Mike Fleming says that Fox wants actress Alice Eve for the (not especially) sought-after role of Emma Frost, aka (but probably not in the movie) “The White Queen,” for Matthew Vaughn’s “X-Men: First Class,” which apparently no one can confirm as being either a “reboot” or a second-prequel following the disasterous “Wolverine” movie. Either way, it’s a “teen years” story for the main group, with Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy as less-old versions of Magneto and Professor X.

Exactly how the “prequel” angle would work when we’ve already seen Magneto and Xavier as “middle aged” men coming to collect Jean Grey as a young girl in the third movie (she’s presumably the same basic age as the rest of the “first class”), unless maybe their taking the opportunity to wipe EVERYTHING from “The Last Stand” completely out-of-continuity, which would actually be fine by me. (FWIW, Frost appeared sans last name via a different actress as “diamond skin girl” in the Wolverine movie.)

If the boxoffice is any indication, you probably DON’T remember Eve as “She” in “She’s Out Of My League.” In any case, fans can now begin The Procedure of processing this information which, in case you’re wondering, goes something like this:

PHASE 1: Awareness.
PHASE 2: Excitement.
PHASE 3: Realization that there’s almost no chance she’ll wear The Costume, thus negating two out of three reasons anyone gives a shit about this character being in the X-Men movies.
PHASE 4: “So is Wolverine in this one or not?”

So… evidently, quite a few folks take offense to me using the word “Teabagger” to refer to the “Tea Party.” Well, y’know what I take offense to? As an American who happens to be living about 15 to 20 minutes from where the ACTUAL “Tea Party” took place? I take offense to one of the defining moments in American and indeed World history – an act of disobedience against actual tyranny by actual freedom fighters – being co-opted by a “movement” that can’t even be bothered to form a coherent ideology outside of “irrationally infuriated.”

So, yeah… I’ll probably keep on using that particular word here and there – just like I’ll keep calling liberal walking-jokes like MoveOn.org, Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan (remember her?) “nutters” and worse. Because it puts a sharp point on things, and gets a “rise” out of people. I make dismissive, bad-taste jokes about things that are comical to me… it’s kind of my “thing.”

BUT…

It also occurs to me that, fairly or not, the preponderance of similar-style mockery in the current political world means that my meaning may be taken more “broadly” than I intend it. So I should probably put this on the record:

I don’t hate “conservatives.” Or “liberals” for that matter. And I’m not an especially big “devotee” of President Obama at this particular point. In fact, I think that Obama – or at least the initial “Obama Phenomenon” – has to shoulder some of the blame for the “Tea” business: Nothing in politics comes into being without bringing an opposite-number with it, and Obama proving that you can build a functional coalition on vauge emotional appeals to “hope and change” meant that you can ALSO build one on vauge emotional appeals to “fear and anger,” and hence, well… you get the idea.

Frankly, I’m fairly “situational” when it comes to ideology – which I suppose falls under “relativism” but my ego keeps telling me to call “thinking on my feet.” There’s a copy of Atlas Shrugged within walking distance of my desk here, and it’s on the same shelf as “Dude, Where’s My Country?” During my daytime commute, the car-radio is almost always tuned to an overwhelmingly-conservative local talk station, and if this were any other night but Friday I’d be typing this with MSNBC on in the background (Rachel Maddow runs the best show on Cable, hands down.) I’m happy to talk, debate, converse and be friends with conservatives, liberals, libertarians, socialists, whatever.

My disdain for the “Tea Partiers” – and thus use of “Teabaggers” – is NOT a disdain for rational Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, etc. I don’t even necessarily have anything specifically against individual people who turn up at the damn rallies… at least not in theory, after all I don’t know ALL of them. My GENUINE disdain lies for the self-proclaimed “public faces” and “leadership” of this thing. Mrs. Palin, Mr. Beck, the various D-list celebrity hangers-on and the “real” politicians who’ve signed on either out of a cynical short-term power grab or because they actually buy it (not sure which is worse.) THOSE are my “Teabaggers” and, no, under the circumstances, I don’t feel particularly bad about giving them a risque nickname.

http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.5.swf
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/1820-Knight-and-Day

Intermission: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/7739-That-Wont-Be-in-the-Movie

Do the math, i.e. the now-resigned General Stanley McChrystal: No four-star U.S. Army General is going to give the kind of interview he did to Rolling freakin’ Stone and NOT expect to get shitcanned for it. If you’re TRYING to lose your job in spectacular fashion, openly mocking your boss is a good way to do it.

So, then: Within the next few months (after “staying out of the spotlight) for a bit, General McChrystal will be on the Teabagger circuit as a “martyr” to Obama’s “disregard for the military” or whatnot, and he’ll probably be a Senatorial (Presidential?) candidate not long after that. Just you watch.