Late night nerd music: Star Wars main theme

File under music that gives me both eargasms and nerdgasms. Enjoy.

United Nations announces seven billionth person born

In other news, the Soylent Corporation has announced that they will be stepping up production of their popular Soylent Green to meet expected increase in demand.

(h/t LA Times)

The Conqueror, or The Movie That Literally Killed People

Okay, before we begin, I just want to address both the the sheer stupidity of this movie's casting and its poster. Let's start with the latter:

Internet Movie Poster Awards

"I fight! I love! I conquer...like a barbarian!"? What does that even mean? Do barbarians conquer any different than non-barbarians? Their tactics and strategy are different when it comes to fighting, I'd imagine, and I don't even want to ponder what loving like a barbarian entails, but it probably isn't pleasant. The whole text both makes no sense and totally sounds like something John Wayne would say at the same time.
Speaking of The Duke, let's move on to casting, namely what in the blue blazes were they thinking? John fricking Wayne as not just Genghis Khan, but Asian? It's a sad and unfortunate truth that back in the day, white actors were sometimes cast to play ethnic characters, like Asians and even Native Americans. Hell, Iron Eyes Cody, famous as the "Crying Indian" from the old Keep America Beautiful ad of the early 70s wasn't Native American at all, but Italian-American. In the case of Asians, makeup artists would use tape to pull back the sides of the eyelids to replicate an Asian person's eyelids and man, that was amazingly uncomfortable to write. Yeah, old Hollywood was pretty racist. Apparently the reason why they cast John Wayne is because he lobbied for it.

Arguably Wayne's worst film, The Conqueror (1956), in which he played Genghis Kahn, was based on a script that director Dick Powell had every intention of throwing into the wastebasket. According to Powell, when he had to leave his office at RKO for a few minutes during a story conference, he returned to find a very enthused Wayne reading the script, which had been in a pile of possible scripts on Powell's desk, and insisting that this was the movie he wanted to make. As Powell himself summed it up, "Who am I to turn down John Wayne?".

 Clearly, The Duke needed a sassy gay friend.

Moving on, let's talk about how this movie actually killed people. You see, someone had the brilliant idea of filming the outdoor scenes near St. George, Utah, which was downwind of the Nevada Test Site, where the military tested nuclear weapons. Of the 220 member cast and crew, 91 got cancer and of those, 46 died. Hell's bells, Dick Powell, the director, died seven years after making The Conqueror. What's worth noting about this is that John Wayne did develop cancer twice afterward. In 1964, he had to have his entire left lung removed because of cancer and he lost his stomach in 1979. The former can be chalked up to his five-six pack a day smoking habit, the latter though seems like it would be caused by something else, especially considering that the cancer other cast and crew developed were varied.

It's a shame he died, really. True, John Wayne's political stances would rub a lot of people the wrong way, but who doesn't love a John Wayne movie and wish he had lived long enough to have done more? A final note on the movie: While it was filmed in 1956, Howard Hughes refused to release it until 1974, which ought to tell you how bad it was.

Supertrain: Yeah, I'm not all that surprised it failed

Wikipedia

Back in 1979, NBC debuted a new show that they were sure would be a big hit - Supertrain. It wasn't and almost slayed the peacock network. The best way to describe the premise is that it was essentially The Love Boat, but on a huge nuclear powered train. A nuclear powered train who's top speed was only about 78mph. You'd think something with a nuke reactor would move faster, but I guess not. Honestly, the idea of a nuclear powered train is more than a little far-fetched, given that trains will sometimes derail or crash into other trains. Anyway, the show featured the tried and true formula of 70s and 80s television, celebrity guests. Like The Love Boat, the episodes centered around the guest stars and you can probably guess their level of quality. The show lasted all of nine episodes and when combined with the lack of revenue from the 1980 Olympics in Moscow - which the United States famously boycotted - it nearly drove NBC to bankruptcy. Oops.

Reading the summaries for the nine episodes, I can see why it failed: they were too similar. I mean, three of the nine involved characters being hunted by hit men and unbelievably, two of those were the first two episodes of the series. Seriously, they aired two episodes a week apart that both featured hired killers. Another two episodes not only revolved around kidnapping plots, but in both episodes, the intended victims were heiresses. I can see why Supertrain flopped, five of the nine episodes aired had similar plots! Brilliant work, guys.

(h/t Wikipedia and Business Pundit)

Not surprisingly, lighting Juggernaut on fire is worse than ineffective

Uncanny X-Men #542

Who knew? Not Cyclops, evidently.

Comic Covers: Amazing Spider-Man #121 and 122

And one of the greatest (or in Spider-Man's opinion, worst) moments in not just the Web Crawler's history, but comics in general. ASM #121-122 is the arc that saw the deaths of both Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborn, the original Green Goblin. The latter got better, though and eventually returned in the 90s during the much maligned Clone Saga. The fact that a supporting character to a superhero was killed off years after the hero has already made his debut was relatively unheard of in comics at the time. Usually, a character is killed off before or sometimes right after the main character becomes a superhero, in order to galvanize them into fighting crime and evil. One of the reasons why I like the Bronze Age of Comics, because writers were willing to do things like this.


Stacy's cause of death was much debated; it was originally unclear whether Goblin killed her before he tossed her off the top of the George Washington Bridge Brooklyn Bridge or if Spider-Man killed her, accidentally snapping her neck when he used to webbing to catch her. She would have been dead either way from hitting the water. Eventually Roy Thomas, an editor at Marvel stated in the letters column of Amazing Spider-Man #125 that it was the latter. Hate to have that hanging over my head.

The reason why Gwen Stacy was killed off was because the writers felt that she and Peter Parker had reached a point in their relationship that marriage was the only option left and they didn't want to go there, because they thought it would age the character too much. They then paired Peter up with Mary Jane and several years later, they got married. So much for the single life.

(h/t to Fortress of Baileytude for the pictures)

Interesting panel from Red Hood and the Outlaws #1

IGN Comics

Red Hood and the Outlaws have gotten a lot of crap since it's inception because of the ridiculous, over-the-top sexualization of Starfire, but this isn't about that. I saw this picture over at The Nerdist and marveled at the way the panels are laid out. It just looks cool as hell.

I'm sure Scott McCloud creamed his pants when that page was put together.

Cool nerd lamp is cool, but overpriced

Nerd Approved

This is an actual lamp that someone made and is selling on Etsy. The downside is that like most things on that website, it's a on-off. On the other hand, they're selling it for over a thousand bucks, so I can't imagine it's going anywhere soon. Seriously, $1,540 for a lamp and a bunch of action figures that you can buy anywhere, plus a can or two of spray paint? All that stuff combined wouldn't even total four hundred bucks and they expect to make over $1100 dollars profit. Talk about price gouging.

Characters shown: J. Jonah Jameson, Thing, Mister Fantastic, Trinity (from The Matrix trilogy), Lara Croft, King Theoden (LOTR), Batman, Wolverine, Spider-Man (possibly, the Etsy page lists him), and Conan the Cimmerian. Frodo is supposed to be on there, but unless he's got the One Ring on, I don't see him.

It's cool as hell, but it's wildly overpriced.

See this list? Yeah, never do these

Underwire made one of the worst mistakes in Geekdom and posted a list of 9 Essential Geek Books You Must Read Right Now. No. Just...no. These kinds of lists always lead to flame wars because everyone has their own opinions on what are and aren't "essential". Oh Underwire, what a can of worms you opened.

Croc Master

YOJOE.COM

When I was a kid, I inherited my brother's smattering of G.I. Joes as he grew older and unfortunately, they were often missing their accessories. I was also fairly ignorant of who most of the characters were, since the Sunbow and DIC cartoons didn't feature all of them, so I had absolutely no idea who Croc Master was and didn't until this week. I think I mostly used him as a heavy muscle/brute whenever I had the Joes throw down with Cobra. He certainly fit the part and the more I look at him, the more I realize that Croc Master bears a strong resemblance to another black mask wearing, musclebound comic book character: Bane, from DC Comics.

JIM SMASH

Clearly, I was not the only one. The resemblance is unintentional, obviously - Croc Master predates Bane by a half decade and unless Chuck Dixon, Graham Nolan, or Doug Moench were fans of the G.I. Joe comic or action figures, it's a purely coincidence.

Speaking of comics, his history there is interesting. Prior to his membership in Cobra, he wrestled crocodiles for a living and even started a business aimed at selling the reptiles as home security. Now there's a business model, what I like to call the "Screw ADT" Plan:  Put a couple crocodiles on your property and you'll never have to worry about burglers, murders, salesmen, or the inevitable visit from Child Protective Services. Cobra somehow heard of this guy and decided to scale his idea up, so they hired to use his crocs to guard the swamps of Cobra Island. Yeah, in the comics, Cobra had their own island, formed after they tricked the United States into launching a nuke at a fault line in I believe the Gulf of Mexico. Brilliant. Anyway, he showed up for work with a bunch of pissed off, psychotic crocodiles and let them loose in the swampland. According to My Useless Knowledge, he then spent the rest of his tenure with the terrorist organization sleeping and collecting paychecks.

During the Cobra Civil War between Serpentor and a fake Cobra Commander, Croc Master sided with the former and after the United States decided to send in the G.I. Joes to help Serpentor (no, seriously), he created a path for them through the swamp. His ultimate fate was not a good one. After the civil war ended (his side lost) and the real Cobra Commander returned, Croc Master was tossed into a freighter along with the fake CC, the real one's son (now there's a story!), and a few others, which in turn was buried under a collapsed volcano. No idea what exactly he did to incur Cobra Commander's wrath, unless it was the civil war thing, but damn, he really pissed him off!

It's disappointing that I never got all the cool accessories that came with my handed down Croc Master, especially the pet crocodile! The newest version of his toy though looks even cooler.

YOJOE.COM

Look at all that stuff!