Saturday, September 20, 2008

Da Yoopers - Live on Stage With Da Yoopers '08 (Sheboygan Co. Fair)

Da Yoopers - Live on Stage With Da Yoopers Sheboygan Co. Fair


We packed 'em in again for some hot fun in the sun!
Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI

Hoolie enjoys a laugh with the audience
Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI

Let's all sing now, "20 Yoopers in a pontoon boat, fishing for Moby Dick!"
Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI

Let's all sing now, "I'm too drungk, boyz, (spit) I'm too drungk, boyz (burp)
All Dat beerz gay me a wittle tummy ache, BARFFF!!!"

Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI

Hoolie and our good friend Chris Hansen (Chris took some of these pics from this show, thanks pal!)
Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI

Here's Lynn with our good friend (Chris's Mom) Barb Hansen.
Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI


Here's Lynn poseing for a pic with Chris..
Hmmm, who does Lynn remind me of with that expression?
Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI


"I WANNA WOCK AND WOE ALL NIGHT, N' PAWTY EVWWWY DAY!"
Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI

Reg rocks the crowd during Turdy Pound Diaper.
Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI

"HE STARTS KICKIN' HIS LEGS ALL OVER DA PLACE"
"EEEEH! DA TURDY POUND DIAPER!"

Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI

Me: "hey Hoolie, whadda ya see?
Hoolie: emmmmmmmm, someting good..
Me: well, come on, whadda ya see, eh?

Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI

Hoolie: "dey're big, really big! I know what dey are now...
Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI


Me: "what are dey?
Hoolie: JOUNCING JILK JAZONGA'S!"
Me:
"I THIRST!"
Sheboygan Co. Fair
Plymoth, WI

Thursday, September 11, 2008

“Family Guy” Spoofs Empire

Fans of the “Family Guy: Blue Harvest” special are in for a treat with the next Star Wars inspired “Family Guy” as the show spoofs Empire Strikes Back next!

Sci-Fi Wire interviewed “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane about the next installment, due to air sometime in the next season on FOX.

“It will be called Something Something Something Dark Side,” MacFarlane teased.

“Lando is played by Mort Goldman, who is the Jewish guy who lives up the street,” Seth MacFarlane said in an interview at Fox’s fall-season premiere party in Beverly Hills, Calif., this week. “We figured, black guy, Jewish guy, why not?”

In the sequel, “Boba Fett is played by the giant chicken,” Peter’s nemesis, MacFarlane said.

As in “Blue Harvest,” Stewie plays Darth Vader, and Chris plays Luke–leading to the awkward moment when Stewie tells Chris that he is his father. “Yeah, basically,” MacFarlane said. “He will have to tell Chris that he’s his father.”

“Family Guy” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT, with new episodes beginning Sept. 28.

Read the full interview here:
Guy To Lampoon Empire (Sci Fi Wire)

Also be sure to check out with our interview with Seth about the “Blue Harvest” special and his love for Star Wars here:
“Family Guy” Creator Reveals Star Wars Cred (Starwars.com)

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Ten Best Sci-Fi Planets

Most planets featured in science fiction tend to be rather generic. These planets are usually convenient celestial bodies upon which to pitch a narrative tent for a few scenes before the plot moves on. Generic planets also tend to be one-note, reflecting some particular environment on Earth. You have your ice-worlds, desert worlds, lava worlds, jungle worlds, water worlds, city worlds, forest worlds (in particular, forests that look like those near the city of Vancouver), earthquake worlds, and so on.

But sometimes an author will create a world whose presence has a weight and ring of truth, a world that feels like it could happily go on existing on its own terms, with or without a protagonist or antagonist strolling around on its surface. Setting aside obviously artificial habitats like ring words or hollowed out asteroids, here are my top ten best science fiction planets, in chronological order:

1. Solaris (1961): You may or may not have liked the films, but Stanislaw Lem’s conception of a world so utterly alien that it defies any genuine human comprehension still resonates.

2. Dune (1965): Best Planet Ever. At first glance, it’s just one of those one-note desert worlds. But Frank Herbert created a complete ecosytem, deep geological history, and a complex native society to go with his sand-covered planet. Dune is no mere backdrop, it drives the plot of Herbert’s complex saga as inexorably as the law of gravity.

3. Annares (1974): Ursula LeGuin’s novel The Dispossessed featured two worlds, a more-or-less straightforward analog for cold-war era Earth, and the far more interesting Annares, where settlers established an anarcho-syndicate-based society in a bid to be free from authoritarian government. LeGuin created a believable society for Annares—including the unpleasant side effects (such as intellectual conservatism) of trying to create a human utopia.

4. Mote Prime (1974): In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s The Mote in God’s Eye, this is the homeworld of the Moties, a species that, due to cosmic happenstance, has been bottled up in its solar system ever since it evolved. Mote Prime is planet which has become a palimpsest, mutely testifying to the endless cycles of technological development and collapse experienced by the trapped Moties.

5. LV-426 (1979): The dread planet that featured briefly in Alien, and was the location for 1986’s Aliens. In both movies, LV-426 is perfectly portrayed as part of a cosmos utterly indifferent to human concerns, such as staying alive.

6. Dagobah (1980): The Star Wars franchise is a planet-producing machine: Tatooine, Yavin IV, Alderan, Hoth, Endor, Coruscant, Naboo, etc, etc. But Dagobah sticks out for its organic messiness and claustrophobic atmosphere that stands in contrast to the typical open spaces that provide the large stages for the movies’ space opera.

7. Lusitania (1986): The setting of Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead, Lusitania is the exception that proves the rule—it is fascinating not because it is a rich world, but because its ecosystem has so little diversity, and the implications that has for the book’s characters.

8. Red, Green and Blue Mars (1993-1996): Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy has become the standard against which all hard science fiction books about Mars are weighed. Beginning in the near future, with the founding of the first permanent outpost on the red planet, and continuing for two centuries as Mars is terraformed, Robinson’s Mars is a meticulously researched and believable fictional version of our solar system neighbor.

9. P2 (2004): P2 is a world orbiting the nearby Barnard’s star, and it is settled by fantastically advanced exiles from the solar system in Wil McCarthy’s Lost in Transmission. Unfortunately, all their technology can’t make up for some basic deficiencies in the carrying capacity of the Barnard system, and what happens to P2 is reminiscent of Flowers for Algernon, but on a planetary scale.

10. Nasqueron (2004): A gas giant, home of the maddeningly unconcerned Dwellers, and location of much of Iain M. Banks’ The Algebraist. Nasqueron becomes not just the huge canvas the Banks requires for his sprawling tales, but also becomes an integral element in the plot, as the protagonist struggles to understand the Dwellers.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Inquisition of the Week: Bat-sequel : Critical Hits

Inquisition of the Week: Bat-sequel



Last week, in preparation for the release of The Dark Knight, we asked which Batman movie was your favorite. The clear winner, with 59%, is Batman Begins, the reimagining with an all-star cast that lead into The Dark Knight. The previous first Batman movie came in second with 20%, and the first animated Batman movie, Mask of the Phantasm, third with 6%.

Since many, many people went out and watched The Dark Knight last weekend (myself included), I thought I’d see where people might think the franchise is headed next. While Batman Begins foreshadowed who would show up in its sequel, (slight spoiler) The Dark Knight merely sets up a new status quo, but one that does suggest that we haven’t seen the last of Bale’s Batman.

So hey, let’s wildly speculate:

Who should appear in the next Batman movie?

If you want to talk about anything in The Dark Knight that would suggest your choice or choices, just be sure to put a spoiler warning in front of it.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Hi-5: Five Hottest Women Who Secretly Play Dungeons & Dragons - 5/16/2008

Hi-5: Five Hottest Women Who Secretly Play Dungeons & Dragons

Written by Benjamin Hedrick

Ever since man has been inventing activates to entertain him and his friend’s people have ridiculed each activity. Once enough people pick up that activity it loses it nerd status and becomes main stream. The two most recent activities that come to mind are poker and video games… not so much Dungeons & Dragons. Yet, 5.5 million people play every year. Certainly some of them have to be women, and some of those women have to be celebrities. Here are the five hottest candidates.

Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman went to Harvard, the Dungeons and Dragons playing nerd.

I know that I fell for Miss Portman when I saw her in Beautiful Girls; then Garden State put her over the top. Here is why I think she plays D&D: she is wicked smart. She graduated from Harvard and did graduate studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She speaks Hebrew and has studied French, Japanese, German and Arabic. She has guest lectured at Columbia. There is no way that she has been around that many nerds and not gotten into a few heated games of D&D. I think her character class would be Erudite. The Erudite is an alternative to the standard psion class. It is a psionic character who follows a scholarly and self-reflective road to power, instead of a merely self-conscious path like the psion follows. This class fits her to a tee. She reportedly missed the premier of Episode I because she had to study for her high school finals.

Kristen Bell

Kristen Bell seems to only appear on things that nerds like.  Therefore, she plays Dungeons and Dragons.  Air-tight logic, my mans.

She has been quoted as saying that “nerdy is the new cool.” Lets run down the list. Fanboys, a movie about Star Wars fans going to Skywalker ranch -- check. Forgetting Sarah Marshall a movie from the King of the Nerds, Judd Apatow -- check. Comic book style Heroes -- check. Voice of Gossip Girl (sure, you watch it... because your girlfriend makes you) -- no check, but I pity you. So, 3 out of 4 projects with nerds, by nerds, for nerds. Again, she can’t be around that many and not have stumbled upon some 20 sided dice. I think her character class would be the Monk, a martial artist whose unarmed strikes hit fast and hard, a master of exotic powers.

Zooey Deschanel

Zooey Deschanel probably plays Dungeons and Dragons.  She was in that Wizard of Oz thing.  Close enough, right?

I know this is going to be the most debatedly hot chick on the list. I personally find her very sexy, and it is my list. I hate to admit this, but I remember falling for her in Almost Famous -- but I really became enamored with her in The New Guy. Yes, I am the one person who saw that movie. Then, in a move which cemented her in nerd lore, she played one of the title characters in the movie adaptation of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. She always plays the quirky sidekick and is now in an indie band call She & He, so it is not a stretch to think that she is sneaking off to dusty basements, not to snort lines, but to progress her character through the situation the dungeon master has thought up. Since she has mastered being hot, acting and singing, I think her character class would be Bard; the Bard is a performer whose music works magic, a wanderer, a tale-teller and a jack of all trades.

Layla Kayleigh

Layla Kayleigh hosts a video game show, and her Britishness makes her automatically slightly nerdy.  She plays Dungeons and Dragons for sure.

She is a self-professed nerd. She reads "The Economist," she watches Bill Maher, she likes to bowl and she used to work for Al Gore on Current TV. Layla runs the Feed on G4TV’s "Attack of the Show." She is British. If we were betting on which of these five would be the first to step forward and say, “Yes, I constantly roll dice in a non-gambling atmosphere,” she would be the favorite. Layla and Kristen seem to be the most at home in their nerdiness. She has been living on her own since her mother left England for the US when she was 12, so she had to learn at an early age how to gather and process information on her own. Layla has said she was afraid to tell anyone her mother had left for fear that social services would take her away. I think her character class would be Rogue; the Rogue is a tricky, skillful scout and spy who wins battles by stealth rather than brute force.

Scarlett Johansson

I don't honestly believe that Scarlett Johansson plays Dungeons and Dragons.  She's effing hot, though.  Enjoy her inclusion.

Scarlet has come a long way since that slightly pudgy girl in ‘Lost in Translation’. She has gone on to top numerous lists, including Esquire’s Sexiest Woman Alive, and she is the new go-to girl for Woody Allen. She seems smart, or at least she gets cast that way. She is engaged to Van Wilder. She also has a reputation for being a diva, which is the main reason she is on this list. That, and it's a reason for me to stare at pictures of her while I am writing this article. We needed someone who always gets their way, who has to make every decision -- in short, we needed a dungeon master. Step back and think about how many people would be playing Dungeons and Dragons if Scarlett Johansson was their dungeon master. Take some time for the calculations.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008



R2-D2 Talking Ice Bucket With Han Solo Carbonite Ice Tray
Posted by Dustin on May 13, 2008 at 01:01 PM CST:
Check out this super cool R2-D2 ice bucket coming from Wesco that includes an ice tray featuring Han Solo in carbonite!

Monday, May 12, 2008