The following article was written for Geekscape.net. For unfortunate reasons, the website feels like since it's been 2011 for over 11 days no one is interested in top 10 lists. The boat has sailed for this final instance of remembering 2010. I think it's a pretty great article (although how do you not like something you wrote? It feels like if you do, you shouldn't be writing at all). Also check out my review for hair-metal band The Scorpions newest (and final) album Sting in the Tail.
So 2010 has officially come to a close. So far 2011 is barely peaking the horizon but let’s be honest… it looks promising. 2010 (much like every year) had it’s ups and it’s downs. We saw some serious tragedy this year with January 12th 7.0 Earthquake that devastated Haiti, and we saw even more tragedy when a group of musicians decided to remake the mediocre 80’s song “We Are The World” to help raise money for said-Haiti disaster. This year we’ve even dealt with the Wikileaks scare when an online publisher did with internal reports on the “War on Afghanistan” what Facebook does to all of our lives. And while all these things are important, that’s not what Geekscape is about. Why talk about government information being released this year when we’d much rather discuss what was more offensive at the 2010 MTV VMAs… Will.i.am’s blackface or Lady Gaga winning every award (um… I mean… her Meat Dress).
So for you lovely Geekscapists I have compiled a list of the Top 10 Greatest Moments in Pop Culture
10. Double Rainbow, Possibly Triple Rainbow – When nature enthusiasts Paul Vasquez went camping one day he saw in the sky something amazing. Something so amazing he grabbed the nearest camera and quickly videotaped it to show the world the amazing Double Rainbow. Soon Paul found himself one of the top videos on youtube and being interviewed by Jimmy Kimmel. I can understand being excited about stuff, but rainbows? I mean I stopped being excited by rainbows when I learned I could make them myself using a hose.
9. Sandra Bullock wins Oscar and Razzie – Sandra Bullock did something this year no one has ever done before, she managed to win the Oscar for The Blind Side as well as the Razzie for All About Steve the same year. This event did two things; it showed the Sandra Bullock will apparently act in anything but also it showed that Bullock has a sense of humor when she showed up at the Razzies handing out free copies of All About Steve.
8. Myspace is Dead Long Live Facebook – This month Myspace and Facebook made a joint announcement. Myspace is now just a “Music Site” and no longer a “Social Network”. It really shows how quickly you can go from the top to the bottom in the world of the internet.
7. Fucking Magnets – When Insane Clown Posse released their single Miracles, I don’t think Violent J or Shaggy 2 Dope expected the entire world to cling to six simple lyrics “Fucking Magnets, How Do They Work?”. Next thing we know there are SNL parodies and internet memes all over explaining Magnets; the best comes (not surprisingly) from cracked.com with their Science book for Juggalos
6. Fuck you by Cee-Lo Greene – Rapper and Gnarl’s Barkley singer came out of nowhere with his single Fuck You (or Forget You if you’re a fucking pussy). The vulgar but catchy Motown throw-back track was an instant internet hit receiving not one but two music videos and bringing Cee-Lo Greene into a much needed lime-light. The Song has even been covered multiple times ranging from great (William Shatner) to the terrible (Glee)
5. Every Comedian in the World Gets a Podcast – The World of Podcasting always was a decent place for Comedy with Scott Aukerman’s Comedy Death Ray, Doug Benson’s Doug Loves Movies and Jim Pardo’s Never Not Funny, but this year it felt like every Comedian on the planet got their own podcasts with WTF with Marc Maron, The Nerdist With Chris Hardwick and Pod F Thomkast with Paul F Thompkins to name a few. Even Geekscapes own Brian Walton has his own podcast now with Live Nude Geeks
4. Conan leaves and returns to television – In Early 2010 Conan did his last Tonight Show after just 7 months of being the host. Unjust? Possibly. But it gave us a heart-felt goodbye (“if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen”) followed by a new show on TBS that is ten-times funnier and edger than his NBC days. Conan is an extremely talented interviewer and seems like a great guy, some people (Corey Roberts) think people are giving him too much credit, but sometimes it’s just nice to see the nice guy end up on top.
3. Muppets Make a Comeback – The Muppets for a while were the Kings of TV. But back in 1990 when Muppet creator Jim Henson sadly and suddenly passed away. By 2000 the Muppets were nothing but low-budget TV-movie characters. However thanks to youtube the Muppets have been making a comeback in a BIG way. Also this year it was announced there would be a new Muppet movie, which is coming out next Thanksgiving, a Muppet-aholic like myself is completely overjoyed.
2. Geekscape gets a booth at San Diego Comic Con and new site – Okay, yeah call me lame. Sure this wasn’t something that changed the world this year; but for this community it’s something huge. Not only did we get a new and impressive website; we got a booth at San Diego comic con where we were able to reach multiple new listeners and users. Not to mention we caused some controversy with Evan Stone’s Riddler signing autographs; but luckily someone stabbed someone else in the eye and took the attention off of us.
1.Bed-Intruder Song – “He’s climbing in your window and snatching your people up, so hide your kids, hide your wife and hide your husband because they’re raping everyone around here”. One simple heart-felt comment by a brother sincerely concerned about his sister’s well being ended up leading to a hit single that caught the entire nations ear. This song is one of the catchiest songs I’ve heard in years and it’s simply a news-report in auto-tune.
Showing posts with label Geekscape. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geekscape. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Sunday, December 5, 2010
How Jonathan London Ruined My Social Life (The 25 Songs of Christmas Part 5)
Today Geekscape founder Jonathan London turns 32 years old. While having a long and bizarrely complicated relationship with Mr. London I only actually got to meet him in person very recently. He is without a doubt one of (if not the) biggest driving force/motivation to my move to LA in July. Geekscape has indirectly (and directly) been one of the most important things in my life but I've never really told the whole story. I think it'd make an awesome blog entry myself.
Back in December of 2006 I got my first laptop; it's currently been my ONLY laptop. It was a mac-book pro that my friend (who worked for Apple) got me using an employee discount. I now had access to iTunes and I decided I'd check out these things called podcast I've been hearing so much about. I didn't really know what I wanted and somehow (and I honestly don't remember how anymore) i noticed a title that struck my interest... Geekscape. The episode was Episode 5: Nutpunch featuring co-host Scott Culver, to this day he is still one of my top 5 favorite Geekscape guests (despite NEVER returning for a second episode). I remember laughing my ass off and feeling like I could really relate to these guys, but what really struck my attention was hearing these two guys talking about bands like Don't Look Down who I knew of, but only thought I knew them because of growing up in the Tri-State area.
Using Facebook and Myspace I decided to track down the creator and host of this show, Jonathan London. London will tell you, he's one of the easiest internet personalities to get in touch with and it's true. His facebook has his screen name on it and I immediately IMed him, I told him how I just watched an episode and how great it was and we talked about different punk bands. Everyone week I'd listen to the new episode and then IM him to tell him how much I liked it. But that was really the extent of our friendship and relationship, until December of 2007.
Geekscape was getting ready to celebrate it's one year and I contacted Jonathan with an idea. "You should do a what a difference a year makes type segment, looking back at the first episode and seeing how far we came". Jonathan's answer was simply "if you're willing to watch episode 1 and give me notes... I'll do just that." So I did.
I think this single decision of doing exactly what he asked me to do is what changed our friendship. He started asking me if I'd be interested in doing other things, Join the forums, run the youtube page, run the facebook page, even write an occasional article. Geekscape started to become a second home; I'd spend hours on the forums, sometimes refreshing the page every couple minutes to see if someone had posted a new post. I even got my girlfriend at the time to become a scapist, and when my girlfriend dumped me... Geekscape was there to support me in ways that I was never able to ask my friends here in PA for help.
I began to distance myself from Geekscape in the spring of 2009. I just stopped watching, I'd still post occasionally, but I really stayed out of the loop. I'll never completely know why I did this, but I did. By the winter of 2009 I was at my lowest. I had no girlfriend, no job and was living with a married couple (though very good friends). I never really felt at home there, while M & L were very welcoming, I couldn't help but feel like I was always in the way, invading a honeymoon if you will. During this unhappiness, I started to watch the months of old Geekscape episodes.
Then I watched their coverage of that Summer's San Diego Comic Con. As I watched I couldn't help but think to myself... why aren't I out there? Almost a day or two later it was announced that Geekscape was going to have a booth at Comic Con that year and needed someone to run the Merch table. I contacted Jonathan and asked (and begged a little) for the job. If I got my own plane ticket and willing to help put up for the Hotel room... the job was mine. I accepted.
I got more involved with the site again, writing articles, running the twitter account, I was re-energized. As the trip kept nearing, I got more and more excited. I had already decided that I was going to move to LA the following summer, but this was the first time I'd ever actually see the city. I had developed many friendships with scapists and was curious to see how we'd get along. While i predicted that I'd hang out with a bunch of the scapists alot and only really see Jonathan here and there, I couldn't be further from wrong. I didn't anticipate that London and I would get along super well, in the end he was the one of the two people I became closed with. Perhaps it was just because we were forced to spend lots of time together between driving to San Diego and manning the booth together... but I'd like to believe it was because we both respected each other as creative minded people.
Regardless, July I'll be finally moving to LA. It's something I've said I'd do for over 13 years, but it's actually happening now, because of one man and his website. Thank You Jonathan London, you're one of the biggest inspirations in my life and I hope you have the Happiest of Birthdays.
In your honor I dedicate the 5th song in the 25 songs of Christmas to you; It's the Mark Hoppus and Ben Fold's covering the Blink 182 classic "Happy Holidays, You Bastard"
Back in December of 2006 I got my first laptop; it's currently been my ONLY laptop. It was a mac-book pro that my friend (who worked for Apple) got me using an employee discount. I now had access to iTunes and I decided I'd check out these things called podcast I've been hearing so much about. I didn't really know what I wanted and somehow (and I honestly don't remember how anymore) i noticed a title that struck my interest... Geekscape. The episode was Episode 5: Nutpunch featuring co-host Scott Culver, to this day he is still one of my top 5 favorite Geekscape guests (despite NEVER returning for a second episode). I remember laughing my ass off and feeling like I could really relate to these guys, but what really struck my attention was hearing these two guys talking about bands like Don't Look Down who I knew of, but only thought I knew them because of growing up in the Tri-State area.
Using Facebook and Myspace I decided to track down the creator and host of this show, Jonathan London. London will tell you, he's one of the easiest internet personalities to get in touch with and it's true. His facebook has his screen name on it and I immediately IMed him, I told him how I just watched an episode and how great it was and we talked about different punk bands. Everyone week I'd listen to the new episode and then IM him to tell him how much I liked it. But that was really the extent of our friendship and relationship, until December of 2007.
Geekscape was getting ready to celebrate it's one year and I contacted Jonathan with an idea. "You should do a what a difference a year makes type segment, looking back at the first episode and seeing how far we came". Jonathan's answer was simply "if you're willing to watch episode 1 and give me notes... I'll do just that." So I did.
I think this single decision of doing exactly what he asked me to do is what changed our friendship. He started asking me if I'd be interested in doing other things, Join the forums, run the youtube page, run the facebook page, even write an occasional article. Geekscape started to become a second home; I'd spend hours on the forums, sometimes refreshing the page every couple minutes to see if someone had posted a new post. I even got my girlfriend at the time to become a scapist, and when my girlfriend dumped me... Geekscape was there to support me in ways that I was never able to ask my friends here in PA for help.
I began to distance myself from Geekscape in the spring of 2009. I just stopped watching, I'd still post occasionally, but I really stayed out of the loop. I'll never completely know why I did this, but I did. By the winter of 2009 I was at my lowest. I had no girlfriend, no job and was living with a married couple (though very good friends). I never really felt at home there, while M & L were very welcoming, I couldn't help but feel like I was always in the way, invading a honeymoon if you will. During this unhappiness, I started to watch the months of old Geekscape episodes.
Then I watched their coverage of that Summer's San Diego Comic Con. As I watched I couldn't help but think to myself... why aren't I out there? Almost a day or two later it was announced that Geekscape was going to have a booth at Comic Con that year and needed someone to run the Merch table. I contacted Jonathan and asked (and begged a little) for the job. If I got my own plane ticket and willing to help put up for the Hotel room... the job was mine. I accepted.
I got more involved with the site again, writing articles, running the twitter account, I was re-energized. As the trip kept nearing, I got more and more excited. I had already decided that I was going to move to LA the following summer, but this was the first time I'd ever actually see the city. I had developed many friendships with scapists and was curious to see how we'd get along. While i predicted that I'd hang out with a bunch of the scapists alot and only really see Jonathan here and there, I couldn't be further from wrong. I didn't anticipate that London and I would get along super well, in the end he was the one of the two people I became closed with. Perhaps it was just because we were forced to spend lots of time together between driving to San Diego and manning the booth together... but I'd like to believe it was because we both respected each other as creative minded people.
Regardless, July I'll be finally moving to LA. It's something I've said I'd do for over 13 years, but it's actually happening now, because of one man and his website. Thank You Jonathan London, you're one of the biggest inspirations in my life and I hope you have the Happiest of Birthdays.
In your honor I dedicate the 5th song in the 25 songs of Christmas to you; It's the Mark Hoppus and Ben Fold's covering the Blink 182 classic "Happy Holidays, You Bastard"
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