On Tuesday, July the 22nd, the fantastic British sitcom, SPACED, (from the minds of the people who brought you Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) gets its long-awaited US DVD release.

If you haven’t already imported a copy from the UK, I highly, HIGHLY recommend you pick up a copy of the US release. Highly.

I’ve not met a geek who doesn’t like this show, so get in on the ground floor while you still have the chance to be the one telling people about it.

Spaced: The Complete Series

Defined tags for this entry: comedy, edgar wright, geeky, jessica stevenson, nick frost, simon pegg, spaced, tv

Dear people who care,

Which is better:  1991’s animated Back to the Future series, or 1990’s animated Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure series?

(The latter is not to be confused with 1992’s live-action Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure series.)

I’ve seen episodes of both animated serieses, but they were both so long ago I only have the vaguest of memories, having no recollection of which was better.  Anyone have an opinion on this?

Defined tags for this entry: Back to the Future, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, movies, time travel, tv

With only 3 produced episodes, the first unsuccessful LAW & ORDER spin-off was scrapped due to the fact that, in the end, it was always Hitler that did it.  All that remains of The History Channel’s first dramatic series is this title screen:

Click to embiggify.

Defined tags for this entry: art, Godwin’s law, History Channel, Hitler, inventions, Law & Order, The GIMP, tv

Two things:

1) the superb Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) sitcom SPACED is finally getting a US DVD release.  No word yet on whether music has been changed, but either way this is fantastic news.  Quite possibly the greatest nerd sitcom ever will now be available to lesser geeks everywhere. (And by ‘lesser’ I simply mean unable to acquire/play DVDs from outside of the US easily.  Us uber-geeks already own it on DVD due to thoughtful geek girlfriends.)

2) the ill-conceived McG Amer-remake of SPACED has been given the axe by FOX.  That sound you hear is geeks everywhere rejoicing.

For the uninitiated, here’s a brief clip of what one might expect from this show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ZRGO7HPRU.

Defined tags for this entry: amer-remakes, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WATCH THIS SHOW WHEN THE DVD C, McG, remakes, Simon Pegg, Spaced, tv

I haven’t been sleeping too well as of late, meaning I’ve not really had any dreams. This morning I was trying to come up with the sorts of dreams that I wish I could have, ending up with this:

Click for (slightly) bigger

Defined tags for this entry: androids, art, battlestar galactica, geeky, posters, robots, rosie, summer glau, terminator, the gimp, the jetsons, tricia helfer, tv

Remember a while back when I watched the pilot for CBS’s <i>The Big Bang Theory</i>? 

Remember how much loathing went into my review of it?

No? Here’s a link then: Big Bang Theory: Nothing Intelligent About This Design.

After several months of being told by people that I trust that it’s a really funny show, and also several months of me explaining just why the jokes aren’t funny (my rebuttals sounded hilarious even to me), I decided that perhaps as a geek myself, I may just be too close to the subject matter to see it objectively.  After all, I DO carry a man-purse, I DO have conversations about fiction as if they were real, I DO have difficulty with OCD things like always sitting in the same spot, and I do exhibit most of the social awkwardness that the characters on the show do.  I began to wonder if it would be possible to:

a) objectively view the show with all those things in mind
  and
b) find it funny?

It was with this in mind that D and I sat down to once-and-for-all determine whether the show does, in fact, suck ass as much as it seemed to upon viewing the pilot.  We’ve now watched every episode, and I’m here to report to you that… I was wrong.  I actually like that show quite a bit.  (I stand by my review of the pilot, though, it’s still terrible.)

I’m not sure you realize how much it pains me to not only think this way, but to also publish the thoughts on the internet, but it’s completely true.  Viewed outside the context of a show that I thought should be trying to APPEAL to geeks, it does an excellent job of making FUN OF geeks in a way that geeks like me can totally appreciate.  It’s funny because it’s TRUE.  You just have to get past being insulted by it.  One of my biggest complaints was that it doesn’t accurately reflect geek culture, but now I see that it actually does.  Sure, some things are exaggerated, but it’s very funny, appealing to the primarily non-geek viewers are much as it can to the geek ones.

I hereby have to revoke my completely negative criticism of this show and apologize to the people involved with it.  <i>The Big Bang Theory</i> does have quite a bit of exceptionally funny stuff in it, and would be what I would call a “perfect show” if they’d just get rid of that damned laugh track.  Despite the laugh track, I have to say I like it quite a lot, putting it just a bit under <i>The IT Crowd</i> on my “shows that I actually like” graph.

But you don’t have to take MY word for it…

Defined tags for this entry: Big Bang Theory, experiments, geeky, I was wrong, objective observations, reviews, tv