Best of 2013 – The Annual RENDAR List!
Holy smokes — it’s the final day of 2013.
Reflectin’ on the last twelve months, I have to say that it was a pretty solid year. Am I without financial concerns? Do I wield enough agency to do whatever I please? Have I achieved all my goals? No. No. And no.
But as far as relative simple lives go, mine is a goddamn blessing. I’m surrounded by righteous friends. My zany family has my back. I live with the absolutely babe-tacular Bride of Frankenstein. I’ve got a job I believe in. And I don’t have to travel to a rival village, murder an elder with a rock, and steal the water supply.
Also, they still let me navigate Spaceship OL!
So with my love of life intact, let’s meander through some of my personal favorites from the year TWO-ZERO-ONE-THREE!
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Watch: NASA robot combines OCULUS RIFT + KINECT. Future rules, brah.
NASA ain’t letting the upcoming Robot Apocalypse dissuade them from utilizing current technologies. Until it strikes, of course. Then they’ll just be paste like the rest of us. Until that happens though, they’re doing jazzy things like combining the both the Oculus Rift and XB1’s Kinect. For great justice. Or great…science?
Ming Doyle redesigns Wonder Woman. It rules.
This is old. Don’t care. Ming Doyle. She rules. Redesigned Wonder Woman. It rules. Just found it on Tumblr. That also rules.
Monday Morning Commute: Neon Light, Black Coffee, & Red Blood
With a fresh Pepsi in hand, Absalom took a deep breath and began his tale.
“We’d been tryin’ to get home for ages, and we were all in rough shape. Beat-up. Hungover. Outta gas. And hungry, to boot! There wasn’t no way we’d be able to travel through the night. So I had to call in a favor to woman I’d’ve rather not ever seen again.”
“Waitta second,” interjected the Pie-Eyed intern, sole audience member of this performance, “whereyou says you comed from? Why’s you away inna furs-place?”
“Ah, yes. It’s a long story. But in short, this guy I knew – friend-of-a-friend sort of thing – was all sorts of salty `bout his ex-girlfriend bein’ with another man. So, he assembled a crew to travel `cross a bunch of states and win her back. With nothin’ to do but sit around drinkin’ beers and readin’ science fiction, I volunteered for what I’d assumed would be a grand adventure.”
“Wuzzit?”
“You’re goddamned right it was! I don’t think I’ll ever see nothin’ more glorious than a midnight fist-fight in a donut shop – everything blurrin’ together in a wash of neon light and black coffee and red blood!”
Absalom seized a moment to swish cola across his gums and crack his knuckles, like hitting the reset button on a broken-bodied Storyteller Machine. He flagged down the bartender and re-upped Pie-Eyed’s drink.
“Phanks man, but I dunno if I needa ‘nother.”
“Kid, it ain’t `bout need! Hell, ain’t no needs bein’ met in this entire bar! This place is `bout the Tapioca Populace foolin’ themselves into believin’ that they can even conjure up the notion of danger or excitement or novelty! So drink your drink!”
Pie-Eyed obeyed and Absalom continued.
“So anyways, after spillin’ teeth in the donut shop we attracted some attention, so we had to scram. Hightailin’ it out, we got ourselves into all sorts of trouble. Drinkin’ and fornicatin’ and fightin’. Glorious! But before y’knew it, a three-day drive had mutated into two weeks. Two goddamn weeks.”
“Thazz,” Pie-Eyed slurred and sipped and slurred, “thazz crazy. Whattya do?”
“Well, with the gas-gauge on E, the backseat-keg on its last pint, and the paper absent from our wallets, I decided to rely on the generosity of Susy.”
“Who’s Susy?”
“Susy,” Absalom paused to take a rip of Pepsi and stare into the middle distance, “Susy’s a goddamn witch.”
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Come one, come all! This here’s the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! What’s that, you ask? Well, once a week Spaceship OL has to touch down on a nearby moon or satellite-weigh station for refueling purposes. During this time, I share the upcoming itinerary with the crew, detailing the means by which I’ll be navigating our rusty pop-culture mind-vessel through the Omniverse. After sharing my plans, the floor is opened up and everyone is encouraged to share their prospective space-maps.
In other words, we nerd out about the various ways we’ll be entertaining ourselves.
Let’s do the damn thing!
Baller: DOLPHINS GET STONED by sucking on puffer fish.
Dolphins, man. The fucking best. Actually they’re raging fucking assholes. Or at least some of them are. Don’t want to be Dolphinist or something. Whatever. So the ones who are assholes need to hang out with the more chill of their kind. Take some fucking rips off of the ole puffer fish.
Cosplay: Lady Loki ain’t impressed with our mortal selves.
I love me some Lady Loki. Even if she doesn’t love me. Look at her right here, just like “Pfft. Humans. All squishy, rotting, whatevs.”
Hit the jump for the full extent of her dismissiveness.
WUT Rumor: ‘FANTASTIC FOUR vs. X-MEN’ MOVIE being considered by Fox.
Fox is all like “Hey, fukk u Marvel! You may own the rights to like 75% of ur properties but that doesn’t mean you get to do the Heroes Fight One Another movie storyline first! Were gonna do it while Mark Millaer wipez his ass original copies of Amazing Fantasy #Something comics are ghey.”
‘CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER’ IMAGES: FIGHT AND RUN.
New Captain America: The Winter Soldier images show the sprawling brawling wonder-land that the feature film shall be. Real talk? I just fucking woke up. So just have these images while I begin compiling my Caffeine Dossier in my tummy. Okay? You fucks.
Best of 2013 – Budrickton’s Picks
Like OL magistrate and chief jester Caffeine Powered, 2013 was a bit of a banner year for me. Overwhelming change in my personal life — from a return to postgraduate education, to a complete re-invention of my career and life direction, to the advent of a serious, life-changing relationship — it’s been a year of serious upheaval for me, and one that I now realize deeply affected the entertainment I enjoyed.
I promise, I ain’t full of shit when I say this – what you do, and who you do it with has a huge effect on what you partake in and what you’re drawn to. My new career has me in Communications and Public Relations. It’s no coincidence then that my great fascination this year in the nerd sphere was the amazing PR landmarks and media fiascos that accompanied the console gaming space. E3 in particular was THE shitshow of 2013, a spectacularly-enjoyable ride for gamers everywhere, and one that meant so much more to me now that my mind was tuned to the Comm/PR-perspective on everything. The way a business conducts itself publicly, the way it announces its products, the way it does damage control – these things fascinate me. They rocked me. I loved every second, and this year more than any, was aware of my own consumer agency as I allowed myself to partake in the stories businesses were trying to weave and tell to their audiences.
Here’s what captured me this year:
Best of 2013 – The Dude’s Picks
As 2013 comes to a close, I look back on a rather lackluster year for myself. I feel like I’m standing still, stuck in the mud, and need a kick in the ass to move forward. While I didn’t hate the year, it will soon be forgotten and added to the long list of unremarkable events that make up my back story when I become a hero lion tamer that moonlights as a vigilante. Here’s a list of things I might remember from 2013.
