My Favourite Things - October 2011

Note: This article originally was published by me on ASiteCalledFred.com

I have returned! It's that time of the month when I give you my Top 5 list of Top 5 things that I enjoyed in the past calender month. Some would say it's a slightly OCD excercize in recounting my happiness, others would say "hey, back off man, let the guy make his list. This is America! He's free to make lists if he wants". I would argue that I don't live in America but otherwise I'm proud of that made-up person for getting so defensive on my behalf.

... Lets get on with this, shall we?

1) Time Lapse Videos

I've been spending/wasting a lot of time lately over at Broadsheet.ie. They're an Irish blog that updates at an alarming rate with many interesting, fun, and dumb things throughout the day.

One of the things I spotted there this month was a lovely time-lapse video made by photographer Joe Capra featuring the Icelandic landscape. Here's what he says about the video:

During my days shooting this film I shot 38,000 images, travelled some 2900 miles, and saw some of the most amazing, beautiful, and indescribable landscapes on the planet. Iceland is absolutely one of the most beautiful and unusual places you could ever imagine.

And here's the video:

To see some of the other time-lapse videos Broadsheet has highlighted CLICK ME CLICK ME CLICK ME.

Weekend Justice #135: Día de las Personas Que Necesitan Ayuda Psiquiátrica

It's Weekend Justice: the Internet's #1 audio trainwreck. It's the podcast that will mistake your head for a sugar skull and take out a huge bite. Then it will decide it likes the taste and finish it off. This podcast was engineered--some might say over-engineered--by experts to escort you from the work week in the most chaotic manner possible. Please note: this podcast is profane, definitely oversexed and definitely overwrought. It is wrong and unsafe. You have been warned.

Agenda (partial):

• Defending Halloween from Leigh
• Rox gives you the corporate history of Halloween
• Sugar skulls
• Walking Dead
• Zombie trivia! And clowns!
• Day of the Dead breakfast cereal! Sugar skulls!
• Nostalgia and breakfast cereals
• How to get Young Widge to shut the hell up
• The Adventures of Young Rox
• Netflix
• The Green Mile: The Series!
• WB and the Harry Potter DVDs
• The Stand: movie or miniseries?
• British vs. American television
• Stephen King and helping you with leather
• Doctor Who writers
• The Sound Board Porno

To download this episode directly, Your Weekend Justice #135: Día de las Personas Que Necesitan Ayuda Psiquiátrica. Or to stream it from NeedCoffee CLICK HERE.

Audiophilia: October 2011

Welcome to another new column on DOOM! Audiophilia will be our monthly recommendations for stuff you can listen to and maybe go out and buy it if you like it (somebody has to). For the task of offering the widest range of taste I have assembled a team of DOOM’s die-hard, music-loving staff… and then settled for anyone who bothered to show up. Myself, JJ Hawkins, Michael Harris and Katie Delz are going to give you our picks for what to try this month.


To read the article and listen to our picks, CLICK HERE.

Aaron's WWEport - The Trouble With Titantrons

NOTE: This article was originally posted by me on TheWebsiteOfDoom.com

Welcome to the first in what will surely be semi-regular opinion articles about WWE wrestling. I've been a long time fan (since I was about 6 years old) but lost interest in the late 00s due to some terrible product management on behalf of the WWE. But now, much like many other wrestling fans of my generation, I've come back with a renewed interest and enthusiasm thanks to the high-profile exploits of a Mr. CM Punk.



The positives (and negatives) of CM Punk will be delved into on another occasion but for now I'd like to talk about something that has been on my mind lately and that's intro music. Some work, some don't and the ones that don't can really kill the atmosphere.

The idea of intro music isn't a new one but for some reason there has been a big emphasis placed on them in the last decade or so now that WWE have been releasing the songs for download. You'll see the little symbol pop-up in the bottom left corner of your screen when the wrestlers walk out to the ring. Buy, buy, buy! But the thing is, they shouldn't be just songs to be played in the background. They should be battle cries. They're not just to anounce the arrival of the athlete but to make the crowd pop with the knowledge that s*** is about to get real.

Weekend Justice #134: How Many Licks Does It Take to Get to the Center of Cerebro?

This is probably the sleepiest I've been recording a podcast in a long time. But I can't stop, won't stop the rock. All the usual suspects show up in this one. We discuss some of the following madness:

• Spock, the closet and Rox's sincerity
• Amazon, DC and Barnes & Noble
• Don't hate on Neil Gaiman, fuckers
• Jon, Lord of the Uni-Pull
• Bacon funnel cakes!
• Sex and Medieval Times
• The Irish and The Welsh and some islanders
• Walking Dead
• The Raven
• Mission: Impossible and Desilu history
• The new TV season analyzed...kinda
• Ben Stiller comedies
• Sexy Olympics!
• The deal with Glenn Beck

So to listen CLICK THIS and to download CLICK THIS.

Robert Kirkman is gunning for my job

This article was originally posted @ TheWebsiteofDOOM.com by me. Reposted here for your entertainment.

Well, maybe not really, considering he's one of the biggest comic book writers in the industry I'm sure he isn't jealous of a mere internet reporter. However, as we here at DOOM love to gab about the latest geeky movie trailers we feel a little affronted that Kirkman has decided to muscle in on our territory slightly.

MTV managed to get the writer of The Walking Dead and Invincible to sit down and share his thoughts on the new Avengers trailer. The very same trailer we covered here ourselves last week.

I'm not too proud to say that he does a pretty good job at pointing out the cool but also dumb things that pop up in the 2 minutes of footage. So if you're reading, Rob, (and you obviously are) give us a call. We'll give you a regular column.

You can check out his thoughts on the trailer in the video below.

Get More: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

Weekend Justice #133: Wood For Sheep

More manic madness than you can shake a proverbial stick at, Weekend Justice is here once again to rock your ears off for far too many hours.

This week hosts myself, Widge, Jon, Rox, Leigh and Rob. It contains such topics as:

• Settlers of Catan
• Random Halloween costume discussion
• Compliments in Ireland
• Avengers trailer!
• Chest hair and Alice in Wonderland
• Netster! Qwikflix! Whatever!
• Muskahounds!
• Robotech!
• More sexy costumes!
• Tintin WTF
• The truth about Irish car bombs
• Doctor Who/Vincent Price script alert!

To download this episode directly, Your Weekend Justice #133: Wood For Sheep. Or to listen to it on NeedCoffee click HERE.

Tease Me, Baby! - The Avengers

Considering the coverage I have given in the past to the Marvel films of Thor, Captain America etc. it's probably not very surprising that myself and the folks at DOOM Towers are quite excited at the prospect of seeing The Avengers. In fact, three of our staff have the same Thor action figure. So now that the first real trailer has been released we're... well, lets say "giddy".

I personally felt that the teaser trailer we got after the credits of Captain America was pretty weak. We got flashes of nothing in a pretty large sense and apart from one shot of the gang standing in the same room, I saw very little to get excited about. I also saw very little.

We have a year to go before this film is going to be released, so whatever we see now will be the easiest stuff to shoot and finish (so lots of talking and intense staring). But lets hope it manages to stir the same feeling in my loins as the last few trailers for the solo films.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE TRAILER AND READ MY THOUGHTS

The LOST Panel.

Avid listeners of Mars Need Podcasts will know that both it's host JJ Hawkins and myself are avid LOST fans. Last year at Dragon*Con I got the opportunity to sit on the LOST panel in front of a packed house with legendary writer Paul Dini. This year we had no such star write, but another packed house nonetheless.

So, as you can imagine we had a blast yapping with the crowd about the show's 6 seasons. We were joined by The Unique Geek's Jon Boutelle. Jon even recorded the whole thing and thanks to him it can now be watched online!

It was a packed room and a highlight for a lot of us. So watch me, JJ and Jon talk about our favourite characters and how much we hate Kate below, in 5 handy parts.

Weekend Justice #132: The Regeneration of Sherman

I have been exhausted the last few days. Why? Because I stayed up far too late to record this madness and I've been trying to catch up on my sleep ever since. But you can make my sacrifice worth it by giving the show a listen.

 

This week stars myself, Widge, Rox, Leigh, Jon, Tuffley and Rob. Some of the topics discussed include:

• Aaron vs. The Wayback Machine
• The biology of Shermans
• Aaron's George Harrison docu review
• Terra Nova
• Disney's 3D
• Mad Men Lite. And Guinness.
• Star Trek madness
• Rob's record find!
• The inevitable Doctor Who tirade
• We must understand Dollhouse
• Inexplicable Jedward discussion
• ...which devolves into an X-Factor discussion
• Honey badger flu and the vaccine
• The Simpsons will end

To stream the episode click this linkymabob. To download this episode directly, Your Weekend Justice #132: The Regeneration of Sherman. BTW, you iTunes subscriber types can nab this feed here. If you like us, why not rate us? We don't bite. Mostly.

Work In Progress

A long, long time ago. In a podcast recorded far, far away...

Myself and JJ Hawkins once spoke about a video idea we thought would be fun. 10 months later and I'm actually starting to film the damn thing.

The reason why it took so long? Well, I'm not getting paid to do it is one thing so other stuff got in the way. Also, the wonderful Vanessa has been drawing and cutting and painting away to create the little world we're hoping to film. That world turned out to be a lot bigger than we were expecting so a big thank you to her for such dedication.

I won't go into too much detail for now but here are some crappy camera-phone pictures taken to whet your appetite.

I've just finished the editing for a music video, which I will share as soon as possible (band have to clear it first) and I'm currently working on the pitch to make another.

It's been busy around here.

Mars Needs Podcasts #128 - North Virginia

Myself and Mars Needs host JJ Hawkins go to ranty-town this week on his show. We start off light enough and mention a little music interest but things go from the bizarre to the serious (normally the other way round right?) as we try to make state relationships in the USA and fix all the problems to basically asking for some Muppets folk to quit.

You can listen to the show by following THIS HERE LINK.

Also, before I forget, this month's Poll has also been put up on DOOM. Check it out. Poole’s Polls – October 2011.