Geek Out

The brave men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces are dedicated, upstanding and amazing individuals who put their lives on the line daily to help make the United States a safer place. However tough their tour of duty may get, it's always nice to be able to take a time out and enjoy the finer things in life like video games.

Founded back in the summer of 2007, Pro vs G.I. Joe is a unique non-profit organization dedicated to bringing soldiers together with celebrities and professional athletes to compete in video game challenges. Since their inception, they've done a whole bunch of these virtual meet-ups and soldiers have faced off against the likes of the Green Bay Packers (Halo 3), Shaq and David Robinson (NBA Live 09) and Warren Sapp (Madden 09). It's a really great organization with an innovative vision. Seems like they have the right idea of how to say "thanks" to the service men and women who do so much.

Tonight on a very special Attack of the Show!, soliders from Camp Virginia in Kuwait will take on hosts Kevin Pereira and Alison Haislip in a game of Call of Duty: World at War live on the air. Who will triumph? Will the real military minds be able to conquer the video game geeks? You'll just have to tune in and find out.

All the fun starts tonight at 7 PM ET.

A few years ago before Facebook was widely available to everyone and still confined to students, MySpace was the king of this burgeoning new world of online social networking. My friends and I were first understanding the idea of what having a version of yourself on the internet that anyone could see at any time really meant, when one of the more social among us died suddenly.

It was a traumatic and tragic way that he died but the ever-present geek in me eventually wondered about his MySpace profile. I checked it out. The comments section was jammed full of condolences and "I miss you"s, the most interesting of which were messages from family members and friends who had lost touch. I knew these commenters weren't that connected to him in real life, and it was powerful to see them reach out in a public forum and proclaim their regret and grief over losing someone not yet clear of their twenties. It must have had some therapeutic value for them, like going to a grave and leaving flowers or some other significant object as a gesture of love. Eventually, his profile disappeared.

More recently, a friend of a friend died under similarly tragic circumstances and the same thing happened. His MySpace profile was bombarded with well wishes and for a while an almost daily reminder from his sister, stating how much she loved and missed him. Being curious and slightly removed from the situation, having never met him, I checked the profile every day to see how things unfolded. Eventually I stopped checking as people posted less and less, their grief apparently dwindling and sealing up. Recently, I went to check out the profile and found nothing there. An empty internet void we're all too familiar with when there are no search results. A huge white space where a friend of a friend used to be. My search "did not match any documents."

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Jimmy the Geek is temporarily indisposed by order of the Las Vegas Board of Gambling Regulators, yet the tournament continues on and somebody has to tell you who to bet on, right?

Well, we're not necessarily one for sports here on AOTB. We like a good afternoon match of croquet, but pro sports and let's face it, the March Madness tourney is a pro event, have eluded us for decades. Regardless, here are our picks for the Final Four and the Championship games to close out the tourney.

April 4 - The Final Four

2 Michigan State Spartans vs. 1 U CONN Huskies
Magic Johnson used to play for the Spartans, which automatically makes them sweeter, but we've got to think that Tanzanian Nightmare Hasheem Thabeet will dominate the paint and outrebound the Spartans on either end. Look for Michigan's economic troubles to cause them to secede from the Union early in the second half in order to join up with Canada and their more socialist outlook. This should clear the lane for superstar point guards Price and Dyson to penetrate, draw double teams, and dish freely to each other for raining threes. However, soon after Michigan is ratified as a Canadian province, UCONN will realize how close their name is to Yukon and also defect to the Great White North. Trouble for UCONN is, college eligibility rules are different in Canada which will allow Magic Johnson to suit up and bring Michigan out of their deep deficit for the win.
Final Score:
Michigan State (CAN)     92
Yukon Huskies (CAN)     87

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Nerds, these are bleak times in comics. Most geeks are either trying to survive the Dark Reign or dealing with the fallout of the Infinite Crisis. However, over at Wildstorm someone's having a good, carefree time and his name is Mysterius, the Unfathomable.

The star of the new comic of the same name is a genuine sorcerer who has walked through history having wild, magical adventures in this world and beyond, all while posing as a dimestore illusionist and flimflam artist  (along with his ever changing roster of assistants). He keeps himself in snake oil and fairy dust by helping wealthy clients deal with their irksome paranormal problems and there seems to be no shortage of them.

This is the kind of comic you hope goes on for a million issues, because there are just so many possibilities and you know that writer, Jeff Parker and artist, Tom Fowler (whose work here definitely takes a cue from the art styling of MAD Magazine) won't disappoint. In the first two issues alone we see Mysterius botch a seance (leaving his benefactor in Hell), spend some time living it up with a Satanic sex cult and fight a coven of raunchy witches. It's scary, evil stuff that's treated with an air of whimsy. Time and again the licentious magic man walks into and out of the most dangerous, bizarre situations imaginable and behaves as if it were no more unusual or lethal than shopping for groceries. The world, maybe the entire universe is his playground and all he wants to do is get by and get laid, and he does.

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It's Tuesday once again, which means that it's time for DVDUesday Bonus Features. On today's AOTS, Chris Gore will be talking about the epic Sex Drive, which got me thinking about the best of the sex comedies that there have been over the years, so I'm going to give you a guide to cinematic sexual hijinks, in case you want to do some further study.

The Last American Virgin (1982) - This story about a group of teenagers who are learning about life and sex, all while attempting to get laid, is one of the classics of the genre. There are lots of things that would never in a million years appear in a teenage comedy these days (the pursuit of cocaine, an abortion subplot, etc.), but those things make this stand out from the pack. Oh, and The Last American Virgin deserves to be on this list solely for the ending, which is one of the great "Huh?" moments in the history of film.

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As if you nerds didn't have enough reason to attend this year's WonderCon, we're giving you another, free Attack of the Show temporary tattoos! These temporary works of body art will be handed out to show fans and attendees of the greatest gathering of geeks, collectors and cosplayers this side of Comic Con, so be sure to make the trek out to San Francisco on February 27- March 1. Get yours and finally live out your fantasy of having Kevin and/or Olivia on, or around your body in a way that would never happen in real life... or don't and just wear them like a normal person would.

Also, Nerd Queen, Blair Butler will be on hand Sunday, March 1 at 1 PM to meet fans and sign autographs. WonderCon FTW!

It's that time of the year again, when the crappiest films of the previous year get their props for the craptacular crapness of crap that they crapped on us. That's right, it's the 2008 Razzie Awards nominees!

Leading the pack of the ignominious awards with seven nominations, is Mike Myers' flop, The Love Guru. It seems that a gratuitous dose of Jessica Alba, shameless hype on American Idol (It worked for Jumper, didn't it? ...Wait.), and an Austin Powers-like satire style was not enough to save this one from mockery. (Not to be confused with the talented Whose Line is it Anyway? repertory player.)

Still, what would a discussion about the Razzies (or bad movies in general) be without mentioning the name of Uwe Boll? Well, no need for him to feel left out. Besides being nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Supporting Actor (Burt Reynolds from In the Name of the King), and Worst Supporting Actor for his own role in Postal, Boll will be "honored" with a Worst Career Achievement Award. Really, at this point they might as well just rename these awards, "the Uwies."

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