My spider-sense is tingling, and not in a good way: Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment (yup, that Marvel, as in Spider-Man, the X-Men and so on) for $4 billion in stock, acquiring the rights to all their characters. Soon we’ll see the cast of High School Musical as the newest young mutants to join Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and a Marvel Team-Up featuring Spider-Man and the Jonas Brothers.

I feel like this:

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Seen in the window at a shop in Bloor West Village and coming soon to your grandmother’s (or a die-hard Star Trek or M*A*S*H fan’s) house:

Click the photo to see it at full size.

Here’s a photo of the current selection of movies at the cinema near “Hah-vahd Square”. I think I’d enjoy all three films as a movie marathon:

It would probably go something like this:

Yes, you’ll need to have seen the Milton-Bradley boardgame “Guess Who?” and this scene from the Quentin Tarantino flick Pulp Fiction to be in on the joke:

If you thought that the “Burger King” character, with his glazed mask, wasn’t creepy enough…

…you haven’t seen the Burger Klingons. Qa’pla!

Click the photo above to see it at full size.

 Click the photo above to see it at full size.

Click the photo above to see it at full size.

Dork Shelf, a blog devoted to Toronto and nerd culture points to Nextround.net’s collection of photos of guys in so-bad-they’re-good Wolverine costumes. My favourite one is Jewish Wolverine, complete with adamantium menorah claws.

If you’re looking for costumed adventurers who really are “from the Tribe” (such as Kitty Pryde, mentioned recently in this blog entry), look no farther than Comic Book Religion’s catalogue of Jewish superheroes. The oddest one is “The Acidic Jew”, whose touch can dissolve anything.

This article originally appeared in Global Nerdy.

There’s a small TV set in my home office that I sometime turn on – usually to one of the cable news channels — as “background noise”, which I sometimes find helpful when I’m trying to get work done.

Today, I’m on the road in London, Ontario with Microsoft’s EnergizeIT tour. I’m hanging out in the hotel room with my coworker Rodney with the TV on as background noise and here’s what’s on right now:

When I tell people that I often work from my home office, they ask if I ever get the temptation to plunk myself in front of the TV instead of getting work done. The answer is no, and part of the reason is that there’s nothing but this junk on during the day.

For no reasons other than I love the band and my stumbling across this list, here are the names of the bands who’ve opened for Queen:

• After The Fire
• Airrace
• Al Stewart
• The Alarm
• Alvin Lee & Ten Years After
• Ambach Circus
• Andy Fairweather-Low
• Angel Child (Änglabarn)
• April Wine
• Argent
• The B-52s
• The Bangles
• Belouis Some
• Big Country
• Billy Squier
• The Blasters
• Bloodrock
• Bob Seger & Silver Bullet Band
• Bow Wow Wow
• Brownsville Station
• Bullitt
• Cate Brothers
• Cheap Trick
• Chris Rea
• Cold Chisel
• The Commodores
• Craaft
• Dakota
• Eduardo Dusek
• Erasmo Carlos
• The Exploited
• Foghat
• Fountainhead
• Frankie Miller’s Full House
• Fruupp
• Full Frontal Nudity
• Gary Moore
• General Public
• The Go-Go’s
• Head East
• Heart
• Hustler
• INXS
• Iron Maiden
• Joan Jett And The BlackHearts
• Kansas
• Kayak
• Kid Abelha and Os Aboboras Selvagens
• Kiki Dee
• Lancelot
• Level 42
• Lucifer
• Lulu Santos
• Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Mahagony Rush
• Manfred Mann
• Marillion
• Molly Hatchet
• Mr. Big
• The Narcs
• Ney Matogrosso
• Nutz
• The Outlaws
• Pepeu Gomes and Baby Consuelo
• Ray Burton Band
• Red Baron
• R.E.O. Speedwagon
• Rory Gallagher
• The Royal Dragoon Guards
• Sea Level
• Seger
• Solution
• Sport of Kings
• Status Quo
• Steve Hillage
• Straight 8
• Storm
• Styx
• Supercharge
• Taste
• Teardrop Explodes 
• Thin Lizzy
• Tombstone
• Treat
• Voyager
• Whitesnake
• Yesterday And Today
• Zas
• Zeno
• ZiZi Labor

This article originally appeared in Global Nerdy.

This ad won’t make any sense if you’re not a follower of the TV series Lost. However, if you are, you’ll find it amusing…

Click the ad to see the original on its Flickr page.

…when the Exxon Valdez hit the Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, spilling about 40 million litres of crude oil.

Click the photo to see it at full size.

Unlike many other oil spills, this one worked its way into popular culture:

• The belief at the time was that the Exxon Valdez’ ship’s master Joseph Hazelwood was drunk, leading David Letterman to make a “Top Ten List” of his excuses, one of which was “I was just trying to scrape some ice off the reef for my margarita.”
• In an episode of Futurama, the robot character Bender crashes an intergalactic tanker into a planet because he’s not drunk enough. In the world of Futurama, robots need alcohol to function properly.
• In the movie Waterworld, the bad guys’ boat was named the Exxon Valdez, and their patron saint was Hazelwood. Hazelwood even appears in the movie, in portrait form – here’s a still featuring the movie’s chief villain, The Deacon (played by Dennis Hopper), talking to the portrait:
  

For a little more detail about the story, here’s a July 1989 Time magazine issue: Joe’s Bad Trip.

This article originally appeared in Global Nerdy.

One of the best sci-fi series on television, the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, comes to an end this Friday night at 9 p.m. on Space here in Canada and the Sci-Fi channel in the States. With only one episode left, it would seem an appropriate time to point you to the Battlestar Galactica Frakmap, a little chart that tells you which characters have been intimate with each other and quick summary of their story.

The screenshot below shows only a part of the Frakmap, but it’s the part with the most promiscuous of the bunch: Kara “Starbuck” Thrace and Gaius “Horndog” Baltar. Click on the image to see the whole Frakmap:

This article originally appeared in Global Nerdy.

Photo courtesy of Matt Gunn.

This article originally appeared on Global Nerdy.

Over at Kevin Kelly’s blog, The Technium, there’s a video of an amusing interview on Conan O’Brien where comedian Louis CK talks about how we take today’s technology and the way it improves our lives for granted. Kelly describes it as "a cartoon version of a more serious argument that we become blind to progress".

For some reason, this photo-comic in which “Mr. Miyagi” (played by Pat Morita in the Karate Kid movies) gives mad props to Barack Obama amuses me to no end. I decided to enhance it by adding a caption to the bottom":

Found thanks to Giles Bowkett.