A Wizard Entertainment sales manager managed to royally tee off PvP creator Scott Kurtz just two words into a letter inquiring about the Toronto and Anaheim 2010 Wizard World* Cons.

What exactly were those first two words? “Dear Kurt,” (Mind you, not “Dear Kurtz” or “Dear Scott” but “Kurt”). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that screwing up a person’s name in a formal address to them is liable to not only make you look stupid, but immediately try the patience of whoever you’ve just sent the letter to. It also gives the appearance that you’ve sent the same letter multiple times to multiple people.

Kurtz posted the embarrassing letter from Wizard on the PvPonline Blog along with a colorful response that blasted the organization and its recent scheduling practices…

David Tennant, best known to his fans as the Tenth Doctor in the BBC sci-fi television show Doctor Who, has grabbed the lead role in a pilot for NBC called Rex Is Not Your Lawyer– an hour-long legal dramedy about a Chicago lawyer who suffers from panic attacks.

The show was first developed two years ago, but was only greenlit this past August because the studio could not find a suitable actor to play the main role until Tennant came along, according to a report from Reuters. While the report doesn’t mention whether Tennant will be adopting an accent (British or his native Scottish), it’s probably more likely that he’ll be portraying an American.

It’s hard to imagine Tennant in a role that doesn’t in some way touch the sci-fi genre. However, it’s always been clear that his acting abilities stretch far beyond what we’ve seen him do on Doctor Who alone [...]

Just in time for Halloween comes the Vampire-inspired Fleshlight — a variant version of the original strange-as-hell sex toy “the Fleshlight” — called the Succu Dry.

If you are unfamiliar with this device, it essentially looks like a flashlight that you insert your…and then the glitter comes…well you get the point.

The folks at Gizmodo discovered this little gem and offer a few more pictures on their site [...]

Brian Kibler was victorious in the final match to win the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour-Austin, which means he has the recognition of being the top player in one of the largest competitions and takes home a nice $40,000 in prize money. Also, there was a trophy I’m told.

For those of you who don’t play Magic, it’s a Collectible Card Game that has been around for decades. For those of you who have played Magic, yes, you read that headline correctly.

The second place winner, Tsuyoshi Ikedaat, who lost in the final matchup against Kibler, took home a modest $20,000 and the others in the top 8 were awarded anywhere from $15,000 to $9,500.

Why am I telling you all this? Partially because I think it’s cool that a nontraditional competition has gained enough steam over the years to do pro tournaments and offer up prize money. This is a game that lives in the local comic shops of the world and is very much a part of geek culture [...]

The emergence of popular CCG’s like Magic: The Gathering and a plethora of MMOs have all but killed the player base for old school tabletop games, but that could change in the future.

A digital version of tabletop RPG Dungeons and Dragons that uses Microsoft Surface technology was recently developed by a group of students from the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, who uploaded a demo video of the project. [Scroll down to watch it.]

The students created the demo as part of the SurfaceScape project that is “taking traditional tabletop role-playing games to the next level, adding a new layer of immersive and intuitive gaming to the Microsoft Surface Table and assisting both GMs and players in enjoying exciting and engaging adventures,” according to their Web site [...]

Viewers on the West Coast were treated to the first half of the Venture Bros. Season 4 premiere twice last night, but were denied the last 15 minutes of the program, according to a comment thread on the Adult Swim message board.

The error was experienced by only the Western region regardless of cable provider and was corrected during the 4 AM encore show. [Most of Geeks of Doom's editorial staffers are based on the East so we lost no sleep.]

So in other words, you weren’t drinking too much last night and did not actually experience a temporal shift in time.

For those of you who may have missed it, Adult Swim has uploaded the episode in its entirety to their Web site [...]

The world’s longest running science fiction series, Doctor Who, is scheduled to continue on after current Doctor David Tennant ends his run. This means a new doctor and, of course, a new logo.

The new logo with accompany the on-screen debut of Matt Smith as the eleventh Doctor in spring 2010.

Below is a video teaser of the new logo, which I don’t really have much of an opinion of yet. This is more than likely because I’m still trying to get over Tennant leaving and I can’t be concerned with “new” anythings until after his final specials air. The final three episodes featuring Tennant will air later this year, with the existing logo on-screen.

What do you guys think? [...]

Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less
Edited by Nick Douglas
Published by It Books
Release date: August 25, 2009

My first thought was “you’re missing the point” when I heard someone was planning to publish a book containing only 140-character messages from micro-blogging site Twitter. Then I discovered that this someone was former Valleywag editor Nick Douglas and my thoughts instantly shifted to intrigue.

Douglas is a talented wordsmith, who in years past, has demonstrated a vivacious ability to both inform and entertain readers, [See, Everything indie sucks now]. Having been with Valleywag, it’s obvious that he understands technology from all angles, including the cultural level. If anyone is qualified to create a book of tweets worthy of being collected and bound for $12.99, Douglas is certainly a front runner. Twitter Wit is such a book, featuring about 600 tweets and a foreword by Twitter Cofounder Biz Stone [...]

Fucking ecstatic does not begin to adequately describe how happy I am that the dark period of music socialization is over. And in case you aren’t sure the time frame I’m speaking of, it’s the period in which people had to really work in order to discover and share new music by listening to FM radio, buying overpriced albums at a retail store or my *least* favorite, speaking to a group of self important douchebag music snobs. None of those options were ideal for the sake of discovery, but they were even worse for the sake of sharing.

Technology has ushered in so many new (legal) ways to socialize about music, none of which involve an abundance of black t-shirts or $5 covers at the door.

Blip.fm

If you’ve ever had the urge to communicate solely through notes and lyrics, then blip.fm will become an addiction. It’s by far my favorite new way to socialize about music. Blip.fm is a service that allows you to listen to virtually any song by “blipping” it to your own personal stream — similar to Twitter. Also like Twitter, each song you blip is accompanied by an optional 150-character message. Users “listen” or “follow” other people’s blips, which are aggregated in real time to a custom feed that acts as a playlist. However, if you get tired of this playlist you can always navigate to someone else’s [...]

What happens when you mesh mirror-like shards commonly found on disco balls with the finest soldiers this side of the Darth Vader’s Empire? Disco Trooper, who in this case decided to crash the Battlestar Galactica’s Fleet party at Dragon*Con 2009.

I followed around the groove jivin’ man inside the Disco Trooper suit, Chris Lee. Interestingly, he was accompanied by an entourage of folks that flashed strobe lights on him whenever it looked as if a picture was being taken. Also, there was a guy dressed as a nun — well either it was a guy or a really convincing asexual lady of the cloth.

Either way, I brought the flipcam along. Video starts with me questioning the ethics of this gathering in the company of the Holy Sister and ends with Disco Trooper bustin’ moves to Lady Gaga…

Until the emergence of Adult Swim’s Squidbillies, never had there been an animated program that so eloquently embodied the life of an alcoholic talking squid and his illegitimate son in the rural foothills of Georgia.

Such is true of the voice acting for Squidbillies’s hillbilly squid Early Cuyler, who routinely provides a plethora of thought provoking philosophical quotes such as his dinner table prayer:

“Dear lord… please allow this dangerous combination of hair spray, bat slobber, and D.O.T. four automatic transmission fluid to excite my mind, occupy my spirits, and enrage my body, provoking me to kick any man or woman in the back of the head regardless of what he or she has or has not done unto me.”

Lines of dialog like that can only be delivered effectively by one man, Stuart Daniel Baker a.k.a. the legendary Unknown Hinson. And long before becoming the voice of Early Cuyler, Hinson made a name for himself as a Rockabilly musician who is still touring. His songs are exactly how you’d imagine them to be (ridiculous and offensive). Actually, the amount of ridiculous shit that comes out of this man’s mouth is pretty much exactly like his Squidbillies character.

For proof I’ve provided videos of Unknown Hinson’s performance at the Dragon*Con 2009 Squidbillies panel…

Remember the actor who did the voice work for World of Warcraft’s Death Knight Gnome, Dino Andrade? [Read: Conversations with GoD: World of Warcraft’s Death Knight Gnome Speaks] It turns out he’s also lent his voice talents to another dark, evil, and more menacing video game character — The Scarecrow in the new Batman game Arkham Asylum.

Andrade is no stranger to the video game world as his voice has also appeared in Call of Duty (PSP), Guitar Hero (DS), and Skull from Scott Kurtz’s PVP animated series.

Below is the Arkham Asylum trailer, which ends with flashes of the Scarecrow saying “Poor Little Bat” along with some convincing cackling…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 comic book series (Dark Horse) will tentatively conclude at issue #41, according to editor Scott Allie, who sat on a Dark Horse Comics panel at Dragon*Con 2009 earlier this month.

While Allie kept mum on all future plot details, he did say the final story arc would be a four-issue run written by Brad Meltzer (DC’s Identity Crisis mini series, Justice League of America) with art by series regular Georges Jeanty.

Buffy head honcho Joss Whedon will follow up the Meltzer/Jeanty run to tie up loose ends and set the stage for Season 9.

“We will do a Season 9 but there will be a break after Season 8 [ends],” Allie said, with no indication of how long the duration of the break would be.

Allie also said Season 9 could have a different editorial approach, possibly having one creative team as opposed to the rotating crop of writers and artists that was done in Season 8 [...]

The plus side to having everyone dress in elaborate costumes for an extended weekend is that it gives the fairer of the genders a reason to adopt the likenesses of their favorite fictional characters — even if that means causing them to go half naked and/or require the application of mass body paint.
I’m not going [...]

James Marsters gave details about the role his character will play in the upcoming Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica in a fan panel at Dragon*Con 2009.

“I saw the pilot. All I have to say is I was disturbed and had to shut it off,” Marsters said, after explaining that he can’t go into too much detail since the show is months away from airing.

He did add that playing a role with darker, most serious tone was very exciting [...]

Ianto Jones will not return in future episodes of the Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood television show, should it return for a third season, according to actor Gareth David-Lloyd in a panel at Dragon*Con 2009.

“It looks very likely that they’ll get a full season, but all we know is that they’re in talks,” David-Lloyd said. “As far as Ianto is concerned, he won’t [be returning]…”

“But, there’s always a chance,” David-Lloyd said, perhaps giving fans a spark of hope. “I really don’t know.”

Ianto met his untimely demise in the Torchwood Children of Men special, which evoked outrage from fans of the series and several campaigns to rally the show’s writers to change their minds [...]

Sometimes a picture is worth… well, it’s own post. For instance, the shots captured below (done by geek photographer Derek Deweese) at Dragon*Con 2009 that depicts one very angry mutant. Of course this could have been inspired by the Penny Arcade web comic that shows how Marvel Comics’ new parent company Disney is dealing with an excess of characters.

I have to be honest though, I expected far more Marvel/Disney mashups from this group of creative costumers. News of the Disney-Marvel acquisition is still very fresh in the minds of fanboys, but as you can see from the disgruntled Hank McCoy pictures, a little effort goes along way.

[P. S. - If I've missed some Marvel/Disney mashups from Dragon*Con either add the URL to the comment section below or tweet @geeksofdoom. We'll make sure you get credit for the find.] [...]

Leonard Nimoy will not reprise his role as the Elder Spock in the planned sequel to the revamped Star Trek film directed by J.J Abrams, he said today at a panel discussion at Dragon*Con 2009.

“There are no plans for me to return for the second movie,” he said in response to a question asked by an attendee.

William Shatner, who has been absence from the convention scene for the past few years, joined Nimoy on stage for a discussion that began with a playful exchange about why Shatner wasn’t featured in the new movie.

Shatner admitted he’s never seen the movie, but not because of any sort of grudge.

“I think the Spock character is very well established as portrayed by Zachary Quinto. And I think if you saw the movie Bill, you’d say the same of Chris Pine,” Nimoy said [...]

Plenty of people have heard about Dragon*Con, the fan-centric geek convention that doesn’t get nearly as much attention as Comic-Con. With a stacked guest list and decades of culture, it’s more than worth the price of admission.

But if you still need convincing the Geeks of Doom have provided a list of reasons why you should attend Dragon*Con, which starts today in Atlanta, GA.

Once you read the list, be sure to check back here at Geeks of Doom, as a bunch of us rowdy geeks are down here and we’ll be providing coverage of Dragon*Con 2009 all this weekend [...]

The beta for Longbox Digital, the application that’s been heralded as the iTunes of digital comics, is scheduled to make its debut this month, according to LongBox CEO Rantz Hoseley.

Longbox is actually much more than just an iTunes program and will eventually feature integration with gaming consoles, electronic book readers and several mobile phone operating systems (iPhone/Android/Blackberry).

While multi-platform support won’t be available for quite a while, the desktop app’s official launch is tentatively set for Oct/Nov. (If you’ll recall, we acquired a beta key for the app at San Diego Comic-Con) [READ: SDCC 09 Video: Longbox Digital Comics App Demo]

Check out the short Q&A with Hoseley below for more launch details [...]