Geekfest 2006

Freaking back to work tomorrow. Oh goodie.

Yeah, yeah – I realise that many of you will have very little sympathy for me. “Oh you teachers – all this time off … why don’t you go and issue parking tickets or something in your so-called holidays ?”

However, before YOU go bashing a teacher you know, saying they have too much time off, answer me this – why aren’t you a teacher ?

Yup – I know what you’re thinking. And THAT’S why we get that time off. It’s because we flipping NEED it ! After two weeks of winding down I’m only just feeling somewhat human again.

I was pretty good over the break though. I did a bit of marking just about everyday – and I mopped up the last of it today. So that’s good.

In other news – I went to the “Armageddon – Pop Culture Expo” yesterday. It was okay. I mostly went to listen to the guest speakers. Hix wanted to hear these two comic guys first thing – they wrote something called “Infinite Crisis” ( though one of the guys drew for “The Invisibles” which is pretty cool ). I was reminded ( as if I needed to be ) of the massive weight of geekiness at these things by the very first question of the day – some guy complaining bitterly about how Hal Jordan ( I think the original Green Lantern ) was now back from the dead in the comics, and why why WHY did comics feel the need to do this. I suffered quite an acute feeling of embarrassment while this question was asked. But the two guys were very patient – they carefully make sure they knew what the guy was actually upset about, and then explained that comics are very cyclic in nature – much like soap operas, and JUST like soap operas sometimes characters do come back from the dead ( and that if these types of stories bothered him, that it might be time to stop reading comics ). They were pretty interesting.

There was Claudia Christian ( Ivanova in “Babylon 5” ) who was as cool as she was the last time I saw her in Auckland. Then there was some guy who played some alien doctor in “Enterprise”. I never got into that show, but that guy was a scream !

The big draw of the day was Jewel Whats-her-face, the woman who plays the character of Kaylee in the sci-fi show “Firefly”. She was pretty cool, and had some good stories to tell about the show. The ‘flipping-the-bird” war she was having with the guy who played Mal. That was pretty damn funny – especially how she claims to have won the war after getting about three thousand fans at a convention to flip him off. Heh.

I caught a little bit of the guy who was the original Bo Duke from the Dukes of Hazzard ( I thought that the guy was from the new FILM of the Dukes … d’oh ! ). They also had the General Lee there ( I’m pretty sure it was one of the original ones … though how the hell would I know ? ).

I’m kinda glad that I don’t like much in the way of Manga or Animae. I think a few my more Asian animation orientated friends spent a WHOOOOOOLE lot of cash on DVDs and such. In comparison I didn’t spend much. I picked up a copy of ‘Senenity’ on DVD ( for the ludicrous price of $15 !! AND they threw in a Serenity mouse pad ! Freaking bonus ! ) and a couple of graphic novels that were going cheap.

So, a fun day. And I hardly wanted to kill anyone !

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The 48 hour film competition draws ever closer. I’m really happy that our school production isn’t going to get in the way of my taking part ( which I had confirmed on Thursday – say gawd-BOMB! ). At the very least I’ll be a grip – though I’m hoping ( and attempting to back up with a campaign of kick-backs, black mail and out-and-out threats to the writers ) that there’ll be a fairly decent part for me to play as an actor. I’m hoping we get either the ‘crime’ or ‘action’ genre. A part for a scary looking bald guy ? Forget about it !