…I haven’t updated my blog in a long time. Too much crap going on. My weekends are totally down the toilet thanks to Outpost Doom . It’s been fun, but it’s a lot of work. I promise to get my act together once that slows down. In the meantime, you can get your Jeff fix on the DeadLantern Forums and on the Splattercast .
I haven’t played a TCG (trading card game) in several years but some of my Dead Lantern pals are getting together tomorrow to play a few rounds before we record our 75th episode of the Splattercast.
I know I have a box full of Magic: The Gathering cards somewhere in the storage garage, but for the life of me I could not find them. I did find a few MTG preconstructed decks, including this insane red-artifact thing from the 1999 world championships, so I can at least play with those. I can tear up the storage garage to find my other cards when we move next month (oh yeah, we found a house - I’ll post more about that when we’re actually in it 
).
We’re also going to try playing the World of Warcraft TCG. Our pal Spooky McPhee is getting us into it. He told us about a really curious market dynamic surrounding the WoW TCG. Apparently there are certain cards that the players of the WoW MMORPG can use to get special junk in the PC game. We all know MMORPG players are psycho. Compared to them, I feel downright normal playing a TCG. So, anyway, these WoW MMORPG dudes buy lots of the cards looking for those few specific ones, and then they sell the cards on eBay for peanuts. Spooky bought a few thousand cards to start us out.
So yup, it’s a total nerd relapse. I even dug out my polyhedral dice!
We did a very small run of The Grand Horror on DVD and are selling them online. We’re really excited about how well they’ve been selling so far. We’re actually down to our last handful of copies (only 8 left as I type this) so if you’d like one please visit the ordering page soon!
We’re only charging $10.00 with free shipping. C’mon, don’t be a douche; buy one!
The Splatcademy Awards went really well, the contributions from our fellow podcasters were amazing. My only concern is that people will see how much funnier than us some of those dudes are, and will quit listening to our show 
I went to The Ross yesterday to see The Orphanage with some pals. It was a good time, I hadn’t been to that theater for several years. I think the last time was back in ‘99 or 2000 to see Princess Mononoke. Reactions to The Orphanage varied across our group, but I think most of us thought it was pretty decent. You can hear our thoughts in Splattercast #66.
Before The Orphanage, we saw a trailer for Persepolis. It’s an animated movie based on a well-liked graphic novel. I don’t know if I’ll make time to see Persepolis at the theater, but this trailer was very cool. It had a garagey cover of Eye of the Tiger playing and it was just really rockin’.
And lastly, I read about this music/radio site called Pandora over on The Stygian Hollows. I’m having a lot of fun with Pandora, it’s great because I like hearing new (new to me, at least) music but I don’t have the gumption or inclination to learn about music on my own. Pandora takes a single recommendation from you, a single band or song that you like, and produces a string of music that it thinks you will like based on that one piece of information.
I’ve taken tomorrow off of work to take Tina to the hospital for some outpatient surgery. She’s having her gallbladder removed because it’s been causing her some serious discomfort. Apparently it’s something that can happen to women after they start having children. She’s nervous (who wouldn’t be?) and we’re hoping everything goes smoothly.
I’ve charged up both my DS and my GBA micro, and I loaded some new podcasts onto my iPod so I should be good to go for the long wait in the hospital.
Speaking of podcasts, if you like listening to me as much as I like listening to myself, then you should check out these podcasts that I co-host…
We’ve started putting up some “best of 2007″ lists over at Dead Lantern. Here’s my list and Mat’s list. Hopefully Steve, Deejay and Brady might put up some of their favorites as well.
What were your favorite flicks of 2007?
I ordered an MXL990 USB microphone, which will hopefully be delivered on Monday. Mat, Steve & I are going to try to do some podcasting from Grand Island on Christmas Day so I wanted a microphone that would pick all three of us up as we sit around a table. The MXL990 is the same microphone we use in Spooky McPhee’s haunted studio (although his aren’t USB) so I’m hoping we get good results with this one. The USB and non-USB versions look identical aside from the connection on the bottom, of course. We’ll hook it up to my laptop and give it a try.
Assuming it all goes as planned, you can look forward to a special Christmas Day edition of The Splattercast. But then, I guess I won’t be uploading it until a couple days later, so don’t plan your whole holiday around it
Keep an eye out for Splattercast #50, which I hope to have uploaded over at Dead Lantern later tonight. It features a great interview that Mat did with controversial German director Uwe Boll.
Boll has become this infamous figure in moviedom, reviled by many people for making horrible films based on video games. But are the movies really that bad? Or are people just sort of running with the crowd? They’ve heard that Boll’s movies are awful, so they just pile on because everyone else is having fun dissing him? That was what I wanted to explore, so we all watched some of his movies and talked about it.
As you’ll hear on the show, my position after watching a couple of these movies is that yes, these are bad movies but they’re nowhere near as awful as some people say they are. It’s like some folks are actively offended by Boll’s work, and I just didn’t take that away from the movies. I never felt like I was being insulted or that some crime against humanity was being perpetrated.
The discussion on the podcast got a little contentious, with Mat being almost incredulously pro-Boll, me being a little on the “pro” side, and Braden being stridently unimpressed with Mr. Boll’s films. Steve was sort of lukewarm, liking one movie and hating another. And Deejay, of course, was largely incoherent
I’m okay with all of the varying positions, though. I mean, we all feel differently about different things. It’s impossible to go through life and never run into people who disagree with you. Actually, that would be pretty boring! Who wants to sit around with a bunch of clones who think and feel exactly alike?
You read Dead Lantern every day, right? Cool people read Dead Lantern… and you’re cool, right?
Anyway, all of us over there are posting our five favorite horror movies, and I just listed mine, so go check it out - Five Favorites: Jeff Edition.