Thursday, September 8, 2011

Self for Sale....Get your Selfs while theyre hot

How goes it my lovely friends? I was thinking recently about the many way in which we as a society have become quite good at selling ourselves.....Now I know what your thinking...."how could you lower yourself to selling your body for money Rambler?".... Well to answer that Ill first say I appreciate your care but clearly you don't know me very well for its pretty common knowledge that for the right price Id do just about anyth.......(.I clearly need to stop writing  now).....Secondly and much more relevant I am not talking about physically selling oneself, though the truth isn't that far off....

... what I mean by this is that we have become increasingly obsessed with the culture of self....I mean its been going on for years with "reality" TV for example. Anyone who has even watched TV in the past 10-20 years has been able to observe a drastic shift from (successful) scripted television to cheap, quick, loosely scripted shows starring casts ranging from normal everyday Joes to wanna be actors doing their best pretending to be everyday Joes. We have created a celebrity culture for ourselves and by ourselves (Please don't be so ignorant as to blame TV programmers as it is we who dictate what is successful....trust me if all of a sudden people watched in masses a show about helping the poor and bought helping the poor shirts and helping the poor videos from itunes than helping the poor shows and copycat shows would be up and down or local programming guide....okay I'm getting off my soapbox now). Long gone are the days of looking up to our movie stars and sports heroes (whether that was ever healthy is a whole nother story). What we do now, to put it simply, is look up to those of us who without much talent or training find a way to make it in today's culture....Now personally I think its a horrible sign of how out of control and lost our current society is but one cant deny that people like the derelicts of the Jersey Shore and the ever business savvy yet mostly talentless Kardashian family are the hot melty center of our pop culture Stromboli (I have to stop blogging around lunch time)....

...Where am I going with all this passionate rhetoric about how we've become a society of people looking for ways to sell themselves and become the next talentless fool who cashes in?.....Nowhere particularly to be honest...I just thought it'd be fun to talk about how horrible each and every one of us are as human beings despite how good we think we are as a precursor to me trying to sell myself (Now isn't that ironic).... and with that said I shall join in on the quest for talentless success by providing you with the following ;-)

get at me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Writing_Rambler @Writing_Rambler

follow me here Duh!: http://thewritingrambler.blogspot.com/

ans last but not least patron my pockets by buying from me on Ebay: http://myworld.ebay.com/itslvg3

read my weekly comic book reviews on http://www.aintitcool.com

..... Ill see ya when I see ya folks.....

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Thank you Nike for making my dreams a reality

So when I was a kid my favorite movie was without question Back to the Future 2....I lived it...I breathed it and Im pretty sure I can still recite every word to it........

....so when I get online and read a story tonight ( check it out here http://www.nicekicks.com/2011/09/is-nike-taking-us-back-to-the-future/ ) about Nike having a Patent for actual power lacing shoes and a lot of secret tweets being sent out...well I assumed it was just too good to be true....

Then I saw this video...


...All I can say is MIND BLOWN.....

Thursday, September 1, 2011

THE NEW 52 & THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION

Hey there fine people...its been a little while hasn't it? what can I say, the summer just seems to fly by and with having to juggle fatherhood, writing reviews, watching movies, working now and then from home, camp counseling, battling hurricanes, inspiring the youth, playing horseshoes, creating nanobots, locating Frankensteins brain, visiting the Amish and general tomfoolery it's been hard to keep up with my writing here....But don't fret, I still love you all nonetheless...

So today is 8/31 (technically 9/1 by the time I post this) and for most it is a day that harshly reminds one that the joys of summer have come crashing to a halt and Fall will be soon upon us ....we all know what that means don't we? Sweater weather...kids back in school...the leaves changing to a glorious Autumn hue and my natural enemy, the soulless crossing guard, will once again be slithering from there dank caves to torture us all before we know it....ohhh how I despise those creatures of the day....................................

....................(okay I vented...I'm better now)..........

..........but for Comic fans, today was also a day of change in our world....Today saw DC comics release FLASHPOINT #5 & JUSTICE LEAGUE #1 ( I wont officially review these here....though I will say they are both very satisfying and should be picked up....especially JUSTICE LEAGUE #1 for old and new readers alike)......the only 2 new releases from the company today signified a major changing point in the DC comics universe, as years of storylines and history have been suddenly reset and all titles (52 over the next month) have been renumbered as #1's and are set to welcome a new generation of readers into the DC world.....



...Many people have written this "REBOOT" off as a marketing ploy and I cant blame them, as the comic book industry as a whole has often used gimmicks and shocking storylines to make headlines and sell some extra copies of a particular book. One Thing that is unique about this moment though, is that it is seemingly a company wide change. While a big gamble for DC comics, as they risk polarizing their core audience, they also are bravely attempting to broaden their status in popular culture.Currently DC comics takes 2nd place to Marvel comics in overall sales and name recognition (Not my personal opinion, just facts....personally I prefer DC's brand of storytelling much better) so a move like this makes sense as they want to claim the top spot in the comics world......

...Where this story gets really interesting is one of the ways that DC is attempting to "push" their comics to the top, which is day and date availability of their books digitally as well as in traditional comic shops. For some this looks like the nail in the coffin for the retail comic stores that are becoming very outdated with every new technological update. For others its a revolution that will forever better the industry as a whole. .............


.................My Opinion (and really that's what your here for)is that its a mixed bag of both but for the most part will be a positive move for DC and the Comic industry as a whole. The ability to be able to read your favorite stories the day they are released no matter where you are is an awesome advance in technology and can definitely help bring in revenue. It also becomes somewhat appealing to those people who may not be comfortable strolling into the troll dungeons that many local comic shops can often resemble but still would like to read some books (I say this out of love as I myself can be quite the comic book troll at times). It's just a fact, your average person either doesn't know where a local comic shop is (and their numbers get lower every day) or wouldn't be caught dead walking into one, for fear of not looking cool (something I gave up on quite some time ago).The main negative response I can see (and it mostly comes from comic book nerds, after they are done complaining about changes to Superman's costume......seriously guys, get over it) is something that isn't really a negative, and that is pushing the comics to go more mainstream is destroying part of the culture that we nerds so often lovingly (you could also probably use the words violently or creepily here as well) cling to with a passion. While I get your fears my fellow nerds, you have to learn to live with these changes......were a digital world and we've got to accept that world includes comics now (side note: there's a terrific App called COMIXOLOGY that you can get for your Apple or Android devices that pretty much works like the Itunes store but for comics, this is also where DC and Marvel both provide their comics digitally each week....though Marvel has not embraced day and date release....at least not yet..........you folks should check it out if interested....a great way to keep up with stories without having to go to the store to buy the books)............sure in the long run some old school comic book stores are going to disappear and it sucks but the comic book culture will thrive on.........comics have embedded their way into our culture and are responsible for some of the biggest entertainment franchises ever.... simply put...they're not going anywhere!

....all in all everyone needs to calm down....at the end of the day your favorite stories are still going to be there whether your crazy about the new ones or not.....I get how it sucks when your into something and then all of a sudden it gets popular and now everyone is seemingly an "expert" on it....these things are just going to happen and the only choice you really have to make is wheter you are going to embrace the change and enjoy the future of the comic industry or join the ranks of the miserable cynics who wouldn't be happy if the next issue they bought came with a million dollar check.....for me, I'm gonna embrace the change and keep enjoying what new stories I get each and every Wednesday, hopefully you will too........

.......If I have personally come away with anything from this whole experience it's that never have I wanted a digital tablet more in my life than I do now. So Kudos to you DC Comics, Geoff Johns, Jim Lee and all those involved as no matter what happens with the outcome of this venture you will be responsible for me owning a tablet of some sort in the near future (of course that will be after I'm done paying for my wedding because that is much more important.........Just in case the future Mrs. Rambler is reading this).

...Till next time...Ill see ya when I see ya folks