The Ultimate Nerd-ament is here!
The first episode of The Ultimate Nerd-ament is here and I couldn’t be more excited about it. As if that wasn’t clear by my constant posting of countdown images over the past week.
Lots of people to thank for this one. First off, Darren Passerello who works for Stan Lee. I met Darren several years ago, in the most geeky of ways, through the card and dice game Champions of the Galaxy. Since then we have stayed in touch and last year he came to me saying they were looking for new shows for World of Heroes. That’s how it began.
Next I want to thank Nick Jacklin and Yuka Kobayashi of Vuguru and POW! Entertainment for going with the idea and helping with logistics. Once they heard the idea, they were just as enthusiastic as we were to get the show made.
Huge thanks to the staff of Stan Lee’s Comikaze in Los Angeles. They were super accommodating and a pleasure to work with. We had a great time at our shoot and the staff made us feel right at home.
A big shout out to everyone who stopped by the booth and took part in the show. The show is all about the fans of comic books and superheroes and you all made the show what it is. We would be nowhere without you. Extra thanks to DMC of Run DMC, Richard Hatch and, the man, Stan Lee for dropping by to talk to us as well.
Thanks to Mike Hollingsworth for the artwork of Stanley & JAX. You may just be seeing those designs on T-Shirts soon.
Thanks to DJ BC for the music he composed especially for the show. It was a happy coincidence that we met him and his music was perfect for The Ultimate Nerd-ament. We are excited to have him as part of the crew.
This show would be nowhere without the crew we put together. Wyatt, our Production Assistant, was on hand to wrangle people to do interviews, hold the mic for those to little to hold it for themselves and keep a running tally of people’s votes. Mike, our producer, who also helped wrangle people, ran the camera and was in hand as makeshift puppet wrangler and more. And we’d be nowhere without our director, David Marquez. He made us look and sound good and it was a pleasure to work with him. He’s a modern day Walt Disney and was our first choice to direct.
Finally, I want to thank my good friend, and co-creator, Russ Walko. Russ was the first person I called after Darren said I should come up with a show idea. Russ is easy to work with, makes me laugh and makes hard work seem incredibly easy. He’s also the voice of reason when I get wound up about things. There’s no one else I’d rather work with.
Thanks to all these people for helping The Ultimate Nerd-ament become a reality. Enjoy episode one. I sure do. And, just so you know, I got an email this morning. They are already talking about a season 2!
Comic books.
In anticipation of the debut of the web series I produced for Stan Lee’s World of Heroes, I thought I would sit down and explore my love of comic books and try to grasp exactly how cool it is that I get to work with Stan Lee.
I discovered comic books when I was younger. My parents would drive us from San Francisco to Klamath Falls, Oregon. We’d stop at a small convenience store in Weed, CA and there was always a rack of comics there I would pick up one or two. The first I remember picking up was Elf Quest. I didn’t like it very much, I was just too young.
The next time I got into comic books in a more, hardcore way was when I was really into G.I. Joe. I began reading G.I. Joe comics and even had a subscription for awhile. But as I moved on from playing with those as I got older, I drifted from comic books again.
It wasn’t until High School, sophomore year, that I got really into comics, a hobby I’ve enjoyed up through today. I was a wrestler on the High School wrestling team and also involved in the theatre productions. That meant I was at wrestling practice until 4PM daily and then at 5PM I had theatre rehearsal. During that hour in between, I would go grab dinner somewhere, usually, regrettably, the 7-11 around the corner from the school. That is where I found the comic that started my comic book mania. It was an issue of Marvel Comics Presents. The book was an anthology series that showcased three or four different stories a month.
I loved the heck out of that issue, especially the art, and so that became my daily ritual. After wrestling I’g go to 7-11, get a (horrible) sandwich and a comic book and read them until play rehearsal started.
In a short amount of time, I had bought just about one of each comic book 7-11 had. I was hooked and I needed more. Then I found out about Lee’s Comics in San Mateo. Lee’s comic became my home base for my comic book addiction growing up. I went crazy buying comics. After a few weeks, I stabilized and found my favorites.
Though I have a love for Batman, I discovered early on that I was a Marvel Comics guy. Not sure why, I just connected with the characters more. My early favorite character, and still a favorite to this day, was The Punisher. As a ‘good kid’ in high school who saw ‘bad kids’ get into trouble and still get all the breaks, The Punisher was cathartic to me. Here was someone who punished those who did wrong. I loved him. In high school I saved my cash and waited for a sale at the comic book store and picked up Amazing Spider-Man #129 that features the first appearance of The Punisher. I got it for $113. First time I could remember really saving every penny for something. I still have that book today.
I also found a fondness for Daredevil, who is easily my all time favorite. It has been a goal to own every issue of Daredevil ever printed. I’m a long way from that goal, but, maybe someday. I still read Daredevil comics to this day and I’m very excited for the Netflix series that will debut in April.
Another favorite was Jamie Maddrox, the Multiple Man. My favorite mutant/X-Men character. He wasn’t super strong. He didn’t have telekinesis or anything. He was just an average guy who could make exact duplicates of himself. All of those duplicates were just average ordinary guys, as well, but he could make a countless number of them and soon, the bad guys would be facing an army.
In the mid-2000’s I donated all my comic books, except for a select few, to charity and pretty much went cold turkey on comic books. Then I discovered comic books on the iPad! All the fun of reading them without worrying about where I’m going to store them.
Working with Stan Lee’s YouTube channel has been a lot of fun and I sincerely hope you enjoy the show. You don’t need to be a superhero fan to enjoy the show. Heck, you don’t need even need to know anything about superheroes to enjoy it. You just have to enjoy it.
The promo for the show is below and the first episode will debut later today at www.youtube.com/worldofheroes
Excelsior!
Creative Mondays #053 – Wrap Up
Well, here we are one year later. I had set out to write and publish to the web, one short essay on creativity a week for all of 2014 and I am happy to say I achieved that goal. I actually surpassed that goal in that I wrote more than fifty-two essays. I believe I will release the remaining essays, once per week, going forward. I may not release all of them as the reason some weren’t released in the past was because I didn’t feel they were strong enough. But you can still expect a few more weeks of thoughts to continue into 2015.
I would like to whole heartedly thank those of you who followed along with this experiment and a big shout out to the people who commented on the various posts and to those who would send me comments in by email. It was rewarding to know that I was reaching people in various creative fields and I just wasn’t shouting into the void.
My initial goal was to write fifty-two of these essays and then, possibly, collect them in a book. I guess that’s still a possibility, but I’m not sure if the interest is there. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give the essays an edit and then maybe put out an ebook for those who would be interested. I’m not sure these require an official print version, but a digital version could be fun. Of course this step means I would have to actually go back and edit them, a task I really don’t enjoy. I guess we’ll see.
What’s next? I don’t know. Now that this project is complete I’ll have to find another one to spur me on. This one was fun, but I may look into something a little more creative. A novel. A screenplay. Something. Time will tell.
At any rate, thanks for following along on this Creative Monday’s project. Enjoy the few ‘bonus’ posts in the weeks to come and keep checking back here at blog.mrgrant.com where I will always be posting…something.
Oh, and check in now and then with the creative projects you’re working on. I always like to see what’s going on in the creative minds of others!
Thanks again.
2015 Project – Audio
I wanted to give myself a project for 2015 in the same vein as the Creative Mondays project I did last year. I’ll have lots of projects to work on this year, but I liked having Creative Mondays last year because it gave me some focus. I knew that those posts had to be written and posted every week.
I had lots of ideas for a project for this year. A goal to set to try and accomplish. I had two different ideas for video/webcast shows but after producing one video a day from December 1-December 25, I was sort of burnt out on that idea. I may go forward with one or both of those at some point, but I didn’t want to commit to producing video weekly.
After some thought, I decided to go back to my internet ‘roots’ sort of speak and that is producing audio. A podcast. A weekly podcast that has no set structure, no set topic, no slickly produced audio. Just me talking. Maybe I read some stories I wrote. Or maybe I’ll tell stories that happened to me that day. Or maybe I’ll interview a friend. I have no set structure, just a goal.
Release one piece of audio every Saturday for all of 2015.
In 2011, I set up a podcast called The GrantCast. I only ever put one episode out and, because of such, it is no longer listed in iTunes. That’s fine, I want to start small. Since these are going to be slickly produced with music and fancy editing, I’m not going to go screaming from the mountain tops about it. That’s why I’m not even publicizing this post talking about it. I just want it to go to the people who’ve subscribed either via RSS or the mailing list because they are the ones who, I’m assuming, would be interested.
The first episode for 2015 is out now on the podcast feed. If you want to subscribe and are podcast savvy, the feed is:
http://www.mrgrant.com/feed/podcast/
If you are not Podcast savvy, and just want to hear the audio, it is here:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/saturdaymorningmedia/GCast002.mp3
In the first episode I talk about my parent’s selling the house they’ve owned for 30 years. Nothing special, nothing groundbreaking, no big laugh at the end. Just a little chat about my parents selling their house.
If you do give it a listen, let me know what you think about it in the comments below.
Note: Future episodes, at least for now, will be posted at www.MrGrant.com not here. It’d probably make more sense to do them here, but the podcast was already set up over there. Anyway, enjoy.