all right, you primitive screwheads
Jun. 9th, 2010 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
veronica_richFirst off - happy 27th birthday to my sister, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dahlianna! She's still at an age where she'll admit how old she is ...
As I posted earlier, Sunday night was our attendance at W00tstock 2.0 in Chicago.finding_neo, a_silver_rose, and I stayed overnight near O'Hare (for those of you who remember TurnerCon '08, our hotel was across the road from the Holiday Inn we were at *G*). W00tstock - or as metalkatt calls it, "Nerdvana" - is the creation of Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, and Paul & Storm whose focus is geekdom, fandom, and all the associated nerdiness of four decades of pop sci-fi/fantasy culture that have influenced our lives. It's stand-up comedy, music, humorous visual aids, stories, and general geekery, and I highly recommend it - with tax, my ticket was $33 and it ran FIVE HOURS.
Here's Wil telling us we're free to photograph and record the entire show:
And so, we DID.
Here are Paul & Storm opening the festivities with their song "We Are The Opening Band." (They also did the closing song, but took WAY too long to do it, prompting the other performers backstage to elect one of their number - host Peter Sagal of NPR's "Wait, Wait ..." show - to wander out and tell them to "fucking wrap it up so we can go HOME." ROFL)
Dr. Demento frequent contributor singer/comedian Tim Cavanaugh also came out and sang for us. He's the guy who wrote "99 Dead Baboons" in 1984, which far surpasses the quality of its original inspiration ("99 Luft Balloons"):
I don't keep up THAT closely with the YouTubes, apparently, for I had not heard of ukelele singing sensation Molly Lewis. She came out onstage, sang an original song, and a medley of popular songs, including her (much better) version of Britney Spears's "Toxic."
One of the highlights for me were three of the guys from Mystery Science Theatre 3000 coming out onstage: Trace Beaulieu and Bill Corbett, who each voiced Crow the robot, and Kevin Murphy, who did Tom Servo. I uploaded a short video I took to YouTube - I missed the first few seconds where Trace and Bill show up onstage and express awkwardness at both being there at the same time, but the rest is great.
Kevin and Bill belting out a song:
And Trace doing a dramatic reading from one of his pseudo-children's books:
My pictures of him didn't turn out well, but cartoonist Bill Amend was also onstage (the creator of "Foxtrot"). In addition to telling stories about his work and dealing with geek-challenged editors and syndicators, he threw up on the screens in the room (the default screensaver was Ceiling Cat, in case you care *G*) cartoons in the style of famous fellow 'toonists that he drew, with twists for the Internet Age:
We were treated to a reading from Wil's book, a short story detailing his first visit to see "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" at the age of 16 and his fascination with the movie and the moviegoing experience since. Probably the highlight of this was his steadfast refusal to admit to being a Rocky virgin except, upon being questioned by a hot woman in a bustier and Betty Page haircut if he was a virgin, screaming, "YES! YES! I'M A VIRGIN! DO THINGS TO ME!!" ("Like everyone's deflowering, mine was not what I expected it to be.")
Wil, with live storytelling musical accompaniment from Paul & Storm, in the best RHPS tradition:
The entire company, singing "My Country is Better Than Yours":
Couple of close-ups of Wil singing (that's Bill Corbett on his right and Storm on his left):
Near the end of the show, one of its organizers, Adam Savage ("Mythbusters"), came out and told stories about his first time in Chicago (going dancing with his wife and friends at a club; having the musical tastes of a 14-year-old girl and choosing to get up to go dance to Kelly Clarkson; being on the dance floor as white smoke cleared and the first sight greeting him being one guy on his knees giving another a blowjob right there on the dancefloor - "Man, Chicago is HARDCORE," he concluded) and of course, stories about co-star Jamie Of The Walrus Moustache. (The one I liked the best was Adam telling everyone some celeb gossip about an interview he'd seen the night before with Billy Bob Thornton about ex-wife Angelina Jolie, Billy Bob making some comment about how someone can be the most beautiful woman in the world and it still be "like fucking a couch." Jamie, off in the corner, wisely observed, "If MY couch looked like Angelina Jolie, I'd fuck it.")
I didn't get photos of EVERYBODY, but I missed very few performers. One it was way too dark to photograph (for me anyway) was Peter Sagal, who did a performance-reading of a short story (assumedly one of his own) about being a supervillain's minion. Maybe he should get together with Joss Whedon for "Dr. Horrible II"? At the very end, the four main organizers came out onstage to sing a song with Presidents of the United States of America drummer Jason Finn - "The Pirate Captain's Wife's Lament." (I'll let you look up those lyrics. Be sure to say/sing it out loud for maximum effect.) But they kept interrupting their own start with stories, harassing each other and the audience, and labeling cover bands. (This is where you take a phrase someone just said and assign it as a celebrity's cover band you'd have - at one point someone said "sometimes, 15 minutes is too long," to which Finn quipped, "'Sometimes, 15 Minutes Is Too Long' is my Justin Bieber cover band's name.")
Like Gilligan's Island, we all set out on a 3-hour tour and ended up careening along for much longer. But for $33 (including taxes and fees!), I got 5 hours of great entertainment, geek references only a few people I know IRL actually understand, and the chance to meet these guys in the lobby afterward; I even got a photo with the MST guys and they signed my ticket stub for my sister and even wished her a happy birthday on it.
dahlianna! She's still at an age where she'll admit how old she is ...As I posted earlier, Sunday night was our attendance at W00tstock 2.0 in Chicago.
finding_neo, a_silver_rose, and I stayed overnight near O'Hare (for those of you who remember TurnerCon '08, our hotel was across the road from the Holiday Inn we were at *G*). W00tstock - or as metalkatt calls it, "Nerdvana" - is the creation of Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, and Paul & Storm whose focus is geekdom, fandom, and all the associated nerdiness of four decades of pop sci-fi/fantasy culture that have influenced our lives. It's stand-up comedy, music, humorous visual aids, stories, and general geekery, and I highly recommend it - with tax, my ticket was $33 and it ran FIVE HOURS.Here's Wil telling us we're free to photograph and record the entire show:
And so, we DID.
Here are Paul & Storm opening the festivities with their song "We Are The Opening Band." (They also did the closing song, but took WAY too long to do it, prompting the other performers backstage to elect one of their number - host Peter Sagal of NPR's "Wait, Wait ..." show - to wander out and tell them to "fucking wrap it up so we can go HOME." ROFL)
Dr. Demento frequent contributor singer/comedian Tim Cavanaugh also came out and sang for us. He's the guy who wrote "99 Dead Baboons" in 1984, which far surpasses the quality of its original inspiration ("99 Luft Balloons"):
I don't keep up THAT closely with the YouTubes, apparently, for I had not heard of ukelele singing sensation Molly Lewis. She came out onstage, sang an original song, and a medley of popular songs, including her (much better) version of Britney Spears's "Toxic."
One of the highlights for me were three of the guys from Mystery Science Theatre 3000 coming out onstage: Trace Beaulieu and Bill Corbett, who each voiced Crow the robot, and Kevin Murphy, who did Tom Servo. I uploaded a short video I took to YouTube - I missed the first few seconds where Trace and Bill show up onstage and express awkwardness at both being there at the same time, but the rest is great.
Kevin and Bill belting out a song:
And Trace doing a dramatic reading from one of his pseudo-children's books:
My pictures of him didn't turn out well, but cartoonist Bill Amend was also onstage (the creator of "Foxtrot"). In addition to telling stories about his work and dealing with geek-challenged editors and syndicators, he threw up on the screens in the room (the default screensaver was Ceiling Cat, in case you care *G*) cartoons in the style of famous fellow 'toonists that he drew, with twists for the Internet Age:
We were treated to a reading from Wil's book, a short story detailing his first visit to see "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" at the age of 16 and his fascination with the movie and the moviegoing experience since. Probably the highlight of this was his steadfast refusal to admit to being a Rocky virgin except, upon being questioned by a hot woman in a bustier and Betty Page haircut if he was a virgin, screaming, "YES! YES! I'M A VIRGIN! DO THINGS TO ME!!" ("Like everyone's deflowering, mine was not what I expected it to be.")
Wil, with live storytelling musical accompaniment from Paul & Storm, in the best RHPS tradition:
The entire company, singing "My Country is Better Than Yours":
Couple of close-ups of Wil singing (that's Bill Corbett on his right and Storm on his left):
Near the end of the show, one of its organizers, Adam Savage ("Mythbusters"), came out and told stories about his first time in Chicago (going dancing with his wife and friends at a club; having the musical tastes of a 14-year-old girl and choosing to get up to go dance to Kelly Clarkson; being on the dance floor as white smoke cleared and the first sight greeting him being one guy on his knees giving another a blowjob right there on the dancefloor - "Man, Chicago is HARDCORE," he concluded) and of course, stories about co-star Jamie Of The Walrus Moustache. (The one I liked the best was Adam telling everyone some celeb gossip about an interview he'd seen the night before with Billy Bob Thornton about ex-wife Angelina Jolie, Billy Bob making some comment about how someone can be the most beautiful woman in the world and it still be "like fucking a couch." Jamie, off in the corner, wisely observed, "If MY couch looked like Angelina Jolie, I'd fuck it.")
I didn't get photos of EVERYBODY, but I missed very few performers. One it was way too dark to photograph (for me anyway) was Peter Sagal, who did a performance-reading of a short story (assumedly one of his own) about being a supervillain's minion. Maybe he should get together with Joss Whedon for "Dr. Horrible II"? At the very end, the four main organizers came out onstage to sing a song with Presidents of the United States of America drummer Jason Finn - "The Pirate Captain's Wife's Lament." (I'll let you look up those lyrics. Be sure to say/sing it out loud for maximum effect.) But they kept interrupting their own start with stories, harassing each other and the audience, and labeling cover bands. (This is where you take a phrase someone just said and assign it as a celebrity's cover band you'd have - at one point someone said "sometimes, 15 minutes is too long," to which Finn quipped, "'Sometimes, 15 Minutes Is Too Long' is my Justin Bieber cover band's name.")
Like Gilligan's Island, we all set out on a 3-hour tour and ended up careening along for much longer. But for $33 (including taxes and fees!), I got 5 hours of great entertainment, geek references only a few people I know IRL actually understand, and the chance to meet these guys in the lobby afterward; I even got a photo with the MST guys and they signed my ticket stub for my sister and even wished her a happy birthday on it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-06-10 02:00 am (UTC)I especially love that they didn't forbid recording. True Geeks, these guys (not a bunch of actors/promoters/etc. grubbing for money at every available turn).
Good time achieved. :-P *is envious*
no subject
Date: 2010-06-10 05:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 01:31 am (UTC)