Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Monday, October 13, 2008

Hold on to your hat, something cool's coming...

Monday, August 11, 2008

San Diego Comic-Con Coverage: Part 4

Well it turns out I still have more Con pics to bore you with, so let's get this party started.

This is Alex Ross Batman with Soccer Mom Wonder Woman. I call him alex Ross Batman because he's thick and doughy, yet still authoritative. And that's Soccer Mom Wonder Woman because she can't compete with the Wonder Woman from Part 3. You know I'm right.

A bit of backstory on this pic: Back when I appeared in Toyfare for my entry into their Make-Your-Own-Iron-Man-Costume contest, the SDCC organizers contacted me to ask if I would be kind enough to ship them my Iron Man costume made entirely out of plastic Iced Tea jugs to be displayed on the floor as a testament to amateur ingenuity.

I said no way in hell was I going to pay for shipping, so they told me to screw off and displayed this movie costume, instead.

This is the greatest vehicle playset in the history of vehicle playsets, and it'll be mine as soon as I knock down a few walls so I can fit it in my apartment.

Con was crawling with these things:

No, it's not a Kid Rock tribute band. It's a bunch of Sexy Jesus', there to promote Hamlet 2 through what must be some movie exec's idea of viral marketing. Well, it worked, because it got a mention here. And based on my website traffic report, I got 7 whole visitors last week!


Okay this one takes a bit of 'splainin. At my first year of Con, I was unfortunate enough to sample the offerings of the convention center food kiosks. $9 and one piece of microwaved pizza later, it was simply a matter of finding a place to sit down to enjoy my processed dog meat. There was nary an empty chair to be found, so my chums and I relented and settled on the floor at this very spot. Not three minutes later, as we were in the process of choking down a substance that surely contained bits of Chinese newspapers, a security guard approached us and sternly ordered us to get up and stop causing a fire hazard. So why am I posting this picture? Because it's totally unfair that these folks got to sit down in the very same area and eat their food unmolested! Where the hell is that security guard to hassle THESE people?? I'm writing my congressman a strongly worded letter about this.

And speaking of my chums, here they are looking happy to not be in a picture with me. My congressman will hear about that, too.


And so ended another eventful year at Comic-Con. But wait! What crap did I buy? Well, I couldn't possibly pass up my chance to get a poster autographed by Lou Ferrigno. He signed it while talking on his cell phone and not making eye contact with me. Oh, and he gave me change from his own wallet. So Chirping Chicken now has a $20 bill that was once in Lou Ferrigno's wallet - they might want to frame it.

As usual I picked up a few Batman figures, but beyond that, not much else.

Not much else at all...

My trip back was a bit less stressful than my trip out, at least until I got on the plane and realized that I was sitting next to a hyperactive and very vocal five-year-old boy who was none too pleased about being separated from his mommy. That is until he met me.


This is Jack, and as you can tell from his jumpsuit, Jack like Iron Man. We got along just fine. It's amazing how easy it is to make friends with a five-year old when you happen to be carrying a bunch of Batman action figures in your carry-on luggage. And it gave me an excuse to play with my action figures on my tray table without air marshals tackling me, so all in all, it was a win-win situation.

Oh, and one interesting note, my flight took off 2 minutes before that 5.4 earthquake hit LA, which we were all fully informed about thanks to Jet Blue's in-flight TV. That's like watching Godzilla tear through Tokyo while on a plane leaving Tokyo. In other words - awesome!

So thus ends this year's Comic-Con coverage! Tune in next year for, uh, something else...

Iron Monger commands you!

Thursday, August 7, 2008

San Diego Comic-Con: Part 3

Today I'm gonna talk a little bit about the panels at Con because really, isn't that what Con's all about?


Well, no, actually it's all about this...


But I have a lot of Panel pics I need to burn through so let's get on with it.

So this year all the panels started off with something new - a warning from the Bush administration saying that all of our questions to any panel would be screened! Check the bottom point on the screen here:


What the hell?? Con wouldn't be Con without autistics getting to the mic and asking William Shatner to sign their birth certificates. Well it must have worked, because there weren't any weird question-askers this year.

Um...except this guy...

This is the producer of Heroes, threatening to show us the season premier unless we could avoid yelling "woo!" when Hayden Panettiere came out:

He made us watch it. It sucked.

These are the Lost producers with Matthew Fox making fun of the Heroes people.


This panel created more questions than it answered, killed off a few of the participants, then took a six month break before coming back to confound us some more. I couldn't stop watching.

This is me outside, in line for the Battlestar panel. Outside because the line snaked around the top floor of the convention center, out onto the balcony and up some power lines.It didn't work out.

This is the Watchmen panel, which rocked.

That's Jackie-Earle Haley thanking Zack Snyder for giving him the opportunity to be known for something besides child molesting. Insane psychopath is a bit of a step up, really.


This is the line for the Oprah panel:

Zing!

And on that note, I'm going to sign off. Be sure to tune in for Part 4!



The Apes command you!

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

San Diego Comic-Con: Part 2

Ok, so where were we - ah yes, upstairs. I should probably take this opportunity to mention that I don't write these blogs in chronological order, so it's entirely possible that you might see me in a Batman shirt in one pic, a slightly different Batman shirt in another pic, and me and Charlton Heston kickin' back while enjoying some Billy Beer in another pic. That was a historical joke, kids. DeLorean jokes are so passe.

Let's kick off part 2 with an interesting experiment, namely the Do's and Do Not's of wearing a Princess Leia Slave Girl costume at con.

DO:Be hot.

DO NOT:

Not be hot.


Class dismissed.


And as long as I'm making fun of people who put time, money and love into their homemade costumes...This is a very accurate representation of Spider-Man from issue 479 where he fights his greatest foe, Type II diabetes. Zing! Still with me? Okay let's do another one...

This is Six and Baltar if Six was actually Boomer. Let's think about this. You're an Asian girl. You're a Battlestar fan. You want to dress up in a Battlestar costume for Con, so what's your natural choice? If you said Boomer, the hot Asian female, you're wrong! No, the natural choice would be Six, the hot, blonde, caucasian woman. Look, I'm not saying this girl can't dress up as whoever she wants, I just think there was a better choice for her. You don't see me walking around dressed up like Sherman Helmsely. Not after Halloween '84, anyway.


This chick knows the score.



This is Evil-Lyn, looking at me with dead eyes that say "You better not take this picture back to New York with you and show it to your girlfriend, who will recognize me as a girl she went to college with named Emily and send me mocking text messages making fun of my poor life choices that led me to pose with nerds for money. I can't believe I went to college for this."


I've got to give this guy credit. He didn't come to Con dressed up as Chewbacca, he came to Con dressed up as PETER MAYHEW! That does it, next year I'm coming as Kenny Baker.

This is the movie exec who green lit The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, wandering the floor looking for a delicious baby to eat. Looks like he found one, so I guess we can look forward to Uptown Girls 2: Uptownier.


This guy came dressed up as Jonathan Frakes.

And here's an image to cleanse your palette for the next installment...
Two hot chicks and one smokin' hot dude.

Tune in to Part 3 for more unwarranted name-calling and a special appearance by the lady who did the voice of E.T.! Or not...


Trap Jaw commands you!

Friday, August 1, 2008

San Diego Comic-Con Part 1: Frake-a-licious!

Back from Comic-Con! For those of you wondering where I have been (and therefore you must be illiterate, because I explained my absence about 2 posts down. Since you're reading this, however, I must commend you on learning to read in the past week. Still doesn't explain why you didn't bother to scroll down a bit, but hey, maybe the new literacy rules have changed to "only read things written since you've learned how to read." Who am I to judge.), I just returned from a week in sunny and earthquake-prone Southern California.

My odyssey in getting out there is a story for another post, but let's just say it involved sitting on the tarmac at JFK for four hours, a canceled flight, a mini tornado, a missed day, and a cocktail napkin signed by Selina Gomez (Google it if you're older than 14). But I digress...

Once my plane unpleasantness got sorted out, I finally arrived at the San Diego Comic-Con Friday morning. The big one (a helluva lot bigger than the New York con, brilliant coverage of which can be found here). Me and over 100,000 of my closest friends, all intent on getting into the Watchmen Panel. Which I did! This is me looking rather dashing in line:And this is what it looked like once inside:
(this is only about 1/64 of the room, mind you)

Watchmen was fun, the whole cast was there, but I only focused on getting pictures of Malin Ackerman because she's hot:


After Watchmen, it was time to hit the floor! "Hit the floor" is just a figure of speech, though, considering that the sheer concentration of people at this year's Con made it impossible to make physical contact with the ground. It was more like "dive into the crowd and hope that the human current doesn't deliver you to the Manga section."
After floating past a lot of fat women convinced they could pull off a slave-Leia (a staple of Cons worldwide, and considered by many Con-goers as an occupational hazard), and Jonathan Frakes...
"What do you mean they don't want me in the new Star Trek movie?! I'm Jonathan Friggin' Frakes! I'm the only Star Trek alum to have a successful directing career! What do you mean you didn't see Clockstoppers?? It was huge in Laos! Well I guess I just have a more global perspective than you. Tell J.J. to call me, I'll be at the pay phone on 59th and Lexington at 4:00."

...I decided to board the stairway to heaven, otherwise known as the second floor of the convention center:This is the view from up there, if you can tear away from the hypnotic trance of my eyes above:

But what did I find up there? An attractive slave Leia? A Spider-Man weighing less than 300 pounds? A bottle of water for less than $6.00? Tune in next week for these and more exciting answers in part 2 of a 600 part series!

99.8% green She-Hulk commands you!

Wow, a whole post about Daily Droid...

Daily Droid layout has been giving me problems lately, working on something different. Stay tuned...

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Off to Comic-Con!

Well I'm about to leave for Comic-Con: The Big One. Tomorrow I fly to Burbank, then head down to San Diego, where I am to spend the next four days trying to out-geek 400,000 other dorks. I'll attempt to post pics and snarky commentary from my European-style hotel room every night (translation: shared bathroom and an abundance of washcloths), but no promises. If the Con-nights prove to be too eventful, I'll at least post a wrap-up when I get back. So wish me luck, and watch the skies!

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Check Out the Shell Show's New Look!

So, in the spirit of the post below...

I've spent the last few weeks doing a massive redesign of The Shell Show site. It's not as straightforward as it used to be, but it's a lot more fun! So go check it out, Season 1 or Season 2. Season 2's almost done, with Cyclops, The Punisher and Pyro being the newest episodes. After Dr. Doom is done, I'm going to take a short break and then get cracking on Season 3. Got a favorite superhero you want interviewed?

Too bad, I don't share creative control.

"Why Don't You Ever Update the Blog?"

So you may have noticed that I'm not the best at updating this here blog. The thing is, I never really understood "blogging." I'm aware of them, sometimes I read them, but I've never had much of a desire to write one myself. Why? Because despite what you may infer from the main page, I'm a rather private person. It doesn't make any sense to me to write things about my daily life for complete strangers to read. Quite frankly, what goes on in my boring life is none of your business. I may want to run for President or Country Coroner one day, and if that happens the last thing I need is for folks to start sifting through things I wrote 20 years earlier and calling me a racist because I wrote that I preferred vanilla ice cream over chocolate.

So why do I even have a blog section? Well, mostly because when I was designing the site I realized that I didn't have a whole lot of content for it, and I figured a blog button would be a good way to eat up some space. Also, it's a good dumping ground for stuff that just doesn't fit anywhere else. My Comic-Con coverage is a good example of that - that's about an event, not my personal life. Additionally, this is a good place to give updates on what's going on with the site (the site, not my life - there's nothing going on there). But seeing as major updates to the site don't happen like clockwork, you can't expect the blog to be updated consistently, either. That's not to say I'm not good at updating other things. I update Daily Droid religiously, and I'm shooting new Shell Shows at a pretty good clip.

This site is about content, not opinions that nobody cares about. So if I were you, I'd stick mostly to Daily Droid and The Shell Show when you stop on by VforVitale. If you notice something different, come on over to the blog where I'll probably explain it. And if there's any sort of features in the blog, I'll try to let you know on the main page. On the other hand, if you want to know what my favorite color M&M is, or what my pornstar name is, well then strap yourself in to be sorely disappointed. Then head on over to any 14-year old's MySpace page, where I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for.

Oh, and about Top Secret - yeah I'm probably going to be replacing that with something else. That hasn't really turned into what I originally envisioned. Maybe I'll turn it into a review section for things I find at the Dollar Store. Or if you have a better idea - make your own site.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

2 New Interviews

So I've been doing Shell Show interviews at a pretty good clip now. Loki and Psylocke are up, and I'm on track to put up one a week. If you have any requests, leave them in the comments. And the Psylocke interview is a bit PG-13, so tuck the kids in first.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Check out the Shell Show...again.

Considering that I've spent the last 3 night staying up to the early morning hours while I messed with Blogger's HTML to make the Shell Show navigation a bit more intuitive, I think you owe it to me to check it out. You can do that here.

I've organized it by seasons (so far there's 2). Rule of thumb is that Season 1 was the first season I did (hence the"1"), and it shows. So far there's 2 episodes in Season 2, reflecting 2 set redesigns. I wasn't happy with the new set in Episode 1 of Season 2, so I redesigned it for the Cyclops interview. I like it now, and it'll probably stay like that until at least Season 3.

Oh, you may notice that the Batman interview is missing from Season 1 - that's on purpose. Batman was the first interview I shot, ever, and looking back at it, it just seemed too amateur. Therefore, I'll be doing another Batman interview (with another Batman) in Season 2. Maybe when Dark Knight comes out. Or maybe never.

So go catch up on The Shell Show, and check back because I'll be shooting the Season 2 episodes at a pretty good clip now. Next will be either Luke Cage or Dr. Doom...or maybe another visit by Wolverine. You heard it here first!

Thursday, May 8, 2008

The Shell Show Season Premiere!

Hey hey,

Haven't updated in a while, I've been busy. Busy creating COMEDY GOLD!! Well, comedy copper anyway. That's right, I'm talking about new episodes of the SHELL SHOW. Head on over there now to check out the second season premiere with LONGSHOT. The second episode's already done, but I'm thinking about redesigning the site, so stay tuned.

G'night everybody!

Thursday, April 24, 2008

NYC Comic-Con PART 4

Well Comic-Con was over, but I didn't leave empty -handed! In terms of cool free stuff, there wasn't as much as you'd find in San Diego. I did get a Meg Ryan mask:


Or maybe it was a Skrull. I can never tell.

I also got a Hellboy 2 poster, supposedly one of only 2,008 being given out, but I seriously doubt that anyone really counted out 2,008 posters to bring to Con. If they did, that must be the most boring job ever. What's that craigslist posting going to look like?

INTERNSHIP: Come work in the movie business and rub elbows with the stars! Duties will include counting out 2,008 posters and loading them onto a truck. Must be able to count. Unpaid.

But I digress.

Most of the places on the floor at Con look sort of like this:

Where you can buy hard-to-find collectibles at rock-bottom prices!

Pay no attention to that.

I was good this year, I didn't get a ton of stuff like a normally do, which requires me to make a special visit to the Home Depot parking lot to hire some immigrants to haul it home for me. Mostly because I already have pretty much everything, action-figure wise. Nevertheless, I did come away with a few bags worth:This only required two immigrant workers to get home.

Here's the run down:

One (1) Batman T-shirt

Two (2) DC SHOWCASE collections (Superman and Batman), which are basically a romp through the absurdity of 1960's Superman and Batman comics. Always a good time.

Three (3) Batman action figures, varying styles.

Three (3) Masters of the Universe "Snake Men" action figures, which I've been looking for since 2003.

One (1) autographed "trinity" print by GW Fisher. Nice guy.

So there you have it. The Batman figures went straight to my display of Batmen from every style I can find. It's quite a party once you get them all standing together. Here's what it looks like (click to embiggen):

That's a lot of guano.

The He-Man figs are going under my bed until the day when I can get my Castle Grayskull out of storage and give them a properly displayed home. The trinity print is going on my wall, here's a better look at it:


Wonder Woman looks pissed. Probably because Con was charging $3.75 for a bottle of soda.

And besides that, all I have are my memories, my photos, my empty wallet, and the lingering stench of geek-scent in my hair to remember Con by. But have no fear, true believers, because San Diego is just around the corner. And this year I'll actually be sleeping on a bed! Woo hoo!

But don't let that scare you off, keep checking the blog for exciting updates in the world of VforVitale.com. There's some cool stuff coming up, stuff you'll want to wake your kids up for. And there may even be a very special appearance by the guy who played "Mr. Six" in the old Six Flags commercials! So don't be a stranger...

Middle-aged Black Manta commands you!









Tuesday, April 22, 2008

NYC Comic-Con PART 3

Here it is, part 3!

Sunday was Kids day, so there were lots of little nerdlings running around. This one was one of my favorites:

After a while the Stormtroopers rallied and started rounding up the kids:Word is that they lined them up and shot them behind the convention center. Kind of like the RNC.

Basically the point of Sunday is to wander aimlessly and try to soak in all the stuff you missed the last 2 days. Meryl found this thing:
It stole her wallet.

And I found this thing:
Not sure what it is, but it made me crave Ice Tea. (*Editor's Note: If you want to understand this hilarious joke and be the envy of all your friends, tune in to TOP SECRET next week for the thrilling conclusion!)

Here's some Batman action figures:

Blue, Black...










...and Bale









Then the Con folk went and flickered the lights, which is the universal demand to get the hell out. And the stampede began!

RUN!!!

This is me and Meryl showing our sad faces, because Con was over:
Yes I know that it appears I'm about to spit out some rancid Sunny D, but that's what my frown looks like. Shut up.

Here's a picture of all the sad geeks outside, many of them calling their moms to come pick them up:
But wait!

What about all the cool stuff I bought? I did buy cool stuff, didn't I?

Yes of course I did! But you'll have to come back tomorrow to find out what. That, and random pics that didn't make it into parts 1 through 3. Plus a very special message from the guy who played Maude's husband on Maude, Bill Macy! You're not gonna want to miss this!Confused Stripper Wonder Woman with a lightsaber commands you!!