We Interrupt Your Saturday Evening To Bring You 30 Seconds of Awesome

If you caught the United States Presidential Debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama last Wednesday, you heard Romney say that he loved Big Bird, but the first thing he’d do as President would be to defund PBS… effectively firing the poor bastard, leaving him homeless and wandering the streets like any down-on-his-luck wino, muttering to his imaginary friend.

Well, the comment led to “Big Bird” becoming a trending topic on Twitter, a slew of Big Bird parody accounts on Twitter… and the odd response from the comics community.

Such as this little masterpiece by pulp comic artist Francesco Francavilla. Which. Is. Awesome. Check it out.

Dance Your Cares Away – Ben Folds And Fraggles Make Beautiful Music

Chris Hardwick may currently have the greatest job on Earth. He gets to rub elbows with Doctor Who and Walking Dead muckity-mucks, run a whole channel of geek oriented programming as part of Nerdist Industries, and now, hang out with the Ben Folds Five and The Jim Henson Company as part of the 30th anniversary of Fraggle Rock. Here’s the scoop from the press release, in which Hardwick describes how this came together and the inherent awesomeness of his job:

In a meeting with Lisa [Henson, CEO, The Jim Henson Company], she casually said, ‘Next year is the 30th anniversary of ‘Fraggle Rock.’ Would you want to do anything with the Fraggles?’ ‘WHAT THE [expletive]?? That’s an OPTION?!’ I loudly replied. I think I scared her a little. I knew Ben [Folds] had a new album releasing in September so I threw his name out. Lisa said ‘that would be amazing’ without hesitation. It was beautifully serendipitous. It seemed like a no-brainer to me, but I still cautiously pitched it to Ben, not really knowing his relationship with the show. I think I just spit words out, ‘YOU. VIDEO. FRAGGLES. ME PAY FOR!’”

This video for the new single “Do It Anyway”, by Ben Folds Five, speaks to my inner child who had to sneak episodes of Fraggle Rock at friends’ houses because my parents refused to get HBO. It also speaks to my inner early twenty-something for whom Ben Folds Five’s Whatever And Ever Amen was the soundtrack to the year I moved out of the house after college. It also makes me question my life choices because, no matter what I might accomplish tomorrow, next month, or next year, it most likely won’t be a video shoot with Fraggles. This. This is how the full on midlife crisis starts.

Check out the video full of awesome win, in which Ben Folds and the Fraggles are joined by Chris Hardwick, Rob Corddry, and Anna Kendrick, after the jump!

Brain Bleach – It’s A Slow News Day, So Here’s An Avengers Themed Burlesque Show (NSFW)

Captain America didn’t see *this* coming.

Hotsy-Totsy have a history of producing eccentric geek-centric burlesque tributes, most recently creating a Game of Thrones and Mad Men show, as well as an upcoming Doctor Who Parody…To further stake their clam in the land of nerd, overheard backstage were some of the burlesque dancers discussing the merits of seaQuest DSV versus seaQuest 2032.

Check out a trailer for the show, after the jump.

Doctor Who News: Is Moffat Planning On Killing Off Both Rory And Amy Pond? Also, Here’s All Of “Pond Life”.

The US premiere of Doctor Who Season 7 is tonight at 9pm EDT. We’ve all heard that the Ponds will be exiting the series this season, potentially with one of them being killed. However, the wording of Matt Smith, the actor currently in the role of The Doctor, in this interview with The Mary Sue is positively cryptic:

…what’s really interesting about these next five episodes, which is the first season, if we tag that as the first season, it deals with the fall of the Ponds and the demise of those two great companions (emphasis added) that the Doctor is hugely, hugely attached to and had such a significant impact on him as a character and for me as an actor. So that’s bound to be an event that flips his universe massively.

Wait, what? Words like fall and demise are pretty freaking dire there, Matt. Are you being dramatic about the exit of The Doctor’s companions or are they taking their leave in a somewhat more permanent and final manner?

Well, all we know for sure, based on this Doctor Who Insider clip and the events of the Season 7 Web series prequel, Pond Life, is that whatever’s coming down the pike, it’s going to be pretty emotional. Check it out:

And, catch the entirety of Pond Life after the jump!

You Bust It Out. You Light A Match: Superman And Wonder Woman On Match.com

You might have heard that, starting in Justice League #12, writer Geoff Johns and artist Jim Lee will be starting a storyline where Superman and Wonder Woman take their relationship, shall we say, to the next level. They go from friends, to friends with benefits, provided my “benefits” you mean “The Kryptonian Armpit Gank.”

We didn’t jump on this story here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives because, after nearly 40 years of reading comics, this isn’t our first rodeo – we’ve seen these two crazy kids bump overidealized comic book uglies in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and saw it intimated in Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s Kingdom Come, plus if you can spell the words “comic” and “slash” and find the enter key on your laptop, you can get all the super sucky-fucky you can shake your stick at. Besides, these things come and go in the comics – remember when Batman almost chucked the Bat Meat to Zatanna? These things never last, and we figured we’d address it in our review of the issue.

That is, until DC decided to hype the story by setting up profiles for Superman and Wonder Woman on Match.com.

Brain Bleach – Naked Stan Lee

Yup. I saw it. I can’t unsee it. Now I’m sharing it with you:

Hey ladies! Check out my Hulk!

You can check out the specifics of why this is a thing that happened over on Sean Howe’s Tumblr. And, you can actually purchase Batman Vs. The Incredible Hulk, which is also a crazy thing that apparently happened, over on Amazon. Most importantly, you can purchase enough whiskey to make you forget that picture over at your local liquor store. I know that’s on my list of things to do right after I hit “post” on this.

You’re welcome.

Dirty Mego Is Now A Thing: Robot Chicken / DC Comics Special Trailer

If there is a show on television that has repeatedly demonstrated its comic geek cred, it’s Robot Chicken. From the sketch of the members of the Justice League as the cast of The Real World to the Hollywood Spotlight on The Hulk, you have to respect Seth Green’s commitment to comics, even though at SDCC I had to wait around for five minutes in my hotel lobby while his bodyguards cockblocked me from the elevators in the hotel I, you know, was a paid and registered guest in, so they could guarantee that Mr. Green got to ride to his hotel room in comfort. All the while ignoring my plaintive whimpers about my scrotum being stuck to my left leg. But that’s not important right now.

What’s important is that, after a couple of Star Wars related specials, Robot Chicken is doing a DC Comics special. And not only that, DC Comics’s Chief Creative Officer did some work on the special, meaning that we are likely to see Aquaman finally breaking off a piece of that sweet, sweet Catwoman ass, opening a filthy joke singularity of the words “fish” and “pussy”.

Look: if you’re a fan of the show, you’re gonna watch it anyway. But if you’re not, the official trailer for the special has been released, and you can get a taste of what you’re in for (hint: if includes crotch shots. Literally.) after the jump.

Multiple Redundancies: SDCC 2013 Pre-Registration Is Over

And that’s that. Preregistration for San Diego Comic-Con for those who attended as members this year opened at 8 a.m. Pacific Time yesterday… and closed at about 9:20 a.m. thereafter.

Unlike other years, which for us have entailed either obtaining our four-day passes for the currently-starting convention and immediately doing a 180 to get in line to obtain passes for the following year, or, as last year, setting an alarm for 4:30 a.m. to catch a cab to the Hyatt to the right of the San Diego Convention Center… and then walking to the end of the line near the Hilton to the left of the San Diego Convention Center to wait for five hours to purchase the next year’s passes, this was a relatively bloodless affair. Simply log into a particular URL with your favorite Web browser, upon which you pressed the Big Green Button, and were directed to a virtual waiting room, which told you what your place in line was. Every two minutes, the page would update, and tell you how far along you were. All in all, it was simple… except for the fact that it was anything but. Not if you wanted to make sure that you could go.

Brain Bleach – Watch Out For Creeping Latex; Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow.

A couple of quick things for a Friday afternoon. First of all, check out Bleeding Cool for a gallery of some the coolest Venom cosplay to ever get banned from Facebook. Here’s a little sample to get your attention:
 

 
Apparently, Facebook took issue with photographer Adam Jay‘s subject’s semi nudity, despite the fact that there are other photos all over Facebook, including whole groups that participate in latex play (seriously, Google “Facebook+ latex”). What a shame.

After the jump, a short film illustrating the lack of dog curbing laws in the neighborhood of Superman’s Fortress Of Solitude.

Lines Online: SDCC 2013 Passes For Previous Attendees On Sale Saturday

Update, 4:20 p.m. According to CCI, passes with Preview Night will, in fact, be available when they go on sale this Saturday:

Hi Rob,

Yes, 4 Day badges with Preview Night will be available. For badge pricing information, please use the following link: http://comic-con.org/cci/cci_reg.php

Thank you.

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As I intimated last night (But was frankly too drunk to elaborate on at the time), the word has gone out that advance sales for passes to San Diego Comic-Con 2013 for people who purchased passes for this year’s SDCC will go on sale online Saturday, August 4th, at 8 a.m. Pacific Time.

Here’s the deal: if you had an actual purchased pass for SDCC 2012 – press, pros and exhibitors need not apply – you’re eligible for the advance sale (You can find out if you can be in on the action here, using your SDCC 2012 member ID).