New Podcast - Interview with Craig Roberts!

This week's podcast, beyond being on our new release schedule by coming out on Wednesday, is extra special because we get to interview Craig Roberts, official buyer for Game Parlor. We caught up with Craig at the Game Parlor in Chantilly, as you can probably tell by the comforting murmur of gamers just outside the game room that we were recording in. Here's a few of the interview highlights:

• The preorder system for Game Parlor is super useful.
• Every boardgamer I know is with me on this: how awesome is Ticket to Ride?
• Do game store customers resemble those in Our Valued Customers or Not Always Right?
• Learn about the glorious geography and demographics of Utah!
• Learn more through the Cartoon History of the Universe and Scandinavia and the World.
• NPR is convincing me that birds are every inch as terrifying as I feared.
• Scooter believes that if I attempt to run the zombie obstacle course with a helmet and a GoPro camera, hilarity will ensue.
• I stun Scooter when I reveal the truth of my retail past.
• We get into a solid discussion about the pros and cons of digital distribution.
• Everyone with gaming books has a horror story about moving; we share ours.
• Because we recorded this early, we try to convince Craig to join us for Shawarma and Avengers (the event was amazing, by the way).
• To prevent the podcast from being too high-brow, we list the most obscure and/or offensive RPGs:
• Kill Puppies for Satan (page has a running hate mail total)
• Cats (I have only Brannen's word that this exists)
• Kittens in a Blender
• Maid
• My Life with Master
• The Other Other Other All-Batman Game
• I bought Zombie Dice after this podcast (a week ago) and I've played it on a nearly daily basis.
• This podcast includes my favorite moment ever recorded in any podcast. You'll know because we're laughing so hard that Scooter comments on my face going red.

I'm including links to the Amazon games so that you can read reviews and see the box, but please, if you can, make it out to Game Parlor and buy them from the local brick and mortar store. Check out Game Parlor and the upcoming events on their website and Facebook page. They have an upcoming Naruto Shonen Jump Regional Championship (June 23).

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Takeaway quote: "Sure, this is my job (and the owners' livelihood), but this is your game store. If you're doing it right, it should be a community." - Craig Roberts

This Week in Geek 2012/05/28

A showcase of this week's finest geek and geek related activities for the week. Mark your calendars.

Thanks to the New York Marine Corps for making this image Creative Commons.

Happy Memorial Day! Thanks to all those who are serving or who have served.

Longer Term

• Theater - Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play - Washington, DC - May 28 through July 1
• Its comedy! Its theater! Its social commentary! Its a post-apocalyptic retro style retelling of the Simpsons around the dying fire of human civilization! The folks up at Wooly Mammoth are at it again, and honestly, this sounds like it could well be the summer counterpart to this winter’s The Elephant Room. I wonder if they’ll have audience participation sessions.

Tuesday

• Terrifying Social Opportunity - Epic Comedy Open Mic - Fairfax, VA - 8:00 PM
• You know the Soundry folks. You love the Soundry folks. (And if you don’t, why not? You need to get out more.) Well, take the rare talents of the Soundry, add in the unusual tastiness of the Epicure Cafe, and toss in a mic to get the epic Comedy Open Mic. I know a lot of you think you’re funny. And a lot of you actually are funny. Well, take the plunge and share that wonderful snark or that frothing, sputtering rage with your fellow geeks.
• Literature - Georgetown Library Graphic Novel Bookclub - Washington, DC - 6:30 PM
• The group has been working through The Sandman. Comics like Sandman make me believe that there should be massive, Norton-style anthologies of graphic novels (maybe like this). This time around the discussion will focus on The Wake and Endless Nights. Catch back up and head in to chew over the end of the long story with your fellow geeks.

Wednesday

• Creativity - Come Write With Us! - Washington, DC - 7:00 PM
• So many of us love to write, we want to create, but do you know what we lack? Peers willing to read what we’ve written and ask “What the hell happened in chapter three?” And we need that. We really, really need that. The Washington Creative Writers’ Club is set up to deal with issues just like that. From peer sharing to reality checks, inspiration and ideas to avoid, a good writers’ group is beyond value to the working author.

If he's like most of the writers I know, that mason jar is full
of vodka. (via Eduardo)

Friday

• CCG - Magic: The Gathering League Second Draft - Dulles, VA - 8:00 P
• Five spots are still open for this competitive league, so you’d better get out there. It may sound odd, but it doesn’t really matter to me if its a Magic player, a Warhammer fanatic, or a Yu-Gi-Oh kid writ large, there’s something about the passion and dedication it takes to compete in these styles of games. I just love watching them. Are there spectator spots open?

Did we miss something? If you have an event you’d like to promote that isn’t on this list, leave a comment or email us. Other weekly reoccurring events are listed on our website (such as Rocky, CCG tournaments, crazy themed happy hours). For more information, check out the calendars at DC Geeks.

New Podcast - Zombies and Mole People!

Here's another podcast with Aine, Brannen, and Scooter. This week's highlights:

• I've watched the trailer for Stacking by Double Fine and I still don't get it.
• Diablo III and the monk's ability to RUIN things.
• 2nd and Charles is pretty awesome.
• Unfinished Swan is freaking terrifying.
• So is a Minecraft texture pack that has all the monsters wearing Steve's skin. 
• Cave Johnson is still amazing. I still go back and watch the exploding lemon rant.
• The space core quotes video *feels* like it's nine minutes long, but it's only three.
• HISHE Thor and Ooodinsleep.
• Also our obligatory Minecraft discussion, and our continuing quest for a server:
• Here's 400 wolves turning into a mass of teeth and hate.
• A cat-based teleportation device (and canon). This is why I play Minecraft.
• On Xbox, Scooter becomes one of the mole people, and leads a zombie zerg rush.
• Here's your highbrow for the week: NPR's All Things Considered on a 2005 WoW plague.
• For more outbreaks, check out Empty World, Jeremiah, and World War Z.
• Scooter and I reveal our worst geek sins.
• In lieu of learning how to pronounce Japanese, I'll give you this link.
  (Although listening to us try to say "Gankutsuou" is hilarious).
• Guu is still the scariest thing I've ever seen. Here, I'll save you and link to one with French subtitles.
  You're welcome.
• Anyone want to set us straight on our knowledge of anime and offer up an interview as an otaku?
• I go off on a five-minute rant about how badly I want to pay for content, and how when things are impossible to find and buy and uselessly layered in DRM, it makes me hate everything.
• Here's a wonderful Ted talk (spoiler, he drinks poop water. His water filter is that good).
• Here's a reminder of why Neil deGrasse Tyson is king of the internet.

As always, thanks for listening!

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Looking forward to seeing you all at Avengers and Shawarma on Thursday.

This Week in Geek 2012/05/21

A showcase of this week's finest geek and geek related activities for the week. Mark your calendars.

In honor of the cons this week, I found you a pretty cosplay
picture to start off the post (via Vincent Diamante)

Longer Term

• Con - Animazement - Raleigh, NC - May 25 - May 27
• A little further away than our usual fare, but as we’ve stated before here at DCG: size matters. Held by our counterparts to the south, this con looks well on its way to cracking the 8000 attendee mark this year. The con aims itself squarely at popular visual culture from Japan with all the offerings you’d expect from a large anime con. Just one note - Animazement started life aimed at being all ages and family friendly, so the mood may be something a bit different than we’re used to locally. Or maybe not. Depends on who you’ve been hanging out with.
• Con - Balticon 46 - Hunt Valley, MD - May 25 - May 28
• Its Balticon. Its offerings are massive. If I want to start the day with a writers workshop, move on to costuming (all about the little hats), thence to software use for the DIY designer and wrap my day up with lessons in fire spinning? Yeah, Balticon is where I do it. Toss on top of that performances by folks like Jonah Knight, SJ Tucker, and Heather Dale and the cost of the weekend is already less than I’d pay for concert tickets.

Thursday

• Event - Avengers and Shawarma with DCG - Alexandria, VA - 6:30 PM
• DC Geek’s first public get together, and we’re starting simple: a movie that hand folks in the audience literally screaming at the screen, laughing, cheering, shouting all through the film, and tasty, tasty food from around the world. If you don’t get the connection between these two events... just trust us, it's there. Show up and we’ll prove it to you. Show time is 6:40PM and we’ll hit up food afterwards. Sound off on the Facebook event if you plan to come.

See? Doesn't that look delicious?
(via Rain Rannu)

Friday

• Celebration - Geek Pride Day - Everywhere - All day
• Its the original release date for Star Wars. Its Towel Day, according to our friends on the staff of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And if you were there, its time to wear the lilac again. With such major overlap it was only a matter of time before the date got stood up for the wider geek culture. Its still a fairly young day so poke around locally and see what celebration you can get together.

Saturday

• Art - Art Carnage - Vienna, VA - 8:00 PM
• Indie artists hawking their wares + sideshow acts + music + compressed schedule = an amazing night out with friends and fans of the offbeat and weird. The art is great, the acts are entrancing, and I wanted to share my Art Carnage drinking game with you all but our legal council and fashion expert said it would be reckless of me. So you’ll need to make up your own, but you’ll need to actually show up to do that.

Did we miss something? If you have an event you’d like to promote that isn’t on this list, leave a comment or email us. Other weekly reoccurring events are listed on our website (such as Rocky, CCG tournaments, crazy themed happy hours). For more information, check out the calendars at DC Geeks.

This Week in Geek 2012/05/14

A showcase of this week's finest geek and geek related activities for the week. Mark your calendars.

Great view of Artomatic (via Elvert Barnes)

Longer Term

• Art! - Artomatic - Crystal City, VA - May 18 through June 23
• A ten story building slated for demolition. A one month time limit. More than a thousand artists. Free admission to the public. Music, film, visual art, fashion, performance art (never, ever call it non-consensual LARPing - it upsets the artist), and more are filling up the whole space for a month. And with the constantly shifting line up it's one of those events you go to over and over again.
• Beer - American Craft Beer Week - All Over - May 16 through May 22
• A lot tastings, a lot of keg tappings, a lot of fund raisers, and meet the brewers kind of events. For some reason the geek community seems to have a strong showing of beer geeks as well as the more general types of geekery. So go forth and get your tastes teased.
• Industry Event - Nebula Awards Weekend - Crystal City, VA - May 17 to May 20
• Odd that we rarely hear much about this event. Its a major industry event in an industry that is relevant to almost all of our interests. There are still some registration slots left for non-members of the industry group. Workshops cover everything from Icelandic Myths to giving TV interviews to improving your online professional presence. Its great stuff for the aspiring writer.

This image is faster than writing a thousand
words about Fiesta Asia (via Angela N.)

Saturday

• Festival - Fiesta Asia Street Fair - Washington, DC - 10:00 AM through 7:00 PM
• A free street fair sponsored by the Asia Heritage Foundation, we’re talking live music acts from Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines, food, martial arts, non-martial arts, and what looks to my suspiciously like prep for a dancing flash mob.
• Parade - 2012 Cosplay Parade - Washington, DC - starts 10:00 AM
• Using the Fiesta Asia Street Fair as a launching point, the DC Anime Club is holding their 2012 Cosplay parade the same day, starting from the Fair. Show up as whoever you want (just be sure to label so folks can tell who you’re playing and where the costume inspiration is from). The parade itself is starting around 2:00 PM, so there’s plenty of time to relax and have fun beforehand.
• Art! - Super Art Fest - Baltimore, MD - Noon to Midnight
• Put together by the folks who hold the Super Art Fights, and put on as a fund raiser for the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults, this is going to be a packed day. Twelve hours of head to head, chair beating art wrestling. Art Fight hopefuls clawing their way across each others bent and broken souls. Adam WarRock. What more do you heartless bastards want?

Did we miss something? If you have an event you’d like to promote that isn’t on this list, leave a comment or email us. Other weekly reoccurring events are listed on our website (such as Rocky, CCG tournaments, crazy themed happy hours). For more information, check out the calendars at DC Geeks.