Nerd News in Brief

“You take the good, you take the bad / You take them both, and there you have / The facts of life.”

So states the theme song from one of my favorite sitcoms, and, truthfully, the same can be said for this edition of Nerd News in Brief.

Why, this morning alone I’ve been informed that beloved television icon Merv Griffin has shuffled off this mortal coil (sad face), and that low-level boogeyman Karl Rove has announced that he’ll pack up his brimstone and magic hat full of poisonous spiders at month’s end (happy face).

Those sort of conflicting events really make a cat feel ambivalent, y’know?

• Even werewolves get the blues: Over the weekend, my pals Matt and Church hit up a Vienna, VA Wrock show featuring Snidget, The Whomping Willows, and The Remus Lupins. Matt did a really nice post-gig write-up, and it appears as though everyone involved had a really great time. That is until some assholes smashed in the bands’ van window and made off with a pair of iPods and about 2 large in cash (all belonging to The Remus Lupins). If you’ve got a couple extra bucks lying around, you might wanna consider picking up their latest disk I Was a Teenage Werewolf to help the Lupins over this unfortunate hump. WizardRock.org will also be donating 50% of any profits made from their Cafe Press store to the band (with the other half going to the HP Alliance as previously promised.) Dig deep, folks.
• Post-PWNED: After a lot of ponderous soul-searching, Hex Warrior has elected to postpone Nerdapalooza. While new dates and other solid details are still in the works, the crew is currently soliciting for “COMMITTED people to take on coordinator positions amongst our ranks.” You can hit up the official site for the full story, and to make a donation to the cause.
• Til All Are One: Okay, so I sort of started off on a downer today. Fear not: here’s an Optimus Prime casemod that Matt found that will surely help take the sting away.
• Game Head sound vaguely pornographic: Spike TV showed a little love to nerdcore hip-hop at Comic-Con by talking a bit with the featured artists at the pivotal concert. The results of the taping can currently be viewed right here. The piece features a freestyle from Karl and a little Q&A with YT in the post-4:00 area.
• Because “too much of a good thing” is an urban myth: Last week, Glenn Case added another 50 songs to his All Songs directory, bringing the grand total to 370 tracks. That's plenty more covers, demos, and original material for you, and another year’s worth of podcast fodder for me.
  
• What? No Router?: Church hipped me to this very odd collection of nerdy (read: scholastic) tattoos from ScienceBlogs. Big up to the cat with the Periodic Table; that's nerdcore!
• What Would mc Do?: Dan recently posted some nice new mc chris clips to YouTube. Both were shot by Fanatical back in April for the documentary, and, while the first is pretty standard performance fair, the last “contains some humble words of wisdom” that Dan decided to share.
• Please explain: Since I started off a bit somber today, I’m gonna end on a… high note? Well, I’m gonna end with something that’ll definitely get you thinking. It’s a German PS3 commercial that funky49 found and shared with me. I… I really don’t know what to say about it. It raises several distinct questions, the most prominent being: what the fuck does this have to do with the PS3? Enjoy.