So yeah, I stopped watching Apprentice. It was the episode that Penn got fired. At this point I was tired of almost all the leftovers celebrities, other than Arsenio. I honestly felt that he was playing for the charity first. This might be editing, but I bought in to that narrative.

Penn’s run had me excited. It was looking like he was going to beat the game, even with the game actively playing against him.

Apprentice has two cheats built into it. First, every other event is “judged,” usually by a Trump. So if one team is losing a lot, the judges find a reason for that team to win.

Second, there’s the issue of sending three people to the board room. Penn did a masterful job of manipulating his team, as they rarely brought him into the boardroom. But eventually there was only three people on his team. And eventually they hit a judged event. And that was the end of Penn’s run in a rigged game.

For the record, it’s very likely that Mr. Trump’s hair is the source of all of humanity’s troubles.

One of the things I get asked a lot about lately is Kickstarter. As you probably know, I’ve got a bit of experience with these things.

But both of my Kickstarters were before the really big prospector boom, when Kickstarter started raising the banner for million-dollar projects. Clearly, the landscape has changed.

I’m reminded of Mr. Levi and the California Gold Rush of 1849. Levi went west with the mad rush, but he didn’t spend his time searching for nuggets of gold. Instead, he started selling jeans to people that were ill-prepared for searching for nuggets of gold. Out of the thousands of miners that hit California in ’49, few were as successful as Levi.

Now there are big winners during this Kickstarter Gold Rush (first and foremost being Kickstarter). And the good, well-built projects are still getting funded. Because of the influx of new users/funders, we’re even seeing bigger pay-outs to the big projects. The Fundraisers-to-be have gotten savvy about stretch goals, and good things have happened.

But there’s also a problem with the sheer amount of Kickstarters running right now – there’s a lot of signal noise. I went through my feed, and I have enough projects to start my own curated page right now.

Most recently, I found Goblins Drool, Fairies Rule!, a card game with great art. I’d rather not give too much away, but for my summer plans I am keeping an eye out for nice card games with good art.

Then there’s a couple awesome comic projects from friends – Erstwhile Fairy Tale by Gina Biggs and THE PUNCHCLOCK HERO HOLIDAY SPECIAL by Joe Hunter.

And for even more comics and fairies, there’s Fairy Quest by Paul Jenkins.

Backers of my Kickstarters have even been inspired to try for awesome. Gaslamp Social Games Cafe is a mix of a coffee shop and board game den in Washington, and I really want to see this place open. Dice Chuckers is a documentary about gamers, and Global GameSpace
seeks to build a resource for gamers.

I endorse all of these messages. In the comments, tell me about your favorite Kickstarter, past or present.

Yep, London Comic Con is happening. O will be represented in cut-out form, and Dern will be there under the Scallywags International banner in the Comics Village.

We now know what we’re allowed to bring, so here’s the merch list:
Night and Day, a sketchbook collection by O
The Zombie Alphabet book
The Monster Alphabet book (hopefully)
Prints from various Hello With Cheese and Commissioned comics
Posters from various Hello With Cheese and Commissioned comics
Magnets from various Hello With Cheese and Commissioned comics
A very small amount of Call of Cthulhu prints from last summer
And a small selection of original art from Commissioned.

Not for sale:
Shirts, mugs, bottles – sorry guys, this is something the Convention requested. Also, it makes packing for this show really easy.

Remember how I said I’ll never complain about being tired this year? This doesn’t mean that I won’t get tired. And on Monday, I was beat. Like, stupid tired.

O wasn’t doing so hot himself, recovering from a massive head cold and sounding like baritone gravel. But we had a goal. And that goal was to nerd out.

Over the weekend, I was at ROFLCon III, which apparently is the last ROFLCon. I’m kind of sad to see it go, especially considering how completely surreal it was. The idea is that a group of MIT students put on a conference (not surreal) but make it almost entirely about the weird meme stuff of the internet (very surreal).

So then you get moments where you realize that that kid walking around is the grown-up “Success Kid,” who by the way, has that successful smirk on his face because he’s eating dirt. I love the fact that the parental reaction to seeing your child eat dirt is to first take a picture, then get the dirt out of the mouth. I love this, because this is exactly what I would have done in that situation.

I also got to find out that the Double Rainbow guy is a big dude, in a “dude, he’s a dude that’s bigger than me, dude” way. Also, he says dude more than me. Chuck Testa, meanwhile, is adorably pint-sized, and it becomes very clear that he’s not putting on a show on his commercial. He’s got a dry wit and he really, really loves taxidermy.

Somewhere along the show, I went to a party where Ben Huh, the owner of the Cheezburgers of the internet, was catering. So yes, I can has cheezburger. And beer. And at some point during that party, I was drinking with Leeroy Jenkins, who might be the most normal person on the entire internet. I was tickled to find out that he’s a big fan of Super Art Fight.

Honestly, if I just focused on the Super Art Fight we put on, that alone was crazy. We had Caldy of Loldwell join up, and I always enjoy his bouts. But then throw in guest spots from Zach Weiner of SMBC, Rob DenBleyker of Cyanide and Happiness, and Ethan Nicolle of Axe Cop, and it got nuts.

So all that happened. And THEN I had to fit in a screening of the Avengers, plus a nine-hour drive back home. So yeah, Monday I was grinding on fumes. But Joss did it. And we had to geek about it.

There’ll be more of a story to what I did this past weekend later, if only to explain why I’m in a slo-mo video with the voice of Leeroy Jenkins (who eats chicken), Chuck Testa (who hits the Double Rainbow guy in the face with an inflatable mace), and Tron Guy:

I’ve been lobbying for O to do this comic for a while. I my mind, all slash fiction is are stories where Slash shows up. Also, I think Slash writes every one of them. This is what goes on in my brain. I like it.

Meanwhile, this weekend I’ll be at ROFLCon, and by the end of the month I’ll be at London Comic Con. Let me know if you plan on stalking me at either show.

Fan fiction: where your favorite characters get to do stuff their creator wouldn’t let them do.

There’s a couple things I need to blab about.

First, this Friday I’ll be rocking it with Super Art Fight at ROFLConIII. ROFLCons are incredibly surreal, strange events. Registration closes on Wednesday if you want to go, and I understand that tickets are extremely limited. Also, if you’re in the Boston area, keep an eye out on the Super Art Fight twitter, as we’re looking to do a group outing for The Avengers.

Second, Fairy Tales. A friend of mine, Gina Biggs, has a comic that focuses on the other Grimm Fairy Tales – not Red Riding Hood or Snow White. We know those. No, this gives us some deep cuts of Grimm, like The Farmer’s Clever Daughter, All Fur, or The Bird, the Mouse and the Sausage.

It’s almost overkill as to how well the Grimm-based revival has been going. There’s a perfectly awful Snow White movie next to one that looks like it could be good, and there recently was an awful Little Red Riding Hood. There’s also a police procedural show based on Grimm, a Fables-esque soap opera, and a really awful episode of Castle that dug into the whole Grimm stable. And every single one of them has had to lean on our collective knowledge (most of it courtesy of Disney). So maybe we need to expand our knowledge base a bit.

With the Erstwhile Tale’s Kickstarter, I have to say that the various $30 backer levels look like a nice deal.