From the Nerd Base!

A quick update or personal note from your gracious host.

My Very First NYCC Experience

/ Amanda / 1 Comment

It’s Saturday morning, and my first day attending New York Comic Con 2013! Excited, but anxious as I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve been to only two conventions before, but nothing like this.  My first convention was Philly Comic Con (Wizard World), which was crowded, but quite small and didn’t consist of many panels. The second convention I went to was the Supernatural Convention in Whippany, NJ back in May of this year (run by Creation Entertainment).

Any geek convention is basically the cosplay center, so, naturally I had to do some sort of cosplay for my first day attending. I had recently become a big fan of the Hawkeye comic books and decided to do a two-part cosplay with fellow Nerd-Base member Christopher as Hawkeye & Kate Bishop. I tried to get as accurate as I could with her outfit in the comics (specifically the one pictured here), but it’s nearly impossible to find a matching zip up jacket and jeans that are exactly the same shade of purple.

Kate Bishop from the Hawkeye Comics.

Kate Bishop from the Hawkeye Comics.

Unless of course you make it yourself, special order it, or wear a body suit and customize it from there. Luckily, I ended up finding a nice purple zip up “yoga jacket” from Target (as well as the purple aviators), and purple jeans with a nice wide belt from H&M. Also, being that I’m blonde, I ordered a black wig from eBay to top it off. The one thing I was missing was the helmet pictured, but there was no way I was either wearing a helmet over my wig, which was already bothering me from the moment I had put it on, nor carrying it around. So, I decided to do without it.  Chris had nailed down the Hawkeye cosplay perfectly. We had seen a few Hawkguys at the con, but none with the details he had put into it, including the gauze wrapped around his arms, and medical bandages randomly placed on his face. Chris had also dyed his hair blonde! That is dedication, my friends. Continue reading →

The Podcast is dead, LONG LIVE THE PODCAST!!

/ Christopher Lee / Leave a comment

Nerd-Base Podcast Banner
NOTICE: We’re changing stuff around and the Nerd-Base Podcast has been down for a bit, so I apologize for all the broken links. I’m fixing it as fast as I can among all the other processes we’ve got going here. The new home (hopefully permanent) of the Nerd-Base Podcast is at http://www.podcasts.com/nerd-base-podcast-deaacdb0c and the new RSS feed is: http://www.podcasts.com/rss_feed/637e792e31fc5a514ff82f7a002282c4 until I figure out how to set up something more permanent and easily changeable should another move be necessary. I’m learning, always learning. *sigh*
Also, since iTunes cannot seem to find it within themselves to make it easy for podcasters to change their feeds within the system, we’re very likely going to be taking it off iTunes and resubmitting in the near future.
ALSO ALSO….expect some new Podcasts VERY soon!! Along with our NYCC coverage, we’re going to have a nice sit-down and talk about this year’s experience with a few new guests!!
Keep checking back!

Play Games, Save Lives

/ Christopher Lee / Leave a comment

The Extra-Life charity event is a gamer-centric event (though any and all are more than welcome to participate/donate/contribute) where individuals or teams gather and promise to game for 24 hours straight through while blogging/vlogging the experience in a sort of crowd-sourced “telethon” of sorts to raise money and awareness for children who have fallen ill with any variety of terrible, sometimes terminal diseases. Thousands of gamers and hundreds of websites have been created for this event and together have raised MILLIONS of dollars to help treat and even cure these kids. To give them an “Extra Life”. ALL PROCEEDS GO DIRECTLY TO HELPING THE CHILDREN IN THEIR RESPECTIVE HOSPITALS. That’s so important to mention, it had to be capped, bolded, and italicized. A more honorable task, you’ll be hard-pressed to find.

We sometimes forget that as cynical and sarcastic as we, the “nerd/geek/gamer/fanboy” community can be, we also have some of the biggest hearts in the world and I’m constantly in awe of what we can do when our powers combined are given a focused target.

Extra-Life was formed in 2008 by a gentleman known as “Doc” who, during his time as a radio DJ, came to know a young girl named Victoria “Tori” Enmon that had been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. At the time, Doc had belonged to a group called the Sarcastic Gamer Community and during one of her hospital stays where she really couldn’t get out, he asked the community to help out by sending her games to raise spirits. They responded better than any could have hoped. Sadly, Tori soon after passed away, but her spirit lit a flame in Doc and the community at large and he dedicated himself to honor her memory by continuing to help children who had become innocent victims to horrible illnesses via the Chlidren’s Miracle Network. Doc has since quit the radio biz and gone on to work full-time for the CMN as their Radio-thon Director.

A video was made better describing this story, please watch: Continue reading →