"Casting Couch"

The new television season has started and I've fallen victim to it. Thank god for the DVR.

Two new shows that I like this season are FlashForward and White Collar. Both feature FBI agents as some of the main characters. Evidently the writers and casting agents for both shows were on the same wavelength as they both have black male and lesbian agents in supporting [and not leading] roles.

Of course, maybe it's just me because I tend to notice patterns, commonalities and coincidences. For example, I theorized that there was an Entourage curse as many of the guest stars died within months of their appearance on the show for Seasons 2-4 [Chris Penn, Bruno Kirby, and Sydney Pollack]. No known deaths for Seasons 1, 5 or 6.

UPDATE: I just saw the latest episode of White Collar, and evidently they got rid of the lesbian agent played by Marsha Thomason and replaced her with a heterosexual female agent played by Natalie Morales [formerly of the underrated but cancelled sci-fi comedy The Middleman]. While that makes perfect sense to spice up the series by having sexual chemistry between the con man main character and the female FBI agent, it now throws a monkey wrench into my blog entry.

Talk to you later.

-Chris

"The New Yorker Caption Contest - 11/02/09"

For the last several months, I have entered The New Yorker Caption Contest on a regular basis without any luck. While I will gladly admit I'm not the funniest person in the world, I think I have a great sense of humor plus I can be pretty witty and sarcastic on occasion.

So I have decided to post my entries for public viewing. Here's the latest...


Please let me know what you think.

Talk to you later.

-Chris

"Con Wars - Dazed and Confused"

The New York City comic book convention war between Wizard and Reed Exhibitions continues.

There are great summaries and synopses at Bleeding Cool, The Beat and Robot 6 [at Comic Book Resources].

While there has been mention of Wizard's excellent mainstream news coverage, I saw something in Time Out New York which was not covered. For those of you who don't live in the Tri-State area, Time Out New York is a pretty popular local magazine, right behind New York and The New Yorker. Check it out below, it's the first blurb in the bottom section - "Best of the fests" with the photo of William Shatner.




So what's so strange or baffling about this blurb, Mark Texeira [who is currently drawing random stuff for Marvel Comics] is mentioned FIRST!!!

BTW, the blue highlight is mine and not the magazine's. The yellow highlight and arrow are the magazine's.

For those of you in the media business, sections like these are often rewritten versions of press releases so I'm guessing that the Big Apple Comic Con promoted Mark Texeira. And if you look at the Big Apple Comic Con guest list here, he's listed as a "Special Guest" in the top section ahead of sports legends Yogi Berra and Joe Frazier, top-selling comic book artist Jim Cheung, and pop culture icons as Linda Hamilton and Adam West.

I love Mark Texeira's work and think he's one of the great underappreciated comic book artist, but there is no way he should get first billing before guests of honors Jim Lee [the most popular comic book today] and Joe Quesada [the E-I-C of Marvel Comics] or William Shatner in the blurb.

So why was he getting such attention??!!? I'm guessing because the spelling of his name is close to ubër-popular Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira, and that Big Apple was hoping there would be some confusion among the general reading public.

When I get a chance, I'm going to elaborate further on the whole Con War and how I think it will be good thing for the general convention goer.

Talk to you later.

-Chris