A Nerds-eye view of Venice Italy: day 1
My first full day in this mysterious land named Venice and I must say I am of mixed feelings. On the one hand the city is shockingly cool and fun with all kinds of cool things going on. On the other hand this day was a good reminder of why I never go on vacation: vacations tend to suck when you go on them by yourself.
Venice is a city of lovers, and every time I turn around I am running into another pair of the bastards making kissy face in front of me. Each couple I meet is another pound of cement in my foundation as the loneliest and bitterest person on the planet.
All that being said, there is a lot to see here. I am kind of a task oriented guy (another reason vacations have always seemed kind of frivolous to me. Even the stuff I do for fun I tend to have a purpose for. When I played WOW I was the biggest achievement whore you ever met. Green Linen shirt image, by the way, courtesy of the Video Game T Shirt category) and have set my vacation around a serious of tasks (some might call them quests). The first was finding an ATM, which are not as pervasive as they might be back home. I found one and, after taking 10 minutes figuring out how to have it use English, had 200 Euros in my pocket.
About that time I discovered something important about Venice: it is freaking hot here. I sweated my ass off most of the day. It also rains periodically, but honestly that was kind of a welcome relief from the heat.
The Quest for the ATM accomplished, I decided to simply wander around until I was totally lost, which I did. I hate touristy areas and vowed to check out more of the residential and off Grand Canal stuff. It was pretty cool, to be honest. The architecture is an amazing mix of retro-70’s with retro-14th century. Incidentally, I am completely convinced that Venice would be the perfect place to have a zombie apocalypse video game. It seems to be completely comprised by narrow, creepy corridors, foot bridges, murky canals, and small plazas.
I accomplished the Quest for Getting Lost with ease, and with the help of two very nice South Africans named Lisa and Fiona managed to get unlost. The next quest I set for myself was the checking out of the local Warhammer scene. In the world of Warhammer Italy has a reputation for bringing the beardiest lists and pushing the rules boundaries as hard as possible, and I want to see it for myself.
This would prove the most daunting quest so far. I found three shops that carry Warhammer merchandise, but for the most part do not have tables and just feature a few items on a shelf. Back home these kinds of shops annoy the crap out of me, as they are selling the products but doing nothing to support the hobby. However, here it seems like there just isn’t enough space. One girl at a shop told me she has been trying to organize tournaments but really can’t find the space.
I also discovered the we Americans have been getting ripped off by Games Workshop for years. Even adjusting for the Euro prices here are 20-25% less than we have been spending back home. Another reason (of about 2,300) to hate Games Workshop.
Anyway, I was pretty wiped and ended the evening eating really bad pizza alone in my room and feeling sorry for myself for being alone. However, today is a bright new day and I am excited to get out there. I found out there is a GW store that is a 40 minute train ride from here and plan to check it out. I will let you know how it goes.
Dave
The Nerds-eye view of Venice, Italy-day 0
It is a sad and embarrassing part of my life that I have never really been out of the United States (unless Tijuana or the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls count). This is not from a lack of interest; quite the contrary. However, when you grow up dirt poor and have to pay your own way through college the opportunities to travel are few and far between, and by the time you graduate and get a job the habit of never going anywhere gets pretty well ingrained in you. Sure, it always sounds like a great idea, but there is always something else that has a higher priority in your life.
So, I come to Venice, Italy. My day job saw fit to have us do our annual sales meeting here and I have opted to extend my stay by a week in order to explore and appreciate this strange and alien culture.
I am saying like this because I have always dreamed to traveling to strange, new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; and to boldly go where no man (in my family) has ever gone before. Therefore I am going to treat this experience like the proverbial Lewis and Clark of space; I have come across a new and exciting planet, and am reporting my findings to you, my beloved readers, here.
First off I am happy to report this alien world seems to have at atmosphere with sufficient oxygen to support human life, and while there is a slight musty scent to it (not dissimilar to any Earth city set on the ocean) it is generally pleasant and lacking in any alien toxins or pathogens detrimental to human life. Gravity seems to be about 1.0 Earth normal, and the sun shines with a pleasant light that not only doesn’t want to kill me any more than our own Sol but seems to interact with the local flora in a manner similar to Terran photosynthesis.
I am calling this post Day 0 because most of my experience thus far has been related to the travel I have done to get here. After following all the correct signs and instructions on BART I still managed to take the wrong train (BART, like almost everything in San Francisco, is a pale imitation of something in New York City). However, I anticipated this and padded my schedule to make up for the inevitable screw up.
I boarded my flight on Airberlin and am happy to report that the flight, while painfully cramped, was extremely well run and modern. The entertainment screens were recently upgraded and had an excellent touch interface (assuming you are smart enough to figure out what the instructions were in German), the diabetic meal I ordered was one of the best I have had on an aircraft, and the Germans (and most other foreign airlines that I have observed) do not feel a fear of being sued for discrimination and therefore do not hesitate to hire hot young women to be flight attendants. I also love the big Airbuses, and had not a single experience of turbulence. I can definitively give a thumbs up for Airberlin.
I spent the flight next to a pleasant German woman who said her name was something that sounded a lot like Cigarette. I’m sure there is a German name that just sounds like that (any of my German readers please be sure to correct me on this) who was flying home to see her family. She lives in San Francisco and had the amazing decency to make small talk while we were eating our two meals and otherwise shut up and let me sleep or watch Lethal Weapon on the TV. Also on my plane was my new best friend who’s name I can’t remember, but I was destined to keep on running into him for the next twelve hours.
We arrived in Dusseldorf, the German city with the coolest name ever. If ever a city were to go for a nerd name, it would have to be Dusseldorf. It was here and later in Venice that I learned that the architecture of airports is pan-cultural. They all have a lot of glass and steel, a bunch of duty free shops (although the German ones seemed most interested in selling mass quantities of cigarettes. I saw a display pile of Marlborough that must have been eight feet tall), a lot of horribly misleading signs and dead ends, exits that seem to want to funnel you back through security, and some “chairs” that seem designed to give chiropractors more business. After learning that a meal that costs 8.00 is really like $11 after you convert from Euros to dollars and that German chocolate really is better than American (sorry, Girardelli) I boarded my plane for Venice.
Another relatively pleasant flight wherein I slept most of the way (with hot flight attendants) I arrived. I spent 120 Euros on a water taxi (I’m pretty sure I got ripped off there. The price on the sign was 110, but as soon as he saw my passport it went up 10) but as we rolled into Venice I decided it was worth every penny (or whatever they call 1/100ths of a Euro). The slow ride through Venice was shockingly like going through the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland; glances through windows at partial scenes of people cooking, hanging laundry, setting up rock bands, or just sitting there drinking coffee and wine (no pirates chasing wenches in circles that I could see). This would later contrast with my walking through Venice experience.
I can say that the story I was told about Italians being super friendly seems to have not manifested itself. The four individuals I met so far-water taxi company dude, water taxi driver, hotel clerk, and waiter later that night-couldn’t have been more perfunctory and uninterested if I had been a large sack of American laundry they were transporting or serving food to. The taxi driver started talking once I started asking him questions, but my experience with taxi drivers in the Bay Area and even more in NYC is most times you can’t get those guys to shut up. Maybe I have an unfriendly appearance (I would actually not discount that possibility) or maybe it’s because everyone who tells me how friendly the Italians are seems to be a hot girl and the old adage “Life is easier for hot chicks” holds true in Italy as anywhere else.
Anyway, walking around Venice at night is less like Pirates of the Caribbean and more like making your way through Raccoon City from Resident Evil (Raccoon City image courtesy of the Video Game T Shirt category). You walk down a creepy, narrow alley respondent with graffiti (point in America’s favor-our graffiti is much more creative and well executed), dark side passages, and weird no purpose stairways only to turn a corner and find an open restaurant or bar (as opposed to Raccoon City, where it would usually be an open gun shop or abandoned hospital).
The hotel room is tiny, but space efficient in a way you never see in even the cheapest American hotels and generally very pleasant. The bed is very stiff and hard, but I like a hard mattress so it works for me. The WiFi was excellent as evidenced by this blog post. Overall very pleasant and interesting.
I managed to lose all my Venice maps and phrase books in the month prior to packing, but this will just enhance the exploratory nature of my time here. I have procured a map from the hotel this morning and will be setting out shortly from breakfast. First task: find an ATM. Look for more on my trip tomorrow. Also, if I find time I have two movies I saw that I have to review. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Goodbye Ray Bradbury
This one really sucks to do. Ray Bradbury, author of the Martian Chronicles, died Tuesday after a long illness.
I know I have said before of other authors that they had an impact on my life, but Ray Bradbury was probably the start of my inevitably (and enjoyable) journey to nerddom. I read the Martian Chronicles in grade school and I can say they opened my eyes to the possibility of something other than this drab, mundane, and more or less meaningless world we humans infest.
The idea of being able to go to another world and colonize it captured my imagination like nothing else. Of course, Bradbury was a genius when it came to creating poetic, otherworldly landscapes with words, so it was easy to see what he saw.
Even more importantly, however, is the fact that in addition to being a welcome escape in my childhood he inspired a generation of authors who took me to other worlds on a daily basis. Ask any author of that generation worth his or her salt who their early inspirations were and most of them will list Bradbury. He was truly a pioneering and wonderous author. I will truly miss him.
I didn’t really have any good Martian images so I just grabbed this Mars Attacks! shirt from the Movie T Shirt collection. I’m pretty sure this movie would not have come to be had Bradbury not been around.
Dave
Dumb movie question from Star Wars Episode 4
Dave’s on his way to Italy, so it falls on me post blogs. Actually, he told me he has two reviews lined up and will try to post them from Italy, as well as talk about his time there. I expect a lot of pasta stories. Anyway, I know the easy ones to hit are episodes 1-3, but here is a question that has bugged me for a while about Episode 4.
The Death Star arrives in the system with the Rebel base. They are behind the main planet and have to wait 30 minutes to clear it and get a shot at the moon that the base is on, giving Luke and friends the time they need to hit the exhaust port. However, the Death Star is armed with a giant planet destroying turbo laser. Why not just save the time and blow up the main planet? The shockwave and debris alone would probably destroy the moon the base is on. It’s not like Tarkin was that interested in not blowing up planets. Would have been a huge time saver, and in Jedi they were shooting that thing off all the time, so you can’t say it would need to recharge.
For that matter, if blowing up the Death Star was a million to one chance, why weren’t the rebels bugging the hell out of there? They couldn’t leave Hoth fast enough in the next movie. I would have abandoned that base but left the fighters behind to go for that last ditch chance. Makes sense to me.
This cool Japanese Star Wars image I got from Dave’s movie t shirt collection by the way.
Jason
Moonrise Kingdom Review
Whimsically weird and delightful.
Wow that felt kind of pretentious and d-baggy to write. However, I can’t honestly think of a better way to describe this film. A story of young love as told in an innocent and surreal script set in 1965. And while it wouldn’t be one of my reviews without finding something in it for me to nit pick about, overall a very successful movie in my opinion.
Before I go any further I would also like to applaud director Wes Anderson for setting a film in the 60’s and not have the damned thing overrun by hippies. The whole “peace and love” movement culminating in the Summer of Love has so dominated the American perception of the 60’s that it is easy to forget that there were any number of cool cultural things going on that didn’t involve long hair and not bathing (I don’t really have a lot of images that are hippy related, but I did find this anti-hipster image from the Cheap T Shirt category that I think is really funny and actively support).
I would also like to mention that the camera work bordered on brilliant, and the editing really contributed to the flow and development of the movies (special props to Robert D. Yoeman for his camera work and Andrew Weisblum on the editing). Furthermore, the soundtrack was really well done (more props out to Alexadre Desplat). It is refreshing to see a movie that seems to have all the elements of the film working together in balance rather than dominating a couple and letting the rest follow along or rot on the vine.
The story is of young Sam (Jared Gilman-first movie credit) and Suzy (Kara Hayward-also first credit). Sam is a Khaki Scout deserter and Suzy his pen pal love interest. They meet up and run across a small New England island. They both have their emotional issues; Sam is an orphan with an eclectic perception of the world and Suzy is a troubled pre-teen with distant and uninvolved parents. (the cool thing about their issues, by the way, is that they are delivered in a very subtle manner over the passage of time rather than spoon fed to us an a plate). They met the year before at a church play. Sam is in his full Scout uniform while Suzy is dressed like a 60’s flight attendant, all in pink.
Sam is pursued by Scoutmaster Ward (Ed Norton-Fight Club, the Incredible Hulk, American History X) and the rest of his troop, all of whom despise him. This being the 60’s, Ward is constantly smoking and the boys in his troop are armed to the teeth. Suzy’s absence is noted by her parents Laura (Frances McDormand-Almost Famous, Burn After Reading, Tranformers Dark of the Moon) and Walt (the great Bill Murray-Groundhog Day, Lost in Translation, Ghostbusters). Each party contacts the local law enforcer Capt. Sharp (the also great Bruce Willis-Die Hard, the Sixth Sense, the Fifth Element) who starts running around the island looking for the kids. Meanwhile the two make their way across the island with the aid of Sam’s wilderness skills and Suzy’s girlish preparedness. The have been writing each other for a year and connect further through her love of fantasy novels involving unicorns and magic.
Eventually they are caught, and things are looking grim for orphan Sam. The story, which up until that point had progressed in a very linear manner fragments and the pacing ramps up considerably. Young love hijinks ensues. A storm strikes. No one turns out to be really bad, just sometimes uncaring.
The stars. Really cute, entrancing story. One star. Really well told and overall very good. Two stars. Brilliant camera and editing work. One star. Soundtrack was really good too (you know it has to be exceptional for me to even notice it). One star. Great performances from young Jared and Kara. I am sure we will see them in other things soon. One star. An amazing cast of great actors who all performed brilliantly. Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, and Ed Norton, all playing outside of their standard roles. Two stars. A nice call back to the non-hippy 60’s when kids were allowed to run around unsupervised and actually injure themselves. The Khaki Scout running around and attacking each other was pretty much exactly what being in the Boy Scouts in the 70’s was like. One star. The humor, while for the most part tongue in cheek, was brilliant and laugh worthy. Pretty much every shot had some kind of sight gag or cultural reference. One star. Dialog was extremely good. One star. Total: eleven stars.
The black holes. Not a lot, really. I found the sexualization of 12 year old Suzy and some of the scenes with Sam to be kind of off putting. Too much makeup, and a second base scene involving kids was something I found creepy and disturbing. I know it was supposed to remain an innocent love, but I found that one scene really drained a lot of the innocence away. One black hole. Normally in a movie of this nature I would find the pacing slow, but I think in this case it was 100% appropriate for the telling of the story. Total: one black hole.
A grand total of 10 stars. Absolutely you should see this movie if you like anything that is not dominated by explosions. It is really fun. Also this is a brilliant date movie. I think any girl would be turned on by having seen this film, so take a girl to a theater. Bathroom break? While none of the scenes in this film are truly necessary for the progression of the story the are almost all worth watching. I think your best bet would be the one with the Bishop parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) are lying in bed staring at the ceiling talking. No great camera work and not a lot that contributes to the whole of the story.
Thanks as always for reading. I also saw the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel yesterday and will try to write it up tonight. I am seeing Snow White and the Huntsman tonight so look for that one tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Feel free to post comments on this film here, or if you have questions, suggestions, or comments on other topics feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Dumb movie question from the Phantom Menace
I know the terms “dumb question” and “Phantom Menace” go together too easily and I am just picking low hanging fruit here, but this is another question that has bugged me for a while. Remember when the Trade Federation guys wanted to kill Qui Gon Gin and Obi Wan on board their floating space donut and gassed them for like 10 seconds? Why didn’t they let the gas sit in there for like three days? Or use a gas that didn’t look like smoke and have a distinctive odor? How about a nerve agent that is absorbed through the skin? Or just vent the room out into space? Hell, just reduce the O2 content of the room slowly and let them pass out. Did Lucas really feel the need to use a white easily identified gas out of a hissing vent in order to make his scene happen?
For that matter, what is wrong with just using a bomb? If I were trying to kill a Jedi I wouldn’t us an easily deflected blaster. I would use a 12 gauge shotgun, or the blaster equivalent. Sure, he might be able to deflect 50% of the shells, but that still leaves a lot of lead in the air. This is pretty much why modern military doesn’t use swords any more.
The Empire logo I found in Dave’s Star Wars T Shirts. One of the coolest logos ever IMO.
Jason
Farewell Richard Dawson
I woke to the unfortunate news of the passing of Richard Dawson, the King of the Family Feud. It may see odd to those of you who have gotten to know me and my likes or dislikes over the last couple years that I would comment on this, but there are a couple reasons for it hitting home. First of all, watching Family Feud as a kid was one of the few things we actually did as a family that did not actively involve feuding. Something about the way the show ran and the structure of the questions really appealed to my dad, and he like having my sister, mom, and me around to show off how smart he was with the questions. I won’t say watching it was something we all looked forward to, but when it was on we could all pass a pleasant evening together.
The second reason, of course, stems from his playing one of the greatest unsung movie villains of all time, Damon Killian of the Running Man. Go back and watch it again and you will see how civilly sinister he really could play it. A big part of the success of his roll (in my mind, at least) was the brutal contrast from the heart warming good guy he was on Family Feud. Kind of like if Gandhi took a role as a serial killer. (Nobel Peace Prize image courtesy of he Funny T Shirt category)
Anyway, I’m very sorry he’s gone. He lived to be 79, and had a recurring role on Hogan’s Heroes when he was younger. I will miss him.
Dave
Chernobyl Diaries Review
Dear diary, Last night I ate dinner off a roach coach, met a beautiful girl with amazing eyes, and almost wetted myself watching a scary but by-the-numbers horror movie.
This is another review where I will be in disagreement with most of the other reviewers out there. Most of them can’t seem to find a score low enough to give this film, but as a horror movie I can honestly say I spent most of the movie honestly scared. Sure, it was a pretty rote rendition of a traditional horror movie, and there were any number of problems I will happily dump on in a few lines, but if you use how frightened you get as your horror movie barometer than I can honestly say this one succeeded pretty well.
The Chernobly image, from Hot Tube Time Machine, comes to us courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category.
One of the main issues I had, however, was the fact that the director couldn’t decide if he was doing a found footage film or a classic film. The camera had all the gremlins that plague found footage: jittery, nausea inducing movement; horrible out of focus shots; bad lighting; stunted story and character development; and an editor that seems to feel he is paying for cuts out of his own pocket. However, it had none of the benefits of the found footage genre: a sense that you are in the scene operating the camera; the occasional fourth wall breaking mirror or camera passing shot that makes things seem more real; or the understanding that when the final scene cuts out it’s because the the camera man just got impaled on a length of rebar, not because they just ran out of things to shoot. (If you want to see what I am talking about in all these watch Trollhunter, a great Norwegian film (By the way, just as an aside a movie is not automatically good just because it comes from Norway. I recently saw Norwegian Ninja and I’ve never seen a movie that looked more like dog vomit before))
SPOILER ALERT: I will be throwing in some spoilers here so if you hate them maybe skip ahead to the summary paragraph. One of the other big issues I had with this movie is the kids in it are being stalked, hunted, and chased by…something? Mutants? Animals? Aliens? Crazy humans? Supernatural creatures? C.H.U.D.s? It seems the producers didn’t want to have to pay for special effects, makeup, or extras with a face so they more or less skipped the whole “actually have something after the protagonists” phase. Even the reveal at the end of the film is both vague and underwhelming. What’s sad is the movie did an admirable job of ramping up the terror level through vague unease, dangerous but explainable attacks, through to full blown pee pee pants scary. However, in this horror movie formula at some point towards the end of the second act they are supposed to reveal the actual face of the horror. In this film they more or less exhausted the incredibly long list of excuses a film could use to never have a clear camera shot or flashlight shone into the enemies face.
The story plays out a lot like a survival horror video game, and in this case that game would be S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Cherobyl (I think maybe one of the reasons I like this film is I have always been partial to survival horror games over true horror). Six of the stupidest tourists in the history of tourism sign up for a totally legitimate Russian tour guide to take them on a tour of Pripyat, the radioactive town abandoned after Cherobyl melted down (where does one go in the Ukraine to get a tour guide permit to take tourists through radioactive wastes? I must say I’m impressed with the Ukrainian Tourism Board). They are turned away by guards but take a back country road that should have had signs marked “This Way to Your Impending Doom” all over it. They get to Pripyat (to be fair to this movie, it was shot on location and the scenery was really damned cool) and walk around taking pictures. They get almost bowled over by a bear and opt out, only to find that someone has cut all their wires in the van. At that point they have to spend the night in the van. They get attacked by what look like wild dogs. One gets injured and at that point the survival begins. The tour guide gets eaten by something so they have to split up to find help. Things go from bad to worse when they get chased by dogs, attacked by water somethings, and then by humanish somethings. The somthings pick them off one by one in typical horror movie fashion.
The stars. The location shots were pretty cool, until they decided the best things to shoot were barren concrete tunnels. One star. Aside from the dumb decision to actually take the tour, none of the protagonists acted in what I would consider a really stupid manner. They more or less did what I would have done. One star. The girls were all pretty hot, especially the brunette (Devin Kelly-Refrigerator, the Chicago Code, Anchors). One star. While the whole film was rote and by the book, I was honestly frightened at times and felt my pulse quicken often. Two stars. I kind of liked Uri the tour guide (Dimitri Diatchenko-Get Smart, G.I. Jane, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). One star. Total: six stars.
The black holes. Jumpy camera for no reason. One black hole. Stilted, flat performances all around. One black hole. Never revealing anything beyond vague hints about the bad guys. One black hole. The very stupid decision to take the tour in the first place (honestly, Mr. and Mrs Howell made a better vacation plan),and a very laissez faire attitude regarding the dangers of radiation and rad buildup. One black hole. Rated R but it honestly felt like it could have been PG-13 except for the language. Add more violence or nudity IMO. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
A grand total of one star. Weird. I thought it would net out a little better than that. Once I get into the analysis I can sometimes be surprised. Worth seeing? If there is nothing else playing or MIB3 is sold out sure. Your blood will be moving. I’d day it’s on par with MIB, to be honest, but that’s because I found MIB to be painfully stupid. Date movie? Not really. I don’t think it’s jump out at you scary enough to get your date in your lap. I think is is a great one for watching while folding your laundry at home. Bathroom break? I can’t say there is any one scene really integral to the plot, so almost anywhere will do. However, try the scene where they are walking back to the van after the bear attacks or the scene where they split off and the kids are trying to avoid some dogs.
Thanks for reading. I have about 800 things to do today so will get going. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu or email me with questions or comments to [email protected]. If you saw this film and want to make a comment feel free to do so here. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Who would win: Batman versus Ozymandias?
This is an interesting question. On paper it looks like Ozymandias would wipe the floor with Batman. Ozymandias is fast enough to catch a bullet, super strong, and hyper intelligent. Not to mention he is ruthless on a level far beyond the pale. Batman, while equipped with all sorts of cool devices and a never say die attitude, is still merely human.
However, the one factor you can never really account for is the fact that Batman has a resourcefulness that makes MacGuyver look like an amateur and a drive to save the lives of the innocent that gives him serious motivation. Faced with Ozy’s plan to kill millions of people to make a political statement I believe Batman would find a way.
Unfortunately, without time to prepare and just based on what we know from the comics and movies, I would have to put this one firmly in Ozymandias’s favor. Sorry Batman.
The Watchmen image I got from Dave’s Comic Book t shirt collection. He only has a few from the Watchmen. I really like the Dr. Manhattan one.
Jason
Green Lantern is Gay
I don’t mean that in any way as an insult. It is a fact. DC Comics has announced that they are having Green Lantern come out of the closet and enjoy his freedom to be whomever he chooses.
I see this as a really positive statement not just in support of gay rights but rather in support of human rights. Humans should have the freedom to have whatever makes them happy in their life, as long as that doesn’t interfere with other people’s happiness. I am also glad we live in a time where we are no long slaves to the negative stereotypes associated with gays and their abilities to be heroes of any stripe. We have gay cops, firefighters, and soldiers and I think they are all heroes. I furthermore applaud DC’s commitment to their support in casting a major character from their pantheon as gay. The easy and cheesy way would have been to either create a new gay superhero or take some minor character from the past and make him or her gay.
The interesting part for me will come in the months ahead as we can see how this revelation is received by the American public. Dave sells a good number of Green Lantern t shirts from his DC Comic t shirt collection and I am very curious to see if he sees either a spike or drop in sales. However, I say to anyone who drops his or her fandom of Green Lantern over this you should consider the fact that you were a fan when you thought he was straight. His orientation did nothing to change his actions. He is still the super hero he always was.
Jason
