Comic-Con 2010: Infinite Crisis

July 26th, 2010
by Rob Reuter

Before you ask: I don’t go to any of the Hall H programming anymore, so I don’t know anything about the stabbing. And you can tell I’m telling the truth because this sentence isn’t: “And I’m not answering any more questions without my lawyer here.”

For new readers who’ve never been to Comic-Con: Hall H is the big room where they show all the sneak preview clips for the upcoming geek flicks at Comic-Con. Five years ago it was possible to get into the Hall H programming of your choice by getting in line a couple hours early, staking out a seat and waiting through the panel before the one you wanted. Since they don’t clear out the room between programs, bingo! You’ve got a seat for your panel for the low, low price of pissing away your morning watching something you don’t give a shit about (What is a… Yo Gabba Gabba? Is it… what Spongebob yells while he is ejaculating?), and knowing that the funk of 4,000 geeks will permanently burn out all of your nostril hairs.

Then God got distracted and allowed the creation of a little something called Twilight, which spiked the lines a dozenfold and changed all the rules… which is putting it mildly. People start lining up at 9 p.m. Friday to get into Hall H at 9 a.m. Saturday, and when the get in? They sit there ALL DAY, setting back the image of genre geeks as ANYTHING but borderline autistic couch potatoes at least 10,000 years (Throg! You sit on rock all day for sneak peek at next cave hunt painting! Get off ass and go outside. Maybe invent underpants so I invent wedgie!”)

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Comic-Con 2010: Clowns To The Left Of Me, Jokers To The Right

July 24th, 2010
by Rob Reuter

An inquisitive reader (Who knows I know his home address and the name of his employer and should know better than to demand I do ANYTHING beyond drinkfree whiskey that he’s providing) writes:

Where’s the pix? I know there are a ton of hot chicks running around dressed like who knows what… you should be able to point in any direction and find a chick dressed as Hit Girl this year…

Thanks for writing, you filthy, scumsucking swine! I’ve known you for a long time, so I can only assume that your call for “pix” of women dressed as the pre-pubescent anti-heroine of an obscure comic book movie is based on some kind of weird, pop-anthropological interest, and CERTAINLY not the uncontrollable urge to look at pictures of idealized women in a way in which they can never question your manhood, and then jack off like an amphetamined ape in an empty cage.

Or perhaps in the equipment closet of the girl’s locker room back in high school with six soiled sports bras draped over your face, huh? Yeah, you just keep on muttering about “sealed records” and “expunged juvenile record”; some of us know the TRUTH. And trust me: you are going to HELL for leering at women in skintight superhero costumes! You will BURN FOREVER for your filthy IDOLOTRY and LUST!

I know this because these douchebags yelled it at me Thursday.

Yeah, the Westboro Baptist Church swine managed to find some time in their busy schedule of protesting soldiers’ funerals and high school productions of Tennessee Williams to come and protest… comic book geeks. Apparently they take issue with people reading stories about a man with incredible power, sent to Earth by his father, who selflessly toils to save us all… come to think of it, that IS a stupid fucking story. Only a rube would believe it, and certainly NO ONE would base their lives around it. But I digress.

These whimperers showed up peddling their bullshit across the street from the convention center, and immediately a gang of Comic-Con attendees started throwing together a gang to… shit, I don’t know. After all, these are NERDS were talking about here, myself included. I can say from personal experience that, when confronted with bullys, the nerd reaction is less to whip together a posse and more to clamp your nostrils closed so toilet water can’t flood your brain.

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The American Jerk Week in Filthy One-Liners – 2010-07-24

July 24th, 2010
by Rob Reuter
  • I don't know how anyone quit smoking before e-cigarettes. It's the only thing keeping me from having 4 or 5 fewer fucking neighbors. #
  • Just had to pay $120 extra to get seats together on the flight out. Ah #SDCC your penis of wallet rape gets longer and crueler every year. #
  • In San Diego for #SDCC so let me finally say: fuck @jetblue. Next time, prior to boarding, you could maybe CHECK THE FUCKING WATER PRESSURE #
  • Since the Worpress plugin ain't cooperating, the 1st long dispatch from #SDCC is up at http://theamericanjerk.com #
  • #SDCC has been open 15 minutes… and THIS is the line to preregister for 2011 – http://twitpic.com/27ehhk #
  • And yes, I just waited in that fucking line. That's why I'm at #SDCC and you're home reading this shit. #
  • What could possibly go wrong? #SDCChttp://twitpic.com/27f08s #
  • Kenny Fuckin' Powers! #SDCChttp://twitpic.com/27fej2 #
  • Aaand here… we… GO. – http://twitpic.com/27fmh7 #
  • #SDCC videos are trickling into The American Jerk Video Dump – http://youtube.com/theamericanjerk1 #
  • Having a refried bean burrito for breakfast. I WILL have personal space on the Floor, Goddammit. #SDCC #CRIMESAGAINSTHUMANITY #
  • Shit. So long Saturday nights and, in fact, the REST OF COMIC-CON MY GIRL'S SEEN IT PLEASE RESCUE ME – http://twitpic.com/27nbro #
  • The God Hates Fags people are here protesting. They should've been more specific. The furries'll yiff their holes til they whimper #SDCC #
  • At How To Break Into Marvel panel. Room full of desperate wannabes face to face with editorial, none with the balls to take a hostage. #SDCC #
  • Wearing this shirt sends a message… just not the one he thinks – http://twitpic.com/27oj9n #
  • Following @operationtron to get into to Flynn's Arcade so I can catch a furry drilling a glory hole into a Donkey Kong game. #SDCC #PERVERTS #
  • Ha Rodriguez, you wanted me to wait in line sober to see Machete but I got drunk and SAW IT ANYWAY #SDCChttp://twitpic.com/27rt4s #
  • #SDCC photos have been uploaded into The American Jerk Photo Dump – http://www.flickr.com/theamericanjerk #
  • Long post will have to wait. New video available at the Video dump – http://youtube.com/theamericanjerk1 #
  • You've been warned: when Steve-O asks for a nickel, tell him to fuck off (I thought #SDCC was about COMICS) – http://twitpic.com/27z8t7 #
  • Unless someone in No Ordinary Family can fly, STOP TRYING TO SELL IT TO ME IN EVERY CORNER OF FUCKING #SDCC ABC #
  • After all day on the #SDCC floor, if @goonguy's Franky doesn't shout "Knife to the eye!" during The Goon movie panel, I FUCKING WILL #
  • No, no longer post yet. Need food and beer. As a consolation, Flynn's Arcade footage trickling to Video Dump now. #SDCC #
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Nerd Prom 2010: We Are All Locals Now

July 22nd, 2010
by Rob Reuter

I’ve only been coming to Comic-Con for five years, and while the fucker was big even when we first started attending, it has become damn near unwieldy. Since this is The American Jerk, and we are nothing if not professionals in the trade of Dick Jokes As Metaphor: if Comic-Con in 2006 was Ron Jeremy, Comic-Con in 2010 is Big Johnny Holmes. They’ll both make it tough for you to walk when you’re done, but only The Wad can make you dread the next day’s go-round. And maybe kill you and your entire fucking family.

One of my great memories of Comic-Con was my girl’s and my first Preview Night a couple of years ago. And I talk a lot about Preview Night without ever describing it: originally, Preview Night was a courtesy set up for the exhibitioners, the comic pros and the absolute hardcore collector who had come to Comic-Con looking for that ONE thing that they felt they HAD to have. no matter how stringintly you argued that that ONE thing should be a shower.

As such, it was meant to be low-key and not too crowded; a chance for serious people to get some last-minute trading done before the heady throng of maybe 50,000 people hit (Comparision: last night the San Diego Fox affiliate estimated today’s crowd to be 140,000), and for drunken gigglers to have a chance to run wild on the floor, checking out the spectacle and, posing for pictures spooning with Jabba The Hutt… and sometimes pushing off the fumbling advances of Jabba’s pimply sister outside the men’s room.

That was then. Now, Preview Night is just day one of Comic-Con. It used to be considered foreplay, and still kinda is… provided your definition of foreplay includes wandering around in a drug-style haze with a sticky patch on the back of your jeans.

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Nerd Prom 2010: Back In The Saddled

July 21st, 2010
by Rob Reuter

At five this morning, my cell phone shrieked me out of a beautiful dream where I was smoking a Marlboro Red the size of John Holmes job qualifications (Although if that’s the best description I can come up with, it’s probably best it woke me when it did). It was my credit card company’s fraud department, calling to advise me that some depraved spastic had used my card to buy a dozen beers, a bottle and a half of wine, and then hole up in a mid-ranged motel overlooking the Pacific… presumably to make his last stand.

I advised the nice lady in return that the deranged spastic in question was me.

Welcome back to San Diego Comic-Con.

——————

Christ, look at the fucking dust and cobwebs around this fucking Web site, huh?

Sorry about that. Let’s suffice it to say that things have gone weird on me in 2010; even weirder than usual. When you quit one day job after it “allegedly” defrauded you out of $10,000 in 2009 and was on its way to gleefully upping the ante to $23,000 in 2010, and then have to spend an inordinate mount of time at a new day job convincing them that your kind of behavior is NORMAL, well, you try stamping out dick jokes and coming up with clever ways to call politicians whores.

But if there’s one thing that I’ve forced myself to embrace in the past half decade, it’s to report back from Comic-Con. Oh sure: unlike when I started spitting sporadic and incomprehensible dispatches from this place five years ago, now you can just dial up G4 and watch eight hours of Olivia Munn and That Other Guy making hip-hopish hand gestures and tit-jiggling from the main convention floor. Of course, that assumes you can trust that kind of reporting. After seeing Olivia on The Daily Show, I wouldn’t believe her if she reported she had jugs without some hands-on fact-checking.

However, I still think there’s a place for “reporting” (Quoted because what I do is only journalism in the loosest definition… and only then if your definition includes Blue Law violations) from a man with his boots on the ground, a song in his heart, and most of a distillery’s pride in his brain. A man reporting from the actual Cheez-Nip cholesterol-pumping heart of Comic-Con, using all the tools available to a man on the budget of a modest family vacation minus the coin required for enough beer to prevent him from wanting to lay hands on every Naruto with a children’s stroller.

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