What is Sci Fi Science?  Well…

Science fiction isn’t just for the movies! Cyborgs, shape shifting, the colonization of space and tons more really are possible. Join Dr. Michio Kaku on a quest to discover the science behind the sci fi and find out how to bring your favorite futuristic tech to life.

Dr. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist, best-selling author, and popularizer of science.

He is known the world of physics as the co-creator of string field theory, a branch of string theory, and his research on Einstein’s “Theory of Everything.” The theory seeks to unify the four fundamental forces of the universe-the strong force, the weak force, gravity and electromagnetism.

Dr. Kaku is author of several scholarly, Ph.D. level textbooks on string theory and quantum field theory are required reading at many of the world’s leading physics laboratories. Also, he has had more than 70 articles published in physics journals, covering topics such as superstring theory, supergravity, supersymmetry, and hadronic physics. Currently, he holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York, where he has taught for over 25 years. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, as well as New York University (NYU).

As I’m a regular viewer of the show I find our involvement immensely cool, and am honored the producers asked us to serve as a backdrop.  The episodes the shop will appear in will air October 6th and 13th, and are titled Destroy the Death Star and Black Hole Odyssey respectively.  If you need to acclimate yourself to the show you can view clips of prior episodes here.

Seeing this this morning on Blastr immediately provoked memories of Pavement:

Click here to view the embedded video.

On another note, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve spent well over twenty years attempting to grow Trek sideburns to disastrous effect.  Which is okay, really, as some Starfleet Captains just plain forget to grow them.  Even when said Captain is not only the star of the show, they’re also the director:

I was driving with my daughter on the Sunday evening before our Monday morning shooting, and she looked over at me and asked, ‘Dad, where’re your Kirk sideburns?’ and immediately my gut turned over, as if I’d forgotten to do my homework. I clasped my hands to the sides of my head and I realized that in all the weeks that I’d been preparing to do this film, the script consulting, the wardrobe fittings, nobody had mentioned my sideburns. Everyone just assumed that I must know the routine by now, and that I would have the intelligence to grow them myself, which is overestimating any actor, I feel. It’s a lesson I want everybody to learn about actors. Never trust us, not for a minute.

-William Shatner on Star Trek V, from Star Trek: Movie Memories

Thankfully this only documents the Next Gen that might have been.  I shudder to think of a world in which Reggie Jackson flew the Enterprise.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dean-o, listed as illustrator/artist of the sequence, shares the nomination with its director Tom Barham, lead animator Marci Ichimura, and compositor Mark Rubbo under Dakota Pictures, 3 Arts Entertainment /Fair Harbor Productions.  You can see a full listing of  the work they’re up against on The Emmys’ official site.

If you’re interested in Dean’s comic work, I highly recommend The Alcoholic (a graphic novel collaboration with B2D’s writer/creator Jonathan Ames), and The Quitter (written by Harvey Pekar of American Splendor fame).

“Futurama” is back! Everybody’s favorite zany group from the future has returned with twelve brand-new episodes, premiering on Comedy Central June 24^th at 10PM. Twentieth century boy Philip J. Fry is still jetting around the universe with his favorite drunken robot, one-eyed mutant, mad scientist, rule-abiding Jamaican accountant and Nibblonian monster in a host of brand-new adventures from the team at Planet Express.

Hatched from the mind of “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, “Futurama” blasts contemporary culture and science fiction alike with an animated comedy barrage. Hapless NYC pizza guy Philip J. Fry makes a fateful delivery to a cryonics lab on New Year’s Eve, 1999 when he’s accidentally flash-frozen until the next millennium. Reawakened in 31st century New New York, he finds work at his great-great-etc. grandnephew’s Planet Express delivery service. Together with his hedonist robot buddy bender and cyclopsian love interest Leela, Fry travels to the farthest reaches of the universe. Along the way they discover strange alien life forms, velour-clad lotharios, freaky mutants, intergalactic conspiracies and the disembodied heads of celebrities throughout the ages.

You can jazz yourself up for the new season by following a countdown to 6/24/10- filled with stills, interviews, videos and other neat stuff- on the show’s Facebook page.

Comer & Gallucio Casting is looking for comic collectors and enthusiasts to serve as extras at a comic convention scene for Bored to Death, the terrific show created by Jonathan Ames and starring Jasson Shwartzman, Zach Galifianakis and Ted Danson.

-SEEKING: Males & females, ages 18+, and must be legal to work in the US.

-SHOOT DATES/LOCATION: End of May (no specific dates yet but will probably be within the last week). Shooting in NYC.

-CONTACT: Please email the following info to BOREDTODEATH2010@GMAIL.COM: Full name, phone number, and 2 current & clear snapshot photos (no professional shots). One should be of your face and the other should show your body. If you have costumes that you wear to conventions, please include photo of yourself in this costume, as you might be used with it on the show.

I’m confident we can populate that set with enough Forbidden Planet kids to fill a space cruiser.  Now get going.

Oh, and if you’re not familiar with Bored to Death, or need to refresh yourself with just how good and refreshingly quirky the series is, you may refer to this previous Daily Planet post.

Or you can watch this official trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

David Alan Mack and Will Sliney are the script writer/artist team behind the Farscape Ongoing series and Keith R.A DeCandido pens the new Scorpius adventures.  All three gentlemen will be on-hand Thursday night to sign comics and chat, so come on by Farscape fans!

As always, if you can’t make it to the store that night you may pre-order signed copies of the books for mail order.  Your books will be shipped out the Friday the 23rd.

Scorpius #0 may be purchased here.

Farscape Ongoing #6 may be purchased here.

Stan is digitized a la Kevin Flynn and sent to the Game Grid for having the audacity to attempt to delete his profile… and Facebook the MCP will have none of that!

So what sort of games are the conscripts profiles forced to play to gain their freedom? Jai Alai?  A Light Cycle race to the death?

NO!  Yahtzee!

Looove the episode’s Tron parody segments (the little touches go a long way- Facebook Saark is a more accurate cartoon depiction of a real person/character, actor David warner in this case, than any featured on The Simpsons in a long time… The MCP’s voice and the line, “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Stan Marsh.” ), but the episode’s real strength is its biting commentary on the Facebook phenomenon and the various social changes it has loosed upon the world. For better, but mostly worse.

Great episode.

END OF LINE.

It’s one of the only forms of entertainment I enjoy more than comics, SF and other geeky stuff, and provides me with a much welcome escape… from the world of capes and spaceships and Mandalorians.

Now the new baseball season’s just three days old and as I set my fantasy rosters and pore over stats and root for The Mets and marvel at Joe Mauer’s astounding ability, I find geekdom encroaching at every turn.  How’s that?

I can’t get the frigging Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” out of my head!  For three days now!

If you’ve not seen it I’ll briefly recap- Captain Sisko challenges an old academy classmate and rival, the Vulcan Solok, and his crew to a baseball game in the holosuites of Quark’s… Ah, just watch the clip for a brief recap.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Vulcans for the most part play small ball, with an emphasis on pitching, defense, and advancing the runner.  Cold, efficient, and precise.  It’s a very Japanese style of play.  They destroy the “Niners” but Sisko and company are the real “winners” because they enjoyed themselves as a team.  Awww.

Yes, the episode’s a tad canned and corny (CAN OF CORN!) and revives a number of cliches the Bad New Bears perfected twenty-two years earlier and every lovable-losers baseball film has banked on since.  But The Bad News Bears didn’t have a Klingon (Worf) playing first base, who in a round of on-field taunting, barks “Death to the opposition!”

Next Week’s Psychosis: Talkin’ Softball!

Click here to view the embedded video.

AMC has ordered a total of six episodes of the series that revolves around a group of survivors of a zombie apocalypse. Darabont penned and directed the pilot and will exec produce with Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd of Valhalla Motion Pictures and David Alpert of Circle of Confusion, which will be funded entirely inhouse by AMC parent Rainbow Media. Charles Eglee, a seasoned TV drama showrunner, has also boarded the project as an exec producer…

AMC… ultimately decided to go straight to series after hearing Darabont’s vision for a six-episode arc… ‘He’s taken the baseline road map of the underlying material and just blew it out to the next level,’ said Joel Stillerman, AMC’s senior veep of programming, production and digital content. ‘There’s stuff in there that will make the people who love the comics very happy and some surprises in there as well.’

Exciting, eh?

UPDATE: I just learned to spell “Walking!”