What Is Imitation Lobster And Crab Meat Made Of?

Probably a poor choice of artwork for this ad.

Star Trek DVD Due On November 17th

Paramount Home Entertainment has announced 2-disc DVD and 3-disc Blu-ray releases of Star Trek for the 17th November. Each will feature a widescreen presentation along with Dolby Digital 5.1 for the DVD, and 5.1 Dolby TrueHD for the Blu-ray. Extras will include commentary by director J.J. Abrams, writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, producer Damon Lindelof and executive producer Bryan Burk, deleted scenes with optional commentary (“Spock Birth”, “Klingons Take Over Narada”, “Young Kirk, Johnny and Uncle Frank”, “Amanda and Sarek Argue After Spock Fights”, “Prison Interrogation and Breakout”, “Sarek Gets Amanda”, “Dorm Room and Kobayashi Maru (original version)”, “Kirk Apologizes to the Green Girl”, “Sarek Sees Spock”), featurettes (“To Boldly Go”, “Casting”, “Aliens”, “Score”), a gag reel, and a digital copy. The Blu-ray release will also include additional featurettes on the Starships, Gene Roddenberry’s Vision, Ben Burtt and the Sounds of Star Trek, a Starfleet Vessel Simulator, and more.

Introducing The iQ Font

The iQ Font is designed entirely based on the movements of an automobile. It’s the result of collaboration between two typographers and a pro race car driver. Here’s how it was made.

What If Cartoons Were Real?

Here are some artistic interpretations of what animated characters would look like if they were real people.

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Stephen King’s Under The Dome Book Tour

Stephen King will tour to promote his upcoming massive novel, Under The Dome. The dates and locations for the signings are as follows:

November 10 – NYC (sold out) - on stage, no book signing, 250 pre-signed books

November 11 – still being decided, either Washington, D.C. or Baltimore, Maryland – book signing, no on stage event

November 13 – Atlanta, Georgia – book signing, no on stage event

November 16 – Sarasota, Florida – on stage, no book signing, 250 pre-signed books

November 18 – Minneapolis, Minnesota – on stage, no book signing, 250 pre-signed books

November 19 – Toronto, Canada – on stage, no book signing, 250 pre-signed books

December 1 – Portsmouth, New Hampshire - on stage, no book signing, 250 pre-signed books

December 2 – Manchester, Vermont – on stage and book signing

More information to follow at a later date.

Watch J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life, Tonight

Elizabeth Vargas hosts an ABC special, J.K. Rowling: A Year In The Life, which follows the author as she writes the final book in the Harry Potter series. The program airs tonight (Thursday, July 16) at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. Watch a preview of the program below.

Mysterio Infant T-Shirt

Mysterio predicts your child’s future on a cotton t-shirt which is then sealed in a hand-stitched muslin bag. There are 12 possible futures but you won’t know yours until you open it. This is a fun gift for a baby shower.  The shirts are size 0-6 month only and retail for $12.95. You can order the mysterious tees HERE or at a store near you.

Life on Mars: The Complete Series DVD

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has released details for the upcoming release of Life on Mars: The Complete Series ($39.99) on 29th September. This remake, broadcast on ABC, spans seventeen episodes presented in 1.78.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1. Special features include: three featurettes (To Mars and Back, Sunrise to Sunset with Jason O’Mara, and Flashback: Lee Majors Goes to Mars), a bloopers reel and deleted scenes.

Google Debuts Search With Location for iPhone OS 3.0

Google has announced that iPhone and iPod touch users running iPhone OS 3.0 can now perform local searches via the company’s My Location feature. When users visit google.com from Safari, a link on the page will allow them to turn on My Location, after which searches can be made on a local basis; the Official Google Mobile Blog uses a search for “Jazz clubs” in New York City as an example. Once the feature is turned on, users can update their location via a link on the main google.com home page. It is unclear whether Apple plans to build the feature into future versions of Safari for iPhone, which would allow for location-based searches via the browser’s integrated search area.

Issue 33 of McSweeney’s Quarterly Will Be A Sunday-Edition Sized Newspaper

McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers says his quarterly magazine’s Fall issue intends to prove the viability of print by adopting a newspaper format.

His goal is to create a physical object that doesn’t retreat, but instead luxuriates in the beauties of print. Eggers believes that if you use the hell out of the medium, if you give investigative journalism space, if you give photojournalists space, if you give graphic artists and cartoonists space-if you really truly give readers an experience that can’t be duplicated on the web-then they will spend $1 for a copy. And that $1 per copy, plus the revenue from some (but not all that many) ads, will keep the enterprise afloat.

Issue 33 of McSweeney’s Quarterly will be a one-time-only, Sunday-edition sized newspaper-the San Francisco Panorama. It’ll have news (actual news, tied to the day it comes out) and sports and arts coverage, and comics (sixteen pages of glorious, full-color comics, from Chris Ware and Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman and many others besides) and a magazine and a weekend guide, and will basically be an attempt to demonstrate all the great things print journalism can (still) do, with as much first-rate writing and reportage and design (and posters and games and on-location Antarctic travelogues) as we can get in there. Expect journalism from Andrew Sean Greer, fiction from George Saunders and Roddy Doyle, dispatches from Afghanistan, and much, much more. We’re going to try to sell this thing on the street in San Francisco, but it’ll also go out to our subscribers and be in bookstores all over. The newspaper issue of Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern is due out in September.

 

Clever Promotional Zombie T-Shirt

Stop by the Capcom booth at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego and pick up this clever inside-out zombie tee. The shirt promotes the upcoming release of Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.

New Sherlock Holmes Trailer

Entertainment Weekly’s Second Annual Comic-Con Preview Issue

 

Entertainment Weekly’s second annual Comic-Con preview issue will hit newsstands this week. The magazine features Iron Man 2 on the cover, and inside it’s packed with exclusive first looks at highly anticipated TV shows, comic books, and movies.

The first Iron Man blasted Robert Downey Jr. back to stardom, and the superhero franchise is readying to return to the big screen on May 7, 2010. Iron Man will battle new villain Mickey Rourke, size up Scarlett Johansson as The Black Widow (photo below), and, hopefully, prove that the success of the first movie wasn’t a fluke. Downey knows the movie isn’t an underdog this time around. “There are a lot more invisible eyes on us now,” he says.

Apple Releases iTunes 8.2.1

Apple has released iTunes 8.2.1, its latest update to its digital media management software. According to Apple’s release notes, in addition to providing “a number of important bug fixes, the release “addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices”. iTunes 8.2.1 is available now via Apple’s Software Update utility or as a direct download from Apple.com/itunes/.

Collector’s Editions of Stephen King’s Next Novel, Under The Dome

Scribner will publish two Collector’s Editions of Stephen King’s next novel, Under The Dome. The regular Collector’s Edition will have a special jacket with a belly band, a stamped case, four-color printed endpapers, a ribbon marker, and will contain a set of 27 special trading cards featuring drawings of characters from the book (drawn by cartoonist Matthew Diffee). These drawings will also be featured in the book—as a frontispiece image and on the 26 part title pages. The book will be shrink-wrapped and Scribner will print only 25,000 copies of this edition, priced at $75.

Scribner is also offering 1,500 copies of a signed, limited Collector’s Edition. This contains all the special elements listed above, plus the book will be signed by the author. This is priced at $200. Both books are scheduled to be release in November of 2009.

40 Weapons From Cult Movies Contest

Every year a fantastic poster is released to promote the Crazy 4 Cult show. Usually the posters are filled with movie references and this year is no different.

For the 2009 show, Tim Doyle created the official Crazy 4 Cult 3-D poster in which he references 40 weapons from cult movies.  Some of the images are easy to recognize while others are a bit more obscure.

See how many weapons you and your friends can recognize and send the results to gallery1988@aol.com, with the email headline “Cult Contest 09”. The goal is to match which movie each weapon is from with the corresponding letter or number assigned to it on the below key. The winner will not only get a handful of prints from this year’s Crazy 4 Cult 3-D, but also an Artist Proof of Luke Chueh’s “I Asked For Scrambled” print. The deadline is August 8th to email it in.

Disney’s 1983 Wild Things Test Clip

In 1983, the Disney studio owned the movie rights to Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are. Animators John Lasseter and Glen Keane were interested in combining traditional, hand-drawn animation with CGI backgrounds, so they shot the following test film featuring Max, the lead character of Wild Things. The studio rejected the idea because they said it was too expensive, and Lasseter was fired soon after.

But Lasseter ended up doing pretty well for himself. Getting the axe from Disney freed him up to get started in the new field of computer graphics. He would go on to be the head honcho of a little company called Pixar, directing Toy Story and other blockbuster hits… Before he eventually returned to Disney in 2006, as chief creative officer. (From monstersandrockets.com)

Dave Chappelle at Portland’s Pioneer Square

Dave Chappelle showed up. Thousands of people packed Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon late Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, drawn by the ethereal promise of an appearance by the popular comedian. They stayed two hours despite a tiny sound system that made Chappelle nearly inaudible, creating one of the most remarkable spontaneous gatherings in Portland history.

The rumor came through Twitter and text and Facebook, and it seemed too good to be true: the wildly popular comic appearing at midnight in the middle of Portland — for free? A mostly 20-something, expectant crowd filled the square until it was crammed full. By midnight thousands stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a bigger crowd than the Greg Oden and playoff rallies the Trail Blazers have held in the square in recent years. Chappelle arrived at 12:53 a.m. to huge applause and people surging toward him, camera phones aloft. When he reached the stage, left in place for the square’s lunchtime summer concert series, he turned on an amplifier the size of a toaster. It was barely audible beyond the first dozen rows of people. One point that did come across: “Portland Police were kind enough not to arrest me,” he said. Chappelle starred in the 1998 marijuana-based comedy “Half Baked,” which he also co-wrote. But he is best known for his wildly popular and often quoted sketch-comedy program, “Chappelle’s Show,” which ran from 2003-2005 on Comedy Central. He stunned fans when he reportedly walked away from a $50 million contract to continue doing the show, and has been somewhat of an enigma since then.

It wasn’t clear why Chappelle was in town, or how the impromptu gathering came about. Though he did say, at one point, “I’m not here for money.” Most people had gone to the square at the last minute, after receiving a text message or other communication from a friend, coworker or roommate. “He played the Bye and Bye (bar/restaurant in Northeast Portland) last night,” 22-year-old Alyse McNeill said. “So I think he’s just doing a tour through Twitter.”

But instead of the 200 people Chappelle said he anticipated showing up at the square, thousands did. He had no entourage and, apparently, not one security guard. Chappelle kept speaking to the crowd, at one point saying he was proud, “when people can stand this close together and not be angry.” Despite the huge crowd police never intruded. Chappelle seemed surprised by the scene. “This has never happened in my entire career,” he said, to a huge cheer. “I’m grateful everybody came out.” Chappelle did squeeze in some comedy. He compared one guy working on the sound system to Scotty from Star Trek, and took an OPB reporter’s microphone and said, “Support Oregon Public Broadcasting.” At one point, a woman and two men atop Starbucks began stripping as Chappelle gaped and the crowd cheered and jeered. By 2 a.m., it was clear the sound system wouldn’t go, and Chappelle wound things down. He thanked the crowd and shared a few things he learned, including: “Don’t tell a secret in Portland.” He left the square at 2:09 a.m. and walked to the Heathman Hotel, where he held court with several dozen fans on the sidewalk. “I’ll catch you on Twitter,” one man said to a friend as he left.

America’s Best Places to Live

Money magazine released its list of America’s Best Places to Live today. Although no location with a population above 50,000 cracked the top 100, the rankings still have plenty of value and might just make you fantasize about uprooting your family and heading toward greener pastures.

So which small U.S. town takes home top honors? Louisville, Colorado.  Read the complete list HERE.

How to Eat Well on $50 a Week?

Fifty bucks. It could get you a single steak at a fine dining establishment. Or it could feed you—and feed you pretty darn well—for an entire week. A trio of writers from around the country is proving just that with the recent launch of their experiment and blog Fifty Bucks a Week.  

The experiment started a little over a month ago, and the three writer/guinea pigs who can no longer pig out as they once pleased are: Adam Pollock, who lives in Brooklyn and is working on the second season of his web cooking-dating show called The Feed Me Show; Cari Luna, a novelist and stay-at-home mom who is based in Portland, Oregon, and who also blogs at Dispatches from Utopia; and Emily Farris, a food writer from Kansas City, Missouri, whose book Casserole Crazy: Hot Stuff for Your Oven, came out last fall. Read more HERE.

Percy Jackson And The Olympians: The Lightning Thief Teaser Trailer

20th Century Fox has revealed the teaser trailer for the Chris Columbus-directed Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, opening in theaters on February 12, 2010. The film stars Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Sean Bean, Kevin McKidd, Melina Kanakaredes, Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, Alexandra Daddario, Catherine Keener, Rosario Dawson and Steve Coogan.

In “Percy Jackson,” based on Rick Riordan’s best-selling children’s novel, Poseidon’s son, a 12-year-old boy, sets out on a quest in present-day America to rescue his mother, return Zeus’ stolen lightning bolt and prevent a civil war from erupting among the gods.

First Trailer for Universal’s Despicable Me

We’re still a year out, but a 2 minute and 31 second trailer for Universal Pictures’ animated Despicable Me has already been released featuring a full scene from the film. The film opens July 9, 2010 and is voiced by Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Kristen Wiig, Will Arnett, Russell Brand, Jemaine Clement, Jack McBrayer and Julie Andrews. This is how the studios describes the film:

In a happy suburban neighborhood surrounded by white picket fences with flowering rose bushes, sits a black house with a dead lawn. Unbeknownst to the neighbors, hidden beneath this home is a vast secret hideout. Surrounded by a small army of minions, we discover Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), planning the biggest heist in the history of the world. He is going to steal the moon (Yes, the moon!) in Universal’s new 3-D CGI feature, “Despicable Me.”

Gru delights in all things wicked. Armed with his arsenal of shrink rays, freeze rays, and battle-ready vehicles for land and air, he vanquishes all who stand in his way. Until the day he encounters the immense will of three little orphaned girls who look at him and see something that no one else has ever seen: a potential Dad.

The world’s greatest villain has just met his greatest challenge: three little girls named Margo, Edith and Agnes.

101 Muppets of Sesame Street

For a recent National Post article, Chip Zdarsky (aka Steve Murray) illustrated 101 Muppets to celebrate 40 years of Sesame Street. Can you name them all?

Click HERE for the interactive key. 

Comic Pick of The Week: Blackest Night # 1

Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis raise the dead in the most anticipated comics story of the year! Throughout the decades, death has plagued the DC Universe and taken the lives of heroes and villains alike. But to what end? As the War of Light rages on, the prophecy of the Blackest Night descends upon us, with Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps at the center of it all. Don’t miss this 8-issue epic taking the DCU beyond the grave! Blackest Night will be in comic stores tomorrow and retail for $3.99.

Also, available from your retailer this Wednesday alongside the comic book is this promotional ring. Retailers will be supplied with a limited supply of these this week, so pick up your Blackest Night # 1 early.

The Top 10 San Diego Comic-Con Exclusives

It’s that time of year again. The San Diego Comic-Con hits July 23-26. Hopefully you were lucky enough to get tickets to the show (they sold out online weeks ago, and won’t be selling any additional tickets at the door. Besides oodles of free goodies, awesome stuff for sale, behind-the-scenes panels to attend, and celebrity autographs to snag, Comic-Con is also known for its exclusives. Almost every major company that attends offers some sort of exclusive – a toy, comic or statue that’s only available in limited quantities and only available at SDCC itself. HERE is a list of 10 of the coolest exclusives available only at Comic-Con 2009.