You love post-apocalyptic dystopian tales of gritty humans battling armies of insidious baby-eating cyborgs, right? So does Philadelphia’s preeminent geek Eric Smith (geekadelphia.com), but in his debut novel he tackles something much more troubling and frightening: relationships and ruts.

If you follow Eric in the social media ether you’ll realize right away he is sincere, funny and very supportive of the Philadelphia tech community. He’s an all-around good guy well-versed in everything from academics to Atari. You’ll also notice he proudly wears his heart on his iron-clad exoskeleton’s arc reactor, so there is much vibranium to mine when it comes to the successes and failures of a romantic young lad.

“…and poor Andrew, his week has been a rough one. His former bestseller, Chasing Fireflies, is on clearance at Barnes & Noble for $1.37, his girlfriend left him for a corporate America action figure, and he’s been tricked into joining Textual Healing, a support group for writers who can’t seem to write anymore.”

Buy: $15.99

More: www.ericsmithrocks.com

Handy Site for Screw-It-Yourselfers: There, I Fixed It

Santastic: Very cool customizable “From Santa” video for the kiddies.

“It’s Funny Because It’s True”: Eight ways to kill an idea

Do They Know It’s Christmas? The Award-winning Canadian hardcore band Fucked Up has just released their star-studded remake of the Band Aid holiday classic. It features Andrew W.K., Bob Mould, David Cross, Ezra Koenig, GZA, Kevin Drew, Kyp Malone, Tegan & Sara & Yo La Tengo. It’s quite good. Grab it on iTunes.

Behold Our Domain! Russia unveils new Sochi 2014 Olympic logo, the first to include a URL.

Jawbox! J Robbins and Co. performed live for the first time since the 90s. Thanks to Hulu you do not have to watch the entire Mr. Giggles Show, just the good parts.  View Jawbox performance plus two bonus songs!

Your Positivity Positively Blows: Why Fake Optimism Is the Worst Way to Deal with Life’s Problems

Never Disappoints: National Geographic’s International Photography Contest 2009

See The Photos That Inspired The Art: Norman Rockwell’s use of Models and Photos

Mystery Science Theater 3000 is Back! Win Tickets to MST3K Cinematic Titanic Dec. 31! (compliments of Geekadelphia)

Cinematic Titanic, the new feature-length movie riffing show from the creator and original cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000, continues the tradition of riffing on the unfathomable, the horribly great, and the just plain ‘cheesy’ movies of the past.

Living on The Edge: Clifftop Communities

When You’re About to Lose Your Marbles and Tell Entire Sales Team How Your Really Feel About Their Input: Don’t. Calm down, take a breath and think of this:

Mad Props: The venerable Mad magazine gives us: The First 100 Minutes of the Obama Presidency [via laughingsquid]

It’s Electric! Our pals at Geekadelphia are throwing a shindig honoring America’s greatest geek Ben Franklin. Yup, that long-haired, fat bastard invented a ton of stuff (or so they say) and he’s arisen from the dead and looking for some fun in Philly. Bonus: You know that guy who plays Ben at all the big events? Yeah, well he’s not invited (he’s a real cockblock). Details:

Ben Franklin’s B’Day @ National Mechanics – January 17th, 2009: Drink Specials @ 9PM

National Mechanics
22 South 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA‎
(215) 701-4883
www.nationalmechanics.com

Christ Almighty, More Ring Tones: When I want the latest in music news, I always hit up the Wall Street Jour… wha? Anyway, good read: How the Music Industry Can Get Digital Satisfaction.

Conan Go Bye Bye: Our Favorite freckled giant is leaving NYC for L.A. soon (boo!), get tickets now to his last shows:

After 16 seasons on the air, the curtain is coming down on Late Night with Conan O’Brien as Conan prepares to head out to L.A. to take over The Tonight Show. Would you like to be a member of one of Conan’s last studio audiences in New York? Here’s your chance!

For an opportunity to obtain FREE tickets, please e-mail your Name, Address, Phone Number, & E-mail Address to: conangobyebye@nbc.com

Old News: Actor Eric Christian Olsen is 31 and looks it, but that didn’t stop him from playing a high school jock in the upcoming awful movie “Fired Up!” Let’s add him to the list: Old School! Too Old to Play Teens

Ale Yay!: Philly Beer Week Just added 20 more events to the calendar – Standard Tap, Good Dog, Grey Lodge, P.O.P.E, 12 Steps Down & TJ’s Everyday. Brewers include: Dock Street Brewing Company, Dogfish Head Brewery, Flying Fish Brewing Company, Troegs Brewing Company, Victory Brewing Company, Yards Brewing Company and many more of your favorite beer slingers. March 6-15th. Stay informed: join mailing list or Twitter.

Jon Wurster = a relentless volcanic eruption of comedy and music!

Language, Please! Kathy Griffin started it, and hopefully Tina Fey has ended it. Let’s put “Suck it!” on that high shelf where we completely forget about things, it’ll fit in nicely with “Bitch!” and some other never-funnies that can be heard regularly in Manayunk bars and also as a greeting on the Preston & Steve morning zoo.

Comic vs Audience, Now with 100% More Sound: I just spent a delightful half hour listening to local comedian Chip Chantry chat with host Dave Walk. You can too! Totally free. Listen up: Podcast.

More Props: Music maven @largeheartedboy reminded the twitterverse that Propagandhi finished their latest in November and should be available soon. We’ll keep ya posted. That is rockin’ good news. In honor, let’s fire up some some ferocity… a nice Bush send-off.

Download MP3: Die Jugend Marschiert

Quite Possibly, The Greatest TV Show Ever: Tim & Eric, I mean “Jim and Derrick,” are all Turbo Fueled up and are X-tremely in your face with their tats, trucker hats and mad piercings… “Hey G4 and Fuse, you can suck it! There’s a new graphics-heavy, stoner-hip-hop-skater-slacker tech culture show in town!” View this: Awesome Show!

Rick Rubin, Tupac, Floyd… All Overrated! I’ve never read Blender before, but after thoroughly enjoying this spot-on list, I might start. Good Stuff: The 33 Most Overrated People, Places, Trends and Other Junk in Rock.

Alec Baldwin is a Pretty Sad Guy: Despite being hilarious on 30 Rock, good ol’ Jack “Don’t ever make me talk to a woman that old again” Donaghy is not a happy camper in real life. That’s what a messy divorce, one bad phone call and more than a few movie bombs will do to a guy.

Still, you gotta love him and the endearing Republican (with an actual soul!) character he portrays, especially when he explains a tuxedo he is wearing in the office by saying:

“It’s after six. What am I, a farmer?”

Baldwin is also a tad bitter at NBC for not giving 30 Rock enough respect and moving it’s time slot around, I completely agree. I also agree with his assessment of their other shows (I know Scrubs is now gonzo, but still…):

They’ve gone out of their way to wring the last drops out of ‘My Name Is Earl’ and ‘Scrubs.’ Those shows are done! They’re cooked! Yet they do a one-hour episode of ‘Earl’! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

Read the New Yorker Article.

Build Your Own “Iron Man” Arc Reactor! Attention Philly nerds with tools and an undying love of Tony Stark: On Thursday, October 2nd, The Hacktory and Geekadelphia are teaming to throw an “Iron Man” viewing party at Indy Hall. You will also be schooled in the art of Arc Reactor building. Really. Details here.

PowerPoint Made Fun: Read at work in business stealth mode.

How Palin Will Beat the Press: Slate’s Jack Shafer has an idea:

Instead of letting Palin talk directly and frequently to the press, the McCain campaign will dress her in bunting and rush her from one controlled setting the next—small towns, firebases in Iraq and Afghanistan, “town halls,” important funerals, church conventions, and American Legion halls (essentially George W. Bush’s current itinerary). There she’ll play the role of Spiro Agnew to McCain’s Nixon, dismissing reporters’ tough questions as effete, impudent, sacrilegious, snobby, intrusive, unpatriotic, hostile, disrespectful, chauvinistic, “East Coast,” unfair, unbalanced, liberal, biased, trivial, hypothetical, elitist, and as partisan attempts to lasso her with a “gotcha.”

Guest: Nicole Brewer from CBS3 Philly! Interview: El Vez. Topics: Dated Olympics Talk, Stormtrooper Eating Habits, “Beauty Contests,” Geekadelphia, New Facebook, Philly Accents, Russ’s Africa Trip, Small Audiences, Todd’s Hair Update, Cologne, Polyphasic Sleep. Playlist: Bound Stems, Jukebox the Ghost, Spoonfork, El Vez, Johnny Foreigner.

Preview: Regarding Nicole Brewer’s “What’s Brewing” website, “You lucked out, what if your last name was Lipshitz?”

Play Now: http://www.usedwigs.com/pod/podcast51.mp3

Read: UsedWigs Video Interview Featured on CBS3 in Philly!

Subscribe: iTunes

Website: www.usedwigsradio.com (more photos and goodness)

Listen Right Now:

No, This is Not a Kidnapping: The lovely Nicole Brewer of CBS3 Philly chats with Geekadelphia’s Tim and Eric and gets exclusive bonus footage of a super-fast chinchilla! Check out the video. Nice job fellas!

Blind Painter: Esref Armagan cannot see, but he sure can paint. {via boingboing.net}

Colossal Waste of Time: But I still watched the whole stupid thing. Never knew Billy Joel mentioned “Thalidomide,” maybe the first and only mention of the grim term in a pop song? Let’s hope so. {via ilovebacon.com}

Damien: The Omen IV? Nope, it’s just the new “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” trailer. Glad to see they’re getting darker.

Joe Strummer Lives: In case you didn’t know, “The Future is Unwritten” is now out on DVD. It rules, as did Joe.

Sadly, This is Not a Joke: To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them.

Lastly: Here’s that “Tango and Cash” remake starring Janeane Garofalo you were asking for:

Sigur Ros: Now with 100% More Nudity! Don’t worry parents, it’s the artsy/tribal kind of pubic- and nipple-baring nudity. Check out the new video: Gobbledigook and feel the love.

McCain Doesn’t Seem That Bad… Um, hold on a sec… Yes, yes he is that bad.

May I Have 630 Calories with my 120-Calorie Coffee Please? When you’re ordering your Dunkin’ Donuts coffee tomorrow morning you might want to skip your usual Sausage Egg Cheese Croissant. Check out the Consumerist’s Ultimate Fast Food Nutrition Guide: 2008 for more frightening news about your favorite fast food staples and fight back against that evil, taunting lump of fat that lives above your belt.

Moment of Silence: It’s very hard to believe Phil Hartman was killed 10 years ago today. Before he was a brilliant comedian, he was a graphic artist. That’s makes him even cooler in my book. Phil ruled and so did Lionel Hutz:

“Well he’s had it in for me ever since I kinda ran over his dog… Well, replace the word “kinda” with the word “repeatedly,” and the word “dog” with “son.”"

Funny Pixels: The Worst Celebrity Renders of All Time {via Geekadelphia}

“Wacky Packs” Anniversary Book: Up until a few years ago, the old brown fridge at my parents’ home had remnants of weathered “Wacky Packs” stickers stuck on its side. I spent lots of coin on these little fellas back in the 70s. There is handsome new book out celebrating the 35th Anniversary this adhesive-based humor.

My parents are gone and the fridge is gone, but seeing these silly things again brings back some good, wacky memories.

Attention all Skinjobs, Toasters and Humans: Geekadelphia is hosting a Battlestar Galactica Party on May 10th (in conjunction with the fine folks at the Hacktory and Indy Hall) at Independents Hall in Old City, Philadelphia.

I will be there dressed as Klingon with a lightsaber (peace-bonded, of course) just to disrupt the party’s space-time continuum. Hope to see you there!

“The party will kick off at 5PM. We’ll be playing the official Battlestar Galactica game, as well as the fan-made Beyond The Red Line, on some LAN networks. If you want in, please bring your own laptop or PC. While we’ll probably have an extra machine or two on hand, you’re better off bringing your own comp.

Between rounds of the game, there will be episodes screening, and at 7:30, we’ll watch some Best of BSG, three of the best episodes. If you’ve never seen the show, which is ending this season sadly, you’ll finally get to see what all the hype is about.”

More Details: www.geekadelphia.com

Who Are All These Tools? And Why is My Favorite Bar So Crowded Now? “From upscale to down home, we really know where to knock ’em back,” so says Philly Weekly as they give you:

Philly’s Top 50 Bars!

I heard numero uno, Grace Tavern, is quite awesome (watch the video) and I agree with numbers: 2, 14, 20, 32, 35, 39… but I haven’t been out and about drinking like a Mick (not a slur, just a guy I know) on payday in over 3 years, so what do I know. I boy can dream though, can’t he?

I Agree Wholeheartedly: 8 Upcoming Movie Adaptations That Must Be Stopped

It’s Like MTV, Only with Videos:! Love them or hate them, Pitchfork will be launching a new Online Music TV Channel on April 7th. Pitchfork.tv is described as “The first-ever music video channel dedicated to documenting independent music as it happens.” Sure, some of the writers at the Fork are a bunch of pretentious, frustrated musician wannabes with a free reign to destroy a band, but this endevour sounds pretty cool.

Speaking of Music Nerds: Next week you will notice a dearth of skinny, bearded indie-rock guys pedalling around your city streets because they will all be in Austin; filling the bars, standing still and looking not impressed as the next big things take the stage. SXSW “showcases hundreds of musical acts from around the globe on over fifty stages in downtown Austin.”

It’s basically a mix of bands (some indie, many already signed to labels), film makers, alternative comics, new media types and of course bloggers—lots of them, twittering like fools—all looking to promote their various wares and websites. Yes, it’s gotten pretty corporate and more than a tad annoying, but you can still see some good shows and enjoy a nice city.

Geekadelphia Finds Some Fun: Fresh Spam: Junk Mail Inspired Art

Attention Anal-retentive Techies: This may help your crazy cable problem: Top 10 Ways to Get Cables Under Control, it helped me.

Get Your Swerve On! Swervedriver is getting back together. That is very good news for people who love good music. These lads were so ahead of their time. Enjoy a vid:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNRRnew2jcA [/youtube]