The Ecstatic Truth

Hello, y'all.

Da7e here.

I spent last night with Muse and Amanda at a Meetup.com event here in New York. The three of us went out to Daredevil's stomping grounds in Hell's Kitchen, hoofed it up several flights of stairs to a rooftop and watched two 80s horror/sci-fi movies with a crowd of 15 or so like minded geeks.

It was quite the experience. I'd been to a rooftop showing once before (Team America on a Brooklyn rooftop for September 11th, 2008), so I knew that it felt sort of like a big living room. Lots of popcorn, lots of booze and you need to go to the edge of the roof to smoke your cigarettes so you don't blow smoke in the face of the other movie-goers.

The best part about this kind of event is that you're allowed, possibly encouraged, to talk, yell, scream and "w00t!" at the screen. Bonus points if you come up with a drinking game.

Check out our short video pod below, where Amanda and I discuss what we just saw and I share a production story about an EXPLOSION on the set of John Carpenter's The Thing.

The Ecstatic Truth: Horror Double Feature from Dave Gonzales on Vimeo.

What up, mystery audience?

Da7e here.

Last night Tims and I got to attend a screening of Thirst by Chan-wook Park, the director behind Oldboy. We were discussing things geek and The Ecstatic Truth. We were especially discussing Comic Con video coverage, as occasionally Tims needs to help Muse manage the tech side of things. I was feeling confident because the night before I had recorded the Comic Con Quick Hit from inside the confines of Dallas BBQ near the 10th Annual Latino Film Festival on 8th and 23rd here on Manhattan (that's just "New York City," don't worry about it).

The idea of The Ecstatic Truth has always been a more conventional podcast, but because we're all busy geeks with jobs and only so much time to do left-over geekery, you might notice that most of our posts take the form of us all hanging out at press events or just having geek-versations. We're working towards something with more of a format, but that's always getting stalled and the things we plan to talk about fade into irrelevancy. 

Tims had the idea that we could get videos from you, fellow geeks of America, because we know that there is cool stuff happening outside our NYC base. Surely there must be other geeks with flip cams and video means that are out there living an active geek lifestyle?

Lucky for Tims, I have geek friends with the time, talent and geek-friendly jobs.

Meet Dano. Dano works at a radio station and sent me this video he made as an excuse to take time off work to go to Comic Con.

He is fellow geek, and I submit his video as a shining example of why fellow video-casting geeks are welcome here at The Ecstatic Truth. 

It's true that neither Da7e nor I attended San Diego Comic Con this year but why should that prevent us from posting a quick podcast on the subject?

You can hear out what Da7e had to say, along with some off-camera and editing commentary from yours truly, in the video below. But if you're itching for some real Comic Con footage -- as in, footage from the convention and featuring people who actually went there -- you'll have to check back in a few days. That's about how long it should take for LoquaciousMuse to upload all her footage and stop cursing at her computer.

Oh right! The video. Get to clicking folks.

-- Genevieve

Da7e here, bringing you low-brow discussion once again.

With the Half-Blood Prince opening today, the world is about to be exposed to a Harry Potter film that splits action/adventure with a romance plot that has slowly been building for the past two films. Romance is in the air at Hogwarts in the sixth installment, and the stars are of age.

I was listening to the Reject Radio podcast this week with Cole Aibus of FilmSchoolRejects.com and Quint from AintItCoolNews.com. They were discussing the Harry Potter press conference having an uncomfortable mix of film journalists asking questions about the film and journalists asking perv-y questions to the film's stars.

Harry Potter and the Sexual Innuendos is a common topic at dinner parties and drinking events amongst my geek friends. Here's our justification as to why this is OK: J.K. Rowling outed Dumbledore as gay. In the books, Dumbledore isn't hitting on Harry or making out with Snape, but the author wrote the guy as a homosexual. That acknowledges the existence of sex and sexual orientation in the Potter universe, suggesting a wider world of wizarding weirdness is just below the story of Harry, The Boy Who Lived.

My friend Lauren Savit of New York's The L Magazine is a Harry Potter fan, and she insisted that Ginny and Harry might be fooling around between the lines.

So, in honor of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince lodging the idea of wizarding sex in the collective subconcious, I grabbed some beer and launched into the conversation topics that always interested me: Did Harry and Ginny do it? Is there a birth-control spell? Is a Patronus a symbol for semen?

The Ecstatic Truth - Geek On Geek: Harry Potter and Sex from Dave Gonzales on Vimeo.

Geek on Geek is the product of my on-going attempts to talk to geeks about what they care about. My previous entry profiles a "real-life" Jedi living in New York. I've re-posted the full interview on my blog at ReadItOrDont.com. 

If you are one of those geeks that is misunderstood or a rockstar in your phylum, shoot me an e-mail at dave.m.gonzales@gmail.com to see if you're a Geek on Geek fit!

What happens when three 20-somethings who spent their high school years obsessing over Gundam Wing meet for dinner and realize they have the same passion? One of the geekiest Gundam-Wing-inspired convos to date.

I apologize in advance, folks. And if any of the terms that pop up are unfamiliar, Google is you friend. Or you can do what our friend Loquacious Muse, who filmed this, did, and write it all off as nonsense as you take another drink.

(Make sure your volume's up so you don't miss Muse's whispered comment at 0:50 in.)

Gundam Wing Geeks from ScarletScribe on Vimeo.

-- Genevieve