Todd Terwilliger » manhattan

Walkabout

Todd — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:11:56 +0000

For the past few weeks, I’ve exchanged my morning subway ride to work with a walking commute. Even though the time spent in transit has not changed overmuch (on average walking takes me ten to twenty minutes longer), the experience is a completely different animal. Without having to worry about practical matters such as jockeying for subway car position or perfecting proper platform placement for an incoming train, my mind can wander to more esoteric planes, asking questions like, for example, why is that woman screaming in the middle of the street?

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Post tags: brooklyn bridge, city hall, manhattan bridge, subway, tribeca

The Immigrant Movie

Todd — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:23:47 +0000

If a Viking takes a dump in the woods, does he make sound? Yes, yes he does. How do I know this? Because I made the mistake of seeing Severed Ways at the Angelika Film Center on Saturday.

The premise of the film reads like a teenage boy’s wet dream:

Abandoned by a Western exploration party and stranded in the New World, two lone Vikings wade through a grand primeval landscape, struggling for survival while still in the grip of their Norse ways. An impressive DIY epic, SEVERED WAYS features a frosty black metal soundtrack, including Burzum, Morbid Angel, Judas Priest and Dimmu Borgir.

How could something that sounds so good turn out so horribly, awfully wrong? Where should I begin?

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Post tags: angelika, beowulf, brokeback mountain, john cleese, mary magdalene, monty python & the holy grail, severed ways, sir lancelot, society for creative anachronism, thirteenth warrior

Enter Ye Through the Black Gates

Todd — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:20:08 +0000

I don’t talk much about where I spend my days beyond that I am somewhere doing something. It will, for the moment at least, remain nameless. I will say however that it has gained a reputation over the past few months on par with the Death Star, minus the planet-busting capabilities but with the same budgetary concerns. I say all of this to prepare you for what I could not have been prepared to see this morning.

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Post tags: bothan spies, death star, ginsu knife, mouth of sauron, one ring, orc, robert deniro, ronin

No Snow Day for the Weary

Todd — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:51:40 +0000

I woke up this morning during a pause in this morning’s snow flurries. Personally, I think it was more than a flurry. More than a flurry but just short of a blizzard. Does the National Weather Service classify snow storms like hurricanes? Could I dub this March Flurry Winston, possibly upgrading to Blizzard Regina as it hurtles down the coast? Category 2! Category 2! Somebody call the borough president, it’s a category 2! Damn it, where’s the army? Where’s Jack Bauer? No matter. It was here and I had to deal with it. By deal I mean take a few pictures as I slog through it on my way to work.

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Post tags: commute, jack bauer, photos, snow

Comic Contemplations, Part 3

Todd — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:40:16 +0000

In which our hero’s voyage comes to an end, but not before he meets men of legend, accumulates some much deserved booty, and escapes with a share of swag.

Sunday. The last day, the final hurrah, the end. I set the alarm early. We had stayed up too late last night watching The Wire. You simply cannot watch just one episode of The Wire. It gets on top of you too fast. Before you know it, the clock has jumped ahead six hours and you’re laying akimbo on your couch half-naked with a belt tied around your arm, held tight by one end, the end which is clamped between your gritty teeth. You’re looking down at a throbbing vein in your arm and you don’t know why.

Somehow Uncle Bob and I, we were able to rouse ourselves. We had plans today, ideas, and ideas for plans. They all required a quick start to the morning. We moved sluggishly but with determination and an odd efficiency. No moves were wasted. No time for lazy brunching, we threw back a couple of bagels before plunging into the subway.

We made it to the Javitz Center early. Enough time to wander past the accordionist playing the Legend of Zelda theme outside the building. Enough time to descend into the bowels of the place, the subterranean space below the con floor where the panels were held. We were looking for the panel on diversity in comics. To find it, we had to wend our way past every other panel room. It could not have been put any further away from public access than it was. It was the polar outpost of the con.

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Post tags: chuck d, comics, creepy, dmc, eerie, hip-hop, legend of zelda, new york comic con, rap, the wire, uncle bob

Comic Contemplations, Part 2.5

Todd — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:12:51 +0000

In which our hero expounds on the nature of his fandom and shares some random observations.

I realized that yesterday, I went into very little specifics about what I saw at the con. This is not due to some blindness or memory lapse on my part but rather the nature of my particular interest. For me, the con was less a fact-finding mission to glean secrets profound about anything than it was all about the journey, the experience mentally, physically, and metaphysically, in the con itself.

I’m a comic fan but I’m not, at this time, a comic fanboy. I haven’t had a pull at a comic shop since Junior High and while I never completely lost interest in the medium, while I’ve read isolated books here and there, enjoyed adapted films and games, I haven’t actively followed the tangled knot of comic history in an age.

Given my ignorance of the scene, I did not seek out much in the way of forbidden lore. Even if, in my wanderings, such lore was thrust into my face, I wouldn’t have recognized it. For such arcane comic knowledge, I was a very poor vessel.

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Post tags: andre the giant, comics, dc online, ghostbusters, hawx, honky tonk man, hulk hogan, legends of wrestlemania, mad world, new york comic con, tom clancy, world of warcraft

Comic Contemplations, Part 2

Todd — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:50:29 +0000

When last we left our hero, he had returned, if not triumphantly than at least mostly unscathed, back to Brooklyn. Fortified by dinner at neighborhood watering hole, Maggie Brown, he and Uncle Bob retired for the night.

Morning. It sloshed over us sluggishly. We trifled with it, talking about Nazis while waiting for my sister to arrive from Pennsylvania, playing a few rounds of Everyday Shooter, eating at Maggie Brown again before noon rose it’s head, demanded our attention, and stared us down into the subway warrens.

The con on Saturday was almost exactly like the con on Friday except more so, much much much more so.

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Post tags: alice in wonderland, comics, everyday shooter, frank beddor, looking glass wars, maggie brown, nazis, new york comic con, torchwood

Comic Contemplations, Part 1

Todd — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:46:44 +0000

It was inevitable that, having compiled a list of events at comic con that I most wanted to attend, I would actually participate in almost none of them. Inevitable, perhaps, but not tragic. The convention grounds were so carpeted with pageantry, pomp, and circumstance, the air so thick with geek pheromones, that the panels and screenings, not undesirable by any means, were out of sight and thus out of mind.

Uncle Bob, having swooped down from upstate while I was at work, was already firmly entrenched at the con when I met him at the Marvel citadel Friday afternoon. At this stage, a raw initiate, it took all my weight to keep from capsizing in the sea of geekery. The sight of slight teens in gravity-defying wigs sauntering down an aisle with giant blades strapped to their backs has broken greater men than me. I had to steel myself. I had to maintain. Fear is the mind-killer.

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Post tags: antman, blue demon, comics, cosplay, javits center, kevin grevioux, luchador, new york comic con, uncle bob, yellowjacket

Comic Conundrum

Todd — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:22:19 +0000

Now that I have overcome my fear of the forthcoming comic convention, I must tackle a slightly less-vital but crucially important task: selecting the events to attend.

Leafing through the long list of panels, exhibitions, and other elements of convention panoply, it is clear that tough, merciless decisions will have to be made. There’s no room for fat or gristle here. I need to cut down to the meat, the rare bloody organs- no offal, only the best cuts for this strange trip.

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Post tags: dave gibbons, fringe, mcg, new york comic con, penny arcade, robot chicken, star trek, terminator, the watchmen, torchwood, venture bros, yatterman

Comic Con Carne

Todd — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:42:14 +0000

I’m going to the New York Comic Con this weekend. That much has been confirmed. The weekend pass has been bought and paid for, sent and received. Out-of-town guests are already gathering like a murder of crows to descend into the city. It is too late for escape. Events are in motion. The momentum of the thing is unstoppable.

If there are some slight misgivings gnawing at my gut, a bit of bile-tasting queezy unease, it might be that feeling of entrapment mixed with my general reticence to attend fandom events of any kind, let alone this kind. I’ve never gone to a con before.

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Post tags: frodo, gandalf, hansel and gretel, new york comic con, one ring