This was a last-minute thing that evolved from an editor-writer hangout into something more. Fun and beers were had by most.

TR contributors Peter Paras, Natalie Nichols and Melissa Molina.

Peter and Natalie with actor/producer Edwin A. Santos.

Editor and wifeslashboss

Deadline.com reporter Ross Lincoln and the TR crew.

Ross' "sacred heart of Mario" tattoo.

Melissa with regular commenter "Regular_Stormy."

I'll try to have another one of these around E3. It was great to interact with everyone in meatspace.

We have three winners, who'll get a Villain X shirt of their chosen design/style/size.

The assignment was to describe the most villainous act your mother ever punished you for...or never found out about. Some people tried WAAAAY too hard to make themselves sound psychotic, but that's okay...I went through that phase too.

I might also add that if you're going to make a Michael Bay/Transformers joke in a contest entry, you really have to try hard, as we've exhausted most of the good ones already.

The best provoked genuine responses in me and Julia, either laughter or horror, or both. But first, the honorable mentions.

chadwicktron brought up some religious nuttery I would never have even though of:

It's not my mom but my aunt whom I lived under. I was playing my soundtrack to "Flash Gordon" (vinyl, of course) and my aunt told me not to play the satanic music in her house. To quote; " They're singing "Flash Gordon, savior of the universe"... but we both know there is only one savior!"

And now we know Canadian.Scott is a CRIMINAL!

This is the story of how I almost got away with the perfect crime. When I was a younger Canadian Scott, my friends and I decided that because the pool I was working at as a lifeguard was going to be shut down that we should go and break into it and steal the pool rules sign. We were all excited and in the haste to perform our act of thievery, my friend side swiped my car, scrapping the paint and damaging my driver side mirror. What was I going to do? I wasn't going to bring the insurance company in to screw up me and my friend's rate. So I did what I figured was the best. Lie and tell them that I was eating in a restaurant and some random person hit me. Even when I told my mom the story I made it dramatic and also explained how upset I was thinking she would think I was irresponsible, making sure to act visually upset. It was the perfect crime and no one was any wiser.

Flash forward to the day of my wedding. In order to get the couple to kiss, we had key words at the table and if you could tell us how they work into my wife and I then we would kiss (beats the glass clinking). One of the clues was Blue Steel (which for the record is our baseball team). But my friend who hit me that day, decided to state that Blue Steel was the colour of the paint of his truck that smashed into me when we were goofing around that fateful summer eve. I looked out from my head table to my mom who sat with her mouth wide open unable to comprehend the information. As a way to show revenge, my mother used her time during her speech to express the disappointment in me for insurance fraud and how I was so easily able to "turn on the water works" and lie to her.

And every so often, she brings up the story to keep reminding me of the ultimate lie and crime I almost got away with. God help my daughter if she ever asks grandma for an embarrassing story about dad.

DrAbraxas specified his mother's biggest crime instead.

the most villainous thing my mother ever did was give birth to me :D

FakeAssName submitted multiple crimes, but the ruination of a convention was the standout.

Breaking the elevators at the Hilton Hotel in Denver, when we would stay there on the seasonal Hockey trip, by forcing the doors open hallways between floors .... that was mostly my older brother, but after he and his friends in his division showed me how; I went and showed it to my team.

at the same time I'm sure I played a part in Gen-Con moving out of Denver because they used to hold it in the same Hilton, at the same time, and I would crash it every year; the organizers couldn't really keep me (and the other hockey players I would get to crash it with me) out because there was too much traffic too keep us from getting in, and then they really couldn't figure out how to kick us out because were really were just dumb kids that honestly didn't understand why we were supposed to pay to get in.

damn it, I guess it wasn't Gen-Con 'cause their website says that they were never in Denver, I was thinking that if not Gen-Con then maybe it was Dragon-Con but that seems like a no-go either.

damnit, what was the name of that Con?!?! I honestly looked forward to it more than playing hockey .... would have been something like 90-93 range and was held at the Hilton in Denver (I think it was the one of Quebec street).

Timely-Tardis-Lego weaves a devious web.

Ok, I don't really remember the past, but, when I was little, I was playing with a ball of yarn. Now, at first, you'd think that's harmless. Well Not so much. You see, I was in my aunt's room. She had a few chairs and an ironing table in the room that day.

I looped a piece of yarn to something, then made what was basically a giant spiderweb that took up the entire floor. When I was done, I was called to eat and forgot. I turned off the light. 15 minutes later, I hear my aunt fell and guess who they were shouting for. Can't really remember what happened after that though.

With rpmarsh, I just liked the phrase, "trying to convert the pastors kids to Zeus."

The neighbors were a strict religious family and their two children were a little younger than me. When they saw me playing they came over and we played until they brought up god. So I brought up Zeus and taught them all about the more fun stories of the Greek Pantheon. The next day my mom grounded me for trying to convert the pastors kids to Zeus and they were banned from playing with me.

And finally, 10glfan59 the attempted sister-killer...

Me and my younger sister were playing hide and go seek on a rainy day. It was my turn to count and we were in the back part of the house and my mom was at the other side. As I was counting I heard the dryer door shut. When I went by the dryer I could here my sister giggling. So my younger self thought it would be funny to turn it on with my sister in it. After hearing the dryer turned on my mom come running and seen me holding the door shut and heard my sister yelling. So as punishment for "almost killing my sister" my mom made me donate my NES all my games and good sized portion of my toys to Goodwill

Winners after the jump.

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Of course you do.

This one's for all the viewers who are, like, "I still don't get it. What's this movie about again?"

I wonder what could possibly have provoked its release this week...

We heard about these back around Toy Fair time, but they've been holding back on at least one: the Ice Warrior. It's also the first time I've seen the new Gaiman-version Cyberman figure.

Toys in the UK cost about twice as much as they do over here, so I'm surprised it's taken this long to reduce the scale of the figures and cut costs. Yes, it means collectors may have the annoyance of starting all over again in a new scale - however, these will be more compatible with the old Dapol line, and you can finally have the Doctor take on Darth Vader if you like.

The whole set can be preordered for $69.99, which puts them at more than $10 a figure. That strikes me as a little steep, but then again back in my day flibbidy blibbidy blah.

If I were one of those kids on new Who, I'd ask to go back in time and buy, like, a Kenner Alien figure while it's still on the shelves. And several Eternia playsets. But nooo, going somewhere that endangers your lives is way more sensible. Dumb kids today.

The ex-Python was never a big one for stealing the spotlight, preferring to direct and animate, yet he did have such memorable small roles as Patsy in Monty Python & the Holy Grail.

Now he's announced via Facebook that he has a "small but vital part (or so I'm told)" in the new sci-fi movie from the Wachowskis, in which Mila Kunis plays a janitor who obviously has a much bigger destiny in store because, y'know, she looks like Mila freakin' Kunis.

Gilliam also shared a new image from the film, which apparently had leaked to other sites over the weekend.:

They sure do love them some crazy-haired people in white, those Wachoswkis.

I'm not sure how new this is, but Bing translator now has two different types of Klingon, one of which is the "Kronos" version - so it looks like spelling the homeworld Earther-style is new canon, because grammaticists in Abrams' timeline are like space honey badger. Maybe the PC "local" spelling only comes around after peace is established - but then Praxis already looks half-exploded in the new movie, so who knows?

Anyway, I figured there was no better way to test it out than on some old Trek-themed Fan Fiction Friday. So here you are - it works.

h/t 10glfan59

benchilada

I should create a new category for "Stuff I'm Not Sure About But Then Everybody Sends It In As A Tip." Judging by the sheer volume of submissions on this one, most of you have probably seen it by now. But here goes anyway:

It seems that the city of Norwich in England - previously best known to me as a place that the Man in the Moon wished to find - has both a Sci-Fi Club and a Star Wars Club, and it seems they get along about as well as the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea, to the point of holding different conventions - and arguing about whether one or the other has the right to actually use the word convention.

So when the chairman of the Sci-Fi Club attended the 4th Norwich Sci-Fi and Film Convention (which was being put on by the Star Wars Club; follow me here) allegedly to get some Doctor Who autographs but apparently to secretly film everything, it grew into a nerd fight involving two Doctor Who copslayers and one Judge Dredd.

So who wins in that scenario? We'll never know, because the police broke it up. And that Dredd image above? Just made me smile.

Seriously, though, fellow sci-fi fans: let's not fight. We need to band together against outside forces that utterly despise us.

Like whoever came up with this T-shirt:

It's not quite the Wachowski siblings' signature effect, but a $30 ceiling fan and a GoPro camera got Mark Rober pretty close.

Check out the cracking of an egg, the dropping of a lemon, the sprinkling of Nerds candy and more in a suspended slo-mo similar to a Trinity face-kick.

via Indiewire

If you missed it, my original (minimal spoiler) review gave my take on the matter.

Now that you've seen it, give yours below. Don't hold back, and don't click if you don't wanna know.

DC Comics used to be chock full of experimental "Imaginary Stories" that took place outside of mainstream continuity - not that they were that concerned about things making sense. Imaginary Stories had been kiboshed once DC tightened its hardly-buckled continuity belt in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but that didn't stop its creators from dreaming up scenarios that couldn't fit within the streamlined status quo. The solution was to launch the Elseworlds imprint as a means of telling independent alternate reality tales which either re-imagined established characters in new contexts or showed the effect that changing key events would have on the DC universe.

Published as mini-series, one-shots, and sometimes annuals, they were clearly stamped with the Elseworlds logo so as not to cause confusion with the in-continuity titles. And because they're self-contained, each story told under this branding can have complete arcs and radically alter - or permanently kill - popular characters.The first Elseworlds title is arguably 1989's Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, although it was printed without the distictive logo. It clicked with fans looking for new takes on old favorites and launched numerous stories across DC's Multiverse, but this cottage industry slowly ground to a halt & became moot around the time 2005's Infinite Crisis decided that twenty years of relatively sensible continuity was long enough. Various Elseworlds characters were last seen being forced to battle each other in Countdown: Arena, which missed the point of not mixing the Multiverse.

Now that the imprint is kaput, it's a perfect time to catch up on all of them. But if you're a normal nerd with limited funding and shelf space, which Elseworlds can't your libaray afford to miss out on? The best not only tell engaging standalone yarns, but they also give new insights into their stars. Having gorgeous art doesn't hurt either.

Only works originally published under the Elseworlds banner count here, so please don't complain about the lack of The Dark Knight Returns and "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" in the comments. Although the New 52 hogs all the limelight, elements from Elseworlds appear in Injustice: Gods Among Us (a shoe-in for the "Most Overwrought Video Game Title of the Year" award) and the Infinite Crisis online multiplayer, proving that even altverse IP gets recycled. While modern DC Comics compulsively retcons and reboots itself, let's take a nostalgic look at some outstanding comics that were intentionally out of continuity.

10) Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham

It is known that nerds love Batman and the works of H.P. Lovecraft above all things. Mike Mignola had the brilliant idea to mash them up into the peanut butter and jelly of comics. The result feels surprisingly organic; if any superhero could stand to be more macabre, it'd be Batman, and his gothic reinterpretations of Killer Croc, Green Arrow, Two-Face, and Oracle are particularly inspired. Twenty years after his parents were viciously stabbed to death by a madman, a nightmare-haunted Batman returns to Gotham City to prevent the necromancer Ra's al Ghul from summoning one of the tentacle-tastic Elder Gods. (It's got plenty of nods to Lovecraft stories, although Arkham Asylum is strangely absent.)

The only downside, which is unfortunately common in Elseworlds tales, is that the conclusion is too abrupt. Oddly, DC never reprinted this mini-series in a single collection causing the already pricey issues to skyrocket on the secondary market. Their stubborn refusal to make a surefire profit on a Batman book is a sure sign they've been infected with the madness of the Great Old Ones!

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