Towser's Choice

The new and improved Towser's Choice has new sections and will now be a monthly artical appearing on the last day of every month. I have to add that not all of these are new this month I have just been ocupied with them this month.

TV

1. 24
2. House
3. ER

Music

1. Simon & Garfunkle - The Only Living Boy in New York
2. Kaiser Chiefs - Oh My God
3. I Monster - Daydream In Blue

Comics

1. Supergirl no. 5
2. All Star Superman no. 2
   
3. Astonising X-Men no. 13

Films (Have not seen any cinema this month all DVD I'm afraid)

1. Goodfellas
2. X-Men 2
3. Serenity

Video Games

1. Dead or Alive 4
2. GBA Classic NES Series - Ice Climbers
3. Sonic Adventure 2 (Thanks to Sonic Week)

Towser

The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day Seven

I have I believe saved the best till last:

The Big The Cat Special

Well probably the worst character Sonic has to offer. In both character design and game play this big fat cat who fishes and talkes to frogs falls short of the mark.

Why fishing?

Why is he blue?

Whats with the big ears?

Why does he have a frog friend?

Why, just fucking why?

Towser

The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day Six

Ok short post today. Just thought I should point out, have you ever seen these two in the same room?













Thought Not

Towser

The Many Characters of Sonc Week: Day Five

If you have not already guessed I am not entiarly convinced with the character design of the Sonic characters. I don't want to give the wrong impression however, I thourgholy enjoy Sonic games specifically the 2D versions from the megadirve that I played as a kid. I am more of a Nintendo fan than Sega and so I thought I would devote todays post to the repetitve character design of some Nintendo characters although none of them are as bad as the Sonic characters.

Ok first off there is Waluigi, I mean Luigi is just a Mario clone in design terms but just because Wario is popular dosn't mean that this was agood idea.

Right now we have Lanky from Donkey Kong 64 (Great Game), let's just hope he dosn't appear in any other games purely due to his looks.

Nothing wrong with Gruntilda but she is an ugly fucker isnt she.

More Nintendo stuff to come, all good I promise, although I will be taking a video games hiatus for a while.

Towser

The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day Four

The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Special Mention

Name: Ryan the Wanker

Features In: Many Sonic the Hedgehog forums

About: An old aquaintance of mine Ryan was a bit of a wanker, but he is mentioned here because of his obsession with Sonic the Hedgehog. Ryan had a hobby, this hobby involved taking the sprites from old Sonic Megadrive games and altering them in some way and placing them in positions on the screen impossible in the game. Told you he was a wanker. Oh and I think he also made custom sonic characters.

Custom Sonic The Hedgehog Characters. Well I suppose everyone needs a hobby.





I leave you with "Samus Sonic" all I can say is HMMMMM.

Towser

The Many Characters Of Sonic Week: Day Three

Name: Bean the Dynamite

Features In: Sonic The Fighters

About: Such a crappy looking character. Just to set the record straight Bean is infact a Duck, he may not resemble one but he is indeed of that species. Ok now to explain his very bad name, he is called Bean the Dynamite because he throws bombs in the game. "Ahhhh" I hear you say in a very uninterested sort of way. Supposedly he has the ability to "instantly manifest any type of explosive" well that is certainly a good way around the fact that this character has absolutly no connection to bombs than that. Could I suggest we have a Bean the Dynamite come back in a new Sonic game and perhaps his bombs are oh I dont know eggs.

Name: Mighty The Armadillo

Features In: Knuckles Chaotix

About: Once again Sega have out done them selfs this character resembels nothing of an Armadillo. Got to love his name, "well he is strong and he is an Armadillo." thinks the game designer. "My god I've got it" he proclaims "Mighty the Armadillo." Genius. Absolut frigging genius.

Name: Fang the Sniper

Featurs In: Sonic the Comic, Sonic the Fighters.

About: Well sexual preditor springs to mind when looking at Fang. His constant name changing would also imply that he is indeed a pervert on the run. Fang is also known as Jet the Sniper and Nack the Weasel. Although the character design is not to bad (he looks like the animal he is supposed to be, but he is still realy dull) I cannot get over ridgid tail, what on earth caused that freak of nature.

Towser

The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day Two

Day Two: The Many Echidna

Tikal the Echidna

Now the character to the right may seem to be almost identical to the lovable rouge Knuckles but you seeshe is slightly differant. In terms of game play she is exactly the same, I have played as her in Sonic Adventure 2 and she is a clone of Knuckles used solely for the two player mode. Now Tikal might just be a clone of Knuckles in both game play and character design but she is not the worst Echidna.

Julie-Su

Introduced in the Archie comic books Julie-Su would appear to be another way for the writers to get some mileage out of Knuckles. Yes thats right people she is Knuckles' girl friend. They have very sencably changed her from there usual 'colour Knuckle in a diferent colour and put some clothes on them' approach she is now slightly thiner and has a tuft of hair at the front of her head. Just as well I suppose we wouldn't want Knuckles dating him self now would we.

Lien-Da

This could get very tedious the amount of bloody echidna that seem to populate the Sonic universe. Well Lien-Da would appear to be yet another Knuckles with differant hair and clothes. This time the character is an enemy of Knuckles though so she is very inventive indeed. I am not sure if the picture of her is official or not it could be some sort of fan art.

The Brotherhood of Guardians

I leave you with a very funny picture indeed just to show the copy-paste technique that they use when designing Echidna. Enjoy:


A Very Echidna'ed Out Towser

The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day One

Name: Blaze the Cat

Features in: Sonic Rush (DS)

About: It seemed fitting to start with this abomination of a character. It would appear that the game designers at this point have completely lost any form of creativity and simply followed the following line of thought: animal = cat, colour = purple, gender = female, game make. Having not played the game I can only guess that this cat plays exactly like Sonic, Knuckles or Tails most likely Sonic by the look of her.

Name: Bark the Polar Bear.

Features in: Sonic Championship and Fighters Megamix

About: Where the hell do I start, this character was probably thought up while the game designer was drunk at some bar. Well if this is the case Bark isn't worth the handkerchief that he was created on. "Oh crap" the game designer thinks "I've got to think up a Sonic Character that can appear in a fighting game. Right he is going to be a polar bear who wares a hat and is very strong. Done." Well I have done plenty of stupid things when drunk but nothing this spectacular.

Name: Sonia the Hedgehog

Features In: Sonic Underground (TV)

About: Never mind Amy Rose Sonia truly is a pink version of Sonic. She along with her brothers Sonic and Manic try so desperately hard to cash in on the popularity of the Sonic franchise. Unfortunately for them their audience was not brain dead and so the show only lasted one season.

Towser

The Many Characters of Sonic Week

The Many Characters of Sonic Week was an idea spawned from the blog of a friend of mine Hippopotaman (Hippopotaman's Hippopotablog can be found here), recently Hippopotaman ran a section entitled Androgynous Female Video Games Characters Week which was very funny. During this week Amy Rose from the Sonic the Hedgehog series featured on day 4, which got me thinking, how many ridiculously lazy Sonic characters are there well it would appear one hell of a lot. So for the next seven days I shall be running The Many Characters of Sonic Week. Considering this blog is supposed to be about all aspects of my nerdom this should be quite a good way of introducing video games in to the mix but please you must visit the Hippopotablog for this to be a tribute rather than plagiarism.

Towser

The Many Characters of Sonic Week Navigation

The Many Characters of Sonic Week Navigator

1. The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Introduction
2. The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day 1
3. The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day 2
4. The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day 3
5. The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day 4
6. The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day 5
7. The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day 6
8. The Many Characters of Sonic Week: Day 7

Towser

Everyone is a Critic

I attend a private school and so I am subjected to such a thing as the house competition, a competition between groups of people who, on mass, share nothing but a little coloured badge in common sort of like Harry Potter except boring. Today was the yearly house choir competition and although completly pointless was rather entertaining and also took up some class time. Once this event is over and the winner has been named the school usually gets back to normal. Today however every one seemed to have an opinion on the quality of the performances and whether or not the winners and loosers were awarded the correct place. God, who gives a crap I know I don't and any way there were all as bad/good as each other so it doesn't realy matter who won.

Now although nobody other than my self and maby a few others read this I thought I would once again give a little hint as to one of the characters in the upcoming Characters Of Towser's Past: Five Day Spectacular 2. Can you guess who this is:

Well I bet your juices are really flowing now.

Towser

The Scooby Gang Volume One

I first intended The Scooby Gang to be this weeks 'The Characters of Towser's Past' it being only two weeks in and I had already broken the guidelines I set - looking at a single character I loved, I decided to instead create a new section entitled The Scooby Gang. Each week, or when ever I can be bothered I shall write about a character or some aspect of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel for my own enjoyment.

Willow - Sex and Drugs and Magic

[Spoiler Warning - Those who have not seen the entirety of Buffy and wish too should not read on.]

The Chosen One

Either Willow or Xander gaining some form of power was I feel an inevitability on the show because it helps to emphasize Wheedon's idea; a show about social rejects being superpowerful. Xander and Willow being just the friends of someone with power is not exactly the same. So when Willow became a witch it was no real surprise. We are now left with only one character with some normality about him Xander. Although, as we will see, just because Xander is ordinary it does not mean he cannot save the day (I will return to this point at a later date).

The Not so Hidden Meaning

Magic would appear to have some form of deeper meaning when being used by the lovable nerd Willow. As we all know Willow realizes that she is in fact a lesbian in the fourth season. Willow and her new partner Tara start to take Willows dabbling with magic a step further. During this season and season five magic symbolically takes the form of lesbian sex as Willow and Tara's relationship moves forward so does Willow's use and control of magic.

The more apparent symbol is that of drug use. In the sixth season after Willow's magical powers reach a breakthrough point; she raises Buffy from the dead. This appears to be a step to far for Willow after this point magic starts to have a negative affect on her. Tara threatens to leave Willow, if she does not give up the use of magic. Willow continues to use magic and eventually Tara leaves her. At this point Willow tries to give it up but is addicted she starts to have withdrawal symptoms and through pear pressure from Amy she starts to use it again. When Tara is killed it pushes Willow over the edge and she turns evil. At the start of season seven Willow even goes into some form of re-hab.

The sexyest Nerd In the World

Willow is one of my all time favorite Buffyverse characters, she was cool when she was a nerd and even cooler as an evil witch and god damn is she hot.

Towser

The Scooby Gang Navigation

The Scooby Gang Navigator

1. The Scooby Gang Volume One
2. The Scooby Gang Volume Two

Towser

A Fair Of The Toy Variety

Some Pics of the 2006 International Toy Fair in New York:

I love the above animated-style maquettes from Gental Giant.

The above Mickey is a 1:1 scale mixed-media statue from Master Replicas pretty damn cool.

Towser

The Characters of Towser's Past

Today marks the end of my Characters of Towser's Past: Five Day Spectacular (Not named as such untill now), I will soon return to this but I now feel like a little break. Unfortunatly for the sake of keeping my blog tidy I have not wanted to post anything else while I was churning out Characters of Towser's Past editions. I have five more great characters planned and they will be apearing in the near future in another Characters of Towser's Past: Five Day Spectacular.

Hold in there loyal readers, here is a little teaser to get you excited for the next COTP:FDS.

Towser

The Characters of Towser's Past: Green Ranger

Name: Green Ranger (Tommy)

Features In: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

About: The Green Ranger was originally introduced as a villain who was under the spell of Rita. This spell was soon broken and Tommy joined the ranks of the Power Rangers. The Green Ranger used the Dragonzord when fighting big bad guys. Tommy unfortunately used the worst way of calling his Zord the Dragon dagger which doubled as a flute of some description.

Why He Appeals To Me: The Green Ranger was by far the coolest of the Power Rangers. Tommy had that slightly rebellious side to him which made him much cooler. Also having a character who used to be a bad guy doing good always appealed to me (perhaps that is why I like Buffy so much, oh and by the way look out for the Scooby Gang Vol One coming soon.).

Towser

The Characters of Towser's Past: R2-D2

Name: R2-D2

Features In: Star Wars Trilogy

About: R2 comes into the hands of Luke Skywalker along with C3P0 in Star Wars Episode 4. R2-D2 and C3P0 are used as the comic relief of the original trilogy and together get up to all sorts of trouble. R2 flies with Luke in his X-Wing to help navagate and act as the on board computer.

Why He Appeals To Me: I like the mannerisms of R2-D2 he can be both stroppy and happy by using differant beeping noises which is pretty damn hard. Also R2-D2 just looks damn cool the chunky design works so well and contrasts with C3P0's humanoid design. R2-D2 is half of the best fictional gay couple in the world, he and C3P0 are the campest and coolest robots out there.

The Characters of Towser's Past: Poison Ivy

Name: Poison Ivy

Features In: Batman TAS, Batman and Robin

About: Poison Ivy is one of few female villains in Batman's rouge gallery but she can certainly hold her own in a fight with the capped crusader. Poison Ivy is more than just a petty criminal, although she does steal things to fund her more important crimes, she is a green protester with a vicious edge. Ivy can manipulate plant life and uses natural chemicals to aid her criminal life style.

Why She Appeals To Me: There was always something cool about Poison Ivy; I have always thought her ability to manipulate plants would be a rather useful one. There was something about the cartoon Ivy that stood out from the other animated villains. The real reason that she stood out for me was her appearance in the film 'Batman and Robin' Ivy was my first crush as a kid. Portrayed by the lovely Uma Thurman I thought Ivy was sexy as hell.

The Characters of Towser's Past: Timon and Pumba

I must first apologies for I originally said COTP was going to be a weekly item but I want to get it out of the way so this will be daily for the next undisclosed amount of time. Also today's COTP was to be on The Scooby Gang but I decided to do something more interesting with my Buffy fandom look out for The Scooby Gang - Volume One coming soon.

Name: Timon and Pumba

Features In: The Lion King

About: Timon, a meerkat, lives with Pumba, a warthog, and together they make the best comedy double act after Laurel and Hardy. Timon and Pumba are both relaxed and love life and they live by the motto: Hakuna Matata.

Why He Appeals To Me: When I was a kid I went to see the Lion King at the cinema as many times as my mother would let me and then when the video came out I watched it so many times it actually broke and Timon and Pumba were the reason I loved it so much. My favorite Timon moment; when Timon dress' in drag and does the hoola. My favorite Pumba moment; "They call me Mr Pig!!". I still love the Lion King to this day because of these two.

Towser

The Characters of Towser's Past: Donatello

Name: Donatello

Features In: Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (1987)

About: Donatello is one of four Ninja Turtles - pet turtles that have been living in the sewers with a rat that one day mutate in to human like turtles. Don when fighting uses a bo staff, although Don is infact less inclined to fight than his other brothers he can certainly kick butt when he needs to. Don is the brainy turtle who likes to invent and build gadgets to help the turtles on there missions.

Why He Appeals To Me: Well I am not to sure why he appealed to me so much but he was definatly my favorite turtle. Perhaps it was his attitude to fighting and his ability to build cool gadgets.

Towser (Next Week: The Scooby Gang)

The Characters Of Towser's Past Navigation

The Characters Of Towser's Past Navigator

1. The Characters Of Towser's Past: Donatello
2. The Characters Of Towser's Past: Timon and Pumba
   
3. The Characters Of Towser's Past: Poison Ivy
   
4. The Characters Of Towser's Past: R2 D2
5. The Characters Of Towser's Past: Green Ranger

Towser

You've Got To Love The Japanese

Just a quick post to share the wonder that is Takara Toys. Go to this link to see the greatest Thunderbird 2 model ever created. I love the look of this toy and want one so badly.

Takara Toys

Towser

An Ode To Grant Morrison

Today I bought my first ever Superman title I have never realy liked Superman (from the TV shows he featurs in) and so have this far decided against buying Superman comic books but today I bought All Star Superman no. 1 + 2.

'Why did I buy it' I hear you scream. Well the answer is as followed everything I hear about this book is good and also I love Grant Morrison.

The book blew me away it was much better than i had expected. The story was not continuity driven, the characters were acting like they should; it was good old comic book fun and because it wasnt trying to be a super realistic gritty title you can forgive and even find endearing lines like "You're now pushing against the equivalent of 200 quintillion tons, Superman."

The art in this book brings that feeling of nice comic book fun that it needs. I love how Frank Quitely has captured the feel of this book.

Towser

The Comic Geek Inside Of Me

My eyes have been opened (slightly more) to the world of comic book collecting. I have always enjoyed comics the odd purchase here and there and for a brief period of time I held a subscription with Forbidden Planet but I have never truly got into the role of comic book collector.

This I have decided will all be changing now with the coming of "One Year Later" after the cross-over event Infinite Crisis. This gives me the chance to jump on to a few monthly DC titles:

All Star Superman
Batman
The Flash
Hawkman
JSA
Nightwing
Supergirl
Wonder Woman

I would like to thank the Comic Geek Speak podcast for awakening the comic geek inside of me

Towser

The Characters of Towser's Past: Introduction

After writing about Scrooge McDuck this week it got me thinking about all of my other favorite characters. Each week I will post a character description and some of the aspects of them that make them appealing to me. They should be slightly more in depth than my Scrooge McDuck. I will return to him at some point though.

Next Week - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Donatello

Towser

It's All Over

Well thank god for that, today marks the end of prelims for me. Today's exam was AH Economics it went better than expected not sure what mark to expect but I am fairly confident about it. Prelims this year have been an interesting experience; I have found each of the exams excruciating to sit through they have each been very hard and there is this little man sitting in my head saying "You don't need to be here" also those seats that we have to sit on for three hours just did my back in with pain.

After my exam I was in a rather good mood so I decided to go in to town. I went in to HMV because I had vouchers to spend from Christmas, bought two things - Firefly on DVD and I pre-ordered Serenity on DVD. I saw Serenity last year and I absolutly loved it, I am a big fan of Buffy and Angel and it would seem Joss Whedon can do no wrong. I am realy looking forward to watching Firefly.

Towser

Eye Candy

Just a few Comic Book Images I am rather fond of, all by Michael Turner:










Towser

Has TV Lost The Plot?

Lets face it most TV is shit. A schedule over populated by reality TV, repeats and self help shows makes for a unhappy Towser. In fact it has now got so bad that I no longer just sit and shove on the TV I only watch specific shows and so my viewing week looks something like this:

Monday - Smallville --> Cant get enough of this; The OC with super powers. The only decently written Superman stories around bar All Star Superman (I love Grant Morrison).

Tuesday -The OC --> Now in its third season not as great as the first two but still ok.

Wednesday - Desperate Housewives --> Relationships, Sex and Murder, Oh My.

Thursday - ER --> Love it been watching it for years and I will be as long as it is made, House --> Great if it weren't for Hugh Lawrie's American accent (tour British damn it)

Friday - The only night I do a bit of channel hopping.

Saturday - Go out

Sunday - Soon to be 24 --> Just finished watching series 4 looking forward to series 5.

Only watching an hour of TV a night leaves a lot of room for every thing else - reading books, magazines or comics, listening to music, the radio or podcasts and of course my favorite doing homework.

All I can say is thank you schedulers you have put me off TV so much that I have actually started to enjoy other aspects of life.

Towser

Scrooge McDuck

Ever since I was a kid watching Ducktails on a Saturday morning there has been one character that stood out one character who interested me the most, Scrooge McDuck. There was something about him that I just loved; perhaps it was his love for money, the fact that he is Scottish or maybe just because he could swim in money. What ever the reason he remains one of my favorite characters from my childhood and certainly my favorite Disney character.

Created by Carl Barks. For use in his superb Disney comic books, in 1947. Scrooge has since become a classic Disney character. IGN's fantastic section for the nerdy like me, Comics in Context written by Peter Sanderson has a great article about Carl Barks comics in Comics in Context #114: Christmas with Carl Barks found here also go to this page for another Comics in Context in which Scrooge features

Scrooge's Wiki entry can be found here.

Towser