Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to a seasonal special of the geeky Bremer show. Joining me today, Mr. Keith Bloomfield.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Mr. Sam David Edwards.
[00:00:07] Speaker C: Hello.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Mr. Matt Lovell. Hello. And Mr. Lee Price.
[00:00:11] Speaker D: Hello.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: How the devil are.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: We?
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Are we feeling Christmassy enough?
[00:00:19] Speaker D: Getting there, Keith?
[00:00:21] Speaker A: Obviously not.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: I'm getting there.
[00:00:27] Speaker D: The green shirt does indicate the Grinch.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: There's red as well.
[00:00:33] Speaker E: It's a festive color choice. You could be on the front cover of a hallmark movie because it's very red and green.
[00:00:43] Speaker D: But which character is he the love.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Interest that stayed at home? Or is he the one returning to the little small town America, set up a chocolate shop or random cafe?
[00:00:54] Speaker B: I'm quite clearly the lumberjack in the village who's waiting for the high flying executive from New York to come in to run the.
And you know, that's what's going to happen.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: What would be the title of the film?
[00:01:15] Speaker B: No, I just can't think of anything that's broadcastable.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Logging off for Christmas. There we go.
[00:01:24] Speaker D: There's the lumjo.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: That'll do. That has the high flying exact.
[00:01:28] Speaker D: Coming home.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Anyway, on today's show we'll be having our regular geeky gift guide, which we do every year to tell you about the best purchases in broom and beyond. We'll be picking our favorite items of the year. And we popped to MCM a couple of weeks ago and we bought gifts back for Keith because Keith couldn't, unfortunately join us due to having a. What was it?
[00:01:48] Speaker B: A bad back? I still have a bad back and I'm really worried now that I'm like, I'm going to be very grinchified by.
[00:01:55] Speaker C: The end of this episode.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: Well, it was a reinvention of our usual tat challenge, so keep looking forward for that one.
[00:02:02] Speaker C: I like what we've done here is Keith's got a bad back, so we've given him a load of extra things to carry on.
[00:02:08] Speaker D: She's got to lug it all on the bus.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Cool. But we all shall be back shortly.
It is time for our regular geeky gift guide. Every year we kind of mine the depths of what you can find in Birmingham and beyond for geeky gifts and we bring you some highlights. Usually we try and stick to around about a ten pound, 100 pound and an unlimited gift, but with the current UK climate, I think we're just picking some favorites for ourselves and a bit more regionally budgetly priced. Matt, do you want to kick us off?
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:03] Speaker E: So my budget friendly gift is one that keeps on giving all year round and it's a membership to independent Birmingham. So independent Birmingham, it's now an app, but it's also a card. It's 199 a month and you get loads of 25% offs at loads of independent bars and restaurants around Birmingham.
But the app also doubles up as hyper local news. So it talks about all the different places in Birmingham to go and places for entertainment, that kind of thing, all which you can get discount on or deals with via the independent bow map. So I would give a subscription. So 199 a month. If my math is right, that's about 25 pound. Am I right or do I look like a dick because I can't count.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Just under 24 pound?
[00:03:53] Speaker E: Just 24 pound. Even cheaper. So for 24 pound, which is essentially a takeaway, you can give someone discounts all year round and a chance to really explore Birmingham.
My middle range is so Tokyo toys on the Birmingham High street, they have the death Note manga box set, so they've got the box set for 90 pound. Or you can get the all in one manga of deaf note, which is all of the volumes in one for 45 pound. And I would get that because my niece particularly is getting into anime and manga and she loves deaf note, but she's never read the manga. So for me that's like a perfect gift. But Tokyo toys as well also just has loads of cool anime and manga related merch as well. So you can get even little things for under ten pound, like keychains, wallets, that kind of thing for people at very little cost.
And for my high end, I've kind of broken the rules a little bit because I'd buy it for my friend who lives in Birmingham, but I'd get it on eBay because it's quite rare. And it's a replica shackrum that is from Xena Warrior Princess because we've recently been rewatching. He lives in my complex and will like once a week, go and watch a couple of episodes of Zena. And every single week he's watching it on eBay, this chakram, because he sold his ages ago when he was tracked for cash and it's now worth about 400 pounds.
So that's my high end item.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Very nice selection, Keith. How about yourself?
[00:05:47] Speaker B: The first two you'd be able to pick up from our local comic store, which is Walter Park, Birmingham, down on small book Queensway. So you can pop in there and pick up your comic related gifts there. But my two picks for the lower end is a series written by Tom King and illustrated by Greg Smallwood. It's ran over the last year, it's now been collected into two volumes. So for the lower figure, you could buy the one volume, but they split it into two, so you could spend a little bit more and get them both. And it's the human target, which is a character called Christopher Chance, who basically assumes the identities of other people to be like a human target. So if they look up for assassination or they're going to be taken out, he can be the character. But whilst on a job protecting Lex Luther, things go sideways and he has to spend twelve days each issue solving his own murder. So it kind of starts off at the end and works its way back as a way of him kind of finding out who it was that's done him the dirty. And it's kind of set outside of main DC continuity, so you haven't got to worry about knowing anything about it. But ice from Fire and Ice and Guy Gardner turn up as well in there, which causes a bit of a ruckus if you know the history between Ice and Guy Gardner and stuff. But it's a brilliant series. Tom King writes a lot of great books. He wrote one of my picks from last year, which was the Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow, which James Gun's going to be using as the template for his supergirl movie that's coming up. But it's an excellent series. Looks beautiful. Got that kind of very fifty s, sixty s, kitsch vibe to it. Excellent story, great art. So go and get that. Get both volumes, obviously, because you only get half the story if you only buy the one. And it comes in a hardback and a paperback edition. So you can kind of pick and choose. My next pick, which is kind of mid level, is one I haven't bought myself, but I want to. And grab them while you can because they do get a little bit rare. And it's the 2000 ad art of Mick McMahon Apex edition, which is a big oversized hardback with the original art as it was drawn. And he did one last year, which was his judge Dredd work. This one is more of his work outside of dread. So it features a lot of slain, some stuff from the last american, which is an epic book that he put out in the kind of late eighty s. And the joy of these books are literally just seeing that original art. And you can see how much work went into this, how the lettering gets done, all the rest of it, and you can just pour over the stories. They're not whole continuous stories. So it's. If he's done the art for a particular issue, it's kind of illustrated in there, so you're not getting the kind of the whole story, but you're getting enough of it to kind of understand it. But it's the appreciation of the art that's gone into it. They've done a few of these already, and I hope 2008 he continued to do them.
But yeah, it's killing my wallet to get these because they're a little bit expensive. So this one's 100 pounds if you buy the regular edition, and it's 160 if you buy the slip case one, which comes with a couple of extras. And he's signed by Mick as well. But it's well worth your money. And my high end choice is something I splurged on a little bit myself as well this year is everybody always thinks that tv is the most important part of their home movie setup, but everybody forgets sound.
And I've had a kind of av system for a while, it's getting on a bit, but the wires are killing me, so there's wires everywhere. And so my high end recommendation is to go with a sonos wireless surround sound system, and it's modular. So you can start off with a low end soundbar like their ray. You could go up to the beam two or the arc, depending on the size of your spaces and what you want, and then you can add a subwoofer and surround sound speakers. And it all works through their app. If you're an iOS person, you can also use their true play system, which kind of sets up the audio so it perfectly matches your room, but you can also use it to stream your music services and all the rest of it. And some of them will go up to doing Dolby Atmos type sound. It's not true Dolby Atmos because they're not actually speakers in the roof, but they use a special bounces off special.
It's a Star Trek techno babble reason that they use. It's got an illustration that looks like straight off Star Trek with bubbles and stuff and the sounds doing all this weird stuff. So it's some kind of like audio spatial anomaly in your front room. But yeah, if you want to kind of upgrade your massive tv system or projector system, add some surround sound, because the mixes on a lot of surround discs or streaming services are great. So if you only watch in your tv, you haven't really heard it properly. So I recommend upgrading your home video system with a nice shiny new wireless surround sound system.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Awesome. Good choices. Thanks Keith. Sam?
[00:10:36] Speaker C: Well, I'll be honest. First of all, I'm struggling to think of much at the moment, but my mid range choice, I think, would be. I mentioned earlier in the year, I've been getting more into sort of Warhammer type stuff recently, and there have been some really beautiful models they've released in the last few months.
There's one in particular which I forget the name of the person, but it's a sort of female general riding on a huge manticore and it's just incredible. The sculpting and the face of the lion head of the Manticore is stunning.
Obviously, the one they've got painted up for their advertising is beautifully painted as well. It's just really lovely feathers in the wings and she's got this cool kind of throne that she sat on to ride it.
So that would be that one lower range I have been looking on. Etsy struggled to find some that are in Birmingham, but I did find particularly lovely kind of. Well, it's a Pokemon book. It's set out as a sort of field guide, but it's also decorated as if it was an illuminated manuscript. So it's got illustrations of the Pokemon in this lovely sort of medieval irish art style and really look like they could have come out of an illuminated manuscript, basically.
So that would be my lower range one and then more expensive one, I'm afraid I've struggled a bit, but if money is no object, I'll have a house, please.
[00:12:47] Speaker E: But where's Birmingham?
[00:12:49] Speaker C: Where in Birmingham?
Dorridge.
Every now and again, if there's no objects, I'll go and write move every now and again, just take all the upper limits off, just to see what's available. And there are some very fancy looking houses around village, which I will never in a million years be able to afford.
But, yes, that would be lovely.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: Awesome. How about your own right for myself. So, for low end, kind of breaching that ten pound limit, but anime Con is coming back to Birmingham for the 15th and 16 June 2024. We went this year. It was really good fun. Lots and lots to do. They've got another event on in London in February, but they're back up our way.
Well, middle of the year, near my birthday, really can go, coincidentally. It's always fun just putting that out there, but, yeah, there's always fun. They just started announcing guests for 2024 and tickets aren't available yet, but I'm assuming they should be available very soon. So I think the first guest they've announced is Alejandro Saab, who's a voice actor and he's known for Dragon Ball. Legends, Pokemon journeys.
So that'll be my low end choice. I think the ticket price is usually around about 15 to 17 pound, 50 for the day, and there's like a vip weekend pass which would be about 40 pounds. My medium price is another membership and it's for another independent in Birmingham, but a very specific independent, which is the Mockingbird cinema.
So they have multiple members limits, so they have a basic membership which is 18 pounds, where you get two free tickets for any screening of your choice, 10% off concessions, ongoing discounted tickets. They have a plus membership which gives you four complimentary tickets for any regular film screening. That's 35 pound, 99 for students, a bargain 15 pounds for two free tickets. But the one I'd probably go for is the bird member gold. For that, you get ten free tickets to any regular film screening of the year, 10% off concessions, ongoing discount tickets, up to roughly around one pound off ticket price compared to nonmembers. And then it's any regular screen up to 999, but that's 80 pound a year. So you're actually saving money if you go to the Mockingbird quite regularly. Really nice little cinema, a really interesting collection of cult and classic films on. They got a really good Christmas selection this year, which is including Eyes Wide Shut, which is an alternative Christmas movie if there ever was one. Scrooged in Bruges, which is one of the best comedy films, dark comedies of all time. Really go and watch it. Batman returns, Tokyo, Godfathers and Black Christmas from 1974.
Really good selection of christmasy films, but my ultimate one would be the f one arcade in Birmingham, which has just opened. So if you've not been there, this is like a giant, I think, 30, 40 simulator seats they've got.
So it's absolutely huge. And you can do private hire. So basically you could hire that venue out for the day. Invite all your friends. I think it's up to 90 guests that they do at the Birmingham location. All get to play on giant simulators and pretend you're in f one for a day.
Yeah, that's it.
Hope those gift guides have inspired you. Some really good stuff on there. All the links will be down below in the description or on the web page if you're listening to the podcast. But yeah. Merry Christmas.
[00:16:24] Speaker E: Welcome back. So in this section we're looking back on 2023 and we're reminiscing about what is our favorite thing of 2023.
So I'm going to start with Keith.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Right. I'm cheating a little bit because I spent a lot of good things this year. Lots of good tv shows, lots of great things. But I'm kind of picking something that will probably be around as people listen to this episode.
And I'm kind of hyped, super hyped for it. And I know it's going to be my favorite thing of the year. Regardless of anything else, I know this is going to be completely a thing.
[00:17:01] Speaker D: You actually be really disappointed.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: About. To appear in cinemas right now is a film called Godzilla Minus one, which is directed by Tashiki Yamazaki. I hope I've got his name right, who's directed a few things I've liked in the past. He's done quite a lot of animation stuff, so he did loop in the third, the first, which is quite recently, and he did a film I loved a few years back called the Returner, which was just a bonkers movie, which had transforming robots and everything in there much better than any Transformers movie you've ever seen. But this is kind of continuing the resurgence of the Godzilla's films from Toho. So a few years back we had Shin Godzilla, which was set in more contemporary times, but this one is set in post war, World War II Japan and is again looking at the kind of implications of war and nuclear bombs and stuff. Some people are referring it to it as an add on to Oppenheimer, as a reflection of the kind of the japanese view of nuclear Armageddon.
[00:18:04] Speaker D: So do we get shots of Cillian Murphy just looking horrified? Just Godzilla? What have I done?
[00:18:10] Speaker B: Thankfully not. We get a lot of very brutal Godzilla. Apparently this is one of the most savage godzillas that we've had in a long time. But reviews from Japan earlier in the year have been fantastic. Reviews from America at the moment have been really good. It opens on the 15 December and strangely, it is getting quite a wide release. Usually kind of the japanese Godzilla movies get a very limited release, but this appears to be on kind of everywhere. Mockingbird is doing some screenings, so if you've taken Ryan's advice and become a member, it could be your first film you go and see with your free tickets. But I'm super hyped for it because the reviews are great. The clips I've seen look fantastic. So although it's a little bit of a cheat, I kind of also want to get as many people to go and see it as possible because, you know, world cinema has got a lot to offer. Obviously this will be subtitled, but I think for me it's going to be a great film. We've had the monarch tv show which is the kind of western impression with Godzilla's that run and stuff, which is really a thing. But this is much more kind of my kind of back history with Godzilla from kind of watching all the old black and white movies on Saturday afternoons when they used to be on instead of world sport or whatever it is. So I'm super hyped for Godzilla minus one. So I think it's going to be my pick of the year because it just sounds and looks phenomenal. So I'm kind of super hyped for it.
[00:19:34] Speaker D: Fantastic.
[00:19:35] Speaker E: And being so close to Christmas, there's a Christmas wind down, so people should have more time, so there's no excuse. Go watch it.
Sam, what about you?
[00:19:44] Speaker C: I think I'm going to go with Spider man across the Spider verse. I'm pretty sure it was across. I keep getting them mixed up, but it was just such an incredible film. Into the Spiderverse, which came out a few years ago, was one of the most groundbreaking animation or animated movies that's come out for a long time.
A lot of films have tried to kind of emulate that style since. So things like put and boots, the last wish, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie earlier this year, Disney's wish, it seems to be sort of trying to do it, but not quite doing it as well. Unfortunately, into the Spiderverse was clearly really influential, but now we've had a few films and tv shows as well that are kind of trying to copy that style. So I was slightly worried going into it that it wouldn't feel as significant and impactful, and it somehow managed to surpass the original.
The animation is stunning.
It's keeping that same sort of style of kind of mixture of a blend of animation, but then also manages to find different variances of it based on what universe the plot is in at any given time, what characters are on the screen. There's spider. Punk is sort of animated as almost like stickers that he'd put on a guitar case.
Or when it goes over to Spider Gwen's world, it's all very kind of muted pastel colors and almost kind of watercolory kind of style.
I'm a big fan of animated films generally, and I think using the animation as a medium to support the storytelling is how it should be done.
They're really thinking about not just what goes into the plot and characters, but also how the film should look and how they're making the best use of the tools available to them.
And, yeah, I was blown away by it. I mean, even putting the animation aside, the film itself is incredible, too. It's huge number of characters, but they're all very well developed. They've all got their own arcs. The action scenes are really kinetic and exciting.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:21] Speaker C: And I know Ryan was a bit annoyed with the cliffhanger ending, but it does just mean I can't wait for the next one. So, yeah, I think that's going to be my pick of the year.
[00:22:34] Speaker E: You're absolutely right. And I think the music is key. So I went to go and see the original earlier this year at Burm Symphony hall. They were doing like a live orchestra version, which I originally thought was quite weird because when I obviously first watched it, a lot of it was sort of hip hop, that kind of thing. But then when they brought it to life and you're hearing all of the individual instruments, picking up that different characters, different music, and the mesh of it was just incredible. And props to the symphony orchestra for bringing that to life, but it just really sort of hammered home exactly what you were saying. I've not seen the second one. I still need to see the second one, and I'm desperate to watch it, so I can't wait.
[00:23:21] Speaker C: I'm glad I didn't say anything too spoiler in that case.
[00:23:25] Speaker D: Lee, how about you? So mine's kind of an interesting one because in a similar vein to Keith, I'm cheating a little bit in the sense that I'm picking three things. But however, it's all connected on one theme effectively, which is basically. So obviously this year, a lot of people have been talking about how it's been just a phenomenal year for playing video games, not so much for working in them, unfortunately, with all the layoffs and stuff. But that kind of does connect to my wider point because my top three games the year are hi fi rush, Bullsgate three, and Alan Wake two.
But the thing that connects all three of them is something that, as we've seen with all the things with the layoffs and stuff, is just what happens if you actually put trust in a team and you gather that team around a singular vision and you just see that vision through. Because we've had a lot of things with, like, AAA games where they're focus tested to death and we get like a million crafting systems and open worlds that don't need to be there. And these three games have kind of just booked the trends and kind of done their own thing. Even like in the case of, like, Balder's Gate three, for instance, they did it in a genre that a lot of the AA space says no one wants to play those games and it's the biggest game of the year.
It's a sort of very classic style rpg. It is obviously a sequel to the old Baldersgate games and still follows a lot of that sort of styled the top down, turn based kind of rpg style. Very dense, very complex sort of stuff going on. But they sort of saw it through and it's the biggest game of the year and they've not had any layoffs.
Yeah, you got hi fi rush, which of course is effectively if you took Devil may cry and you basically set it entirely to music in like a world that's kind of like if you took Scott Pilgrim and future armour and kind of smushed it together. And that's kind of just a phenomenal game that, again, just kind of focuses in on that kind of rhythm and that rhythm action stuff. And it focuses in on this kind of goofy world full of robots and music and stuff. And again, it shows what happens if you just kind of go, no, this is the game we want to make bulbs get three. Like I said, is that sort of classic rpg? And then Alan Wake two is just Sam Lake spending over a decade coming up with all these weird ideas because he watched way too much twin peaks and then just kind of like going, oh, I'm going to sort of make a meta textual story about the nature of making stories which references every remedy game ever made, except like the crossfire. Single player mode and death rally, I think are the only ones left out.
And then it's know, again, the fact that it's sort of so focused on this vision of like, we're going to tell this very specific kind of story. The fact that you've got the two different sides of it, you've got Saga's side of, you know, she's an FBI agent, so it's very much focused on detective work and it's very grounded. And then you've got Alan's side of it where he's like trapped in the dark place and it's very surreal and all over the place. And it's basically him throwing ideas at a plotboard that changed the world around him. So it kind of shifts around. And then, of course, it's got the brilliant musical bit, which is everyone who's played Alan Wake two will say it's the best part of the game. And it is. But again, it kind of shows in a year where we've had all these sort of layoffs at companies, especially companies that have been chasing the live service thing, we've had these three big single player games that have sort of very kind of almost rebelliously kind of gone, no, we want to do this regardless of what the trends are. And they've trusted in the teams to deliver these games and they've just become some of the best games of the year. So I think that's my thing of the year, really.
[00:27:37] Speaker E: Yeah, I agree as well. And also I think in terms of how they've been marketed as well, it's not the Todd Howard on stage talking about millions of worlds and how they're all diverse. It's literally just, here's the game.
On the grand scheme of things like Boulders Gate, obviously I'm not the Oracle of gaming news, but that kind of just dropped for me. Everyone just suddenly started talking about it.
[00:28:03] Speaker D: And I was like, oh, so Balderscape Three is an interesting one because it was in early access for like three years.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:09] Speaker D: And it obviously had a good community built around it, but then it came out in its full version in August this year and it just kind of exploded and a big chunk of it is world of word of mouth on social media. A lot of it was because it was, people just kind of going, oh man, this is amazing. This is my favorite character. And making memes about characters and stuff. And so more people saw it and was like, yeah, I kind of need to play this. This sounds cool. And I think also just the fact that one of their initial trailers was just like, oh, by the way, you can have sex with the bear. And I think that kind of got people very intrigued as to what is this game?
And yeah, like you said, hi fi Rush really was that exact thing. It was just an Xbox showcase and Tango gameworks showed up and went, here's our new game. It's out now. Enjoy. And I think it being on Game pass as well kind of helped that because people were just like, this looks really cool. Oh, I can play it right now and I can just install it right now. I don't have to buy it if I've already got a Game pass subscription. So that really helped it, obviously, with Alan Wake two, I think that it did have a bit of a longer marketing cycle. It has shown up at summer games fest and things like that, but I think it's one of those things where they've kind of built up the sort of fan base over the years. The original Alan Wake came out in 2010. It became a court classic over the past few years. Control came out in 2019 and grabbed a few more people. I'm definitely among those. And obviously with that, it was released for free on everything at some point, or it was on Game pass briefly. I think it ended up on PlayStation plus at some point. So it kind of got a lot of attention through all that, and it's kind of built up this audience. So now it's like, okay, here's a culmination of all of that is now.
Yeah.
[00:30:01] Speaker E: So I'd probably say my thing of the year is I've been to quite a few gigs in Birmingham this year, which I'm quite proud of because that was one of my New Year's resolutions. And the one that really blew me away was in November, and it was seeing chemical brothers in utility arena with the Mr. Geek bring me over there.
And I just loved it because I've always wanted to see them. And with sort of the death of Keith Flynn, daft punk, sort of like hanging up the mantle, that kind of thing, I thought, I need to go and see them while they're still going around. And Kelka bros. Were just phenomenal.
Their quality has not dipped at all. But the way they mixed all of their tracks as well was perfect. They would play around as a lot of these kind of artists do, but not in a way that messes up what you're there for with the tracks. But also they structured it in a way where they would bring you up, get you all hyzakai, and then bring you a bit down to a bit more wavy, and then bring you right back up again for like a finale.
It was just so fantastic and the atmosphere was amazing, the crowd were fantastic.
And, yeah, I just had such a good time and it was great compared to some other gigs I've been to, where especially the audience have just been really lame.
Even if the performance has been fantastic, there's a lot of people just stood there on their phones recording the entire thing, or just not really getting into it. But with chemical Brothers, everyone was into it, and it was just really just such an experience. So for me, that's my highlight.
[00:32:04] Speaker C: It does make a difference, doesn't it, when the audience is properly engaged? I've been to gigs before where you almost feel like you want to be yelling sorry to the people on stage.
Well, you didn't have it in Liverpool, literally.
[00:32:19] Speaker E: I mean, I went to see. So I actually went to see prodigy a few weeks afterwards. They were phenomenal in terms of. The actual performance was amazing. They did a beautiful tribute to Keith. Audience dead in the water. It was as if they were watching Adele. There's nothing wrong with Adele, but just that kind of atmosphere of just sat milling and how hard prodigy tracks are. And just me and my friend, yes.
[00:32:45] Speaker D: Must die.
[00:32:49] Speaker E: Were just like, what is going on here?
And it made a massive difference because their performance was up there with chemical Brothers, but the fact that the audience were just so lame, it just didn't create the same experience.
[00:33:06] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, I can definitely agree with the sort of sentiment of a good audience because, again, the sonic symphony thing, it was an entire symphony hall of people just going nuts for sonic music, which on paper sounds really silly, but then you're in the atmosphere and you just kind of get swept away with it, and it's great.
[00:33:24] Speaker E: Well, even with, like I said, the Spiderman to the spiderverse thing I went to at Symphony hall, same sort of thing. Everyone was just. Obviously, we're all just a bunch of nerds, but everyone was just having a really good time with it, even though we'd all probably seen it and listened to music 100,000 times.
[00:33:40] Speaker C: So.
[00:33:41] Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely.
We'll be right back.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: So last weekend, was it last weekend? It was last weekend. Went to MCM Comic Con Birmingham for their closing of their winter season quite late this year. It's usually around mid November, I think, but weather was atrocious. The weather was not delightful.
[00:34:09] Speaker D: It was actually quite frightful, to be honest.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: But inside, great atmosphere, some fantastic guests, some really nice merchants, some good fun, lots and lots of things to do. And they've kind of broadened out the categories a bit this year. So, Lee, do you want to run through the guests that we had?
[00:34:26] Speaker D: Yeah. So the guests. Now, this is where I was able to reel them off, off the top of my head last week, and this is where they've entirely gone from my head this week. So there were a few. It was mostly, like, voice actors from video games and anime and that sort of thing. So you had a few people from Genshin Impact.
I met Erica Harlecker out of that group who plays, I think, Venti in Genshin impact, but I was there because she plays Anne in Persona five, the voice of Zelda in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the kingdom was there. You had David Hater, the voice of solid Snake. You had Troy Baker, you had Roger Clark, who's the voice of hangs Arthur Morgan in Red Day Redemption. Two, you've got Jennifer Hale, who's the voice of Commander shepherd, and you had Neil Newbon and Devorah Wilde, who are the voices of Astarian and Blazel, respectively, in Baldersgate. Three, I met a bunch of them. I met David Hater I met Jennifer Hale, I met Devorah Wilde, sadly could not get to meet Neil Newbond because his queue was, like, several miles long. And it was just like, I'm not going to get into this queue.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: I was going to say Astarion is really the big breakout character of Bulldozers Gate.
[00:35:38] Speaker D: Yeah, it's him and Carlak, I think, is kind of the big ones, really. But Carlack obviously wasn't there.
But, yeah, I was like, I really want to. It would be good to meet him, but I'm not getting to see him at all.
[00:35:50] Speaker C: This.
[00:35:51] Speaker D: It was. Everyone that I met was absolutely phenomenal to meet. Just very friendly, very chatty. Absolutely great time.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: And outside of that, there was some really good, interesting stuff as well. There was a lightsaber training academy who's there every year. There's wrestling on this year, which is the first time, I think it's been on for quite a while, but that was really good fun to watch. There was this AR VR game which we looked at. We didn't get a choice to play. There was the retro arcade, there was a treehouse for the kids, and there was the pop Asia area as well, which looked quite. And there was two separate live action d d experiences as well. One either side of the event.
[00:36:32] Speaker D: Although one thing at the pop Asia stage that I don't think we got to see as a group, but I saw briefly was the Tyco drumming, which I've done the previous year. I think last year I actually did it, then I just jumped in and was like, because you can actually just come in and just be part of the big lesson that he's doing and teaching everyone how to do Tyco drums, that was a lot of fun. Obviously didn't get around to doing it this year, but they usually do it every year and it's always a lot of fun.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: I think my only experience with Tyco drumming has it ever been just the arcade machines, which I'm awful at, but, yeah, it was really good fun. Unfortunately, Keith, you couldn't join us?
[00:37:11] Speaker B: Not this year, no. I had quite wanted to get to see this one because it's been a while since we've done a con, but unfortunately, circumstances prevented me, so we decided.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: To wear regular tat challenge. But we put a bit of a twist on it this year, as you unfortunately weren't able to join us, we decided to turn it into a ten pound get a Christmas gift for Keith's challenge.
So, 10 minutes running around. Ten pounds. I think I'm the only one who spent the full amount.
[00:37:44] Speaker C: I spent the full amount, and I was the only one who was back within 10 minutes as well.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: Mine took some customization, but you'll see why later.
[00:37:54] Speaker D: In my case, it was because where I got it from was, like, was selling a lot of Pokemon cards, and there was one guy speaking to the vendor for, like, a good 5 minutes about, well, I've got all these Pokemon cards. Could you value all of them? And I'm just like, could you hurry up?
[00:38:12] Speaker A: Cool. Who wants to go first?
[00:38:13] Speaker B: Do I have to do this blindfolded or anything first?
[00:38:16] Speaker A: No, I think you can pick. So if you go and watch the MCM video we've thrown up on the YouTube channel, you can see our very speeded up footage of us running around trying to find stuff, but.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Keith, you can choose who you want to go first.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Let's go with Lee, I think.
[00:38:31] Speaker D: Okay.
Do you pass back, Keith?
[00:38:37] Speaker A: Okay, tell us what it is, Keith.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: Well, it's a Godzilla. Sophie puppet mascot two, which from the COVID has jet Jaguar the destroyer, baby Godzilla Mothra.
Well, quite a few. Even the later Shin Godzilla first evolution version.
[00:38:55] Speaker D: Yes. Got to do a blind bag.
[00:38:57] Speaker B: So it's a blind bag, which is good.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Squishy.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: A squishy. It doesn't feel any shape like Godzilla.
[00:39:04] Speaker D: So just remember the store that I bought this from was basically that and Pokemon cards.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Let's see what we. Blind bag pick.
That's why it didn't feel like anything.
You can't feel what is in there, so that's not good.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: You got a card?
[00:39:29] Speaker B: Would you greatly. It'silver. So I'm assuming he's jet Jaguar, and it is a tiny, tiny jet jaguar.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Is that allowed to go in the collection? I know, Maddie, is there's room in.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: The collection for a tiny, tiny jet Jaguar? I haven't got many jet Jaguar figures, actually.
[00:39:48] Speaker D: See, there's the justification. You're welcome, Keith.
[00:39:50] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Well, thank you very much, Lee. That's right. He's got a hole in the bottom for you to pop on your thumb if you want to do some kind of puppetry. If you had lots of them, you could do a little kind of Godzilla movie.
[00:40:02] Speaker D: You need to get the whole set, and then you can just do, like, yeah, puppet pals.
[00:40:08] Speaker C: Now.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: I'm tempted to go online and see if I can get the other ones, actually, because some of the godzillas look pretty cool. Thank you very much, Lee.
[00:40:15] Speaker C: Godzilla minus one is Godzilla minus a whole lot more than one.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: Okay, Nick, I'm going to save you till last line.
[00:40:23] Speaker C: Of course.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: So let's go with Sam. Okay.
[00:40:26] Speaker C: It's beautifully wrapped in the bag that it came in.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: The bag that it came in.
[00:40:31] Speaker C: Perfect.
[00:40:32] Speaker D: Sadly, I didn't get given a bag. I was just like, all right, you take it with you.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: I'm just going to pop it out without looking at it for added surprise. Making loads of asmr noise there.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: I'm going to tip that.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: Ah, cool, right? So what we've got here is a teeny, tiny little Jedi starfighter from the classic Star wars prequel revenge of the Sith, which is pretty cool. I can't remember who's the blue one? Is the blue one Anakin?
[00:41:02] Speaker A: Blue one was Obi Wan.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: He's Obi Wan. Yeah, that's. Oh, it does say in tiny letters. Very tiny letters, folks. Comes with a stand so I can pretend that I'm flying. And although you might not be able to see on the back there, much like I was thinking of doing with the Godzilla figures, you pop it on your finger and fly around.
So I could have jet Jagger on one figure in a fight with a Jedi starfighter.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: It's the crossover we never thought was.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Going to happen, actually. There's a whole set. You can get Millennium Falcon, two versions of tie fighters, and an x wing. And you pop it on your finger. It's like some crazy, kind of like new jewelry. I might just try it out. It's just kind of like some kind of new bling rings. That's kind of cool. I will be playing with that once I undo the packaging. Then we've got Ryan, which worries me because it's customized.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: So it was actually one of those where it was one of the. We'll print something with a picture of a friend on it.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: Oh, God.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: But they had many choices. This wasn't the choice I wanted because unfortunately, they were out of that design print. But if you want to pass that over, it's a nice clippable thing.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: Okay, so I'm going to show you lot first, and then I'm going to flip it around.
Okay. So apparently now I work for Cyberdyne, so I'm going to be responsible for judgment Day. Summer Hellria.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: Level five access, I believe.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: Yeah, that's pretty up there. Really?
I kind of know what I should be doing at Cyberdyne, and that is not switching the AI on.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: It'd be good for a cosplay if you ever got a last minute one. Just get a lab coat straight in. You there.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: Well, I'm sure there is a place called cyberdyme systems, because people just didn't think it was a good idea to avoid that name for its implications. But there are actually companies out there.
[00:42:54] Speaker D: Please don't make the torment nexus. Oh, no, we made the torment Nexus.
[00:42:58] Speaker A: We do have somewhere the terminator's head, he's a jumping off. There we go.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: I could take that in and go like, oh, I've got an idea for you.
Yeah. So I could do the whole thing. Get a white lab coat. I've got a blue coat that I could use. That's quite awesome. That's kind of cool. Yeah. I don't think it'll get me in anywhere, but I might try it out at some places.
[00:43:23] Speaker D: Just try it out at various different convention conferences or something and just kind of wander in.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Next time you're wandering for the ICC.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: See if you can use level five.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: Sorry, next time, a crypto bro conference.
[00:43:36] Speaker D: As long as you're confident enough with a lanyard, I can blag it through. Yeah.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: I can just blag it through. Yeah.
That's awesome. That's quite a collection. That is. I'm quite impressed with that.
So was that done at the desk for you? Okay, and what other designs did they offer?
[00:43:57] Speaker A: So there was the blade riddle class, but unfortunately you can't have that one customized, which is the one I did want to get for you. I did want to get the Rick Deckerd, but they had like 20 or 30 other designs. There is the link to the guy in the description below, but he will pop up. But it was just a case of, yeah, he was serving a customer and I was just milling around and then I left the desk and come back and I realized I've got like 4 minutes left.
But I thought, oh, God, that one.
[00:44:23] Speaker B: Did they do the multipass from.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: They do do the multipass as well. So they had a whole range of customizable ones and they had a whole range of just the standard. If you wanted just to print them.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: I'd like them to have done a customized multi pass because I have actually got a multi pass. But it's the Leelu Dallas one, so it's have my own one because I've got this little thing with the cane, not because I'm a nerd in any fifth element.
[00:44:47] Speaker D: Multi pass. You do remember the name of the show.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
I appreciate the time you spent running around 10 minutes.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: We hope it makes your back feel a little bit better.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'm certainly going to put it out. Having a fight between Jaguar and a Jedi starfighter on each finger.
[00:45:07] Speaker D: What's going to be happening on Christmas day?
[00:45:09] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, if I had TikTok, it'd be straight up there, kids.
But obviously I'm not old enough to do TikTok. I'm not old enough to do TikTok. I'm more than old enough to do TikTok. That's the thing. I'm over 13, definitely, which is good. I can't get that stand up, so I'm just going to wear it. Yeah. Well, thank you very much and happy holidays to you all. Happy holidays.
[00:45:29] Speaker C: Happy Christmas.
[00:45:30] Speaker D: Christmas.
[00:45:34] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us on the Geeky Priming podcast, this issue and this year. This is us for 2023.
Sure, we'll be back in 2024.
Fingers crossed. It can't get any worse out there in the world. So we coming from the geeky Brummy bunker next year, Mandalorian. Where can we find you online?
[00:45:59] Speaker B: If you use this way to find me, you will find me at Hardbuck Underscore hotel on X, Twitter Hardbuck hotel everywhere else, including Blue sky, which is probably where to go. But look out for me every Wednesday on the Geeky Brummie website and Twitter feed, taking you through the pick of the week's comics.
[00:46:20] Speaker A: Matt, where can we find you online?
[00:46:22] Speaker E: You can find me at Mr. Mattlevel on Twitter. I refuse to call it hex. You can find me at matchdick underscore Matt on Instagram. And eventually you'll find me again on the geeky Brummy feeds at some point in the future.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: Cool. Sam, where can we find you?
[00:46:43] Speaker C: You can find me at Dragonsam 89 on Twitter and SD edwards 89 on Instagram.
[00:46:52] Speaker A: And Lee, where can we find you?
[00:46:53] Speaker D: You can find me on Bob pet Ferret on YouTube, where my full games of the year list will be going up at the end of this month. And you can find me on the cheap ferret on Twitter. And you can find me doing games, right, and stuff online. I work primarily at Silicon era, so you can find me there. You can also find me on the geeky bearing website every Friday. Well, not for the rest of December. Apart from the top 50 most notable games of the year at the end of the month. There will be no more games release roundups for this month, but they will return in the new year, which is showing the latest games releases for the week.
[00:47:32] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:47:33] Speaker D: And what about you, Ryan?
[00:47:34] Speaker A: You can find me, but you'll have to have a particular set of skills.
[00:47:37] Speaker B: Because I'm not going to tell you.
[00:47:38] Speaker A: Where you can find me, but you can find geeky Brummy on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, blue Sky at some point. When do we get around to setting that up properly? YouTube, where you might be watching this, or your podcasting service of choice where you might be listening to this. But don't forget to go to geeky room. As you said, fantastic articles from Keith Lee. Don't also forget we do Birmingham Anime Film Festival in association with the wonderful people at the Mockingbird. More to come on that in 2024. So we're coming back for 2024 and we'll be releasing the new films soon, but otherwise it's been a fantastic year. Thank you all for joining me, and thank you all for listening or watching us, but we shall see you in 2024.
Goodbye.
