Check out these entries from Worth1000’s Fine Art/Super Hero Photoshop contest.

Check out this sweet custom of a “Sentry Robot” by custom toymaker Hatesminion.  He’s actually based upon a little known MOTU cartoon character.

You can read up on Hatesminion’s creative process on this guy here.

Please come to Piece Brewery, 1927 W. North Ave., Chicago, Il, Monday night, Dec. 29th for a Nerd City Birthday celebration.  We’ll be recording our show there from 5ish to 7ish and the party should start shortly after that.  Come watch us record the show!  Come eat some great pizza!  Come get drunk!  Most importantly, come wish me (and Max and Joey) a Happy Birthday!

See you there!

From Super 7:

Killing You Softly with our Song

Brian Flynn & Martin Ontiveros
Blue Bottle Gallery, Seattle, WA

Jan 2nd – 31th, 2009

Martin and Brian don’t draw the heroes they draw the bad guys. They can’t get enough of giant monsters, ghosts, robots, the characters that play the villain. Both artists pull their imagery from similar genres sources where the character they connect with is the destructive element within the scene. In “Killing you softly with our song” Brian and Martin alter the context of their beloved characters and bring to light their more admirable qualities.

I’m a huge fan of Martin Ontiveros’s work. If Brian Flynn started a cult, I would join it.  Judging by these preview images of both their prints and wood sculptures, this is going to be a totally kickass show!

The Bluebottle Gallery website is here.

From

io9

Sure, you might think that your Christmas Eve is pretty hellish, but does it have an undead Santa? These pages from the Army of Darkness Christmas Special will make your day seem much less stressful.

Sure, it may look like another Deadite invasion for poor Ash Williams, but this sadistic Santa is the start of something else altogether… and for anyone who’s been looking for an antidote to A Christmas Carol, this may be something you’d happily see under the tree tomorrow morning.

The Army of Darkness: Ash’s Christmas Horror oneshot is released today, for those who like their Christmases to be more blight than white.

Can’t get that girlfriend (or wife) of yours to put out?  Don’t worry because science is there for you.  Researchers have discovered that the orbitofrontal cortex (behind the eyes) is a “new stimulation target” to help persons with the inablility to experience pleasure.  A woman with a low sex drive had a chip implanted by scientists and the results were so intense that she asked for the new feelings to be removed.  That’s my kind of results.  Imagine what this would do for a girl who already has a healthy sex drive!  These researchers say that within 10 years a new chip could be ready as a treatment.  I say…not soon enough!!

Fox News’ Article on the subject here. 

Remember when the coolest part of waiting for Christmas was flipping through the Christmas catalog? Wishbookweb.com has scans of the pages from most of the Sears Wishbooks from 1940-1988. So, you can go there and drool over the toy sections of the Wishbooks of your youth all over again. However, the other sections of the books are well worth a trip down memory lane, too!

We don’t cover a lot of sports here at Nerd City but this one is worthy of posting.  First, I HATE the Mannings.  Yes, all three of them.  I’m a Chiefs fan (somehow even after this season…) and I’ve watched in person as Peyton knocked us out of the playoffs twice.  Once at home and once making the trip to Indy to see it.  When I saw this video of the implosion of the RCA Dome I was a little giddy.   If they could have somehow left Peyton, Eli, and Archie in this building and THEN blew it up I would’ve been okay with that.  Sadly they didn’t, but at least I can say that horrible, HORRIBLE building is now gone.  So here’s 90 seconds of Joy to start your Monday…

Direct Youtube Link

From 1-up.com:

Everyone’s favorite turtles-turned-ninja have a new game in the works, and it’s a four-player fighting game for the Wii. Nintendo Power revealed the game (via GoNintendo) with a sparse bit of information, but it’s very intriguing info at that. Some of the developers working on the currently-untitled fighter have worked on Super Smash Bros. Brawl, while others come from Team Ninja of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive acclaim. That instantly gives it a chance at being better than some of the previous TMNT games, none of which have been particularly good.

GoNintendo also has word on some details we can’t currently verify. According to their story, the game is being published by Ubisoft and will be released next September with an online mode that functions better than Brawl’s.

We’ll be keeping an eye out for an official announcement and more details in the coming days.

Check out these awesome new offerings from Real Head! I’m a huge fan of the Akro Kaiser sculpt, and the new magenta colorway is pretty rad. The new blue Bigaro is pretty badass as well, but the most badass of all of the badass new offerings from RxH is this, the Mazinger-style 9″ Bigaroid:

Images from Toybot Studios and Rotofugi.

Man the video game industry is really taking a hit lately. First Midway starts closing down multiple development studios, now Free Radical has completely shut down. For those of you not familiar with Free Radical, the studio consisted of a team of developers that worked for Rare and created Goldeneye 64 and Perfect Dark 64. They created my favorite first person shooter series of all time and that was TimeSplitters. Combining fast action and over the top weapons and characters, it brought back the great times of sitting around my Nintendo 64 playing Goldeneye all night with my friends. So it is sad to hear that this studio closed, considering they were working on TimeSplitters 4 and a rumored Star Wars Battlefront game for LucasArts. So we bid you a fond farewell Free Radical, you supplied me and others with fantastic games. Hopefully these guys will find work at another studio and maybe we will still see the release of TimeSplitters 4.

Cosmo Liquid, famous Japanese toy sculptor/artist has taken the “fight figure” bask to its basics with his new minimalist toy, Mr. Punch Ball. These were display and available at the BEAMS TOKYO CULTuART shop opening party in November. I really like the black one with the alternating matte/ gloss finishes. Good stuff and a must for people who are both Japanese designer toy collectors and bowlers.

We’ve made it perfectly clear in the past that Nerd City hearts the beer of Three Floyds Brewery from Munster, Indiana.  It was, however, just this past weekend that I finally got around to trying their Alpha Klaus Christmas Porter.  This is, for me, by far the beer of the season.  It boasts a strong hop flavor that reminds you of its Gumball Head or Alpha King cousins, but combines this with strong coffee, chocolate, and tobacco flavors.  Alpha Claus is suprisingly light and drinkable for a Christmas beer, too.  So, that’s cool.

Check out Three Floyds Brewery here.

More from Nerd City’s exploits @ Chicago wrestling outfit UWC. Listen in to episode 29 for more on UWC from announcer/Nerd Citizen Darwin Smith.

Direct Youtube Link

See part one here.

For a fun party game, take a drink every time you can tell how badly Max is balding.

The first video of the upcoming Kingdom Hearts game for the PSP has surfaced on this new fangled internet thing. I have played through the first game on the PS2 and was surprised with how fun the game actually was. Hopefully with this release we will get a PS3 game, but these videos will do for now.

Videos courtesy of Gametrailers