Dr. Horrible's Undead Sing-Along Blog

Dr. Horrible gets bumpy in one of Beau Berkley's pieces for Gallery 1988's Joss Whedon show.

Previously on Popped Culture...
Buffy And The Scoobies
Wizard Of The Hellmouth
Velma The Vampire Hunter

Get A Room! Great Pop Culture Couples

C'est la vie by Andres Lozano

The latest Bottleneck Gallery show is an awesome collection of pop culture couples. Above and below are just a few of my favourites. There are dozens more at the site.

Tatooinian Gothic by Darin Shock

You Were There With Me by Erin Gallagher

Mixed Involvement by Eric Hancock

So Happy Together by Jerrod Maruyama

The Plumber's Quest by Florey

Two Of Hearts by Jieyi Mei

Previously on Popped Culture...

The Look Of Love
In Your Old-Timey Eyes
Edward & Bella vs. Ed Wood & Bella

Buffy And The Scoobies

"Fresh out of Sunnydale, here comes Buffy and the Scoobies with their debut album "Chosen"! Choose your weapon and get your blood boiling with heart pounding songs such as "The Big Bad", "Out For A Walk, Bitch", and "Hush". Buffy and the Scoobies take aim at your heart and will have you begging for more. Fortune favors the brave when you are Chosen."

Joey Spiotto finishes off a series of Joss Whedon inspired albums with Buffy and the Scoobies. Also available at his Etsy shop.

Previously on Popped Culture...

The Frakkin Toasters: By Your Command

Velma The Vampire Hunter

Wizard Of The Hellmouth

A Geek’s 12 Days of Christmas

Pop illustrator Becca Whitaker is rewriting the 12 Days of Christmas with a more nerdy vibe. Here are the first eight, go to Becca's Bombshells for the rest.

Eight Maids-a-Milking

Seven Pokemon-a-Swimming

Six Slayers Slaying

Five Gold Rings

Four Trek Nerds

Three Rutger Hauers

Two Turtle Dudes

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

Previously on Popped Culture...

12 Days of Popped Culture Christmas

Rudolph, You Don't Have To Put On the Red Light

Werner Herzog Reads 'Twas The Night Before Christmas

I Like Big Butt..erfingers

Erik Estrada, Charisma Carpenter and Lou Ferrigno as the Butterfinger Defense League? Oh and Sir Mix-A-Lot too - it wouldn't be half as insane without him. I love that advertising campaigns are trying their out there ideas online as it makes for some bizarre viewing. (Link via FP Marketing)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Buh Buh Buh Buh Buh Buh, Power!
Dropping Paper Towel Science
Britney Spears: Patient Zero

A Is For Angel, B Is For Buffy

A Whedon Alphabet. A soon to be complete set of Flash cards from Orphan Elliott. (Link via The Zeray Gazette)

Previously on Popped Culture...
F Is For Freeze Ray
Velma The Vampire Hunter 
Cereal Killer, Qu'est-ce Que C'est? 

The Fan Fiction Is Out There

Creative romanticism — that works, right? Nothing Happened Today by Ed Harrington.

Previously on Popped Culture...
The ALF-Files
Cereal Killer, Qu'est-ce Que C'est?
Whose Responsible This? Birth Of A Meme

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Video trailers for books are odd things as they just make me want to see them as a film, not dive into some pages. And Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter all the more so, as I can't imagine ever reading it, except maybe in comic book form.

That being said, the idea of the 16th President of the United States of America as a slayer is pretty funny. I can't wait for some kid to include this bit of alt-history in an essay. (Link via The Zeray Gazette)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Velma The Vampire Hunter
Wizard Of The Hellmouth
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Wizard Of The Hellmouth

Buffy, meet Dorothy. Seems she is the new slayer, plucked out of the University of Kansas to fight demons in Oz, with a steampunk Tin Man, a wolfman-esque lion and a scarecrow that bears more than a passing resemblance to Batman's nemesis.

I don't know if that is actually the background, but it is the concept art for a movie pitch by ColtNoble. (Drawn With a Different Style via The Zeray Gazette)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Velma The Vampire Hunter
Cereal Killer, Qu'est-ce Que C'est?
And Now I Have A Heart 

Velma The Vampire Hunter

Update: We've Got Some Work To Do Now is now for sale. Sweet!

Designer Travis Pitts updates the Scoobies for the vampire-slaying, zombie-killing generation. Sadly, it appears Shaggy, Fred and Daphne didn't make it, judging from the RIP on the door of the renamed Misery Machine.

You can see more at Pitt's Flickr page and hopefully find it for sale at Threadless. (Link via Super Punch)

Previously at Popped Culture...
Fear And Loathing In The Mystery Machine
If The Van's A-Rockin'...
I Know We'll Catch That Villain

Buffy Dusts Edward

Stick a stake in Twilight, it's done. Pop culture hacker Jonathan McIntosh's mashup of Twilight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer takes down the latest vampire craze.

Sez the artist: "It’s an example of transformative storytelling serving as a visual critique of Edward’s character and generally creepy behavior. Seen through Buffy’s eyes some of the more patriarchal gender roles and sexist Hollywood tropes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed."

He means it's funny, folks. (Link via Buzzfeed)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Cereal Killer, Qu'est-ce Que C'est?
It's the Celebrity Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Numbers

Cereal Killer, Qu'est-ce Que C'est?

"The cereal-slinging life is enough to drive almost any decent cereal mascot to a life of murder. While the police have no proof that Sonny or Cap'n Crunch are responsible for the deaths of anyone, many children go missing each year. We think it's time someone took a good, long look into these borderline psychotics who might be part of a nutritious breakfast... but also part remorseless killer."

For more breakfast carnage, read Topless Robot's countdown of the 10 Cereal Mascots that Are Probably Also Serial Killers. My bet is on Tony the Tiger. There is no way somebody can be that relentlessly positive without eventually snapping.

The image of Buffy The Vampire Slayer dusting the Count is from pop artist Chris Tezber, entitled The Tragic Death of Count Chocula. (Link via Idiot Box Artwork)

Previously on Popped Culture...
I'm Coo Coo For Killing Stuff
The Breakfast Cereal Club
Cereal Mascot Reunion

It's the Celebrity Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

My pumpkins have always been in the classic vein - triangular eyes and gappy, square-toothed grins. But over the past few years there has been a dramatic leap forward in pumpkin design. We have the technology, we can carve him.

Above is one of my favourites - someone's clever tribute to the classic Calvin & Hobbes snowmen. Below are some of the better pop culture pumpkins. Get more from Zombie Pumpkins, Extreme Pumpkin, PumpkinGlow and Pumpkingutter.

Peanuts & Homer Simpson

Wallace & Gromit

Statler & Waldorf

Buffy & Spike

Tom Cruise & Britney Spears as seen by Gallery of the Absurd

The Geek Prince

Seth Green is the coolest guy in Hollywood. Sorry Johnny and Brad, you can't hold a candle to this scrawny, pasty geek.

It all crystallized for me during Family Guy’s subdued version of the original Star Wars. At the end of the episode Peter Griffin (voiced by series creator Seth MacFarlane) bickers with son Chris (voiced by Green) about Robot Chicken's take on the series.

Chris: Didn't Robot Chicken already do this three months ago?
Peter: I wouldn't worry about it, Chris. I don't even think people are aware of that show's existence.
Chris: Well, I don't know, Dad. I think a decent number of people watch it.
Peter: Oh, really? Define 'decent'.
Chris: I think it's the highest rated show on Cartoon Network, and the Star Wars episode doubled that audience.
Peter: Well, yeah. But double ten people is like twenty people. So, uh, what kind of numbers are we talking about here, you know?
Chris: Don't be glib about this stuff, Dad. It's a legitimate show and they beat you to the punch.

It was a fantastic piece of meta comedy that got me thinking about how many cool projects Green has been involved in.

The first time I saw Green was as Scott Evil, the reluctant son of megalomaniac evil scientist Dr. Evil. The disbelieving Scott voiced everything I have yelled during a James Bond film: “Why don’t you just kill him?” Why not indeed? It was a great character that managed to hold up against all of Mike Myers’ mugging.

That same year Green appeared as the werewolf Oz in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was laconic and sarcastic and so much cooler than Michael J. Fox’s Teen Wolf. There haven’t been many positive pop culture portrayals of werewolves and Green’s should have made lycanthropes the “it” supernatural being.

Green got his next badge of cool by starring in a cancelled Fox sitcom. The network is infamous for green lighting cutting-edge comedies and then killing them off before the season is over. Green earned his stripes with Greg the Bunny, a show populated by a group of foul-mouthed puppets. It was dealing in bad puppets before Avenue Q and Wondershowzen and was hilarious. So naturally, it was killed off.

The next time I saw Green, or at least heard him, was on Family Guy. Though I think the show slips over the line from sharp to mean more often than not these days, it broke new comedy ground, constantly making me wonder how they could get away with what they aired. Chris is a wonderfully stupid/smart, horny teenager, who is getting notably better story lines so far this year.

Then of course there is Robot Chicken, a brilliant cornucopia of pop culture parodies acted out by stop-motion-animated action figures. Co-created by Green it is one of the funniest shows on TV. It mines all the TV and movies of my youth and asks what happened to the characters when the cameras turned off. No childhood memory is sacred – the Care Bears engage in ethnic cleansing; Masters of the Universe sex tapes; Apocalypse Ponys! It’s the most fun you can have playing with toys

Buffy, Austin Powers, Greg the Bunny, Family Guy, Robot Chicken – the guy has impeccable instincts in picking his projects – and has made geeky cooler than ever.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Numbers

I am a math phobe. For as long as I can remember numbers have often left me baffled and people who understood them might as well have been speaking another language. I did manage to graduate high school, university and find a career without much in the way of mathematics, despite some hellfire and brimstone speeches from a couple of exuberant guidance counselors.

Over the years I have learnt to, if not love numbers, at least stop avoiding them entirely. But engage them in my free time? I don’t think so. That, though, has become easier said than done. With the emergence of geek culture has come a rise in numerics in pop culture. Earlier this week I happened across Clive Thompson’s assertion that math proves that the Buffy universe harbors no more than 512 vampires. His geek calculations were a refutation of a paper that claimed that vampires don’t exist:

If a single vampire fed on a single human in the first month, this would create two vampires -- and decrease the human population by one. In the second month, those two vampires would each feed, transforming two people into vampires. The vampire population is increasing in a geometric progression, and the population of humans is similarly decreasing -- and at that rate, the authors calculate, the entire human population would be transformed into vampires.

Seeing as we aren’t all vampires – as cool as that might be – they therefore must not exist. The problem with that argument, says Thompson, is that it ignores the existence of vampire slayers. Of course I think both math and the undead are equally unlikely occurrences.

Another lucky find was Jessica Hagy’s site Indexed. She takes apart politics, human foibles and pop culture with cool little mathematical charts that even I get Very funny stuff and well worth checking out.

Of course there’s the numbers on Lost, though nobody has talked much about those much lately.

Welcome (Back) to the Hellmouth

In 1997 a smartass blonde high school student discovered she was the chosen one. To her dismay that meant a life of running stakes through the hearts of the undead. Ten years later Buffy the Vampire Slayer continues to influence pop culture and the tough, female power characters of Lost and Veronica Mars all owe a debt of gratitude to Josh Whedon’s characters.

Though the show was cancelled in 2003 after seven seasons, Buffy is proving as immortal as those she battled. Originating as a feature film then morphing into a TV show, season eight of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is returning again, this time in comic form – available this Tuesday. Whedon himself will be writing the first five issues and will keep watch over the whole run. My friend Nikki Stafford, who convinced me to watch the show despite the ridiculous name, has a great piece in this weekend’s Star talking about the impact of the show and what has kept it in the mind of fans and the creators of other shows. She knows of what she speaks and looks exactly like the picture on the left (as far as you know).

I’m interested enough to check out an issue, and I haven’t picked up a comic book in years. Not a graphic novel, nothing. I’ve been more of a fan of comic strips and even as a kid I was more likely to read Richie Rich than any superhero issue, caped or otherwise. What’s been interesting over the past few years is the amount of comic books that have appeared in both film and TV. The Matrix, X-Men, Hulk, Spider-Man, Sin City, Heroes and 300 – the list is considerable. Because of it I feel like I have a considerable grounding in the style and ethos of comics and even find myself opining on what the best interpretations of comics on film have been. I’ve also come to appreciate the unique artistic visions presented by comics and the on-screen adaptations so perhaps this might be the reason to give comics another try after all these years.

Once More, With Feeling

Countless numbers of new sitcoms and dramas are produced every year and then never see the light of day. For the most part, that is probably a good thing, based on the garbage that gets aired.

Of course who’s to say the network execs have made the right choices on what to give the green light to and what to leave on the heap? (See the above comment.) But TV pilots now have a new place to live in the world.

Last week NBC announced that it was reviving a failed WB sitcom called Nobody’s Watching after it made a splash online. The pilot, which never aired, was uploaded to YouTube and started garnering attention and the network came calling, first on the web and maybe even on TV eventually.

But it’s not just old sitcoms showing up online. The unaired pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has shown up on YouTube and it’s cool to see the very beginnings of the show and what it evolved from. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicholas Brendon and Charisma Carpenter are all their but Willow is not played by Alyson Hannigan. Anyway check it out in all it’s grainy goodness, but be warned it’s 25 minutes long.