We tend to pass on geeky burlesque here because we don’t want to be the site that does a full post whenever a star of the Justice League Porn Parody sneezes.

But Dr. Sketchy’s recent tribute to Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman blew us away.  Dr. Sketchy’s isn’t exactly pure burlesque.  Referring to itself as an Anti-Art School, it’s an international franchise that mixes burlesque with life-drawing.  From Wikipedia:

A Dr. Sketchy’s class may consist of a burlesque dancer (such as Veronica Varlow) or some type of performer (drag queens, trapeze artists, or roller derby girls) as the featured model, with drawing contests during breaks. Sketchers are known as “art monkeys”, a term borrowed from the Madagascar Institute. Dr. Sketchy’s features heavy drinking games, comedic skits and onstage go-go dancing.

What makes the Sandman tribute so amazing is a combination of costuming, casting, and performer characterization.

The venerable tumblog DC Women Kicking Ass has gotten a hold of the casting sheet for David E. Kelley‘s Wonder Woman pilot, revealing what looks like the majority of the major characters of the show.

The new show will portray a Wonder Woman who is a “powerful C.E.O.”, and most of the characters named fall into the category of a CEO’s entourage.  A press secretary/best friend, a personal assistant, and a second-in-command-CEO.  Those who don’t fall into that category, naturally, are love interests.

Honestly, our favorite part?  Liberal use of the phrase “open ethnicity” when used to describe casting requirements.

Locked in a Vegas Hotel Room with a Phantom Flex from Tom Guilmette on Vimeo.

What happens when a cameraman spends the night in a Vegas hotel room with a state of the art slow motion camera?

…Pretty things.

(via Laughing Squid.)

The University of Groningen in the Netherlands made this 32.8 ft. by 9.2 ft. touchscreen interface from six expensive cameras… and some “cheap” infrared emitters, 1000 LEDs, some old computers that were sitting around, and some free software.

The result is a positively enormous curved screen with a resolution of 4900 by 1700 that can track 100 different touches at a time… and that’s just at optimum speeds.  Latency is between 30 and 50 ms.

Anyone up for a game of Pong?

(Ignore the last minute of video. It’s just black. There’s no stinger. We were confused, too.)

(via Bit Rebels.)

The Wikipedia page for Defenestration has a list of Notable Defenestrations throughout history.

Unfortunately most of them were not committed by The Defenestrator.

We couldn’t look away from the latest innovation rolled out by Reddit’s F7U12 (that’s seven f’s and 12 u’s: fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu) subreddit.

And so obviously now we have to inflict it on you.  We highly recommend checking out the rest of the thread for other awesome permutations like this.  (Don’t forget the mouseover text.)

We’re just about two weeks from the launch of TheMarySue.com, an entertainment/news site for the the geeky girl, from the ones who love The Lord of the Rings but have never actually read the books, to the ones who want to know which movie stars are going to be at Comic Con, to those planning out their Minecraft cross stitch samplers.  (Just me?)

We are planning a February 28th launch, so we’re not quite ready yet, but I wanted to share one part of it that we’re particularly proud of: our logo.

I knew, going into the site design on The Mary Sue, that it would be very, very important to get the look of the site right.  (In fact, I believe my exact first words on the matter were “It can’t be pink.”) The first thing we tackled was, naturally, the logo.  ”How about a generic girl geek?  The every-geekwo-man!”  Well, that sounded great until we sat down to try and decide how to depict a generic and obvious but inclusive girl geek without diving headfirst into stereotype.  Do you give her glasses?  A book?  A certain air of social unease?

Harder than it sounds.

As you may have noticed, I am a Batman fan.

But here’s a dirty little secret: I also. Love. Watching Superman. Punch giant robots.

This video may engender the same love in you.

(Rob Pratt‘s Superman Classic is heavily influenced by the Fleischer Superman cartoons, and even uses music from the same, I think to great effect.)

(via Comics Alliance.)

This weekend Brad Bird was given one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon an american animator: the Windsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement in the field of animation.  He now stands alongside such animation greats as the Fleischer Brothers, Tex Avery, Hanna and Barbera, Mel Blanc, Walt Disney, Bob Clampett, Don Bluth, Genndy Tartakovsky, John Lasseter, and Bruce Timm.

Too bad he’s quitting animation.  Ok, not really.  He explains, in his acceptance video, which had to be filmed in advance due to Bird being too busy filming the next Mission Impossible movie with Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise to attend the ceremony.

(via Bleeding Cool.)

The BBC reports this morning that Brian Jacques, the author behind the Redwall series of children’s fantasy novels, died this weekend of a heart attack.  He was 71.

The Redwall books were the first chapter books that drew me into becoming a voracious young reader, a primary refuge in an elementary school environment where I only had a couple of friends.  As mentioned elsewhere, I’d read Mariel of Redwall eleven times by the time I was eight.  And I know I’m not the only one who wished almost every day that they lived in Brian Jacques’ exquisitely described world.

The first book in the Redwall series was written with no intent to publish: while working as a truck driver delivering milk, Jacques befriended the students at a school for the blind and wrote Redwall in a exceptionally descriptive style precisely for them.  Fortunately for the rest of us, a friend showed his manuscript to a publisher without telling him, and the company immediately agreed to publish it and signed the author for five more novels.  Jacques’ kindness towards his readers, especially children, didn’t flag once he became a world famous author whose books have been published in twenty-eight languages, either.