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.

Zach Anner is back! (ZachAnner on YouTube)

A Love Poem to Video Games (Kotaku)

93% of parents are around when video games are purchased. Hm. (Entertainment Software Association)

LEGOs make even A Clockwork Orange adorable! (Surf With Berserk)

Neil Gaiman on Internet piracy, selling more books (OpenRightsGroup on YouTube)

How to introduce your kids to D&D (The Mule Abides)

Anatomical sleeping bag. Thank you, Japan. (Weekly ASCII Store)

(Top pic via Neatorama)

Happy New Year 2011! We can’t put it better than Neil Gaiman:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Hawkeye to Cameo in Thor (Bleeding Cool)

Samuel L. Jackson Saying M*th*erf*ck*r (NSFW) (Abaurre3)

8 Hard Lessons 2010 Taught The Entertainment Industry (Wired)

World’s Smallest Periodic Table Etched on Hair of Worlds Adorablest British Scientist (Periodic Videos)

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer Restage Labyrinth; Gaiman is Bowie (Amanda Palmer)

Nintendo Warns Against 3DS Graphics for Young Kids (Ars Technica)

Gallery of Original Background Art from Masters of the Universe (Robert Lamb)

(Dougtrio pic via Reddit.)

39 Degrees North: Christmas Card 2010 from 39 Degrees North on Vimeo.

Feeling a little overwhelmed by the cheer associated with a particular holiday, of which you may or may not even be participating?  We invite you to have a chill up your spine, courtesy of 39 Degrees North‘s Christmas “card” offering, based on Neil Gaiman‘s own once surreal Christmas greeting.

3DS American Release Date Was A Photoshop (Joystiq)

Amazon is Putting in a Like Button (TechCrunch)

How to Make a Papercraft Heather Mason from Silent Hill (Paperkraft)

Star Trek Online Going Free to Play? (GameInformer)

One More Reason Why Neil Gaiman is One of Our Favorite People (Matter Anti-Matter)

Radioactive Rabbits, FYI (Koin Local 6)

10 Bizzare Weapons of the Allies in WWII (Listverse)

(pic by Jude Buffum, more here.)

The Price is a wonderful ghost story of sorts from Neil Gaiman‘s Smoke and Mirrors collection, about a father who finds that the stray his family has adopted is protecting their home from something terrible and wild, and that somehow his family’s happiness is directly dependent on the black cat’s ability to defend them from it.

Filmmaker Christopher Salmon read the story and was enough enamored by it to want to make an animated film of it. And fortunately for him, Mr. Gaiman was also enough enamored of his concept to give him permission. The project is currently seeking funds through Kickstarter, but you can watch a video spelling out the basic visual style of the eventual movie, featuring many shots from his animatic below.

So Neil Gaiman wrote this book, American Gods, the premise of which is first (broadly) that gods and legends don’t die, they are just forgotten, and then they walk among us as seeming humans. And second, that America is not a good land for gods. The book’s plot meanders its way slowly through a landscape of characters (the identity of some of them can only be guessed at) and through all corners of the American landscape, including places of great power. Not the places you would expect. One of those places is The House on the Rock.

This Halloween weekend, a long culminating project was brought to fruition: Fans of American Gods had a fabulous costume party at the House, with Neil Gaiman in attendance. The prizes in the costume contest? Rides on the infamous carousel, which featured as a prominent cross-reality vehicle in the book, and has never before been open to the public.

Sony has announced that it is discontinuing the Walkman, the ubiquitous portable music player of yesteryear. The manufacturer acknowledged that it has sold 200,020,000 cassette players in 30 years, but that nevertheless, the last batch of Walkmans shipped in April and there will be no more.

Well, looks like I’ve really got to look into getting my Neil Gaiman radio plays in a different format. And it’s going to be increasingly difficult to explain parts of Home Alone 2 to kids.

First: Sit down. Next: According to a report from The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman is once again being considered for television adaptation, this time by Warner Bros. TV.

The show’s development into a TV series is still in its “early stages”; the biggest impediment right now is that Warner is still “in the midst of acquiring television rights” for the show from DC Entertainment – a process which may be made easier considering that DC Entertainment is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment — and Warner is “in talks with several writer-producers about adapting the 1990s comic.”