Ok, so this time, I do have some pretty good news.  I submitted a panel to Los Angeles Comic Con a couple weeks ago and it was accepted.  I was going to wait until I got the notification telling me when and where my panel will be but I’m pretty fucking excited about this.  I submitted a panel to FanX last year and I made it as far as the standby list and then nothing came of it.  But for this show, I heard back very quick, my panel was accepted, and now I’m just waiting to hear back with time and place.  So, yeah, a lot of fun for me.  And of course, it’ll be a panel about podcasting.  The title, Podcasting for Beginners.  I figured that to be a good first step to get going with things like this.  I’m going to record something this coming Monday.  I’m looking for some questions and/or thoughts beforehand to offer as advice to start the panel.  I have a list of topics and notes already, I’m just curious what things other people think of when considering how to start podcasting.  Now, I’m planning to record this panel and maybe put it out as a podcast if it works out well enough.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see happens.  Again, I’m pretty excited for this.  Also, just going to another convention is going to be so much fun!  Previously I went to Indiana Comic Con this last March and I wrote about that adventure then.  Feel free to look through previous posts, I can always use more clicks as it were.  In summation, I really enjoyed that convention and going to a different conventions beyond FanX.  And then going to a convention right here at home in LA.  I can’t wait for September!

     Just a quick update on Bottle Cap, my pokémon buddy that’s extreme training on Pokémon Go.  We’ve a little more progress over the last week.  Right now his stats are up to Att. 14/15 Def. 10/15 HP 12/15.  We’re working our way through a time dependent task, and then one more time dependent task, and the rest of the tasks for that stat should clear pretty quick.  I’m fairly confident that we’ll get this done in pretty good time.  And then I’ll have a 4* shiny charizard!  

     I’m going to cut this one a here.  Work this week has been somewhat of a shit show and I’m beat to hell.  The last few days I have actually managed to sleep just about six full hours each day.  I know!  Six hours a day!  Just imagine the days I’m having that I can sleep six hours at one time.  Oh, and I feel this should be said.  There’s a decent Mexican restaurant in Cincinnati.  We went there to grab dinner after work.  I got a Hot & Spicy Burrito and the only complaint I have is that I was an idiot and forgot to ask for it without sour cream.  Good heat and spice but not overwhelming the flavor.  La Jaiba Seafood & Taqueria in Hamilton County, Ohio.  If you’re around, check it out.

Another couple of rough days.  This past Sunday, Malcom Jamal-Warner died.  I can’t decide whether it’s more tragic that he died in a random accident or if it had been some illness he’d been dealing with.  According to the reports I read, he was dragged out by an undertow.  He was under water for a bit and then bystanders pulled onto the beach and couldn’t be revived.  It wasn’t even something like a car accident where someone could be blamed for something.  I was always a fan.  I used to watch that one show, everyone older than thirty-five knows what I’m talking about and everyone younger than thirty-five can’t do anything with it, and I just feel personally that there’s no real reason to discuss it by name.  I also watched some of Malcolm and Eddie.  I’d caught a couple episodes recently and still, it holds pretty well judging by a small sampling.  My favorite work of his, though, is on The Resident.  That, in and of itself, is a great show but his character specifically with him portraying that character, always added to the whole of the show in no small way.  Ever a talent, he always managed to find a special little something in his characters.  He is surely no less missed than any of the other great talents and just good people we’ve lost in recent years.

     I was planning on this and then finding something fun to write about now but then earlier this afternoon while I was sitting at the airport, the news broke.  Ozzy Osborne died today.  You know I’m as attentive to music but god damn it, Ozzy was objectively great.  Sure, he had his issues and then got kicked out of his own band but then, went on to release a number of high scoring tracks and albums on his own.  Despite his problems.  He’s one of those generational minds who had that one defining moment where he thought to himself “Fuck that, I’m going to do it now.”  And then he did it.  I was listening to a bit of Black Sabbath’s titular album and was impressed.  Yeah, I’ve heard at least bits and pieces of those songs over the years but this album is not what I expected.  Being more familiar with Iron Man and Crazy Train, that first album was more melodic and the real distinctive talent was in the lyrics.  Again, I’m not an expert or even really inclined musically so, this opinion is in every way not-so-much informed.  But I’ve always tended to gravitate more to lyrics of songs rather than instrumental mechanics.  So, hearing more closely the lyrics of those earlier works have made me more intentionally a fan.  I wasn’t paying attention to whether I listened to that whole album right then but Rush’s Tom Sawyer kicked in with shuffle and I went back to listening to podcasts.  But the important thing is that he’s biting the heads off of angels now.

     Ok, I’m currently on my way to Cincinnati so, I’ll definitely be writing more later this week, I just wanted to address these more recent tragedies and you may know, that’s not a word I use lightly.  Until then.

     First things first, I had a really bad tummy thing last week so, I wasn’t able to sit down and write.  Then I was pretty lazy today aside from doing laundry which is why I finally started this at ten:forty-five tonight past deadline.  But I’m doing it so stop yelling at me.

     Now then, I’m thinking it’s time for an update on my Pokémon buddy, a shiny charmander I’m training up to 4*.  I changed his name to Bottle Cap because, ya know, I used that bottle cap for him.  I guess it’s been two weeks now, you can see his progress below.  Things are going pretty well so far.  It looks like a couple of upcoming tasks will have a minimum time requirement but they are consecutive so, it’ll be thirty days to complete those two, otherwise, all the other tasks should be relatively quick.  I can’t wait to finish this finally have a shiny 4* charizard!!!

     More fun things!  I’m working out some plans for upcoming conventions.  I’m focusing on some things for LA Comic Con.  And then FanX…it looks like this’ll be first FanX I miss.  I’ve been going to that show every year since its beginning but this year it’s landing on the same weekend as LA.  So, the plan is for Ben and Dustin to cover FanX while I cover LACC.  I can’t wait!  Glancing through the guest list, a lot of the stars from Daredevil: Born Again, a bunch of voice actors, and then Elizabeth Olson and Paul Bettany.  But one person I’m really excited to meet is Greg Weisman.  I just recently watched through Young Justice again.  As you can read in previous posts, Young Justice is one of the greatest DC projects in recent time.

     I’m running late so I’m going to cut it off here.  I need to take of some things and maybe clean this shithole apartment.  Yeah, it didn’t take me very long to get here.  Oh, and I’m taking steps to get the podcast going again.  I’m thinking we’ll post episodes on Wednesdays but I’m working to put out something this week.  Ideally I’ll get something put together and posted before I go to work tomorrow.  If not, I’ll get something uploaded on Thursday.

Hey hey!  I’m actually getting in a second post this week!  Some things are already starting to work out.  So, new stuff, I’ve been playing some games on Discord.  Rumor has it, that was the original designed purpose for that platform.  I’m playing in a weekly game with friends of friends so, not enemies by default.  We’re playing Dungeons & Dragons.  As you may know, I’m not a fantasy guy myself but I have played in a few games of D&D, mostly with the same group of people.  This game, however, has been some actual fun.  It’s an interesting sensation playing with a group that isn’t comprised of assholes just looking for a moment to screw over one another.  And yes, generally speaking, I was the was one being screwed over.  But that was usually because I was doing funny things and playing in-character while the rest of the group was playing it more like a video game.  In any case, this group is fun and I’m playing a new iteration of my now classic character Uk’as Twirleyes and this cat is tearing up the proverbial shit.  

     I’m running a play by post game in Marvel Multiverse RPG on a server that hosts various various such games in this system.  You may know I tend to make different DM Screen-ey things for the games I play.  Usually character creation things because that’s the fun I have with these games when there isn’t a group to play with.  I’ve been building extensive charts for efficiently creating characters for MMVRPG aside from the random generator I built on Charaterize.  I’ve talked about my random character creation at length in a previous post.  I’ll close this entry with a link.  The problem I’ve been having lately is efficiently sharing these documents with other players.  I’m fairly active in some threads on reddit and I’m becoming more active on Discord but both of those platforms have some considerable restrictions on things like posting images in certain threads or on certain servers.  So, today I finally sat down started building this website by adding pages to with resources for these games.  Right now I’m focusing on MMVRPG.  I’ve got the Power Charts up, the Traits list, and the Occupations list.  I’m rebuilding my sheets for the Origins and then the Tags list should be relatively quick.  I’m thinking I’ll make sheets for the modifying templates like The Phoenix Force, Horsemen, and Symbiote modifications.  Anyhow, when I get caught up with MMVRPG I’ll start building the pages for MSHRPG.  That task will be much faster since I’ve already made all those materials.  I have to put in some work still for the Numenera materials I started forever ago.  Fortunately, the tools I have for these tasks have improved greatly in just a few years.

     Alright, I’m starting a new job in the morning and I missed the communication that our game tonight is cancelled so, I’m going to get back to these projects and maybe get done something tonight.  Later, poozers.  This is my previous article about creating random characters.  https://www.comedyshedradio.com/news/i-swear-i-had-something-for-this

Alright, it’s been a couple weeks.  My schedule and drive had been kind of fucked up for a little bit.  I was working a job that was really good but the way my schedule was shaking out, I wouldn’t have been able to do things I’m working on.  Ya know, like post on here two times a week.  And then the other things.  So, I’m starting a new job this week that is more of “nine to five” but that should have me out of the apartment at the right times that I can hit a few open mics on the way home from work.  But I have been going to these monthly meetups and getting to know some local filmmakers.  That’s been a lot of fun.  Who knows, maybe I’ll find some way to get into stunt work after all.

     Now then, Pokémon GO.  They just had a big event this last weekend.  Some new forms for Zamazenta and Zacian, I guess some things from newer games I haven’t played.  I fell out of the Pokémon series when everything shifted to the DS system.  I have every generation of Game Boy up to that point but couldn’t afford to keep up with it at that time.  I’ll go back when I can…probably.  Moving on.  The thing I really want to talk about, though, is a particular reward from the timed leveled reward thing.  Anyone playing Pokémon GO has undoubtedly seen the Golden Bottle Cap by now.  Again, something from a game I haven’t played.  I guess in that game it helps build up the stats of whichever pokémon you give it.  I want to break down how it does this in Pokémon GO.

     It’s interesting how they designed this item for this game.  It increases the pokémon’s stats up to one hundred percent.  Pokémon have three stats; Attack, Defense, and HP.  

As you see in the first image, there are three cells to each stat which represents five points for a total of fifteen points to each stat.  Each point represents about two percent of the pokémon’s ultimate potential.  A one hundred percent IV, as it’s referred in meta conversation, is a ‘four star’ pokémon or one hundred percent IV, a “hundo” in slang terminology.  I’ve chosen this shiny charmander for my Golden Bottle Cap.  You see those weight icons on the stats, I have already completed some tasks to improve those stats.  And that’s the interesting component of this item, the training.

     The bottle cap initiates a training program to improve the chosen pokémon up to one hundred percent.  You’re given a series tasks to train your pokémon as your buddy.  The tasks are designated to one of three stats and completing each task will add one point to that stat.  You find this information in the buddy screen.  As you seen in the second, third, and fourth images.  And apologies about the images, I can’t seem to figure out if there’s a way to resize and insert the images into the body of the text like I intended.

     The catch is that you have three-hundred-sixty-five days to complete it.  I’m assuming that whatever progress is made is kept at the end but really, who’s going to invest any of this time and energy to not get their pokémon up to one-hundred percent but I know as well as anyone that shit happens but this is something you make a concerted effort.  Of course, if I’d known how this works before I probably would’ve chosen a one star shiny charmander instead of this zero star but cé la vie.  The only thing that would make my shiny “hundo”, or “shundo” and yes, I hate these stupid fucking make up words, is if it were also a shadow pokémon but one of the terms of the Golden Bottle Cap is that it can’t be used on shadow pokémon.  All the same, I’m going to love having a four star, shiny charizard.  Still my favorite pokémon.

     Anyway, I hope this was helpful to anyone who maybe didn’t know beforehand how it works and ideally hasn’t used their bottle cap yet and can now make a more informed decision.  I’ll do my best to remember to post updates on this little guy’s progress over the next year.