From this show on, we’ll be having more guest c0-hosts. Last night, we had the honor of having a Cosplay Idol, Ms. Yaya Han, as our first guest.  Yes, we did have her on our show before.  But, that was before we reformatted the show. Yaya has a new website out and it looks very beautiful, thanks to her very artistic friend, Meg.

Topics:

• Yaya Han’s new website
• Apple iPad reactions with Joe the Peacock
• Mass Effect 2 – 1 week in
• The Grammys

Also, if you weren’t part of the live audience, you missed out on some free games. Congratulations to Krisikins for winning a free copy of Plants VS Zombies and to MrGlowsticks for winning Bob in Pieces.

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• Apple iSlate and Keynote event
• Mass Effect 2
• Jessica’s first day as a Production Artist
• Career tips from Joe

Play the Podcast Below | Download the MP3 | Subscribe via iTunes | RSS feed

If you weren’t part of the live audience last night or stayed through the after show, below is a video of me doing the “Truffle Shuffle.” Why was I doing this? Well, remember last time Joe was on? He gave me money to buy Christmas gifts for everyone on the podcast staff from BustedTees.  I got lazy and forgot. So, this is what I had to do to make up for it. =(

Click here to view the embedded video.

Topics:

• Mainstream Filmmaking is equal to Auto-Tuned Rap
• E-Readers – Is it time to make the Jump?

We couldn’t get to the rest of the topics because I let the Peacock run rampant. Which is ok because he gave us all presents! If you were part of the live audience last night, e-mail me your full name and ustream username to nelson -at- pixelatedgeek .dot. com so I can send you your Christmas gift.

Play the Podcast Below | Download the MP3 | Subscribe via iTunes | RSS feed

Big thanks to Joe again for giving away Christmas presents.

Featured Writer: Joe Peacock

Website

Tell us a bit about yourself:
Hmm… Not sure what to put here. I’m Joe Peacock from Atlanta, GA. I have lots of cats, love comic books and football, and once ate an entire bag of jet-puffed marshmallows. I can run faster than a cheetah. I once ate a lightbulb. I can backflip over two cars. I know tomorrow’s lottery numbers.

More after the break.

What’s been your inspiration for writing.
Mostly the insatiable need to make people feel things. That’s really been the driving force behind my writing most anything I’ve ever written, with a few exceptions. I want more than anything to relate to people and share stories and have us all unify, if but for a second, under a shared banner of common experience. Or, at the very least, craft a very fine poop joke that makes you snort.

What programs do you use to write?
Pages on Mac and, lately, OmmWriter. It’s pretty nifty. But I’ve written stories on everything from legal pads to backs of receipts to inadvertently-upside-down-post-it-notes. I think that, optimally, I’d be in a preferred word processor to make things smooth, but really the words are coming when they come, so the best you can do is hope you capture them as they show up.

Any Tips and Tricks for Writing.
Umm… Caffeine. Lots of it. And try to write when everyone else is either asleep or away, it makes having to hear the derision and attempts to deflate your dream a little easier. Don’t write with a “target audience” in mind, instead, picture a friend or acquaintance you think would really get a kick out of a piece of writing and write for that person. But whatever you do, don’t show it to them, lest they tell you it’s better than it really is to spare you your feelings. Get your critiques from strangers whenever possible; they have absolutely no reason to be nice to you. Write, then edit – not the other way around.

Any advice for a beginners trying to break into the industry?
Mostly, stop trying to break into the industry and just write. I hate how that sounds, and when I read it from people like Ann Lamote and Stephen King, I had the same reaction you just did: “BUT WHAT’S THE POINT IF NO ONE WILL READ IT??” The point is to get it out, hone it, make it better, then start again. Being read is only worthwhile as a tool to figure out how to write better; nothing more. Everything else is a luxury. If you truly care about the craft of writing and telling a fine story, people WILL find you. But if your goal is to “publish a book” instead of “write a book” you’ll spend a whole lot of time being aggravated, frustrated, unmotivated and ultimately exactly where you are now.

The Crew here at Pixelated Geek wants to continue featuring artists but we need your help. If you or someone you know would like to be featured as the Artist of the Week please drop me a line andrew@pixelatedgeek.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, I got the chance to hang out with Joe Peacock this past Thursday after a book signing he did at a Borders at the Stonestown Galleria in San Francisco. For those of you who where unable to make it but were curious to see what Joe had to say. Unfortunately, due to poor planning, my battery died about five minutes before Joe finished, so it cuts out at the end. Also, Joe is a really funny guy, so laughing at everything he said caused the camera to shake a lot and unfortunately I had no tripod. Also, you may want to turn up the volume on this if you want to hear him clearly.

So, Thursday rolls around, which is usually the day I work a late shift at the UC Berkeley dorms checking student IDs (gotta pay the bills somehow, right?). Luckily, I had managed to get a friend to cover my shift and picked up an extra shift to make up for it, which was awesome. I mean, who wants to deal with college freshman when you can hang out with a published author? Anyway, my timing sucks, mainly because I didn’t expect the Bay Bridge toll-booth to be so backed up. I don’t drive, so there was no way for me to anticipate the massive traffic jam that I would hit when my bus reached the Bay Bridge. That, coupled with not having any idea where to find the SF Muni train that would take me to the Stonestown Galleria caused me to be late, arriving at Borders just as Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com and author of It’s Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News was finishing up his presentation and introducing Joe. Not a total disaster, by any means. Everything was fine. The seats were mostly full, so I just made my way to the back next to, unbeknownst to me at the time, Joe’s wife Andrea Peacock, with Joe giving me a “wassup” nod as he noticed me arrive, which I returned. However, as I reached into my pocket, the Blackberry that I forget to lock started blasting Dragonforce’s Through the Fire and Flames, immediately interrupting Drew and making me as red as a tomato. I’m sure Drew hates me because of that, but Joe got a real kick out of it.

So, epic fail on my part right there. Anyway, with Joe starting his presentation, I decided I would film it…unfortunately, since my digital camera runs on AAs and not a rechargeable battery pack, it drained most of my battery, cutting out the tail end of his little speech, which was over half an hour long by the way, and meaning I only had a very limited sliver of battery life left with which to take photos, meaning I would have to rely mostly on my Blackberry’s camera. So yeah…double fail on my part right there. Still, the actual event was great. If you’ve read Joe’s book or heard him on our podcast, he’s a really funny guy, especially when he just acts like himself.

After the presentation and the signing, Joe and Drew were nice enough to invite everyone who showed up, myself included, out to a nearby Chevy’s Fresh Mex for some food and drinks. And that took up most of the night and Drew was kind enough to pick up the tab for everyone. Oddly, I found myself sitting with Andrea and Joe’s friends rather than with the group of people who showed up for the signing, just having fun, drinking some margaritas and just talking the night away. If there’s one thing about Joe, it’s that he likes telling stories about his life, like the one about how his wife flipped a guy who was trying to hit on her at a conference in Georgia. She will flip you…she will flip you for real. At one point, Joe attempted to give a teen some “fatherly” advice, which his wife and friends thought was probably a bad idea. Joe and I also talked about his guest spots on the Pixelated Podcast, which we agreed were just a whole lot of fun, especially when he got Nelson to do the truffle shuffle for the people tuning into the live video feed. Needless to say, hanging out with Joe was a blast, and it’s easy to see why Nelson has such a big man crush on him.

Joe gave me a copy of his book with a special message just for me. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to spell Hideo Kojima.

If you don’t really know about Joe Peacock, check out MentallyIncontinent.com and read the Wal-Mart story. Believe me, once you read that, you’ll see why Joe is awesome. His book, Mentally Incontinent: That Time I Burned Down a Hooters, That Time My Stalker Crashed on My Couch, and Nine Other Stories from My Weird Life is available in stores and on Amazon.com and is definitely worth a read, though most of his stories can be found on MentallyIncontinent.com in case you’re not convinced.

 

If you haven’t got it by now, our podcast titles usually have nothing to do with the episode. But, what we actually talked about was:

• 4 games that most people are on the fence on buying
• Censorship in Australia on Left 4 Dead 2
• Kojima likes Twilight
• Spain on track to opening a space hotel on 2012
• JoeThePeacock’s 2nd book, Still Mentally Incontinent, is on sale. 2 for 1!

Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes

Download the podcast here

So we had a podcast. Cool. Wanna hear about it? Here it goes.

• Bill went to a Renaissance fair. Here’s a picture of a dragon.
• PeopleOfWalmart.com is funny. But not to Joe.
• An anonymous PR rep at a video game publishing company gets sad about game journalists giving bad ratings to games.
• Uniformed Rating System through music, films, and video games
• We like Joe
• We like Chase and Gamerlimit

Download this Episode

In this episode, we make fun of Nelson.  Then Nelson fails and we make fun of him again.  Then we talk about stuff, like:

• Blizzcon
• The Hilton Parties at Blizzcon (but who cares?!)
• My impressions of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3
• Joe the Peacock talks about MMO addictions and his experiences
• District 9 impressions
• Sony PS3 Slim
• making fun of Nelson.

Some notable links from this episode

• Fark
• Fark
• Second Skin (An MMO Documentary)
• WoWDetox
• Fark

Our special guest co-host tonight will be Medros from All Things Azeroth and maybe Joe the Peacock.  We’ll obviously be talking about Blizzcon, their games (WoW, Starcraft, and Diablo) as well as other topics that we come up with.

So join us, wont you?