Memorial Day Weekend

While we are celebrating this Memorial Day weekend, let's be sure that we remember what this holiday is about and take the time to honor those men and women who served in the Armed Forces to give us what we have today.  We should never take for granted the sacrifices that others have made and we should always be grateful for what we have. So let's celebrate this weekend and enjoy the extra day off tomorrow.

Ways to spend this Memorial Day weekend:

1.  Spend time with family BBQ'ing.

2. Watch the Star Wars Marathon on SpikeTV.

3. Watch Band of Brothers or The Pacific or Captain America. 

4. Play Battlefield 3, Call of Duty, Ghost Recon or Medal of Honor games.

5. Most importantly, say thank you to any member of the Armed Forces you see this weekend.

National Daddy Daughter Tea Date

Yesterday was National Daddy Daughter Tea Date/Day and even though I had to work all morning I made sure that when I got home I had tea time with my little girl. 

Cheers!

National Daddy Daughter Tea Date was started by Tshaka Armstrong in 2010 as a way to, according to the Facebook page, "Encourage men to strengthen the bond with their daughters. See fewer daughters fall prey to problems associated with low self-worth." 

My view of our tea date.

I think this is a great event and not only does this help strengthen the bond between a father and daughter, but it could become one of those rituals that fathers and daughters can look forward to every year.

Hopefully, next year there will be a few events in the Chicago area where fathers and daughters can go to celebrate and who knows, maybe Fandads will host an event one year.

If you would like more information on National Daddy Daughter Tea Date visit and "like" their Facebook page and help spread the word.

Warrior Dash Take Two!

If you are a follower of our blog you will remember that last year I participated in the Warrior Dash on Father's Day. That experience was amazing and I told myself that I would do it again the following year and prepare better for it this time around. 

Well, with about a month to go for the next Warrior Dash, I am glad to announce that I am doing it again, but sadly I haven't prepared any better than I did last year.  I have been working a lot these past few months so my time to train has been few and far between.  I have been using Your Shape Fitness Evolved on the Kinect to exercise and it has been working pretty well, but I need to go running to improve my cardio.

Unlike last year where it was just two of us, this year there is a group of us going together and it should be a fun experience.  Maybe we'll do costumes or maybe we will not, but either way it will be great to run with friends and support each other at the Warrior Dash.

I am thinking about starting a running group to get prepared for the dash and just to start getting in better shape.  If anyone is interested in joining, let me know.  I know work schedules will make it hard to have a constant schedule, but maybe we can find a few times in the week or weekend to just get together and run for a few miles.  This would be a great way to get in shape and to familiarize ourselves with our readers.  Hopefully this will lead to one of our goals here at fandads: to create a community of like minded fandads.

Thanks for reading and wish me luck on June 17th. 

The Dark Knight Rises has a New Trailer!

Today was a huge day for those that have been following the Dark Knight ARG game.  Today the site had up a dossier that asked people to go to certain locations throughout the world and take a picture of "evidence" of this masked vigilante.  Although most of the places were in downtown, one was Wrigley Field. Did anyone see these today?

"evidence"

Once you had this information you were to "Submit photographic evidence of graffiti related to any movement in support of the vigilante's return. Make sure that location services or store location is on in your camera settings. Report any and all information pertaining to the investigation to the designated contact (#tdkr07202012 or tdkr07202012@gothampolicedepartment.com"  For each piece of  "evidence" that was found it unlocked a new picture. Once all the pictures were unlocked, they formed the new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises. 




What do you all think about it? I wonder what's next in the ARG game?

To Buy or Not to Buy

As usual, I've got lots to write about, but never get around to it. The Fan part of being a "Fandad" has taken a back seat to just being a dad. Going to class, taking care of the kids, spending time with the family, it's a lot to do and it doesn't leave me with a whole lot of free time. The little free time that I do have is usually spent trying to level up in SWTOR or chasing another prestige level in MW3. That being said, I have neglected our blog, and I'm going to try to do better in that regard. Anyway, where was I?

To buy or not to buy, that is the question. Well, MY question is, should I get the Call of Duty ELITE deal? I do most of my playing on the PC (ahh PC v. Consoles, that's a whole other post I'll get to) and I've been waiting to see if they ever roll out the ELITE program for the PC. However, the 360 version just went down in price and I had an Amazon gift card so I said why the hell not. I can't remember the last time I bought a game on multiple platforms, in all honesty I think it was probably MW2, but I digress. One of the reasons I purchased it on the XBox is because I have a lot more friends playing it on LIVE than I do on Steam. Tonight I tried getting into a game with someone and I didn't have the maps they were using. I immediately went to the marketplace and I was about to download them, but then I started contemplating purchasing the ELITE deal.

I'm usually not a sucker in the sense that I don't purchase a lot of DLC. I did buy the Gears of War 3 season package, it seemed like a good deal at the time, but I haven't even played that game in months. So was it all that good of a deal? Knowing my luck, the minute I purchase ELITE, it'll be rolled out for the PC. Anyway, that's the dilemma, the fifty bucks it costs isn't anything to scoff at, I could buy a whole new game with that. (Granted, it'd be another game I'd have no time to play, but you get my point)

I'd like to hear your thoughts and comments, help me decide! (I'll probably end up buying it, I am a sucker I guess...lol)

-Gil

Black Ops 2 Leaked & A New Fighter from Sony.

It seems like the rumors of Black Ops 2 are true after a leaked photo of pre-order cards from Target appeared online.  IGN broke the story and now we just have to wait for the official announcement on May 2. 

Photo by IGN

In other news that I'm excited about, last night on Gametrailers TV they announced a new fighting game from Sony: PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.  This is going to be a fighting game in the vein of Super Smash Brothers Melee, but obviously with PS3 characters. 

So far, only a handful of characters have been announced: Kratos, Parappa, Sweet Tooth, Sly Cooper and Fat Princess to name a few.  According to the interview last night on GT.TV, 3rd party characters are going to be in the game, but will not be announced until E3 later this year.  The game is scheduled to come out this holiday season and I am pretty excited about this one.  Check out the video from the official PlayStation Blog and tell us what you think.



One of the coolest things in the game is that one of the stages is a Little Big Planet level that is being created while the characters fight.  This game seems like it's going to be fun to play.

C2E2 Recap

C2E2 came and went and the Fandads were there to partake in the festivities. Although I did miss last year's C2E2, I did make sure that I was going to be able to attend this time with my little girl and enjoy kid's day on Sunday.  Last time I came with my little girl I was worried about how she was going to react to the costumed people and I soon found out I had nothing to worry about.  This year was a different story.


As soon as I got there she was already starting to get antsy about the people walking around.  She started crying and saying that she wanted to go home, but after a few minutes of seeing other little kids walking around, she started to relax and wanted to walk around herself.  We walked around looking at the Captain America props that were on display and I just tried to enjoy my time with her.



Usually when I attend any comic show I have a list of books or action figures that I am looking for, but this year I just wanted to go and enjoy the show.  I did have a few books in mind, but I wanted to look around before I actually bought anything.  Plus, since I had my little girl with me, I knew I had to get ready for whatever caught her eye and hope that she didn't want to buy everything she saw.

One cool thing about this year is that we decided to do a Fandad's Scavenger Hunt.  The Scavenger Hunt was going to consist of three elements.  We were going to talk to some of the venders and artists and leave a small prize with them.  Next, we were going to post on our Facebook page and twitter account a clue as to where to find said prize.  Then, the person was going to say a phrase, given by us, to claim the prize.  I purchased a few Xbox Live point cards, some $20 PlayStation Network cards and was prepared to have fun with the scavenger hunt.  One thing we didn't prepare for was the bad reception inside the convention center.  When we were able to post our first tweet we waited for someone to show up. After about 20 minutes we gave up and decided to figure out another way of handing out the prizes.

On Sunday I attended the show again with my family and we tried to partake in some of the kid's day activities.  We met up with my brother-in-law and my nephew and we walked around together talking about the cool things we saw at the show.

My little girl was excited because she saw a Goofy doll the day before and I told her that if she behaved, she would get it.  Along with meeting the Disney Princesses, that was one of the highlights of her day. The other was finding her first hard cover comic.  You guessed it, a Yo Gabba Gabba book.  

We decided to try a different way to give out the prizes on Sunday and that was by posting a picture of me on our Facebook page and telling people that if they saw me and told me that they are a fandad or fanmom, they will get a prize.  Again, it was a bust! I just decided that if anyone would come up to me, I would ask them a question and if they answered correctly, they would get a prize. 

One great moment on Sunday was meeting Daddy Incidents.  My wife and I were deciding what to do next, when a guy asked her where she got the Chewbacca shirt my little girl was wearing.  When she answered him I started talking to him about the show and asked him if he had any games systems.  When he told me he had a Wii, I gave him a Wii $20 card that I had left over from the Ten Days of Fandads, and my Fandad card.  When he read the name on the card he told me that he follows me on twitter and that he was @daddyincidents.  I highly suggest that you check out his blog and follow him on twitter.  His "5 for Friday" is one of my favorite things that I look forward to seeing every week.

I also ran into my friend Steve D. and the guys from comicbookqueers, I had a comic for him, and they gave me the first issue of  "The Strange Talent of Luther Strode"  After reading the issue, I went and bought the collected book of the first six issues. If you haven't picked this up, go and get it. Thanks again guys for giving me this.

A big thank you goes to Redeye's own Elliott Serrano aka @geektome for giving a home to some Star Wars Burger King giveaways that I had. I found them when I was helping my parent's move and I remembered the Sonic DC figures he just got and thought this would be a great addition to his collection.  I met up with him after a panel he was moderating and gave him the toys. 

This year's show was great and I just wished I had more time to check out the panels or maybe get some autographs, but overall I had a fun time.  I did end up picking up a Walking Dead book that I was looking for and my little girl got the Goofy doll that she wanted.