Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 1843

Old Spice Created a “Gentleman Class” for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

After this year’s Super Bowl, we’ve learned that anything can be a Tide ad, even an Old Spice commercial! But Old Spice has gone even further outside the box than Tide with its latest campaign, opting to reach gamers who love Dungeons and Dragons. Earlier this week, Old Spice revealed that it has unofficially created its own class within D&D: the Old Spice Gentleman Class.

Download this new Old Spice Gentleman Class for the greatest role playing game of all time, which we cannot mention for legal reasons, to fulfill that fantasy dream you have always had since reading this post. https://t.co/sz1D2hMMm9 pic.twitter.com/f7KsKE6aiQ

— Old Spice (@OldSpice) February 7, 2018

We first noticed this story at ComicBook.com, and you can download a well-designed PDF file here that fully explains the Gentleman class and what they can do within the game. Old Spice isn’t hiding the fact that it’s trying to sell itself to gamers. In fact, selling Old Spice is part of the very motivation of the Gentleman Class! It’s even written into their official description: “The Gentlemen will always find a way to rise above any challenge and inspire their companions to greater feats, all in the name of selling more Old Spice deodorant than Old Spice is already selling.”

Perhaps that’s why one of the Gentleman’s higher level abilities is to heal their allies “with their pleasing scent.” When starting out, Gentlemen can only use catchphrases or punchlines that inspire their allies and hurt their enemies…or at least hurt their enemies’ feelings. Other abilities of leveled-up Gentlemen include the power to instantly summon a horse, and players can even turn into an intelligent dog. We’re tempted to try it just for that!

What do you think about Old Spice’s new Gentleman Class for Dungeons and Dragons? Roll for initiative in the comment section below!

Images: Old Spice

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Watch Acetone Delete a Keyboard in a Soothing Timelapse Video

As someone who makes his living as a writer, I can tell you there have been multiple occasions when I wanted to smash my keyboard into a million little pieces. When I finally snap after my space bar gets stuck again, there might be a far more satisfying, aesthetically pleasing way for me to express anger towards my electronics. I can give my keyboard a nice, long acetone bath instead of destroying it with blunt force, because this video shows dissolving a keyboard is strangely soothing.

This comes from the YouTube channel Amazing Timelapse, and it consists of 11,000 photos of a standard plastic keyboard slowly dissolving in acetone. The images were taken over 70 hours. It starts off slow, but then the plastic starts to melt away as the keyboard appears to be slowly sinking into some unseen dimension. By the end, the remnants look like some strange alien material that was found alongside a UFO crash site.



It’s bizarre how tranquil that video is, but that’s mostly because of what was put in the acetone. The entire tone changes depending on what you immerse. If, for example, you use a small Playmobil man, the whole experiment takes on a much more sinister feel.

Sure, I’ve felt like wrecking my keyboard a few times, but that doesn’t mean I want to recreate Walter White’s very special type of bath.

What other normal household item would you like to see take a long aectone bath next? Take a dip in our comments section below and tell us your best ideas.

Featured Image: Amazing Timelapse

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A Guide to H.P. Lovecraft’s Alien Terrors

For most of the 1920s, H.P. Lovecraft‘s brand of cosmic horror consisted of multidimensional deities, doom-destined lineages, and excursion into fantasy-inspired Dreamlands. This period culminated in some of his most lauded writings, like “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” But following this, Lovecraft began veering into sci-fi in his horror, explaining humanity’s utter unimportance through ancient aliens rather than eldritch mysteries. Four of his best works of all time come from his sci-fi oeuvre, and I’m going to discuss the aliens depicted within and how they continue (and perfect) the idea of “Lovecraftian” horror.

When we talk about “Lovecraftian Horror,” what that means, in the most basic sense, is two fold: 1) that there is but a thin shell of safety and normality over the everyday world people hold dear, and if one learns too much, that shell cracks and everything they thought about existence would be changed inherently; and 2) that there are greater, uncaring, unknowable forces at work beneath that shell of safety that are older and more horrific than could possibly be comprehended. Almost too perfect for looking at beings from outer space.

The first of his major science fiction works is the 1927 short story, “The Colour Out of Space.” In it, an investigator from Boston tries to uncover the secret of a meteorite that crashed to Earth in the hilly farmland to the west of Lovecraft’s fictional Arkham, MA. The man discovers, through conversations with a crazed old local, the tragedy that befell the farmer Nahum Gardner after the meteorite fell on to his property. Emanating from the meteorite was something that can only be described as a “colour,” an amorphous, almost vaporous, something or other that was a color no one had ever seen before. The colour gets in to the ground and causes the crops to grow large, but foul tasting; the animals on the farm eventually grow massive and deformed, and the humans grow sick and die of madness. The colour returns to space in a dramatic fashion and the area eventually becomes barren and dead; it becomes known as “The Blasted Heath.”

For this story, Lovecraft wanted to create a truly alien entity, and one that seems to bring prosperity at first–the crops do grow to world record size in a matter of days–but soon brings about nothing but decay and death. While the colour could not be described as intelligent or having intent, it’s nevertheless totally indifferent to what its arrival is doing to the surrounding area, and it’s the Gardners’ bad luck that it landed where it did. This is a case of the horror of randomness that permeates the author’s work.

Lovecraft’s next major science fiction work was his 1930nnovella “The Whisperer in Darkness.” It followed Miskatonic University professor Albert N. Wilmarth and his attempts to debunk reports of strange things seen floating in rivers during a historic Vermont flood. He soon gets a letter from a Vermont farmer named Henry Akeley that he has proof that will make Wilmarth stop his investigation. He asserts that extraterrestrials do exist and have been seen and heard chanting with humans, worshiping old gods like Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep. Agents of the aliens intercept Akeley’s correspondence and, pretending to be him, convince Wilmarth to come to Vermont, and that he’s changed his mind. Once there, Wilmarth discovers a race of winged, hulking aliens who place human’s brains in jars and use their bodies as hosts for their nightly rituals.

The aliens in “The Whisperer in Darkness” are the Mi-Go, pinkish, fungoid, crustacean-like entities from the planet Yuggoth. They also have a pair of bat-like wings which are said to help them traverse the “ether,” a part of outer space from Pre-Einsteinian conceptualization. The Mi-Go can transport human consciousness to Yuggoth via their brain cylinders, which they do in order to get access to the human bodies for their plot to invade and take over. The title refers to the strange buzzing heard in the voice of Akeley upon Wilmarth’s arrival, a noise that Wilmarth learns is the sound of a Mi-Go approximating human speech when disguised.

Unlike the colours, the Mi-Go have physical form and sinister machinations. This makes them singular among Lovecraft’s aliens; generally the aliens have no care one way or the other about humanity, beyond as a curiosity, or a pest.

Written immediately after “Whisperer,” Lovecraft wrote his most ambitious piece, At the Mountains of Madness (easily my favorite of his work). In it, he details not only how aliens existed on planet Earth long before humanity, and that all life on Earth was a byproduct of their experimentation. An expedition from Miskatonic University sets out to Antarctica (still very unexplored in the early 1930s) and discovers frozen creatures in the ice. Our narrator, geologist William Dyer, believes the tall, star-headed, winged aliens to be the Elder Things written about in the accursed Necronomicon. After horrors befall the scientists, Dyer and his assistant, Danforth, fly their small plane over intensely high mountains and discover a massive abandoned city, the work of the Elder Things.

Through studying art and etchings, Dyer learns that the Elder Things came to Earth billions of years ago as explorers and scientists and created a slave race of tentacled behemoths called Shoggoths. All other life on Earth began as waste product from other experiments, meaning we owe our existence to amoral genetic experimentation by aliens. Eventually the Shoggoths killed off the Elder Things, and still exist deep down in the Antarctic depths.

The story also gives background on various cataclysmic events the Elder Things witnessed while on Earth, including the arrival of Cthulhu and he and his city, R’lyeh, sinking into the sea, and wars with both the Mi-Go and the Great Race of Yith. Who are the Great Race of Yith, you ask? Well…

From late 1934-early 1935, Lovecraft wrote what would be his penultimate work of fiction, the novella The Shadow Out of Time. In it, Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee tells us of his nightmarish existence of losing huge chunks of time in trances, during which people tell him he’s acting unlike himself. Eventually, Peaslee begins realizing his vivid dreams that occur during these blackouts are actually happening, and that his consciousness has been transplanted into the body of a being with “immense rugose cones ten feet high, and with head and other organs attached to foot-thick, distensible limbs spreading from the apexes.” This, we learn, is the Great Race of Yith.

The Yithians have the technology to send their consciousnesses through space and time, trading places with various other races to learn through observation and communication. As horrific and invasive as this experience is for Peaslee, the Yithians are not the villains of the piece. The actual threat are flying, interstellar polyps which predated the Great Race on Earth, were defeated, and then returned in force. Peaslee knows that the Yithians will eventually return to Earth and take over the bodies of yet-to-evolve species, and he also knows that humanity will be wiped out by the polyps.

So, as with all of Lovecraft’s visions of terror, even stuff from outer space is worth staying away from. But it’s not like it would matter much anyway. We’re always doomed.

Images: Astounding Stories, INJ Culbard, The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He is the writer of 200 reviews of weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!

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New FIREFLY Novels Will Expand the Universe of Joss Whedon’s Cult Classic

This year marks the 15th anniversary of Firefly‘s untimely cancellation. But even a premature end couldn’t take the sky away from fans, as the series had a big screen revival with the film Serenity, and brand new comic book adventures from Dark Horse Comics. Now, Firefly is expanding again with three new novels from Titan Books.

Via Entertainment Weekly, series creator Joss Whedon will be a consulting editor on the new Firefly novels, and they will all be official stories within the canon of the franchise. The first novel, Firefly: Big Damn Hero, will be written by Nancy Holder. That book will launch the line in October with a story that finds Malcolm Reynolds, the captain of Serenity and its crew, kidnapped by “a bunch of embittered veteran Browncoats.” For anyone new to the franchise, Browncoats were the nicknames for the rebels who lost an intergalactic civil war with the Alliance. Mal and his right-hand woman, Zoe Alleyne, were also Browncoats.

James Lovegrove will pen the second novel, Firefly: The Magnificent Nine, which shifts the focus to Serenity’s resident enforcer, Jayne. In that tale, Jayne gets a call for help from “his ex, Temperance McCloud, that leads the Serenity crew to danger on a desert moon.” That story will hit book stores in May 2019. The third novel, Firefly: Generations, is coming in October 2019. In that book, author Tim Lebbon will put the spotlight on River Tam as the Serenity crew contemplates the “staggering salvage potential” of one of the lost Ark ships that brought humanity into the larger galaxy. However, the cost of that salvage may prove to be higher than the crew can imagine.

Are you excited about the further adventures of Mal and his crew? Keep things shiny and leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Images: Fox

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Love, Alexi #99: Bill Prady

Television writer, producer, and co-creator of The Big Bang Theory Bill Prady joins Alexi to talk the muppets, Studio 54, writing, nerd life, computer programing, self esteem, relationships, and MORE!

Follow @alexiwasser on instagram & twitter, send emails for Alexi to read on air: DearLoveAlexi@gmail.com!

What Will GAME OF THRONES’ Creators Do With STAR WARS?

Once they’re done with Westeros Game of Thrones‘ creators are heading off to the galaxy far, far away. Does that mean we should be terrified all of our favorite Star Wars characters will be killed off? On today’s Nerdist News Talks Back we discussed what their space adventure might look like, along with breaking down the new Deadpool 2 and Jessica Jones season two trailers.

Not hosting today was Jessica Chobot, who handed off the reigns to producer Derek Johnson who won their “will Solo get a Super Bowl teaser” bet. They were joined by Nerdist editors Amy Ratcliffe and Kyle Anderson, and they started with the new, Cable-interoducing Deadpool 2 trailer. What did we think of it? Was Cable worth the wait? What do make of our first look at Brolin in the role? And do we still dig Deadpool’s 4th-wall breaking meta-comedy, or are we over it?



We also got a trailer for the second season of Jessica Jones. Do we think the show can live up to its stellar first season? Is it even possible for them to top a villain like Kilgrave? With Disney no longer making new Marvel series for Netflix, would a bad season put the other shows at risk? And is it the strongest superhero show currently on TV?

Finally, Game of Thrones’ creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are set to write a whole new Star Wars trilogy after they finish up in the Seven Kingdoms. Does this mean Luke and Leia’s kiss will be a minor footnote in Star Wars incest history? With so many movies in the franchise already planned, what other filmmakers would we like to see get a shot?

As always Nerdist News Talks Back airs live every weekday at 1:00 p.m. PT on our YouTube and Alpha channels. Tune in and discuss the biggest pop culture news of the day, every day, especially because at this rate we always have another new Star Wars project to talk about.

But we still want to hear from you, so share your thoughts about today’s show in the comments below.

Images: HBO, Lucasfilm, ABC

DRUNK HISTORY Talks About STAR TREK’s Nichelle Nichols’ Awesomeness

If you’ve been a Star Trek fan for any length of time, chances are that by now you’ve heard Trek legend Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura on the original series and the first six feature films, tell one very specific story many times. This would be her famous anecdote of how she once almost quit the series, but was convinced otherwise by one Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It’s a pretty great story to be honest, but even if you’ve heard Nichols tell it before, you’ve never heard it told quite like this.



Thanks to io9, we’ve learned that the producers of Comedy Central’s Drunk History recently got comedian Ashley Nicole Black to get a wee bit tipsy and recount Nichelle’s historic run-in with Martin Luther King Jr., and not only did she tell the story of their historic chance encounter, but she also elaborated on Nichelle Nichol’s role in making sure the first ever interracial kiss made it on the air. And yes, that’s Raven Symone as Nichols, and Jaleel White from Family Matters as Dr.King.

Ashley Nicole Black even gets into Nichelle Nichol’s huge contribution to the real space program, where she was recruited by NASA to lead a recruitment program for women and minorities to become astronauts. Among these astronauts were famous names like Sally Ride, the first woman in space, Guion Bluford, the first African-American man in space, and Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space. Getting to be a vital part of the crew of the Enterprise is cool, but helping recruit all these people into NASA? What a mic-drop on an amazing career. “Hailing frequencies closed” indeed.

Were you aware of Nichelle Nichol’s amazing contributions to promoting civil rights? Give us your thoughts down below in the comments.

Images: CBS 

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Should There Be a Law Making Tide Pods Look Less “Edible”?

If you’re reading this and operating a computer or smart device all by yourself, we at Nerdist really, really hope you know that laundry detergent is poisonous when ingested, and not a food. If everything that smelled nice and came in bright colors could be eaten, there’d be no candles left in the world. Or Moss Man action figures.

But thanks to the next insane generation of would-be Johnny Knoxvilles on YouTube, some folks out there have made eating Tide Pods a thing. Now, sure, most of us look at that and remember all the times YouTubers would eat crazy hot peppers, or chug entire bottles of liquor, and generally end up in extreme pain and suffering as a result. But in New York, people are starting to say there oughta be a law. Via The Verge, branded videos from Rob Gronkowski are clearly not satisfying assemblywoman Aravella Simotas and state Sen. Brad Hoylman, who want a bill mandating that the company “make pods less visually appealing to children, teens, and adults with dementia by requiring manufacturers to change the design of laundry detergent packets to a uniform color. In addition, you and other manufacturers must use a stronger bittering agent to prevent ingestion of pods, reduce their pleasant smell, and make them feel more firm.”

There is precedent for this: stove gas has a detectable odor because that odor has been added for your safety, to make leaks more evident. There is also precedent for not doing it: antifreeze looks like Gatorade, tastes sweet (I’m told), and has led to many a pet death over the years. Maybe adding a powder element like Cascade dish-washing packs have might be off-putting enough, given that crazy YouTubers have already done a cinnamon challenge that might make all that powder seem extra gag-worthy. But adding something that might make laundry smell bitter would be a no-go.

Or…here’s a radical thought…maybe just keep that detergent on a high shelf away from children and elderly dementia patients. And never do something just because a YouTuber dares you to. I mean, I’m asking you right now if you have thoughts on this issue to leave them in comments, but it is purely a suggestion. Make up your own informed mind.

Image: Tide

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Marvel’s YOU ARE DEADPOOL Miniseries Turns a Comic Into a Game

Deadpool‘s fourth wall breaking insanity has helped transform him into one of Marvel’s most popular characters. The Merc with a Mouth is famously unpredictable, and now there’s a new voice in his head that’s guiding his actions: yours. Marvel’s new five-issue miniseries, You Are Deadpool, is not only a comic, it’s a series of stand-alone RPG adventures that invite readers to take control of Wade Wilson and experience the Marvel Universe from his unique perspective. As you can see below, the comic also works as a tutorial for the game.

Al Ewing is the writer of this miniseries, with artists Salva Espin and Paco Diaz rotating on each issue. While Marvel has produced comics that tied into games, You Are Deadpool is the first time the publisher has attempted a series like this. It resembles a Choose Your Own Adventure story, with elements inspired by single-player RPGs like Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, and Diceman.

Each issue will be a self-contained story with outcomes dictated by the choices made by the players, their accumulated scores, and the luck of the dice as they roll to victory or defeat. There are some Deadpool-inspired dice in the issue itself, but that’s just a bit of trolling from the comic. You should probably use real dice if you want the full effect.

While plot details are scarce at this time, Deadpool will encounter other Marvel heroes in this series, including Hulk, Ghost Rider, and Daredevil. But if the game is anything like Deadpool’s other adventures then only he will realize that his life has literally become a game for your amusement. Additionally, Marvel promises that there will be “unique minigames about bar fights, beat poetry, and sneaking through levels.” The following page demonstrates the combat system, as former Deadpool writer Kieron Gillen has a chance to use his sandwich as a deadly weapon.

You Are Deadpool #1 will be released on Wednesday, May 2, with subsequent issues released on a weekly basis.

What do you think about You Are Deadpool? Roll for initiative and share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Images: Marvel Comics

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13 Easter Eggs We Found in the New DEADPOOL 2 Trailer

Deadpool 2 may not have an official name, but the first trailer for “Untitled Deadpool Sequel” has finally arrived. The highly anticipated preview gave fans their first glimpse of Josh Brolin as Cable, as well as some delightfully subversive digs at other Marvel movies and even Deadpool’s new Disney overlords. This trailer was more loaded than Deadpool’s chimichanga, pun totally intended. That’s why today’s Nerdist News is unpacking the 13 Easter eggs we found in the new footage.

Join host and cybernetic mutant from the future, Jessica Chobot, as she shows us how the trailer threw shade on everything from Henry Cavill’s Justice League mustache removal to Brolin’s moonlighting comic book gig as Thanos for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The unfinished CGI of Cable’s arm led to the mustache joke, while Ryan Reynolds‘ merc with a mouth quoted Thanos’ single line of dialogue from Avengers: Age of Ultron. Later, Deadpool referenced Infinity War when he said that he had “the stones to help you.”

It’s pretty hard to miss the video’s Toy Story parody, but you may not have noticed that Wade Wilson wrote his name on his action figures as well. If you watch the rest of the video closely, you’ll see Cable unleash his limited form of telekinesis, as well as witness Domino make her official debut as Deadpool and his new frenemies go up against the DMC, which may stand for the Department of Mutant Control. But the biggest standout moment here was the apparent first look a mutant team that might be X-Force.

All of these Easter eggs came from a trailer that was under three minutes. How many could the finished film have? We’ll have to wait until May 18 to find out.

What’s your favorite Easter egg from the Deadpool 2 trailer? Let’s discuss in the comment section below!

Images: 20th Century Fox

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