You know what NFL? You’ve lost me forever. I never cared about your “sport” anyway. I sort of cared about Madden because it at least helped sell video game systems during the holiday seasons. But now, you’ve gone too far. Yesterday, the NFL announced they’d be banning “nonstandard/overbuilt” facemasks.

This includes Oakland Raiders defensive end Justin Tuck’s mask that resembled that of Shredder from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now I don’t know who that is but damn them for not allowing a Shredder mask. They have also announced that the similar Bane styled masks will also be a part of this ban.

Now what is funny is the reason for the ban: because they don’t live up to NFL safety standards. The group of gargantuan men who are doing everything they can to throw their body weight on top of each other as fast as possible is worried about safety? Meanwhile hockey lets people play with a rubber puck flying at their face with no protection. Makes a lot of sense.

Well now I have given up on ever giving football a shot. The best chance they have is stepping their game up and creating a hybrid of the XFL and whatever the heck futuristic version of the game that they play in Starship Troopers and when they do it’s Team Shredder vs. Team Bane vs. Team Casey Jones vs. Team Mysterio.

Until then, I say “Good day” to the NFL.

About a year ago, crowdfunding was the big buzz word. If you had talent but wanted to remain independent or you just weren’t big enough to make it to the desk of a major studio, developer, publisher or manufacturer, you would head to Kickstarter (or maybe Indiegogo) and put a call out to your audience and see what they could do to help get your project going.

Early on, there were some huge successes with millions of dollars going into funding. But then, you couldn’t escape it. If you were an entertainment writer of any kind be it movie, music or gaming, your email box didn’t go a week without hearing about “the next big thing… that just needs crowdfunding” and quickly that frequency has continued to increase.

If somehow it was possible to ensure that the projects being put on Kickstarter and then publicized everywhere were of a certain quality, this wouldn’t be an issue. But the more I hear about and see the bad ones, the less likely I am to check out the good ones. Now instead of going and browsing Kickstarter on my own, I only head over if someone has directly recommended one to me and that has to be someone I trust the opinion of.

This is especially evident in the gaming category. You have one or two higher profile titles and everything else is derivative and unoriginal fluff.

When did “Spoilers!” become a thing? It used to be understood that when a movie was in the theater you didn’t talk about the ending in a public place. It was also understood that if an episode of a TV show ran, it would be fair game at the water cooler the next day. But then habits changed.

Books became movies. Comics were sold as trades. TV could be DVR’ed or sold as a full season at a reasonable price. And then things changed and the way people behaved changed with it. And M. Night Shyamalan made Bruce Willis a ghost. (Oh, calm down! The title even read spoilers!)

Unfortunately, few things are kept sacred and spoiler free. Right now that seems limited to Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead comics. Even with Twitter pages and hashtags galore, these are still people who have been able to avoid what happens in season 3, episode 9 of Game of Thrones on HBO. Similarly, I was able to make it to the trade released six months after issue #100 of The Walking Dead without finding out the issue’s pivotal plot point.

But that seems to be where it ends. So the question becomes when is it safe to talk about what you’ve seen, heard or read?

After opening in select theaters in LA, NY, and San Francisco, director Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing will open nationwide on Friday, June 21. We have already reviewed the film but just in case that wasn’t enough to convince you to seek out this delightful adaptation, here are five reasons Much Ado is worth your time and money.

1. You’ll understand Shakespeare (finally). If you are hesitating about Much Ado because you are concerned you will not keep up with the Bard’s prose, you are not alone. Dogberry himself (Nathan Fillion) at first refused the project and then tried to back out of it for this very reason. But then Fillion, like all of the other players, immersed himself in the language, the setting, and the character.

The cast did the hard work of studying the text and translating it so you don’t have to. They do an excellent job of adding movement and clarity to Shakespeare’s prose so even if you don’t know what someone is saying, you know what they mean.

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy, people have been looking for someone, or something, to blame. Back in January, I wrote an editorial in response to the NRA trying to place blame on the video game industry for the violence that occurred in Newtown, CT. In it, I didn’t try to place blame unfairly because at that point, and still today, I don’t know all the facts about the case, nor do I claim to be an expert in it.

What I do know, though, is the old school mentality of placing blame and trying to pass a law to put a quick fix on something isn’t the way to solve the greater problem. After a recent report claiming that the Sandy Hook shooter was a “deranged gamer”, United States senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) stated that it is the entertainment industry’s responsibility to tone down the levels of “obscene violence” in their games.

The idea for this editorial came shortly after catching up on Raw on my DVR. Despite being in the era where Raw has turned from a two-hour, weekly Lifetime movie for men into a three-hour Greek epic with Tout™ ads I’ve come to a realization: It’s cool to watch pro wrestling again.

No matter what “era” of wrestling you’re a fan of, there are a few recognizable details that pro wrestling needs to push it from relative obscurity to pop culture significance: fresh faces, exciting action, old favorites, and a household name to tie it all together. And only recently have the stars aligned to provide all four to the WWE Universe.

Those of us old enough to remember the Hulkamania era sometimes talk about the intervening years as if it were the Great War. And in some respects, it was. Once Vince McMahon’s Hulkamania bubble burst, it was on to the lean years of the New Generation. Stricter federal regulations and drug testing meant that lean was taken in the literal sense. The biggest stars of that era were either smaller, more technical workers (Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels) or naturally big stars (The Undertaker, Diesel).

As of the time of this writing it is still January, 2013 and all we have seen from Zack Snyder’s Superman film is a couple of teasers and a couple of posters. Why then, you ponder, am I already dismissing the film as a misstep from the Brothers Warner?

I am ready to cast off hopeful anticipation of this film because yesterday the final nail in the coffin was resoundingly hammered in. David S. Goyer spoke to Empire Magazine and had this to say:

“We’re approaching Superman as if it weren’t a comic book movie as if it were real…  I adore the Donner films. Absolutely adore them. It just struck me that there was an idealist quality to them that may or may not work with today’s audience. It just struck me that if Superman really existed in the world, first of all this story would be a story about first contact. He’s an alien. You can easily imagine a scenario in which we’d be doing a film like E.T., as opposed to him running around in tights. If the world found out he existed, it would be the biggest thing that ever happened in human history.”

Soak that in boys and girls, the most iconic comic book character of all time is going to be presented (once again) as if he were not a comic book character starring in a comic book movie.

Since the events of Sandy Hook in Newtown, CT, the argument about violence in games and the effect it has on children has been reignited. Recently, Vice President Joe Biden spoke to everyone from gun owners to experts in the entertainment and gaming industries to try and find ways to prevent another tragedy like Sandy Hook from happening. And when a call came for a ban on assault weapons, the NRA responded by trying to shift the blame solely to the media, including the gaming industry, since the offender was reported to have played “violent video games.”

Obviously, there are many issues that contributed to the tragedy at Sandy Hook and the events that led to it. I cannot even begin to fully explain them all and to try would be socially irresponsible on my part. However, there there are some aspects of it, and the resulting controversy, I feel I need to address.

It’s an argument that has plagued gaming since the first time a player was able to pull out a weapon and attack someone else. No one ever worried about Mario jumping on the heads of turtles or Donkey Kong kidnapping a woman and defending himself with barrels. But by the time characters began looking like real people and players had the ability to whip out a gun and shoot Nazis in Wolfenstein or possessed marines in Doom, violence in video games has be criticized by those outside the industry. Now, the argument against it comes from within by an incredibly respected member of the community.

Warren Spector was recently quoted saying, “The ultraviolence has to stop.” This doesn’t come as a huge surprise that he would be an opponent of violence in gaming as Spector left Eidos in the mid-2000’s because of the level of violence he saw in certain games being created by his studio.

Spector continued, “We have to stop loving it…I just don’t believe in the effects argument at all, but I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it’s in bad taste. Ultimately, I think it will cause us trouble.”

Welcome to the first of our occasional “Best Of” series here at The Flickcast. In this series we look back at some of our favorite articles, videos, posts, reviews and more from the site’s last few years. This time it’s Matt Raub’s infamous rant against hot chicks who pander to nerds.

We’re sure you’ll agree it’s a fun read and just as relevant as the day it was first published. Enjoy.

Since the creation of The Flickcast, there has rarely been a time or topic that I’ve felt strongly enough about to write an editorial rant, until now. There is a new fad swooping through the brains of up and coming actresses who feel like they need to close in on a wide and constantly sought after demographic. I’m talking, of course, about the close group of people across the globe who can be referred to as “nerds.”

Back in the day (and by “the day” I mean when Lord of The Rings were just books that nobody talked about and the closest thing we had to a superhero movie was Christopher Reeve wearing guyliner and blue tights) the concept of a “nerd” was someone with awkward social skills who took solace in the worlds of science fiction or fantasy.

Today, the line has obviously been blurred between what’s considered “cool” and what’s considered “nerdy.” Some of the biggest movies of the year are one’s involving Orcs or robots from space. That’s all fine and dandy, but enjoying these things isn’t what makes you a “nerd.”