Going to Comic-Con in San Diego is a commitment. It’s not just the travel, the hotels, the Lyfts and Ubers, the food, and the drinks (…oh so many drinks), it’s much more. The floor of SDCC is the ultimate test of maintaining your composure and measuring your self-restraint.

And many, if not all of us, fail. New vinyl collectibles, classic non-sports trading cards, prints, sketches, autographed memorabilia, comics, nostalgia filled unpackaged toys, trades, meet & greets are just the start of the ways that your wallet can bottom out within just a few hours if you aren’t careful.

I, like many, try to go down with a plan on what I will be purchasing. As a Comic-Con veteran of nine SDCC’s (eight of them being consecutive), what I look for in advance is the list of the exclusives. This gives a good baseline for what will most likely be purchased.

Last month right before Comic-Con, Loot Crate released one of their best crates with a phenomenal Villains crate that included a totally original and exclusive Joki shirt alongside, amongst other things, a pair of Deadpool socks. It was going to be pretty hard to follow that up. But who better to show up the Villains than… the Heroes.

This month WallE and JC put their physical prowess to the test in an effort to capture a bunch of items based off of some of their favorite childhood heroes along with an exclusive Pop made just for Loot Crate. As some of you have seen in past crates, WallE and JC have an addiction for the little guys and battling over an exclusive one could possibly end their friendship and Whiskey & Waffles as we know it.

After taking a week off, we’re back with an all-new episode of The Flickcast. We’ll try not to take any more time off, but no promises. Hey, we have lives too.

Anyway, on this week’s show, Chris and Joe discuss and debate The Expendables 3, the upcoming HBO series Westworld, the look of the new stormtroopers (and  more) from Star Wars: Episode VII, TV series like The Last Ship, The Strain and Outlander and yes, even the relative merits of Jedi facial hair. Of course, that’s not all they talk about. There’s also the usual “more.”

Picks this week include Chris’ pick of the FX series The Bridge and Joe’s pick of Portland hot spot Pip’s Original Donuts.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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That whole “getting back on track” thing we were harping about a couple weeks ago? Yeah, that didn’t work out so well. We’re trying, believe us.

But sometimes, things don’t work out as planned. Until, of course, they do. That’s right, here’s a brand new episode of The Flickcast for your listening pleasure.

As usual, this week Chris and Joe take on some new topics and some old ones. Some of these include new trailers for The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men: Days of Future Past, more casting news from the world of movies and TV, The Walking Dead finale, the awesomeness of Magnum, P.I. and a whole lot more.

Just listen. You’ll enjoy it.

This week’s picks include Chris’ pick of the HBO series Game of Thrones and Joe’s pick of the bittorrent software BitTorrent Sync for Mac, PC, iOS and Android.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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I feel the same way as most of the people reading this. You’re here because you’re a late 20s to early 40s male who is scared that Michael Bay is going to ruin something else from your childhood. After the last two Transformers films, I can understand it. But think back to the first Transformers movie. While there were certainly some decisions I’d disagree with, like Optimus Prime having a mouth, for the most part Bay did a good job with it.

Looking at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles teaser released yesterday (and seen below), the internet have fallen into one of three camps. The minority seems to be wholly optimistic of the project.

For now, we’ll call these the blissfully ignorant be it that they have absolutely no taste at all or they have never seen what Michael Bay can do to a franchise when left unchecked or had to watch Megan Fox attempt to act. Then there is the grouping I am currently in which is okay with the current trailer, excited about the positive possibilities but is still have trepidations about getting our hopes up too high because we know that never ends well when it comes to Michael Bay.

It’s that time again, folks. That’s right, a brand new episode of The Flickcast is here and once again it’s yours for the taking. Still for free.

Of course, Chris and Joe are back and ready to rock and roll with a whole slew of new and recurring topics. Some of these topics include the new photos released from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Michael Bay’s filmmaking prowess, some X-Men: Days of Future Past magazine covers, the amazingness of Hugh Jackman, the Syfy series Helix, Thor 3 and Captain America 3, the imminent return of The Walking Dead and the fact that everything sucks, at least if you believe people on the Interwebs.

There’s also the ever-present more. And, 20% more sincerity this week. So yeah, there’s that.

This week’s picks include Chris’ pick of the HBO series True Detective and Joe’s pick of the XBMC software for the Rasberry Pi. Nerd, amiright?

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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As mentioned before, the geek lifestyle isn’t a cheap one. Even when we find things we like that aren’t individually expensive, we end up buying enough of them at once so it ends up costing us more than we would have wanted in the first place on one single larger purchase. That’s the danger of the impulse buy.

It is easier to mentally justify to ourselves a spend if we get more items out of it, even if it costs more than what we wanted to spend because we as geeks value both quality AND quantity. As long as something isn’t terrible or poorly made, it is good enough for us. And if we can get a bunch of them on the cheap, we want them all.

This week on Whiskey & Waffles, WallE and I address our recent disaster of impulse buying with Mash’Ems. After WallE had already begun purchasing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, I got pulled into the mix too which resulted in the blind box purchase of some TMNT, Power Rangers Samurai, WWE and Marvel Mash’Ems.

If you aren’t familiar with Mash’Ems, they are little oversized heads and shrunken bodies (except in the Marvel series which is just heads). They are soft and squishy and perfect to have on your desk as a miniature stress ball just in case.

When I was younger, like most kids, I had Michelangelo pegged as my favorite Ninja Turtle. He was the fun one, the cool one, the one that everyone wanted to be. But as I matured (as mature as you can get when still being a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that is), I began to lean more and more towards Leonardo.

Of the four brothers he is the one who had to balance a father’s expectations along with brothers who were either immature, socially outcast or rebellious. He also has the most badass of any of the weapons.

In this new darker TMNT game coming to the PlayStation Network and XBLA this summer, Leonardo may very well be the first turtle I choose to be. In the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game his swords were second only to Donatello’s bo for range and damage and later iterations put in him the role as team leader amongst his band of brothers.

If you’re close to my age, one of your favorite video game memories is most likely being in the arcade playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game in all its side scrolling, beat-em-up glory. With the upcoming downloadable title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, we may get to relive our past glory while a whole new generation gets to experience it for the first time (without pumping the arcade machine full of $27 in quarters.

In the latest trailer, we get to take a look at Michelangelo in action. The first thing you’ll notice is that the combat doesn’t resemble that of a simple brawler as the moves done by Mikey more closely mimic that of the Batman: Arkham franchise. Combat looks to have a dynamic feel, and though there are bound to be some canned animations (like Mikey’s head spin) it appears as though there will be a plethora of different moves happening during a fight as opposed to a few basic swinging animations from the classic arcade series.

If you were born after 1980, the names Leonardo, Donatello, Rafael and Michelangelo aren’t just a bunch of names you ignored in fine arts class. For almost three decades, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been a part of the lives of so many different generations with some of their iterations being better than others and their history in video games is no exception.

While the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is renowned as being one of the most difficult games on the NES (even though its key audience was kids), the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles four player arcade cabinet is one that hordes of us pushed quarter after quarter into and did so happily.

With the most recent version of TMNT hitting big on Nickelodeon and a Michael Bay (shudders…) feature film in the works, it’s no surprise that a new game would be making its way to consoles. Thankfully it isn’t based off the Michael Bay film but instead off the Nickelodeon franchise in TMNT: Out of the Shadows.