NERDS AROUND TOWN

Nerds Around Town: Crawfish, Mulan and what's next for HBO?

May 20, 2019, 4:45 am

ART BY JESUS RODRIGUEZ

Born with a comic book in one hand and a remote control in the other, Cory DLG is the talent of Conroe's very own Nerd Thug Radio, Sports and Wrestling. Check out the podcast replay of the FM radio show at www.nerdthugradio.com!

Hey Nerds!

It's a new week and there's challenges to overcome and opportunities to seize. Don't waste your time and your chances by letting the week slip away.

GOOD DEED OF THE DAY

I've found one this week, a beautiful and wonderful charity event. It's an ALL YOU CAN EAT Crawfish boil, that's right! It's the Light of the Phoenix Charity All You Can Eat Crawfish Boil, and also there's a waterslide and bounce house. Boom! Get pumped, $25 if you get your tickets early. $30 at the door, how are you not excited? #NerdsUnite

House Mouse

As Disney continues to remake movie after animated movie into live action versions, and make another large fortune, they're starting to run out of the cool movies like Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast (don't judge, it was a great movie, the fight between Gaston and Beast was awesome) they move on to movies like Mulan. Mulan was a big story, with tons of characters and big set pieces because it's about a war in China. So now it's getting a $300 million dollar budget to be remade, which is a lot of money. I'm curious if China will be excited about this movie coming out and if it will be one of the 27 American films released in China the year it comes out. Which will be key to them making the money they need to make in order for Mulan to be a success. I'm curious how it all turns out.

House Minecraft

The game Minecraft, which you may not know about but your kid probably knows it all to well has sold over 175 million copies over the last ten years. That is an insane amount of copies of a game, now granted there may be some overlap, like someone who has bought it for multiple platforms or devices or accounts, but still, that's a lot of copies. This helps underline just the sheer size of the video game market and world. It's weird to think just how many people have gotten into gaming and how many people have slowly gotten involved in the whole industry to just grow it to this point. The sheer growth of this whole industry is amazing and it is hard to imagine how many people are represented by that number but it's almost immeasurable.

House Box Office

Game of Thrones has ended. No spoilers here directly but the conversation for HBO is what's next? Westworld had a great debut trailer, Watchmen looks like it's going to try and do something interesting, and the new His Dark Matters which I think is a Golden Compass based property are all coming up. Are they enough to keep people entertained and attached to a $15 dollar a month subscription for a bunch of not as great as Game of Thrones shows? I don't know, and honestly I don't think anyone else does either. I bet there's a bunch of very nervous suit wearing executives who are going to have their eyes on the numbers for the next month or two, waiting to see which way the numbers go. If I were a betting man, I would bet strongly that the numbers take a dip, somewhere in the realm of less than 20% but more than 10% because I think for every ten people I know at least one will cancel their HBO but I don't think it'll be up to that one in five range. I don't see a mass exodus but I bet in the next investor call for whomever owns HBO someone utters the phrase, "post Game of Thrones numbers are shaky."

Not That You Asked

This weekend is the retailer summit at in Vegas for the comic book world. For those who don't know the simple version is this, all the comic book companies are doing their own thing, there's only one national distributor and no one likes working with them and the reality is the shops suffer for all this craziness. So this annual event is a big deal because the publishers, the distributor and the shop owners are all in one place all talking at the same time and changing nothing. But cool stories always leak out of this event, so that's a plus.

I'm going to jump out and wish you guys a great Monday and remind everyone to be kind to each other and try a little harder to have a great day! I'm coming back Tuesday and we'll be bringing more good times your way. Feel free to check out my digital short story The Wilson House or buy a shirt from Side Hustle Ts where some proceeds help fight cancer or listen to Nerd Thug Radio or support our Patreon Page. Thoughts, complaints, events and comments can be sent to corydlg@gmail.com.

Listen Live

FALCON POINTS

Is another Houston star about to be shown the door?

Correa could be on his way out. Composite image by Jack Brame.

It has not been the best of times to be a star athlete in Houston. In the last year, Jadeveon Clowney and DeAndre Hopkins were solid off for a warm bucket of spit. George Springer won't be back. James Harden and Russell Westbrook rumors are rampant. J.J. Watt might be moving on as well.

Now, reports are the Astros are listening to offers for Carlos Correa.

Predictably, Astros fans are livid. And if it's true, they should be concerned about the bigger picture.

Trading Correa makes sense - if you have no plans on keeping him after next season, as was clearly the case with Springer. If the Astros can get a haul and replenish the farm system, it would be the right move, especially considering Correa's injury history.

But in the long run, it does not bode well for the direction of the team. All recent indications are that the Astros are going cheap.

They would still be a competitive team without Correa, but it would be yet another indication their World Series window has closed. Alex Bregman could slide over to shortstop, but who would play third? And they only have one starting outfielder on the roster as it is. Putting together a competitive lineup around Bregman, Jose Altuve, Kyle Tucker, Yuli Gurriel and Yordan Alvarez would still be possible, but if the Astros aren't going to spend money, that could be problematic.

The writing was probably on the wall when the team hired James Click as GM from the notoriously frugal Tampa Bay organization. The good news is the Rays have been successful. But this is a new direction for a team that was not afraid to spend big money to make runs at the World Series.

If they lose Correa, they lose a team leader, one of the few players who embraced the villain role in the wake of the cheating controversy and was not afraid to speak out. But he has never lived up to his MVP potential, has battled injuries and will command big dollars on the open market. He is still young enough to become that kind of player, and someone will gamble big money that he will.

Sadly, if this rumor is true, it won't be the Astros.

SPORTSMAP EMAILS ARE AWESOME