Mega Ran on The Soul Man

January 21, 2020January 22, 2020 MegaRan

My relationship with professional wrestling is very complicated at best. I watched my first wrestling match sometime around 1983, and the larger than life characters were literal comic books that had exploded in front of me. Like most other kids in the ’80s, I wanted more. I begged my mom to buy me wrestling magazines, toys, and watched every Saturday morning.

I loved guys like Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage, but I remember my eyes widening every time there was a Black or Brown face on my screen. So naturally I had an affinity for characters like The Junkyard Dog, Koko B Ware. But what really turned me on to wrestling was a tag team called The Soul Patrol.

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Music, Nerdcore9 Comments

What’s Beef for $1,000? Alex Trebek vs. Nerdcore

October 18, 2016January 21, 2020 MegaRan

It’s been an interesting 24 hours, to say the least.

On Wednesday evening while on tour, I got a few tweets linking me to an episode of Jeopardy!

I not only learned that day that the show was still on the air, but that Alex Trebek had taken a really small poke at the genre of music in which I make my living: Nerdcore Hip-Hop.

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Sports, Television5 Comments

The Show of Shows: Being at Wrestlemania 31

March 31, 2015April 1, 2015 MegaRan

The Granddaddy of them all. Wrestlemania.

I’ll start this off by stating how special this year’s ‘Mania was for me, mainly because my favorite wrestler ever, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, had such a huge imprint on the event.

Wrestlemania IV in 1988 took place in Atlantic City, NJ, not even 90 minutes from my childhood home in Philadelphia. We had plans to attend, but tickets were sold out, so the Spectrum — the local basketball stadium — had decided to open the stadium up and broadcast Wrestlemania on the JumboTron for a small fee. I was so excited, I had to go. My mother agreed and took my cousin Howie and me to South Philly for my first Wrestlemania moment. I bought a Macho Man poster, a foam finger, and a program.

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Conventions, Nerdcore

The Mega Ran Comic Con 2014 Experience Was Epic

July 29, 2014March 31, 2015 MegaRan

Originally posted at Real Entertainment News

Now, I have been lucky enough to attend San Diego Comic-Con since 2007. I’ve seen this event, and nerd culture in general, undergo some huge changes since then. In 2007, the biggest news was the premiere of Iron Man, which has gone on to spawn three movies and a spinoff, The Avengers, which is now the highest grossing [comic book superhero] film EVER. Nowadays, it’s no big deal to bring up a comic book movie, or a video game, in discussion, even in a professional setting. People complain about this explosion of comic and game culture, but I can’t say it’s a bad thing, at least not yet.

Anyway, this is Mega Ran’s Comic Con 2014 experience.

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Music, Nerdcore, Origins1 Comment

Introducing the NPC Collective

January 28, 2014March 31, 2015 MegaRan

In gaming culture, an NPC (non-player character) is often a bit player in the overall story — he or she is there for no reason except to get the main character to their goal. Their backstory is never told.

Much like an NPC, people of color who desire to create music or art or think differently than their counterparts are often discouraged and forced to keep those thoughts and ideas to themselves. And to play the background.

I had an idea a while back to create a collective of like-minded, forward thinking creatives who have been through a lot of the same things I had as a person of color who enjoyed nerdy things as a child an as an adult.

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