It's actually used by people from all walks of life to share snapshots from their more memorable trips and adventures. For instance, last weekend's FanExpoDallas filled the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center with a wide assortment of movie and film stars, memorabilia and costumed fans to celebrate all the things that geeks worship like the druids worshipped Amaethon, the god of agriculture and animal husbandry.
We combed through the farthest corners of the social media community for the most interesting photos from the convention.
Actor Zachary Levi, best known these days as the adult, superhero counterpart of young Billy Batson in Shazam!, captured this photo of a fan dressed in "some next level cosplay" of the imagined version of another superhero named Shazam. Of course, this "Shazam" refers to the song identifying app that takes all the fun out of that question "What's the name of this song again?"
Shazam-Man may sound like a made-up character for the basis of a really sweet costume idea but the superhero actually has an interesting origin story. The music-identifying superhero came to life when an angry driver crashed his car into a tanker of nuclear waste while yelling at his phone to not play Adam Levine's music ever again. The impact of the crash caused the driver's finger to smash through the phone right over his Shazam app on his home page. The nuclear mutation gave him the power to tell people the horrible music they are listening to and prevent them from ever listening to them again.
There's something magical about seeing Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd together in the same frame whether it's on the big screen or the glow of a picture on a cell phone. Both made an appearance at the FanExpo so it's not a surprise to see them together in the same room.
They just have so many years of great chemistry together that seeing them reunited in the wild feels like you're watching the beginning of a re-teaming of a powerful superhuman duo, even if a fourth Back to the Future never happens. Plus, they are the two nicest people in the Hollywood machine, at least until Ron Howard figures out a way to clone Tom Hanks.
A highly detailed statue of Godzilla and a guy in a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man suit aren't terribly eye-catching on their own thanks to the microscopic attention span created by social media. It's the pairing that makes this notable.
Just imagine for one second if Hollywood actually listened to what the fans wanted to see on the big screen and pit Japan's most feared reptile and the evil concoction that just popped out of Ray Stanz's head at the end of Ghostbusters in a giant monster fighting movie. Sure, you might think that Godzilla could bite through Stay Puft's gooey torso like a burnt marshmallow, but this is more than 40 years after Stay Puft's first appearance on screen, meaning he's gone well past his expiration date. So now Godzilla must protect the Earth's populace from the world's largest expired dessert treat, harder than calculus for a Kardashian.
Actor Michael Rosenbaum is probably the biggest cutup on the set of every movie and TV show he's ever shot, starting with his memorable run on The CW's Smallville as mini Lex Luthor. He's also a very talented and funny stand-up comic who can hold a room's attention using more than his star power.
So it was no big surprise when we found this hilarious video of Rosenbaum interviewing a young "Anthony Michael Hall" at the FanExpo. (I'm sure if I was there, he'd interview me as a down-on-her-luck k.d. Lang. Scroll down below to my headshot and prepare to laugh at the thoughts that follow).
We're not exactly sure what was going on in this photo posted on the FanExpo's official Instagram account and we should probably keep it that way.
At first, our reporter's instincts kicked in and told us to find a source who could explain why a deranged horse-headed man was doing his impression of a Southern belle cooling herself on the porch of her antebellum home. Then we imagined the nightmares that would soon follow if we dared to unfold the horrific layers of this macabre mystery. We don't need another ax-wielding psycho in a horse mask waking us up at 3 a.m., thank you very much.
Cons have more than the usual share of cosplay costumes and at a place like FanExpo, you're bound to run into something that will make you wonder how much time, money and access to movie-grade materials it took to make such an impressive getup.
This costume of Orisa, a tank hero from the Overwatch video game, looks like it jumped off the screen and into our four dimension universe. It's so good that we're glad someone took this picture and didn't see it in person because we'd be in fear of getting fragged.
This photo of (second from left) James Wallace, the creative director for the Alamo Drafthouse DFW, is kind of a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, it's cool that he got to take such an awesomely posed photo with the cast of the insanely great YouTube series Cobra-Kai starring the original cast from the first Karate Kid movie including (from left to right) William Zabka, Ralph Macchio and Martin Kove. On the other, we really hate that Wallace gets to meet and take photos with famous people like these while we're only allowed to experience such moments from afar. You can be happy for him if you want.
