While the Escapist is largely a gaming site, Elizabeth Grunewald is tasked with filling out its content with insightful commentary on other forms of media. From film to television to books, she provides on-point informative, and often opinionated articles a vast number of subjects.

She’ll be calling in to extend some of her experience to the crew of Desert Bus, so tune in at 4pm to catch her call.

If you have any questions for Elizabeth, be sure to leave them in the comments of this post so we can address them on-air.

Chances are, if you own a modern video game system, you’ve played or at least been exposed to a game overseen by this man: if not, then certainly one made on his engine. Mike Capps is the president of Epic games, creators of the Unreal series, the Gears of War series, Shadow Complex, and the forthcoming Bulletstorm and Infinity Blade.

Mike will be joining us to wish us well on our live boradcast today at noon, so be sure to tune in! Also, if you have any questions you’d like us to ask Mike, send them along and we’ll try to include them in the call.

Sponsor Showcase : THQ Entertainment

Yet another new sponsor this year is THQ! They donated not one, but two super epic prize packs of Wii and DS games. We’re not talking about just a few games, but twelve (12!) Wii games in one package! We’d direct you our auctions page, but we were so excited about the prizes we already gave them away!

Thank you to THQ for their generous prize donations! Please visit them online at http://www.thq.com/us.

Catching up, yes: we beat 115k as well, thanks to the amazing power of Matt’s animal magnetism. Possibly the closest anyone’s come to literally prostituting themselves for the children, but still totally worth it!

Sorry that these are gettign less frequent, even as doantions continue to increase: we’ve been very busy on camera, hustling for donations! I’ll attempt to do these with greater promptness.

Last year, we were approached by a gentleman named Michael Lunsford, who offered to make a poster chronicling that year’s Desert Bus, to be put up for auction near the conclusion of the event. While we normally don’t accept late donations of art and such for the craft-a-long, we made an exception for Mike based on the incredible quality of the draft he submitted.

The final product was well worth a little rules bending.

This year, Mike’s been hard at work again, producing a poster based on this year’s events. You may have seen us ooing and ahing over the drafts as he’s emailed them to us, and he’s now produced a near-final version, which should very closely resemble the final product. We’ll be auctioning the finished poster near the end of the event, so stay tuned!

For more of Michael Lunsford’s work, also check out his webcomic, Supernormal Step.

Here is what we have for your bidding pleasure this evening.

Ramona Flowers bag – olive w/ blue star

This incredibly awesome too-cool-for-words bag has a large pocket inside for a netbook or Kindle, and smaller pockets for a phone, laptop mouse, DS, pens, laminated list of your evil exes, etc.? Stars on both sides.? Giant hammer not included.

A note from the crafter: “I’ve been sewing for many years, but this is the first handbag pattern I’ve ever created.? I made these after I read the first few Scott Pilgrim books, and knew that just carrying one around would make me feel like a badass.? (I was right.)”

Eric Pato – Desert Bus Poster

This is a Desert Bus 3 memorial poster, a monument to the events and happy/exciting/surreal moments of last year’s run. Depicted or represented in the poster are Rosco, Paul, Graham, Tim, Matt, Bill, Morgan, Tally, Alex, Kathleen, James, Ken Steacy, Yahtzee, Tycho, Gabe, The Moon Base, Octopimp, Buses and, hidden in one of the two versions, Woody Tondorf fighting a group of school children.

Eric Pato is a lifelong doodler, writer and general creative type, currently enrolled in USC’s Grad Animation program. In total, the two versions of this poster took him 11 months of work (on and off), and approximately 300 hours. That’s ART, people!

This is the Indiana Jones colours version of the poster.

Creepy Doll #31 with holiday accessories

The Creepy Doll is back! Here is the 31st and final Creepy Doll from our very limited run. He’s based on Kathleen De Vere’s webcomic character the Littlest Reaper, who runs around maiming all the other holidays personified and stealing their stuff. Hence, this Creepy Doll comes with all the festive paraphernalia he’s stolen from the other holidays. The winner of this item will receive:

– the 31st Creepy Doll (numbered on the bottom)
– his scythe
– a Valentine’s Day box of chocolates*
– a St. Patrick’s Day 4-leaf clover
– a Thanksgiving drumstick*
– a Christmas Santa hat
– a Halloween pumpkin

[*These are fake food items, made from polymer clay and not meant for actual consumption.]

The set also comes with a Creepy Doll coffee cup sleeve, so the Creepy Doll can watch as you drink your morning coffee or tea. Do you really need that much honey?

This doll is slightly different from the other Creepy Dolls, in that his hands have velcro attached, allowing him to hold onto his scythe and various trophies. He is made from felt and polyester suede and is stuffed with polyfil. He also differs in that his insides are partially stuffed with navy beans, giving him a bit more weight for balance. It’d be pretty embarrassing for the Littlest Reaper to be toppled by his own scythe.

About the crafter: Tally Heilke (an organizer for Desert Bus and contributor to LoadingReadyRun) writes a weekly crafting blog, where you can learn to make all kinds of cool stuff. She won’t tell you how to make your own Creepy Doll, but she might tell you how to make some other sweet plushies in upcoming weeks…

Penny Arcade Ultimate Pack

Includes:

– Penny Arcade, the card game
– PA TV season 1
– Cardboard Tube Samarai action figure
– Fruit Fucker Laser Cel
– Vol. 1-6 of Penny Arcade the series
– 5 Penny Arcade posters

Fangamer Megapack

We love fangamer’s awesome videogame inspired shirts (graham owns several) and fangamer have graciously donated some seriously great prizes so you can too. This megapack of 4 shirts includes a: Bitboy shirt, Chronometer shirt, Special Forces shirt, Question shirt and a steampunk inspired Gate keychain!

Desert Bus for Hope is happy to welcome Little Kuriboh of Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series to our bus–this time in an official capacity ;). Stay tuned for possible appearances by any number of characters, and the auction of a variety of premium Yu-Gi-Oh cards, with sleeves signed by Kroze and Little Kuriboh himself!

Need I say more!? I need hardly remind any of you that this is ten times our original estimare for Desert Bus for Hope, and is approaching ludicrous amounts of money. Thanks so much to everyone who’s helped push the bus this far! It’s gone!