A while back, Marshal and I watched KRULL, an ambitious 1983 Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie hoping to be the next STAR WARS. But did STAR WARS have The Glaive?
Seems like a long time ago, but you can check out our review HERE.
Seems like a long time ago, but you can check out our review HERE.
Rish talks--at length--about a library patron suffering from mental illness, he tries to say "Who cares?" more often, watches Active Shooter Training, plays detective in The Case of the Stolen Backpack, and facilitates a proposal. And says "of course" a lot.
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Logo by Gino "Out Security" Moretto.
He has continued to write short stories and on occasion has me do a voice or two on the full-cast audio versions. But he has also embraced the demon-fed technology of the day, and creates motion videos for his stories. It's certainly not what I would do . . . but isn't that the beauty of other people?
Well beauty or not, here's his tale, "The Hollows," in which both Big and I lend our voices (though not our faces this time*) to the experience. Teen Josh has been forbidden to hang out in the dangerous section of woods near his neighborhood, but his friends manage to get him out there. Big mistake.
You can check out the video HERE, or, since it's on YouTube, I could just post it below:
Years ago, when I worked in L.A., I heard there was going to be a faux anti-mutant protest as a promotion for the X-MEN movie. I called up my friend Erik and bought a posterboard and made up a pair of protest signs (one was of Blinky the Fish from "The Simpsons" with a circle-slash through it, and the other said, "Do your duty, report a mutie!"--which I was quite proud of), and we went to the venue to participate in the protest. When we got there, we were told that it was not a real protest, and only paid Fox employees were allowed to march in the parade. It saddened me, and I swore to never raise my hand in protest again.
Yet here we are, twenty-five short years later, and I'm up to my old tricks.
After watching Marvel's THE THUNDERBOLTS (spoiler warning), Rish muses about the possibility of solving problems with a hug instead of a fist.
And Fake Sean tries his own squeezin, touchin, and lovin.Many years ago, I wrote that "I may not always love you, but sure as there are stars above you; you'll never need to doubt it, I'll make you so sure about it. God only knows what I'd be without you" were the most beautiful words ever written. Not sure, twenty-five years down the road, if I wasn't right.
One of the first gigs I got as an extra in L.A. was for a TV miniseries called "The Beach Boys: An American Family." I got to wear '60s clothes and have my hair combed/cut into an era-appropriate style, and play a fan at an early Beach Boys performance. And between takes, I hung out (briefly) with the actors playing the band, asking them about their characters. "I drown," proclaimed the one playing Dennis Wilson. "And I just died," said the one playing Carl Wilson.
I liked the Beach Boys' music, and to get paid to pretend to listen to them, while hanging out with the mom on "The Wonder Years,"* felt like I had made it.
Well, the Beach Boys DID make it--they're probably the greatest American band of the 1960s--with more hit songs that you could shake a surfboard at. And Brian was behind it all, the chief songwriter, the genius with a shorthand that spoke to a great many young people about the ocean and fun and young love and excitement and California.**
Brian Wilson, founder and chief songwriter of the Beach Boys, died this week, at the age of 82. There was a bit of fanfare, a few tributes, and at least one person expressed that "Finally, he is at peace," which struck me as unsettling, but yeah, the man had his demons. His contributions to music can't really be overstated, though I do wonder if any young person alive today knows who the Beach Boys are. If not, it's certainly their loss.
I probably haven't listened to Surfer Girl since my twenties. And yet, while I stood by the library doors, waiting for everyone to leave, I surprised myself by remembering every single line from "Little surfer, little one," to "surfer girl, my little surfer girl." And that's kind of amazing.
I had two odd experiences today that, because they happened on the same shift, I felt motivated to blog about.
First off, in the computer section, there was a man sitting at one who, as I walked by, gave me a . . . uh, you know . . a straight-armed salute. I found that strange, but hey, sometimes people do that.
But then he did it a second time. Because the guy's a regular, I approached him to suggest that maybe he not wave in that way because it sort of looked like, you know. But when I went around, I could see he was watching a documentary about Adolf Hitler. I went back to my desk.
I guess I found it amusing enough to sit down and look for when he did it on the security monitor to put the image into this post. Scrubbing though the footage, I found him saluting at timestamp 4:46:39 . . . but that wasn't when I was on my rounds. So I ran it backwards a little. Turns out, he did it again at 4:43:56, and at 4:43:50. After five times, I stopped keeping track and closed the program. It wasn't remotely funny anymore.
But not long later, I saw a young couple come in right before we closed, one with a camera and one with a bag filled with something I thought were ice cubes at first. But as they went about their "business," I realized the bag held googly eye stickers, and I later learned they had been through the academy building and the parking garage before this, making their mischief.
Before my eyes, they proceeded to walk around, sticking them to posters and displays and worst of all, to the statue of the little boy outside the children's library.*
It was the first time was ever sad not to be armed on this job.
At the end of my shift, I told my boss about the googley-eyed bandits, and he said that he had just spent a few minutes walking through the building, peeling eye stickers off walls and statues and photos of our donors. Just like the Nazi-saluting library patron, my boss didn't find it remotely funny.
I was bummed out earlier today when I heard that the townspeople of Bozeman, Montana are not fond of Star Trek fans who travel there to mark the (future) site of mankind's first contact with aliens. Anecdotally, they have been known to brandish rake handles and corn cobs and suggest that Trekkies "shove long and prosper."
It made me sad because, just like Metropolis, Illinois, which proclaims itself the home of Superman, and Riverside, Iowa, which calls itself the future birthplace of James T. Kirk*, you'd think any town would welcome the kind of tourists that would come there for the day, buy mugs and t-shirts, take pictures, then scatter (of course, Bozeman is literally a hundred and eighteen times the size of my hometown, so maybe they don't need that kind of thing).
But then I found out that Winslow, Arizona, a little town that used to be on the famous Route 66 but lost all of its industry and tourism when the historical highway was relocated, has thoroughly embraced its minor bit of fandom. You see, in 1972, the Eagles released the song Take It Easy, which includes the line:
Well, I'm standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,
Such a fine sight to see;
It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford,
Slowin' down to take a look at me.
. . . and the lovely folks of Winslow (a little burg only nine times the size of my hometown) decided to honor the song by building a park (Standin' On The Corner Park) and tribute, where Eagles fans can go and, I dunno, imagine that a girl is slowing to look at them too. Because wouldn't that be great?
There's a mural, a painting, a prop vehicle, and a statue of "The Troubadour," which folks say looks like Jackson Browne, who wrote the song.
It's difficult to explain how much joy I got from reading about it and seeing the various photos people have taken over the years (it opened in 1999), because it doesn't really do anything, you know what I mean, and yet it somehow manages to mean something.
Would it kill you, Bozeman, to put up a statue too?
*Oh, and I just learned that Vulcan, Alberta in Canada has an annual Spock Day celebration, complete with a bust of Leonard Nimoy and a statue of the Enterprise. All in an effort to lessen my sadness at Bozeman's (alleged) assholery.
C-3PO figures tend to be plentiful. He's a popular, perennial character that requires few paint applications (especially if you're doing a die-cast figure). His design isn't quite as useful for customs, since other protocol-type droids had different style heads, but the figures are cheap and plentiful. So I grabbed one and took a picture of it to send to Big, warning him I was going to do something unholy to it.
I guess it's been enough time to do another Robert Bloch story . . . hasn't it?
This one is the 1951 Lovecraft homage, "Notebook Found In A Deserted House," about a twelve year old boy who discovers that the only thing worse than a mystery is the answer behind said mystery.
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Logo by Gino "Perverted House" Moretto.