Greetings, Creepozoids!!

I know, I know… I told you all that last week would be the last installment of “The Don Remembers” for 2010.  But, reception to last week’s finale was so good that I just had to offer up one more.

And also I’m trying to prep for Horrorfind this weekend and needed to be able to whip up something quick and easy.

So, uno mas…

Back in the seventies and eighties, kids didn’t need much of an excuse to run around the house (or outside) in their underwear.  It was a simpler time – a time right before razor blades were found in candy, before creepy vans pulled up with creepier guys offering candy, before Diff’rent Strokes had that special episode with the Maytag Repairman wanting to share Dudley’s…candy.

While it didn’t take much to get our prepubescent selves out of our suffocating outer garments, coming up with a specific reason to entice us to do so didn’t hurt, either.

Introducing Underoos!

Underoos came about in the late seventies.  Marketed by Fruit of the Loom, Underoos were billed as “Underwear that’s FUN to wear!”  In order to make good on that promise, Underoos bought the licensing rights to several different, pop-culturally relevant (at the time) companies – including Star Wars, Marvel and DC.  That’s right – like MEGO was able to do just a couple of years earlier for their eight inch action figure line, Underoos managed to get both of the big comic companies to play.

The result?  If ever there was an understatement to a five year old, that tagline would be it.  They weren’t just FUN to wear, they were heckafrikkin’AWESOME to wear!

You see, the hook that made each set a must-have was that each combination of shirt and underpants guaranteed that you were dressing up as the character.  Liked Superman? The Superman Underoos were comprised of a shirt with his chest logo on blue while the underpants were the same color as his trunks.  Just grab a red towel from your mom’s linen closet, and you were now ol’s Supes himself.  Each pack of Underoos was literally an affordable superhero costume for you to wear year round.

I still remember my very first set of Underoos – Robin, the Boy Wonder.  I remember opening that package with an excited glee and getting those suckers on immediately.  Then, it was off to fight imaginary crime while I wore that yellow towel (it was the seventies – they had yellow towels) around my neck with pride.  The Joker?  The Penguin?  No match for my acrobatic, crime-fighting skills.  The Riddler?  His enigmatic word problems were child’s play (see, cause I was a child… get it?) to this masked avenger.  Hours of amusement, all based around a shirt and a pair of underpants.  That was all I needed.

Over the next few years, my collection of Underoos grew – Superman, Batman, Spider-Man… leading up to the crème de la crème – Boba Fett.  That was the golden goose, my friend.  Running around, collecting prices on heads while the chest plate of the galaxy’s most infamous bounty hunter adorned my young torso…

I just realized what that reminds me of.  Underoos were for me what the Red Ryder BB Gun was for Ralphie in the film A Christmas Story – except that it was cheaper and less hassle to get a t-shirt and a pair of underpants.  Plus, more variety to choose from when it came time to play in your imagination than with the Red Ryder.  Also?  Less likely to end up with a damaged or missing vision orb from two pieces of fabric.  Otherwise, the endgame was exactly the same – suit up and go adventuring until dinner.

Fruit of the Loom still puts Underoos out nowadays.  Unfortunately, they pale in comparison to the classic stuff of yore – instead of becoming your favorite characters, most of them just feature said character on the shirt.  Guess it’s just another example of how the stuff we love from Nostalgialand never comes back the same way we remember them.

Also?  They don’t fit anymore.  These things are riding up something fierce right now.

The Don… wants to apologize for that visual above.

Greetings, Choppers!!

The end of summer is upon us!  And with the changing of the seasonal guard, so does my summer series prepare to exit, stage right.

But, I wanted to end “The Don Remembers” with a bang.  Or at least, with a lame crazy stunt no one will notice.  So, as my final offering to you all, I will be going… live!

Well, not really.

What I will be doing is spending this installment on my couch, watching that awesome love letter to those who lived the eighties – Hot Tub Time Machine.  During the course of my film viewing, I will be doing a regular commentary – highlighting each bit of eighties nostalgia I come across and sharing my own, brief thoughts on it.  As I do so, I will also time stamp each comment, so that anyone who wishes to do so can follow along on their own.

Yeah, like that would happen.

So without further ado…  I present to you Hot Tub Time Machine…

Oh, and it’s the unrated version (more nudity for me!)…

Okay… here we go:

00:01:30  The dog’s name is Bono.  Like the lead singer of U2.  Once upon a time, he was just an Irish lead singer in a great band in the eighties.  Now…

00:02:36  John Cusack is in the house!!!  Literally, he just walked into his house.  One of the pioneers of eighties teen comedies.  This man has managed to still have a great career.  One of my all-time favorite actors.

00:04:47  Firebird Trans-Am!!!  One of the finest automobiles of the 1980s.  Introduced in the seventies by Smokey and the Bandit, the Trans-Am became an icon throughout the early to mid-eighties.  Not, my favorite, however.  That distinction would go to K.I.T.T. a year or two later.

00:05:01  Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home”!  One of the greatest ballads to come out of the eighties from a hair metal band.  I frikkin’ love this song.

00:10:43  Just realized… John Cusack always seems to play characters that get dumped.

00:12:45  Clark Duke just referenced Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.  That movie scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid.

00:13:54  Crispin Glover!!  Marty McFly’s dad as a bellhop!  From one time travel movie to another.  Turns out, he was cast for this film for just that reason.  Well, one of the reasons.  And it appears he’s doing a variation of “Hey you, get your damn hands off her!”

00:17:15  The hot tub looks like it’s filled with Michelob, a popular beer in the eighties.

00:18:37  Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. masks.  Once upon a time in the eighties, that was our President and Vice, respectively.  Reaganomics!!  Remember when Patrick Swayze robbed banks wearing presidents’ masks in Point Break?

00:19:46  Ah, the ski resort.  A common backdrop in eighties comedies.  South Park did a great parody of that trope a couple of seasons ago.

00:20:12  Fluorescent colors!!!  Man, who thought that was acceptable to wear??

00:20:27  Another Crüe song – “Kick-Start My Heart”.  Crüe was king of the hair bands…

00:21:21  Enter the staple of all eighties coming-of-age comedies – the bully.  Two of them, in fact.  Usually in a position of authority, and usually full of douchebaggery.

00:21:31  Speaking of douchbags… “Hey, look – it’s the douchebag from Karate Kid III.”  What an awful film, sullying what were two great predecessors.

00:22:02  OMG – fur boots.  Run for your life.  We have finally captured and killed bigfoot, and made him into footwear.

00:22:08 Eighties overload in 3-2-1 (Contact)…

00:22:10  More bright colors!  And an eighties tune I hear playing in the background that I can’t remember the name of.  I fail.  Commentary over.

00:22:18  Acid-wash jeans.  I owned a couple of these… I’m afraid to admit.

00:22:21  Ah… those weird sunglasses that looked like open blinds…  Never had a pair.  Even I thought they looked stupid, and impractical.

00:22:29  Giant, portable phones.  Only the rich had them because the “plans” were so expensive.  The crappy spin-off That 80s Show tried to do this same gag.  It failed.

00:22:37  “I want my two dollars!”  A direct quote and homage to the aforementioned Better Off Dead, just as Cusack in onscreen.  Love it.  Great movie.  The original line comes from a paperboy who is… a tad overzealous about getting paid for his deliveries…

00:22:40  S-S-S-S, A-A-A-A, F-F-F-F, E-E-E-E, T-T-T-T, Y-Y-Y-Y… “The Safety Dance”!  Love this song.  Great eighties staple.

00:22:45  Jheri curl and smoking in public establishments.  Two tastes that go great together.  No, they don’t.

00:22:50  David Bowie does a promo bumper for MTV… “I want my MTV!”  So, do I, Jareth… So do I…

00:22:53  The Bill Cosby sweater…  The Cosby Show was actually pretty funny.  And a cigarette machine.  No carding required…

00:22:57  Too hot for the hot tub!!

00:22:59  Miami Vice – Popular cop show for its time… and a fashion trendsetter.  That’s partly where all the bright colors came from.  Thanks, Don Johnson.

00:23:03  Poison – another hair metal band from the eighties.  The debate was always which was better – them or Crüe.  I was always for Crüe.

00:23:07  Madonna on the cover of SPIN magazine… back when she was hot and I wanted her badly… In the background, a CHOOSE LIFE T-shirt, popularized by George Michael when he was in the band WHAM!  There are a lot of CAPITALIZED WORDS in this comment.

00:23:10  ALF!!!  (More capitalizations.)  I loved that show.  Was so pissed when NBC cancelled it right after a major cliffhanger.  It would not be the first or last time they did that crap.

00:23:15  Reagan again… trying to talk his way out of something…

00:23:19  Super Mario Bros.!!!!  One of the greatest arcade games of all time!  That was my joint!  Was one of the first hits to come out of the video game fallout of 1983…

00:23:20  The Cuban Missile Crisis… I think.  My history isn’t up to snuff.  I know, shame on me.

00:23:21  Cyndi Lauper.  Strange, fun, and sexy in her own way…  Love her music… and Pete Townshend during his solo days from The Who…

00:23:22  Col. Oliver North… had a shredding party… while Adam Ant sung about “Goody Two-Shoes”.

00:23:23  The old Apple II computers… everyone at school seemed to have one… but me.  I eventually got a Commodore 64.

00:23:24  Sony Walkman!  I had that exact color and model.  I’m actually glad we got out of the cassette era.

00:23:27  Nu Shooz – “I Can’t Wait”.  One of my favorite eighties songs of all time.

00:23:35  Legwarmers.  I actually never got the reason for these.

00:23:37  “Where’s the Beef?”  Classic slogan for Wendy’s.  That old lady was a hoot when she would spout that line.  She’s dead now.  (Ooh!  Too soon?)

00:23:41  Michael Jackson – before the charges, before the color change… he was just about the music.  I love “Thriller”.

00:24:10  Whew!  That was a a lot of stuff…

00:24:55  “Eddie Lives” T-shirt from Iron Maiden, Fishbone T-shirt… one of these bands I actually listened to.  And an old school tape recorder…  Ah, the stuff we would record on those things.

00:25:15  1986… I was eleven and in the sixth grade…

00:25:27  Timecop – not a bad Jean-Claude Van Damme flick.  Creative time travel ideas.

00:25:40  A mullet, a feathered hairstyle, and a hi-top fade walk into a bathroom…I wore two out of three of these.

00:26:27  Cocaine – the drug of the eighties.

00:27:20  The Terminator – James Cameron’s first admitted flick.  One of the best sci-fi/horror films out there.

00:28:03  Enter Chevy Chase.  He had a great career in the eighties… well, at first.  Luckily, this movie and the show Community have finally brought him back from obscurity.  Now, if only we could get Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy back, too.

00:31:06  AIDS.  ‘Nuff said.

00:32:48  “What You Need” by INXS.  I used to think it was pronounced The Ink-sez.

00:33:34  Wine coolers… the alcoholic beverage of the eighties.

00:35:49  “Modern Love” by David Bowie.  I liked some of his stuff, but really didn’t get into his music until much later.

00:36:56  Look at all the eighties cars…

00:37:04  Synthesizer!  I keep saying – we need to bring synthesizers back into music.

00:37:12  Keytar!  This goes double for the Keytar.

00:37:50  Jordans… a shoe that I never owned by a basketball star that I never watched play.

00:38:45  “Push It” by Salt n Pepa… not really my bag.

00:40:00  Denim skirts… those have actually come back.  I kind of like them on the ladies.

00:42:30  So much great music in this flick – “Obsession”, by Animotion.  Another one of my favorite songs from that decade.  I remember roller skating to that song.

00:44:03  “I Wanna Know What Love Is”, by Foreigner.  I love me some Foreigner…

00:48:48  Rocky IV, Rambo III, Red Dawn.  The testosterone in this room is overwhelming.

00:48:49  Yep.  People used to wear their polos with the collars up.  Embarrassing.

00:48:58  “Wolverines!!”

00:49:19  21 Jump Street.  I loved that show.  Aired on the fledgling Fox network and launched the career of Johnny Depp.

00:50:05  Break-up notes SUCKED.

00:51:11  More Crüe – “Keep Your Eye On the Money”.  I think Crüe is the main sponsor of this film.

00:51:23  Manimal.  Eighties show about a guy who could turn into animals.  I never liked it.  I loved Automan, about a guy created from the computer.

00:51:36  Denver vs. Cleveland.  I never watched sports as a kid.  Still don’t.  Sci-Fi/Fantasy all the way.  If it doesn’t have a plot, I’m not interested.

00:51:53  Cutting Crew – “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight”.  I’ve always been a ballad man, and this is one of my favorites.

00:52:26  Break-up poetry.  I was a hopeless romantic in high school.  I wrote a lot if this stuff.  Still have some of it somewhere.  Man, is it awful.

00:54:51  “Let me ask you something McFly.”  From William F-ing Zabka, the guy who made a short-lived career out of playing douchebags in movies like The Karate Kid and Back to School God-bless his douchebaggery ways…

00:55:13  “Bring it on, Spader.”  That would be a reference to James Spader, another actor who played creepy characters in eighties flicks.

00:58:50  “True” by Spandau Ballet plays during a scene that’s a throwback to the final scene in Sixteen Candles with Molly Ringwald – the eighties’ go-to girl for a red head sweetheart.  Man, I hate the song “True”.

01:01:55  Ugh.  Tiger striped pants.  More horrors in eighties fashion.

01:03:29  The punk rock movement and shoulder pads for women’s clothing – two things that do not go together.

01:05:10  The permed, overdone hair the chicks are sporting is outrageous… and I still like it.

01:06:48  Butchering a George Michael song… not cool…

01:06:54  But, doing a Rick Springfield song right…  Too bad the other guy with the word “spring” in his name got the better career.

01:07:22  OOH!  I spy a Back to School poster!  How meta!  And a Last American Virgin poster – the most depressing teen comedy of the eighties.

01:08:06  Another riff on Back to the Future – Nick bringing the future of music to the youth of the past… works out better for him than for Marty.

01:11:06  Crimped hair.  Wow.

01:16:45  Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines in a movie about ballet dancers… and effort to send a message about the Cold War… in a non-manly fashion.

01:30:23  Winding down with The Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”.  Same as it ever was.

01:32:45  And… in what is a complete departure from eighties time travel flicks – the characters don’t actually just face their issues and learn a valuable lesson while coming to grips with their situation, leaving it as it is.  No, these guys ACTUALLY DO THE COOL THING AND CHANGE THE FUTURE FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT.  Oh, and learn a lesson, too.

01:33:21  And now, we end this long commentary with a slightly altered version of the music video from Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home”.  Love this song.

And that about wraps it up for this lengthy, final installment of “The Don Remembers”.  I actually managed to stretch an hour and forty-five minute movie to a three hour writing exercise, and I prolly missed a bunch of stuff.  Still, it was a blast.  My apologies for putting you all to sleep, and I’ll meet you all back here next week with a return to form for “The Office of the Don”!  Goodnight!

The Don is on his way… he’s on his wayeee…  Bed, sweet bed…

I was originally going to write about how today was a monumental day because, for once, Faye from Questionable Content WASN’T being a huge rhymes-with-witch. (Well, I guess I did just write about that.) Seriously, I’ve never understood why she’s the most popular character in that comic.

That, however, was overshadowed by far more depressing and important news, as news of Satoshi Kon’s death began burning up the Internet. This 47-year-old master Japanese director was one of my artistic heroes from the moment I first discovered his work in anime, via the “Magnetic Rose” short from Memories. Paranoia Agent later became one of my absolute favourite television series.

If you’re curious to see some of Kon’s work, just hit up a certain popular video site for clips and other videos. I highly recommend “Magnetic Rose” as uploaded by user DimensionAnime. I’d link to the videos here, but, since the whole thing is uploaded by DimensionAnime rather than just clips, that wouldn’t be entirely kosher, and we like to be kosher here, if not in the rabbinical way. So please go find it for yourself. Then buy it!…if you can still find the home release, that is.

I’ll be raising a glass of something fizzy and unidentifiable in his honour tonight, while contemplating Kon-themed sushi (remember that, The Don’s lovely wife?) and hopefully organizing a Satoshi Kon anime marathon for the future. I feel extremely lucky that I got to see Kon himself a few years ago, when the movie Paprika made its U.S. debut at the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. Kon answered questions, he entertained, and after the movie and panel were over, everyone left giddy and excited, touched by the presence of a creative genius. I guess those blurry, dark photos I took away on my crappy camera that night will be greater treasures to me than ever before.

Sleep well, Kon. Hope you’re enjoying the moon.

Meanwhile, M. Night Shyamalan and Uwe Boll continue to live and work in the entertainment industry. Truly, there is no justice in this world.

Greetings, Poopsmiths!!

We’re already over the halfway mark in August, which means this summer series is almost at an end (unless I hear voices erupt from the crickets out there to demand I keep this going in some form).  With that in mind, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t go out without talking about one of my favorite animation companies – Rankin/Bass.  These guys helped get me through my entire childhood.  And they managed to accomplish that feat in more than one style.

The double-surnamed animation company started back in 1964.  Their first attempt was a Christmas special for NBC about the famous red-nosed reindeer Rudolph.  Using an animation style that they would become most noted for over the next twenty years – stop-motion animation – Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer became an instant holiday classic, and Christmas specials like this one would become Rankin/Bass’s bread and butter for the next two decades.

Over the course of those two decades, Rankin/Bass produced over thirty seasonal specials, covering other holidays as well as Christmas.  While most were in the stop-motion variety, they would occasionally throw in a traditional cel-animated special as well.  But no matter what the style, Rankin/Bass specials always pulled in some of the grade-A talent of the time for voice-over work, like Mickey Rooney, Fred Astaire, Burl Ives, and Andy Griffith.

As a young boy growing up, Christmas didn’t fully begin until the networks started showing Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph, or ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.  Sure, Charlie Brown is probably considered the king of Christmas cartoon fare, but surely the R/B stuff was part of the royal court.  And in some ways, they’ve even surpassed the Blockheaded One – A Charlie Brown Christmas airs once, maybe twice on CBS every year.  Rankin/Bass specials?  They get twenty-five days devoted to them every year on ABC Family.  Who’s the blockhead now?

Oh, right.

Now, while most other animation companies would be content to cater to one specific niche where children are concerned, Rankin/Bass did the unthinkable.  In 1985, right around the time they produced their last Christmas special, the cartoon-makers with a forward slash in their name changed tactics and decided to aim towards the “impressionable ten to fifteen year olds who loved action/adventure and would pester their parents to buy them any toy featured in a cartoon” demographic.

And so, Thundercats was born.

I just so happened to be at the very beginning of that demographic at the time.  So guess what?  Yup – first thing I did when I came home from school each day was plaster myself to the living room floor to watch the adventures of a small group of anthropomorphic, feline humanoids try to survive on a futuristic earth after fleeing their doomed home world of Thundera.

Along with He-Man and Transformers, Thundercats completed the trifecta of animated action/adventure in my ten year old life.  Homework?  What homework?  Who had time for solving math equations, writing book reports, or figuring out why gravity pulled you down when the forces of good and evil were in constant struggle three times a day.

Did I say three times?  I meant four.

Because just when I thought my pre-pubescent life already had enough excitement to take the edge off of starting to discover girls, those geniuses running that cartoon company that sounded like a smelly fish had struck gold again.  Taking the exact same formula that made Thundercats such a huge hit, Rankin/Bass modified the ingredients – setting it primarily in space and making the humanoids birdlike instead – and gave it a similarly-structured moniker.

And so, Silverhawks was born.

Let’s be honest – it was a blatent rip-off of Thundercats.  Almost all of the voice cast from the first series was carried over to do voices for the new series.  The characters and situations they found themselves in were very similar to what came before.  And the big bad – Mon-starr, had a transformation sequence – with spell chant! – almost exactly like his Thundercat counterpart Mumm-Ra.

Of course, none of this mattered.  My pre-ADD-discovery brain latched onto this new offering with spirited glee.

It wouldn’t be long after Silverhawks debuted, however, that the house that Arthur and Jules built would start to run aground.  By the late eighties, this powerhouse of animation that had managed to persist like a juggernaut over the course of twenty years was finally starting to lose steam.  So, of course, the only solution was to triplicate the same exact formula that made them a hit twice before, only this time it was – gasp – underwater!  And once again, the name was just a smoosh-up of what animal they were combined with some other random word.  It was like they weren’t even trying anymore at this point.

And so, Tigersharks was crapped out of Satan’s rectum.

The sound that immediately followed was the death knell for Rankin/Bass.  Tigersharks, thanks mostly to the fact that no one ever really heard of the show, much less watched it, met a quick and painless death.  Sadly, Thundercats and Silverhawks followed suit right around the same time, and just like that – a wonderful animation company went the way of your favorite uncle who just happened to drink a little too much sometimes.

Despite their unfortunate demise those many years ago, Rankin/Bass is still around.  Revived at the beginning of the new millennium, they are currently owned by Warner Bros. – who do the company proud by making horrible sequels to their holiday classics.  In the meantime, at least we still get to see the fruits of studio lowercase today – between the aforementioned re-airing of all their Christmas specials on ABC Family to having the entire Thundercats series on DVD (and occasionally on Cartoon Network).  Even the first season of Silverhawks made it to DVD.  Unfortunately, it’s the only season out to date due to poor sales.  But, that can only mean good news:

At least Tigersharks will never see the light of day again.

The Don feels the magic, hears the roar… crap – it’s the other kind of cougar.

So, the whole “does Zelda have an official timeline?” debate has been stirred up online. Yes, AGAIN. This time, it was the current Zelda manager, Eiji Aonuma, confirming in a recent interview that the Zelda timeline is documented, but so confidential that only Aonuma, Shigeru Miyamoto, and another director of Zelda projects have access to it.

This article does not speculate whether or not the Zelda “master timeline” exists. I’m sure if the guys in charge of Zelda at Nintendo Japan say it does, then it does. I’ll leave the debating over whether or not Nintendo is lying to this write-up over on Zelda Informer–worth checking out both for the points raised in the article and the discussion in the comments, by the way. This article is merely my brief thoughts on what the “master timeline” really is.

Here are those brief thoughts: Nintendo isn’t lying, but the timeline is no master.

What, you want more? I can’t believe you guys actually expect me to do some work here! Fine….*GrumblegrumbleMonsterBait*

When I say the timeline exists, but it’s no master, I mean this: the timeline is being composed retroactively when each new game is developed. I know those Zelda timeline theorists out there would love to believe that Miyamoto introduced the original The Legend of Zelda with full knowledge of where the story would go in the future, and that all the games have reflected this pre-existing knowledge. But that’s just not the case.

Nintendo has always emphasized gameplay over story. That line has been repeated so many times I’m only adding it here for completion’s sake. No one knew the Zelda series would take off like it has. Very few fans were concerned when it was revealed that A Link to the Past would feature a different Link and Zelda than in the The Legend of Zelda. (I’m not saying “and Zelda II” because the Princess Zelda in that game was not the same Princess Zelda as in the original game, but was a distant ancestor–though Zelda II still had the same Link as in the first Zelda game. Also, I’m not saying “and Link’s Awakening” because there were no Princess Zeldas in that game. Just a Link, who appears to be the one from A Link to the Past. Confusing, innit?) It was only when we learned Ocarina of Time would have a brand-new Link and Zelda, again**, that people really started to care about what happened when, and how events of one game connected to the others in the series.

**For those keeping score at home, that’s three Links and four Princess Zeldas over the course of five games.

It seems most likely that at this point, or sometime during the next few games that came after Ocarina of Time, Nintendo realized they couldn’t keep tossing out Zelda games that reference other Zelda games without some sort of timeline to keep a pretense at order. So not only is the so-called “master timeline” being written up retroactively, it’s also not set in stone. How many contradictions have we seen from one Zelda game to another that make it difficult to determine their proper order? I can guarantee you, Nintendo has been caught out by those same contradictions, and putting together a “master timeline” is a too-late but ongoing attempt to make order out of the chaos. A good reason for keeping the alleged document confidential is that perhaps Nintendo knows it contains conflicts and paradoxes since there’s already so much of that in the games.

And let’s face it: the Zelda universe is too big and scattered to easily keep track of. The development team changes from game to game, so there’s a steady stream of people who don’t know their Zelda canon from the inside out and so abandon or forget previously-important story elements. Each game has multiple writers. Each writer alters the story from its originally-conceived version a little bit more, until the final product is different from what any one writer imagined, and it’s not uncommon for story elements to contradict when multiple people worked on them. That’s just at Nintendo Japan; I’m not even getting into translation alterations that are made when Zelda games are localized for different countries. But you’d be surprised at how much plot and other concepts can change from the original Japanese releases to, say, North American releases. (Link goes to a translation comparison of the backstory in the Japanese and North American A Link to the Past manuals.)

I really don’t think there can ever BE a true timeline at this point. There’s just too much clashing information, and Miyamoto, the creator of the Zelda series himself, has said that he’s never really been concerned with game order or continuity between games. The closest we can ever get to a real “master timeline” would be to have a team of people at Nintendo Japan examining every single bit of dialogue and lore from every single Zelda game, comparing their information, tossing out all conflicts, and rewriting paradoxical bits that can’t be compromised. Those last two bits mean that the timeline would still never be an accurate representation of the history of Hyrule since the content taken from the actual games would have to be partially altered and rewritten in order to fit into the timeline. On top of that, I highly doubt that the Zelda “master timeline” is being composed by a team of people who spend their days examining the Zelda universe nonstop. Most likely, it’s a few people who write down major plot elements in their downtime at work, which means that vital but easily-overlooked details are being left out. Missing information can cause as much inaccuracy as conflicting information.

And that’s why I don’t think we’re ever gonna see a true Zelda “master timeline”. If Nintendo DOES ever make this mystical document public, I imagine it’ll be full of those previously-mentioned plot conflicts and paradoxes, which’ll just make the fans debate the timeline even more, and no one will really be appeased. Or the story will be extremely cut back or rewritten and missing important details in order to crop out all clashing data, which will just make the masses equally fan-raged.

I’d like to say that I’d really love to be proven wrong. I want to see a tight timeline that no one can argue with, that tells when and where my favourite games fall into their own canon! I just don’t see it realistically happening.

So what’s my belief on the order of the Zelda games?

Oh, no, I am NOT opening that can of Lanmolas.

Greetings, Penguin Blackbelts!!

My schedule from this past weekend all the way to this coming weekend leaves me with little time to do much, so this week’s installment of the summer nostalgia series will be short and sweet, which is apropos considering that it’s about a candy product that I have vast amounts of love for.   And if the title of this week’s “Remembers” hasn’t already given it away, I’m talking about that glorious confection that put Reeses’s Peanut Butter Cups to shame – PB Max.

Created in 1990, PB Max took the whole “you got your chocolate in my peanut butter” to a whole new level.  Instead of a processed-looking filler of brown paste, this candy bar seemed to include the same stuff you would knife or spoon out of a jar.  Slap that on a whole-grain cookie, combine it with peanuts and oats, and then wrap it all up in chocolate seduction and you found yourself with a square-shaped slice of euphoria.  And these things weren’t small, either.  Despite being less rectangular than their competition, PB Max bars didn’t suffer for it in the size department.  As you can tell from the picture above, those things were quite big.  Now imagine that packed with the ingredients I mentioned above.  Now salivate.

I loved the hell out of these things when they were still available.  They were the reason that Snickers bars and I didn’t speak for a long time (don’t worry – we reconciled some time later).  I simply could not resist these little buggers.  If I was ever in a grocery or convenience store and my eyes caught sight of a PB Max, I would usually mow down whoever was in my way to grab a couple.

Unfortunately, this incredible concoction obviously created by a wizard saw a short shelf life.  Halfway into the nineties, PB Max bars disappeared forever.  The reason?  According to the book The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars, the Mars family hated peanut butter.

Seriously.

So, thanks to communism (because honestly, communism has to be at the root of every evil – right?), the Mars company succeeded in their nefarious scheme of halting production of a candy bar that would have made Gandhi give up his crusade just so he could sit and ponder the wonders of the universe that were obviously contained within its chocolate coating.  At the very least, it prevented us mere mortals the chance to enjoy a delicious treat that gives Reese’s a run for its money.

And I cry.  Every night.

Still, all hope is not lost.  If you have a friend – like I do – and he is ambitious enough to look at the commercial, as well as check Wikipedia for the ingredients – like mine did – then you just may find yourself living in a shotgun shack gifted with the blessing of homemade PB Maxes, which are literally the next best thing.

And to help you get started, here’s the commercial so you can bask in the warm love of the PB Max:

However, getting a friend is up to you.

The Don is a portly ballerina.

If you guessed “your friendly neighbourhood Marlink”, then applaud yourself! You just earned 500 XP!

Guys, what with San Diego Comic-Con going on last weekend, all the geeky announcements coming from said con, StarCraft II dropping this week, and the webcomic Dreamless ending yesterday (Monday, July 26th), I actually was so flooded with topics that I honestly didn’t know what to write about this week. Luckily, two tickets to a free pre-release showing of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World saved me from hours of pointless self-debate. My boyfriend has awesome connections, man. (Despite popular misconception on the blogging sites that link to me, I am, in fact, a chick. *Cheepcheep*)

Don’t worry, North American moviegoers. The film won’t be released here till August 13th, and I won’t be spoiling your experience with a plotariffic review here and now. This is just a gush post. I’m going to predict right now that this is the best movie I will see all year (sorry, Tony Stark). It is, in fact, the best movie I have seen, not just this year, but in many years. We just saw it for free, but my little household is already planning to go see it again, with pocketbooks wide open, as soon as it opens in theaters. And quite possibly see it again, and again, and again.

Okay, so, I’m a Scott Pilgrim newbie. I’d never even heard of the series until I went to see Iron Man 2 this spring, and my friends were geeking out over a poster for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. From the snatches of conversation I could decipher (I was also playing Zelda on my DS at the time, which may have affected my comprehension), Scott Pilgrim was the Best Comic Evar, and this movie was going to be the Best Movie Evar. I filed it away as “interesting; may have to check out this Scott thing” and then promptly forgot it in the wake of Tony Stark Being Awesome. Let’s face it, that’s far too easy to do. Then I continued to forget about the existence of Scott Pilgrim until yesterday, when I received a text from my significant other about those famous free tickets to the advance showing. So, yeah. That’s me, going into the movie blinder than a hundred thousand blind cave fish with severe astigmatism and broken glasses. I didn’t know what to expect.

When the movie began–began!–with the opening sound of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (the electronic harp heard at the beginning of the below video), I knew that this Scott Pilgrim and I were going to get along just fine.

In fact, there is one character who is frequently playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past during the movie, and I have to admit–I didn’t hear a single word of dialogue while those sounds were playing in the background. I think I could watch that movie a hundred times–and I plan to–and I’ll never be able to tell you what’s being discussed when Zelda 3 is in the movie’s hizzouse. Talk about tunnel vision, man.

Okay, I’m trying to drag myself away from Zelda now. Really, I am. I understand that the greatest video game series of all time making a cameo isn’t enough to draw some people into the theater. Picky, picky. But all joking aside, as much as I fangasmed at the Zelda-ness, that wasn’t what made me love the movie. If there had been no Hyrulean presence whatsoever (and it was also referenced aside from the music, by the way), I would still have declared this The Best Movie I Have Seen In Years. I read up…a LOT…on the original comic series today and even got to read a little bit of the work itself. From what I can tell in my incredibly limited experience, the movie seems to hold true to the geek parody-loving, metahumour style that seems to be the comic’s standard. I can already point out places where the movie cut and squished things together a bit to make it all work in two hours, but I see that as giving me something new to look forward to when I read the full series. There are super-fast visual cuts from character to character and scene to scene near the beginning of the movie that you might find a little unsettling or confusing, but the film very quickly calms down and remembers it’s a movie, not a comic book, and that panel-to-panel behaviour doesn’t work so well in most live-action. Still, though, the movie does a terrific job of sticking with its graphic novel roots. Sound effects are written out on the screen as they happen, for example, and two people can literally throw each other around the room without taking damage. Batman would approve! You know, if he wasn’t too busy angsting over his parents being dead and all.

And, dear elder gods, but this movie is FUNNY! The theater was less than half full (very few tickets given away for this particular screening), but, frequently, the audience was laughing and cheering so loudly that the movie would be completely drowned out for a few seconds. Did I mention the movie was funny? I actually got a stitch in my side from laughing so hard, and my boyfriend seemed to be having trouble breathing at times.

Now, I went into the movie blind, but you don’t have to. (Stop reading now if you want the comic/movie to be a total blank slate for you.) Here’s a belated Wikipedia blurb on what Scott Pilgrim and his ilk are on about in the comic and movie:

The series is about 23-year-old Canadian Scott Pilgrim, a slacker, hero, and part-time bassist who is living in Toronto and plays bass guitar in the band “Sex Bob-Omb.” He falls in love with American delivery girl Ramona V. Flowers, but must defeat her seven “evil [exes]” in order to date her. (Read the rest of the article for more on the story.)

But if you think this is just a romance story, you’d better re-examine that theory. Scott Pilgrim is all about adventure, a “real-life” video game where ninja attacks are to be expected, Bollywood song-and-dance fights are considered a viable way to settle your differences, no one bats an eye at a vegan going Super-Saiyan and punching holes in the moon, people explode into coins when they’re defeated (but it’s not “real” money, being Canadian and all–I kid, I KID!), and sometimes, you find out the worst enemy you have to face to win the princess is Dark Link yourself.

If parody and metahumour and a little touch of love are your bag, baby, then you want to see this movie. If you’re not a fan of geek humour…then I don’t know what the hell you’re doing on this website. Go watch your American football games and try to convince me that it’s not gay when the guys slap their teammates’ asses. You’re only fooling yourself. Actually, because I’m all about love and peace and sharing and all that crap, I’m also going to recommend Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to you, ’cause expanding your horizons “ain’t never hurt nobody”. Trust me, you’ll enjoy the film! Here, have a little trailer to prove it:

And now, if you’ll pardon me for this week, I’ve got to go add six new comic books to my Amazon.cacom wishlist….

Greetings, Anawanna Campers!!

The fun and colorful eighties had already bore witness to several unique and awesome innovations by the time the decade started to wind down in preparation for the drab and angsty nineties.  By the time we reached the twilight years of the era famous for hair bands, half-hour long, animated commercials for toys, and the conclusion of the original Star Wars trilogy, another fantastic invention came into being – one that fit in perfectly with the polychromatic decade – thermal color changing!  And when it comes to cool, color changing items, there are two that immediately spring to mind:

Hypercolor T-shirts and Color Changer Hot Wheels!

Both creations came about during the mid to late eighties and functioned based on a simple, yet complex concept – when the item was at room temperature or cooler, it was one color.  But, when you applied heat or in some way increased the temperature of the item, it would change colors!

I seem to recall that the Hot Wheels vehicles were the first color changing products I owned growing up.  By that time I was in my early teens, and my Matchbox and Hot Wheels collecting had significantly waned and been replaced by my action figure collecting.  But these things were different.  After seeing the commercial for a toy car that changed its hue under cold or hot water, I knew I had to have one.  Once acquired, I spent quite a bit of time… not playing with them.  No, instead I got way too mesmerized by the pure sorcery on display as continuously ran them under an alternating warm and cold tap – an act that, out of context, may appear as though I was trying to pry spy secrets from their die-cast lips.  Of course, it wouldn’t be long before I either “broke” them, got bored with the fact that there actually wasn’t a little wizard in the paint schemes making the greens turn yellow and the purples turn red, or discovered something els– ooh, Real Ghostbusters action figures!!

Hypercolor T’s on the other hand… those things mattered for a little while longer.  See, as is the case with any new fashion trend based out of pop culture – you weren’t cool unless you owned one.  Of course, in my case I wasn’t even cool when I owned one.  Que sera sera, I guess.  All the way into the locker.  Sadly, I couldn’t see the color change while I was stuffed in there.

Aside from a revisit to the emotional scars of my youth, Hypercolor shirts were frikkin’ awesome!  Not as reliant on that life fluid that pours out of faucets, all you had to do was put your hand or another warm object on the fabric – and the outline of that object would remain for seconds in a different color on the shirt.  Of course, after the initial wave of awe over this mystical garment wore off, there was only one way teenaged owners of said shirts could put this innovation to any use.

If you said “Probably something obscene”, you would be correct.

It would not be out of the realm of possibility to see sixteen and seventeen year old girls running down the halls with light blue hand prints over their budding buxoms on their purple Hypercolor T-shirts.  Nor, would it be inconceivable to imagine some young dude getting on the school bus with an intentionally oversized Hypercolor top – just so that he could plant a couple of yellow hands on his otherwise green-clad derriere.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen – teen creativity at work.  And just think – those folks have become us, and we are now running the country.

Or writing silly nostalgic pieces for geek culture web sites.

The Don can change colors as well.  Just make him laugh while he’s scarfing down a bag of Doritos.

Greetings, Warriors!!

There are two things that immediately spring to mind when I think about the Fester’s Quest game that came out for the NES back in the late eighties:

“Man, that was a great game!”

and

“$#*&@%#!!”

Released in 1989 by Sunsoft, Fester’s Quest was this little hidden gem of a game amongst the rest of the NES titles that came out that year.  Featuring an overhead layout (with a few scattered, first-person, dungeon crawl-like areas) and utilizing gameplay mechanics similar to the game Blaster Master, you controlled Uncle Fester as he ran around town trying to save it from and alien invasion.

While the gameplay was fun and the environment was visually stimulating, the game itself was quite – to put it mildly – challenging.

Between clunky movement and shooting mechanics, frequent and sometimes hard to avoid weapon degrade drops mixed in with the upgrade drops, and enemies that would pop up almost everywhere way too often, this game would frequently get very frustrating.  Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t stop playing it.  Thrown controllers aside (pun intended), I still enjoyed every minute of this game.  For me, at that young age, Fester’s Quest was different and inventive.  Plus, the fact that it was based on what was then a twenty-five year old, black and white television show impressed me.

Though I never actually owned Fester’s Quest, this cartridge has the distinction of being one of the few titles I rented repeatedly (well, as long as my parents had no problems paying for the rental and driving me to and from the rental place).  The first time I rented it, I remember picking up this title and the first Ducktales game.  I found myself enjoying both so much that I had a hard time choosing between the two to play.  I think the quirkiness and eccentricities of Fester’s Quest is what made it stand out for me, though, as well as what made it a constant on my video game rental list.

Before finishing this article, I decided to play it again just to see how it holds up.  It’s not as difficult as I remember, but it still can get frustrating as hell.  Part of the problem is the damn gun upgrades.  Until you upgrade to the best gun in the game, your projectiles tend to do some kind of wonky zig-zag or loop-de-loops as they head towards their target.  This can prove to be somewhat anger-inducing when you are in close quarters with some nasty alien varmints and your gun blasts keep getting stopped by the local shrubbery.  But you know what?  I still enjoyed the hell out of the game.  In fact, it took me at least an hour to get back to this article, I was having so much fun.

So, is Fester’s Quest as good as I remember?  Yup.  In fact, I’m going back to play it some more.

“$#*&@%#!!”

There goes another controller.

The Don is creepy and he’s kooky, he’s hairy like a wookiee, he’ll make you wanna pukee…

It isn’t very often that the stars align and a series of unfortunate events occur in tandem and in perfect sync with the Spwug article that I happen to be writing for the week.

This isn’t one of those times.

Still, it’s a pretty fortunate coincidence that the new Predators movie is opening this weekend and the original Predator came out last week on Blu and that I watched it over the weekend and I had planned on writing about the film this week as a part of my “Don Remembers” series.

Wow.  That’s a lot of ands.

But, with the ever-growing excitement I’m feeling over the possibility that a new Predator film written and produced by Robert Rodriguez might actually be good (or at the very least wash the horrible taste of A v P films out of cinegoers mouths), I felt it was only fitting that this week I remember the classic Schwarzenegger flick that started it all.

First, I will go on record and say that I think Predator is hands down the best action film on Arnold’s resume (and holy cow does it look beautiful on Blu – so clean that it looks like a recently-released film).  Don’t get me wrong – I love me some Terminator and T2, and Commando is just way too much fun – but Predator is a nice, intimate sci-fi/action flick that seems to work perfectly on every level.  You’ve got your well-cast, well-balanced team dynamic, with each character played brilliantly by his respective actor and getting a decent amount of development – so when each one dies, you don’t just shrug it off.  Each death carries weight.  You’ve got your humorous one-liners.  You’ve got your straight-up, military mission plot line that about half-way through gets a serious injection of sci-fi/slasher juice in the form of a bad-ass alien who has no qualms with how messy he makes his kills.  That leads me to the fact that film is also loaded up with a decent amount of gore.  Top that all off with the requisite staple of a Schwarzenegger film – Arnie in a one-on-one showdown with the big bad – and you have the final product that should be on regular rotation in every household.

This film actually holds a special significance for me, as it was the very first R-rated flick I got to see in theaters.  It was summer of 1987.  I was twelve and had just finished seventh grade the month before.  One of my best friends, Jeff, and I had already been stoked to see this film for months after all the articles we had read in magazines like Starlog and Fangoria (ah, the days before the internet when all of your cool movie scoops came from sci-fi and horror magazines).  We talked about this movie constantly, in between watching episodes of Thundercats, playing D&D, and our numerous and consistent attempts to catch any glimpse of T&A that we could on MTV or in whatever flick we could catch on a pay channel.

When the film was finally released in June, Jeff got permission from his mom to stay over at my family’s house that weekend.  Convincing my dad to take us wasn’t a difficult task, as he loved a good action flick as much as anyone.  With our tickets in hand, we went into the small theater at our tiny mall in our miniscule town and took our seats – minds ablaze with excitement over what we were about to see unfold across the screen.

An hour and forty minutes later…

Holy crap!  Jeff and I exited that theater, our young minds blown by the spectacle we had just been privy to.  For the next few months, every minute of our lives was infused with Arnie-speak from the film.  Quotes were flying out of our mouths (and in most cases, away from adult ears) faster than Blaine getting eviscerated by a plasma blast.  Every time we went out to play “guns”, we were commandoes up against some alien hunter.  Even our combined G.I. Joe saw an upgrade in adversaries – from hooded used car salesmen to dreadlocked killers with mandibles and active camouflage.  We would be eating, sleeping, and breathing the awesomeness of Predator well for quite awhile…

Then the hormones kicked in, and we noticed girls.  But that’s another memory… and one probably best not shared.

The Don ain’t got time to bleed.  He’s too busy screaming like a girl from the paper cut.