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…

Greetings, Soggies!!

Alright.  This is the part of the show where I remember something that almost no one has ever heard of (of course, sometimes folks surprise me).

In the mid-eighties, during the height of Indiana Jones fever, it seemed like every studio in Hollywood had to make some kind of “treasure-hunting adventurer”-style film.  Romancing the Stone.  King Solomon’s Mines.  Firewalker. Even television tried to capitalize on the success of Raiders in the early eighties with shows like Bring ‘Em Back Alive and Tales of the Gold Monkey.

Now, somewhere in the midst of all of those movies and shows that actually formed a blip on the “treasure-hunter” radar, there’s this one little gem of a turd that sneaked in under the door… so much so that to this day I am one of the few people that even knows of its existence:

Jake Speed.

The film came out in 1986.  I have no idea if it even made a theatrical release.  All I do know is that it was on heavy rotation on Showtime around that time.  And I watched the hell out of it.  Written, produced, and starring some guy named Wayne Crawford in the title role, this movie was truly a love letter to himself… that just happened to have a couple of fun sequences and a neat thirties-style roadster with machine guns to fit in with the whole “cool vehicles” theme that was also going on in the eighties.

The movie is about a woman named Margaret whose sister is kidnapped while in Paris by a bunch of white slavers.  Her grandfather, who is a huge fan of the heroes of dime store, pulp novels, suggests she recruit one of them – Jake Speed.  Balking at the idea that her grandfather would even believe that these characters are real, Margaret finds herself face to face with Jake and his partner (I don’t mean that kind) Desmond.  Turns out, these guys really go on adventures, and then write about them to pay for more adventures.  From there, the trio go after the slavers, headed up by an awesome, scenery-chewing John Hurt.

I remember stopping to catch this every time it was on.  Not particularly well done, especially compared to its better, theatrically-run brethren.  But, it had its cheesy charms.  Jake had a special shotgun he called “The Kid”.  This weapon had two special properties that all guns had in the eighties – unlimited ammo and the ability to destroy practically anything with one shot.  Then of course, there was that car.  I would grin with delight every time the side panels opened up and the machine guns came out, blazing down everyone in sight.

Now, the film had two major things going for it as far as I was concerned back then – the aforementioned John Hurt and Karen Kopins.  John Hurt is the main (and maybe the only) reason to watch this movie.  He plays the evil villain so over the top you can tell he’s just having fun cashing a paycheck.  But, he’s so much fun to watch.  Sadly, I wanted to provide a clip of Hurt having a scenery sandwich, but it looks like the movie is so bad that everyone is too embarrassed to even post a clip on You Tube.

Now, the reason why Karen Kopins was such a draw for me in regards to this movie is because I had a huge crush on her.  My long distance love affair with Miss Kopins began with a little film called Once Bitten.  In it, she played the girlfriend of Jim Carrey’s character (yes – that Jim Carrey), who was being turned into a vampire.  The cute, little bob haircut and the girl next door persona had me hooked.  And here she was in Jake Speed, playing a very similar character.

Oh and did I mention that about two-thirds of the way through the film she ends up in her underwear?  For a preteen, that’s a big deal.

Many years later, I still have a guilty-pleasure love for this flick.  The movie hasn’t come out on DVD (nor do I ever expect it to), but I did manage to get it on VHS for about five bucks several years ago in a Wal-Mart bargain bin.  It’s one of the few VHS tapes I still own despite the fact that almost all of my movie and TV collection now resides on DVD or Blu.

And as far as I’m concerned, it’s still worth every penny of that five bucks I spent.

The Don doesn’t chew scenery… he swallows it whole.

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…

Greetings, Pyleans!!

Of all the bits of nostalgia that have been running through my head for consideration as my first “Don Remembers” article, one stood out immediately among all others:

Colorforms.

These little, mono-colored pieces of pliable plastic were like a gateway to endless hours of creativity when I was a kid.  Created in the mid-fifties, Colorforms are pre-cut vinyl shapes that would stick to a flat sheet of cardboard that was coated with a slick sheen.  Each shape would usually have some sort of design, like a person or a car, and could stick to the illustrated background through static cling.  Children could create any scene they wanted by placing the Colorforms on the background, peel them off, and reuse them later by setting up a completely new scene.  Originally, they started out simple, but over the years they began to include licensed characters from different television, movie and comic properties.  By the time the 80s rolled in, almost everything from the band KISS to Marvel Superheroes to Jem had truly outrageous Colorforms.

This is where my childhood comes in.  I remember my first set – Battlestar Galactica. I was a huge fan of the Olmos-less original series.  I would spend hours setting up different battle scenes.  Sometimes Starbuck would get ambushed by Cylons.  Sometimes Boxey and his daggit Moffit would have their own solo adventure.  The best part is that while some of the Colorforms depicted single figures, others would be body parts that you could piece together to make poseable characters.  See kids?  This is what we did before home video game consoles were in every household.  Well, this and Atari.

Eventually I would get other sets like Star Wars or Mork and Mindy, and that’s where the fun would really begin.  Wanna know what would happen if Mork from Ork had to take on Vader while Han Solo and Starbuck were caught in a crossfire between Cylons and Imperial Stormtroopers?

Simple – K.I.T.T. would show up with Pac-Man and rescue everybody.  Duh.

The Don once crossed Batman with a Gremlin.  He doesn’t like to talk about it.

Is your head still reeling from last week’s negative webcomic review, Spwuggin’ friends?

Well, ol’ Marlink will take it easy on ya this week, with a bit of extremely cool news for all you literary and history geeks out there: after a century’s delay, Mark Twain’s 500,000+-word autobiography is due to hit the stores as a trilogy this year!

Seems Mr. Samuel Clemens didn’t want his autobio to be seen by the human race until one hundred years after his death. Luckily for all you Twain fans out there, the end of that century is 2010.

Why didn’t Twain want his autobiography published during his lifetime? Did he want to avoid offending people close to him? Did he fear personal persecution? Did he just want to ensure that he would be talked about even a century after a death? I guess we’ll finally be able to find out for certain later this year, when the mysterious massive tale is finally made public.

Like others have pointed out, the man sure knew how to make you want to buy his books!

Greetings, Boglins!

I have to admit that I’m a wee bit off this week.  I feel a little disjointed, so to that end my thoughts are kind of a jumble.  I have ideas, but not enough to flesh them out to carry full articles on their own.

But never fear, my fellow Spwugnerians!  I can actually make this work for me.  In fact, it allows me to do the kind of articles I’ve found myself rather enjoying as of late.  So I bring you another installment of random bits that I affectionately refer to this week as “Bleeps, Sweeps, and Creeps”:

Iron Man 2

Got to see this over the weekend with DKM Marlink and a few other friends.  First, we watched the first film at my house, all the while making snide remarks about how Terrence Howard was going to be replaced later that evening when we got to the theater.  First film still holds up remarkably well.  It has to be one of my favorites, despite the weak third act.  As for the sequel?  Wow.  More of the same, and I mean that in a good way.  Downey Jr. proves once again that the talent is actually his and not from the drugs he lived in for years.  Cheadle was a great substitute for Howard in the role of James Rhodes.  Just a fun flick all over.  My only complaints were that the middle started to feel like it was plodding along (same complaint I had for The Dark Knight).  Plus, Mickey Rourke’s character kinda shows up in a blazing show-down, then takes a back seat for most of the film until the end.  Despite both flaws, the movie got back on its feet by the third act, which was a vast improvement over the first film.  Those who haven’t seen it – stay until after the end credits.  Just like Nick Fury’s spoiled surprise cameo at the end of the first Iron Man, there’s a cool little surprise at the end of this one (SPOILER ALERT: It’s Batroc the Leaper!*)

Farscape

I picked up the complete box set to the hit Sci-Fi (not SyFy) series Farscape about a month ago, and I’ve been pouring myself into it furiously.  I’m almost finished with the first season, and I’m impressed with just how well this show still holds up.  There’s definitely a reason why it was my favorite TV show during its run.  I’m falling in love with these characters all over again (I plan to ask them to marry me next week).  One of the things I like so much about the show is how much it captures the essence of what made the original Star Trek so great – a perfect mixture of straight-up action with episodes of weird crap happening to our main cast with a dash of some light sexiness.  Best feature on the DVD set so far?  Commentary by the creators and the two main cast members on an episode where they spend the entire running time explaining just why the episode is so abysmal.

Super Mario Bros. Galaxy 2

It’s almost here!  Are you ready?  Did you play the first one?  Weren’t the frikkin’ purple coin challenges hard?  How long has it been since you last played the first one?  Do you even remember whether or not you own a Wii?

Corkscrewed Over

Busch Gardens in Virginia, also known as Busch Gardens Europe, also known as The Belgians Were Bored With Just Being Known For Waffles So They Bought the Largest Brewery in America and This Park Got Thrown In For Free, also known as The Park That Had a Really Cool 3-D Ride in Ireland When Not Compared to Anything in Florida but Decided to Ditch it For a Non-3-D Borefest That Could Double as an Extended Promo for British Airways.

That’s a Reynolds Wrap!

Burt Reynolds has been cast as an ex-spy in the incredibly awesome TV series Burn Notice.  My greatest hope is that his cover name is Turd Fergeson.  And he wears a big cowboy hat.  ‘Cuz it’s funny.

Speaking of wrapping up…

The Don’s RADAR appears to be jammed.  Halle Berry.

*It’s totally not Batroc the Leaper!

Greetings, Madballs!

Holy crap.

I’m sure those of you who own one of the “fat” PS3 systems (like me) became quite acquainted with the issue that occurred last Sunday on the right and straight on ‘til Monday.

In short, the non-slim PS3s all took a huge dump.

In a major snafu that most-assuredly gave Xbox 360 owners plenty of ammo in the “Which system is better?” war, a simple glitch with the internal clock ended up wreaking havoc for about twenty-four hours.  For some weird reason, the older PS3 models tried (unsuccessfully, I might add) to turn over from February 28^th to February 29^th, 2010 on Sunday night.  Of course, the system that only does everything (including ride the short bus) did not get the memo that 2010 is not, in fact, a leap year.  The side effect of that?  February still remains short-stacked against her fuller siblings (I’ve always thought of February as a woman – she sure flirts like one).

So, when that internal clock rolled over to the obviously illegal date, those “fat” PS3s immediately wet the bed, making online connection impossible.  Also affected?  Trophy data was either corrupted or non-existent and almost all PS3 games were completely non-playable.

Sony’s response was amusing, yet horrifying at the same time – “Stay off your PS3!”  Sounding like an septuagenarian who just confiscated your Frisbee (do people even play with Frisbees anymore?), the company that uses the same font for Playstation and the Spider-Man movies admitted that they were at a loss, but that the problem was bad enough to warrant treating your system like a red-headed step child (what a sad moniker – I happen to like gingers).

So, like the stalwart troopers that they are, Sony set their tech experts (who obviously have no concept of the Gregorian calendar or this wouldn’t have happened in the first place) to task to find and fix the problem.  Meanwhile, Xbox folks were laughing at our misfortunes right up to the moment when their 360s got their fifth or sixth “Red Ring of Death”, at which point they swore profusely and immediately throw themselves onto some jagged rocks.

At the same time, I was going through a steady decline as withdrawals started to kick in.  It wasn’t noticeable Sunday night, as the problem didn’t occur until after I had already signed off for the evening.  But by the time I got home from work Monday afternoon?  Well, let’s just say that I never realized just how much I use my PS3 until I found out the hard way that about two-thirds of my couch time in the living room requires the use of the third generation Playstation.  I couldn’t play any video games.  I couldn’t watch any movies.  Every time my instincts automatically queued up my arms to reach for the power button on my system I had to stop myself.  In the end, I was forced to “channel surf” – a past time that I’m pretty sure became obsolete right around the same time that Frisbees stopped being something cool that you did in parks and backyards.

Fortunately for me, the Winter Olympics were just over enough to return one of my 8 PM viewing staples to its proper time slot.  After watching the show I bought a Subway sandwich to keep on the air, “Chuck” returned the favor and kept me distracted long enough for Sony to figure out how time is actually kept track of in modern society.  By 9 PM I hesitantly fired up ol’ Bessie based on some positive rumblings I had read in one of the forums I frequent.  Sure enough, my sleek-black beauty was fine and dandy.  She was a little disoriented, still thinking that it was Sunday, February 28^th, but after a gentle correction I was able to play Fallout 3 with only my usual operational glitches and irritations.  All was now right in the world once again.

At least, until all game systems everywhere instantly self destruct while trying to reconcile December 21^st, 2012.

The Don survived the PS3 Blackout of February 29^th, 2010.  He didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt.

Greetings, Station!

The other day I was listening to the Tenacious D song “Beezleboss (The Final Showdown)” from the soundtrack to Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, a movie which no one saw (as evidenced by the abysmal box office numbers).  Despite its lower-than-lackluster performance, I found the film to be a fun romp in the spirit of the rock band misadventure movies of old.  And being a fan of Tenacious D itself (comprised of Jack Black and Kyle Gass), it was only natural that I picked up the soundtrack to the film.  While it isn’t as good as their first album, “PoD” still contains plenty of little musical gems.  One of my favorites is the afore-mentioned “Beezleboss”.

The song retells a slightly altered version of the story regaled in the previous D song “Tribute” – JB and KG get involved in a “rock-off” with the Devil.  The stakes?  If The D wins, Satan must go back to Hell… and he has to pay Jack and Kyle’s rent.  If Beelzebub wins, he gets to take KG back to Hell with him to be his slave (and not the indentured servitude kind, either).

With the stakes in place, the rock-off commences.  Satan begins with an epic, dark mass of metal proportions.  Tenacious D reciprocate with a fairly inspirational effort, but to no avail.  The Devil wins and prepares to take Kyle back to his domain for eternity.

But wait!  At the last minute, Jables intervenes, causing the Beezleboss to break off a piece of his own horn.  With that piece in Black’s possession, he is able to command the Devil to go back to Hell once more until he is “complete again”.

So, I’m listening to this song and the thought occurs to me – most tales that chronicle Ol’ Scratch competing for a mortal’s soul seem to paint him in the same manner in order to sell the message that good always triumphs over evil.  He’s almost always painted as an honor-bound entity that can be easily beaten by someone with enough talent, hard work, and moxie.

Wait, what?  Hold on a minute.  This is the same guy who had the molten stones to challenge The Big Man.  Sure, he lost and was cast out of St. Peter’s jurisdiction, but he obviously had enough power to challenge George Burns in the first place.  You don’t make such a bold gesture unless you know for certain that you got the Mana to do so.

Plus, Lucifer is also a master of deception.  He managed to fool the first man and woman with fruit.  The guy’s got some serious ad executive powers going on if he can sell a couple of nudists on foliage sweets.  Come to think of it, this isn’t all that different from the supernatural ability Steve Jobs has to convince people to buy things like iPads.

Wait… Steve Jobs… Apple…

Mind = blown.  Where was I again?

Oh yeah… So, The Dark Lord is obviously a master manipulator.  There’s a reason why he is called The Master of Lies – the guy uses words to confuse, deceive, delude, dupe, fool, gull, hoax, hoodwink, kid, snow, take in, trick, intrigue, machinate, plot, scheme, arrange, contrive, devise, finesse, mastermind, cheat, chisel, defraud, fleece, gyp, hustle, and swindle (thanks, Merriam-Webster!).  He’s always in it for his own ends and he does whatever is necessary to get what he wants.

This means that there is no way in Hell (pun intended) anyone like Charlie Daniels or Ralph Macchio could ever hope to defeat him in a one-on-one.  It doesn’t matter how hard you try or how much spirit you poured into your efforts.  The Devil can say whatever he wants.  He could play two plunky chords off- key while you play Vivaldi backwards with your butt cheeks.  He’ll declare himself the winner no matter what.  It’s what he does.  Say goodbye to your soul, Karate Kid, because no amount of Crane Kicks or Drum Techniques or Lipton Brisk Iced Tea will save you from spending an eternity waxing on and waxing off The Prince of Evil.

Now, I’ll give “Beezleboss” some credit.  Despite the fact that the Source of All Evil adheres to a “demon code”, the song (as well as the final scene of the movie, which is where the song comes from) does finally illustrate that The D had no chance of winning a rock-off against The Dark One.  Even the “Real Ghostbusters” episode “Night Game” had a better understanding of how things should work when you compete against dark forces.  Granted, Winston was playing baseball against your more run-of-the-mill demons, but the ump still recognized that evil was free to cheat and play as dirty as it wanted (well, at least as dirty as a Saturday morning cartoon can get).  Of course, in the end good still won, despite the fact that the evil demons cheated the hell out of that game.

Don’t get me wrong.  I completely understand the intention behind the way these stories are told.  Triumph of the human spirit against the forces of evil and the belief that we are inherently good enough to conquer our own (metaphorical) inner demons is a popular trope that’s never going away.  As a society we need to be able to watch movies and television shows, listen to music, and read books and comics that remind us no matter what dark paths we go down or what nefarious entities we meet, we still have a chance and the power within us to punch old Beelz in the front-flow and scream “Adrian!” in triumph.

It’s just that every once in awhile I would like to see Mephisto with his Adamantium cup on.

The Don went down to Georgia.  Her mother didn’t approve.

It’s that time again! And seeing as all my previous notes for Spwug articles, webcomic reviews, and other whatnot are still inaccessible to me (and no, we can’t just transfer them to this computer right now, for reasons), you get a new batch this week…of filler!

Entirely by coincidence, I’ve seen more of Adam Baldwin in one weekend than I’ve seen over the past year, via Firefly and the season premiere of Chuck. I’ma gonna ramble about the first of those two shows—yes, I really did go this long without seeing Firefly and its movie, Serenity. This article is really an Opinion After the Fact and not much of a review at all, since there’s probably no need for me to go into character descriptions and plot for a show that you’ve likely already seen, or at least heard about, and you’ve probably already made up your mind on its merits.

What was my verdict, after watching the Joss Whedon work that was repeatedly urinated upon by FOX (c’mon, is anyone REALLY surprised that a network now hiring Sarah Palin screwed up?), resurrected by the fans, then killed again? Well, I had a blast watching it. I can see why it’s so loved. The character dialogue and interactions were brilliant for the most part. When you watch the show, you stick around because the scenes are so wonderfully written. Great jokes, deep insights, usually realistic reactions to dangerous situations…the characters really are people and not just characters, and that’s what make the show truly live. My better half and I did spend the series playing the “Hey! I saw that part in Cowboy Bebop/Outlaw Star” game, although of course it could be said that those two shows in turn lifted some of their own moments from previous works, and so on down the line. (The “game” is not a complaint, by the way. It was fun.)

At the same time, though, I can see why it got cancelled (twice). What didn’t I like?

There were times when people behaved slightly against their grain so as to not to move the plot along too quickly, which would occasionally bring things into cliché territory. This usually happened via Malcolm Reynolds not living up to the “shoot first” attitude that made him such an interesting character in the first episodes.* Naturally, the Bad Guy that Mal didn’t kill would then come back to haunt the ship’s crew, only to end up getting killed by Mal after all, roll credits. Not terribly original. Meanwhile, this being a Joss Whedon creation, you of course had the required “main character dies a stupid death for absolutely no good reason” in Serenity. (HARPOON!) Maybe it would have made more sense and had more impact if we’d had seasons and seasons of episodes and character development leading up to it, instead of a single random act?

* Some of the villains Mal “killed” were supposed to come back later in the series. But since the series HAD no “later”, this little point becomes moot.

In other issues I had, the worlds visited were all largely identical, being mostly either barren dustballs or barren ice worlds due to lack of budget—on the flip side, the inside of the ship Serenity was so detailed that it really was, as a DVD extra calls it, the tenth character. Then there’s River Tam, the very annoying know-it-all character whose mental imbalance shouldn’t be an excuse for her behaviour–and really, The Mysterious Girl Is Always the Key to Everything has already been done in nearly every sci-fi creation known to man. And of course, the “united government that rules everything on all worlds is evil and corrupt” recurring theme is another standard sci-fi cliché. It didn’t seem to fit in so well with the episodic unrelated criminal capers the main cast got up to regularly.

And I think that was the show’s Achilles heel. All the brilliant dialogue in the world can’t save you from a story that’s been done many times before and doesn’t give any indication of being done in a unique manner this time. I really believe that, if the show had lasted, it would have been a FUN ride and more than worth the price of admission. But at the end, it likely wouldn’t have been the space dramedy roller coaster to end all space dramedy roller coasters. The show deservedly has a lot of rabid fans. But I also think that intense love for many is bolstered by the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” sentiment as only the word “CANCELLED” can bring.

I still think anyone who likes a good sci-fi show should watch Firefly, because it was very good. Yeah, I just wrote a list of complaints up there, but for the most part, they’re pretty minor. Besides, that’s what I DO. I warn you what to expect. The show is awesome. But if you haven’t seen it, don’t go in expecting any surprises. Expect fun dialogue, fun Western-style shootouts, fun criminal capers, crossdressing, fancy guns, toy dinosaurs, and, if you’re just the shallow type, eye-candy in the form of naked Mal (according to many fangirls) or the lovely Companions (according to many fanboys)…just don’t call them whores. (The Companions, that is. Although I’m sure Mal would take some offense to the term himself, despite using it on his own Companion comrade/not-so-seekrit love interest regularly.)

Yep, if you’re like me and you never get around to watching something unless everyone you know is still raving about it years later, the Firefly series is an excellent one to add to your Netflix queue. But don’t take my (many) words for it. How about some YouTube examples of the previously-mentioned great spoken lines?

A Powerful Ugly Creature – posted by gouhibiki

“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” – posted by foxabulous

“What’d y’all order a dead guy for?” – posted by gouhibiki

Join us next time, when I’ll probably have yet another random article whilst waiting for the new computer’s parts to arrive!