Go-Bots Vs. Star Wars

After a marked lull in activity on my blog for the last month during which time I was busy writing horror movie reviews at In the Queue, I revisited for the first time just a few weeks ago.  I was shocked to see, in the last month, the viewings of my site had doubled!  I’m not sure what I can attribute this spike in interest to except maybe people love tongue-in-cheek articles about meat products, since the majority of hits seemed to stem from my Goetta and Spam entries.

Or maybe, just maybe, it is time my self-depreciating, semi-acerbic wit, my tendency to carouse, my boundless knowledge of pop culture, and my ability to string together marginally related words to create partially coherent sentences to finally be truly appreciated.

Regardless, I best strike while the iron is hot, which is why I’m bringing out the big guns.  The GO-BOTS!

When I was a kid, I hated the Go-Bots.  To my recollection I had exactly two in my toy collection.  Screwhead (because he has a screw...for a head) and Pathfinder who, supposedly, is a female Go-Bot.  I was completely unaware of this until I went to look for a screen shot of her.  But now that I look at this pic of “her,” I totally see the feminine qualities.  Large, broad shoulders, some sort of bonnet, and a bow-tie.  Screams the fairer sex.  How did I ever overlook it? 

One thing was for sure, they sucked.  I wasn’t a kid who owned a bunch of Transformers growing up, so this wasn't the litmus test by which they were measured, although even with only a couple of each in my collection it was obvious Transformers were FAR superior toys.  Me?  I was a He-Man/GI Joe/Thundercats guy.  I'm telling you right now, the feminine wiles of Teela were much more enchanting than the blocky, cold, asexual feel of a robot.  That being said, who didn't have a little bit of a crush on Arcee?

The Go-Bots  were just so damned generic.  To transform Pathfinder you folded her in half and to transform Screwhead I’m pretty sure you just tipped him over.

I never knew the Go-Bots as popular toys.  I thought everybody felt the same way I did about them.  But they had cartoons, paint with water books, activity books, Nestle Quik tie-ins, cereals….oh, wait, no, they didn’t have a cereal at all.  They didn’t have Colorforms either, which is a PRETTY good measuring stick of popularity.  Maybe they weren’t so beloved after all.

But what they did have was MODELS.  Good thing, because I’m really tired of living vicariously through Dr. Wiley.  My deep seeded need to build a robot without any knowledge of how to actually build a robot can finally be fulfilled!

I bought the Buggyman model off EBAY.  I picked Buggyman because he was cheaper than the other models I found on EBAY.  He must be the scrub Go-Bot.  For those of you who only speak Transformer, Buggyman would be the equivalent of Sideswipe.  Remember him?  No?  Neither do I.

I was kind of surprised when I received the package.  Kind of small.  I was expecting something at least the size of, say, a puzzle box.  It was more the size of the palm of my hand.  I thought, being a giant robot, it might be a little more grandiose.  Of course, for all I know, the Go-Bots were actually very tiny.  Like Transformers meets The Littles

.    

 My good friend Buffalo is going to help me build this bad boy.  Doesn't have the same ring as Jim or Jack, but just as effective and twice as tasty.

Here are all the pieces spread on my card table.  Looks pretty meager, eh?  You betcha’ it does.  But let’s just wait to see it when it’s done.  Just break out ye old instructions here.  Hey, there’s a description right on here of Buggyman! 

“Buggyman is a ferocious robot from the planet GoBotron, located in a distant galaxy.  With a few simple movements he is transformed into a dune buggy.  He’s a real mean machine!”

Ah yes, dune buggies, the meanest of all machines.  I guess, based on my viewing of Mad Max 2, he’ll be pretty important after the apocalypse. But for now only important for those times when you have to traverse a desert.  Or joyride on a beach.  Even in the lame world of the Go-Bots, Buggyman is at the bottom of the totem.  Unless “GoBotron” is rife with dunes.  GoBotron.  Seriously.

Let’s get in to the actual directions.  Step 1.  Check.  Step 2.  Check.  Step 3……cement?  Step 6…..paint?  Step 9…mild detergent? What the hell?  I thought this thing would just snap together.  I don’t have this crap just sitting around the house.  Damn, Dr. Wiley had it easy.

It took me 50 times longer to write the last 700 words then it did to be foiled in my original attempt at building the Go-Bots model.  But with a Dale’s Pale Ale and a shot of Buffalo already in my gullet, with my Les McCann and Eddie Harris record playing, I was inspired to build SOMETHING.

How about THE MILLENIUM FALCON?!  This has been sitting in my closet for about a year or so now.  I picked it up for $4 at the Goodwill.  It's a 3-D puzzle.  Seemed like a steal.  I’ve hesitated to make it because it touts “super challenging” right there on the front of the box.  Welp, no time like the present!

 Ugh, look at it.  Intimidating.  Kind of oozing out of the box, like The Blob.  Better turn all the pieces over.

Holy shit.  It’s just gray.  So very gray.  Painfully gray.  It’s going to be like putting together a black and white picture of the sky.  And 3-D puzzles aren’t like other puzzles, all the pieces don’t just go together.  Oh, no.  I gotta make the top, the bottom, the sides, the back, the wings, all separately then fold it all together like some sort of malevolent origami!  Not to mention there are too many pieces to fit comfortably on my card table, so I have them spread everywhere…some on the lid of a tote, some still in the box.  God knows if they are even all there.  A bit more daunting then I had hoped.  This calls for some more Buffalo Trace and another beer.

A couple more shots and another Dale's Pale Ale later.  The Blob has consumed me.  I Got about 6 pieces put together, but two of them were together straight out of the box.  Han Solo is somewhere crying in to his beer as we speak.

Friday the 13th

Despite all my talk about love of the horror genre, until October of 2012, I had never seen the original Friday the 13^th.  For a while I avoided it because I was scared of horror films, slashers in particular.  Then, when I got in to horror films, I avoided it because it was too obvious.  Too mainstream, too readily available, too well known.  Better to watch Night of the Creeps, or Slaughter High.

I have to say, about ten minutes in to the film, I was already taken with something astounding; Kevin Bacon was in this bitch!  I mean, it’s well known that Jamie Lee Curtis was in Halloween, and Johnny Depp was in Nightmare on Elm Street, so how can it be I had no idea Kevin Bacon was in Friday the 13^th?  Certainly Bacon is as important to the pop culture lexicon as Depp, right?  I think Tremors trumps any work by Depp, and what moviephile hasn’t played a rousing round or two of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?”

The second thing I was struck by?  The outfits.  Oh, dear, the outfits.  Here’s screen shot number 1:

Holy crap, what is that guy wearing?  Bright red socks and a red kerchief with MATCHING RED SHOESTRINGS!  Quite the little accesorizer.  No shirt and cut-off jean shirts.  What do you do in an outfit like that?  Cut down trees.  In this thrilling scene they are getting ready to remove that pesky stump.  Slasher films always start out so innocuous.

Hey look at this snazzy dresser.  Plain white pants, plain white shoes, bright red suspenders with no shirt.  The modern man in the early 80s.  Before they invented belts, I guess.  Damn, looks like I left the play time on this one.  It actually bothers my sense of aesthetics, but I’m too lazy to go back and fix it.  But it reminds me, these two dapper fellows appear about three minutes apart in the film.  Talk about sensory overload!  Not to mention just a scant few minutes later, on the dock you can see right there in the background, Kevin Bacon will be seen cavorting in a pair of blue and yellow Speedos.  I like to refer to that particular scene as “superfluous batch.”

Speaking of snappy dressers, I swear when our killer first shows up she (oops, spoiler alert!) is wearing a tweed jacket and a pair of slacks.  That doesn’t seem very threatening, and I’m sure those little burrs get all caught up on the tweed.  Still, I guess slashing throats in the woods with a huge butcher’s knife probably adds a bit of menace regardless of one’s poor choice in wardrobe.  I wanted to make a Mr. Bean joke here, but I already messed it up by revealing the gender of the killer with my spoiler alert joke.  The choice of jests available for the early 80s slasher-film blogger is abundant, but only one path is true.  I hope I have chosen the correct one. 

God I hate Rowan Atkinson.

Let’s get this whole “spoiler alert” thing out of the way.  Chances are you have seen the original Friday the 13^th at some point in your life.  And if you haven’t, there’s a pretty good chance you aren’t reading this review, in 2012, for advice on whether or not to watch it.  Either way, seen it or no, you’re probably just curious what I think of it so, yeah, I’m going to spoil the hell out of it.  I’m going to tell you Kevin Bacon’s character dies and I’m going to post a picture of it.  I’m going to tell you they play strip Monopoly at the camp but, even with such a ripe opportunity to explore burgeoning teenage sexuality, nobody gets naked.  Most importantly, I’m going tell you the killer is Jason’s mom and Jason, for all intents and purposes, isn’t even in it. 

Now that there have been nine Friday the 13^th sequels, a remake, and a crossover, all of which (ugh, most of which, I know he isn’t in the 5^th one either) revolve around the character of Jason Vorhees, he has become the embodiment of the films.  It seems weird, in retrospect, that he did not appear in the first film and I have it on good authority (thanks to Mr. Kris Riley) didn’t even don his iconic hockey mask until the third film.

That being said, I actually rather enjoyed Friday the 13^th.  My expectations for the film, considering it has now reached its 30^th anniversary, were very low.  I assumed it would be much of the same slasher dreck I have seen before and even though Friday the 13^th would in all actuality have been a precursor to those films, it wouldn’t matter since I hadn’t seen it until after.

To a degree, that turns out to be absolutely true.  It is very similar to any slasher you’ve ever sat through.  It was, however, unexpectedly gory with a few over-the-top murder scenes, there’s death by knife, arrows, and axes, the direction is competent enough and almost suspenseful at times (almost), the soundtrack is quite memorable, and it has the decency to be laughable instead of boring during downtime.

The climax of the film is a bit of a letdown, as our sole survivor Alice (Adrienne King) grapples with Pamela Vorhees (Betsy Palmer).  I know in this sort of film it might seem silly to complain about how foolhardy the heroine is, but I can’t help myself.  See, first Alice hits her with a fireplace poker, than runs to a shed.  Then Vorhees finds her, so she hits her with the butt of a rifle, and runs away.  Then, oh god, can it be true?  She hits her with a FRYING PAN.  And runs away.  Come on, give me a break.  She’s unconscious every time.  You better tie her up or bludgeon her with that frying pan, one or the other.  At least the final, killing blow is so ridiculous it will probably leave you in stitches.

After seeing a ton of cheaply made slasher films, I was surprised this film left any sort of impression on me.  I'm not going to tout it as a "must see," but as a pop culture phenomenon it is definitely worth a watch.  KEVIN BACON, LOOK OUT!

Next up, Halloween review at In the Queue Reviews.

Or, if you feel froggy, jump ahead to my review of The Burning.

GoettaFest 2012

Every year, in my hometown of Evansville, Indiana, the first full week of October is commemorated with a huge street festival.  It is touted as the second biggest single street festival next to Mardi Gras.  This bit of trivia is accredited to the late radio personality Paul Harvey, so make of it what you will.

Fall Festival, bird's eye view

It’s known as the West Side Nut Club Fall Festival…although all the denizens of southern Indiana simply refer to it as the “Fall Festival.”  Although the Fall Festival boasts its fair share of carny-run games and rides, the real draw is the food.  According to this article:  http://matadornetwork.com/nights/the-worlds-most-ridiculous-food-festival/  last year’s festival contained 135 food carts culminating in over 400 menu items.

When it was first recommended by Mr. Bob Thacker I do my next blog on goetta I had to come clean: I’ve never had it.  Now, there’s a good chance you have never had goetta either and probably, quite frankly, never even heard of it.  Probably because it is only produced and known in the greater Cincinnati area.  It’s more or less ground meat, sometimes pork sometimes beef sometimes a mixture, mixed with oats.  Yeah, I said oats.

So people around here are often aghast when I mention such a thing.  Their jaws drop.  They scratch their heads in a puzzled manner.  “Haven’t had goetta?!  Well I never!”  And then the obligatory recommendations: Have it here, have it there, buy it at the grocery and cook it up yourself at home.  Etcetera, etcetera.

As luck would have it, right around the corner from the goetta blog recommendation lay Glier’s GoettaFest, a hearty street festival centered around celebrating the much heralded meat product.  After perusing the website, I felt this would be akin to Evansville’s Fall Festival: Games, live entertainment and, most of all, food and drink, even if on a much smaller scale.

It's more crowded than it looks....

So it was on a hot and humid day that my wife and I trudged down to the Newport Levee where, right on the river, Glier’s, the world’s largest manufacturer of goetta, was holding their fest.  As we climbed down the stairs towards the merriments, the sights and smells brought with them a strong sense of nostalgia washing over me like a wave.  A crashing, thunderous, catastrophic tsunami wave.  And there, practically swimming through the 90 degree heat and oppressive humidity, the truth of the matter came rushing back…I fucking HATE street festivals.

Looking down the street I saw the swarm of sweaty, unwashed humanity, standing in long lines to buy food so enormously bad for you one might imagine you are inviting a spur of the moment heart attack.  There were those swilling overpriced beer to wash down their overpriced food.  There was a completely mediocre live band, so loud it was near impossible to speak to any of the nearby vendors.  There were those who brought along their broods of children, assumedly so they could ply them with food so greasy and fattening by the time they would get home they would be nearly catatonic, so mom and dad could watch the newest episode of whatever completely reprehensible reality TV program is currently moderately popular in peace and quiet.  You know, something like Swamp People or, God forbid, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

Even when I lived in Evansville, I could never understand the giddy excitement that descended on the town come October.  Literally thousands and thousands of people, elbow to elbow, perusing overpriced rubbish, most of it deep fried.  I printed out a copy of the menu from last year and there were FORTY-ONE items incorporating the term “fried” or “deep fried,” including such delicacies as Snickers, Klondike Bars, Kool-Aid, cookie dough and dandelions.  This doesn’t include items that are deep fried but just don’t say so in the description. 

I like food.  I like it a lot.  I am certainly not saying I don’t sometimes like to eat food that isn’t really all that good for me, because I most certainly do.  But when we went to GoettaFest we spent about $40 on food which left me feeling fatigued and borderline nauseas .  $40.  For goetta products either so deep fried or so covered in cheese I couldn’t actually be 100% sure it was goetta at all.  For all I know it could have been Soylent Green.  Forty dollars should actually be a pretty nice dinner out in a restaurant, where I don’t have to either eat my food standing up or fight for a seat at a picnic table next to a complete stranger.  Where my eyes wouldn’t be stinging from the sweat running down my face and the menu is well thought out and the food comes with actual flavor instead of the sickly taste of overheated Crisco clinging to it.

Upon first entering the festival I encountered this signage describing goetta:

Your fork breaks the delicate crisp and moves carefully through the creamy middle of the morning circle.  Every bite sends you deeper into total sensory engagement, and allows the mind to skip through the collection of stories that decorate your family’s history and your own.  In a moment you are at your grandma’s counter enveloped in tales of her grandma’s kitchen.  Your heart sings.

“Holy crap,” I thought, “this stuff must be what God himself eats for breakfast!”  And I could picture him at a table of four, with Peter Falk, Sherman Hemsley and Richard Dawson.  Oh, the ribald tales they would share with God while drinking morning mimosas around a cornucopia spilling out assorted fruits.  Dawson would brag of the ladies, oh all the ladies.  Falk would tell about the time he lost his glass eye to a dog, and Hemsley would ironically proclaim about how he really had finally made it to a deluxe apartment………..in the sky-i-i.  And while they would all chortle with laughter and pat each other reassuringly on the backs, just as the morning feast seemed to be coming to an end and the angels were serving the morning coffee with pieces of apple pie, God would scream up the heavens, “Let there be more goetta!”

And so it would come to pass.

I had high expectations beforehand but this sign, this spectacle, this promise of a semi-hallucinatory state, this raised my expectations so high my first bite of goetta would have probably had to be accompanied by an orgasm in order to match them.  So it was, when I had my first bite of a goetta Philly Cheesteak (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one), it happened that my first thought was “This shit taste like hash browns on a bun.”

This, I think, is the most depressing thing of all.  For all my want to actually try and, hopefully, enjoy goetta, none of the items there really seemed to represent the meat.  The Philly Cheesesteak was so lathered with cheese and onion I couldn’t really taste the meat, but the consistency did come across as hash brown-y.  I finished the day with a “corn dog” because it’s a classic festival treat, but, as far as I could tell, the goetta sausage wasn’t ever covered in any kind of corn flour. It was simply dipped, naked, into its bath, leaving me to eat a thin layer of congealed deep fried grease tasting just like old deep fried grease.  I’m pretty sure God wouldn’t want his goetta sullied in such manners.  And, for that matter, neither would Peter Falk.

Oh, the humanity! 

On the way out of the festival we stumbled on a vending machine filled with pre-processed pounds of goetta for three dollars.  I wanted so badly to purchase meat out of a stand-alone vending machine and I wanted, even more, with all of my heart, just to hear the sickly thud of a pound of processed pig pieces slapping dully against the bottom tray.  But I just couldn’t do it.  On this day Glier’s had already stolen enough of my money, if not even just a little bit of my soul.

ADDENDUM

My wife was kind enough, in her spare time, to give a handful of honest reviews of the food she sampled.  So if you haven't had your fill of goetta, read on dear reader, read on...

Goetta mac & cheese…apparently an award-winning recipe.  I started with this dish, and I was a little disappointed with it.  First, it was a pretty big helping of mac & cheese. Second, I couldn't really taste any of the goetta sausage in it…I basically felt like I was eating mac & cheese with oats.  As a point of comparison, Ryan and I have recently been eating Hamburger Helper with spicy sausage instead of hamburger for a change, and there is a cheesy rice meal that is AWESOME with said sausage.  In fact, I would go so far as to say our variation on cheesy Mexican rice in a box would whip the goetta mac & cheese's ass in a head-to-head taste test.

Goetta spring rolls…just tasted like spring rolls.  All fried wrapper and cabbage.  I had to add a little spicy mustard to mine to give it some zing, and then all I tasted was spicy mustard.  Definitely not worth the $3 for two spring rolls that are completely basic.

I also got it in my sun-addled noggin that we needed to try Busken bakery's Goetta Goobers, which consists of small fried lumps of goetta-infused donut dough liberally sprinkled with powdered sugar.  What the hell, Voodoo Doughnuts has a Bacon Maple Bar… However, that is an actual donut, and these are just fried nuggets.  In general, all I tasted was frying oil and powdered sugar.  Since we got them to go, I was also stuck with the dilemma of how to store meat donuts.  I can't just leave those in the breadbox, no sir.  I had to put them in the fridge.  

The goetta chili cheese chilito from Chili Rocks was really good.  It was spicy, saucy and tasted just like a good chilito should.  The goetta was not a distraction.  And seriously, my typical gold standard chilito is one from Taco Bell.  That mystery meat is probably less appetizing than goetta.  So this dish gets the best in show from me out of the four goetta concoctions I tried.

Spam.

There are a number of important opportunities to take advantage of when one’s significant other is out of town.  The two most important, however, are turning up the air conditioner, and drinking plenty of beer.  And also maybe eating a can of Spam.

I’ve never had Spam before, at least not that I remember, but when a fellow co-worker jokingly mentioned it as something a bachelor would eat, I decided it just felt right.  The 24oz Pabst Blue Ribbon I added of my own accord.  I actually like PBR.  I know, I know, it’s laden in hipster-rich chic, but I honestly don’t think its flavor is dreadful.  And I’ve tried my share of cheap beers.  Burger, Hudepohl, Hamm’s, Schlitz, Natty Light, Old Milwaukee, and I find Pabst to be the best of them all, not a terribly far cry from its much more popular domestic brethren and much cheaper.  Oh, and also, for the hipster in me, this:

http://www.youtube.com./watch?v=HeWUXV89w0g

I wasn’t quite sure how to “prepare” spam.  Both on the front and back of the can it is prepared as a sandwich, so I figured this was the best route to go.  I had to stop by Kroger in order to get a loaf of bread, as the one in my home had been ridden with a bit of the fungal growth.

At first I thought it might be kind of ironic to eat it on some fancy bread, but after a short, yet heated, internal argument, I decided I wanted to sort of stick with the “everyman” Spam meal.  I think of Spam as an affordable working man’s meat, and the working man, he don’t give a spit about Pepperidge Farm’s thin-sliced Deli Rye and Pumpernickel swirled half loaf.  Nor Brownberry’s 10 Grain “Health-full” half loaf.

And after looking…..neither did I.  I mean, really?  $4.29 for a half loaf of bread?  What could make it so much better?  Oh, your bread has more grains than mine?  And also it has a few oats in the crust?  You know what, I’d just as soon buy the Kroger brand of Lite White.  It tastes like bread and it has a picture of a mother playing with her daughter on the front.  You know what $4.29 doesn’t buy Pepperidge Farms?  Family wholesomeness.  Maybe you should think of that when you’re trying to sell 16 slices of Goldfish-shaped thin slices for five bucks, you gimmicky rip-off artists! 

The makings of my meal.  My co-worker (Mr. Douglas Kuhlman….although around my crib I refer to him as Riptide, since he is one of the few people I have ever met who actually remembers the short-lived TV show Riptide) had mentioned I should have an egg with my Spam.  I’m sure he meant a fried egg, but I have a lot of hard-boiled eggs premade.  I think it’s the thought of having an egg with a meal that doesn’t really need an egg anyway.  The working man loves eggs.  Easy and filling.  Just like the ideal woman.

A super dramatic pic of the top of the Spam can. I love cans of food with pull tabs.  It makes me feel like I’m in some post-apocalyptic America, trudging down gray, desolate countryside.  With every step the dust kicked up from my boots making me more and more thirsty.  Finally, weak with hunger and near delusional I stumble in to a 1950s ranch-stlye home.  I collapse on the floor and there, right in my line of sight, I see a small, raised ring…..a trap door!  A bomb shelter!  With the last remnants of my strength I pull the ring and the door flies open, revealing true, pure darkness.  Ever so cautiously I descend the rickety stairs in to the shelter with the help of my trusty flashlight.  Beneath is a cornucopia of canned goods.  Vegetables!  Beans!  Preservatives!  Meats!  If it turns out I am the last survivor of the human race, at least I can fill that void in my soul with a spoonful of potted meat and a side of Bumbleberry Jam.

 If you’re wondering what that is on the far end, it’s a seal proclaiming the 75^th anniversary of Spam.  The best thing about it?  When I opened the can of spam, you could see the indention of the seal pressed in to the top of the meat product.  Delicious.

Sans can, in all of its pinkish, gleaming glory.  I’m pretty sure, if you look real hard, right in the corner, you can make out the face of Jesus.  Or maybe that's the mascot from the Bad Boy Club clothing line.  No, really.  Google image search it.  He's right there.  In my Spam.

  

Cookin’ it up…….mmmmm…..just a bit brown on the edges now, don’t wanna over fry it…if you can do such a thing to processed/cured/nebulous/ham-bits.

The finished product.  I lightly toasted the bread and added a slice of Swiss cheese, because that’s what I had in the fridge.  In retrospect I kind of which it would have been a slice of neon-orange, individually packaged, Kraft American cheese, because that’s what I picture working everyman having in his fridge.  But cheese is cheese, and this sandwich was certainly not going to do without. 

Both of the pictures on the can had a tomato, so I added a tomato.  It might be overkill, but I think it adds some much needed class to the proceedings.  I considered adding a condiment as well, say mustard or mayonnaise, but I didn’t want to completely kill the flavor of the Spam.  I think this is one pork-based conglomeration needing to be TASTED.

The final three word verdict?  “Damn that’s SALTY!”  I guess you have to add a lot of salt to canned meat you want to keep edible for 5+ years.  I have to say, the tomato cut the salt a bit which made it much more palatable, and I eventually added a bit of spicy mustard, which even made it better.  I think I could enjoy a Spam sandwich every once and again provided it was dressed with lettuce, cheese, tomato and mustard, preferably spicy brown.  Although maybe, just maybe, I should try it in some of the ways this commercial recommends.  Did somebody say Spam pizza?!

SPAM COMMERCIAL!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLRPJEoQBQQ

Weird Stuff at the Local Wal-Mart

When I first named this blog, I was a little worried people would think it inspired by “People of Wal-Mart.”  Not so.  Making fun of morbidly obese individuals who don’t have the cognitive ability to dress themselves appropriately is only moderately humorous one time, unless said person has a wildly inappropriate tattoo somewhere on their back.  Then it’s funny every time.

No, this blog was a lot more inspired by finding a Power-Man and Iron Fist action figure duo at Target.  You may not think it’s weird, but finding packaged action figures based on a comic that ended its run 25 years ago and was never popular even back then, well, that’s weird.  Especially at Target.  I wouldn’t even expect that sort of spectacle at my nearest comic specialty shop (big ups to Captain Comic on Beechmont).

Needless to say it was one of my favorite comics, and I purchased the figures and they are now sitting in my basement, still packaged, right between my (opened) “Shop S-Mart” Ash, complete with boomstick, and my (still packaged) Xander Harris construction worker figure, circa Season 7.  God I’m the coolest.

Which brings me to the things I find weird at Wal-Mart.  It actually started just a few months ago when I was walking back to the electronics section, and I passed a packaged action figure duo.  No, I’m not repeating myself.  I haven’t lost (all) of my short term memory just yet.

It was THIS duo:

Although on the surface they seem like perfectly normal toys, there are a number of strange things about this product.  Number one, they seem to be a tie-in with the movie “Wolverine: X-Men origins.” I haven’t had the will (or is it just plain unabashed stupidity?) to sit through that god-awful piece of tripe, but I don’t believe either Colossus or Cyclops were in the film.  Number two, Cyclops is simultaneously grabbing his head and his crotch.  I believe that is a move more associated with Captain EO than Cyclops.

Number three, fittingly enough, is the associated film is three years old.  I guess the reason they are still on the shelf is because it was a really shitty film, the characters packaged have no viable connection to said film, and because they are on clearance for TWENTY-FOUR DOLLARS!

I believe I paid $11.99 for my Power-Man and Iron Fist, and I cringed at forking over that much hard-earned cash.  Twenty-four dollars?  For a movie nobody has ever said anything good about?  For two characters not even in the film?  ON CLEARANCE?!

I should probably point out the obvious reason this diamond in the rough is worth its weight in paper exchange is the giant blue sticker at the top.  It’s a Wal-Mart EXCLUSIVE.  One day it will probably be worth big money.  I mock Colossus and Cyclops, but I’m stowing away my Wal-Mart exclusive copy of Foreigner’s “Can’t Slow Down” album for the day when it will be worth its weight in whatever monetary unit we use in the future.  Personally I’m hoping human livers or possum tongues.

And what was right beneath the ill-bred “collector’s edition” of two characters with no modern day following and so far removed from Chris Claremont’s rabid fan base nobody would even take the time to glance at it twice?

That’s right, a giant bin of wooden slide whistles.

I have no idea what you would do with a slide whistle.  Ostensibly you would use it to, well, whistle a jaunty tune.  But who do you buy a slide whistle for?  I can’t imagine anybody over the age of five would want to do anything besides set it on fire.  Furthermore, I can’t believe any adult who isn’t simply addled would want any child under six to have it, for fear he would use it with such fervor and so unrelentingly you would simply want to cram it down his throat.  I feel like the slide whistle can probably be laid to rest with such great toys as jacks or paddle ball or those stupid drums with beads on the side you shake back and forth between your palms…….yeah, you know what I’m talking about…

I feel like this blog is becoming somewhat superhero-centric but, in all fairness, I found every item here on the same clearance island.  So here we find a Nick Fury action figure.  There is absolutely nothing odd about this figure.  Well, I mean, except it is a Nick Fury action figure.  Who wants Captain America or Thor or Iron Man or Hulk or, hell, even Black Widow or Hawkeye when they can have NICK FURY!  He stalks around in the background and shoots a 9mm at Norse Gods!  Oh, Nick Fury, you’re dreamy!

I took the picture because it looks so goddamned much like Samuel L Jackson I find it just a little eerie.  I’m glad he’s an eye short else his steely gaze would be staring right in to my soul.  And the last place I want Sam Jack is in my soul.  Also, in the bottom right hand corner, it states INCLUDES WEAPONS!  As if you can’t see that by looking through the clear plastic packaging.  It’s a good thing too, because Fury without guns is like Cap without his shield, or Spidey without his webs, or the Hulk without his…..giant pummeling fists?

http://tinyurl.com/6mozfkl

Mmmmm……

Finally (for now) I ran across Buttontails, by LaLaLoopsy.  For those of you who don’t know me personally, I happen to not be a 10 year old girl, so I don’t know anything about the LaLaLoopsy line of toys.  I tried to research it at lalaloopsy.com, before I realized I didn’t really give a shit, and neither do you.  This was shortly after I clicked the catalog to try and gather extra information about Buttontails, and discovered there were 155 items for me to wade through.  On the first page there was a mermaid packaged with a pet blowfish though, so that’s cool.

The toy is kind of like a Mr. Potato Head, I guess, with some items appearing removable and some you have to sew on.  I didn’t actually handle the product, but I gather this from the slogan at the bottom stating “Sew Magical Sew Cute!”  Oh, what a pun.  I didn’t have the foresight to get the clearance price in the picture, but Buttontails’ “list price” on Amazon is $16.99.

Looks at Buttontails.  Look real close.  Do you see what I see?  Buttontails is a FUCKING SOCK!  How in the hell are they gonna sell a stuffed sock with ears for $16.99?  I know it comes with button eyes and limp pieces of heart-shaped cloth as well, but come on now….

Look, I’m all behind anything that gives little girls the chance to start honing their domestic skills by teaching how to darn socks at an early age, but you can get a Fruit of the Loom 6-pack of socks for $5.99, and little Sally can still have $10.99 to pick out whatever various items she wants to sew on to them.  Or she can cut the socks apart and sew them together and make a giant Buttonzilla.  Hm.  This actually sounds like a viable use of my time.  Buttonzilla may be making an appearance at some time in the future.

I’m not very good with a needle and thread.  Though I did personally sew up this sweet pig pillow back in, say, 6^th grade home economics?  Can’t be faded. 

Finally, here’s somebody killing it on a slide whistle.  Get it, son!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b89B4AsYzs

Motherfucking Snakes on a Plane

Starring:  Samuel L. Jackson

Directed by:  David R. Ellis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV24FN4rDzE&ob=av2e

Huh, who knew, who knew.

That may seem a bit out of context.  If you missed my previous reviews, you can find them here:

 http://www.comingoffthereels.com/2012/the-long-kiss-goodnight/

And here:   http://inthequeuereviews.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/deep-blue-sea/

Samuel L Jackson, he’s a guy who has never met a script he didn’t like.  Seriously.  On IMDB he has 143 titles attributed to him.  I know IMDB is absolutely exhaustive…the list contains TV appearances, animated voice work, video game voice-overs, documentaries, etc….yet, still, 143 titles.  Take, for example, the filmography of someone like Harrison Ford.  66 titles.  That’s right, Jackson has more than twice the film appearances of Harrison Ford.

Other popular actors?  Say, Brad Pitt?  67.  Sean Connery?  91.  Sean Connery!  The man is 20 years older than Jackson and he still has 50 less acting credits!  Hell, even Val Kilmer, who seems like he’s in a new straight-to-dvd movie every week, only has 84 titles to his name.

I guess, what I’m trying to say here, is if anybody was going to be in a film with a title as ridiculous as Snakes on a Plane, it might as well be Sam Jack.  I’m just wondering if anybody else read it, furrowed their brow at it and threw it in the trash bin, or if they just went straight to Jackson, knowing he doesn’t even really read his scripts.  I mean, he was in XXX2, where they replaced Vin Diesel with Ice Cube.  That’s like making a Rambo sequel and replacing Stallone with Tom Berenger, or a sequel to Predator, replacing Schwarzenegger with Danny Glover…….wait a second…….

So, the movie.  Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) is riding his bike around the island of Hawaii when he witnesses the brutal murder of a U.S. Prosecutor by unruly gangster Daniel Kim (Byron Lawson).  Only his quick wit and quicker crotch rocket (I think it was actually a mudbike, but there’s less fun in that phrase) help him escape the scene without being caught.

The next day (or maybe later that day…who knows and, it is, by all measures, completely insignificant) he is saved from some would be assassins by Neville Flynn (Samuel L Jackson), an FBI agent who wants him to testify against Kim in Los Angeles.

Jones eventually agrees, of course, and the duo sets flight to Los Angeles.  Of course Kim is aware of this, and sends his goons to leave a little surprise on the plane; crates filled with poisonous snakes, agitated by a special pheromone in to being more aggressive.  I would have thought if you could sneak crates of snakes on a plane maybe you could just manage getting a bomb on there, but that doesn’t really lend itself to very intricate plotting, I guess.

So how, you ask, does Kim know the snakes will actually attack Jones?  Well, it doesn’t really matter if they do, as long as they are successful in bringing the entire plane down.  As long as he expires in one manner or the other.  More or less ludicrously plotted than Deep Blue Sea?  You be the judge.

Still, I must admit, I rather like Snakes on a Plane.  The use of a giant Boeing 747 helps out immensely, giving the characters in the film room to move about.  From coach, up a set of stairs to the ultra-posh first class, in to the cockpit, and even in to the bowels of the plane, no stone is left unturned.  The death count is high and a couple deaths are rather gruesome and still others are, well, humorous.

Originally shooting for a PG-13 rating, they ratcheted up the violence and language in order to get an R, the opposite of what happens in almost every single film because it restricts certain viewers from seeing it.  Rumor has it the film was originally supposed to be titled Pacific Air Flight 121 (ick), but Jackson supposedly asked it be changed back to the “working title.”  Whether there’s any truth to these rumors I cannot say, but there had to be a time in filming where they realized this wasn’t going to be the next big action film and decided to completely run with the idea of camp, and let it sink or swim on those merits.  A brilliant marketing move which led to the modest success of a film that could have very well been straight to video.

There are definitely flaws though.  The biggest being the film has way too many characters:  A wealthy socialite with a Chihuahua in her purse, a grumpy business man, four prominent airline attendants, a couple kids on their first plane trip by themselves, a foreign woman with a baby, a rapper with two bodyguards, a martial arts expert, another completely unimportant FBI agent, Taylor Kitsch, a pilot and co-pilot, etc. etc.  This doesn’t even include the characters on the ground Jackson is in contact with throughout.

I understand in a film such as this you have to have a handful of disposable characters but *spoiler alert* most of these people make it through the film.  Most of the deaths are completely innocuous characters who only utter a line or two of dialogue.  This probably had something to do with the reshoots used to give the film its R-Rating, but it also erodes some of the suspense.  At some point you start to settle in to the rhythm of the film and realize most of the characters don’t seem to be in any real danger of missing the final credits.

Also it’s the only film reviewed that was not directed by Renny Harlin.  What a letdown.

Snakes on a Plane is probably the weakest link in this three pack, but it’s also probably a little bit better than you would expect, and based on Jackson’s filmography I don’t think there would have been a more appropriate film to substitute.  I paid $14.99 at Target for the bunch of them, and feel it was worth every penny.  I would have been more sold on just a Renny Harlin 3 or 4-pack, but maybe that’s not as easy a sell to the average big box shopper.  Although I can’t imagine anybody passing on a 4-pack that includes Deep Blue Sea, Long Kiss Goodnight, Cliffhanger, and Mindhunters.  The average joe-shmo might not realize the glue holding them together is Mr. Harlin, but they would recognize the greatness therein, this I can guarantee. 

Gone Fishin'

Well, dear reader, looks like it’s time for another trip to my hometown of Evansville, IN, where she will welcome me home with metaphorical open arms, treating me to a much earned hero’s welcome.

Okay, okay, there is probably a bit of hyperbole in there.  Certainly I will be greeted by swarms of old compatriots, vying voraciously for my attention.  Mmmm……maybe still a dash of hyperbole.  I think it’s safe to say maybe one or two people will saunter out of their homes out of a sense of obligation.  Maybe even one of them will buy me a cheap, watery, domestic beer to “enjoy” or, at the very least, allow me to drink one cold mug out of a shared pitcher of Bud Light.  Thanks ahead of time to whoever you are.  I’m not heading back 200 miles just to revel in unfettered adulation, anyway.  No, I’m heading back to go fishing.

I’m not sure why I originally started fishing.  Well, I mean, I’m quite sure it had to do with my friend Shaun Knight, who likes to both fish and hunt.  The thing is I don’t ever remember expressing any interest in fishing.  I don’t know how I was convinced to do it that first time.  I don’t ever remember a time when I would have thought, “Sitting in a tiny boat in the 100 degree weather listlessly holding a pole in my hand waiting on a fish to bite for hours on end?  Yessir, sounds magnificent!”

But enjoy it I do.  Part of this comes from the one-of-a-kind ambiance present at Mr. Knight’s privately owned lake, “Foot’s Pleasure Club.”  No lie.  I’ll post a pic of the t-shirt when I get a chance.

Cell phones don’t work, the cabins are ramshackle, the wildlife is plentiful, snakes and skunks are commonplace, the toilets are holes in the ground, the plumbing (sink only!) is the coldest water you’ve felt in your life, and the lake itself is nothing short of fantastic.  It’s a pretty good-sized lake, not the bastardized version of suburban lore.  Turns out sitting in the middle of a giant body of water drinking beer and catching bass can be quite soothing.

I’m still not sold on hunting though.  Getting up at 3AM when it’s 30 degrees outside, dressing in layers of camouflage, spraying myself down with deer urine, climbing up in a tree and then sitting perfectly motionless all day, many times never even seeing any wildlife, well, sounds a bit tedious.  But who knows.  Slap a bow in my hand, send a fresh faced doe down my line of sight, and I might find it in my heart to let that arrow fly, straight and true.

Enough about killing or maiming harmless animals (I hate when the hook gets stuck behind the fish’s eye, it’s so damned hard to wrestle out of there).  How about something everybody can agree on; gettin’ drunk!

In addition to drinking on the lake, including waking up in the cabin and starting off the day with a Bloody Mary, I will probably indulge in a frosty beverage in many other of Evansville’s hot spots.  Namely Shaun’s parent’s home and the Gerst Haus.  I like these places because I am the kind of guy who likes to actually conversate with my friends, as opposed to yelling myself hoarse through a smoky haze over a cacophonous din of music I hate.

I know it seems like, at some point, I should probably give my liver some time to recuperate during my week’s visit.  But I doubt it will happen.  This shall be a week of antics and hedonism.  I shall eat and drink myself to the precipice, peering abysmally in to it, resisting the urge to plunge headlong.  For one week I will purposely (and gleefully) replace the angel on my shoulder with Poe’s Imp, where he and the devil will drive me around the town of Evansville creating hijinks and tomfoolery the likes of which the town has never seen!

Either that, or I will drink way too much on my first night then spend hours on Shaun’s couch consecutively watching all the episodes of the 3^rd season of the original Star Trek.  It’s a toss-up, really.  We once watched all of season two because we saw a screen capture on the box of “Mugato.”  Also because I was hungover as shit.  

 Hell man, who could sleep at night having missed that episode?  Of course, we spent about 10 hours waiting to find the episode he was in, and his 30-second blink and you’ll miss it cameo left much to be desired.  You can see it here, if you would like.  I seriously doubt you do, though. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP1VoH_0l-E

Hey, looks at this, he even has his own action figure!  THREE DIFFERENT VERSIONS!  If my basement wasn’t already filled with worthless paraphernalia I never use, I would probably buy one of these.  Still, it would look pretty good next to my pimped-out 80’s-retro-suited Adam Dunn Bobblehead…..

I know a lot of people would think it silly to spend a vacation heading to a little burgh like Evansville but I’m just heading back to break up the monotonous routine of my everyday life.  Plus, a lot of times when people complain about the city they live in they are really illustrating a classic case of greener on the other side-ism.  I’ve lived in the ‘Nati for about four years now, and the weird thing is I’ve spent a lot of time thinking “I wish I could find someplace more like the Gerst Haus.”

I like Cincinnati, don’t get me wrong.  And there are a lot of things to do here.  Baseball games, nice museums, a wide variety of restaurants and other cultural events.  Yet, I do often times miss my friends and family and my familiar haunts.  So is being able to view the exact same Miro painting hanging in the Cincinnati Art Museum worth the trade-off of drinking a fishbowl of icy Newcastle with an old friend?

Regardless, I’m headed down.  I will drink cheap, water domestics and full bodied microbrews.  I will eat pizza and deliciously greasy German fare.  I will watch bad movies and bad TV shows and possibly a few good ones….although I doubt it….and I will invite friends to take place in both sharp and dull-witted banter.  The week will pass painfully quickly and I will realize I didn’t have time to visit everybody I wanted to, as is always the case.  When I awake on my departure morning and bid the good Shaun Knight a fond adieu, I will leave with a head cloudy with nostalgia, only muddied further by the aforementioned idiom.

Not to let this meander too far down the path of serious introspection, I will also, and most importantly, go fishin’ with Shaun Knight.  Just like Danny Glover and Joe Pesci.  I’ll let you decide which of us in this particular comparison is Danny Glover and which is Joe Pesci, but I can assure you I will probably be the one grumbling about how I am “too old for this shit” by the end of the week.  Clip to follow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q37xJtuQ24w

I actually wanted to put the trailer on here for Gone Fishin’, but I’ll be damned if I can’t find it!  Why, in this day and age, I should be able to find a trailer for every movie made, especially one with two of our finest thespians! 

You can watch the entire film for free on Hulu, though.  If you’re some kind of sick masochist.

Obsessed With Krull

There are a lot of films I liked when I was, say, ten, which I still like today because I liked them then.  Maybe it’s a gentle wistfulness, nostalgia, associating a film with a time in my life when my biggest care in the world was the newest issue of The Amazing Spider-Man and collecting all the hard to find He-Man toys.  Like Snout Spout, or Modulok, or Mosquitor.  What young man’s He-Man collection is complete without the Orko figure?  WHOSE I ASK YOU?!

Or maybe they’re just good movies.  Although I’ve often times been told otherwise.

I know this happens because I’ve seen movies widely considered classics I should have seen when I was young, but do not much enjoy as an adult man.  I will give the biggest example of this, in hopes that it does not cost me my entire 42 person readership.  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

I am sure if I would have seen this film when I was 16, I would have reveled in Bueller’s metaphoric middle finger unabashedly waved at the establishment with youthful enthusiasm.  But when viewed as an adult, probably around age 28 or so, I was a little bit nonplussed.  A little bit indifferent.  A little bit bored, to be quite honest.

I know, I know, I’m throwing myself under the bus.  I’m a damned fool.  Shouldn’t have let the cat out of the bag.  The barrage of negative e-mail and/or Facebook comments I will receive will cost me a healthy dose of my psyche and force me, in my later years, to believe I only enjoy films with Matthew Broderick in them relegating me to a life in my mid-80s, alone in a nursing home, watching and rewatching Godzilla and thinking about just how goddamned good it is.

On the flip side, The Goonies is one of my favorite movies, and I’ve known plenty of people who didn’t originally see The Goonies who eventually viewed it as adults based on its reputation as a cult classic (or is it just classic?), and just don’t “get it.”  How can you not like The Goonies?  The camaraderie, the adventure, the pirate ship, that little shriveled up old woman who always plays a gruff, unlikeable biddy!

Goonies and Ferris withstanding, the one film I, personally, have become absolutely obsessed with is Krull. The weird thing about loving the movie Krull is it isn’t even in the same league as Ferris Bueller and The Goonies.  Love ‘em or hate ‘em, seen ‘em or haven’t seen ‘em, if you are my age and have any semblance of pop culture knowledge, you have heard of ‘em.  However, I run in to people all the time who have never even heard of Krull.  To me this is disastrous.  An oversight of momentous proportions. 

Or maybe it’s just because Krull isn’t a very good film.  After all, that’s what I’ve been told, on many occasions.

My parents owned a lot of movies on VHS.  And a lot of them were crappy.  They owned Solarbabies for God’s sake! http://www.allrovi.com/movies/movie/solarbabies-v45500.

I would be hard pressed to say, growing up, I watched any 80s film more than Krull, Willow, or Return of the Jedi.  Well, we did also “own” a taped VHS copy of Ewoks: Battle for Endor which I watched repeatedly.  Fine piece of cinema, that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASiVgcna9UM.

But I still enjoy Krull when I watch it today….which is probably more than I can say of Battle for Endor, although I haven’t even attempted to watch it since that fateful day in 1987 when my parent’s VCR destroyed our copy.  A mournful day.  Soul wrenching, really. 

The one thing I love about Krull, next to the pure, unadulterated glee I get from watching it, is the borderline repulsive amount of memorabilia available.  There was a Marvel comic book tie-in.  There was a Krull card game, board game, a stand-up arcade game, a pinball machine and an Atari cartridge.  And, despite all those fine options, not a single, solitary action figure.

Wasn’t the action figure the reason to be a small, male child in the 80s?  If my friends were coming over and we were going to break out the board games, we were going to play Fantasy Forest http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4196/fantasy-forest or Crossbows and Catapults http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2129/crossbows-and-catapults.  Krull the board game is way too complicated.  I should know.  I own it.

Since Krull isn’t very popular, or maybe more apt to say unpopular, most of its memorabilia goes for a song and a package of off-brand beef jerky sticks on EBAY.  So I happen to own the card game, the board game, the soundtrack (ON VINYL!), and the comic book adaptation.

 Here’s the card game, fresh off EBAY, along with the two decks. 

I don’t know if you can tell from the pic, but those bad boys are still in their cellophane!  The seller didn’t even mention this in his description. If he had I’m sure he could have received way more than the $2.00 bid I ended up winning with.  Then again, Krull auctions aren’t exactly cutthroat.

My want to keep possibly the only remaining unopened deck of Krull: The Card Game in just that condition is always in a never ending struggle with my want to tear them asunder, to wield the glaive with a heretofore unknown veracity, to defeat The Beast, and to ravish Princess Lyssa, her red mane of curly locks spilling down over her pert, sensuous breasts while I wear the glaive around my neck as a symbol of vitality and victorious conqueror.

Or something like that.  I haven’t really given it to much thought.  Luckily I still have the board game to help play out my vicarious debaucheries.

 Prince Colwyn looks a little more smitten with the Glaive then he does Princess Lyssa, and she seems none too happy about it.  Here on Earth we refer to that as a scowl.  I’m fairly certain this must have some connotation about Colwyn's obsession with his own masculinity.  Those folks at Parker Brother never miss a chance to deal in underlying allusions.  I mean, have you ever really examined the front of Clue?  Simply rife with innuendo.

Also, in the bottom right corner, it mentions COLLECTIBLE 3-D Prince Colwyn and Beast figurines.  Titillating.

Damn that game board is colorful!  If you look, in each corner, there are painfully rendered scenes from the film.  The giant spider from their trip to the Widow of the Web, the Firemares, the……nebulous jellyfish characters…..I don’t know, maybe those are rocks…..

Here are those “collectible figurines.”

It’s hard to tell from the pic, but Colwyn is all hunched over, and he has his hand firmly attached to his chest.  You can barely even see he has the glaive in his hand.  Why isn’t he wielding it out to the side to make it obvious?  Instead he looks like he’s having a heart attack.  And he also looks 100% more like Bob Ross than he does an epic hero.  The Beast figurine is perfectly fine, although he, too, is holding his hands in an odd manner.  Rubbing his stomach, like he’s hungry.  Hungry for the flesh of the virgin princess, I’d wager.

They tried to incorporate everything they could from the movie in to the gameplay, but it’s somewhat of a confusing mess.  I guess if I played it on a regular basis I would become a little more familiar with the rules.  The problem with playing it more than once a year is, somewhat unsurprisingly, that it just isn't very much fun, unless you really like rolling dice ad nauseum, since everything is simply represented by a dice roll.  Fight a Slayer?  Roll the dice.  Fight a Changeling?  Roll the dice.  Need to look at a card?  Roll the dice.  I would have actually liked a Slayer (the Krull equivalent of Storm Troopers) at least painted somewhere on the board.  No luck. 

And damn is it “Glaive” heavy!  The game board?  The Glaive.  The point of the game?  Find the Glaive.  Prince Colwyn?  Limply brandishing the Glaive.  The name of the game should have been “The Glaive.”  Which is why, until I rewatched it a couple years ago, I thought the Glaive was actually named Krull.  No, no friends, the planet they are on is named Krull.  Put that piece of trivia deep in your subconscious mind, you never know when a pearl of such magnitude might be of some use to you. 

Here’s the secondary gameboard where Colwyn and the Beast “battle” for Lyssa in the Black Fortress.  Pretty damn colorful, being the Black Fortress and what not.    In a heavy gameplay twist you *gasp* roll dice and, based on the outcome of the regular six-sided die and the “battle” die, either you or the beast move, one agonizing space at a time, closer and closer to Lyssa, who is kinda’ haphazardly painted on the side like an afterthought.

I’ve only played this game twice in my life, but once your player gets to this point in the game, it’s weighed pretty heavily in favor of the hero.  Which is perfectly fine, I suppose, because no way in hell do you wanna’ draw this game out any longer than necessary.  Maybe the main problem is I’m playing a throwaway game designed 30 years ago for 13-year-old boys to try and cash in on a movie that turned out being completely unsuccessful.  Just maybe.

The felled Beast!  Honestly I just wanted to incorporate a picture with the Cyclops in it, because anybody who has watched Krull knows the Cyclops is, heads and tails, the best part of the film.

I can wax on and on about many a subject and, in some cases, it may be warranted.  Even though I still have breath to breathe in to the life of the Krull comic and, for that matter, the Krull movie, I think right now brevity might be a little more valorous.  Plus Jen has almost convinced me to open the card deck I have.  Something about how much could it ever really appreciate in value and whether that appreciated value would be worth more than the joy of playing it with my goodly wife.  I guess, considering some three decades after its release I purchased it for $2.00, unopened, even if it was to appreciate 1000% in the next three decades I wouldn’t exactly be rolling in money.  We shall see, I suppose, we shall see……

So, until I find a suitable time to waste more hours writing about Krull in the future, I live you with a clip of the film, the scene in which Horner’s grandiose “Ride of the Firemares” rises magnificently, just like the majestic steeds upon which the characters ride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5G4puptHvo