Stranger Things Shirts (Fan Merch/Replicas)

There is no denying that Stranger Things delivers in terms of pop culture nostalgia for every Gen X’er who has ever spent a weekend staying up late, consuming huge amounts of junk food to fuel an hours long campaign in DnD, going to the mall unaccompanied, or just generally hanging out with their small circle of friends while never checking in with parents once except to get a change of clothes, shower, a hot meal, or an advance on their allowance to go and try to beat that high score on Dig Dug at the arcade.

The 80s were a different time of being out of pocket. We didn’t have cell phones or social media or any other ways to get a hold of us except for yelling out the back door, down the street, or calling our friends’ land line phones to tell their parents to send us home. But we usually came home, eventually, and without incident. It’s probably a good thing those ways of contacting us or documenting our childhood adventures hadn’t been invented yet or we would have been grounded until graduation.

Stranger Things takes everything we experienced or felt in the 80s and encapsulates it into an 8-10 hour horror/sci-fi marathon, complete with all the sights, sounds, and bad fashion choices we yearn to have again secretly during our mid-life crises.

And speaking of fashions… It also produces a ton of merch, either fan inspired or replica of what you see in the show, every year. From the subtle to overtly in your face, here are a bunch that you can find over at TeePublic from each season.


Season 1

Hawkins Radio Club



Strange Number 11 by djkopet



Hawkins Middle School A.V. Club by redbaron_ict










Season 2

Palace Arcade





Bitchin’ by Vincent Trinidad Art






Season 3
Hawkins Pool Life Guard





Operation: Child Endangerment By BoggsNicolas





Dustin’s Roast Beef Shirt by Polomaker






Season 4
Murray-Do Karate




Rink-O-Mania






Dustin’s Thinking Shirt by BiggsNicolas






And of course, how could we not sneak this one in…
Hellfire Club replica design

Revenge of the Nerds: Entitlement, Misogyny, and Misconceptions Perpetrated By a Classic

Oh 80s, you silly time.  No one cared about PC culture or what was considered right.  Hollywood took a concept used time and time again and equated it to College, dating, and social status.

In 1979, Bill Murray and a bunch of ne’er do wells took on the rich, more entitled campers of Camp Mohawk in Meatballs.

In 1980, it was the slobs vs. the snobs in Caddyshack as the likes of Danny Noonan, a poor caddy, and wealthy, but uncultured Al Czervik take on the likes of Judge Smails and Dr. Beeper at Bushwood Country Club.

But in 1984 the haves vs. the have nots trope was spun into the nerds vs. the jocks at Adams College in Revenge of the Nerds.

Simple concept, two nerds try to fight the established “Greek” social society infrastructure at a college in order to be given the same treatment as their more physically fit and attractive male counterparts.  Brains vs. Braun.   Along the way, main nerd Lewis develops a crush on sorority cheerleader Betty and pursues her in spite of the fact that she clearly has no interest in him and already has a boyfriend, footballer and alpha male Stan.

Through various tests of wills and basic knowledge of science, the nerds defeat their jock antagonists and Lewis wins Betty from Stan in the flimsiest of plot points.

And that moment set the stage for a variety of cultural misconceptions that have always existed but were exploded into a “thing”.  If a nerd can just convince an attractive, out of his league female, he will be rewarded with sex and status, regardless of anything such as earning these concepts.

I’ll admit it.  I loved this movie growing up.  It was funny.  I was a budding teen and this movie was an HBO staple at the inception of my adolescence.  In other words it had boobs.

But it also had other things that, upon review after 30 years, are somewhat unsettling.  It has, in no particular order:

• Sexual harassment
• Rape
• Invasion of privacy
• Destruction of private property
• Lewd and lascivious behavior
• Theft
• Misogyny
• Pornography

I was talking about the acts committed by the nerds, mind you.  Yes, it is shocking to think that something considered to be a "comedy" could really be the basis for a horrible reality.  Even the title creates an air of violent tendencies "REVENGE" of the nerds.

Now, to be fair, the treatment of the nerds by the jocks is unfounded.   If you want to get technical about it, the jocks fire the first two or three shots.  They physically assault the nerds, throwing them from their dorm rooms in a manifest destiny of “Well, my football players need coddled because they are the driving force of enrollment and funding for this institution of higher learning.”  They also humiliate the nerds by inviting Lewis and Gilbert to rush Alpha Beta fraternity.  In fact, Betty is complicit in her role as deceiver of affections towards Lewis.  In the end, they choose to resort to physical violence at a pep rally before they are stopped by another stereotypical character, the scary and possibly more intimidating African American male fraternity.

However, if you think the nerds are absolved of blame, let’s take a look at what they do throughout the course of the movie.  Lewis and company sneak into PI sorority and steal underwear, physically enter private dressing areas, set up surveillance equipment, all because those women teased us, so we are entitled to look at their naked bodies without their expressed approval or knowledge.

During the Greek games, the nerds outsell the jocks in the charity pie bake sale by including, as a reward, a picture of Betty, topless.

Finally, Lewis gets his ultimate revenge by posing as Stan in a costume and following Betty into an attraction and effectively raping her into submission in his desire to win her from a jock with the argument that I am a better match for you because I am better at sex than Stan.   Yes, technically, it is rape.  She was not consenting to Lewis.  She was tricked.

But it’s all in fun, right?  It’s the 80s.  It’s college.  It’s acceptable behavior.

No.  It creates a false expectation in those who are considered nerds.   It forgives the egregious behavior by a subculture of humans that are clearly smart enough to know what things they should not do just because they feel they are wronged.

It also creates a false personification of an alpha male as an antagonist towards those with weaker physical attributes and stronger mental ones.   “Because he is clearly weaker, I must dehumanize him more for the sake of my position in my group.”  Granted, it is more acceptable to believe that because someone is a jock or popular, they are afforded more rewards because of their status.

Now, I am not absolving the jocks for their behavior in the film.  I am digging further into a concept that is becoming a huge problem in this age of instant gratification due to technology; entitlement.

The jocks feel entitled because they have physical prowess and are clearly the driving force behind the school’s success at capturing funding.  They feel that because of that role, they are deserving of the best accommodations, regardless of actually earning them.    They feel that others, who do not fit into their mold of perfection are not worthy of the same accoutrements.  They even leverage their girlfriends to deceive and humiliate the nerds.  They feel entitled to use women for their bodies because they are dating them.

The nerds, display the sense of entitlement that has developed into an epidemic of thinking among young men today.   “I am a good person.  I am smart.  I am nice.  I clearly treat women better.  Therefore, I should be rewarded by women, just because of those things.  Not because they actually:

A: Are attractive to them

B: Have common interests as them

C: Have a chemistry conducive to the foundation of a relationship with them

In the wake of the rampage by Elliot Rodgers due to “entitlement sex”, the foundations of nerd culture get called into play.  The problem is, like any culture or subset of a culture, the loudest and most antagonistic members are the ones the group gets defined by.  Whether it be Republicans, Democrats, Christians, Islamists, jocks, nerds, feminists, blondes, gays, lesbians, men, or women, every set has its “one bad apple”.     But we need to take it back.  We all do.

My own experience in this subset is somewhat skewed.  I am a hybrid of sorts.   If you imagine social strata as a wheel with each spoke representing a subset of culture; jock, nerd, popular, etc.  I tend to exist near the hub.   My attempts to exist in any one end or spoke is impeded by centripetal force constantly pulling me inward to where I exist as several different stock character types at once.    I grew up, dealing with things like being chubby, wearing glasses, being labelled as “smart” by my peers.  I had bad teeth and hair and clothes.  I also played basketball and baseball, albeit horribly.  I wasn’t a straight A student and found myself, at times, struggling with Algebra and Science.  Yet, I also felt as if I was well liked and had friends who operated in different spokes.  Sure, I had my own dealings with “jocks” and “bullies”, but I could always blend in when it called for it, but couldn’t stay there for long because that force of motion could not allow me to sustain any one trait.  It’s a sort of chicken and egg conundrum as to why I pursued acting.  I either developed it because I wanted to be an actor or I pursued it because I was already trying to be everyone at once.  However, I probably identify more with nerds than any other group.  Even though, I cannot hang with them beyond the surface in terms of certain things like Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Quantum Physics, Dr. Who, and D&D.

When that adolescence period hit and I was developing interests in girls, I, like most people, pursued what I thought was perfection.  In college, I was so livid over a certain guy because he consistently and successfully “scored” with women while he had a girlfriend “back home.”  I was friends with his "girls" and a few would confide in me that this guy would constantly lead them on, and they would comply, thinking that he would dump his girlfriend and eventually commit to them.   Meanwhile, I seethed that they could be so stupid to continually put themselves in that position, when someone, like me, was right there and would never do that.  Sound familiar?  Of course, it’s a typical situation.   But what was I really upset about, him, because he could get away with such brazenly bad behavior, or myself, because I was unsuccessful at doing the exact same thing?   He would gloat about his exploits and treat me like crap.  But I gave him all the ammo he needed with letting him get to me.  Did it really matter?  These few women were not the only ones in the world.   There were other possibilities out there.

I am also sure that I probably ignored obvious potential relationships because I was blinded by society’s definitions of beauty or status.  But, we live in such a paradoxical society.   On one hand, we are told that we are special and that we shouldn’t limit ourselves in terms of what we desire to have.  We work hard for it and it will be ours.  Yet, we’re also told that our expectations are too lofty.  In dating circles this would be akin to trying to date out of your league.    We’re told we’re special, but nerds shouldn’t try to date the prom queen.  This limitation on what level of social being we can or cannot date is just as bad as the expectations we create about what we deserve.  Again, chicken and egg.  Are “nerds” coming up with these “nice guy” mentalities because they are told they can’t do something, or are the limitations being put in place because too many “nerds” are thinking they should be rewarded for nothing?

Who is to say?  If you try to argue the point that nerds should be well within their right to seek out dates with people out of their league, you piss off a lot of people.    And when you may be the one exception to the rule of “nerds”, it doesn’t matter.  You’re branded and you must move on and deal with the imagined reality that has been put in place.  If you argue it, you’re “Aggro”.  You can't turn it around.  It is what it is.    You get slapped with labels used by Internet dating sites and observational non-contextual so-called experts.  Again, you let the other person define you when it doesn't matter what they think.  You give them the ammo to put their labels upon you and treat you as such.

Let’s face it.  We are individuals, so we should be treated on a case by case basis.   We are not our labels.  Don’t think that because I am a ”nerd” I believe I deserve some kind of special entitlements.   If I were to want to date someone who is considered “out of my league”, it’s between me and that person, not anyone else.  If we share some special bond or chemistry, that is for us to discover, not society’s social watchdogs.  We are adults.  I will not expect any special treatment because I feel I would be worthwhile for any woman just as she should not expect that I am horrible because I may be not the typical definition of attractive.   Also, it works both ways.   I will not ignore the possibility that matches exist with people who I may not deem as a typical type of attractiveness, but will see that there could be something that is stronger between me and that person.   

Yet, we get this stereotypical, “Oh you just want to date someone unattainable.”    Well, who is to say that someone who would want to date me isn’t doing the same thing?   But yet, someone will give you grief that you are being irrational.  Again, isn’t between me and that person on whether or not we should become a couple?    So, it’s cyclical.  We don’t need to say that nerds shouldn’t date out of their leagues and nerds shouldn’t have to date someone in their league just because of proximity.   Now that we have settled, let’s get back to entitlement.

I don’t care which “spoke” you live on but you are not entitled to anything except what you earn.  Whether it’s money, love, position, sex, or respect, you should only get what you deserve.   Treat someone well and they may treat you accordingly.   If they don’t, so be it.  They aren’t required to reciprocate, but it would be nice if they did.    You cannot demand anyone to give you something that they are not willing to do.  You can only do the best you can do and let things happen.  You can’t make someone fall in love with you just because you are a better person.  You can’t demand payment for services rendered outside of a contractual agreement.  Meaning, if you do A, B, and C, for a woman OR MAN, they should automatically be thankful and repay you with some arbitrary reward.    So, guys, drop the “Nerds are better lovers and we can prove it” attitude and everyone else drop the “The nerds actually believe this stuff” attitudes.   

Somewhere, a long time ago, a few popular movies put forth the idea that it was the nerds time, that it was “game on” in the realm of love and war.    But, we need to break that stereotype just like we need to break our own.  People get what they earn and if someone else gets more, suck it up and deal with it.  No one owes you a thing and your actions, as well as your intentions, speak to your character.   People will screw you over no matter what.   Just don’t let it define you.    If you like someone put it out there.   If they aren’t interested, deal with it and move on.  It doesn’t matter if you know or believe that you are destined to be together.  You can’t make someone love you just by wearing them down.  You can only be who you are and those who are looking for those traits will meet you in the middle.   Don’t let movies define what you think you should get and don’t let movies define who people think you are.

 

While You Were Sleeping Part 1: What the cicadas missed from 1996-1999

Welcome back, cicadas.   I know you’ll have been gone awhile, so I decided to put a list of all the things that have happened since you were around the last time.   I wrote these down as they happened. 

Let’s see, that was 1996? What’s been going on since then.

1996-1999 (The world might explode at that point, so I stopped here.)

NEWS

The Summer Olympics, which were in Atlanta that year, had a bomb explode causing one death from the explosion, one from a heart attack, and  111 injuries.  A man who found the bomb and cleared people out of the way, saving lives, was accused and persecuted in the eyes of the media before the real bomber was found in 1997 and convicted.  Don’t worry though, the media probably won’t screw up again in 17 years, right?

Princess Diana was killed in a car accident in 1997 in Paris after being chase by paparazzi through the city.  They stood around and took pictures of the wreckage instead of helping.  But… not worry, paparazzi wouldn’t cause any more issues since, right?

A bunch of people, believing that they were going to ride on a comet/alien spaceship, committed suicide in California, but it probably will be the last time that anyone died, believing something somebody told them to be true, right?

OJ Simpson was convicted of wrongful death in a civil trial, even though he was found not guilty in the criminal trial.  He’s probably not going to do any time for anything, so don’t worry.

Bill Clinton was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with an intern in the Oval Office.  So, his career and credibility are pretty much screwed for eternity.  It’s not like he’s going to have any effect on any future politics. 

The U.S. had a budget surplus, the first in 30 years.  Everything concerning the economy will probably be great until you return.

Two boys in Columbine, Colorado went on a shooting spree in their high school, killing 15 ppl.    They died in the incident from self inflicted gunshot wounds.   I think it will be an isolated incident and should be the last time we ever talk about guns or school shootings or anything like that.

Some guy named Osama Bin Laden set up a base of terrorists in Afghanistan and was responsible for the bombing of the American embassy in Africa.   Isolated incident.  Probably be the last time we hear his name, ever.

And don't worry about catching up on news.  I'm sure CNN will still be the best place to get news from on television.

TECHNOLOGY

DVDs are a new thing.  They might replace VHS tapes, so when you get back your Star Wars movies, you know the ones you got on Laserdisc, might not be worth anything.   In fact, they are coming back into the theaters, so we’ll get to see the same movies you have on those discs on the big screen.  Great, right?  You may want to stock on a bunch of movies on DVD when you get back.  They should be the best thing going.

The Internet is kind of taking off, a bit.  Not sure if it will still be around when you get back.  There is this cool website, though.  It basically goes out and looks for everything based on a set of words you type into the search field.  They call it a search engine.  Should be really popular.  It’s called Ask Jeeves.

Speaking of the Internet, there was a little web browser that was out just before you left.  It’s the biggest thing going.  Should be pretty advanced by the time you get back.  I’ll make sure you have the latest copy of Netscape Navigator installed on your Pentium II when you awake.   (update) Scratch that.  Pentium III.

I still need to find your password for your computer.   There’s some talk about this thing that will happen on midnight 1999.  We may have to print this list out and put it somewhere safe.  A lot of shit is going to break come January 1^st, 2000.  Hopefully, the list will still be here.

I took the liberty of creating you an account on a pretty sweet website.  You can meet a lot of people, put pictures of yourself on there, share stuff, make a lot of friends, too.   I will actively update it and make sure you keep making friends.   You’ll probably have 1000s by 2013.  Your site is www.myspace.com/cicadas

Remember all those mix tapes you had when?  I know you were pretty upset I left them in my car that one day during that heat wave.   Don’t worry, when you get back in 2013 you can do this new thing called CD burning.   All your music can be put on CDs, now.  And there’s this cool place you can find all those old Emerson Lake and Palmer songs to burn on your CDs.   It’s called Napster.

POP CULTURE

Will Smith, you know, The Fresh Prince, did a good job in a movie about Aliens attacking Earth.  It will probably be the greatest Sci-Fi movie, ever.  Though, I’m sure Mr. Smith is just content playing Fresh Prince on television.

There’s also a new Star Trek movie.    I see no reason to tinker with the Next Generation format.  They should be good for a number of films, just like the cast of the original series.

George Clooney is now playing Batman.  Should be good.  He’ll probably be Batman for a long time.

If you thought Toy Story was good, this new film from Pixar is pretty nice.  Glad to know they were able to do one more good movie, though I don’t know where they’ll go next.

I know how you liked Law & Order, so you’ll be happy to know it will probably be on when you come back.  Good show, not many like it.

Simpsons are still on believe it or not, even after almost 10 years.  Though, I’m sure it’s bound to done here real soon.  Probably only catch it in reruns in 2013.

Lot of talk about game shows making a comeback and something called a Reality Show.   Personally, I don’t see it working out.  Who wants to watch real life when Friends and Dawson’s Creek, and ER is still going strong.

SPORTS
The Yankees won the World Series three out of four times so far.  They'll probably win another ten before you come back.

A lot of people are talking about this kid named Tiger in golf.  Wonder who he is?

I know how upset you were that The Dallas Cowboys beat our Steelers in the Super Bowl.  I know they are America's Team, so don't be surprised when you come back and they still have more trophies than Pittsburgh. 

You were wondering about how hockey would turn out during your absence.  You were pretty unsure about it since two expansion teams went to the Stanley Cup that year.  I'm sure it was a fluke and probably won't happen again.  I mean, what does the Southern portion of the United States know about having a winning hockey team?  Go Canada, right?  They invented the sport.

History Incorporated

It’s no mystery that I am a purist.   I love my favorite shows and movies right where they were, in the past.   Remakes. Adaptations.  A purist craves not these things.  That’s how the blog started.   Someone in Hollywood was making a remake or something and I felt a great disturbance in the pop culture force.  I opened an email and began typing furiously to… no one.  Then, I joined blogger and shared all the crap that’s inside my head.  Now, five years later, you’re all worse people for enjoying it.  ;)

However, there are few times when something gets remade or rebooted and it is phenomenal.   It doesn’t happen very often.  It’s about as frequent as Haley’s comet around here.  But it happened recently and I cannot be happier with the results.

Let’s go back to the 60s. 

A little cartoon came along about a mystery solving gang and their beloved Great Dane.    Scooby-Doo Where Are You? debuted in 1969 and has run in some incarnation all the way through 2013.   That’s 44 years.    And while some instances weren’t all that great, *cough*Flim Flam*cough*Scrappy-Doo*cough* the show has managed to maintain a central theme since the original show.

It’s one of the few shows I have been able to enjoy all over again, thanks to my kid and DVD collections.  She loves the old episodes along with the Blue Falcon ones, as well.  But when Mystery, Incorporated came on Cartoon Network in 2010, I was skeptical.   It was the first time a Scooby-Doo show didn’t take place on Saturday Mornings.  Not only did it not serve as a continuation of the original series, more of a reboot, which angered me, but it also introduced elements of relationship drama that never existed before.   It used to always be the running gag that Fred would go off with Velma and Daphne, leaving Shaggy and Scooby to fend for themselves, cementing Fred’s pimp status.  And if he didn’t take Velma, it was a joke that she was a nerd and therefore, Fred wouldn’t be interested anyway.   However, in the new series, the relationship between Fred and Daphne is laid out, humorously at that and the real triangle occurs between Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo, oddly enough.  Nothing disgusting, more a “Bros before Hoes” mentality.

I gave it a shot, though.  My daughter and I would load up some OnDemand Doo and watch.  While she just enjoyed the show, I carefully scrutinized the plot and the connection to the canon of Scooby-Doo.

I.  Became.  Hooked.

Not only was this new incarnation smart and witty, but it dovetailed into the old series nicely and stood as a companion to the old episodes.   The only thing that changed was the timeframe for Mystery, Inc. coming together.  They made nods to every old “guy in a rubber suit” character and even self deprecated themselves by calling out how bad Scrappy-Doo and Flim Flam were perceived by fans.

The show also makes a lot of pop culture references to other movies and television shows that aren’t so blatant that you go “I see what you did there”.   It’s more like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe they worked that into the plot.”  For example, a recent episode saw Scooby-Doo attending a side-kick competition with all of the other Hanna Barbera side-kicks like Jabber Jaw and Speed Buggy.  There are other cross-over episodes, just like the older series, but with a twist.  Instead of the usual Blue Falcon persona, we are given a somewhat bad ass  ex-security guard turned vigilante.  The real twist is that Dog Wonder’s cybernetic components are a product of Quest Laboratories.  He still retains the somewhat dim personality.    In the same episode Zin shows up. 

Even the voice casting is a reference in and of itself.   While Matthew Lillard reprises his Shaggy from the Live Action films, Casey Kasem plays his Dad.  Grey DeLisle reprises Daphne, and Mindy Cohn reprises her role as Velma, but Linda Cardellini, who played her in the movies, becomes the hilarious Marcy Fleach/Hot Dog Water.  Jeffry Combs from the Re-Animator shows up as H.P. Hatecraft.  Even Vincent Van Ghoul comes back, albeit voiced by cartoon everyman Maurice La Marche.

The show also introduces an arc, which crosses the complete series.  A mysterious artifact seems to be tied to the history of Crystal Cove as well as the emergence of mystery solving teens, complete with an animal companion, in various decades.   There is even an overall villain, the previous Mystery Solving Club’s anthropomorphic side-kick, Professor Pericles, played by scenery chewing Udo Kier.

In the end, though, the storyline comes to a close and manages to effectively tie in all the history surrounding the various incarnations of the show.   They’ve been here before.   In each generation, the mystery solving group has never been able to free the demonic entity controlling their fates.   Much like the ridiculous plot to LOST, the latest version of Mystery, Inc. serves to meet that end, and they do.  But they also defeat the demon and reboot their own history.   All of the bad things never happened.  All of the masked monsters never got caught because they were not brought together to solve mysteries.  They were just kids in a town that was no longer the Most Haunted Town in America.  Except that Harlan Ellison, playing himself noticed, as did they.   He said they changed something that affected them remembering the alternate timeline.   He asks them to come to… get ready for it… Miskatonic University.  So, in essence, they set out on the road, just like they did in every iteration of Scooby-Doo.   Sometimes they are with Fred and Velma… sometimes they are with Flim Flam or Scrappy-Doo.  Sometimes they are with guest stars.   In any case, the explanation for all the different versions of Scooby-Doo cartoons are contained in this one episode. 

Pure. Genius.

I usually hate this kind of thing.   You know.  The turtles are aliens.   Yeah, but it totally works in this fashion.  In fact another full length movie that came out recently was very well done.    Mask of the Blue Falcon went for that crossover feel once again, but sort of went meta on the fact that Blue Falcon was a television show in their world, but not an actual superhero that the gang interacted with, when in fact the first episode of Blue Falcon indeed had the gang helping Blue Falcon catch the same villain in this film, Mr. Hyde. 

Jeff Bennet provided the voice of an elderly Owen Garrison, a play on the name Gary Owens, the original voice of Blue Falcon.   His take sounded so much like Adam West, that I In fact thought it was Adam West.

The references to HB properties are a plenty as Frankenstein Jr. and the Herculoids make an appearance at a ComiCon style convention where Blue Falcon was featured, signing autographs and waxing nostalgic about the good old days.  The theme builds on the apathy towards remakes of old cartoons and comic books that I feel every day.

As much as I don’t like my childhood being rebooted and retconned.  I like the direction some of these folks are taking.   Perhaps one day, we can catch Hollywood in a complex trap and they can give up their crappy ways, while exclaiming they would have gotten away with it if it weren't for us pesky pop culture kids.

One Does Not Simply Barf Into Mordor

People always ask, “How was your Christmas?” This year was a down year. There are more reasons than I care to relate, but the biggest was having a kid with the stomach flu on Christmas morning. Now, I don’t believe it was the stomach flu, because neither my wife nor I came down with it. That may seem trivial but the kid had three separate bouts of stomach issues across a week, where the stomach flu usually lasts around 12-24 hours. We both thought it was strep as the kid has had the same symptoms without being contagious in the past. But, her pediatrician, Ted Nugent (He looked and sounded like a cross between Ted Nugent and Joey Slotnick with a goatee that stuck out like four feet from his chin), said it was the stomach flu. Anyway, I want to explain to you, in Mongo terms, what Christmas was like for us.

Now, I am going to give you a visual marker and I want you to remember it. It will help as this is how I can only describe what happened.

Do you remember somewhere around the last third of the film, The Return of the King… which had about 14 different endings… the part where Sam and Frodo are stuck on a rock in a river of lava? If not, I’ll sum up.

Gollum attacks Frodo who has given himself over to the One Ring. Gollum bites off Frodo’s finger, which I heard is no harder to do than to bite through a carrot stick. That’s a little tip for you playing at home or in a bar. Anyway, Gollum and Frodo fight for the Ring and he falls over the edge and pulls a Terminator 2 with the Ring in the lava. Frodo and Sam hightail it out of the Crack of Doom as everything goes to shit and Mount Doom erupts.

After high fiving each other for completing the journey… they have an “Oh FUQ!” moment when they realize they are now stuck in the middle of the flowing lava. Soon, the eagles come to their rescue, which was the one thing that made no sense, because they could have just flown on the eagles from The Shire and it would have been a half hour long movie…. But I digress. So, keep that image of Sam and Frodo adrift in your mind. If you are still having trouble… here…

Now, on the 23rd of December, I took my kid out for a bit of last minute shopping, while my wife wrapped presents and cleaned for company to come over on Christmas Eve. The last thing I really wanted to do was take my kid out into the madness that was the shopping mall on the day before Christmas Eve, but she helped pick out some great Yankee Candle stuff for my wife and she had a ball playing some floor projected video game which uses your shadow like a controller as you step on an area of the floor.

As a reward for her good behavior, I took her to Cold Stone Creamery for some ice cream. Ok… I wanted to get some and used her as an excuse to get some. She had a standard kids cup with chocolate and we went home.

After a bit, she started complaining of a stomach ache and ran around the house clutching her tummy and I yelled… get to the bathroom. So, she sat there a good 20 minutes and finally let it all out. Then, before I could assist her, I heard it. I heard the familiar sound of the child spewing used ice cream all over the tile floor in the bathroom. I ran into the bathroom to the back porch to grab the garbage can she and my wife both used two weeks before when they both had the stomach flu… the real deal. It was empty, but we just hadn’t disinfected the can, yet. As I turned the corner into the bathroom, it was too late, again. Mount Doom had erupted… everywhere.

I managed to reach the can over to her as she finished vomiting into it. Now, she was trapped. Not only was she sitting, with dangled feet, on the toilet, but she was stuck in the middle of a used ice cream flow, with no escape. She was Sam and Frodo, awaiting death on the side of Mount Doom. Here, I was, Gandalf, riding in on the backs of giant eagles.

I used a good portion of a roll of paper towels just to clean up a path as I told her to sit tight. Once I got that cleaned up, I could get her cleaned up. She was then told to just stand out in the living room, naked and not sitting on anything, while I exorcised the rest of Captain Howdy’s Pea Soup out of the bathroom.

As she shivered in her nakedness in our living room, I scrubbed and Lysol wiped everything I could. The Christmas shower curtain was now speckled, as were the towels and floor rug we had just put into the bathroom. After finishing my crime scene clean up, I gave the kid a hot bath and called it a day.

This is how I know it was not the Stomach Flu. As I cleaned out the garbage can, I simply rinsed it down in the tub before scrubbing it with Clorox Cleanup and Lysol Wipes. I turned on the bathtub to rinse down the remaining liquid and it splashed up and hit me in the face as if it was that liquid from the cylinder in The Prince of Darkness. I never got sick.

Perhaps it was luck… or a trick…

Do not take me for a conjurer of cheap tricks.

Review of Skyfall, But First... Monologuing

I am a traditionalist. I like my adaptations played as close to the source material as possible. I like my sequels to be in the same vein as the originals or close to them. I don’t like reboots and I don’t like reinventing the wheel.

That being said, when you’ve been putting out movies in a franchise for fifty years, sometimes the old ways are the best ways. And… sometimes the material is better served being looked at from a different perspective while still maintaining that commonality of the franchise… Can anyone say “Crystal Skulls”?

Skyfall represents the latest in a series of films which franchise predates the death of JFK. And, frankly, Bond never looked better. But along the way, we need to look at the evolution of how we got from Connery to Craig and Dr. No to Skyfall.

I started to do just one post but as I ranted on for nearly three pages, I thought, “Might as well break this up into sections…” Call me Peter Jackson, bitch!

So, I’ll start off giving my thoughts on the Bond character as portrayed by the various actors. Next, I’ll go into the movie evolution. Lastly, Skyfall. If you don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read any further.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Hatless Yokam

There a few things in this world that truly scare me.

One is death by drowning. I’ve always had this intense fear of dying from drowning. I don’t know what causes it. As a child, I grew up spent as much time in the water as I could. I could spend all day in a pool with a mask and snorkel, simply floating along. When we’d go to the beach, I’d be out there trying to test the boundaries of where I could stand and where I couldn’t. Loved body surfing and riding on those big green and yellow canvas rafts. They seemed to last for years in comparison to the ones we have nowadays that seem to last one summer, if that.

But something about not being able to breathe and having water slowly fill my lungs, allowing me to drown, my eyes open, fully aware I was going away scares me out the crap (as my five year old puts it). In fact, when I had surgery 12 years ago to correct an issue brought on by wisdom teeth extraction, causing me to have packing in my nostrils, I had a dream I was drowning, only to awake to realize my covers had slipped up over my mouth, stifling my breathing.
That fails in comparison to what really scares me on this Earth.

Oh, another thing that scares me, horror movies where there is no sight of the monster. The most effective film to do this was The Blair Witch Project. I didn’t sleep for three days because I kept thinking about that ending. The fact that we never once saw a witch or anything didn’t matter. My imagination had already dreamt up something more sinister than the filmmakers could have inserted into that film. That image haunted me for days. Even though I had known it was fake, it still shook me to the core to think about an evil spirit lurking in the woods, waiting to be captured on film at any moment. It was just as jarring to have seen the alien in Signs as it passed by the camera on a “home video”. Of course, it doesn’t hurt when you have a stinger note to accompany the reveal.

Still, the real thing that scares me most is out of this world.

Yes, as the title suggests, the thing that scares me the most is The Hatless Yokam.

You see, there are two Dwight Yokams.  There's the cowboy hat wearing, country singing, fast as you Dwight and then there's the hatless, psycho home invading, abusive boyfriend Dwight that makes my inner child hide under the covers.  He is like bizarro Clint Howard.  He scares me so.  The Hatless Yokam nibbles on my soul.

Hatted and Hatless Yokam



Sampsonia Street Samurais

Google Street View can be useful for a lot of things. If you want to know where the entrance to a parking garage is, or how close a parking spot is from where you need to be, it’s invaluable.

Then, there’s the sheer joy of just looking at the city without having to get real close. You can travel down the streets looking at the architecture from the comfort of your living room. After all, Pittsburgh has been given so many accolades over the past few years, it’d be a shame to not take in all that splendor. And this way, you don’t have to get involved in road rage incidents with jagoffs that make Pittsburgh lefts.

However, you have to wonder if Google does a lot of quality control in their selection of filming. Maybe they just turn the camera on and go. Perhaps they do a few passes to make sure that they don’t have anything inappropriate in the shots or a bug on the lens effing it all up for five blocks.

Sometimes, I think that the folks at Google have to have a sense of humor. Because otherwise, why would you let this be a part of your Street View scenic landscape?

Sampsonia St. Samurais

In addition to all the accolades Pittsburgh has received, I think we need to get an award for Most Samurai Friendly city.   Now, this, of course, is slightly less as prestigious than when South Union won the, “Best Place For a Ninjas to Break in Cars” award.   But, it’s almost on par with Scottdale when it won, “Best City to Abandon Your Kids For Ninja Practice”. 

Now, my brother emailed me this picture, so he gets credit for bringing it to my attention.  But, it didn’t stop there.  Why would it?   You never know what’s around the next corner.  So, my brother sent me the link to this street corner.

Now, at first glance you might say…. “Oh, look, a whale tail!”   

But, more importantly, WTF is in the alley?

Here's a better view from the opposite direction.

It looks like a half assed Matryoshka doll or homemade Gloop costume for Comic Con.  For you kids out there, Gloop is from a cartoon called The Herculoids. 

Still, I have no idea what the hell that thing is. It’s got feet, so somebody is standing under whatever that is. And that guy, with the apron, must work at Doug’s Market and he’s unfazed by all this. Maybe he saw the samurai fight in the distance and didn’t notice the thing next to him in the alley.

So, if you’ve got time to kill, wander around Google Street view in your town and see what you can see. 





What Is Left When There Is No LOST

The series finale of LOST took place one year ago, today. It seems a bit silly to eulogize a show, let alone one that has been off the air for a year, but it is important to note that there really hasn’t been a particular show to pick up the baton that LOST dangled out there.

Love it or hate it, the last episode of LOSTis one that stirred a lot of debate and conversation, some frustrating, some enlightening. An indelible impression was left when the passengers of Ajira 316 left the island, passing over a dying Jack Shephard. Left behind was a dead Locke/Smokey, a newly appointed island keeper in Hurley and a reformed right hand man in Benjamin Linus.

As the embers of those feelings about the show started to cool, LOST fans desperately searched for another show to fill the void. The hopes for another show, like LOST, seemed in peril. Some fled to the land of Fringe, some to V and little went to the Event.

Yet, I don’t think there has been another show out there that can compare with LOST. Now, I don’t think LOST was the greatest show ever but in terms of the mythology and intricate story lines of redemption and good vs. evil, I don’t think you can find another that was so good at it.

I still have a ton of questions about the show. Some that will never be answered. Maybe that’s the allure. Maybe that’s the hold the island has on its audience. Because we never really got closure, we’ll never really be free from wanting more of our fated castaways.

Among the big head scratchers for me, still, are the decision to kill off Jin and Sun after spending a huge portion of the preceding season keeping them apart with Sun desperately searching for her husband while trusting the Man in Black wearing a Locke suit. How about the Lighthouse? What the hell was the point of all that? Was it just some special contraption used to bring Jack’s belief to the island to join the rest of him? The others, the true Others claimed that it was there island. Yet, we knew that they were most likely brought there just like everyone else. Why kidnap the children, do experiments on Claire and Sun, hold Jack, Kate and Sawyer prisoner? Why did they spend so much time on Walt and why wasn’t he kept around? What the hell was the point of the blast door map or the lockdowns or any of it?

I could go on for days wondering, and sometimes remembering, about what made the show so damned interesting and head-into-the-desk slamming all at the same time. In the end, none of it mattered. It truly was, as they said, a giant Rube Goldberg device. It was a overly complex machine designed to perform a simple function, find a replacement for Jacob. Yet, throughout its six seasons the show created such an addiction among fans, they were willing to overlook a lot of the flaws in the execution of some of the seasons.

Looking over the sheet of new shows for Fall 2011, there is a noticeable lack of enthusiasm on my part, much to the relief of my DVR, I’m sure. There is a J.J. Abrams show with Jorge Garcia for those looking to recapture some of the nostalgia of Hurley being on an island. Of course, this time it’s Alcatraz. There are also a couple of other shows that piqued my interest, but nothing with the same caliber of LOST. Of course, I said the same thing about LOST when the previews for the pilot episode started airing.

Season One Summer Promo

Not much to make of what’s going to happen from that promo. We see a spectacular plane crash, a lot of Michael Bay explosions and chaos. Then we see a man shooting a big fluffy pillow as it hurtles itself towards him in the brush. We get the final question which defined the show to a ‘T’.

“Guys, where are we?”

It was a whim, an afterthought, a slip of scheduling that I actually saw the pilot episode of LOST and that was all it took. Like a junkie, looking for a new drug to take, I was hooked. I was searching through my couch cushions for change in order to score my next high. “The first one is free. After that, you gotta pay to play.” It was so simple a premise. Take 48 people, crash them on an island, add unknown scary monster sound, and leave on a low heat. After that, it became so much more complicated and erratic of storytelling to even try to explain to someone who had never sat down with it from the beginning. Fortunately, here is an excellent explanation in three minutes.

LOST in Three Minutes

So, as another season in television comes to a close and we see a bunch of new shows get plugged and a bunch of existing one get bled like a stuck pig. Remember, we’ll always be LOST, together.

The Cave of Seclusion Has Poor Radio Reception

Every once in a while I have to come down out of my cave of seclusion to see what’s happening in the world. The Cave of Seclusion is much like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, except it shields me from the crap that is out there on in mainstream Pop Culture, like Bristol Palin making it to the finals on Dancing with the Stars or yet another reality show like Bridal Plasty. But, I should embrace the malaise instead of shuddering myself from it. After all, I am in the business of making t-shirts based on such tripe.
It was one of these trips down from the mount that I discovered Cee-Lo Green’s new single, “F**k You!” I’m trying to keep it PG around here. I have limited exposure to Cee-Lo, other than the song Crazy from Gnarls Barkley. I still love that song and keep it on current play lists for my listening pleasure. However, I had heard that he had released the new song but since I don’t listen to Top 40 stations that only play the top four songs in a constant rotation of ear bleeding torture, I tend to miss a lot. I had to go to my wife’s niece and ask her to call up “F**k You!” On Demand. I guess that’s the way we get music videos nowadays. MTV no longer plays music videos and I didn’t exactly have access to YouTube when I made this request of the 14 year old who loves everything Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift related. I don’t blame her, I blame society.

I was blown away at the song. It was perfect. It had a great Motown feel to it while spouting obscenities, although it was censored. I had to call it up on YouTube to get the uncensored version, because even though I love it. I’m still too cheap to go out and buy the CD for one song. Afterwards, my wife’s niece called up Katy Perry’s “Fireworks.” From what I can pretty much gather, Katy Perry’s music career consists of things shooting of her breasts in the videos. Frankly, I could turn down the sound and watch "California Gurls" and be happy. My thoughts are that her first album was probably the best she’ll ever be. The whole “I Kissed a Girl” song was the pinnacle of her credibility and now she simply panders to girls who want to be like her and teenage boys who become piqued with the promise that she might actually fall out of her top. I don’t blame her. I’ve been there. I remember recording the video for Motely Crue’s “Take Me Home” and running it back in slow motion just to see how close I could come to seeing a hint of nipple when the female fan lifts her shirt in the concert footage during the chorus. Of course, you never do see anything but Tommy Lee’s expression of “WHOA!” You’d think he’d never seen a pair before.

I really need to start getting out of my bubble. I have a three year old who is quickly adapting to the world around her, even though I’ve tried to shield her from the crap that is out there.

I admit, my methods probably aren’t approved by child psychologists. One Saturday I happened to be flipping through channels and found Ghostbusters on one of the cable channels and, of course, had to watch a couple of minutes. Forgetting that there was a three year old present, I continued to watch as Slimer greased up Venkman and then became trapped inducing the pop culture nugget, “We came. We saw. We kicked its ass!” That got repeated, immediately by my child. I toyed with the prospect of putting Toy Story on for the umpteenth time, which don’t get me wrong, it’s a great movie, but I can only take so many repeated viewings. I weighed the fallout from this decision and decided to throw the DVD in and watch from the beginning. Ghostbusters, not Toy Story. She was hooked. I figured she’d be a little frightened but she kept asking me to rewind the parts with Slimer and The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. She doesn’t get frightened by things on television. Now, seeing a Halloween decoration, in the store come to life, has spooked her to the point of screaming until her eye sockets were flushed red, but seeing the skeleton cab driver in Ghostbusters simply caused her to say, “Hey, that skeleton isn’t a very good driver.”

Thankfully, I was able to locate her portable DVD player because Ghostbusters 1 & 2 has become her new favorite loop of movies. I can freely sit and play Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare free for all while she sits and dances to the "Ghostbusters" song.

Unfortunately, one day, the crap of the world reared its ugly head in my living room. While being fragged by 12 year olds over my Internet connection, this little voice began singing from across the room. She was playing with blocks and just muttering the lyrics to a pop song. At first, I had no problem with this behavior. That was until I heard what she was actually saying. She was singing Ke$ha’s “Take It Off.” After being blown up by a grenade, I called my wife into the room. “Guess what your daughter is singing?” I wasn’t appalled at the lyrics, but more the choice of artist. Where the hell did she hear this crap!?!?

I need to step up my daughter’s instruction on the finer artists of 20th century pop culture. I figure some heavy doses of RUSH and CCR followed by a nice application of some Johnny Cash and Cream. I’ll be damned if any kid of mine is going to start singing that crap that is on the radio.

Of course if she breaks into “F**k You” anytime soon, I might let her finish the song before I scold her for swearing. After that I’ll tell her to go watch Ghostbusters on her little DVD player while I get blown up another 15 times. Parent of the year award, here I come.