Slowly I turned...

Conan the Barbarian - A quick review SPOILER WARNING

2011-08-21T02:19:00.004-05:00

SPOILER WARNING!

It was OK. There were some really great things about it, but as a whole it seemed a little two dimensional as the characterization was uneven. It's pretty graphic in the ways one would expect from an R rated movie, BUT with almost no bad language to speak of. :-) It's not an accurate take on the character, but the lead actor looks the part and seems pretty barbaric. There is skin, a bit of sexuality and gallons of blood. The action is almost non-stop but I think more dialogue might have made the fights more impactful. I also think the violence became so acceptable by movies end that I began to not care. The transitions from shot to shot are sometimes jarring leaving the viewer with an unclear perception of where the characters ARE and where they are GOING. Something must have been amiss with the storyboards or maybe the edit was the problem. Rachel Nichols was excellent. All in all a B-.

True story...

2011-02-14T23:33:00.000-06:00

The woman and her family were obviously out of place as they wandered into the local comics shop led by her adult, but oddly still pubescent son.

"No socialization?" she observed in a mocking tone upon entering.

"I guess we can't talk to anyone in here."

Her incredulity bordered on disgust and they did not linger there long.

I was puzzled by her comments until sometime later, when leaving the shop, my 13 year old son pointed out the sign on the store front entrance.

It read... "NO SOLICITATIONS".

FF Death Prediction

2011-01-08T01:42:00.000-06:00

Prediction - The Thing will "die" as a human being. A year from now, he will 'resurrect' when it is discovered that the THING imposter from "This Man, This Monster" did not die. He will return and impart his stolen Thing-ness back to the dead Ben Grimm. The imposter will be a hero a second time as he 'gave' his life before to save Reed. Ben will NEVER become human again after this. Just my theory...

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T13:59:00.002-06:00

I hope that all my friends have a great Christmas and that this time is a source of joy for you from whichever well you draw.

Third Eye Posters on Facebook

2010-12-10T00:25:00.003-06:00

I started a Facebook page for fans of the Third Eye blacklight posters.

Please give it a look...

Third Eye, Inc. on Facebook

Oh boy... is this great?

2010-10-19T22:44:00.005-05:00

Just in time for Halloween!

2010-10-03T22:44:00.006-05:00

This might surprise some people...

2010-09-20T00:17:00.002-05:00

High School Memories

2010-09-18T09:21:00.002-05:00

I am so happy for others to see these!

2010-09-15T21:10:00.004-05:00

I know I've shown these before, but it's really an honor for them to be shown on this blog dedicated to the KING of comics - JACK KIRBY!

Kirby-Vision

2010-08-04T23:05:00.003-05:00

The kids are always watching "iCarly" and it's a pretty funny show actually. The lead actress (Miranda Cosgrove) always seemed familiar to me, but I never made the connection until tonight. So... I'm watching a documentary online about the old TV series "The Outer Limits" - in particular, the episode "Demon With The Glass Hand" (which I've seen many times). The female lead (Arlene Martel) looked very familiar and suddenly I realized who Miranda Cosgrove of the Nickelodeon show "iCarly" reminded me of. Separated by 57 years, these two actresses could pass for mother and daughter or sisters! Arlene Martel is probably most recognized by fan boy types as Spock's 'wife' in the original Star Trek. Am I nuts? Do YOU see it?

Conner spring 2010: A Yo-Yo vid

2010-04-20T22:05:00.003-05:00

That's my boy... *sniff*

1970s GIJOE - Redux

2010-04-05T22:59:00.006-05:00

OK... for this to make perfect sense, watch this first - an original TV commercial from the 70s.

Then watch my remake featuring NEW Adventure Team toys done in a smaller scale.

So, there you have it. Verdict?

Why ART... thou?

2010-03-05T00:19:00.000-06:00

God shines through His creation and as created beings, we reflect the Creator in our propensity to create. He made US like HIM. Even our fallen state cannot completely block out such great light. When we see the fingerprint of God on even the least of these, in the most common effort to make, we find joy.

Is diversity so great, really?

2010-01-28T04:45:00.000-06:00

The loss of shared experience is negatively impacting our world. When I grew up, There were 3 channels and PBS. Each day at school or work, it was very likely that you watched the same shows as your peers. Our minds are driven in a million directions now and the less we have in common, the more we grow to hate one another. We define ourselves by our tastes which we hold up as moral absolutes. Read a discussion on popular music online, for example, people will shred each other verbally over artist or genre preference. The collective damage of this type of misdirected malice is taking a heavy toll on us all.

Quick Thoughts on Avatar

2009-12-26T22:14:00.008-06:00

It was an exceptionally well crafted movie. The film was visually stunning and emotionally engaging. The CGI was possibly the best ever achieved. The language one would expect from a PG-13 film was present and a little much at times. The main military figure was stereo-typed to the point of being the most one dimensional and therefore unrealistic character in the story. There are people who want to believe that all people in the military are this hard assed, but I don't find it very likely. If that character had even one moment of self doubt or introspection, it would have made him not seem less real than the CGI aliens he fights.

The message of the film fails as an allegorical take on our relationship to the environment since biology doesn't simply doesn't work as well on planet Earth as it does on the alien moon of Pandora. If that world was supposed to represent a product of evolution, then it fails on that level too. I only wish I could talk to a horse or a pine tree via a tentacled USB plug. Having said that, I liked the emphasis of the 'spiritual' as a pervasive element of Pandora's ecology. I think that points to more than natural selection as a mechanism for an ordered eco-system... especially one like that on the world of Pandora.

The movie looked amazing and functions best to show that love matters and that one should not simply TAKE what one wants. Greed is bad. Caring for others is good. It has too many intellectual inconsistencies for one to draw anything more from it than that. So, the message is a good one unless one looks too deeply....

It was a fun ride and a visual feast. It also had me rooting for the underdog. The last act of The Return of the Jedi will never be the same again, though. :-)

I'm glad I saw it, as, despite my observations, I liked it a lot!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T03:07:00.001-06:00

May you find blessings and hope at this time of joy and celebration.

2009-11-14T14:52:00.002-06:00

Here are photos from Halloween. One is a shot of the grappling gun prop I made and the other is of me in my final costume.

Halloween is coming...

2009-09-30T13:41:00.009-05:00

I always have a lot of fun with the kids at Halloween and here is a peek at plans for this year...

2009-08-08T11:46:00.013-05:00

I like the new GIJOE movie quite a bit. It is, what many would call, mindless entertainment, and while it has that aspect, it is also a reasonable take on the 80s-born icon. This movie IS based on the 80s 'Real Amercan Hero' version of the GIJOE toyline, so for anyone who is wondering "Who plays GIJOE", it may be a bit of a mystery. And also, for anyone who has issues with movie adaptations that take liberties, it may be a bit of a bumpy ride.

There are a few hiccups here and there such as a weak effects shot or two and few performance moments that don't mesh, but all in all, it's a solid piece of theater bang up fun.

While this movie is not in the league of the original STAR WARS, it does an admirable job of reaching for that level of visual stimulation while maintaining the basic framework of the 80s cartoon and comics. There are even elements that hearken to STAR WARS in much the same way that Lucas referenced Kurosawa films.

There's plenty of action that escalates to progressively grander set pieces as the story moves forward, yet unlike STAR WARS, there are few quiet moments. In that way, the movie is somewhat like an old Bond movie.

That may sum up the movie well: 80s GIJOE meets STAR WARS meets JAMES BOND...

Not bad.

Brushes with celebrity greatness...

2009-06-06T13:56:00.012-05:00

I've seldom gone WAY out of my way to meet famous people, but as fate would have it, I've met a few. This past weekend and BotCon I got the opportunity to meet three: "Weird Al" Yankovic, Guillermo del Toro and Tyrese. I think with most famous people, as they meet so many people, it all becomes a blur, so I harbor no illusion that I now KNOW these people. But still, it's fun to snap a photo. Digital cameras have made all this much easier. Two decades ago, who had a film camera with them most of the time? Anyway... here are the pics...

Be resolute!

2009-04-25T12:00:00.004-05:00

To be honest, a great deal of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming puzzles me. It's either too coarse for my taste or simply not funny. Tonight, however, at midnight (11PM central) Adult Swim will be airing the long awaited, hour long NEW animated mini-movie: G.I. Joe: Resolute.

Brace yourselves. This not your father's G.I. Joe or even YOUR G.I. Joe for that matter. This all too brief outing is rated PG-13 and features actual on-screen death and blood. The script is by Warren Ellis and the animation team worked on AVATAR. The show has been airing all week long as 5 minute webisodes and is really quite amazing. It is full of "oh cool" moments and pretty sophisticated story-telling.

Check it out tonight or set the TIVO. It is the best animated G.I. Joe programming to date. But, remember it is not appropriate for young children due to the violence and mild language.

Time's Last Gift

2009-04-04T09:11:00.004-05:00

I came across a copy of this just a few days ago. It was an old copy with the Darrell K. Sweet cover. In the moment, I didn't connect it directly with a blog post by my friend Charles. I grabbed it because I had never read Farmer and did remember Charles posting about his recent passing. I could barely put the book down once I began reading last Saturday morning. By Sunday afternoon I had finsihed. As I read, the story seemed familiar somehow and I began to suspect the main protagonist was Tarzan or at least his descendant. Farmer drops a lot of clues, but keeps it fairly subtle until the last 10 pages or so. The roller coaster reveal made me dizzy! 2/3 of the way through, Charles' blog came to mind and I sought out his old post from last year.

It's a great read if you like time travel stories. One of my favorite aspects of the story is how Farmer pretty much throws time paradox out the window at the outset.

If it happens, then it ALREADY happened. Don't worry about it.

Great stuff!

It was only a matter of time...

2009-02-09T23:05:00.008-06:00

When I was a pre-teen, we visited the home of my dad's cousin and her husband. I had not yet become a believer at that time, but I was struck by a black light poster depicting Jesus on the wall of the couple's college age son. I was intrigued by the meshing of the counter culture via a blacklight poster with traditional religious imagery.

Now this was the same son who had a few years before displayed a shelf full of Aurora monster model kits at the end of the home's main hallway. That made a big impression on me as well and most likely led to my fascination with Universal Studios horror films and their related model kits. By age 12, I had built and painted all the re-issues of those same kits I saw on that hallway book shelf.

But, I digress...

Much like that first peek at monster models, my later peek at the black light Jesus poster left a lasting impression. It planted the seed that Christian faith need not be something mired in cultural tradition, but that truth could step outside of culture and find its place in myriad representations. I realized that Christian art need not be only from the Renaissance for example. And that, Christian music need not be only hymns or southern gospel. My mind began to open to the idea that Christian faith might be more diverse in its expressions than I had imagined.

A few years later, I made the leap of faith and made a commitment in my heart to trust Jesus. Now, after all these long years, I find myself playing with faux black light imagery and it occurred to me in church yesterday that I could bring the iconic Christian imagery together with the black light comic art look of the Third Eye posters that I now collect. I could connect with that treasured black light memory right on my own desktop.

Wow, what fun! I found a generic painting of the Resurrection of Jesus online and laid into it with photoshop. This image is not based on the same one that I saw as a poster during my tweens, but it had a quality I liked and depicted a powerful moment in the Christian story. You might even say the event depicted was a little "cosmic", so I added a little "Kirby-Crackle", to capture the comic book feel and added a caption in the pinup style of the Marvel comics of the 60s.

I realize I've backed myself into a tiny niche of enjoyment that might only be occupied by just me, but I had to share anyway.

I thank you for your indulgence and hope you at least find my obsessions amusing.

Mo ichi do!

2009-02-07T11:43:00.006-06:00

That's Japanese for "one more time" and here is yet another retro poster style image I edited. This blog entry offers the faux blacklight re-color of a recent Dave Gibbons drawing of Rorschach from WATCHMEN. It took a bit of thought on how to use the limited blacklight palette effectively, but I'm pretty happy with the results. I got the image online and thought it would be fun to bring the florescent look even further into the modern era by adding it to a very recent piece of comic art. The original piece (with the original colors) appears in the new book "The Art of Watchmen". Buy it pal!

Seven colors and black...

2009-01-31T17:14:00.004-06:00

Here's another "faux blacklight" image I did recently. This and the previous image are hi res poster sized files. Sadly, there's not an economical way to print them. As RGB files they look pretty much like florescent inks, but as CMYK, they would not look anywhere close to what you see here. If anyone has a solution to getting these files from monitor to paper without spending an arm and a leg and having them actually be blacklight reactive, let me know. I have one more image to show that draws from a more recent source. Click the pic to make it bigger!

More "blacklight" MADNESS!!!

2009-01-28T23:19:00.010-06:00

As mentioned in the previous post, I have been playing with emulating the look of the 1970s Third Eye blacklight posters. Some of the most memorable pieces offered by the now defunct New York company were made from panels of Jack Kirby Marvel Comics art. I began to imagine...

What if Kirby's work at DC in the 70s was incorporated into additional posters from Third Eye. What would THAT have looked like? To satisfy my own curiosity and explore the color palette and inherent challenges of printing with only black and seven florescent colors I undertook the laborious task of scanning Kirby art from a black and white reprint volume, eliminating the gray tones and then coloring in the Third Eye style.

Shown here is the first image I did. The art is by Jack Kirby and is reproduced here only for purposes of instruction and historical significance. My only contribution is the color. The original source image is property of DC Comics and I make no claims of rights or ownership.

This is... "The Infinity Man"!

Click the image to see a larger version.

PS - I will probably add these to my Facebook page, but Facebook all but destroys the color saturation on these when the process uploaded files for display. They look practically identical here to their appearance in Photoshop, so I had to let my friends see how they "actually" appear.

Just so you can see it better...

2009-01-26T23:37:00.009-06:00

I've been experimenting on doing faux blacklight poster images in photoshop. I've done a couple of Kirby Fourth World images and a Dave Gibbons Rorschach, but while I may show those here eventually, I thought I would offer a better look at the dayglow self portrait I am using for my profile pic...

Batman dead? Yeah, right.

2009-01-18T11:27:00.004-06:00

I bought and read Final Crisis #6 just see to see the on page death of the second greatest comic book superhero of all time. Granted (pun intended), I had not read the first 5 parts, but this issue's story was incomprehensible until finally, almost at story's end, Batman confronts Darkseid. I won't go into details on the odd chance you want to read the story for yourself and haven't already.

I'm reading a lot of debate online about Batman's actions prior and the method of his "death", but all that is really moot. The real question is, after some time goes by and someone else steps in to fill the cowl, "how will DC bring Bruce Wayne back?". Because, you KNOW they will bring him back.

Haven't we seen enough of this kind of publicity stunt in comics? Spider-Man's a clone! Aunt May is dead! The FLASH is dead! Superman is dead! Robin is dead! Spider-Man unmasked! Captain America dies! Peter Parker and Mary Jane make a deal with the devil and were never married! And now... BATMAN IS DEAD!

Yeah.

Right.

Have a great 2009!

2008-12-31T20:18:00.001-06:00

Even though tomorrow is really just another day, my prayer is for better days ahead for us all.

Be safe...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

2008-12-25T02:05:00.001-06:00

THERE!

I said it and I'm glad!

:-)

Twilight of the Apes

2008-12-20T11:01:00.000-06:00

If you have ever seen the original Planet of the Apes film from 1968, and if you have ever seen more than a few episodes of Rod Serling's classic Twilight Zone TV series, you can clearly see Serling's influence on the Apes script. I've said for years that the film (which I love, by the way) plays like a big Twilight Zone episode.

As you can imagine I was quite amused when I came across a black and white 30 minute edit of Planet of the Apes which conforms the movie to the Twilight Zone TV broadcast format. It isn't perfect and there are some dramatic time leaps between commercial breaks, but all in all, I think the editor did a bang up job merging the the show with the film.

YouTube has taken down the videos after a request by CBS, but if you go to this site...

Forbidden Zone Video

...you can download the short film and view it on your computer.

If you have any fondness of the Apes movies or Twilight Zone, you should give it a look.

Is there a gap between your ears?

2008-12-08T01:01:00.000-06:00

Cliff posted this over on his blog and it looked fun...

There Are 0 Gaps in Your Knowledge

Where you have gaps in your knowledge:

No Gaps!

Where you don't have gaps in your knowledge:

Philosophy

Religion

Economics

Literature

History

Science

Art

Do You Have Gaps in Your Knowledge?

Want to play internet detective?

2008-11-23T12:12:00.000-06:00

If so, do a Google search for "Alan Keyes lawsuit". Read what you find.

Then, go to CNN, FOX News, ABC News and do the same search.

I find the lack of news coverage... interesting.

People are easily programmed...

2008-11-19T21:41:00.001-06:00

Considering the possibilities...

2008-11-06T21:06:00.000-06:00

As I had posted previously, Election Day in the United States had massive potential to end with some sort of immediate unpleasantness beyond the actual poll results. I am happy that I am a poor prophet, in that regard, thank the Lord.

I found Obama's Tuesday night acceptance speech to be fairly genuine in that he acknowledged those who did not vote for him, and seemed to imply that he knew he must listen to the opposing line of thought if he has any hope of realizing his ideal of a more unified nation. He also seemed to have a slight tone of humility. Was it real? Who can say at this early stage? I hope it's genuine.

Going forward, I wish him well. I hope his heart is as he seems to believe it is. He seems to think he is a good, well intentioned person. I hope he is right. I hope he is not the person he has been painted to be by some. I still have a lot of issues with his philosophy of shared wealth and some of his other social / moral stances, but he now has his shot to lead. Let's see what the man can do. Only time will tell, as always, how this will play out. I voted my conscience and that is all I, or anyone, could do.

In the future, I will continue to speak out against injustice and evil, but as of now, Barrack Obama will be the President for the next four years. I cannot change that, nor would I, now that we have reached this point in time. The people, no matter how unwisely, have spoken. The system worked as it was designed. According to scripture government is allowed by God's mercy to give structure to our world and because of that we are to offer that government some degree of acknowledgment and respect. As Jesus said, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God, that which is God's." God is in control as I posted before. His will be done.

For good or ill, if all goes as planned, Obama will become the 44th President of the United States next year. If you are someone who prays, please pray for him. He will need it. I suspect his dreams and ideals will be greatly challenged as realities and world situations, only imagined by the average person, are revealed to him by the highest levels of the U.S. intelligence machine.

I am sure there are levels of knowledge, that would make it difficult for many of us to sleep at night if we were allowed to share in them. It's an ancient adage that ignorance is bliss and this may be more of a blessing than we know. Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft said, "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of it's contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far." And while I'm sure there is a large gap between the world view of the late author and myself, I think there is a ring of truth in what he says, if not metaphysically, then at least in the more mundane temporal sense.

So, in some ways, I pity Obama or any head of the executive branch - past or future. I don't think anyone who seeks the office of US President REALLY knows what they have gotten themselves into until it is too late, so to speak.

It is not a job I would wish for myself or any of my friends or loved ones. Godspeed Barrack Obama.

Election Day Woes?

2008-11-04T00:49:00.000-06:00

Here we are: it is election day 2008 in the USA. Hang on tight my friends, this one could be a little crazy. Who can say with any certainty what this day will bring. Everything may go off without a whimper or any great calamity. I really hope that is does, but there is a lot of potential for weirdness on many levels. Some level of social unrest is quite possible no matter the day's final outcome. Be wise and stay safe.

If you pray. Pray. If you don't, think about trying it. This might be a good time to give it a shot.

We will have a new President Elect in the very near future. We don't yet know who it will be, but when all the votes are counted and any needed recounts are done, once any possible lawsuits are filed and resolved, after some people possibly get upset and maybe physically vent their anger, when others rejoice with jubilation on the streets and maybe overturn a few cars, if any gunshots are fired or any fires set, when any dust settles, and any possible smoke clears and one man is finally designated as the man to be inaugurated as President next year, for good or ill, God will still be God. A political election cannot change that. God is MUCH bigger that that.

"...He suspends the earth over nothing." Job 26:7

No man is the center of what is or what will be. Come what may, God will still be in control. Nothing will ever happen outside of His knowledge or ultimate perfect will. So, my prayer is that no matter what comes, God will grant me the grace to be content in those circumstances and to show me how to best react to evil when I encounter it going forward. I don't say this lightly. I fear I will struggle if things don't go my way. I'll be honest enough to say so. But...

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Job 13:15

He is infinitely wiser than I and He can see all ends. If I were driving this 'car', I would have driven into a ditch by now. I have seen amazing things grow out of shocking deeds and bad decisions in my own life. He is a better 'driver' than I could ever hope to be. I am sincerely thankful He has taken the driver's wheel from me on so many occasions.

I may yet post my disappointment over future events as they occur, but I am striving to trust.

I didn't mean to create some kind of 'sermonette' before signing off like old style broadcast television. It just sort of came out that way. I don't usually stress faith issues here. I thank you for your indulgence and hope that someone might draw some comfort or strength from these words.

Good night and may God bless us all.

Clarifying the Republican mindset...

2008-10-28T22:15:00.000-05:00

I found this somewhere and I doubt it's a true account, but I think it's a great illustration...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words redistribution of wealth.

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in and the occasional chat with a professor,she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. The self- professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father.

He responded by asking how she was doing in school. Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, 'How is your friend Audrey doing?' She replied, 'Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over.'

Her wise father asked his daughter, 'Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0? That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.'

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, 'That' s a crazy idea, how would that be fair! I've worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!'

The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, 'Welcome to the Republican party.'

If you consider yourself a social conservative...

2008-10-27T23:50:00.000-05:00

I encourage all who are social conservatives to vote on November 4th for John McCain. Please don't stay away from the polls because you feel it doesn't matter who wins. It does matter. This may be the most important election of this generation. Stand up for what you believe in and get out and vote. The far left is mobilized and the right is asleep. Don't let the rights you enjoy go silently into the night. Let's do what we can, while we can, to keep this the America of our youth. Traditional values have merit and have been at the heart of civilization for thousands of years. Let us not subvert those ideas and principals that have brought us so far. We have often failed, but do not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Also, I appreciate those who support independent and third party candidates, but THIS election is not the time to send a message. I realize you may feel you are voting for the lesser of two evils by voting for McCain, but less evil is still LESS.

Don't let your wallet speak to you more loudly than you heart. I would rather live in poverty than to see the United States become a pale shadow of itself.

McCain - Palin : 2008

Spreading around the wealth...

2008-10-20T22:15:00.000-05:00

Barrack Obama's recent comment on the campaign trail that he wants to "spread the wealth around" is socialism in it's most basic form. Apparently Obama feels it is somehow 'wrong' for the people who work and make the money in this country to actually keep that money. He thinks it should be 'shared' more 'evenly'.

50% of the U.S. population only pay federal income tax at a rate of 3%. Many do not pay taxes at all and yet Obama would take my tax dollars (collected at a higher rate), which I am required to pay BY LAW, and give them to others that he feels are more deserving of that income than my own wife and children.

Having something handed to you that you did not earn, that came from the pocket of someone who did not give it willingly is immoral from any point of view except perhaps that of the thief and the recipient of the stolen wealth.

Helping those less fortunate is a central teaching of many faiths and I feel it is a proper and godly thing to do, but sharing at the point of the gun is not charity, it is victimization. If I am compelled to help others against my will, that is not love. Love is a choice. What Obama proposes is 'change' not based on choice, but by the mandate of the state.

Aren't you glad someone has finally come along who can fix us all despite ourselves?

R.E. Howard's Horror Fiction

2008-10-07T22:38:00.000-05:00

How could I help but to become a dabbler in the work of Robert E. Howard after reading so many 'Howard posts' by my friend Charles. I've read just a few Kane stories from a Wordsworth Edition I found at Half Price books and a few others from a collection titled "People of the Dark". As an aside, those of you who live in states without Half Price books are missing out.

Interestingly I'm finding I seem particularly fond of Howard's horror fiction. I picked up another Wordsworth Edition just published this year which contains 21 Howard stories, most of them suspense and horror related. I already have a few of these in another volume, but oh well, what can you do?

I got a dark chuckle the other night at the conclusion of "The Fearsome Touch of Death". It's the shortest of the stories and just perfect for reading right before bed. You'll either chuckle at the end and go to sleep with a smile on your lips as I did, or... you may have trouble dismissing the 'empty' darkness around you and finding your night's rest.

Sweet dreams...

Getting in the "Halloween mood"...

2008-09-30T20:30:00.000-05:00

It's almost October and just get you all a little creeped out before we dive headlong into the Halloween season, here's a little video to set the tone...

My favorite quotes from last night...

2008-09-27T10:40:00.000-05:00

These are a few of my favorite quotes from the McCain / Obama debate last night:

“I think Senator McCain’s absolutely right that we need more responsibility…”

“Senator McCain is absolutely right that the earmarks process has been abused…”

“He’s also right that oftentimes lobbyists and special interests are the ones that are introducing these…requests…”

“John mentioned the fact that business taxes on paper are high in this country, and he’s absolutely right…”

“John is right we have to make cuts…”

“Senator McCain is absolutely right that the violence has been reduced as a consequence of the extraordinary sacrifice of our troops and our military families…”

“John — you’re absolutely right that presidents have to be prudent in what they say…”

“Senator McCain is absolutely right, we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran…”

It seems that Obama DOES think McCain "gets it" on some issues. :-)

You MUST watch this before you vote...

2008-09-26T23:44:00.000-05:00

Just the facts ma'am...

2008-09-18T23:54:00.000-05:00

(I found an article at the Fox News website and thought I would do my part to diffuse the misinformation campaign currently raging against Sarah Palin by posting parts of it here as the election draws closer. The article was written by Maxim Lott)

Palin “Wants Creationism Taught in School”

The Charge: Palin opposes the teaching of evolution, and would mandate the teaching of creationism in the state’s public schools.

The Facts: Palin said during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign that she would not push the state Board of Education to add creation-based alternatives to the state’s required curriculum, or look for creationism advocates when she appointed board members. She has kept this pledge, according to the Associated Press.

Palin has spoken in favor of classroom discussions of creationism, in some cases. “I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum,” Palin told the Anchorage Daily News in a 2006 interview.

(See: ‘Creation science’ enters the race; Palin is only candidate to suggest it should be discussed in schools. By Tom Kizzia, Anchorage Daily News, 27 October 2006)

I don't like Ike...

2008-09-12T23:23:00.001-05:00

Well here we sit with a major hurricane just about to make landfall on the Texas shore. In roughly 12 hours or so, some part of this system will impact the DFW area as well. We can use the rain, but I feel bad for the damage that will occur south of us tonight. What happens here will be nothing by comparison.

I am sure there will be loss of life. If you pray, please say a prayer for those who will most likely lose loved ones tonight.

The house where Superman was born...

2008-09-01T23:44:00.000-05:00

I found this video oddly compelling. I thought I'd pass it on...

Ya gotta love this...

2008-08-16T08:47:00.000-05:00

My 12 year old, keenly aware of my fascination with the Batmobile from the 60s Batman T.V. series, scratch built a Lego version of the George Barris designed car of legend.

I made the logo stickers, but he did the rest himself using my 1/50th Batmobile as a guide and internalizing my feedback with a healthy amount of gusto.

I think it's a really great take on the BEST version of the Batmobile in the Lego style.

It's one of my prized possessions. Click the image to see a larger version!

Now I'VE done it...

2008-08-15T19:43:00.000-05:00

I think "I" jumped the shark with my last post...

Cheated the carrot!

2008-08-02T15:52:00.000-05:00

I'm sure most folks are familiar with the term 'jumped the shark".

The phrase originated as a reference to the old TV series "Happy Days", when in it's waning years of popularity, an episode was filmed in which lead tough guy character "Fonzie" (played by Henry Winkler) did an Evel Knievel style motorcycle stunt.

The stunt involved jumping a motorcycle over a tank containing a live shark. This has come to be seen as the point of the TV show's run where it's demise is seen to be eminent.

This terms use has expanded to other facets of life including relationships, music, books, comics and business.

Now, not many people know this, but it has been my long held dream to be the originator of a catch phrase.

To this end, a few years ago, I came up with the phrase "cheated the carrot".

What does it mean?

When one attains something offered or promised without first meeting the requirements for said acquisition, one is said to have "cheated the carrot." The comes from the idea of dangling a carrot in front of a horse in order to motivate the horse to move forward with no real chance of ever getting the offered vegetable.

If the horse were to somehow gain the carrot without ever taking a step and also circumvent efforts to keep him from the carrot, then he would have attained his goal without ever giving in the the whims of his deceptive and manipulative task master.

So the phrase "cheated the carrot" does not refer to getting something undeserved, but rather attaining a goal without being taken advantage of.

I hope that's clear. Now dear reader, YOUR job is to take this phrase with you. Use it whenever possible. Ingrain it into our culture until the day comes that I overhear the phrase while standing in the checkout line at Target or waiting for a meal to be served at a restaurant.

Suggested usage would be:

1. Refer to someone or something as having "cheated the carrot". ie. "Wow, Bob I can't believe you got that raise without moving to the Hoboken office! You really cheated the carrot!"

2. Encourage someone to "cheat the carrot" or at least make the attempt. i.e. "Dave, I think you should cheat the carrot. Don't take her to that nice restaurant. She'll love you anyway! You're too good looking to let go."

I think you get the idea. Now...go forth.

The Dark Knight

2008-07-20T10:25:00.000-05:00

I saw the Dark Knight yesterday. It makes all the other films I've seen this year seem like nothing more than popcorn movies. I've see a lot of good movies this year, but this one tops them all.

It's not a perfect movie, but the flaws are minimal. I've never seen the genre treated so seriously on film. The performances are strong and believable. The plot and dialogue are tightly executed. I believed that this situation could exist in the real world.

The Joker will never be the same to me. I never saw the character as a truly frightening menace until now.

The themes of morality, justice, sacrifice and loss are presented with so much depth and variation in meaning as to give the viewer much to consider in regard to the world we live in.

I've caught myself thinking about the movie a lot over the last 24 hours. It's haunting me.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the woods...

2008-06-13T01:38:00.000-05:00

This is a promotional vid I did for the JoeCon 12" figure set for this year.

Hmmm...um...well...

2008-05-26T15:19:00.000-05:00

Indy IV was...well..

Okay. Just...okay.

I did not expect "RAIDERS", but I did expect something that was at least as strong as "TEMPLE OF DOOM". In that regard, I was disappointed. There were some nice moments, but all in all, the movie seemed forced.

Shia LeBeof may have been the best thing in the movie.

Karen Allen seemed as though she was doing an appearance at a Sci-Fi show.

Ford seemed to be playing INDY as if he were older rather that just letting it happen as a result of FORD himself being older.

I could list many more things that bothered me, but I'll stick to just a few:

SPOILERS AHEAD...TURN BACK NOW...

I understand the move to a sci-fi theme since the movie takes place in the B-movie laden 1950s and I didn't think I would mind, but as it turns out, losing the supernatural element really hurt the movie for me. I don't think it undercut the other films, it just didn't play to the emotions. The original 3 Indy films built off of three of the world's major religions. The foundational concepts are pretty well known to a lot of people. The Ark, the Grail and to a lesser degree the Shankara Stones oF TEMPLE OF DOOM had a basis in history and legend.

The Crystal Skull scenario is such a loose plot device, that everything the movie builds around it is the PUREST fiction. It builds to no anticipated climax, because there is no foundation or context to build on. Even Indy himself looks at the titular crystal skull at one point and says, "What is this thing?"

In the previous outings, it was always Indy who had at least somewhat of an idea about the scope of what he was involved with.

It was like watching Batman say, "oh my goodness, what do I do next?" Indy's lack of knowledge just didn't fit the character and made him seem intellectually incapable of dealing with the situations at hand, beyond throwing a punch, or swinging from his whip.

Try this on for size - INDIANA JONES IS...SMART... REALLY smart!

Next- Mutt Williams is Tarzan in this film or at least the filmakers would have us think so. The Monkey / Vine sequence was beyond silly and went even further to pull me out of a movie I couldn't get connected to.

Did I mention Karen Allen's phoned-in performance?

The flying saucer buried under the ancient ruins was.. um...anti-climactic, but I guess Spielberg and Ford had to let Lucas keep one saucer in the pic as they wouldn't relent to making the movie George wanted to make. Looking at a synopsis of the early INDIANA JONES AND THE SAUCER MEN FROM MARS script, I think it would have been a better movie if that script had been produced rather than the Crystal Skull amalgam.

The crystal skull, a flying saucer, the A-bomb test and a wedding are about all that survived from that script. It was a bit silly, but it seemed more fun in that the alien angle was more upfront and not treated as some great mystery that was obvious to everyone in the movie EXCEPT Indy.

I have two more issues - grave yard guards and Maya warriors that hide inside temple walls. Where did these people come from? Who were they. There was almost no exposition to explain their presence except a legend about undead guards. Were they undead? Who knows? They came and went without a word.

How many times do the heroes need to go over a water fall in order to outdo all the previous waterfall scenes in an Indy film? Apparently THREE in rapid succession. At least they fell out of the "boat" on the third one!

There was a nice subtext about the loss of Henry Jones Sr. and Marcus Brody, but then we get the head of Marcus' statue in the lap of a villain. Please tell me why.

OKAY...that was more than a few, but once I started, I couldn't seem to stop. I feel bad too, because complainers drive me nuts!

So... was there anything TO like? Yes, there was quite a bit.

The opening was fun. The warehouse scene was pretty good. I thought Kate Blanchett's character was well done. The A-bomb test was good and a great way to lock the era in the mind of the viewer. Ford LOOKED pretty good. And of course there was Shia. The wedding was okay, but Indy should have put the hat on Mutt's head as he left the church.

Overall the movie was...as I said at the begining...okay.

I think maybe on subsequent DVD viewings it'll hold up better...I hope.

Hooray for Hollywood!

2008-05-19T22:14:00.000-05:00

As a family we've had four movies in our viewing sights for a while now. We've seen three of them so far and I don't recall being so pleased with three new movies viewed in such close proximity.

First up was Iron Man which was a true winner. Robert Downey Jr. was BORN to play Tony Stark onscreen. The tale of a decadent captain of industry who realizes that life should mean just a little bit more, played true to the super hero genre in a way that few films have. We had a blast at this one.

Next was an early screening of Speed Racer at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. This movie almost lost me during the comical race / battle near the mid-point. Viking race car drivers!? Yet, by the end, I was won over by this positive movie about a strong family who looks out for each other against organized evil. There is an amazing amount of emotion and excitement at the film's conclusion that overcame the films crazy 3-D cartoon context and left us all exhilarated.

Finally, yesterday, we saw Prince Caspian, which for me was a better movie than the previous Narnia screen adventure: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The new movie had a great amount of (bloodless) violence with large marching armies and so came closer to The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy in look and style. Based on one of the Narnia books I've never read, I understand the script took a few more liberties than the last film, but, since I didn't know any better going in, I loved every minute of it. It hit me on many levels, both emotionally and spiritually. Perhaps my favorite line of dialogue was, "Do you see him, now?" This was the only film of the three I've mentioned that actually brought tears to my eyes a few times.

And now, the family is waiting for INDY IV which opens next week. Will we go 4 for 4?

I'll let you know...

He deserves a star...

2008-05-07T19:50:00.000-05:00

Back in my post about the Wolfman remake currently in production I mentioned classic horror makeup genius Jack Pierce.

If you've ever seen any of the old Universal Studios horror films from the 30's and 40's you've seen Jack Pierce's work:

- Karloff as Frankenstein's Monster

- Lugosi as Dracula

- Chaney as the Wolfman

- Rains as the Invisible Man

Pierce designed all these makeups and thus created images that remain iconic until this day. His visuals continue to permeate our culture through myraid media forms. He left his mark on us all.

There is an online petition to get Jack Pierce a star on Hollywood Blvd. I think he deserves the recognition.

Here's the link to sign:

Jack Pierce Star

NOT on the cover of the Rolling Stone...

2008-04-13T22:38:00.000-05:00

Issue #164 of Tomart's Action Figure Digest features photos of this year's BotCon figure set that I designed paint decorations for. Making it doubly cool is the fact that I took all the photos that fill the four pages of BotCon toy previews in this issue.

Triple cool kicks in as I also took the photo used on the cover.

I realize I'm tooting my own horn a bit here, but there are no photo credits in the mag itself and it's pretty cool for a toy fan like myself to see my work (on two levels) in a news stand distributed magazine. I realize it's not the cover of TIME or ROLLING STONE, but hey...

I believe if you click the image, you can see a larger version. It's not my favorite photo of the one's I sent to Tomart's, but it's the one they chose. If you get a chance flip through the magazine the next time you are in a comic shop or major bookstore.

Another online quiz...

2008-04-09T23:46:00.001-05:00

You must take this one.

You KNOW you've thought about it.

69%

I think somebody's having TOO much fun!

2008-03-24T00:51:00.000-05:00

Check out the top headline from tonight's Fox News website update. Read it slowly. I'm thinking they got scooped on this one a LONG time ago! :-)

Arishikage clan member spotted!

2008-03-21T00:06:00.000-05:00

While I'm in the frame of mind to share early pics from films in production that I feel some connection too (see previous post), I thought I'd throw THIS image up. This is from the USA Today website. What you see here is one of two first look images of Ray Park as he will appear in the role of Snake Eyes in the live-action G.I. JOE movie coming in 2009! I'm pretty shocked that they stayed so close to the classic look. I think it bodes well that the film will be a fairly traditional take on the 80s iconic Real American Hero toys and comics. After these last two posts my geek / nerd meter is off the scale!

El Hombre del Lobo...

2008-03-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

I had to share this pic from Universal's WOLFMAN remake that is now in production. Rik Baker is the makeup man behind the monster and I really think it's a pretty good update to the classic JACK PIERCE make up that Lon Chaney Jr. wore in the original. He's even wearing his shirt - torn though it may be. THAT is one tidy Wolfman! :-)

Dave Stevens passes...

2008-03-11T23:47:00.001-05:00

I read today that, artist Dave Stevens passed away. Dave created the Rocketeer for comics and it was made into a pretty good superhero / adventure film. The Rocketeer movie was eclipsed during it's release by Kevin Costners ROBIN HOOD movie which wasn't HALF the movie that ROCKETEER was.

Dave was quite a talent with a unique style. It was Dave who brought 50s pinup star Betty Page to the forefront of pop-culture through his art. He was instrumental in seeing that she received compensation for the use of her image all these years later.

I guess this will be the way of things as we all get older – familiar names and faces will leave our world with increasing frequency. The young have little idea that it will be the same for them one day.

My Latest Video

2008-03-09T15:39:00.000-05:00

As I had posted before, I'm having fun making videos and uploading them to Youtube. The latest is a "fan trailer" for the GIJOE movie due out in 2009. It features the actual cast 'photoshopped' to look like the classic characters from the GIJOE comics and cartoons. It was fun and I THINK it has just a trace of the style of an actual movie trailer. My respect for video pros has grown enormously after working on projects like this!

One more...

2008-03-03T20:01:00.000-06:00

Guitarist Jeff Healy has passed away. He was 41. He was the blind guitar player in the movie Roadhouse. Jeff fell victim to the cancer that had robbed him of his eyesight as a young child. After becoming blind, he created his own style of playing a standard guitar across his lap, pressing down on the neck from above to fret the strings.

He was quite impressive to say the least and had several hits. All this loss is about too much.

I'm ready for some good news...

Larry Norman has left this planet...

2008-02-29T00:19:00.000-06:00

If you don't know who Larry Norman is, you should. It was Larry Norman who created what became known as Christian Rock, and opened the door for what eventually became the contemporary Christian music scene. He sang Christian lyrics over blues riffs and rock licks before almost anyone.

He was decried as non-Christian by the mainstream church and a Jesus Freak by the secular music scene.

Larry's lyrics at a glance seemed irreverent to some, but his love of God was intense and his music was more honest and real than any ten of today's top Christian recording artists.

"They nailed Him to the cross
and they laid Him in the ground,
but they shoulda known you can't keep a good man down."

That was Larry. He also wrote a song that made it's way into some Church hymals. Many might be surprised to find that the writer of "I Wish We'd All Been Ready" was a long-haired rocker who crooned about the devil having all the good music.

He touched the lives of many of the major rock personalites of the 60s and 70s. It was at a Bible study in Larry's kitchen that Bob Dylan had his brush with Christianity which produced a few albums with Christian content.

Larry's vocals could be harsh and sometimes nasally so, he wasn't really cut out for radio airplay, but much like his friend Bobby, he could craft words into a precision instrument that would cause a listener to erupt in laughter while listening to one track and shed tears upon listening to the next.

Larry Norman was a huge influence on me and showed me that there is more to being a Christian than looking the part and spouting the latest Christianese jargon. He didn't really fit in here on earth with the sinners or with the saints, but according to his own lyrics penned over 25 years ago, he was "only visiting this planet" anyway.

Larry Norman passed away a few days ago after a long term bout with heart problems. He was 61.

He has moved on to a realm where he fits in perfectly.

Chip off the ol' block...

2008-02-25T00:01:00.000-06:00

So, after church today we ran over to a little comics shop that we seldom frequent. I'm looking for back issues of Marvel's run of G.I. Joe and I was hoping they might have a few I'm looking for. The name of the store is Y2 KOMICS.

We had just parked the car and were getting out when, with only a casual glance, my youngest son misread the block letters on the building's facade and said, "What's YOKO Comics?"

Without missing a beat, his older brother knowingly replied, "I wouldn't want to go to a store called YOKO Comics...That's the comic shop that broke up the other comic shops."

Caught me completely offguard...

I hate politics, but...

2008-02-22T00:26:00.000-06:00

This video clip just blew me away and I had to share.

Youtubin'...

2008-02-09T00:19:00.000-06:00

I've blogged even less than usual lately it seems. Why? Well, I've been experimenting with Youtube and viral video as a promotional tool.

Here's the URL to a video I recently did. It's been viewed over 15,000 time since it was made public 2 days ago. That's nuts!

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

Video is VERY time consuming. I find I spend about 8 hours for 30 seconds of run time depending on the complexity.

It's a fun exercise and one I hope to continue as time allows.

Cloverfield...

2008-01-20T17:53:00.000-06:00

We rarely go to movie theaters these days. Babysitters are expensive and so are ticket prices. On top of that, the average movie audience is often comprised of rude people who are thoughtless of others.

Be that as it may, we couldn't stay away from "Cloverfield". The kids had a birthday party to attend and we took the opportunity to slip away to a nearby movie tavern to see the modern retelling of the giant monster story.

Does it live up to the hype? I would say, definitely so. I was engaged in the charaters within the first 10 minutes and was absolutely enthralled from that point on.

It was an incredibly visceral experience. Now, I think I have a pretty good idea of what it would be like to be just an average guy trapped in a city due to a sudden attack by a towering creature of unknown origins.

But, if you must have a musical score in films that you enjoy, don't see this. If you hate handheld camera work, I would suggest you stay at home also. There is a LOT of camera movement and slight nausea could easily result. The first 20 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" are the best example of what this movie is like AFTER the first 20 minutes.

The movie is also pretty dark with only a handful of lite moments. There is room for a nervous giggle or two, but for the most part the personal sense of horror is prevalent, throughout.

This is a non-traditional film that takes the "Blair Witch found footage" concept that was so luke warmly executed in that film and knocks it out of the park. But, since the idea is that the viewer is watching "found footage", the ending isn't tied up in a neat little bundle like most movies. If this bothers you, do not see this movie.

If, though, you want to have a pretty unique film experience and you have nostalgia for old Godzilla movies, this might be the film for you. As a matter of fact, this movie is closer in tone to the original 1954 Japanese version of "Godzilla" than about anything else.

The primary distinction of this film from classic giant monster movies is the point of view of the protagonists. So, there are relatively few appearances of the monster with only a few good looks at the thing in it's totality. Is it a dinosaur? No. Is it Cthulu. No. BUT it could hearken to that concept.

Much of the details of the creature are unknown by movie's end. If that bothers you, don't see this movie. But becuase of the vagueries, a sequel could definitely be made. And if this creature is only one of an older race of cyclopean giants awakening from their long sleep on the ocean floor, then I could even see this becoming a franchise.

I doubt that will happen, as this all may be too much for the general public who like to be spoon fed all the answers. I think some filmgoers will feel cheated as they miss the point of what the director was trying to achieve.

If you go see "Cloverfield", I suggest you simply sit back and pretend you are actually watching a video tape found in camera, in what used to be Central Park, in what used to be New York City.

Who to vote for?

2008-01-07T18:27:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Cliff for posting this link in his blog which calculates which candidate best fits your views.

I KNEW I was conservative, but wow! Looks like I've lined up with Mr. Norris this time out.

Like Cliff, I expected Obama to score higher than Hillary, but I just can't see Hillary in the White House with Bill in tow as the "First Gentleman". It's just TOO weird.

81% Mike Huckabee
79% John McCain
73% Tom Tancredo
69% Fred Thompson
68% Mitt Romney
56% Rudy Giuliani
49% Hillary Clinton
47% Ron Paul
47% John Edwards
45% Joe Biden
44% Barack Obama
40% Bill Richardson
38% Chris Dodd
28% Mike Gravel
22% Dennis Kucinich

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Worth a thousand words...

2008-01-07T00:32:00.001-06:00

I'm not feeling quite so serious tonight and I thought I would post something lite after my previous "sermon".

I was going through a folder of images I had captured with my cell phone. One stood out and I felt I had to share it.

The image you see was snapped in a Target parking lot.
What you see is the front view through the windshield of a parked car.
The only barely empty spot in the vehicle is the driver's seat.

That's it...just an image...

There are no words.

Concern...

2008-01-03T21:46:00.000-06:00

I am concerned for our nation and our world. People have become even more shallow and mean spirited than ever. They are more often than not driven to do that which best serves their own need. This service of self often brings us down to the level of destrcutive behavior - destruction of ourselves and those around us. This lack of a common thread of simple descency threatens to undermine the very mortar of our culture's brick wall. The casual use of the most foul language in public places is but a single indicator, but it goes way beyond that. I see it in those around me and (God help me) I see it in myself.

This experiment in freedom that we call the United States of America is suffering from a disease. That disease can best be described as "Personal Responsibility Deficiency". When the majority of people stop doing the right thing 'en masse' and wave the flag of freedom as a defense, there seems little optimism for hope. A free society such as ours can only exist when washed in rain of personal responsiblity for actions. Without that rain, we will either wither and die - too weak to defend ourselves from tyranny. Or we will become that which we most hate in an attempt to maintain order. Fascism is often the fate of free people who lack the conviction to maintain righteousness at the level of the individual.

I'm not advocating puritanism. I don't think people need to be restricted. That never works. You can't fix a man from the outside in. He must change from the center. That change will radiate out and manifest in his actions. Will he ever be perfect? No. Will he fail as he makes bad choices? Most assuredly.

So, what do we do about the problem? I believe there are answers. I believe that education can help. I think that people can adopt correct behavior because it makes sense. But mostly, I believe there is an answer that transcends all of these if not simply supporting them. That answer is Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate source of hope.

Will most people ever know Him? Probably not. Faith in the unseen is tough. Critical, but tough.

Given that, I do wish people would at least attempt to follow His central teaching on behavior from which all moralilty and law can be drawn. I know others have said it too and pardon the paraphrase, but here it is:

"Love your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself. Do not do anything to anyone that you would not like done to you."

Even if one can't cross the line and embrace the theology, the simple common sense of this idea should make just a little impact on people. Shouldn't it?

The path many are on now will never lead them home.

Linus said it best...

2007-12-24T09:07:00.000-06:00

On this Christmas Eve, I defer to the words of someone much wiser and far kinder than I:

"And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them! And they were sore afraid ... And the angel said unto them, "Fear not! For, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all my people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ, the Lord."

"And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the Heavenly Host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth peace, and good will toward men."

"That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown." - Linus Van Pelt

Did I miss something?

2007-11-24T00:02:00.000-06:00

I just came across this image of a movie poster for "Solomon Kane". I have recently been delving into Robert E. Howard's Puritan hero and was amazed to see this film in production.

We live in interesting times. Hollywood is considering properties that traditionally have been off the radar. It seems almost anything from pop culture is now fair game for use as a movie property and perceived as being 'respectible'.

I applaud this. There is a vast wealth of untapped material just waiting to make the leap into film. In fact, I predict it will happen more and more and we will see things made into feature films that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago. Part of this is a hunger for ideas on the part of Hollywood. Another is the advancements in special effects. Add to that the success of recent crossovers of genre print material to film and I think the future is rather obvious in this regard.

I never thought I would see the Lord of the Rings as a big budget film, or for that matter Spider-Man, and yet those films WERE made and were made well. The die has been cast.

What's next? Personally, I think Jack Kirby's Fourth World material is due for it's turn at the cinema box office bat.

"It'll never happen", you say?

Don't be too sure. Stranger things have come to pass.

Snow? Yes...SNOW!

2007-11-22T17:31:00.000-06:00

Three days ago it was 80 degrees in north Texas. Today it is Thanksgiving and TODAY...it is snowing.

It's actually snowing pretty hard, too. There may even be light accumulation. On THANKSGIVING...in TEXAS!

Who woulda thought?

Visiting home...

2007-09-14T22:22:00.001-05:00

I must apologize for my long absence here, but things have been very busy. Convention time is upon us and this one will be REALLY special.

You see, this year, the G.I. Joe Convention will be in Atlanta, GA! So, In almost no time, I'll be able to visit with old friends and spend some time in the old stomping grounds. If, you haven't heard from me with details, I'll try to let everyone know what our schedule will be like. We plan to come to Dr. No's and dinner on the Wednesday before the show if all goes well.

I'll send an e-mail with more deatails.

See YOU soon!

My friend...

2007-08-03T01:16:00.000-05:00

I am so sad for the loss you face. Too soon are loved ones gone and too brief is our time here together. Your dad left his mark on us all through the strength of character he instilled in you. I think I only met him once, but I feel I have known him for years through you.

I have walked a path similar to the one you are on. I never faced such a decision as yours, though, as my mom went on to be with my dad before my brother and I could be called upon to make a choice. I am thankful for that. But I believe that difficult tasks often fall to those best suited to manage them and I am convinced that you will make the right choices during this time. I am not sure I would have had the strength to do the right thing in your situation. I see mercy in this for me and strength in you as you are cast in this role.

You are a good man and quite possibly the most intelligent person I have ever known. You and I have disagreed on some things over the years, but all good friends have. In this time of heartbreak and pain, be assured that those who know you are there for you and that you do not face this alone.

I love you and sincerely hope for blessings on your life. You have certainly blessed my life in MANY ways.

Lanny

Coming to a theater near you...

2007-07-08T21:11:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure I would classify this as more substantial than my last entry, but it was a lot more fun. My buddy Cliff directed folks over to the Simpsons movie site in a recent blog entry and I couldn't resist the avatar generator he described.

I decided to do the whole family as Simpsons characters and put them together as a group shot.

Now that's the cast of a movie I WOULD go see!

I just gotta post!

2007-07-07T22:28:00.000-05:00

I really have nothing much to say, but dang it's 07-07-07!

I've been VERY busy lately with work and a little sleep deprived.

Other than that, things are pretty great!

Once things settle down a bit, I'll try to post something a LITTLE more substantial!

Passing it on...

2007-06-16T23:50:00.000-05:00

The family and I headed out to the local multi-screen movie house today to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I liked the movie for the most part and thought it was better than the first effort. The Silver Surfer was handled VERY well and even Dr. Doom came off a little better this time around.

While well done, these movies still lack a lot of the scope of the classic Lee / Kirby comics of the 60's, but I'm not so sure a strict interpretation of the Kirby graphic style would play well in a live action film. A very tight Kirby-style animated Fantastic Four might be the ticket. I am sure, though, that such a THING will never happpen. (Pun launched with furvor.)

The kids, of course, dug the new movie the most, and the outing led to something that was, for me, quite gratifying. After returning home, I offered up my Marvel Treasury Edition #2 (which features the original 3 part Galactus Trilogy upon which the movie was loosely based) as reading fodder to the kids. They, of course, already knew of the differences between the comic story and the movie. Living in my home, they couldn't help but know. But to cement this, I decided the original tale should be required reading to show how ideas change and evolve from one medium to another.

As I write this, the younger son has finished and has now passed the book on to his older sibling. Imagine my joy tonight as I watched them soaking up a big heapin' helpin' of Kirby glory!

As a rule, I strive to pass on many things to my children: my faith, my morals, my world view and after all that, I try to drown them in the positive images and words of the heroes I loved as a child.

Some things should not be lost.

How did I get by without one?

2007-06-04T21:11:00.000-05:00

My wife and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary this past Friday. It's an event that falls off most people's radar and I think that's due to the way we did our wedding.

Neither of us wanted a big wedding and we didn't want to spend the money that is needed for such an event either. We decided we would have a small ceremony at the home of a retired Navy Chaplain. We had two witnesses and the Chaplain's wife in attendance. Their home was beautiful with a HUGE staircase that the bride was able to walk down as she entered the room. It was an emotional ceremony and had none of the tension of the more theatrical big wedding. We left for our honeymoon trip immediately after the ceremony and everything was great and grand.

For all intents and purposes it was like an elopement rather than a traditional church wedding. We have the most fond memories of our small ceremony, but I suspect the lack of other participants is why the anniversary itself goes without fanfare except between she and I. It's our own fault for being so quiet about the event, I know, and think for some people it was a point of contention. Family out of state and in, as well as others were offended that they didn't get a wedding invitation. Pure and simple - no one got a wedding invitation. There were none. The ceremony was for us and God since that was really what it is all about for us.

So, if you are a person who thinks you were slighted those 17 years ago, please know, you weren't.

OK...that's a long road to go down to talk about an anniversary gift, but here goes...

My dear wife bought me an iPod Shuffle. I have never owned an iPod, though I had checked them out from time to time when in department stores. It seemed like a great idea, but it always struck me as a little extravigant for some reason.

I was sorely wrong as I now deem this sliver of technology to be a necessity!

I have the Generation 2 version which is teeny tiny and holds 240 or so songs and will play for around 12 hours on a full charge. It integrates with iTunes on my MAC and works like a charm. The sound is amazing and the unit is almost weightless. It plays in the car through my casette adapter and so the portable CD player is a thing of the past.

I was listening to music I hadn't heard in years as I quickly compiled a playlist from my moderate CD collection. What's on my iPod? Well, just about a little bit of everything: Kerry Livgren, Beatles, U2, Resurrection Band, Bride, Evanescance, Kiss, Al Green, Johnny Cash, Badfinger, Grammartrain, POD, Alanis Morissette, 12 Stones, Extreme, Larry Norman, Stryper and Van Halen.

It's an eclectic mix to be sure and sometimes the transition is a bit jarring when randomly switching from one of these artists to the other, but this is all my music, all the time.

Ha ha...life is grand!

It was 30 years ago...um...yesterday...

2007-05-26T21:07:00.001-05:00

So, Star Wars turned 30 this past friday and at our house we made an attempt to celebrate WITHOUT flying out to Celebration IV. Airfares are atrocious these days, ya know.

We sat down and watched Episode IV on VHS. I have a copy of the first release, sans the "A New Hope" chapter title, but it is packed away somewhere unknown. That would have been the REAL deal, but alas, it was not to be.

We had milk with blue food coloring to mimic the meal Luke shares with his aunt and uncle on their Tatooine farm. With the blue milk, we had star-shaped cupcakes. Luckily no 'star-cake wars' broke out as yellow cake and chocolate icing can make quite a mess.

Watching the 'almost original' version, I found that I actually missed the cleaner, more polished Special Edition on DVD. Despite some of it's drawbacks such as Greedo shooting first and the CGI Jabba, sequences like the Death Star battle are much improved.

But, I remember fondly seeing Star Wars thirteen times the summer it was released. We sat through it twice the first time. It changed so much for so many. Film has never been the same and my children and I share a cross-generational metaphor for the battle of good against evil and a treatise on failure and redemption.

Thanks George, you have forever altered our culture by giving us all a fairy tale for our times.

You know what bites?

2007-05-19T19:05:00.000-05:00

Writing an entire post thinking the new Blogger feature that saves your draft automatically is working and finding out it DOESN'T work on AOL's browswer...That's WHAT!

Yeesh!

Hopefully, I'll work up the enthusiasm to rewrite the post I just lost.

Spider-Ham, Spider-Ham...

2007-05-06T23:32:00.000-05:00

(Spider-Man 3 spoilers abound, so read at your own peril.)

I REALLY love Sam Raimi's Spiderman movies. Well, I love two of them anyway.

Saturday afternoon, the family and I headed off the see the latest installment in the hit Spider-franchise: Spider-Man 3. Many aspects of the film were amazing and a lot of it was dead on, but there were a few nagging elements that left me scratching my head. I often bemoan fanboy ravings about a lot of moives, but the issues with this movie go beyond the usual 'they did the costume wrong!' comments. These are storytelling problems that transcend genre and strike at the heart of tight movie making.

As I said, a lot was right with the movie. Most of the special effects and action scenes were spectacular. The Sandman effects were great. Venom looked good and Topher Grace brought an energy to his Eddie Brock that that was noteworthy, but made Toby McGuire seem as if he was weary of the role of Peter Parker. The same was true of Bryce Howard's Gwen and Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane. I had harbored doubts about the choice of Howard to play the ORIGINAL (in comics) girlfriend of Peter Parker, but I was amazed at how she projected the same appealing quality of the comics character from over three decades ago. Her look was distinctive and avoided a Gwen that had a sort of 'common supermodel' look. In the end, though, she made Mary Jane look as though Kirstin Dunst hadn't had enough sleep. Harry Osborn was played well and his action scenes were well done also. Sadly not all was right in the Big Apple.

My first problem with this outing is the fact that there is simply TOO MUCH injected into this film. It could easily have been two movies or even three. It's even possible it might have worked better if some of the more erroneous elements had been excised and more exposition and key connecting scenes had been added. Some of these are minor points, but not seeing the symbiote that becomes the black costume move from Pete's motor scooter up to his apartment made me think I had slept-walked a bathroom break and missed a scene. This happened several times and everytime it made me stop watching the movie and think about what was going on. I don't ever recall being reminded I was in a theater so many times during a movie.

Spider-Man 3 really consists of four stories. All four stories (Mary Jane, Harry, Sandman, and Venom) are all interesting and viable. Sadly, there isn't enough screen time to tell them all in a full rich manner as had been done in the first two Spider-films. Instead of expanding on these elements, we are are treated to Peter Parker doing a John Travolta act, a Pulp Fiction-esque dance number with Harry and Mary Jane, AND not one, but TWO songs from Mary Jane. Also, as funny as I find Bruce Campbell, the running champaigne joke seemed over played and did not fit the movie.

I also didn't care for the alteration of Spider-Man's origin to include Flint Marko. I understand why it was done as it allowed Peter to actually forgive his uncle's killer since the ORIGINAL killer was dead. Indeed, I liked the moral of the story that this presented, but it just added extra baggage to a movie that is already a contrivance caravan. The Venom-Meteor just happens to fall near Pete and Mary Jane's make out spot. Flint Marko just happens run onto a particle testing facility. Spiderman just happens to be in the bell tower of the church Eddie Brock visits to pray for Peter Parker's death. I realize that these types of synchronistic occurances are the mainstay of comics, but the inclusion of so many in one film and at such a rapid fire pace was jarring and took a franchise that was accurate if not transcendant of its source material and made it into simply a comic book movie.

I'm not sure what happened with this one. The film seems to have fallen victim to the same thinking that plagued many of the Batman films i.e. cramming as much into the project as possible in order to create buzz and sell a broader array of merchandise. Now, don't get me wrong, this was still one of the best superhero movies to date. Sadly it wasn't one of the best Spider-Man movies. I was hoping for much more, but it is after all, just a movie.

When last we left our hero...

2007-04-01T23:09:00.000-05:00

Well I just realized I never got around to posting about my time in NYC this year after first recounting my lengthy tale of the escape from said island city. The time was actually more fun than in previous years. It seemed less hectic and more relaxed. It was really pretty great until the snowfall hit.

I saw Spamalot for the second time on Broadway. Everyone else was going and so as not to be a stick in the mud, I went too. I think I actually liked it better this time as I knew what to expect.

This trip, rather than doing some of the touristy things like the Statue of Liberty, we hit three NY comic shops instead. That was actually a lot of fun. Our good buddy Rik (of Transformers fame) was kind enough to drive us around much of the weekend, but that did not completely spare me a few harrowing cab rides. I actually rode in the front seat on one occasion! It was more like a thrill ride than a cab ride. If you've never been in the front seat of a moving New York City cab, you must try it at least once before you die. I was sure we were going to kill at least one pedestrian that night.

We also hit FAO and Toys R Us on Times Square. The photo here is of me outside the TRU. We ate at the Carnegie deli - a place introduced to me by friend Chris back in '94. We visited a REALLY odd bar with friend John Waterhouse so he could eat dinner since Brian and I had already eaten that night. It was run by Hawaian Tropic and feaured waitresses in bikinis. Now hold on...this SOUNDS better than the reality. The tone of the place was oddly asexual and VERY above board. It had a sort of retro 60's Tiki vibe and looked as though Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. should have a corner booth. The girls were fairly pretty, but it was less lurid than any Hooter's restaurant and so I was able leave feeling fairly guilt free! Score one for the man away from home!

Of course we saw the Hasbro showroom and spent much time in the Javits Center for Toy Fair. That all goes without saying.

We had dinner at the larger version of Jekyll and Hyde which is more of a restuarant and less of a bar. The skit-like entertainment was going full bore and turned out to be quite annoying for a group of 15 who really wanted to visit and chat in a cosy setting. The dinner that night was more like Six Flags Meets Haunted Disco. 'Nuff said.

The most interesting event of the visit was the promotional event for the upcoming TRANSFORMERS movie. The director, Michael Bay was there and particpated in a panel with other notables from Hasbro and Amblin Entertainment. After the panel chat, we were treated to a 20+ minute preview of the film. The footage was devastating. The images rolled off the screen with a ferocity that left me feeling shellshocked. The viewing experience left me tired but eager to see more. I think they have a hit on their hands that will cross over from fandom and engage the general public as well.

It was that night that the snow began and with it our lengthy journey home...

A song I like...

2007-03-26T23:37:00.000-05:00

It may be the most lame kind of Blog entry, but I was listening to this rockin' little number by Petra on iTunes and thought I would share the lyrics while I actually come up with something original to post...

Jekyll & Hyde
I have a secret that I let nobody see
An evil shadow that's been hanging over me
My alter ego that I try to hold at bay
But despite my good intentions he can always get away

He does the things that I don't want to do

Sometimes I feel like Jekyll and Hyde
Two men are fighting a war inside

I have this secret that I let nobody see
It's like a split personality
And the one I feed is the one who lives
The one I starve will be the one who gives

He won't do things that I know I should do

Sometimes I feel like Jekyll and Hyde
Two men are fighting a war inside
One gives, one takes, I have to decide
Sometimes I feel like Jekyll and Hyde

I need somebody to rescue me
When personalities clash
I know which person I want to be
With no defiance
Just God-reliance

Petra

Trains, Planes and Automobiles...and buses. OR... My Escape from New York.

2007-02-16T22:31:00.000-06:00

Ah yes, another trip to New York City's Toy Fare has come and gone and man was it a doozie!

But before I talk about the time spent in New York, (see next blog entry) I want to recount the absolute horror of trying to leave the Big Apple after a winter weather system pounded the entire northeastern United States. I've been to NY City three times during the winter and all three times it has snowed. Last year was a record snow fall for Manhatten and this year was the first snow fall of the winter. It's me...I'm sure it's me.

Indeed, we knew the icy mess was coming, but due to scheduling issues (again...see next entry), we couldn't schedule a flight out of NY until Wednesday morning. That proved to be our travel undoing.

We were leaving the Transformers movie media event on Tuesday night and the snow had already begun to fall. While the forcast had indeed projected winter weather, there much uncertainty as to how the system would track. Back at the hotel we had some last minute web work to do as key people wanted a report of the event online ASAP.

Brian (the boss man) and I finally turned in around 12:30 AM with plans to leave on a 5:15 AM shuttle for the airport. Our flight wasn't until 9:10 AM, but the concierge advised we not wait for the 6:15 shuttle. The weather situation was still somewhat mild at that point and calls to the airline confirmed that our flight was still a 'go'. So, we were up at 4:30 AM and downstairs at 5:15 and shortly on the shuttle to the airport.

We checked in, had a quick breakfast snack at the gate and waited. Boarding time was at 8:45 AM and as the hour approached, there was no airplane outside. Uh oh. Within moments the announcement came that the 9:10 flight to DFW was cancelled. We quickly rebooked a flight into Pittsburgh with a change and then on to Dallas. The new departure was scheduled for 3:30 PM – six hours later! We retreived our checked baggage, re-checked it for the new flight and wentthrough security for the second time. Again we waited.

The sleet fell like heavy rain or thick icy tears from some bitterly sad ice giant as we sat in the food court lunching on Wendy's burgers and trying to get a WiFi connection. We headed to the new gate and I had a very bad feeling about the whole thing. I sometimes hate being right. 3:30 came and the flight was moved to a 4:00 and a new gate. Before we could make it to the NEW gate,our flight was cancelled again. It became clear that American Airlines wasleading people around by the nose. I know these flights should have been cancelled for safety reasons and due to other delays in the region, but Ifeel sure the call could be made sooner or at least annouced earlier. With these types of last minute cancellations, options become fewer and fewer. I think they WANT people to stay and wait lest they lose revenue. Hence,the late coming information.

The time had come to take another course of action. American was projecting no flights to DFW until Saturday or Sunday.We had to get back to the office and so a plan was hatched. We reasoned we needed to go south and get out of NY and the white cold stuff. The roads were a skating rink at this point for miles in all directions and so we got train tickets to...Norfolk, Virginia! From there we would catch an ice free flight to Dallas. It was not a bad plan considering the severity of the circumstances, but we had to go back to the city and wait for the train which departed at 3:00 AM Thursday morning!

It was cold in the big city that night,my friend, as we trod the slush laden concrete paths that lined the streets. 3 0'clock in the morning was like a distant vision. We headed to Penn Station, got our tickets and checked some of our bags for later pickup. We found solace in an Irish pub that we had visited earlier in the week and had dinner there. We both had the Shepherd's Pie (mmmm...comfort food). After we ate, we killed a little time at a Borders Books, but the luggage check closed at 10PM so we had to be back at the station to get our bags before then. Bags again in hand, we settled into the waiting area for the Amtrak train service. There was an amazing number of people there and it stayed that way until we left. Mixed liberally into the crowd were several crazy people. Not less that two people there were engaged in what I am now calling a "solo dialogue". One gentleman was going on about how God took Anna Nicole Smith's life and that Britney Spears was next. I was braced for anything, but luckily nothing untoward happened. We watched Fantastic Four on a laptop. Jessica Alba is pretty and in that, there was some small comfort.

I had been calling home with each change in our travel circumstances and realizing I had missed Valentine's Day completely, I took a quick pic of myself making the sign for "I love you" and sent it to my wife's e-mail. She teaches sign language to kids and I knew that the image of my fatigued face and a simple universal gesture would say everything that needed to be said.

3 AM came and we finally boarded the train. It was a ride that took us through DC, over frozen lakes and lasted over eight hours, as there were delays and stops along the way.Chatty women in the seats in front of us kept me awake, but we finally managed to sleep a little – especially after our car became mostly empty in DC. Wearrived in Newport News, Virginia and then took a 30 minute bus ride on into Norfolk. Our flight to DFW was set to depart at 6:20 PM. We found a place to eat and had a steak to fortify ourselves. We then took a taxi to the airport only to be met with another delay due to ground traffic backups in Dallas caused by the same winter weather we were fleeing. We took off an hour lateand flew 3.5 hours to DFW. Another hour later, Brian was dropping me off at my house.

I hadn't slept in a bed for over 40 hours with only four hours of sleep prior. I had been away from home just 8 hours short of an entire week. I was nearly delirious, but I was SO very happy to be home. I had begun to wonder if I would ever get back. Once inside the door, I shared a long embrace with two wonderful children and one beautiful woman. God be praised.

New York on the horizon...

2007-02-04T13:24:00.000-06:00

Well it seems I'll be off to New York again in the not too distant future and it occured to me that I had done a fairly poor job of chronicaling my 2006 New York adventure. I don't wish to bore anyone with a lengthy story, so instead I'll offer a bullet list of highlights for the sake of posterity. Some of this is recounted in a previous post.

* Arrived in New York city taking a long train ride from the Airport.Got on the subway. It smelled really bad.

* Got off the subway 10 blocks from the hotel and walked the rest of the way. It was very cold.

* Went to dinner with Brian and Buddy. This was the fabled 'meat restaurant' of an earlier post. Checked out Toys R Us with escalators, a full size animatronic T-rex and an indoor Ferris wheel.

* Saw Spamalot (see earlier post). Heading up to the balcony, we ran into someone from Hasbro by chance. I felt as though Rod Serling was peering at us from around a corner.

* The next day, we had brunch with Tina and headed off to the Statue of Liberty. I talked to some Scottish guys about G.I. Joe. It was very, very cold.

* Had dinner in Little Italy with a unique assortment of non-sequiter folk. A girl bit a bananna at a nearby table.

* There was a massive snow storm. It was the largest snowfall ever recorded on Manhattan. The next day we all headed off to Toy Fair at the Javits Center.

* Went to the reception at Diamond Comics. Free sushi. Too many bodies.

* Headed over to the Toy Asylum party at a dance Club built in a old church. They had go-go dancers dressed in Speed Racer-centric outfits. One girl was from Atlanta and normally worked a PR job. She seemed like a nice girl.

* Left with a friend of John Waterhouse who was like Jackie Martling from the old Howard Stern show. He was pretty funny, but I have seldom heard so much profanity from one person.'Jackie' grabbed the back of a cab after we parked and 'ice skated' down a New York street. No one died.

* We went to a bar and I drank Red Bull. After being asked, I talked about Jesus Christ and the Bible with 'Jackie'. He listened intently. He REALLY wanted to know my beliefs and why I held them. It was a VERY unexpected moment and something quite uplanned by me.

* Headed over to another bar called 'Jekyll and Hyde' with an all horror movie deco. It is an amazing place with classic horror movie photos and full size elaborate props all over. There were alligators in the sewer.

* Another day at Toy Fair. We took lots of pics for the internet. Brian and I went to the Letterman TV show taping that afternoon. It was cool to see Letterman in person. TV studios / theaters always seem bigger on the tube. And it's true, they keep the Ed Sullivan theater at about 60 degrees during the taping. I saw the O'Jays perform 'Love Train'.

* The next day, we Met Barry Kay (long time GIJOE enthusiast) for breakfast and then headed back to Toy Fair. Later that day we left for the airport.

* Arrived at DFW exhausted. I got sick. If I left out anything, I'll add it later.

I'm not sure if this conveys what a magical mystery tour it really was. Oh well. I wonder what the 2007 trip will yield?

Long time comin'...

2007-01-27T11:51:00.001-06:00

Here it is - the long awaited officially licensed George Barris designed TV show die-cast Batmobile. The classic design of what is possibly the most recognized car in the world will soon grace toy shelves everywhere after decades of debate and bad feelings. It seems that after creating the Batmobile for the 1960s Batman TV show starring Adam West, custom car mogul George Barris retained the rights to the Batmobile design and held tightly to them for all these years resulting in no accurate toy versions since the show era.

Now, at this late point in history, things have been worked out bewtween Barris and all interested parties. As a result, Mattel, who currently has the Batman toy license, will be producing the classic superhero car in several scales and levels of detail. The first will be released in February and will be a standard 1:64 scale Hotwheel car that will sell for around $1.00. And they say dreams don't come true. I honestly thought this would never happen as the barriers that stood in the way seemed insurmountable.

Later this year larger scale and more detailed versions will be released and I cannot wait. Ah yes, another childhood icon seems almost within my grasp.

Do you remember these?

2007-01-02T23:27:00.002-06:00

Back in 1971 a company called "Third Eye" produced a series of black light posters that were available at mass retail. Several of these were comprised of enlarged individual panels and pinups from the Marvel comics of the day and included art by Jack Kirby, John Buscema and Steve Ditko.

I recall seeing these at a long gone department store chain called "Treasure Island" when I was a kid. They were displayed high up on a wall far out of reach of ten year old hands. Many of Marvel's mainstay heroes were depicted on Third Eye's posters including Spiderman, the Silver Surfer, Medusa, Doctor Strange and Thor. In those days, I was a 'DC only' kid so the surreal images that often defied superhero stereotypes (made even moreso by the flourescent inks) left me a little befuddled while at the same time creating a desire for the 'cosmic'.

By the time I had migrated from DC to Marvel comics, these posters seemingly disappeared from retail thus creating another unfullfilled fragment of my youth. Recently, while on an internet nostalgia hunt, I came across a website that featured images of some of these psychadelic posters from the 70s. They were just as amazing as I remembered them to be.

I immediately fell in love with a poster that featured Dr. Donald Blake with his alter ego Thor flying through the heavens above him. This is Jack Kirby's art at its finest! I began to seek out the Thor poster and found auctions for several of Third Eye's posters on the dreaded eBay. The bidding for the Thor poster quickly soared out of my range, so I half heartedly bid on my second favorite which was a poster featuring Odin and Hela by John Buscema. The Buscema art in this poster is very Kirby-esque though I cannot place which issue of Thor the art is taken from.

I never really expected to win the auction as most of the bids for these relics of the 70s were running way over where I set my maximum bid. Much to my surprise, I won the auction and when the poster arrived, it was in almost new condition. The quality of the printing on the poster was immediately apparent. As someone who worked for commercial printing companies for 16 years, I really appreciated the thick paper and the wonderful silk screened image all in vibrant day-glo and starkly black inks. It's amazing that something of this quality sold as a novelty item for a couple of dollars in 1971. I could imagine the screens being prepared and the pungent smell of ink as it was forced through tightly stretched fabric before finding it's final home on finely milled parchment. I now felt even better about my purchase as I realized I possessed a piece of graphic arts history as well as a pop culture collectible.

Maybe I'll stumble across the Kirby Thor poster at an affordable price in the future. In the meantime, I'll settle for having my retina scorched by my glorious Buscema wonder print.

a NEW year?

2007-01-01T00:28:00.000-06:00

Well here we are. It's 2007 and I still don't have my jet pack.

As a kid growing up in the 60s and 70s I was led to believe that my adult life would be much more like a science fiction film than it has turned out to be. The advancement shown in such films as "2001: A Space Odyssey" has yet to come to pass let alone the more Buck Rogers-ish expectations of the previous generation. A generation which in turn promised MY generation flying cars and personal jet packs. Instead, I am typing into a device almost unthought of when I was a child.

I am also once again struck by the odd observance of the changing of the calendar year. Much like birthdays, New Year's Day is just another day. I think Bono said it best in the U2 song: "nothing changes, New Year's Day".

Maybe a jet pack WOULD make me feel better.

Maybe.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

2006-12-24T23:12:00.000-06:00

Though this kid might well pass for one of MY kids, that's actually me in the photo. It was Christmas morning around 1966 and I had just opened a pair of Batman house slippers. Batman was all the rage at the time due to the hit TV series. Batman merchandise was everywhere at retail in the those days. It was a phenomana seldom seen before that, but often repeated with pop culture icons thereafter. Batman may have been one of the first to enjoy such a high degree of retail cross pollenation.

Nostalgia buffs might be interested to know that the photo was taken with the 'just out' Polaroid Land Camera. My dad bought my mom the high end version that year which came with all the bells and whistles in a cool 'spy case'. The Christmas tree in the image is a REAL tree. The television set in the background was our first ever color set made by RCA and bought at the now defunct RICH'S department store.

This photo has often reminded me of Christmas seasons past and of the parents who helped me grow into the man I am today. It also brings to mind how fortunate I am to have been given the life I have and the family I enjoy and love so very much.

May you all have a blessed Christmas this year!

My Own Aristocratic Title

2006-12-23T21:22:00.000-06:00

Just in time for Christmas, I got my very own aristocratic title.
It's the holidays! Treat yourself to your very own!

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Reverend Earl Lanny the Saturnine of Grasshopper in the Hole
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

A sea of red and green...

2006-12-18T22:08:00.000-06:00

Is it only a rural Fort Worth thing this year, or are there more Christmas lights in evidence in other parts of the country than in previous years? I dare say 60% of the homes here feature some type of electrical holiday illumination as I write this. What say ye in Georgia? Is there light at the end of Santa's tunnel out your way?

Ummm...that just doesn't sound right at all...

Was that a turkey I saw?

2006-11-27T23:29:00.000-06:00

I was struck by my friend Charles' recent comments about the loss of his family's Thanksgiving traditions. My own Thanksgiving, this year, seemed to further mark that same steady progression away from the familiar in my own life.

Thanksgiving day had been a gathering of my wife and kids and my brothers wife and kids at my parents house since I was a kid. When my dad passed, we attempted to maintain this tradition, but we sometimes went out to eat, and sometimes we had my mom over to our house for the day. One year, we all went to my brothers' in-laws for the Turkey meal, which was a different but pleasant experience.

After my mom passed, the Thanksgiving tradition was broken. Last year we spent our first Thanksgiving in Texas and the sense of loss and seperation from home and the past became almost overwhelming. Some friends here were very kind and invited us to their home. The people were extremely nice and the food was incredible, but the experience could not quell the steadily mounting sense of holiday homesickness that seemed to permeate the entire season in 2005.

This year, I realized I was coming down with a cold on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I missed work on Wednesday and hoped to feel better for the Thanksgiving meal at Taura's cousin's home. Taura's cousin is the geographically closest family here in Texas and I was looking forward to spending the holiday with ACTUAL relatives.

Sadly, Thursday morning saw my cold becoming a full blown respiratory infection and I was unable to go anywhere. I sent Taura and the kids off to enjoy the day with family while I stayed home in bed. I was fairly sick most of the weekend, but got well enough to return to work today.

I realize all this reads like quite the pity party, but it is weighing on my mind with Christmas quickly approaching, that I miss home and friends...and family...

...and mom and dad.

Lightsabers, camera, action...

2006-11-12T22:49:00.001-06:00

Halloween approached and our boys' facsination with Star Wars, Jedi, and lightsabers in particualar, combined with the increased asthetic sense that greater maturity brings, led to the wife moving on from the store bought Jedi costumes of last year to something a little more...elaborate for 2006.

She spent weeks making the costumes seen here and NO that is NOT me in the Vader outfit. In order to get more bang for the buck we took them to a local comic con the week before Halloween and then to Wizard World Texas this past Saturday IN COSTUME. This photo was taken at the Dallas Comicon where the kids won second and third place in the kids division of the costume contest. They were beaten out of first by a baby in a Poison Ivy costume. Go figure.

In between these two pop culture events at which the boys were a big hit, was Halloween night. There is a tradition, it seems, in Texas of taking children to certain neighborhoods which are somehow mystically designated as the 'place to be' for Halloween. Last year we took them to a recommended Trick or Treat locale only to be lost in a sea of humanity. It was a mob of costumed children and the kids literally waited in line to get candy at each house. It was overwhelming. This year, I thought of a neighborhood which we had discovered that took Christmas decorating pretty seriously. I surmised Halloween would get a similar treatment.

I was not proven wrong, as we had once again found one of the 'special neighborhoods'. While not as bad as last year, it was still unbelievable as police officers were there to direct traffic. It was a more upscale neighborhood and not quite so crowded and therefore resulted in a more satisfying and less frustrating experience in general.

The costumes are a little over the top but these times won't last forever. The oldest will be eleven on his next birthday and I'm sure the desire for this aspect of Halloween will begin to fade soon. I guess knowing that drives Taura and I to enjoy these times as much as possible. They are growing up so very, very fast.

A Legend is a Legend...

2006-11-05T20:48:00.001-06:00

It dawned on me recently that I had failed to comment here on this year's G.I. Joe Convention in New Orleans, except to philosophize about the state of BBQ in Texas.

The show was a great time to be sure. I saw many familiar faces and got to spend time with old friends. Taura got to see New Orleans again for the first time since spending a summer there as a child and the boys got to see, first hand, the city recounted in many a mother's tale. It was also good to see a city rebounding from the terrible human tragedy left in nature's wake.

In retrospect, though, the actual high point of the show for me was meeting Sgt. Slaughter. I am not really a fan of pro wrestling, but back in the 80s, the man known in wrestling circles as Sgt. Slaughter had actually become a character in G.I. Joe cartoons and an action figure in the toy line several times over. In doing so, he transcended his primary vocation as he was forever tied to the incarnation of G.I. Joe known as 'The Real American Hero'. I didn't know what to expect when we arranged to have him as a guest at the show, but I was very impressed once I met him. He was quite the gentleman and had more incredible stories to tell than almost anyone I've ever met.

At a dinner with the folks from Hasbro, Sgt. Slaughter told of meeting U.S. Presidents, a request for an autograph under the men's room stall at Disney World and more tales than I can remember. The stories never stopped while we chatted over catfish and po' boys. He REALLY needs to write a book about his career and those of us seated near him at the retaurant just off Bourbon St. told him so repeatedly.

I strive to remain as non-starstruck as possible in these situations, but the experience was something like meeting Batman. Like Batman, Sgt. Slaughter is an almost mythic figure in pop culture. But unlike the Caped Crusader, The Sarge is at the same time a living breathing man. Despite being an icon, his gentle manner often disguised his sharp wit and he was never at a loss for words. At one point during the weekend, The Sarge jokingly offered to wrestle me for the Custom 12" Sgt Slaughter I had made, but I declined telling him he could probably take me. He wanted to buy the figure, but I promised instead to make one for him and send it to him. I am still fighting to find the time to make good on my promise. Putting together the correct mix of odds and ends is a challenge as well, but I will get it done. He was so good at the show - to the fans, and to me - it is the least
I can do.

Pro wrestling was never really my style, so to speak, but a legend is a legend.

Filling in the Gaps

2006-09-16T22:34:00.001-05:00

When I was around nine years old, much like today, I was fascinated with genre movies. I yearned to see movies like "The Planet of the Apes" and "2001: A Space Odyssey", but my parents had little love of such things. I was growing up in a Baptist-rural-Georgia home and even though my folks did not disapprove of fantastically themed movies, their interest was low to say the least. Even so, I saw my fair share of the Universal horror films on television and commercials for then current sci-fi films appealed to me in a really big way.

Despite my parents ambivolence and through some strange happenstance, my parents took me to see "1,000,000 Million Years B.C." thinking it was a 'bible picture'. I'm pretty sure they were confused by the B.C. suffix. Of course I knew better and my love of dinosuars kept me silent in the back seat of the car as we drove to the Cobb Center movie theater. My dear mother knew nothing about dinosaurs and thought poor Raquel Welch had been carried off by a large bat during the film. At age 6, I knew full well it was a Pteronadon, but again, I stayed silent.

It was in this environment that I spotted the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland #57 in the magazine section of a Marietta, Georgia drug store on Hwy 5. The cover featured the movie poster art from a B-grade Japanese made sci-fi movie entitled "The Green Slime". I thought the art was amazing and it still evokes a sense of fascination even today. Memories of that magazine cover stayed with me for years and in the VERY back of my mind, I always wondered what the movie, depicted so wonderfully in the artwork, was actually like.

I never saw "The Green Slime" until a week ago. I was checking out the DVDs and remaining VHS tapes at a Half Price Books when I stumbled across a VHS copy of what was, to me, a missing gap in my childhood. It was only $5, so I grabbed it without hesitation.

The movie was made by the studio that made Godzilla movies in Japan, but this film featured a mostly non-Japanese cast. The effects shots were about as bad as one would expect from a 1960s Japanese sci-fi film, but all in all it was not as bad as I had anticipated. The oddly familar plot was something like "Armageddon" meets "Alien". A space craft sets out to destroy an asteroid on a collision course with earth. The feat is accomplished, complete with a landing on the planetoid, but not before a small alien presence is unknowingly brought back to the Earth orbiting space station which had launched the mission.

As you can see from the poster art, mayhem ensues even though none of the aliens grew to the Godzilla-like proportions depicted on the cover of FM #57.

Despite "The Green Slime" being a B-movie barrage, seeing it after all these years, actually created a faint sensation of accomplishment. A small gap in my childhood had been filled in by a simple $5 video tape. Not bad for $5.

Subversive Bar-B-Q

2006-08-19T01:04:00.000-05:00

What does a man do when he finds himself far removed from the Bar-B-Q he likes best?

Such has been my plight for a year a half as the family and I have struggled to find a restaurant akin to the 'southeast-centric' Sonny's. I know Sonny's is not the cream of the red sauce crop, but there is a certain quality to their food that is comforting and unchallenging. It had become a favorite 'once and a while' eatery when we lived in Georgia.

When prowling for the familiarity of Sonny's after relocating to Texas, we quickly discovered that Sonny's Bar-B-Q has only spread as far west a Louisiana. This became a less daunting hurdle when it was confirmed that the 2006 GIJOE Convention was to be held in New Orleans. That in itself is a story for another time, but suffice it to say, I planned to drive to the Big Easy rather than fly and found there was a Sonny's in Baton Rouge...enroute. So, the plan was made that Sonny's would be our dinner stop as we drove south toward the coast.

It was all we remembered it to be - including the 'honey-variety' of sauce that the family prefers. We were so pleased with the meal that we made it a dinner stop as we headed back to Texas five days later. On the second visit, Taura made a point to buy a bottle of our favorite sauce for later use in Sonny's-Free Texas.

Tonight, we were thinking of Bar-B-Q for dinner and armed with a small squeeze bottle of our favorite sauce we headed for a restaurant we had never frequented called 'Cousins'. The food was actually pretty good and combined with our subversively introduced sauce, we had an experience that was Sonny-esque enough to truly satisfy.

Yes, we actually brought our own sauce to a restaurant. Desperate times call for desperate measures and though I felt like I was carrying a NIV Bible into a KJV-only church, the end result was almost as satisfying.

A brief interlude...

2006-04-14T00:14:00.000-05:00

(Please pardon me as I break from the DRAWNOUT account of my NY trip.)

If you've watched the animated TV show 'King of the Hill' in any great quantity, you've no doubt seen a restaurant featured called "Luly's". It turns out there really is a true Texas counterpart to television's "Luly's" - a cafeteria style eatery called "LUBY'S". I realize this sounds more like a business where you take your car for an oil change, but it is a reasonably good place to eat and on Wednesdays and Saturdays, kids eat free with the purchase of adult meals.

So it was, that last night we headed out to Lone Star Comics on Hulen Avenue to pick up a copy of GIJOE #111 which features a Scarlett pin-up page by my friend and excellent artist Adam Hughes. After the quick comic book stop, we scooted down the street to LUBY's for dinner.

As we ate, the two boys, Taura and I chatted about Superman's powers. I was explaining the yellow sun as the source of Superman's powers to the boys and discussing how x-ray vision might work with my dear wife Taura.

When dining at LUBY'S, one doesn't really get a proper waitress, but rather a 'server' who fills your drink glass and who will bring you odds and ends if you need them. Our server was an elderly lady who, to my eye, looked as though she should not have been working at all. Her age seemed beyond that of retirement. She engaged us in conversation and was really quite pleasnt to us. She was most amazed that my youngest son Joshua was eating spinach.

We were almost done with our meal when there was a tremendous crashing sound a table away. I looked and saw our elderly server, who was bussing a table, had almost dropped a bin full of dirty dishes resulting in most of the contents spilling onto the floor. I shot a quick glance at Taura and went over to help. I only managed to pick up the bin and a few dishes before two other employes showed up and politley waived me off.

It dawned on me that I had been handling the dirty plates of unknown persons, so I headed off to wash my hands in the restroom. Shortly after, we collected ourselves and paid our check with the cashier near the exit. The four of us were in the entry way and almost outside when I heard a woman's voice calling "sir, sir?".

My first thought was that I had been given the wrong change or left some personal belonging at the table. As a woman I hadn't seen before came through the exit toward us, she began to tell me what a good man I was. She had noticed how I 'jumped up' and helped the server when she dropped her pile of dirty dishes. I was taken aback but I smiled and managed a polite 'thank you'.

As we made our way to our car, I was reminded of the Biblical account of someone calling Jesus 'good' and his quizically knowing reply of 'Why do you call me good? Only God is good.' I only wish I had managed something one-tenth as profound as He, when I suddenly found myself on the receiving end of a stranger's praise.

As we drove toward home, I found that I was oddly melancholy about the experience. I was struck by how little pride I derived from the situation and how I actually felt a twinge of remorse that I am not a better person than I am. Instead of self-satisfaction, I only felt the desire to do better. It seems to be the best way to think of a situation like that. One good deed per day is not enough.

Taura and I spoke of this as we neared home. "Helping someone like that is really no big deal at all," I told her. "And anyway, after our conversation about Superman, what else could I do?"

She smiled at me.

What happened next...

2006-03-19T13:07:00.000-06:00

Continuing the account of the recent NY trip...

The next day was Saturday and we managed to get the most sleep of the entire trip that Friday night after coming in from seeing the performance of Spamalot. We managed to rouse ourselves and met Tina from Cotswold (long time GIJOE mail order icon) and Buddy for brunch at a trendy little restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. I had the tuna burger. We talked at length about the state of GIJOE collecting and also hooked up with John Waterhouse who writes for the Atlanta Journal / Constitution newspaper.

This was to be the last FREE day before our flurry of Toyfair activities ensued, so we wanted to do something specifically New York. Albeit a little more than a tad touristy, we decided we would visit the Statue of Liberty. I had been to NY twice before and yet I had never seen Lady Liberty. As we hailed a cab, we noticed it was beginning to snow - the beginning of the greatest snow fall in Manhattan history! Not really the place for a Georgia-boy!

The cab ride was long and as with all NY city cab rides - fraught with danger.
We arrived at the pavilion at which tickets could be purchased and after a security check, we boarded the ferry that would take us out to the statue. The air was already hovering at freezing temperature, but once the ferry was out into the water, it quickly cooled down almost fifteen degrees. The snow intensified also and was now blowing sideways. Most of the tourists on the ferry retreated to the heated interior except for quick forays onto the deck to snap a quick photo or two.

I often take a 12" GIJOE with me when I travel for photo opportunities, but this jaunt had left me joe-less. Buddy, however, had planned ahead and quickly produced a customized 12" figure. As I stood with the figure so Buddy could get a shot with Liberty in the background, I noticed a few chuckles from a trio of knit capped men who looked to be forty-ish. I immediately assumed they were making fun of our past-time, when suddenly one of them called out, "Eagle-eye!" It took me a minute to realize this was a reference to one of the later versions of GIJOE just before the line was cancelled back in the late 70's. JOE had gained the ability to shift his gaze left and right via a small lever on the back of his head - hence the advertising moniker : "Eagle Eye GIJOE".

Buddy and I walked over to them and found out they were from Glasgow, Scotland and had fond memories of Action Man (the UK version of GIJOE) from when they were kids.
I was immediately struck by the odd connection I suddenly shared with these strangers from half a world away because of a childhood toy and an adult hobby.

We all traded a few memories, some laughs, a business card or two, and then shook hands and said good-bye. We soon arrived at the statue. Buddy and I took photos of each other in the 'John Lennon pose" (see previous post) fighting to keep the lens of our cameras free from snow. It was EXTREMELY cold and since the gift shop was closed and access inside the statue is by reservation only these days, a quick circle round the statue and a few photos later, we were back on the ferry hungry for the warmth it offered.

We quickly evaded the booths of souvenirs, found a cab, averted our gaze from the numerous street performers dressed as the Statue of Liberty (yes...really) and made our way back toward our respective hotels. Time passes quickly when trying to navigate Manhattan and so it wasn't terribly long before our planned dinner at Lamela's, which is a great restaurant in Little Italy. Benson Yee, of Transformers fame met us there and also joining us were John Waterhouse, Tina, and Buddy. What grand hidden conspiracy had placed this unique mix of people at one dinner table remains a mystery. I am sure though, the intent couldn't have been to generate conversation. While there was a great deal of talk, it was hindered by the bachlorette party at the end of the room complete with a few loud, drunken dinner guests. The hi-lite of this display was when the bride-to-be was asked to take a bite of a whip cream-tipped banana - it's base nestled between two scoops of ice cream.

The things you see in New York...