I jumped through the racket-filled hoops of the RI DMV this week. One such money-hoop was a VIN check. You had to go to a dude at a special police station that is open every other 3rd full moon for like 3 hours in the middle of the day. Next, pay him 10-30 bucks cash, and he'd check you car VIN vs your title. At this point you could now go find a person to notarize the friggin' application for a new registration. Yay!
I've been told to go check out this place up the road by Jess2 and her knowledgeable beerman. It's like a whole 3 miles away - which is light years in this town. So I've been going instead to the one that's 2 miles away. But I was driving back from some coupon fueled errand (how does Michael's stay in business?) and saw the neon lights beckoning, so I swerved in for a looksee.
"Oh, so Anchor Steam in in San Fran huh? Neat."
After a bunch of effort and lots of cursing, the hellish area that is my day-prison has finally been painted. I've been locked in this room, day-in/day-out staring at the institution green walls with a crap pile behind me that awaits a painted room. The mental downer this has been can finally be blocked. It's painted, I have purpose in here now.
Have you gotten the idea that this room is painted and I'm stoked? New desk mat for my chair! Corner shelves for nerd shit! I even cut a hole in the outer desk wall for the radiator to poke through and warm my feet! Wheeeeee!
Not too much of the zombie outbreak was explained, as most of the facts were fuzzy and the dude didn't know what he was doing. The rest of the world is still a large enough mystery since the power/communication gird went down and no one seems to know what the deal is anywhere. The CDC exploded and is gone. No goofy new plot lines were developed. The cast has been whittled down to the canon group, with the welcome bonus of Darryl. The whisper thing was lame, but is easy enough to puzzle out if you think about it. Merle is still running around and will most certainly be back as an evil d-bag. Essentially, they built themselves a big fat reset button so that come second season they can plot a decent story arc or two. Smart move? However, the ending didn't really leave any openings or tantalizing bits to get you stoked for more, besides basic survival. Ya know? It could theoretically just end here with a well placed "and there were nooooo survivors".
Oooooooooook. Here I go. It's been a hit or miss batch of episodes with this series. A series I want to succeed reeeeeeeal bad. And it has, given the numbers and second season green light. But it is not living up to its potential. I know it was taking a chance and a short season and nothing was guaranteed during shooting and the budget was limited - but that's all the more reason you shouldn't fuck around with an equation that's been slingin' the bestest zombie fiction in comicdom.
Isn't it better to have the charcaters guessing about how it spreads? Bites only? Scrapes? Can you get zombie juice in your mouth and become one? Or if the USA is alone in this? If it's just Georgia or the South? All that gets flushed tomorrow when the brother from The Truman Show ruins the surprise (how ironical!).
As a certain giant nerd tournament approaches, I've been tossed back into the potential throes of my accursed addiction - painting stupid lil' mans and growing my back hump further. I'm currently in mental preparation for building an army from scratch and painting it in, more than likely, a last minute marathon. So, to ease back into things with the most minimal of effort, I shipped some totally unrelated 20mm models off to friend for painting! Woooo cash rules!
Then I got off my butt, due to guilt, and painted 26 of my 20mm Germans that have been in a near state of completeness for years now. These will complement the ones I sent out nicely. The fun thing about this batch is that they were guinea pigs of sorts. I picked up a can of this insta-shade stuff for near to nothing the other day. People claim to have painted entire armies in a weekend - with decent results - using the stuff. All you have to do is lay down a decent, neatly executed basecoat. Then just dip 'em and wait. I've been quite dubious of the technique for years, but gave it a swing on my tiny Germans. You can see them crummily photgraphed "pre-dip" above and "post-dip" below.
Much to my surprise it worked out great. Saved me hours of pain. I will be using it for just about all my smaller scale (below 20mm) needs in some form. It really did do a super job of shading. Though going forward, brighter colors will be needed for basecoats, since the shading does knock the colors down a bit.
There's no hiding my love for MST3K and it saddens my nerd heart to be so behind on this one. Something called Wizard People, Dear Readers from our internet friend/comedian Brad Neely. (The George Washington Rap) Basically it sounds like a mean drunken uncle slaying the Harry Potter film, MST3K style, after a full bottle of 4 dollar gin. (the plastic unbreakable hobo bottle) The voice over track is all growly and bitter. Below is a link to the YouTube clip (one of many), since it won't embed. The bit is about the "cribbage" match and the dude misnames stuff left and right, adding to the gold factor. If you gots 10 minutes to have look while eating a sandwich, it'll be worth your time.
Looking at some olde tyme illos.
And it appears that I can add pyrex cookware/making tea to the list of things I shouldn't touch/do. (lamps, lawn mowers, etc.) Luckily it melted already callused tissue, so it ended up only baking dead skin a bit further.
I dunno about these spooky light up finger candles I saw at the supermarket. Kinda gross, but in a manner which they aren't intented to be.
But more importantly, this photo is from 2 weeks ago, just one isle over. Christ. (Indeed!)
Whilst on a magical Peter Pan bus to NYC, I spotted a bunch of brightly colored storage places and took a crummy photo. Storage places that had an odd logo choice. I doubled checked the website to be sure. Yes. I'm 12.
This pretty much sums up Halloween 5+6. Loomis in this one is double super crazed. He spends most of the film acting like a monster and yelling into the face of a 10 year old recovering from being hunted down by a pychopath. The same terrorized little girl is later used as bait, a shield, and then an offering to Myers by our brave action psychiatrist.
The film starts to leap into the fringes of drunken plot points from part 3. Let's simply not hover on the fact that early in the film, Myers is picked up by a river hobo and left to sleep in his river shack for a full year until the next October 31st comes around. What were they doing for a full year? Plus there's some dude dressed in black that mysteriously shows up throughout the film for no reason at all. Except to mystically blow up a jail and set Myers free at the end so that he can careen into the wackyland that is part 6. Although 6 is easily as ludicrious as the infamous part 3, it's strangely satisfying to watch for it's off the rails plot, funtastic kills, abusive fathers, wooden child actors, the mom from better off dead, and a young Paul Rudd.
I finally found a local place that delivers the tasty-times sandwiches to my gut. It's called Sandwich Hut. They are cheap. They recently extended their hours. They don't mess around with Prosciutto. Excellent meatball there too. After a lunch at Sandwich Hut, I've been surprised to find myself repeating my father's famous pre-dinner quote from childhood. The line is uttered just before any preparation decisions for the evening meal are made: "I dunno, I had a big lunch." Yummers.
Sam surveys the scene of an ambulance Myers wrecked during his mostly off screen escape. The cops are just too busy to even look and count how many bodies are present. They figure, "Welp, that's that." So Loomis steps up.
After surviving a completely unsurvivable explosion in the 2nd film's climax, Loomis now sports a jaunty scar, crumbly hands, and a limp. Not to bad for being in confined space blown apart by volumes of volatile gas and fire mixing. It's like a video game, except Loomis doesn't instantly die when he falls in water.
Donald did his own stunts. Action Pleasence!
Thus he earned his on screen boozin'. I've no doubt he was half in the bag during most of the filming. One anecdote from shooting was that Donald had a hat on his head to keep warm during some night shots. No one noticed it (par for the film in general) and the character of Dr. Loomis with a goofy hat was never really established. Sooooo they had to do a whole nights worth of shooting again the next evening.
More Action Pleasense! Though I think this is a stunt dude, since Pleasence would obviously want any stunt he performed to be lit. By lights and stuff. You know, a lit scene.
Now begins the incredulence of Loomis. He seriously wonders inside "Why won't anyone take my insane ass seriously?" "Look at my scar man, it changes in each scene! That's some serious shit!" "Where are your guns?"
The best Myers moment (there was only one) was the face ripping of a dude as he was driving. It was rad.
OK, now that Myers has been vanquished by guns (didn't work before, but now it does? Okdoke.) A bloody Dr. Loomis is thankful to have survived Michales latest rampage.
But no! The twist ending we all saw coming from the 10th minute in is upon us! Who would have thought Michael Myers' niece would have taken up his murderous ways! Shocker!
This shot and expression wraps it all up really. So many more films to go...
Heh. Hot nuts.
Lastly I leave you with the guy responsible for shitting everything up. Alan McElroy. He wrote the script in 11 days. Because he needed to get it done before a writer strike took effect. Great job dude!
You know when you look at most card or boardgames, there's an icon or set of numbers explaining how many players it's designed for? Most of the time it's 2-4 or 3-5 or whatever. Because they assume you have a group or family to play said game with. Then there are those that indicate 1-4 or 1-5 - with emphasis on "1". They're known as "Solitare" rules or in the UK, the more appropriate, "Billy No Mates".
Watched halloween II last night and had to pause the credits, twice. Dick Warlock was doing double time in this film as Myers and some cop. I laughed, then remembered laughing at that name before in some other film's credits. Like Halloween III, Friday the 13th V, and of course Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo. Oh fun. Would be a good band name though.
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