Archive for May, 2012

Epiphone LP-100 left-handed guitar, Ibanez Gio Mikro, Laney Hardcore MXD15, guitar stand

Friday, May 25th, 2012
Epiphone LP-100 left-handed guitar

Epiphone LP-100 left-handed guitar

Ibanez Gio Mikro

Ibanez Gio Mikro

Laney Hardcore MXD15

Laney Hardcore MXD15

Guitar stand

Guitar stand

We love models!

Sunday, May 20th, 2012

I haven’t built a model kit in nearly 20 years, but recently Zen used his money to buy one. He bought the kit, but not the glue, which took another week of wandering around before we finally found one. It wasn’t easy to find, not even in the shop that sold the Tamiya models in the first place!!

Zen didn’t realise that, with microscopic parts, this would not be easy to build for a 10-year-old. But now he knows what goes into building a 1:46 palm-sized model tank (gluing the tank treads together was sheer murder!!!).

But in the end we got it made, and it was a lot of fun. Yay!

Before...

Before...

...after!

...after!

Zen took this picture of his new M26 Pershing tank Tamiya model. Great shot!

Zen took this picture of his new M26 Pershing tank Tamiya model. Great shot!

The Avengers Volume 1

Sunday, May 13th, 2012

A

A


The Avengers – I haven’t read the Avengers in a million years. So Zen and I see the movie, and I get an interest in reading them again. So here is a copy of The Avengers, Volume 1, with a new adventure involving Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, the Wolverine, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Hawkeye, and a few others, fighting Kang, Ultron, the future Hulk, the future Iron Man and others. Trippy in a back-to-the-future kind of time tripping way, with all sorts of twists and turns. Unfortunately, there’s more quipping than actual fighting, although I’d say that this story is a lot better than many of the comics that I’ve read recently. But why do they make Spider-Man so useless and boring? Oh yeah, you get a glimpse of the Baby Avengers, ie the offspring of our current Avengers. You see them, but you’re not quite sure whose kid is whose. “Watch this space”, I guess.

The Art, by John Romita Jr, is very well done and super stylistic, although sometimes a bit too much of the long strokes and the same-sameness about every face. Some pages are inked by Klaus Jansen to look like Mike Mignola or Frank Miller…

Who ya gonna call… Ghostbusters!

Sunday, May 13th, 2012

G

G


Ghostbusters – We watched Ghostbusters. It was way better than I remembered it. Bill Murray’s manic, madcap performance is totally hilarious, and the script is full of some pretty hilarious lines (most of them spoken by Murray). Harold Ramis is also pretty hilarious, which makes me wish I’d seen him in more films (he’s also the legendary of some of the funniest movies ever – Caddyshack, Vacation and Groundhog Day).

Listen – do you smell something?

Back off man – I’m a scientist!

Do you have any hobbies?
I collect spores, molds and fungus.

That’s the bedroom, but nothing ever really happens there.
What a crime.

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

No job is too big, no fee is too big.

Tell him about the twinkie.
What about the twinkie?

Where do these stairs go?
They go up.

And when they spot the Stay-Puff Marshmallow man:

There’s something you don’t see every day.

Nice references to Omni magazine (remember that one?) and a young Larry King. Casey Kasem’s voice is also to be heard.

Not a bad little movie. Zen loved it!!

Boycott Marigold products now!!

Saturday, May 12th, 2012
UP $5.25; special offer $5.55. Yes. How clever!

UP $5.25; special offer $5.55. Yes. How clever!

WTF??? WTF??? WTF???????

Taxi story

Saturday, May 12th, 2012

I’ve been living in Singapore a long time and I’ve never had a car. So I tend to take a lot of buses and trains; I also take taxis more often than people who own their own cars.

As a result I’ve met a lot of taxi drivers. Many of the are pretty lousy. Some of them are overly talkative, others don’t respond when spoken to (not sure if that’s too-cool-for-school or passive aggressive), others answer their cell phones and chatter away in dialect; most of them drive aggressively and break all of the rules (straddling the lane markation, turning without signaling, etc). When we get a good driver it’s part of the discussion we have when heading up the stairs – “boy, that driver was actually quite nice to chat with; he actually seemed quite clever, and he drover carefully and considerately.” I’m of the view that I’d rather be in the hands of a professional than share the road with other dummies like me who’ve been given drivers licenses that they’re basically not entitled to possess given their sloppy driving practices. Every driver on the road is a little spoiled egomaniac menace to society. Cars are the real weapons of mass destruction.

By now I’ve had a million taxi anecdotes, most of which are lost. But from now on I’ve got a page dedicated to taxi stories. For example:

May 10th – I took a taxi from Jurong to Holland Village at around 3:00 PM, I needed to get to my vocal lessons. The driver was a lady. I remarked to her how I very seldom see lady cab drivers, maybe one in 50; she shared with me that other passengers have remarked the same thing to her, although she’s had passengers say to her that “although I rarely get a lady cab driver, sometimes I’ll get one at the start of the day, and then another one at the end of the day.” Then, around 5:00, I was coming back from Holland Village, by bus, wandering around my neighbourhood, taking my time, picking up a beer, walking home, and in one of the small inner roads I saw her drive by! I flagged her down and we had a laugh – I, too, met a lady cab driver at the beginning and end of my day… and it was the same one!!! Har har har…

Roots of the Swamp Thing

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

ROTST

ROTST


Roots of the Swamp Thing, by Len Wein and Bernie wrightson – It’s great to find these vintage comics from the early 1970s collected in hardcover volumes. This one collects the first 13 issues of the comic run, with the “classic” line-up of writer/creator Len Wein and legendary comic book artist Bernie Wrightson. It also includes the eight-page first appearance of the character from issue 92 of House of Secrets (spooooooky!!!). There’s also a nice introduction by Wein, written in 1991, that notes that “a recent check of a computerized information and reference service showed no less than 300 uses of the term ‘Swamp Thing,’ most of them not even related to the character himself.” How quint. Nowadays, you can do a check of a computerized information and reference service called “Google” and discover 4,400,000 references to Swamp Thing.

Oddly, the original story of Swamp Thing was of a scientist called Alex Olsen, his lover Linda, and the villainous Damian, who murders Alex (the usual laboratory explosion/dump-the-body-in-the-swamp-to-create-a-mutated-hybrid-swamp-monster) and marries Linda, only to have revenge exacted on him. Apparently, the story had personal significance to Wrightson, who had just broken up with his girlfriend when he was drawing the adventure, so when the story proved famous enough to produce a series, the creative team balked.

What? Artistic integrity in comics?!?

But a year later, Wein had the brain wave to re-create the origin with a different guy, this time called Alec Holland, and another legend was born. The new Swamp Thing is also a scientist, seemingly a plaything of government agents and mafia thugs who want his research for themselves, and his monster is again born of a chemical explosion and the spirit of the swamp. Throughout the adventures, Swamp Thing mostly battles freaky scientific creations (his nemesis Arcane is a modern-day Dr Frankenstein/modern day Prometheus), evil witches and werewolves, Lovecraftian demons, mutated swamp dwellers, nefarious agents both human and inhuman, and once enters the city to engage in battle with.. the Batman? Sure, why not.

The first adventure is short, being the original origin of Swamp Thing, yer standard melodrama with a dastardly backbiting murdering girlfriend-stealing two-faced jerk (kind of like the story we see in the movie Ghost). Then the second origin, in Swamp Thing #1, shows Alec Holland becoming the Swamp Thing under similar circumstances, but this time the victim of gangster thugs. The second issue moves from the human world to the arcane when Swamp Thing meets the Un-Men, evil creatures manufactured by Dr Arcane in some crazy German Schloss that he’s spirited away to. Arcane swaps bodies with the Swamp Thing, giving him his humanity back, but that doesn’t last long when Dr Holland discovers how Arcane is going to abuse his new powers to destroy innocent people (lots of nutty black magic and evil creation going on here). So he makes a hard decision and goes back to his old body. For the next several issues, Swamp Thing travels back to his swamps from the Alps, passing through Scotland where he meets the desperate (and evil) family of a werewolf (check out the hairy palms).

The interesting dynamic is that Swamp Thing can’t really talk. He’s constantly hunted by his friend Matt Cable, who at first doesn’t know that Swamp Thing is actually Holland – he thinks that Swamp Thing is Holland’s murderer. But he isn’t. Cable picks up the gorgeous Abigail Arcane, the good niece of the evil Dr Arcane, and they travel platonically together. Swamp Thing spends a lot of time saving their lives from dangers brought about by their chase of the Swamp Thing (which coincides with enemies also coming out to engage with Swampy), until they build an unlikely alliance of sorts. In the world of Swamp Thing, often enemies are friends, and friends enemies, like the New Englanders who befriend him with the ulterior motive of sending him into the abandoned mine shaft where the Lovecraftian horror M’Nagalah lives. Then there’s the witch and her brother (mutants?) that he protects from murdering bigots. Some moral ambiguity there, of course, but that’s all good. There’s also the freaky town of automatons, built by a loveable old Bavarian in the forests of New England where he creates a town (sort of an Anti-Arcane); but that little paradise doesn’t last long as the organised criminals clamp down on our lovely little group. Too bad… The return of Arcane, with its tale of black slave ghosts and undead is also pretty damn cool – lots of mis-shapen freaks and weird, steaming swamp battlegrounds. Rahrrr!!! Then there’s the hideous worm creatures who take over the brain of Zachary Nail, who has created a New Eden of sorts… or so he thinks. Turns out the space worms are EVIL! In another very strange episode, Swampy gets involved with the diamond-eyed time traveller, whose hideous fate is… to never be able to die, no matter where he is in time. Finally, the government closes in on Swampy and captures him; by now, though, he’s finally won over Matt Cable and the Swamp Thing is given new freedom. Nice.

The art is spooky, and Wrightson does a great job drawing moods, and grotesque, inhuman creatures. Love it. Give me MORE!!!

Breaking Away

Monday, May 7th, 2012

BA

BA


Breaking Away – I probably saw Breaking Away for the first time when I was about 16 years old and remembered liking it a lot. I wondered if I would still like it all these years later. I watched it with my wife and my son, and everybody really enjoyed it. It roughly follows the same plot as Animal House, meaning that the slobs are bullied and beaten down by the slobs, who have infinitely more class, and who eventually win the day. But Breaking Away has none of the pretentions, it’s just a simple story, and the “villains” in the movie are just regular old ambitious opponents of our heroes, the Cutters, local boys or “townies” at the Indiana University in Bloomington. Nice part of the world, kinda peaceful, not a whole lotta jobs, though.

I got a kick seeing a young Hart Bochner, who plays frat snob Rob in this picture, but who’s chilling as Jack, the mercenary in Apartment Zero.

Hart Bochner in 1979

Hart Bochner in 1979


Hart Bochner in 1988

Hart Bochner in 1988

Dumb ads

Sunday, May 6th, 2012

You’ve been warned – headaches can STIKE ANYWHERE!!!!!!

I sometimes get headaches in my butt!!!!!!!!!!!!

Be prepared... headaches can strike anywhere!

Be prepared... headaches can strike anywhere!

How about this slogan: “Don’t put up with the present.” Not only do I hate someone telling me what to do, but I wonder why someone would tell me to live in the past… or to live in the future. How does that make any sense? And yet, some bozo spent a lot of money paying some other bozo to dream up this senseless stringing together of English words.

Will the phrase "Don't put up with the present" sell more cars?

Here’s a classic from Reebok: The Sport of Fitness. That’s like saying “the silence of tranquility” (and vice versa), or “the novelty of news”, or “the rapidity of speed”. I really don’t know whether to shit or go blind.

Someone must be taking the piss.

Animal House

Saturday, May 5th, 2012

AH

AH


Animal House – I never watched this movie as a kid, although it must have been on TV a million billion times and all of my friends saw it. Why?!?!?!?!?!?

Okay, it’s pretty funny, and it has lots of silly scenes. I don’t remember what I enjoyed the most, other than Belushi saying “Expelled? Seven years – down the drain.” (The other great line in the film is from Dean Wormer: “The time has come for someone to put his foot down – and that foot… is me!!). Great sexy, wacky scenes that reminded me of a big budget nutty version of M*A*S*H* (who dares to tell me that Animal House is better than M*A*S*H*, huh?!?!?). It even had Donald Sutherland (the star of M*A*S*H*) in it!!!!!!! Nice to see the film debut of Kevin Bacon, Tom Hulce, and Karen Allen (who, three years later, would appear as the love interest in Raiders of the Lost Ark… then nothing else of note). The social commentary is o-kay… Bullys, snobs, racists. Whatever, I deal with them all the time in real life anyway. Otis Day and the Knights not remembering the frat boys they played for, ha ha ha. Snobbishness and drunkenness. D-Day was good with his motorcycle, his Deathmobile; nice mustache, too.

The DVD comes with some great extra features, namely an in-character documentary of “where are they now”. Boon and Katy married and remarried: 64-69, 74-85, some time went by, Boon became a documentarian, they got married a third time, had a kid, Otis. Babs, tour guide at Universal Studios. “That’s the table from My Dinner With Andrew and Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, declared a national monument by Ronald Reagan; no one can eat on it again.” Dorfman – battled weight, then went on a diet of injecting the urine of pregnant women. Got into self-help through the “Am I Really As Okay As I Should Be?” movement. Savagely beaten by Mike Tyson, grew up spiritually. “Mike has an anger problem.” Still waithing to meet the right woman. Kevin Bacon becomes a right wing religious nut, saw Jesus in his food, went on self-righteous missions to Africa. Good for him! As Chip Fuller he wrote 100 novels in fie years. Wrist injury from typing. Robert Hoover, four kids, wife, two cars, has everythinga man can want. Los Angeles District Attorney called him for advice, chuckle. Dean Wormer still harboring anger against the Deltas even in an old age home, his wife is a lush in some dive somewhere, Eric “Otter” Stratten, successful gynecologist. D-Day, Daniel Simpson Day. The Yearbook – an Animal House Yearbook and documentary, gets real with the story. The producers had created “Laser Orgy Girls”, which was like “Charles Manson in High School”, so in order to make it they moved it to college. John Belushi had a plastic face, they do a skit on it. “No college would let us film our movie on their campus.” One in Eugene, Oregon fell for it, since they had regretted turning down The Graduate. The Deltas and Omegas, as actors, were put in opposing camps even off-camera. Elmer Bernstein scored the comedy as if it were a serious film, Landis’ idea, as he had been childhood friends with the Bernsteins, and comedies have been doing it ever since (hello, Wes Anderson). First cut was 175 minutes, unfortunately we don’t get a glimpse at the 60 minutes that they trimmed (AAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!). When they showed the sneak preview there was a fraternity convention in town, 80% of the audience was from the convention and it was mayhem. Bacon went back to waiting table, Belushi and writer Doug Kenny died.