Playmobil Photo Post 2

Did you like the last "Playmobil Photo Post"? If you didn't, sorry to disappoint but too bad for you, we have another one today! My wife Nicole kindly once again took photos of my latest Playmobil creation. This time I made a little scene showing the remains of an ancient castle located in the mountains. *Click each photo for an bigger view





Notice the woodsman peering over the castle wall.

Another front view of the ruined fortress.

Various bandits and outlaws travel to the long forgotten castle, seeking refuge from the law

Behind the crumbling walls thieves have setup a kingdom to call their own.





Well there you have it. I've been purchasing a crap ton of Playmobil off of Ebay lately, so rest assured that more Playmobil creations will be on the way. Until then, drink and be merry...

Playmobil Photo Post

I recently created a custom creation using Playmobil castle pieces. My lovely wife was kind enough to help me photograph a little display I setup. I think it shows off the details quite well. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it! *Click the photos to view a higher resolution in my Flickr account.





^ Here's the front of what I suppose is some sort of Royal Blacksmith shop, complete with a guard tower.




^ The upper loft of the Blacksmith's house.


^ The main floor of the Blacksmith's house. The foamy beer mug pieces are a personal favorite of mine. Try finding an American made toy that includes anything like that...













I'll have some more toy photo posts coming soon!

Welcome to Jurassic Park

Last week the wife and I hit up a special one night only showing of Jurassic Park at a local theater. Apparently they've been screening old flicks every Wednesday as a sort of cinema throwback special. For 5 bucks you can check out a different classic each week, which is a pretty sweet deal. The selections thus far have ranged from Casa Blanca to the likes of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Jurassic Park original film reel print came complete with dust and scratches in the picture, as well as an obviously deteriorated sound track. Despite any of these flaws it was still awesome. In fact it was rather surprising to me how effective scenes like the T-rex attack (which I've seen dozens of times) still were. There's just something magical about seeing these scenes in a movie theater, and that may sound pretty cliché but it's a simple truth.

I was approximately 13 when Jurassic Park first came out and I also recall being the first kid on the block to get my hands on the toys. This would have awarded me, at the very least, 5 cool points with the local kids on the street. However this was likely only fortified by the fact that all the kids who lived on my street were 3 or more years younger than me. Being 13 and recently promoted to teenager status I was a bit too old to be playing with toys, or so was the common opinion of my school peers. That's a stigma that never really stopped me from collecting toys all through my High school years, although it wasn't something I would have readily admitted to at the time. Looking back, I'm happy that I risked being viewed as a retard since I otherwise would have missed out on the awesomeness that was the Jurassic Park toy line. Thanks to the power of the internets you can get an idea of what I'm blathering on about. The kind folks at JPtoys.com were nice enough to let me borrow from their catalog of images. (Thanks guys!) So, during the course of this article I'll be sharing a small sampling of Kenner's Jurassic Park toy line with you.

Before Jurassic Park some of the nicer dinosaur themed toys belonged to a little line designed by Tyco called Dino Riders. One of Dino Riders selling points was their extremely detailed dinosaurs, which I recall Tyco referring to as "museum quality". Kenner took this a step further with the "JP" dinosaurs and brought with it a level of detail and quality that I haven't really seen rivaled to this day, at least where dino toys are concerned. In addition to quality these toys had quantity going for them as well. There were a huge range of different dinosaurs to choose from, some of them much more obscure species than the main stars of the movie. Movie based toy lines have never been all that concerned with maintaining complete story accuracy, and Kenner was pretty masterful at expanding on the Jurassic park theme with non-movie additions. But more on that later. One of the accuracies Kenner did maintain with their toys was that Dinosaurs love to tear the crap out of each other. Along with "real feel" textured skin, many of the dinos included a battle damage feature that Kenner dubbed "Dino Damage". In most cases this was executed by having removable pieces of the dinosaur's hide, which kids could peel away to expose the dino's delectable juicy innards. In a time when video games were simply not violent enough, Kenner had struck gold by giving children a perfect outlet for their blood lust. Consequently "dino damage" was one of the things that added to the "JP" toy success.

Kenner knew that something kids liked even more than making dinosaurs mutilate each other was making dinosaurs eat humans. So they saw to it that a full line of the films main characters would be available in action figure form. Like I mentioned earlier, this is where Kenner took some liberties in expanding the characters and storyline. In the Jurassic Park toy world Alan Grant wasn't just a paleontologist, he was also a supreme bad ass. Dr. Grant had apparently designed the world’s first hiking pack to include a catapult, which could launch everything from net traps to what appeared to be plutonium bomb canisters. Alan wasn't known for his patience. He would try his best to capture dinosaurs with nets, but when pushed too far he would burn Jurassic Park to the freakin ground.

Another one of the main characters who was badassified was Dennis Nedry. In the film Dennis was played by actor Wayne Knight, who you may be more familiar with as playing "Newman" on Seinfeld. Kenner apparently felt that kids wouldn't want to play with a fat man action figure, so they made some changes to the characters overall appearance. The end result looked something like a middle aged, slightly pudgy, rent a cop. Nedry came complete with a spray gun attached to a water filled backpack. Maybe most kids would imagine Dennis was using the spray gun to shoot acid at dinosaurs. I myself would like to think that he was simply spraying extremely poisonous pesticides on the island plant life, which in turn would cause his dino enemies to die from a slow painful death. Once again encouraging kids to indulge in their violent nature, Kenner included a "dino damage" feature in which Dennis Nedry's arms could be ripped off. Of course this particular feature was a real favorite of mine as a kid. While the liberties Kenner took to make the characters appear more cool to kids were actually pretty neat, I can't help but wonder what a movie accurate Dennis Nedry with "real feel" fat man skin might have been like.

This is only a sample of what the Jurassic Park toy line had to offer. In addition to the human figures and dinosaurs, Kenner also produced various vehicles as well as one giant amazing Command Compound Playset. The toy line was successful enough that when the movie sequel "the Lost World" came out years later, Kenner was able to produce another fantastic line of similar toys and figures. I can't remember why, but for some reason I never indulged in collecting the sequel line, and it's unfortunate since it was just as cool as the first. If you enjoyed this feature, and would like to see nearly every aspect of the Jurassic Park toy line, then check out JPtoys.com. The good folks over there have done a fantastic job archiving the entire toy line and I'd like to thank them once again for letting me use the images for this article. Until next time folks, take it easy...

That's pretty rad

According to my best friend I'm so stuck in the 80's that I don't even realize it. During one of his visits this past week, my friend informed me that I regularly use the phrase "rad" to express my enthusiasm for something (usually when I'm describing some rad new toy). Apparently this is a habit I just haven't noticed and perform through unconscious impulse. It's possible that I simply never stopped using the phrase since childhood. Or perhaps I just picked it up again recently... who knows. Inevitably whenever something like that is brought to my attention I get to thinking about it in further detail, and that in turn leads into reminiscing about the 80's.

So I thought I'd look up a list of 80's slang and see how much of it I remember, and more importantly if more than just "rad" remains in my everyday vocabulary. A quick Google search lead me to this handy Glossary of Eighties Terms located at "inthe80s.com". They have an extremely thorough list, so for the purpose of my stupid little project I decided just to cover a handful of them:

Barf Me Out - This is one you would usually hear coming from the "valley girl" type. Used to describe something that is disgusting or perhaps offensive. I can recall hearing this quite regularly as I sat in the cafeteria during elementary school. It's no wonder as commonly served food items included cheese, which after rolled up into a ball would bounce just as well as the super bouncy balls purchased in vending machines. Regardless I am thankful that I never personally used this 80's phrase, ... that would have just been lame.

Batcaver - Here's one I don't think I ever heard. It describes a person who only wears black, and listens to bands such as "the cure". It's not surprising that I wasn't aware of this one since I was most likely too young and had no idea who "the cure" were. This phrase wins points with me for being creative and hilarious.

Bonus - According to the glossary this one is used to denote satisfaction or one's approval ie. "My parents are going away next weekend, I'm throwing a party!" "Bonus!" My friends and I were obviously out of the loop and rather confused about this gem. Instead of the above described definition we would regularly use the word "bonus" in place of the phrase "boner". I have no idea where that got started but I have a feeling it was just us being retarded.

Dickweed - "A dumb person or loser. Used for joking around with friends". After I was first called this on the playground in first grade I was puzzled for days as to what it could mean. Consequently this is one I still use on occasion.

Gnarly - This is one my older brother used quite regularly during his skater years. Denotes when something is exceptional. ie. "That move you just did with your board was gnarly."

No Doy - A variation of another 80's slang term "no sh*t sherlock". Used to denote when someone states the obvious. I can confirm that this term was used regularly by my friends and I, specifically when I was in elementary school.

So there you have it. If you would like to see more 80's slang then checkout the glossary linked above. I decided just to sample a few that jumped out at me. In conclusion - I have a theory that my brain is subconsciously using 80's slang in an attempt to open a rift through the space time continuum to 1985. I hope it ends up working since my time machine isn't getting any closer to being finished. Later...

Childhood memories - Part 1

Here's a new feature that I hope becomes a regular contribution to the blog. You never know with me how long I'll maintain interest, but I do have a great deal of "childhood memories", which I can continually pick my brain for. This is probably because personally I look very fondly upon my childhood, particularly the early part growing up in the 80's. Later on in life I would learn about lots of stupid political bull crap that was going down during that time period, but as a child you usually have the wonderful luxury of ignorance. Because of this I was able to focus completely on the awesomeness of geeky 80's pop culture. So as a result not only do I have a huge soft spot for my childhood, but also for the 80's. I often find myself daydreaming about what I would do if I had a time machine, a flying Delorean no doubt. On a daily basis my coworkers need only peer over my short cubical wall to find me staring off into space, day dreaming about raiding the toy isles at my local drug store in 1985. But alas that damnable time machine has yet to be invented, so I will have to fall back to my memories as a barely acceptable outlet.

In 1984ish I recall being an absolute Star Wars obsessed nut. Many kids at the time were, however my case was a bit strange considering I had yet to see any Star Wars movie the entire way through. I still haven't gotten a concrete answer to why that is, but the standard answer when I interrogate my parents is that "I was still too young, and they thought I would be scared". This does seem likely since in addition to being in love with Star Wars, I was also incredibly scared of the dark - more specifically the "monsters" that lurked in the dark. Going back to my original point, I had yet to see a full Star Wars film. I recall seeing bits and pieces, we did have HBO at the time but my parents still hadn't bought a VCR. I have this specific memory of seeing on tv the scene from Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker fights Darth Vader, and for some reason I thought this was from the 10th movie. I don't know where that came from but wouldn't that have been cool if there was actually 10 classic Star Wars films. But I'm getting off point again. The person responsible for my Star Wars obsession was most certainly my older brother. Being 5 years older than me he had lived through the birth of Star Wars and already had an opportunity to bask in the glory of the Kenner action figure toy line. My brother always took it upon himself to school me on what was "cool" in current toy fashion. In fact he was always reliable for this up until he eventually lost interest in toys. So, thanks to my brothers tutelage I was a blooming Star Wars fan who was starving for more. My other family members also contributed to this by buying me the awesome Star Wars toys. In particular my great grandma, who bought me the coveted Jabba the Hutt Action Playset.

In 1985ish I believe we finally moved into our first real house. We had always rented before this time, and now my parents were finally happy home owners. Not long after this we were at a local supermarket, where my brother and I would browse through the VHS video cassette rental section. And there I saw it, the Return of the Jedi video cassette, the most amazing sight to my young eyes!

I begged my mom to rent it for us. This would be no small task since in addition to renting the video this also meant renting , yes renting a VCR to take home with us. It wouldn't be until a year or so later that my parents took the plunge and purchased a VCR. Somehow I must have convinced my mom to go along with all of this. As we drove home I sat with my eyes transfixed on the tape's cover, grasped tightly in my little 4 year old hands. It must have felt like an eternity as I waited for my dad to hook up the rented VCR. I'm sure that I was far to concentrated on thoughts of what I would soon be watching than to notice the inevitable string of cuss words, which my dad would shout as he tried to hook VCR up. At last the family sat down and I enjoyed, for the first time, Star Wars Return of the Jedi. Most likely after the movie I immediately ran to my room to play with the Jabba the Hutt Action Playset. Or maybe I ran off to the back yard to pretend I was Luke Skywalker, complete with wiffle ball bat as a lightsaber. Regardless, this was a huge moment in my childhood. Something that only further fueled the fires of my Star Wars obsession, which lives on to this day. And yes, consequently the first Star Wars movie I ever saw was the last one, in order of start to finish.

Consider scheduling a doctors visit

Do any of you out there read the Adventures of Dr. Mcninja? You should. Being a web comic, and therefore free, you have absolutely no excuse not to. Really though, it's hilarious, genius stuff.

It tells the story of an Irish doctor who also happens to have been born into a family of ninjas, hence the "mcname". The two guys who work on the comic have done a great job of progressing the overall characters and stories while maintaining the refreshing amount of ridiculousness it's known for. I mean seriously, take a look at the image below as a perfect example...

The creators update the site with a new page about 3 times a week (Monday - Friday). You can also catch up on all the past story arcs by checking out their archives. If after reading the comic you dig it as much as I do, you may be inclined to purchase some of the great merch available. Things like graphic novel collections of past stories, and some cleverly designed t-shirts is the type of stuff you can expect in the store. So give it a shot, I think you'll be happy you did: www.drmcninja.com

I never finished this

Here's a music video project I started working on 2 years ago. At the time I had just gotten my hands on the latest version of Adobe Premiere, and I thought I had the most originally brilliant idea to edit together Star Wars clips to a rock song. I don't recall using or even knowing much about Youtube at the time, so when I later found out that over fifty six million similar videos were already widely in circulation I went on a violent rampage throughout my house. After locking myself in the closet my wife yelled at me to "get out here" and clean up the mess I made, to which I replied "No! Go away!"

Above is the result of my journey into amateur film making and editing (you know the ones I mean). Let it be said that I rarely ever finish anything in life, and it's something I admire about myself greatly. Enjoy one minute of a song I don't even like that much anymore, combined with scenes from the Star Wars movies.