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.

You suck, and I hate you all...

Hi Everybody! Welcome to what I hope will be a regular outlet for my interests, and maybe in turn some of yours. While my hobbies are pretty vast in range, I think some of them go hand in hand. Toys and Action Figures, Movies, Star Wars, Comics and Graphic Novels. Yeah, all that geeky stuff... they're really close friends with each other, don't you think? So that's a sample of what you can expect me to write about. A bit off topic - I'm an intermediate musician and I've been fooling around with home studio recording over the past year or so. Honestly I pretty much suck at writing music, so if I choose to share any of my recordings in the future, you can expect them to be covers of existing songs. Just putting that out there as a possibility for future postings. I'm sure that has you really excited too...

So I hope you all enjoy reading my blog and will gladly hit it up several times each day. Neglect will cause me to not love you anymore.