Daniel85

Some more mock-worthy stuff from bargain basement catalogues.

This is probably one of the weirdest and most compelling things I’ve seen in years. That kid is built like a 37 year old truck driver who’s been sinking a slab of VB a day for the past 18 years. Even his facial features look old. It’s just weird.

I dunno if the bandana is just what he came to the photo shoot in, but it doesn’t really jive with the medieval/barbarian weaponry, does it? It would make for a cool rock-opera, though, involving medieval warriors who get around on Harleys instead of horses. Music by Jim Steinman and Meatloaf.

I hate that kid in the black hooded suit. That sardonic look on his/her face, as if he/she is so above doing a Go-Lo catalogue. I guess I’d be looking kinda nonplussed if some photographer asked me to hold my hands up in a ’scary’ pose like that, but still… 

Check out that little dude in the Dracula get-up below, though. He’s loving it. He’s getting right into it. Good on him.

That pirate guy in the middle has forgotten that he’s in some shitty two dollar shop catalogue flogging a dodgy pirate costume, and thinks he’s in a Myer catalogue or something. He’s doing his Blue Steel look.

They’re still selling this kinda shit. Good old discount stores.

The shot gun even comes with little shells, which heightens the chances of some nervous cop thinking little Billy has grabbed dad’s shotty from the shed, and so popping a couple of pistol shots into him for public safety.

So… Halloween’s tonight. It’ll be interesting to see how many trick or treaters we get, considering the big push from retailers and supermarkets this year.

And then tomorrow we can start celebrating Christmas! Fruit mince pies all ’round!

Another goodtime happyfunsummer commercial:

There are certain things that stick with you from childhood, and for the TV generation(s) they’re mostly ads. This is one of them for me.

I remember being over at a friend’s house after school one day, and we became absolutely enamoured of this ad. We probably saw it during Disney Afternoon or Totally Wild or something. Afterwards we went outside on the trampoline and took turns sliding across it, singing “You run/You slide/You hit the ramp/And take a dive!”. I think we replaced ‘ramp’ with ‘bump’, cos that’s how I remember it.

We must have done it for hours, or what seemed like hours, because we were at it right through the twilight, until the street lights came on and his mum called us in for dinner.

That kid should get a fuckin’ Oscar for Best Sheer Terror. He’s either the greatest child actor of our times (even better than the kid from Liar, Liar) or the director of this ad actually brought a real crocodile on set and sicced it on the kid. Method directing.

Of course, I never had a Crocodile Mile, or even a Slip ‘N’ Slide. Just a couple of black garbage bags held down by volcanic rocks, with the hose running at one end. Thanks, dad.

Are you coming?

This Halloween shit is getting on my nerves.

I went into K-Mart yesterday, and was greeted at the entrance by some lady in a spooky-themed t-shirt and witch’s hat. She didn’t need any additional make-up, which is probably why they pulled her outta shoes or house ‘n’ garden to be a door greeter for the occasion.

This page from their latest catalogue explains it:

They’re also having a big sale on horror DVDs, which I’m not complaining about, cos they had some top flicks like The Thing, Gremlins 2, and Land Of The Dead for $8 each.

The check-out chicks were all got up in the t-shirts and witch’s hats as well, except for the ones at the service counter. I guess it’s kinda hard to be stern with some scumbag trying to return a stolen or obviously used item (”Yeah this… this was a present. I’ve already got one.”) when you’re dressed up like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Then this morning I went into Safeway, and found that they’re selling fucking jack-o’-lanterns.

I had to get a photo of it, in case no-one believed me. It wasn’t easy, either. I didn’t just go the stealth approach with my mobile phone camera like some retard out of a Bundy or Lynx commercial. No, I straight up strolled in there with my big ass Pentax hanging round my neck like I was the fifth Run DMC, and coldly took a photo while some dude loaded bread onto the rack next to me and a bunch of housewives and old people tried not to look at what I was doing.

As if its size wasn’t conspicuousness enough, the camera in action is like some kinda fucking Decepticon, with bits popping out and unfurling while it hums and throbs and makes a pretty good approximation of the THX sound.  I firmly believe that if things got rough in there, the camera would’ve transformed into a Harrier jump jet and flown me to safety.

Elsewhere in Safeway, there were plastic signs pointing to various confections with the message ‘Try these for Halloween!’ Because, you know, we’re still new to this Halloween thing Down Undah, and we might have erroneously given the kiddies some apples or cheese sticks or something. Thanks for the tip, Safeway.

Don’t get me wrong; I love Halloween. I just don’t like Coles Myer or Woolworths Ltd or whoever the fuck owns K-Mart and Safeway this week trying to pull a fast one on us by importing a new holiday that we’ve never before celebrated in this country. It’s one thing for junk pedlars like The Reject Shop and Go-Lo to try and flog some rubber masks and devil pitchforks, but quite another for huge retail and supermarket chains to suddenly start gearing up for it like it’s Christmas or Easter or something. See this page from K-Mart’s latest catalogue:

What are they gonna do next year, put Rhonda from kidswear out the front of K-Mart in buckled shoes and a pilgrim hat to tell us about the specials on Australia’s Choice cranberry sauce and turkeys? Thanksgiving under the Southern Cross. I’ll carve the turkey, mum.

The really scary thing is that they’d probably get away with it like they’re getting away with this.

Anyone seen any good movies lately?

My parents just bought a massive LCD TV that is totally beyond their means, but the good thing is that we got a book full of Video Ezy coupons with it. Free weeklies and new releasies galore.

Between that and the fact that when you rent from Video Ezy, there are more free offers on the back of the receipt, we won’t be paying for a DVD rental for the next ten years. Coincidentally, that’s probably how long they’ll be paying off the TV. Badoom. 

I’m usually way behind the times on watching movies, but thanks to our glut of freebies I’ve been catching up on a few recent (and not so recent) movies. I’m going to write paragraph reviews of them, just because I feel like it.

Secret Window. This was fucking awesome. It’s as if Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch had a little movie baby. It’s based on a Stephen King novella, so the story is pretty predictable, but that doesn’t detract from the pleasure of it. Johnny Depp’s and John Turturro’s performances are both brilliant. I don’t usually take much notice of film scores, but the music in this movie really impressed me. That’s not surprising; I checked the back of the DVD cover and the composer was Phillip Glass, the guy who scored Koyaanisqatsi. And heck, I love writers writing stories about writers writing stories.

Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. More Johnny Depp. Not gay or nothin’. I really don’t know what to think of this movie. It’s hard to objectively approach a ‘remake’ (perhaps re-adaptation would be a better term in this case) of a film with an imposing legacy. There’s either the Gus Van Sant route (shot-for-shot remake), or the ’something a bit different’ route,  like Tim Burton tried with this. I’m usually a fan of Tim Burton’s Weirdness™, but it seems like he just phoned this one in. There were some good bits, though. I liked the backstory about Wonka’s childhood, and the whole Jon Benet Ramsay thing with Violet Beauregard. One thing that really stuck in my craw was how Mike Teevee was updated into a video game addict, but his come-uppance in the factory was still the same. It would have been better if there was some kinda video-game thing Wonka was working on, maybe a Pac-Man clone with candies and chocolate bars instead of dots.

Cars. This was okay. Standard Pixar fare. I think I liked it better when it was called Doc Hollywood, though.

Over The Hedge. Brilliant. I usually hate CGI funny animal movies, just because there are so many of them and they’re all the same. This was refreshingly different. The visual comedy was some of the best I’ve ever seen in a CGI movie, and the writing was fantastic. “Mmmmthat’s good satire.” (I forget what episode that’s from, but it’s a Simpsons quote.)

In Good Company. I quite liked this. Dennis Quaid was hilarious, Scarlett Johansson was hot, and Topher Grace was Eric Forman. It’s gonna be interesting to see how he goes with something meaty in Spider-Man 3, although I don’t really care as much as some Spider-Fans. I always thought Venom was stupid anyway.

Ultraviolet. I wish it was really ultraviolet, so I didn’t have to see it. Little spectrum humour for you there, folks. This movie sucked. I have nothing critical to say about it, so I’m just going to make up snarky puns to show how derivative it is. More like… ’X for Mendetta’! More like… ’The X-Matrix’! Hah!

Speaking of the mutants… I don’t really want to admit this, but I still haven’t seen X-Men 3. By all accounts, I should be thankful for that. I’m a glutton for punishment, though, so I’ve got it ready to go on the ol’ LCD tonight. Wish me luck.

And I repeat: anyone seen any good movies lately?

To all the people who’ve come across my old post on Kit Kat Cookie Dough through search queries such as ‘kit kat cookie dough poster’ and ‘kit kat cookie dough girl’: I’m sorry I haven’t been able to provide fap-photos for you, but take heart!

It has come to my attention that the chick from the Kit Kat Cookie Dough and Honeycomb campaign has done a photo shoot for the latest issue of Zoo Weekly. If you can bring yourselves to go out in public for a few minutes, you’ll find the mag down at your local newsagency.  

No more wanking in bus shelters by torchlight at 3AM for you guys!

Op shops. This morning. Old junk. Here.

Board games and Richie Rich. It’s as if Milton Bradley had a list of my fifty guiltiest pleasures, chose #7 and #33 on that list, and then combined them. You’d think the fact that this game came out in 1982 (three years before I was born) would make this idea less plausible, but it doesn’t.

I don’t quite understand the box art. Are Richie, Gloria, and Freckles stealing those jewels, or what? It’s bad enough that ‘The Poor Little Rich Boy’ has to go slum it with the kids from Skid Row, but now he’s dragging them into his little cry-for-help games? Daddy Warbucks may be able to pull strings when you  get caught, Richie, but Freckles is going away for a long time. And they looove freckled redheads in the State Penitentiary.

We all love making fun of yesterday’s impressions of today and tomorrow, don’t we? The shiny pictures on the cover enticed me to flip through this book, and when I saw an illustration of a man sitting on a psychoanalyst’s couch talking to a computer with the caption ‘One day, computers will be able to respond to your verbal commands’, I knew I had to own it.

‘Covers history, gear needed, professional play’ - from what I saw in my quick flick through, it also covers exercise, diet, and all manner of other things. I think it’s not so much a guide to table tennis as it is a manifesto for a new way of living. I’ll be sure to review it at length when time permits.

And I didn’t know Uncle Jesse from Full House was a ping-pong champ! A man of many talents.

Awww yeah. Trolls rock. But you know that.

For a brief period in 1991, my class went through TROLL FEVER. Trolls on desks, trolls on pencils, trolls on… parade? I remember being absolutely amazed that my mum not only knew what trolls were, but she also had them as a kid. She might as well have told me she got the Technodrome for her tenth birthday. The troll phenomenon is kinda like the yo-yo phenomenon, with each generation falling prey to the madness. It’s just wunna doze tings.

I always preferred these little trolls to the medium and big (teddy bear sized) ones. I guess it’s because the smaller they are, the more you can do with them play-wise. A bath is an ocean, and so on. It’s also nice to reduce their hideous features to a negligible size.

I didn’t want anything to do with those larger trolls, because it would have led to problems with the suspension of disbelief if I tried to incorporate them into my little troll world. I guess I could have taken the easy way out and allowed that they’d been enlarged by some enchantment, but that never occurred to me. And that’s a damn shame, when you consider the possibilities for a King Kong-sized troll running amok in Trolltown.

Anyway, that little guy pictured above is now my mascot for Christmas 2006. I’m going to carry him in my pocket all December, show him the Christmas lights down the street, give him a nibble of the chocolate from my advent calendar each night, build him a little house in the Christmas tree… NO I’M NOT. I SWEAR.

Thanks, Jim. Jim Shepherd, everybody!

Ah, The Phantom. The superhero comic that time forgot. The status quo never changes for The Ghost Who Walks, so you can pick up an issue any old time and get a comprehensible, self-contained story. Imagine that! And even if you don’t know the Phantom’s origin, they recap it on like every page…

Diana: Kit, honey, what would you like for breakfast?
The Phantom: Upon the skull of his father’s killer, my ancestor swore an oath to fight evil in all its forms, so I think I’ll go with the Corn Flakes.

I used to buy The Phantom every fortnight as a kid, but these days I only read it whenever I come across a copy by chance. My brother gave me one yesterday, which he got in a showbag. (I decided not to go to the Royal Geelong Show, by the way. I missed the showbag guide/supplement in the newspaper last week, and it’s no fun going unless you’ve had the opportunity to peruse all the showbags and asteriskxxks the ones you want beforehand.)

Anyway, those crazy carnies are always throwing surplus Phantom comics in showbags. The one I got was issue #1419, July 2005 (written by David Bishop and drawnen by Kari Leppanen). I’m pretty sure that unsold Phantom comics are not destroyed like other newstand periodicals, but are instead sent to a great carnie wonderland/factory somewhere in Broadmeadows or Sunshine, where they make Jungle Chews and those little Fanta/Coke candies that you can only get in showbags. 

The story in this issue is typical Phantom fare… it’s a flashback to the 17th century, with the Phantom of that era travelling through the Austrian alps, for no specified reason, but probably to bang hot barmaids/wenches. A bandit leader named Jager (cool name) is raiding towns and villages in the area. The Phantom gets a cold after being thrown from his horse into an icy river (so resilient, those Walker boys!), so it falls to Suran, the Ghost Who Walks’s’s’s Pygmy Bandar companion, to organise the locals into a lean, Alpine fighting machine (please pretend that ‘Alpine’ rhymes with machine. Thanks.)

Of course, the obstinate Germanic farmers don’t trust the little black dude, so Suran has to teach a group of local boys how to use blowdart shooters and Bandar poison. Hilarity ensues:

I don’t know why I wrote a summary of the issue, when all I really wanted was to show the following sequence:

I found that really funny, for some reason. Just a great dead-pan rebuttal. And Suran simply says ‘cold’, but the Phantom has to pull out all the adjectives and everything. Loquacious bastard.

Also, what’s the deal with his disguise? At least the modern Phantom pulls down his costume’s cowl, and wears tinted glasses to change the shape of his face a bit. Let’s go rob a bank wearing ponchos and cowboy hats, guys. It’ll be the perfect crime.

* Not to be confused with Guran, the modern 21st Phantom’s Bandar buddy.

P.S. If they ever make the next Phantom movie, it’s Gary Coleman for Guran or it’s nothing.

As if that isn’t the best cartoon theme song ever. As if.

I love how it charts a range of feelings… excitement, optimism, whimsy, SHEER TERROR, and then finishes on a schmaltzy, sentimental note.

The show was pretty crappy, but that theme song sure got me pumped for the weekend when I was very young (A.A. Milne reference, fools!) Especially the first few lines. There’s such feeling in that soulless Disney studio singer’s voice.

That bit where Piglet’s hiding under the furniture and Winnie the Pooh fills the lightning-lit doorway was scary in a frissony kinda way, especially in winter when everyone else was still in bed, it was still dark outside, and I was in the loungeroom watching Saturday Disney by myself.

I don’t know what the deal is with that aurora borealis shit at the end, but for me it really sums up The Walt Disney Company Pty Ltd ™ and ©, Esq. Pretty colours. Pretty colours is Disney.

All of the shows from the Disney TV renaissance had great theme songs: Gummi Bears, DuckTales, TaleSpin, Darkwing Duck, Chip ‘N’ Dale Rescue Rangers, but none of them were more in sync with what it felt like to be a kid on Saturday morning than The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.