Daniel85

Caught the Fantastic Four 2 trailer this morning. Looks good.

To celebrate the Surfer’s arrival on the silver screen (ahem), here’s my favourite SS panel of recent times. Shit, this one panel is better than all 14 issues of his last series. 

(From She-Hulk #3, Feb 2006, Dan Slott & Juan Bobillo)

To put it in context, a whole bunch of Marvel characters are speaking up for She-Hulk at a trial of the Time Variance Authority where she’s been brought up on charges of violating the time stream. Only in the comics, folks.

I haven’t really been watching The O.C. much this season, because I work Tuesday nights. This week, however, Tuesday was Boxing Day. We had a grand total of about 3 tables eating and chef closed the kitchen early, so I got to go home at 8:30- right in time for some O.C. action.

What… the… fuck?

When I first discovered the show back in 2003, it had some of the best writing I’d ever seen in a TV show, much less a teen drama. The second season, while not as tight, pulled me in because of the comic book storyline that Allan Heinberg was weaving (references to Bendis and New Avengers in a prime-time drama? Fuck yeah!). The over-arching storyline and relationships were actually interesting, too.

I just don’t know what the hell to think of it anymore. Fans the world over rejoiced when Mischa “Visible Skeletal Structure” Barton’s character was killed off, but I think it’s hurt the show more than anything. I can’t really get too analytical about it, because I’ve seen hardly any of this current season, but something really seems off. I noticed it at some point last season, and I thought getting rid of Marissa may rectify the problem. It doesn’t seem that way. Curse the TV gods for their decree that all shows must eventually fall into suckdom. (Except Quantum Leap. That was gold from start to finish.)

Oh well. I got the first season on DVD for Christmas, so I’ll be able to pop that in for some great F. Scott Fitzgerald-meets-the-21st-century action over the summer.

I have decided to retire from backyard cricket.

It’s a decision I’ve been wrestling with for some time, but with the recent spate of retirements in the cricket world, I feel now is as good a time as any to bow out.

This Boxing Day will see my last game of backyard cricket. It’s fitting that I should bid farewell to the sport on the concrete and patchy grass in our backyard. It’s the ground I started on, and also my favourite to play at.

I’ve had many ups and downs in my career as a backyard cricketer. Easter ‘97 springs to mind, when I slogged it right into dad’s nuts and spent the rest of the day hiding in the laundry. He shouldn’t have been fielding so close.

I’ve also had the pleasure of facing some absolute ripper bowlers in my day… Uncle Shaun, dad, the kid from over the road who just rocked up and started playing whenever he heard the slap of corked leather on wood.

As I said, retirement is not a decision I’ve come to lightly. I’ve had to weigh up my love for the sport with other concerns, such as my comic book collection and family. One thing I always ask myself is “have you stood up on the day?” and if you’ve stood up on the day, then at the end of the day you can hold your head high, and give yourself a pat on the back. I feel I’ve stood up on the day, and I’ll probably stand up on Boxing Day, too.

Just like to thank mum, for the cordial and icy poles; the old man next door for not minding us borrowing his bin for wickets; and dad for not chucking too much of a wobbly when I unintentionally vasectomised him. 

Go read this.

It saddens me that I can’t remember believing in Santa Claus. I know I must have, because all kids are sublimely gullible. Anyone who tells you they never believed in Santa Claus (excepting, of course, people who for religious or other reasons were never led to believe) is a fucking liar.

I know I believed, I just can’t remember what it felt like to believe.

One thing I do remember (partly because mum tells me about it every Christmas… it’s one of Mr Dickens’ “pleasant associations” for me) is asking my mum- point blank- “is there a fat man in a red suit who comes and leaves presents under our tree?” after she’d dodged and ducked the question all Christmas season.

Of course she had to say no.

Later that day- Christmas Eve- mum showed me a Christmas card she’d received as a child, containing an abridged version of the “Yes, Virginia” editorial. It was probably devastating for her to know that her little boy, her first child, had stopped believing. But there’s a different kind of belief that comes after you pass the point of putting out biscuits and milk. At least it does if you have any kind of soul, and that’s what Francis Pharcellus’s editorial has always meant to me.

I’m not religious, and I’m not much of a materialist (okay, I lied about that, I’m a greedy capitalist whore… NINTENDO SIXTY-FOUUURRRRRRRRRR). Christmas has always been about stories to me. Tired old family anecdotes trotted out over Christmas dinner, TV Christmas specials, Christmas movies, the Nativity (despite not being religious, it’s hard to grow up unaffected by it in a traditionally Christian society), Christmas carols, and of course the Christmas carol, “A Christmas Carol“. Yes siree, Christmas is a time rich with story.

As Francis Pharcellus (I can’t stop saying that name!) points out, only through ‘faith, fancy, poetry, love, (and) romance’ can we ‘view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond’.

There’s no fat man in a red suit coming tomorrow night, but there is a Santa Claus.

(No, I don’t mean Tim Allen.)

“Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused- in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened- by the recurrence of Christmas.”

- Charles Dickens, from ‘Christmas Festivities’ (1835).

I made a visit to my LCS* today, to catch up on the backlog of funnybooks I ain’t been buying lately.

Something I was vaguely interested in checking out was a series of one-shots commemorating the 65th Anniversary of Stan Lee’s involvement with Marvel Comics, in which The Man gets to meet some of his favourite creations. Actually, the only issue of this cashgrab that held any appeal to me was the Silver Surfer one, seeing as how I’m a big Silver Surfer nut and all. (I should add that calling the Silver Surfer Stan Lee’s creation is a touchy subject… the angsty, overwrought Silver Surfer we know is certainly Stan’s, at any rate.)

Anyway… comics publishers are forever using gratuitous T&A on covers to sell comics, but this cover’s a little different. The Surfer doesn’t have any T, but he has A for days…

(Word balloons my own. It just cried out for captioning.)

I could have lived without seeing some Norrin Radd asscrack. I really could’ve. Thanks a lot, Marvel.

* Local Comics Store - Ed.

Seeing as it’s less than 10 days till Christmas, and I haven’t really been blogging much about Christmas, and I carry on like I’m the king of fucking Christmas, I thought I’d better do some blogging about Christmas. (New Year’s resolution: fewer run-on sentences.)

When I was a little kid I used to spend a lot of time at my grandparents’ house, because both my parents worked. I spent enough time there that I had an entirely different range of toys and videos to the ones at home. Grandma defended this separate entertainment republic fiercely, absolutely refusing to ever let me take a ‘grandma’s house toy (or video)’ home.

I can remember among the grandma’s house videos were an animated film of Black Beauty, a video filled with animated versions of classic Golden Book tales (The Pokey Little Puppy, The Saggy Baggy Elephant, etc), and this budget collection of public domain cartoons:

I really vividly remembered that video cover, especially the purple, so I knew exactly what it was when I spotted it at a Video Ezy liquidation sale last year.

The cartoons on this video are all supposedly Christmassy, but there’s actually only one real Christmas toon on there: “Santa’s Surprise”, the classic Little Audrey exercise in racist caricature. Bones through the hair of the little African kid, Chinese kid with a speech impediment, etc. Really uplifting stuff.

The rest of the cartoons were only loosely related to Christmas, either through the season of winter or involving toys or having a religious tone. My favourite short on the video was a winter one, “Jack Frost”. It’s a 1934 ComiColor production, from when the great Ub Iwerks told Walt Disney to go fuck himself and started his own studio. Iwerks’ shortlived ComiColor series put out some solid animated shorts, mostly based on fairytales and scored by the brilliant Carl Stalling.

If you’ve never seen “Jack Frost” (and I’m hoping that some of you have!), do yourself a favour and check it out now: 

Or just read my review of my favourite bits!

The story is basically that of a proud little bear getting his come-uppance from Old Man Winter.

While all the woodland animals are getting ready for winter’s onset, this little shit’s just stuffing around, jumping in the washing basket and stuff.

His mum comes and puts him through the wring-dryer, which pretty much serves him right for not being a productive member of the woodland commune.

Shortly after, Jack Frost arrives to start spreading the news that Old Man Winter’s on his way, so everyone better get the fuck inside their treehouses.

The bear family retreats to the safety of its tree trunk abode, and our little friend gets put to bed. He slips out the bottom Dennis The Menace style while his mum’s still tucking him in…

And gets the shit smacked out of him for it.

Cowering in bed, afraid of another beating administered by his mum’s paw…

… the little bear decides to teach his parents a lesson by running away in the night.

I bet you can see where this is going, with the impending arrival of Old Man Winter and all. The funny thing is that even though this was clearly intended to scare kids out of running away from home, the lil bear looked so cool with his tramp’s suitcase-on-a-stick that it actually made me want to pack up and leave.

Another amusing, confusing reversal of the cartoon’s intent is that I was actually way more terrified of Jack Frost, the good guy, than Old Man Winter, the villain.

Just look at how freakin’ scary he looks, peering in at the window:

I find it really interesting to trace my obsessions and neuroses back to the literature and entertainment of my childhood, and this is one of ‘em right here. To this day I cannot sleep with an uncovered window. There has to be a heavy curtain pulled right across the window, with not even a sliver of outside visible.

In his travels, the bear comes across Jack Frost, who’s all like ‘Yo, son, get the fuck back in yo’ house! Ol’ Man Winter gon’ fuck you up!”

But then the bear is like “Ain’t no thang, J-Fross. I’m a grizzly bear.”

So the bear continues on his rebellious way, to come across a scarecrow. But not just any scarecrow— this is the coolest damn scarecrow since the one in that song we all learned in grade prep, about all the cows sleeping and then up jumped the scarecrow.

The scarecrow comes to life and proceeds to perform what only be termed some kinda German scat-singing breakdance, while a chorus of Ents belt out a Negro spiritual in the background.

As usual, the little furball feels the need to prove how undaunted he is, this time putting up his dukes:

As if in response to his unabashed hubris, a cold wind starts a-blowin’, and the scarecrow is turned into a snowman. To everything, turn, turn, turn… there is a season, turn, turn, turn.

Then outta nowhere, Old Man Winter lopes in with his giant strides and the bear shits himself and runs. It’s actually scarier now than it was when I was a kid…

The bear frantically knocks on every door in every tree trunk, but all the commie critters turn him away. Except the skunk, who’s only too happy to invite him in…

The skunk smells like crap, though, so the bear decides to take his chances with the furious elemental god. (Aww… skunk don’t gots no fwiends….)

The bear jumps in a log to hide, but there’s no fooling Old Man Winter.

He casts some ice from his fingertips to turn the log into a jail cell. If Old Man Winter were any kinda villain, he’d stroke his beard and say “How ironic that the very place you sought sanctuary has become your prison”, but he doesn’t.

(And speaking of villains, I always thought my obsession with winter and snow came from the sheer awesomeness of The Empire Strikes Back, but it probably dates back to this cartoon.)

Thankfully, after OMW pisses off, Jack Frost rocks up. He originally just came to mock the little bear and tell him I told you so, but Grizzly Jr cries like a bitch and admits he was wrong.

‘Jack Frost paused a moment, considering this new development. “Well… just as long as you’re traumatised,” he said finally, dabbing his brush on his magic palette and transforming the bear’s icy prison bars into delicious candy canes.’ 

Still on the topic of finding the origins of one’s obsessions, I think I can pretty safely say my love of candy canes comes from watching this cartoon as a greedy little 4-year-old. I just can’t get enough candy canes come Christmas time.

Jacky Frost and Grizzly Jr hop on the palette, and head home X-Treme Sportz style.

And there’s that creepy-ass little goblin peering in at the window again. None of you are sleeping tonight.

I always knew Dr. Phil was a phony asshole, but this just proves it:

Are we to believe that the good “doctor” never reviews the intro clips before the show? Come on!

It’s so obvious that he just invited this guy (Ty Beeson, producer of the infamous ‘Bumfights‘ videos) on so that he could grandstand and make himself look like a fucking hero. Funny how at the end, Phil declares that he ‘refuse(s) to publicise that’, but that’s just what he’s doing by making a big deal out of it to impress the viewers Oprah gave him for his birthday.

Beeson does have a point about Dr. Phil’s show being just as exploitative as Bumfights. Despite that fact that I think Bumfights is depraved, disgusting, despicable and deplorable (I know more condemning ‘d’ words than Dr. Phil!), I do agree with him on that. They deserve each other. 

(Bonus points for mocking Dr. Phil by wearing a grey suit and shaving his head, too.)

Found these at K-Mart today. The Zizzlingers have been around for a while, in Marvel Heroes and Disney Princesses form (good ol’ gender duality reinforcement!) but I never really had any interest in buying them at the exorbitant price of $9. The lure of getting a miniature Maccus was too strong, though, so naturally I picked up a pack of the Pirates version.

From Zizzle, the same company that gave us the cool POTC action figures, Zizzlingers fall under the broad heading of ‘novelty toy’. Basically you throw them into water, they fizz and dissolve and shoot lasers all over the fucking place like the ship in The Last Starfighter, and then after the show you’re left with a couple of little character statuettes.

I like how they’re not giving you the option of collecting them all. They’re actually telling you exactly what you can do. “You know what, kids? You can just fucking collect them all.”

After hacking through the cardboard and plastic (the packaging is locked up like Fort Knox, but I guess they need to do that to stop scumbags stealing them outta the pack on the shelf), you’re left with this little paper bag that you’re supposed to chuck in a bowl of warm water, like so…

It fizzes away for a minute or so, and then, from the crystal blue depths:

Duh-dun. Duuuhhhhh-dun. Da-dun da-dun da-dun da-dun duh. Yeah, Jaws theme, sorry.

Yes! I fucking got three! You get either two or three figures in each pack, and paying $3 for each shitty little plastic dropping is slightly less soul-crushing than paying $4.50.

I love how calm and halcyon the water looks after all is said and done. It reminds me of the Blue Lake up in Mt. Gambier… such a beautiful place. It also kinda looks like the water in the Isla Cruces scene from Pirates 2, with the sugary white sand and all.

No Maccus for me.

I got Elizabeth Swann, Governor Swann, and some pirate named Ogilvey. Elizabeth looks nothing like Keira Knightley, the Guv’nuh looks like Captain Hook, and Ogilvey looks like he’s carrying a boombox. I guess even pirates like to cut footloose every now and then.

It’s also some kind of game, apparently. It’s like a more complicated version of Paper-Scissors-Rock, each figure with an animal symbol printed on the bottom.

Why does every collectible/toy have to be a fucking game these days? Fucking Pokemon, man. Kids used to just make up their own epic toy battles and adventures, but now it’s all pre-programmed with rules and shit.

Now that Go-Lo has the use of Bandana Kid, they’ve wasted no time reinventing his image for the Zoomin’ Zeros (like the Roaring Twenties, but with iPods).

They’ve done away with the beer-gut emphasising black t-shirt in favour of a hip tank-top, and even introduced a love interest to the Bandana Kid Universe. That’s bullshit, man. Bandana Kid is never tied down to one woman.

Probably the biggest crime committed against Bandana Kid’s image should be readily apparent to any Bandana Kid fan: the removal of the bandana.

Turns out he has a normal head. So much for all our predictions of BK’s looking like some kinda hybrid of human and dinosaur (pachycephalosaurus.. say it with me… pachycephalosaurus) with a grossly deformed forehead, like in that Whoopi Goldberg movie. No, not Made In America; I mean Theodore Rex. Little Ted Danson humour for ya there…

How could a discount chain that gave us something as awesome as the giant Olmec Santa head do this to Bandana Kid?!