Out-of-Context X-Men Panel o' the Day

Cyclops and Mr. Sinister exchange brutal bon mots in X-Factor #39.

Not cool: Stomach flu

My apologies for the lack of posting - this time my entire family and everyone withing 50 meters of our house fell prey to some sort of hideous stomach flu nanovirus.

Seriously, the shit was nasty.

It started with my wee little toddler and then spread from there. Soon everyone was violently puking, including Trixie the dog, Po the cat, and General Chang the goldfish. You ever seen a goldfish vomit? Oh. Well, me too.

Anyway, now I'm back and - brace yourself - I am actually planning on doing a post about a comic book! I know, pretty wild stuff for a blog that is supposed to be about reviewing my old comic books. What can I say, sometimes it's hard to muster up the moral energy and courage needed to eviscerate a twenty year old issue of X-Men. Sometimes I just want to post about other crap and totally alienate my dwindling readership. Meanwhile, hungry young turks are out there beating me at the game! Of course, if the hungry young turk in question ever kisses a girl, I suspect his productivity will drop drastically.

OK, the puking and ass stuff are over! Now it is time to blog!

By the way, the stomach virus and me plunging my hand into a public toilet recently are completely unrelated events. Really.

Off-Topic: Which is less likely to fall into a toilet, an MP3 player or disc player?

It's not unusual it happens every day

no matter what you say

you find it happens all the time

love will never do what you want it to

why can't this crazy love be mine

-Tom Jones

"It's Not Unusual"

Help me out here, people.

Some background: I still haven't gone digital. Instead of an MP3 player, I lug a cheap-ass disc player to work.

This morning I was on my way to work on the safe and efficient Washington State Ferry service and I had to go to the bathroom. Not to put too fine of a poitn on it, but I had to go #2. This is a relevant detail, I'm not telling you this to be gross or to conjure up an unwelcome mental image.

Anyway, I set the Discman behind me on the toilet and kept the headphones on, listening to Tom Jones as I did my business. There's nothing like a little Tom Jones in the john. Try it some time.

Anyway, when I had completed the transaction, I stood up - and the headphone chord yanked my disc player off the back of the toilet and right into the toilet bowl - before I had flushed, if you know what I mean. I screamed an obscenity, undoubtedly frightening the guy in the stall next to me, and quickly plunged my hand into the feculent water to fish out the now ruined and stinky Discman. I had to toss away the entire thing, disc and all, and wash my hands like, seven times. I don't know if I can ever listen to Tom Jones again.

I've been discussing this incident with anyone who will listen and I've gotten mixed responses:

a) Why are you telling me this? Get away from me, I don't even know you.

b) You should get an MP3 player, you're much less likely to drop it in the toilet.

c) Good thing it was just a cheap disc player - just think if that was an expensive iPod.

d) You put your hand in the toilet?

I ask you: what is the answer? Replace my disc player with another cheap disc player and be more careful around toilets in the future, or go digital and get a tiny little MP3 player that will fit in my pocket? I need your guidance, O Dave's Long Box reader.

The Deathstroke Theme Song - not OK with pets

I've been thinking a lot about Deathstroke the Terminator lately. Just lying await at night, unable to sleep, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Deathstroke while Tangerine Dream music plays endlessly in my head. I have issues, what can I say?

Anyway, I've decided that Deathstroke needs a theme song - some short little ditty that plays when he strides into a room or busts through a skylight, guns blazing. I think it might sound a little something like this...



Shortly after my cat Po attacked me for waking her up, I tried the Deathstroke Theme on my dog Trixie, just to see what she thought...



Trixie savaged my left hand five seconds after that video was taken. Eleven stiches. Schipperkes are tough little sonsabitches, let me tell you.

It's hard living in a world of animals that don't appreciate my devotion to Deathstroke the Terminator. Damn, it's hard.

CRIMSON PLAGUE Image Comics, 2000

Terror Week splatters you in womanly acid blood with this look at George Perez's gory, short-lived creator-owned sci-fi/horror comic Crimson Plague!

I have to be careful because my fingers find themselves wanting to type "Crimson Plaque," which would be a wholely different but equally disturbing comic. Floss and brush, kids! You don't want crimson plaque or ochre tartar, that's some nasty shit.

This comic, part of the creator-owned Gorilla Comics imprint published by Image Comics, only made it two issues, but the first issue is like, 64 pages for only a couple of bucks. I wonder how they made money off that one. George Perez, arguably one of the greatest comic book artists of ALL TIME, wrote and drew this ambitious but unwieldy tale of two women - DiNA Simmons (acid blood, red streaks in hair) and Shannon Lower (acid tongue, no pants on butt). One of the things that makes Crimson Plague noteworthy, aside from all the melting flesh and stuff, is that all the characters in the comic were modelled after real people that George Perez knows. This is both a good and bad thing, as we'll discuss shortly.

It's sort of difficult at first to figure out who the main characters are and what the main plot of Crimson Plague actually is, but after repeated readings I think I've got it figured out. Shannon Lower and a bunch of ragtag space marine types are dispatched to a lunar penal colony to rescue employees of the mutli-planetary corporation EcoTech from rebellious prisoner/miners. When they arrive, they find no survivors - just lots and lots of red goo that used to be human beings.

The shit is everywhere; it'll take more than a couple of Swiffers and a trash bag to clean this mess up.



Man, what a mess.

It turns out that most everyone has been killed after exposure to the acid blood of DiNA: Simmons, a foxy woman with a seriously dangerous physiology. Anything her blood touches dissolves into the aforementioned goo while screaming, "GAAAHHH! HELP MEEE!!!" Seriously, her blood is so nasty that the slightest drop will totally kill you within seconds in the most gruesome way possible. Beat that, Rage Virus!

Perez is famous for his ridiculously detailed art and Crimson Plague is no exception. He seems to really enjoy drawing people dissolving into red goo. Here's some poor mulleted bastard who makes the mistake of stabbing DiNA: Simmons in the gut. Bad call, dude:


Yikes.

So DiNA: Simmons (no idea why her name is spelled like that) is sort of the villain of the piece, a combo of Alien and Species. Shannon Lower is the protagonist, I guess, but that's only really evident in the second and final issue. She kind of gets lost in the crowd in the first issue, which is full to the point of gagging with minor characters. Since she gets about as much page space as everybody else, it's tough to figure out that she's supposed to be the focus of Perez's story. She ends up being the sole survivor when the Colonial Marines, er, I mean EcoTech soldiers she's with get slimed by DiNA.

Now that I think about it, the tip-off that Shannon is the main character is her introductory panel, in which she appears in her underwear. There's an alarm going off on her ship and she's got no time for pants! Pants? "Pants, HELL!"

I admire her spirit. There are some times when you just can't be bothered with trousers, like during an earthquake or at the swimming pool. I'm going to try that: next time the mail comes I'm just marching down there in my boxer briefs because damn it, there's a Bank of America bill and a J. Crew catalog just sitting out there exposed in my mail box! "Pants, hell! I've got to get that damn mail!"

I would have liked to have seen more Shannon in her underwear and more crimson goo, but alas, Crimson Plague never made it to issue three, because Gorilla Comics folded as quickly as they set up shop. Perez clearly had big plans for the series, because the first jumbo size issue is absolutely packed with exposition and characters. It's one big steaming info dump, really, with not a lot of narrative momentum. One gets the feeling that Perez would have hit his storytelling stride after a few issues, but we'll never know. As is, the first issue in particular is a busy mess, jumping around in time and location with abandon. A few narrative captions would have smoothed things out and made it an easier read.

I mentioned earlier that Perez based all of his characters on people in his life. Dina Simmons and Shannon Lower are real people, presumably without acid blood. That may explain why even the most incidental character gets a name in the book, so Perez can say, "See, Bob? You're the space janitor Max Mopup on page 13. You get killed on page 14, though. Sorry."

Perez is a fantastic artist, so all his characters look like real people instead of the usual default Square Jawed Guy template we get in many comics by lesser talents. The problem is, Perez is not as good of a casting director as he is an artist. Some of the characters just don't look like they fit their role.

It's like when you watch a low budget Canadian syndicated TV show and the cast just doesn't look right. You know what I mean? You can just tell - the guy on the screen doesn't look like an FBI agent or an immortal warrior, he looks like a truck driver. I just couldn't get past the "miscasting" in Crimson Plague. Lower and Simmons fit the bill, but some of the other characters just look sort of... normal. You know you're not looking at a galactic president, you're looking at the librarian at George Perez's local library.


All in all, despite a somewhat shaky start, I'm bummed that I don't get to find out where Perez was going with all this stuff, bummed that I don't getto see more people dissolve into piles of red goo, bummed that I will never find out the signifigance of the spelling of DiNA's name.

Oh, well. That's how things go during TERROR WEEK! (Now entering week 2, BTW)

P.S. I forgot to mention that I don't actually own Crimson Plague - Ian Brill lent them to me like, TWO YEARS AGO and I never gave them back. Sorry Ian! You can have them back now...

Terror Week presents: Eaters of Man!

Terror Week lingers on after Halloween, like a fart at a Saturday night poker game. You just can't get rid of it, no matter how many windows you open. Such is the power of Terror Week here at Dave's Long Box.

Utter, bladder-voiding, sanity-shattering terror is part of the human condition, but such is the nature of civilized Western life that few of us are confronted with true terror on a daily basis - unless one happens to be an avid viewer of Nancy Grace on CNN. Those reading this blog were undoubtedly born in the 20th Century, the most violent 100 years of human existence, yet for those like myself fortunate enough to live in modern society, we have lived lives untouched by the specter of daily violence.

I am, of course, speaking in extremely general terms, but the sad fact is that the daily burden of fear on this planet is usually born by those in developing nations who live in poverty. These are the folks who have to stress about the air, food, and water they ingest killing them, or their children dying of preventable diseases, or about falling prey to criminals or soldiers or mines or unexploded bombs...

...or yes, getting eaten alive.

Previously I advanced my completely unproven and unsupported theory that all human terror stems from a biologically hardwired fear of saber tooth tigers. I stand by my hypothesis and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong (knowing that I will just delete any comments that contradict said theory because I am a dick). That's because for hundreds of thousands of years, animals have been stalking, killing, and eating humans. Even today man is on the menu with alarming frequency in poor rural areas on Earth.

Let's take crocodiles. There are two species of crocodile that regularly chow down on homo sapiens: Africa's Nile crocodile and the Asian saltwater crocodile. According to the Wikipedia entry (grain o' salt alert!), "The saltwater crocodile is one of the major animals involved in attacks on humans in Southeast Asia and Australia and is responsible for about 300 deaths annually." It is estimated that the Nile croc kills a couple hundred Africans and tourists each year. These numbers are wild approximations because of the lack of infrastructure and local government in many croc-heavy regions, to say nothing of civil war. But let's presume that at least 500 people get the chop every year from crocodiles.*

Chew on that for a minute.

Odds are pretty damn good that as you are reading this, some poor bastard is being digested inside a crocodile's belly or some unsuspecting person is walking too close to the edge of a river right now, unaware that death lurks unseen in the murky water mere yards away...

Crocodiles are opportunistic ambush predators, bursting from hiding when some animal enters their Kill Zone - anywhere near water. Again, Wikipedia: "As an ambush predator, it usually waits for its prey to get close to the water's edge before striking without warning and using its great strength to drag the animal back into the water. Most prey animals are killed by the huge jaw pressure of the crocodile, although some animals may be incidentally drowned."

The most famous and prolific Nile crocodile is Gustave, a monstrous 20+ foot beast that prowled Burundi's Rusizi River and Lake Tanganika. While Burundi's warlords have killed far more of their own people than Gustave could ever dream of, the jumbo croc is blamed for over 300 deaths over the years. This may be an exaggeration, but it's certainly possible. Gustave is so famous they even made a movie about him, Primeval, which I haven't actually seen.

The locals mistakenly believed Gustave had died of old age or finally got killed, as a confirmed sighting of the man-eater hadn't been reported in years. Likely the only ones who sighted Gustave didn't live to spread the news, because in April 2007 a huge croc with Gustave's trademark bullet-scarred noggin attacked some fishermen, eating one of them. It seems that Gustave is back and in full effect.

A 300 victim tally is impressive for any species, but pales in comparison to India's Panar leopard, which killed over 400 people around the turn of the century. Or how about the Champawat Tigress, the champion of all man-eaters with a documented 436 kills in Nepal and India's Kumoan region in the 19th century? Any way you cut it, that's a shitload of dead bodies. The Champawat Tigress was so feared that the Nepalese Army was assembled to drive it over the border into Kumoan, where it became the Indians' problem. Nice, huh?

Aside from staggering success at killing people, both the Panar Leopard and the Champawat Tigress had one thing in common: they met hot doom from the barrel of legendary hunter Jim Corbett. Nobody on Earth had more experience at tracking and killing man-eating cats as Corbett, a man who by all accounts was exceptionally skilled and possessing of iron nerves, keen eyesight, and a lot of luck. Guy had a face like a mutt, though. I guess God didn't roll triple sixes for every category when he was making this particular Ranger player character.

Corbett's books occupy an honored place in the Dave Campbell Library of Macho, particularly The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag, an account of Corbett's repeated attempts to end the career of the most famous man-eating cat in India.

This particular leopard preyed on pilgrims and villagers in a more densely populated area of India and as a result had a much bigger psychological impact than the Panar leopard. The official death count for the Rudraprayag leopard is around 125 victims, but Corbett himself says the cat killed "several hundred" Indians over the course of several years. The leopard was notorious for snatching people out of their homes without a sound and was thought by many locals to be some sort of evil spirit due to its uncanny knack for escape and evasion. It was like a Sith lord and a Predator and a ninja all wrapped up in one lean rosette skinned package.

Leopards, like crocodiles, are opportunistic killers - although humans aren't their natural prey, they're more than willing to sample the local bipeds if the conditions are right. By contrast, tigers and lions usually only turn to man-eating when they can't close the deal with their normal prey due to injury, illness, or infirmity.

Corbett believed that the Rudraprayag leopard probably developed a taste for humans during a period of plague and drought. The local Indians couldn't spare the wood to cremate their dead, so they put burning embers in the mouths of their dead and pitched them off a cliff. The leopard, it is theorized, discovered this stockpile of man flesh and decided that they were good eating. From that point forward, it was ON.

"[Leopards] drive tent-peg size fangs into your neck and rip open your
tender belly with windmilling rear claws while their foreclaws hold you in place
and they call you dirty names in leopardese."

The Rudraprayag leopard still carried on with eating its usual diet of goats and deer and whatnot, but the enterprising cat also killed and ate more than its share of women and children. Unlike crocodiles, whose Kill Zone covers the river/human interface, leopards have an unlimited Kill Zone - they can show up anywhere, and often do. They're practically invisible in the sun-dappled underbrush and are totally silent - until they spring into action. Then you are screwed. They drive tent-peg size fangs into your neck and rip open your tender belly with windmilling rear claws while their foreclaws hold you in place and they call you dirty names in leopardese.

Only two people were attacked by the Rudraprayag leopard and lived to tell about it. Everyone else died. Corbett tried everything to stop it, ranging from bear traps to tripwire shotgun traps to baiting the cat with live animals to lacing dead animals with poison. He was stalked and nearly killed on several occasions by his nemesis, and at one point Corbett had to take a vacation to get his jangled nerves together. All the while, the residents of the Rudraprayag region and the pilgrims who had to pass through lived in abject fear of this unkillable boogeyman.

Corbett ultimately sorted the Rudraprayag man-eater out, and the old cat measured a full seven foot and six inches. It had teeth worn from old age, a mouth blackened from ingesting the poison that could not kill it, and scars from various close calls and battles with other cats. It was an old leopard, but still magnificently powerful - it had taken down adult cows as well as full grown humans.

What about lions? Or tigers? Sharks? Jaguars? Already this post stretches too long to discuss any of these man-eaters at length. Sure, these animals don't hunt and eat humans by default, but each of them has been known to chow down on homo sapiens when the local conditions are right.

Let's just look briefly at lions. The most famous man-eating lions, the Tsavo lions, devoured up to 135 railway workers during the latter part of the 19th century before they were killed by Lt. Colonel JH Patterson. This man-eating team were dubbed The Ghost and The Darkness, and a mediocre film was made about them in 1996. After serving some time as Patterson's floor rugs, the lions are now on display at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. It's speculated that the natural food supply of the Tsavo lions may have dried up and the pair learned to appreciate human flesh by dining on the inadequately buried bodies of railway workers. Through trial and error they taught themselves how to hunt man.

The Tsavo lions were not anomalies, however. A pride of lions in Tanzania taught themselves how fun and easy it was to hunt people. Three generations of lions in the pride developed the skill and aptitude for man-eating, and ultimately the threat to the local populace was ended when the entire pride was wiped out.

Even today lions go after humans in Africa. According to researchers, "Between August 2002 and April 2004 a man-eating lion killed 35 people and injured at least nine in a 350 square kilometres area along the Rufiji River." It appears that Tanzania is still one big Kill Zone under the right circumstances. All it takes is one lion with a tooth ache or a festering thorn or the proper role model and the curtain lifts once again on the ages-old drama of man vs. scary animal.

There are some who may read this and feel uneasy with the idea of man killing animals under any circumstances or feel that the depiction of certain predators as man-eating monsters makes it that much easier to hunt and kill them. Fair enough. I for one think it's incredibly cool that there are still places on the planet where humans are not Lords of the Earth, where if you don't tread carefully you may end up getting eaten.

Of course, that's easy for me to say here in my warm home outside Seattle. I don't have to think twice when I go get food for my family or even step outside for a minute to look at the stars. It's an inescapable fact that for loads of people in the world, man-eating animals aren't some romantic notion but a very real part of their daily lives. Even today.

And that, my friends, is real TERROR! Believe it!

*I totally can't back this number up, it's just a rough estimate. Hey, if you want scientific accuracy you shouldn't be reading a blog.

Terror Week rolls on and on!

I was bored in a meeting so I drew this absolutely terrifying picture. Beware to the trick-or-treaters who refuse to acknowledge the supremacy of Dr. Doom!

Horror with a heart - Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

I love horror movies, but it’s a sad fact that most of them suck wet ass. With the glut of “torture porn” movies and PG-13 jump-scare flicks targeted at 15-year old girls, it can be tough to find a halfway decent horror movie these days.

I enjoyed 30 Days of Night, although it shared the same flaws that its comic book source material had. (That aerial shot of the vampires running amok was pretty sweet, though, wasn’t it?) I’ve heard good things about the indy slasher movie Hatchet, which looks fun. But it’s rare to find a good scary flick anymore. You can imagine how pleased I was when I found a horror movie that I not only could tolerate, but genuinely loved.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is like a big blood drenched Valentine to all those slasher flicks that scared the shit out of me as a kid. It works as a horror movie, as a cultural satire, and as a comedy. It’s fantastic and you should stop reading this and put it at the top of your Netflix queue right now. I’ll wait.

Back? Good. You won’t regret it, I promise.




Behind the Mask begins as a mockumentary created by college student Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals) and her crew that follows the training and planning of Leslie Vernon, an aspiring mass-murderer. In the universe of the film, slashers like Michael Meyers and Jason Voorhees are not only real, they are the subject of study and admiration for Vernon (Nathan Baesel), a chipper Prius-driving young man who is truly devoted to mastering his craft – his chosen trade just happens to be stalking and massacring teenagers.

Vernon explains in detail the tricks of the slasher trade and the meaning behind his impending slaughter of a virginal teen and her friends. It’s a clever and very funny deconstruction of the tropes of slasher movies, but you can tell that the filmmakers have a real affection for the source material. This is loving satire, not parody.

Nathan Baesel is pitch-perfect as Leslie Vernon, who carefully constructs a fake local mythology surrounding his slasher and meticulously prepares the haunted house and apple orchard which is the center of the fake folklore and hunting ground for the anticipated partying teenagers. He rigs the lights to a remote control so he can plunge the house into darkness, weakens the branches on trees so the kids can’t escape from the second floor, constructs secret passageways, sabotages a tool shed full of potentially defensive weaponry, nails the windows on the bottom floor shut, etc. – all while he talks about the benefits of cardio and the Jungian/Freudian symbolism of the bond between slasher and the virginal “survivor girl” who is the focus of his twisted attention. Leslie Vernon is hilarious and endearing and, much like the documentary crew, we’re drawn into his world and don’t really want him to stop.

Of course, there comes a point when Taylor and the film crew must decide whether to intervene, step away, or keep filming – and that’s when the mockumentary stops and the movie shifts gears and becomes a full-on horror movie. There’s an unexpected twist that makes complete sense and lots of mayhem, including a great kill where a victim’s heart is removed from his chest with a post-digging tool.

My only complaint about the third act of Behind the Mask is that it’s not scary enough. At this point in my life I may be immune to stuff like this, but I felt like director Scott Glosserman could have pumped up The Scary a little more.

Overall I thought it was fantastic and I think you will, too. The script is clever, the performances are spot-on, the concept is fantastic (and not as similar to the Belgian flick Man Bites Dog as it sounds), and most importantly, Behind the Mask’s heart is in the right place – lying on the ground next to a busted open sternum.

Terror Week: Horrifying Real Ghost Videos!

Do you believe in ghosts?

Ever since my pal and I saw an eerie little girl with a red ball in the woods, I have... not really believed in ghosts. I mean, we thought she was a ghost at the time, but there is probably a rational and totally non-supernatural reason why a little girl with a red ball would be out in the woods by herself early one Sunday morning. The most plausible explanation would likely be the Hunter S. Thompsony activities my pal and I were up to the previous night, if you know what I mean.

My personal explanation for ghosts is sort of a half-baked theory about "psychic" energy and how powerful emotions can leave a lingering after-image in the physical world. It's more fun to think that ghosts are actual dead people, but that opens up a whole theological can o' worms that Agnostic Dave can't wrap his secular mind around.

But this is Terror Week, and for all purposes, ghost are real. I can prove it to you, I have it on video! Video never lies. Let's take a look at the three most horrifying real ghost videos on the Internet - they will make you believe.

Portuguese Hitchiking Phantom

Unless your rental car has ghost collision insurance, do not pick up hitchikers in Portugal. They will fuck your car up real bad.

Here's a looong video about three crazy kids who are driving around in the middle of the night and something terrible happens. Good thing one of them was filming the whole thing! While I appreciate the intent of the film makers in trying to capture the whole raw video cinema verite thing, I think they could have cut this video in half and still achieved the same effect. After five minutes of them driving around you just want the ghost to show up and kill them already!

Wait a second - am I saying this video is fake, as in fictional? Well, yes. Click here - my Portuguese is a little rusty, but the website basically says, "I hope you liked video of ghost that I am made, support donkeys by buying DVD for very green rapist man!" Like I said, my Portuguese is a little shaky.

Pontianak Attack!

Here's another TOTALLY REAL video of some soldiers in Singapore wigging out when they are confronted by a blurry thing that giggles like an anime schoolgirl. Is it a Pontianak, a blood sucking vampire woman? You make the call.

This video never fails to crack me up, because the guy's reaction to the evil female ghost is so heartfelt and profane. Warning: NSFW audio that will make you laugh.

"Welcome the dude who ain't the buyer of mugs."

Finally, a video that probably half of the online world has seen but I will share with you anyway. Be warned: it is TERRORFYING!

Brace yourself for an odyssey into TERROR!

Halloween draws nigh, so I welcome you to Terror Week here at Dave's Long Box. Suit up, my friends, because like Donald Pleasance and Racquel Welch you and I are about to embark upon a Fantastic Voyage into the core of your reptilian brain to discover the Source of All Fear! (I'll be Racquel Welch in this metaphor if you don't mind.)

What is the Source of All Fear?

Sabertooth tigers.

Everything boils down to a fear of sabertooth tigers. Since the days when our primitive hominid ancestors tread the Earth, our brains have been hardwired to be afraid of sabertooth tigers, and possibly volcanoes. Everything boils down to that. Scared that the guy tailgating you might be a mass murderer? Your reptile brain really thinks he's a sabertooth tiger. Nervous about walking alone to your car in a big empty parking garage in the middle of the night? The primitive core of your mind thinks there may be tigers of the sabertooth variety about. Afraid of doing that big presentation at work? Actually, that's just you being a pussy.

Anyway, since Halloween is nearly upon us in the States (in Canada they have to wait until mid-November*) I thought it would be a good time to post about Scary Shit of the real and imagined kind.

The other week we had a big Fall windstorm here in the Pacific Northwest. It wasn't so bad - last year's was way worse - but it was not a good day to be a commuter on the Washington State Ferry system, which I am. Here's a shot of one of the big-ass car ferries plowing through some heavy waves on Puget Sound. See that area that's underwater? That's the auto bay.


I usually walk on the ferries to get to work in Seattle, but occasionally I drive, and when I do I like to hang out in my car and listen to NPR and plot the demise of my foes. I'm just happy I wasn't on that boat at the time - that would have been TERRORFYING! Thanks to my dad for forwarding me that picture, BTW.

Each year I get a little more ambitious with the Halloween decorations around the house. It must run in the family, because my sister decorates the inside and outside of her house big time. Her house has more of a Martha Stewart vibe - lots of tasteful black swag and cornstalks and white pumpkins. Mine is more of a traditional homemade yard haunt, with cobwebs and black lights and a graveyard and spooky portraits - stuff like that.

I still haven't gotten around to creating some of my dream layouts that I've talked about in the past, like the Oprah Encounter yard haunt. However, this year I've created the Doom O' Lantern, the only pumpkin in my 'hood that honors Dr. Doom. Behold, and know fear:


Those who come to my house this Halloween must acknowledge Doom as their master or they don't get shit.

KIDS: Trick or treat!
ME: Oh, look at you guys! Let's see - we got a ninja, black costume Spider-Man, a fairy princess. Wow, you look great. One question before you get candy: is Doctor Doom your lord and master?
KIDS: No. Who's that?
ME: Out. All of you. Leave.
KIDS: Wh-what about candy?
ME: Doom does not reward the foolish and weak with candy. Get off my porch, now.
KIDS: You're mean!
ME: Hey, fuck you pal. Dr. Doom has kicked Spider-Man's ass I don't know how many times. Blow.
KIDS: B-but...
ME: I said "BLOW!"
KIDS: (crying, running)

That's how I roll on Halloween - deal with it.

OK, let's begin Terror Week! Let us do this thing!

SUPERMAN #9 DC Comics, 1987

Look at that cover.

That is a SHOCKER of a comic book cover! Somebody needs to tell Superman that green eye shadow doesn't work with his outfit - I don't care if he's been hit with Joker venom or not, it just doesn't work. And those eyebrows! Damn. Somebody get the Queer Eye guys in here, 'cause Superman needs some manscaping, stat.

I am an unreserved fan of John Byrne's relaunch of the Superman books in the mid-Eighties. Byrne wrote and drew a completely revamped Superman with the ground-breaking mini-series Man of Steel, then followed up with a new Superman comic and a brand new Action Comics team-up title. Times were good for Superman fans.

In this issue, written and pencilled by Byrne with inks by Karl "Under Twelve Parsecs" Kessel, The Joker decides that Gotham isn't challenging enough so he comes to Metropolis to screw with Superman. That's just asking for trouble. But The Joker is crazy and ambitious, so it's understandable if not wise.

The story is short, but longer than you would think a Superman vs Joker match-up would run. I'd say it would last all of three panels under normal circumstances, but John Byrne uses The Riddler Factor to good effect here, postponing the inevitable and lopsided showdown between godlike alien being and skinny clown for as long as possible.

As stated elsewhere, The Riddler Factor is:

"...that combination of luck, moxie, and plot contrivance that allows lame
villains to survive when they are hopelessly outclassed by their superhero
opponents. "

The whole thing begins with a clone of Superman robbing the Metropolis Diamond exchange by getting all Jokery and releasing deadly green gas from his robot ears. Like so:



Turns out the Superman robot has a live thermonuclear bomb in its chest, which Superman takes care of by flying it into space, of course. That sort of begs the question: if The Joker has enough resources to build a nuclear bomb gas-spewing Superbot, why is he using it to rob jewelry stores? Because he's batshit insane, that's why.

Actually, the whole thing is part of a plot to screw with Superman. Because, as The Joker says, "Why not?" Oh, Joker, you so crazy!

One thing I am not crazy about is Byrne's take on the Clown Prince of Crime, The Joker. If memory serves, Byrne was just carrying over the Joker character design he used for the Legends mini-series. I'm a big fan of Legends, but that doesn't mean I like this look for the Joker. Check him out in this crappy scan which I swear I did not do at work:
The Joker looks creepy, but not in a scary psychopath way. It's more of a funhouse mirror kind of creepy.

Look at him. He's got David Byrne's puffy suit wardrobe, Karen Carpenter's diet plan, Donald Trump's eyebrows, George Washington's teeth, and Alien jaws. What the hell, man? I mean, clearly he's exagerrated for effect, but how does his mouth work? What would the Byrne Joker's skeleton look like, a Whitley Streiber alien? Hey, don't get me wrong, I think The Joker should be grotesque but I also think he should be recognizably human. Just a little nitpicking for you.

Minor quibbles aside, this issue was great. I'm a huge fan of Kessel's inks over Byrne's pencils and I thought this was just a great light-hearted done-in-one story.

This issue also features a fantastic Lex Luthor back-up story that deserves a post all its own.

In the short story, Lex stops his limo at a roadside diner for some bacon & eggs and a little casual, life-wrecking cruelty.

He picks a foxy married waitress named Jenny and offers her one million dollars if she'll jettison her life and come to Metropolis with him for one month. That's one million dollars for thirty days of sex with Luthor. I'd ask for two million. He tells the waitress he'll wait in his limo outside for ten minutes and then his offer will be off the table. Oh, BTW can he have his breakfast in a to-go container? KTHX

It is established that the waitress is married to a bit of a jerk, but the decision is gut-wrenching. Should she dump him and leave her simple life for a month of God-knows-what in Luthor's crib? Oh, what to do?

Of course, Lex drives off before the ten minutes have elapsed. In his limo he gloats, "Jenny Hubbard will never know what her final choice would have been. And that question will torment her for the rest of her meaningless life!" We learn that he does this stuff all the time.

I love that story! It should be called "Lex Luthor: Total Asshole."

From the Department of Corrections: NEWSFLASH - Deathstroke has ONE EYE!

You may have noticed in my last post I talked a little bit about Deathstroke the Terminator, who I claim to be a "big fan" of. One could certainly question the depth of someone's devotion to Deathstroke if they were to write/utter the following statement:


I meant that he purposefully wears his one-eyed hood to handicap himself. Clearly that's not right. I mean, Deathstroke is wearing a frickin' eyepatch in the very issue I was writing about. I scanned the image above of shirtless, nippleless eye-patch wearing Deathstroke from the Turkish Bath scene in New Teen Titans #34. I'm telling you, those comic books had something for everybody.

Anyway, I feel shame so I had to you know, make a correction and shit. I mean, it's like, what was I thinking? Dude, he's Deathstroke - he has one eye. Like Nick Fury, his one eye thing is part of his schtick, his branding. Man, I'm slipping.

I don't know, I feel like an aging gunslinger or David Lee Roth or something. There's always some hot shit kid nipping at your heels, waiting for you to slip... And you always do...

NEW TEEN TITANS #34 DC Comics, 1983

Forget about Trigon, the Wildebeest, and the Team Titans - The Judas Contract is the definitive New Teen Titans plot, the equivalent of the X-Men's Death of Phoenix storyline.

This particular issue, New Teen Titans #34, was the big reveal, the "holy shit!" issue where readers learned the shocking truth about Terra, the annoying buck-toothed heroine with the Prince Valiant haircut who was inducted into the ranks of the Titans - she was Amish! No, wait - she was a traitor, a mole planted on the Titans' by their mortal enemy Deathstroke the Terminator.

I love this storyline because I got to experience it in real time as it unfolded every month. I’ve already extolled the virtues of Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s densely packed, more superhero for your buck run on Titans and how the colorful and shiny cast of DC heroes was a perfect counter-balance to all the Marvel books I was getting at the time. I got hooked on the issue where the young heroes battle giant animated Hindu statues in the snow and had to get every issue thereafter.

Terra Markov was a brash heroine with a boulder/chip on her shoulder who could telekinetically manipulate rock and earth – the perfect character for artist George Perez, the master of drawing rubble. For several issues she bitched and whined and tried to worm her way on to the Titans roster, until she finally proves herself in a (staged) battle with Deathstroke in this issue.

I dig Terra's powers - they look great - but I'm not a huge fan of the character herself, and this issue just confirmed that Young Dave was right to not like her! Vindicated!

Anyway, after seemingly vanquishing Deathstroker (that's a dumb pun, not a typo), the rest of the Titans decide to invite Terra to join their special club.

The Titans were perhaps not the most sensitive peer group. Terra’s hard luck story about being raised by terrorists falls on deaf ears among the team, who each have traumatic histories that would put most people in therapy. Here they blow off Terra’s attempts at inducing sympathy:

“Big fucking deal, girl. I got all burnt and exploded and now look at me – I’m a goddamn robot. I’m all hideous and shit.”

“I sympathize, Terra, but my father is a demon lord and I occasionally grow extra eyes on my forehead and try to kill my friends. Beat that.”

“I’m a total fox, but I have like, twenty different origins and I’m in love with a red-haired loser with a beard. A beard.”

“I was a slave for years and I have no pupils. I also trip over my hair all the damn time. Then again, I'm stacked.”

“I have green skin and hair and have to wear this red and white outfit. Plus: no penis."

“Two Face killed my parents and I wear bikini bottoms. And I grew up in a cave full of goddamn bats and a psycho drill sergeant surrogate father who regularly thrust me into combat unarmed against people with guns. Every other night I got knocked out or tied up or strapped to a giant cue ball. So I ain’t trying to hear that shit you're talking.”

“I’m a Republican.”

Nope, not a lot of empathy for the buck-toothed rock girl in Titans Tower.

The other thing that this issue had going for it was Deathstroke the Terminator, one of the coolest villains ever, a man who dresses in blue and orange and somehow makes it work; a man with perfectly good eyesight who covers up one eye because it wouldn't be fair to his opponents if he used two; a man who sports a DC Beard (see Green Arrow, Warlord) when he's not in costume; a man with not one but three kick-ass names (Deathstroke/The Terminator/Slade); a man who uses 90% of his brain at all times because it wouldn't be sporting to use the full 100%. He is perhaps the most bad-ass villain in the DC Universe this side of Kobra - and he knows it.

At this point in the Titans Timeline he is just referred to as The Terminator. I'm not sure where he picked up the "Deathstroke" handle. Prison? Don't judge, man, we all do what we have to in order to survive.

Anyway, it turns out Deathstroke is the chief architect behind the whole Judas Contract plot, which doesn't really pan out in the end, but must have seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm just glad it was Deathstroke and not somebody lame like Clock King. I won't even mention his prison name.

Man, DC was firing on all cylinders in the Eighties. If you'll notice in the barcode box on the cover, they attempted a rebranding. They were "The New DC" and there was "no stopping them now!" I'm glad they settled on that slogan as opposed to some of their other attempts at hip, edgy branding:

Yeah, maybe a little too agressive...

The Flip Test

One trick that overworked “readers” in Hollywood use to decide whether a script is worth checking out is the flip test. Goes like this: you start from the back of the script and flip forward, scanning the pages without actually reading the words in order to see if the script has a good balance of action and dialogue. Are there huge chunks of scene direction squatting like monoliths on the pages? Or endless long-winded passages of dialogue that straggle from one page to the next? If the screenplay doesn’t have a nice variety of direction and dialogue, it probably sucks and isn’t worth reading.

Does that seem fair? Maybe not, but if you had to read a million point six screenplays and write coverage reports for your producer bosses, you would probably think otherwise. From what I understand, the flip test is actually a pretty good way of determining whether your boss will want to read the damn thing. Remember, this is Hollywood we’re talking about. They’re interested in making money, not high art.

I’m working on a screenplay right now (one of the reasons I’m not posting a lot these days) and I keep the flip test in mind as I crank out the pages. Bear with me, I’m going somewhere with all this.

My number one job in writing the script is to entertain the person who is going to read it. A big part of that means to make it as easy as possible to read. If I’m writing a big action scene you can bet I’m not going to have huge blocks of unbroken text describing the action – it is death to read. You gotta break that shit up. Similarly, big dialogue scenes will be interspersed with scene direction to add more variety to the page – it just reads better.

I used to work in a comic book store back in The Day, but nowadays I’m just a consumer. I have X amount of time and Y amount of money to spend in a comic book store, and so I’ve started doing my own flip test on comics I think I might like to buy.

Sure, there are some books I will pick up just because certain writers or artists are involved, but lately I’ve been doing the flip test and it’s a surprisingly painless way of making comic buying decisions easy.

(Before you think I’m being callous or flippant, which I kinda am, I would remind you that we all do the flip test when we watch movie previews. In two and a half minutes you make up your mind whether you want to spend money on a flick or pass.)

I love Thor! Let’s check out the Straczynski/Copiel relaunch. Flip, flip, flip… Wait a second, where’s all the head-smashing? Maybe this is just a slow issue, let’s look at another one. Flip, flip, flip… OK, I’m just scanning this from back to front, but I see a lot of talky-talky and not a lot of hammer-to-skull. PASS.

That was easy.

New Avengers! Bendis’ Mamet-y dialogue and Leinil Yu’s vascular artwork. I haven’t picked this up in a while. Flip, flip, flip… Hey, this entire issue takes place during one plane ride? Hmm. What about this issue? Flip, flip, flip… Lots of talking, Wolverine gets shot in the crotch… Sorry, the talking to action ratio seems off. They must want me to wait for the trade. PASS.

OK, let’s give DC a chance. I haven’t picked up that Blue Beetle book yet. Flip, flip, flip… Looks kinda cute, lots of jumping and fighting. Flip, flip, flip… Hmm, there’s some talking and shit, too, so there must be a plot… Flip, flip, flip… Oooh, look, it’s Giganta! SOLD!

This may all seem very glib, but I guess I’m trying to make a point. I don’t want to buy an individual comic book that is really just a chapter in the inevitable trade paperback collection. I want to buy a comic, a 22 page floppy, that stands on its own. The entire industry seems to have drifted from producing comics as an end product towards producing comics that will be repackaged in a couple of months in trade form.

Well, fuck that.

I’m not saying you can’t publish a quiet issue or a ball-busting all-action issue of a certain comic. But if I’m browsing through my local comic shop and have ten minutes and twenty bucks to spend, you had better GRIP MY SHIT. Sorry, if I’ve never seen an issue of Ultimate Spidey before and I pick up 22 pages of Mary Jane and Peter talking on a bed? (I know I’ve used this example before, but Jesus, it still bugs me) I’m never going to buy your comic. I’m a consumer looking for a good comic in a crowded market place, and you blew it.

I don’t want to wait five issues for something exciting to happen in Thor. I don’t want to buy a chapter in your trade paperback. I want a fucking good comic NOW and if you can’t deliver, if your story telling strategy is to “pace for the trade” then you’ve lost me and my measly twenty bucks. Every issue is somebody’s first and somebody’s last, and unless you make EVERY ISSUE entertaining and gripping, forget it. You don’t deserve my cash.

You didn’t pass the flip test.

Off Topic: The Red Baron

One of my pipe dreams was to write the definitive Red Baron screenplay, but dreams are made to be crushed and urinated upon, aren't they?

A German production of The Red Baron has been underway for years now and the film will finally be released in 2008. I'm a little bummed out because I have to put my dream of writing the Red Baron movie on my Shelf of Broken Dreams, right next to "marrying Linda Carter" and "driving a hovercraft to school." However, I must say the movie looks kick ass, if this effects reel is any indication:



I'm not sure why they have the Trans-Siberian Orchestra or whoever doing the music, but that looks pretty bad ass, doesn't it? I'll reserve final judgement because I've been burned before by WWI aviator flicks. I'm looking at you, Flyboys. Anybody see that? I hated that movie. I actually walked out of the theater with ten minutes left to go - me, who will watch and enjoy any old piece of crap movie. That's how insultingly bad Flyboys was.

Anyway, I'm cautiously optimistic and a little melancholy about The Red Baron. Sure, I didn't get to write the damn thing, but if anybody is going to do a good movie about Manfred von Richthofen, it would be German film makers. I'll gladly have my dreams gunned down by their twin Spandaus if they can just deliver and make a movie worthy of the Ace of Aces, the greatest combat flyer the world has ever seen.

Don't let me down, guys.

B-List Bad Guys From Back in the Day

I like old shit; sue me.

Once it’s had a chance to dehydrate and season a little, old shit is easier to handle than new shit. With new shit you get so hung up on the smell that it’s hard to value the form and texture of the shit itself. Old shit has been sitting there for a while in the grass, waiting patiently for you to come along and appreciate it, or just step in it. Yep, I like old shit and so do folks like Alex Ross, Grant Morrison, and my dog Trixie.

Oh my God, what the fuck am I going on about? Way to stretch a metaphor to the point of breaking, Dave.

I was going somewhere with the old shit analogy. Just be thankful I stopped myself before I stopped talking about nutty old shit. I think my point was, it’s OK to like old stuff, provided nostalgia doesn’t blind you to the fact that new shit can be pretty good, too. Wallowing in old shit is insular and regressive and unsanitary – if you’re just listening to old Freedom Rock all the time you’ll never get exposed to all the awesome new rock out there.

Let’s abruptly segue away from the poo talk and chat about old school villains.

Man, they don’t make villains like they used to, do they? Sure, there are some exceptions – I thought Prometheus from JLA was pretty cool, and Bearded Dude from Brubaker’s Captain America run, and Cassandra Nova from X-Men was creepy as hell – but most of the heavyweight comic book bad guys were created in the last century. Let’s face it – Doom reigns supreme. How you gonna top that? (psst... click on the picture of Doom to find out what his favorite breakfast food is. Thanks to Dave Lartigue for the pic.)

I've always been a sucker for minor villains in pretty much any medium (e.g., my love note to Arnold Vosloo and his character Pik from Hard Target). The arch-villain's henchman in the Bond movies is often more interesting to me than the arch-villain himself. While you could argue that Kobra is not a minor villain, let's face it, he's not on the A-list. Anyway, after this lengthy and feculent preamble, let's look at some bad ass bad guys.

Deadline - In comic books, if you've got a good character design you're half way there. For whatever reason, Deadline really works for me. I dig his armor, his little Mister Miracle hover discs, and his "NO" logo. A super-tech assassin who can phase through walls, Deadline first appeared in the pages of Starman (the purple and yellow version of the character). Talk about the minor leagues, yeeesh. He's appeared in Aquaman and Flash and Suicide Squad, but has never really caught on with the general public. Except me - I think he's neat-o.


Black Manta - What a cool costume. This Aquaman villain has the distinction of being a member of the Legion of Doom on the SuperFriends cartoon, where I think he was just called "Manta." Black Manta has appeared in tons of comics, but never seems to get the respect he deserves - perhaps because his initials are B.M. I described Black Manta's most hilarious and noteworthy appearance right here, which should give you all the reasons you need to love him as much as I do.


Titanium Man - An armored relic of the Cold War, Titanium Man could have been called Iron Man's Whipping Boy with some accuracy. This Russian juggernaut of emerald evil has been around longer than I have, but my favorite incarnation was in the pages of the X-Men/Avengers mini-series, where it was revealed that the green giant was being piloted by the diminutive and encephalitic villain The Gremlin. That's like two awesome villains in one! I particularly dug Marc Silvestri's design of T-Man. As long as you look cool and act like you know what you're doing, people will like you. I will like you. Wolverine is not so sure, however.


Silver Banshee - Come on, give it to John Byrne - that is a fucking awesome character design. I get the impression that this Superman villainess was intended only for one storyline, but artists liked drawing her so much that she keeps popping up. Art Adams drew a particularly busty version of Silver Banshee on one cover, if I recall. She's dreamy, in a Halloween sort of way.

BTW, Rob Zombie wrote the song "Living Dead Girl" about her, no lie.*

Johnny Sorrow - Cool name? Check. Cool design? Check. Cool power? Oh, yeah.

Geoff Johns created a fake Golden Age back story for this JSA villain, whose interdimensional trip to Cthulhuland gave him a creepy power. If he takes off his mask and you see his "face," you totally die. How does he shave?

Oh. Right. No face.

Crossbones - He's the Anti-Cap, a dirty-fighting son of a bitch who can go toe-to-toe with his nemesis Captain America. No, I'm not talking about Batroc.

First introduced during Mark Gruenwald's legendary run on Cap, Crossbones has been used to good effect in recent years by writers who are as fond of the guy as I am. I think Kieron Dwyer came up with Crossbones' distinctive pro-wrestler/pirate aesthetic, which is part of his charm.

Kobra - The budget-rate Dr. Doom of the DC Universe, Kobra is my favorite B-list master villain. I love him so much I actually devoted an entire week to him. Check it out here, here, here, here, and here. Oh, and here. Here. Here. And here as well. And finally, here. Man, I had a lot to say about Lord Naga Naga. It's because there's so much to love.

OK, let's wrap this up. I think I'm going to have to do another one of these because I didn't even touch on Bolt, Merlyn, Marvel's Jack O'Lantern, or The Bros. Grimm. Next time, I guess. There's a lot of old shit out there...

*This is a lie.

Restaurant code violations, Batman-style

Caveat venditor!

If Batman does not like the way you run your joint, he will shut you down, Dark Knight-style. In Gotham, restaurants, bars, and clubs that run afoul of local ordinances don't get cute little letter grades posted in their front window like they do in L.A.. No, if your tavern gets a "B" grade that means he shuts you down - with a BIG ASS STICK.

In Batman #400, Batman drops in on The Belly of the Whale, a quaint establishment on the Gotham waterfront with a colorful clientele. It's the only place on the East End that has Bludhaven Stout on tap due to an arrangement the proprietor made with some local criminal types. The Belly's local charms are lost on Batman, who finds the following violations:

1. establishment used as a front to push skag
2. no hot water
3. unclean food contact surfaces
4. illegal sub-lease to supervillain (The Riddler)
5. improper food temperatures

Wow. Five violations. That's when Batman puts away the baseball bat and picks up the oar.



After administering his fine/punishment, Batman advises the proprietor on the appropriate course of action to correct the five violations: "Just close." The merchant is free to disregard Batman's advice, but is cautioned that he will return within 24 hours for another inspection - with an even larger stick - perhaps a fence post wrapped in barbed wire.

And that my friends, is why it's safe to eat out in Gotham.

We're back and we're Cracked

Eastbound and down, loaded up and truckin'
We gonna do what they say can't be done
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there
I'm eastbound, just watch old Bandit run

-Eastbound and Down
by The Great Jerry Reed

OK, we're back.

The road trip east beyond the Rockies to pick up the Megaforce Destroyer was a success, but very grueling. Fortunately there were three of us, so we switched driving duties while the others caught what sleep they could. We pulled three all-nighters in various weather conditions and arrived back in Seattle totally bleary. Highlights included ghost towns, semi-ghost towns, Yellowstone, fall colors in the Jackson Hole area, a truck vs buffalo showdown (advantage: buffalo), a really mean thunderstorm, a flat tire, nearly running out of gas in the middle of Nowhere twice, evil waitresses, and a lengthy debate on the merits (or lack thereof) of adapting old cartoons and TV shows to film.

The highlight for me was a two-hour hellride in the dead of night along a remote highway in Wyoming that was boiling with animals, all of whom seemed intent on jumping in front of the truck while I drove. Seriously, I felt like one of the cars in Frogger. Every thirty seconds or so, jack rabbits, deer, antelope, or coyotes would loom up in the highbeam glare as they suicidally flung themselves in front of my vehicle. Judging by the amount of gore and carcasses on the road, other drivers had the same experience. Either that or I was following some kind of animal serial killer. That was some nerve-wracking shit. Oh, and I saw a UFO on that road.

But now I'm back and the moustache I had cultivated just for Wyoming has morphed into a big scuzzy growth of stubble that collects lint and scraps of food.

While I was gone the good folks at Cracked.com posted a few pieces I had written for them. The first, written with the Cracked staff, explores the philosophical musings of Wesley Snipes, who has much wisdom and head-kicking to offer us all.

The second piece examines the most disturbing and disturbed sidekicks in history. What force compels the craven bootlicking of Smithers, Renfield, or that guy from Morris Day & The Time who seems to exist only to hold up a mirror to Morris Day. I'm not speaking metaphorically, that's all he does.

So now that my annual road trip is out of the way and I've used up all my vacation time for the fiscal year, I can commence posting on a regular basis again.

No, really. I know you've heard it before baby, but I can change.

Once again, it is ON

I was born a ramblin’ man, and I must listen to the call of the open road.

The spirit of the American highway sings to me, and she sounds a lot like the bombastic lead singer of Four Non-Blondes, wailing, “WHAT’S GOING ON?!!” I don’t know why the American highway sounds like that, and I kind of wish she didn’t, but I must heed the call regardless of how annoying it is.

As a North American, the need to go on a road trip is ingrained in my genetic code. In the New World we are all wanderers, only a generation or so removed from people who come from Someplace Else. The road trip is part of our identity and our culture, from the Conestoga wagons to Steinbeck to Easy Rider. Combine this deep urge to roam with our love of automobiles and crappy food and you have a powerful biological imperative that you can only ignore for so long. You turn to your buddy – you know, the one who understands – and all you have to say is: “Road trip.”

Once again I am teaming up with my pal Bob for our annual adventure. In years past we have launched a 300 mile boating expedition up bear-infested Lake Roosevelt and back, searched for a ghost town in a blizzard, traversed a burning mountain range, crawled through endless volcanic caves, snapped an axle high up in the Bitterroot Mountains, and made a pilgrimage to the fabled Ring of Fire train wreck.

This time: Megaforce.

Every decent road trip has to have a purpose, a goal that transforms the journey from a standard car vaction into a full-on quest. This year we’re traveling to Wyoming to pick up a Megaforce Destroyer – the dune buggy of the future!

Take a look at this clip – at about the fourteen second mark there’s a good shot of the dune buggy. It’s the one SHOOTING THE LASER!

OK, it’s actually just the fiberglass shell of the dune buggy of the future. But it's from Megaforce! Bob bought the actual Megaforce dune buggy shell on eBay and we’re going to pick that bad boy up and bring it back to Seattle, where Bob will bring it back to its former glory. Or so he tells me.

Bob and I are huge Megaforce fans – I’ve discussed at length why Megaforce is one of the greatest movies ever made HERE – so this is right up our alley.

As usual, Bob drives and I plan the route and navigate. This year I’ve picked a route that should take us through four ghost towns, a few abandoned mines, some old railroad tunnels, and a mountain backroad called "Deadman’s Road." I anticipate awesomeness.

Since we are heading east into the Old West, I have decided that I must grow a moustache (pictured). I just have to, it’s important. I know, I look like a date rapist. In retrospect, I should have started growing the ‘stache earlier, because it will not have reached Sam Elliot / Tom Selleck state by the time we start the trip. Maybe I should get a cowboy hat, that might make me look cooler.

Road Trip 2007 is ON. It’s on like the Wrath of Khan. We must live the Megaforce motto: "Deeds not words."

See y’all next week.

Nostalgiametrics: The Science of Today for Yesterday's Crap

Have you ever watched a movie or TV show that you loved as a kid and just been shocked - shocked, I say! - by how crappy it was? Sadly, stuff that seemed great when you were a kid is often revealed to be utter shit, and that can be hard to take. Believe me, I know. I had a full-on existential meltdown when I realized that Charles in Charge was not the comedic masterpiece that I remembered. I was like, "What is truth if this is a lie?"

As a handsome man once said here:

"Nostalgia is deception wrapped in sentiment. Nostalgia is a ghostly lover dressed in a lovely, old-fashioned gown, who beckons you to dance with her, to make love to her… and then she turns into a hideous mummified ghoul who rips your throat out with her teeth and blood gushes and the screaming, my God, the screaming… That is nostalgia."*

Gosh, if only there were some way to scientifically determine whether or not say, an old network TV show sucked or not, so we could spare ourselves the pain and disillusionment...

Well now there is!

Introducing Nostalgiametrics: The Science of Today for Yesterday's Crap

Using the patented Nostalgiametric grading system, we can now quantify a show's suckiness or lack thereof. It's simple: just pick a favorite old TV show, run it through the Nostalgiametric Checklist to assign it quality points, and then add up the points to get your Nostalgiametric Quotient!

Here's the Nostalgiametric Checklist for One Hour Network Television Programs:

_______________________

The Main Guy(s)

• Doesn't suck: +5 points (Incredible Hulk, Wild Wild West)
• Is William Shatner: +5 points (T.J. Hooker, Star Trek)
• Is a Woman: +3 points (Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman)
• Superpowers: +3 points (Man from Atlantis, Greatest American Hero)
• Ex-astronaut: +3 points (Buck Rogers, Six Million Dollar Man)
• Ex-soldier: +2 points (Magnum P.I., BJ and the Bear)
• Ex-convict: +2 points (Rockford Files)
• Ex-cop: +2 points (Booker, Renegade)
• Cop/agent: +2 points (Hunter, Martial Law)
• Hot cop: +3 points (Miami Vice)
• Private eye: +2 points (Spenser for Hire, Vegas)
• Bounty hunter: +2 points (Renegade, The Fall Guy)
• Can fly helicopter/plane/spaceship: +2 points (Matt Houston, Airwolf)
• Mysterious loner who helps people in trouble: +2 points (Kung Fu, The Equalizer)
• Occasionally shirtless: +1 point (Wild Wild West, Starsky & Hutch)
• Always shirtless: +2 points (Magnum P.I., Man From Atlantis)
• Hunted by somebody: +2 points (A-Team, Incredible Hulk)
• Main character totally sucks: -5 points (Manimal, Automan)

Sidekick

• Dog: +3 points (Tales of the Gold Monkey)
• Monkey: +5 points (BJ and the Bear)
• Hot chick: +3 points (Hunter)
• Ernest Borgnine: +3 points (Airwolf)
• Robot/alien: +3 points (Buck Rogers, Alien Nation)
• Master of disguise: +2 points (Wild Wild West)
• Punching bag/goon: +2 points (The Fall Guy, Walker Texas Ranger)
• Dreamboat: +2 points (T.J. Hooker, JAG)
• Comic relief: +2 points (Riptide, Fantasy Island)

Theme Song

• Totally rules: +5 points (Magnum P.I., Six Million Dollar Man)
• Sucks ass: -2 points (Manimal, Misfits of Science)
• Written by Mike Post & Pete Carpenter: +5 points (Hill Street Blues, Rockford Files)
• Spoken word intro: +3 points (A-Team, Charlie's Angels)
• Sung by star of series: +3 points (Walker Texas Ranger, Fall Guy)
• Title of show mentioned in song: +2 points (BJ and the Bear, Love Boat)
• Gratuitous synthesizers: +2 points (The Equalizer, Airwolf)
• Theme song sucks bad: -5 points (Misfits of Science, B.J. and the Bear)

The Cast

• Lone wolf show: +3 points (Kung Fu, Incredible Hulk)
• Buddy show: +5 points (Hunter, Cagney & Lacey)
• Hero + posse show: +3 points (Walker Texas Ranger, T.J. Hooker)
• Ensemble show: +2 points (Love Boat, SWAT)
• Show named after buddies: +3 points (Starsky & Hutch, Tenspeed & Brownshoe)
• Romantic tension: +3 points (Moonlighting, Hunter)
• Old man buddy: +2 points (Hardcastle & McCormick, Jake & The Fat Man)
• Attractive buddies: +2 points (Miami Vice, Charlie's Angels)
• One attractive/one ugly buddy: -1 point (CHIPs)
• Hot chick: +3 points (Dukes of Hazard, Buck Rogers)
• Roddy McDowell: +2 points (Tales of the Gold Monkey)
• Science guy/mechanic: +2 points (Street Hawk, Bionic Woman)
• Patriarchal old dude: +2 points (Battlestar Galactica, Love Boat)
• Frustrated police lieutenant: +2 points (Rockford Files, Starsky & Hutch)
• Pilot: +2 points (Magnum P.I., 240 Robert)
• Token old dude on posse: +2 points (Walker Texas Ranger, Matt Houston)
• Major cast members replaced: -3 points (Airwolf, Dukes of Hazard)
• Minor cast members replaced/added: -1 point (Airwolf, Knight Rider)
• Hot chick added: +2 points (T.J. Hooker)

Transportation

• Normal vehicle: +1 point (Rockford Files, Heart to Heart)
• Boss vehicle: +3 points (Magnum P.I., A-Team)
• Super boss vehicle: +5 points (Airwolf, Street Hawk)
• Crazy ass stunts: +2 points (Fall Guy, Dukes of Hazard)
• Vehicle talks: +2 points (Knight Rider)
• Loaded with custom features: +2 points (Wild Wild West, Star Trek)
• Vehicle has a name: +2 points (Battlestar Galactica, Hardcastle & McCormick)
• Vehicle is frickin' huge: +2 points (Love Boat, Supertrain)
• Vehicle blows shit up: +3 points (Airwolf, Buck Rogers)
• More than one vehicle: +1 point for each extra vehicle (Miami Vice, Riptide)
  

Bonus features

• Two fights + one chase per episode: +3 points (T.J. Hooker, Hunter)
• Weapon/gadget created out of scratch each episode: +2 points (A-Team, MacGyver)
• Characters often pose as exotic dancers: +3 points (T.J. Hooker)
• Has spawned spin-off show: +2 point (Dukes of Hazard, B.J. and the Bear)
• Is spin-off show: -1 point (Enos, Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo)
• Shameless use of stock footage: -1 point (Airwolf)
• Non-lethal gunplay: -2 points (A-Team)
• Fights vampire at least once: +2 points (B.J. and the Bear, Starsky & Hutch, Buck Rogers)
  

_______________________

That's the basic Nostalgiametric Checklist for One Hour Network Television Programs. Now, let's add up all the points and see what your favorite show's Nostalgia Quotient is:

1-20 pts: Sucks ass. Try
to pretend it never existed - everyone else has.

21-25 pts: Some redeeming qualities. Watch it again after drinking a few beers.

26-30 pts: Halfway decent. Buy the DVD. Somebody out there has a website devoted to this show.

31-34 points: Kicks ass.
Begin letter writing campaign to network begging for the
show's return. Write fan-fiction or get a tattoo with the show logo.

35-40 points: Best show ever. Devote your life to this program and bludgeon anyone who speaks ill of it. Create a cult based on show. Name your children after characters on show.

Here are some examples for your reference:

Tales of the Gold Monkey - ABC's 1982 Raiders of the Lost rip-off starred Stephen Collins as Jake Cutter, a pilot/adventurer in pre-war South Pacific. Featured one-eyed dog and Roddy McDowell.

Airwolf

- Jan Michael-Vincent and Ernest Borgnine fly into danger and into our hearts in Airwolf, a super helicoppter. Extra points for awesome theme song, but loses points for replacing the entire cast for the last season. No Borgnine? No love.

T.J. Hooker

- William Shatner, Adrian Zmed, and Heather Locklear keep the streets of L.A. clean in this cop show. Shatner clung from every manner of speeding vehicle known to man, while Zmed and Locklear posed as exotic dancers on regular basis. Loses points for losing Zmed to Dance Fever.

*Wow, what kind of egomaniac quotes himself?