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December 23, 2008
November 18, 2008
The denial twist
Adam and I's crack scheme to buy each other do-it-yourself muppets for Christmas was tagged and bagged by the sudden unavailability of the product on the FAO web site, in favour of the same kind of "I.O.U." they used to deal out when the Star Wars figures ran out back in '78. Still, the notion is goddamned appealing, especially since we are entering into the project double-blind (i.e. Adam will design a muppet of me, I will design a muppet of Adam, and neither of us will see the other's designs until the toys arrive). Plus, this saves me the bother of ever having to figure out how to make a muppet of Stanley J. Keramidas. FAO can make the muppet Stanley for me, and muppet Stanley could then co-chair my team meetings from here on out.
Less than 2 weeks out from shooting Guy in the Sky and everything is peppermint paper and rock n' roll. I'll even have lavolier mics this time around - lavs, and no storyboards. I'm flying a whole new kind of plane this time around, and if things go really well, I'm gonna figure out how to shoot something on the Scarlet next year. I even have something like a mission statement, the rules of which I am consistently breaking on a daily basis but regardless, folded up in my wallet right now, alongside a poem that I like quite a bit. Inspiration started small but once it got going it was everything good and loud about the world.
In the meantime, I am Indiana Jonesing one step ahead of the giant rolling ball, until at least Thursday at 3. I have my boots on to help me with this.
"Well if service providers could think, there'd be none of us here, would there?" - me at a team meeting, paraphrasing Obi-Wan Kenobi
"Pickles are ruining my life." - this woman
October 12, 2008
The toying of same, part 1
For some reason I got it in my head to do a follow-up now-that-I'm-done list of the best of the Star Wars figures, but along the way I realized this would really only be of significance to my brother. So I've created a new Tederick.com category just for him. ADAM!
The best Star Wars figures (modern line) ever made before I gave up the hobby and retreated into the corner like a whipped puppy, in no particular order other than grouping like characters together:
- The Darth Vaders:
- Darth Vader with removable helmet
- Darth Vader (Vintage Original Trilogy Collection)
- Darth Vader with removable helmet
- The Obi-Wan Kenobis:
- Obi-Wan Kenobi (Pilot)
- Obi-Wan Kenobi (POTJ)
- Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda (McQuarrie Concept Art 2-pack)
- Obi-Wan Kenobi (Cold Weather Gear)
- Obi-Wan Kenobi (Naboo)
- Obi-Wan Kenobi (Pilot)
- The Yodas:
- Yoda (animated - the 2D animated, not the crappy 3D animated)
- Dagobah Yoda
- Yoda with Kybuck
- Yoda (animated - the 2D animated, not the crappy 3D animated)
- The insanely peripheral characters:
- Aunt Beru
- Sio Bibble
- Shmi!
- General Madine
- Cloud Car Pilot
- Wat Tambor
- Fireship Pilot
- Rebel Honour Guard
- Moff Jerjerrod
- Aunt Beru
- Oola with Salacious Crumb (Fan Club mail-away)
- Yarna d'al Gargan
- Max Rebo
- Ephant Mon
- Padmé (Pilot)
- Princess Leia (Jabba's Prisoner) - v1
, v2 
- Queen Amidala (Theed)
- Queen Amidala (Celebration)
- Luke Skywalker (Bacta Tank)
- Luke Skywalker (hologram)
- Han Solo (Hoth rescue, blue coat variant)
- Han Solo (Bespin capture)
- Tion Medon
- Sebulba
- Bantha
- R2-Q2
- R5-D4
- R2-D2 with holographic Princess Leia
- R4-M9
- R1-G4
- TC-14
- STAP with battle droid (Episode 1 preview)
- Commander Cody
- Utapau trooper
- Qui-Gon Jinn with Eopie (Japanese import)
- Darth Sidious (holographic)
- Yarael Poof
- Teebo
- Graak (a.k.a. Lumat?)
- Jango Fett with removable head
- Zam Wesell with removable arm
- Tusken Raider with removable head
- Mon Mothma (Episode III)
- General Calrissian
Ye photography and linkes all thanks to Rebelscum.com. Still the best, and they've got this.
August 15, 2008
Whys and wherefores
I bought Adam a Yoda toy yesterday and in return he kicked me in the fucking shin!!:
Jerk.
Over here, Moriarty calls foul on that favourite fanboy watchphrase, "George Lucas raped my childhood." He's right: inarticulate losers reaching for an ugly overemphasis of their hurt feelings through violent sexual overtones are not doing the world, or the discussion, any favours. Moriarty, though, has become the film criticism community's biggest pansy. He has been so completely spun by the birth of his child and the "development" of his middling screenwriting career that his reviews have gained an imperious, "I'm seeing this from a higher level than you" level of smug that is simply useless to both his direct audience (AICN fanboys) and film criticism in general. And the fact that both of those changes in his personal life have softened any ability on his part to look at a piece of film objectively without either going gooey-eyed over how the flick speaks to his h opes and fears for his child, or rose-hearted about how it's just so hard (sniff!) to make it in tough-ass Hollyweird, means that his opinions have become useless to me as well. Sigh of frustration. When Roger Ebert kicks it (and they're taking him down in chunks, these days), film criticism will die.
For a few months I've been remarking that I really have no idea what's coming out, movie-wise, next summer. Well, others seem to have noticed the tentpole gap in summer 2009, too, because following Star Trek into a release delay is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, bumped from a November '08 show-date to July '09 to run riot over the relatively limited field of box office competitors next year. I'm not particularly disappointed, if only because my overall interest in the Potterflicks has dwindled precipitously since Order (even though, as blog-memory serves, I liked that one), and this gives me the opportunity to build a bit back up again. They'll never go down as the biggest cinematic contributions to my life, but there's something reflexively nice about going to a Potter movie with Rebecca and just magically freaking out a bit. And with five down and three (!) to go, I do also have an appreciable sense of the scale of the thing, once it's all finished.
So I'm ploughing through Y: The Last Man for the second time, sort of like when I read all the Potter books consecutively since this time, I don't have to wait for subsequent volumes to be released and can treat it as one big story. In addition to all the other stuff Brian K. Vaughan is doing, I am really enjoying the degree to which the story gets to be about the way men think about women. All the myths, misconceptions, psychological fracture points, broken chivalry, noble (and not) ambitions, outright needs, subconscious lacks, complete and utter raging misunderstandings... just so eerily, pleasingly accurate. What 13-year-old boy hasn't stared into that gaping chasm of proposed femininity and refused to take more than a tentative step into the dark cave, out of the sheer unknowable otherness of it all? We can be so patently bad at knowing ourselves when it comes to sex, love, and our position on the gender coin; one of the best things about Y is the way that fully selfish and immature male-ness (which is now too happily fostered in modern North American life) just tracks for Yorick through the story, into a genuine process of maturation and change until he does become, like Jung woulda said, a fully individuated person. It'd be nice if this could happen to everyone, or at least, me. I kinda wonder if Vaughan has actually Figured It All Out, or if he's just a smart enough writer to know that he can just parlay his own experiences of relating to women throughout his life into a reasonable psychological arc for The Last Man, and let the arithmetic work itself out. Either way, it worked great.
It's chilly. It's actually chilly. Fall is coming.
August 7, 2008
The time of your life, part 2
"I will take you outside and fuck you in the street!!" - Ed Begley Jr.
"That is spicy. I don't think that's for cats." - Adam
I love that photo a lot.
Sarafina and myself went to the Pineapple Express movie last night, and ate fish burritos, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. I would say there are at least six things in that film that are outstanding, four things that are just really pretty, and the rest is overall very well done. Additionally, I read the second neo-Fray arc issue in Buffy, and was so goddamned thrilled that I almost didn't know what to do with myself. Actually, I probably embarrassed myself in public spaces with my near-constant glee. The densely-woven futurespeak is new (I suppose we can presume that in the previous self-contained storyline, we were seeing "translated" futurespeak, as we would see translated Chinese in an issue of Iron Fist) but very well done. And as for the spoiler... well yeah. I fell for the Dru fake-out rather nicely and was aptly rewarded at the end, but the bones of the thing now are just gorgeous to look at. Something happened in this issue that never happened before - the modern-day Buffyline just gained a fuck of a lot of context, a place in the world. It's not limited to Sunnydale any more, it's not even limited to the naughties any more; with the past and present accounted for and the future now added in, the Buffyverse feels dense. I like.
This crazy son'bitch built the Batman Beginsmobile. There was a phantom DeLorean that lived somewhere between my ex-girlfriend's house and my parents' place, back in the day... you'd be driving along at night and it would just appear behind you, and you (meaning I) would freak right out. Imagine how you (meaning I) would feel if the motherfucking Batmobile started tailing you instead. Holy cow.
Finally, for everyone who (like me) is still having trouble sliding the oily oyster that is "Quantum of Solace" down their gullet, there's a Joe Cornish fake theme song floating around YouTube that's quite enjoyable. They had me at "great big man-tits."
August 3, 2008
The last Star Wars figure / The day Jack Sparrow died
On Friday, before the wedding, I was downtown anyway dropping off the rock star's dress, and I had about an hour to kill before I had to get dressed, so I went for a burrito - I am all about the halibut lately, belated obsession though that be. I hit the Snail en route, as is my custom, although nothing I read shipped this week so my pull bin was empty. But there it was as I came through the door: the Gargan action figure. Which here matters because, as mentioned previously, she is the last one.
It's actually been thirteen years, give or take. Thirteen years back I got off the Steeles bus outside my grandmother's condo, took a walk across the street (it was snowing), and into Toys R Us, because I'd heard that Hasbro had re-established the Star Wars action figure line - they were calling it "Power of the Force 2," the sequel/continuation to the line's failed attempt at continuing past Return of the Jedi, circa 1984. And... hey, what else am I about if I'm not about about that? So they had a few of the new figures there, including this Ben with a really long lightsabre, and they all looked goddamn weird and awkward but I bought the Ben anyway because he generally looked the most like a human and, c'mon, it's Ben. Then Light & Magic happened and I bought a few more, and then at some point in 1996 I was standing in that same TRU with Adam holding a Jawa 2-pack in my hand, and Adam said something along the lines of "I'll take one, you take one, we'll split it" - yes, these are two 20somethings here - and as far as I'm concerned, the deal was done. Something kicked off in both of us (though he turned back far sooner than I), and the avalanche began which, a baker's dozen years later, lead to something in the neighbourhood of six hundred of the things as a final tally - although right at this moment, over half of them are gone again. Still... six hundred. Droids and jawas and Jedi and pregno-Padme; Jabba aliens by the fucking bucketfull, so many that I even started making my own; and Lukes and Chewies and Slave Leias and Bens beyond measure; and insignificant characters, lord man howdy, how I loved the insignificant characters. Sio Bibble and this guy and Aunt frickin' Beru with her blue milk.
And this stated a bunch of other things too, what with Sideshow and Simpsons and really expensive pirates and I even have a vintage Toht, and one on card too, yeah. But the best of all of it was always and ever shall be Darth Vader with Removable Helmet, which they've re-made a dozen times since but never come close to making as cool as they did on the first try, the tiny piece of plastic in which a shred of my 10-year-old soul permanently resides. And that was in... 1997? Early '98? When the best year of your hobby is ten years back, it's time to look for an exit. Gargan seemed like a good fit - they tried to make her back in '85, but as I recall the prototype got shitcanned because she has so many boobies. Six of them! No self-respecting toy line should ever have a six-titted prostitute as part of its character line, one presumed, at least until whatever phenomenal conversion shift I myself was a part of in the late 1990s, when toys stopped being made for kids and started being made for me. They made Gargan, the Fat Dancer, and I'm out.
(If they ever make Bea Arthur, I'll come back.)
And with all that done, I came home with my action figure firmly in hand and, upon entering, found one of my Jack Sparrow dreadlocks lying on the floor in the doorway to my room. Thinking at first that Zam had - as is her way - destroyed something I cared about, I became riled, and then I had a look at the wig. And, in what can only be described as a rather perfect little Pirates of the Caribbean moment, I turned the thing over in my hand to find the back of it eaten out by grubs. Some unholy combination of the heat, the humidity, the age, or just the primordial fucking filth we now live in at 3QF, conspired to turn my custom-made Jack Sparrow pirate wig into a couple months' worth of food for a colony of mealworms. And as the thing literally decayed in my hands while I stared at - the sheer action of bringing it down off the shelf upon which it has sat since my rather lovely Hallowe'en, was enough to tear apart the few remaining strands maintaining the wig's shape - it ceased to be a thing, and became a former thing, nothing more than a cluster of digital photographs, really warm memories, and at least one Jack Sparrow bolt-in-terror moment when that damn Obeah woman asked for my number.
Here's the thing: I hang on to things. Tangible relics of stuff that otherwise live only in my head, or in my eyes, or on movie screens across the nation, literally clutter the very ground I walk on. My grandmother used to have a glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary next to her bed; I have a glow-in-the-dark King of the Dead. It comes to the same thing, which is a talisman by which to channel some inexpressible force that flows through my life; without the relics to hang on to occasionally, I become nauseous and indistinct. But this is, after all - and today was not the first time I have realized this - an imperfect solution to a larger problem, because all matter is so frustratingly impermanent and vague. I used to say there was something I liked about having a tiny, perfect Luke Skywalker standing on my desk with his lightsabre in hand, that it said something to something in me in a language beyond arcane. But that same relic melts, turns sticky, gets dusty and loses its colour, gets handed down to kids (because kids are supposed to have these things) or thrown out with the trash. Matter doesn't matter. These are all just signposts on the way to the larger, glowing somethingorother.
July 26, 2008
Aliens from space
Between me and my brother, this morning:
Me: Check it out, aliens are actually real.
Adam: Damn... here's hoping he's sane. I wiki'd him and he's 78 so he may just be senile from all the age and space travel.
Me: Or maybe he has a CRYSTAL SKULL??
Adam: More likely, yes.
It wasn't until a few days ago that I actually registered the full measure of my disappointment about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I was tooling around indianajones.com, there were some video clips from the movie on there, and I just sorta gawped at it. Good lord in fuck, why on earth would anyone ever do a thing like this. It's amazing that three Star Wars prequels couldn't make me hate George Lucas, but this one did it with one computer-animated gopher poking out of a dune hill, and took down my teenboy love of Spielberg with it. They're freezing Lucas in carbonite over in Japan in officially sanctioned product now; can we get desk-sized ones on this side of the Pacific?
On a much lower scale of disappointment is the X Files sequel. For years I have been crying "The world needs Fox Mulder!" so I guess I'm getting what I paid for this weekend; in the post-Batman orgasmic high it barely mattered to me at all that this movie was even coming out, and the results bear out:
I genuinely do: I want to believe. I want to believe in aliens and psychics and fluke men. More than that, though, I desperately want to believe that if the Man is being a scary, lying sonofabitch, there's a couple of methodical, deadpan FBI agents out there with flashlights and cell phones and a drab mid-size sedan, patrolling the highways and biways of middle America / Vancouver with a dogged (Doggett?) interest in figuring out just what the hell is going on. Maybe not solving, maybe not saving, but at least seeing. I believe in The X Files.
Now utterly unsure of what the hell I'm supposed to go do with myself, I'm going wander around the city and try to find new gods.
May 24, 2008
Offer expires June 15, 1983
The new Indy figures have at least one thing going for them that I really admire: a genuine mail-away offer. God I miss those things. When we were kids, Adam and I collected our proofs-of-purchase on Star Wars figures so we could mail away for Nien Nunb and the Emperor. He got the latter, I got the former. I don't think you even had to pay shipping and handling - it was like they were rewarding you for giving a fuck about the toys, not trying to make a secondary buck on exclusive merchandise. (Well sure: getting kids to ante up on five figures to get the free one wasn't the stupidest marketing ploy of all time. But it seemed more innocent then.) In fact I think my entire fondness for Nien Nunb as a character in Return of the Jedi came from the process of collecting those five blue circles and then getting a free figure in the mail 10-12 weeks later. I mean he's just a mouse with giant ears, but in mail-away form, he was cool. I wonder if there's a kid out there who's going to think a Crystal Skeleton is just the cat's fucking pajamas once he gets his in the mail in a few months.
Here's a Nien Nunb ad, to take you back.
April 15, 2008
The dog song
Adam says I should buy this guitar and rock out:
I really agree. Everyone gets to rock out but me. It drives me nuts! Buying this guitar (and learning how to play it) would also let me reinvent Jessica Fletcher as something more than just a didgeridoo-wop funk fusion band.
The other thing is, I still really want to get my hands on a French horn. I don't particularly want to spend more than a couple hundred bucks on this project and I don't really care if the thing is beaten beyond all recognition, but it would be nice to actually have one. Sarafina and I saw a dude selling one on the street a few weeks back, but he wanted five bills. That ain't happening.
I do own a set of bongos. I'm just saying.
April 8, 2008
Archaeopteryx
...is just a great, great word. I have always loved that word. There are some words that make your spine thrum like a bass string, and archaeopteryx is one of those for me.
Brother Adam spent the weekend jerking around New York City, sending comments to the blog from various Jerk stores. He came back with candy. I helped him out with a project before he left so he put a gift-note on my desk with three items on it:
From the "chocolate bar" in NYC - they make their own bars and wrappers. PB caramel, yum!
[and hereunder was a peanut butter caramel chocolate bar with a retro wrapper]
You may wish to share with Sarafina - Dark rum! Zooks!!
[and hereunder was a Crash Dark Rum chocolate bar]
Chick in nSoho hand-knitted this for you!
[and hereunder was a knitted Spider-Man finger-puppet]
Suddenly, my brother is a way better brother than my brother ever was before. Except oh wait: he also got me that Wii that one time. That was pretty sweet.
Last night Sarafina and I tried to one-up our ratatouille/Ratatouille night of a few months ago, by doing Insomnia/Insomnia. This didn't work out so well, because Insomnia sucks, and Insomnia kinda sucks too. You can kinda see what it would have been like without the wrong casting and a bad script, but not enough to make you love it. Nonetheless: so pretty. As was our hastily-improvised non-Insomnia dinner. So, it was a pretty good Mondate anyway.
I lost one of my notebooks recently, and the apparent result is that I have been brain-dumping like a fiend into every notebook I can find, like I'm trying to retain whatever fragments of the DNA of my recent thought processes that I can, in spite of the mishap. Honestly: pages and pages and pages of exons. It's a weird feeling, but oddly satisfying in its way, too.
I, too, am over Sarah Marshall.
March 5, 2008
The Alpha-Omega Smurf
The other day while gift shopping with Bex, I freaked right out when I noticed that the store I was in had a bin of Smurfs next to the front cash - just like the toy store at Bayview Village that my parents used to take me to when I was a kid, to buy Smurfs. Between Mark, Adam and myself, an entire agrarian/marine Smurf civilization grew up around Six Inch Lake behind my cottage when I was young; now, among the multitudes in front of me at this store, I found the conclusion of the entire affair: the Smurf Angel of Death.
There is something beautiful and perfect about there being a Smurf Angel of Death, and in my having purchased him, and in him staring at me right now, last scion of a smurf culture that has spanned my lifetime and is now, at last, at rest. Thank you, SmAOD. As is your way, you have brought closure.