When I was a kid, there was a store like no other, and it was called Consumers Distributing.

Consumers Distributing was Amazon before the internet. It was either so sensationally ahead of its time that one wonders if Jack Stubb was in fact a visitor from the future, or so permanently wedged in the intransigent spaces between true marketing trends that it was essentially the Laserdisc of its day. Consumers Distributing was shop-at-home shopping, where you still had to actually go to a store. But what a store.

Once a year the heavy, industrious Consumers Distributing catalogue - like a roided up Ikea catalogue, with extra sass - would THUMP on the door step, and it'd be off to the races. Given my age at the time (well, given my age anytime ever), the races was toys. To the toy section of the catalogue I would flip, and like Eisenhower planning D-day, I would chart out the accumulation of plastic men into my forces. After all, going to a traditional toy shop is such a horribly risky affair for a lad - will they have Dusty? What if they only have one, and my best friend Geoff gets his hands on it first? Who wouldn't want the sensational security of those gloss-bound catalogue pages, and their promise of systematic, gentlemanly shopping assurance?

Of course, it was never quite like that, but the ideal was beautiful. Off to the C.D. you'd go, and belly up to one of the geodesic kiosks littering the showroom floor; the catalogue would match the one you had in your house (you would already have memorized the relevant page numbers, to accelerate the process); the golf pencils would scribe the 6-digit code on the tiny slip of paper, and the guy in the wicket would take your slip into the back, and out would come your toy. Sometimes.

Well, there was the plot hole, anyway. Perfect idea; unreliable execution. After all, if (with catalogue in hand), you had to call the Consumers Distributing beforehand to find out if your 6-digit code was actually in stock, and tangible reality instead of a dream on paper, what separated C.D. from the animal magnitude of the Hudson's Bay Company, or Toy City? Nothing, that's what, save for the rank anarchy of the toy aisles and the bloodshot look in Geoff's eye when he - and you - realized simultaneously that there was one Dusty left, and it would be a foot race to determine who got it first.

A few times a year when I pass Sunnybrook mall, where the former Consumers is now a drug store (? - and don't get me started on what happened to Boots), I can't help but become nostalgic over the brief window of time where golf-pencil buying was the sport of kings, just like I occasionally miss the feel of a big CAV laserdisc in my hand as I laboriously flipped it over to get to the next 30 minutes of analog-cum-digital content. The times, they were a' changin', and the weirdest and most amazing shit was constantly happening.

Posted by tederick at 1:01 PM in arcana & toys!
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Too bad I don't buy these sorts of things any more otherwise I would find this mighty compelling.

Posted by tederick at 6:33 PM in toys!
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Gore Verbinski, having successfully turned a ride into the BEST MOVIE EVER, is now going to try to turn a boardgame into another (best?) MOVIE (ever?). Except this time it's Clue and holy crap, does the world not need another Clue: The Movie, because the first one was (of course) perfect.

Meanwhile, that Green Lantern movie that I thought was entirely theoretical at this point has a release date, and it ain't far away. The usual mix of "hey cool they're making a Green Lantern movie" / "oh they're gonna fuck this up so bad" applies. And by the way (same article), in case you hadn't heard, Christopher Nolan's science fiction film Inception is going to be EPIC.

Finally, Hot Toys announced Joker #3, and thank goodness, it sucks so bad. All the collectors who got their jubblies in a froth over the Nurse Joker idea are gonna have to go back to home-stitching their kid sisters' Barbie outfits.

And that's what I think on 5 hours of sleep.

Posted by tederick at 7:39 AM in movies & toys!
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ITEM!: Domain nameserver migration still pending. All may be lost but I just can'ts not be bloggin' no mo'.

ITEM!: On Sunday, I watched Kill Bill, and every time I do that, I come away wanting to do it again the very next day.

ITEM!: On Monday, I stayed in the best hotel that has ever been. I would show you the pictures, were I not nude in all of them.

ITEM!: Did anyone hear that Kim Manners died? That's sad, man. He was a class act, and his work on X-Files did, of course, set the stage for pretty much everything kickass about Lost.

ITEM!: I HAVE NOT WATCHED LOST YET SHUT UP.

ITEM!: No you shut up.

ITEM!: No you shut up!

ITEM!: Lando!

Posted by tederick at 12:54 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & hotels & movies & tederickdotcomdotcom & toys!
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Neo-Devastator via the Transformers 2. Well, I mean... frick lord. They're makin' a toy of that? Meaning you could Neo-Dev vs. Gen 1 in your own back yard? I used to know a person who played with Transformers in the bathtub. Imagine that mash-up. ...I mean, wow.

Sorry. Zoned out for a minute there. Anyways, I went to see Revolutionary Road yesterday, at long last (and here's my review). So very, very interesting. So really, very, unsuccesful. But interesting. Sam Mendes! Frick! What happened, man?

Posted by tederick at 2:45 PM in pirates & reviews & toys!
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Devastator and Christian Bale are my 2 favourite things this week, and if they ever found a way to combine the two into a Voltron-like mega-transforming Christian Baleastator, there is no toy large or expensive enough for how awesome that would be, even if the on-board microchip made the transforming sound and quipped "WHAT DON'T YOU F***ING UNDERSTAND???" in equal measure.

I betcha Christian Bale transforms, anyway.

Perused via email:

"...Though [the Christian Bale rant and its dance remix] have no ostensible link to the quality of Terminator Salvation, they have convinced me that Christian Bale Tears Shit Up Like A Motherfucker, and I will see any movie he makes." - Me to Carl

"Also, the Transformers proved they were far and away superior once they had the Constructicons -- the 5 construction site vehicles who combine to form DEVASTATOR! As far as blatant rip-offs go, they pretty much nailed it right there!" - Chris to us

"When Devastator showed up in the new Transformers trailer I nearly shit my pants" - Me to Chris

"I'm lovin' the focus." - Demetre to us

Posted by tederick at 9:44 AM in movies & toys!
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Folks, last week was crappy. Between my work computer self-destructing and me getting sick, I basically lost a whole week. An entire five-day span slipped into utter nothingness, as though it had never been. That's a surprisingly disconcerting feeling. But it's over and done now, and one trip to the Central with Sarafina later, I am aces. What a difference a date makes.

Yesterday I sat in on Demetre's casting session. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but casting is a damn strange business. It's nice to sort of get to toe-test the filmmaking universe a bit without actually having to commit to spending every second of my day and night worrying about a project that's going off a week from now, but sitting in a casting room you become very uncomfortably aware of why the world is the way it is. You actually can't just go by objective performance merits; you have to consider whether the girl's boobs are too big, or whether your lead character can be ethnic, or whether the gay guy comes off too gay. You become so instantaneously hyper-aware of every goddamned cliché, stereotype, and unwanted subtext that could possibly flood its way into your picture just by picking any one person who is not statistically identical to you (6 feet tall, male, 32, white). It's amazing anything interesting ever gets made at all.

Nerd alert: toys for new Star Trek movie to be in same scale as Star Wars figures, plan your fights accordingly. (Captain Christopher Pike vs. J'Quille the Wiphid, FTW.)

Nerd alert 2: I am sick beyond words of hearing about Dollhouse. I feel like I've been hearing about this crappy show with no definable premise for half my fucking life. Just get it on the air so you can cancel it already, Fox! It's Joss Whedon's, which makes it an obligation, but also means it will be canceled by its second act break (having been moved to a different timeslot during its first). Get 'er done.

A big fancy feast (and further fondue frip-frappery) this afternoon, a lovely end to a week (or start to a next), and now having felt like I've not had ten minutes to myself for 72 straight hours, perhaps a bit of couch, perhaps a MacCutcheon, perhaps some television like regular people.

Posted by tederick at 9:30 PM in jedi antics & joss & toys!
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You gotta admire the fact that some cheeky bugger out there created a custom Nurse Joker outfit, packed it up with a TrueType body, and is selling it on Ebay, at Hot Toys prices no less. Never slow to catch a drift, Hot Toys themselves are now hinting that a third incarnation of their Joker series is on the way. Me, I'd just run down to the general store and buy an Art S. Buck, make/bash the costume from Barbie paraphernalia, and have the whole thing over and done with for about forty bucks. If I were so inclined.

(That's not the "worth it" of the title.)

What I really wanted to say vis à vis the long-awaited Joker is,

drooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllll.

Done now.

Posted by tederick at 3:17 PM in batman! & toys!
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Last night I had a dream that I went back to 3QF, and found out that half my DVD collection was still there, along with Chris and Human Rights Lawyer, who were a) living there together in connubial bliss and b) surprisingly athletic. (This dream could not possibly be related to current anxieties about career, life planning, or the end of the world). The fact that I can remember this dream seems to demonstrate that I did in fact sleep, which does not tally with my recollection, but there ya go. I do recall shoving my now-22-minute Guy in the Sky assembly cut into a kind of rough order before retiring to the bedroom in a spectacularly bad mood, and after that there was a lot of tossing and turning and accidental punching of Zam. Which is fair, given her behaviour lately.

I watched Rhapsody in August the other day, which I rather enjoyed, and puts me within a single movie of getting to the end of Akira Kurosawa's rather significant body of work. (I do then have to do some back-catchup thanks to that Eclipse set of the postwar years that Criterion released recently.) I also redirected some Christmas Chapters money towards The Sinestro Corps War, which is shiny and absorbing and much more enjoyable than The Silmarillion which, Beren and Luthien aside, just ain't any fun any more. I also, after a treat of a date with my ladyfriend the other day, finally found that goddamned Joker, so I can stop prattling about that. I still wouldn't mind finding myself a pair of the socks, though.

Today, I am trying to ride out what has been a spectacularly frazzling work-week with a modicum of grace, before fading into the weekend. I may walk home.

Posted by tederick at 8:54 AM in 3QF & books & comix & dreams & j-o-b & movies & shinydisks & socks & tederick films & toys! & zam!
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You have no way of knowing this, but when I was... I'm gonna go with 10 years old, me and my best friend videotaped a "Toy Report," which was just us doing a news show about our favourite toys. Yes: I've been this pathetic, for that long. Although I guess one would argue that 10-year-olds are supposed to talk about toys.

In '08, as with '07 and '06, I stopped collecting toys. In the meantime, though, these were the best ones I got:

#1: Davy Jones (Hot Toys)

Sweet googly crap, the entire Movie Masterpiece series for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is pretty goddamned impressive, but they absolutely cranked it out of the park with their final entry, Davy Jones. Unlike every other Davy Jones toy ever produced, this thing actually looks like the character from the movie... and not just a little bit like. SCARILY like. I have the good captain on my desk at work, to remind my underlings what awaits them if they fail.

#2: Sarafina action figure (Tederick Limited Releasing)

Aw no, I guess I can't do that, but I do thank everyone for the kind comments. YEAH! PARKDALE!

The real #2: Yarna D'Al Gargan (Hasbro)

Long ago I promised that if they ever actually made Gargan, I would buy her, and then quit collecting Star Wars figures. Well, done and done.

#3: Mola Ram (Hasbro Mighty Muggs)

Credit to Hasbro for going with the Mighty Muggs concept, which they can just basically repaint endlessly into any number of adorable little squashy men. Adorable little squashy man with ripped-out heart, however, is ingenius! He rips out your heart, cutely!

#4: Deep Space Nine (Diamond Select Toys)

Kicking the line off with Sisko and the Daxes seemed sorta weak and strange to me, but I still get gazoodles of thrill out of having the DS9ers on my desk. The Odo is the best of the lot, with Ezri second, the too-slender Sisko third and Jadzia a distant fourth... and I remain stumped by the continued lack of Ferengi... but with O'Brien, Kira and Bashir joining the line in '09, Trek's own Wild Bunch is gonna keep dominating desk-space for some time to come.

#5: The Crystal Skeleton (Hasbro mail-away toy)

As opined earlier this year, nothing quite ever beat the thrill, as a kid, of cutting out those circular proof-of-purchase tabs from the back of my Star Wars figures and getting a Nien Nunb in the mail 8 weeks later. I got to relive it a bit this summer, even if Hasbro's stupendously slow service meant that I had to go back to 3QF in October to recover a toy that was supposed to arrive in July. It was made up for by the fact that the Crystal Alien, in its fancy chair, is significantly more enjoyable than the entirety of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

And furthermore:

Best toy from a different year: Batman Begins from Takara. They had him at the Silver Snail in 2005 and I didn't buy it because of the exorbitant cost, and probably regretted it on a weekly basis ever after. The new movie finally prompted a reissue, so I snapped it up; still easily the best Batman from any source material at any scale. Phenomenal piece.

Best toy I did not buy: Gandalf the Grey from Sideshow Collectibles. So movie-accurate ya sort of wanna kill yourself. If I had an extra hundred and thirty bucks, and I assure you I do not, I would purchase this right now.

If I could only buy one thing in 2009, I would buy (and I already have): Meltyface McTohtsalot from Sideshow Collectibles.

Toy I thought would top this list but never got the chance cuz it just plum didn't come out: that goddamned Joker.

Posted by tederick at 9:48 PM in toys!
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For Christmas this year, I made this:

It is Sarafina as a rock star ninja, which she was already, but now has a toy about it. I loved doing this. I haven't customized an action figure - heck, I expect there are Tederick.commies reading this who didn't know I ever did - in aeons. Busting out the Dremel, going to the art supply store every couple of days, sanding and painting and spraying and cutting and finishing... boy, this was wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more fun than any gift creation process should ever be. I even made a box:

The Sarafina action figure comes with the following accessories:

• Sword
• Guitar with authentic guitar strap
• Bag of snacks
• Microphone stand
• Portrait of Peter O'Toole as Zaltar in Supergirl, saying "Yes You Can!"
• Figure stand
• Window box.

The Sarafina action figure is a limited edition, #1 of 1.

As used to be the norm for me in projects such as this, I documented the construction process, with notes and additional photos, in my Custom Action Figures section. But be careful - it's geeky in there.

Posted by tederick at 5:15 PM in toys!
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Posted by tederick at 11:45 AM in ADAM & toys!
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"Salad is a mixture of cold foods, usually including vegetables and/or fruits, often with a dressing, occasionally nuts or croutons, and sometimes with the addition of meat, fish, pasta, cheese, or whole grains. Salad is often served as an appetizer before a larger meal." - Wikipedia

Frick. Ing. Tired, internet. How are things on your end? Today is nothing but eggs. Eggs benedict for breakfast (review forthcoming), egg salad for lunch, and tonight, I'm making egg nog. At approximately 11:30, my liver will explode. (From the drinking.) Followed by my heart, though, because of the eggs. I have a table now! How that might figure into the creation of egg dishes escapes me, but it was nice to actually have a sit down dinner of fish and rice and salad at my table with my girlfriend last night. I'm bored. Buy me a starship.

We were conscripted into making gingerbread houses at the office last Friday and since then, I have slowly been eating them. I'm the only one doing so. I am single-handedly decimating an entire gingerbread suburb. People approach me with a mixture of respect and fear, and there's whispering when I walk by.

Boy, the last 2 weeks before the holidays. When you're relentlessly busy for about 12 straight weeks and then it suddenly stops, it's a bit like sucking up a big lungful of nitrous. Giddy!

I am wearing longjohns today.

Posted by tederick at 1:38 PM in foodin' & galaxy far & toys!
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That is some spectacular grossness.

I'm pretty impressed overall. The price is way too high for an un-armoured figure, but the attention to detail is frickin' fanatical. The meltyface swap-out head is not actually the exclusive (the really expensive Ark of the Covenant is, for those who want it), so everyone gets to partake of the meltyface fun. Plus, he comes with every other damn thing right down to the unfolding coat hanger. This will be to next year what the Hot Toys Joker was to this year - the one.

Posted by tederick at 7:38 AM in dr. jones & toys!
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DID! YOU! KNOW! that Umbrella Academy Vol. 2 starts today with issue #1 of Dallas? I wonder if that's city Dallas, TV show Dallas, or captain of the Nostromo Dallas. (Speaking of which: working lights!) I guess we'll find out in a few short hours.

I messed my hair up a bit this morning in an attempt to look emo like Gerard Way or Spider-Man Three, but my hair doesn't work like that. I did, however, spontaneously dance.

Also, today is the day that Batman theoretically either dies, retires from crimefighting, or turns into a giant elk or moose. I'm betting on the latter because Batmooseman is not only a great idea for a comic, but is also the name of a city in Turkey.

For those interested, Michael Crawford's review of the Sideshow Indy figure - which looks in some ways better than I expected, and in some ways worse - is here. I cancelled my order on this a few months ago in a fit of pique, because after all, toys are for little kids. (Still no word on meltyface Toht, by the way.)

And that's yer geek news for today.

Posted by tederick at 12:49 PM in batman! & comix & dr. jones & toys!
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Nothin' says Christmas like a Nazi doll! Woot! He'd better come with a glowing poker and an alternate melty-head (the latter to make up for the cancellation of melty-face Toht from the 3 3/4" Hasbro line).

He could also have a little pull-string on the back that makes him say "Net." And he could come with Mohan, that Mongolian feller. And springs in his legs to make him jump up and down in the snow. HOLY SHIT - what about a puppy. Toht could totally eat a puppy.

Posted by tederick at 7:35 AM in dr. jones & toys!
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Yesterday afternoon Daniel and Demetre rehearsed a few different versions of an idea I had written and now I have Frankensteined together an actual script using sticky tape and initiative. It will be my first movie in well over a year, and might even go to camera before the beginning of December (but barely). After rehearsing we also watched My Best Fiend, which is about Werner Herzog's relationship with an egomaniacal actor named Klaus Kinski, and also Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, which is about Werner Herzog eating his shoe. I am going to be Werner Herzog for Hallowe'en. Daniel, who will be in Germany at the time, will be Klaus Kinski.

I also had banana bread ready when D & D came over, because it does not suck to work with me. I am doing more cooking - honest.

I was disappointed to learn that Sideshow has put their Lord of the Rings 12" figure line on hold, which basically means on cancelled. Apparently sales were weak. Kicking off with a shite Aragorn, charging $70 a head for hobbits, and those goddamned excruciating belt-loops on Faramir and Boromir... they've had some troubles. But boy, this Gandalf is pretty. I wish I could afford it. I'm sure they'll resuscitate the affair come Hobbit season, but I was rather hoping for opportunity for a Gandalf the White. Ah well. Seems rather strange to think that a couple of years from now around this time we're actually going to all go see another (kinda) Lord of the Rings movie... I wonder what that will be like.

Freezing my fingers clean off right now, actually typing with gloves on in my office. I will go home later, more writing, more VHS dumping to data, fixing the Final Cut Pro problem and maybe some editing of rehearsal footage. Getting back on track, big ugly gears, but moving.

Posted by tederick at 11:54 AM in foodin' & movies & pj's playground & tederick films & the process & toys!
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BEST THING EVER.

When I looked at him a minute ago I thought it said "I rip out your heart, Charlie!" which is in a lot of ways even funnier.

Posted by tederick at 1:50 PM in awesomeness & dr. jones & photoblog & toys!
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There are apparently two things I simply cannot forgive:

• Abusing my liberal guilt
• Making a bad Indiana Jones movie.

While in the list-making mode, the Thanksgiving weekend has made me realize that I left two important signposts off my recent list of things that make you an actual grown-up:

• The ability to host dinner parties
• The ability to have people from out of town sleep over
• Formally engaging some kind of financial "retirement plan"
• **NEW!** Cooking a whole turkey
• **NEW!** Waking up in your own bed on Christmas Day, at a home not owned by your parents.

That colour, by the way, was "firebrick." Hex code #800517 for those looking.

Incidentally, my brother tells me some crazy son'bitch out there actually wrapped a turducken (which is actually, by default, a turduckenage, as we explored yesterday) in bacon, thus creating (for all intents and purposes) a bacoturduckenage. Five meats.

Hot Toys Two-Face: not shabby! Neo-Toht with meltyface: not coming! That latter was worth my updating my meagre little Toht fan page from back when the internet had fan pages, for the first time in about eleven years.

Right, so I went to see a puppet show with Rebecca today, which was as decent enough as any a way to spend a holiday Monday. Plus, it's unseasonably warm in T.O. today. I might go for a bike ride back to my old abode, and see if that frickin' crystal skeleton ever showed up. And tonight is all about watching Batman with Mark. Doin' just fine over here.

"Guy rips out the other guy's heart, shows it to him, and tosses him into a fire pit." - Me, explaining to Bex why Temple of Doom continues to have a profound hold on my subconscious

Posted by tederick at 2:32 PM in dr. jones & foodin' & miscellaneous crap & toys!
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And yet notwithstanding, I seem to have moved up to a new scale. Scale is the serious problem of my toy collecting life: I got too big. Let's say you've got a desk, in an office where people are. You go to your local hobby shop and see, for example, a Beetlejuice action figure. And you liked Beetlejuice, and you like the action figure, so you purchase same for your desk, and put it there. And the single 7" Michael Keaton toy on your desk adds a certain "je ne sais quoi" that humanizes the place, creates a useful talking point for visitors, and lets you (when in a bad mood) look at Beetlejuice and think, "hey, fuck, that was a funny movie."

Well, imagine you had a lot of movies you liked just about as much as Beetlejuice, and a bunch you liked more, and toy companies figured out that you existed about 7 years ago, and has spent the intervening time making toys of everything. Say you had sloppy impulse control, a middle class white boy's understanding of the value of a dollar, and a bunch of disposeable income. What would you do, Keanu? What would you do?

Well shit.

Not buying toys any more sucks the balls off the world, but having 300 Star Wars figures sucks more. They're just a mass, an aesthetic puddle - none of them mean anything because each of them means something. I do genuinely look at some - well, most - of these little doo-dads and say, that's a kind of art, or as close to as I care to get right now. But frick lord, they stop making any kind of a statement past a certain scale of collection, and that brings up the other matter of scale, wherein the only way to really stand out among a flock of 4-inchers is to be 8-inch, or better 12-inch, higher detail or higher quality or just whatever. This is a tunnel with no end, unless you really concentrate - fill the nerd case to the top, but no higher - yes Joker, maybe Utapau clone, no bad Indy because you know what? No one in the world can sculpt your face. It's okay.

Yeah, there's a wishlist, particularly for Sideshow (though I'd not say no to a Hasbro Bea Arthur, or a Hot Toys Geoffrey Rush); I want to see that Cody, or that Zam, or a Tusken filthy and sandblasted like a nightmare vision of a future in an iron lung. Past a certain point, though, I chumped myself. Only so much room at home or at the office and then it's just the landscape equivalent of white noise - the salt flats in Gerry, the blizzard in House of Flying Daggers. When they can make an action figure of an idea, call me.

It's like this: I have seven dark grey Benno DVD shelves from Ikea, and then they stopped making the colour. They fucked me. They don't care: seven grey and a green, fucking express yourself you clinging commodity-culture wretch. My next shelf will be red. Why? Because I've run out of ways to keep doing the same thing.

Posted by tederick at 12:21 PM in toys!
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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)
• 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)
• The Yodas:
  • Yoda (animated - the 2D animated, not the crappy 3D animated)
  • Dagobah Yoda
  • Yoda with Kybuck
• The insanely peripheral characters:
  • Aunt Beru
  • Sio Bibble
  • Shmi!
  • General Madine
  • Cloud Car Pilot
  • Wat Tambor
  • Fireship Pilot
  • Rebel Honour Guard
  • Moff Jerjerrod
• The Jabba folk:
  • Oola with Salacious Crumb (Fan Club mail-away)
  • Yarna d'al Gargan
  • Max Rebo
  • Ephant Mon
• The ladies:
  • Padmé (Pilot)
  • Princess Leia (Jabba's Prisoner) - v1 , v2
  • Queen Amidala (Theed)
  • Queen Amidala (Celebration)
• The Lukes:
  • Luke Skywalker (Bacta Tank)
  • Luke Skywalker (hologram)
• The Solos:
  • Han Solo (Hoth rescue, blue coat variant)
  • Han Solo (Bespin capture)
• The miscellaneous monsters:
  • Tion Medon
  • Sebulba
  • Bantha
• The droids:
  • R2-Q2
  • R5-D4
  • R2-D2 with holographic Princess Leia
  • R4-M9
  • R1-G4
  • TC-14
  • STAP with battle droid (Episode 1 preview)
• The clonesmen:
  • Commander Cody
  • Utapau trooper
• The Force-wielders:
  • Qui-Gon Jinn with Eopie (Japanese import)
  • Darth Sidious (holographic)
  • Yarael Poof
• The cute little furry bastards:
  • Teebo
  • Graak (a.k.a. Lumat?)
• The folk with stuff chopped off:
  • Jango Fett with removable head
  • Zam Wesell with removable arm
  • Tusken Raider with removable head
• The Mothma:
  • Mon Mothma (Episode III)
• The Man:
  • General Calrissian

Ye photography and linkes all thanks to Rebelscum.com. Still the best, and they've got this.

Posted by tederick at 9:43 AM in ADAM & galaxy far & toys!
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That's me.

Yeah, I used to own the Palisades Mr. Brown from many a moon ago (back when there was a Palisades Toys, of course), but Zam pretty much destroyed mine over the past few years. I found a replacement at a stupendous bargain on Ebay last week, so Quentin Tarantino is pointing a gun at me once again. It used to force me to write; now, at least, it keeps me honest.

Hey speaking of fun shit you can do with shit, here's a woman dressed up as a Cookie Monster Slayer. Now, if it was me, that would not be red blood on the stake - it would be either bright blue, or uncooked cookie dough with chunks of blue fur sticking out of it. (Probably the latter.) Me, I always liked Telly. I think there should be Telly action figures. I think Telly and Mr. Brown would look quite good together, actually, and if you stick General Madine in there, you pretty much seal the deal.

Today was the day I got everything in the mail that was supposed to come to me, over the past five weeks. All at once. Most important of all was the replacement for my camcorder adapter, because somehow in the moving shuffle I actually lost the old one. I thought that only happened on TV, but it made me feel stupendously stupid and impotent nonetheless, and reminded me rather violently of my responsibilities to myself on a creative level. Nonetheless, although I do not feel very well today (physically), I (otherwise) feel full and wonderful and very, very thankful. (Hey, five days early!) So that's good. Fall's a good time to do a thing.

"Personality-wise, Telly is a fidgeting, nervous wreck, prone easily to manic behavior and paranoia."

Posted by tederick at 3:05 PM in miscellaneous crap & toys! & tv
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At Sarafina's suggestion I put Jabba on the fridge, which was something that had been kicking the back of my mind anyway, and thus turned a large and unwieldy collectible I was seriously considering getting rid of, into the best thing about my house. Jabba on the fridge: pop art, cautionary tale, or just good decorating? A bit of all three, I think.

I spent the afternoon making chili and watching The Godfather.

Posted by tederick at 6:05 PM in 1701 & awesomeness & foodin' & toys!
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Was a time, I used to customize some action figures. I never really got into paint ops much, or at least, not paint ops that involved the likeness - I am a shitty detail painter and portrait artist (but goddamned tremendous at paint-aging, I will tell ya). Anyways, Hot Toys - who have pretty much owned the year, toy-wise, with their Masterpiece Series Pirates of the Caribbean figures and now these forthcoming Dark Knight toys - went ahead and let the head of their paint department, JC Hong, demonstrate what he can really do with his tools, when not limited by the inherent down-rezzing of detail that comes with mass production. He took that Bank Robber Joker I was so drooly about a couple of weeks ago, which is already no slouch in the sculpt/paint/likeness department,

and did this.

Bit of a finger-waving "nyah nyah", because of course collectors will never see a product hit the shelves with even close to that level of fidelity (I mean, blink your eyes and you could actually mistake that photo for Heath Ledger). But on a pure fanboy geek level of a guy who dressed down his Millennium Falcon with garbagey sludge water when he was 12 just to make it look like it had really spent some time in space, I'm a' gonna call JC Hong a genius, and that one-of-a-kind paint op a piece of art, and sorta just think about it for a while, cuz it makes me happy.

Posted by tederick at 2:38 PM in batman! & toys!
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What does she use it for?

• Back scratching?
• Pointing at people?
• Poking holes in cloth?
• Stirring?
• Conducting?
• Magic?
• Breaking in two when frustrated?
• Galactic conquest?
• Reading?
• Yoda?
• The art of misdirection?
• Tap?
• or simply the allure of a mysterious woman holding a stick?

"Mon Mothma's Mothma Stick" is too ostentatious for a band name, so let's use it as a track name instead.

Also: why does General Madine also need a mothma stick? And why does he get to use it in the actual movie?

Posted by tederick at 10:07 AM in galaxy far & toys!
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I sure thought that short, fat Lando was outta sight, but a frickin' 12" Blacula is OUTTA SIGHT!!!

I could fight 'em!

Now to be fair, if I were to have my druthers, Blacula would actually be low on the list of blaxploitation icons that I'd want to see turned into toys. A 12" vintage Shaft (preferably anatomically correct), a Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed 2-pack, a Pam Grier made with a Triad female figure body and maybe some knives... that'd be all right. Certainly someone out there has the wherewithal to create a fully articulated Sweetback with his foot placed firmly up the Man's ass?

Posted by tederick at 9:02 PM in toys!
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Now, I'm still going to try my ass off to get this Joker

even though it's proving tricky as a cat scratch to find any retailer in Canada who will actually be carrying the dang-old thing (even my beloved Snail).

That said, however, if I had money to burn and a fuck of a lot of time on my hands I'd probably also get this Joker

cuz good lord howdy, he's pretty good. He's a bank robber! And I would pose him on my shelf with his mask in his hand and his back to us, à la this:

and that would be just fine, in my opinion.

I am obsessed with that man's clothes. That's all there is to it.

Posted by tederick at 9:20 AM in batman! & toys!
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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.

Posted by tederick at 9:07 AM in ADAM & comix & galaxy far & movies & toys!
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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.

Posted by tederick at 3:45 PM in ADAM & arcana & death & galaxy far & pirates & poetical & toys!
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Today sucks, for reasons blah, and blah-ha, and boo-hoo, which I shall not utter here. I shall, however, say: Ha! (Not a "ha" of merriment. A "ha" of deep, diaphragm-clenching malaise.)

I will also say that if you're going to have a gigantic see-thru glowing toy bust of Fat Palp on your desk (I'm not), this is the one to have. Tell me this ain't some scary shit. Damn the Japanese are weird.

Unsurprisingly given the storm clouds over my head today and also the obvious cinematic parallels in The Dark Knight, I've been thinking about There Will Be Blood quite a bit lately. The TWBB blu-ray remains one of the highlights of my collection and the flick is just, well... "even better every time" don't cover it. It's goddamned stunning. In fact I think a blu-ray TWBB/TDK double feature (to be subtitled: The Night America Stole Your Soul) would be quite the crushing experience of cinematic awesomeness, examining the complete dissolution of moral certainty in the 21st century, and I may stage such a viewing at 1701 in the fall sometime.

That's right, 1701: behold the tag for my new domicile, in which I shall be living solo starting on September 1 of this year. I signed the lease on Friday. Now I'm all bound up with labour and logistics. More detail to follow.

Posted by tederick at 1:49 PM in 1701 & galaxy far & miscellaneous crap & movies & toys!
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