RIP Burt Reynolds

Posted on September 15, 2018 by Steve

Alas, here is my overdue obituary for Burt who was really the king of Action and Comedy-Action movies for my generation’s childhood. He still had quite a career in the decades following but the Seventies were when Burt was in his prime: Smokey and the Bandit, Gator, White Lightning, Starting Over (a huge departure for him), The End (one of his best in my opinion), The Longest Yard, Nickelodeon and Deliverance. However, Burt was equally frustrating due to his propensity to make dreck: Stroker Ace, Rough Cut, The Man Who Love Women, Smokey and the Bandit II and Part 3, Paternity, Rent-a-Cop, The Longest Yard remake with (not funny) Adam Sandler and The Dukes of Hazard movie. Hooper and Cannonball Run were vanity projects yet they have their charms thanks to the legendary stunt director Hal Needham. This pattern of bad decisions continued even after Boogie Nights gave him a Tarantino-eseque boost.

Another thing I will always remember well about Burt was his ability to be a fantastic guest star in numerous TV shows and a few films. He was able shed his ego because no one laughed harder about himself than Burt, his guffaws were a trademark; Johnny Carson did a joke about that. Key appearances he made in my mental library as himself: The Larry Sanders Show, Archer (Archer couldn’t handle him dating his mother), Silent Movie (the shower bit remains one of his funniest scenes of his career), Dinner for Five (he had an incredibly compelling story about Robert Mitchum) and Robot Chicken. Others in which he had a small role as a character: Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask (hilarious as the switchboard operator), King of the Hill, Duckman, American Dad!, Duck Dodgers, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (video game) The X-Files and long ago, he was on The Twilight Zone as a Marlon Brando type who offended a time traveling Shakespeare.

In closing I want to bring up a little something special involving Burt if you’re ever in Milwaukee. At the SafeHouse, a combo restaurant and bar with a spy theme, the women’s room has a large print of Burt’s famous semi-nude photo he did for Cosmopolitan with a star covering up a key area. Whenever a female touches the star, the whole place hears an alert and usually everybody gets a good laugh. I have no idea if Burt ever found out let alone visited the SafeHouse but I’m confident he approved.

Thanks Burt. I’m confident your legend will live on through your gigantic body of work.

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Rest in Peace Hank

Posted on September 13, 2018 by Steve

This week my friends had to put their dog to sleep (he was getting on in years, illness) and although I’m a cat person, dogs make me nervous since I was bit in the ass by my own dog in the early Eighties, I am sad to see Hank go. He was a very sweet and loyal dog. Like most mid-to-large dogs, he didn’t know his own strength or mass when he demonstrated how excited he was to meet you. What I am going to miss most of all is his ability to either sit in my lap or was he trying to push me out of what he considered his seat.

Farewell Hank, I’m glad you got to spend your final years with the Derrs and be loved.

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Modern Enemy Monthly featuring the Blue Morpho

Posted on September 12, 2018 by Steve

I signed up for the subscription for this season of The Venture Brothers because I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss out on any OSI designs for Somara, she loves anything involving Brock. Above is another cover from the imaginary trade magazine for the Guild of Calamitous Intent, probably warning their members that an old enemy, the Blue Morpho (a parody of the Green Hornet), has returned. For those who’ve been watching the show, or got caught up through Hulu, we know the true identity and backstory.

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17 years at the same house and place!

Posted on September 11, 2018 by Steve

I totally spaced on the day we closed on the house last week and 17 years ago, September 4, 2001, a week before the shit storm solidifying Bush the Lesser’s reign of error.

As for staying in place, I continue to pinch myself every few weeks to make sure it’s not a dream or nightmare. When I left Austin in late 1997 for Raleigh-Durham, I figured that I was infected by the Maggi Gypsy curse, meaning I would be picking up my crap and moving to another city every few years. I have no idea what would follow Raleigh-Durham if I surrendered myself to it. Thankfully I decided to return to Austin because it was the last place I was genuinely happy and independent. The return was difficult for the first year but within three years I took the plunge to own a house and have never looked back.

I think living in the same city for roughly 24 years, 17 in our house is a good counter to changing high schools every year.

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Finally…My Life as a Teenage Robot on a shirt

Posted on September 9, 2018 by Steve

Here is the title character Jenny (model XJ-9) from a short-lived yet awesome Nickelodeon cartoon created by Rob Renzetti. I loved it because of the retro Art Deco style (many hard angles) and the main plot point was Jenny striving to be a normal teenager, similar to Lt. Commander Data on Star Trek: Next Generation, while juggling her earth-saving duties.

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Forgive me, I share some of the responsibility on this one

Posted on September 8, 2018 by Steve

A recent article in Mental Floss showed that the RIAA has updated its list regarding the best-selling albums of all time. For several decades it was Michael Jackson’s Thriller at over 25 million according to my memory. It stormed to the top by my sophomore year of high school 35 years ago. After further data gathering and probably Jackson’s legacy being tarnished by his pedophilia, the Eagles have pulled ahead to number one at 38 million copies with their all killer, no filler greatest hits. I contributed to this milestone in 1985 when I bought a vinyl copy in high school; buying Don Henley’s solo stuff is what led me to it. I know, my alternative credentials are probably tarnished but it was a phase I am not ashamed of. Still, the genius of this compilation was the work of David Geffen while he was an employee of Elektra Records. He instinctively knew the Eagles’ popularity was rising and he found a way to fuel further anticipation of their swan song Hotel California (surprisingly number three on the list).

Today it’s faddish for anyone under 60 to crap all over the Eagles thanks to the overrated film The Big Lebowski. Given what a pair of douchebags Don Henley and Joe Walsh can be, some of the criticism is deserved. However, as an owner of their pre-1994 remastered catalog, I offer a modest defense. The sound, aka “the California Sound” they perfected then has never really be duplicated despite the rise in Americana material; Jason Isbell, Drive-By Truckers, Dwight Yoakum, Steep Canyon Rangers and Hank III readily come to mind. It is also uniquely American. It’s not completely original by any stretch of the imagination. They cribbed from the Bakersfield Sound (aka Buck Owens) and the record I think that started it all, the Byrds’ Sweethearts of the Rodeo laid the groundwork for what Henley and the late Glen Frey wanted to do.

Meanwhile, if you look at the rest of the list, you will notice there are no albums from the Aughts or later. This is due to the music industry’s ecosystem collapsing through Napster, iTunes, etc. and sales no longer being tied to the purchase of CDs just to get the annoying single people want to hear ad nauseum. Maybe in another generation today’s du jour music will catch up to push out Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors or anything by Garth Brooks.

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First Activity/Fitness badge for September 2018!

Posted on September 8, 2018 by Steve

I’m taking a more aggressive stance or attempt or whatever with my exercising this month. The joint Activity application on my Watch and iPhone offered two challenges for September; exercise every day (which means, close both the move and exercise ring) and do at least eight workouts of 15 minutes or more. As you can see, I achieved the latter! Now I just need to get my ass to the gym for 30-plus minutes of aerobic activity for the next 22 days which would also beat my streak of 19 days in a row.

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Summer of ’18 is over part two

Posted on September 3, 2018 by Steve

Another Summer bites the dust. I readily admit, I miss the way it used to be when I was a kid, teenager and college student. Being an adult with responsibility sucks. We do experience Summer in other ways but just not as great as we used to.

This Summer was pretty cool though. A few concerts. A visit from my nephews who live in Qatar. A weekend trip to San Antonio to check out Brick Fiesta. A good string of movies at Alamo and the discount theater. Met some celebrities at a comic book convention. Time spent reading, writing and relaxing at the public library, this one I never thought I’d ever enjoy when I was a kid. I enjoyed reading yet sometimes going there can feel like school.

I hope everyone had a great Summer themselves. I’m optimistic about the upcoming Fall activities in Austin. I just need to clear up some paperwork, then I think all will come together along with the “perfect” exercise month I’m pushing to achieve.

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Two awful cartoons on Netflix, just avoid them

Posted on September 3, 2018 by Steve

While there’s been a huge wave of disappointment over Groening’s new show for Netflix, I want to bring up a pair of cartoons which are much, much worse. Not as a way to raise Disenchantment‘s ratings by trashing others. No. I will blather on how much like it but I want to watch it all the way through one more time before I write. My point in in bringing these other shows forward for criticism is that I hope to spare you all from wasting any of your time and hopefully the people running Netflix’s algorithm will tweak it, then produce something a helluva’ lot better. Stuff on par with Bojack Horseman, F is for Family, All Hail King Julian! and Big Mouth, the latter returns this October!

First up is what I’m guessing is an Australian version of Archer, aka Pacific Heat. In short, it’s the misadventures of four cops stationed in Queensland fighting gangsters, terrorists, whatever. One officer is smart, one is vain and two aren’t very bright. Most attempts at humor are its rapid-fire dialog (I think these are supposed to be the jokes) and showing semi-racist stereotypes of Asians. The accents are probably dumb downed for a wider audience but after a couple episodes, I just couldn’t find it funny nor amusing. The animation quality is also pretty terrible, resembles what people did with Flash in Nineties.

Debuting over this weekend if Paradise PD and it’s from the team who are responsible (or we can blame) for Brickleberry. It’s practically the same show, just swap out the park rangers for cops and throw in additional gore, cursing and nudity because you can on Netflix. It has the A-list when it comes to voice actors: Tom Kenny, David Herman, Sarah Chalke (Beth on Rick & Morty) and Grey Griffin (formerly DeLisle). The problem here is the premise is tired and old; an incompetent police department yet the spin is this is in animated form. There were greater and funnier shows I can quickly list to put your time to better use: The Thin Blue Line with Rowan Atkinson; Barney Miller, hell Brooklyn 99 and I’ve never seen that, I’m going on the recommendation of friends I trust.

The jokes in Paradise go for what the creators must think are easy laughs. They are, if you’re under 20 and even then, the funniest show before this was Family Guy.

Even if you don’t watch either of these turds in Netflix’s punch bowl, please do me a favor, search for them, mark ’em “thumbs down,” and we can hope Reed Hastings gets the hint on how to have his staff vet harder on what’s actually funny.

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Creative Brick Builder helps out in making another starfighter

Posted on September 3, 2018 by Steve

This weekend, our favorite used Lego place had a sale. All the Lego bricks you can fit in a box for the great price of $3.99! As much as we love the (official) Lego Store way down at the Barton Creek Mall, when you get free-standing Legos, they tend to be plain bricks, namely the square or rectangular ones. Sometimes they offer unique choices: flowers, coins, levers, wheels, control panels, etc. Good luck on finding wing pieces or nosecones. This is where Creative Brick Builder comes in handy. Much like the Web site Bricklink.com, there are bins and bins of loose stuff containing whatever you can imagine.

So I took the instruction manual with me to see how far I would get recreating this Striker-class starfighter from the Old Republic product line. Not bad. I managed to build the chassis which would entail all of bag one in the original package. I only finished one wing because I had no luck finding a large wing part but I do have all the little Legos which will go on top making a pattern, especially the hinge element. I think the hodgepodge of colors are cool. Maybe I will gradually swap out some parts whenever I find matching colors.

I will definitely post the finished product when I complete it. The one major part I’m confident that will cost me is the canopy or cover to the cockpit. Those are always tricky to get the right fit on. Luckily, I found the one for the Z-95 Headhunter which will be my next project to build for less money.

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My new Hello Kitty Chucks

Posted on September 3, 2018 by Steve

Somara gave me the green light to buy these limited edition Chucks from Converse.com as a birthday present to myself. I should’ve acted faster since my size (US 11 Men) were already gone when I bought them; I can handle a little bigger (these are US 11.5 Men). I suspect a couple things: they didn’t make many in “large” sizes and/or there were other men like me who wanted them. Why not women? I don’t know many women who wear a US 13 other than fictional character Peggy Hill; she’s really Women’s 16.

The special box the shoes came in

Converse pulled out all the stops on these, much as they did with Andy Warhol, The Simpsons and every DC Comics pair. I’m on the fence about saving the box or donating to a little kid.

Here’s a little barrette for the laces at the top

The tongue has the Hello Kitty logo

The optional Hello Kitty laces which I chose over the white ones

The “outside” showing Hello Kitty and her friends

The “inside” of the shoes showing them facing outwards

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Three Identical Strangers: Worth Seeing

Posted on September 1, 2018 by Steve

This was my free movie from Alamo Drafthouse for 2018. It was worth the drive down to the South Lamar location.

Anybody over forty-ish may remember the core story about these guys since they were all over the talk-show circuit in the early Eighties (Donohue, Today, Good Morning America, etc) and People magazine. Personally, I have no recollection. I was totally absorbed with being a kid, playing D&D, trying to adjust to life in Houston and watching MTV. I’m going to work on the assumption their story is new because it was for me.

The short version is Eddy, David and Robert rediscovered each completely by accident when they were 19. Their birth mother was a teenager with an unplanned pregnancy so she gave them up for adoption. When they were about six months old, the agency broke them up and each was raised by different families in the New York City area. Initially they’re just overjoyed to find each other. Then comes the media circus in which they reveal in interviews how much they have in common despite being apart:

  • They smoke the same brand of cigarettes
  • They were wrestlers in high school
  • They have sisters who are two years older
  • They have similar tastes in women

The triplets use their newfound celebrity status to party in their early twenties, have a cameo in Desperately Seeking Susan and eventually go into business together, a high-end steak restaurant called Triplets.

Meanwhile, their parents confront the adoption agency since they were all willing to take in all three together. They get bamboozled by the board and its lawyers so they leave feeling defeated, but one parent re-entered the meeting room when he realized he forgot his umbrella. He caught the board toasting themselves with champagne as if they were celebrating how they just dodged a bullet. This prompts the parents to sue the agency. Oddly, no lawyers will take their case due to the agency’s speciality in adoptions for Jewish families and somehow every firm they speak with has an employee that would have a conflict of interest. Personally, I’m puzzled here. These parents couldn’t find a group of exclusively gentile lawyers?

As Eddy, David and Robert get older, married and wiser…they start to connect the dots too. Some matters they thought were coincidences may have been calculated by a prestigious psychiatrist named Peter B Neubauer who specialized in the “nature v. nurture” debate. Turns out, they weren’t the only children broken up for his study, a set of twins found each other with eerie similarities:

  • Researchers from the agency would come by every six months to run tests on the adopted children.
  • One was adopted by a working-class immigrant family (shopkeep), one by a middle-class family (teacher) and one by an affluent family (doctor).

The filmmakers do manage to interview a couple people tied to Neubauer’s work. One became a professor in Michigan and the other I’m not clear on yet she hobnobbed with the rich and powerful. Both are rather cavalier on what they did in my opinion; they dismiss it as the attitude of the era. In the end, Neubauer’s study and its conclusions are locked up with Yale until 2066.

At this point, if I’ve piqued your curiosity, see the movie. The revelation of Eddy, David and Robert being guinea pigs isn’t a spoiler. There’s no way in hell coincidence was involved when their story began and there really wouldn’t be much of a movie if it did. For those of you who know what happened later, keep it to yourself and still check it out. Strangers is an excellent documentary.

Alamo Extras: Trailers for the Kung Fu movie Dynamite Trio and Triple Impact; UK newsreels showing roller skaters doing tricks, three tap dancers and three acrobats; the German band Trio performing on Japanese TV; the Danny Lipton Trio Dancers; the Del Rubio Triplets performing on Pee Wee’s Playhouse; and a commercial for Eddy, David and Robert’s Triplets steak house.

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Los Angeles Achieved!

Posted on September 1, 2018 by Steve

After sleeping in the bulk of the week like a slug, I kicked off September by finishing my first exercise-bike goal, reaching the distance between my house and Los Angeles! According to my spreadsheet, I’m only 0.17 miles over the distance. Darn. I thought I would be much further since I sat at 99% since Sunday.

On to the next target, the distance between my house and NYC. If you recall with my running, I’m not starting over, I’m shooting for the next “marker” which as you’ll see on side with the progression bar…1512 miles. Shouldn’t be too hard.

The bigger challenge will be achieving a perfect month. I know I attempted this earlier in the year but I’m confident I can succeed. Only 29 more days to go and there’s an extra one I will achieve if I workout for 15 minutes or longer for eight days this month.

My right knee still stings when I climb up “hard” stairs (concrete usually) so running remains on the back burner.

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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Worth Seeing

Posted on August 31, 2018 by Steve

The last Marvel movie for 2018 and it had its work cut out given the monumental events from Infinity War. In short, Ant-Man 2 delivered. It was also the second part of my birthday double feature!

We return to the misadventures of Scott Lang who is currently under house arrest thanks to his involvement with Captain America in Civil War. I think he received a deal but the one part Scott won’t cooperate with the FBI on is the whereabouts of Dr. Pym and Hope Van Dyne. Well, beyond a burner cell phone to reach them, he doesn’t really have a clue.

Meanwhile, Pym and Hope have been researching the means to rescue the original Wasp, Janet Van Dyne, because Scott proved it was possible to survive and return from the subatomic realm (from the first movie). Their need for specialized high-tech equipment draws the interest of criminals and a mysterious adversary who has ghostlike abilities due to their quantum powers (means the villain is in unpredictable states from what I understand through my personal research on quantum computing). The cool part is the heroes go get assistance from Dr. Bill Foster played by a personal fave Laurence Fishburne! He gets to be in a good superhero movie for a change.

As expected there’s multiple sequences involving shrinking/enlarging while the heroes fight the villains, get chased and the supporting cast chips in to help Scott any way they can, hint, jokes involving “truth serum.” They managed to find some new size jokes too. The ants don’t help as much sadly. Being part of the MCU, stay put until the very end since the nagging question we all have throughout is, “When does this take place in regards to the Infinity War?”

Alamo Extras: Trailers for the movies Them, Phase IV, Empire of the Ants and Matinee (plus some scenes of the latter); scenes from the cartoon Inch High Private Eye; Trailer for Agent 00 (a midget super spy), old-timey cartoon of ants going to war; a home movie of Paul Rudd as a DJ at girl’s bat mitzvah; Rudd in an SNES commercial (his early days); an Adult Swim bit with Paul and a computer; re-cap of the first Ant-Man.

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RIP Neil Simon

Posted on August 31, 2018 by Steve

Caught the news of his passing this Sunday on our way home from the movies. He’d been out of the spotlight for so long, I forgot he was even alive. Shame on me given his body of work I devoured as a pre-teen via HBO. Thanks to early years of the entertainment behemoth I saw Simon’s prime material: The Goodbye Girl, Murder by Death, The Cheap Detective, Seems Like Old Times and The Prisoner of Second Avenue. Network TV showed The Sunshine Boys and the one everybody knows, The Odd Couple. Through these movies I gained a better understanding of certain comedy tropes, namely his Film Noir parodies and life in New York.

Neil was much like his contemporaries: Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and Carl Reiner. He started out doing the usual dreck in the Borscht Belt and early TV, then branched out to write stuff you wouldn’t expect from a former television writer.

Thanks for the jokes Neil. I personally love Murder by Death the most since it’s a who’s who (by other names) of the most popular detectives from film and novels.

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