Halloween Scene: The Superhero Party

Whew, I'm sure like me, you're a bit tired of horror movies. Heck, I even sent the Netflix DVD of Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer back unwatched because it seemed super intense and I just don't think I could watch another murder movie. So, you probably will be seeing a lot more action and comedy movie reviews and more comic stuff. I've been kicking around the idea of reviewing some of my all time favorite comics, movies and records throughout November, but we shall see. Hit the jump for the full story and pics!

Before getting too sick of Halloween, I had one hell of a Halloween night. Actually, it started on Halloween Eve when I got Em to actually watch two of my absolute favorite horror movies Halloween and Jaws. She even kept trying to go and read her book but Jaws kept sucking her in. The next day, before the party, Em made these awesome monster cupcakes while we watched several hours of Ghost Hunters (it's a pretty good show actually).



As you probably know from my post the other day, I went as the Golden Age Green Lantern, but what you didn't know is that my lovely wife went as her favorite superheroine Black Canary. We did this because our friends Amy and John had a superhero themed party (which is crazy because they're not huge comic geeks like me and Rickey).

Rickey and Sam came to the party a little later, but looked awesome dressed as Golden Age Flash and Zatana. We apparently didn't get a picture of them together, but we did get some rad team-up pics of Rickey and myself and then Sam and Em. Here's the pics!





Our lovely hosts John and Amy dressed as the Joker from Dark Knight (in nurse duds) and an Arkham Asylum-inspired Harley Quinn (they're flanking the group photo which also features Ashly as Tinkerbell and Constantina as Wonder Woman). Amy and John also dressed their dog Guinness as Krypto the Super Dog! As a matter of fact, with the exception of a really good Hellboy movie costume, everyone who dressed as a superhero or villain dressed as a DC one, which is interesting. There was even a girl there dressed as Spoiler, but we didn't get a pic.



After pleasantries were through, we got down to the nitty gritty. And by that I mean we played some beer pong! John actually has a table he built to regulation specs. Somehow Rickey and I won three or four games in a row before tanking. He really held the team together because I only got about one, maybe two in each game. As you can see int he pic of Em doing a fantastic impression of Christopher Lloyd in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the ping pong balls all had eye balls printed on them. After Rickey and I were defeated, we split up and Sam and I played a game. I also started messing around with the fog machine in the room, which resulted in a completely smoke-filled room by the end of the night. It was epic.





Then, after we got back to our place, this happened and we got about 3 minutes into Texas Chainsaw Massacre before deciding to just call it quits and go to bed. A good time was had by all and I didn't even drunk dial anyone (though I did play some pretty terrible Guitar Hero/Rock Band)!


Oh, DO go on.

NYSeen: Steve Martin Statue

It's been over a month since I've been a regular in New York City, but I just had to share this picture of a wall sculpture in Penn Station. It wasn't on our usual route, so I didn't see it for a while, but when I did, I stopped dead in my tracks (something I hate when other people do while walking anywhere in the city), pointed like David Brent points at the Bart Simpson doll and just looked between it and Rickey and Ben. The resemblance is crazy, right? It looks just like Steve Martin! Anyone know the story of this thing?

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Oh, DO go on.

Dirty Candles

I was rooting around my Drop Box, taking stock of what images I have in there that haven't made it up on the blog yet and came across these hilarious candles we saw when we went to Oktoberfest.




You can buy your own jars of Mmm...Nice Melons and Smell My Nuts at Our Own Candle Company's site. From what I remember, they did smell pretty good. You know, if you want your house to smell like entendre (double or otherwise).

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Oh, DO go on.

Wonderful World of Oz

I saw this post on io9 about the five remaining munchkins from Wizard of Oz getting together for a quick interview and it got me thinking back to my days as a chorus member in my high school musicals. The reason I even tried out my sophomore year of high school was because they were doing Wizard Of Oz and I wanted to be a flying monkey (this monkey thing goes back quite a ways). Anyway, we had a new director named Michael Kastner and he wanted to make a splash by getting a surviving munchkin to come and hang out, take pictures and sign autographs. Well, when I saw the io9 post I checked the video and unfortunately Clarence Swensen is no longer with us, but don't feel too bad for him, he lived until this year to the ripe old age of 91. Impressive. Anyway, here's my picture with Clarence. By my count, I was 16 when this picture was taken and it's fairly embarrassing, but what the hell? I swear, I didn't wear makeup on a regular basis, it was after one of the performances. I wish I didn't look like a weirdo serial killer in it, sorry Clarence.


In a strange twist of fate I was actually just talking about this photo with Kevin in the context that I have two photos with famous people, this one and one with John Landis and myself. I'll try and dig that one up too.

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Oh, DO go on.

Demolition Derby

As I mentioned a couple days ago, I had a very redneck weekend (literally in fact, as I got a little color on the back of my neck thanks to walking around the flea market), which included a demolition derby at the Orange County Fair Speedway. I had never been to something like this before, but, hearing that there would be a bus race, I was in (well, kinda, I probably wouldn't have gone on my own, but Em and her parents and Amy were all going, so what the hell?).

And you know what? I was a little disappointed. The bus race had three short buses and then two longer ones, so it wasn't a big surprise who would win that one. There was a funny moment where one of the dudes near me turned to his buddies and said "How do you think they get the buses here?" Probably zeppelin. Then there was a trailer race, but two of the cars were just pulling two wheel trailers with nothing on it. The rest were vans pulling campers. I proudly admit that I totally called the winner of that race (yeah green van!). There was also a stuntman of sorts who drove a semi truck into a bus that was standing straight up on the emergency exit sticking in the air. Oh, there was also this race where the cars had their hoods and trunks tied up so they couldn't see shit. Craziness. Then, the demolition derby started and I gotta say, I was highly disappointed. See, it wasn't a figure eight or anything like that, because they had people in the center with their trucks and whatever, so what they did was they cordoned off a section of one of the long parts of the track and just had these dudes smash into each other. There was hardly any carnage, very little fire and no one hit with a tire. Ah well, here's the slide show, I figured this would be easier than showing each picture individually. Oh, also, the pictures clearly suck, but it's hard to get a good shot of a slow moving bus apparently.

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Oh, DO go on.

New England's A Weird Place

As I alluded to in the past few days, I was gone on a mini trip last weekend with Em to visit her parents and grandma in a Massachusetts coastal town called Ipswitch. Em's grandma used to live there and now she rents a cabin (or camp as she calls it) every year towards the end of the summer for a month and we try and make it out every year. This year's trip was pretty interesting as it rained for most of the 4 hour drive there and was generally miserable as far as the weather goes for Friday and Saturday (luckily it got really nice on Sunday and we were able to enjoy the sun while Em's aunt, uncle and cousins came to visit).

Have I mentioned that I love having a phone that takes pretty good pictures that I can easily put on my computer? If not I do. And thanks to it, I can share these pics with you. Make it through the house and beach ones and I promise you a picture of an epic T-Rex image unlike anything you've seen before!

Here's a few pics of the camp itself, the surroundings and the incredible view of the ocean. It's not the most pleasant place to be when it's pouring rain and cold, but when it's nice, it's amazing. As a side note, I apparently can't sleep in a wooden cabin with the wind and rain banging against a house. Good to know.





To keep ourselves busy on Saturday we went to a little town I don't remember the name of, but they had this amazing store called Enchanted Forest.


EC had some amazingly weird stuff including Life Is Crap shirts, I like this one about whiskey.


Then, I turned to my right and saw this EPIC T-shirt featuring two T-Rexes fighting on a mountain with lightning in the background! Too bad they only had kid sizes.


Not wanting to solely focus on dinosaurs, EC also has plenty of things starring dragons, like this statue and snowglobe.




While walking through town I also saw a TON of these posters hanging around.


In case you can't read it, here's the various text boxes from top down and left to right. "I Fall For You." "Modern couples/Used to be gay...going straight?" "Time Traveling Lesbian!/Her Amazon Adventure." "Sexy parlor games/Turn tables on cheating hubby!" "Woman finds her gynecologist in a singles bar!" "Missing member turns up...in church!" "Mr. Happy's shocking leap of death!" And finally, at the bottom "A few short plays about sex and romance." Yes, that all does sound very romantical.

We also got a glimpse of these pop culture rubber duckies, gotta love that someone thought it'd be a good idea to turn one of the most revered comedians of his day who died far too young thanks to drugs and alcohol into a rubber ducky. Oh, plus a slasher.



And on the way home I saw these mints at TJ Maxx, and because I'm truly 14 at heart, took a picture and giggled like a school girl.


Oh, DO go on.

NYSeen: Gross Clump Of...Hair?

I've been working in NYC for a few months now (I actually don't even remember when we moved down there) and I've seen all kinds of craziness. It wasn't until last month that I got a phone that could take decent pictures, so I've been sort-of documenting some of the weird and interesting things I've seen like this:


Whatever this pile of grossness is (hair? fur?), it got stuck on the bottom of my shoe after leaving Bryant Park. I was pretty grossed out, but just had to snap a picture because...well, I can. It's not the best picture because I wanted to get away from that monstrosity toot-sweet, but to give you an idea, it was about the size of a frolf disc and quit dense.

Any other thoughts on what it might be?

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Oh, DO go on.

Wizard World Philly Weekend

Last night Em and I got back from Wizard World Philly and, as always, it was a trip.

After picking up Justin and Rickey , we got to the show Friday morning and got right to work after getting some lunch after checking in. The highlight of my day was sort of moderating a Q&A panel with Tom Savini, a man whose work I've been enjoying since I started watching horror movies. I say "sort of" because Tom handled the thing pretty much on his own while I struggled with a laptop. For anyone in attendance, I swear I'm slightly more adept at computers than I appeared at the panel. Tom was a great sport though and once we got everything up and running he showed off the next installment of Chill Factor, which was a story he wrote and directed and had the students that work with him to learn filmmaking do the rest. It was pretty rad, so keep an eye out for it. Em was even nice enough to video tape the whole thing, so maybe I'll get it up on YouTube at some point. I didn't, however, get a picture with him because I was running around so much.

Later that day there was a big toy industry panel that was super interesting, just like last years'. Look for more information on that in ToyFare. Friday night we grabbed lunch at a place called the Field House (you can actually spend the full weekend at WWP without going outside if you want to because so many things are connected around there). After that we headed down the hotel bar and had a good time. It's always fun to sit there and see who you'll run into. I ended up talking to guys like Shane Davis, Dennis Calero and Matt Serra, a fighter who was super nice. Plus, you always see random people walking through the lobby.

After a late night we got up and headed back over to the convention center. If you guys didn't hear, Jesse Falcon showed off some potential future Marvel Legends for 2010 at his panel (X-Force Warpath, Lady Bullseye and Maddrox!). It was rad getting a peek at those and we'll be getting more info at SDCC.

After that I headed over to Emma Caufield's booth and escorted her to her panel room which was packed. For those of you who might not know, she's Anya from Buffy. She did a great job and everyone really seemed to have a great time with it. As a Buffy fan, I was one of those people having a great time. I'm really hoping that the future projects she talked about come out quickly.

Right after that we had a really great Customizing 101 panel with Matt "Iron Cow" Cauley, Bobby Torres (why can't I find a link?!) and Pierre "Airmax" Kalenzaga. I learned a lot about toy customizing and I really want to give it a go. Now I need a studio. Or a man cave. I'm still hoping for man cave.

But, the big event of the night for us toy guys was the second annual ToyFare Hall of Fame awards. It was great seeing most of last year's winners along with this years' (Jesse Falcon, Tim Bruckner and Aaron Archer from Hasbro for Transformers, Randy Bowen couldn't make it). Justin did a great job with the presentation and I muddled through with my Power Point presentation. I think it went well and everyone was really happy.

That night Wizard threw a party along with Kaiju Big Battle at a place called The Trocadero that was a 130 years old. As you may be able to see from the picture we were up in the balcony looking down on the fight. It was pretty crazy, though a little slow. Tired from standing all day, a few of us migrated into the adjoining room where karaoke ended up taking place. But it took a while. A bunch of the people we were with filled out the slips to sing and we were sitting there waiting and the room got PACKED. Then some guy said something about Skeletor. I had no idea what that was about until freaking Skeletor showed up. This guy was great, but what no one knew was that it was a gong show. So, you got up to sing and he'd gong you. Sam got gonged unceremoniously early which was BS, but Justin, Alex and Jim all got up there and rocked the mic. I missed a full on, all dude version of "I Am The Man Who Will Fight For Your Honor" because Em and I had to bolt, but it was worth it cause I think I would have passed out if I stayed in that room any longer. Check out the slideshow below for some incredibly blurry photos of the creepy stairs up to the bar, the Kaiju battle, the karaoke area, Justin, Sam and Alex singing. Plus some shots of Skeletor. Maybe I'll tell people I did all this in Photoshop.

After that we met back up in the lobby where I got to meet some more cool people, but the funniest thing was seeing a bunch of people who just got back from a wedding reception at about 12:30AM looking at Lou Ferrigno walking away and being absolutely shocked. I'm guessing they didn't know anything about the con and that was a pretty awesome experience for them.

Sunday was slower because it didn't last as long, which was good because I think most of us were pretty exhausted. Justin, Alex and I had a Twisted ToyFare Theatre panel that was a lot of fun. We got a lot of good questions and it's funny because I'm starting to recognize the people that show up to the toy panels. I also plugged the blog after some cajoling, so hopefully one or two of you guys made your way over here and are liking the site.

The highlight of the day though was getting a sketch by Steve Dillon. I am a huge, HUGE Preacher fan and got him to do a Jesse Custer, which was well worth the donation to Hero Initiative. Heck, I would have probably paid my last paycheck (don't tell Em). I don't think Em had ever seen me geek out that much, I was super psyched. After that we got our things together, I had yet another cheesesteak (with whiz, this time, it's way better that way) and we made the long trek back through New Jersey.

All in all, it was hard work, but a ton of fun as cons tend to be. The people I talked to all seemed to have a good time and I'm looking forward to the next one.


Oh, DO go on.

Soon To Be Big In Japan, Chad Mikrut

Last night my friends back in Toledo had a surprise going away party for my buddy Chad Mikrut who will be spending the next year over in Japan for work. The best advice I could give him was to always carry a bottle of water with him everywhere he goes because Japanese children ghosts tend to be afraid of water. I later realized that Chad hates horror movies and may not have gotten the joke, but what are you gonna do?



Anyway, as a testament to Chad's radness, I decided to post a bunch of pictures I had of him, many of which are embarrassing. Now, I've known Chad since our Freshman year of high school. I can't remember the exact circumstances of our meeting, but I do remember him sitting in front of me in home room. Our Sophomore year, we did the musical along with a bunch of our other friends (we were flying monkey's on rollerblades). Later, Chad and I formed a band with our buddy Jimmy and, Chad Yates as singer at first and later Randy.

I'm not sure if the pictures require much more explanation I added tags for them, but then turned them into a goofy slideshow on Photobucket, so who knows? They're in close to chronological order. Enjoy!

Oh, DO go on.