PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Nice doggie.

I got this set recently. 5612 Police Officer. I like his grumpy face. He's probably mad he lost his gun. I wonder if he's looking for ET. Most LEGO sets have names, which is often just a description. It's one of the few small sets that LEGO sells. I wish they sold more of these small sets. There's also a nice Castle one with some shiny armour and weapons. $3.49 for 17 parts is higher than the average cost of a part when comparing this set to a larger set, but you get a nice dog. And I wanted the dog more than the set. I didn't have a reddish brown one. I have a couple of bluish gray ones. I got 2 Harry Potter Shrieking Shack sets. On clearance. There's a lot of  brown in that set. And a big useless prop. They got parted out and the dogs got put into the animal bin. The dog plays Sirius Black as The Grim. That's him below. I like several of LEGO's animals. I think the dog looks pretty good. I think he's handsome, and maybe even noble, in his angularity. I like the way he represents dog.

Good boy. He's a big dog too. He's taller than a minifigures waist. At least he doesn't mess. I also like the polar bear a lot.

What I Read In December 2007

 

I started the month with Kasa Kingsley's book The Dragon's Eye. It the first of the Erec Rex series. I bought it because the packaging was so like the Harry Potter US editions. Melvyn Grant is the illustrator and he's ok. No Mary GrandPre, but still, not too shabby. He's got the cover in color, rather muted, with the series title in big gold letters. There are illustrations on the first page of each chapter. They are more cartoony than Mary GrandPre. It's the size of a Harry Potter book and while it was a pretty good read I don't think I will be re-reading it more than once. That's better than most books get. I'll re-read some once and some more often, but there are those millions I won't even stoop to pick up off a wet floor. Erec is a kid in our world. He's connected to a magical world. He doesn't know it. His mother disappears and Erec sets off to find her. He meets a young woman who saw his mother and she leads him to the special passage to Alpium. It's one of those magical dimensions. Erec has a series of adventures and makes some new friends. He gets involved with a contest for ruler of the world. I bet we know where that's going. There are the bad kids, rich spoiled and not very nice, who cheat and hurt other kids. So we got some kids in a castle and there's a contest going on. Kind of like the 4th Harry Potter book. Ya' know, the one with the kids in the castle and there's a contest going on and someone's trying to kill that one kid. The situations and characters and place are all different enough to make it an interesting place to visit. The writing is ok and it pulls you along just fine. I'll keep an eye out for the other two. They'll turn up at HPB sooner or later.

I'd seen The Dragons of Lonely Island by Rebecca Rupp in a store and liked the cover. I'm always interested in reading dragon books. Except for those big serious adult fantasy novels that have dragons in them. This is not one of those in any way. Three children, Hannah 12, Zachary 10, and Sarah Emily 8 and one half, all go to live at their aunt's house on Lonely Island. Their aunt owns an island. Who wouldn't like that. Their mother is a mystery writer who needs to finish her latest. The kids are to stay with the caretakers. Aunt Mehitabel sends them a key and a message. Visit Drake's Hill if you are bored. Sounds like a clue to me. On Drake's Hill it's no mystery that they find a three headed dragon. He's right there on the cover and that title just can't keep a secret. As the children visit, each head wakes up from it's decades long slumber to tell a story. Each of the stories helps the kids grow a bit and there's a bit of a moral mixed in. Some people get helped by the dragon, some don't, and life goes on. A nice little book, rather gentle, with a good sense of humor.

And the same can be said for the sequel, The Return of the Dragon. This time the kids are joined on the island by a figure from the dragon's past. A rich business man seeks the dragon for his own personal gain. The dragon just wants to be left alone and live out his retirement. There are more stories from the three heads and they tie in with the rich guy and the kids. Mr. Moneybags bullies his way onto the island and darned if that dragon doesn't screw him up pretty darn good. Nice to see someone getting punished for being such a jerk.

Ghosthunters and the Muddy Monster Of Doom is the fourth book in the Ghosthunters series by Cornelia Funke. I enjoyed the other three quite a bit and when I saw they had the fourth cheap at HPB I jumped. In this book Tom is going for his Ghosthunting Diploma. He's joined by Hetty Hysopp and Hugo. Hetty is an older ghosthunter. She's helping Tom become one. Hugo is a ghost, who ghosthunts. It's a living. The benefits are good and there's plenty of travel. The gang heads for the haunted town of Bogville. There's a minotaur like demon there and he needs his ass kicked. Tom is there to firmly plant the boot and rid the town of it's problem. There are plenty of complications and fun situations. This book was published first in 1995 and there have been no other sequels since. Oh, well.

Herbie Brennan's Faerie Wars was bought on the good recommendation of Eoin Colfer. Or at least the two nice sales pitches quotes on the front and back of the book. Brennan's another Irishman who's got a lot of books under his belt. Sixty according to his bio. Most of them aren't out around here. This is the first of a, so far, four book series. It's about a 12 year old named Henry who discovers a fairie in Mr. Fogerty's backyard. Prygus turns into a human size boy overnight and Henry and Mr. Fogerty help him get back to his dimension. Mr. Fogerty was a physicist. And a bank robber. Currently he's the recluse on Henry's street who's hired him to do chores around the house. Mr. Fogerty makes a portable portal opener and they head to the Realm to help out. There's always something new coming and the story is fairly well written. Easy to follow and quickly moving. I wanted to find out what happens next. While I was reading it I mentioned to one of the women at work that this is a very modern novel. The dad and mom are breaking up in the early part of the book. Henry hears the name of his dad's secretary. Suspecting the worst he asks his dad if he's having an affair with his secretary? Nope, his dad says. "Your mother is?" Henry spends some time coming to terms with this and we have to follow along. I'm not sure it was a great story choice. It gets complained about on Amazon alot. People called it controversial but it's too common and too much of the real world to be that. The story gets better once it leaves Henry and his troubles and travels to the Realm and we meet Prygus Malvae and Silas Brimstone. The first is the son of the current King of the Realm and the second is a nasty business man who makes the best glue in town. His secret? A kitten in each batch. He's got some other nasty plans envolving demons up his sleeves. Unfortunately, the demon's have a plan too. We follow them about a bit and eventually Prygus gets thrown into our world. Henry and Mr. Fogerty travel to the Realm and have some adventures. People get dead occasionally and things don't look too good for our heroes on a couple of occasions. The day is saved and some girl kind of likes Henry.

   

I'm a big Jenny Nimmo fan so when they started releasing The Magician Trilogy I was picking them as they laid 'em down. I wasn't gettin' crazy, so I waited a bit and picked them up at Half Price books. I wanted to wait until all three were in my hands before I opened the cover. I am glad I did, it really is like one long story, even though there is a year or two between each book. And it's not even that long a story, each book is only about 120 pages. Meant for readers a bit younger than the Charlie Bones series, I guess. All three books are set in the same Welsh countryside. There is a smattering of Welsh thrown in. That's always good. In The Snow Spider we meet Gwyn and his family. On his 9th birthday Gwyn is told by his grandmother that he is decended from a powerful Welsh magician of fable and he might be one too. She gives him 5 presents. A brooch, a piece of dried seaweed, a tin whistle, a scarf, and a broken toy horse. She tells him to offer them to the wind. Except for the horse. Hide that away, keep it safe. It's dangerous. When Gwyn throws the brooch into the air he recieves a silver spider in return. It spins a magical web and in it he sees his sister. She's been taken by some creatures and transported to a snowy magical world. She's been gone 5 years, disappeared up the mountain, and the family still hasn't gotten over the loss. Gwyn's magic brings her back, but she's changed and she doesn't really fit into their world anymore. Her visit helps the family come to terms with their loss. Each of the series helps some member of the extended family through a rough patch. In the second book, Emlyn's Moon, it's Gwyn's friend Nia who gets some help. She gains worth of self and helps mend a riff between Gwyn's family and his cousin Emlyn's family and in doing so returns Emlyn's mother to the her husband and son. It's a truely wonderful ending that brought tears to my eyes. The third book, The Chestnut Soldier, turns a bit darker as the broken toy horse is unleashed and the demon within gets trapped in the body of a visiting soldier. He's troubled to begin with and this just isn't helping. It's up to Gwyn and Nia to put the genie back in the bottle and help pull the soldier back from the brink of madness and destruction. I liked these characters and their problems. I enjoyed the books and will keep them on the re-read pile. Jenny Nimmo has a bunch of books out but only a few are out in the USA. There's always Amazon.UK.

In between the 2nd and 3rd of the last series I finished The Purple Emperor by Herbie Brennen. It picks up where the last one left off and was even more enjoyable to read. Lots of new characters and places to go. When the book starts Henry is back in our world planning to come visit when Prygus gets crowned as the new Emperor. Mr. Fogerty has decided to stay. He feels better there and he's got a girlfriend. Our returning villian, Lord Hairstreak has resurrected the dead emperor in an attempt to take over the throne through trickery and magic. It's up to our pals and some of their new friends to stop him. Even if they do, there are two more books to read and you know some other stumble will placed in our heroes way. But they are tough and smart and they will win the day. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

Now I am done for the year and I managed to get through 110 titles. Of those only 7 were not novels but graphic novels. Not too bad. I did pretty good with the movies this year too. Saw 344 movies that I hadn't seen before.

LEGO turns 50

I got up too early and was checking the LEGO sites and noticed that the 2 by 4 LEGO brick turned 50 today. That's when the patent got filed for the that brick. The LEGO company started in 1932. It made wooden toys at first. Here's a picture from over at Brick Fetish. They have a nice timeline of the LEGO company.

They look pretty somber don't they. Here's a couple of their toys. Also from the Brick Fetish archives.

 

There were earlier versions of bricks. Here's a link to the 1949-57 version called Automatic Binding Bricks. No kid would want to play with that. Kiddicraft had a plastic brick before and after the war. LEGO would copy that for their ABB line. In 1958 the brick would be changed again and the modern brick we know today was born. Those bricks would still work with the bricks made today. That's one of the great things about LEGO is all the parts pretty much work with all the other parts. There's the challenge, sticking things together in different ways. Now I'm going to stick myself back in bed and have a nap before I have to go to work.

Ron Weasley in Space

That's Ron Weasley, flying the Nimbus 2035, the most sophisticated broom ever. I started making a space ship last weekend but it got out of hand and crashed. So, I went back to the drawing board and started building this ship. Ron was laying around the work table and he got recruited to fly the thing. He's ok on a broom.

It's just shy of 17 inches. I didn't count the pieces as I went. Three to four hundred, best guess. I had a hard time getting the black to show up. There are a lot of angles.

   

 

I was going to use that trident on Death's Train but I couldn't find a place for it. I only had one of them and two would have been better on the train. I wanted to get as many complex curves into the thing as I could. I wasn't being slavish to aerodynamics either. With gravity control and inertialess drives who cares about wind resistance. First it was mostly going to be white and black but more red kept creeping into the mix. I had to do something with all of those curved parts that I keep accumulating.   

Friday Night Movies 154

Instead of our usual double bill we watched a single film and three episodes of the 1953 Flash Gordon TV Series. We don't often watch episodes but this Made in Berlin series sounded curiously interesting. Curiosity killed the cat, huh. We're tougher than cats.

The movie was first and it was the cultish Japanese film Horror of Malformed Men or Edogawa ranpo taizen: Kyofu kikei ningen. It's a 1969 film that didn't go over too well and because of a ban on using the Japanese word for malformed in movies it was rarely seen since. It still has not appeared on video in it's home country. Now that I've seen it, I don't know why anyone would care. It does try to be bold and sexy and weird but there's nothing too shocking it it. Or gory. It's pretty preverse, especially when we get to visiting crazy dad on Mystery Island. Here's the trailer on YouTube, and a clip of crazy dad, and a guy in a chair. The guy in the chair is actually from an Edogawa Rampo story about a guy who hides in a chair to get sexual gratification from having women sit on him. These pieces are part of a whole that is based on pieces of Edogawa Rampo stories. That's the pen name of a Japanese writer who was heavily influenced by Edgar Allen Poe. His pen name comes from the sound of Poe's name as spoken by the Japanese. In the movie a guy is telling us about his predicament. He's in a mental institution with some topless women. There's a lot of yelling. He was a medical student, just starting his internship, and now he is here. He doesn't know why. He doesn't remember anything of his past. Someone tries to kill him but he fights back and wins. He escapes the institution and goes looking for his past. Is it over there? Nope. During a tryst with a woman he sees a notice in the newspaper about a man who died. He looks like that man. He decides to assume that man's identity and see where that takes him. "The rumors of my death," and his uncanny resemblence to the dead man, get him into the house were he learns of his new father and the man's self imposed isolation on an island. Determined to find out the story of this family, which he feels stangely connected to, Mr. Forgetful heads for the island. He takes a bunch of people over with him. He meets crazy dad and finds out the family backstory. Dad, who hid away because of his deformed hands, has collected other people and made them deformed. He now rules his island of freaks. There is a woman sewn to a sheep and other grotesqueries. Unfortunately the makeup is not up to the story. Dad wants to turn his son into a malformed slave, and he's going to have his other son do the surgery. Other son. Oh, oh. Looks like Mr Forgetful found out more than he bargained for. And he has a sister too. He's just been sleeping with her! Oh, oh. Most of the story could be something out of Poe or other horror writers from a century ago. That element was taken in by Rampo and filtered through the film makers who present us with the mashup we see today. I betting it would have been different to see it in 1969, especially if you are Japanese. It's got some shock value, but less than many movies from the late 60's. Jodorowsky's Fando and Lis and The Holy Mountain, which came out in 1968 and 1970, pop into my head first. There must be others. The story plods along at first and picks up a tiny bit in the last half. Once we get to the island it gets a bit better, but only because it's weird to look at, then the ending comes along and our lovers blow up. Limbs and heads flying everywhere, in their sad, badly superimposed bloodless glory. I'm glad that I didn't buy it. I wouldn't now that I have seen it.

I don't think I would buy the Flash Gordon TV Series DVD from Alpha Video. Unless it was cheap, maybe cheaper than the 2 bucks that Joe paid for his copy. It's the first of two 4 episode releases. There were 39 episodes that were released in syndication during the 1954-55 tv season. I never saw them before that I remember. It's an American, French and German production, filmed in Berlin, with some American actors and writer Bruce Geller, who later created and produced Mission Impossible. This series was nowhere near as good and seems to have been panned soundly in the press at the time. I thought it was equivilent to the Rocky Jones Space Ranger shows of the time period. Lot of talk, some bit of poor action, and some shots of a space ship going through space. At least from what I remember. The ship is ok, other effects are pretty poor. Steve Holland plays Flash and he's more interesting than his character. Steve was an actor and a male model. He was the model for James Bama's Doc Savage book covers. He takes his shirt off in several episodes. Dale does not, but she wears no pants at times. Weird. Dale is played by Irene Champlin, who appeared in a couple of other lowbudget films and nothing else. Steve didn't appear in much else, nor did Joseph Nash who played Dr. Zarkoff, but Henry Beckman who played a character in several episodes did. He's a Canadian who acted in over 170 productions, mostly tv shows, from 1951 to 2002. I knew I had seen him before. I wonder if he still talks about this series. We watched three episodes. That was enough. One episode they went back in time to disable a bomb. They arrive 1954 West Berlin and start diggin' though the rubble. That was the most interesting episode for me. Lots of cool shots of bombed out buildings through the city. In another episode, a guy had to get to earth to cast an important vote, while some bad guy was trying to stop him. Flash had to stop that guy. Typical. They also get attacked by a half man, half lion, who's kind of entertaining, but he doesn't have the most convincing costume. As I said we stopped after three episodes. There's a fourth unwatched, maybe for later, maybe not.   

What I Read In November 2007

I started the month reading two books by Robert McCloskey. The Complete Adventures of Homer Price is 2 books in 1 volume. It's a Barnes & Noble reprint from 1998, with no page numbers, that I got at Half Price Books. Homer Price and Centerberg Tales were published in 1943 and 1951. I had read these scores of years ago and remembering them fondly I picked up this nice hardcover. I was a young tyke about Homer's age when I first encountered them in the school library, but I never had such a good of a bunch of adventures as Homer did. I don't think getting chased up a haystack by your neighbor's dog was as good a story as Homer's first tale. A bulldog in a leg cast, barking his foamy mouthed head off, pinning three kids up on top of a haystack is no where near as good as capturing those robbers. Five of them. Even if the dog had rabies and one of the kids had to get a shot in his stomach. Not as good. To this day I am glad it wasn't me. I wonder what happened to that family. Too bad I forgot their names. That whole housing development is gone. Completely wiped out like it never existed. That's urban renewal. Lot 74 was a great place to play as a kid, it had it own junked car lot and a forest. Except for that bulldog with the front right leg in a cast. He was a horrible dog. I once saw him eat human poop. Sure was angry that day he chased us up the haystack. I think they shot him later. They took him away. Never saw him again. Weird stuff happens in the country and you can read more weird things happening to Homer in his two volumes. McCloskey, author of Make Way For Ducklings, tells a handful of stories in each volume. There's a story about the night the automatic donut machine wouldn't shut off, and the time the giant plant nearly covered the town and great story about Homer's Grandpa who jumped 19 miles. There was a stong wind that night. Then there's that great story about three competing balls of string. The prize is Miss Terwilliger's hand in marriage. She knits and she makes the best fried chicken. It was a fun read.

After those two I read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by she who is well known. I just felt I had to read them right then. I still liked 'em. Joe still hasn't found that dollar copy of HP and the HBP. Sad really.

Stormchaser is book two in The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. Set in the wonderful little compact universe there at the edge of something this series had a pretty good start with me. I liked the first book and wanted to read some more. The Edge would be a pretty cool thing to make from LEGO. Even in Microscale it would have to be big to get the detail. I wonder who has the time for that, sure isn't me. I need to get more readin' done. In this book, which pretty much continues from where the first one left off, Twig becomes a sky pirate serving under his newly found father.They go off in the Stormchaser, their airship, looking for stormphrax to save Sanctaphrax. The first is generated by lightning and the second is floating unversity. They got everything out on The Edge. There are new characters, animals and locations every few pages. Lots of treacherous people, critters and places. It's a dangerous world, is The Edge. Better to read about it than go there.

Three Rotten Eggs is the third installment of The Hamlet Chronicles. I need to find one more and then I can read the last two. In this book some fire breathing chickens turn up. They start as eggs. Miss Earth's Class is competing in an egg hunt. Get the picture. It's the boys against the girls. Huntin' eggs. This book there's a new kid who's trouble and he splits the already divided b and g's even further. When will those kids ever learn. "People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?" And that's usually the lesson of the books in the series. Working better as a team the kids help pull the fat out of the fryer and save them firebreathin' chicks from Professor Wolfgang Einfinger. He wants to chop them up. There are some good things to learn along the way and some fun stuff too. I've enjoyed the series quite a bit and put them on the keeper pile. At least until I read them again. I have his adult fairy tale novels to read someday.

Midnight Over Sanctaphrax is the 3rd in The Edge Chronicles by those two guys in the entry before the last one. They are still doing a great job making new books. Nice to look at and fun to read. Twig gets his own ship and on a mission he gets a tip about his missing father. Dad's out past the end of the world, and Twig races off to save him. He finds him, but everything goes to hell, and Twig looses his ship and crew. Luckily, a giant wind tosses them back to The Edge and they all fall to the ground. Luckily, most of them don't die. Twig spends the rest of the book collecting them and trying to restore his memory. It's important. If he remembers, it could save his world. I think we don't have to worry, there are more books in the series and more coming. Yahoo.

Dark Congress by Christopher Golden is the latest Buffy The Vampire Slayer book. It's post the show and Buffy is headed for Providence Rhode Island. There's a Hellmouth there and demons are gathering. Not too surprising, Lovecraft probably smelled it. He gets a mention or two in the book. As the story unfolds, Giles explains that the demons are convening a session of their Dark Congress. It's the first one in thousands of years and things aren't going too smoothly. Someone's got a beef and they want Buffy to be arbiter. Just like the enemy to ask, huh. Then someone gets murdered and B has to figure out whodunit before the shit hits the fan. And you know that's something that demons like. They are not very nice, most of them, and they're stinky. It's a pretty good book from a guy who is a good writer. I don't read his straight horror novels, having little interest in that genre, but I have a great fondness for many of his series books. You can usually depend on a good read from the guy. That's not always something you can say. And I like keeping up with Buffy and the gang. Dawn's still a giant in this book. Just like the comic book. Hard to get clothes when you are 40-50 feet tall. That's all I'm gonna say.

Friday Night Movies 153

The Netflix gods smiled and a copy of Eastern Promises turned up in time to watch it friday night. Nice. I was interested but I was waiting to get a copy once it had gotten cheaper at Target. It's David Cronenberg's latest. Vigo Mortenson is the driver for Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl. They are in the Russian Mafia, doing the usual bad things that you might come to expect. Armin also has a nice classy resturant. Deep down, he's a pretty much a monster, rapist and murderer. Naomi Watts is a midwife. She has a young woman die on her and her baby survive. She takes the 14 years old girl's diary and, hoping to find a clue to her identity, gives it to her Russian uncle. A business card in the diary leads her to Armin, Vincent and Vigo. The diary mentions all the dirty things that happened to the girl. Things Armin and Vincent did. Pretty naughty things. Now you know that cannot be a good thing. I would be worried about getting involved in the Russian Mafia. I would not want to be on either side of customer with people like that. But Naomi is prone to getting right in there and nearly gettin' killed. She wants justice. And that can get you killed. You really can't trust people in that business to do anything but kill you. Even if you are their friends.

Vigo's character turns out to have some surprises as the story unfolds. I won't spoil them for the few who might not have seen it. I liked his character, very silent and stoic, who was born of a dark place in the Ukraine. Such a contrast from the Soprano gansters I had been seeing of late but still they share something in common. Their life sucks and will destroy. You them everybody. I liked Vincent Cassel, he great at playing a spoiled rich twisted ganster fuck. He was in a couple of my favorite movies. Check him out in The Brotherhood of the Wolf and The Crimson Rivers. He's French, playing a Russian in London. Go figure.

I'd like to see Cassel as Lieutenant Blueberry in the film Blueberry. It's called Renegade here in the US. It's based on a comic series that Moebius did under his real name Jean Girard, with script writer Jean-Michel Charlier. They started in 1963 with the first story being serialized in Pilote magazine. The series is pretty hard to get here. Not in print. Marvel did a nice collection of books in the 80's or early 90's and they are long gone. Too bad. It's really good. A French guy and a Belgian guy doing a series of graphic novels about Cavalry soldiers in the American West just after the Civil War. Really nice art too. Different from the Moebius style.

Mike bought a copy of the first Cinematic Titanic Episode. It's Joel Hodgson and some of the other MST3K people watching and riffing on The Oozing Skull. It's really Al Adamson's Brain of Blood, retitled for marketing reasons. It gets a stunning 1.6 on the IMDb. Seems high. A dying dictator hires a doctor to transplant his brain into another body so he can go on ruling. His plan goes off course in this low budget 1972 film. It's the last film with Grant Williams. I barely recognized him, and he's in one of my favorite oldies, The Monolith Monsters. He's also the disappearing guy in The Incredible Shrinking Man. Not the greatest actor in the first place, he was ok for those black and white 50's films. Here he's the dictator's doctor, and he's just not so good. Transplant doctor has his own naughty scheme in mind. There's a big disfigured guy and a dwarf. They each have their own sad story but sadly they are mostly for comic relief. The comments on the movie aren't very funny, especially at the beginning, and the commentators physically cover much more of the screen than on the old MST3K shows. There are no sketches or segment breaks. They stop the film  once in a while and some action joke happens. Not all were to my taste. My other commplaint was many of the joke readins were just that, readings. They had a certain lack of spontaneity I found sad. Glad I didn't buy it.

When the going gets tough...

the tough get machines guns. At the LEGO user group meeting I got a few odd parts in the dreidel game. We were to bring 30 parts we don't need. You bet them on spins of the dreidel. I came away with 36 parts of which 10 or 11 were new. One of them was the Rock Raiders Dozer Base. That's it on the right. It was in three of the Rock Raiders sets in 1999 and turned up again in the 2005 XXL Mobile Crane. It's kind of an odd shape and the short wheelbase makes it a tough piece to use. I have one or two of those Rock Raiders sets, but I'm getting rid of them.

 

The other part is a wing from the Celestial Stinger set or the Sea Scorpion set. That dark grey only came in those two sets. I never had either of them. I didn't like the Insectoids very much. Most of the sets had these weird legs I didn't like. I wasn't buying LEGO in the mid to late 90's. I started again in 1999 when the Star Wars sets came out.

I was looking at the two parts and wanted to use them together. One of the other guys at the meeting was showing his post apocalypse outpost. Nice. That got me thinking of using them to make something post-apoc. It seems to be a popular building topic on some of the websites that talk about such things. 

   

Someone's got hold of some sort of low slung vehicle and stuck a machine gun on the top. They added some metal plates for armour and out they go patroling. There's also a top hatch and the machine gun turret swivels. It's the kind of thing you'd expect to see in some bad movie on the SCI-FI Channel, and since I have seen a bunch of those, it's no wonder.

Friday Night Movies 152

Sometimes there are several choices of dubious quality and one of them needs someone to step up and push over the tower. Even though it wasn't mine I was the one who spoke up for Les Raisins de la Mort, or The Grapes of Death as it's know here. Not known well, I'm guessing. It's a 1978 Jean Rollin film, with zombies, set in the vinyard's of France. I hadn't heard of it before. I also haven't seen many of his films. In 1999 I saw Living Dead Girl and next to the entry in my movie log for the year it just says "yuck". I used to put a word or three down as a comment on the movies I would see. Maybe it would help me remember something about them. I'm thinkin' here though, I didn't like the movie that much. I really don't remember anything much about LDG. With time, I feel confident that I will forget the dead raisins movie. A couple of gals are traveling on a train. It's nearly empty. At a stop a strange man gets on the train. Of course he sits in their compartment. He's kind of creepy and doesn't say anything. He starts to fall apart, and ooze puss, in front of one of the women. He's already killed her friend off screen. Our gal pulls the emergency stop and runs away. She runs for miles and miles. And that first zombie guy never turns up again, but she just keeps on running and running, over hill and dale, or what ever they call them in France. That was really the best thing about the movie. Some nice shots of interesting French countryside. Places with lots of rock sticking out of the ground are often cool. There were several old broken down stone villas nestled in the hilly and rocky country side. Our gal is trying to find the vinyard that her boyfriend works at. She gets lost and finds a house with an older man and a younger woman. He turns all murdery and tries to kill them. Our heroine gets away, the other woman is not so lucky, she gets a pitchfork stuck in her topless torso. The camera lingers a little too long on her over done death rattle and the poor special effect holding the pitchfork to her chest fails. Train lady keeps running into people, literally in the case of one man, and having to either, see them being killed, or kill them herself. Not the best day that one. She meets two beer drinking construction workers who haven't been affected. They are blasting zombies with guns and dynamite. There's some nudity but it doesn't help the movie much. Everyone seemed to like the evil blonde woman who popped out of her dress for a bit. But she got blown out of the picture and that was the end of her. Luckily the movie ends after a while and we can watch our second feature.

I had seen The Brain From Planet Arous a couple of times since the first time on 10-2-93. It was on a double bill with Dune Warrior that saturday at my house. John Agar and Robert Fuller are science guys who detect intermittent radiation coming from Mystery Mountain. They drive up there to take a look. We all enjoyed the parking the jeep scene. They meet up with a giant brain from the Planet Arous. Like they didn't give it away in the title. Gor, the B from PA, is mostly invisible. He kills Robert Fuller and takes over the mind of John Agar. A week later he returns home and lies about Robert Fuller's disappearance. Under control of Gor, John Agar acts kind of weird. Gor gets really excited when he starts kissing Joyce Meadows, Agar's girlfriend. Joyce and her dad, thinking something bad might have happened to Robert Fuller, head for Mystery Mountain. They don't have any trouble parking on the mountain. They do find Robert Fuller, he's been burnt. Gor, left on his own, turns his mind to world conquest. He practices killing by blowing up a plane full of people. While at Mystery Mountain Joyce and her dad meet up with Vol, another Brain from you know where. They conspire to capture or destroy Gor. He can be killed by human hands when he turn solid once a day. John Agar meets with high ranking military officials and blows up something for them. He wants to meet with high ranking officials from some countries he names. If they don't show up he will blow up their capitol city. More stuff happens and eventually the day is won and Gor vanquished. You can see some pictures, and video and soundbites here and more silly stuff here. A obviously different Gor turns up in the Horror Incorporated, I sadly don't know what to call this, but it's here and here.

Death's Coffee Break

That's Death in his kitchen, having a cup of coffee. That's his cook, I don't know her name. Here's a couple of shots from above. The one on the right is before I found my Chef lady. Missed her the first time. I liked the added red much better.

 

I started thinking of building Death's office, then I wanted to have a two layer piece, office on the top and the kitchen on the bottom. Then the kitchen became more exciting. I still would like to do the office and I have left the top unfinished to plop that other room right on down. If I was really ambitious I could build the whole of Death's palace. At least a dozen more rooms. Not Palace as in Buckingham. More like the Palazzo in the Italian tradition. I don't know much about Italian buildings. Never was interested in the architecture of Italy. Too traditional, like the École des Beaux-Arts. I have a tendency to like the odd building out. Antonio Gaudi made large family houses in Barcelona. They are called Casa's and here are two. They even better inside. See here.

 

Here's the front of the building. I got a couple of bats on the wall. That's always good. Here's the inside wall (right).

 

The the other side opens up. You can see there are lots of supplies in the larder. 

   

Here's a shot of the furniture and those shelves full of goodies.

 

I do like that medium blue. The doors to the cabinets are from the Harry Potter Escape from Privit Drive set. They were the doors on the Ford Anglia that Harry and Ron drove to Hogwarts. Most of the 2 by 2 medium blue bricks came from the LEGO store in the Mall of America. They were in the Pick-a-brick. That yields up some interesting parts at times. And in large quantities. Lucky to live in the Twin Cities and have our own LEGO store so handy.