PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

What I Read in December 2008

   

The Dream Stealer - Gregory Maguire. I'm slowly workin' my way up to the more adult books by Maguire. I have really enjoyed his Hamlet Chronicles series. I thought the cover on TDS was great and the book was pretty fun to read. It's a malgam of some Russian folk tales like Baba Yaga, the Firebird, and Vasilisa the Beautiful. A small Russian town is in danger from the Black Prince, a large wolf that kills you and eats your soul. That kinds of sucks, huh. It's up to two kids to save it. It's a short book but there's lots going on.

Wildside - Steven Gould. I'm still not a fan of Gould, no matter how many of his books I read. This was a more interesting story than Jumper or Blind Waves. It's pretty much hard sf. Some young guy finds a door to an alternate Earth in his Uncle Max's barn. They capture some passenger pidgeons's and sell them to finance their gold mining operation. The FBI comes down hard on them and things get pretty screwed up for a while. The book spends a lot of time talking about flying. Too much like Tom Clancy for me. People on Amazon are comparing it to the Heinlein juvies that I read years ago. I didn't like it as much as I remember liking those books. I have a box of them somewhere and really should dig them out to re-read. As with all Gould's books they are going into the sell pile.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J.K. Rowling. Here's one that I'll keep and re-read again. The original book was hand written by Rowling. She made seven copies and gave 6 to friends. The 7th copy was bought by Amazon for nearly 2 million pounds. The money went to charity. Amazon also published a special edition. I  made due with the nice hardcover that came out in December. It's also illustrated by Rowling. There are introductions to each of the 5 stories by Albus Dumbledore. The stories are tales that wizarding families tell their children to pass on morals and lessons. If you read the last Harry Potter book then you know the story of the three brothers that created the deathly hallows that are so important to the story. The other stories are equally entertaining and education. As Albus says , "it was through Babbity Rabbity and Her Cackling Stump that many of us [wizards] first discovered that magic could not bring back the dead." A good lesson to be learned.

   

The Thief Lord - Cornelia Funke. Based on Dragon Ryder, which I liked most of, I picked up several of Cornelia Funke's books. They can be found in abundance in the used stores. I liked her Ghosthunters series. Written for the smaller set they are fun but I didn't keep them. I read Inkheart and was one of the few that didn't like it very much. None of the characters are very likeable, even the good ones. Mostly they don't learn anything and they make the same mistakes over and over again. A couple of young boys run away to Venice. They are escaping the evil aunt and uncle. There's a detective who looks for them and then befriends them. He's a pretty good character. I kind of liked him. The two boys hook up with some homeless kids who are being protected by The Thief Lord. He's a young boys who steals to support them. They live in an old abandoned movie theater. Turns out the Thief Lord is a spoiled rich kid and his dad owns the theater. He steals stuff from his house and sells it. His big fakeness and pigheaded attitude gets them all into trouble. I like the first part of the story and the intro of the characters but the end kind of peters out but it has a mostly happy ending.

Helm - Stephen Gould. I don't read much science fiction any more. Helm is set in a world that space travelling human's have settled ages ago. The people are somewhat lo-tech. Except for the Helm. A glass helmet that gives the user some great store of knowledge. A guy we meet gets charged up with smarts and during the book he uses them to defeat the other groups that are grasping for power. I liked this more than most of Gould's books, but I didn't keep it.

House of Many Ways - Diana Wynne Jones. I'm such a big fan of Diana Wynne Jones that as soon as I heard this was out I rushed over to DreamHaven and picked it up. It takes place in the world of Howl's Moving Castle. That's a really fun book to read and this is too. Jones is one of the better fantasy writers. She gets kids and people and her writing style is top notch. She makes reading a pleasure. Charmin goes to take care of her uncle's house while he's sick. It's a wizards house that has doors that lead to many places. There are lots of characters and lots of stuff happens. I can't recommend her books enough.

    

Ginger Pye - Eleanor Estes. This was a fun book about the Pye family and their new dog Ginger. You can see where the title comes from. That's not the cover to the one I have but it is a nice cover. That's Ginger in the forground and the Pye children in the back ground. Ginger is the dog that Jerry buys from a neighbor lady. Costs him a whole dollar, which he earned by dusting the pews of his church for an older boy. Ginger is a smart dog that is kidnapped after Jerry has him just a while. Don't worry, the kids find him near the end of the book. It's a slow moving book, gentle and sweet. There are other books in the Pye family series, which are set back in the early part of the twentieth centrury, in the same town as the Moffat family stories are set. I like the kids. The Pye children, Rachel and Jerry, have an Uncle Benny who is famous, in their area, for being an uncle the minute he was born. He's only three in the book and he's partly responsible for finding Ginger after his kidnapping. I got a few more of Estes books to read. I liked some of them better than others and I liked this one better than most.

The Yowler Fowl-Up - David Lee Stone. This is the second book in The Illmoor Chronicles series, the first being The Ratastrophe Catastrophe . The second volume is pretty much as funny as the first and there's quite a bit of mayhem and action. Duke Modeset, the ruler of Dullitch, was run out of town in the first book after he screwed up with the rats and the piper. He sneaks back and accidently gets involved in a plot to resurrect the Stone God. Unfortunately the evil group planning to do this needs to turn everyone in the city to stone to get the job done. Well, the Duke can't have that. He might not like the city and it's people very much but it's his town and some crumbs aren't going to take that from him. The Duke has help from a sad vampire, a crappy thief and some other assorted miscreants and oddballs. I'll keep these and keep an eye out for more. He's up to 5 or 6 in England but only 3 are out here in the USA. I'd recommend them so someone who wants a humorous fantasy tale, but humor is pretty subjective and it's hard to know if others would like them. It's like Christopher Moore. I read the first chapter of his first book and laughed and it was all down hill from there. I never read anything as funny by him after that. I quit reading his books, though both the owners of the two worlds largest SF bookstores here in the Twin Cities tell me his latest Fool is really funny. Nearly made both of them pee their pants. Yeah, well, nearly isn't good enough to get me to go back. I'm like Joe Pike always movin' forward. Why bother once the magic is gone. Jasper Fforde was the opposite. He just keeps getting better and better. Not that those books have anything in common with each other.

The House of Mystery #2 is a collection of the DC comic House of Mystery. In it's 552 black and white pages it reprints all the stories and covers from issues 195 to 211. These originally came out from 1971 to 1973. I got it because there are many pages of great art and some ok stories to read. Artists like Mike Kaluta, Bernie Wrightson, Neal Adams, Gil Kane, Gray Morrow, Wally Wood, and Jim Aparo supply the art and some other guys supply the stories. The art is often better than the story. I read all these issues when they were new but sold them when I moved to the USA in 1978. I'm glad I didn't keep them. I'd probably never bother to re-read them, being too lazy to haul them out of the attic to look at again. I don't read comics as regularily as I used to. They have a tendancy to sit for a while before I plow into the stack for some batch reading. Not actually working in a comic shop anymore has made me less excited about even the stuff I like to still pick up, which is not so much anymore. I don't quite feel I want to quit, as I still enjoy reading most of the issues I do get when I do read them.

Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea

Last week Target had some two dvdpacks on sale. Two seasons of a tv show, usually the first and second seasons, packed together for 20 bucks. This week they were only 15. I picked up the first season of Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. It's about 40 bucks for the 2 dvd sets on Amazon. Half a season in each box. Several of the 60's hour long series were packed that way. Helps keep the cost up. Each 3 double sided disc set has 16 episodes on 5 of the sides and some slight bit of extras on the 6th side. It could all have been packed onto 9 sides in one box but they couldn't sell it for as much. Seasons two and three are available at Amazon and the first half of four is due out in March of 2009.

   

I hadn't seen this series in decades. I think I saw a few episodes in the 1980's and didn't care all that much for them. I remember liking it when I was a kid. I would have been 10 when it started Sept 14, 1964. It ran for four seasons and 110 episodes. The first season were filmed in black and white. The rest of the series were color. The bonus disc has the pilot in color. It looks pretty good. You can see the first season on Hulu. I found the link at the IMDb. With 32 episodes you can imagine that the stories are pretty varied in quality and content. It's supposed to be the 1970's in the show and there's a lot of cold war going on. That and monsters. The monsters came to be the theme of the Irwin Allen produced show. The Seaview is a most advanced sub in the world. It seems to sink damaged to the bottom of the sea every 3rd episode. Lots of people get dead each episode. Spies seem to sneak on the ship once or twice a month. Even the new Captain Crane, played by David Hedison, sneaks on the ship to point out the lack of good security. It didn't get any better I guess. Richard Basehart plays Admiral Nelson the creator of the Seaview. Some of you might remember that Gypsy on MST3K was a huge Richard Basehart fan.

The episodes were 50 minutes in those days, lots of time for stuff to happen, but they can be a bit slow at times. The monsters are a mixed bag. Giant sea critters outside and a giant plant inside. An first contact encounter with an alien that assumes the faces of the crew it meets. A proto-human, played by a young Robert Duval, from millions of years ago. There's even a robot that goes crazy and an episode where Nelson and Crane encounter a secret nazi organization. There's an amazing wealth of riches and danger in the sea. Someone's always after the riches and the Seaview finds the danger. There's a great roster of guest stars. Michael Ansara, Eddie Albert, Carol O'Conner, Malichi Throne, George Sanders, Werner Klemperer, and James Doohan in the first season alone. And that's just the ones that some of you might recognize.

The episodes look pretty good and there are only a few extras besides the pilot in color. Some stills, covers to the Dell Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea comics, 5 minutes of interviews with David Hedison, some of Irwin Allen's home movies from the set, a short blooper reel and a promo reel. I don't think I'll pick up anymore sets until they drop in price some. I enjoyed them better at $15 than I would at $40-50. Who doesn't like a bargin.

Friday Night Movies 208

Sometimes at the start of the evening there's the short pause while we ponder our choices and wonder what sort of nightmare are we in store for. Someone often has to buck up and take the bullet. Joe picked Maneater of Hydra from amongst our choices. It's a 1967 movie that was shown on Elvira's Movie Macabre November 20, 1983. It's a tv show hosted by Elvira in the early 1980's, which Sperhauk had picked up cheap somewhere. It's the only dvd version of the movie currently available. Elvira introduces the movie, makes terrible jokes and flashes her monumental cleavage before the commercial break. Occasionally her jokes made me laugh but not for being funny. I have a low-level admiration for Elvira and her dogged determination to keep her character alive.

Maneater of Hydra has a group of tourists coming to stay at an ancient castle. It's home of Baron Von Weser, played by Cameron Mitchell, who is needing the tourists money to continue the carnivorous plant research that is his life. The tourists are a mixed bag, a handsome guy with a cleft forehead you could hide in, an attractive young woman, a older man with a trampy wife, a science guy and a loud old battleaxe with a passion for photography and hysterics. The wife starts making eyes at the chauffeur on the ride to the castle, her hands investigating something below his belt. She's a piece of work and only the husband cries when she dies. Go figure. We did speculate that he was upset that wasn't the one who killed her. It's a slow movin' movie, there's plenty of time to speculate. There's the occasional murder by some agent unknown. We don't see the maneater until nearly the end of the movie. It's not so good in the wide view but the close ups of the deadly tentacles are pretty grin inducing. Not to be outdone the Baron gets into the act and starts murdering on his own. Not to surprising, you should see how he treats a bike. There's a couple of funny scenes where the handsome guy and the Baron ride a bike in another part of the island and on arrival they just throw their bikes to the ground. It happens twice. Even Elvira noticed it and repeated the footage during her commercial break segment. The movie is short but it takes a while to get to the end. Mostly everyone dies aand I didn't care much. I don't think I need one of these in my collection, but it was fun to see Elvira from 26 years ago. Wow time sure flies.

Joe brought our second feature, a dvd he had actually picked up on a whim. Bad idea. I Know Who Killed Me stars Lindsey Lohan and pretty much no one you'd probably know by name. I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch a movie about Lindsey getting her arm and leg cut off. I'm not much into torture or slasher movies. You see a bit of the torture and amputeeing and who wants to see that. Sperhauk fast forwarded to the boring parts. Lindsey is Aubrey. She wants to be a writer and plays piano. She quits the ivory's to concentrate on the writing. We meet some of her friends and family. Then she disappears. The family and friends worry and the FBI stumbles about. A driver finds her in a ditch, barely alive, her arm and leg amputated and sown back on. She doesn't know the family and says her name is Dakota, who is also the main character in some of Aubrey's stories. Dakota was a dancer in a club where she doesn't take off her clothes. It's a step up from being a part time hooker. She's does a few dances and her finger falls off. She tried to sow it  back on, but it doesn't work. Just like the script. The poorly thought out story unfolds over 106 minutes and mostly it's unpleasant. The movie scores lower than our first feature on the IMDb. It gets a 3.6 and MOH gets a 3.9. I wouldn't give either one more than a 3. Neither is a good entertainment investment for your movie buying dollar. At least for me. IKWKM won 8 Razzies (including Worst Excuse for a Horror movie), beating the old record of 7 Razzies for both Showgirls and Battlefield Earth. Lohan's private antics might have also had something to do with that score, but the movie just is an unpleasent romp with some unsavory characters. You can read a synopsis of the movie at the Wikipedia. It's a premis that should bring a laugh to your belly and maybe you'll think like me and know someone needs a slappin' for the ridiculous stigmata twins concept. You can actually see the whole movie on YouTube right now. I liked Lohan better in the more fun Mean Girls but that was written by Tina Fey. She's a much better writer than the guy who wrote IKWKM. Go watch Mean Girls and ignore I Know Who Killed Me. Save yourself the 10 bucks Joe blew. I know I will.

It's a good day at MOCpages.

 

I'd been sorting LEGO into some new storage containers, eyes glued to the tv, and hadn't been on line for hours. I checked my email and there were some really cool things to go look at. That's Kevin Fedde's The Ivory Lotus on the left. It's pretty cool. I don't care for the lime green bricks that much but occasionally it gets used well. I think here it makes that green just pop. It's very bug or alien like. I always like those tentacles/horn like pieces. On the left is Chris Phipson's ode to the white picket fence, Moc Wars: Episode 5, Enter the Davetrix.

 

While I was sorting and rearranging my storage containers MOCpages had it's 100,000 moc posted. When I started about this time last year it was about 50,000. It took 4-5 years to get to that point. A year to double. That's a lotta LEGO. Dave and John Xandegar, a father and son building team made this tribute to MOCpages. Celebrate! was #100,004. I have not looked up what was 100,00. It wasn't by someone who's in my MOCpages favorites folder. On the right that's Thomas N's Dart Space Fighter Final. I thought it was a nice little ship that reminded me of the ships LEGO used to make back in the early days of the space program. The LEGO space program.

 

That's a birds eye view of Shannonia by Shannon Young. It's an Award Winning Microcity. There are jokes to go along with the pictures. I don't think the jokes won any awards but they're ok. The city kicked some ass at BrickCon 2008. I think he mentions that here. Once again Giovanni Seynhaeve has dipped into the Aquastlenauts water and come up with Cut the Crab!, an underwater remake of Castle set 6066 Camouflaged Outpost. It was a forestmen set. You can see a pic of the set here. That was a nice fun build. Made me laugh, just a bit.

As I said a good day over at MOCpages. Normally it might inspire me to at least think about building something new but it's late and I'd rather go to bed. see ya.

TwinLUG Meeting 2-15-09 Micropolis Update

 

Max posted 5 pictures of the city on Flickr. I counted and there are 77 of the 16 x 16 modules and 4 of the 12 x 16 modules along the shore line. I forgot to stick the giant shark module I made in the picture before it was too late.

TwinLUG Meeting 2-15-09

 

It was a busy meeting with 10 in attendance. We were in the small room of the St Paul library that the club uses for our monthly meeting. Besides this chronicler of LEGO life there were Alice, Roy, Max, Matt, Erik, Gary, Brian, Tom and Nathan. Most everyone brought their Micropolis modules. I forgot to bring my camera but Matt and Max snapped away for future Frickr posting and hopefully they will let us know when we can glom onto those picks. I'll stick a couple up here later.

I don't know how many modules were brought but I had 26 including one I had finished this morning. I don't even have any pictures of it myself. Max said he had 15. I bet we were over 60, maybe even 70. Probably 7 or 8 square feet. Once the pictures are up we'll know.

     

We  had a parts draw. It was for the Speed Racer set 8160 Cruncher Block and Racer X. It's on clearance for half off at the LEGO store right now. I'd already bought one and thought it had some good stuff in it. I like clearance sets. $20 for 367 parts. I did see the Speed Racer movie and reviewed it a while back. I've mostly forgotten about it and the set reminds me of nothing so much as a box of parts. Some of them good and some of them just more parts. Mostly in red and yellow. I liked that sticker sheet. It has some art work on it that you can use to turn tiles into paintings. There's even a large fishtank picture. The curved windscreen, which slipped through my fingers, has more use than just for cars. Space ships! I've already seen them used to create a round cockpit. I did get a couple of those curved windscreens in a grab bag a while ago. I plan to pick up a couple more sets while they are available. There's two in each one. I have an idea for that piece. And not a car nor a space ship either. The mudguard, in yellow, was another that slipped by. Lots of potential there. I did get the spoked wheelcover but have no idea what to do with it yet. I had 32 of the of them until I traded Brian a set of 4 for a couple of technic beams. We also traded some minifigs. I wound up with the Racer X guy and the character in the brown pants. Brian got the other two guys. Matt wants to trade. He wants some for the vests. That's why I like some of the different sets of late. They have the best minifig clothing. Like the Indiana Jones Sanghai Chase set that has the two villians in their black suits and black fedora hats. They are so cool. I think the Short Round minifig is cute. We had a brief discussion on female minifig hotness. We agreed there are boundries and moved on. I'll trade with Matt next meeting when he brings his bags of dismembered minifig parts. I liked digging through his minifig bags. Rustle rustle. Woohoo! That's the sound of me scoring some odd minifig parts in trade. I like having different minifig costumes. You never know when you might need a change of clothes. Erik scored the biggest bundle of them all with the bag full of 64 large truck tires. You could kill a man with that bag of rubber and rims. When it makes sense to put two parts together we do. It takes one unique part out of the part number total but it just makes sense in a case like tires and rims. I don't make enough cars to ever need to get more tires than I have already. Maybe some of you other guys could comment on your picks.

We ate some cookies and talked about LEGO a bit. I brought two of the cars that are coming free in Cheerios. They are ok but not so interesting to me as cars. I'll get some pics up later. We talked some more as we cleaned up the parts draw and ate some more of Gary and Alice's great cookies. Home made. Then it was time to head home and play with my new LEGO. And by play I mean sorting.

Birds of Prey

I actually watched a whole tv series but it did take most of the weekend. Joe loaned me his copy of Birds Of Prey. I vaguely remember that there was a show. They only did 13 episodes. I miss all this stuff on regular tv. Just don't watch it. It was the 2002/2003 season when this came out but it's set in the future. Still no flying cars though. Batman leaves Gotham City after his wife Cat Woman was killed. The Joker sent a minon for that, but shot Batgirl himself. Barbara Gordon, played by Dina Meyer, is alive but in a wheelchair. She's really smart and an electronic wiz too. Batman and Cat Woman had a daughter. She was 15 when mom was stabbed in front of her. It's 7 years later and she's grown up. She tends bar and fights crime as The Huntress. Barbara Gordon is also The Oracle. She's the info gathering computer gal who lends support of all kinds. As our series opens a young runaway arrives in Gotham City. Right away she needs savin' and who show up? The Huntress. Our runaway girl is a meta-human. She is able to read people's minds from physical contact. The Huntress is half meta-human. She is super strong and very leapy. Turns out there are many meta-humans out there. Which is great for a guest mutant of the week show. There's a lot of jumpin' and leapin' in the darkened back alleys and streets of Gotham. Seems there's at least a fight every act. Sometimes people get killed. Our heroes try not to kill people but the evil meta-humans just seem to like it. They pack a lot of angst and anguish in this short series. Some amazing revelation happens each week and someone gets all bent out of shape. But everybody pulls together and the series even ends with some closure. The acting is a mixed bag but mostly everyone does an ok job. The sets are great to average and the effects are about the same. The plots and scripts are pretty much average tv fair. There's even an episode about a guy who kidnaps Meta-humans and makes them fight in an undergound fight club. Who hasn't been to one of those. I can see why the series never caught on. Same old same old that we've seen. I didn't mind watching them and might rewatch them but don't know that I'd bother picking up a set since I can borrow Joe's copy. I did like the 3 seasons of the short webisodes of Gotham Girls. Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn fight Batgirl in this short animated series. Each season is about 27 minutes. They were pretty funny.

Friday Night Movies 207

I'd sorta of been lookin' forward to My Name Is Bruce for a while, then I forgot it was coming out. Sperhauk netflixed it. and we watched it as our first feature. It's short, only 84 minutes, and pretty funny. I must pick one up for myself. Bruce Campbell directed it from Mark Verhiden's script. He plays himself in the movie, or rather the Neil Patrick Harris version of himself. Bruce is rude, loud, boorish, on the make and lives in a trailer. Sexy. He's working on the sequel to Cave Alien. Sucks to be in Cave Alien 2. Some kid, a huge Bruce Campbell fan from the town of Goldlick, kidnaps him to help rid the town of the Chinese demon that's chopping off a lot of heads. Bruce, mad at first, thinks that it's all a birthday hoax played on him by his agent. He eats a lot, drinks a lot and grabs some ass. Then they ride out to see the monster. Hey, guess what? It's real. Bruce runs away. After all he's just an actor. He has a change of heart when the kid calls and tells him he's going to fight the demon. He returns to Goldlick, which was a set built on Bruce's property, and through a series of pratt falls saves the day. The rest of the cast are pretty good, many are old friends. The script is mostly pretty good, even though it's the familiar reluctant hero story we've seen many times before. It should appeal to the genre fan, especially one of the Bruce sub-genre. It's filled with Bruce material. It was fun to watch and made us laugh. Not like our second feature.

Some guys loaned Sperhauk Max Payne. It's got Mark Walhberg as a detective. Mostly I like him. He's all screwed up in this movie adapted from a video game. His wife and baby were killed by the guy that got away. No one's found that guy in three years and Mark hides in the basement working on cold cases. He's not much of a team player anymore. There are some Russians in town with Mila Kunis and her big machine gun in charge. She's all black leather and attitude. Her sister is killed by some guy with wing tattoo's on his face and arms. He's part of a failed super soldier experiment that roams free killing. Isn't that always the way. Clues lead Max to the bastard who killed his wife and it's vengence time. There's a lot of flashy darkness and whoosey special effects. Very Sin City like. There's a definate lack of action which is sad. It does pick up in the last half hour. I don't know that I need to see it again but I'm not sad I saw it this time.

The Temple of The 15 Dragons

   

This is The Temple of The 15 Dragons. It's on the bluff in Micropolis. The temple isn't a place you'd want to go. It's home to the US branch of the Hong Kong Triads, The 15 Dragons, who are the 7th most powerful evil organization in the city. You can read more over at MOCpages.

Micropolis Modules

     

Here are the three new buildings I made for Micropolis. They are The Kowloon Seafood Import Company, The Lovecraft Building and The Braun Building. See more pictures and description on MOCpages. The first is a remake of an old building. I like the dark red and sand blue color combination. The second is sort of a remake of a building that I didn't like once it was done. I didn't even photograph it for MOCpages. This has no hint of the old building other than the dark blue color. I used the purple and red for highlights. I wanted to try a three sided building. I had some trouble with the roof and it came out rather Blade Runnerish. I'd like to tackle that again in the future. I named the building after Max Braun, the TwinLUG member who came to a meeting with his first building. Caught on like wild fire. The goal is to have everyone bring their modules to the next TwinLUG meeting on the 15th of Feb and build as big a city as possible. I have 23 modules so far but that's only 9 buildings. Two of the modules are bluff faces. I hope to make more of those.