PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Max Headroom - 20 Minutes Into The Future & Season 1

 

It's been a while since I've watched this series. I watched them more often when they were new back in 1987-1988. I used a vcr back then and taped shows like Max to watch over and over. Someone was always interested in seeing them again or had missed them. That's in the days when people used to come over and hang out and watch tv. Not everyone had a vcr and hardly anyone stayed home all the time. I'd always be recording something to watch later. At one point I had three vcrs stacked up just so I could record 2 or 3 shows on different channels in the same time slot. I really got used to scanning through the commercials. That's one of the reasons I like watching shows on dvds so much.

I was really impressed with the concept of the show. There really wasn't anything that subversive on tv and the shows negative attitude to big corporations taking over and running our lives was something I'm keen on. Visually the show is very like Blade Runner in style and production. There's a lot of dark corners and light punching through smoke and heaps of rubbish everywhere. I loved the characters who inhabited that world. That's the cast from the series up there on the right: Matt Frewer, Amanda Payes, Jeffrey Tambor, George Coe and in the back Chris Young. The 2010 dvds from Shout Factory collect all 14 episodes of the two seasons are on 4 discs. There's a 5th disc of bonus material. Lots of good interviews with the the creators and actors. What they didn't put in the dvd set was a copy of the 1985 British tv program Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future. It was released in the US as Max Headroom The Original Story. That's the VHS Tape package at the top of the post. It still hasn't been released on dvd here in the US. I had that tape and had copied it to dvdr. I'm going to watch it before I watch the series. The British show was adapted for first show of the US series. Peter Wagg was the producer of the original show and the series. He came to LA to do the series, brought a few people over with him and hired a lot more. In a short time they put together a show that becomes a short lived sensation. A second season is ordered and killed off with a time slot change. It's was called ahead of it's time but really it's a show that moves fast and requires you to think more than most want to or can. It would find a bigger audience in this more tech savy world.

Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future - Matt Frewer plays Edison Carter, a investigative journalist in a crappy cyberpunk style future where everything is run by big tv corporations. Edison's on location at an apartment complex, following a lead about a guy who blew up, when the story is killed by someone high up at Network 23. Edison gets mad that his Network Controller cut him off and abandoned him. After getting attacked Edison comes back to the news office and pastes his Controller in the face. That lackluster guy is replaced by Amanda Pays as Theora Jones. Edison and Theora dig into the reason the story got killed and they find out that the  network is having a problem with their new advertising gimmick blipverts. They've speed up adverts to cram a 30 second ad into a 3 second burst. It works well and since the ads over so quickl it keeps the viewers from changing channels. Unfortunately they cause some people to blow up and the Network Head is worried viewers will find out. The blipverts are keeping them at the top of the ratings. Edison is too close to breaking the story so the Network Head decides to get rid of him and his old controller. To cover up the crime the head of the computer lab, a 16 year old evil genius named Bryce, makes a scan of Edison's mind and uses that to create a computer generated Edison Carter. What they get is Max Headroom. He turns out to be uncontrollable and is sent off to be destroyed along with Edison. That doesn't go as planned when Breughel, hired to dispose of Edison, decides to sell the near dead reporter to a body bank for points. He sells Max to Blank Reg, played by Morgan Sheppard, the program director and announcer at Big Time TV. It's a small network that operates out of a big pink bus. Edison escapes the body bank and recovers at Theora's place. They work together to out the Network chairman and his killer adverts. They get a bit of help from Blank Reg and Max. Matt plays Max with a bunch of make up and some cell animated backgrounds. Computer graphics couldn't do much of anything back in the CGI stone age. The tv series would later create the background with a Commodore Amiga computer. Sad, huh? It's a pretty entertaining program, still somewhat morally and socially relevant if you're into that sort of thing. I just like the twisted future and think it worth taking a gander at. Too bad it's so hard to find. Still you can get the basic story in the first episode of the tv series.

Season 1

Blipverts is very much like the British program but there are some changes. There's more money spent, it's now shot in LA, and the show looks a lot better. Matt Frewer still plays Edison/Max and Amanda Pays once again takes the hot seat of a Network 23 Controller. Morgan Shepard returns as Blank Reg but his part in this episode is smaller. The Brit show was 57 minutes and the tv episode clocks in about 45 minutes. Jeffrey Tambor plays Edison's boss Murray. George Coe plays the Network Head after Edison sinks Charles Rocket for the blipverts cover up. Chris Young plays the young genius Bryce. He's played much less evil, in fact he often helps Edison. They stop the blipverts and Charles Rocket exits Network 23. He'll be back in the second season. The team is ready for it's next big story.

Rakers is one of those underground fighting shows. Young guys are talked into fighting on a track on motorized skateboards in a sport called Raking. There's a lot of illegal gambling associated with the games. The players have claws on their hands so they can cut up their opponents. People like to see a bit of blood. Theora's brother is one of the young guys racing around the ring. He's just trying to make some extra money since he's in a dead end job. Theora gets Edison's help in saving her brother from getting more damaged. Max comments on the Networks violent children's program Missle Mike. Mike blasts people and blows stuff up. Kids would love that show. Network 23 was trying to create a Raking show but that falls apart after Edison's story. Sometimes Edison is a big thorn in the Netwrok's side.

Body Bank has Max looking for a young girl who was kidnapped by Breughel and his sidekick Malher. Jare Burns plays Breughel as quite the evil psychopath. I recently saw him on the 5th season of Burn Notice as the exceptionally evil psychopath Anson. He'll be back in the 6th season. Mahler is played by Rick Duccommon. The two of them are kidnapping young girls so a rich old lady can prolong her life with their nice fresh young organs. It's not legal but it also not an uncommon scene in Max's world. The rich are even more powerful and above the law than in our own universe. In one of the subplots Network 23's biggest advertisers, Zik Zak, wants to use Max to promote their products. By now Max has integrated himself quite well into the Network's computer systems. So well he can't be removed easily and since he can't really be controlled making him do ads is really a problem. Edison figures out what happened to the girl and rides to the rescue before the scapel digs in.

Security Systems has Edison investigating a security company. Someone is trying to buy the company and he wants to find out who. He's framed for credit fraud and goes on the run. It's a pretty tough future, that crime has a death sentence attached to it. Lots of crimes have a death sentence, it helps keep the bady banks filled with organs. Edison gets help from his usual gang and between them they manage a bit of payback. 

War has terrorists marketing their attacks to keep funding more bombs. The TV Network behind this is BreakThru TV and Edison kicks them down the stairs as he uncovers the plot. There's some nice explosions in this show.

Blanks has Blank Bruno go up against the system to get some Blanks released from prison. They've been rounded up by a nasty politician who's backed by Network 23. Blanks are the people that have fallen, or been pushed, out of the system. They live a shadowy life in the poor part of town and hardly anyone wants to deal with them. They start having to when all sorts of gadgets and systems start acting up. Blank Bruno threatens to take everything down if they aren't let go. Edison finds out there's some secreet nastiness going on and he uses digital trickery to make it look like the politican let the Blanks go. High approval rating makes the politican go along with the trick.

Not all the writing is perfect, there are some clunky lines, and occasionally the acting is not the best. It was produced on a highly short time frame. Peter Wagg had 2-3 months to get the show on the air from the ok by ABC. Then it was rush, rush, rush to keep episodes coming on time. It the story concepts are what's interesting. It's a good look at a decayed corrupt world that was only a step ahead of our own back then. Now Edison's world isn't so different. That was the first 6 eipsodes in this mid-season replacement. The Network asked for a second season but only 8 more shows got made. They weren't even all broadcast when the show was cancelled. I'll be watching those soon.

LEGO Forest Fire Theme

Brickset lists these four sets as Forest Fire under the City theme. Bricklink list the sets under Town: City: Fire. LEGO's web site lists the first 3 sets under Forest Fire but you have to search for 4430 as it's a Target Exclusive in the US. There's isn't anything much to differentiate the sets from any other City fire set other than some trees are burning in 2 of the sets and vehicles that don't appear to be regular city fire equipment. They are the kind of sets that I would rarely pick up. They are the kind of sets that might turn up on clearance at Target. It would be good to know if there's some thing in them that might come in handy. Unlike the Forest Police there aren't any buildings in this lot so it's less likely they would have the parts I find more desirable. There's always a pecking order for clearance and sale sets.

4208 Fire Truck

 

Here's a set with a nice price per piece. There are 243 pieces listed on the box with a $20 price tag. Brickset says that's about 8.226 cents each. From the Bricklink inventory it looks like there are a nice number of the parts that would be useful. They would add value to the building stock. The set makes a nice little truck but as usual I'm not that interested in building a truck. There's a burning tree for the fire fig to put out. All those tree parts except for the round 2x2 plate with the four bars sticking out of it are all parts that I stocked up on in the Pick-A-Brick wall at the LEGO store. The style of tree in the set is okay but you can make better looking trees than that. The only thing I find interesting in the truck are the white door panels on the side. They lift up and could be put to other uses. I already have a couple from a Grab Bag and really I don't know that I need that many more. I can always Bricklink them if I find I need more.

4209 Fire Plane

 

In this set the parts average about 11.5 cents each. There are 522 including the 3 minifigs for a list price of $60. Other than the tree parts and the 1x1 trans blue round bricks I'm not seeing much that makes me want to jump on this baby. A couple of hoses are good to have and so few sets have them. It's just easier to pick up a few on Bricklink when you decide you need some. I lack any interest in making jeeps and trailers. I'm even less likely to be interested in building planes. There are too many specific plane parts that I would never use. Of course I get some of the plane parts in random Grab Bags at the LEGO store and they go into storage or get separated to be sold or traded. I would pass this set by even on clearance, maybe even deep clearance. It would be a good set to do a parts draw with. We have parts draws once in a while at TwinLUG but not for a while. There wasn't as much good clearance in the last few months. Sometimes that parts draw was the only time that we saw some club members. Funny how that works, huh.

   

It's got three nice looking minifigs. The red jackets on the two pilots are generic enough to use for other things and the middle fig's bright light orange uniform could serve another job. One of the pilots is a gal. LEGO claims they are trying to get more female figs in the mix. We'll see. Often females only appear in some of the bigger sets.

4427 Fire ATV

 

Here's a little guy and his ATV. It's a nice simple set that's got 50 parts for$6. Nothing to striking in the set and one that I wouldn't bother picking up. Twenty percent of the parts are those tires, wheels and axels and I have plenty of those. I assembled a bunch of tires, wheels and axels and tossed them into a ziplock baggie with some random MegaBlocks for giving out to the Trick or Treaters last Halloween. I pass on most of the MegaBlocks to kids of families I know. I haven't gotten rid of it all yet. I'm keeping some of the accessories that came with the Dragon theme of a few years ago. I'm keeping some of the dragons too. They had nice dragons in the first sets of that line.

4430 Fire Transporter

 

Here's another vehicle heavy set. Not even any trees to burn. Like 4209 it's got 522 pieces but this set is only $50 which makes the price per piece just over 9.5 cents each. The truck and trailer are kind of interesting but if I Google forest fighting vehicles I don't find much that looks like that 8 wheel thing. Not sure what it is or why it seems to have a fan on the top. There's a lot of red parts and some good amount of dark blay. There are certainly a lot of wheels, tires and axels in this set.

 

That's the three guys in their bright light orange fire suits. Their helmets are dark red though they don't look it in the minifig pictures I got from Brickset. That site usually pulls all the pictures it can from LEGO's site and those are the ones I put up here. There are plenty of good parts in this set but the heavy amount of red might make me think twice if I see it on clearance. Gotta have your priorities.

 

There's the 4 figure battle pack 853378. It's 43 pieces for $15 which makes it about 43 cents a part. Ow! I don't usually buy these multi-minifig sets unless they are half price. I bought 3 of the Alien Conquest battle pack for the Space Port layout I just had at the Comic con. That one was more attractive in that it had 5 minifigs in the set and at $7.50 a set it's only a buck and half a minifig. That seems more reasonable. It's the same thing with the magnets, I only buy them on clearance, at least until they started glueing the figs to the magnets. Then I quit picking them up and so did a lot of other people from what I hear at the store. No one wants them if they are glued. I know you can boil them and seperate the figures but I haven't tried that. I doubt that I would get the book. The book has fire in the forest and they aren't using a Forest Fire minifig in the bright light orange uniform. It's the truck from 4208 but not the correct minifig. Kind of lame, huh? Makes me less interested in it that's for sure. 

It's probably a good line for little boys to play fire fighters with, especially little boys that like trucks and planes. I'm only interested in the parts I can use and I'm just not seeing them here in enough quantities that I need these.

The Adventures Of Pete and Pete Season 3

The 1995-6 season was the last and it was 13 episodes long. For whatever reason Paramount had they never got any further than making the cover for the third season DVD set. Lucky for me I had tapes of those episodes and could make my own dvdrs. I have all the full length episodes either from buying the Paramount sets or my own tapes. It still would be nice if they issued a nice box set of the whole series. I'm missing a lot of the shorts that ran before the series so you know I would appreciate seeing those. The series is supposed to be running on TeenNick sometimes this year. I haven't looked to see if it happened yet but I'm thinkin' that they aren't going to run the shorts. There are lots of fun stories and entertaining guests in the episodes this season. In 35 Hours Big Pete was supposed to have a 500 lap race around the house with Little Pete but he blows him off to fall for a cute girl. Patty Hearst guest stars. In The Trouble With Teddy Big Pete's friend Teddy comes over to stay for a few days and he drives the family nuts. Little Pete has a lucky penny and he thinks it's lost its luck in The Good, The Bad And The Lucky. Little Pete has to battle with Pit Stain and his cronies Drawstring and Hairnet. Splashdown! has Big Pete lifeguarding at the local pool. Little Pete wants to abolish Adult Swim. Dance Fever has Little Pete attend his first school dance. Nona's dad, Iggy Pop, sings a song for her. Lucious Jackson play the band at the dance. Crisis In The Love Zone has Little Pete fall for his mail woman. Since she's played by Ann Magnuson I can see why. Little Pete gets the Last Laugh against Principal Adam West. In Allnighter Little Pete, Monica and Wayne get locked in the school and have to stay overnight. In Road Warrior Big Pete learns to drive from shop teacher Mr Slurm. Big Pete tries to get a Varsity Letter for wrestling in Pinned! In O Christmas Pete Little Pete tries to keep Christmas going long after the holiday is over. It doesn't go so well for a while but it works out in the end. Big Pete tries bus driving with Bus Driver Stu in Das Bus. There's lots of romantic angst in this episode with Selma Blair playing the girl who has smitten Big Pete with her smile. In Saturday Big Pete and friends have separate adventures during the day. J K Simmons plays the not-so-talkative barber Big Pete is trying to get to say something. Monica becomes a ninja. All in all a nice bunch of shows with the same level of cleaver writing and fun dialog as the rest of the series.

Science Fiction Sunday 183

I've always liked The Postman and that seems to be bucking the trend. It did poorly at the box office and the critics panned it pretty uniformly but I agree with David Brin, who wrote the original novel the movie was based on, that the movie is flawed but entertaining. It's a post-apoc story that offers up more hope than most. I'm not a big fan of main lead Kevin Costner but he does ok here. He's also the director. The US has fallen apart after a global war. The Government is gone and people live in small towns taking care of themselves as best they can. Will Patton heads up a militia that terrorizes the local communities. He's a right bastard who used to be a copier salesman. He kills those who stand up to him or to instill fear into his men. You want to see him dead as soon as you meet him. He's got a heavily trained army that people are afraid of. They pay his fees. Food and men for his army. Kevin plays a guy who travels from town to town earning food by putting on Shakespeare plays with with his trained mule. Will and Kevin cross paths and it goes bad for Kevin. He's drafted into Will's army but escapes. He pretends to be a postman after finding a uniform and some mail. He says the Government has reformed and he's part of a group setting up new routes. It gets him into towns and he gets food and lodging. The story becomes real as Ford Lincoln Merury follows in his footsteps. While Kevin's travels strand him in the mountains with a belly wound Ford gathers a large group of idealistic youngsters to set up mail routes between the towns. Will doesn't like the civilians uniting and puts his foot down. After several of the youngsters are killed Kevin challenges Will to fight him for his army. It all turns out better than you could hope. There's plenty of beautiful scenery in the mountains of Oregon and Washington states to look at and the story holds up pretty well. The characters are a good variety and a lot of them grow a bit. It might be a little heavy handed but not so much that it bothers me. Some of the scenes run a bit long, the whole things clocks in at 178 minutes, it could have been trimmed to speed things up a bit. What I like is the idea of the postal service uniting the country and the people, creating a stronger community through the connection. You see it going on around you right now with the internet and the multiple connection methods available. No wonder Will Patton wanted to destroy the post office, especially after he started seeing the posters denouncing him and his scumbag army. I might not like all the citizens in our society but I like that the society exists and we aren't living off the land being crushed by evil psychopaths with little or no interest in creating a better society for anyone but themselves.

She Creature is more fantasy than science fiction but I wanted to watch it again so I put it on. It was part of a Showtime series of horror and science fiction movies with the names of old American International Pictures films. It was written by Sebastian Gutierrez who went on to write Gothika and Snakes On A Plane. He also directed She Creature. I haven't seen many of his other films, either written or directed. Rufus Seawell has a fake mermaid and zombie and they travel around the country putting on shows to make money. Carla Guigino plays the mermaid. They meet an old man who is highly disappointed to find she's a fake. He nearly faints and Carla, concerned, offers him a ride home. There they find his disappointment is from his having his own mermaid. A real one which he won't sell. Rufus comes back with a couple of his crew and tries to steal the mermaid. The old man dies in the struggle. On the ship to America things go wrong and the mermaid turns into a monster. It minds you that messing with monsters is just downright dangerous. It's a nice looking film that's fairly well made. The story works for the most part and moves along fairly quickly. I've seen it several times and it still entertains.

3315 Olivia's House

This is the largest Friends set with 695 pieces. At a price of 70 bucks it's just over 10 cents a part. Not too bad, some of those parts are useful and in the colors I would want. Because of the price, and the fact that I really don't need most of the parts, I haven't rushed to pick one up. I'd take those parts for stock so maybe if I see it on sale. There's always hope.

You can see that you get a nice bunch of accessories. I really like the brick built blender and salt and pepper shakers. I looked on Brickset for the instructions and downloaded them. Now I know how they made that item. There's a magenta book. I always liked that book part and was glad to have picked up a bunch when the first batches of Harry Potter sets were coming out. They were more reasonably priced in those days. The house has four rooms and they can be rearranged in several ways. The furniture is pretty colorful with the medium lavender couch and chair brighting up a room with a tan carpet and tan walls. The house is made up of mostly tan parts, there's a few smaller bircks but the best parts in my eye are 4 1x1x5 bricks, 4 1x2x2 bricks, 19 1x2x5 bricks and 6 1x6x5 panels. There are a bunch of those magenta roof slopes. Not enough to do a big roof and there aren't any of the double convex slopes but it's a start.  Some white pieces, some black, some blay and some other colors. All in 1's and 2's. There are 3 of the bright pink 8x16 plates and 3 of the same size in bright green. There are one each of the 16x16 plates in tan and white. I like those large plates even if I haven't made any use of the ones I already have. I traded Judy a large bunch of goats for the same number of 16x16 dark tan plates. We got goats in the LUG bulk order at TwinLUG and Judy got dark tan plates in the LUG bulk order at GMLTC. They were pretty much the same price so we traded even.

   

That's Olivia and her mom Anna and dad Peter. They all look the same age to me. I don't care for dad's beard. I do like the cat. Pretty cute, huh. There are a lot of good reasons to pick this set up. There are 89 tiles in the set plus one printed to look like a letter. Tiles are useful at times and that is a high precentage of the set, huh. Be a good parts pack for the right person. I'm sure it would make a nice playset for the right little kid. Change the hair on Olivia to blonde, change the house a bit and you could make your own Three's Company playset. That's kind of scarey, huh. Not sure how that got into my head. If I luck out and wind up with one on clearance or something I won't build it.

Friday Night Movies 375

The Sorcerer And The White Snake is a 2011 movie based on an ancient story called Legend Of The White Snake. A pair of snake demons see some men gathering herbs and the green snake scares one into falling off the hill into the river. He nearly drowns but the white snake turns into a woman and saves him. Her kiss passes some extra life to the guy. Both of them fall for each other. Jet Li is a monk, the sorcerer, and his job is to send demons back to their own realm. He's got his own secure demon prison too. When the white snake decides take up life with the man she saved it's Jet's job to split up the happy couple. Man, even in their legends the Chinese beat their own asses pretty darn hard. Jet's monk student gets bit by some bat demons and starts turning into a bat bit by bit. The monks and demons battle it out in the movie and there are some good action scenes. What really dragged on were the romantic scenes which were somewhat dull. It's 101 minutes seem to take a long time to play out. Some of the CGI looks ok and some looks cartoony. Not a movie I would pick up now that I've seen it. I like the 1993 Tsui Hark film based on the same legend better.

Our second feature was the BluRay of Mysterious Island.  I'd last seen the movie on Turner Classic Movies nearly three years ago. This is the 1961 version with all the Ray Harryhausen stop motion animation. We've got a giant crab, a giant ostrich and some giant wasps. Turns out some of those giant monster animals taste good. During the civil war some Union soldiers escape a Confederate prison in a balloon. They get blown west in a storm and wind up in the Pacific ocean. When they come down they barely make land. It's a deserted island, or so they think. Herbert Lom plays Captain Nemo. He's been hiding on the island and trying to repair his submarine. There's a ticking time bomb in form of an active volcano that is going to erupt before the end of the movie. The BluRay is a limited edition of 3000 copies but the regular dvd is readily available on Amazon for under 8 bucks. It's worth a look if you haven't seen it before and you like giant monsters attacking human's.

Star Trek S1D10

   
The last disc of season one only has two episodes. The first, The City On The Edge Of Forever, was broadcast April 6 1967. It's a pretty darn good episode. The Enterprise detects some temporal disturbances on a planet. Dr McCoy accidentally injects himself with a drug that makes him super crazy. He gets all paranoid and transports down the planet. Kirk some others beam down to look for him. McCoy manages to run into that portal above right. That's the Guardian Of Forever. It tells them that it's been there a long time and it likes questions. McCoy has gone to the Earth of the 1930's and changed the future. Kirk and Spock take the portal back in time and fix McCoy's blunder.

   

The Captain steals some clothes to hide their uniforms. They get jobs in a Mission run by Joan Collins and Jim falls for her. Sadly she has to die in the car accident that McCoy saved her from. She has to die or their future won't be the same. The German's will win WWII and that would be the end of that. Kirk and Spock are looking for McCoy and they find him just in time for Kirk to stop him from saving Joan. Sadly poor old Jim has to take a punch in this one. It's a great episode which won the 1968 Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation. Harlan Ellison wrote and re-wrote the episode before it was ready for tv. His original treatment had drug dealing and physical Guardians of Forever. In the aired version the portal does all the talking. This is because it was too expensive to make a show as it was written. It was still one of the most expensive episodes to do. The average episode of Star Trek was about $185,000 and TCOTEOF was about $250,000. When Babylon 5 started airing in 1995 those episodes were about a half a million a pop and episodes of Deep Space Nine and Voyager were being produced for about a million bucks each. 

   

Captain Kirk loses his brother in Operation: Annihilate! and that's just after losing Joan Collins. It a Tough life in the space fleet. Something has killed off the populations of several planets. I guess it's a tough life on planets too. If you travelled from the first planet that everyone died on to the last you'd travel in a path that would lead you to the planet that Kirk's brother is stationed at. They get there too late to save the brother but his wife and son are ok. They figure out what the problem is and how to take care of it.

   

I remembered the plastic fake barf like critters that are causing all the problems. They infect people and that eventually kills them. Spock gets infected and he manages to fight off the sickness with Dr McCoy's help. The cure blinds him but his super Vulcan eyelids help out. The last show of the first season aired April 13 1967 and while it wasn't as good as the previous episode it was pretty entertaining.

There a 90 minute doumentary called Beyond The Final Frontier that mixes cast and creator interviews with footage about a big auction of Star Trek ships and costumes and props. The people interviewed are from all the series not just the original and so were all the auction items. The interviews were ok and the stuff in the auction went for a lot of cash. It was cool to see the props as they were uncrated. The auction was only impressive for the cash flow. The other short featurette is about a Star Trek Online Game. I didn't really pay attention to it.

LEGO City Forest Police Theme Part 2

4439 Heavy-Duty Helicopter

This set has 393 parts, including the three minifigs, and it's a whopping 50 bucks. The combo of parts aren't ones that would attract my attention. It's an ok helicopter but I wouldn't buy the set for that. I guess little boys like 'coppers. I know I did. Nothing stands out as an unusual or interesting piece in the set. That's the three guys below. I still like the campaign hat but the flight suits on the helicopter crew have badges on them which limits their use. Even on clearance I doubt that I would pick one of these up. I have enough of most of the parts in the set.

   

4440  Forest Police Station

This is the big dog in the forest and it's the only set with a female forest police character. That's her over on the left. I hope it's not just a guy wearing lipstick. Strange things happen in the woods. From movies I learn it's often a bad idea to go into the woods. Hell, the woods in these sets are filled with criminals and there's no guarantee that these cops are going to get the bad guys. There are 633 parts in the set and it's $80. There are 5 minifigs and that new bear. Most of the parts are common ones in small quantities but for the 33 1x2 logs and 27 1x2 brick patterned bricks in medium dark flesh. I got a few of the latter in the 4438 Robbers' Hideout but I'd rather have the dark tan version. I did order 600 of the dark tan brick patterned bricks in the latest TwinLUG LEGO LUGbulk order. Haven't seen them yet. I might pick this up if it was below half price. That would get the parts into a nice price per piece range. Here's the rest of the minifigs. At least the cops outnumber the crooks in this set.

     

4441 Police Dog Van

Here's a set with a couple of cars, some sort of mine entrance and two guys and two dogs. It's got 313 parts for $35 which includes 2 figs and a pair of dogs. Not a set I'd need. I've got some of those dogs already and I sure don't need 8 more tires. There's a bit of dark red but not enough to make the set more attractive. Here's the cop and the crook and the dog. Nice dog, huh.

30017 Police Boat

   

That's one of a couple of polybags sets that have Forest Police guys in them I haven't seen them around here but Brickset says they were in Walmart March 2012. It's got 35 pieces and it would probably be 4-5 bucks. Seems to be a nice little boat with an outboard motor. Nothing exciting in the parts list.

30018 Police Plane

 

Here's the other polybag set. It's got 37 parts and it would be the same 4-5 bucks. It's also supposed to be at Walmart. Nice minifig but nothing much to say about the build. Not much of a plane.

The Finder Season 1

I watched the 13th and last show in the series. It's been cancelled. I'm not surprised. It was a sort of an entertaining show but everyone had such excess baggage it was getting tiring. I get tired of serious shows sometimes though The Finder had it's moments of levity. There just weren't enough of them. I didn't like the season end cliff hanger much either. I'm not a fan of those for the most part. There's an annoying one at the end of the current season of Bones with Bones framed for murder and on the run. Poor Corbin Bernsen got blasted in the last episode of Psych. The Finder guy, played by Geoff Stults, gets busted for finding his mom who is in the witness relocation program. Too bad he doesn't get to finish his story Oh, well, that just means that I won't have to worry about finding the time to watch this series anymore.  

Comic Book Men 103-106

Boy, I tell you, anyone I mention this series to either hasn't heard of it or dislikes it. I finally got around to watching the rest of  the series myself. There were only 6 episodes of the reality show set in Kevin Smith's comic shop Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash. I'd watched the first two a while back and didn't rush to watch the rest. In Episode 3 Walt puts together a commercial. It's kind of silly. Then Ming convinces the rest of the guys to get made up as zombies for a poster announcing a themed sale. They didn't dress up as zombies during the sale which was kind of disappointing. They didn't get any extra customers for all their work and expense. They only looked so-so as zombies. It was made slightly better in the poster by photshopping them. They pick on Ming at the end of the 4th show for his bad marketing idea. It was a bad idea. In the 5th episode the guys head out to a local small comic con. When they get there it's been cancelled. No one told them? They stopped at a garage sale on the way back home and lucked into a few nice comics and toys. In the last episode Walt challenges the rest of the staff and Bryan to get tattoos. He fails to show up at the tattoo shop but the others all get tattoos anyway. Didn't make Walt look too good in my eyes when he tossed off some lame excuse for not being there. Sadly the guys come across as less likeable than you'd think a person would like to present themselves on tv. Sometimes they say the dumbest things. 

There are the usual bits with people coming into the store to sell some kind of collectible. That's the best part of the show, seeing all the interesting stuff people want to sell. A lot of it was smaller stuff, toys, action figures, single comics or small bunches, but one guy brought a big box of comics that they guessed was worth $750,000. It had some neat old comics. Not the kind of thing I want, early Superman and Batman issues etc, even if I could afford them. The issues looked in nice shape and they told him to get himself to an auction house. That's the way to make the most money on that collection. Another guy tried to sell them a rare poster of Superman. He wanted hundreds for it. They passed and later found it was a poster by different artist than the guy said it was and you can still get it on the artists website for $35. Some people took the money offered and some did not. Some of the encounters didn't come off to well like Ming buying the Catwoman Barbie from some lady. I'm sure stuff like that turned people off the show. I certainly have mixed feeling about it. Cut into the store footage is a group sit down to talk about the show. Kevin Smith sits in on that with them. They also produced a series of podcasts that Kevin hosts on his podcast network. There were 7 of those. You can find them if you need them.

I had read some reviewer compare Comic Book Men to Pawn Stars so I watched 3 episodes depicting the buying activities in a huge and long established pawn shop in Las Vegas. I can see why someone might use that show as a comparison. They bid as low as possible to see if the people want to sell. Some people take the money and some don't. Other than the buying stuff it's pretty different. You don't learn enough about the Pawn Stars guys to bother much about them. Showing the goods and the cash is the reason we're here. "Show me the money!" Hollywood Treasures is another collectible show. They go for movie props and memorabilia, rare books, other interesting collectibles. They had a book that was signed by all the cast of The Wizard Of Oz including Toto's paw print. I really would have wanted that book for that paw print but it went for a huge pile. I think it was $65,000 but it was a while ago and I can't remember for sure. They had a ton of stuff from the Terminator movies and a bunch of great props and ships from different Star Trek series. The guy that heads the company that auctions off the items on the show is annoying, it's all about getting items for the next auction. Unlike that business model the comic shop doesn't pay much of the value of a collectible when someone tries to sell it. Ten to twenty percent of the value, that's the used bookstore and comic shop business model. It's partly supply and demand. Customers demand so much choice but they don't supply the sales too well. Much of what those stores buy winds up collecting dust, especially in the used business. Bookstores can return most new books. There's a certain window that you have to hit but you'll get credit on the returns and you won't get stuck with unsold and unwanted inventory. Used stores are stuck with the stuff no one wants. There's always a huge supply of people wanting to sell all the books they don't want anymore but there aren't always the huge supply of customers to demand all those books. Better items might net the seller a bit more than that 10-20% but more common items would get the seller a lot less or the store might not want them at all. It's typical for used stores to cherry pick the items you bring in and pass on the ones they don't want. For collectible toys and the like the price the seller will pay is based on the buyers thoughts on the re-sale price and the length of time he might have to sit on it. In the case of more high end collectibles auction is the way to go. That's where the high paying fans hang out with their checkbooks.

Mostly I was interested in watching the show while I was watching it but I doubt I would bother buying a dvd of the series. I wouldn't want to watch it that often.