So far, I'm having a GREAT Halloween Weekend!
...you know, in my own, low-key way...
My holiday began Friday morning when I got off work.
I'm dead broke, rent ate my whole check (as it usually does at the end of the month), but I had planned ahead for this Halloween's festivities. I dropped a chunk of change on Universal's The Legacy Collection for 4 of their classic monsters: Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon!
The Wolf Man has been a part of my Halloween celebrations since the mid-1990s, when it aired and I caught it on VHS. It's not a long movie, so I was also able to fit Gary Larson's Tales from the Far Side Halloween special on the same tape. And when that Halloween mood came upon me, I'd pop the tape in and watch.
As a result, I've become rather fond of The Wolf Man, and come to associate it with Halloween (beyond the natural association of the mere fact that he's a Universal monster and a classic Halloween costume).
But the last few years I haven't been able to trouble myself to dig up the VHS, so this year I was sort of missing Mr. Talbot. (Laurence Talbot, the name of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s character when he's not eating villagers by moonlight.) So I Netflix-ed the DVD.
But when I went to watch it, the main menu asked me which feature I wanted to see: The Wol Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Werewolf of London or She-Wolf of London.
Huh?!
I hadn't heard of the 3 other films. And 2 of them, it turns out, were only available on another disc. I checked Netflix, and they didn't offer that second disc.
So what is this amazing thing I have stumbled onto?!
Amazon held answers for me:
Back in 2004, as a sort of promotional tie-in with big-budget stink-bomb Van Helsing, Universal Studios apparently re-packaged their classic monster movies into these uber-packs: The Legacy Collection! As part of the Bonus Features in each package is the director of Van Helsing giving a short history of the monster, then talking about how he is going to treat the character in his film. (I was about to type, "Not well," but that's really not being fair. Mr. Sommers clearly loves the characters, and Van Helsing is clearly a love letter to the Universal classics, it's just that Sommers appears to have let the script get away from him. Toward the end of Van Helsing, I remember thinking that just watching the dailies -- after the special effects began coming in, that is -- there is no way anyone associated with the film could have guessed they were making a terrible movie! If you watched the scenes alone, separate from each other and out of order, you would be convinced that this was an awesome flick! It's just when you put all the scenes together, in order, that you become bored an unimpressed. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was good, though! I was disappointed with The Mummy, and I didn't see any of the sequels, but I dug G.I. Joe!)
Since the short promos for Van Helsing talk as though the movie isn't out yet, I'm guessing Universal released the Legacy Collection DVDs before the movie -- to remind people why they loved the classics, or to introduce new generations to them -- in order to perk-up interest in the new flick.
Naturally, when this was going on, I was unaware because I was -- as ever -- broke.
BUT...
...my broke-ness actually worked in my favor this time!!! :D
If you look on Amazon right now, you can get all these amazing collections for just under $20 each! And if you buy one of Amazon's 3-fers, you can get a whole mess of them for less than that!
Which is what I did with my birthday money this year! :D
I bought the Frankenstein collection, the Dracula collection, the Wolf Man collection and the Creature from the Black Lagoon collection!!!
But what's amazing is that I wasn't just buying 4 classic movies, I bought ALL the (official) SEQUELS, TOO!!! :D
So going into the Halloween season this year, here's what I'm working with:
Frankenstein (1931)
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Son of Frankenstein (1939)
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
House of Frankenstein (1944)
Dracula (1931)
Dracula (1931 Spanish Version)
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
Son of Dracula (1943)
House of Dracula (1945)
The Wolf Man (1941)
Werewolf of London (1935)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
She-Wolf of London (1946)
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Revenge of the Creature (1955)
The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)
That's the better part of 3 decades of Universal Studios classics!!!
It's insane, too, because though most of these flicks really wouldn't sell on their own (the and Son of... and House of... flicks, especially) Bride of Frankenstein and Revenge of the Creature really should be sold separately, from a value standpoint! One could argue that in both cases, the sequel somewhat eclipses the original!
But I'm immeasurably glad that Universal made this minor oversight, since I feel like I've gotten away with highway robbery, lol. (When was the last time you paid for entertainment and felt like you were the one on the better end of the bargain?)
Naturally, I broke into the DVDs long before they came. I watched the Making-Of featurettes for all 4 franchises, and watched Creature, Wolf Man and Dracula with the film-historian audio commentary. I even watched Dracula with Philip Glass's score, and I love it!!! I didn't know who Philip Glass was when Southpark dissed him in a Christmas episode, but that guy is a genius!!! (Well...at least, his score for Dracula is genius. I'm not familiar with the rest of his work.)
One more thing about the classic horror flicks: Every time I watch the original Halloween (John Carpenter's version, the real one) I can't help but notice how all the TVs are playing old black & white horror flicks, and it makes me kind of want to experience that. I mean, I watch black & white flicks all the time (whenever the mood takes me, anyway) but I've never spent Halloween that way. When I was a kid, a teen and in my 20s, Halloween was always about going out, not-being-home. Then in my 30s, when I didn't have the money or sleep schedule that allowed me to go out, I usually gravitated to newer horror flicks, stuff that still scared me.
So this year, I'm reveling in the Classics!
And reveling I am! here's how my Halloween is breaking down this year:
Friday, October 29, 2010
I started out by logging into Hulu and watching the latest episode of Castle, assuming this macabre-yet-fun show would surely have Halloween episode, right? Wrong. Oh, sure, the episode was good! But it was too good, in the wrong way. It's this deeply moving character piece that had me in just the wrong mindset for a Halloween-y good time.
But I recovered, and watched House of Frankenstein, the first of the "monster mash-ups" with most of Universal's line of monsters: The Mad Scientist (played by Boris Karloff, interestingly), the Hunchback (the Mad Scientist's assistant, naturally, but in a subplot clearly lifted from The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Dracula (played by a cowboy in an Abe Lincoln hat), Wolf Man and Frankenstein's Monster!!! It was the second-to-last of the "Golden Age" of Universal's monster films (excluding the Abbot and Costello Meet... parody pics, the cycle wouldn't start back up again, in earnest, for almost another decade with Creature from the Black Lagoon), so it was guaranteed to be a bit of low-quality, schlocky fun!
And it didn't disappoint!!! :D
And watching all the behind-the-scenes stuff about the making of these films -- particularly the Frankenstein films -- I had to watch Gods and Monsters finally, the film about the end of James Whale's life. It didn't really have much to do with the making of either of his monster films -- except to sort of suggest where some of his creative inspiration for bits of them came from, and why he was such a master with macabre imagery -- but the film was really good.
Too good, though, in the wrong way.
So I followed Gods and Monsters up by watching the rest of Them!, and that movie is just surprisingly great! Made in 1954, it's clearly the 2012 of its time! I was seriously surprised at what they pulled off with that flick! Now, I mean, my daughter and her friends aren't going to watch it and be impressed. (I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch it.) They can create more convincing special effects on their iPhones. But for what they were working with back then, Gordon Douglas must have been the Michael Bay of his day!
Then I fell asleep to House of Dracula.
When I woke up Friday night, I listened to a couple of episodes of Spooky Southcoast, watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on Hulu, then tracked down "the Halloween episode" of Quantum Leap and watched it on Netflix (because Tim Weisberg mentioned it on one of the SSc eps).
And I'm blanking on what else I watched...
Is it possible that I went to sleep to Invasion of the Body Snatchers? No, I remember waching Gods and Monsters and Them! Friday morning, so I must have fallen asleep to Body Snatchers Thursday morning.
Actually, I think I'm getting some of this out of order. Hmph.
Okay, I know for sure that tonight when I woke up, Brian and I watched the end of Young Frankenstein (he was watching it when I woke up, so he saw the whole thing) and then we listened to Spooky Southcoast live!!! :D We almost never get to do that. And tonight was a psychic who has what she believes is new information about Ron DeFeo (the guy who lived at 112 Ocean Avenue and murdered his entire family back in 1974, before the Lutz family moved in and left after 28 days, sparking off the "Amityville Horror" phenomenon). It was a creepy show than ran half an hour longer than usual (probably because they somehow knew Brian and I were listening).
Then after that, Brian & I enjoyed Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein!!! HALLOWEEN FUN!!! :D
When Brian went to sleep (poor guy has to work tomorrow) I popped in Son of Frankenstein, The Ghost of Frankenstein and I was partway into Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man when I paused to write this entry.
After I finish FMTWM I will have seen ALL of the Frankenstein series! :D (Actually, I need to rewatch House of Dracula, because Frankenstein's Monster appears in there, but I fell asleep long before his scene popped up, lol.)
AND THE COOL THING IS, I STILL HAVE PLENTY TO WATCH!!! :D There are several awesome classics on Netflix that I queued, and there are plenty of horror flicks in my Hulu queue, too! (That's completely leaving out my vast DVD library of horror titles, intentionally.)
So whatever happens between this moment and All Saints' Day, I know I'll be having a funky-fun time!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
:D
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
PARRRRRR-DEE!!! *hiccup*
When I was young, I could not imagine what my 40th Birthday might be like. I mean, I couldn't even imaging being 40, much less the details of what turning 40 might be like.
Well, this weekend, I have found out.
IT'S AWESOME!!! :D
When I was growing up, turning 40 officially put you "Over the Hill" and meant you were now on the fast track to senility, a retirement home, and DEATH. You're 40th Birthday party was, inevitably, an Over-the-Hill party, and every single card, present and party favor in someway reflected this. (We threw such a party for my Pops when he turned 40.)
Now, the unspoken spirit of the Over-the-Hill party wasn't actually mocking a loved one who was now, officially, "Old", is was more a subtle mockery of the idea that the loved on in question really was old just because of the number of years he had lived.
But I lucked out, on a couple of counts:
First, thankfully for me, "Middle Age" has been pushed back another decade. I think it's because women closer to my age simply refuse to wither and look not-hot, so people like Teri Hatcher (this is my guess, anyway) forced the Middle-Aged limit to be pushed back.
Secondly, that whole "Over the Hill" fad seems to have simply vanished, like parachute pants or something.
Also, I could never have imagined, when I was younger, that turning 40 could feel so young!!!
Like, I heard "older folks" say things like that when I was a kid. Say that they didn't actually feel old. But I could never have guessed how literal they might have been! I don't exercise, or eat particularly well (thought I don't eat particularly badly, I don't think) so my body isn't in the type of shape I think it should be. But even still, I'm not short on energy, and there aren't any activities I fear taking part in. (Besides, you know, moshing, gang-rapes, self-mutilation, robberies, that sort of thing. But that's really nothing to do with how healthy I think I am.)
So anyway, how did I celebrate?
Like the past few birthdays, I kept it low-key. I don't have the money to throw myself a lavish party, and honestly, the party would just be getting started for me about the time everyone else was saying Goodnight.
So my B-Day started with some well-wishes from my little bro' Friday morning when I got home from work. There was a bigass Birthday card waiting for me! The envelop was covered with Brian Edwards ORIGINAL artwork!
Front...
...and Back...
And then the card itself -- IT'S 3-D!!!
:D
So as Brian's getting ready for work, he's also making sure the weekend of my 40th gets off to a fantastic start!
Since Brian bought us a Blu Ray player a couple of weeks ago, I decide it might be cool to watch a Netflix movie on the Big Screen.
The HD TV Brian bought is kind of profound! It makes movies look like they're actually on the Big Screen! And you have no idea how wild this is until you watch an OLD movie on it! For the first time ever, you feel like, you are watching this ancient flick the way it was intended to be seen!
And you can tell, watching an old movie on a HUGE screen, that this is exactly what the original filmmakers had in mind when they designed and shot their flicks! On the Small Screen, it looks cheesy and, well, old-timey. But on a Big Screen, the flick seems somehow more significant, more important. It seems like an event!
So to kick off my 40th Birthday Weekend, I decided to watch what I am told is the 1950s "Giant Monster": Them!.
But first, I figure that turning 40 is one of those occasions wherein it is socially-acceptable to get krunk, so before work Thursday night I bought me a bigass bottle of Tito's Homemade. I already had a bottle of Pina Colada mix in the fridge, and when I poured the remains into a 32-ounce cup, then dropped some Tito's in it, I had me a powerful party drink!
So I kicked back with my Paint-Thinner Colada and popped on Them!! (The first exclamation mark is part of the title, but the second is meant to express my enthusiasm for this endeavor.)
And let me tell ya, this was an awesome way to start off my weekend! Them! is a surprisingly good flick! It holds up well! As the main character are exposed to more and more of the mutant monsters, I'm thinking "How could they afford to shoot all this?!" I mean, you're not going to mistake Them! for Transformers, but watching it, I think you'll see that Transformers might not have been made if not for Them! going there first!
Unfortunately, Them! was kind of too good of a movie...
See, I anticipated it being a bit more laughable, and I imagined that with that heavy-duty dose of alcohol in my bloodstream, I would be up until Brian got off work, laughing with myself and watching half of Netflix's streaming library.
Didn't happen that way.
Them! had me genuinely transfixed. It sucked me in so that I barely finished my one drink, and around 9:45am (the normal time I've been getting to bed the last week) I felt my eyes getting heavy and decided to go ahead and get some sleep.
Now before you accuse me of being old, know that I stay up way past my bedtime entirely too often! I'll get obsessed researching some phenomenon and discover that it's 2 or more hours past the time I should be asleep. So the fact that went to bed at (for me) a reasonable hour has nothing to do with being old. I just recognized, quite sensibly, that I could resume celebrating after I woke up, and I could celebrate with my brother, because he would be home from work by then. :P
And that's how it played out. I woke up Friday evening, and I slipped off to do a bit of shopping. One thing I bought was Season 2 of Castle and Dollhouse. I was looking forward to watching several hours of Castle with Brian, since we're both huge Nathan Fillion fans. (I followed Castle's second season on Hulu, but Brian didn't, and season 1 was half a season. So this was gonna be cool!)
I also bought a bald wig, 2 blood-soaked machete's and an ax.
This was the completion of my 2010 Halloween costume!!! :D
I'm not sure exactly how this became a thing with me, but I had been missing my old Jason Vorhees mask...
See, back in 1987 or so, some company released a "Serial Killer Hockey Mask" (the "generic" name for a copyrighted character's iconic trademark mask) for Halloween. It was this amazing plastic replica of Jason's mask, only it didn't have the chevrons (the red marks on the brow and cheeks of the mask). But I -- clever budding filmmaker and long-time theatre alum that I was -- figured out that I could cut the chevrons out red electrical tape and recreate Jason Voorhees's iconic mask! :D So I did.
I remember this one school costume party where my best friend Tommy and I pulled an incredibly subtle Halloween prank on some classmates of his:
He was invited to this school function, and I was not -- it was for one of his classes or extracurricular activities or something. My Jason Voorhees costume consisted of a plaid shirt, jeans, this cool gray bomber jacket I owned, a bald wig and my Jason hockey mask. (Maybe a plastic glow-in-the-dark machete that I had spray-painted silver, too.)
The idea (and execution) was elegantly simple:
We were both wearing jeans, plaid shirts and bald wigs. He brings me to the party, and I stay outside in his car. He goes in wearing the bomber jacket and hockey mask (and maybe sporting the machete, I can't remember), mingles, and then makes an excuse to come outside. Then he passes me the mask and jacket, and then I go inside. I mingle for a bit, then go back outside, and Tommy finishes off the party.
And that's exactly how it came off...except for one detail: Someone pestered him for a peek beneath the mask. He succumbed ("succame"?) to the pressure and allowed that person to see beneath the mask. (If I'm not mistaken, it was a cute chick, so I can't really blame him.)
So now it was my turn...
I donned the mask and jacket, and went in.
I found myself in conversation with folks I had never seen before. All these years later, I couldn't begin to recall what was discussed. I just remember keeping my replies as vague as possible.
Now, one thing to note is that in 198-whatever, Jason Voorhees was like a rock star! Someone sporting a semi-decent Jason costume was bound to get attention back then. And I got me some attention, lol.
And then it happened: A cute chick wanted to take a look -- just a peek -- at what I looked like beneath the mask.
Hmph.
I mean, I denied her at first, but there is a certain point in which saying "No, I want to keep the mystique" is no longer socially acceptable, and I turn into a freak-ish asshole who is way too into his Friday-the-13th fantasy. And these weren't my classmates: they were Tommy's!
So then I let the cute chick peek, and her reaction...
"Huh. Okay."
She didn't recognize me!
Why should she? I wasn't a part of her class (or extracurricular activity, or whatever it was)! I HAD GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT!!! :D
I believe I remember trying to hang out as long as possible (a small group of people had glom-ed onto me the moment I had entered the building, so I didn't want to look suspicious in my exit) but then taking the first opportune moment to get the hell out of there and get Tommy back to his party.
As a teen, this was a wonderfully horrifying and thrilling ruse to pull off!
AND WE PULLED IT OFF!!!
My exposing my face to the cute chick didn't seem to have spoiled the game for Tommy at all! This wonderful prank was a resounding success!!! :D
So successful, in fact, that none of the witnesses probably even know that a prank had been pulled, lol. (My buddy Tommy and I probably could have been criminal masterminds, if our hearts weren't made of gold.)
However...
I lost that mask sometime in the transition between teenager and twenty-something. :(
And I don't recall when it started, but I've been missing that gorgeous mask for a few years now.
I mean, look at your local Halloween supply stores! When you see a "Serial Killer Hokey Mask" nowadays, it's not made with hard plastic, and the hole configuration is barely reminiscent of the classic Jason Voorhees mask!
What's WORSE is that the "official" Jason Voorhees masks don't come close to recreating what I had!!!
The Jason masks you can buy now are either post-Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part 6 or they're made of uber-flexible rubber -- not hard plastic, like a real hockey mask!
Perhaps I should clarify: This Jason mask I had created was absolutely as close to a Hollywood prop as a middle-class kid from Odessa, Texas could create! It was blind luck that some Halloween-mask company had stumbled onto the original mold (or something very damned close to is) of Paramount's Friday the 13th series hockey mask, and that all I had to do to create this amazing replica was add some chevrons made of electric tape!
And then to realize that 20 years later, luck was less blind -- Paramount had, apparently, taken whatever legal action they needed to to make sure that any successive "Serial Killer Hockey Masks" look nothing like Jason's Red-Wings-based design, and none of the officially licensed "Jason Voorhees" masks could ever be confused with Hollywood props -- was a bit devastating. :(
I mean, it's not like my world was crumbling around me or anything. But it was a considerable disappointment.
But then, one night a couple of months ago, my brother called me, all drunk, lol!
He was thinking about my birthday, and looking on eBay to see if he could find the Jason hockey mask I most preferred...
Now, when I'm looking to buy some long-lost-something-or-other, I look on Amazon.com, but when Brian is looking to purchase the in-purchase-able, he goes to eBay...
AND, to be fair, eBay did have an impressive number of really impressive Jason Voorhees mask replicas!!! They seemed to have every mask from Part 3 to Jason X!!!
But I noticed an interesting phenomenon...the best masks seemed to come from this place called www.frightstuff.com.
It turns out that FrightStuff.com sells the raw materials you need to create your own Jason mask, starting with the blank mask from the original Jason mold!!! :D
You want the mask from Friday the 13th: Part 3? You can buy it there!!! You want the mask from Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan? You can buy it there!!! It appears that Paramount Pictures has been using the same mold for all of their Jason sequels -- and New Line altered the mold for Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X, but not Freddy Versus Jason -- and FrightStuff.com somehow scored that original mold, and offer it to you (us) for an amazingly acceptable price!!!
There was this one blog that has an EXCELLENT overview of the differences between the Jason masks, but it appears to have disappeared, but there is another one here: http://www.jason-voorhees.info/jason-voorhees-mask.html.
The one that influenced me (that doesn't, apparently, exist anymore, gave a phenomenally-detailed explanation of just exactly what was different from film to film, which gave me a more precise understanding of what I really wanted out of a Jason mask: For me, I wanted a mask. My favorite movies are Part 3The final Chapter (Part IV) and Jason Lives (Part 6), but the look of Jason is Part III! While he's still a living human, before he becomes a super-zombie.
I mean, from a cinematic standpoint, you can bloody-up the mask after Part 3, but you can't ever take it back to that level of cleanliness. So, for me, the Jason I want to capture is the pre-ax-to-the-head, pre-machete-to-the-brain, pre-resurrected-from-the-grave Jason of Part III.
In short, the mask I used to own as a teenager...
But here's where it gets COOL...
The drunken conversation with my brother tips me off to this one-off site that is working from the original Paramount Pictures molds...
So I can spend $50 there and buy an completely NEW, unblemished copy of the mask AND (included in that price) a copy of the chevrons!!!
I CAN MAKE A PRISTINE JASON VOORHEES MASK, THAT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE THE FIRST MASK IN PART III!!!
(Of course, I can also dirty it up to look like any version of the mask from III to VII. But what I want is Part III.)
So, with one paycheck, I buy the mask kit and not only recreate the blind luck of my childhood, but recreate a masterful replica of one of my childhood icons! (Like, I could sell this thing on eBay, if I weren't as invested in it as I am.)
So then, my next question is this: What the hell did Jason wear in those movies?
It took a couple of days of research to discover than Jason Voorhees had, basically 3 outfits: 1-With the sack over his head, he wore overalls and a blue plaid shirt, 2-with the hockeymask he wore a Hunter Green overshirt over a white T-shirt with brown pants, and 3-after he was a zombie for a while, he worea gray overshirt over a black T-shirt and gray/black pants.
My Jason is Part III, so he was wearing a Hunter Green overshirt over a white T-shirt and brown pants. (He continued to wear this for The Final Chapter and Jason Lives: Part VI, with the exception that in Jason Lives he had picked up a web belt (containing more weapons) that gave him a more slimming look than he had sported in Part III or The Final Chapter.)
So this weaves into my narrative in that I had used one paycheck to buy the $50 Jason mask, and then I used another paycheck to buy the Hunter Green overshirt, the white T-shirt, and the brown pants to complete Jason's wardrobe. (I normally wear black worker boots, which blend right in with such a costume.)
So with my Birthday money, I needed to buy a bald wig.
I also bought a couple of props...
My favorite prop urns out to be an official Paramount Pictures "bloody machete". You'll see why...
I dig the fact that this machete is "property of Camp Crystal Lake", lol.
So, the completion of my 2010 Halloween costume was quite an exciting aspect of my birthday celebration for me!
(Yes, I'm a nerd...)
So then, after I got home from shopping, my li'l bro' put on The Wolf Man, the remake of the original 1941 Universal Studios monster flick. I dig on the original because it's highly atmospheric and not the least bit scary (attractive to me because I'm so old, lol). But the remake is super-awesome because it seems to capture the atmosphere of the original and provide a mystery that keeps you guessing until the end!
Then I watched a couple of episodes of Castle: Season 2 with Brian, until he fell asleep. At that point, I realized I had a couple of Season 3 episodes I could watch on Hulu but I got sidetracked...
There was this live episode of 30 Rock that aired before I got to work, and that I wanted to see. I adore 30 Rock, but I couldn't imagine how they might pull off a live episode, so I was dying to see this! When I logged onto Hulu, I saw that the new (live) episode of 30 Rock was up, too. So I watched it.
THE EPISODE IS ABOUT LIZ LEMON TURNING 40!!! :D
How cool is THAT?!!
So -- via one of my favorite shows, doing a live episode -- I got to enjoy a star-studded 40th birthday celebration online! (Seriously, what are the odds on one of my favorite TV babes turning 40 on an episode of TV that I don't end up watching until 2 days later, which happens to be my 40th birthday?!! Seems a little coincidental, no?)
I watched both the East Coast and West Coast feeds, and after that I was tired of messing with Hulu, so I switched to the last 4 episodes of Dollhouse (DVD) and saw how the series played out.
That took me into Saturday, the 16th...
I woke up Saturday, and Brian already had himself a meal planned, so I grabbed me some takeout from Texas Road House -- Country-Fried Sirloin, plus side -- and settled into an audiobook I recently purchased from Audible.com, The Grays by Whitley Strieber. This unabridged audiobook wrapped-up most of my attention for the remainder of Saturday night and Sunday morning. In fact, I finished the book Sunday evening at Moonie's Burger House, where I enjoyed a Plain Jane combo -- no onions, mustard, no mayonnaise -- as my li'l bro' slept a home. (The meat isn't really different than the nukebale patties you might buy at H.E.B., but the veggies are fresh and the buns are to die for! Making the meal, all in all, quite enjoyable!)
And that brings us up to NOW...
When I started writing this blog entry, it was around 2:00am. At the moment, it's 6:30am. So some of the ideas I had about what I might do to finish out my 40th Birthday Weekend (such as watch some new Castle on Hulu or watch some No Ordinary Family) seem a bit frivolous, considering...
But is has been and extraordinarily cool 40th Birthday for me!!! :D
I hope your work week -- however old you are -- is AMAZING!!!
Ray Jay :D
Well, this weekend, I have found out.
IT'S AWESOME!!! :D
When I was growing up, turning 40 officially put you "Over the Hill" and meant you were now on the fast track to senility, a retirement home, and DEATH. You're 40th Birthday party was, inevitably, an Over-the-Hill party, and every single card, present and party favor in someway reflected this. (We threw such a party for my Pops when he turned 40.)
Now, the unspoken spirit of the Over-the-Hill party wasn't actually mocking a loved one who was now, officially, "Old", is was more a subtle mockery of the idea that the loved on in question really was old just because of the number of years he had lived.
But I lucked out, on a couple of counts:
First, thankfully for me, "Middle Age" has been pushed back another decade. I think it's because women closer to my age simply refuse to wither and look not-hot, so people like Teri Hatcher (this is my guess, anyway) forced the Middle-Aged limit to be pushed back.
Secondly, that whole "Over the Hill" fad seems to have simply vanished, like parachute pants or something.
Also, I could never have imagined, when I was younger, that turning 40 could feel so young!!!
Like, I heard "older folks" say things like that when I was a kid. Say that they didn't actually feel old. But I could never have guessed how literal they might have been! I don't exercise, or eat particularly well (thought I don't eat particularly badly, I don't think) so my body isn't in the type of shape I think it should be. But even still, I'm not short on energy, and there aren't any activities I fear taking part in. (Besides, you know, moshing, gang-rapes, self-mutilation, robberies, that sort of thing. But that's really nothing to do with how healthy I think I am.)
So anyway, how did I celebrate?
Like the past few birthdays, I kept it low-key. I don't have the money to throw myself a lavish party, and honestly, the party would just be getting started for me about the time everyone else was saying Goodnight.
So my B-Day started with some well-wishes from my little bro' Friday morning when I got home from work. There was a bigass Birthday card waiting for me! The envelop was covered with Brian Edwards ORIGINAL artwork!
Front...
...and Back...
And then the card itself -- IT'S 3-D!!!
:D
So as Brian's getting ready for work, he's also making sure the weekend of my 40th gets off to a fantastic start!
Since Brian bought us a Blu Ray player a couple of weeks ago, I decide it might be cool to watch a Netflix movie on the Big Screen.
The HD TV Brian bought is kind of profound! It makes movies look like they're actually on the Big Screen! And you have no idea how wild this is until you watch an OLD movie on it! For the first time ever, you feel like, you are watching this ancient flick the way it was intended to be seen!
And you can tell, watching an old movie on a HUGE screen, that this is exactly what the original filmmakers had in mind when they designed and shot their flicks! On the Small Screen, it looks cheesy and, well, old-timey. But on a Big Screen, the flick seems somehow more significant, more important. It seems like an event!
So to kick off my 40th Birthday Weekend, I decided to watch what I am told is the 1950s "Giant Monster": Them!.
But first, I figure that turning 40 is one of those occasions wherein it is socially-acceptable to get krunk, so before work Thursday night I bought me a bigass bottle of Tito's Homemade. I already had a bottle of Pina Colada mix in the fridge, and when I poured the remains into a 32-ounce cup, then dropped some Tito's in it, I had me a powerful party drink!
So I kicked back with my Paint-Thinner Colada and popped on Them!! (The first exclamation mark is part of the title, but the second is meant to express my enthusiasm for this endeavor.)
And let me tell ya, this was an awesome way to start off my weekend! Them! is a surprisingly good flick! It holds up well! As the main character are exposed to more and more of the mutant monsters, I'm thinking "How could they afford to shoot all this?!" I mean, you're not going to mistake Them! for Transformers, but watching it, I think you'll see that Transformers might not have been made if not for Them! going there first!
Unfortunately, Them! was kind of too good of a movie...
See, I anticipated it being a bit more laughable, and I imagined that with that heavy-duty dose of alcohol in my bloodstream, I would be up until Brian got off work, laughing with myself and watching half of Netflix's streaming library.
Didn't happen that way.
Them! had me genuinely transfixed. It sucked me in so that I barely finished my one drink, and around 9:45am (the normal time I've been getting to bed the last week) I felt my eyes getting heavy and decided to go ahead and get some sleep.
Now before you accuse me of being old, know that I stay up way past my bedtime entirely too often! I'll get obsessed researching some phenomenon and discover that it's 2 or more hours past the time I should be asleep. So the fact that went to bed at (for me) a reasonable hour has nothing to do with being old. I just recognized, quite sensibly, that I could resume celebrating after I woke up, and I could celebrate with my brother, because he would be home from work by then. :P
And that's how it played out. I woke up Friday evening, and I slipped off to do a bit of shopping. One thing I bought was Season 2 of Castle and Dollhouse. I was looking forward to watching several hours of Castle with Brian, since we're both huge Nathan Fillion fans. (I followed Castle's second season on Hulu, but Brian didn't, and season 1 was half a season. So this was gonna be cool!)
I also bought a bald wig, 2 blood-soaked machete's and an ax.
This was the completion of my 2010 Halloween costume!!! :D
I'm not sure exactly how this became a thing with me, but I had been missing my old Jason Vorhees mask...
See, back in 1987 or so, some company released a "Serial Killer Hockey Mask" (the "generic" name for a copyrighted character's iconic trademark mask) for Halloween. It was this amazing plastic replica of Jason's mask, only it didn't have the chevrons (the red marks on the brow and cheeks of the mask). But I -- clever budding filmmaker and long-time theatre alum that I was -- figured out that I could cut the chevrons out red electrical tape and recreate Jason Voorhees's iconic mask! :D So I did.
I remember this one school costume party where my best friend Tommy and I pulled an incredibly subtle Halloween prank on some classmates of his:
He was invited to this school function, and I was not -- it was for one of his classes or extracurricular activities or something. My Jason Voorhees costume consisted of a plaid shirt, jeans, this cool gray bomber jacket I owned, a bald wig and my Jason hockey mask. (Maybe a plastic glow-in-the-dark machete that I had spray-painted silver, too.)
The idea (and execution) was elegantly simple:
We were both wearing jeans, plaid shirts and bald wigs. He brings me to the party, and I stay outside in his car. He goes in wearing the bomber jacket and hockey mask (and maybe sporting the machete, I can't remember), mingles, and then makes an excuse to come outside. Then he passes me the mask and jacket, and then I go inside. I mingle for a bit, then go back outside, and Tommy finishes off the party.
And that's exactly how it came off...except for one detail: Someone pestered him for a peek beneath the mask. He succumbed ("succame"?) to the pressure and allowed that person to see beneath the mask. (If I'm not mistaken, it was a cute chick, so I can't really blame him.)
So now it was my turn...
I donned the mask and jacket, and went in.
I found myself in conversation with folks I had never seen before. All these years later, I couldn't begin to recall what was discussed. I just remember keeping my replies as vague as possible.
Now, one thing to note is that in 198-whatever, Jason Voorhees was like a rock star! Someone sporting a semi-decent Jason costume was bound to get attention back then. And I got me some attention, lol.
And then it happened: A cute chick wanted to take a look -- just a peek -- at what I looked like beneath the mask.
Hmph.
I mean, I denied her at first, but there is a certain point in which saying "No, I want to keep the mystique" is no longer socially acceptable, and I turn into a freak-ish asshole who is way too into his Friday-the-13th fantasy. And these weren't my classmates: they were Tommy's!
So then I let the cute chick peek, and her reaction...
"Huh. Okay."
She didn't recognize me!
Why should she? I wasn't a part of her class (or extracurricular activity, or whatever it was)! I HAD GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT!!! :D
I believe I remember trying to hang out as long as possible (a small group of people had glom-ed onto me the moment I had entered the building, so I didn't want to look suspicious in my exit) but then taking the first opportune moment to get the hell out of there and get Tommy back to his party.
As a teen, this was a wonderfully horrifying and thrilling ruse to pull off!
AND WE PULLED IT OFF!!!
My exposing my face to the cute chick didn't seem to have spoiled the game for Tommy at all! This wonderful prank was a resounding success!!! :D
So successful, in fact, that none of the witnesses probably even know that a prank had been pulled, lol. (My buddy Tommy and I probably could have been criminal masterminds, if our hearts weren't made of gold.)
However...
I lost that mask sometime in the transition between teenager and twenty-something. :(
And I don't recall when it started, but I've been missing that gorgeous mask for a few years now.
I mean, look at your local Halloween supply stores! When you see a "Serial Killer Hokey Mask" nowadays, it's not made with hard plastic, and the hole configuration is barely reminiscent of the classic Jason Voorhees mask!
What's WORSE is that the "official" Jason Voorhees masks don't come close to recreating what I had!!!
The Jason masks you can buy now are either post-Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part 6 or they're made of uber-flexible rubber -- not hard plastic, like a real hockey mask!
Perhaps I should clarify: This Jason mask I had created was absolutely as close to a Hollywood prop as a middle-class kid from Odessa, Texas could create! It was blind luck that some Halloween-mask company had stumbled onto the original mold (or something very damned close to is) of Paramount's Friday the 13th series hockey mask, and that all I had to do to create this amazing replica was add some chevrons made of electric tape!
And then to realize that 20 years later, luck was less blind -- Paramount had, apparently, taken whatever legal action they needed to to make sure that any successive "Serial Killer Hockey Masks" look nothing like Jason's Red-Wings-based design, and none of the officially licensed "Jason Voorhees" masks could ever be confused with Hollywood props -- was a bit devastating. :(
I mean, it's not like my world was crumbling around me or anything. But it was a considerable disappointment.
But then, one night a couple of months ago, my brother called me, all drunk, lol!
He was thinking about my birthday, and looking on eBay to see if he could find the Jason hockey mask I most preferred...
Now, when I'm looking to buy some long-lost-something-or-other, I look on Amazon.com, but when Brian is looking to purchase the in-purchase-able, he goes to eBay...
AND, to be fair, eBay did have an impressive number of really impressive Jason Voorhees mask replicas!!! They seemed to have every mask from Part 3 to Jason X!!!
But I noticed an interesting phenomenon...the best masks seemed to come from this place called www.frightstuff.com.
It turns out that FrightStuff.com sells the raw materials you need to create your own Jason mask, starting with the blank mask from the original Jason mold!!! :D
You want the mask from Friday the 13th: Part 3? You can buy it there!!! You want the mask from Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan? You can buy it there!!! It appears that Paramount Pictures has been using the same mold for all of their Jason sequels -- and New Line altered the mold for Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X, but not Freddy Versus Jason -- and FrightStuff.com somehow scored that original mold, and offer it to you (us) for an amazingly acceptable price!!!
There was this one blog that has an EXCELLENT overview of the differences between the Jason masks, but it appears to have disappeared, but there is another one here: http://www.jason-voorhees.info/jason-voorhees-mask.html.
The one that influenced me (that doesn't, apparently, exist anymore, gave a phenomenally-detailed explanation of just exactly what was different from film to film, which gave me a more precise understanding of what I really wanted out of a Jason mask: For me, I wanted a mask. My favorite movies are Part 3The final Chapter (Part IV) and Jason Lives (Part 6), but the look of Jason is Part III! While he's still a living human, before he becomes a super-zombie.
I mean, from a cinematic standpoint, you can bloody-up the mask after Part 3, but you can't ever take it back to that level of cleanliness. So, for me, the Jason I want to capture is the pre-ax-to-the-head, pre-machete-to-the-brain, pre-resurrected-from-the-grave Jason of Part III.
In short, the mask I used to own as a teenager...
But here's where it gets COOL...
The drunken conversation with my brother tips me off to this one-off site that is working from the original Paramount Pictures molds...
So I can spend $50 there and buy an completely NEW, unblemished copy of the mask AND (included in that price) a copy of the chevrons!!!
I CAN MAKE A PRISTINE JASON VOORHEES MASK, THAT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE THE FIRST MASK IN PART III!!!
(Of course, I can also dirty it up to look like any version of the mask from III to VII. But what I want is Part III.)
So, with one paycheck, I buy the mask kit and not only recreate the blind luck of my childhood, but recreate a masterful replica of one of my childhood icons! (Like, I could sell this thing on eBay, if I weren't as invested in it as I am.)
So then, my next question is this: What the hell did Jason wear in those movies?
It took a couple of days of research to discover than Jason Voorhees had, basically 3 outfits: 1-With the sack over his head, he wore overalls and a blue plaid shirt, 2-with the hockeymask he wore a Hunter Green overshirt over a white T-shirt with brown pants, and 3-after he was a zombie for a while, he worea gray overshirt over a black T-shirt and gray/black pants.
My Jason is Part III, so he was wearing a Hunter Green overshirt over a white T-shirt and brown pants. (He continued to wear this for The Final Chapter and Jason Lives: Part VI, with the exception that in Jason Lives he had picked up a web belt (containing more weapons) that gave him a more slimming look than he had sported in Part III or The Final Chapter.)
So this weaves into my narrative in that I had used one paycheck to buy the $50 Jason mask, and then I used another paycheck to buy the Hunter Green overshirt, the white T-shirt, and the brown pants to complete Jason's wardrobe. (I normally wear black worker boots, which blend right in with such a costume.)
So with my Birthday money, I needed to buy a bald wig.
I also bought a couple of props...
My favorite prop urns out to be an official Paramount Pictures "bloody machete". You'll see why...
I dig the fact that this machete is "property of Camp Crystal Lake", lol.
So, the completion of my 2010 Halloween costume was quite an exciting aspect of my birthday celebration for me!
(Yes, I'm a nerd...)
So then, after I got home from shopping, my li'l bro' put on The Wolf Man, the remake of the original 1941 Universal Studios monster flick. I dig on the original because it's highly atmospheric and not the least bit scary (attractive to me because I'm so old, lol). But the remake is super-awesome because it seems to capture the atmosphere of the original and provide a mystery that keeps you guessing until the end!
Then I watched a couple of episodes of Castle: Season 2 with Brian, until he fell asleep. At that point, I realized I had a couple of Season 3 episodes I could watch on Hulu but I got sidetracked...
There was this live episode of 30 Rock that aired before I got to work, and that I wanted to see. I adore 30 Rock, but I couldn't imagine how they might pull off a live episode, so I was dying to see this! When I logged onto Hulu, I saw that the new (live) episode of 30 Rock was up, too. So I watched it.
THE EPISODE IS ABOUT LIZ LEMON TURNING 40!!! :D
How cool is THAT?!!
So -- via one of my favorite shows, doing a live episode -- I got to enjoy a star-studded 40th birthday celebration online! (Seriously, what are the odds on one of my favorite TV babes turning 40 on an episode of TV that I don't end up watching until 2 days later, which happens to be my 40th birthday?!! Seems a little coincidental, no?)
I watched both the East Coast and West Coast feeds, and after that I was tired of messing with Hulu, so I switched to the last 4 episodes of Dollhouse (DVD) and saw how the series played out.
That took me into Saturday, the 16th...
I woke up Saturday, and Brian already had himself a meal planned, so I grabbed me some takeout from Texas Road House -- Country-Fried Sirloin, plus side -- and settled into an audiobook I recently purchased from Audible.com, The Grays by Whitley Strieber. This unabridged audiobook wrapped-up most of my attention for the remainder of Saturday night and Sunday morning. In fact, I finished the book Sunday evening at Moonie's Burger House, where I enjoyed a Plain Jane combo -- no onions, mustard, no mayonnaise -- as my li'l bro' slept a home. (The meat isn't really different than the nukebale patties you might buy at H.E.B., but the veggies are fresh and the buns are to die for! Making the meal, all in all, quite enjoyable!)
And that brings us up to NOW...
When I started writing this blog entry, it was around 2:00am. At the moment, it's 6:30am. So some of the ideas I had about what I might do to finish out my 40th Birthday Weekend (such as watch some new Castle on Hulu or watch some No Ordinary Family) seem a bit frivolous, considering...
But is has been and extraordinarily cool 40th Birthday for me!!! :D
I hope your work week -- however old you are -- is AMAZING!!!
Ray Jay :D
Monday, October 04, 2010
UNHOLY SMOKES!!!
I have a new favorite videogame:
LEFT 4 DEAD!!! :D
It's like Resident Evil back when RE was mostly about fighting zombies!!!
The fact that I'm a fan is kind of funny because I've had this game for quite a while now, and I'm only just now playing it.
I bought it near the beginning of the year. I had purchased a USB controller for my 2 newest Tomb Raider PC games (2 od the Crystal Dynamics titles), and I was loving them so much now that I could play them the right way (the keyboard/mouse way wasn't working right, like with the old Edios games) that I decided to look for a Horror title. Left 4 Dead 2 was being advertised at work all the time, so I thought I'd try out the first one.
It sucked! Even with this amazing new controller I had, it was all but impossible to manipulate!
So I let the game sit...
Then, maybe a weak ago, two different friends told me that they could play the game just fine with the keyboard/mouse.
So I finally tried it...
...and OMG!!! AWESOME!!!
It had never occurred to me that some newer games might still be designed for old-school maneuverability! (THOSE are some visionary cats there!)
So now I have a new zombie game! And an AWESOME ONE, too!!! It's more what I hoped RE would grow into, but CapCom went in a different direction. (You're killing more human-like creatures now. They're just sick people, not really zombies.)
It's like I'm in the most badass Romero flick ever! (Except for 2 things: These zombies run, and they're infected with a "zombie virus"; Romero would never let his zombies run, and zombification isn't an infection, as many people assume. In Romero's world, zombie bites kill you like any other bite would, and once you're dead, your corpse is reanimated by whatever reanimated all the corpses in the first place; but it's not a virus.)
Um...
I did some other cool stuff this weekend, too...but I'm kind of still buzzin' on my zombie-shootin' high at the moment.
LEFT 4 DEAD!!! :D
It's like Resident Evil back when RE was mostly about fighting zombies!!!
The fact that I'm a fan is kind of funny because I've had this game for quite a while now, and I'm only just now playing it.
I bought it near the beginning of the year. I had purchased a USB controller for my 2 newest Tomb Raider PC games (2 od the Crystal Dynamics titles), and I was loving them so much now that I could play them the right way (the keyboard/mouse way wasn't working right, like with the old Edios games) that I decided to look for a Horror title. Left 4 Dead 2 was being advertised at work all the time, so I thought I'd try out the first one.
It sucked! Even with this amazing new controller I had, it was all but impossible to manipulate!
So I let the game sit...
Then, maybe a weak ago, two different friends told me that they could play the game just fine with the keyboard/mouse.
So I finally tried it...
...and OMG!!! AWESOME!!!
It had never occurred to me that some newer games might still be designed for old-school maneuverability! (THOSE are some visionary cats there!)
So now I have a new zombie game! And an AWESOME ONE, too!!! It's more what I hoped RE would grow into, but CapCom went in a different direction. (You're killing more human-like creatures now. They're just sick people, not really zombies.)
It's like I'm in the most badass Romero flick ever! (Except for 2 things: These zombies run, and they're infected with a "zombie virus"; Romero would never let his zombies run, and zombification isn't an infection, as many people assume. In Romero's world, zombie bites kill you like any other bite would, and once you're dead, your corpse is reanimated by whatever reanimated all the corpses in the first place; but it's not a virus.)
Um...
I did some other cool stuff this weekend, too...but I'm kind of still buzzin' on my zombie-shootin' high at the moment.
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