I’m hearing loads of “mehs” and “blehs” in response to the new Transformers flick, but I dunno…you’ve gotta go into it without the expectation that this was made for Transfans, because it simply wasn’t. There are millions of Transformers fans, certainly, but there’s a big difference between someone who remembers those cooool transforming cars and someone who remembers that Autobot Seaspray talked funny and once had a human girlfriend. The movie was NOT made for the latter type of fan, because there are not enough of those fans to support a gigantic motion picture.
My take: With or without the Transformers ties, a big budget summer flick featuring robot cars pounding the shit out of robot airplanes is probably more worth seeing than debating. The fact that it has those ties is just gravy for those of us who care. Not saying it’ll be great, but unlike the Star Wars prequels, I’m not going to walk into the theater feeling like I’m owed what I wished for.
This is how I help myself hedge expectations when people tell me that it’s less a movie about Transformers and more a movie about John Turturro making balloon animals.
It’s with that perfect segue that I inform you of my latest ToyFare gig — I’m in issue #120, which is an all Transformers blowout, with a page-long feature about Transformers: The Movie. Not the new one. The old one. The one that’s animated. The one with a reverbing Wheelie. Read about the five best moments in the movie, along with sidebars on “Scramble City” and the age old dream battle of Unicron versus the Death Star. Looks like they had to chop out some copy to make space, but so long as the byline stands and the check clears, I’ll head into tomorrow just as convictionless as before.
I have to admit, I’m pretty pumped about the Summer Megaparty. (See the previous entry if you don’t know what in the fuck I’m talking about.) I’ve spent most of the night spinning in my chair, looking around my junkyard office for different things to write about. Then I thought about how I could hop in my car with my laptop, drive down the street and review the neighbor’s weird lawn ornaments. X-E became whatever it became, but it was built on the freedom to turn anything into content. I’m psyched.
I’ll probably let tomorrow slide without a new entry so we can enter the Megaparty cleanly, and knowing that, maybe it’s a good time for a survey.
In the comments, list five of your weirdest quirks. Don’t fake it. Think about the weird stuff you do, whether it paints you gold or black, and tell the world. Or at least, tell the small part of the world that sifts through comments on my blog. Here’s five of mine:
- I love V8 juice, but I hate drinking it whenever someone else is in the room. When I’m alone, I have visions of the Juiceman and of beautiful beds of tomatoes and parsley. When my concentration breaks, all I can think about is how there must be bits of soil and worms somewhere in the juice.
- I can write just as quickly upside-down and backwards as I can the standard way. Hard to explain, but picture me leaning across the table and writing you a note. You wouldn’t have to flip the paper over to read it. I’m very proud of this.
- I cannot tie shoelaces. I never learned how. I have trouble with most knots, but shoelaces especially. I rarely buy sneakers for this reason.
- I have absolutely no appreciation for music. I’ve listened to the same dozen or so artists/groups for the last decade. Nothing else can get in the rotation and I have no idea why.
- I’m left-handed, but unlike most left-handers, I’ve never been able to learn how to use scissors with my right hand. It makes me feel contorted. Thus, I’m very poor at cutting things out with scissors. Perhaps I should invest in a specialty scissor.
Your turn!
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I also hate seeing hair that is not attached to a body. I am on the brink of barfing whenever I see a mass of wet hair in the shower. I will not pick it up with my hands, rather I cup water in my hands and try to splash it down the drain. If I can’t force it down the drain, then I will exit the shower and grap some TP and flush it down the toilet. I cannot share the shower with the hair of others.
To whoever mentioned a blind doglike creature stalking him (Jedoc?), that immediately reminded me of The Fly II. Maybe that’s where it’s from?
1. I never dry my hair. No matter if I have to go out in subzero temperatures immediately after I’ve showered, I let my hair air-dry.
2. Sometimes I sneak around doing perfectly acceptable and innocent things, just because I like how it feels to be sneaky.
3. When it comes to food, I like textures more than flavors. I love ground beef, but I can’t stand lettuce.
4. I’m very particular about playing my music. I cannot stand it when someone tries to sing the parody version of a song when I’m playing the original (nothing against Weird Al, I just want to hear the song I’m playing). I also can’t stand it when someone tries to sing OVER the music being played (for the same reason).
5. I’m very attracted to pregnant women, but I hate kids.
6. I usually swallow pills dry. Recently, I’ve taken to sucking a cold-eeze lozenge until it’s small enough to swallow, and then swallow it.
7. I order the spicy chicken sandwich at Wendy’s (a fast food restaurant), then smother it in ketchup so I can’t taste the spiciness anymore.
8. I use commas and “I” way too much.
9. When I’m afraid of something, I become obsessed with it and am compelled to confront that fear by overexposing myself to it. When I was a child I was flipping through a comic book and the monsters in it scared me to death, so I had my father buy it for me and I read and reread that comic until the monsters weren’t scary anymore.
I’m a compulsive set completer, and pretty much wasted a good half of my day because I had to read all of the posts in the thread (though as this was posted I was only 75% through). Fun though, and it was nice to know there were several other people with a quirks I have but didn’t list.