The readers have spoken, and I am twenty-five bucks poorerererr.
For my Dollar Tree adventure, I looked the part. I hadn’t shaved in a while, I was visibly exhausted, and the bottom of my jeans were tattered beyond the point where I could’ve passed it off as some sort of style thing.
Realizing the $25 worth of Dollar Tree shit would not possibly fit in a handcart, I was forced to use an actual wagon. While it’s amazing that Dollar Tree even has wagons, it’s a well-known fact that nobody uses them. See, everyone wants to pretend that their trip to the Dollar Tree is a lark. They’re there to “kill a few minutes,” or they’re there because they “just need a lot of paper cups for a party,” or they’re there for this or for that — but under no circumstances are they ever really shopping. When you’re pushing a wagon, you’re really shopping.
I was pushing a wagon. I was really shopping. So began the cold war of nasty glances from the store’s young employees, who regarded me with what was either disgust or pity, or possibly both. Unshaven, tired and pushing a wagon, I could not hide the fact that I was the archetype Dollar Tree shopper. They shot me their looks…looks that said, “you’re really shopping here.” I shot looks right back at them….looks that said, “well, you’re really working here.”
This silent battle went on for twenty minutes, and I felt like I was losing. I was spending money on ceramic pelican statues. At least they were getting paid to stand there.
Disregarding my usual inclination to decide between a “fight or flee” response in reverse alphabetical order, I marched on. I had a mission to complete and a promise to keep. Total strangers demanded that I write about 25 things purchased from Dollar Tree. It was destiny.
I left with way too many treasures to cover in one blog entry, but here are the first eight. If it’s still light out by the time I finish writing this, I’ll head back outside and brave wasp territory to take the photos for Batch #2. (Which is far weirder than this batch, because I’m nothing if not an endless crescendo-mounter guy.)
For now, enjoy these eight gifts from Mars:
Noah’s Ark Playset: If you were under the impression that churches are the best places to get closer to God, I must correct you. Dollar stores are. The zany cast of characters from “The Bible” were all over Dollar Tree, taking every conceivable form — including edible items. Still, any lingering notions that Dollar Trees were holy places was tempered by the fact that all God-related items were stocked next to things like inflatable parrots and six-packs of Bintyne gum.
I chose this Noah’s Ark playset because, well, it’s hilarious and an easy target. I can understand that they needed to exclude an actual ARK toy since it’d be too large for the retail price to make sense, but if they were going to push a Noah’s Ark set and forgo the ARK, they could’ve done a much better job with the residuals…
Included in this accurate portrayal of the classic story are Noah, his wife, one sheep, a bale of hay, and several nondescript vegetables. Perhaps the shitty company that made this was trying to present the kind of food-for-thought “What If?” scenario that makes philosophers and Uatu run in circles. What if Noah was completely retarded and embarked on his God-given journey with only these tools? What type of new society could be forged from the fruits of Noah, his wife, one sheep and a four-day supply of carrots?
I could ponder for hours, but I have red toothpaste to distract me. [more]
I suppose the growing rumors of my demise and the 72 MySQL errors littering the site mean that I should probably, uh, write something.
As for why I haven’t posted — that’s a loaded question. A short break turned into a long one would be the simple answer. A longer answer would involve descriptions of the changing landscape of the industry I work in, and the copious amount of extra effort it’s taken to remain vital within it. It’s a personal journey and a boring story, totally unsuited to becoming a major motion picture, but the point of it is that the past several months have been so loaded with responsibilities that, bluntly put, I maxed out and couldn’t handle another.
I would never dare to say that writing about junk food and Krang is an outright responsibility, chore, job or anything of the sort, but there just came a point where if I had a free moment, I wanted to spend it privately. Being a go-getter is not my nature; I am, at heart, a lazy slug. But if I had to pretend otherwise, it could only be for 8 (or 9, or 12) hours a day. Not 24. I’d make a terrible Behrooz.
Then again, I guess it’s not brain surgery to package crap up all pretty like.
immat the library, do u no why??
my books r dewback lol
Anyway, finally, things are settling down, and I’m getting the itch back. I have big grand plans, but I can’t tell you about them, because if I break another site-related promise, I’d likely turn up dead. But, let’s roll the dice and try this much:
This Saturday, I will write about something. And you will tell me what that something is. Your options are:
A) Matt spends $25 at a Dollar Tree or some other such store, and describes his purchases. I’ve done it before, but not for years, and the statute of limitations has gotta be working in my favor by now.
B) Matt gets a new pet and writes about it. Don’t get your hopes up, I’m not buying a dog just to have something to write about. But it will be something alive.
C) Matt tries to find his collection of Kool-Aid; if he succeeds, he reviews a new flavor.
D) Matt builds a robot using only the materials available in his kitchen junk drawer.
I really hope you don’t pick “D.”
Okay, for the twelve of you who still read X-E, please, choose my adventure!
I was going to post this as a comment, but considering that the last thread is nearing 1000 comments (all positive) and takes about seventeen minutes to load, we may as well start anew.
I’m alive and unchanged. Seriously, I’ve just been working. A lot. It’s been a less-than-ideal grind and I very much look forward to the current wave passing so I can get back to doing what I love to do best: Nothing, with a side of you.
Some of you have expressed interest in an early return for the Halloween Juke. I couldn’t agree more and will try to include this soon as a partial mea culpa. I’ve been listening to that shit constantly, though I don’t know if it has as much to do with me wanting Halloween as it does the fact that Geico’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” commercial airs 772 times each hour.
Also, there was an a site in circulation that evidently attempted to redirect users to a bad place. I cannot lie: I thought you guys were mistaken, but you were right, and the ad guys at UGO (and me) really, sincerely apologize for any trouble it caused. It’s been eradicated and you should have no further trouble.
I finally watched that Clone Wars movie. Now, I was as hard on the prequels as anyone, but despite what seemed to be common opinion, I really didn’t think it was bad at all. Granted, I fell asleep halfway through, but I’m assuming it grew no more offensive from there. Plus, the first reveal of Jabba’s son, suddenly crawling out and goo-goo gah-ing with absolutely no build or fanfare, cracked me up so much that I had to rewind the scene seven times before watching the rest of (or the rest of the first half of) the movie.
Very odd to hear an ice cream truck’s jingle playing during a thunderstorm in early April, but I swear, I just did.
I was thrilled to find the first season of Tales From The Darkside on DVD, and this time, it was for more than just the mental wellness that seems to come from buying new DVDs. I really love this show.
Debuting in 1983 and lasting for most of the ’80s, TFTD was sort of a less clever but much creepier version of The Twilight Zone. From its eerie opening credits sequence (which makes a simple farm town seem like a portal to Hell) to its almost universal use of “twist” endings, the show was and remains a perfect mood-setter for anyone looking to spend their evening feeling somewhat cautious about open windows and errant creaking sounds.
What I hadn’t realized until watching several episodes in one sitting is just how…strange some of the stories were. Mind you, I’m using “strange” interchangeably with “inane,” because I refuse to call Tales From The Darkside “inane.” While rotating writers and directors guaranteed that the quality would rise and fall depending on who was in charge, some of the endings (the whole point of a TFTD episode was to see the last minute) were so outright bizarre that they went straight past being annoying and became affecting, despite how stupid they were.
Weird for weirdness’s sake is usually ugly, but here, the weirdosity is so top notch that I’ve no choice but to sacrifice birds in this show’s honor.
Here’s an example: I watched a bunch of episodes last night — let’s say six. All but one of them ended with Satan revealing himself as the cause of the whatever bullshit had been going on. And keep in mind, it wasn’t the same Satan each time. In one episode, Satan manifested as a smooth talking doctor who convinced his suffering patients to murder people in order to attain relief. In another, Satan was a flamboyantly gay Dracula, complete with red lipstick, nylon cape, and one of those two-dollar “vampire cross” pendants that Party City sells around Halloween.
Satan even appeared, loosely, during the very first episode of the series. Titled “Trick or Treat,” I don’t know if the debut episode could be considered on the TFTD’s best, but it certainly had all of the elements that made the series so memorable: Screwball characters, pointless subplots, a creepy ambiance and an ending that was so absurd, you had no choice but to like it. Worthy of a mini-recap? You bet:
NOTE: My computer chose right this instant to stop playing DVDs, so I made these images from screencapping YouTube videos. Actual footage on actual DVDs does not look like shit.
Okay, so, “Trick or Treat” stars Blossom’s grandpa as Gideon Hackles, an old man who runs some kind of weird dime store, and who keeps everyone in town at his mercy by loaning them money that they can never pay back. Instead of pressuring his neighbors to make good on their monthly payments, Gideon is happy to let them slide…so long as they send their children to his house on Halloween night.
Gideon’s sort of nuts and mean, and though we don’t know what he does to kids on Halloween, we can be sure that it isn’t good. And yet, the town’s many backwoods parents are compelled to make their children go to his house, for two reasons. One, because Gideon will demand payment in full on all moneys owed if they don’t, and two, because Gideon tempts the adults with a little contest. Hidden somewhere in his home is a stack of IOU’s, and if a child is able to find them while visiting on Halloween night, their family’s debt will be wiped clean.
So, the kids are forced to go to Gideon’s home, and one by one, they fall prey to his spooky sight gags, pop-out electronics and scary sound effects. Orchestrating the mayhem from a hidden room, Gideon pulls levers and pushes buttons to set off his many traps, and no matter how brave the children try to be, they all end up fleeing his home in terror, screaming for their mothers.
While at first it might have only seemed that Gideon was a little too passionate about Halloween, these scenes firmly identify him as a cold, sick bastard in need of a lesson. After several scenes of kids entering his home and crying over plastic bats and artificial wind, the tables are finally turned…
His house fills up with ghosts and monsters! Not the kinds of ghosts and monsters that Gideon was using to scare the children — real ones! After a schmooz with a freaky witch and some other creatures, Gideon zips into his bedroom to find…Hell! As Satan (rendered here as an amazing 30′ red dude) and his scorched minions beckon Gideon to come closer, one of the regular kids (who was determined to find those IOUs and save his family) makes off with the papers and a big smile on his face. The end.
Wait…”the end?” Really? Guy scares little kids with fake monsters…real monsters drag him to Hell…that’s it? I will refute any claims that there was a moral to this story, because “don’t scare kids or monsters will take you to Hell” is pretty bleh as far as moral analogies go. But then, I didn’t put Tales From The Darkside on for the chance to think. I put it on because it was really dark and kind of chilly out.
There were a lot of TFTD episodes that had endings like this. Visually powerful, creepy endings that left an impact, even if they made no sense at all. It might be a stretch to call it part of the show’s charm, but at least you knew that if you survived all of the commercial breaks, you’d be treated to memorably spooky shenanigans.
Whether it was a well-written and perfectly executed episode, or just one that made good use of gnarly women in witch costumes, Tales From The Darkside never failed to make late night TV viewing feel all ghastly and cool. Grab the DVD set, if you dare. With a breezy night and a couple of dimmed lights, you’ll have October in March.
It’s time for another Congo action figure review! If you’ve forgotten, the first chapter of this popular series dealt specifically with Kaheega. This time, I’m yanking out the big gun. Glory in four syllables: AMY. MONKEY.
Many times, I’ve tried to imagine what the public’s reaction to Congo would’ve been like had they excluded the friendly, talking gorilla. While Amy’s appearance was a necessity if they wanted to stay true to the novel, I don’t believe that Michael Crichton foresaw the onscreen representation of Amy as a monkey who spoke English through the power of a Nintendo Power Glove.
But where many saw a fumble, I saw a legend. Amy Monkey turned Congo from a mere guilty pleasure to a film that I can watch 72 times in a row, no matter the circumstances. Not a single day has passed since Congo’s 1995 debut that I haven’t thought about Amy Monkey. She was infectious, and when you’re vying for screen space against the likes of Tim Curry and Ernie Hudson, you need to be infectious. A movie starring Tim, Ernie and Amy seems nearly theoretical — like some grand dream that a group of kids on methamphetamines dreamed up and then spent the subsequent 45 minutes laughing about.
Amy was a gem. From her showstopping lines (”Amy want lunch.”) to her heroic display against a horde of mutant grey gorillas, Amy was the film’s true star, and she completely deserved her own action figure. I wish Kenner’s old Congo toys weren’t such an epic failure, but I doubt that the sales records factored into Amy’s clan’s decision to name her top gorilla for all of time.
Right back atcha, Amy! Aloha!
Doing away with the needless oversized missile launchers that seemed to come with every other figure in the Congo collection, Kenner focused its attention on the only accessory that mattered: Amy’s “communicator backpack,” complete with cord-connected gauntlet. With these tools, we are free to imagine Amy speaking directly to us, shooting the breeze about whatever it is that interests domesticated gorillas.
Due to the molding and paint job around her face, Amy conveys a constant sense of indignity, as if someone just accused her of rummaging through the trash. But is this fact or fiction? I suppose it isn’t out of the question for a gorilla to attack garbage, but classifying Amy as a “gorilla” seems somehow wrong. Is the bible just a book?
Overall, the figure is pretty simplistic, I guess because there was no sense tacking random baubles onto what was already perfect. A+.
And now, from monkey to murder:
I saw the new Friday the 13th flick, and did not love it. I think it captured some of the style of the franchise, but not the soul. Or maybe I’m just erratically passionate about Friday the 13th stuff. I kept hearing about how the writers were ginormous fans of the earlier films, but it seemed more to me like that they were just guys who studied up to make sure they were rehashing old bits faithfully.
But then, that might not be a fair assessment — I’m not sure the writing was the problem at all. More the execution. For one, I just wasn’t a huge fan of this version of Jason. I don’t know who decided that Jason needed to be 800 feet tall, but I’d like to meet this person so I can cut parts off of his body and eat them. One of Jason’s many charms was that, while certainly big and bulky, he was impossibly strong despite being of human build. Overall, the look was just too much, and he came off more like one of the nameless freaks from those Hills Have Eyes remakes — albeit in a hockey mask.
Granted, I’m a tough sell. I would’ve much preferred to have a new chapter of “classic” F13 rather than a “re-imagining,” because I am selfish and it really wouldn’t have affected me if the film only took in 8 million at the box office. At the very least, I kinda wish they would’ve set the thing in the early ’80s, which would’ve added a nice visual style and been a good way to really overdo the cliche kill fodder characters. Hell, the movie aped so much from the earlier films anyway — why not the era?
I don’t know. I got the impression that everyone loved the movie, so I feel like a bastard saying that I didn’t. Maybe I’ll feel differently after it comes out on DVD and I have a chance to watch it in the way that I’ve grown accustomed to watching F13 films: Half-crocked on a recliner, with Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crumbs all over my crotch.
In more uppity F13 news, there’s this:
Yep, they’ve finally released Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3D. The DVD barely costs a buck more than the non-3D version, and you get two pairs of 3D glasses, and plenty of other reasons to say “3D” over and over until somebody kills you.
The 3D isn’t terrific, obviously. It could be argued that it doesn’t work at all, perhaps owing to the fact that the 3D glasses are no more high-tech than the 3D glasses that came free inside boxes of Cap’n Crunch back in 1987. One tip, though: Flatscreen TV, as big as possible, in total darkness. I tried watching it on a smaller tube television, and I died six times.
Even if it doesn’t work that well, it’s neat to get a full sense of all of the film’s 3D effects. I certainly wasn’t ready for Friday the 13th movies in 1983, so my viewings have been limited to VHS and DVD. It was always easy to spot the 3D money shots, but I never realized how many simple things took advantage of the technology: Laundry hung out to dry, random bushes, so on and so forth. Totally worth buying.
I’ve been woefully out of the toy loop and thus have no idea if these are new, newish or not new at all, but the Transformers Universe collection is well deserving of a four-paragraph tribute on a lazily updated, ad-stuffed blog. Hasbro’s been re-releasing the “retro” Transformers for years, but this particular series really does the concept right.
First off, the figures are cheap. I can’t remember exactly what I paid, but it was 10 bucks or less per figure. Secondly, the packaging is far simpler than usual, so you can actually open the toys and not feel like a sucker for tearing apart an extra 10 bucks worth of cardboard and plastic. Thirdly, the series appears to span throughout all the many eras of Transformersdom, allowing our G1 Deceptions to battle against Beast Wars Maximals in a scale-appropriate arena.
While I typically admire new Transformers toys on the rack and never on the checkout line, Toys “R” Us carried two of my favorite characters in history — Cyclonus and Dinobot. Owning them seemed natural.
Cyclonus, if you’ll recall, was one of the “new” Decepticons from Transformers: The Movie, created by Unicron to help Galvatron defeat adversarial crons and trons. What many people forget is that Cyclonus was kind of the Decepticons’ de facto leader for a while, during those strange post-movie episodes. I loved the guy. I don’t know if it was just because he looked like some kind of purple robot devil or what, but I loved him. If Transformers had a Boba Fett, it was Cyclonus.
Dinobot is from the Beast Wars era, and aside from being responsible for a ton of great moments in the series, he was also the focus of the best episode of any Transformers series in history. (Spoiler: He died.) I can’t tell if this new action figure is an exact replica of the ’90s version, but whatever the case, it’s a little bit bitchy and falls into 20 pieces as soon as I touch it. Unlike Amy Monkey, I do not have gorilla power hands. There’s no excuse for this.
Overall, nice figures. Too bad they’re doomed to sit in a storage bin until 2030.
Hrm. What else? Oh, I heard that the commercial I did for this SpongeBob DVD aired during American Idol this week. Why did I pick this year to stop watching Idol? (Bonus: I did both of the special features on that DVD. And by “I” I mean, “me and a team of wonderful people.” But mostly me. All me.)
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
This silent battle went on for twenty minutes, and I felt like I was losing. I was spending money on ceramic pelican statues. At least they were getting paid to stand there.
Posted by Matt @ 7:30 pm [Permalink] [97 Comments]
