So let’s preface this with the fact that I love most of Richard Linklater’s films. A Scanner Darkly, Waking Life, the Before trilogy, Boyhood and of course Dazed and Confused all rank somewhere in my ever growing list of “great movies”.
There are a few movies that I’ve watched a lot. My room used to be in the basement of the house, so more or less the entire basement was appropriated to be my room. This meant that my “room” was as much a living room as it was a bedroom.
Anyhow, I used to put on movies the way most people put on music. If I bought a VHS tape, it would mean that I was ready to watch this movie multiple if not dozens of times. Films like Clerks, Mallrats, Empire Records, Hackers and Trainspotting all made that heavy rotation. So did Dazed and Confused.
All that to say that I might just be a little bit biased when a movie comes rolling out in 2016 written and directed by Richard Linklater and touted as the “Spiritual Sequel to Dazed and Confused“.
That’s not just marketing talk, Everybody Wants Some!! is most certainly the spiritual sequel to Linklater’s 1993 film (wow, that makes me feel old), in a multitude of ways. Where D&C takes place on the last day of high school, EWS!! is the first weekend of college. D&C takes place in the late 70s (1976 to be exact) and EWS!! takes place in the early 80s (1980).
Both films deal with finding your place in an ever expanding world that outwardly seems to care less and less about you. The football players of Dazed and Confused wonder about their fate as they move to college and losing their “top dog” status in high school. The baseball players of Everybody Wants Some!! are dealing with that exact reality. They were the best players on their high school teams, now they’re in a fight with equally talented players for a spot on the lineup.
Without expressly taking the same characters and checking in on them in college (which would be an impossible task with all of the actors being 23 years older and mostly in their 40s), Everybody Wants Some!! plays as much like Dazed and Confused as you can get without being fully derivative.
Of course, the other similarity is that both movies are essentially about nothing in terms of plot. The characters bounce around from party to party, with hanging out in between. You’re not watching this movie for the plot, you’re watching it to see these characters, from their different walks of life and philosophies interact and figure their shit out.
In the same way that Dazed and Confused doesn’t have hammy “jokes” neither does Everybody Wants Some!! Instead, you’re just along for the ride as the characters themselves are genuinely funny. I got genuinely excited by some of the casting choices when I saw Glen Powell in the role of Finnegan. He was easily among the best parts of Scream Queens (which I also loved) and it was cool to see him get a major role in a fantastic Linklater script. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
We’re back once again with another Loot Crate unboxing blog, which is always a treat for me since a) they more or less write themselves and b) I get cool stuff.
Last month I was a (little) disappointed in the lack of diversity in the DEAD themed crate (in that it was just Deadpool and Walking Dead stuff) and was a little worried the same thing would repeat this month with VERSUS. However, this was happily not the case! Let’s see what we got going on here. This Loot Crate happily celebrates a number of grudge matches and doesn’t just focus on one or two intellectual properties. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
It’s the first Loot Crate of the year! The theme is INVASION! This box is getting more and more expensive due to the failing value of the Canadian dollar! Let’s take a look at what we got.
I was pretty excited by this month’s theme, especially with the bar having been set extremely high by December’s stellar “GALAXY” crate. This crate was promising to fulfill more sci-fi fandom but with a slant on the (usually) evil aliens that intend on robbing humanity of our freedoms. Or something. What that means is X-Files, Aliens, Fifth Element and Space Invaders swag. Sounds good, right?
You may or may not have listened to our Star Wars Episode 7 podcast, but if you did, then you would know that I have managed to jerry-rig an audio set up that lets us have people call in via google chat or actual phone call. It’s very exciting, but it does cost us a little bit of audio fidelity. Anyways, this was recorded last week during that massive snow storm and we decided to take advantage of the new set up by having Scott call in since he was snowed in in wherever the hell he lives.
Also, we literally had to record the entire first half of this episode twice. Thanks. Jon.
It’s the final Perspicacious Geek of the year everyone, next week will likely be my New Year’s Resolutions or something but for now, as we do every month, we will take a look at my Loot Crate. I’m watching the World Juniors hockey tournament at the moment, so I’m sorry if I’m a little distracted.
I think we all knew this was going to have some Star Wars swag in it, the theme was “Galaxy” and The Force Awakens was a promotional powerhouse going into the late December release. Of course, we knew it wasn’t going to be just Star Wars, but the theme was definitely going to be dominated by Sci-Fi related loot.
So last week we took a look at this year’s hot holiday toys and it got me to thinking about what the big toys were from my childhood. Which toys stood out to me, upwards of 20 years after the fact? This week we are going to talk about those toys.
First of all, I decided to rule out video games. I’m sure there are several articles worth of material when I eventually relive the hours of my childhood that I spent transfixed in front of my NES, Genesis and Playstation, but this article is about toys. Basically, a lot of the video games I loved as a child I would still love as an adult, this is not (entirely) true of toys.
The criteria for something landing on this list was simple. It had to be a toy that I distinctly remembered being a “favorite” of mine, while also not being something that everyone had. Yes, I loved Optimus Prime, but who cares about another article about Optimus Prime? Without further ado, let us take a look at what rocked my world before the idea of a tiny robot droid being controlled by a smart phone could even be conceived.
Click link if you want to buy this thing from someone on Etsy
This was probably the second hardest one of these things to even find a picture of (keep reading next week for the hardest!). This playset was pretty sweet. Not even all the vehicles are in this photo and there were a few more guys that came with it. I distinctly remember at least 2 yellow spacemen, 2 red spacemen and one blue alien and one green alien. I think there might’ve been another yellow guy in the mix too. Anyways, it’s hard to see but if you look carefully, you’ll see two orange little cranks on the space station. One of them spun the laser turret around at the top, and the other made an elevator (that you can’t really see) go up and down. Stuff that moves in a playset is always a huge bonus.
The vehicles that I can remember (not all of them in the picture) were a little red moon buggy, the yellow thing (pictured) and a little spaceship that all were one seaters. The UFO (pictured) was a two seater and had like retractable legs. There was also the best vehicle which was a little moon rover tank/van thing which sat two up front and had two gull-wing doors in the back which could each hold a little guy. The little tank/van had no guns and could fit the entire crew, I usually decided that this was a science and reconnaissance vehicle. I had watched enough Star Trek to know that science and reconnaissance were why humans were in space, even if laser battles were the harsh eventuality.
I’m not 100% sure what the ideal age range was on this thing but I remember playing with it well into the later years of elementary school. Even though it was clearly meant for younger kids, the presence of lasers and missiles made it last much longer. I also, only now, realize how weird it was that a playset for like 5 year olds had lasers and missiles. I remember that the main game was almost always “fight the aliens” since the aliens have their UFO (also with lasers) and the humans have their spinning gun turrets. I doubt you’d see that sort of thing nowadays.
The other cool thing about this was that because it was so big (and sturdy) I got use of it it with other figures too. They didn’t fit as well as the Playskool figurines, but this thing doubled as Hoth for Star Wars and probably even had Star Trek figures running around it in later years.
While I’m at it, isn’t it messed up that Playskool has a spelling mistake in their name? What the actual hell Playskool?
Click link if you want to buy this thing from Amazon
What the hell was going on with Bucky O’Hare? Here’s a video of the intro song:
The fact that I just watched that video and cannot remember any of the lyrics or melody beyond the fact that they say “Bucky O’Hare” a bunch of times. A kids show without a memorable song is doomed right from the get-go.
This one is a little messed up as I honestly don’t remember a damn thing about the show. Judging from that video it was kind of a anthropomorphized version of Flash Gordon and the bad guys were all toads or frogs or something. So why did I have some of the toys and why did this toy stand out in my childhood?
First of all, the reason I had the toys (or the reason I asked for the toys) was that they had big heads and were kind of stocky. I wasn’t allowed to have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys because they were too violent (even though I had a space set with lasers on it as a toddler). The Bucky O’Hare toys were not quite the same size, but were much closer in scale to the TMNT toys than the other stuff out there. Plus they were all animal anthropomorphic guys, so blended in with the Turtles pretty well. So when it came time to play TMNT with my friends I would have something to scale and not be bringing 3/1/2 inch Kenner Star Wars figs like a chump.
Kid brains are weird.
Then, there was this space ship. The Toad Croaker. You see it in the intro video stomping down on some toad minion and making a squish/croaking sound. The toy had a rubberized bladder/whoopie cushion thing on the bottom that made a pretty sweet croaking noise when you squashed it down.
It was pretty easy to imagine it squashing (read: killing because we’re kids and kids are all sociopaths) bad guys with that sound effect. Instead of make spit fueled squishing noises with our mouths, this toy did that for us.
That alone makes the Toad Croaker stick out as a classic from my childhood. Again, I have no freaking idea about what the show was about, but this toy earned it’s spot on this list for being instantly memorable when I thought about my old toys.
Tune in next week when I complete this list with 2 more toys from my childhood and a bonus toy from Sarah’s!
I’m not 100% sure why, but every year I always spend more time than a person without kids probably should reading up on what the “big holiday toys” are going to be. I don’t have kids, and growing up I didn’t celebrate Christmas, so it’s really kind of a weird fascination.
I think it all stems from 1996 when the Tickle-Me Elmo fiasco went down. Even though I was only 13 I was completely fascinated by the nationwide hysteria surrounding the acquisition of a vibrating fuzzy doll. I think part of the allure was the potential of monetary gain after the fact. Tales of people selling their little Elmos for absurdly inflated prices.
I once managed to capitalize on a hot holiday item in the form of a PS2. I had a hunch that Canadian Tire would not be a normal location for people to camp out early to get one on release day and since my dad is basically the best, he agreed to drive me to Canadian Tire bright and early before school. Sure enough, only a handful of people had the same idea and the 3 or 4 of us got a PS2 right out of the store. I then auctioned it off on Yahoo Auctions for a decent chunk of change, selling it at nearly double its retail value. Then I waited until January to buy myself a PS2 for basically nothing.
It was glorious.
Anyways, all that to say that I usually spend some time taking a look at what people will expect to be the big holiday toy items. Today, I will talk about some of them, and try to think what I would think about getting these as gifts at various stages in my childhood when I was age appropriate for them.
Speaking of Elmo, I am not sure but I think that Elmo related merchandise has been the main money maker for Seseame Street. Especially since the above mentioned Tickle Me Elmo situation of 1996 they’ve been trying to cash in big on the next Elmo. I guess this one hugs or whatever. I am thinking that the right age for this toy is probably about age 6 or 7.
I remember never having stuffed animals that did *stuff*. I think I liked it that way. I was also a big fan of generic stuff animals that I could project my own vision of a personality on to. I kind of had a problem with stuffed animals that had counterparts on TV. Clearly the real one was on TV, I just had the generic knock off sold to chumps. This nondescript purple dinosaur on the other hand? He was one of a kind, and only I was aware of what his temperment and personality was like. I don’t think I would have dug this at all. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
So there’s a half decent chance that you’ve seen that Mr. Montreal video floating around on the YouTubes. That’s the mascot of our city, and more specifically, a website. That website is VisitMTL.com. The website that promises to tell you about all sorts of cool shit around town whether or not your from here or just visiting. Jack and Kate, who are two of the creators of this ambitious endeavour, come along for the wild ride of talking with Walter and I for an hour. We talk about the drunk guy who flew into my car, baseball, Hurricane Hazel and of course, VisitMTL.com
I know this is two weeks in a row where I’m not talking about horror movies, toys or video games. I promise this kind of thing won’t become the norm. I had originally planned to write about some new music that I was listening to, but that will probably happen in another week or two.
Instead, I want to write about my thoughts on what happened in Paris. More specifically, how the event was mourned, and what we might be able to take away from it.
The events that happened on Friday, November 13th in Paris really shook me up. Maybe because I know people from Paris. Maybe because Sarah spent a summer living there. Hell, maybe because I’m a fan of Eagles of Death Metal and if I happened to be on vacation in Paris that night there would be a very real possibility I would have been at the show.
Whatever the reason, I’ll admit that this particular act of violence hit me harder than the nearly daily reports of violence out of countries like Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, violence that has killed thousands and displaced millions. It hit me harder than the reports coming from the still ongoing Russian military activity within Ukraine, that has had ceasefire violations as recently as a few weeks ago and a death toll of over 8000. It hit me harder than the violence plaguing Mexico during their drug war that recently found a man hanging from a bridge in Mexico City, the capital once thought to be somewhat of a haven from the conflict that has killed over 100,000 people.
I don’t always talk about serious stuff on this blog, in fact, most of the time I talk about nonsense. Every now and then though the urge hits me to write something that’s a little more substantial than horror movies and toys and the like. This is one of those times. Last week, the new Canadian Prime Minister set an interesting precedent with the appointment of his Ministry. He decided to make 50% of his cabinet women. His reason? “Because it’s 2015.”
I think he has other reasons, good ones, but “because it’s 2015” has a certain quotable ring to it. Let’s be honest, a big part of Trudeau’s current appeal is spouting cocky, progressive sounding swagger to let everyone know that there’s a new sheriff in town. Harper was an alien wearing a human skin suit, Trudeau doesn’t need to try that hard to be cooler than ole’ Steve. That’s another thing, I think we should all start referring to our previous Prime Minister as “Steve”. The same way the Conservatives spent the entire election campaign referring to the appointed leader of a political party as “Justin”.
But I digress.
When Trudeau announced that he was going to being forming his cabinet partially on the basis of gender equality, to reflect the population of the country there were loud and sudden cries of outrage from a bunch of idiots. People boldly proclaiming that appointments to the cabinet should be made on merit, not gender. That by setting the goal of having a full half of his cabinet be female he would suddenly be ignoring merit altogether. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
So let’s preface this with the fact that I love most of Richard Linklater’s films. A Scanner Darkly, Waking Life, the Before trilogy, Boyhood and of course Dazed and Confused all rank somewhere in my ever growing list of “great movies”.
