It’s bad when Wolverine is the best of the three.

But on the other hand, he is Canadian, and they have that certain William Shatner resilience.  So perhaps he can forget John Carter in his shadow, and leave Battleship behind him:

(Sorry, that’s lame… but so are these movies!)

For the DVD cover of her classic (?) film, Mischief, there’s been some hanky-panky:

This image has been burned in my brain for so long.

There’s something missing.  Something’s Photoshopped out of it, right?  Let’s go to the poster:

I will never forget my first time... seeing this.

What?!  Surely, this original poster hasn’t been Photoshopped… let’s check another:

How did people Photoshop (verb) before Photoshop (noun)?

Okay, I must be perverted crazy.  Because the way I remember this, his hand wasn’t pulling a Shooter McGavin… he was holding onto something…

God Bless the VHS

That makes me sad.

This video makes me suicidal:

God bless the TripleDoubleU…

Now you have a shared memory with me.  At least it’s not one of the dirty ones…

There, I said it.

And unlike how I didn’t see The Lion King when it was re-released last summer in 3D, I went and saw Beauty and the Beast in 3D.  And it was worth it.  And I’m probably going to see Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D because of it.  And I’ll explain why.  (And stop using “and” to begin sentences…)

Beautiful and the Beastly

Beauty in the Beast is twenty-one years old.  It can legally drink, and that’s crazy.

While watching it, at least for the first few minutes, I felt an odd mixture of two reactions:

1. That increasingly familiar optical adjustment to 3D images
2. And geez, cell animation sure can be sloppy

I noticed a few occurrences in the movie that seemed strange by today’s “family standards”…

• They showed Gaston kill a duck.
• They showed not one – but two – men in their boxers.
• The village girls had quite the buxom bosoms.

Have I been trained to be that politically correct?

Another thing I realized in re-watching the first animated film to ever be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars (when there were only five nominations) was that they showed blood (when Gaston stabbed The Beast).  Pixar’s Up would be the next film to be nominated for Best Picture, and that too had some bloodshed (when Carl hit a construction worker in the head).

(SIDENOTE: Toy Story 3 is the third film to be nominated for Best Picture.  No bloodshed, but do toy guts count?)

So onto why I would bother seeing The Phantom Menace in 3D…

It was the prequel I liked best.

There, I said it.

And the Masters of the Microwave

I watched the original version in Italian on their website, and it confounded me.  I hoped the subtitled version would help… and… well… check it out for yourself:

In fact, there’s practically no way they would make the movies I grew up with, and here’s a few plus the reasons why:

• The Last Starfighter

The Last Starfighter (1984)

THE PREMISE: Kid in a trailer park plays an arcade game so well he gets recruited to be an intergalactic war hero.

THE STOPPER: Justifies kids playing video games.

Sure, arcades don’t exist anymore, so there’s that.  Besides, this idea has already been tackled in more adult fare, such as Barry Levinson’s Toys and the sci-fi flop, Gamer.  There is no talk of a remake, but there was a 2004 off-Broadway musical based on it…

• The Monster Squad

The Monster Squad (1987)

THE PREMISE: A group of kids battle the classic movie monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Mummy, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

THE STOPPERS: Talk about virgins (and sex “not counting”) and wolfman nards.

Sure, kids these days are way more hyper-sexual in their text messages than the language in this film, but would parents complain?  Someone would complain.  There’s talk of a remake, but it’s supposedly going to be about more current monsters, like Freddy Kruger or the Predator.

• The Goonies

The Goonies (1985)

THE PREMISE: A group of kids seek out a pirate’s treasure to save their town.

THE STOPPERS: Racism, Sloth, and gluing penises upside-down.

Sure, you may get Samwise Gamgee out of this movie one day, but you also get Jonah Hex.  (And Corey Feldman.)  They’ve been talking about a sequel to this longer than an Arrested Development film, and we all know how that’s going… they’re making it!

• Cloak & Dagger

Cloak & Dagger (1984)

THE PREMISE: A kid finds a video game cartridge containing information that could get him killed, so he runs for his life with the help of an imaginary friend.

THE STOPPER: The kid kills a bad guy.

Sure, it has that whole “video game could get you killed” angle, but the kid really shoots someone!  Cross my Atari!  And so far, no sequel, prequel, remake, or reboot talk at all… even though this was pretty much a remake.

• Big Shots

Big Shots (1987)

THE PREMISE: Two kids are chased by bad guys because they stole a car with a dead body in its trunk!

THE STOPPER: The premise!

Sure, this was marketed as a kid movie, but we didn’t know better at that time.  It was written by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas… you know, the guy that scripted Flashdance, Basic Instinct, and Showgirls.  There isn’t even a DVD release planned for this flick.

Essentially, it amounts to numbskulls listening to this strange series of sounds (in most cases, the kids play Gates of Hades on their headphones).  By covering your eyes and hearing this track, the kids believe they’re experiencing a high similar to using cocaine or ecstasy.

Here’s a sample of a dipshit i-Dosing:

I planned on posting the actual noises produced during the course of Gates of Hades, but it was removed from YouTube and now sells on their actual website for $199.95… just like an actual pusher – at first it was free, but now you gotta pay.

In reality, it’s caused by playing binaural beats.  You can read about it here.  But if I know you – and I think I do – you’d rather watch a video about it hear here:

(SIDENOTE: Ha ha… you still had to read!)

But did you know that they’re band names can be just as dirty?  (You don’t want to know what Yo-Yo Ma really means.)

Here are some visual “representations” of what certain band names (you’ve heard of) mean:

MALE THINGS

One-Eyed Willy from The Goonies is a likely euphemism for PENIS... never thought about it before, didja? Oh, you did? Pardon me.

Finger Eleven
Sex Pistols
Tool
Whitesnake

(SIDENOTE: I highly regret starting this post.)

10cc
Pearl Jam

FEMALE THINGS

This couch has a (insert euphemism for VAGINA).

Hole

SEX TOYS

What else can I say?

Steely Dan

This is one of the scariest things I've ever posted. Yet...

Goo Goo Dolls

SEX GAMES/POSITIONS

Connect the dots...

Scissor Sisters

Connect the dots further...

Limp Bizkit

This was from the back of the funny pages, and it was serious.

So I decided to enter the contest, and at age ten, I created these characters:

I entered all of the above except for CARRYVAN, and the one I didn't even like called PUPPY HOG.

For entering so many characters (I guess), I won this playset:

My mom offered to take it back to the store to get something else. I refused. I played with it once.

These ended up being the finalists:

What the fuck?

Fearless Photog won the vote, but no toy was ever made.  At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, it was announced that there would finally be a toy:

You're still kidding me, right?

But there was one bit of satisfaction I was always able to maintain.  Mattel ripped off my Elephantom!

They gave him a robot head and dubbed him Snout Spout.

But now, there’s this:

Victory will be mine!

I will keep you posted on my final entries.  Yes, there will be many.

————————————————————————————————————-

In case you were interested, here are each of the character’s write ups as they were when I was ten:

C.A.R.’s a small, weak wimp that can be Crushed And Restored. But every time he’s crushed by Evil, he gets mad, and when he gets mad, he gets bigger and stronger and wants revenge.  Only He-Man can talk him out of this vengeance he want.  But every time he’s crushed by Good, he gets courageous.

I guess I didn’t like that idea.  Why would good guys crush him?

When Ill-Yusion sways his hands illusions appear.  Anything he thinks of at the time will become an illusion.  Also, he is always ill.  So anytime he coughs or sneezes, an illusion will appear or disappear.

He was always ill?  Who saw that coming?

Ticklon has four arms.  The two upper arms tickle a victim and the two lower arms grab the weapons.  So there is no need for a weapon of his own with arms like this.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Kangaruin (then named Kangaroo Man) has a pouch to keep things hidden.  Can jump to the length of 50 feet and can jump as high as 20 feet.  His hands and feet are very powerful.  He can punch or kick through any solid material.

Liquid materials, forget it.

Walrusaur (then named Walrus Man) has stun rays in his teeth. His teeth can also eat through 3/5 of any material except lime stone, like the walls of Castle Grayskull.  His flipper hands and feet make him a good swimmer (and slapper).

There should have been more slapping in He-Man cartoons.

Elephantom – The ghostly elephant whose trunk can stretch miles until the enemy’s caught. Weighs nothing with unbelievable strength.

Snout Spout was only shown in the He-Man & She-Ra Christmas Special, and some She-Ra episodes, although I never saw those.

She-Yuld – Her shields create invisible force fields that keeps gathering around.  Once finished, ricochets anything that hits them.  Her shields have magnetic forces under them, too.

I don’t get what any of that means.

Clustor (Tartor, Ropego, and Gluestick together) – Tartor alone shakes his leg and gooky tar flies; Ropego alone has a rope arm and buzzsaw spurs on his heels; Gluestick alone spits glue from his mouth.  Together as Clustor they are stronger than ever: streams of glue from the mouth, a more controllable rope arm, and buckets of tar from the legs of Clustor.

Gluestick was the best I could come up with?