"Shape"-less sequel: Halloween III

It's time again for Bad Movies A to Z. Yes, I know three months haven't passed since the last one, but I guess I'm on a roll (that's why there's butter on my pants). This time around, it's a Halloween movie. "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" has nothing to do with the first two, but that's okay.

The movie in a nutshell: This Michael "The Shape" Myers-less entry in the Halloween series focuses on a deranged toy maker who aims to kill kids everywhere with creepy Halloween masks.

The story: We open in Northern California on Oct. 23. A guy being chased by someone in a car runs down the street. He hides in a junkyard. A guy in a suit starts to strangle him. He smashes his assailant with a car and bolts.

There's a TV news report on the theft of the Bluestone from Stonehenge, followed by a commercial for Silver Shamrock masks.

The commercial jingle is set to the tune of "London Bridge is Falling Down," and ranks right up there with "It's a Small World" for getting stuck in your head and annoying the crap out of you, especially since it gets played about every other minute.

A gas station attendant is watching this when the power cuts out. The guy who was being chased startles him. Before he keels over, he tells the attendant "They're coming." In his hand is a jack o'lantern mask, not unlike one advertised a few minutes earlier on TV.

Elsewhere, Dr. Dan Challis visits his ex-wife. He's got masks for his kids. They already have Silver Shamrock masks and turn on the TV so they can see the commercial.

Dan gets paged; the old guy is admitted to the hospital, and Challis has to go in to work. While he's being filled in on the man's condition, the commercial plays on a nearby TV (that's the third time in less than the first 15 minutes of the movie). He says, "They're going to kill us all!"

The man is sedated and moved to a room. While Challis takes a rest, a suited man -- one of the pursuers -- goes to the old guy's room. He pokes the guy in the eyes and breaks his face from the inside. A nurse sees the assailant leave, and she screams. That wakes up Challis, who goes after the killer. The guy in the suit goes into his car, douses himself with gasoline and blows himself up.

He calls his ex to tell her he can't pick up the kids.

The next day, the man's daughter comes to identify her dad.

Challis checks with a friend at the coroner's office a few days later to get information about the killer.

A few days after that, Challis is in a bar watching TV. There's a commercial for the original Halloween (ha-ha) followed by another commercial for Silver Shamrock. He makes him change it. The old guy's daughter, Ellie Grimbridge, finds Challis and asks if her dad said anything before he died. The new friends decide to figure out who wanted her dad dead.

They head to Santa Mira, where the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory is. Santa Mira is populated by creepy people who stare at cars as they drive by. It's also monitored by cameras.

At the gas station, they pump the attendant for information. They rent a room at the adjacent motel. Challis checks the motel's guestbook and sees that Ellie's dad had been there recently.

Buddy and Betty Kupfer and their son, Little Buddy, come to stay at the motel. On his way to his room, he also sees a pissed-off lady who mutters something about the factory screwing up the order.

In the room, Dan and Ellie kiss. Smooth talker, that one is. Despite looking eerily like the old Brawny paper towels mascot, Challis is one quicker picker-upper.

Santa Mira also has a 6 o'clock curfew, which is broadcast over speakers throughout the city. Somehow there's a store open, and Challis buys some stuff there. He meets some bum in an alley and asks him about Conal Cochran, the head of Silver Shamrock. He also warns Challis about the cameras. Then he rambles about the weird goings-on in the factory and says that he wants to burn it down.

The bum stumbles away to his shanty, singing the Silver Shamrock song. Two guys in suits find him there and rip his head off. Tasty.

Ellie meets shop owner Marge Guttman (the lady Dan saw complaining earlier), who tells her how she has to deal with Silver Shamrock in person, and how the quality control is slipping. The trademark button, she explains, came off the mask.

Dan calls his friend at the coroner's office to ask about the dead murderer. She says that someone screwed up, because the remains were mechanical. Must be part of the car. Hmm...

After their horizontal hula practice, Dan and Ellie hear the Silver Shamrock commercial on the radio. Even Dan's tired of hearing it and he turns it off. Ellie wants more practice. Dan stops her first to ask her old she is. A smooth talker and classy...

In a nearby room, Marge Guttman checks out the Silver Shamrock button and starts poking it with a hairpin.

Bzzzaaat! A beam shoots her in the mouth, which would be bad enough (and it's pretty gross), but then a bug crawls out of her destroyed face.

Dan looks out the window to see guys in white coats taking Marge away. Mr. Cochran is going to care for the woman. In fact, he arrives to tell Dan and Ellie that they have a great facility for emergency treatment at the factory. He asks the motel owner what happened.

"Misfire," he says.

Something weird is going on, Dan surmises. No doy.

It's now Oct. 30. Dan calls his coroner friend. There's no indication that there was a body in the car. Just ashes and car parts. He asks her to find out everything about Cochran. Little does he know that the phone is bugged.

Dan and Ellie go to the factory, where they learn that Ellie's dad picked up an order. As she and Dan go to leave, they bump into the Kupfer family. They have an appointment to see Cochran because Buddy has sold the most Silver Shamrock masks in the whole country. Cochran apologizes to Dan and Ellie for the events of the previous night and says that Marge has been flown to a hospital in SF.

They are invited to take the factory tour with the Kupfers. They see how the masks are made and all that stuff. Call me kooky, but why are they still making masks the day before Halloween? Getting a jump on next year?

Little Buddy wants a mask. Cochran makes a point to give him one that has gone through "final processing." It's got the button on the back. Big Buddy asks about the final process. Cochran says no, citing safety concerns and trade secrets.

Challis notices those creepy guys standing around. He and Ellie take off. Ellie sees her dad's car. Before she can check it out, she's blocked by the creepy security guys.

At the motel, Dan tries to make a call but can't. Back at the room, Ellie has vanished. A group of the creepy guys is outside, and they break in. Dan runs away. The Odd Squad has taken Ellie to the factory. Dan finds a pay phone and again gets a recorded message. He takes off again.

He sneaks into the factory somehow and starts poking around. He sees an old lady in a room knitting. He asks her where Ellie is, but she doesn't answer. He shakes her and her head falls off. She's a machine. One of the suits attacks him, and he fights back. They're all machines, he discovers.

Cochran comes in. He knows who Dan is, and he says that Ellie is resting. Two goons haul him away.

It's Halloween now.

Should you want to rent this and you don't want to know how it ends, stop now. If you don't care, or if you just have to know how movies end even if you're going to see them yourself, keep on truckin'.

Challis is taken to the final processing room. Cochran starts talking about the masks. He says that Challis still has time to figure it all out. They walk into a room filled with computers. Also in the room is the missing stone from Stonehenge. The stone has a power in it, he says. Each button has a tiny pebble from the stone in it.

Cochran shows him where Ellie is -- strapped to a table. In another room is Marge's body. Cochran says that Challis needs to see a demonstration. The Kupfers -- still there, at the crack of dawn, I guess -- are taken to a "test room." Dan watches the events unfold on a monitor in the control room.

The commercial comes on the TV and tells Little Buddy to put on his mask.

"Watch the magic pumpkin!"

The flashing pumpkin graphic has a strange effect on the kid. He grabs his head and falls forward. Inexplicably, snakes and bugs pour from his misshapen head. Soon, the whole family is dead.

After it's over, Dan is taken away.

All across the country, kids are wearing the masks. The big giveaway is coming up at 9. The kids are instructed to have their masks on for the big surprise.

Dan's coroner friend tries to call him at the motel. It rings a few times and then she gets the automated message. She calls a guy named Roger -- she's found something. One of the creepy robot guys lurks nearby. It doesn't look good when he grabs a drill. Just as she figures out what the machinery is for, the guy attacks her with the drill. Scratch one coroner's office friend.

7:30 p.m.: Dan is strapped to a chair. He's going to be forced to watch the giveaway with a mask on. He asks Cochran why he's doing this. It's a joke, he says. A joke on all the children. Then he talks about the origins of Halloween and the festival of Samhain. The planets are aligned; the world is going to change.

He wishes Dan a happy Halloween and leaves the room. By now, it's almost 10 till 8; the movie "Halloween" is on. Dan breaks the TV with his feet -- apparently the screen was made of candy glass -- and frees himself. He lobs the mask onto the surveillance camera in his room. It's now 8:11; less than an hour before the giveaway. Dan escapes through air ducts and heads to the warehouse. He calls his ex-wife and tries to warn her about the masks. She hangs up on him.

Dan finds Ellie and tries to free her. Cochran sends some robot lackeys to catch them. They sneak into the control room. Dan grabs a Silver Shamrock button from a box and plays the giveaway commercial on the monitors. While it plays, he takes the box of buttons, goes up to a catwalk and dumps them over the side, which shorts out all the robots. Cochran is still standing, but something weird starts happening. The circle of computers glows. He sees Dan and Ellie up in the catwalk and give them a golf clap as if to say "Well played."

A beam flashes from the giant stone and disintegrates Cochran. The control room and the rest of the factory go up in flames. Dan and Ellie escape in a car. It's almost 9. Dan says they have to do something. Ellie tries to attack him. She's a robot! He drives into a tree and has to fight off the Elliebot with a tire iron. He knocks her head off. He sits back in the car, and one of the bot's arms tries to strangle him. He breaks its grip and throws it away.

Dan runs to a gas station -- the one from the beginning of the movie -- and asks to use the phone. He's trying to stop the giveaway promo from being shown. The TV stations begin to show technical difficulties screens. There's still one channel showing it. Dan shouts "Stop it! Stop it! Stop iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!"

The end.

Afterthoughts: What the hell?

So a renowned toy maker/prankster has stolen one of the stones from Stonehenge and has brought it to his factory in California where he takes small pebbles from it and puts them into buttons that will go on Halloween masks. These buttons will be triggered by a TV signal, at which time, they bring forth bugs and snakes from the head of the masks' unlucky wearers.

While that makes no sense whatsoever, I think it's great. You've got to give them credit. Sometimes things are scary just because they make no rational sense.

However, there is a tiny problem. Cochran's plan is to kill all the children wearing the Silver Shamrock masks. Okay, I'll even grant that these are the most popular masks despite the rather plain designs. But the big ending cliffhanger depends on if Dan can get the third channel to stop showing the commercial. But they've already shown kids wearing masks in all parts of the country, even the east coast.

So even if Dan stopped the commercial from airing locally in Santa Mira, what about the kids in the other three time zones? Nine o'clock had already passed there. If a bunch of kids ended up dying while watching this commercial, wouldn't someone important have made the connection? Or are we to believe that everyone is dead, including adults and those who didn't buy the masks?

And at what point did Ellie become a robot? I'd assume that once Cochran kidnapped her, he killed her and replaced her with a robot. That way, even if Dan escaped, he'd still have a way to get him. But that's an awful lot of work for a bunch of ifs. He would've had to have created a robot that looked just like Ellie in the course of hours solely in case he caught Dan and Dan subsequently escaped but decided to look for her. Plus, why wouldn't she have stopped him when he was destroying the factory?

So maybe she was a bot the whole time? It would've been cool, but I don't think so. Even ignoring her display of emotions and her amorous encounters with Dan, we see her showering by herself. Amazing the robots might be, but given that Dan later punches one and rips out his innards, they don't seem to be sturdy enough to be watertight.

Obviously, I've just done more thinking than was probably expected of people who wanted to watch this.

It's a bit slow, but the effects scenes punch things up a bit. The scene where Marge Guttman gets lasered in the face is pretty gruesome. Still, it's a decent enough way to pass some time. It's not rocket science, but it's not aggressively stupid.

On the five-year program: 'Graduation Day'

Well, here it is, the 200th post. And what better way to celebrate spotty updating than the latest installment in the Bad Movies From A to Z series? We're up to G, and our pick is the 1981 horror film, "Graduation Day," with Christopher George, Patch MacKenzie and brief appearances by Vanna White and Linnea Quigley.

The movie in a nutshell: After a high school track star dies from a heart attack at a meet, a mysterious figure starts bumping off other members of the team. Who is it? To prolong the "suspense," everyone acts creepy for no reason other than to look suspicious.

The story: Less than two minutes into the movie, and it's pissing me off already. There's a track event in progress. The action cuts damn near every second. I guess it's supposed to build suspense or curiosity.

I was practically raised on the so-called "MTV-style" cuts, but those at least have some kind of focus. This is just cut here, cut there, back to here, over there, etc. It's very distracting, especially when there are shots of a gymnast (indoors, no less) intercut. Sloppy.

What I almost missed: Laura Ramstead, a runner for Midvale, runs herself to death, prodded in part by her coach, George Michaels (played with Shatnerian ferocity by Christopher George).

Some time later, a woman in a Navy uniform (Patch MacKenzie) hitches a ride to town. She's holding an article about the girl's death and ignoring the driver's feeble pickup lines.

"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue? It's okay, I got plenty tongue for both of us."

We only see her legs initially, but when she tires of his talk, she first grabs his manberries and then his Ralph Furley castoff neckerchief. He calms down.

She sees a girl running down the street and asks to get out of the truck. She watches the girl cross the street and jog through a park.

Uh-oh. We see a mysterious figure (henceforth to be referred to as TMF) who holds a stopwatch in a black gloved hand. TMF catches up to the runner and slits her throat. He stops the watch at 30 seconds. This will happen at every murder, so it must be important.

The camera lingers on the dead girl's behind for no apparent reason other than it's there.

Back at school, the track team is preparing to get a picture taken for the newspaper. They're waiting for Paula, who I assume is the park victim. While they're waiting, one of the team members makes a crack about how many of them were supposed to make it through the year alive. Coach Michaels tells him he's out of line. They take the picture without Paula.

Navy Girl visits her mom. Turns out she's Anne Ramstead, Laura's sister. Anne is met with nothing but cartoonish disdain from Ronald, her stepdad.

Up in Laura's room, Ronald says that since he raised Laura like his own, he ought to be getting the award that is to be presented to Anne. To make sure we get that Ronald doesn't like Anne, he calls her names and threatens to slap her.

At this point, the captioning locked, so I had to actually listen to people. Seriously, this is the worst captioning I've ever seen on a DVD. Even when it's working, things are misspelled, and the punctuation is horrible.

TMF crosses Paula off on a picture of the track team that he has in a locker. The captioning seems to have caught up again.

Sally walks through a park, possibly the same one Paula was in. She runs into Anne, who is looking for the school auditorium. Anne notices the necklace Sally wears -- she got it as a track award -- and then she tells Sally that she has lovely eyes. "My sister had lovely eyes like yours. She's dead, though."

Not too creepy, is it?

In the auditorium, the principal, Mr. Guglione, is trying to gain control of the graduation practice. While he prattles on, Anne -- and her impossibly thin waist -- walks in. He introduces Anne as a special guest and mentions that during the actual graduation, there will be a moment of silence for Laura.

Anne meets Kevin, who was Laura's boyfriend, who was also a high school senior, despite pushing 30. They talk, but not about much.

Sally heads to the locker room, where she gets changed into a leotard. The lights go out, and she does the requisite walk slowly and ask who's there thing. She's startled by two other girls. She tries to tell them that a door just closed (TMF, perhaps?), but she sees no one there.

One of the girls is Vanna White, letter turner extraordinaire. Something I didn't know: According to IMDB, Vanna's uncle is Christopher George. Coincidence or psychic phenomenon? You be the judge.

Coach Michaels is also the gymnastics coach, apparently, as well as a grade-A asshat. He bullies a reluctant Sally into doing her routine for a newspaper photographer. She falls. Coach Michaels first chews out Sally for screwing up, and then yells at the photog for defending her. Sally does her routine again while the coach appears to be leaving eyeprints on her butt. The photographer seems skeeved out by the coach's expression, but he continues to snap pictures.

Elsewhere, TMF crosses out Sally's picture. Sally falls again and the coach throws out the photog.

TMF lurks about while Sally shaves her legs at the locker room sink.

"This is for you, Coach," she says into the mirror with a sneer. "Sit on it and rotate."

Aaaaaay!

She sees TMF in the mirror, and he's holding a fencing foil that he thrusts through her neck.

Cut to the music teacher, Mr. Roberts. From the way the girls are acting, he's supposed to be Joe Cool, but he looks like Jerry Lewis midway through a Labor Day telethon in 1976. He tells Dolores (Linnea Quigley) that she's not going to pass. She tries to change his mind by popping her top. So far as I've seen, none of the girls at this school wears a bra.

Not a complaint, mind you. Just an observation.

In the principal's office, Mr. Guglione calls in his secretary, Blondie. He dumps a bunch of crap work on her and tries to gloss it over by macking on her. After Blondie leaves, he cuts an apple with a switchblade, one of many that he keeps in his desk drawer.

Mr. Roberts is singing by himself -- I guess Dolores "passed" already -- and he hears an odd noise that he feels compelled to investigate. He bumps into the coach, who doesn't hear the strange tapping noises.

Roberts goes into the boiler room, which is dimly lit to comply with the Creepy-Ass Boiler Room Act of 1971. Someone plays a tape of him "tutoring" Dolores. Roberts finds the tape player and sees two kids running out.

Dolores and her pal are hanging out on a bench smoking some ganja. They get caught by Officer McGregor, who asks them if they want to get in trouble a week before graduation. Since someone else already established that graduation is the next day, I'm a bit puzzled.

McGregor decides to surreptitiously light up his confiscated reefer with matches from 7-Eleven. This isn't important to the plot, but the matchbook design matches (no pun intended) my beloved 7-Eleven smock, which I guess gives you an idea of how old the thing is.

According to the nameplate on his door, Coach Michaels is also the woodworking teacher. Anne goes into his office, but it's empty. Some of the equipment in the woodshop starts up by itself. Michaels runs in and turns the machines off.

Anne accuses him of killing Laura by pushing too hard. He tries to defend himself, to no avail.

"We'll meet again, Roberts."

No. 32 is practicing while running through the park by the school. He bumps into Vanna and her friend. His football gets tossed into the trees. TMF spikes the football -- he puts a giant spike on the front, no lie -- and passes it to the football player, who catches it blade-first right in the gut. TMF crosses him out of the track picture.

Kevin is playing backup harmonica at some hootenanny going on. Kids these days and their hippie music. Out in the halls, which are decorated with pictures of the Beatles and Prince John from the Disney version of "The Jungle Book," kids are hanging out and talking.

Coach Michaels gets in a tiff with some weirdo who tells him not to treat him like crap because "I can hurt you bad if I put my mind to it."

What, like he's going to wish him to the cornfield or something?

Nice transition, eh?
It's time for roller boogie at the school, where they managed to get Felony to play. Oh God, this just smacks of late-70s crapitude. It almost physically hurts. The members of Felony wear makeup, which is supposed to make them rawknroll.

This is a good time to take a break and grab a snack. Hope I don't miss anything.

Okay, I've got some sustenance. Looks like Dolores and her pal Tony are making out in the park outside. The guy breaks away to take a leak and is beheaded in almost total darkness. I had to look again to see if that's what happened. TMF hops out of the bushes in full regalia -- sweatsuit and fencing mask. He chases Dolores with his giant sword and catches a break when she falls. Bye-bye, Dolores.

Tony's mom calls the principal and says that Tony hasn't come home. Guglione reluctantly takes the call. Some other kids didn't make it home either, but they're good kids -- all from the same track team.

Hmm...

Inspector Halliday comes to talk to Mr. Guglione about the missing kids. Guglione says they're probably out raising hell. Guglione: "Why are their parents so upset?" Halliday tells McGregor to make his report -- and hurry because he's claustrophobic. Or Closter phobic, if the captioning is to be believed.

A pole vaulter for no apparent reason decides to get in some practice and lands on a bad of spikes. Oh noes!

Halliday (or Helliman, sez the captions) asks Coach Michaels if he knows anything about the missing kids. He says he doesn't. He's also been fired, so he has to pack. After Halliday leaves, we see a picture of the team on the coach's desk, and in the drawer, there's a stopwatch, black gloves, and a track medal. You don't think...

Okay, if you don't want to know how the movie ends, stop reading right here. The killer is eventually revealed, and while it doesn't go exactly the way one might expect, it's still pretty dumb.

Last chance.

Still want to know, eh? OK, here's the rest:

Vanna and her pal Joanne are in the locker room talking about something when Vanna sees blood oozing out of a locker near hers. A dead and bloody Sally falls out of the locker. Michaels sees this and pulls a foil out of the locker. Just when you think he's going to do some slicing and dicing, Kevin comes in to stop him.

Michaels escapes Kevin's grip and runs off. The cops arrive with Anne in tow. She's concerned about Kevin. Halliday holds up the picture of the track team. He asks Anne if she knows who they are.

"Yes. It's the track team." Who'da thunk, what with them posing on the track and everything.

Michaels bolts off into the park, and Kevin follows him in despite getting outside too late to see him go in. Oddly, he not only catches up but gets ahead of him enough to ambush him. By this point, Anne is there, dutifully minding her purse and telling Kevin that he can't do this by himself.

The coach trips over the football player, and Kevin catches up to him. Coach says it's all a mistake. Kevin tells Michaels that "you killed Laura. You all killed her! And now you all have gotta be punished."

Kevin goes on to explain that his life was changed in 30 seconds. He and Laura were going to marry after graduation. A fight ensues. Halliday catches up to them and, thinking Michaels is the culprit, shoots him dead. Kevin has gotten away with it.

When Anne goes to the school's office to pick up the trophy for Laura, she finds out that Kevin already came to claim it. Anne goes to Kevin's house to see what's going on. Up in his room, she sees a girl wearing a graduation cap. She begins to apologize, but when she walks in front of the girl, she discovers that it's her sister, dug up and dressed in cap and gown.

Kevin has apparently taken a nasty spill off the reality wagon. Maybe he's having his midlife crisis or something. He says they're still going to get married. A scuffle ensues.

Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

After Kevin takes a swipe at Anne with a knife, Laura's spring-loaded body knocks Kevin out the window. Anne goes to check on him, and he walks back in the house, carrying Laura's body. Anne runs away, and we're treated to intercuts of Laura's last race.

Anne's on the field. She's at the 40, the 30... in heels, no less.

She sits on the steps to the stands. Kevin has caught up to her, and Anne busts some horribly fake looking martial-arts moves on him. Under the bleachers, Stabby McStabberson keeps on trying to kill Anne. She kicks him in the nads in slow motion and bolts.

Oh, for crap's sake...

She pushes him away, and he impales himself on the spikes sticking out of one of the victims he stashed down there.

Later, Anne's packing up. She's got a plane to catch the next morning. While Anne sleeps, the door opens. Is it Kevin is back to finish the job? Looks like it, but as the lights go on, we find that it's just Ronald, drunk off his Heineken. False alarm. She was just hallucinating.

In the morning, Anne takes a cab and as she passes the sign that says "Happy Graduation Day," the movie ends.

Afterthoughts: Oy.

You know, for all the complaints, it's not that horrible. There are some things you just accept as conventions of the genre. I don't expect Oscar-caliber acting, lavish production values or a thought-provoking story. If you get them, great. But I don't get too disappointed.

Better gore effects would've been nice, but I understand that there are budget constraints. I guess what really makes me wonder, not just about this particular movie, but B Cinema in general, is what exactly the people who made this thought they were bringing. Was it just to make money? Was it a love of movies? Sometimes, you just don't know.

"Graduation Day," with a few tweaks, could've been much better. Just off the top of my head, even one change would have been a great improvement.

When the cop shoots Coach Michaels and asks Kevin to make a statement, just end the scene with a closeup of the deranged Kevin and dissolve to the next shot, which could've been a closeup of Kevin holding someone's hand. Pan up to show that it's Laura in either cap and gown or wedding gown. Show the back of the car, which has cans tied to the back. Across the back window, it reads "Just Married." They drive off into the sunset and the movie ends.

For that to really work, Kevin needs to be shown to be nuts a little sooner, but it would be a memorable ending. "Sleepaway Camp" was a mildly interesting horror flick, but it's the ending that everyone remembers. If you haven't seen it, go rent it.

Another problem I had was the arbitrary decision as to who the killer was. It really could've been anyone based on what we were given. It's like they flipped a coin or drew straws to pick the killer.

The DVD presentation is pretty lackluster; there aren't many chapter stops, and the picture looks pretty muddy, especially in the darker scenes. As I mentioned before, the captioning on this was laughable. But if you're not expecting archival quality and just want something to watch while you inhale some pizza and beer, you're all set.

If you grew up renting movie like this, you'll appreciate it. It would do pretty well for a group viewing/mocking. I've seen worse.

Heck, I own worse.

If it's a whiny ranting post, it must be Monday

I just don't get it.

I live in Modesto, the city of "American Graffiti" fame. During the summer, it seems like you can't go more than a few hours without there being a classic car show of some sort. Driving is really popular here.

So why do so many people here suck so badly at it?

Honestly, is a four-way stop so hard to figure out? I've almost been nailed more than once because some rolling brain trust isn't paying attention to whose turn it is, looks at me as I pull into the intersection after waiting for my turn, and then -- while looking directly at me, mind you -- pulls out about halfway before stopping abruptly when their synapses fire enough to remind them that the laws of physics preclude the possibility of our cars occupying the same space at the same time.

And I'd like to throw out a special shout-out of love to the giant truck-driving moron who not only parked so close to my car that oxygen couldn't reach the driver's-side door but also did so in a spot clearly marked "Compact." You could just barely see it under the back end of the truck that was sticking out into the road.

Modesto may be the car theft capital of the country, but I'm hoping it isn't the moron motorist capital as well. I'm guessing it just seems that way because I'm boring and don't get out much.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go yell at those damn kids on my lawn.

Your purple prose just gives you away

I thought I'd hallucinated it, but apparently not, because I've seen it a half-dozen times in the last week, once in the presence of another person.

I remember people of my parents' generation bemoaning the use of songs from their youth for cheesy commercials. I rolled my eyes and thought that I'd be mildly pleased to hear certain songs in conjunction with selling products. It was going to happen, but surely the next generation would find a way to do it in a way that wasn't so blisteringly stupid.

Yeah.

So now we have a commercial for Kraft Crumbles, which, if the commercial is to be believed, are "crumbelievable."

Ostensibly creative ad person 1: Dude, remember that EMF song from high school? We totally got a good deal on using it!

Ostensibly creative ad person 2: Sweet, but I'm trying to think of something for these Kraft Crumbles. It's due tomorrow.

Ostensibly creative ad person 1: Well, use the song.

Ostensibly creative ad person 2: It's cheese. How is cheese unbelievable?

Ostensibly creative ad person 1: We already paid for it.

Ostensibly creative ad person 2: Crap.

Ostensibly creative ad person 1: Yeah. Oh, wait, I've got it! They're "crumbelievable!"

Ostensibly creative ad person 2: What the hell does that mean? Crumbelievable.

Ostensibly creative ad person 1: It means, I don't know, crumbelievable. What do you want?

Ostensibly creative ad person 2: Something that doesn't suck would be nice.

Ostensibly creative ad person 1: Well, we'll have to settle for something that's done.

Ostensibly creative ad person 2, muttering: Crumbelievable, rassen-frassen...

That's how I like to think it happened, anyway. I could've also lived without hearing faux-Go-Gos singing "We Got the Meat" for whatever pizza place that was.

I'm just worried that this trend will continue, using songs with only the most tenuous connection to the products. Could these examples be too far behind?

Ring of Fire -- Preparation H

Boogie Oogie Oogie -- Kleenex tissues

Wind Beneath My Wings -- Beano

Don't Worry Be Happy -- Prozac

Having My Baby -- EPT

I Just Wanna Stop -- Pepto-Bismol

Pump Up The Jam -- Smucker's (in a new pump dispenser)

Release Me -- Ex-Lax

Smells Like Teen Spirit -- Teen Spirit deodorant

Check Yo Self -- Self-examination health public service announcement

Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm -- Campbell's Soup

Push th' Little Daisies -- Victoria's Secret (from my friend Ken)

Straight Up -- Viagra

Feel free to add your own.

Can't find my way home

When I explained it later, it sounded like I was making it up, or at the very least, pilfering it from a sitcom or something.

I left my parents' house in Tracy recently after a brief visit to claim a computer my dad was working on for me.

Before I left for home, I stopped at Sonic to grab a drink and some tater tots. I hadn't eaten all day, but I didn't want to buy a whole meal because I'd be home in about a half-hour.

After getting my snack, I saw that traffic on 205 was moving at a brisk -3 mph, so I figured I'd take surface streets and catch the freeway farther down. This usually shaves a good few minutes off.

The key word there is "usually." Construction crews had essentially erased the path I'd intended to take, so I sat there. In stopped traffic.

I wasn't going to let it get to me, though. I surmised that though the mile-long construction zone wasn't quite as speedy as I'd've liked, it was still quicker than the freeway once I'd passed the roadwork.

My tater tots were a memory by the time I hit the freeway, but I was practically halfway home.

I approached the 120 bypass and spied a hazard sign that warned of an accident ahead. "Expect long delay," it said. No joke. It was backed up almost all the way to the turnoff to even get on the bypass.

Not a problem. My first thought was that I could swing up to Stockton, catch Highway 4 four a bit and then hop onto 99 south from there.

After driving a little, I realized that I didn't need to go so far. I could catch 99 from Manteca. This epiphany hit me just after I passed Manteca.

I turned around and decided to try the Lathrop exit, as it looked considerably less packed with people rerouted by the accident. I knew I could go down a ways and then cut across into Manteca.

At least, I could've if traffic hadn't ground to a halt because of -- everybody sing along -- construction.

Back onto the freeway and down to the next exit, where, much to my surprise, I was greeted by a long line of cars because of more roadwork.

Normally by this point, I'd be lamenting that there aren't more effective swear words, but I'm making an effort to not let things bug me so much.

All I had to do was just be patient and everything would be okay.

Finally, I made it through the last of the yellow tape and orange cones.

Just in time for the train.

After the train, I made my way through Manteca and caught Highway 99, which looked eerily like a slightly mobile parking lot.

The trip that should've taken just a little over a half-hour ended up taking two full hours.

And my wife wonders why I don't like to drive.

Journey into Jeff's Brain II

Big Trak



I don't think I had this toy, but I sure wanted it. Big Trak was one of the first toys I can remember that you actually programmed. It still looks pretty neat in the commercial, but I know I would have gotten mad at the toy because I would have been trying to make it do things outside its programming parameters (bully stun ray, flying car, etc.). You can read a bit more about this (and other cool toys like the Micronauts) here

Chicken McNuggets



This commercial isn't interesting because it showcases the then-new Chicken McNuggets, a neat-o contest or the old-school dipping sauce containers. No, if you pay close attention, when they show you the McDonald's food you could win, they pan across a whole bunch of stuff, and there on the left, is my beloved fried apple pie in its keen cardboard container.

Sigh.

Pinball song



I didn't watch as much Sesame Street as some of my peers, but there are a handful of things from the show that I love dearly -- this song being one of them. This runs through my head on a daily basis. No, I'm not kidding. After you watch it, you'll find yourself humming it for at least a fortnight.

Journey into Jeff's Brain!

Trying something a little different this week. It's time to Journey into Jeff's Brain!

If you were somehow able to visit my brain, this is the kind of stuff you'd find there. I'll try my best to explain it, but in the end, there's really no good reason why this stuff occupies space in my brain instead of phone numbers, people's names and remembering to eat lunch.

These clips are from YouTube, so they may or may not still be there if you read this in a few weeks. Also, most of the people who uploaded them also have tons more interesting material, so be sure to check them out. You can end up spending way too much time watching these...

Mousercise



My brother and I had to wake up at the buttcrack of dawn on school days, and the biggest problem with that is that there wasn't much in the way of interesting stuff on at like 6-6:30 in the morning. We opted for Mousercise, the Disney Channel's kid-friendly exercise show. We never actually exercised along with the show, but we had a choice between watching this or boring old news, so we endured a half-hour of Kellyn, her headband and leotard as well as perkiness that made Katie Couric look like a mopey emo kid.

I felt bad for the people who had to exercise in the character costumes. That had to be hot in there.

The Edison Twins



Another offering from the Disney Channel by way of Canada, "The Edison Twins" featured twins Tom and Annie Edison, who used science to solve problems. They had a younger prother, Paul. The weird thing is that I know I watched this show a lot, but about all I remember is the theme song and Tom talking "aboat" things.

What's funny is that Marnie McPhail, who played Annie, is also in one of the shows my son watches on the Disney Channel, "JoJo's Circus." She does the voice for JoJo Tickle's mom, Peaches. I could have sworn that JoJo's mom was named Tess, but once I thought about that for more than I second, I realized how horribly wrong I was.

Moving right along...

Donald Duck Presents



One of my favorite shows on the Disney Channel. Partly because of its vaguely "My Sharona" theme song, but mostly because I loved Donald Duck. To me, he was one of the only Disney characters who had a discernible personality. I practiced doing the Donald Duck voice, planning to make it my job someday. I actually wrote that down in my baby book under "My Ambitions."

"30 Years -- To do the voice of Donald Duck or work at DC Comics as an artist for Superman and Action."

I'm 31 now, and the closest I ever got was doing Donald's voice during a performance in elementary school. In our music class, we were learning a song called "Digital Duck." It was from the Disney record "Splashdance," which contained some catchy innocuous tunes about the various characters. This song revolved around Don's bad luck with gadgets. It was a snap for me to pick up because I already had the record at home.

This, our music teacher informed us, was the song we were going to sing for some parent-teacher dinner function. Lame city. I really didn't want to sing in front of teachers and parents, but there wasn't really a way to get out of it.

Somehow, the topic came up that I could do a fairly decent Donald Duck voice. He punctuates the song with typically Donald comments. If I did the voice parts, I wouldn't have to sing. And when my teacher mentioned the possibility of getting a Donald Duck costume, I couldn't believe my luck. I wouldn't have to sing and nobody would know that I was even there.

The day before our performance, my teacher told me that alas, she couldn't secure a costume. I'd just have to stand at the front of the stage with my classmates singing behind me. And since I was going to be up front, I should be sure to wear something nice.

Much to my amazement, my performance didn't elicit tossed tomatoes, but compliments in the parking lot. I remember thinking that the parents were just being polite and trying to make me feel better about looking like a dork, but I suppose they really meant it.

But after that, I decided to keep my bill shut.

The apple pie of my eye

Oh my.

One of my favoritest junk foods in the whole world is/was the old-school apple pies that they used to sell at McDonald's.

You know, the deep-fried, ought-to-come-with-defib-paddles little bundles of appley goodness.

A few years ago, I could still find them at one or two McDonald's restaurants, and when I happened to be nearby, I'd buy a good 5 or 6 of them. This was apparently unusual, judging from the reactions of the people manning the counters.

But in recent years, my supply has been cut off. Kentucky Fried Chicken has something pretty similar with its apple turnovers, which are nice if you can ignore the slight hints of salty chicken.

The picture here was from McD's U.K. site, which I guess gives me yet another reason to travel abroad.

But lo and behold, the Internet lives up to its potential and BAM, recipes for the industrious DIYer, including my beloved (and healthy) apple pies and Shamrock Shakes.

Methinks there will be some food experimentation here in the Siftin' Test Kitchen. And I can work off those extra calories by taking a quick jog to say, Alpha Centauri.

(via the ever-fascinating The J-Walk Blog)

A shoutout to my boy Clark Kent

Superman means different things to different people -- besides the whole "truth, justice and the American way" thing.

To some, he's just a musclebound goober who wears his underwear over his pants. To others, he's a fondly remembered part of childhood. To me, Superman represents hope. This was the case as a kid, and I think even a bit now.

Not surprisingly, I was a lot more like Clark Kent than Superman, even ignoring the issue of super powers. Clumsy, awkward, bespectacled -- the whole shebang.

But that little bit of identification with Kent helped me out in junior high school. I don't think junior high is much fun for anybody, but it sucked beyond suckitude for me. You know the one kid in class who everyone else teases, picks on and generally treats like crap?

Me.

There were a few others who got in on it, but the brunt of it went on me. And I didn't really help matters much, either. I was the youngest in the class, and consequently always behind everyone else. I didn't dress like everyone else, and the mid-1980s was a really bad time to not be wearing clothes with fancy labels.

Plus, in all honesty, I was a dork. Not the cute dorks that are fashionable these days, but an old-fashioned dork -- the social pariah. Between the hormonal hijinks puberty was playing on me and interests that didn't match others' (no sports, etc.), I was an easy target. As you can imagine, I was pretty miserable; the prospect of going to school every day to face yet another barrage of torment did wonders for my stomach. Once in a while, I just stayed home sick. I wasn't faking, either.

Clark Kent (in the comics of my early youth, anyway) didn't get a lot of respect. And while I don't remember him being teased with such bon mots as being so poor he had to use sticks of butter as deodorant, I did notice that he took these things in stride. Sure, he rarely stood up for himself -- just like me -- but he endured.

Thus, so did I. I went to school, knowing that there was the possibility if not the absolute certainty that kids would give me crap. In the back of my mind, there was always the hope that there would be a day that I wouldn't have to deal with that kind of thing. Until that happened, I just pushed up my glasses, Clark Kent-style, and slouched my way through another day.

So even now, Superman still holds a special place for me. I wore Superman S-shield cufflinks on my wedding day. It was a happy and sad coincidence that one of the medical problems my son Harry had when we was born was a genetic condition also referred to as "Superman syndrome." And when Harry died, I got an S-shield tattoo in his honor.

When I saw "Superman Returns," I smiled when I saw the name of Bryan Singer's production company, Bad Hat Harry Productions. And as the familiar strains of John Williams' Superman theme began to play, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little excited.

Just yesterday, Brody asked to watch "Superman cartoons," so I put on the DVD of the first Superman movie. As the music played, he beamed brightly.

"Superman!" he said, bouncing happily on the couch and absently humming the music. It was one of those proud-dad moments. A super one.

Superman Returns

So I saw "Superman Returns" last night. Not bad. I think I need to see it again to decide for sure anyway. Some really cool scenes, and some others that were a bit meh for me.

I thought it was funny that Lois Lane wins a Pulitzer, and on the award it says she won for an article entitled "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman." It should have said titled. I'd think those Pulitzer people would know that...

The theater I went to offered T-shirts to the first 500 people to buy tickets for "Superman Returns." I bought mine on Monday, and yet didn't get a shirt, so I was a bit bummed. I did end up with a free T-shirt from Cold Stone Creamery. It says "Friends don't let friends eat grocery store ice cream."

Or something like that. I'm too lazy to get up and check.

So, as promised, here are the answers to the questions I posted yesterday from "The Official Superman Quiz Book."

1. Kal-El
2. "Star child"
3. True
4. February 29
5. 29
6. June 18, the day Superman landed on Earth
7. Blue
8. 6'2
9. Superman slouches as Clark Kent
10. 200 lbs.

How many did you get right?

More Superman stuff tomorrow, I think. We'll see.

Here's a quiz. Quiz for Doug.

Well, today marks one whole year since I started this here blog, so to celebrate, I'm treating myself to a sneak preview of "Superman Returns" tonight.

To get you in the proper mood for tomorrow's Superman-centric content, here are some questions from "The Official Superman Quiz Book" by Bruce Nash, the book that shifted my interest in Superman into full-blown obsession.

This is the section called "Vital Statistics."

1. What is Superman's birth given name?

2. What is the English translation of his Kryptonian name?

3. True or false: Superman is an only child.

4. When is Superman's birthday?

5. How old is Superman?

6. When does his alter-ego Clark Kent celebrate his birthday?

7. What color are Superman's eyes?

8. How tall is he?

9. Why does Superman stand three inches taller than Clark Kent?

10. How much does Superman weigh?

Now keep in mind this is asking about Superman as he was in 1978. My dad brought it home for me when I was about 4 because he knew I liked Superman and I was a spaz about reading stuff. That was the year I got my first library card, so I was eager to read what looked like a grown-up book.

I read this so much that the only way it could be more in my system is if I liquefied it and injected it straight into my bloodstream. But it's been quite a while since I tried answering these questions? How would I do?

I answered them without looking at the answers, and out of those 10, I got 9 right. I missed the last one by 25 pounds. I was surprised/sad to discovered that I knew the answer to question 6 without having to think very hard about it, and that's probably the most difficult question.

I'll post the answers tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone for reading over this past year, and especially to those of you who have resisted the urge to tell me what a weirdo I am.

My son, the critic.

Generally speaking, Brody likes it when I play guitar. I'll play something, and if he doesn't recognizes it immediately, he asks, "What song is it?" He's actually better than most people at figuring out the songs.

I was noodling around, not playing anything in particular, and he asked what song I was playing. I told him, "It's called 'Brody's Song.'" So I kept playing it, improvising a melody. This, he liked.

When I played it for Jen later, he was still enthusiastic about it. Then I played an Elliott Smith song, "Son of Sam." Brody loves him some Elliott Smith.

I got about halfway through, and Brody looked at me.

"Stop, Daddy, stop, stop, stop! That's terrible!"

So, after waiting for my wife's copious laughter to stop, I switched to "Older" by They Might Be Giants (Brody also loves him some TMBG), and I guess that's what he wanted to hear, because he started squealing with joy again.

President Lincoln ... George Washington ... Martin Sheen ...

A recent trek to some antique stores yielded a happy find for me: five TV Guides from 1983, a prime TV watching year for me. Marked down to 2 bucks each from 10, I couldn't pass them up.

In one of them, I saw this:

My wife's favorite movie is "The Goonies," so I had to show it to her.

looks like Mouth was right. Martin Sheen did play Kennedy once. Now what if Mikey was right about One-Eyed Willie's treasure?

Shirt happens

It's a fact of life: You can't have too many T-shirts.

There are quite a few shirts I wouldn't mind picking up at 80sTees.com, but this one just jumps out at me.

Or maybe this one.

Definitely this one.

Yup.

Things that make you go HNNNNNNNH!

It's Father's Day, and though this is my third opportunity to celebrate my fatheritudosity, it's still a little weird for me.

Mother's Day doesn't freak me out, most likely because I'm not a mother, though I am a bad mother--

(shut your mouth!)

Father's Day is like someone coming up to me and telling me that it's my birthday, even though I know it's not.

Have I really done enough to warrant celebration for my performance as a father? I spend a lot of time with Brody, which is cool, but am I doing okay? Lemme check.

He knows his superheroes.

He recognizes the themes to "Star Wars," "Superman" and "The Price is Right."

He knows "Guess what? Chicken butt" but doesn't abuse it.

So far, so good.

---

My own dad is a tremendously good sport with a great sense of humor. I say this not because I'm planning on telling a funny story about him but because he put up with my brother and me making merciless fun of him while we were growing up. It wasn't malicious; it was always out of love.

Even when we, ignoring the dynamics of regional dialects, teased him for saying "warsh" instead of "wash," which he has since stopped.

I'm ignoring the time we were in a Burger King parking lot and the bubbles from the first sip of soda tickled my dad's nose, and he, trying to fight the impulse to sneeze, emitted a strangely loud "HNNNNNNNH!" noise. No need to recount that tale.

One of the funniest things -- and the first to give me an image of what I'd likely be like as a dad -- happened here in Modesto.

It was summer day in Modesto, which in the words of Eugene Jerome was "Africa hot." We were going to a store, and our car didn't have air conditioning. So after our shopping trip, we could look forward to bursting into flame once we got back in the hot car.

To reduce the heat a little, my dad would often park by a tree for shade. And every time we parked by a tree, he'd tell us that it wouldn't be as hot when we got back in.

"Look," he said as he pulled into a parking place, "right by a tree. Pretty sly, huh?"

As he said the word "sly," the end of the parking spot came a little quicker than he'd anticipated, and he had to stop abruptly, which caused his Big Gulp to fly forward, splashing on the floorboards. Much laughter and Flintstonian grumbling ensued.

That was, oh jeez, like probably 20 years ago, and we still can't mention the word "sly" without laughing.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

He's a very nifty guy

I think it's funny that the two songs Harry Nilsson is probably best known for are two that he didn't write: "Everybody's Talkin'" and "Without You."

Nilsson would have celebrated his 65th birthday today. Alas, he died in 1994.

I'd listened to his work since I was little, either listening to songs from his "Nilsson Schmilsson" album or hearing others sing songs that he wrote, such as Three Dog Night's cover of "One."

You know, the loneliest number that you'll ever do.

There are two artists that prompted me to become obsessed with all things Nilsson: The Monkees and the Muppets.

No, really.

I loved the Monkees as a kid, and in high school, I plunked down my hard-earned funds (I begged my parents) and bought Listen to the Band, the 4-disc box set Rhino Records put out.

Turned out that some of the songs I liked the most were written by Harry Nilsson. That was weird, but it wasn't until I rediscovered the old Muppet Show record I had as a youngster.

There was a song on there -- a duet with Scooter and Fozzie Bear -- called "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear." I wanted to know who had written it. The album was a little help; it listed the writer as Newman.

A few clicks on the Internet and I found that not only was it written by Randy Newman, but Harry Nilsson had covered it as well. Newman also wrote "Mama Told Me Not to Come," which was a big hit for -- yes, Three Dog Night.

And then it really hit me. He'd always been around.

As a kid, I loved the movie "Popeye" with Robin Williams and was happy when my cousin supplied me with a tape of the film soundtrack. Guess who did all the music?

He wrote the theme song to "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," which I'd singled out as one of the best on my battered copy of "Television's Greatest Hits."

He showed up in biographies of John Lennon and Micky Dolenz. It was in his London apartment that Cass Elliot, my favorite member of The Mamas and the Papas, died of heart failure in 1974; a few year later, in the same room, the Who's Keith Moon would also die.

So I set out to get all the Nilsson stuff I could find.

There aren't many celebrities I wish I could have met; Jack Benny is one that comes to mind. I wish I'd had the chance to meet Harry if only to thank him for his music. His voice is simply amazing, and his lyrics showed a devilish sense of humor at work.

Go buy a Nilsson album. If you can't pick which one, get one of the greatest hits compilations. That'll give you an idea of where to go from there.

I had to convince my wife that our son, Brody Alexander, didn't owe his name to Nilsson's favorite drink, the Brandy Alexander.

It's true. That didn't even occur to me until later.

Honest.

Random observations and ponderings

I'm probably the last to notice this, but Camry is an anagram of "My car."

How do my shoelaces come undone while I'm sitting?

Why does "The Da Vinci Code" remind me of "Midnight Madness"?

Having fun on the beach

I sat down to write and -- this happens from time to time -- I spaced out. When I zoned back in and looked at my screen, it was filled over and over with "All work and no play makes Jeff a dull boy."

A-ha, I thought, maybe a vacation wouldn't be a bad idea.

Going to a hotel with a topiary maze didn't seem like a very good idea, so we headed for Santa Cruz for a little relaxation. Much to my surprise, I had a good time. I wasn't expecting Santa Cruz to be a drag or anything; just the opposite. I am practically physically incapable of having a good time.

Ask anyone who knows me and is forced to be around me.

My son flew solo on a ride for the very first time, which was kind of nice. I wasn't sure he'd go for it, but after the first few times around the car carousel, he started getting into it and playing with the steering wheel. He liked it so much he wanted to go on the boat ride right next to it.

And despite the crowds, there wasn't a huge wait for rides. Heck, I practically walked right on to the Giant Dipper. Score!

I wasn't mobbed on the beach by adoring women even though it's a well-known fact that chicks dig guys who wear shirts on the beach, even when they go in the water. It's just as well; it's embarrassing to have to disappoint them and tell them I'm already taken.

Aside from the aftermath of defective sunblock, it was a good time all around. I think we need to do that more often.

Next on Sci-Fi: New Zoo Revue

As seen here, the Sci-Fi Channel is now adding Extreme Championship Wrestling to their lineup.

Apparently, says the Sci-Fi prez, "Research tells us that there's a healthy appetite for wrestling among Sci Fi viewers."

I'm sure there's also a healthy appetite for all kinds of things, such as bikini models, puppy dogs and pants that don't tent out embarrasingly in the zipper region.

However, if you have a channel called the "Sci-Fi Channel," you might want to stick with things that are even tangentially science fiction.

I'm just saying.

I've been known to check out wrestling from time to time; I have nothing against it. I miss the old days of Hulkamania, when Hulk Hogan punctuated every sentence with a hearty "brother!" I still do this from time to time, brother!

But what's the point of niche networks if you stray out of the niche you staked for yourself (often to the point of excluding others from showing certain programs)?

That would be like an all-music-video channel suddenly showing cartoons and game shows.

Oh, wait.

This, of course, follows reruns of "Saved by the Bell" being shown on Cartoon Network, so in the coming months I'm sure we'll see some of the following:

Motorsports on Lifetime -- Because research indicates that women drive cars.

Reruns of "Vega$" on GSN -- Because they play games in Las Vegas.

Reruns of "Jackass" on C-SPAN.

If you have vast libraries of science-fiction television programming at your disposal and the best you can come up with is wrestling (I'm not even getting into the Sci-Fi Original Movies), then you have serious problems, brother!

Holy shirt!

Have I mentioned how cool my wife is?

"Oh, I got you something," she said casually one day when I was kinda bummed out.

She could've just told me to wait for it to arrive, but she knows that I can guess just about any gift, even without any clues. So she showed me a picture.

When I was going through pictures, I saw 3-year-old me wearing a shirt with a picture of Darth Vader. On it, it said "Darth Vadar Lives." Since it was spelled wrong, I assumed it was a bootleg shirt or something. Apparently not.

So Jen found a place that carries old store stock T-shirt transfers and got me an adult-sized version of my old shirt.

Through the magic of the Siftin' Temporal Studies department, my younger self and I are modeling our respective shirts.

So in case I haven't mentioned it, yes, my wife is quite cool. Why she hangs around me, I don't know.

Rejected commercials, No. 37

"Bad cholesterol, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

"Crestor. Down with the bad cholesterol. Up with the good."

What day is it?

The more I think about being a kid, the more I really think kids are a little bit nuts. Things that made perfect sense to me as a kid now strike me as bizarre.

Even with as many rules as there are for grown-ups, I think kids had more. Everything had specific ways to be done, from picking teams (Ink-a-Bink or Bubblegum, bubblegum in a dish) to requesting kickball pitches (slow with baby bouncies).

There were even guidelines for the specific days of the week. I don't know what they were at other schools, but this is what we had at ours:

Monday Marriage Day: If you held a girl's hand (or vice-versa), you were instantly bound in permanent matrimony. Until recess was over.

Tuesday Toes-Day: Beware the kids going around stomping on your toes when you're not paying attention. The only way to ward off the attack is by walking on your heels with your toes up. While it protects you from getting stomped, it doesn't protect you from looking like a moron.

Wednesday Wedding Day: I couldn't figure out how this was much different from Monday Marriage Day.

Thursday Throw-Up Day: I don't know that anyone actually did this, at least intentionally. Not a bunch of pukers at my school, I guess.

Friday Flip-Up (or Flip-Off) Day: To kick off the weekend, Fridays were the days that boys would theoretically flip up girls' dresses on the playground. I say theoretically, because, thanks to different growth rates, girls were sometimes taller than boys and would either pound you with their metal lunchboxes or gouge you with the one pinky fingernail they keep long for just such an occasion. I only heard about one kid flipping up a girl's dress, and that was when the days of the week were being explained to me on my first or second day after transferring to the school.

Friday Flip-Off Day was slightly more prevalent, if only for the fact that your can be a little more subtle about flipping people off. Of course, not everyone had the manual dexterity to really flip the bird that well, but we tried as hard as we could, even if we had to hold the other fingers down.

I did not participate in Friday Flip-Off Day because of an incident at my old school in which I, having seen Clyde the Orangutan get many laughs doing so in "Every Which Way But Loose" but not understanding why, flipped off my friend Jimmy, who was standing in line to get lunch. I was immediately disciplined by a passing teacher and had sworn off giving people the bird.

In plain view of teachers or yard duty supervisors, at least.

Extra coolness

Brody and Mr. T have the same birthday. Awesome.

You say it's your birthday

Yesterday was Brody's third birthday. The big 0-3. We decided to get him a neat-o sand table with which he can have all the construction-themed adventures he wants.

He loves digging and scooping, and now that it's almost summer, it's the perfect outside toy.

So before all the birthday revelry began, I put together the table on the back patio -- while it was raining. In May. In California. But did the rain get Brody the Builder down? Heck no. That's all he wanted to do -- just dig in the sand, wearing his hard hat.


Then he took a break.


"It's raining!"

If he could've, he would have probably stayed outside playing in the sand all day. But we're mean parents, and we made him come inside to open presents and stuff like that.

And unless the present in question had wheels, he wasn't interested. Unless it was a book about trucks with wheels. That was okay.

I think next year he might have more of an idea of what's going on. Heck, next year he might even try some ice cream cake, which he typically refuses the way most people react to rat poison or "Xanadu."

Still, it was nice to have the family over for Brody's birthday.

Even my brother.

I guess.

Old-school handheld gaming

I know I say it a lot, but man-o-man, I loves me some Internet.

I was going through a few boxes in the massive Siftin Artifact Archive, and I came across some old Super Pac-Man Rub-Off Game cards. Alas, the cards are so old, the dots won't rub off anymore. Well, actually, they will, but they'll take a few layers of the card with them, so they're not as much fun.

It'll be hard explaining the fun of these things when my son grows up. Actually, it's hard to say that we played "Rub-Off games" without my inner 12-year-old smirking. But fortunately, you can't see me and you'll be none the wiser about how immature I am.

This was the cool thing back in the day; the idea was to rub off (huh-huh-huh...) one circle at a time and tally the points earned for whatever was under the dot. Blue monsters, for example, were worth 10 points. You had to go in a line; you couldn't skip around willy-nilly. If you found three regular non-blue ghost monsters, your game was over. It was like a small paper version of Super Pac-Man.

Step 7 in the instructions tells you to "Use SUPER PAC-MAN stickers as prizes, for trading or collecting."

Here's your prize:


If you want to learn more, check out this cool page. Not only are the Super Pac-Man cards featured, but also regular Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Dragon's Lair and Robot Wars.

I also remember Video City cards, which featured a few other games.

And while we're on the subject of dubious attempts to cash in on the video game craze, this also came from one of the catacombs in the archives.


Yes, a Defender board game.


I had the Pac-Man board game when I was younger, and I actually had fun moving my plastic Pac around the board, gobbling marbles with it.

This game, well, it cost me 99 cents at a thrift store.

Something to look forward to

Coolness.

I just found out that a movie I've been wanting to see for a long time is coming out on DVD next month, thanks to Anchor Bay (who also made it possible for me to see a special edition DVD of "Supergirl").

I first read about "Cemetery Man" (also known as "Dellamorte Dellamore") in one of the many cult/sci-fi/horror movie review books I have, and it really intrigued me. Alas, the video store selection at the time was not as diverse as I'd've liked, and (this was before Netflix) I didn't end up getting to check it out.

What's it about? Well, quoth the press release:

Directed by Michele Soavi, Cemetery Man stars Rupert Everett (My Best Friend's Wedding and the voice of Prince Charming in Shrek 2 ) as Francesco Dellamore, a cemetery caretaker who finds that his seemingly dead-end job has recently become a little harder. Along with his sidekick Gnaghi (Francois Hadji-Lazaro), Francesco spends his days interning corpses and his nights killing “returners” – those who have risen from their grave seven days after burial. Life changes for Francesco when he falls for a beautiful, mysterious widow (Anna Falchi). When fate intervenes, Francesco must choose between Love Eternal and the Living Dead…

I'm not a huge zombie fan, but this sounded pretty cool. It hits your favorite movie store shelf on June 13.

Well, that's great, Sparkman, you're probably saying, but are there any special features on the disc?

* Widescreen Presentation (1.66:1), enhanced for 16x9 TVs
* Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
* Death is Beautiful: The Making of Cemetery Man featuring all-new cast and crew interviews including director Michele Soavi, star Anna Falchi and more
* Michele Soavi Bio
* Trailers

It looks like a cool flick, and I'm looking forward to checking it out.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Mom

This Mother's Day, I made a shocking discovery about mothers. They're like superheroes. No capes or anything like that, but they have amazing powers and abilities that you don't realize until you start thinking about it.

Their hugs can soothe wounds both physical and mental (except maybe severed limbs, but they'll try).

They can alter the flow of time in a fashion that seems to defy the laws of physics, such as when you mention that you're supposed to bring cupcakes for the whole class that day, and you're supposed to leave for school in 5 minutes.

Their saliva is a powerful solvent applied by thumb that can remove dirt from just about any child's face.

They possess seemingly infinite patience, even when faced with children who chase the cat so relentlessly that it poops on the wall in the hallway.

Heightened senses that would put Daredevil to shame (they can tell if you roll your eyes at them, even when they're not looking at you).

I can't imagine anyone more grateful for moms than children, with the possible exception of Hallmark. And See's.

Happy Mother's Day, yo.

No, you're out of order!

A friend asked me a question the other day, and it got me thinking: In what order should the Star Wars movies be watched?

It's hard to decide, but I think I'd have to go for watching them in the order they were released. I know it defeats the point of numbering them Episodes 1-6, but bear with me.

Part of the reason, obviously, is that's how I saw them: 4-6, then 1-3.

But I think watching Eps. 1-3 first could diminish the enjoyment of watching 4-6. For starters, by the time you get to "Star Wars," you already know how Darth Vader became Darth Vader. He's not as mysterious.

Okay, if you haven't seen all the movies, you might want to stop here, lest I spoil them for you.

Part of the fun for me watching the original trilogy (OT) was that you got only bits and pieces of Vader's story. Obi-Wan tells Luke that Anakin Skywalker was killed by Darth Vader. That's what made that scene ("No, I am your father!) in "Empire" such a jaw-dropper. We talked about that at school forever. But if you've already seen the new trilogy (NT), you already know who Vader is.

Not only that, but then you're wondering why Vader doesn't sense who Luke is during the first movie.

Or why Obi-Wan says that Yoda trained him instead of Qui-Gonn Jinn.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I think you have to pick which trilogy you want to be your trilogy.

"Star Wars" brings you in the middle of action, where the Rebellion is trying to topple the Empire. "The Phantom Menace" begins with a breath-taking tax dispute.

I'm also not a big fan of the fake foreshadowing in the NT, especially lines like Obi-Wan's "Why do I get the feeling you'll be the death of me?" to Anakin.

I'm still not convinced George Lucas had the whole story planned out in his head they way everyone says he did. The general idea, sure, but not the details. Otherwise, why would Leia have kissed Luke twice (once in Star Wars, once in Empire) if George knew they were brother and sister? Ick.

If you want to watch the original trilogy old-school-like, the non-Special Edition Star Wars trilogy will be out on DVD in September, despite assurances that the Special Editions were the definitive version.

And then next year, the Super-Definitive entire Star Wars saga is supposed to be released as a box set, and who knows what versions will be in that monster?

And there's the 3-D version George is working on.

Maybe I should just save my bucks and wait till the immersive holographic version comes out.

As long as Greedo doesn't shoot first, I'll be happy.

Surely you chest

The season finale of "The Office" is on tonight, and I can't wait to watch it, and not (as some in my household have speculated) just for Jenna Fischer, who plays Pam. I love this show; it always makes me laugh out loud, no matter how crabby I am.

It even makes me laugh when it's not on. How?

Every now and then, I check the stats for the blog, seeing if the number of visitors has reached double digits, things like that. But my favorite part is seeing how people got here.

A search for "Wonder Twins" usually pops up every week, and fans of "Camp Cucamonga" are apparently not in short supply.

But last week, there was this: "jenna fischer chest."

I love how search engines work. For a day or two, this blog was the top result for that search. And no, it wasn't me making the search, pervs...

This is particularly funny given that the subject of chests had come up on the blog Jenna writes for TVGuide.com.

So to sum up (especially for those readers who are married to me), I don't know her -- even though she's on my MySpace friends list -- and I'm sorry to have disappointed whoever came here looking for something besides pop culture fluff.

An unexpected reaction

While at the grocery store the other day, my son Brody was sitting quietly in the cart until something caught his eye.

"Wow, look at that!" he said. Not loudly, mind you, but I could tell something had really gotten his attention.

I looked at where he was looking, expecting to see a display that featured a car or construction equipment (generally the only thing he notices these days).

Nope. No cars.

A blonde.

My son, the girl-watcher. And he's not even 3 yet.

Free Comic Book Day recap

Free Comic Book Day has come and gone once again, and this year, I had a good time. Not so much because of the free comic books, but every now and then I like getting the chance to be in my local comic book store for more than just a few minutes.

It was neat to see a wide range of people, young and old, male and female, clearly enjoying something they liked. I'm terribly shy, but there's something about being a comic book reader/collector that makes it easy to just fall into conversations with people you've never met.

I was also pleased to get a sketch from artist Ethen Beavers, who is a cool cat. He was very nice, giving advice to budding artists and just talking about what it's like being in the business, not to mention doing free sketches all day. Go check out some of his work here. He also signed my copy of Justice League Unlimited #18, the issue he drew that features one of the funniest characters from DC's Silver Age sci-fi comics, Space Cabby.

Another thing that I really thought was cool was hearing a group of young woman professing their love for the Marv Wolfman-era Teen Titans, which is still one of my favorite comics. It was the first series I tried to collect the whole run of. And I don't remember meeting too many girls who were into comics at the time.

I had more fun in a few hours here than I generally do at giant comic conventions. Whether that's attributable to my dislike of crowds or just that there's almost too much to do at a convention, I don't know.

If you want to see a little bit of what was going on, you should check out this little video piece we did for work. Yes, I was pressed into service in front of a camera. Face for radio, voice for print, if you know what I mean. My part is in the second half.

Marvel at my near-lifelike presence.

The King's Arms? Where's the King's Arms?

While rooting around YouTube, I found this outtake. I also have it on a blooper compilation videotape that I got when I was younger.

To this day, it still makes me laugh. Draw your own conclusions about my level of maturity (or lack thereof).

Note: This clip contains one mildly inappropriate word (that I utter roughly a kajillion times during the course of a day, without much provocation) so view at your own peril!

Rules of the game

It's 2:37 a.m. You bolt upright in bed, your heart pounding like a tympani in your chest. The air is cool on your sweaty skin.

It's just at the edge of your brain and it won't go away until you figure it out.

How do you play "Frere Jacques" on Merlin, the Electronic Wizard?

Luckily for you, all you have to do is hop on the computer and check out this nifty little part of the Hasbro Web site. It's a repository of rules and instructions for their games past and present. It's fun to rediscover games you aven't thought about in years.

They even have the instructions for the Super Powers: JLA Skyscraper Caper 3-D Board Game. I had this and brought it to school in sixth grade so my friends and I could play it at lunch. It was too big to carry home in my backpack, so I stashed it in my locker, figuring I could have my mom drive me back to school and pick it up.

I kept forgetting, and eventually came locker cleanup day. My last chance to get it out, and I totally blew it. Some lucky custodian got to keep it, I presume.

It was a crap game anyway.

Hey, Joshua, it's your birthday...

Twenty-eight years ago today, I was an only child, and I was happy. While I wasn't spoiled, I did get all the toys for myself. Things were good.

Exactly one year later, I wasn't an only child anymore. I was a big brother. To prepare me for the concept, my parents got me a shirt that read "#1 Son." Despite what I thought, it just meant that of my parents' two children, I was born first. It had nothing to do with quality of said children. Well, that's what they said. I had my doubts.

I remember my dad telling me that Josh looked a lot like me when I was a baby.

"Is he my twin?" I asked. I wasn't really clear on the exact definition of "twin." I was 4.

"No, but he looks a lot like you."

I was excited by the prospect of having a little brother. Not only did it mean a playmate and someone with whom I could share all the wisdom I'd accumulated in my four years on this planet.

It meant that I had someone I could order around. A minion of my very own to do my bidding!

I didn't take long to figure out that wasn't going to work. When he was about 2 years old, he would repeat whatever people would say to him. For minutes at a time.

A devious plan formed in my mind.

So I taught him a swear word, which he instantly and enthusiastically began parroting. Satisfied that the stream (or more appropriately, given the word I taught him, creek) would continue for a while, I corralled him into the kitchen, where my mom was getting ready to make dinner.

It almost worked. I saw the look on my mom's face when she heard what her 2-year-old was saying, and that was pretty funny. But then she asked where he heard that word. Without hesitation, Josh, my sweet baby brother, stretched out his arm and pointed straight at me.

The little creep sold me out!

From then on it was a constant struggle to remind him of his place in the fraternal hierarchy. His job was to do the gruntwork. I'd come up with the plans, and he would execute any part that might cause injury to me.

One constant thing about my brother is that it takes a crane to get him out of bed in the morning. This provided much annoyance to me, especially when I wanted him to do something for me, but it also provided some fun.

So sound a sleeper was he that I, wanting to show him just what a butthead he was for sleeping so late all the time, drew a buttcrack down the middle of his face. Even better, he didn't realize it for a while.

Another time, he refused to get out of bed. Out of ideas (and maybe 10 or 11), I told him that if he didn't get out of bed, I was going to fart on his head.

He didn't believe me.

He did after that.

I really wanted to get him a customized birthday greeting from Captain Zoom, but I didn't get the chance. I mentioned a while back that on his birthday one year, he got the personalized record and was scared to tears that a stranger on a record was wishing him a happy birthday.

Maybe next year.

Happy birthday, Scrote.

He's the man behind the mask

Well, here we go again. Like good old Jason Voorhees, Bad Movies A to Z comes back once more. There are so many entries in the "Friday the 13th" series to choose from, but I managed to narrow it down to today's selection: "Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives."

The movie in a nutshell: Nut in a hockey mask slices, dices, juliennes.

The story: Tommy Jarvis (played by Corey Feldman in Part IV) is released from a mental institution; he's been in a few since he killed Jason Voorhees and was traumatized. But he has a feeling that Jason's not really gone, so he and a friend go to where Jason is buried.

Tommy's friend, Hawes (Ron "Horshack" Palillo) joins him in the trek to the cemetery on a stormy night. Tommy plans to destroy Jason's corpse to make sure he's not coming back.

This made me think: Given the problems Jason has caused in the past, wouldn't it be wiser to not have him in a marked grave where anyone could, well, dig him up and try to destroy his body?

In no time flat, Tommy has dug up the coffin. He gets a crowbar from Hawes and pops it open. Ooo, inside is a wormy, maggoty corpse. Yum. Tommy flashes back to when he killed Jason. He gets pissed off and stabs the crap out of the body with a metal fencepost that he rips off the cemetery fence (!). He throws in Jason's mask and turns away to get the gasoline.

Lightning strikes, and before you can say Frankenstein's monster, guess who comes back to life?

Dawes, unaware of Jason's resurrection, says, "My heart can't take any more of this." Hmm. Foreshadowing?

Jason crawls out of the grave and goes after Tommy, who douses him with gas. Alas, the rain kicks in and Tommy can't light a match. Dawes hits Jason with a shovel from behind, and Jason, without too much effort, rips out Dawes' heart. Dawes falls into Jason's casket. Tommy drives away. Jason dons his mask, and we get a closeup of his eye. With a nice homage to the James Bond flicks, the opening credits roll.

Tommy heads to the local sheriff's department and says that Jason is alive. Sheriff Garris thinks it's a prank and has Deputy Rick Cologne lock him up. While Tommy's locked up, the scene shifts to two camp counselors, Darren and Lizbeth, who are heading to Camp Forest Green. There's just one little obstacle in their way -- Jason.

Darren suggests driving at him to scare him away. It doesn't work. Darren reaches over and honks the horn. Jason pops a tire with his blade. Darren gets a gun out of the glovebox and threatens Jason. Jason spear-vaults Darren behind him. Now it's Lizbeth's turn. She offers Jason money, and when she looks up, he's gone -- until he shows up behind her and spears her in the head.

The next morning, some other counselors are asking the sheriff to help look for Darren and Lizbeth. Tommy tells them that Jason is out there. Megan is Garris' daughter, and Paula is Lizbeth's sister. Garris is going to take Tommy to the edge of his jurisdiction, and then Tommy is to get out of town and stay away.

That night, the caretaker of the cemetery is wandering around drunk and singing. Nearby, young lovers Steve and Annette are picnicking/making out. The caretaker says that his booze will be the death of him -- "but what a way to go" -- and lobs the bottle behind him. He notices it doesn't break. He turns around to see that Jason caught it. He breaks the end of the bottle and stabs the caretaker with it. Wah-wah-wahhhhh.

You can't fault this movie for not paying off. Every line serves the story, no matter how mechanically and predictably.

From here on out, the movie settles into a rhythm in which we shift among three focal points:

1. Tommy, who is trying to destroy Jason

2. Jason, who is trying to destroy everyone

3. Sheriff Garris, who is dealing with the other two

At points they overlap, but for the most part, it's a steady rotation. There's an ill-advised comic relief bit thrown in that involves some weekend warrior paintballers, but they end up just being fodder for Jason, so they don't really add up to much.

Near the end of the movie, the pace quickens noticeably, and the shifts speed up accordingly and being to merge.

Tommy and Megan arrive at the camp, ready to put their plan in action. I still don't buy that Megan would be that interested in helping Tommy, but that's just me.

Tommy runs to the dock and throws his bag of supplies in a boat. Megan decides to check to see who's still around. All her friends are gone, and very shortly, so will her dad.

Jason is out looking for Garris, who is also roaming the camp looking for survivors.

Megan all the kids in one cabin -- her dad had herded them all in there when Jason arrived -- and tells them to get back under the beds until she gets back. Tommy tells her to use the squad car radio to call for help. She opens the door, and Sissy's head rolls out.

Megan screams, which gets Jason's attention, but before he can close in on her, Garris ambushes him and beats the crap out of him. Jason fights back, and that's the end of the sheriff.

On the dock, Tommy is getting everything ready. While he's doing that, Jason gets to the kids' cabin, which Megan then runs toward. Jason pops out of the cabin and almost kills Megan. Tommy saves her by calling Jason out on to the dock.

"Come on, maggot head!"

Tommy gets the chains ready to redrown Jason with a big rock. Jason wades out to the boat but disappears before he gets there. Tommy pours gas on the water and lights it, waiting for Jason to resurface. He pops up behind him and wrestles with him on the boat. Tommy struggles to wrap the chains around Jason's neck. Jason cuts Tommy's arm and disappears again. When he pops back up, Tommy lassos him with the chain. The boat breaks, and they both go down. An underwater struggle ensues. Tommy appears to drown, and Jason lets go, letting him rise to the surface.

Megan goes to check on Tommy. She dives in and swims toward him. While she tries to bring him back to shore, Jason grabs her leg and tries to pull her under. She starts the motor on the boat, and Jason gets a propeller to the head/neck/chest. That's gotta smart. A bunch of bloody goo rises, and Megan brings Tommy back on dry land. Is he dead?

I know I'm supposed to care during this very tense moment, but I swear, the only thing that occurs to me is that one of the kids standing near Tommy is wearing a Masters of the Universe shirt with Mekanek on it! Sweet.

Tommy lives!

"It's over. It's finally over. Jason's home."

But if you think about it, it's not quite over. Megan still doesn't know her dad is dead.

Cut to: a sunny day. Beneath the lake's surface, Jason rests. We cut close and he opens his eye. He's still alive. So what the hell was all that blood? A bad cough?

The Alice Cooper song ("The Man Behind the Mask") at the end credits, while dated, is still kinda catchy.

Afterthoughts: I picked this one because at one time, it was my favorite of the series. Watching it now is, not surprisingly, not as much fun. The comedy elements for the most part are OK, with the exception of the paintballers I mentioned earlier. One of them is killed when Jason grabs him by the arm and whirls him into a tree face first. As the victim falls, we see the spot where he hit is a bloody smiley face on the tree. That's just a bit much for me.

One of the kid campers reading "No Exit" was better because it was funny without really interrupting what limited dark mood the movie had going.

And that's probably one of the big problems. This just didn't feel scary at all. It's too paint-by-numbers, I think. Even as a youngster, I knew that this was just to highlight the gore effects and body count. You end up just counting the beats, wondering how each victim is going to get dispatched. But since each death is telegraphed by a mile, even that isn't much fun. There's a big difference between suspense and impassioned anticipation.

There was also a lot of exposition, which I think added to the lack of suspense. It seems as though they felt obligated to explain Jason's history. On one hand, I appreciate this -- just like comic books, every installment is someone's first -- but how much do you really need to explain Jason? He's a nut in a hockey mask who kills people. It's nice to know his motivation, but since it really has no bearing on anything in the movie -- other than him killing everyone at the camp -- it just slows things down.

I didn't notice this back in the day, but the music in the movie just isn't working for me. I don't fault Harry Manfredini, who also did the music for all the other "Friday the 13th" flicks up to this point. I blame the choice of one instrument -- the electric piano. The score is a victim of its time. The normally spooky, atmospheric music, which is quite effective in other parts of the movie, just sounds like a TV Movie of the Week once that electric piano comes in. A minor complaint to be sure, but added to the other things I mentioned, makes the movie a touch less scary.

On the good side, I liked Sheriff Garris. He was one of the few characters who came across more like a person than a placeholder. Seriously, when I was taking note while watching this, I had to go back and forth, pausing so I could get the characters' names. They're usually mentioned at the beginning of the movie, and only a few times after that.

Also, this is the first one where I got the feeling that Jason was really the central character in the series. This really went a long way in building a mythology for the character, something that other movies would build on later.

It's not as much fun as it was when I was younger, but is still a solid entry worth checking out. I found the trailer on YouTube. Check it out for a taste of the fun.