Dan’s Corner of the Internet

So Iron Man is getting all kinds of good press and a lot of people I talk to have seen it and given it a good review. I haven’t seen this one yet but it’s high on my list of “gotta see” movies. I figured since it’s out and I have the time I’d throw my two cents into the ring and give my take on the best and worst comic book movies of al times. Oh and just a warning, if you by chance haven’t seen any of these movies beware there be spoilers ahead!

The Good

Spider-Man/Spider-Man 2: The first one took forever to come out, I lost count of how many studios had the rights to this one and how many drafts of the script there were. If I were a bigger nerd or really gave a damn I could probably find out but since I’m not gonna do that we’ll just say lots and lots.

It would have been really easy to screw up this franchise but fortunately Sam Raimi gave it the right amounts of humor and action and did a good job on the casting. Tobey McGuire really did an excellent job playing Peter Parker and the villains were believeable, J.K. Simmons was spot on as J. Jonah Jameson, Kirsten Dunst….she was ok. Maybe it’s because I’m not a huge fan of hers but she seemed to be kind of just there for the check sometimes.

X-Men/X-Men 2: This was another franchise that took forever to get off the ground but once it finally came to be was done really well. You may have noticed that I left the third installments of both of these franchises off the list, theres a reason for that and we’ll get into it just a bit.

Again I thought they did an excellent job casting this one, Patrick Stewart was the perfect choice as Professor X, he had the look and ability to carry off the role without making it seem too unrealistic, James Marsden was able to capture Cyclops’s alloofness and superior attitude and still make him a somewhat likeable character and a true leader of the team. I really like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and I’m convinced Ian McKellen can play damn near any role out there.

Batman/Batman Begins: I am a huge Bat-fan so of course these two had to make the list. The Dark Knight Returns, Knightfall, Knightsend…all great Batman stories, if you can pick them up in graphic novel form definitely check them out. The original Batman kicks ass because it was such a different take on the character from the cartoonish television that used to be on television back in the late ’60’s. This Batman was dark, gritty and violent and the Joker wasn’t afraid to kill whoever got in his way.

Batman Begins kicks ass because it actually gives Bruce/Batman more of an origin story and delves into the training he underwent to become the Dark Knight. It also delved into the relationship between Bats and Gordon and explains where he gets those wonderful toys.

Hellboy: I don’t know a lot of the backstory for this one like I do the others, I stil have yet to read an issue of the comic but Ron Pearlman played a pretty kick ass demon in my opinion. From what I’ve seen of the comic they stayed pretty close to the look and origin of the characters, one of these days I’ll get around to reading it.

There are a few more that are worth mentioning but these would be the ones I would take with me if I were stuck on a desert island and could only take a few movies with me.

The Bad:

Narrowing this down to just a few was a challenge as well. Comic movies, like video game movies can go wrong real fast. These next few movies just….well I’ll let you form your own opinions.

Spider-man 3: I wanted to like this one, I really did! It’s just if your gonna make Venom a character you need to devote a movie just to him. Spidey 3 would have been just fine with Sandman and the Harry as the villains, with Eddie/Venom in the mix it just felt too rushed and you don’t really get to explore the relationship Peter had with the suit and Brock like you did in the comics. I know you can only do so much with the source material but if they woud have just held off a little longer this one might not have been on this side of the list. If there is another Spidey movie I’d love to see them do a variation of “Kraven’s Last Hunt” hands down my favorite comic story of all time. Basically Kraven “kills” Spidey, buries him and assumes the role of everyone’s favorite wall crawler. MJ is left wondering what happened to her hubby till she see’s “Spidey” brutally beat a mugger. I don’t want to give away too much in case you come across it and want to read it but it really is a great story.

X-Men 3:  Where do I start with this one?  Again a good idea gone horribly wrong. The Dark Phoenix saga should have been it’s own movie, not crammed into a movie about the cure for being a mutant. And Rogue being “cured”? Seriously? Who’s idea was that? And don’t even get me started on the Juggernaut, “I’m the Juggernaut bitch?” Please! Oh and I love how Angel pulled a Darth Maul on us, he was so heavil hyped before the movie came out but was hardly in the damn thing! You know theres so much wrong with this movie I could spend a lot more time listing it but there are other movies worthy of my scorn so I’m just gonna leave this one alone for now.

Batman Returns/Batman Forever/Batman & Robin: Batman Returns is kind of borderline on being good and being bad, on the one hand you’ve got Christopher Walken and Danny Devito as the villains but Devito’s Penguin is so over the top and manic it’s hard to enjoy. Tim Burton kinda lost the vision of Batman for me with this one but if I had to choose a sequel other than the two listed above to watch I’d take this one anyday. Batman Forever and Batman & Robin…words fail me as to how bad these two are. People blame George Clooney for killing the Batman franchise for a while but in my opinion the true villain is Joel Schumacher. Nipples on the Bat-suit? And what’s with all the neon colors? But the biggest travesty of all is how he handled the Bane character in Batman and Robin. In the movie he’s a dumb hulking brute incapable of independent thought but in the comic he was a brilliant criminal who figured out Wayne was Batman and used his sense of duty to cripple him in the Knightsend story line. No matter how much you polish this one it’s still a turd.

Daredevil: Oh Marvel, why? This one isn’t as bad as the last batch but it’s pretty bad. Ben Affleck…nothing against the guy but he shouldn’t have played Matt Murdoch, I’m sorry it’s just not a good casting decision. And what did they do to Bullseye? He was such a cool villain in the comics but to make him a bald Irish guy with a bullseye tatoo in his head?  So, so wrong. This one spawned a sequel, Elektra, I haven’t seen that one yet, well not all of it so for right now it’s safe from my scorn but I’ve heard it’s a stinker too.

There are a few other comic movies out there I could review but I’m gonna call this list good for now. Maybe when “The Dark Knight” comes out this summer I’ll review some of the others Like the Fantastic Four and the Blade movies. Until then true believers ’nuff said.

So my friend Guise was kind enough to tag me when I wasn’t looking with this meme thing where you have to tell everyone 6 things about yourself. I’d try to explain it but with the wonders of cut and paste I can just cheat.  Here are the rules: 1) Link back to the person who tagged you. 2) Post the rules on your blog. 3) Write six things about yourself. 4) Tag six people at the end of your post by posting links to their blog sites. 5) Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their site. 6) And let your tagger know when your entry is up.

So to keep up with rule one, here’s the link to Guise’s page http://www.rogues.1me.net/blog/2008/6-things/ My link isn’t as pretty as the link he did back to Kittymao’s page (the person who tagged him, if you read any of the blog comments on X-E you’d know who these people are. Not that I’m telling you what to do or anything but you should really check it out). And hey look at that I took care of rule two already! Wo0t!

So without further ado, here are my six things:

Thing the first: I am a reality TV junkie.

I know it’s crap TV but it all started with Survivor, damn you Jeff Probst! I was undergoing chemotherapy at the time due to colon cancer (if you have a family history of the Big C kids it’s not too early to get checked, cancer knows no age) and if you’venever had chemo let me tell you it kicks your ass! Puking, nausea and other stomach ailments abound, it’s no fun at all.  Survivor was hyped pretty heavily so I gave it a shot. It was so ridiculously cheesy I had to watch and in between bouts of trying to puke my guts out it was something to keep my mind off being sick. Sadly my infatuation with reality TV spiraled out of control from there, Amazing Race, Deadliest Catch…..I just can’t help it. I do have some standards however, I cannot and will not watch the dating shows, The Bachelor, Flavor of Love that crap can rot for all I care.

Thing 2: I beat the Big C

As I mentioned above I am a cancer survivor. I was 29 years old and was waiting for my sister to get out of cancer surgery for the second time when I was strongly urged by our family Dr. to get a colonoscopy just to be safe. Now I don’t know about you but the thought of having a camera shoved up my nether regions didn’t appeal to me but after much discussion and debate with my wife I decided to haveit done. Like I said above, if you have a family history of cancer do yourself a favor and get checked out. No it’s not a pleasant experience but if they catch it early they can treat it without surgery or chemo and believe me when I say that’s not something I would wish on my worse enemy. 

Numero 3: I am listed in the credits of a major motion picture.

No seriously I am! No I’m not an actor or anything but when The Lord of the Rings was in production the company that runs the Star Wars and Star Trek fan club also started a LOTR fan club. I’m not sure if it’s still around or not but the deal was if you signed up for a subscription you got your name listed in one, two or all three films depending on how many years you subscribed for. My sister was a supervisor for the call center at the time and got em a one year subscription for my birthday so therefor my names are listed in the credits of Fellowship of the Ring. It’s near the end of the credits but if you look for the Fan club names, you’ll see me there.

#4: My kids are Pigs.

No not real pigs, guinea pigs. I don’t have kids of my own yet but I do have three guinea pigs they’re just as spoiled as real kids and I love them like they were. I got my first one a few years back on a whim, they run a pet line on a local news station here and the featured pet of the day was a guinea pig. My wife was enamoured with them but I wasn’t impressed, to me it was a rat. Anyway to make a long story short, she had a bad day at work and on a whim I picked up our first Guinea at the pet store and surprised her with Aahz. He turned out to be more my pet than her’s but we were both in love with him and lost him too soon to of all things cancer. We eventually got another one and have her still to this date along with two others we “adopted” from a local shelter. They really do make great little pets if your limited on space but want a loving little pet.

Numero Cinco: I am a reading fool

My bedroom looks like a library right now I have so many books stashed around it. I come from a family of readers tough, my Mom and Dad are both big into books. Granted the majority of my books are sci-fi and fantasy but I’m also a history buff. I love reading about World War II, the Civil War, the Titanic and things like that. I also have the obligatory Stephen King books as well as some stuff by Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. If you haven’t read Good Omens do yourself a favor and pick it up, it’s well worth the money and a great read.  

Number Six:  I love to write

Not that you can tell by my output here but I chalk that to the fact that I’ve had a lot of personal issues going on lately that have demanded my time. My problem with writing is that I am a very insecure writer, I’ll write furiously for hours and think it’s pretty good but then I get self conscious and then delete it and start over only to get frustrated and delete it all again and quit. Maybe one of these days I’ll try posting something up here and see what other people think. Only a handful of people read this anyway and the ones who do are people who’s opinion I truly do value.

So there are my 6 things, if your reading this and haven’t already done this then consider yourself tagged!

Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind! Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign? Sorry, got carried away there for a sec. People never cease to amaze me. I had to go to the DMV the other day to renew the tags on my car and decided that I’d be smart and get there as it opened so I could zip in and zip out. Well the joke was on me because they had actually opened an hour before and a lot of other people had the same idea I did. So I dutifully grab my number and sit down and wait to be called.

Now I don’t know about you but I don’t mind going to the DMV, it’s a great place to people watch. Ok, that’s a lie, I hate going to the DMV and since I thought I was getting there as it opened I didn’t bring my book with me as I  usually would but if I had I probably wouldn’t be writing this. There were the usual group you expect to find there, the single parent with the bored kid, the creepy guy who trys to start a conversation with everyone about nothing, and the people who just looked pissed off at the world because they have to take time out of their day and spend it at the DMV.

For this story to make much sense I suppose I should describe the layout of my local DMV. The desks are layed out like an L, with cubicles all along both sides and at the bottom of the L there is a station set up specifically for people who just need to renew their tags. This was the hotspot of action on Monday. At eight in the morning the DMV is running on a skeleton crew, they had four or five people working and about twenty people waiting. At the renewal station there are three, count them three signs that state clearly “This station is closed, please take a number and sit down” and one lone sign that says open. It’s amazing to me how selective human sight can be.

I was there about half an hour maybe forty minutes and in that time I counted no less than six people who went up to the express station, stand there, look around for someone to help them and then get pissed because no one did. Hello? Three signs people!! What part of closed doesn’t make sense? One older lady got so irritated that no one jumped up from their current customer to rush over to a closed station and assist her she stormed out in a huff. I was both greatly amused and dumbfounded by this, on the one hand how can you not see the fact that everyone is with a customer and theres  no one around to help you but on the other it just goes to show how self important people really think they are. One person had decided regardless of whether anyone was there to help her or not she was going to wait there till someone did.

So finally around Eight-thirty, the other employee’s start to trickle in and set up their stations for the day. Well the impatient renewal people are now about five thick and are getting more and more impatient at the closed station that is supposed to magically open for them because damn it their time is more important than yours! I’m watching the number display overhead and thinking that by the time someone finally does get to these folks they would be pretty close to getting to a rep by now.

Just as they are calling my number, someone finally notices the line and takes pity on them and decides to open the express line for them. As I was walking out, laughing to myself the first person who was so dead set on waiting in the express lane was told she had to get a number and wait for another rep to help her. I guess there is karma in the world after all.

So I just watched George A. Romero’s “Diary of the Dead” and I gotta say it was much better than Land of the Dead. It’s very reminiscent of Cloverfield so if that one made you queasy at all avoid this one. The premise is a group of student film makers are doing a project when the zombie outbreak hits. The director of the “movie” Jason takes it upon himself to document the events as they happen with his handheld camera (a la Cloverfield). The biggest difference between the two is Jason is not nearly as likeable as Hud was in Cloverfield, in fact there are times when he’s just not likeable at all.

It’s not a perfect movie by any means, it kind of retcons his earlier works. The original trilogy of Night, Dawn and Day obviously take place in the past and semi tied together, this one takes place in the day of YouTube, camera phones and DVR cameras which is fine because obviously you can’t really go back and make this one work. My other gripe about it is there are times when it’s so dark due to lack of lighting, camera angle, etc. that it’s hard to make out what’s going on in the movie.

For what it is though it’s a really good movie, very tense in parts and the gore is not over done but is effective for the movie. I had to laugh at one point early on in the movie, the film the students are making is about a killer mummy. The character playing the mummy moves too fast for Jason and he says something to the effect “Dead things don’t move fast, they shamble!” which was an obvious shot at the Dawn remake from a few years back. If your a fan of Romero, you’ll like this movie, if you liked Cloverfield you will probably like this as well. Me? I liked them both so I really dug it. On a scale of 1-10 I’d give it an 8.5. It would be higher if it weren’t for the dark shots where your kind of lost. Yes I know what he was going for and in the long run it didn’t hurt the movie all that much but it gets kind of old after a while. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to see this one in the theaters but given the medium it’s shot one it works well on the small screen. It’s floating around on the ‘net now if you really want to see it, otherwise it comes out on DVD on May 20th 2008.

Well it looks like Hollywood was hit by the recent writer’s strike harder than we thought, I just ran across a list of movies Hollywood plans on “reimagining” and folks it ain’t pretty. Hold your breath or your nose as the case may be because I’m sure that some of these will be stinkers. I’m not gonna list them all, just some of the ones that stick out to me, if you wanna see the entire list check out http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/15211/38_planned_movie_remakes_you_didnt_know_about.html

Battle Royale: They are gonna screw this one up so bad it’s not even funny. If you haven’t seen the original do yourself a favor and rent it. It’s set in the not too distant future in Japan,  classes of high school students are chosen at random to be transported to an island in the middle of nowhere and given a backpack with a map, supplies and in some cases a weapon. The rules are simple, it’s kill or be killed. At the end of 48 hours if your the sole survivor you win, if there are more than one survivor then everyone dies. It sounds brutal and it really is but it’s well worth watching.

The Evil Dead: According to scuttlebutt Sam Raimi is going to direct and exec produce along with Bruce Campbell so hopefully this one won’t suck but I gotta be honest with you I’m skeptical.

Friday The 13th/Last House On The Left/A Nightmare On Elm Street/Hellraiser: For the love of God why?! Clive Barker is working on the Hellraiser remake but word has it that  Doug Bradley is out as Pinhead. WHAT?! He IS Pinhead! How can you leave him out of the remake?  And Michael Bay doing Nightmare? Hollywood what have we done to piss you off that you would do this to us? Whatever it is I apologize! Please stop this travesty now!!

The Warriors: Warriors! Come out and……….you know what? Never mind. Stay where you are, or better yet run far, far away and hide.

Howard Stern’s Porky’s: The title says it all. I just…I have nothing to say about this one.

Footloose: Seriously?

Like I said there are numerous others but I don’t know that I can stomach to list them here. I feel……I feel dirty. I’m gonna go take a shower now and drink some Listerine to get the bad taste out of my mouth. Be afraid people, be very afraid.

Dan

Cartoons today disappoint me.  When I was younger cartoons actually had (some) substance to them. They exposed us to classical music and in some cases opera, cartoons today don’t do that. Of course when I was young cartoons were on in the morning before school and in the afternoons when you got home too. A channel devoted to cartoons? Unheard of! I don’t mean to sound like the curmudgeonly old guy all the time  it’s just kind of sad to me that kids today aren’t exposed to more culture. When was the last time you turned on Cartoon Network and saw Bugs Bunny doing The Barber of Seville? Or The Rings of Nibelung? I remember watching Looney Tunes and hearing Blue Danube for the first time, kids don’t have that now. Instead I turn on Cartoon Network and see shows like My Gym Partners a Monkey, which I don’t have a problem with but I don’t see them doing Beethoven any time soon.

I’m not saying that the cartoons I grew up with were better than today’s fare because lord knows we had some stinkers in my day too. Snorks, Foofur, Monchichi should I go on? I know it’s a different world now than it is when I was growing up, back then we didn’t have to worry about fanatics flying planes into buildings, all we had to worry about was whether we would make it home before Voltron started. I still watch cartoons and enjoy quite a few of them I just wish they’d focus more on the arts and less on farts.

So Titanic has been on TV quite a bit this weekend and watching it again has just reinforced what I’ve been saying for years, Rose killed Jack. If you haven’t seen Titanic, sorry to spoil it for you but the boat sinks, Jack dies and Rose is the old lady. Now I know your probably asking yourself how I came to the conclusion that Rose is a murderer and I’ll explain that in just a moment.  Titanic is one of those movie you either love or you hate. I admit that I’ve seen it more than my fair share of times and I blame this on the fact that I was single at the time and well Titanic = dates. I know I said earlier it was a love it or hate it movie but I have to admit I’m kinda torn about it myself. On one hand I’m a history junkie and the part where the ship is going down is really well done but the rest of it…..meh. Maybe it’s the fact that there was so much hype around the movie, both good and bad before it came out, maybe it was the fact that DiCaprio just irks the crap outta me but if it wasn’t for the historical aspect of the movie I doubt I’d have seen this one in theaters.

But I digress, back to my original point about Rose being a murderer. I actually have facts to back this up, Ok it’s more like a fact but still after reading my “compelling argument” you’ll agree that she is indeed responsible for his death. Ok so in the movie Jack and Rose have already bumped uglies and declared their undying love for each other and the ship is going down faster than Rose did on their first date. Yes I did just go there, it’s my blog I can do that ! Jack puts Rose on a lifeboat so she can row to safety with the other women and children and what does she do? She gets off the damn boat! Ok I’m all about love and romance but if I put you on a boat to save your life you damn well better stay on the boat! But not our Rose, no she’d rather die with Jack than go on living alone, and in doing so she kills the man she loves. See if she had just kept her dumb ass on the lifeboat Jack could have clung to the piece of debris that she was on at the end of the movie and they could have lived happily ever after. Instead Jack does the noble thing and gives her the flotsam with a smile and a “No dear, you float to safety on the piece of wood that could have saved my life if only you had been smart while I float here and freeze to death” look.  Ok, maybe I’m reading too much into this movie and just need to get a life but if you have a sense of humor and want a shorter, funnier version I recommend Thumbtanic by Steve Odekirk, or any of the Thumb movies for that matter. It’ll save you about two and a half hours of your life and the theme song is a lot less annoying than that damn Celine Dion song I promise.

I miss reading comics. I miss the days of riding my bike down to the local IGA with my allowance and buying the newest issues of G.I. Joe, Spider-man and Transformers. Comics are too expensive nowadays for me to keep up with though. I always told myself that once they got over two dollars an issue I’d walk away and I did for a bit. I’ve had a few relapses here and there I’ll admit but mostly I just wait for the graphic novel and buy that, it’s cheaper than buying the individual issues.

I’ve been reading comics pretty much since I’ve been able to read. I remember reading the original Ghost Rider series, Sgt. Rock, Batman and whatever else I could lay my grubby little fingers on. I’d go to garage sales and scour the tables for comic treasures that people no longer wanted and grab as many as I could afford then beg my Mom for more money to get those last couple that were left. In those days though, comics were just read and tossed on my bedside table or more than likely the floor. Back then though comics were cheap, fifty cents an issue when I started buying them new, that was no big deal. I didn’t become a serious collector till I was about thirteen and met Donnie Snider.

Donnie was the new kid in the neighborhood, he moved in just down the street from my friend Stephen and was instantly cool because first of all he had a Nintendo but he also read comics and played Dungeons & Dragons. Donnie kept his comics in boxes though, he kept his in bags with cardboard backing and put them back in the bag when he was done. People actually collected comics?  Why? It didn’t make sense to me at the time, comics didn’t have any value other than entertainment to me. Donnie though, he saw it differently, he said that comics could actually be worth money later on and told us that some could be worth thousands of dollars. What?!?  I’d potentially thrown away thousands of dollars without knowing it? No, he explained to me, only certain issues were worth that much, like the first issue of Superman or Spider-man. It took time for comics to gain value but you had to take care of them for that to happen. Take care of them? What do you mean? Pick them up off the floor? “No” he said, “you have to bag and board them.”  Needless to say this was a foreign concept to me but I was willing to give it a shot…..just as soon as I could find a store that had said supplies. Like I’ve mentioned before the town I grew up in had very little in the way of entertainment, the nearest movie theater was thirty miles away and the nearest mall was sixty, comic book stores may as well have been a figment of our imagination.

Donnie helped me out though, he had extras and gave them to me so I could bag my meager collection. Donnie had boxes and boxes of comics that were all in pristine shape, my ragtag bunch looked pathetic next to his but I was determined that I would change that, I would have a collection as big, no bigger than his! I do have to give kudos to Donnie though, he introduced me to comics I’d never read before. X-Men, X-Factor, Avengers and several others that would be added to my collection over the years. He was never afraid to let us borrow comics as long as we took care of them and brought them back to him, I was like a kid in a candy store.

I’ve seen a lot of things in comics, I’ve seen Spider-man “die” (Kraven’s Last Hunt, still one of my favorite all time stories), I’ve seen Batman broken and return to glory (Knightfall/Knightsend), I’ve seen legends end only to be “reborn” (the Heroes Reborn series). Comics have been a huge influence on my life, they’ve allowed me to travel across the galaxy, save the universe and of course get the girl in the end. 

When I was deep in the thrall of Transformers fever, before the days of the Headmasters, the Targetmasters and the other odd variations they came out with in later years there was one toy that I pined for. This toy was (at the time) the biggest Transformer to be released,  Omega Supreme! Not only was he the biggest, he was motorized too! He had a tank that circled a track and a rocket that you could use to fly your other toys to outer space! He was everything a kid could want!

The only problem with Omega Supreme was he was fifty bucks. FIFTY BUCKS! When your a pre-teen/teenager fifty bucks is like a million! I had to have this amazing toy, but how? How was I going to be able to save that much money? Even if I saved my allowance for weeks it’d still take like fifty years to get enough to buy it! But that’s what I decided to do, I would make the ultimate sacrifice, I would save my money for as long as I needed to buy the holy grail of Transformer-dom. I even asked if I could do extra chores around the house to earn more money. EXTRA CHORES?!?! Why that was unheard of! No kid offered to do extra work! They did what they had to and your parents were  lucky to get that! Slavery ended 100 years ago, what right did they have to “make” you take out the trash? You deserved that money for the hardships you had to endure! You had to go to school, do homework and deal with your big sister picking on you too! They should double your allowance for making you do work on top of that! But save I did and finally I had done it! I had saved $63 thanks to Christmas and Birthday money. Omega Supreme would be mine!

I decided to make a day of it, I would take my best friend Stephen with me, we would go buy Omega and then go to a movie, my treat. Unfortunately for me the closest store that held the holy grail of toys was thirty miles away but that wasn’t such a big deal, the movie theater was that far away too. So we loaded up the car and headed to Jerseyville on our quest. As we pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot my excitement knew no bounds, in mere moments I’d be holding the almighty Omega Supreme in my hands. Stephen and I ran into the store, straight to the toy aisle……only to find they didn’t have one in stock. They had a Go-Bot Power suit which was their version of a Go-Bot mecha I suppose you could say. It was five suits that combined together to form one big robot. I was still kind of into Go-Bots at the time and it was only twenty five dollars, quite a bit cheaper than Omega. Should I get it and use the extra cash to buy a couple of other Transformers? Or should I see if I could talk my Mom into taking me to Alton, to the holy mecca of childhood Toys R Us? They would have it for sure! So I put on my best puppy dog face and trudged my way back out to the car empty handed and gave my Mom a sob story about how they didn’t have any but they said that the TRU in Alton for sure had them  but that was farther away. I guess I must have played my cards right that day because she agreed to take us the additional thirty miles to TRU.  Never had a thirty mile trip felt so long in my life, I just knew we were caught in a time warp that caused us to drive slower than other cars and we would never make it.

Finally after what seemed like weeks we finally pulled into the TRU parking lot, I don’t think the car had even come to a complete stop before I had jumped out the door of the family station wagon and headed inside. The contents of the store were a blur as I flew down the aisles looking for the boy toys, more importantly the Transformers section. Then as if a light from heaven shown down I saw him; Omega Supreme! Big as life in that huge cardboard box…..all the way up on the top shelf way out of reach! How could they do this to me? To place the object of my desire in front of me but just out of reach! I scanned the store desperately for someone to get him down for me and finally had him in my hands! After weeks of chores, scrimping and saving I finally had him in my grasp! Stephen and I ran to the front of the store eager to open the treasure trove of plastic Autobot goodness and transform the robot within. I pulled the crumpled wad of money out of my pocket and shoved it at the cashier, reluctant to let go of my prize. We climbed into the back of the car and I started to open the box when I heard the words every kid hates to hear “Don’t you open that until we get home!”

What?! How could she do this to me? I had waited for what seemed like eons for this day and now I couldn’t enjoy the fruits of my labor? This was child abuse worse than any spanking I ever received as a child but I relented to her demand and left the box unopened. I would instead imagine all of the good times that lay ahead, how Omega would be the ruler over my army of G.I. Joe, He-Man, Transformers and those pathetic Go-Bots.  Any who dared defy him would taste his fury from his gigantic laser hand and be reduced to an insignificant pile of ash! Yes big things lay ahead for Omega and I, all my friends would envy me and my new toy. Oddly enough the trip back to Jerseyville didn’t seem as long and I couldn’t tell you to this day what the movie we saw was, all I could think about was getting home to open that box and transforming him for the first time. After the movie got out Stephen and I went back to the car to wait for my Mom to get out of bingo, drooling over the box, reading Omega Supreme’s bio card over and over again. “You know” Stephen said “she’d never know if we opened it and just put the stickers on while we’re waiting. We’ll put it back in the box and close the lid and you can pretend to open it then.” My God! That was brilliant! Why had I not thought of that? I would get to play with my toy and not get in trouble because she would never know we had already opened the box! So I opened the box and handed Stephen the tank portion and the sheet of stickers while I looked over the directions to see where the stickers went and how to transform this monstrosity. Stephen had extended his arms and legs and shifted his head into the robot position and we attached the rocket portions to mostly complete his upper body. I knew we were supposed to just attach the stickers but who could resist not playing with a new toy for the first time? As I was reading over the instructions again I heard the sound no toy owner ever wants to hear, snap. SNAP?!? No! It wasn’t possible! Not now! Not already! But it was true, Stephen had broken Omega Supreme. I don’t know which I was more of livid or shocked. “What the hell did you do?!” I asked. “I was trying to get his leg back in and it just broke” he said. “It’s not that big of a deal you can still play with it” Not that big of a deal? How could he say that? He wasn’t the one pining for this toy for ages, who had passed over the chance to buy new G.I. Joes, He-Man figures and even other Transformers. Needless to say Omega went back in the box after that and the rest of the trip home was spent in silence. He did still function and transform ok but in my eyes he was never the same. He had the one gimpy leg and it wasn’t even me that did the damage. Stephen and I got over our spat and are still friends to this day and yes I still have Omega Supreme gimpy leg and all. Was he worth the time and effort it took to get him? Looking back on him now, probably not but when I was a kid he was the crown jewel of my collection. He didn’t get out much because of the multitude of small parts he came with and the fact that he was a pain in the ass to transform but he was mine. I don’t have kids yet but when I do I gurantee they will have to work for their high end toys or video games. It makes you appreciate it all the more when you have to work for it versus having someone give it to you. Like I’ve said before kids today have it too easy, they can just go on-line and order their toys, theres no thrill of the hunt.  I know times change and so do people but Omega, he stays the same, gimpy leg and all.

I don’t understand people sometimes, I really don’t. Why do people feel the need to take games so seriously? I don’t mean board games, I mean the on-line gaming community. I play a couple of different on-line games and up until recently I used to enjoy it until I had an encounter with “the Uber-gamers”! The people who get so into their on-line persona that they ruin the fun of the game for everyone. The ones who make what should be a fun experience for everyone make you want to either stop playing the game forever or just delete the character you’ve put so much time into and start over. Seriously people it’s just a game! Did you brothers/sisters/friends never let you win at tic tac toe when you were little? Or were you so determined to win as a tyke that you alienated yourself from everyone else because no one wants to play with such an overly competitive little jerk?

People like this are the reason I don’t play World of Warcraft or some of the other popular MMORPGS, I don’t want to spend time and money on something and then step on the wrong persons toes and get “pwned”.  Don’t even get me started on that @#$! because that’s another of my pet peeves.  Is it really that hard to speak English? Maybe I’m just getting old or maybe I’m just not “l33t” enough to get it but if your gonna talk to me please make sure it’s in a language that I can understand.