21 Red-iculous, Random Things About Me

The color of the day is red, like Honey Boo Boo’s neck. Or cats dressed like lob­sters . Or the ex-Power Ranger who does gay porn now ‚ and other awful red things you would have prob­a­bly never thought of on your own. You’re welcome.

This week The League threw down a red photo chal­lenge . I accepted. I even came up with the word “red-iculous” just for you guys.

I went all through my house to find as many red things as I could, exclud­ing dec­o­ra­tions because that shit’s bor­ing and nobody wants to see pho­tos of that. So that left me with a bunch of ran­dom red crap I had no idea how to tie together in a blog post, until I got the bril­liant (or totally lame–I haven’t decided which yet) idea to do this:

21 Red-iculous, Ran­dom Things
(You Might Not Know) About Me

Kiss a lit­tle longer with Big Red.

Shit. Why didn’t I think of that com­mer­cial before I started this post? Oh well.

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was a photo chal­lenge: I’m see­ing red! Here’s how my fel­low Lea­guers inter­preted the topic:

• For­tune & Glory Days shows off a great col­lec­tion of red action figures.
• Flash­lights Are Some­thing to Eat lis­tens to Redd Foxx. On vinyl!
• Neme­sis Com­plex asks Red Skull, “What If?”
• That Fig­ures plays with a bunch of rad, red, retro toys. (Say that 5 times fast!)
• The Thir­ty­ish Year Old Boy found a bunch of ran­dom red things around the house too.
• Hench­girl argues for the awe­some­ness of Dex-Starr, because cats.
• The Com­bat Work­shop treats us to din­ner and a movie (both involv­ing red things).
• Neato Coolville ‘s photo of red things is totally rad. (View­mas­ter! Bub­blegum! YESSSSSS.)
• Toyriffic also loves Dex-Starr!
• Over at Branded in the 80s , things are get­ting bloody.

I like SuperUndeadDragonGalaxy9. You should too.

By way of the Cult Film Club , I made a new friend on Face­book. His name is Michael. Hey there, Michael . I meet lots of cool peo­ple every day through social media, but not all of them love 80’s hair bands and Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie .…and other awe­somely bad cult films like Stude nt Bod­ies and Swamp Thing . In other words, he’s my kind of people.

Michael is the cura­tor of  SuperUndeadDragonGalaxy9 , a Face­book page which he describes as “a scatter-brained cir­cus sideshow” that is filled with all kinds of awe­some, under­ground stuff. Just casu­ally pass­ing through I saw lots of Doc­tor Who , amaz­ing sci­ence videos, cult film trail­ers, and (holy crap!) My Lit­tle Pony Dub­step (which I chose to list mostly for my benefit).

When Michael’s not post­ing all kinds of awe­some and/or weird ran­dom­ness on his Face­book page, he’s most likely lis­ten­ing to kick­ass music and has given me some great rec­om­men­da­tions, which I will totally be post­ing about soon.

Like it, why don’t you?

SuperUndeadDragonGalaxy9 is a rel­a­tively new page and needs more Likes–so I’m demand­ing (yes, demand­ing!) you help him out. Um, please?

Pop Art Pop Tart: Moving LEGO Nyan Cat

Well this is cer­tainly the most internet-y of internet-iest things I’ve seen today. An ani­mated, mov­ing LEGO sculp­ture of peren­nial favorite inter­net meme, Nyan Cat …in a Flickr video. The only thing more inter­net bait-worthy would be a Gang­nam Style Christ­mas lights dis­play. No, wait, that already hap­pened . ( Mul­ti­ple times , apparently.)

This “pop art pop tart” (Do you like that? It took me five whole min­utes to think of it!) was cre­ated by artist H. Y. Leung, who made a bunch of other cool LEGO cre­ations you can check out here .

On a related note…did you know Nyan Cat has lyrics?

The Most Powerful Christmas Sweater in the Universe!

Who among you has the balls to wear this bad boy to the office Christ­mas party?

In a feat of ironic fash­ion design strength I didn’t think was humanly pos­si­ble, 80s Tees has cre­ated a Christ­mas sweater even more glo­ri­ous than their  Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles sweater that I may or may not admit to own­ing. With the bar for ugly Christ­mas sweaters hav­ing been set so high now, where does 80s Tees go from here?

67% of you are okay with this whole Disney/Star Wars thing.

The poll results from Novem­ber are in!

I wasn’t at all sur­prised to see the major­ity of you guys are on the Dis­ney Star Wars band­wagon, the gen­eral con­sen­sus being that Dis­ney can­not pos­si­bly screw things up more than George Lucas already has. You see that look on his face above? That is not the look of man who’s con­fi­dent about this cre­ative decisions.

Here’s the highly sci­en­tific break­down of my poll results:

Hell, I’m on board just for the  explo­sion of glo­ri­ous  Disney/Star Wars mashups  and ter­ri­ble (and by that I mean  ter­ri­bly hilar­i­ous ) Photoshop’d pre­dic­tions of  what Episode VII will be like .

TMNT: my only reason for watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year.

My yearly tra­di­tion of get­ting wasted the night before Thanks­giv­ing means I’m never up early enough to catch the entirety of the Macy’s Thanks­giv­ing Day Parade, and if I do I’m usu­ally too busy in the kitchen to pay it much atten­tion, but it’s one of those things I put on TV any­way because the annual rou­tine of it is strangely com­fort­ing. Some­thing about the mind­less com­men­tary over the din of cheer­ing crowds and those fleet­ing moments of march­ing band music in between ter­ri­ble lip-synched pop songs instills within me a real sense of pur­pose and tra­di­tion as I stuff things up a turkey’s ass. But in gen­eral you could say Macy’s Thanks­giv­ing Day Parade fes­tiv­i­ties are not some­thing I’m wildly enthu­si­as­tic about (although that one time Rick Ast­ley RickRoll’d my liv­ing room was pretty sweet.)

This year, how­ever, I’m mak­ing an effort to get up early and DVR-ing the parade because the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles will be a part of it . Not only that, but they’ll have their own float (check it out above) which I think is a first. The last time I can remem­ber the TMNT being in the parade it was an ultra-lame affair that involved bad cos­tumes and santa hats :

 (Actu­ally I don’t even really know if I truly remem­ber this or if I want very strongly to believe that I do, but either way, thanks to Matt of X-Entertainment.com for pre­serv­ing this his­tor­i­cal moment.)

For the many hun­dreds of pop cul­ture icons who have been paid trib­ute with their very own float in Macy’s annual parade, it’s almost weird to real­ize the TMNT have never been one.  So good on ‘ya, Nick­elodeon, for rem­e­dy­ing such an egre­gious oversight.

ShezCrafti Joins The Dork Horde

After a rig­or­ous appli­ca­tion process that involved cre­at­ing a mask out of an old black t-shirt and pos­ing for a geeky photo, I’m proud to announce ShezCrafti is now an offi­cial mem­ber of The Dork Horde ! (Inci­den­tally I’m also the first female to join the ranks.)  As the supreme Lord of Dork­ness and founder of The Dork Horde,  Reis O’Brien  heads up a great com­mu­nity that brings together blog­gers who have been rec­og­nized as ambas­sadors of geek culture.

ShezCrafti
Mem­ber: #00021
Rank: Hordyte
Guardian of: Gam­ing & Movies
Spe­cial­iza­tion: Head Pro­fes­sor of Ninja Tur­tle Lore
and Hater of Candy Corn

Since a bunch of Dork Horde mem­bers are also in The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers , I’m already pretty famil­iar with my dorky brethren and visit many of their blogs quite fre­quently. Really, I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to join their ranks, other than epic pro­cras­ti­na­tion. Or maybe deep down I was afraid Reis wouldn’t let in any candy corn haters; the fear of rejec­tion and all that. What­ever the case, I’m hon­ored to have been accepted and I’m look­ing for­ward to get­ting to know my fel­low Dorks bet­ter and read­ing all the awe­some stuff they post.

FOR THE HORDE!

Poll: How do you feel about Disney owning Star Wars now?

If you’re still not on board with this whole Dis­ney Star Wars thing, you haters bet­ter start get­ting used to the idea.  At this point a  Star Wars-themed Dis­ney park  is prob­a­bly inevitable–at least we can all agree that would be amaz­ing, right? Tell me how you feel about it in this month’s poll:

Do also check out a few more of these reac­tions from around The League:

• Top Hat Sasquatch -  Pod­cast: When You Wish Upon a Star Wars
• Under­Scoop­Fire! -  6 Great Things Dis­ney Can Do with Star Wars
• Lair of the Dork Horde -  When You Wish Upon a Death Star

So is a Disney Star Wars theme park inevitable now, or what?

Okay, you got me. This was all just an elab­o­rate excuse to (poorly) Pho­to­shop Mickey hats on Luke and Yoda.

I’m sure you’ve heard The Big Nerd News by now, so I won’t bother wast­ing your time with my own mus­ings about Disney’s acqui­si­tion of Star Wars and what it will mean for the future of the fran­chise, how exist­ing prop­er­ties will be han­dled, and other nerdy things Star Wars nerds have been nerd­ing on about for the past 3 days. As you might imag­ine, The League has A LOT OF FEELINGS about it. You can read some of their reac­tions here , here , here , here , and I also strongly rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to this pod­cast  for an appro­pri­ate gut-check of how you should feel about it. Bot­tom line is that Dis­ney can’t pos­si­bly fuck up Star Wars any more than George Lucas already has. So I say bring it on, and I’m ready to crown Leia as the next Dis­ney Princess.

My ques­tion is this: does this mean we will get a Star Wars-themed Dis­ney attrac­tion in the vein of Universal’s The Wiz­ard­ing World of Harry Pot­ter  or even its own park? Will there be R2D2 spin­ning teacups? I can’t be the only one who thinks Space­ship Earth is only a cir­cu­lar dent away from being the Death Star. The very idea of a Star Wars theme park prints money.

A Fictional Trip to the Paris Opera House in the 1880’s

I really strug­gled with this week’s assign­ment from The League, which was to take a trip into any fic­tional place, time or world in pop culturedom.

First, let’s run through the list of ideas that didn’t make the cut (and why):

1. The Ninja Tur­tles’ Sewer Lair –specif­i­cally the one from the 1980’s car­toon. Too obvi­ous and expected from me.
2. Hog­warts. Because Q the Adult already beat me to it .
3. Juras­sic Park.  Because Cool and Col­lected already beat me to it. Ugh.
4. Aze­roth.  As much as I’d love to stand atop Mount Hyjal, get drunk in Booty Bay or swim the depths of Vashj’ir, I stopped play­ing WoW more than a year ago and I feel too out-of-touch to write about it now.
5. The Con­ners’ House at Hal­loween. I sort of already cov­ered that here .
6. Miss Cackle’s Acad­emy for Witches. Because only like three of you would have the faintest idea WTF I’m talk­ing about .

Even elim­i­nat­ing the above places, I still had a hard time nar­row­ing down the rest to just one. And it’s now after 8:00 PM on Sun­day night, the last day of this week’s assign­ment. Des­per­ate times call for des­per­ate mea­sures. They also some­times call for a notepad, scis­sors, some Scotch tape, and a Sharpie.

Looks legit, right? Now it’s time to roll the shoddily-made die and let fate or a mildly strong gust of wind from my open win­dow decide my fic­tional pop cul­ture destination:

Well, shit. I was kinda hop­ing for The Labyrinth to fit in with the Hal­loween Count­down theme I’ve got going here. But oh well. That’s what I get for let­ting shitty paper dice do all my decision-making. Opera Pop­u­laire it is!

The Opera Pop­u­laire, in case you’re won­der­ing what that is, is the fic­tional Paris opera house where Andrew Lloyd Weber’s  The Phan­tom of the Opera takes place. (Oh, hey, I guess now might be a good time to men­tion I’m really into The Phan­tom of the Opera –the orig­i­nal novel by Gas­ton Ler­oux, its many film adap­ta­tions, the made-for-TV movie star­ring Charles Dance, spin-offs, the ALW musi­cal, the sequel –I love it all.) It is based on the real Paris Opera House, Palais Gar­nier , which is still in oper­a­tion and def­i­nitely a place that’s on my travel bucket list. I’m fas­ci­nated by its his­tory, its con­struc­tion and the fact it was built over a sub­ter­ranean lake which Ler­oux incor­po­rated into his novel to serve as the set­ting for the Phantom’s lair.

In ALW’s ver­sion, the Phan­tom story takes place in 1881. The Paris Opera was lit by gas lamps and can­dle­light, an elab­o­rate sys­tem of ropes and pul­leys manned by dozens of work­ers con­trolled the back­drops, nar­row cat­walks criss­crossed each other high above the stage, opera guests arrived by horse and car­riage wear­ing their finest bus­tled dresses and waist­coats. The Opera Pop­u­laire housed hun­dreds of employ­ees, from the lowly cho­rus girls to the stage man­agers, all liv­ing in rel­a­tive igno­rance of The Phan­tom who dwelt in the labyrinthine tun­nels below. It’s a set­ting that makes for a fas­ci­nat­ing story, one in which the Paris Opera House feels alive, bustling with activ­ity, and seem prac­ti­cally a char­ac­ter itself.

The over­ture from Joel Schumacher’s 2004 film ver­sion of The Phan­tom of the Opera  gives us the best glimpse into this world:

And in case you’re one of those peo­ple who don’t bother to watch videos, here’re a cou­ple of screen­shots that really show off the place:

Yes, Mom, I remem­bered to pack clean underwear.

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was tasked with tak­ing a trip to any­where in pop culturedom–a fic­tional town, time, or world. Here’s where (or in some cases, when ) some of my fel­low Lea­guers went:

• Redis­cover the 80s goes to Eternia!
• Team Hel­lions vis­its The Power Broker.
• Crooked Ninja Tur­tle Gang fires up the Delorean and goes to Hill Val­ley, 2015.
• 3B’s Toy Hive goes to The Simpson’s home­town Springfield!
• The Man Who Stares at Toys vis­its the house from Beetlejuice.
• Good­will  Hunt­ing 4 Geeks goes on a hor­ror movie road trip. (Cheater.)

Happy Birthday, Jim Henson

If I could still talk to you in per­son or bet­ter yet Dream­fast with you, I would tell you thanks:

For teach­ing me the value of true friendship…

…for teach­ing me, period.

For the scary bed­time stories…

…and awe­some Sat­ur­day mornings.

For tak­ing me to fan­tas­tic other worlds beyond my imagination…

…through dan­gers untold and hard­ships unnumbered…

…to a place where I could dance my cares away.

And finally, for bring­ing my heroes to life.

In short, thank you for mak­ing my child­hood amazing.

Most of you would rather be killed by zombies.

In last moth’s poll , I asked you guys which dooms­day sce­nario you’d rather have hap­pen: a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse or a robot apoc­a­lypse. Here’s how you responded:

• 63% of you would wel­come the Zom­biepoca­lypse like the Sec­ond Coming
• 37% of you would rather take your chances with the robots (big mistake!)

Win­ner: Zombies!

I can’t say I’m sur­prised by these results, hav­ing thrown my base­ball bat in for the zom­bies as well. How­ever, most of the com­ments on my orig­i­nal post were lean­ing heav­ily toward robots –really guys? I’m with The Man Who Stares at Toys on this one:

“Zom­bies all the way…I don’t want to be pit­ted against some­thing that likely has the abil­ity to work in total uni­son of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, have mas­tery over strat­egy, effi­cient com­bat skills and use logic and tac­tics against me.”

With killer robots, we’d pretty much be fucked. If we’re not killed instantly by their death rays or tricked into our own demise because they can shapeshift to look just like us, we’ll be har­vested like bat­ter­ies for energy.

While any “-oca­lypse” sce­nario is  simul­ta­ne­ously awe­some and sucks for mankind, most of you who took the poll agree that zom­bies are our best bet for sur­vival. I mean, haven’t we con­sumed enough zom­bie movies, TV shows and video games to know how to han­dle our­selves ? We got this.

Would you rather be killed by zombies or robots?

Per­son­ally, I think I would pre­fer death by robot; to be elim­i­nated in a swift, effi­cient man­ner with the cold, unfeel­ing pre­ci­sion that only a machine could deliver.  You know, as opposed to hav­ing entrails ripped from my body like hand­fuls of spaghetti while I’m still alive.

But on the other hand I’d be lying if I said the idea of a Zom­biepaca­lypse didn’t excite me. I really just want to get Shaun of the Dead on some undead ass, exper­i­ment­ing with a vari­ety of house­hold objects as weapons. And that’s why I’d have to go  zom­bies in this poll.

What’s your ideal end-of-days scenario?

My Dream Pop Culture Road Trip

This week The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers is going on a road trip! But not just any road trip–the ulti­mate pop cul­ture road trip. Though I could eas­ily rat­tle off dozens if not hun­dreds of pop cul­ture land­marks I’d love to visit some­day before I die, I had to cut the list down sig­nif­i­cantly when I real­ized that most places I’d want to visit (A) don’t actu­ally exist (Sher­mer, Illi­nois; The Dou­ble R Diner), or (B) aren’t reach­able by roads from where I live (The Bea­t­les Story; High­clere Castle).

So, after much Googling and fan­ta­siz­ing about places I could real­is­ti­cally visit in Amer­ica, like on an actual road trip, I think I’ve pinned it down to these ten pop cul­ture destinations:

But first…

I’m going to need a fun road trip car that’s cooler than my Honda Civic. Prefer­ably some­thing with a red rope licorice dis­penser. *VROOOOOM*

Now that’s more like it.

Stop #1 — Amer­i­can Clas­sic Arcade Museum

Where is it?  Laco­nia, New Hampshire

The Amer­i­can Clas­sic Arcade Museum is part of Funspot Fam­ily Enter­tain­ment Cen­ter, a huge arcade in Laco­nia, New Hamp­shire that is offi­cially rec­og­nized by Gui­ness World Records as the “Largest Arcade in the World.” The museum is ded­i­cated to pre­serv­ing arcade games through­out his­tory from its pre-electricity incep­tion. I would be in retro gam­ing heaven in this place.

Stop #2 — Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory

Where is it?  Water­bury, Vermont

Since I’d already be up in New Eng­land, I fig­ure why not swing by Ben & Jerry’s ice cream fac­tory in Water­bury, Ver­mont? I am a huge fan of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream as well as the com­pany itself for its social val­ues and inter­est­ing his­tory. I’m fas­ci­nated by the pro­duc­tion process and love shows like “Unwrapped” that show you how your favorite foods are made. I’d also love to visit the real life “Fla­vor Grave­yard” so I can pay my respects to Bovin­ity Divin­ity. Plus, FREE ICE CREAM! Tour­ing this place would lit­er­ally be a treat.

Stop #3 — Toy & Plas­tic Brick Museum

Where is it?  Bel­laire, Ohio

At the Toy and Plas­tic Brick Museum  in Bel­laire, Ohio you’ll find the world’s largest pri­vate col­lec­tion of LEGO. In case you’re won­der­ing why it’s not called the LEGO Museum, accord­ing to Road­side Amer­ica, the owner, Dan Brown (not THAT Dan Brown) was forced by the LEGO cor­po­ra­tion to change its name. Com­monly known as “The Unof­fi­cial LEGO Museum,” this place is 36,000 square feet of amaz­ing super-sized LEGO cre­ations, art­work, and ani­ma­tronic dis­plays. Check out this gallery to see what’s inside.

Stop #4 — Michele Ivey’s TMNT Collection

Where is it?  Some­where in Fer­n­dale, Michigan

Michele Ivey, the super­fan behind  Cow­abunga Cor­ner  & TMNT-L is one of the biggest Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tle fans in the world and has a mas­sive col­lec­tion of TMNT mer­chan­dise and mem­o­ra­bilia, includ­ing extremely rare and valu­able pieces like props from the live-action films. Her house, or wher­ever she keeps all this stuff (the East ware­house on Laird­man island??) is prob­a­bly the clos­est thing to a museum that exists for TMNT fans. If I ever had the chance, I would totally pay money to gaze upon her col­lec­tion. Michele, if you’re read­ing this, (I’m not stalk­ing you I swear!) have you ever thought about open­ing up a TMNT museum?

Stop #5 — The Goonies House & Film­ing Locations

Where is it?  Asto­ria, Oregon

Am I crazy for want­ing to go on a cross-country pil­grim­age just to visit some loca­tions from one of my favorite movies of all time? Yeah, prob­a­bly. I sup­pose I could also make a trip to Asto­ria about Kinder­garten Cop , but let’s be real here. I’d be doing it so that I can finally say I’ve done the truf­fle shuf­fle out­side of  Mikey’s house   and cross it off my list of life goals. As a gen­eral rule, I only set life goals that are stu­pid and that I’m 100% cer­tain I can achieve.

Stop #6 — Golf N’ Stuff

Where is it?  Nor­walk, CA

Con­tin­u­ing my tour of iconic land­marks from my favorite child­hood movies, I couldn’t go to the west coast with­out a trip to Golf N’ Stuff, the arcade and minigolf cen­ter where Daniel and Ali spend their first date in Karate Kid , immor­tal­ized in the best “first date” movie mon­tage OF ALL TIME.

Stop #7 — Claude Bell’s Dinosaurs & Wheel Inn

Where is it?  Cabazon, California

I’m already in Cal­i­for­nia, so may as well swing by Claude Bell’s famous Cabazon Dinosaurs , which fea­ture promi­nently in two more of my favorite 80s movies, Pee Wee’s Big Adven­ture and The Wiz­ard . After I take some cool pho­tos, I’ll go for grub and pie at the adja­cent  Wheel Inn Restau­rant . I will skip the Cre­ation­ist Museum , however.

Stop #8 — The Stan­ley Hotel

Where is it? Estes Park, Colorado

I can’t think of many more places that would be as big of an attrac­tion for hor­ror fans than this one. The Shin­ing is my favorite hor­ror book and movie of all time. The Stan­ley Hotel is the place where Stephen King was inspired to write The Shin­ing.  The hotel embraces its pop cul­ture sta­tus by show­ing an uncut, R-rated ver­sion of The Shin­ing on con­tin­u­ous loop   on all guest room TVs; so awe­some.   Oh, did I men­tion the place is sup­posed to be really haunted too?

(Trivia: Film buffs know that the infa­mous Over­look Hotel as seen in the Stan­ley Kubrick movie was actu­ally filmed com­pletely on elab­o­rate sets, with estab­lish­ing shots of Tim­ber­line Lodge serv­ing as the hotel’s exte­rior. How­ever it was used as the hotel in the 1997 made-for-TV ver­sion of The Shin­ing …which I don’t rec­om­mend, by the way.) 

Stop #9 — Jim Hen­son Exhibit at The Cen­ter for Pup­petry Arts

Where is it?  Atlanta, Georgia

I want to thank Shawn over at Branded in the 80s for intro­duc­ing me to The Cen­ter for Pup­petry Arts in Atlanta, which is home to the Jim Hen­son exhibit of over 700 retired Mup­pets. After read­ing about his recent trip there, I just had to include it as a stop on my road trip, espe­cially after see­ing that this place has crea­tures from Labyrinth and The Dark Crys­tal , two more of my favorite 80s films (are you notic­ing a pat­tern here??).

Stop #10 — The Wiz­ard­ing World of Harry Potter

Where is it?  Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios, Orlando, Florida

The final stop on my ulti­mate pop cul­ture road trip is Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios, Orlando Florida to visit The Wiz­ard­ing World of Harry Pot­ter . I’ve only been to Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios once in my life–thankfully before they shut the Jaws ride down forever–and as a huge fan of Harry Pot­ter I would love to tour Hog­warts Cas­tle  and knock back a few But­ter­beers. I love theme parks any­way, so I can only imag­ine how much fun a Harry Pot­ter theme park would be, minus the inevitable swarms of sweaty people.

I already have the  per­fect road trip song  picked out. Now I just need a musi­cal travel mon­tage to make going to all these awe­some places pos­si­ble in a mat­ter of seconds!

Other Cool Pop Cul­ture Des­ti­na­tions from The League

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from   The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers   was to plan out the ulti­mate pop cul­ture road trip . Here’s where my fel­low Lea­guers went:

• Good­will Hunt­ing 4 Geeks saw lots of clas­sic road­side attrac­tions and shares my love of huge dinosaurs!
• The Man Who Stares at Toys vis­ited zom­bie malls, Kevin Smith’s stash, Dragon’s Den, and topped it off with some good eats at famous greasy spoons.
• Redis­cover the 80s vis­its lots of famous land­marks from 80s movies and TV shows!
• Green Plas­tic Squirt Gun goes to so many awe­some places, I beggged him to take me along.

They’re Heroes in a Half Shell and They’re GREEN

For this week’s assign­ment from The League, I didn’t have to look very hard for inspi­ra­tion. When I think “green” I auto­mat­i­cally think Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles .

They’re the world’s most fear­some fight­ing team
They’re heroes in a half shell and they’re GREEN 

So today I thought I’d share some of my TMNT col­lec­tion with you.

I just recently got my hands on these fig­ures from Nickelodeon’s new line of TMNT toys. I love how each Tur­tle is a dif­fer­ent shade of green, like the orig­i­nal Play­mates TMNT fig­ures from the 80s. This is the first time I’ve ever posed action fig­ures for a pho­tos. I had so much fun I even went the extra mile and Photoshop’d together a decent back­drop and used some dra­matic light­ing. I’m kind of proud of it!

Ran­dom TMNT movie stuff: The Secret of the Ooze poster and trad­ing cards, DVDs of the first two films (my VHS copies are too bat­tered to be pre­sentable), and a VHS of Behind the Shells: The Mak­ing of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles .

Remem­ber these trad­ing cards from the orig­i­nal TMNT car­toon? Here are some of my favorites.

Some of my TMNT comics. I tried to pick out the ones where the Tur­tles’ green col­or­ing was the most vivid.

Some old school TMNT games for NES and Super Nin­tendo. Why the sai? No rea­son, really. I just thought it would make for a more inter­est­ing photo. And it’s also kind of funny because I never use Raph in TMNT games.

I’d love to show you more, but I’d need about a  week to pho­to­graph every­thing! Per­haps I’ll save it for some future blog posts. ;)

The League Goes Green

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from  The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was our first photo chal­lenge! The sub­ject was sim­ply “things that are green.” Here’re some other cool green things my fel­low Lea­guers took pic­tures of:

• Infi­nite Hol­ly­wood has an awe­some col­lec­tion of green action figures–can you spot the Ninja Turtle?
• Green Plas­tic Squirt Gun  has green mon­sters galore!
• Action Fig­ure Chat goes green for…well, I’m not sure what this is, exactly.
• Lair of the Dork Horde is single-handedly fight­ing off the plas­tic zom­bie invasion.

ShezCrafti on UnderScoopFire! Podcast #42

For some rea­son, the guys over at Under­Scoop­Fire!  asked me to be a guest on their pod­cast this week. Like I’m actu­ally cool or something.

Hilar­i­ously, and with­out real­iz­ing it, I mis­spoke when dis­cussing the year the orig­i­nal Mirage TMNT comics came out and said “1994” instead of 1984. I fur­ther go on to empha­size that I was “only three years old at the time.” So the rest of the pod­cast pro­ceeds with Howie and Corey under the impres­sion that I’m only 20 years old, and many “you’re too young to remem­ber [insert some­thing from the 80s] ” age jokes were made at my expense. Good times.

Head on over to Under­Scoop­Fire! to  lis­ten to this episode  and hear me ram­ble on about TMNT, Bat­man, Para­Nor­man, and other geekery.

Pod­cast #42 – Most Antic­i­pated Geek Things Q3 & The Dark Knight Rises Pre­view

Lots of great stuff for us geeks and chil­dren of the 80s to look for­ward to in the 3rd quar­ter of 2012!  We pre­view what’s to come in movies, comics, games, TV, toys and more – with a spe­cial seg­ment ded­i­cated to the grand daddy of them all, The Dark Knight Rises!

Once again, all five lions were not avail­able to form our typ­i­cal “Round­table Voltron”, but a very capa­ble guest joined in, and truly classed up the place.

We wel­come Jaime of ShezCrafti.com, one of the blogs firmly entrenched in our favorites. You’ve seen links to her site via our Scoop of the Day, and she is a mem­ber of the afore­men­tioned League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers.

In this episode:

• Fun with age confusion!
• Why The Dark Knight Rises could be the cure for cancer
• Defin­ing a “spoiler”
• We finally reveal who you decided was the Best Pop Cul­ture #2 of All Time
• Corey Feld­man is  very  available

Meet Mandy and have some delicious Chocolate & Cream Cake

Today I’d like to intro­duce you to Mandy Anne Cur­tis, a fel­low blog­ger, geek, designer, and all-around nice girl.

On her blog Choco­late & Cream Cake , Mandy describes her­self as just “a small-town girl liv­ing in a nerdy world.” And every time I read that tagline, you bet­ter believe I sing it inside my head like Steve Perry .

I was intro­duced to Mandy via a mutual friend & TMNT fan on Twit­ter ear­lier this year who rightly guessed that we’d have a lot in com­mon. I’ve been fol­low­ing Mandy’s blog ever since.

Here’s a sam­pling of some of the cool and geeky things you’ll find over there:

• Nerd News — Gigan­tic round-ups of movie, comics, gam­ing & related news, fan art, and links from around the web.
• Obsessed  — One-shot reviews of the things Mandy’s cur­rently obsess­ing over.
• Fic­tional Fan­cies  — A place to gush over the fic­tional char­ac­ters we’re crush­ing on.
• Lust­ing After — Like vir­tual win­dow shop­ping for fash­ions, decor, col­lectibles and trendy stuff.
• Geek of the Week — Intro­duc­tions to other cool geeks.
• Haiku Revieu — Movie reviews plus a haiku summary.
• Renter’s Delight — Dec­o­rat­ing ideas, projects and inspiration.
• A Life More Pin­ter­est­ing — Nifty Pin­ter­est finds.

I enjoy Mandy’s blog because it’s like a cheer­ful, geeky, girly sanc­tu­ary away from the seedy, dark cor­ners of the inter­webz I usu­ally fre­quent and the sausage party  fest of man-children that is The League (not that that’s a bad thing; I love you guys!).

Mandy humored me today by post­ing my own con­tri­bu­tion to her Fic­tional Fan­cies fea­ture, in which I shame­lessly reveal my lust for a char­ac­ter from Veron­ica Mars. I don’t usu­ally do such out­ra­geously girly things, but every now and then it’s been known to hap­pen. Maybe some­one spiked my Fruity Peb­bles with estro­gen this week.

Any­way, Mandy totally gets an inter­net high-five from me. Do check out Choco­late & Cream Cake and fol­low Mandy on Twit­ter , Tum­blr and Pin­ter­est .

Blank dice can solve all your problems.

Every sin­gle day, I have the same exact dis­cus­sion with my co-worker:

One of us: “What do you wanna do for lunch today?”

The other: “I dunno. What do you wanna do for lunch today?”

And so it goes, back and forth a few times until we even­tu­ally set­tle on one of the three or four places we always order from anyway.

Today, how­ever, my world was changed she she casu­ally sug­gested, “We need dice.”

Lunch dice?! Brilliant!

Why waste time quib­bling over what to order for lunch if you could just roll the dice and let fate decide? Nat­u­rally I wasted no time Googling to see if such a thing already existed; surely this can’t be an orig­i­nal idea. The clos­est thing I could find, how­ever, are these ultra-lame “din­ner dice”  that are meant to help you decide what to cook but over­whelm and con­fuse you with choices (Really? There’s an “omni­vore” set?). This wouldn’t do.

Blank dice. That’s what we needed.

Blank dice that you can write on with dry erase mark­ers and wipe off? Even bet­ter. Who knew I’d go shop­ping at an edu­ca­tional prod­uct store today? I ordered a set of these lit­tle beau­ties post-haste so that we’ll never have to ago­nize over Season’s Pizze­ria or Pat’s Pizze­ria again.

But why stop there?

Just think of all the life prob­lems you could poten­tially solve with blank dice. My mind is already a whirl­wind of possibilities.

• Which Karate Kid movie should I watch again for the hun­dredth time?
• What video game, of the ten I just bought, should I play first?
• Which bill should I skip pay­ing this month?
• What sex­ual posi­tion should we try?
• Which Ninja Tur­tles t-shirt should I wear today?
• What point­less thing should I blog about next?

TMNT Superfan Reviews the New Nickelodeon Turtles Action Figures

So, appar­ently some Toys’R’Us stores are already sell­ing the new Nick­elodeon series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles action fig­ures, even though we weren’t sup­posed to get them until August. (The new TMNT show pre­mieres Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 29.)

Michele Ivy, unques­tion­ably one of the biggest Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tle fans I know, was was lucky enough to get her hands on them early from a store in Mesa, Ari­zona. She posted a great  in-depth review over at Cow­abunga Cor­ner and this hands-on video review:

I still have a cou­ple of the orig­i­nal TMNT action fig­ures, even some in boxes, but I don’t con­sider myself a col­lec­tor by any means. How­ever, ever since pic­tures of the new Nick­elodeon toy series debuted ear­lier this year, I’ve been drool­ing over them on a daily basis. I mean, just look at them!

A lot of TMNT fans don’t seem to like the char­ac­ter designs for the new show, and I admit they took a lit­tle while to grow on  me. But you have to admit the Tur­tles look pretty badass here.

For shig­gles, I checked my local Toys’R’Us store today, and not only did they NOT have these toys yet, they had no frickin’ idea what I was talk­ing about when I asked about them. (But thanks for mak­ing me waste ten min­utes while you dicked around on the Toys’R’Us web­site, “Deb­bie” the “Cus­tomer Ser­vice Asso­ciate” as if I hadn’t already done that myself.) So that my trip into that area of town wasn’t a com­plete waste, I swung by Jiffy Lube to get my oil changed, which is some­thing I’ve been mean­ing to do anyway.

So to recap:

Does that qual­ify as being an adult?

I can already tell ‘Cards Against Humanity’ is going to be awesome.

My impulse buy this week was a party game called Cards Against Human­ity . I’ve never actu­ally played it before, but heard it described as ” Apples to Apples for ass­holes.” Sold!

I ordered it Mon­day night and it arrived today (thanks Ama­zon Prime!) in the sim­ple but impos­ing black box you see above. My curios­ity got the bet­ter of me, so I took out a ran­dom sam­pling of cards. Here’s what I pulled:

I’ll be on vaca­tion next week with my boyfriend who has an even sicker sense of humor than I do, and a bunch of peo­ple who like to drink heav­ily. I have a feel­ing that with this pur­chase I just pre­emp­tively made our week together more awesome.