Something Wicked This Way Comes...

And now she is HERE...


Stomp, Stomp, Stomp! Here she comes.....

Better run, You definitely don't want her answering the door to give you candy!

As part of Leslie Lee Appreciation Week 08 I have posted a few pictures of leslie in her fantastic Fuckofficus costume from a few years back. Enjoy!

Click below to view the group. Join in the fun and leave comments or pictures of your own if you like. : )
Leslie Lee Appreciation Week 08 Group

When Does Construction On The Lair Begin?

And for that matter, can you even get real estate in a volcano these days? Maybe a dark swamp or a skull shaped island will have to do for now. Its a sellers market for prime "lair" properties I bet.

Regular visiter BENDER BENDING RODRIGUEZ has burst onto the blog-o-sphere for hacking a child's toy into an evil robot minion...

gizmodo.com
www.destructoid.com
blog.makezine.com

Let his career in supper science/costumed aggression Begin! (We won't judge his lifestyle choice. Villain or good guy, we will still support and nurture him as he carves the turkey at thanksgiving time with his superscience lasers.)

Way to go!

Latest Video:

Leslie Lee Appreciation Week 08

Friends, It has finally come again, the time each 486 years that we take one week to fully honor Leslie for no reason other than that she is awesome.

The aztec had a name for Leslie, it was Quaxiquatiataltaxabelgle. Unfortunately the modern attempts at translation have only come up with something close to "have you seen my red feathers? I need them for my ass fan." But I am sure it has lost something over the millennia and once meant something far more grand... I mean they had a frigin NAME for her! They just don't do that for anyone... do they?

Anyway... I have collected some photographic evidence of Leslie's greatness...

Click here to visit Leslie Lee Appreciation Week photo set
Click here to view in Fancy Pants™ Slide show format

I will be adding more as the week goes on (not nessasarily every day mind you) so check back often! Also please leave links to any cool leslie photos you have posted... maybe we can start a group. hehe.

*Update*
New images added today! Behold Renaissance Leslie!

Also we have a new content provider... squeezymoose! Since we have more than one person chiping in... as promised I have started the Leslie Lee Appreciation Week 08 Group where everyone can pool all the Leslie goodness.

Be sure to leave comments on the pictures when you stop by, share stories of Leslie inspired by the pictures! (hint: factuality is optional if you ask me.) Have fun with the festivities everyone! HAPPY LLAW08!

Everything I Need To know, I Learn From Alan Moore It Seems

A man goes to the doctor. He tells the doctor that he's depressed. He says life seems too harsh and cruel. He says that he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain.

The doctor thinks about this for a while and then confidently says "Well the treatment is simple! The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him, that should pick you up." The man then bursts into tears, and barely able to speak through his own sobs says "But doctor... I am Pagliacci."



Yes, I am reading Watchmen yet again. Rorschach recounts this "joke" much more simply, as you would expect, so I embellished it some here. It is so beautiful and sad to me because I understand exactly how "the clown" must feel at that moment.

As near as I can tell the joke has existed for a very long time and Mr. Moore borrowed it to deftly use as a very clever device in Watchmen, The more I read his work the more I am convinced he is brilliant.

Darth Needs a Makeover

Here are my favorites...








Oh my god... you have to give love to "Darth Fink!"


Be sure to go check out the rest here..

*Update*
BBR pointed out that this photographer doesn't link back to the artists or the project website, so if you would rather have the WHOLE story... Here is the home of the project: The Vader Project They of course list all the artist and have many more pictures!

Sorry for the sloppy reporting in the first place my friends!

Hellboy: The Golden Army... Well, It Sure Was Pretty!

I have to admit that a bit of shine is off my golden boys.

I freak'n LOVE the work of Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola and since they are both credited as writing the screenplay for this film I can't let mike off the hook totally here it would seem. But I was a touch let down by Hellboy II... Maybe my expectations were to high.

It was fun, it was visually stunning as you would expect, but the story just cut too many corners (My friend Leslie pointed out the abrupt and poorly explored change of attitude in one character as something that bothered her and thats a perfect example.) and the film overall treated the source material too lightly for my taste. I suspect they gave in to pressure to make a commercially viable film and sacrificed even more of the tone of the oftentimes heartbreaking work of Mike Mignola than even the first film did.

I know all the arguments about making graphic novels and comics into films and how you have to change them to suit the audience... but you know what? Maybe its time we took back film from the "audience" which is actually just a metaphor for "box office" which is in turn a metaphor for greed.

Make smaller films, make them cheaper, have less people go see them and keep them running for longer periods of time, convert more theaters to digital to accommodate quickly adjusting to a smaller film gaining popularity quickly by word of mouth. In short make films that are not such a compromise because you feel you need to sell "X" number of tickets. I would like to see the death of the "blockbuster" and I would certainly like to see great martial like Hellboy avoid the "blockbuster treatment" in the future... and yet still get made into films. Yeah, I know, I am insane. : )

I am pretty sure about this "compromise to be able to make the big film at all" theory I have. I could be wrong, but if I go read Conqueror Worm and then watch Devils backbone again, I somehow don't think I will come away convinced that those 2 guys REALY wanted to cast Seth MacFarlane as the soulful and deeply troubled Johann Kraus. I was so thrown off by his voice that I turned to my friend during the credits and said "I guess I can't be annoyed about the changes to the Klaus character if Mike Mignola was credited on the screen writing." it was shortly after that that my wife pointed out that it WAS Seth MacFarlane, and after that I could'nt seem to call him Kraus... it kept coming out "Klaus" I think because after making the connection, he was then just a goldfish with a somewhat fake german accent that had been turned into ectoplasm just like Johann was and somehow ended up in this movie.

I have read they cast him because he could do the wheezing and mechanical sound (huh, mechanical sound?)... Sorry, I'm not buying that, we perfected that technology in the 70's with James Earl Jones. I think it would have been much more important to find a "good actor" if thats what they were really going for and worry about letting foley artist and sound engineers do their job after getting the performance... they, (or the studio) where hoping for funny I think... and honestly I don't think they got it. Oh well.

Honestly, There was still lots about it to love and I will watch it again. It just won't end up being in my top 100... which is so strange for me because I love the work of these 2 men so much and it seemed like a sure thing.

Night Terrors Suck

I was in a bar just now walking around, a few other patrons ignored me. Something was wrong and I tried to call out to them for help. I figured I was drunk, but that was weird since I don't drink really. Like most of these types of events I was trying desperately to communicate but couldn't get any sound to come out. People kept leaving and eventually I was alone in this old smelly bar. I couldn't hold my head up and I still couldn't call for help.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw my old boss and I tried to yell to her for help... thats when I became un-paralyzed enough to make a sound and realized I was "asleep" sitting upright in the chair at the kitchen table where I had been working. Luckily my yell for help was not enough to wake anyone in the house.

Finally realizing what was going on, I set my mind at ease and relaxed as I very slowly got "unstuck" and was able to fully return to mobility and other aspects of consciousness again and wait till they where all in sync as they should be.

Its an over simplification, but night terrors are caused when you are more lightly asleep but the mechanism of deep sleep that keeps you immobile fails to switch off. As the name implies, the experience can be quite disconcerting, even downright horrifying as your brain struggles to explain why you can't move when you should be able to.

Its funny the "stories" your still dreaming mind will make up to explain to you why you can't move and can't talk even though you are becoming partially awake. Crossing that threshhold has become commonplace for me now and I have that moment of panic before I realize whats going on but then I "figure it out" and treat it like its old hat... but man I remember when it was still something I didn't understand... Good lord they suck.

I have to say, I don't know what dying feels like but it must feel like a night terror.