So just out of curiosity, I’m putting up an informal poll. The question is this: If a band has five members, how many members can the band lose before it isn’t the same band anymore? What about a band of four? Three? How important is the source of the song writing to this equation? I mean could Nirvana be Nirvana without Kurt Cobain, or would it just be the Foo Fighters with guest bassist Krist Novolselic?

The reason I ask is that the New York Dolls have reformed and are releasing an album this summer. Now, there were originally five of them, Johnny Thunders, Rick Rivets, Arthur Kane, Billy Murcia, and David Johansen. Then Rivets left the band and died and was replaced by Sly Slyvian, and after the band was dropped from their label Murcia died of a drug overdose and was replaced by Jerry Nolan. In the years since the band broke-up Nolan, Thunders, and Kane have passed away. Now in good conscious, can Johansen and Slyvian really call their band the New York Dolls?

I mean can Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney get together and call themselves the Beatles? I mean it’s kind of weird how Jerry Only calls his band the Misfits even though he’s the only Misfit involved, I mean it should be called the Black Misfit Ramones wrapped in a Flag or something like that since it’s one Ramone, one Misfit and one member of Black Flag. Anyway…

So if you want to leave a comment and let me know what you think.  Or don't.

Well see if Libsyn lets me upload a header photo for this blog entry, it was being all wiggy yestarday.  Anyway, I thought I'd take a second and talk about what Spam mean to me.

First off, I have never eaten even a single bite of Spam.  I am a Spamical virgin, never hast the gel encased spiced meat product crossed mine lips.  Why?  Because it looks gross to me.  This coming from the guy who eats squid, tentacles and all, like french fries, who pops smoked oysters (yet another scary caned 'meat' like substance) like potato chips, and who relishes in Dim Sum, which let's be honest is some of the most 'what the heck is the meat in this dumpling' kind of chinese food around.  So whereas I find it inexplicable (outside of living in Guam, the Philipines, the trenches of WWII era France, or Hawaii) that anyone would eat this stuff, I don't actually hold it against anyone who does.  Each to their own right?

Yet, I have probably purchased more of this canned meat wonder over the years than a family of four.  It all started for me in high school.  I was a weird kid and I liked weird stuff.  I liked wearing my backpack on the front so it looked like I was pregnant with my math book.  I carried around a giant super bouncy ball that I named Fidel, and when I pitched him up on top of the school roof in a fit of anger one day I switched to carrying around a little plastic grasshopper that a suction cup on his underside.  I stuck him to the face of my watch and left him there throughout the day.  And what's even more weird is that I dated in high school.  Anyway I was weird.  It was my way of rebelling.  Making people scratch their head and wonder was just about the greatest thing ever, at least at the time.

So one day I was in the store with my mom when I saw a new kind of Spam next to the deviled ham and tuna fish, Deviled Spam.  It was much smaller (in theory because deviled spam is super concentrated evil and must be taken in smaller doses) and in my mind I vividly saw it as the best necklace pendant ever.  So I bought it and threaded some string through the pop top and started wearing it to school.  The assistant principal even stopped me one day in the hall and said that I must be forgetful if my mom had to tie my lunch around my neck.  All was well until one day when I got off the bus one day.  I used to grab the hand rails and jump from the top step to the road, and on this day I was the last of our group to get off.  When my feet hit the ground we all heard this snap-pop and we all froze.  The pop top had opened and it was hanging by a sliver of metal while the can of meat precariously swung from side to side.  I carefully lifted the necklase off and them proceeded to throw it as far into the wood as humanly possible (I'm sure a family of chimpmunks ate well for a week.)

From that day on I started carring around a regular can of Spam on a leash.  It was much safer and a little weirder IMHO.  I did this until one day some wannabe-punk chick stabbed it with a clay knife in art class.  It was a pretty weird psycho moment where she just stodd there waiting for a reaction like I was going to cry or something, but I just casually tossed it in the garbage and shrugged.  Anyway, my obsession with the culinary grenade continued past high school as well.  For the first year that I worked after I graduated I bought one can of deviled Spam a week, naming and dating each can until I realized that I didn't have anywhere to store the damn stuff.  Besides, my father snuck into my room one day and ate the can named Comissioner Gordon, so I sort of got out of that habit.  I've already written about my comic con experiences with it, so I won't get into that.

All in all Spam has been a pretty significant part of my life, well arguably significant.  So that's that.

While I'm working on my Capri-Sun article/whatever, I thought I'd share a quick memory of another food item I remember from my childhood, Charles Chips.  Before I had my first bag of microwave popcorn, before I had my first Cool Ranch Dorittos, before Cheetos and all those other fried salty snacks, I remember Charles Chips.

Now you can still get them in most grocery stores, but it's just not the same, because when I remember getting them, they came in cans and were delivered right to our door, like milk used to be in my parent's childhood, and ice was in my grand parents'.  Of course my memory would be for a fattening salty fried snack, not something healthy, but that's all part of the branding of the 80's.

I don't remember if a Charles Chip was any better than a Lays or a Golden Flake, but have to hope it was considering it couldn't have cheap to have it delivered to the house.  My friend Kevin and I are going to attempt to relive our potato chip memories by picking up some for an upcoming movie night.  Hell I might even pop for ordering some off the website, to try and relive the whole delivery part of the nostalgia, though getting a tin from UPS in a no doubt heavily damaged box that probably only contains bags of the chips, that I could buy in the store, stuck in the tin just isn't quite the same.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it is I have to offer, either through this blog or generally nostalia-wise outside of my inane observations in my lame podcast.  Not much.  I mean this in the most literal sense, I don't have a huge collection of 80's toys that I can take pictures of, I don't have a slew of old VHS copies of out of print cartoons, and I don't have a ton of various other odds and ends that I've been talking about in the blog.  All I really have is an interest in these things and a butload of links to post.

So in that train of thought it occured to me that I might have been doing something evil in terms of posting about this stuff.  I was hot linking to other's stored media and I didn't even realize what I was doing was bad.  Luckily nobody called me on it considering like no one reads this blog, but I'm glad I caught it when I did.  It's funny how to me the lines between good and bad form can so easily be blurred on the internet in the interest of good will.  I happen to stumble upon something awesome like the Star Wars Planet of the Hoojibs record book and think, man I wish this was like in glaring blinking lights so that everyone else who loved this could hear it too.  So I linked the mp3 files.  My thought process is like this, as far as blogger goes, it's really up in the air as far as linking to a page.  Most blogger templates keep 'x' amount of entries on the page before it chucks them into the archive, so if I just link to the page it'll most likely be a longer search for who ever is looking for that particular post.  Now sometimes you can link to that post directly, but getting to that post isn't always obvious depending on the template the blogger uses.  Some pages, you just click on the title of the post (like on mine here) and it takes you to a nifty page with just that entry.  Swell.  But in the case of the guy running Check the Cool Wax, it's not that obvious, and therefore I linked to the files themselves.  Seemed like the soultion.

Well I checked back today and it turns out to get to the page for just one particular post, you have to click on the link embedded in the time text of when the post was put up.  So yipee, now I just link to the page.  Now I feel like I have egg on my face, and wish I had know this earlier.  What kills me is that this can so easily happen and make people out to be bandwidth stealers, when they just want to point to something, and most blogging sites are so hands off in terms of technical knowhow that you never need to learn about this kind of thing.  Any Joe shmoe (read: me) can put up a page without really knowing anything about the do's and dont's.

Similarly, there's all this hubbub about music copyright infringement in podcasts and vlogs and stuff.  Now I took the time to think about this before doing my own podcast, to me that was a little more obvious.  But what about all these kids who are videotaping themselves rocking out to some band in their room and posting the video on Youtube?  To a 13 year old kid this is fun and easy.  I mean how many people did the same thing when they were younger if there was a camcorder in your house?  In the strictest sense, this is illegal and bad form.  But on the other hand, it's harmless energetic expression.  Hell it's what leads to that same kid directing music videos and movies.  Normally it wouldn't be a problem, but the technology to share video and sound is so advanced and easy that it's hard not to screw up.

I mean how many volgers think about getting permission to film when they're walking the streets of their city filming themselves in front of stores and junk?  What if the TV is playing in the background of their vlog?   What about talking pictures in Disney world and you get a close-up of a tourist and you post it online, not for the tourist, but for Cinderella's castle in the BG?

I'm so getting off topic.  Anyway, I fixed all the links I've put up to link to pages not files.  The question I have now is, is it wrong to link to an image, not actually putting the image on this blog (all images I have here are pulling off my own bandwidth), but just linking to it?  Does this steal bandwidth or is it basically the same as linking to a page?  I mean pulling up my page doesn't automatically use bandwidth from another site if I just put up a text link to an image right?  If you clicked on the link to get to the image, would it not be the same as clicking a link to get to that page as well?  I hate being internet dumb.

By the way the title of this entry is a quote from the below movie, not a knock on homosexual cows or anything.  I mean I'm all for bull/bull or cow/cow marriages and everything, though I'm four square against cow/human relationships because there are too many mancows in the world as it is.  Yup, call me an interspecies racist, screw the tangelos, and koala-monkeys, down with hipporaffes and manickens.

So last night's movie night was a blast.  We started the evening off by eating a crap load of cheesy 80's snack food.  And I mean cheesy, Handi-Snacks (both regular for nostalgia, and the Mr. Salty Pretzel version for Mr. Salty nostalgia), Babybel cheese, string cheese, easy cheese and townhouse crackers, and then some fruity and meaty stuff to round things out (Fruit Rollups, Shark Bites, and Slim Jims.) 

So after our blood pressure rose from the mass amounts of salt we ingested, we sat down and watched Midnight Madness starring David Naughton (American Werewolf in London), Stephen Furst (Animal House), Eddie Deezen (default nerd in most 80's media) and a young Michael J. Fox.  This film transends bad made-for-TV-80's-teen-comedy and becomes something very wacky and very fun to watch, though it's not strong enough to be a classic.

Basic plot?  Genius college student Leon (top row center) has devised the ultimate gaming experience (he's probably a frustrated GM in a D&D group.)  He invites five people (who need to recruit a team) to play the great "All Nighter".  The game is basically a scavenger hunt for clues around Los Angeles that lead to a final destination.  The first group there wins.  Hilarity ensues and the movie just becomes one insane madcap romp moment after the next.

What holds it back from being a classic is that it's just not quite spot on in terms of how the teams solve the clues and who advances fastest, etc.  There is a team of jocks that are solving clues (off camera) that there is no way they could figure out while a bunch of smart spazy nerds are always lagging in fourth place.

Among the highlights of the film are Betsy Lynn & Carol Gwynn Thompson (pictured above), a pair of overweight girls that have the most amazing (yet almost annoying) giggle ever.  Just watching them bounce around inthe back of a picup truck, driving scooter bikes, and dancing up a storm at a roller disco are worth the price of admission alone.  On top of this you get Michael J. Fox's screen debut as a bratty teen who's always doing someting bad to get his brother's attention.  There's also a small cameo from Pee Wee Herman in full pee wee make-up dressed in a cowboy outfit.  Oh and did I mention Candy?  Sorry couldn't find a picture of Candy, but let me just say that the 'C' and 'L' in the word 'control' on her shirt were hiding on both sides if you know what I mean. 

I have to say this was a pretty fun movie night, though I'm going to pay hell for all that cheese I ate.  Every squirted easy cheese on a stick of string cheese?  I have.

It's funny, though I'm not a big fan of the biography built of quotes (like the SNL book and Please Kill Me), there is an inherent honesty to it.  There seems to be this world of difference in how much I trust writing when it takes various forms.  I just got done reading the first chapter of Our Band Could Be Your Life (which covers Black Flag) and it's the first time I've read about the band that it wasn't in the form of a quote, either from Greg Ginn or though a Henry Rollin's book like Get in the Van, and it just sort of comes off a little untrustworthy.  Though it's very hard to write without bias, and I honestly don't think the author Michael Azerrad has a bug up his butt to paint people in a bad light, but it's hard not to take away a feeling that everything bad that every happened to Black Flag was Rollin's fault.

For instance, there's the references to Rollins being macho and violent, coming to blows with audience members and such on the Europe tour.  In OBCBYL it comes off like he's just antagonising the the crowd, begging for fights and stuff and that it eventually led to the downfall of the band.  Now even Rollins admits to this in his books, but it seems like Azerrad sort of takes what he wants from chapters of Get in the Van and leaving out some of the context of just how different and abusive the european audiences tended to be to punk-esque bands and why it might get to that point.  If you read the Joe Strummer Bio that Kris Needs wrote you really get a feel for just how shitty the audiences were.  First there's the whole 'gobbing' thing, spitting on the band as a compliment (that the bands tended to absolutly hate) and then there was the outright violence of the skinheads and gangs that would rumble at shows.  Now these audiences really took our their anger on American bands, and this led to confrontations.  So if anyone's to blame, it's everyone, not just Rollins, but the rest of the band (the music does have a violent tilt to it) and the audience too.

Anyway, it's the difference in reading a book like this, that comes from one writer and his point of view, that it forcing me to switch mental gears and sort of gauge my tust.  With book of quotes format, it was easier to gauge trust, because you could form a better opinion on a certain fact when you've got more than one point of view so you could sort of find a middle ground. 

This all stems from freaking Michael Moore.  I started getting into documentaries and non-fiction a few years ago and I was so outraged when I saw The Big One and then Bowling for Columbine.  But then I started hearing that he was skewing his statistics in Bowling and that some of the film was staged.  Checking into it, some of the film was staged, and then I followed his links on his website to where he got his statistics, and he did skew them.  I was just so let down, especially since the actual numbers were just as bad and shocking, just not as high, that I had to wonder why he would spread misinformation like that.

Anyway, since then I just have a hard time trusting non-fiction when it isn't coming from the horse's mouth.

Though I still need to find another book on the 70-80 era of punk to compliment the last book, I'm restarting Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991.  Though I've read that it's a little off and that it ignores some prominent bands (Pixies and Flaming Lips!?!), it still looks like a great starting place for post-punk and hardcore.

If nothing else, I own a lot of the music the book covers now (I didn't when I started it before and it was amazingly frustrating) so it'll be an easier, more enlightening read.  I'm really curious about Husker Du and Dinosaur Jr. in particular since I was hearing a lot of Sugar and Folk Implosion when I was first really getting into music, so hopefully I'll get to know a bunch about Lou Barlow and Bob Mould.

Just finished Please Kill Me.  As far as getting a center on punk and who was involved during a particular time period, this helped a lot, at least for the New York scene.  Now I need to find a book on the West Coast scene, so I can get a fell for the whole SST thing and stuff. 

Also, I know that no book is complete, but I was sort of bummed that Please Kill Me sort of brushed over the punk orbital bands like Blondie (which it covers a little), Devo, and the Talking Heads.  Basically I'm really curious to know if bands like the Talking Heads were considered punk.  They end up on a lot of punk lists, they seem to be influenced by some of the same bands, but they have a different demeanor on stage (at least I think, though Devo seems very punk to me), so I don't know.

Man, I'm really getting into Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, which pretty much deals with the NY punk scene.  It's set up in a "quote" format, which I'm not a fan of because if it's not done perfectly the narative completely falls apart (like in that SNL biography that is ruined by the format.)  This book, so far at least, is coming together perfectly and all the quotes about a particular subject are grouped well that it forms a cohesive story.

It's funny though, the book is managing to break down some of my preconceived notions on some of the pre-punk stars.  David Bowie in particular, who I had imagined was this Glam god that everyone riffed off of, is coming off like this really almost sad follower.  I know it's just the point of view of this book, but I know next to nothing about Bowie outside of his films and some of his music, but man it seems like nothing he did in his glam stage was his idea.  There's bits about this group of NY transvestites that made their way to England and ended up attending on of his shows while he was still awkward folky Bowie and he just seems to latch onto their image and want to know who did their hair and stuff.  Same with his reactions to the New York Dolls and Iggy Pop.  It almost seems like all he had was money, a crazy libedo and a will to learn, and out popped Ziggy Stardust.

And Lou Reed, don't get me started on Lou Reed.  Man Led Zeppelin's got nothing on Reed, even Zeppelin with a baby shark...

So yestarday I decided to once again to go super nuts in the kitchen and whip up another batch of Puerco Pibil (aka Cochinita Pibil), the amazing (I think) pork dish that Robert Rodriguez educated the world with on the DVD for Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Where ever you stand on the film itself (some love it, some hate it) the dish that Agent Sands eats in every dive he goes to in Mexico is one that I have completely fallen for.  I think one of the main draws for me is that it's a new Mexican flavor to me.  I'm so used to the more normal fare, salsas, verde salsas, creamy cheeses, corn tortillas, enchiladas, guacamoles, even moles, that I just want something new.  This dish from the Yucatan delivers in spades.  It's citrus-y, spicy, and earthy (the annatto is all of the above), not to mention tender (much much more tender than even the best pulled pork.) 

Best of all it's a very "from scratch" sort of recipe, so preparing it is very satisfying in terms of cooking something a little more difficult, but at the same time once you've done it, it becomes very simple.  This is the sixth time I've made it and by far this was the best batch.  I'm getting very comfortable with modifying recipes to make them turn out how I think they should be, something that I refused to do when I first started really cooking.

Anyway, here is the recipe as Robert Rodriguez give it on the DVD (which I've also added to the Cochinita Pibil wiki page):

Hardware: Blender, 8"x12" baking pan (at least), coffee grinder (dedicated to spice grinding), decent sized cutting board (we're dealing with 5lbs of pork here), Knife, tin foil for baking, large ziploc bag (for marinating), hand citrus juicer, rubber gloves (optional.)

Software: 5lbs of Pork Butt (bone out is easier to handle), 1/2 cup white vinegar, 1/2 cup orange juice, the juice of five lemons, 8 cloves of garlic, 2 habanero peppers seeded and roughly chopped, 2 TBS salt, 5 TBS annatto seeds (typically found in mexican spice section), 8 whole allspice berries, 1 TBS black peppercorns, 2 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp whole cloves, 1 shot of tequilla, and about 1/2-1 lb of banana leaves (probably the hardest ingredient to find.)

When cutting the habaneros you should probably use rubber gloves.  The juice and oils from the peppers will stay on your exposed skin for up to three days if you're not careful and it will tingle and burn the entire time.  Also if you don;t use gloves and then touch your face you will be sorry, as the oils, even the smallest amount will stay for days, so be careful not to touch your eyes or pick your nose or anything.

Cut the pork butt into 2 inch squares, doing best to cut away the heavier veins of fat and sinew.

In the coffee grinder combine the annatto, black pepper, cumin, allspice, and cloves and grind to a medium powder.

In a blender add the lemon juice, orange juice, vinegar, garlic, habanero peppers, ground spices, salt and one shot of tequilla.  Blend until garlic and peppers break down.

Stick the meat into the ziploc bag and pour over the marinade.  Let sit in fridge for at least one hour, turning once.  You can marinate the meat overnight (the citrus will have begun to cook the meat and it will have changed to white, this is normal.)

Pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees (fahrenheit).  Line the baking pan with banana leaves and then pour the meat and marinade ontop.  Cover the mixture with remaining banana leaves and then cover the pan tightly with tin foil so that no steam can escape during cooking.  Bake the meat for 4 hours.  Serve over white rice.  Makes 6-8 servings.

Now I've found that there are a few modifications that can make this dish turn out better on a regular basis.  The first couple times I made it, the dish varied, ususally in the tenderness department.  When I made it for my parents in Florida it burnt.  Basically I've found that if you drop the temperature down to between 300 and 325 (it will rise and fall during cooking, but will always be at least 300) and only cook the meat for 3-3 1/2 hours it always comes out tender and perfectly done.  Because different ovens very in temperature and then all ovens fluctuate while cooking, I've found that if you set the oven to 325 it'll often go as high as 350 during cooking.  Mix that with a 4 hour cook time and the probabbility of drying out the meat doubles. 

I've also found the the citrus flavor to be a little richer if you substitute two of the lemons worth of juice for the juice of three limes.

I'll be honest the first time you make this dish it'll seem excessive, the long cook time, the list of ingredients, etc.  But after you've made it a couple times it really is easy to prepare and if you start early enough you can do other things while it's cooking.  Also the more you make it the more you get out of the spices you bought to make it since you probably won't be using them for much else.

I'm also experimenting with using this marinade on fish.  We tried doing it with catfish fillets for Carrie (who's a lacto-ovo and fish vegetarian).  It didn't turn out that great, mostly because I had to improvise on the cooking time.  We wrapped the meat in banana leaves and used a good bit of the marinade, and the fish (at 400 degrees for 15 minutes) just wasn't done enough.  Typically 10 minutes at 400 would cook any fish, but because of teh extra layers of banana leaves and extra liquid I think it might need to cook a lot longer.  Next time we're going to try it for 25 minutes and see how it goes.

Holy crap!  Gluttony is a sin right?  Man-o-man.  So my friend Kevin and I have a regular movie night and currently we are working through a list of 60 or so flicks that strike our collective nostalgia bone.  While tackling this list we are also trying to hit food items that we haven't had in years to sort of round out the experience.  Last night everything was just a tad too much. 

We started off the evening with a visit to our local Red Lobster, which was sort of the special occassion dining experience of our childhood.  I know there were many times when my mother and I would meet my dad there after he got off work.  That's were I started my Shirley Temple drink ordering habit and also where I had my first experiences eating crustaceans and cheddar biscuits.

So last night Kevin, the fiancee and I ploped ourselves down and decided to order up an uncanny feast.  Both Kevin and I ordered the most expensive item on the menu to sort of mark the occassion, the 1.5 lb King Crab Dinner, while Carrie ordered the more sensible and classic shrimp trio.  To warm ourselves up there were stuffed mushrooms and Chedar Bay biscuits aplenty, not to mention a round of Shirley Temples for all.

When the dinner portion of our feast arrived I was about to burst with anticipation.  I haven't had crab legs in like 18 years and I was all ready to don a bib, grab the cracker and go to town. 

The meal did not live up to my expectations.  First off, I wasn't offered a bib, and I was not about to be the messy slob that asked for one.  Second, the crab legs were kind of, well not really crackable.  I don't think they were bad or anything, just a bit rubbery and that sort of took some of the wind out of my sails.  Lastly, and this is totally my fault not Red Lobster's, I sort of got stuck in a "freeing the food from the shell rut" where I wasn't eating any of the booty I was scraping out of the shells with my tiny fork.  I just kept piling the crab meat on a small plate while I worked double time at freeing it.  I couldn't stop myself, it was addictive and with each leg I learned a better technique.

Was it worth the expense?  Probably, considering Kevin and Carrie had a laugh riot at my expense while I dug out crab meat like a nautical junkie getting his daily fishy fix, and the meal ended up lasting right around two hours, so we got our table time's worth.  But all in all it was far from the best meal I've ever had.  By the time I got to eating the sweet leg meat, it was cold and no amount of melted butter or lemon juice was going to save it.  I managed to eat all of it except two joint/knuckle's worth, that Kevin refused to leave (so he ate it.)

We asked the waitress how popular the King Crab dinner was, and she said that she doesn't get that many people ordering it, probably only dorks like us.  I will say that it did bring back a lot of memories of eating at that establishment, though I did my crab cracking in Florida not Georgia like Kevin, so it was probably a little more successful for him in that department.

On the flick front, we watched Teen Wolf (as a part of a proposed Teen Wolf/Midnight Madness Michael J. Fox double feature that didn't pan out due to Netflix being stingy with their copies of Midnight Madness) and Harry and the Hendersons.  We made it an utterly furry night with cheesy werewolf basketball and loveable sasquatch hunting.  The flicks were cool, just as I remembered them (though I never realised just how bad the music was in Teen Wolf), but after 1.5 lbs of King Crab and more butter than I ever need to eat in a lifetime, I was suffering from sensory overload. 

Next week, Midnight Madness (hopefully) and a buttload of 80's snackfood including Babybel cheese, Easy Cheese and crackers, string cheese, Handi Snacks crackers and cheese (oh my god that's a lot of cheese), Slim Jims, Mr. Salty Pretzels, and most likely Hi-C Ecto Cooler juice boxes (well actually not exactly, it actually Screamin' Orange Tangergreen, but it's the same damn thing.)

Wow, two posts in one day.  Anyway, I thought I'd expound a little bit on the last entry in terms of how I think and what I do to keep myself occupied. I make lists, and no sissy short ones, either.  Long elaboratly detailed crazy lists that typically don't have endings and need to be kept up weekly, sometimes daily.  I do this when I'm bored, or when I feel like I need a new project or whatever.

The in print DVD list below is a small example of this behavior.  That list took me four hours to compile, copying and pasting all the links, formating it in Libsyn's blog engine, and then editing and fixing bugs.  You can also see examples of this in the "Links" section to the left with my DVD collection and my library (I say my but I mean ours, as my finacee Carrie is silently included in both, though my section of the DVD collection is pretty much the majority of what we own.)  Anyway, since I'm a big fan of hitting Best Buy on new DVD Tuesday the DVD collection list is one that I am frequently changing.

My favorite and probably most intensive list is my Complete Great List of Movies I've Seen.  This is a word document that I started three years ago when I was bored at work.  I had been flipping though my old copy of the guide to VHS and DVD 1997 edition one day and I started highlighting all the flicks I'd seen, much in the way that the Ione Sky character highlighted words in her massive dictionary in Say Anything.  After I was finished with that little boredom project, I figured since there was only a handful of years between the end of that book and the present, that I'd put it all in a word doc.  So I spent the next month transcribing movies in alpha order, trying to fill in the gaps as I went along.  I hit www.imdb.com and started flipping through their database to get some and then I also picked up a new edition of the VHS and DVD guide to help as well. 

When I was finished with the basic list I had become so addicted to working on it that I decided to overhaul it, going through and marking all the flicks I owned.  But that wasn't enough, oh no.  I also had to put notations for all the flicks that I saw in the theatre, then I marked all the flicks that I wanted to own buy hadn't yet.  That lead to marking all the movies with a series of coded notations which showed who I saw the flick with.  When that was done I also added the number of times, roughly, that I'd seen each flick.

Basically what I ended up with was a large piece of who I am in seriously anal statistical form.  After I calculated the numbers for each notation, I got a weird picture of who I was in relation to the ginormous amount of films I'd seen and with who.  For instance, even though I have a regular movie night with a friend (that we've been holding for roughly four years) and who I've known for like 15 yeas, I've still seeen twice as many flicks with my fiancee even though I've only know her half as long. 

Hi, my name is Shawn and I make lists.  Really freaking large ones.

So in thinking about a cartoon from the 80's (see below) that is sadly out of print, it's started me thinking about what IS in print from the 80's (and a few from the 90's). I figured I'd take this opportunity to create a list (most link to amazon.com if you actually want to pick some of these gems up.) I'm also going to include an additional section of titles now out of print on DVD as well as a section of frustrating titles (frustrating for me because they are available in a different DVD region coding or language than mine and I just think that's unfair.) So here's the freaking list already:

ThunderCats Season 1, part 1

ThunderCats Season 1, part 2

ThunderCats Season 2, part 1

C.O.P.S. Vol. 1

Danger Mouse Seasons 1 & 2

Danger Mouse Seasons 3 & 4

Danger Mouse Seasons 5 & 6

Count Duckula Season 1

Duck Tales Season 1 (minus the first 5 episodes)

He-Man Season 1, part 1

He-Man Season 1, part 2

He-Man Season 2, part 1

He-Man & She-Ra Christmas Special

Heathcliff Season 1

Garfield & Friends Season 1

Garfield & Friends Season 2

Garfield & Friends Season 3

Garfield & Friends Season 4

Garfield & Friends Season 5

Garfield Prime Time Specials

Inspector Gadget Vol. 1

Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers Season 1

Jayce & the Wheeled Warriors (4 episode disc)

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show Vol. 1

The Legend of Zelda Complete Series

Fraggle Rock Season 1

The Muppet Show Season 1

It's Punky Brewster (cartoon episodes included on live action sets)

The Little Prince Complete Series

The Littles (movie)

The Littles Christmas Special (actually 4 non-Christmas episodes)

My Little Pony Vol. 1 (for completeness sake)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Season 1

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Season 2

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Season 3

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Season 4

Robotech: The Complete Macross Series

Robotech: The Complete Masters Series

Robotech: The Complete New Generation Series

Ren & Stimpy Seasons 1 & 2

Ren & Stimpy Seasons 3 & 4

Ren & Stimpy Seasons 4 & 5

Ewoks (8 episodes edited into two bad movies)

Droids (8 episodes edited into two bad movies)

The Real Ghostbusters Vol. 1

The Real Ghostbusters Vol. 2

The Real Ghostbusters Vol. 3

Scooby Doo Where Are You? Vol. 1 (not 80's but it was syndicated in the 80's)

The New Scooby Doo Movies Vol. 1

The Scooby Doo and Dynomutt Hour (featuring Blue Falcon!)

Battle of the Planets Vol. 1

Battle of the Planets Vol. 2

Battle of the Planets Vol. 3

Battle of the Planets Vol. 4

Battle of the Planets Vol. 5

Battle of the Planets Vol. 6

Tale Spin Season 1

Darkwing Duck Season 1

The Animaniacs Vol. 1

Pinky & the Brain Vol. 1

The Tick Season 1 (minus the Vs. the Mole Men episode)

Galaxy High Vol. 1

Galaxy High Vol. 2

Alf Vol. 1

Alf Tales Vol. 1

The Best of the Electric Company

Batman: The Animated Series Vol. 1

Batman: The Animated Series Vol. 2

Batman: The Animated Series Vol. 3

Batman: The Animated Series Vol. 4

Superman: The Animated Series Vol. 1

Superman: The Animated Series Vol. 2

Superman: The Animated Series Vol. 3

Mr. Wizard's World Vol. 1-6

The Best of She-Ra Princess of Power

Voltron: Defender of the Universe Vol. 1

Bobby's World Vol. 1

Bobby's World Vol. 2

Inhumanoids Vol. 1

Inhumanoids Vol. 2

Out of Freaking Print on DVD

Transformers Season 1

Transformers Season 2, part 1

Transformers Season 2, part 2

Transformers Season 3, part 1

Transformers Season 3, part 2 and Season 4

G.I. Joe (the two original mini series)

G.I. Joe Season 1, part 1

G.I. Joe Season 1, part 2

G.I. Joe Season 2, part 1 (Rhino never released Season 2, part 2)

G.I. Joe: The Movie (originally aired as a 5 part mini series)

Jem and the Holograms Seasons 1 & 2

Jem & the Holograms Season 3, part 1

Unfairly Available in other Regions or Languages

United Kingdom

France

Canada

I think I'll try and keep this updated as time goes on so you'll probably see this post once every few months or so...

One of my favorite cartoons from my childhood is also one of the cartoons that I know the least about.  The Spiral Zone was first broadcast in the fall of 1987 at the tail end of the boom in action oriented toy-based cartoons like M.A.S.K., He-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers and the ThunderCats.  It was never as popular as those shows though, and actually belongs more in the company of toons like Bravestar, the Silver Hawks, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and C.O.P.S., all of which I believe had only one season and limited toy sales.

I love the show so much probably because I only caught one episode in it's original broadcast and I always wanted to see more but never saw it again.  The little bit that I did see stuck with me, so much so that I could still hum the theme song to the show a decade after I saw that episode. 

I think one of the things that's mystified me about the show is the plot which is about a rogue military scientist, known as Overlord, who manages to cover half of the earth with mist producing generators that effectively turn the populace living in those "zones" to become mindless zombies with weird red growths on their faces.  The Zone Riders (the good guys) are an elite military group that is trying to get the world back to normal.  I'm sure that's not exactly right, but you get the drift (sheesh, I only saw one episode...)

Though the good guys were very boring rip-offs of G.I. Joe characters, the evil group, the Black Widows led by Overloard, were awesome.  Though they were immune to the minless-ness effects of the Zone, they had all the disfiguring red marks, though albiet in much cooler, more symetrical patterns that made them look pretty badass.  I also love the vehicles in the show, even though when I look back they are pretty much just rip-offs of Robotech Cyclones and the tank/bikes from the Venus Wars anime.  But they were designed and made by Tonka, so you know they're tough.

There's an awesome site that's dedicated to the show and getting it on DVD.  They've got a pretty sweet database going with pictures of the toys and what's much more important, downloads of six full episodes in .avi format.  The connection is drastically slow (I have a pretty fast DSL connection and it took two hours each to download the episodes so be warned and take a nap while they download.)  Here are links to those 20 minute nostalgia gems:

Episodes: Holographic Zone Battle, King of the Skies, Small Packages, Zone of Darkness, Ride the Whirlwind, The Unexploded Pod

No nostalgia today.  It's been a long hard week at work (I'm counting half of last week because I've been covering for someone basically pulling a double shift, except instead of 16 hour days, I'm still only allowed to work 8, which just seems to make it double hard (so hard in fact that I write really long run-on sentences like this one.)

I basically feel exactly like the picture to the right (or above, I never know how this will format) just a screaming monster human who only sees red.  Yeah, that's very rage-y.  I swear, coming into work feels like going into battle, with one problem after another hitting me like on-coming waves of enemy soldiers and I solve them by beating them to death with my bare hands.  How's that for anger in simile form.

But the ray of sunshine that is brightening my life right now is that today is the last day of this for at least a month.  So hooray for me, yeah me, school is good, SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!  (okay, so there is a bit of nostalgia here...)

I love horror movies.  I love monsters.  I love gore, goofy 40's monster flicks, the Munsters, Halloween, campy Itallian zombie flicks, zany Australian vampire flicks, exploitative international pulp covers, insane amounts of weird halloween story and sound albums, fun retro artists, Ka-razy kooky psycho-billy music, monster punk music, retro horror metal music, unbelieveably low budget horror movies (p.s. buy Mulva 2: Kill Teenape because I have art on the DVD), and a really long list of other misc. horror related goodness.

Though I'm pretty sure a lot of this stems from Halloween in general, I think a lot of it also has to do with Susan Smith and James Howe.  Between the two of them in the 80's they had written eight books that I must have read a dozen times each. 

James Howe's series of Bunnicula books in particular captivated my attention.  Veggie Vampire bunnies, psychotic (almost Renfield like) steak (you have to read the book) waving cats, and cupcake eating Sherlock-esque aging dogs, solving mysteries, draining veggies of their essential juices, and rabbit hunting.  What more does a kid need to captivate his attention?  I remember distinctly loving the "horror" setting of the Bunnicula books.  Creepy, but not too creepy, funny, and chock full of vampire goodness.  Besides the first book, my favorites also included Howliday Inn, The Celery Stalks at Midnight, and Nighty Nightmare.

Susan Smith's series of Samantha Slade books were just as good and just as coveted.  Centering around, obvioulsy, Samantha Slade, these books were most likely a quicky project cashing in on the Babysitter's Club craze of the 80's.  The one big difference?  Samantha sat for what basically amounts to the Addams Family.  Creepy mad scientist parents, with a werewolf daughter and a mad scientist in training son.  These books were packed with all sorts of macabre goodness.  There were only four books in the series, Monster Sitter pictured above, Confessions of  a Teenage Frog, Our Friend: Public Nuisance #1, and the Terrors of Rock and Roll.

Between these, the gore in Garbage Pail Kids, and the Monster Squad I don't think there was any chance of turning out any other way.

Do you remember those hot days in the middle of summer?  When you were running around in circles for two hours for no reason other than to make yourself sickly dizzy?  The sweat pouring down your face, huge pit-stains spreading under your arms and in the middle of your back, and you were so thirsty that you'd grab the nearest hose (didn't matter if it was your own house or not) and even if the opening was stuck in the mud, you'd turn it on full blast and take a big swig?  You were just about to die from heat stroke and you were seeing blurry and in double when you'd hear that faint jingle, that familiar tune that you just couldn't place at first.  Just as you were questing your own sanity and if maybe it was just so hot that your earwax was melting, dripping like molten magma and buring though your ear drums, the jingle solidified into a song.  Here We Go 'round the Mulberrybush, or maybe Pop Goes the Weasel (if you live in the UK or Australia maybe it was Greensleeves), and instantly you knew that the day was about to get a lot brighter.

It was the ice cream man, and he was rushing to your aid just in time to bring you what you needed, what you craved.  Be it a rocket pop or a strawberry shortcake bar, an orange cream pop, or maybe even a frozen lemonade.

For me, those first few bars of Pop Goes the Weasel meant one thing and only one thing, Screwballs.  I'm not the biggest fan of the sweet things in life, I'm more of a salty dog, but if there is one sweet somehting that I'd do backflips, or maybe even kill for, it was a Screwball.  Softish cherry sherbert in a plastic cone with a magical gumball hidden in the bottom of the cup.  There was nothing else like it on this earth.  No sherbert from the store every tasted to perfect, so Screwball like.  And the gum was just the frozen rock hard little bonus at the end of the experience. 

One of the things I really miss about my childhood is the ice cream truck coming 'round on the weekends and all summer long.  I never saw one again after I left Florida in '90, though occassionaly I'd hear the chime while driving somewhere, and it always led to a frantic detour to try and track it down to no avail.  Then one day last year, at a very low moment, when the apartment building my fiancee and I lived in for four years burnt down and we were scared and tired and camped out at her father's house, while we were taking in a stray dog, and had absolutly no comfort at all, a ray of amazing sunshine fell upon us.  As we were going out that next moring after the fire we both heard that too familair jingle and stopped and just looked at each other.  I think we even both said something like "Holy Crap, the Freaking Ice Cream Man!" in unison.

Low and behold, he brought to us the fabled Screwballs, and both of us, against out lust for more, just bought one.  It was the best Screwball I'd even eaten.  At the end it was very bittersweet, because we don't get ice cream men in our apartment complex, and I knew that was the last Screwball I'd have for a very long time.  It's going on a year and two months, and a week doesn't go by that I don't stop for a second and listen for the jingle.

First off, let me just say that another podcast is on the way, so if anyone cares, um...., be awares, and stuff.  Probably won't record it until the weekend after next, and it'll most likely be on horror related nostalgia, per an idea from my first listener to write to me.  Anyways....

So somehting that I've really been into recently is sound recordings that I remember from my childhood.  I didn't have much in the way of music that I was really into, mostly Michael Jackson (the Thriller album in particular), the Beach Boys, the Monkees, and a copy Weird Al's first album on tape that my sister gave me.  But I did have a small collection of records that I would listen to over and over.  The majority of these were read-along record books, most of which were Star Wars related.  My favorites by far were what we'd now call part of the "extended universe", or stories that took place outside of the movies.  The two that I had were Planet of the Hoojibs and Droid World.  I must have listened to these a million times.  I had this weird set up, there was a record player in my closet that was plugged into an outlet out side of the closet, but I'd go in there and shut the door and listen to records in the dark (to sort of help get into the story without having my eyes wander around the room distracting me.)

Well when I began the hunt for all things childish I had no problem finding pictures of the covers to these record books, but I had a hell of a time trying to find the actual sound files themselves.  I haven't had a record player in like 16 years, so I didn't want to buy one just to rebuy and listen to the old vinyl copies that you can no doubt find on ebay (like I've stated before, though I am super obsessed with nostalgia, I have a mighty hard time plunking any money into the hobby.)  So I kept my ears open and didn't have any luck.

That is until last week when I stumbled upon this site.  Oh my freaking gwad.  It was like hitting the Star Wars record book jackpot mega lottery.  Like the dude who runs Scar Stuff, this guy deservices a nobel prize in nostalgia.  So with out further ado, I present much record book goodness.

Star Wars Planet of the Hoojibs

Star Wars Droid World

And for fans of the 12 minute adaptations of the original trilogy, or for those who want to learn about colors and shapes or their ABC's the Star Wars way Here you go: Star Wars, Empire, Jedi, Colors and Shapes, and finally ABC's.

A blog entry a day, day the third.  So in searching for a pictoral history of nostalgia for my childhood, as I do more than is probably healthy, I kept hitting a brick wall on one subject.  Clothes.  Now this makes complete and total sense to me, because really, who keeps 20 year old T-Shirts and shorts, and their old worn out Vans shoes?  Well okay some weird people do, but hardly any of them scan in images or take pictures of them and post them on the internet.  In particular I'm looking for a picture of a particular pattern of Vans shoes, they were midnight blue with black bats all over them. 

But I digress, because the point of this post is not to keep the search on, but to shed some light on stuff that I did find.  In particular the one item of clothing that I wanted to find were images of the Town & Country Surf and Skate T-shirts that had the various cartoon characters like good 'ole Thrilla Gorilla as you see to the right.  After a year of looking, I finally stumbled upon the correct phrase in a google search and I found Steven Azar's website which is like the grail of T&C T-shirt designs.  Steven designed and drew the art for a bunch, if not all, of these shirts during this period of the 80's.  I think I had all but two of these growing up and I loved them to pieces.  In fact the first game my parents bought me for my NES game system was T&C Surf and Skate (screen shots here, here, and here) probably because I wore the shirts so much.

So for anyone who had a soft spot for these shirts, here are some more of the designs, here and here.