In space only the crazies get to be heroes

If a guy you knew for a while suddenly told you he was your long lost brother would you believe him? If one day you caught him talking to people only he could see, wouldn't you be scared that he was a total psycho? And if he constantly got into fights that sometimes led to limb amputations, wouldn't you be pissed that he's always getting in trouble? Then if the same guy told you that the evil king of the galaxy was his dad, and by extension-yours, would you believe him? THEN WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS KISSING HIM?

This cartoon girl butt is proudly brought to you by DODGE-makers of the RAM

I got that Kiss Play Convoy I wrote about last week. I'm sure Dodge is proud to have their logo and vehicle likeness placed in such close proximity to cartoon hoochie butt. However it's kind of fitting because most people think Dodge trucks are total ass.

Hot Mod

About a week and a half ago, Jeff from one of the Yahoogroups I'm on noticed a YahooJapan auction for a Hot Rod that had been modified so that the legs extend a bit further than normal. I first thought that Hot Rod with extended legs was some sort of prototype figure that was only seen in the 1986 catalog. But it turns out all Hot Rods have this feature. Apparently there are more details sculpted into the knees of the figure, but for whatever reasons Takara decided not to engineer the lower legs to extend far enough to see these areas. Not content to let the Japanese have all the fun, the call went out to anyone on our group brave and willing enough to try to modify their Hot Rod accordingly. A guy on our group named Martin has experience with modifications like this but he doesn't have a spare Hot Rod to mess with at the moment so while he gets one I figured I'd give this a go. Sometimes attempting these modifications is scary but I had an extra reissue Rodimus Major I bought in Turkey so I figured what the hell-it's trilingual packaging anyway so I've got nothing to lose. You can see in the picture above how the modification adds approximately a quarter inch / half centimeter to the height of 'ol Rodimus Rod (or whatever they're calling him nowadays). That's the modded reissue on the left and a Targetmaster Hot Rod on the right.

You can see here upon dissassembling the leg how much of Hot Rod's knee never gets extended. There are some nice sculpted details that never get exposed.



Here is the basic lowdown of what needs to be done using the right leg as the example. All I used was a screwdriver and a dremel. The screwdriver dissassembles the leg and the dremel sands down two raised bars that need to be made flush with the lower blocks below them. One of the bars is on the rear leg panel and the other is on the front.



Care must be taken not to cut the bars down too much or else the leg will not catch and Hot Rod will never stand up at all. I trimmed slightly too much on one of the forward panels but not enough to destroy the figure. I've just got one knee that's ever so slightly looser than the other. The lower legs still lock securely but if I had gone any deeper I would have wrecked the figure.



Here's a closeup of the knee areas showing just how much of an extension I got out of this. Good luck if you choose to try it. Remember not to trim those blocks down too far!

I know SD is South Dakota but which one is HD?

Despite the Blu-Ray logo being displayed prominently on the front of the box, it turns out 60 percent of PS3 owners don't know it has a Blu-Ray player. I find that really hard to believe. It's like not knowing your triple changer has a third mode. Are the people dishing out over $500 for these systems really that dumb? Amongst the 40 percent of people that were aware of the Blu-Ray capability, only half of them used it the last ten times they turned the thing on. That I can believe. I think that's due to the short list of movies out so far. I've only watched one Denzel Washington movie on Blu-Ray in all the months I've had my PS3. Once Transformers comes out I'll buy that and I'm waiting for Blu-Ray Ghost Rider to come down in price a bit, which I think it will eventually at Wal-Mart.

A better question would be how many times people used their PS3's DVD upscaler to watch DVDs on thier HDTVs. But I'm getting the impression that most people wouldn't know how to use that functionality either. I suspect a lot of people continue to watch standard definition broadcasts on thier HDTVs because they don't have channels in thier area broadcasting in HD or they don't have the tuner. Ultimately I think this shows the vast majority of American consumers suffer from techno-illiteracy and a tendency to consume for the sake of consumption. Which is a shame because it's really cool to do things like stream music and movies from my PC to my home stereo via the PS3, which is something every PS3 owner can do but many are apparently not aware of.

All this time I was feeling dumb for only owning two games. Not being a hardcore gamer made me feel inferior to other PS3 owners but considering how much use I get out of it as an internet browser, a DVD player/upscaler and a streaming media player (plus with all the downloadable HD movie trailers and crap from the Playstation store) I don't feel so bad.

Stop busting my bows!

While the news media distracts us with stories of stock markets and global warmings and Iraqs, sinister forces have been at work hoping we won't notice their nefarious deeds! I listen to a lot of baby music now that I'm a dad and one thing I've noticed is how politically correct a lot of the songs have become. While we were preoccupied by healthcare and the war on drugs, the sinister forces have been changing the lyrics to baby music! On one CD I have, they changed the lyrics to the 'Rock A Bye Baby' song from how I remember them:

De-pussification training: Start early

"When the bow breaks the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all."

To:

"When the bow breaks the cradle will fly
And up will drift baby into the sky."

What the hell? Why did they do this? What is so horrible about the first version? Are they afraid of damaging the delicate psyches of babies that have no comprehension in the first place? Since when did babies become such pansies that we had to make all the nursery rhymes safe and non threatening? This is total baby pussification mind control if you ask me. I have decided to combat these negative influences by coming up with my own lyrics! Whenever I'm putting the Prince of Macrocrania to sleep I now sing this much more manly version:

"When the bow breaks the cradle will fall
So don't let those fuckers bust on your bows!"

Skidsmarks the spot OR: A farewell to Alts

It was the year 2003 and my life was looking awesome. I had just gotten out of Air FOrce after seven years of being paid to look at the sky and figure out if it was raining. I was having fantastic unprotected interracial sex with a girl I had tricked into marrying me. At 29 I was working my dream job as a Target stockboy again and starting Community College in Tucson, Arizona in the hopes of earning a degree in automotive upholstery refinishing. I was on the fast track to success. Then it all came to an end when I forgot that my woman was still in the Air Force and they could screw with my life by doing weird stuff like sending us both to Turkey. And that's exactly what they did.

So, accepting the certainly sucky future I disenrolled in Community College, gave Target my two weeks notice and with Turkey on my mind I went to one last Transformers convention in Chicago. Roboplasticos were the last thing on my mind when there at the Official TF Collectors Convention, Hasbro announced they were starting a new line of robots called Alternators. They debuted the line there with the first two figures to the amazement of all the gathered toy robot nerds. Many were impressed that this new line would feature 1:24 scale officially licensed likenesses of automobiles from real life vehicle manufacturers. The level of engineering that went into making these toys with opening doors, trunks, hoods and detailed engines and interiors was astounding to many people. I remember seeing the first Alternator, Smokescreen, and thinking it was total ass.

So off I went to live in Turkey for the next two years as a dependent spouse. We lived on a tiny Turkish air base where they didn't allow US flags to fly and even worse, the base exchange store did not carry toy robots. I wasn't really into them anyway so I didn't care. After seeing Smokescreen I decided to boycott the Alternators line, which is really easy when you're living in Turkey and they're not in any stores anyways. But after a few months those Alternators started popping up at the base exchange and my resolve weakened. I was a lonely boy far from home. I was desperate for the touch of toy robot plastic. And in a moment of weakness when the exchange was having a ten dollars off sale I strayed and bought the Dodge Viper Side Swipe. I felt so dirty. I was a dirty, dirty boy.

I feel like my boycott still existed because in the very beginning I was boycotting them a little by not getting Smokescreen but temptation was so tough to resist because Alternators made me feel like a man as long as I kept them in their car modes. They looked like highly detailed model cars when we had guests over but at night after the nookie I would sneak out of bed and turn them into robots when my wife wasn't looking. Back in the states, the Alternators line was plagued by crappy distribution and poor sales so it was common for some of the figures to become insanely rare while others went unsold for months. In Turkey I was always a few waves behind and I really wasn't in a position to complain about missing one or two. I was lucky to have any. It was a dark time where I charted the progress in my life not by what I had accomplished in terms of education and career, but in toy robots. And by 'dark time' I mean 'totally awesome'.

Antarctimus Prime

In 2005 I began working in Antarctica and on the plane ride down there from Turkey I had a layover in Singapore. The Singapore airport had an insanely cool toystore and it was there that I found Alternators Meister. I think that made me the first toy robot nerd to bring an Alternator to Antarctica. Meister would be joined by another Alternator a few months later (thanks to my sister back home who sent me Tracks) and the next year I would take Alternators Optimus Prime to the ice. I was making history! It was a sort of retarded history, but it was history nonetheless.

In 2006 I went to Botcon and bought an Alternators Windcharger, which I then modified with a little plastic head I made in the likeness of the human named Chris Ryall. Chris is the editor in chief of IDW publishing, the current Transformers comic license holders. Chris really liked the "Chrischarger" toy and I traded it to him for a comic book. It was all very gay but it was good times. The Botcon people thought my Alternators Chrischarger was so great they prominently showcased it in their gallery of art contest entries (it's the middle picture in the 14th row down).

I'm dissapointed now as Hasbro has announced that after 4 years and 27 releases, Alternators is coming to an end. I have a lot of wonderful memories thanks to those toys. It was with much sadness that I bought the Scion xB named Skids, which will probably be my final Alternator. Skids was my Moby Dick because I wasn't willing to pay more than $15 for it but ShopKo wouldn't cut their clearance price down below $16.75 for the longest time. Finally they clearanced their remaining stock down to $12.50 last week. I'm sure the ShopKo cashiers will be glad that I'm no longer repeatedly asking them to tell me what the price is every time I go to their store every week. Farewell, Alternators. Unprotected interracial sex won't be the same without you.

Lost in the middle of nowhen OR: It's hard to be nostalgic after eBay destroyed the space time continuum

I used to frequent a comic book store back in 1996 before I got on eBay. The store manager and I would reminisce about Transfomers because at the time there was really no market for them and I would enjoy bitching that it was hard for me to revisit the days of my youth when I couldn't surround myself in toy robots. It seemed like they all just dissappeared and took my childhood with them. The store manager told me that in terms of toys, nothing made after 1983 was as hopelessly lost as I thought. He said that after '83, people who ran mom and pop stores began stockpiling cases of every post Star Wars toyline. He told me that Transformers may not seem popular (at the time they weren't) but I shouldn't think nobody collects them or that huge lots of stock aren't out there. He said it may not be easy to find, but there was an assload of toy robots waiting to be bought if you knew where to look. Until someone could break open the buyer/seller barriers separating the old toys from the people who want them, there would be no revisiting the bygone eras of my roboplastico childhood. He seemed quite wise to me even though he was an ex-army helicopter pilot that fell out of his helicopter.

Fast forward to yesterday when I was driving out here in the Black Hills of South Dakota and I hit a long stretch of nothing but road. There were no signs of civilization-no other cars, no buildings. It was just me, my truck and miles and miles of dormant yellow grass on flat hills. I thought that at that moment I could have been anywhere in time. It could have been any year. The scenery was probably just the same then as it was back in 1974. Then it hit me that I had no proof of what year it currently was-no newspaper or watch or nothing. If Marty McFly exploded his DeLorean in front of me and asked what year it was I'd be screwed. I had no proof that I was in 2007. The featureless land gave no hint as to how much mankind had progressed beyond the crappy road I was driving on. I decided why should Marty McFly have all the fun? I wanted to believe it was decades earlier and with the lack of chronological proof saying otherwise, I took South Dakota with me all the way back to the year 1986. The only thing that fucked it up was that I know my truck is a '99 model and that kept jerking me back forward into at least '98. I had made my own retarded version of a time machine but in order for it to work I needed an older car.

As I was stuck in 1986 or something that looked a lot like it, I wondered to myself what really anchors me in the present day and how do I really know I haven't slipped back a couple of decades? Then it hit me that the measure of what generation I live in is what the pop culture is like. Why else would they come up with phrases like 'the MTV generation' or 'children of the eighties'? We are anchored in time by what's on TV and what's on the shelves at Wal-Mart. If you asked me what 1985 was like I couldn't tell you anything about the socio-political events of the time but I could tell you all about the year I got the Constructicons and the Dinobots. We may as well forget the number designations and just call them 'The Cosby Decade' or 'The Iron Maiden Era' or 'The year McDonalds did those Dukes of Hazzard Happy Meals in the shape of the General Lee'. That's how I remember them.

The great thing about when I was little was that if you didn't buy one of whatever was the popular toy when they came out, once they sold out that was it. You got no more chances to participate in that shared pop culture experience. Consumption of specific consumer goods and Toys R Us toy aisle resets marked the years for me and defined the stakes in the game I called living in the eighties. There were no second chances to go back and experience a Coleco handheld Pac Man game or a Go-Bots model kit. So I came up with these sort of pop culture generational boundaries that marked the passage of time by events and merchandise unique to that era. I knew who I was and where I had been and my experiences differentiated me from mister Joe Pokemon five year old guy.

But then eBay hit me in 1998 and nothing was the same anymore. Whatever chunk of the human experience I grew up with that defined my life-all the tv shows and toys that made it up-it's all on ebay right now. Any era of the past can be participated in by Buying-It-Now. There are no more pop culture generational boundaries anymore. Thanks to TV on DVD I can have a kinship with everyone who grew up watching anything from Welcome Back Kotter to Sopranos. Much of my identity as a person was erased by eBay, the only thing keeping my sense of self intact is that I can't afford some of the crazy prices for old stuff. In a way, high ebay prices are the only thing protecting me from my childhood totally coming back. My generation may once have been referred to as children of the eighties and we are forever marked by the handful of popular cartoons of the day. But today's kids have access to multiple generations of cartoons and aren't at the mercy of what's on TV right now to entertain them in their childhood years. They cannot be as easily defined by what common entertainment they watched a in a specific era. They are probably better described as the Best Buy Bourgeois or Citizens of Circuit City.

Back in the nineties I used to live in a state of constant nostalgia, wishing for the old days. But ever since eBay and Best Buy erased the buyer/seller boundaries between the old days and now, nostalgia had its balls cut off. The past is all around and it can be bought if you want it more than the other guy bidding against you on eBay. You don't even have to go that far, though. The internet has all sorts of time warp sites just waiting to take me back for free. I can even go to the library and relive the old news of the day and virtual shop through the old ads. In fact, the reason I sat down to write just now was that I wanted to announce I updated the Vintage Space Toaster Palace with ads for Transformers 1986 and Transformers 1987. So let's hear it for the secondary market and open up a fresh can of 1986 because nothing takes me back to when I was 12 like a good ad for Galvatron pajamas.