Gone Fishin'

Okay, I'm not really fishing. I am on vacation, though. I'll be back on the 3rd with new stuff for a new year! Awesome!

Until next year, stay creepy

-Phantom

Merry Christmas everybody!

Toy Review – Movie Masterpieces: Superman By Mattel

While I skipped General Zod the first time he was offered on Mattycollector.com, I knew I would buy the Superman whenever they offered him. Christopher Reeve as Superman is one of the greatest casting choices ever and one of the few versions of the Man of Steel I can tolerate. Also, I saw the first three Superman movies in the theater with my mom (as well as the awesome Supergirl) and Superman II is one of the first movies I truly recall.

I wasn’t too crazy about a couple of things in the pre-production photo on Matty’s site, but their products tend to look much better than those photos. Was that the case this time around? Find out…

Santa’s Mangina

So I stopped at Quick Trip yesterday morning and just had to buy this:

 

The Best Worst Christmas Songs

I hold Christmas in a very high regard. I don’t like it when people use “X-Mas” and I don’t care for anything Christmas-related being treated in a crass or disrespectful manner.

Unless it’s really, really funny. Or good.

The Best Christmas Songs

I am having an absolutely awesome Christmas season this year. We’ve got the lights on the house, the nutcrackers on the mantel and I’ve been drinking egg nog and devouring gingerbread men like a fool thanks to my “No Diets During the Holidays” rule. A little Atkins in January will clear all this extra fat right up.

Despite all this Christmas joy, I haven’t felt compelled to write about the Holidays at all. I feel like there really isn’t anything new to cover and I am still on a kick where I don’t want to produce any more “Top Ten” lists than are absolutely necessary.

Bad Christmas Cartoons

I don’t know if this post is lazy or just unnecessary, but I had to comment on this. I – like everybody else – have received a number of e-mails featuring holiday-themed Far Side ripoff cartoons. In years past these have ranged from cute to funny to bland, but this year the damned things are just stupid. Stupid to the point where I’m kind of enraged that there are people somewhere making money off of these insipid doodles or even, God forbid, making a living.

Below are the worst offenders. They are not funny and in some cases I can’t even really tell what the joke is supposed to be. Our world is ending.

Toy Review – Blackest Night: Sinestro Corps Mongul By DC Direct

Thanks to the general awesomeness of Mattel’s DC Universe Classics line I have cut way back on my DC Direct purchases. I’m not even buying their alien Lantern Corps stuff anymore because Mattel has stepped up and will be offering some pretty wacky characters in their line. My DC Direct purchases are going to be limited to figures that are either 1) characters I can’t wait for Mattel to get to (Dick & Damian), 2) done in the style of an artist I love or 3) a character that Mattel may be satisfied to cut some corners on in order to fit into their line.

Like Mongul.

WWE 2010 Slammy Awards - LIVE! (but not really)

I like the very not-RAW intro. Even this crappy song is good because it is making this show feel different and special. The stage looks great, too. The voice-over is also good. Punk, Lawler and (blech) Cole are your hosts.

Toy Review – Masters of the Universe Classics: Battle Cat By Mattel

Battle Cat was first offered back when I still thought I was going to get away with only buying a very small percentage of Mattel’s Masters of the Universe Classics toys. Since then more and more figures have been awesome enough to whittle away my resolve. First I was only going to buy people with skull-looking heads. Then I was only going to buy villains. Then I decided I just had to have Moss-Man, then a He-Man, and it’s been all downhill from there. I’ll still skip one every once in awhile. I have no plans to buy Buzz-Off this month and I already know I’ll be putting some of my subscription figures up on eBay next year. Yeah – that’s how bad it got. I ordered the subscription for 2011.

Movie Review - A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

We were attempting a trifecta of movies the other night thanks to Lil’ Troublemaker falling asleep early. First was the disappointing but not bad by any means Monsters, then the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, then Inception.

I wrote a three page review of Monsters that I liked quite a bit. So much, in fact, that I accidentally fucking saved over it. So now all I have is this stupid review of a stupid movie that if you haven’t already seen, you probably don’t care about anyway. I am so fucking pissed about that review. Fuck. And I can’t even begin to rewrite it, because I’m only going to get even more pissed off about it.

Toy Review – Classic Doctor Who: The Master & Axon By Underground Toys

My current TV-on-DVD undertaking is every single episode of Doctor Who featuring Jon Pertwee as The Doctor (1970-1974). My Doctor will always be Tom Baker, but I am finding that Jon Pertwee is my favorite Doctor of all time for the moment. He knows Venusian Kung-Fu and he utilizes it every fucking story. Unlike the other ten pacifistic incarnations of the Doctor, Pertwee’s Time Lord is more than willing to fuck your shit up if he needs to. And sometimes when he doesn’t need to. I’ve seen him chop dudes unconscious - risking concussion and even death – when he could have easily avoided them entirely by just walking more quietly or ducking behind a tapestry.

(the picture above is from Pertwee's first episode, where he pauses in the middle of an escape to enjoy a long shower before stealing some dude's clothes and car)

Which brings me to another reason I love the Third Doctor – dude has no tolerance for anybody. When he’s not busy saving the world, he’s straight-up verbally abusing everybody he knows. He absolutely cannot believe how dumb everybody on Earth is. The story is that he was stranded there by the rest of the Time Lords as punishment for something I haven’t gone back and watched yet, so one could understand his being a little crotchety.

But this Doctor is a Man of Action. He’s always trying to fix the TARDIS or visit some obscure Earth location or something. He’s proactive. And then, right in the middle of important negotiations with an invading alien race, who shows up?

The Master.

Good Lord, wrestling sucks right now

I was working on my “Best of 2010” list the other day when I got severely sidetracked. When I got to “Biggest Holy Shit Moment in Wrestling” I was struck by how few there were that I could recall. As a matter of fact, the one I chose was literally the only one I could come up with.

This led to the article you are about to read (or skip if you are one of the millions… and millions of people who no longer give a shit about the only sport I would ever claim to have loved). I kind of went off, but towards the end I ran out of steam. Mainly because I just don’t give a shit about this once-great sport.

Toy Review – Star Wars: The Clone Wars Mandalorian Police Officer & Pre Vizsla By Hasbro

They’re Mandalorians. I was going to buy them no matter what. Were they worth it?

Medusa

So I just came up with this theory about Medusa that I want to share.

Toy Review – Star Wars: Republic Swamp Speeder By Hasbro

Finding this Swamp Speeder was one of those happy surprises. I had planned on buying it when I first saw a production picture on RebelScum a couple of months ago, I just didn’t know when it was hitting. I lucked into it at the shittiest Walmart in my area, the one none of us bothers to check out anymore because they don’t seem to stock anything. Ever. But my toy sense was tingling as I passed by the other morning and I decided to drop in. I had just started to look for the Zatanna from DC Universe Wave 14 and figured it was worth checking . Not only did I pick up a Zatanna, this normally crappy Walmart also had the newest series of Star Wars vehicles – a new AT-(something) deco, the Separatist Hyena Bomber and this Swamp Speeder.

Comic Book Wednesday: New Cartoons!

This is a long post with few pictures to break up the giant blocks of text. Sorry about that.

Three new cartoons debuted this past Friday night. They all have unrelated comic book series, so I’m going to utilize that tenuous connection and call this a Comic Book Wednesday entry!

I’ve been excited about GI Joe: Renegades, Transformers: Prime and Young Justice for months now. I was going to do a big intro, then I decided that each title had enough individual backstory to split them up. So all I’ll say here is that after the hype and previews and whatever else, my anticipation before actually watching the shows was like this:

Young Justice – Super-Stoked

GI Joe – Stoked

Transformers – Fairly Excited