Toy Run

WARNING: NERD POST. LONG NERD POST.

I don't get a lot of time off anymore. Between working full time, doing the Improv three nights a week and shooting various projects for people, I've lost most of my free time.

But yesterday I had the day off. The whole day. So I called Joe Franzem and we went on a toy run. If you're a toy collector, a toy run is your greatest challenge. It's expensive, frustrating and involves malls. A good partner is essential. Joe's been collecting for twenty years. He's so good he can tell you what parking space to take at the mall. I'd be in good hands.

I got in the Beetle and three blocks later the plastic bottom of the car fell out (this happens to Beetles over a certain mileage). I was pissed but I only had one day off. My car wants to fall apart, fuck it. I'm still going. I got under the car, ripped the rest of the plastic out and got back on the road

Joe and I headed out to Long Island. The Toys R' Us yielded my first find: the Young Avengers box set. I was going to pass on it but Robert Yee lent me the graphic novel and damn if it wasn't great. So now I need the figures. They also had DC Direct and Star Trek: the Next Generation toys, which was weird. These are only supposed to be in comic stores. At least I can say my writing now appears in Toys R' Us. I bought a Knightfall Nightwing for seven bucks.

From there it was on to Amok Time. I love this place. It's pretty far out so you feel like you're making a pilgramage. The display cases are full of Star Wars and Mego toys from the 1970's while the pegs are stuffed with rare new figures. It was here we found Sideshow's Krycek.

As you'll see from the link, this figure is long gone, limited to 500 pieces worldwide. And ever since I bought the final dvds of "The X Files" I've wanted the complete figure collection. I've been fighting for this guy on ebay and losing. And there he was. Only one of him.

Joe and I both looked at each other and said the same thing. "You gonna buy him?" The price was slightly higher than I wanted to pay. I just lost one on ebay for less. "I think I can keep looking." Joe grabbed him instantly. I consoled myself with a Green Lantern Salakk and a couple of Marvel Minimates. I get Minimates free from Art Asylum but it's always a random sampling. Every now and then I like to get the ones I missed.

We drove to the nearest Wal Mart and found the new super poseable Batman from Mattel. They had only two of him so this time we could each have one. We headed home and Joe asked, "You want more minimates?" Sure. Why? "You can have mine." Your doubles? "Nah, all of them. I don't want them." I dropped Joe off at his house and he came up from the basement with fifty minimates and all the X Files palz. And two Star Trek ships. And Gumby. He wouldn't take no for an answer. It was too much stuff but he told me to go fuck myself and take them. Toy karma for Krycek, I suppose.

I went home with the largest amount of new toys I've ever gotten in one day. Some were rare, some were old and some were unexpected. But the ones that meant the most were the ones I got for being a friend. Good day off.

Robocop

The last time I did a toy run with Franzem, I came across the 20th Anniversary edition DVD of Robocop. Whenever a toy run goes long enough, I will buy anything remotely interesting. So I got the dvd and watched it that night.

Robocop

I was in high school when this was released and pretty mad I couldn't get in to see it. It was everything a fifteen year old could want: explosions, blood and robots. But it was rated 'R' and and a heavy 'R' at that. It's so amazingly violent it got no rating at first. That cut is included on the dvd.

It's a better movie now than when it was released in 1987. I hadn't realized that the whole movie is a satire of corporate America. On my first viewing, the 6000 SUX and "I'll buy that for a dollar!" seemed to stick out of the film like sore thumbs. Now I realize they're the point of the movie. Corporate america owns EVERYTHING in this movie and is as out of touch with humanity as possible. Characters like Ronny Cox and Miguel Ferrer aren't eeeevil, they're just 80's businessmen, doing whatever it takes to please their superiors. The fact that they can chop up a police officer for their experiments underlines the tone.

As overwhelmingly violent as this movie is, the humor is sly, deceptive and takes more than a single viewing to comprehend. I liked it so much I rented the sequels.



Robocop 2

Frank Miller wrote the sequel and it's terrible. Now, Miller is not the benchmark of consistency but The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, Daredevil and 300 are all fanatstic pieces of work. But there's also The Dark Knight Strikes Again. And this.

In this movie, Robocop is out to stop a new drug (oh yeah, we're in the late 80's) which apparantly is controlled by one snotty 12 year old kid. We also have a bunch of subplots that go nowhere, like Robocop reprogrammed to be 'nice'. The jokes all fall flat in this one because, let's face it, Frank Miller isn't funny. He's cool and violent and dark, but why does he think he's funny as well? And nothing looks like it's in the future. Compared to the ED 209, which is supposed to be outdated, the Robocop Mark 2 looks like crap. When a sequel with more money can't at least look cooler and sound louder than the original, you're in trouble.

Robocop 3

This one is staggeringly bad. My jaw was literally hanging open in the first ten minutes. Peter Weller didn't return (hell, Leeza Gibbons didn't return) but it's got Stephen Root, CCH Pounder, Bradley Whitford, Jill Hennessy, Rip Torn, Jeff Garlin and a half dozen other character actors who left this off their resumes. It's got the budget of an episode of T.J. Hooker and yet director Fred Dekker does nothing with it. The story is a complete mess, with Robocop helping a neighborhood from being evicted and fighting a ninja. And there's a cute kid in it. Oh, and a jetpack. It's the kind of movie where characters say "what are you doing?" and stand perfectly still until they do it. Frank Miller write this one too.

There's a tv series but even I'm not that big a masochist.

UPDATE: I forgot I signed up for a program and promised today's post would be about the environment. Damn. Oh, well. Robocop is very bad for the environment. He blows things up. He runs on fossil fuels and baby food. He doesn't recycle. And he works in Detroit. I mean, come on!

Long Weekend

It's Monday and I'm exhausted. I did a toy run with Joe Franzem Saturday and a gig at the Side Street Grill last night. The both went well but the same as last time. So go back and look at those. I'm on five hours sleep.

This.

And this.

Buffy

I just finished all seven seasons of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and it is possibly the best written sci fi show ever broadcast.

Dammit.

I wanted to hate it. I did hate it. I spent a decade hating it. There was no way it could be as gripping or groundbreaking as "The X Files" which ran against it. It was too WB. Too teeny. Too angsty. Too soapy. I didn't care how many of my friends praised it, I was never going to watch it.

But something funny happened a year ago. I watched the dvds of "Firefly" and was one of the 34 people who saw "Serenity" in the theater. And I loved it. So I searched out Joss Whedon's run on "Astonishing X-Men". I loved that too. Then I recalled he wrote the screenplay for "Toy Story". Everybody loves that. Maybe Buffy was worth suffering through Sarah Michelle Gellar.

144 episodes later I still don't like her. But I love the show for two reasons. The first is why I like every Joss Whedon project; the quirky humor, the deep characters and plots with unexpected twists all over the place. But the second reason may be pure luck.

When a show runs seven seasons, it has to reinvent itself at least once. "Star Trek: the Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine" did it well. "X Files" did it badly. But no one did it better than "Buffy". The show was running smoothly as a high school soap parody. But by the end of season three, the characters graduated. Worse, two of the core cast left for the spin-off "Angel". Buffy's next season at first dealt with college but dropped the thread for a more adult approach. What if the characters had to suddenly grow up? What would happen?

And that's the genius. Whenever the show took a risk, it lived with it. Unlike other shows which took a "reset button", "Buffy" grew with every plot twist. Ludicrous ideas were given logical weight. Characters who came in for one episode became cast members. Villains became heroes. Comic relief became tragedy. And it all worked. It didn't happen on "Angel". It may never happen on tv again. By the final episode, I needed to own the series.

But I still like "Firefly" a little more.