Category: And also

Pantheon of Plastic: #3

He was a carpenter with a bad attitude, and then he became a movie star, and then he became two separate plastic figures – a pretty good approximation of the American Dream. The 1982 inductee to the PoP is Harrison Ford.

Han Solo, Star Wars
(movie, 1977; figure released 1977 by Kenner

Orphan. Smuggler. Wookiee stroker. Han Solo was the hard man of Star Wars — rough and uncompromising, but willing to subvert his principles if the price was right. His crucial intervention at the battle of Yavin (without him Yavin would be an asteroid field and Luke would be a stain on the equatorial trench) seemed proof of a mellowing of character. Was Han a nice guy after all? And while he could justify Yavin as an act of rugged mannish loyalty, the ass-freezing months on Hoth couldn’t be explained so easily. Even Chewie knew the truth – he was a bad man hung up on an unattainable woman.

And then something went horribly wrong. Maybe all that time in carbonite gave him some time to think, because he came out a changed man. He softened up. Mr. Rough-and-Uncompromising turned into Mr. Upset-When-Leia-Paid-Luke-Some-Attention. He let himself be captured by Imperial officers and he didn’t kill a single Ewok. He went on to marry Leia and popped a pair of L’il Jedi. He even tells that old Greedo story differently now. Sorry, Han – we liked you more when you were dangerous.

(Ever notice how the planetary environments in the Star Wars movies reflect the Han-Leia love story? The regimented Death Star when neither Han nor Leia would let down their guard, Hoth when Han and Leia were on frosty terms, Bespin when they were floating and flirting, Tatooine when they were just plain hot for each other, and finally a happy cavort among the priapic trees and diminutive satyrs of Endor.)

Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark
(movie, 1981; figure released 1982 by Kenner)

If you’re anything like us, you probably already know that Indiana Jones’ first name is, in fact, Henry, and that he received his pathological fear of snakes from a mishap that occurred when he was a wholesome boy scout in 1912, before his well-documented demise into drink and drugs, resulting in his death from drug-induced heart failure outside a fashionable LA night spot in 1993.

You’ll also know that his father, the noted archaeologist Henry Jones, Sr, spent many years as an agent for Britain’s Secret Service, thwarting the plans of SPECTRE and SMERSH, before being captured by the CIA and held prisoner in Alcatraz, before breaking out, and, yes, breaking back in, in order to save the free world.

But here’s some real knowledge: when a female student writes a message on her eyelids so she can flirt with you in class? Going on indefinite leave to Nepal is, in fact, the proper response. Girls like that are NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

[I think we both had a hand in this one. This is the last piece of PoP from a decade ago, but I’m not gonna stop here – I’ll see out the first five inductees at least…]

Pantheon of Plastic: #2

In 1978, Lorne Green became the inaugural member of the Pantheon of Plastic.
One year later in 1979, he was joined by the second inductee into this prestigious panoply of plastinated personalities. Ladeez and gennelmen, I give you the 1979 Inductee… Boris Karloff!

Boris Karloff (inducted 1979)
(Boris Karloff’s IMDB entry)

Karloff is unusual for the Pantheon of Plastic for two reasons – he had passed away long before his induction, and his two iconic plastic-commemorated roles were nearly fifty years old when the action figures were released. But action figures they were, and so Karloff can add PoP membership to his voluminous CV!

Frankenstein’s Monster, Frankenstein
(Movie, Universal, 1931; figure released 1979 by Remco)
Karloff as the Monster

Jack P Pierce was responsible for the distinctive look of the Monster, but Karloff was enthusiastic about the makeup, offering to remove his bridgework to give the monster freaky cheeks. It was a combination of Pierce’s wizardry and Karloff’s unnerving performance that made this such an iconic role, worthy of being turned into a plastic figure to stomp around the sandpit with a generation of little kids.
Karloff once played baseball wearing full Monster make-up. Buster Keaton was the catcher. Read about it, and see the photo, here.

The Mummy, The Mummy
(Movie, Universal,1932; figure released 1979 by Remco)



Another Pierce/Karloff joint. Imhotep! But does anyone really care about Imhotep? Really? This would’ve been a way cooler movie if they’d gone by the original idea of making it about Cagliostro. That dude was crazy.

The Pantheon of Plastic

SUCCESS IN FILM AND TELEVISION can bring seats at the priciest restaurants and entry to the fussiest clubs, but there is one coterie so exclusive that even the most well-known and successful are unable to gain entry, try as they might. Yes, we here at AdditiveRich hold that the true measure of a star’s greatness is their membership in this particularly elite group – THE PANTHEON OF PLASTIC.

The criteria for membership is quite quite simple: the performer must have played at least two different roles for which his or her likeness has been immortalized, in molded plastic, as an action figure.

(An action figure. NOT a doll.)

Note that it has to be an action figure of the actor as the character. Those James Bond figures that used the same mold regardless of movie don’t win a prize for Roger Moore or Sean Connery. Or George Lazenby even. Animated characters also don’t count, even if the animation is based on the performer. These are our rules! They are carefully-considered and cannot be violated!

This is a 2001 draft of the Pantheon of Plastic intro. It shows its age – in fact the whole concept of the PoP shows its age. As plastic molding tech has improved and action figure markets have matured, the PoP has lost its exclusivity. There are now action figures of all sorts of folk. The barricades have been thrown down! The Pantheon has been debased!

Here’s a screenshot showing the first inductee into the PoP… from 1978, it’s… Lorne Green!

Unexpected world


This is the poster for Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 movie The Girlfriend Experience, starring Sasha Grey, who works in the porn industry.
At this link she can be seen playing D&D with a bunch of other people from the porn industry. (All links are totally safe for work, btw.)
The blog Playing D&D With Porn Stars, and the D&D game described therein, are run by Zak Smith, who also illustrated every page of Gravity’s Rainbow. The D&D w/ Porn Stars blog is an excellently thoughtful and creative blog that is closely tied to the Old School Renaissance that has hit D&D since Gygax passed away, with James Maliszewski’s blog Grognardia as its totemic centrepiece. (Grognardia is here described briefly on the blog of Seattle’s alternative paper The Stranger).
Zak Smith and some of his players recently got into an honest-to-blog feud with a gaming podcast, said podcast being more attuned to the Story Games RPG community, which is kinda the hipster end of gaming but without the irony. Substance of feud: story games people didn’t give due respect to the breadth of Zak’s gaming knowledge and understanding.*
Point being: culture is fragmenting as the potential for internet communication to create asynchronous non-geographical communities beds deeper.
Or, more succinctly: porn stars just battled elite role-playing game nerds over geek status. You’re not living in your father’s culture any more. Heck, you’re not living in your older brother’s culture any more. The world is getting weirder and wilder all the time.
That’s a feature, not a bug, by the way.
* Feud since resolved.

This One Dream I Had Once


(Found this described in the 1999 journal – March 20th. I know, I know, other people’s dreams are not interesting. I’m writing it up anyway.)
I’m in an elevator, wearing nothing but a length of tin foil that doesn’t quite go all the way around me. I realize I’m on my way to have one of those dreams where you’re standing in front of a group of people and you’re pretty much naked.
With me in the lift is a burly guy with a brown goatee, wearing only a narrow blue towel around his waist. I realize that he is on his way to his own version of the same dream.
We nod at each other.
He is wearing underwear under his towel. Seeing that my dignity is in an even more perilous state than his, he offers the underwear to me.
I am touched by his generosity, but politely decline the offer. I just couldn’t take a man’s underwear when he was about to have a dream like that. It wouldn’t be right.
The door opens. We head out in separate directions.

Podcasts

So, using my borrowed iPod, I’ve been dabbling in the world of podcasts for a while now. I like ’em because they fill up my walk to work nicely, and I don’t need to invest in good headphones to get a good experience.
I’m liking This American Life, of course. Dabbling in Adam Corolla, RadioLab, and Kermode’s film talk.
What else is good for listening? Make recommendations in the comments, if you are so moved.
[Just noticed my spam filter caught Derek’s comment – don’t panic if your comment doesn’t appear, I might have to extract it before it’ll display]

Xmas Re-post: Desperately Seeking Santa

(from 9 November 2004)
Voiceover man: In a world
(Santacorp high-rise on the Arctic wastes)
Voiceover man: where Christmas means business
(interior Santacorp CEO office. CEO reading a child’s letter)
CEO: “Dear Santa, blah blah, I’ve been very good all year, brownnose brownnose brownnose… ah, here we go: what I want for Christmas is…(he flips the page) my little brother to get better?” (stops reading) Who let this get through?
(shot of nervous, cowering elves with pointy green hats in their hands)
Voiceover man: Now
(shot of the elves running from the room, chased by the raging CEO who is throwing their hats after them)
Voiceover man: the most unlikely heroes
(shot of the elves fighting amongst themselves Three Stooges style)
Voiceover man: must find the one man
(shot of elves marching out through the reception area of the Santacorp high-rise)
Voiceover man: who can put things right
(closeup of one elf who seems to be in charge)
Elf: We gotta find Nick.
(a boardroom meeting at Santacorp.)
CEO: Saint Nick, Santa Claus, Father Christmas – he’s old news. History. We need something fresh.
(CEO standing in front of a small audience, giving a big speech)
CEO: Allow me to introduce the new face of Christmas: Santa Rhymez
(zoom in on a black dude wearing a red gangbanger vest and shades, with swimsuit ladies hanging off him and lots and lots of jewellery.)
Santa Rhymez: Yo. What’s digging y’all?
(Elf talking to a policeman on the streets of New York)
Elf: Excuse me, sir? I was wondering if you could help me?
(The policeman is kneeling down, eager to help.)
Elf: We’re looking for a magical fat man in a red coat.
(Cell door closing on the elf, who is kicking and shouting)
(Santa Rhymez addressing a group of teenagers)
Santa Rhymez: “Remember, there’s a reason for the season: tha ka-CHING-CHING-CHING!”
(Shot of the elves beating the crap out of a guy in a Santa suit)
Voiceover man: This Christmas
(Elves gathering around a table, lit by the torches in their high-tech goggles. They unroll a blueprint of Santacorp’s high-rise.)
Voiceover man: Get ready
(Shot of the elves abseiling down the outside of the building in a blizzard. Something SWOOPS past the camera.)
Elf: I don’t think we’re alone out here.
(SUDDENLY a RAGING REINDEER SPRINGS INTO VIEW behind the elf)
(Shot of elves breakdancing in a nightclub)
Voiceover man: To get merry
(A flame-filled cave. Standing in the centre is the Devil.)
The Devil: I’m Old Nick.
Elf: Ah. Well, we’re looking for Saint Nick.
The Devil: Sure, sure. It’s a common mistake.
(cut to TITLE)
Voiceover man: Desperately Seeking Santa
(Santa Rhymez with a gorgeous young woman on his arm.)
Santa Rhymez: Ho ho ho!
(the woman slaps him)
Woman: Watch your mouth!
—————-
It’s a game idea that took on a life of its own. As with so many things, blame ubiquitous_cat…

A Christmas Message


Hey everyone! This is David Hasselhoff, multimedia star of the new generation! My fans call me The Hoff and you can too (I like that name – snap!). And don’t forget that I was the first and best Nick Fury! (Take that, Samuel Jackson!)
Anyway, just stopping by to wish a very Merry Christmas to all of you readers of From the Morgue! You guys are the reason America’s so great! So keep on rocking in the FREE WORLD! (You know what I mean!)
And maybe you should give yourself the greatest gift of all this Christmas, and sign up to HoffSpace, my own personal social networking system! It’s great! “Morgue” (known in HoffSpace as “Morgan12”!) already has a profile, you should sign on up and be his friend! You can win great Hoff merchandise and help make the world a more amazing place! That’s truly brutal – or should I say TRUTAL!
As a talking car I know used to say: Oh Yeah! See you on Hoffspace!

Coming Home Again


I never expected Shihad’s anthem to be “Home Again”. NZ’s mightiest live act released their third album in ’96 and it was a departure from the heavy intensity of their first two releases, defiantly poppy and restless. (It’s a great album to sing along to.) “Home Again” is a touring musician’s thin promise/apology to his partner, a charming upbeat track with no small undercurrent of melancholy. It has become the song with which Shihad are most identified, their ultimate crowd-pleaser.
Kiwis like songs about going away and coming home again. This shared affection comes from a number of different strands in our national identity. It’s most obvious in how our middle-class youth (which is a lot of us) habitually embark on the Big OE, the overseas experience, and take off to Europe (sometimes other destinations) for a couple of years. It’s also visible in the large number of New Zealanders living overseas (the global Kiwi “diaspora“), or the relationship many Maori have with a home marae. The bare facts of geography are also influential – when you’re a big island a long way from anywhere, leaving the island and coming back to it become important concerns.
Which brings me to the Returning to New Zealand pages on the Careers NZ website. This set of information was the pet project of a friend of mine, and I’m pleased to send some eyeballs in its direction.
It’s really just three pages, with supporting docs and links. The first is about preparing to return home, with advice and ideas for people who are ready to come back. Then, unsurprisingly given it’s a Careers NZ site, there’s a page about seeking employment back in NZ – definitely worth consideration, as the job market in NZ is its own beastie, quite unlike those in other countries. Finally, there’s a page on settling back in, the cultural and mental adjustments you need to dig back into the local scene (including “reverse culture shock“).
It’s a good wee resource, and I hope it gets found by people who are about to make the jump back – it will surely be of help. There’s also a short survey for recent returners – you might want to click through if that’s you.
You know, I remember vividly getting off the plane, back in Wellington for the first time in years, and the way the sky looked, and the sharp colours of the trees, and most of all the crazy colourful wooden houses clinging to the hillsides. It was very strange and very familiar all at once, and it was a great feeling. I loved coming home.

Twitter makes my world smaller

At a course I was on the other day, the tutor asked us to sell her on Twitter, the micro-blogging service that continues to be the flavour of the moment. What was the point of it?
The other web-native in the class related how Twitter is essential for her professional networking as someone who works in web; and how her active network of real-world connections effectively drive their social activity through Twitter.
It made me wonder about my own relationship with and use of Twitter. I signed up at the end of March, mostly to secure my preferred username. Since then, I’ve sort of figured out a rhythm for using it, and on reflection I think it has had a small but curious impact on my life.
I view Twitter as an ongoing conversation which I dip into from time to time. Sometimes I’ll click through the archives and catch up; mostly I just see what people are saying right now. The conversation aspect is important, as questions and replies ripple back-and-forth across the 180-odd people who I follow.
However, those followers aren’t all of a piece.

  • There’s my real-world crew, people I know and care about whose activities are of interest to me just because of that connection.
  • There’s my content-providers, people who I don’t know at all but who consistently provide curious and interesting things to look at (a significant chunk of Friday linky comes from Twitter).
  • There’s my political agents, people who are tracking and promoting political angles in which I’m interested.
  • And there’s my “famous people”, generally creative types who communicate on a massively one-to-many scale about whatever the heck they want.

Two effects on my headspace from this.
First, the world seems smaller. It really does become one big conversation, and connections between people seem magnified. UK writer Warren Ellis chats with recent arrival in Wellington Meredith Yayanos who swaps jokes with William Gibson while heading out to watch the dolphins just mentioned by friend Jack Elder who compares notes with friend Suraya who converses with Warren Ellis… and round and round it goes. It magnifies network effects, and NZ is already home to some pretty intense network effects. It makes the world seem pretty small.
Second, it’s shown me a new kind of “fandom” (for want of a better word). I’ve been following Dollhouse, as regular readers know, and the Twitter presence of that show is pretty strong. Many of the Dollhouse peeps are on Twitter and they all seem to be friendly with each other and hang out a lot; more importantly, they all were quite up front about what it was like fighting to keep their show on the air, and then lamenting its cancellation, and finally celebrating the fact that they are in a show they really believe in. And they clearly respond to and appreciate the community of readers around them. Its a view into the collaborative creative energy that I haven’t seen before, and that I really appreciate. (Longtime readers will also know I’ll a big fan of collaborative creative energy…) It’s something that I didn’t expect to appreciate – I was all snobbish and sniffy about following actors on favourite shows – but turns out, I like it, at least for this set of people.
So, yeah, Twitter. Not essential. Not for everyone. But definitely an interesting tool that can be harnessed in more ways that I initially expected, and one that will keep being part of my online presence.
(I also have been known to ask “what’s your at?” to people, asking for their Twitter ID. Heh.)
(Related to that last note – in conversation with a Yoof the other day, I heard for the first time the expression “typed up” meaning “found on the internet”, e.g. “He typed up this video of a kid dressed as Batman wrestling his mom”. Interesting usage for word geeks to note!)