Possible Pextinction

Recently, I started a page on the website called Pinterest. I did it basically at the suggestion of my Mother in Law, because she created a pin to the charity group I am a part of, and I had been really lax about creating the page. Been meaning to, but you know how it is. Time. All that shit.

Then on my wife's cousins' blog there was a recipe for some vegan stuff that I clicked on, but it was only on Pinterest. Did I mention to you here that I recently adopted a no-meat, no dairy plant strong lifestyle?

Probably not. I tend to keep that kind of thing on my own blog. But the health benefits are ASTOUNDING. You would not believe it.

So anyway, I went to look at this recipe, and I couldn't see it right away. IN fact, it took TWO DAYS. Wanna know why?

The Blocking Dead

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG.....

The Season Finale this past Sunday, and my issues with it and the pacing of Season 2 overall not withstanding, I gotta admit I still really like the show The Walking Dead on AMC. The mid-season finale was WAY more gut-wrenching though. And still resonates as the best episode they have ever done.

I'm surprised I have not turned it into a weekly article here. Well, not that surprised.

How do you do a weekly article on a show that lasts for 13 weeks and takes a break in between? I guess I could always write about stuff related to the show. The comic book, the over-priced McFarlane action figures that I want and am not getting, or THESE babies...

Yup. In case you hadn't heard...

By George It's Metal!

Is it October yet?

Luke brought up the game Bioshock: Infinite as one of the ones he was looking forward to when we were discussing the very few games that we had in our scopes for 2012. The Bioshock series has been a ton of fun for me, certainly, and I may be one of the few people who actually liked Bioshock 2 more than the first game.

Certainly, it looks by all accounts that all of us will be enjoying this newest installment in the series, come Fall, even though it has very little if nothing at all to do with Rapture. In essence, toweling off and soaring amidst the clouds looks like it might be fun.

I hope they do eventually plan to return to Rapture someday however...I don't feel that the place has had its story completely told. Something does not feel...complete.

This city in the clouds holds some promise though...I am a bit torn on this Motorized Patriot. I have not decided yet if I absolutely love it or not.




I'll let you know.

OUT.

Domesticated Badness: Varmint Town

I'm not sure what I find most scary.

What looks like clunky and disappointing game-play mechanics, the fact that I think that the Nemesis that is hulking and skulking about in this demo of the Multiplayer 'Nemesis Mode' in the upcoming Resident Evil: Raccoon City game looks more lost and confused than terrifying, the fact that as hard as I try to care about ANYTHING related to Resident Evil from Capcom, one of those ALWAYS-ON dealies that used to be THE most beloved things in the universe to me (but ever since they took the franchise to extremely weird places in ZERO they have kinda lost me)...

...OR...

...the fact that it is taking longer and longer to scroll down when I have to enter my FUGGIN' BIRTH YEAR when I go to these damn videos on any of the game sites.



It's getting to be downright embarrassing...

OUT.

Holy BATPOOP!

Do you remember when I almost crapped my pants a while back over the 1:6th Scale Tumbler that Sideshow was importing from Hot Toys and had made available for Pre-Order on their website?

Do you remember me whining like a bitch about how old I am and how all my responsibilities suck and how I can't really afford toys anymore and how expensive all this crap is now but how cool all this new 1:6th Scale stuff is and how it just keeps getting awesomer and awesomer?

Do you remember the Barbie jokes?

No?

Well, EAT ME...because it is time for ROUND TWO.

SWEET!

Gone. Then back. Gone. Then back.

Guess what?

Now I'm back. Here to stay. For now. Mwuhahahahahaha!

My kid seems to be leveling off. He had almost become feral there for a while. Werewolfian in nature. It was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Bennett.

I gotta tell you...being a Special Needs Dad can suck it sometimes. But? And there is always a but...it can also bring you intense amounts of joy, teach you shitloads about the kind of man you are, and show you what you are actually made of.

Though I am not recommending you run out and try it, by any means, all I am saying is that there is, like any slice of Hell's Pizza, something to be said for at least having something to EAT that is yummy, delicious...and really, really bad for you.

I don't expect anybody to understand that. I just like talking about food.

I Gotta Get Me 12-inches!

OK, two weeks I've been gone.

And admittedly, I'm not really coming back with a whole lot. But here's the thing. I'm not apologizing to any of you assholes. Since last I wrote, we've had not one but two deaths, some behavioral issues out the wazoo with my kid, some other shit, and to top it off? Yesterday I find out I have Meibomianitis.

Freaky huh? And I thought the lids of my eyes were just red and swollen from crying every day. Who F**KING knew?

Got my newsletter from Sideshow early this week. How's THAT for a jarring segue?

It was late of course because of my SHITBAG of an e-mail hosting service. Did I mention I am dumping them and now have a new e-mail address too? Yeah, been working on that as well.

Do I sound angry? I guess I am. Go figure.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah...when I saw this I almost shit my pants.

Call of the Mild

Miss me?

Somehow, I missed my weekly obligation. Kind of like church. Though I have been missing THAT weekly obligation since I was, I dunno, 22 or something. Well, to be honest, I haven't really been MISSING it all that much. I prefer worshiping the bone-crunching hits of the NFL every Sunday.

But that is neither here and, coincidentally, neither there.

Speaking of the NFL, did anybody actually play Madden 2012 this year? I did not. My gaming was a bit limited because of budgetary reasons. I had to pick and choose what I devoted my X-Box time to. In fact, so tight was my wallet, that I played Borderlands for the first time THIS YEAR, since it was twenty bucks. Great game. But back to Madden.

I skipped it. Why? Because Madden 2011 sucked balls. In my humble opinion. Madden 2011 offered little, if anything, over its predecessor, and so when it came time to move on to 2012, that memory, along with a CLEVELAND BROWN on the cover of the box, left me flat.

Something else really took the wind from my sails when it came to game sequels in 2011. Wanna know what it was?

Hail, Yeah...

Merks recent post of a video about Battlestar Galactica got me thinking.

I call him 'Merks' as if he is my best friend and I have known him all my life. I have never met Timothy, have no idea who he is really, and I'm sure he's very cool, I hear good things about him, his posts are great, but we don't know each other at all.

That's the nature of being a 'contributor' on a site like this. You are part of a whole, and on this here Internet, it can often be a whole lotta strangers. Funky, right? Not as funky as this.

I had planned to make this blog about LOST, but when I was pretty much done writing the blog, something came up before I could go in and spell-check it and put the finishing touches on it. So I took a break from what I was doing and hit the showers.

As I was soaping up, NAKED, thinking of Timothy, Luke and all the other GUYS on this site, I decided to totally change it up. I'll say what I wanted about LOST another time.

Especially since if I write that a post about Battlestar Galactica got me thinking, um...shouldn't it stand to reason that I be writing about BATTLESTAR GALACTICA?!?

So instead, I think I'll just point out that we should all take a moment on this Christmas Eve, this OH SO HOLY time of year, to remember that horrifying bullet that, thanks to Ronald Moore, we all, thankfully, dodged.



MERRY FRAKKIN' CHRISTMAS!

OUT.

Flaking Over Star Wars

Do I need two banners? I may need to rethink that whole philosophy.

This place is a one man army of posting...I see something I THINK might be new or interesting, I know I am rolling the dice on whether or not someone has already posted about it, or it might actually be old news.

But? Waddya gonna do?

Sometimes you have to take your chances and hope for the hard six.

Friend of mine clued me into these over on Facebook, sent me a link.

They are kick-ass Star Wars snowflake designs, and you can find templates and everything you need at two places that I know of.

An original site that introduced them, called Matters of Grey, and another blog site that made even more, called Anthony Herrera Designs, inspired by that site!

Go get 'em!

OUT.

Me, Robot

Sorry I'm a little late with this week's installment. Been a bit late with a lot of things...of late. Must be the season. Or it is just this nasty FUNK I am in. Yeah, another one of those. Hate that shit.

It isn't that things are too terribly bad either. It is just time for Funkytown.

And not the good kind.

So I found this thing the other day, and figured I'd shoot it for another episode of A Closet Full of Crap. Like I love to remind you all, I chose that title because I have a Basement Full of Shit, but A Closet Full of Crap sounds much better.

Although, that Basement Full of Shit is fast becoming a Basement Full of Mildew and Decaying Sections of Rotten Wood as This House Built by Apes Falls Down Around My Ears...but hey, that's a story for another time.

If I survive that long.

All I Want For Christmas Is Steve Jobs to Come Back, But NOT as a Freakin' Zombie!

If you've followed my personal blog, blogzilly, for any length of time, you pretty much know the full story behind a charitable foundation that sprang forth from an iPad contest gone disastrously wrong over the Spring and Summer earlier this year.

That organization, which came to be known as Mission: iPossible!, went on to complete its Mission One project at a pace I think everyone, myself included, was stunned by.

In some unreal number like 76 days or some such, the Special Needs Community pooled its collective resources, came together and raised slightly more than $11,000.00 to purchase and ship 20 iPads to 20 kids with communication-related disabilities.

Well, we're at it again. Wanna find out more? Then JUMP!

Movember Day 25: Ron Jeremy

In an industry dominated almost exclusively by women (and rightfully so) 1979 saw the red-hot, throbbing rise of Ronald Jeremy Hyatt. Ron Jeremy, as he would later call himself after being admonished by his conservative Jewish father for using his real name, provided stiff competition for all of the less significantly talented men at the time and rigidly solidified his rock-hard status as one of the greatest male Adult Film actors to ever come along.

No need to stroke the ego of this 'Hedgehog', as he was later nicknamed, as his famous moustache has been ridden more times that Space Mountain by some of the hottest women on this planet, and his fame for being capable of auto-fellatio (which he demonstrated on-screen in the film Inside Seka) automatically places him in a category that defies traditional description.

Here's to you, Mr. Jeremy.

I...um...salute you! And one of these days I am going to talk to my buddy about possibly getting permission to tell the story about you, him, his sculpting shop and doing the work on sculpting you and your tree trunk. It's quite an interesting story and the kind you don't often get to hear when you work in the toy business.

OUT.

I Got Yer Stuffing Right Here...

Sometimes, you don't have a lot of time, but you still have some things you need to take care of. You have obligations you need to fulfill. Promises you have made. Word you need to keep.

You can't let anyone down. You got people counting on you.

You've made a commitment. But things have gotten a little out of hand for you this week. It is a short week after all, and you had technical problems of all kinds and now you find yourself far from home. You don't even have access to all the stuff you have come to depend on.

In cases like these? You find a substitute and you send it in.

It's all you can do really. And if it works for James T., well then it works for me.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

Set your phasers on LOVE!

OUT.

Phil McKraken

When I first conceived of the idea of having a blog at all for myself, back when blogzilly was first hatched back in February of 2009, it is ironic because the intent was to actually do a lot of different 'thematic' blog posts. Then, things just changed when, as you may or may not know, my 15 month old son went from an average, everyday kid one day...to something totally different the next.

When that happens, when your life radically changes, whether it is from some tragic accident, maybe the loss of a loved one, or even a good thing, like winning the lottery, you go through this period of time where things almost aren't real. And I don't even know what to CALL that period of time.

I guess it depends a lot on what happened to you, 'natch.

For me, even though I have a written record from February 2009 through the summer of 2011, that period of time just feels like a strung-together clump of stages. Hard to describe what I mean. Maybe one day I'll try harder. Bottom line is, that my plans for blogzilly began to change. And I don't really regret it. I needed to choose a clearer path, I simply had to, for the sake of keeping it together as best I could, know what I mean?

I started to, less and less, write about games, toys, movies...all the stuff I loved (and still do love) and I put a lot of things I had started on the shelf.

Thanks to this place, I can now start pulling that stuff off the shelf and taking a look at it again.

But HOLY CRAP it is dusty...

Fat is PHAT

Without fail, each and every time I sit down at this God-Forsaken machine, there is a question that is always on my mind whenever I think of the daunting task of putting together the materials needed for me to whip up what is now to be my weekly serving of fruity goodness here at Fruitless Pursuits.

Now...what shall we talk about?

Why is it daunting? Because since it is ONLY a weekly serving, therefore I feel like it needs to be something that is fairly interesting, fairly MEATY actually, and because, well, that's how I roll.

Fruit. Meat. Roll. Hey...that's almost a meal.

And I NEED these things to be filling and satisfying, for reasons I cannot possibly begin to explain. Besides...I would not be me unless I put shitloads of pressure on myself for all the wrong reasons.

Problem is, I have so MANY things to choose from now.

Remember last week when I said I compartmentalized this whole thing when I planned on being a Daily Post Guy? Well, I had around a dozen or more 'themes' that I was going to cover, just like when I started, from that A Closet Full O' Crap thing, to The Game's Afoot, to new ones like It's Prototypical, Blockzilly, or my personal favorite Let's See What Hidden Gems We Can Find Under Jabba's Disgusting Rolls of Fat!

Too wordy?

So now, with this Once-A-Week-Shit...I am left with a Conundrum, wrapped inside an Enigma, jammed inside a Riddle, stuffed inside a Burrito.

Which topic do I choose for over here?

To a Pulp

'I'm sorry, did I break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that. Please, continue...you were saying something about 'Best Intentions'? What's the matter? Oh, you were finished! Well, allow me to retort.'

Whenever I get stuck in life, I seem to fall back to Pulp Fiction or Star Wars.

At least, lately I do.

And why not? Two excellent sources of Truth if there ever WERE.

So...yeah, it's me again. But a different kind of me, and with a different slant. And there is a reason for that. Although, anyone who reads my useless shit, or has, for the past couple of years won't see this as anything 'different'.

Let's get down to brass tacks, gentlemen. If I was informed correctly, the clock is ticking, is that right, Jimmie?

Just what in the name of FUGGIN' HELL am I trying to say?

Find out after we get to Monster Joe's Truck and Tow.

Is That a Beaker Figure in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

You can close your mouth now.

Yeah, it's me. I've got something else for you. My goal, believe it or not, is to actually get to a point where I am posting here, at blogzilly and at Mission: iPossible EVERY DAY.

It's totally doable, and I know HOW to do it, I just have to put the plan together and make it happen. Back in the day, when I was writing for the Palisades Toys website, I wrote multiple things for the website, and I kept a spreadsheet for it. I planned the posts in advance, I grabbed stuff I needed, I organized files, I kept it greased up like a giant pair of...um...like a well-oiled machine.

That's what I need to do. Content? I got. Ideas? I got. Time? I actually got SOME of. Skills? Debatable. The issue has been getting my rounded melon-shaped cue ball of a head uncorked from my beautifully shaped and freshly-shorn buttocks.

It was one of Fruitless Pursuits fearless leaders, Uncle Miltie, who suggested that get I back into the swing of things a wee bit as I work toward this Master Plan and post something about Jim Henson, who would have recently celebrated a birthday, since I have such a connection, especially online, with The Muppets, because of the work I did on the Palisades Toys line of Muppet action figures, playsets and other fun stuff.

I can picture that.

Yes, It's a God-Damn RePeat...

Bit it is a serviceable explanation of the reason why I came on here, shat out three posts and then disappeared for nearly a month.

I will be back, but I had these testicle-sized shaped tonsils in my mouth (I swear they REALLY were tonsils!!!), and I had them removed, and well...it's taking FOREVER for me to get back on track. I blogged about it on my own site. But I am re-posting it here, in case anyone gives a shit.

Here you go...

Calrissian said it best.

'Yes he's alive...and in perfect hibernation.'

Barely. If you managed to sneak a photo of me of late, I might actually be on my back, hands up, palms forward, with a grimace on my face, awaiting transport to Jabba the Hutt. I feel frozen.

Lots of reasons why.

Batboobies

On August 25th, 2009, two things happened that were HUGE in the life of Yours Truly. One, we were packing up the Lillymobile and hitting the road, headed up to Cleveland Clinic to have our then 21 month old son Bennett's skull cracked open so that he could have a brain tumor sucked out.

And the second was, of course, that Eidos and Rocksteady released Batman: Arkham Asylum for the XBox 360, and superhero gaming was never the same again.

For the first time in the history of sweat-soaked gamepads, geeks everywhere got to REALLY feel what it was like to actually BE the Dark Knight Detective, facing off against the likes of adversaries as little known to the General Population as Killer Croc and Scarface, or as well known as Scarecrow, Bane, Poison Ivy and of course, The Joker.

This game had everything. Batarangs. Bat Grappling Hooks. Detective Mode. Awesome fighting moves with a wide variety of martial art techniques. Even many sequences that required you to use more stealth than strength.

Plus, there were titties.