Sunday, March 10, 2024

I Don't Remember Vader Being That Petite

Recently I got to enjoy the parody burlesque show known as The Empire Strips Back.

It was a memorable and enjoyable experience.

I do applaud our Host for the show, Eric Calrissian, Lando's nephew, who did a great job of keeping us entertained between acts and engaging the audience in energized exchanges.

The shows started off with an individual dressed in a costume much like Luke's Hoth outfit, but very much NOT Luke, climbing off her Tauntaun and then dancing with it. The poor girl ends up removing articles of clothing that leaves her cold and needing to reenact a well-known scene from the movies.  At one point the outer casing is removed from C-3PO, but the inner structure doesn't match up with what we saw in Episode 1. We get an extended scene from the opening of Episode 4 where Leia is recording her message with R2. A batch of Storm Troopers wearing what did not look like screen accurate armor, with a Darth Vader who was not as imposing as what we saw in the films.

We also get a rapping Jabba the Hutt.

It was a fun, crazy, erotic show with decent production values.

The crowd itself was something to take note of. A very diverse crowd with what looked to be an equal male/female ratio, with a fair number of couples, as well as a wide range of ages. It was a geeky crowd and despite the stereotypes, the geek crowd is very sexual group as showed by many in the audience wearing highly suggestive outfits in competition with what was on stage.

I left with a T-shirt that most likely will be worn only in certain company.

If you get the chance and it is your type of entertainment, I can highly recommend it as an enjoyable way to spend an evening.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Just Let Them Like What They Like

I have been a major fanboy of so many things over my life. Just looking around my office you can see at least a dozen different geeky franchises represented on my shelves. There are so many geeky things that I am passionate about and enjoy being part of.

I have also at times been laughed at or told that I should not have such 'childish' interests or been told I am liking the wrong things. The reasons for this are varied, but at all times there do seem to be individuals out there who dislike my interests and wish to put me down in some manner for having them.

While I will admit there have been times where I myself have been critical of someone else's interests that I disliked and might not have been at my best regarding my comments, I have very much become a person who understands that everyone is going to have their passions and should be allowed to embrace those passions if it gives them joy. I do not need to like a franchise or interest for other to find value in them. A prime example of this is sports, which I really have no interest at all in and find boring. Yet there is no doubt how huge sporting events are and how passionate the fans can be of them. People enjoying going to a baseball game does no harm at all to me, even if I do not get any pleasure from such events.

It surprises me at how many people are unable to comprehend that.

I have never been one to jump on the bandwagon. While the crowd yells out what bands you are supposed to hate, I've listened to what I like. I will defend that Nickelback has some great songs, no matter how much some wish to tell us they suck. I think 'Howard the Duck' is a great, fun film, despite all the hate it gets. I kept collecting action figures even after I was told I needed to grow up.

I know I have the right to enjoy what I enjoy, as long as it does not harm anyone, no matter what anyone or everyone else thinks. I also know that is the right for everyone else out there.

Now I will admit I have not always been the best regarding this in the past, but I go out of my way to respect the passions of others, even if I do not share or understanding them. There are many popular and unpopular franchises that I just do not connect with. And it is fine if others enjoy them, no matter how little I may think of some of them. Unless I am being forced to against my will, which would be a whole different issue, I don't have to watch of take part in them.

Yet there too often seems to be those out there who wish to put down others because they do not share in the same passions. There does seem to be an element of human nature in doing this, but that does not justify such actions. We are beings capable to growing beyond such needs after all.

We are all individuals with unique aspects that make us who we are, and a big part of that is what we get passionate over. Only someone with a disrespectful ego would believe that everyone should find enjoyment in all of their passions and nothing else.

There is room for all of our passions in this world and we as a whole are best served by being respectful of that.

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

APPRECIATE A DRAGON DAY



Just learned that today is Appreciate a Dragon Day. Sounds like my kind of holiday.
Sounds like the perfect day to explore an interdimensional hotel run by two shape-shifting, master mage dragons, connected to a thousand-thousand worlds with some of the most unique beings you have ever encountered, and read a Georgie and Armand's Place story.
And there are a lot to choose from.
The novels -
A Day at Georgie and Armand’s Place
Georgie and Armand’s Place Under Siege
Georgie and Armand on Vacation Short Stories -
A Visit to Cripple Creek - A Weird Western
You Call This Scary - A zombie story
An Education in Steam and Gears - Steampunk
A Very Georgie and Armand Christmas - A Christmas story
How to Survive The End of the World - Post-apocalyptic
A Spirited Locale - A ghost story
What to Wish For - Genie tale
Dragons in Space - Sci-fi
Lemon-Man vs. The Flannel Darkness - Superhero
Awakening The Deadly Horror - Lovecraftian story
Daughter of Ash and Nightmares - Dark horror
The Bigger They Are - A Kaiju story
Special release-
The Courtship of Georgie and Armand (Reprint of the flashback story from A Day at Georgie and Armand’s Place)

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

We Are Only Custodians of Our Collections

Sorry for the huge gaps between blog posts here.

2023 ended up being a rough year for me. So here is the first post for 2024, which I hope will be a much better year.

I am going to talk about a concept that Chuck, owner of Mile High Comics, mentioned during one of his regular auctions. He talked about how in the end we are only custodians of our collections and that at some point, in some manner, everything we have collected will end up no longer being ours.

I know that when I am at a thrift store and I see what was clearly once someone’s collection, broken apart and separated into random groupings, I feel sad, knowing that for some reason that collection was given up. I have felt the same when I see such a thing at collector stores like Mile High Comics. I know how much effort can go into a collection and finding prized pieces that have meaning to you. I also know what it is like to make the choice to sell off part of your collection.

I started collecting Magic The Gathering Cards way back when they were a new thing. I had completed most of the original expansion sets. Then there was a time when money was tight, and I noticed that Magic cards were one collection of mine that had real value. Since taking care of my family was more important to me than my Magic cards, I decided I should sell them off. I made some good money that greatly helped out with the bills. It was not a pleasant experience. I had put a lot of time and effort into completing those sets. It was great to have pieces in my collection that were sought after. But I needed the money. I hope they went to people who took on the role of custodian of them and have appreciated and enjoyed them.

For the opposite view of that, I did recently trade off my Garbage Pail Kids collection to a local shop, The Gnarly Toybox, for trade credit after I saw they were in demand. When I was younger, I had a passion for them and found them amusing. As an adult I looked at them and had no real attachment to them, showing that I was not the best custodian for them. And my boys had shown no interest in them, so there was little reason to keep them when we could exchange them for collection pieces that were desired by us. I kept ‘Alien Ian’ (My favorite because it was the first one with my name and it was a cool looking alien similar to the Mars Attack aliens), and traded the rest of them away, giving each of my boys some of the credit for them to find new pieces for their collections. Hopefully they are now in the hands of custodians who value and enjoy them.

And in the end that is the best fate we custodians can hope for, a good home for our collections.

It is something fully out of our hands in the long run. So while those collections are in our care, we need to take as good care of them as possible.

I know there are parts of my collections that my boys value and are looking forward to becoming the custodians of. I am also aware that there will be pieces that have no meaning to them and chances are they will part with. As there is a chance I will end up with grandchildren, I very much enjoy the idea of them becoming custodians of what I hand down to them.

Knowing you are only a temporary custodian of your collection should not take away from the enjoyment of making those collection. If anything it should help one find more joy in finding those rare pieces and feeling excitement when showing off and talking about those pieces.

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

The Most Magical Place Just Outside of Denver

 Here in the Denver Metro area, there are a lot of people awaiting the reopening of one of the most unique and memorable restaurants you can experience.

Casa Bonita.


It closed up due to COVID and had a great deal of issues reopening, until the South Park guys bought it and invested in fixing it up. Last time I was there was for a free tour that they were doing regularly while trying to work out the details to open it for business.

It really is hard to describe Casa Bonita in any manner that would give a person the real feel of the place, but I will give it a try. It is an old Mexican village with all manner of areas to explore, which fully feels like you are in a different world from the strip small off a major street that you entered by. There is a massive waterfall cascading into a clear pool in the middle of it all, with divers regularly taking plunges into it as silly skits get performed on the small stage, with them normally ending with at least one person ending up in the pool. There is a puppet plaza with animated rocks that talk. A theater with a stage for magic shows and such. You can explore an outlaw's secret cavern, where you will get eaten by a dragon. You can be seated in caverns or the mines or behind the waterfall. Don't forget to throw a coin into the wishing well and listen to the creature in the well.

And I know I've missed some stuff there.

Casa Bonita is an experience.

I've been going since we moved out here in 1980, and most likely have been around 200 times, give or take.

As a child I loved it and had my birthday there twice. We took all my cousins there and family from out of town. Once I had kids of my own, we of course took them. My oldest boy's first trip there was when he was five days old, as we took my cousin there for his tenth birthday. And both of my boys have celebrated their birthday there, but didn't get the T-shirts to commemorate it, which I swear I still have my two (Long since outgrown) that say 'I Celebrated My Happy Birthday at Casa Bonita', in boxes somewhere in the storage room.

Gonna talk about the food here briefly.

A lot of people really are critical about it. And yes, it was a step-up from cafeteria food for the most part, with a few better options. I always enjoyed it, as it was edible, and I found it filling. With the reopening however, this should not be an issue, as they have invested highly in getting a new menu together and making sure to move beyond the old reputation.

Of course no one ever went there for the food.

I have never heard anyone complain about the sopapillas, which were the free dessert. There were fresh and hot and so good with honey. It would be a huge mistake to change them.

In my Georgie and Armand's Place stories I have the Bonita Lobby, for a subterranean wing of The Hotel which is connected by a sparkling lagoon of water fed by a waterfall to the Aquarian Casa lobby, for an underwater wing. You will find many such homages in those stories, some more hidden than others. That is one that those not familiar with the restaurant will not see, but I hoped that those who know would be amused. Even the head of the Bonita Lobby, Novick, has a connection to the restaurant.

Casa Bonita is the kind of place that has inspired many of us who grew up here in the Denver Metro area. Its pink tower, which has been repainted and is brighter than ever, is a true landmark, breaking up the monotony of the area. Just go across the parking lot to the Next Gallery that regularly features Casa Bonita inspired art to see just how much it means to so many of us.

It is supposed to reopen at some point in May and chances are it will have huge lines, with hour long waits to get in. But the people will be there as there are so many of us ready to see experience all the new as well as embrace all of what made Casa Bonita such an incredible experience for us. I am also looking forward to the idea of being able to take the next generation of my family there once they come along and see them get filled with the wonder and excitement of it all.

Wednesday, March 1, 2023

They All Seem So Young

In a batch of comic books I got a hold of recently was Giant Sized Fantastic Four issue six (A reprint of FF Annuel #6), which ends with the birth of Franklin Richards, the son of Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) and Susan Richards (The Invisible Woman). The date of the original comic was 1968, which means that Franklin is a few years older than I am...

Right now in the comics Franklin is a teenager. His age had jumped around a lot over the years and we have seen various older version of him from alternate futures a few times now. It seems he was trapped in the age of a little kid somewhere between four and eight years old for several decades, ageing and de-ageing in that range as needed. In the last few decades, they decided to let him hit puberty finally and have not trapped him at that age for the time being.

So a few decades later he gets a little sister, Valeria Richards, who originally would have been born in the early 80s, except this is the comic book world and she was miscarried at that time in the comics. Jump to the early 2000s where she was revealed that Franklin, using his reality altering powers, had somehow sent her to an alternate reality then she returned to the Marvel 616 reality to fulfill her destiny and somehow had to be reborn. Age-wise she is presented in the comics now as almost the same age as her big brother, sometimes seeming older than him.

Of course, age has always been an oddball issue in comic books.

When the Fantastic Four started, Reed Richards and Been Grimm (The Thing) had fought in WWII together, then a few decades later that was changed to being Vietnam. Now they just fought in an unnamed war whenever the issue is mentioned.

When I started reading Spider-Man comics in the mid-80s Peter Parker was late 20s early 30s. Today, forty years later, Peter Parker still comes off as being late 20s early 30s. He was not actually a teenager for long in the comics, finishing High School only a few years after the series started. He was then in college for a good chunk of time. Now he is a perpetual young man in the main Marvel Comics universe and most likely will remain at that undisclosed age from here on out, as do most of the adult super-heroes, even as the children in his stories get to age little by little.

Then you get characters like Aunt May, who was an old lady sixty years ago and actually seems younger now. She has nowhere near all the crazy heath problem she had for the longest time. For the first few hundred issues of Spider-Man Aunt May was in the hospital because of her heart dozens of times. Now she is an older woman, who is very active and healthy, even though she should be over a hundred now.

With over 60 now of continuous stories in the main Marvel Universe, there is an understanding that the aging of the characters is all just what is needed for the stories then and there, with a great deal of flexibility needed.

I guess if you are going to accept the idea that a person can get powers by being bitten by a radioactive spider, you can accept there being a disconnect to the whole concept of aging. In the end these are fictitious stories, and it would not work well for them to worry about such trivial things as age. It is one aspect of comic books that is easy enough to accept, no matter how amusing it becomes when looking back.

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

One Kind of a Son of a Bitch or Another

 Yes, I am quoting Capt. Reynolds today.

“It's my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of a son of a bitch or another." --Malcolm Reynolds.

The quote is full relevant to today's topic.

I really love the musical 'The Greatest Showman'. So many of those songs speak to me and the overall story is great. I get emotional just about every time I watch, which is a lot because I enjoy having it on in the background when I write. The song 'A Million Dreams' is myself and my mindset to a scary level and 'This Is Me' very much fits with what I have gone through in my life.

I also know the truth, that the story is highly, and I mean highly, romanticized account of the life of P.T. Barnum. There is really little fact or truth to be found in musical. There was a great deal of 'questionable' actions taken by the real Barnum. He very much exploited people for his own gain, openly drawing people to his shows with admitted hoaxes that he justified.

I am fully able to separate the real Barnum from the romanticized image from 'The Greatest Showman' and just enjoy the show for the meaningful entertainment that it is.

Yet I keep running across various reviews of the show that are all based on the real Barnum and being upset over him being romanticized on any level. They refuse to separate the two versions and claim it is insulting to do so.

And that takes us back to the Malcom Reynalds quote.

We romanticize so many historic characters, like the Founding Fathers, and are able to look the other way over their failings. So why is it that every so often a historic figure is not allowed to be romanticized at all? With obvious exceptions like Hitler, so many of our historic figures are easy to romanticize and turn into something greater than they were. I know whenever I see Winston Churchill being highly praised it bothers me, for while he did some great things in his time, he was a racist and held some interesting beliefs regarding imperialism. Yet I am able to enjoy the fiction that uses his character, even knowing they are romanticizing the person. It is like how everyone ignores that JFK slept around, even while being praised as a great family man.

These are men with statures to them who are one kind of a son of a bitch or another, and history is full of such people.

Looking at any period pieces with real historic figures in them, those characters will be romanticized concepts to fit with the desired story, no matter how close to reality they try to get. It is part of being human to embellish upon the stories we tell. In the case of 'The Greatest Showman' there is no doubt they fully knew they were romanticizing his life for the sake of the story.

Being aware of the accurate history should not take away from the enjoyment of a good story that is clearly not supposed to be accurate. Knowing the truth about Barnum will never take away from the joy and meaning I get from watching 'The Greatest Showman'. That is a big advantage to being able to separate fact from the fiction and understand the difference between the two.