Programming Note- Moving Day

I mentioned last week about my moving taking up a lot of my time and just wanted to put out a reminder of that. I know readers are used to a certain amount of posting a week and just don't want to leave you all hanging. Posting will resume to it's regular volume soon, pinky swear. Today is my moving day, and I'm pretty stoked to be moving into my new home.

I totally scheduled Friday Night Frights still though. Priorities.

Programming Note- Moving

I've mentioned a few times that I'm moving, because I am. Moving day is actually next week, which means I'm currently in crunch time getting everything together. Between packing and organizing everything while working my normal 60+ hour work week, things are taking a bit of a toll on me. Not to mention covid-19 has thrown a few curve balls into the process *sigh*.

There won't be an episode of the podcast this month, and for the next week, posts may be a little spotty. I'll still be posting, but it'll be a little lighter than you all are used too. I just wanted to put it out there in case anyone notices the lighter volume of my nonsense here for a little bit. It won't be long before things get back to normal.

I appreciate each and every one of you for continuing to read and support my weird site about robots and monsters. If you like what I do, thanks! All I ask is for you to share and show a friend.

Robocop Hates Bugs

For the past few years the wife and I have been wanting to move only to stay where we're at. This year we've been putting a considerable amount of work into actually moving. While we've seemingly found a place (unless some 11th hour bad luck causes plans to fall through), man we've been through the ringer looking all over. There's all sorts of things you don't consider until you actually need to consider them. Which leads to a rather sitcom like confession of mine, like you, my waking thoughts often pop up in my dreams. Unlike you, I'm possibly (probably) insane.

I'm almost 42... I'm just like this ok?

So one apartment neighborhood in a pretty swanky area really had us sold, we discovered it and it's neighboring communities had bug problems. Bed bugs, roaches, scorpions, silver fish, you name it. That's freaking gross! I have no clue why that town's so fancy pants when they got bugs in their cereal, but no way man. No freaking way. Moving alone is a stressful situation, but looking for a place to move isn't a cakewalk either.

So there I was, seemingly have found the perfect place. A condo large enough to fit our needs and in a pretty good area. We were settling into our new home on or first night there. Then there they were... roaches. Pouring out of the air vents, the plumbing, getting into my kool-aid. Just awful. I don't know about you, but I like to take care of business. No messing around, if theirs business to be taken care of... TCB mother fucker.

So I pulled out a tommy gun from the Dick Tracy coat I was wearing (to bed) and just started shooting every roach in sight. Just firing like mad, and yelling. Because when you shoot a machine gun for more than a second you have to yell while doing it. Bullets piled on the floor, roaches fell dead. This was my house and I had to defend it.

Ever wake up running to the bathroom wondering why 50 gallons of pee comes from a 12 ounce can of Coke? It was 3/4ths of the way through that when I realized I was awake and not shooting roaches. Oh by the way... ever seen that Japanese bug spray commercial staring Robocop?

Insert a generic Transformers post title here

Today (yesterday for you) marked the 35th anniversary of the original Transformers cartoon. I'm just going to take a moment to appreciate a show I've been watching over and over for 35 years. I kinda I have to at this point. My strongest memories of the show was right around when it first started airing and my family had recently moved to a neighborhood in Statesboro GA. Like most kids around my age, I was obsessed with all the various cartoons and toys. For some reason this one stood out. It just did, I am who I am, and I like what I like. I like Transformers.

There's a few moments that are the type of thing that only happen when you're a child (normally). Megatron pulls a swerve and my brother and I looking at each other in surprise and disbelief with our mouths wide open. Or Megatron says something sinister and my cousin standing straight up yelling at the tv "THAT'S WHAT YOU THINK MEGATRON" shortly before my uncle tells him to shut the hell up. You never really get those moments back. If anything, that's what I have nostalgia for.

That Halloween, thanks to my local K-Mart, I was Snarl in my cool Collegeville costume. The kind with the name of the character on the chest so you could point it out to the old lady who asked what you were. Later that old lady went to a closed store, read the store was closed on the sign, then proceeded to beat on the door only to ask the cleaning crew if the store was closed. While the smock has long dissolved to time (my parents probably threw it away), I still have the mask somehow. Somehow. It slowly evaporates year after year. It wasn't meant to last a lifetime and it's eventually just going to fade from existence.

We lived in a neighborhood across the street from a college. Just behind the college was a tiny movie theater that we later saw the 1986 movie at. A kid from the bus who seemingly had his Perceptor with him everyday managed to watch every showing. He was a little older than me and one of my brothers friends. Sometimes I wonder if that kid grew up to be another one of us in what became the Transformers fandom. I was the only kid in my 3rd grade class to see the movie and got to have that cool moment of telling everybody what happened just in time for the new season to start. That kid who cried every morning was pretty upset.

We moved out of Statesboro and into the suburbs of Atlanta by the end of season 3. That following fall The Rebirth aired ending the show (for us in the US anyway) before beginning the reruns of season 5 and G2... or just reruns on odd channels. The comic continued for a while and the toys chugged on, but that cartoon never went away. I'm not being wistful, you can watch it on Tubi. But seriously, here I am 41 and still talking about it just like I was in second grade on the bus. Just a little more sarcastic.

Did I ever imagine I'd still be talking about that show all these years later? No. I don't think it ever occurred to me that I'd grow up. It's a surprise to some people that I spent my spare time with this old cartoon and talking about it online. I guess it isn't normal, though now in the time of social networking talking about old shows is common place. I'm not sure what my life would be like now without that cartoon. I don't mean that in any phony pseudo deeper meaning type of way. I mean that as outside of my wife and co-workers, the people I talk to most are because of that cartoon. I'm not ashamed of that either. I'm happy, I like who I am. So, like I said, I kind of owed it to that old cartoon to take a moment to talk about it a little. It's part of my life and part of me.

Halloween (2018) trailer

Earlier today (posting this in advance) the first trailer for the new Halloween movie was put online and man does it look good. It brought me back to my late teens and the first half of my 20's when I'd watch the entire run off VCR all week. 1, 2, and 3 at least once a day. Just couldn't get enough, of course as time goes on I haven't watched them as much, but the original Halloween still remains one of my all time favorite movies.

There's something funny and poetic about this films release. It's hard to believe that 20 years ago I was a kid in college and in high anticipation for H20, which was essentially another rebooting of the series taking 20 years after the original. Now we have this new one, 20 years later, taking place 40 years after the original (this time outright skipping part 2, which H20 did not) and here I am 40 and am exactly as much time from H20 from the original has passed that has between H20 and H40.

I wonder if this will be a every 20 years thing.

They just call him sports car

I'm just sitting in my living room eating frozen pizza and drinking some ice tea from a dollar store tumblr watching old commercials on my tablet (I know what you're thinking and this is exactly the definition of thug life, cue the music). I was actually having a hard time locating the Black Convoy/Build King commercial. Well, that's not true, I keep finding a grainy one, but I was hoping to get one in a little better quality. That lead to the above compilation of assorted Car Robots commercials (which was fun to watch... still thuggin).

It briefly took me back to the days of watching subtitled Car Robots on VHS while eating frozen pizza and drinking ice tea from a dollar store tumblr (I didn't choose the thug life, the thug life chose me... cue the music) and taking note of the commercials. Those old tapes of dubious release always had a few of the shows related ads included.

My best friend since childhood and I used to live together and he'd regularly rent Gundam episodes on those tapes and we'd watch the commercials. He found it funny that they'd make such a production for a few second commercial and as I've said here time and time again, I thought the tiny tokusatsu style productions were neat. It'd always make for a good time. My next roommate was another old friend that I had made at that garbage Office Max I worked while attending community college. He had a sorta part time job at the same store we'd get those Gundam tapes from (they paid him in free rentals) and eventually they got a copy of the first Car Robots release from that shady anime VHS company.

Which he brought home one night and we promptly made a copy of (because that thug life). Eventually I found a few more releases of the series the company made before the show debuted on Fox Kids. Which was a relief since those shady VHS tapes always made weird noises in my VCR. In all honesty they were probably made on those dollar store VHS blanks sold next to my tumblrs.

That I used to copy of a shady anime VHS tapes.