November | 2013 | Cavalcade of Awesome

Archive for November, 2013

Giving thanks for my new The Shadow action figures

Posted in movies, pop culture, toys with tags movies, pop culture, The Shadow, toys on November 27, 2013 by Paxton

Brian over at CoolandCollected.com is a good friend of this site and the Nerd Lunch podcast. He is also a garage sale/flea market/Craigslist guru. He finds awesome pop culture items and toys tucked away in some nooks and crannies where only the brave care to tread.

Brian posted several articles recently (here, here and here) showing a nice haul of toys he had procured and is looking to “trim the fat”. I love looking at these articles and seeing some of the treasures he has unearthed. For instance, I wasn’t even AWARE they made figures for The Last Action Hero and Demolition Man. WHAT?! That’s coconuts. Check them out:

Bananas. Anyway, a little further down, I noticed something that caught my eye. Brian had found some of Kenner’s The Shadow figures from the 1994 movie. I love that movie and I really loved those figures. I still own my Lightning Draw Shadow figure from that line that I bought back in ’94 when they were on clearance in KayBee Toys.

Kenner’s entire The Shadow figure line was amazing. Eight regular figures, a deluxe electronic figure and FOUR vehicles. The line was gorgeous, it really was. It’s too bad the movie didn’t hit like they wanted because I would have loved to have seen both a Shadow Sanctum and a Hotel Monolith playset. Oh yeah, AND A SEQUEL. But that’s a rant for another time.

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Today is the 50th Anniversary of JFK’s assassination

Posted in nostalgia, pop culture, roadtrip with tags anniversary, Nerdy Roadtrip, nostalgia, pop culture, roadtrip on November 22, 2013 by Paxton

50 years ago today, JFK was killed in Dallas. It’s up to you to interpret how or why he was killed. There are plenty of theories to choose from. Personally, I think here is more to the “Lee Harvey Oswald story” that we don’t know. I don’t think Oswald planned it on his own, though he may have actually done the deed on his own. I don’t know, a the time this occurred, I wasn’t going to be born for another 11 years. Anyway, I’m sort of fascinated by Kennedy’s assassination and the culture storm that has sort of erupted around it. I even visited the site of the assassination.

Via Newsbusters.org

I graduated college in Summer 1997 and was sent to Dallas, TX for 7 weeks of training for my new job in IT consulting. While there, I decided to take advantage and visit Dealy Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository building.

A few friends of mine and I drove there and when we arrived we decided to drive the main street in front of Dealy where Kennedy was killed. Below is a picture out of the car window at the infamous fence on the grassy knoll (on the left) next to Dealy Plaza (white structure on the right). Our car is approximately where Kennedy’s limousine was when the shots were fired. Maybe even a little bit past.

After getting out of the car and walking towards Dealy Plaza, I stood where Abraham Zapruder stood and snapped a picture of the road Kennedy traveled and the Texas School Book Depository building looming in the back (brick building far left). In Zapruder’s footage there was a street sign on the road that blocked the view back in the early 60s. The street lamp in the very middle of the picture is the same one that is in the above picture.

I’m not going to lie, standing in Dealy Plaza and on the grassy knoll looking back at the School Book Depository building was surreal and a bit eerie. Lots of living history. So much happened. It just feels ominous standing there. My group of friends and I probably didn’t talk for like 10 minutes as we walked around.

After looking around a little bit we walked towards the School Book Depository building to get a better look. The Depository is no longer operating. It was bought by the state and is now run as The Sixth Floor Museum. Tours are offered. So we bought a ticket.

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Nerd Lunch Episode 108: The Trial of M Night Shamalayan + Nerd Lunch at the After Movie Diner

Posted in Back to the Future, movies, podcast, pop culture with tags Back to the Future, movies, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, pop culture on November 19, 2013 by Paxton

Episode 108 of the Nerd Lunch podcast is now live. Jeeg and I couldn’t make it but Aaron Nix, Michael May and Andrew Bloom show up to put M Night Shamalayan on trial for crimes against moviegoers.

Via keviemetal.tumblr.com

Bloom is the judge, CT is the prosecution, Aaron Nix is the defense and Michael May is the expert witness. Listen to everyone put M Night on trial. Hear Bloom fall asleep during the podcast. Hear CT passionately speak out against M Night’s movies. Hear Aaron Nix speak lovingly and at great length about this director whom he clearly has a giant man crush on. It’s a great episode, and honestly, I think the best of the three trials we’ve done. Give it a shot.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

Also, in case you missed it, CT and I were invited to join Jon Cross over at his podcast at The After Movie Diner. Jeeg couldn’t make it due to some rift in the time-space continuum, but CT and I roll up in our modified DMC-12 to discuss the entire Back to the Future trilogy.

It’s not exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a solid hour and a half of three movie geeks talking about their remembrances of one of their favorite movie trilogies of all time.

Check out episode 101 of the After Movie Diner Podcast featuring CT and yours truly here.

Nerd Lunch Episode 107: Movie Prequels

Posted in movies, podcast, pop culture with tags movies, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, pop culture, sequels on November 18, 2013 by Paxton

I don’t think I mentioned this last week, but I hosted episode 107 of the Nerd Lunch Podcast which went live LAST Tuesday. I’m still in vacation mode after my month long AWESOME-tober-fest this year.

We were joined by Shawn Robare from Branded in the 80s and we all discussed the idea of movie prequels.

We discuss our thoughts on prequels, which prequels we think worked and which didn’t we even pitch ideas for movie prequels we’d like to see someday. Nerd to Dos include Witches of Eastwick, Funko figures, Bond movies and M Night Shamalayan.

Tomorrow’s new episode won’t feature me or Jeeg at all. We both had to drop out for various reasons, so CT is going it alone with several guest stars. It should be an interesting one.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

Nerd Lunch Episode 106: More Real Life Scenarios

Posted in podcast, pop culture with tags movies, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, pop culture on November 5, 2013 by Paxton

This week we are joined by Mr Strange Kid himself, Rondal Scott from Strange Kids Club. The topic this week is hosted by Jeeg and he is presenting the encore of Real Life Scenarios which we did first back in Episode 78.

We discuss our thoughts on things like which real life news reporter is actually the son of Krypton, which real life scientist would create a time machine out of a Delorean and which real life astronaut found and married a genie in a bottle. We all discuss our picks to these questions and several more inciting some interesting conversation.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

Or listen to it in an online player right here.