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AWESOME-tober-fest 2009: Star Wars and Zombies

Posted in Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, pop culture, Star Wars, Uncategorized, zombies with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, Star Wars, zombies on October 30, 2009 by Paxton

Okay, one more day until Halloween. I’m going to break with the Frankenstein theme today because, honestly, I’ve done enough Frankenstein. I love the big, lumbering, green guy, but I’ve been up to my pooper in Frankenstein stuff for 2 months now and I’m ready to just put that whole thing on pause for a second. Don’t worry, I’ll go back to Frankenstein (and Boris Karloff) in mid November for the Boris Karloff Birthday Blogathon.

Right now, though, I want to talk about Star Wars…and zombies.

Star Wars and zombies go together like Lennon and McCartney. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Peanut Butter and laaaadies. One thing makes the other better. And for this Halloween season, there are a couple projects that bring Star Wars and zombies together like some awesome Halloween version of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercial (where someone gets their chocolate in someone else’s peanut butter).

The first cool, Star Wars zombie item is the book Death Troopers

The book takes place just before Episode IV (A New Hope) and involves a derelict Star Destroyer and an unknown virus. I got the book from my friend, Dr Mike, and I am currently reading it. It’s pretty much as bad ass as you think it is. I’m not sure why Star Wars and horror (and more specifically, zombies) hasn’t been done before, but count me in. EXCEPT, Star Wars really needs to tread lightly here. A virus that makes characters zombie-like is awesome, but I’m not sure I want vampires or werewolves popping up. Actually, I KNOW I don’t want vampires popping up. I love this idea, but it has the potential to get very bad, very quickly.

Unlike every other Star Wars book that is published, this book is a one-shot. It’s not part of some multi-arc storyline in which you have to read 6 other books and 2 other comic books to fully get the story. It’s completely self-contained, like all Star Wars books USED to be in the ’90s. And I love it because of that. These ridiculous 19 book series with in a series are why I stopped reading Star Wars fiction to begin with.

Another cool zombie item? Star Wars zombie posters. There is some really cool zombie artwork on the Official Star Wars Blog Flickr Photostream. There are several zombie versions of the Star Wars posters, like Zombie Wars and Episode III: Revenge of the Zombies (click images to see them BIGGER).

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Hilariously Inappropriate Star Wars items

Posted in humor, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags movies, pop culture, Star Wars on September 23, 2009 by Paxton

Star Wars is iconic. Almost all kids love it. Floppy haired ’70s kids. Neon wearing ’80s kids. Baseball cap tilted 20 degrees to the right ’90s kids. All of them. They have heard and love Star Wars (well, they’ve at least heard of it). It’s ubiquitous. With the metric tons of crap that is produced within the Star Wars brand, there is going to be a few missteps. Maybe quality control got drunk and fell asleep on the job, maybe someone just got a little greedy, maybe the Lucasfilm execs are nothing but perverts. For whatever reason, questionable products are released all the time. Here are 5 of the most inappropriate Star Wars toys meant for children.

Topps Star Wars movie card #207 — This is probably the most well known of the “vaguely obscene” Star Wars items. Take a look at this image of C3PO. Take a goooooood look. Right around the “bathing suit area”. Hmmmm, what’s that? I can’t quite………holy crap. I guess this gives new meaning to the term “fully functional”. Am I right? Goldenrod, indeed! You can click the image to make it bigger, if you are into that sort of thing (and are gross).

C3PO tape dispenser — C3PO, dude, WTF?! Was the card above not inappropriate enough? Now kids are supposed to grab your “wheel” to get some tape? For once in your life, Threepio, show some dignity. I don’t think I can “unsee” any C3PO suppositories or “body massagers” that come about because you are a media whore.

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Dork-topia: Cities that are constantly overrun by nerdy fans

Posted in Americana, books, movies, pop culture, Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, Wizard of Oz with tags books, movies, pop culture, Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, Twilight, Wizard of Oz on August 19, 2009 by Paxton

Nerds. You gotta love ’em. When they love something, they don’t half ass it. They are ALL IN. They live and learn the minutia of whatever aspect of pop culture they relate to. Be it comics, costumes, card games, TV shows, movies…whatever. And whenever they get the chance, they will make the pilgrimage to whatever place on Earth is the focal point for their obsessions. A Geek Roatrip, if you will (and I will, thank you). “So, Pax, where are the nerdiest places on Earth?” Other than the San Diego Comic Con or DragonCon in Atlanta, here is a list of the nerdiest vacation destinations in the world. And this is only a few of them. There are more, trust me.

Forks, Washington – Home of Twilight — This one is the most recent addition to the list. Forks, Washington is the real life city where the fictional Twilight novels are based. Constantly inundated by Twilight nerds (called Twerds…no, I’m not kidding) this town has finally thrown it’s collective hands in the air and said, “FINE! You dorks win. We’ll sell you Team Edward shirts, let you eat at Bella Italia (OMFG…at the EXACT table Bella and Edward had their first date!!! You must order the Mushroom Ravioli!!) and even tailor entire tours of the city around a fictional book about vampires that sparkle in the sun. Hell, visit Forks High School and buy a t-shirt as if you actually attended there with Bella and Edward. It’s all nerdy fun. I’m sure my friend Marlene will be there. Tell her “Hi”, and that I think she’s a dork.

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Glorious Glass: A look back at some of my favorite collector’s glasses

Posted in advertising, comic books, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews, Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, The Flash with tags advertising, Burger King, comic books, glasses, McDonald's, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews, Star Trek, Star Wars, Taco Bell on July 28, 2009 by Paxton

Fast food joints used to give out the best swag back in the day. At the top of this swag list was commemorative collector glasses. These were glasses made from ACTUAL glass (not f’n plastic) with kick ass graphics all over it usually given away as a premium with a purchase of food or drinks. Actually, collector glasses didn’t just come from fast food joints. The convenience store 7-11 as well as soda giants Coke and Pepsi both created collector’s glasses that were distributed in stores, gas stations, supermarkets and/or fast food joints. The heyday of collector glasses was in the ’70s and ’80s, but glasses were also released in the ’50s, ’60s and ’90s. Burger King recently revived the collector glass (real glass!!) tradition in May 2009 with their four glass set for the new Star Trek movie (Thanks, Michelle for finding those for me).

So without further ado, here are a bunch of my favorite collector glasses from the ’70s and ’80s. You can click any of the below images to see it bigger.

Burger King Star Wars/Empire/Jedi Glasses (1977, 1980, 1983) — The most famous of all commemorative glasses, the Star Wars Burger King collector glasses are what everyone thinks of when you mention “collector glasses”. A set of four were released for each movie. Surprisingly, it is not very hard to complete a set of all 12 as they made a crap-ton of them. Here’s a pic of the Star Wars set. Here’s a pic of the Empire Strikes Back set. Here’s a pic of the Return of the Jedi set.

Glasses for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom by 7-Up (1984) — This is probably one of the more obscure glass sets. Made by 7-Up to commemorate the second Indiana Jones movie, the glasses were only released to certain local fast food chains so getting a full set is extremely hard. I don’t care about a set, but I would love the Mola Ram glass (far right hand side) with him holding the still beating flaming heart. That is BAD ASS. A year earlier, in 1983, there was a set of three glasses created by Coca-Cola for Raiders of the Lost Ark but the set was never released. Check those glasses out here.

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Movie Flashback: Star Wars Episode I 10 year anniversary

Posted in movies, pop culture, reviews, Star Wars with tags Entertainment Weekly, magazine, Movie Flashback, movie reviews, movies, pop culture, Star Wars on May 19, 2009 by Paxton

Ten years ago today (May 19) Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace opened in theaters. Hard to believe it’s been 10 years. I still remember taking that week off work and going with my friend, Jason, to see multiple showings the day of release. Those multiple day screenings were seen at the now defunct Carmike Galleria 10 Cinemas.

When talking to Jason about this recently, he reminded me that we also saw a midnight screening the night before the day of release at the Summit Carmike Cinemas. Which we wound up doing again for Episode II.

I was going through some old magazines I have in my collection looking for Episode I stuff and found two issues that have cover stories on Star Wars Episode I. Both magazines cover rumors about plot lines and actors that have been possibly cast in the movie. Since the magazines are over 12 years old the information they have is sketchy and mostly rumor, but it’s fun to look at what the magazines thought the new Star Wars movie(s) would be about. Especially at this point in time when we’ve seen the whole prequel trilogy.

So, let’s look at these two magazines from the early ’90s that had cover stories on the movie we now know as Episode I: The Phantom Menace. We’ll also see a few tidbits of info these magazines speculated on that, in hindsight, are wildly false rumors.

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