Invasion from Planet No Face, or The Great Doorknob Robbery

Story, Character Creation, Design and Development by Anabelle McGinley

Assembly, and Continuity Editing by Jeff McGinley

Once upon a time, postal worker Ana Belle went to Wal*Mart to buy a new pair of roller skates. She skated everywhere she went, and thought it was much quicker and easier to deliver the mail on them. She found a pair of skates on a pallet in the back of the store, and also a destiny changing chocolate yo-yo. Hungry after her long route; she ate the candy while trying on the skates.

Just then the back doors of Wal*Mart were blown apart by the villainess Chainarina. With a cry of, “Yee Ha, Yippee Ki Ay, You stink if you’re good!” she chased everyone away while jumping mightily around the store. She began wrapping up the pallet with her electric seaweed chains, while absorbing energy from her other glove to power them.

Bad Geek Confessions: Star Trek

Fifty posts and I haven’t mentioned Star Trek yet? I must be slipping.

The True Crew

I’ve been watching Star Trek for as long as I’ve been capable of watching things. (Thanx, Dad.) When it was in its first syndication run, we’d watch it every night (after the vampire shows were done) at dinner. I was young enough that, for a very long time, I had this overall conception of Star Trek undivided into episodes. Tribbles, Klingons, Spock with a Beard and the American flag were all weaved into one highly unusual story in my highly unusual head. I also had the pajamas, the action figures, the communicator walkie talkies, and even the cardboard ears. The Franz Joseph designs in my Dad’s Starfleet Technical Manual were some of the first pages I poured over multiple times.

My enjoyment of the original series and its characters has not dulled over the years.

However, I cannot sit through The Next Generation or any of the other later shows.

A Carnivore's Guide to Cardiology: Drinking Problem

When I started on the major overhaul of all the stuff I ingest, I figured the food alterations would be the most difficult. They’ve actually come off pretty easy. The change in my taste buds has caused even what I WANT to eat to be radically different than it had been in the past. There are all these hidden flavors in various forms of vegetation that I had been missing all these years by blasting my tongue with a plethora of junk food.

Up until recently, I viewed pears as a slightly less flavored apple, but now I can appreciate the variety between different breeds, as long as they’re mushy. (This lets me play “Is it rotten yet?” the home game.) There are apparently different flavors of apple as well, go figure. And how’s this for an amazing discovery? Vegetables can taste different based on how you cook them! Who knew? I realize this may be obvious to most, but considering my reaction to any of them used to be, “Get these freakin’ plants off my plate!” any detection of subtlety is a huge step.

Up the Lake: Fireworks

Kids Having a Blast
Or
Light Fuse and Get Away

The official Up the Lake season begins on July 4th weekend. As it’s in a secluded space, distant from most of civilization, and (most importantly) there’s no TV, fireworks have always been a major part of the summer. When we were growing up, Nick, Skip, and I usually managed to beg, borrow, or steal several packs of firecrackers for ourselves. As these came in precious, limited quantities, we would always carefully unwrap them, and use them one at a time. This allowed the demolition to last as long as possible. We would also use them only on interestingly destroyable items, often saving some complex toy or model all winter long, in order to bring it to an impressive doom at the hands of our creative, destructive, tendencies. Once supplies were truly low, we would have long committee meetings, sometimes for hours, to determine the worthiness of an item’s artistic merit. These meetings would often degrade into arguments, provoking us to waste some of our precious stash by throwing them at each other.

Many brave army men gave their all on these rocks...

More to Meet My Eyes or Robots and Dese Guys

The Transformers’ writers said their original series stands out compared to most of the "toy commercial" type shows (the new garbage they're passing off as Transformers today included, the crusty old fan added) because they were one of the first syndicated cartoons. Writers were thrilled to be free of the Saturday Morning censors, which were the worst ever at that time. This is the period they were cutting the violent scenes out of Looney Tunes, making them impossible to follow. The writing, they stated, is pretty high by TV animation standards. This claim however, doesn’t explain why other series of the time with equally strong nostalgia have aged pretty badly and are close to unwatchable. (I’m looking at you Thundercats and G I Joe…except that episode where they travel to an alternate universe where Cobra is actually competent and has taken over the world, that one still rocks) Transformers, in contrast, holds up well enough that it was the first complete series I got and enjoyed on DVD. I’m banking it has more to do with robots driving/flying dangerously fast and then beating the crap out of each other than happy writers.

Standard's Blues

I planned to review the new Weird Al album, but in all honesty, why? If you’re a fan of his work, you’ll like it, and if not you won’t. We don’t need to waste each other’s time for me to tell you I liked it.

I will say it’s probably his best album cover. Also, thanx to having a daughter there are a couple parodies on it where I’ve actually heard the original song before Al’s version. That hasn’t happened in a decade or two.

Instead of talking about his album, here’s one of my (unworthy to be mentioned in the same post with him) songs about my job. This one’s a parody of “Smugglers Blues” by Glenn Fry.

Oh yeah, and here’s my dress shoes. As you can see, Al has influenced my footwear as well as my sense of humor.

In Brightest Midnight Preview!

The first comics I read were Golden Age. No, I’m not old enough for that, but my first steps into the world of printed superheroes (straight from watching the Superfriends) were checking out compilations and those way cool 1970’s giant treasury editions from the library. The Justice Society guys had (and still have) a special place, but the Silver Age DC gang were the heroes/myths/legends that belonged to me. They were the ones from the cartoons I knew, represented on the merchandise I owned, and still the current group at the time. From early on, Green Lantern was my favorite: Alan Scott from the Golden Age stories, but mostly Hal Jordan in all his pre Satellite Era, Rat Pack style, honest and fearless, square jawed glory. One of the first comics I ever owned was a Weird Monster War collection featuring a reprint of “The Leap Year Menace” from Green Lantern issue 3.