retro entertainment since 2001
Hahah…I picked this Mars Attacks! figure up at World’s Best Comics in Sacramento today, and it’s wonderful. The original ’60s Topps cards were amazingly lurid and one of them featured a horrible Martian blasting a dog with his ray gun wtih the card title “Destroying A Dog.” This figure by ReAction even includes the ill-fated dog as an accessory. You can check out so many more cool figures by ReAction right here.… read more
One of the weirdly charming and bizarre parts of the forgotten 1990 Captain America film is when he pretends to be carsick to steal a car. It’s a weird enough scene to see once, but as you’ll see in the video clip below, he actually pulls this stunt TWICE! Who wants to see Cap throw his shield and do cool stunts when you can enjoy him faking nausea and carjacking innocent citizens?
I was working in San Francisco in the … read more
Here’s a fun interview I did with Rob Zombie back in 2011. He was doing a practice show at now long gone theater in Modesto called The Fat Cat. What a thrill it was to interview him in his trailer before the concert. Rob is one of the cooler guys I ever met. He emailed me out of nowhere years back to thank me for the review I gave his masterpiece The Devil’s Rejects. We corresponded off and on and … read more
Historical fiction goes back to the time of Shakespeare, and even The Bible. Historical fiction allows the artist to fill in the unrecorded pieces, add conversations that were previously left to speculation, or in some cases, simply invent new scenes or alternate realities to the events that occurred. As escapism, historical fiction is a way for people to experience the event through a different perspective, or ground an unrelated story in something that’s relatable, or provide a different context. In … read more
Plants, trees, vines, and vegetation of all sorts have played an important part of pop culture since pop culture first existed. From The Garden of Eden to The Sherwood Forest, plants big and small have influenced literature, TV shows, and toys from all generations. This list started out as kind of a joke but the more I thought about it, the more I totally dug the idea. Plus any chance I have to write about Kooky Spooky Trees is worth … read more
NOTE: This is an interview I did with Robert Graysmith back in 2007 right when the David Fincher film based on his Zodiac book came out. Inspector David Toschi has since passed away in 2018 but is referred to in the present tense in this piece.
I picked up Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac when it first came out in 1986. I was a high school senior in the Bay Area of California, right in the heart of where the actual crimes … read more