Tag Archives: Optimus Prime

It’s Not Real To Them, Damnit

So. As an adult, you have a problem with a movie that you loved as a child. I see on social media that this is a common grievance. I don’t need to name a film. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of motion pictures that don’t stand up to the intense scrutiny and overthinking of 2017.

It’s not them. It’s you. You are the problem.

I’ll begin with a contemporary example: any current superhero movie. Marvel, DC, independent degeneracy like Deadpool and Kick-Ass; it’s all the same. Permit me to make another assumption- you got all worked-up over seeing the latest hero flick, and you left the theater three hours later feeling empty and disappointed, without knowing why.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned

Matty Watches Transformers: The Last Knight

As an “underground” artist, I go broke often. Sometimes I have to sacrifice comfort or nourishment to pay my rent.

Sometimes, I’m broke because I’m a total assclown who takes public transportation across town to see a $22 popcorn movie, alone. (I didn’t have enough for actual popcorn.)

Even while facing the consequences, I have no regrets.

I don’t know what the hell Al Gore had to do with the history of Transformers, and I don’t want to know. I had to sit through the trailer for his second bullshit global-warming scare film, and he can go fuck himself with an iceberg.

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3-D’s Nuts

3-D movies employ greatly improved technology today. Previously, they used the same glasses as 3-D comic books did; cardboard with acetate lenses in red and blue.

My personal pair, since 1991’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. (As much as would fit on my scanner.)

3-D comics were unreadable without these glasses. I still have two issues: Gumby 3-D and Transformers in 3-D #3, both from Blackthorne Publishing.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Magazine Rack, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee

Ze Brain On Ze Table

In case you’re a neophyte to this website and its redundant obsessions, 2009 saw the release of the hysterically divisive toy movie Revenge of the Fallen. To be kind, I reference this beloved turkey a lot. So often, in fact, that I’ve tried in recent months to avoid referencing it, to keep from wearing it out.

So much for that.

I bring it up almost as frequently as I do my time in jail. It even showed on the giant TV in stir- and the other inmates had seen it so many times they were sick of it. It was like hanging out with a hundred friends in a warehouse, bickering over what to watch. Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Robot Toy Fetish, Thousand Listen Club

The Necco Betrayal

Everyone loves a gingerbread house. Even South Park’s hate campaign against the “ginger” couldn’t dull the sugary luster of the beloved cookie-built domicile. You probably remember the first time you saw one, right? Or the first time you smelled one?

How to make me put a ring on it*, chapter one. (*the robot.)

Sometime in the late 1970s, at my local church, I spied and smelled a real, elaborate gingerbread house for the first time. It was during an Advent festival, with apple-cheeked residents of my snowy hometown selling pinecone ornaments and weaving fragrant holiday wreaths budded with hollyberry. Someone had knocked themselves out on the centerpiece, a resplendent dwelling of gingerbread with all the confectionery trimmings, the kind that lured the likes of Hansel and Gretel to their near-doom.

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Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Eatable Things, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Worst Of All

Disappointment: Childhood’s Elegy

From BIUL III.

From BIUL III.

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Freddy vs. Jason

Horror icons are sparse in the 21st century for a very simple reason. Horror used to be adults scaring children. Now it’s all about creepy children scaring adults, and adults don’t scare the way kids do. Hence, a decent slasher flick gets forgotten after four or five years, regardless of how many sequels it has (witness the interminable Saw franchise of torture-porn).

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Two of the most enduring figures in terror are Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, of the Nightmare on Elm St. and Friday the 13th franchises. Both are bogeymen; mythical killers of young folks, in familiar settings. Therein lies the key to their longevity and appeal. Continue reading

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Thrills: A Retrospective

The life of a hardcore junkie.

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Animation Analysis: The Transformers: The Movie

For the past ten years, one Rhode Island company has made me so deliriously happy, I’ve considered corporate personhood, so I could ask for its hand in marriage.

Hasbro.

They even threw in a rubsign. Hasbro is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

They even threw in a rubsign. Hasbro is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

2006 was the year this little toy company had a subline of their Transformers toys called “Classics”; new figures of favorite characters from the 1984 cartoon. And a funny thing happened- these robots from an old show sold very, very well. Characters like “Bumblebee”, “Megatron” and “Optimus Prime” were familiar to a enviously broad range of people. They had staying power equal to Superman or Batman. The world was on the cusp of finding this out.   Continue reading

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New Kids On The Block

Savannah, Georgia, late 1990.

A young man of eighteen staples fliers around his college campus, advertising his upcoming periodical. And his Cult. 

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