Just wanted to drop by from my holiday hiatus and say that I hope everyone has the best holiday season they can (times being how they are and all.)  To brighten up your day I'd like to share this great four page Transformers comic from (of all places) Woman's Day Magazine 12/26/1985.  This was sent to me a while back by the ever awesome Jerzy Drozd (of the Art & Story Podcast, MLaT Comics, and Sugary Serials.)  So join me in reading just how the Transformers Saved Christmas!









Merry Christmas to all and to all (insert something clever here!)

**Update** Apparently the release date for the single season 1 volume has been pushed back two months. Ug.

Jeez, I sure haven't been active this past couple weeks.  Sigh, the holiday season is smacking me in the face with its good will and cheer I guess.  I probably won't have much time to post for the next week or so as I'll be leaving town to visit family.  I did want to throw up this quick post though (and just in time for holiday shopping fun!)

Back a few months ago, Time Life announced that they were going to release a complete series set for the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  On the one hand it was pretty cool that this show was finally going to get some love on DVD, but on the other it was announced as a Time Life online exclusive, which just pissed me off.  Basically it was forcing fans of the show to make a large 5-season purchase (retailing at about $175) for a 20 year-old cartoon series.  That's one heck of a dent in the pocketbook, at least for mine that is.  Though I'm a completist when it comes to collecting 80s cartoons on DVD, I like to have the option to buy bits at a time.  Besides, what if I'm not interested in later seasons, when it converts to Slimer & the Real Ghostbusters?  Anyway, I bitched about it earlier in the year and there's no use in rehashing that.  What I recently found out was that there is going to be a single season release through normal retailers, at least for the 1st season, which is slated to come out from Time Life on January 27th, 2009!  It's priced at a decent $40, but you can currently pre-order it on Amazon for only $27.  Now that is what I'm talking about!

The only question I have now is whether or not TL will be releasing the remaining seasons individually, or if this is simply bait to pick up the complete series set?  Either way, I will be busting some ghosts in about two months, and that's all I really care about right now.

Also, in new 80s cartoon on DVD news, I also just recently discovered that a couple of shows have recently seen new releases.  The very odd 80s cartoon Drak Pack was released in Canada recently, which is good news for us Region 1 Drak Pack fans.  If you've never seen it, the show revolves around the exploits of three teenagers who are descendants of Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and the Wolfman, who fight crime, ala Scooby Doo (it was a Hanna Barbera show after all.)  Though they are typically three normal teens, they can transform into monstrous versions of their classic monster ancestors by doing a group high five and shouting Whack-O!  Honestly the show itself is pretty wacko, but in a good way. the show borrows a lot from its predecessor the Groovie Goolies, but honestly it's not like there is a glut of monster themed cartoons.  Anyway, you can either order the show from Amazon Canada, or get it from a retailer new/imported, also on amazon for pretty much the same price (about $30 US.)



I also noticed that the Pound Puppies movie is available on DVD (and has been for a couple years.)



Anyway, hope to be back posting soon.

I've been on a John C. Reilly kick lately, and this past week I sat down and watched the flick The Promotion (written and directed by Steve Conrad.)  I wasn't expecting to really connect with the film at all as it's sort of set up with a pretty standard comedy plot and stars Seann William Scott (he of Stiffler fame from the American Pie movies) who I'm not all that enamored with.  Honestly, I was expecting to enjoy Reilly's performance, a few jokes here and there and that's about it.



Part my initial disinterest was that the flick seemed to be drawing from the same cultural ennui of flicks like Waiting, Office Space and more importantly Clerks.  I experienced Clerks at the perfect age, 19, right smack dab in the middle of my initial career as a grocery store stock clerk and budding film buff, and connected with it in a very visceral way.  For my money Kevin Smith totally captured what life was life like for a 20-something pop culture nerd working in retail, whittling away the hours with humor as the world (customers, supervisors, family, etc.) slowly sucked away at your soul.  Well, with a lot of genres (sub-genres, sub-categories, what-have-you) it seems like there are one or two films that do a great job of addressing the particular subject matter, and thereafter other flicks just seem to be watered down imitations or parodies.  For me, in the minimum wage lackey category of comedy films, Clerks stands head and shoulders above the rest (with a nice honorable mention to Office Space, even though it deals more with corporate misery), and after watching flicks like Waiting or Kill the Man I was getting kind of tired of the genre.  When I saw the trailer for the Promotion, I was expecting just more of the same.

Actually, I think part of my disinterest lies simply with the fact that I've moved on from that time and place in my life.  I'm over ten years older, working a slightly more rewarding office job (I still emotionally connect to Office Space just fine thank you), and I'm less interested in wallowing in sarcastic hopelessness, preferring a bit more upbeat fare (in general, not as a rule.)  Again, watching the trailer for the Promotion, which revolves around two grocery store assistant managers vying for the coveted store manager position at a new location, I was expecting to be less than engaged by the plot.

For the first half of the film everything was going exactly as I figured.  I was really enjoying John C. Reilly's Richard Wehlner, there were a couple of really funny jokes (in particular a handful about an annoying banjo teacher/gay dominatrix type), and a few surprising cameos (in particular by Jason Bateman and Bobby Cannavale.)  I was actually a little surprised that Seann William Scott didn't bug me all that much (something I also noticed in the flick Southland Tales), though there wasn't anything particularly engaging about him either.  Then, as the rivalry between Reilly and Scott started to heat up a bit I found myself wanting the film to side-step the clichéd plot (where one of the two would take on the role of the villain and you’d start rooting for the other by proxy) and veer into more uncharted territory.  The weird thing is that it did.

I as mentioned before, the film stars Scott as Doug Stauber, who is an assistant manager at a grocery store chain located in Chicago, and along with his wife (played by Jenna Fischer) is just trying to make a go of life in middle class America.  Figuring on being the shoo-in for the Store Manager position at a new location under construction, the couple decides to take a chance on buying their first house.  At the same time, Canadian transplant Richard Wehlner (Reilly) (and his family, including his Scottish wife played by Lili Taylor), also an assistant manager (though for a chain of Canadian sister stores), and a recovering drug addict, transfers to Chicago putting Stauber's "shoo-in" status in jeopardy.  As the bigwigs descend on the store to check up on Doug and Richard, each end up dealing with their own demons, be it a gang making life on parking lot duty hell, the possibility of slipping back into depression, alcohol and drugs, or their need to get 'promoted' in order to grab a hold on their life.

Though the film is mainly a comedy, it manages to avoid some of the more obvious or gratuitous plot machinations, and pretty much plays the jokes in a subtle manner (even the more outrageous humor isn't in your face.)  The flick manages to balance the gags with plenty of introspection and does a surprisingly amazing job at illustrating a more real-life struggle for success.  This is what kills me about most movies where the characters are always shooting for the stars, where success is defined only by achieving what in the long run only a very few people can.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for striving for greatness, but I'm also content in not shooting myself into the cosmos.  Becoming an amazing success is wonderful, unless the trip there and beyond is horrible.  Anyway, about halfway into the film I started hoping for a particular outcome, and was surprised when it occurred.  Where Clerks deals with the grind of working a Middle American job with sarcasm, apathy and slack, The Promotion deals in hope, duty, and a positive work ethic.  It's the other side of the coin, and sort of the next logical step after a film like Clerks (which is sort of where Smith was going with Clerks II, just without the goofy dance sequences, inexcusably ignorant fanboys, and donkey sex.)

Just found out that another one of my favorite TV Shows is finally coming to DVD, the awesome (in my opinion) Tales From the Darkside!



Though I missed out on shows like the Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, and the original Alfred Hitchcock Presents (for the most part), I was weaned on horror though episodes of Tales From the Darkside, as well as other similar anthology shows like Monsters and Freddy's Nightmares.  In fact one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies is the Tales From the Darkside flick starring Debbie Harry, Buster Poindexter, Christian Slater, and Steve Buscemi.  I'm so excited to finally get a chance to relive the experience of watching this great series again.  The best part is that the release looks to be priced rather cheaply at around $30 a season.  I can't wait for February 10th to get here!

During this past Halloween season the wife and I were browsing around some of the outlet stores in North Georgia and I had another one of those lightening strike nostalgic moments while in an antique shop.  Sitting on top of a stack of old records was a copy of Scooby Doo and the Mystery of the Rider Without a Head record and storybook issued by Peter Pan records back in 1977. 

I've mentioned this feeling before, but it's my favorite sort of nostalgia moment, the kind when I can't believe I forget whatever it is that made me slap myself upside the head with disbelief.  There are plenty of these bits of pop culture flotsam and jetsam that I come across that will put a smile on my face or make me stop for a second and say "Huh", but it's really a great an rare feeling when I feel like a part of me has been lost and is there sitting in front of me again.



This particular book must have been a hand-me-down from my sister as I was born the same year it was released and probably wouldn't have used or appreciated it until I was five or six.  I'm also not sure how often I actually listened to the record as I didn't recall much when I listened to it recently…



(You can listen to the record at the great read-along site, the Secret Cavern of Read-Along Treasures.)

What really grabbed me when I found this in the antique shop, and what I really remember pouring over as a kid is the interior artwork.  Unfortunately the artist on this particular book wasn't credited, and I have a feeling it's because it was more of a quickie in-house art department rush job as opposed to shopping the work out to freelance talent.



Honestly, looking back at this stuff so many years later I have to say that I'm a bit underwhelmed at the quality.  Actually it's pretty sloppy in a lot of places, smacking of a bad tracing job.  The line work is very stiff with almost no grace or variance to the line width and weight, but even for all of this, I still love it.  It makes me feel like I'm six years old again…





My favorite bit in the book is the Rider Without a Head, not only because of the monster-esque subject matter, but because the character is rendered with the most detail and attention throughout.  In fact, the stiff art style paired with the watercolor in the book reminded me of the work of one of my favorite artists, Quinton Hoover.  When I started playing the Magic: the Gathering collectable card game back in the mid 90s, Hoover artwork was the one that really stood out and spoke to me.  I'm a big fan of the exacting lines and the colored pencil & watercolor work in the color.  It's the essence of comic book art, minus the thick black shadowing.  There's something in this type of clean line work that makes me think of cartoons or the type of simple effective illustration used in product packaging.



Even though the artwork in the Scooby Doo book isn't nearly as elegant as Quniton Hoover's work (example of which you can see here and here), it makes me wonder if spending hours pouring over the book helped to predispose me to enjoying this sort of clean style (though obviously there were the hundreds of hours of cartoon watching and comic book reading that didn't hurt.)  Looking at the pieces above and below, I really do see a close connection to Hoover's style, so much so that I would have to say that there is some sort of connection (as tenuous as it seems.)  At the end of the day it's another piece of the puzzle at least.



On a side note, I thought it was interesting how on-model the above image of Scooby is compared to the art in the rest of the book.  You see this exact same pose repeated in the final image in the book, again leading me to think that a good bit of the artwork was traced from other existing Scooby Doo work.











Though I had a handful of other read-along storybook and record sets (namely Gremlins, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and the various weird Star Wars exopanded universe books like Planet of the Hoojibs), I don't remember if I had any others released by Peter Pan Records.  I seem to remember the company character icon pretty well though.  I wonder if it was from pouring over this Scooby Doo book so many times?

I'm sure I've written about this before, but one of the aspects I love the most about pop culture is how I can chart the time line of my life by what was bouncing around my skull at the time.  Back in the late 80s, early 90s, my family was going though a lot of changes, mostly geographically, taking us from Florida to Massachusetts, then to New Hampshire, and eventually back down south to Georgia (all within a one year period.)  This was a tough time for me as I was always in flux, leaving behind best friends and family, jumping into new climates (in particular dealing with snow for the first time in my life), and continuously changing schools (as well as going from middle back to elementary because the programs up north had 6th grade as part of elementary.)  The only constant in my life at the time was my love for and addiction to the DuckTales cartoon.  Actually it was DuckTales and the movie Willow as my mother was also in a weird place, and we ended up watching Ron Howard and George Lucas' under appreciated fantasy flick almost nightly.

For me, sitting down in front of the TV and hearing the opening synthesized drum beats from the DuckTales theme was like a warm blanket and a cup of chicken noodle soup.  There was nothing more comforting at the time than watching Huey, Dewey, Louie, Doofus, Uncle Scrooge, Duckworth, Webby, Ms. Beakley, Launchpad, Gyro, Gizmoduck, and Bubba the prehistoric cave duck battling the likes of Magica de Spell, Flintheart Glomgold, the Beagles Boys, and El Capitan (from the original miniseries.)  It was always a treat when Donald duck would make an appearance, getting some shore leave from the Navy to spend some time with his nephews.

The below sheet of stickers was released in 1986, though I'm not sure if it was part of a Hallmark set or if it was just distributed by Disney (or a subsidiary) in other retail outlets…



Aside from ditching one of the Beagle Boys in the set above (and replacing it with a Magica de Spell sticker) I think this sheet does a nice job of representing the main characters of the show.  I was surprised to see Doofus getting some love here as he was pretty annoying, though I'm not sure who he's be replaced by.  I love Gryo Gearloose, but I'm not sure if he was a fan favorite, and I'm not surprised there isn't a Ms. Beakley sticker.  Gizmoduck would have been cool, but this sheet was printed before his appearance on the show.  Actually, I'm sort of surprised there wasn't a Flintheart sticker as he is more or less the main villain of the show, at least in terms of being Scrooge's nemesis.

Getting back to the show itself for a second, Ducktales, the second Disney cartoon released in the 80s (after the Adventures of the Gummi Bears), and the first of their syndicated fare (which would be followed by shows like Rescue Rangers, Talespin, and Darkwing Duck throughout the 90s) is probably the best written and executed of the various Toon Disney shows (at least IMO.)  Also, the revamp of the Duckberg characters was probably the most subtle of the various Disney chartoons adding hints of Indiana Jones' adventures to spice up the shenanigans of the greedy Scrooge and his mischievous nephews (as opposed to throwing a bunch of the Jungle Book characters into the odd air pirate setting of Talespin, or making Chip and Dale into makeshift MacGyver's in a Wings sitcom setting.)

For me, DuckTales marks the end of my afternoons watching more or less realistic action cartoons after school (like Transformers, G.I. Joe, Thundercats, Silverhawks, and Bravestarr), and the shift into more cartoony action/comedy fare (like Tiny Tunes, the Disney Shows, Animaniacs, and Freakazoid.)  Luckily the show has begun to be released on DVD by Disney (there are currently three volumes containing 75 of the 100 produced episodes, including the original mini series, available), though the sets are a bit lacking.  The episodes are out of order, and currently there are no plans to release the final 25 episodes of the show, which is kind of a shame, though if nothing else, the sets are pretty cheaply priced.

There are a ton of reasons why I'm a nerd/dork/geek/what-the-fuck-ever, but if I had to pick one that exemplified this blog, it would probably have to be the word document file that I've been working on for the past four years that I call "the list."  What is on this list you probably aren't asking?  Well I'll tell you.  It's a list of every film I've ever seen.  Not so dorky you say?  Well it's also annotated.

Over the course of the past four years I've spent a good bit of my spare time reading over IMDB lists, complete video and DVD release guides, and any other list of films I could find to compile a list of everything I've ever seen, film-wise.  I was pretty proud of myself at first because this sprang out of boredom at work as I tried to think of some project that would take a long time, and when I decided to draw up the list, I figured that I'd never finish it.  I have seen quite a few movies, but the thing that I felt was going to be the biggest stumbling block was finding thorough lists of flicks.  See most of the lists and guides I was reading were either yearly best-of's, or limited to what has been released either on video or DVD, and even then these weren't exhaustive as they leaned toward more popular fare.  So between these, 6 million Google searches, and my collection of movie ticket stubs that I started collecting about 20 years ago I managed to put together a pretty exhaustive list.

Is anyone still reading this?  God bless your inexhaustive patience and limit for boredom if you are.  So were there any stipulations to what could and couldn't find a home on the list?  There sure were.  First off, I had to feel like I remembered a decent amount of the plot in order for the flick to make it on the list.  If I remembered the title but couldn't remember the plot, I nixed it.  Second, and this is the super stupid anal part of this list considering I'm the only person who will ever see it besides what ever estate lawyer lackey is forced to read through it upon my death, I had to feel like I watched the flick from beginning to end.  So anything that I've seen edited on TV didn't make the list either.

So what are these annotations you probably aren't asking about?  Well, once I finished the general list it didn't seem quite as cool as I had hoped.  I did mention that I was a dork right?  So in order to make the list cooler than G. Gordon Liddy the night before the Watergate scandal broke, I decided to run through the list and mark each movie with some code.  First, each flick was marked to show who (out of my circle of friends and family) that I saw the flick with.  Then I marked it as to whether or not I saw it in the theater.  Then whether or not I owned it.  Then I figured I'd try and mark the approximate number of times I could remember watching it.  This list was really starting to take shape now.  I had to make a key for the various notations.  As a coupe de grace, I decided to highlight all the flicks that I wanted to own on DVD, and then whether or not they were available on DVD, so now the list was all colorful as well.

Outside of feeling like the biggest anal-list-retentive geek on the planet, I felt like all the time and effort I put into the this was well worth the, well, effort, if for nothing else, than for giving me fodder for other boredom relieving activities like "count the seconds".  Have you ever found yourself on the toilet with a calculator so bored that you decided to mathematically deduce the total number of seconds you've been alive, or the approximate number of breaths you've taken, or the possible number of times you've pooped in your life?  Liar, I saw you doing it.  Wil Wheaton has done it.  Well, he wasn't on the toilet, but that's neither here nor there.  Anyway, this list has a ton of statistics fodder for crap like this, from the approximate proportion of my life I've spent watching movies, to the ratio of films seen with each of my friends, and who I am more likely to see a flick with.  Last warning, I mentioned I was a dork, okay, so stop screaming at me.

One thing I'd like to do it to be able to compare this list to someone else's like another movie buff that's seen a ton of movies.  I mean, even though the list took four years to finish and refine, at the end of the day there are only 1950 films on it. Is that a lot?  Dunno.  Doesn't look like a lot, but then it felt like a lot when I set out to make it.  I think I might need therapy...

Wow, when the heck did the middle of November jump in our laps?!?  Mentally, I'm still back in late August trying to figure out how to not go stark raving mad because of all the changes at work.  Sheesh.  I'm totally neglecting the internet right now (actually it feels like I've been out of the game so to speak since the start of the year.)  But I'm not writing to complain about my silly life woes, no I'm back to get into a fun head-space, and what better way to do this than by cracking open a bootleg copy of one of my favorite all time movies, the 1986 BMX cult classic RAD.

Growing up in the 80s I had a chance to catch the insane home video boom right from the beginning, what with all of the mom & pop rental shops opening and the initial flood of movie titles on VHS and Beta.  My family was a late adopter in terms of getting our own VCR, so instead we'd rent one every other weekend from a little store tucked in a corner of a Gooding's shopping center down the street from us.  As a kid I was a creature of habit when it came to renting movies, not only because I loved watching the same flicks over and over, but also because there were only a handful of titles that I was interested in packed into that tiny rental store.  I remember that the store was divided pretty evenly between Beta and VHS, and the little old couple that owned it only ordered the flicks in one format or the other.  For some reason my parents only ever really wanted to rent a VHS player, so I was severely restricted in terms of titles to rent.  Usually it was a choice between three or four movies, Red Dawn, War Games, SpaceCamp, and RAD, and for some reason the flick that I was always choosing was RAD.   It was also around this time that I realized just how much VHS tapes used to cost back in the day.  I think on my sixth or seventh rental I got up the courage to ask my mom for a copy of the movie for Christmas, so we asked the rental store owners how much a copy cost. ;'When they told us that a new copy of the movie would run about $110, both my and my mother's jaws hit the floor.  Owning VHS was apparently only for the very, very rich in 1986 (well actually it was aimed at store owners for rentals as the industry really hadn't caught a whiff of just how much people wanted to own copies of films.)

So I never got a copy of RAD on VHS, and later on when I starting building my own library of films, I was cheated again as RAD has never been officially released on DVD.   I had to resort to picking up a bootleg copy on ebay, which was just a crappy port of an old VHS rental ripped and burned to disc.  My copy did come with a nice bonus disc though, which included the majority of the RAD soundtrack songs.

The flick begins with the very iconic Tri-Star opening (with the Pegasus running kitty corner into the screen and then leaping over the logo), something that I associate with plenty of Saturday afternoons spent glued to the TV during movie marathons.



Anyway, I thought I'd sort of go through the movie chronologically and talk about the stuff I find interesting.  RAD is part of an unofficial trilogy of flicks in the 80s that touch on the 3 main popular extreme (for lack of a better term) sports of the decade (skate boarding, which was covered by the movie Thrasin', surfing covered in the seriously underrated flick North Shore, and BMX.)  Though there were a couple other BMX movies in the 80s (namely the Aussie flick BMX Bandits, which was more about escaping murderous thieves than BMX), none were as cool to me as RAD.  The opening features a plethora of professional BMXers free-styling over the credits, set to the rocking Jon Farnham tune, Break the Ice (which deserves to be held up with other 80s triumphant movie rock ballads like Rock Until You Drop from Monster Squad, and You're the Best from Karate Kid.)



The flick was produced by Jack Schwartzman, the husband of one of the film's stars, Talia Shire (and father of Wes Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman.)  It was directed by Hal Needham, the guy responsible for many of the goofy Burt Reynolds car-centric comedies of the late 70s and early 80s (like Smokey and the Bandit and the Cannonball Run series), so you know that he can handle the fast paced action of RAD.

I think it was during this credit sequence that I got the most jazzed while watching the flick.  The pro BMX riders doing all sorts of stunts (which I can only hazard a guess to what the names are by using the internets) would always get me in the mood to go outside and try them myself.  Trouble was that I'm horribly uncoordinated when it comes to most physical activities, not to mention that I'm deathly afraid of pain and looking too much like an ass (a trait I've since grown out of), so I'd get pumped, go outside to ride my bike (a sweet powder blue and white GT Performer covered in pink GT stickers), fall off once while trying to do a simple trick and then pedal back home in a huff.  Pretty sad I know.  Guess I would have been the definition of a poser.

Anyway, the flick's main star is Bill Allen who at the time was a 24 year-old guy who looked a hell of a lot like a young Powers Booth.  Playing opposite of Allen was a young Lori Loughlin, who would later on play Uncle Jessie's girlfriend/wife on Full House for six or seven seasons.  Rounding out the cast (in terms of the more known established actors) are Ray Walston of Fast Times at Ridgemont High fame, Jack Weston (who I remember mostly from Dirty Dancing, Ishtar and Short Circuit 2, but who also had turns in flicks like the Cincinnati Kid and the original Thomas Crown Affair), and H.B. Haggerty (who was a familiar wrestler and starred in another underrated flick from the 80s, Million Dollar Mystery.)



In the above screen caps you can take a gander at two of my favorite 80s BMX memories, the first being a fabled full pipe and the second my favorite freestyle move though I have no idea what it's called.  Basically it's when someone does an endo, starts pogoing on the front tire and whips the frame of the bike around in circles, stepping over it as it flips around.





The opening credits sequence is one of those (for me) breathtakingly awesome bits of 80s nostalgia and excitement that I revel in like a drug.   Between the sickly sweet fist pumping heartfelt ice breaking and right making anthem playing over the free-styling action, and the non stop montage of professional BMX riders doing all your basic tricks and such, it's just 80s perfection.  Every time I hopped on my GT Performer heading out for school in the morning, this is the kind of thing I had in my mind's eye.  Sure, I couldn't do much besides popping a wheelie or coming to a side-sliding stop, but I always imagined I was just as talented and, well, cool.  Never meant to be though.

Anyway, back to the film.   The action opens on Cru Jones and his two friends Becky and Luke, splitting up to do their morning paper routes…



What follows is a montage (of which this film has in spades) of the three playing out every possible BMX cliché and fantasy, at least in terms of riding around a local neighborhood goes.  There's riding through construction sites (which was always a favorite of mine growing up within a series of newly built subdivisions…)



…followed by the perfectly timed (or not so much so) jump off of one structure onto a car (and the hilarious wipe out that ensues, complete with straightening of hair and uttering the word "gnarly".)



To illustrate just how ensconced Cru and his compatriots are in their small town, the local fire department is shown getting their delivery mid-street at the appointed time, as well as a friendly garbage man who obviously gives Cru a 'lift' on a regular basis…



Of course, everything isn't wine and roses.  The filmmakers had to make sure and keep an edge to the characters, which is where the ornery residents of the 'hood come in.  You've got the guy who doesn't appreciate his paper thrown into his flower bed, and the most typecast curmudgeon of all time, Ray Walston, who gets a walkway full of spilled coffee and newspaper, courtesy of our hero Mr. Jones.



The sequence ends with Cru in the middle of town staring down an iconic clock tower pumped at another shot at his own best time.  Again, though this sequence is pretty cliché, it does address a lot of what it felt like to cut through my own neighborhood, using my regular shortcuts through golf courses, and light woods to get to school or my friend's houses.

There's even a nicely executed bit with Cru riding though a specifically rigged section of fencing (again, another childhood fantasy of secret passageways hidden throughout the subdivision), which he then turns to face revealing the plot of the film in an advertisement for Helltrack, a 7-Eleven sponsored BMX event coming to the small town.



Again, the plot is pretty straight forward with the corrupt owner of a BMX company (an actual company Mongoose, who I'm sure didn't realize how their company was going to be painted when they agreed to be featured in the film) putting on Helltrack to promote one of his star riders, Bart Taylor (played by real life Olympian Bart Conner), and securing a million dollar T-Shirt licensing deal.  The catch, and the entry of our hero into the story, comes with a local town hall meeting where the residents want to know if local talent can enter into the race.  After some thought, Mongoose owner Duke Best (played with plenty of sleeze by Jack Weston) decides that there will be a qualifying race, the top contenders of which will be featured in the final Helltrack race.



If you've ever seen a kids flick in your life you can probably figure out the rest of the film from here.  But this is beside the point as the cult status of this film isn't in its intricate plot shenanigans, but in the 80s laced cheese, and fun BMX sequences.  One of my favorite of which takes place in a lumberyard where our heroes have a clubhouse (again, another staple of my childhood fantasies realized on film.)  Again, like with the morning paper route antics, this group of BMX nerds is apparently frequently confronted by a local motorcycle cop (played by the iconic H. B. Hagerty) who chases them for sport.  In this bit, it involves riding around huge stacks of freshly cut & stacked wood, as well as a mountain of logs that Cru ends up very unconvincingly riding up to evade the policeman (you can see the planks through the logs the stunt rider used to scale the heap.)  It's crazy and over the top set to a goofy fun rock song called Get Strange by the act Hubert Kah.



Of course, there's also the angle of the Cru's home life with precocious sister Wesley (place in pitch perfect Peppermint Patty tomboy by Laura Jacoby), and his hardworking depressed mother played by Talia Shire (who brings way more gravitas to the role than the film probably calls for, but is plenty welcome.)   Basically, the old push and pull of Cru's hopes and dreams of becoming an ace BMXer, and his obligation to get good grades and go to college (the money for which his mother works hard to earn.)   It's not enough that there's a super evil greedy BMX company owner to contend with.



Completing the template set up by films like the Karate Kid, Cru also has to master that perfect race winning BMX trick, the awe inspiring 360 degree mid jump back flip.  It's surely the crane kick of this film, though is eventually more or less useless in the grand scheme of things.



The film really picks up steam with the introduction of the main villains of the piece, Bart Taylor and his twin toadies, Rod & Rex Reynolds (played by the dreamy real life twins Carey and Chad Hayes respectively.)  They're introduced in the weirdest fashion, a parade through the center of town.  Granted, the whole Helltrack business would probably be a big deal, but parade worthy?  I don’t know.  Of course, blowing into town along side Bart, Rod, and Rex is the lovely Christian Hollings (played by the one and only Lori Loughlin, who looks about ten years older than the character she was cast to play.)



One of the weird themes in this flick involves our hero Cru not always portrayed in the best of lights.  As I mentioned in the beginning of the film he's not the best paperboy, annoying shop keeps by riding through their stores, and knocking coffee out of senior citizen's hands willy nilly.  There's also a short bit with Cru jumping a fence into the school parking lot right into the middle of a group of yuppie teens, who granted probably deserved it, though it's still unprovoked and not the nicest.  During the parade, there is a weird sequence where Cru and his friends stop the parade to let a lady in a car on a side street through the traffic, but then to the angry sneers of the evil BMXers and being chased by the local fuzz, Cru beats a hasty getaway by jumping his bike onto a car and riding over it.  Maybe it's just the crotchety old curmudgeon in me, but this would have pissed me off and I'm sure dented the hood and roof to hell and back.  Maybe I'm just getting to old to appreciate these teen action flicks.



By far, my favorite sequence in the entire film revolves around a school dance that Bart, Rod and Rex are forced to attend while in town.  The scenes feature two of the zaniest, most ridiculous dance sequences ever put to film (including both Rodney Dangerfield performances in Caddyshack and Back to School.)  The first is the stupendously retarded evil line dancing bit, set to the song Music That You Can Dance To by Sparks.  Bart Taylor is decked out in his supremely "cool" suit jacket over a plain yellow T-shirt looking like a reject Billy Zabka clone and is dancing with a hussy all gussied up to look like Debbie Harry.   They're both so stiff and trying way too hard to exude sexiness that they come off laughable, particularly in their Macarena-like dance moves (don't you dig the crossed arms grasping the shoulders dance move?)   The look of evil intensity on their faces is offset by the absurd faux break dancing styles of the Reynolds twins dancing around a zebra-striped, skintight-lycra-wearing shell of a woman.  Hands down, the evil dancing craziness reaches a nice crescendo when the twins drop to the floor doing the god awful push-ups move, followed by a double dose of the worm that has to bee seen to be believed.



As all this is going on inside, Cru (who has come to the dance Dutch after being rebuffed earlier in the film), is doing a bunch of freestyle BMX tricks outside the school gym.  A crowd begins to gather, when all of a sudden Lori Loughlin arrives and a very tenuous, yet lasting connection is formed between the two star-crossed lovers…



…which leads to the single most insane dance sequence ever!



Set to Real Life's Send Me an Angel, Cru and Christian proceed to rip up the floor BMX style, dancing on their bikes.  The above screen captures just don't do this sequence justice.   In fact I don't have the words to adequately describe just how over the top, hilarious, and amazing this sequence is (check out youtube for the proof and judge for yourselves…)
This craziness is followed by a lightening fast procession of falling in love montage scenes set to With You by John Farnham.  Again, it's predictably hokey, but lovable just the same and ends with the oddly named Ass Sliding scene.  Why is there a nice concrete slide in the middle of the woods leading down into a nearby lake?  Don’t know, but it makes for some zaney love scenes…



Again, adding to the idea that Cru isn't the best person in the world, he ends up sort of cheating during the Helltrack qualifying races by riding outside of the boundaries to avoid entangling with the other racers, and skipping over obstacles.  It's a weird message to send to kids, and it sort of ends up muddying the film a bit.  Ces't la vie though.  The sequence is scored by the rocking Thunder in Your Heart by John Farnham, which is equally as high five inducing as the opening song Break the Ice.   It's rare that a movie like this get two fist pumping anthems…



Of course, by taking part in the qualifiers, Cru has to pass up on taking his SATs, and really pisses his mother off.

To complete the clichéd plot, Cru is wooed by both Duke Best and the evil BMX hussies to come ride for them, and just as soon as he turns them down, our hero finds more obstacles in the way of riding at Helltrack…



Enter the last bit of cult styling to the movie with the introduction of the Rad Racing team, as Cru and his friends find that they have to have a liquid corporate sponsor in order to ride at Helltrack.  The group decides to print up their own T-Shirts with their newly formed team logo and sell them to raise the money they need to race.



Of course in all the ruckus there is some strife for the blossoming relationship between Cru and Christian.   If this film holds the record for the most insane dance sequence, then it also holds the record for the corniest make-up love scene involving a god awful poster featuring pandas and ice cream, reenacted by the two doe-eyed lovers.



As a quick aside, take a look at that monster comic book rack in that ice cream/convenience store!



Again, falling back on the Karate Kid template, the film features a 'sweep the leg' moment as Duke Best informs Bart, Rod and Rex that they need to wipeout Cru no matter what it takes (punctuated by Weston knocking back some whiskey.)



The film builds to the crazy BMX track called Helltrack, and boy does it live up to its name.  Featuring an almost two story vertical drop and some craze jumps (for standard BMX bikes at least), not to mention a giant cereal bowl (of Kix no less), Helltrack was a very convincing set piece.



Again, another strength of this movie was that it featured a bevy of real BMX superstars…



A). Team Hutch – Jeff Ingram. B). Team Robinson – Richard Fleming. C). Factory DK – Robert Rupe. D). Powerlite – Danny Millwee. E). Redline Team – Scott Clark. F). Norco – Kirk Bihun. G). GT – Mike Napareho. H). Binghams Schwinn – Glen Adams. I). Peddle Power Rider – Chris Phoenix. J). Team Robinson – Travis Chipres. K). GT – Eddie Fiola (who also did most of the stunt riding for Cru in the Film as well as being the Technical Advisor on the stunts.) L). GT – Kevin Hull. M). Skyway – Richie Anderson. N). Vans – Beatle Rosecrans. O). Hutch – "Hollywood" Mike Miranda.







All in all, this is one of my favorite cheesy films from the 80s, one that I can watch a hundred times in a row and never get tired of.  I'm sure true BMX fanatics can't stand the flick, but as a kid I loved it to pieces.  Hopefully one day it'll get a true DVD release, but in the meantime I hear that Bill Allen is signing copies of the bootlegs (as well as selling headshots.)  Also, don't forget to check his site for some more Rad trivia, straight from Cru's mouth...

Did you ever wonder how some people can find the time to have multiple blogs?  Well I did, and then for some insane reason decided to start up a second about a year or so ago called Buried in DVDs where I waxed deconstructive on my favorite movies and my DVD collection.  I felt awesomely productive for a few months, and then I was all of a sudden asking myself where in the hell did I think I'd find the time for a second site and promptly stopped updating it.  I think I initially wanted to keep this content separate from Branded as I was going to get into a lot of non-eighties flicks and TV shows, but honestly, I don't really think it's necessary to paint myself into such a tight 80s corner.  So I've decide to integrate the archives of Buried in DVDs into Branded (a process that is one hell of a time sucker. )

Anyway, for anyone curious, there are a handful of Buried posts, well, buried in this site now (you can access them through the banner on the sidebar.)  Hopefully this will free me up to posting about movies and TV shows again as I at least feel it's all working toward the same goal (and site) now…

It's kind of weird how much I switch off holiday-wise after Halloween.  Sure, there are aspects to some of the American holidays that get me excited, but there really is no other holiday that even remotely gets me jazzed besides the 'ween.  I like seeing my family during Christmas, but I'm getting to a near Scrooge level of bah-humbugging when it comes to the pageantry and gift giving.  From a totally pop culture angle there isn't much about Easter that floats my boat besides my first Cadbury Egg of the season (which is also subsequently my last as well.)  I detest the pointlessness and card company greed of Valentine's Day (not to mention that I can't find sets of kid or cartoon inspired card sets that I dig anymore.)  I don't have the energy or interest in color-coordinating my clothing choices for St. Patrick's Day.  Fear of living in rough neighborhoods and a general Curmudgeon-ness has also deflated my love of the sound of fireworks during the 4th of July (not to mention my near non-existent general patriotism for being an American, and the fact that no one ever stops with the fourth to set off firecrackers and the like and it gets old real quick.)  That leaves Thanksgiving, and again I find myself teetering dangerously toward falling out of love with the holiday. 

I've never managed to wake up early enough to enjoy the Macy's parade, I don't watch football, and gorging myself until I pass out from all-too-rough heart palpitations isn't as fun as it used to be (besides tarragon and thyme scented night sweats aren't the most attractive prospect.)  If the holiday has one thing going for it, it's the autumn association with Halloween.  Pumpkin iconography, sharing similar color schemes, and shelf space in a lot of stores in particular.  This was a way-too-long intro for the following set of stickers in this week's edition of Peel Here…



This sheet of stickers was released by Hallmark in 1984 and features a very weird video game theme that's in line with the sort of made-up video games you'd find in an arcade in Springfield (in the Simpson's.)  I'm assuming (and this really is a stretch considering these are just silly stickers) that the Turkeyvision game was modeled after Pac-Man with a manic turkey (instead of our hungry round yellow hero) gobbling up candy corn in place of power pellets, and being chased by little pilgrims and Indians (instead of multi-colored speedy ghosts.)

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'd really dig a skin-able version of Pac-Man, especially if I could design my own character sprites.  How much fun would it be to navigate a floating Charlie heard through a maze of candy pellets being chased by umpa lumpas (as a fer-instance?!?)  Anyway, take these stickers as you will…