April 2011
42 posts
NorWesCon
I will be there for panels tonight and tomorrow night, including “Gamers Need Love Too,” “Victorian Sex,” “Body Acceptance is for Everyone,” “BDSM 101,” and “Putting the R in RPG.”
See you there, maybe.
I NEED THIS LIKE BREATHING
I love the Lion Voltron!!!!
Shel Silverstein
The God-Father of twisted poetry for children. He also wrote and performed folks songs, like “Guess I’ll have another Espresso.”
Walt Whitman
In third grade, I tested out with a college reading level. And desperate for something to appease my ravenous appetite for Literature, my mom gave me one of her college lit texts. In this text was a section on Walt Whitman, which included “Song of Myself.”
I still love Whitman.
Verse 1 of “Song of Myself”
1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you...
Nero Wolfe
Ok, so this is a three parter:
One: The 1970s television show was my first exposure to Nero Wolfe. It’s a modernized version, starring Michael Ironsides as Nero. And for all that I am generally not a fan of modernization, since I hadn’t read the source material, it didn’t bother me at the time.
Next, I actually READ the original Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout. Yes,...
The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries
Oh, this picture is so 70s it hurts! I also watched this religiously, much to my parents’ horror and chagrin. I don’t remember much about any of the storylines. I just remember watching it.
Jonny Quest
I was always bitterly disappointed in Jonny Quest because there were no girls. Yet, I still watched. Race Bannon was the hotness.
The Original Scooby Doo
I loved this show, in no small part because they always found the hoax behind the supposed supernatural stuff going on. Yes, Scooby Doo is an awesome Skeptic, if not Atheist, cartoon.
I greatly dislike the more recent ones with actual supernatural things going on in them.
I also wanted to be the Lone Ranger
Sadly, a horrid allergy to horses nipped this career choice in the bud.
I wanted to be Zorro so badly.
Not be saved by Zorro. BE Zorro. I took fencing in college because of this.
Johnny Socko!
Loved this as a kid!
The Munsters
Not as good as the Addams Family, but they had a sweet car, and Dragon named Spot.
G-Force, or Battle of the Planets
This anime was dubbed and released in the US as G-Force in the 70s. I watched this religiously. It was my first exposure to anime and shaped a lot of my future tastes.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
This came on either right before or right after Twilight Zone, and I was an even bigger fan of this show. In fact, I distinctly remember when I was five or six, I, and my best friend Brent, who lived next door, once buried an ant alive in effigy, naming it Alfred Hitchcock because we’d been disappointed in the outcome of the previous night’s episode.
I told you, these things bent me...
The Twilight Zone
One of the local channels played the Twilight Zone reruns all the time! I watched religiously. It came on right after Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
My father read me Sherlock Holmes as bedtime...
He actually had a slipboxed edition of all of them in paperback. I have this edition. I haven’t read it in ages. I probably should.
Things that bent me in my childhood.
My most favorite television show of all time ever!
Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes
Yeah, looking at this I can see the genesis of a LOT of my celebrity crushes. He will always be Sherlock Holmes for me.
Excalibur - This comic cemented my love for...
Ok, embarassing true confessions time. I broke up with my first, serious adult-type boyfriend at 19 (he was 24)*. I was devastated. We really should have ended it about 6 months before we did, and he spent those six months passive aggressively trying to make ME dump him, so I could be the bad guy and he could score awesome pity sex or something. I did finally dump him (I still thank him for...
Elinor from Ralph Bakshi's Wizards
She was a positive role model for a curvy girl (even while I was starving myself, I think I dipped below a double digit dress size for all of a bout 20 minutes). Everyone else in the media was tall and slender. Elinor looked like me.
BRILLIANT!!!!
This is conceivably the best thing ever in the entire universe.
(via Cartoon Illuminati by *AdamWithers on deviantART)
The Cast (Clockwise from top center): Daria Morgendorffer (Daria), Susan and Mary Test (Johnny Test), Velma Dinkley (Scooby Doo), Dexter (Dexter’s Laboratory), Edd (Ed, Edd, n’ Eddy), Nigel Uno (Codename: Kids Next Door), and Jimmy Neutron.
Stabbing Contest has been at the Demotivator site
My first Rocky Cast
Let’s see if this works.
I’m second from the left in the back row, playing Frank.
Rocky Horror Picture Show
I moved to Seattle in 1988, just shy of my 17th birthday. During my senior year, one of my friends took me to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Even though I was a “virgin,” I got drafted into playing Janet because their Janet hadn’t shown up. I came back the next week, and the next. Their Janet kept bailing, so I got pulled in kind of full time. In spite of the fact that...
Elvira Mistress of the Dark
I love horror movies.
I love cheesy horror movies.
Elvira had a series of horror movies released with her intros and the occasional interjection. She was one of my heroes.
Clockwork Orange
I had Cinemax in the 80s. Ergo, I watched A Clockwork Orange a lot. A LOT. I can still recite parts of it.
Real Genius
Positive portrayal of nerds as the good guys!
Nerds save the day!!!!!
I think this is a far more important nerd movie than Revenge of the Nerds. Because, in RotN, they succeed mostly in just bagging cheerleaders (in what would actually be legally termed rape, i.e. sex by deception) and partying. In Real Genius, they actually do save the world (by inference).
Vampire Lestat
Yeah, I read this, also in Kettle Falls when I was 12, and I loved it. Reading this first, however, meant I could never ever read Interview, it just sounded like Louis whining. I also loved Queen of the Damned, The Mummy, and Feast of All Saints… And then Anne Rice lost her tiny little mind.
Vampire Junction by SP Somtow
This was the best photo I could find of the original cover. I loved this book. I found it in a grocery store in Kettle Falls, WA the summer we lived there on a job site, and I read it over and over and over.
Dracula
When I was fourteen I memorized his soliloquy to Mina: “Be my bountiful wine press for awhile…” And had Francis Ford Coppola used that one speech in the movie, I would have forgiven him EVERYTHING else, the werewolf sex, the reincarnation, everything… But he didn’t. I maintain that his film was a very pretty vampire film, it was not Dracula.
Frank Langella will...
Dragonlance
Yet another, don’t try to go back and read it as an adult. However, it’s brilliant escapism for teens, particularly if they’re gamers.
I think Raistlin set the mold for many of my later fictional crushes.
The Xanth novels by Piers Anthony
If you loved these as a teenager, I do not recommend going back to re-read them.
Just don’t. They are nowhere near as funny or good as you remember, and you will long for your memories of reading them in your teens.
That said, for teens, these books are brilliant. I highly recommend them for anyone with teenagers who are into fantasy. For adults, I recommend his Lords of the Tarot,...
Anne McCafferey's Pern Books
This is not the edition I have and have replaced several times. As an early developing, nerdy girl with a feminist mom who had just recently been transplanted to Idaho, these books probably saved my life. I read them over and over and over. I checked them out of the library at least a dozen times before I got my own copies.
I got to meet Anne McCafferey a few years ago at DragonCon, and...
Things that got me through my horrid adolescence
Elfquest. A high school boyfriend had these graphic novels, and wound up giving them to me. I gave them, in turn, to a friend who was having a hard time, and bought new copies for myself later. Just recently someone posted a link to the trailer for an Elfquest Fan-movie. And I went back and re-read the entire original series in, oh, a morning.
Ultimates Nightcrawler
Here's another good one
In other things that make me feel better.
Not kidding when I tell you I have a Nightcrawler tattoo on my left calf. I’ve also got plans for an Age of Apocalypse Nightcrawler on my right calf, and a few others.
Mmmm, David Bowie in those pants....
Labyrinth. I’ve worn out two VHS copies of this movie. I saw it fourteen times in the second run theater by my house in Boise, ID. I’m working on my first DVD of it. Ooo, it’s a favorite for watching when I’m depressed or sick, you know, when I wish the Goblins would come and take me away right now.
Hairspray, the original
The original, not that awful remake with John Travolta. I’ve also seen the stage play with Harvey Fierstein as Edna Turnblad, which was awesome.
More Movies That Make Me Happy
What I'm Watching Right Now
Wolverine and the X-Men. Not on here, I’ve got some DVDs. It’s not bad. Reminds me why X-men is my number one fandom.
Malifaux →
Interesting little miniatures game that my buddy Alex is really getting into. I enjoy the backstory and the world. I don’t know if I’m ready to, or can afford, a minis game right now, but it looks pretty neat.
