Six Seasons and a Movie: A week and a half of Melons and Collies.

In today's exciting episode:

It'll all make sense in the end.

Movie Review MADNESS!

Advent Calender recap WEEK THREE!

The fastest Kijiji Transaction of all time!




 All that and even more bad news! Stay tuned.

Kre-O: The Perfect Storm?

I've heard that the last two toys boys stop playing with as they grow up, at least in North America, are LEGO and Transformers. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because each are more technically advanced and interactive than most other toys you could come across, and are therefor slightly more rewarding for the kid. Maybe it's because LEGO has that special European mystique and Transformers has a movie with boobs and guns in it. Either way, they both stick around, and have stuck around, and continue to stick around for large portions of adults. I myself suffer from this two-headed addiction, appealing simultaneously to my unceasing need to fidget and my happy memories of youth.

This review will be aided by Warpath and Jimmy the Squid.

So when I saw that Kre-Os were a thing, I sorta plotzed. LEGO and Transformers blended into a single heady broth of plastic meaning? Too good to be true. [Yeah, it's happened before, but Built-To-Rule was, as far as toys go, barf-inducing.] These things had all the weight of the years of TF character and history piled up on top of them, on a foundation of LEGO-like constructible fiddliness.

Let's get some things out of the way first: Is this, I dunno, unfair of Hasbro to be doing? Are they making themselves into a lowly clone brand by ripping off LEGO engineering? Will the quality ever be able to compare to the impossibly high standards that LEGO and its fans have set [standards that LEGO itself doesn't seem to meet all that often anymore]? And do the damn things transform?

Simple answers: no on all counts. Sort of. The parts are made by Oxford, which, sure, is a not-LEGO company and has that taint about it, but it's certainly one of the higher-regarded brands among those able to acknowledge such things. And, really, there's a surprising number of elements that are not standard LEGO designs. [Some definitely are, and some that aren't probably shouldn't be, but take it as it is.] The quality is fine. Not perfect, not even great. I'll go with good. And they don't easily switch from vehicle to robot, although, really, technically they do transform. It just takes a long time.

Here's what you missed: Nugs, Chillin', and Grindage

It's a new year and here's a new blog for you reader[s] out there. Seeing as how I tend to lean pretty heavily on the LEGO stuff, I was gonna basically just rattle off all the new sets I got for and around Christmas, but I feel that would be terribly uninteresting for pretty much everyone. Suffice it to say I got some mustard stuff, though. And that may well be all I say about that. For now.

Here are some movie opinions, because there seems to be a rash lately of better-than-average films out there. I'm sitting here listening to the TRON soundtrack rather than buying it, because I am cheap. And besides, it's computer music, and it feels only fitting I should listen to it exclusively via the computer. However, I have yet to see the movie for which the music is meant to accompany, and I'm not sure where in relation to the fence I sit regarding that. I know I really wanted to, though. I DID see Black Swan, and it is a movie you should stop reading this and go see. Natalie Portman has always been hot, but she seems hottest at her craziest, and she is coco for kookoo puffs in this movie. Plus: lady kissing.  And there's still True Grit and Barney's Version to see as well. [Sidebar: I went to school with Mordecai Richler's... grand-nephew? Third cousin? They were somehow related, is what I'm saying. So, you know. That.]

It occurs to me that back in my first post I made the promise of making a habit of discussing three things here: toys, food, and people on the subway being idiots. I've certainly done the first, glossed over the second, and generally neglected the third. Well, hold on to your butts, it's about to get real in here.

Let's talk about New York

So I was in New York about a month ago. It was a vacation, and we were only there for a few short days, but it was a hell of a trip. If I started getting payed for work again, I'd go back toot sweet. I really mean it. If you're reading this, you should stop and book a ticket. Stay in Brooklyn.

I've been reminded of this because my pictures came back from developing. Apparently no one at Shopper's Drug Mart knows what black and white film is, though, because I stumped the whole lot of them with my outlandish requests. I'm sure some of them were concerned that I'd never heard of colour film. Regardless, New York is a city that looks sexy as hell in black and white, so I ponied up the 70 dollar development fee [imagine!] to do it up right. Here's a few specific ones I enjoy.

This is whatever street is north of Wall Street. I'm bad with directions.