Steak’s Guide To Good Living

Could anything be more adorable than custom headware for cats? You be the judge! Is she a pretty princess or does she look like she’s wearing a Flash Gordon-inspired old timey space helmet?

So, it’s been over a year since I’ve posted anything. Well, I’ve been busy.

Anyway, as a new homeowner, I now have to think about things I never cared about before. Things like appliances.

My mother-in-law mentioned a story about the following dryer and I had to look into it. And it is, indeed, the most amazingly awesome clothes dryer ever. It plays the song “How Dry I Am” when you open the door. I agree with the guy in this video — they should totally bring back this feature. Of course, they would probably make it some sort of Wi-Fi updateable “DryTone” that charges you $2.99 to download and play the newest Fergie track, but it would still be cool.

This could well be the most insane thing I’ve ever seen… It might be more appropriate on Things I’ve Eaten, but I feel that the lifestyle enrichment provided through art and excercies made this a better venue.

Notable Quotables:

“You paint what you eat.”

“Try not to get any paint on your pie”

“We’re trying to get our creative juices on everyone.” (I am guessing there should have been a comma before “everyone,” like more of an inspirational rallying cry.)

Possibly more psychotic is this one…

Head On: Apply Directly To The Forehead
Head On: Apply Directly To The Forehead
Head On: Apply Directly To The Forehead
Head On: Apply Directly To The Forehead
Head On: Apply Directly To The Forehead
Head On: Apply Directly To The Forehead
Head On: Apply Directly To The Forehead

‘King of Queens’ Star Held Suri Cruise

I think it speaks for itself.

I just saw what may be the greatest achievement in stock footage and repurposed celluloid ever made: Roger Corman’s Galactic Odyssey (AKA Starquest II). Of its 90 minute running time, I’d guess only about 25 minutes of footage were shot specifically for this movie — and most of those new scenes involve nudity. It rivals the best Ed Wood in its genius.

The movie starts with stock NASA footage of rockets and shuttles taking off, along with some pretty catchy Enigma-knockoff music. Through voice overs from Houston, we sort of piece together that SOMETHING has happened to one of the shuttles. Major Tom, are you there?

Suddenly, a crazy pastiche of what is probably at least 2 other Roger Corman films appears onscreen. A good 10 minutes into movie, some semblance of a story starts to emerge. Three couples wake up in separate, stark rooms with no idea of where they are or how they got there. Each room has a bed that requires a ladder to get into, for some reason.

Unbenknownst to our heroes, they are on a space ship, the external shots of which are stolen from Battle Beyond the Stars, a low-budget movie that was actually pretty good and featured John Boy from the Waltons.

Eventually, doors start opening, the couples start exploring, and they meet in a common area just in time to see somebody we don’t know getting vaporized by the ship’s security system. The body was already on the ground and played by a dummy so the producer’s didn’t have to pay SAG scale on another actor.

Around that time, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) and some flunkies monitor the couples on the ship’s security system. A computer explains each person’s backstory — and shows clips from what I’m guessing were other films to help illustrate their backstories! You’ve got a husband and wife scientist couple who were involved in a cryogenics project, two soldiers, and a street fighter who generally kicks everybody’s ass and appears to have been part of an Asian prison chain gang. His girlfriend, a stripper, is also along for the ride. The computer explains that they are perfect human specimens and are not to be harmed.

Freddy and the flunkies go down to meet the newcomers and play along that they also were recently abducted. After Freddy shows the noobs how to conjure food by thinking about it, the ship’s computer finally clues everyone into what’s going on?

It seems as though Earth has been poised on the brink of self-destruction for a while. Humans are wallowing in depravity. How can we be sure? By helpful clips demonstrating how depraved they are! Another montage commences, culled from who knows how many Corman-produced sources, but a clip from the west coast punk classic Suburbia makes a brief appearance, along with liberal use of assorted nude scenes.

Sensing that Earth was doomed, a bunch of benevolent aliens snatched up our heroes so they could crank up the breeding machine and preserve the race. Just in time, as Earth done went and nuked itself shortly after!

Faced with the gravity of the situation, the couples go back to their rooms and start getting busy — literally. Not content to allow the viewers to derive anything resembling enjoyment from the softcore escapades, the film frequently cuts away to Robert Englund watching the goings on from the control room. Occasionally he muses to the other flunkies, but mostly he holds his face pensively.

Freddy is concerned that the guy that was getting fried earlier was a rebel who was trying to sabotage the project. Then some scenes from yet another movie appear of a bunch of road warrior-types fighting some other guys with a bigass cannon and flamethrower. When he leaves the room, the flunkies discuss sabotaging the project.

The scientists are the first to do their part for humanity, but instead of thinking about baseball stats to prolong the action, Adam Baldwin thinks of when aliens abducted him, cut him open,and implanted things into his gut. It sort of kills the mood.

Shortly after, the female soldier wakes up from sleep and confronts an unseen intruder. Although they made a big point of talking up what a good soldier she was, the unseen intruder chokes her pretty easily.

For some unknown reason, the streetfighter taps one of Freddy’s flunkies to help take over the ship and fly back to the smoking remnants of earth. They go to the bridge and the flunky explains that he know how to work everything because he helped design it. They start messing with the computer and an android that I couldn’t be bothered to mention earlier snaps to life and kills the flunky. If the guy designed it, shouldn’t he have known that the android would squeeze his head until blood came out when he started to mess with the controls? Anyway, the point I guess is that the droid flies the ship when the autopilot doesn’t work or when they get attacked, which also happened earlier with stock footage from Battle Beyond the Stars.

The streetfighter soon gets blamed for the growing pile of bodies, or at least piles of ash because every dead body gets vaporized. The rest of the people have had enough, so they capture him and leave to find more evidence he’s really to blame. Tying up the guy also provides a perfect opportunity for his stripper gal to relive the first time they met at her club and she performs an impromptu dance because “he can’t touch her — just like he couldn’t that night!”

The guy soldier is feeling down, so it seems like a good time for Freddy’s female flunky to mate with him. Unfortunately, the pregnancy test comes back negative. Freddy says not to worry because he’s had his physiology modified to make it easy for him to take on the duties.

You’re probably thinking, “Ewwww… They gave him a uterus!?” That’s what I thought anyway. But, even worse, they gave him an operation to explain why a bunch of B-Movie hotties would get it on with Freddy Krueger — some sort of glandular thing that makes him irresistible to women. As thoughts of an impending threesome involving Robert Englund loom, the first emotions of real horror come to light while viewing the film. Thankfully, other events intervene.

Freddy slags the rebel movement some more and equates them to Earth’s PETA crowd, accompanied by yet more stock footage of people freeing bunnies and mice from cages. It seems as though some aliens don’t believe it’s right to mess with human breeding, even if it will save a race, just like humans don’t believe curing diseases is worth the moral cost of experimenting on animals. To say nothing of mascara that won’t run after snorkeling!

After more stock footage of the rebel aliens who look like humans (or maybe the humans are an allegory for the aliens? Who the hell knows), a lot more people get naked and die. Eventually, it’s just Freddy and the scientists. He reveals that his race also was doomed and his people saw a way that both race’s needs for survival could dovetail to ensure both continue in some form.

Although the mating thing didn’t work out, all isn’t lost. That alien operation that went on earlier? Turns out the scientist’s sperm now includes alien DNA. Huzzah! His wife looked a little creeped out, which I think is a fair reaction.

Freddy finally collapses, because he took a shotgun blast to the chest that I forgot to mention, and wheezes “Think of the children.” Probably a good thing, because a few minutes earlier the scientists were going to put their last 2 shells to good use.

“I guess this is the end,” one scientist says.

“No,” counters the other, “it’s the beginning.”

I’m guessing that if you saw the words Vikings, Lee Majors, and1978 listed in a program description when flipping through the TV guide you’d say, “That sounds like the most sweetass awesome movie ever made!” Well, that’s exactly what I thought when I came across the listing for The Norseman.

The first setting that comes to mind when you think of Vikings is probably chilly Scandanavia. The second that comes to mind is probably the swampy beaches of Tampa, Florida, which is where the movie takes place.

Lee Majors, the titular Norseman, leads his longboat of Norsemen to America in search of his father, the king. As illustrated in a flashback sequence heralded with a wavy transition and tinkling harp sound effects, the king and his men had been exploring America and were befriended by a tribe of Indians (AKA Anglos with spray-on tans). Everything started out great. There was lots of smoking, drinking, limboing, and playing of music that earned the movie 1978’s award for Most Stereotypical Ethnic Music Played During A Scene Involving Native Americans.

Unfortunately, as often happens when everyone starts drinking, the chief got pissy when his main squaw started making googly eyes with one of the bearded warriors. And, as also often happens in such a situation, things ended with all the Nords getting their eyes burned out before being forced to mill corn in the prison/millery.

I learned a lot about Vikings from this movie. I learned that not all of them had big bushy beards. Some have porn star moustaches, like Mr. Majors. Others have long, flowing white beards that would eat Gandalf’s. Some of their beards appear to be made of synthetic fibers and are bordered by thick seams. And some just have thick sideburns. I also learned that they have Southern accents and that some are black.

Aiding The Norseman in his quest is a wizard played by the creepy proctologist from the Cannonball Run movies, a pro football player (Deacon Jones, AKA “The Black Viking”), his Norsetween brother, and a Very Special Viking named Olaf.

After getting their asses handed to them on their first encounter with the Indians, the disaffected squaw sneaks off to the longboat and turns on her people. I’m not sure what message this sends. Anyway, she leads The Norseman and a few of his Berserkers to the prison and helps with the rescue logistics. And my research indicates she was Sonny Bono’s 3rd wife.

Regardless of cinematic quality, Monty Python has made it somewhat difficult to take anyone in a Viking costume seriously. But I do have to say that after taking some time to acclimate, I found myself appreciating the gravity of the situation that these Norsemen faced.

The Norseman may have set the bar for the epic battles that inspired Braveheart, Gladiator, and other modern melee films. Aside from The Norseman taking out the two doughy obese Indians left to guard the prison, some fight highlights include the blind Vikings’ revolt, the storming of the longboat, and pokey Olaf’s emotional run to his departing ship as he is pursued by the tribe of ruthless Florindians. Does he make it? You’ll have to watch it to find out!

This film was also a nice reminder that the Bionic Man and an Angel were once one of Hollywood’s power couples: the movie was a Fawcett-Majors Production.

To learn more about Vikings, ask the Viking Answer Lady!

What do you get when you hold a blind cat while a vet flips him over and shaves his underbelly?

Here you go!

Bottom line: a half-day off, tetanus shot, and 12 new bacteria holders! Plus no booze or sunshine for 10 days.

The next big MMO on the horizon is probably The Lord of the Rings Online. Developer Turbine has just opened registration for the beta program that will be starting later this summer.

I want to be one of the tree people and deliver a Bombadil Beatdown.

Imagine, if you will, a man who speaks like Helen Keller right after she learned to pronounce “water.” Then, imagine that man playing arpeggio loops on a Casio and shouting the following at the top of his lungs:

Mortal Challenge!
Face to face!
Fight with style!
Sing with grace!

If you’ve imagined it correctly, you’ve just heard the Mortal Kombat-inspired (AKA “ripped-off”) theme song to the movie Death Game (AKA “Mortal Challenge”).

Shamelessky designed to kash in on 1995 kult klassic Mortal Kombat, it also evokes Escape From New York/L.A., borrows from Blade Runner, and mimics The Running Man.

In the future, L.A. is plagued with gang violence and earthquakes, so the rich move offshore to a man-made island and happily go about their decadent lives.

Kids are disappearing from all over the ruins of Old L.A., but nobody gives a crap until a rich kid goes missing. Because the cops are overloaded, a wealthy family hires a private dick to find her. Timothy Bottoms detective is styled after Blade Runner’s Deckard character, at least for the first 10 minutes of the film; dressing like a ’30s gumshoe and driving around Old L.A. while moody sax music plays.

TB approaches a group of street kids to pump them for info when suddenly a bunch of “Centurions” attack and abduct most of them. TB teams up with a kid who looks like he is from O-Town and follows the trail to an underground club. It turns out the missing kids are getting thrown into a labyrinth “Death Drome” where they stumble around until eventually getting eviscerated by cyborgs on closed circuit TV for the pleasure of rich brats from New L.A.

The Socias decide the fate of arena combatants with the old thumbs up/thumbs down, pay to get it on with the gladiators, and spend so much time watching street urchins get impaled you wonder when they have time to go to the university back in New L.A. Seeing some paralells to historical time periods? Hmmm?

Oh yeah, and their college professor (god knows of what) is the ringleader of the arena for some reason. He prattles on about how the games distract people from real problems, just in case you need some sort of moral framework to wrap around the film. But at the end of the day, all that really matters is: do asses get kicked and boobs get shown? They sure do.

TB actually has a couple of decent fight scenes and O-Town gets electrocuted in a takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’ sequence. But it isn’t all fun and games. There’s pathos, too.

Like when the arena master tells one of his creations something along the lines of “You were a broken shell when I found you… now you’re a shining thing of beauty!”

To which the borg replies, “You… call… this… beauty?!” and he removes his Geordie goggles to reveal a mangled eye socket and nasty scar. I won’t tell you what happens next, but let’s just say it was more of a rheorical question.

Probably the most amazing thing about this Roger Corman-produced film is that is was made in 1996. You’d swear it’s circa 1986 and I expected an impromptu cyborgs-in-spandex dance sequence to break out.

And at no time did anyone “Sing with grace.”