Hanging out with Vale Anoa'i at the Lake County Comic Con

 

On November 17th, I was a guest at my first comic con, the Lake County Comic Convention. The LKCC is a nice size comic con, not as big as the Tampa Comic Con, but featured approximately 100 vendors and guests, to include Tommy Timmons from The Sandlot and other artists, writers, and creators.

Among those artists and creators was my friend Vale Anoa'i. Vale has authored nine books and has created an impressive array of art, some of which I own. She is a fantastic creator and a great person. So of course we had to cut a promo video.

You can find Vale's creations at The Art of Vale.

Movie Review: The Unbreakable Bunch (2023)

 

 

Making movies is hard work. There is a lot that goes into filming, acting, lighting, directing, editing, and all the other components that comprise a movie. But sometimes movies are fun. Sometimes the fun actors have making a movie comes out in the final production. The best mainstream example I’ve seen is Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups, where Sandler and several fellow comics looked like they had a blast throughout the movie. The positivity and comradery came through the screen.

The Unbreakable Bunch is a similar movie. Not in plot or in budget, but in the feeling that everyone in the movie enjoyed being part of the project. While watching, I could see the fun they had making it.
Truth be told, there isn’t a giant global market for low budget alien flicks. They are fun, but not for everyone. The same is true for seeing pro wrestling legends. But put low budget aliens and pro wrestling legends together and you could combine the fanbases and double the niche. Like peanut butter and chocolate, or lamb and tuna fish, The Unbreakable Bunch works.

It works because it’s fun and because viewers get to see a bunch of their favorite wrestlers of yesteryear act tough one more time and punch, kick, body slam, and shoot an invading alien horde. Of course, the aliens decided to only invade the streets of Sanford, Florida and the only group who could possibly stop them are former wrestlers. Of course.

The Unbreakable Bunch starts like a wrestling version of The Blues Brothers. In order to raise money, a wrestler gets a bunch of his “unbreakable” buddies together and they cris-cross the United States putting on shows and making money. As their small show with six wrestlers makes the needed money, a group of aliens is slowly taking over small Florida towns. I don’t know which story requires more disbelief. Although the wrestling scenes drag a bit and we don’t see much alien action, it is fun to see Haku, Glacier, Ernest Miller, and Luther Biggs thrown down again. There are also some independent wrestlers taking falls to the legends and they are fun to pick out if you know.

One of the highlights of the movie occurs at a town festival when the wrestlers and the local fire department have a brawl to end all brawls. Fellow legends Stan Hansen and Gangrel just happen to be working for the town’s fire department. Bodies get tossed and pizza gets eaten and everyone looks like they had a good time wreaking havoc.

Finally, the wrestlers and the aliens cross paths and it’s time for the main event. The final 30 minutes of the movie is worth the slow set-up. Sadly, there are a few losses that took me by surprise. But there are some great scenes of alien annihilation. Haku, for example, kicks some major butt, both with his fists and with his pistols. The producers definitely made the toughest man in professional wrestling look good. Not even extra-terrestrials can slow down the world’s toughest Tongan.

Of course, everyone else gets their share of the action, shooting and stomping out the heinous alien threat.

My one critique of The Unbreakable Bunch is that the ending was a little weak. There was no final resolution. No boss alien or final bad guy. Just a montage of the Unbreakable Bunch walking around shooting aliens. Viewers are left to ask if the event actually happened or if it was just a road story from a bunch of legends of the ring. A small twist at the end might have helped stick the landing.

I also have to ask if the aliens act like zombies, why not make them zombies? Instead of low budget sci-fi, the Unbreakable Bunch could have been a low-budget horror. I wonder why they chose aliens. Maybe they didn’t have zombie make-up or maybe the risk of unleashing a Zombie Haku on the world was too dangerous.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Unbreakable Bunch. It was as fun to watch as it looked to make. Definitely for fans of cheesy sci-fi and pro wrestling, both of which I enjoy.

Grade: 5 alien elbow drops out of 5

Curveball at the Crossroads is approved by Tommy 'Repeat' Timmons of The Sandlot

 

I had the pleasure of meeting Shane Obedzinski this weekend at the Lake County Comic Con. Shane is famous for playing Tommy "Repeat" Timmons in the baseball classic "The Sandlot". He was nice enough to give Curveball at the Crossroads a shout out.

Quotes I like

  These are not my quotes, but quotes other people said or wrote that I like.

"Even among men with the most modern arms, time is the hardest thing to kill" - The Musher, newspaper, 1907

"Words win wars or sell soap." - C. Wright Mills

"Not knowing is the ground of mystery, the land of wonder; a haven to be visited daily. It is the source of creativity, inventiveness and tranquility all in one." - Zen saying

"But I like to be surprised, and I like to be proved wrong. Not in public, because that’s humiliating. But in private, I really like to be proved wrong, because that means that afterward, if I come to terms with it when the dust settles, I am ever so slightly smarter than before, and I feel better that way." - Tadashi Tokieda

"The world needs less specialists in force and murder and more generalists in love." - Tuli Kupferberg

"Some people are steak people and some people only like fish, if I am steak and they are fish people, they might not like me very much." - Lorenzen Wright

"A Nation's fun will tell you more about that nation than anything except its jails." - PJ O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell (pg 79)

"The Islamic Jihaad has no relationship to modern warfare, either in its causes or in the way in which it is conducted." - Seyyid Qutb, Milestones

"Difference of opinion in my community is a source of blessing." Muhammad (reportedly)


"There a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root, and it maybe be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve." Thoreau, Walden

"If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think." - Charles Darrow

"It was not from want of will that I have refrained from writing you, for truly I wish you all good; but because it seemed to me that enough has been said to effect all that is needed, and that what is wanting (if anything be wanting) is not writing or speaking - where of ordinarily there is more than enough - but silence and work." - St. John of the Cross

"Being drunk is a good disguise, I drink so I can talk to assholes." - Jim Morrison

"You have opened the gates of hell, from which shall flow the curses of the damned which shall sink you to perdition!" - Richard Keith Call, former governor of Florida, to secessionists

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits." - Thomas Edison

"Have a mind open to everything; attached to nothing." - Vedantic Scholar Telopa

"Our appetite for discovery slows as our familiarity with the status quo grows." - Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine, September 2010

“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.” ― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

"When you meet a beautiful woman who has everything going for herself, but you are not yet ready, admire her from afar. Don't try and spoil greatness just because you aren't quite on that level." - Monica Delgado

"People that are brilliant and successful, we think they’ve just always been that way. That’s not the case. Most of them have had some tough adversity in their life. It’s prepared them. I’ve never felt like you could develop character without adversity. A guy’s who has all the money he needs and never faced any hard times, he won’t have any character. But when you’ve had it tough and you’ve had it rough and you thought you were at the end of the rope and you work your way out of it, that’s the way you build character."  - Bobby Bowden

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops." - A. Bartlett Giamatti, Green Fields of the Mind

My Personal Quotes

"If time equals money, and money buys resources, and time is our most valuable resource, would that make time priceless? Could money buy time? Or would that be like money buying itself?" - Me

"You wake me up - agitated. I try to take a shit - constipated. I go to school - get educated." - Me

"Triceratopian hustle/ Mastadonian wassle" - Me

"I know I am smart because if I asked you if I was smart I would not know something easy to know therefore I would not be smart." - Me

"Everyone who says I need help should get help because I know I don't need help, especially when I know I know what I am doing." - Me

"Stress and panic cause nothing but high blood pressure and a low sperm count." - Me

Not so Serious Movie Review: The Devil's Hand (1961)

 

My latest cinematic adventure was The Devil's Hand, a 1961 independent horror featuring the guy who played Commissioner Gordon in the old Batman TV show.

At only an hour and seven minutes - which is actually sixty-six minutes and sixty-six seconds (wow!) - The Devil's Hand is too short for a movie, but too long for an episode of the Twilight Zone or any other broadcast show, although it does play like a Twilight Zone movie.

Our story begins with a gentleman having vivid dreams about a woman who is not his girlfriend. Somehow his actual girlfriend is ok with this. The dreams lead to him quitting his job and wandering the streets. Again, his girlfriend has no problem with this. The dreams also direct him to visit a small boutique doll store where he finds a doll of the woman in his dreams. After bringing his girlfriend to the store, where she not only sees the doll of the woman, but also the doll of herself, the guy's girlfriend is creeped out, but still not upset with him.

We then learn the dolls are voodoo dolls and the owner of the store stabs the girlfriend-looking doll, causing her to need medical care at the local hospital. How long she is there is not determined, but it is long enough for another woman to swoop in and steal the dude and them to join a satanic cult that holds meetings under the doll store. Good things happen to the guy when he joins the cult. He wins at the track. His stocks go up. Life is good.

He still has feelings for his hospitalized girlfriend, however. He finds the doll they pierced and removes the pin, causing her to miraculously recover. Then after the cult kidnaps her and attempts to sacrifice her to Satan, he rescues her, punches the high priest/doll shop owner, and starts a fire that burns the store down. Of course, his girlfriend is still not upset with him, despite the fact that everything that has happened is his fault.

The Devil's Hand also has a hip surf rock soundtrack, which considering the link between the Beach Boys and the Manson Family, adds a little weirdness to the movie.

Grade: 4 voodoo dolls of 5.

The Fire Burned in the Crossroads

 

"While he slept, the fire burned in the crossroads, first feeding on the alcohol and then on the dirt, as if the earth itself was soaked in moonshine. Within moments, the spark turned into a full blaze. Unlike a usual fire, however, the blaze was contained in the middle of the old intersection.

Before long, a hole grew in the middle of the fire that burned at the crossroads. From the blazing flame and the depths of the earth emerged a figure – a tall, slender, well-dressed man in a black suit, tie, and matching top hat. Once fully risen from the earth, the man spread his arms and extinguished the blaze."
 

- taken at the Bradfordville Blues Club, Bradfordville, FL 2/19/2022

Curveball at the Crossroads Easter Eggs and references

 

Curveball at the Crossroads is full of references and inferences. There are call-backs to famous baseball stories, famous blues legends, and many other items of popular culture.

Did you find the reference to the following?

- a baseball character made famous in Sports Illustrated?
- a famous speech in Field of Dreams?
- Casey at the Bat?
- a famous Jimi Hendrix song?
- a scene from Pee Wee's Big Adventure?
- a Snoop Dogg song?
- the Muddy Waters' song "Hoochie Coochie Man"?
- the culinary preference of Elwood Blues?
- the culinary preference of Elvis Presley?
- a food item sang about by blues legend Robert Johnson?
- pro wrestling's Iron Sheik?

Not So Serious Movie Review: Warning From Space (1956)

This is a monster movie without great monsters, an alien invasion movie without great aliens, a disaster movie that glosses over the disaster, a movie about an alien taking over a pop singer's body that barely mentions the pop singer, and movie that warns about atomic energy that doesn't do enough to make it serious.

Overall, the real warning is that this movie is a dud.

Imagine a movie in which an alien species need to send a message to humans. Knowing only one human, they make a clone of Taylor Swift. She infiltrates a nuclear lab to tell a scientist his energy formula is the only thing that can generate enough power to blow up a planet on a trajectory to hit earth. But only the aliens can harness the energy and he has to give it to them. Meanwhile, the people of Earth, led by Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, attempt to knock the runaway planet off course with atomic bombs and mining equipment. And for some reason there is a mob boss is also trying to steal the energy formula. In the end, the aliens take the formula and help the Earthlings by destroying the planet, but not before buildings are wrecked and parts of Japan are flooded.

This movie is what happens when way too many concepts are jammed into a low budget movie. None of the ideas have a chance to breathe and none of the actors have a chance to be relatable.

They should have just called Gamera to destroy the incoming planet. Then they might have had a movie worth watching.

Grade: 1 intergalactic starfish out of 5.