Harlan Ellison (1934-2018)

I Was a Toys “R” Us Kid

Today (assuming you’re reading this on the day it goes live) is Thursday 28, 2018. Within the next 24 hours, the last Toys “R” Us in the United States will be closing its doors for the very last time. A business that Charles Lazarus started in 1957 (or 1948 if you go all the way back to Children’s Supermart) will cease to exist. But, more than that, and unlike so many other businesses that leave us in the ever evolving consumer landscape, a piece of our collective childhoods will cease to exist this week.

Tomorrow

“It’s our turn now!”

Okay, now that I’ve gotten to laugh my ass off about Huckabee and crew’s hypocrisy for the weekend… Some (mostly) more seriously constructed thoughts.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders got requested to leave a restaurant called Red Hen this weekend because the owner felt that she wasn’t simply an average person with opposing points of view, but rather a public figure and representative of an administration that has been hostile to various minority groups that included her staff and that Sarah Huckabee Sanders worked in the service of an “inhumane and unethical” administration.

David McLane Returns to Women’s Wrestling Television?

So, over on Netflix, they’ve had some success with a Netflix original program based on the 1980s cult wrestling hit GLOW. But, rather than actually have a women’s wrestling show on Netflix, they went the path of a comedy/drama telling a fictionalized version of the creation of the show. The original GLOW was the creative child of David McLane. He had an idea for giving women wrestlers a more story-based spotlight and set about building GLOW into a ratings winner for a time. That was the late 1980s, and it’s been a long, strange, spandex (and roller hockey) filled trip for McLane since then.

Shameless Self-Promotion Post at Needless Things

In between grumblings and observations on fandom and genre, I do a lot of promoting of other people’s works and passion projects. One thing I’ve really not done is promote anything I’ve been working on other than in the little bio bit at the bottom of the columns, and, let’s be honest, most people that read articles on websites tend to stop reading when they hit the first few words of those things.

However, if I learned nothing else during my years of being a professional wrestling fan and seeing Mick Foley on the television, I’ve learned that cheap pops work. Unfortunately, cheap pops of the Foley variety don’t really work all that well on a website like this. However, I also learned from the Foley years of WWE television that shameless self-promotion isn’t always a bad thing.  As such, this week I’m doing some shameless self-promotion. Think of it as my birthday gift to myself. Granted, my birthday is still five months away. However, I keep being told that procrastination is bad, so I’m getting it out of the way now.

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ConCarolinas 2018 is in the Books

ConCarolinas is multi-genre, multi-media convention that has at this point been plugging away in North Carolina for the better part of the last two decades. I’ve been an on and off attendee since 2014, so I’ve only seen some of the growth of the convention in recent years as well as seen a couple of nice locations for the event. Although, I have to admit, of the four ConCarolinas I’ve been to, this one was a little different in more ways than one. One reason was something everyone may have noticed. The other things were a tad more personal.

The Assignment: Horror Podcast- Lifeforce (1985)

Assignment Horror

This week the crew are talking about the visual and narrative insanity that is 1985’s Lifeforce. This film was the Cannon Group’s attempt to jump into the big budget (looking at least) science fiction filmmaking. The attempt was a mixed bag, and people either love it or hate it. Also, bonus new viewer material- It turned out that John had never actually seen the entire film from start to finish either.

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