Now we’ll start at the very beginning, that’s a good place to start…..

Around 1990, I had a character I created called the Flea. He was a six inch tall alien from a distant planet with super strength, invulnerability and the power of flight. Over the course of a few years, I tweaked and changed the concept in preparation for developing a proper comic.

For the next few years, I did various short stories, and I even did a more involved tale and realized way too far into the process that the pages were the wrong dimensions for proper comic pages. Rookie mistake. Took a break. Eventually came back with a better story.

It’s 1995—-The alien was now 18″ tall and his name was”M’tk”, but called Mataak. Named by the two humans he befriended when arriving on earth, John and Theresa Longbow, both of Algonquin Native American descent. “Mataak”, in Algonquin, meant something like “to fight”, I believe. He was also named that because even though he wasn’t born yet, we knew if we had a son, his name would be Matthew. Of course, Theresa was already around, albeit just.

The basic thrust of the issue was that Mataak came to earth in an experimental warp craft to head off an invasion. His distant planet of Myristica had been ravaged by alien warlords. M’tk had learned the location of a future planet targeted by the warlords and vowed to not let that planet suffer the same fate as his. Working with scientists, he was genetically engineered to be the right warrior for the job and sent off in the craft that was much faster than the warlord’s armada and thus beat them to that next target planet: earth, but only just.

The trip to earth for the warlords took a few months, but in that time, M’tk used his time to plan and prepare, then warped over in the nick of time. In hindsight, if I had to do it over today, I might have had Mataak come to earth, have some adventures, get settled in for several issues, then build up to the big invasion. But I wanted to hit the ground running.

Mataak is introduced along with John Longbow and his granddaughter Theresa. She’s the no-nonsense head of a family run corporation and he’s a bit of a mystic, a touch of Yoda in him. He drives Theresa crazy. He senses Mataak’s arrival and he and Theresa go to help.

The warlords arrive and start wreaking havoc, so Mataak has to move fast. Defending a group of humans, he destroys one of the invaders and afterwards, commits what appears to be some form of ritual arrangement of the body. He then attacks another warlord from behind and unseen, whispers “Duvaari” to the other invader, which terrifies him. Mataak successfully makes the invaders think that earth is already infested with their deadliest enemies, the Duvaari. The con works and the warlords are more than happy enough to move on. Afterward, Mataak reveals his craft was only able to make a one way journey, so for better or worse, he was here for the duration. 

Now, I went through all the steps mentioned above to set things up for printing and distribution, and got a decent amount of orders. I had a printer down in Texas work up 3,000 copies– that was way more than I needed but at the time, it was their minimum print run. And, because of the scheduling of the monthly distributor catalog, if I wanted to keep things moving, I had to have another two issues ready to go, so I did create a second and third issue. Sadly, the order numbers for issue two were far too low to rationalize getting a 3,000 print run for that as well. Thus ended Mataak’s book. Issue two would have introduced more side characters and issue three would have been the actual Duvaari coming to attack, with Mataak’s earlier gambit coming back to bite him.

But nothing is ever abandoned. I liked the characters of Mataak, John and Theresa, so they did make another appearance in 2000, in the Epoch anthology book I put out with a bunch of illustrators from my studio. I’ll have a bit more about that in the next entry.

As for Mataak, he once again came back in 2008 as part of a whole superhero team called The Battalion I created for a graphic novel called 100 Covers, which we’ll get to later on. I incorporated the Duvaari invasion into that project, in fact.

Creative side note: a co-worker of mine at the time, Mike Semer, was supposed to actually do the dialog in the Mataak book, but after a miscommunication, he left the project. All because of a typo. It took me a while to figure out what the hell happened.

There was a scene early on where John Longbow sensed something was very wrong, some disturbance in the force, if you will, etc. 

Mike had a wonderful line for John describing the disturbance as “A warp in the wood of reality.” This was a brilliant line. Unfortunately, when he typed it up, he hit the wrong key, so line read as “A warp in the woof of reality.”

Only ever seeing the “woof” version, I didn’t get it at all and when I asked him about it, not realizing he had the typo, he insisted that it was a great line but he didn’t hear me saying woof, thought I was saying wood, thought I just didn’t appreciate it and was assuming I was out of my head questioning him and just being difficult. Didn’t even bother to look back at the sheet at what he typed. And he bowed out of the project immediately. He probably figured I was a temperamental perfectionist. He probably was right. Still…. “woof”.

For the longest time, since we never cleared it up, I was under the impression he thought “woof” was brilliant for some reason. 

I definitely corrected the typo and went with “A warp in the wood of reality.” 

Best line in the book. 

As for the art, it was pretty raw, but even worse was that I hand lettered it. That was painful. I later went back in and digitally redid the lettering. Chalk it all up to early days, I suppose. This was also one of the very last times I used zip-a-tone! Good times. 

This entry is kicking off  “Creation Month”.   

Basically, several days this month will feature some of the creations I’ve concocted over the years, regarding comic books and comic characters. I’ll give the reasoning behind them, if any, and what the point was, if any, to them. Give you a look at the process, the circumstances and the outcome, be it success or failure. 

My goal was to create professional comics and successfully get them printed and distributed. Regarding my projects in between 1995 and 2004 that I’ll be talking about in the coming days, I did just that, at least until the process became financial untenable.

First, becoming an independent publisher is a bit daunting. Certainly not impossible but there are things you have to do to facilitate the business. It’s a good idea to do your homework. Talk to comic shop retailers and get their input on when the best time of the year is for an independent comic to actually hit the stands, and any other tips they might have. Then find out about all the steps it takes to print and distribute your book. Once you get the hang of it, it’s really not difficult.

In essence, the process I list below is what I usually did with each of my comics. So, a little bit about the process about actually self publishing:

The era I’ll be referring to was mostly before the internet and web comics so if you wanted to get *your* comic book distributed around the world yourself, you would go through the channels with a company like Diamond, who, until recently, had a monopoly on distributing print comics in America. To get things going, you would do the following:

(assuming you’ve already completed your comic….)

A. Have your comic ready to be published. Diamond wouldn’t take just anything and they certainly wouldn’t allow anything in the catalog that was unfinished because some illustrators are like scatter—brained cats that can’t keep to a schedule. Some. Make sure that product is ready for publication.

B. Contact the main distributor (Diamond) and get their timetable, schedule, deadlines for their process.

C. Send them a mock up of your book to show them you had a proper product and they can see it’s worthy of being published. As I say, if it was unprofessional looking or not finished, odds are, they wouldn’t allow you to solicit your book in their catalog. They would let certain companies like DC, Marvel or Image be late back in the day—and they always were, but that was a high profile comic company, not an independent. Some may refer to Image as an independent, especially back then but they would be incorrect. Considering the rock star names they had in the company, the high profile, and the millions they were hauling in, they were a big company. When it comes to unknowns and independents, there were different rules.

D. Send all the necessary info for the solicitation of your comic to the distributor. This would be:

*The mock up of the book

*The solicitation copy for your book to be printed in the catalog, a couple lines telling the comic shop owner what the book is about. Hoping to catch their eye. Most comic shop owners would sell or give away the monthly catalog to their customers so they too could see what was coming up and maybe ask the owner to order certain things as well.

*Any ads and/or artwork for ads you wanted to put in the catalog. For ads, you would find out the ad sizes and prepare your ad appropriately. I would usually get a smaller, quarter page black and white ad for $800.00. The hope, of course, would be that the ad would generate more interest on behalf of the comic shop owner, or readers. hopefully pump up those orders. Then you hope the orders are sufficient that they pay for the ad and the printing costs. (They rarely, if ever did)

E. So, after all your stuff was in, the distributor would put your comic into the catalog, send it to all comic retailers for them to order comics, etc. 

F. You would contact a printer that does comics professionally and they would print up a run of your book to fill the orders. I would contact Brenner printing down in Texas, as they did a nice, professional printing job on comics. And Diamond would pick up comics from there each week. Initially, the *minimum* print run at Brenner was 3,000 copies, which was brutal but thankfully, eventually, that came down to 500 . Much more affordable.

G. Your comic would hit the shelves in comic book stores around the world. 

I probably committed to this process with at least a dozen different one shot comics over a decade.

The actual timetable for all the above steps went something like this, if you wanted your comic to *hit the comic stands* in May of any year:

1. You would send all your solicitation materials to Diamond before the January deadline, thus ensuring you would get into their *March* catalog.

2. The March catalog would come out, previewing all the comics due to come out in May. Retailers/fans order comics.

3. All the March orders from retailers are supposed to be in by early April, the numbers go out to the publishers late April.

4. Publishers (me) gets the numbers, contacts their printer—who already has the files/art ready to be printed.

5. Printer prints up the order number for diamond to pick up. any excess copies get shipped to the publisher. that’s why I still have many boxes of old comics in my basement.

Oh, and lest I forget, there’s the *pricing* of the comic. What price do you put on that cover? It’s a bit more complicated than one might think because of the profit breakdown. Most retailers would keep whatever comics they order and not return them and get 50% of the cover price on every individual comic/copy sold. Diamond would get 15% of the cover price and the publisher (me) would get 35% of the cover price on each copy sold. So the comic shop owner made more money on each copy than I did (as he was taking the big risk getting stuck with comics). Plus, I had to pay the printer up front. So I had to create a price that wasn’t crazy high yet high enough so I had a chance to make some of my money back. Or in a miracle scenario, make an actual profit.

SO… I hope that all wasn’t too confusing but that’s the process. I got used to it pretty quick. Like I say, around 2005, things got to the point where Diamond rose ad rates by 50%— got too rich for my blood, because you really needed the ads to try and stand out. Although I was somewhat unique in doing this back in the late ’90’s, early 2000’s, by 2005, I was one in a sea of independents filling up the catalog and it was more and more a case of diminishing returns.

*Side note: a lot of these practices and timelines I believe are still in effect today with Diamond so if you want to dive into this world, go for it!

But I still kept creating stuff. On with Creation Month!

That first half wasn’t so hard (or entertaining), was it?

So far, so good in this experiment where I post up a blog for 366 days straight. 

Once again, this was basically me just relating pretty much everything in one way or another about me. But I find that I’ve related most of my stories, remembrances, horrible mistakes — that I remember, anyway. Still a few more tales to pass on but I’ve already covered a lot of ground. Favorite this and that, also goofy stuff, things that makes me laugh, whether it’s stuff like The Purple Throbber or Horse Guy. 

I haven’t written much serious fiction at all. Most of my *actual* serious stuff has been serious enough. But that all brings us to the second half of the year and what it will hold. 

Side note: I’m *kind* of astonished that I got absolutely no reaction to my documenting the time I almost killed Linda’s parents (and us) back on the June 16th entry. I mean, that was an amazing event and very true. there was no exaggeration what so ever and frankly, I’m pretty damn proud that I was able to pull us out of that mess with our skins intact. That was me in a rare good moment! ah well.

This October, I think I’ll finally partake in “Inktober”, the fairly popular art exercise where the organizers send out an optional daily prompt word for inspiration and you draw something each day of the month. I will then post it up the same day or the day after, depending on the schedule. We’ll see where the experiment takes me. 

Since I’m basically presenting “the life of Rick” during this year, it seems only fitting that I devote a chunk of it to artwork. (I can put everything on a flash drive when I’m done and give a copy to the kids to pass along to future generations to explain who the weird old man was.)

I thought that during another month –not sure which one, I would revisit some of my past creations and projects to document things. So, basically everything from the past 25 years, from Mataak to The Swede. That might just start tomorrow on July 1st, with me peppering some of those creations throughout the month. Not every day, but they should pop in several days at least. I’ll add the title of the creation and the year.

Immediately following Inktober is “NaNoWriMo”, or National Novel Writing Month. The thought there is that those who wish to write, should attempt to hammer out 50,000 words during November as the start of a novel. 

Frankly, I’m not sure I’m up to that. When it comes to writing, I find I’m like a sprinting alligator — I’m good for short bursts, but no sustained speed or distance. A lot of this has to do with projects in general. I’m impatient and get very bored when something gets extended and drawn out. Maybe it has to do with my vocation and storyboards. Everything is hurry up and wait and crazy deadlines. 

So I kinda doubt I’ll be diving into NaNoWriMo but stranger things have happened. So, we’ll see. the more I think about it, the less I’m inclined to try it.

As for stories of my youth… like I say, I’ve covered most of the good, the bad and the ugly. There are some that I shan’t share as it might intrude on the privacy of others, as I wasn’t always the bad influence during these adventures. And I’ll probably never give the details of the Academy Christmas party where I was dressed like Jon Pertwee’s Doctor Who. Eh…. no. Really, nothing good can come of that. 

Stayed tuned for the ass end of 2020… 

Because the thing IS. 

A million years ago, when Mel Gibson was an unknown, before eventually being hated, he made a low budget flick straight outta Australia (former prison continent), called Mad Max. It was a decent film but I barely remember any of it. 

Max had a wife and child who were brutally run down by a biker gang. I remember this only because I think we see both the wife and the baby each running down the highway while bikers loomed menacingly in the background.

Max was left for dead, came to, buried his family, tracked down the bikers, exacted revenge. Actually I think most of that happened but I’m not sure, because I don’t think I’ve ever rewatched it because it was either disturbing, depressing, had violence against children, was just a shitty movie, or all of the above. 

The thing IS…. whenever you wanted to watch some primo Mad Max, you’d gun it right over to Mad Max: The Road Warrior. This really was the perfect movie for the 1980’s. Lent itself very nicely to the chaotic punk era. Mel Gibson’s Max was kind of the Dirty Harry antidote to all of it. 

RW had an intro, giving us all the exposition we need about gas and water and survival and desert gangs and the set up.

But the movie is really an excuse for a bombastic, crazy ass car, cycle, tank, truck, copter, insert vehicle here, chase. With spikes and leather and Mohawks and screaming and razorangs. Chock full of Ozzie humor, which kind of amounts to the same end result of the leather, spikes, etc.

Like many film franchises, this second film was the standard bearer. The quality entry.    And like many film franchises, we see the second film and think wow, imagine how good the third will be! Ah well.

Mad Max : Beyond Thunderdome wasn’t really that bad, I don’t think. Unlike Road Warrior, it may have had more of a story but mostly dome antics, Tina Turner showing some leg and MasterBlaster, who, frankly, is a much better, more interesting, capable and well rounded character in this franchise than Boba Fett was in his. Just sayin’.

I also don’t think I’ve ever watched BT a second time either. Not all the way through, anyway. 

I think, when you come right down to it, it’s very hard to care for any of these people. Well, I guess you care a bit about the people holed up in the fort in RW, but the occasional Ozzie humor undercuts the severity of their situation. And you really don’t care about the crew in BT. I forget if they had slaves or some form of oppressed individuals in the dome and if so, how bad their plight was, mostly because of the wacky Ozzie comedy bits/black humor. The last people you really felt sorry for were Max’s wife and baby, but that was before the apocalypse. You weren’t really even that concerned about the Feral Kid, because he knew how to wield the razorang. 

But then, decades went by and we got a brilliant new Mad Max film, Mad Max: Fury Road. I say “brilliant” because it is easily one of the most visually stunning films ever. Certainly the best looking Max film by far. And virtually no Ozzie black humor!

It is not really a Mad Max film though. It is a Furiosa/Mad Max film. Furiosa is played by Charlize Theron. That’s all you need to know. 

The next time someone complains we have no strong women roles or role models out there, remind them of Charlize Theron in any number of roles like Furiosa or Atomic Blonde. Remind them of all the roles they’ve forgotten going back to Mrs. Peel 60 years ago in the Avengers. (Look it up, kids) but I digress. Bottom line, Furiosa is awesome.

Max is kind of the go between in the movie between we the viewers and the co-hero of the film, Furiosa. My hats off to the producers for making a Furiosa film but labeling it as a Mad Max film just to get it out there, get butts in the seats and basically rehashing the Road Warrior.

And it works! Yes, it’s the Road Warrior again and I would even say it’s done better. More action, more craziness, more violence, more spikes, leather, screaming, color and Guitar Guy.

Guitar Guy, the most colorful, red leather gimp in all of Oz, slammin’ on a sci fi blazing guitar, suspended on wires, plastered on the front of a speeding monster truck.

Tom Hardy plays Max and he’s more than a worthy successor to Gibson, so maybe there are more Max films coming? I have no idea. They had one good idea that’s been done twice in four movies. If George Miller tries again, he may end up taking another giant Thunderdome. 

Back to Hardy. The guy is a consummate professional. The vast majority of actors go nuts if you cover up their handsome mugs in a movie for even five minutes. Hardy, meanwhile, is the guy who was facial, vocally and physically unrecognizable when playing Bane in Dark Knight Rises, yet was easily the most entertaining part of the film. Here, he spends the first half hour with no lines and his face covered in a metal cage! Crafty old blood-bag…

It’s very rare that a film franchise pulls it all together and not only nails it on the 4th try but has the audacity to be a better remake of the only other good film *in* the franchise. That’s pretty crazy. 

It’s MAD, I tell you!

One of if not the most popular Doctor of the new era, tenth incarnation actor Tennant is a huge Doctor Who fan and had been all his life. His dream came true.

1)Christmas Invasion introduces us to the new Doctor and just what kind of man he is.  

2)Girl in the Fireplace is a wild offering from Steven Moffat (the Robert Holmes of the new era) and this tale of monsters under the bed, girls in fireplaces and horses on a spaceship is forever a joy.

3)The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit is an ambitious thriller featuring a planet in stationary position above a black hole, hordes of possessed Ood and yes, Satan. Gabriel Woolf (Sutekh-Pyramids of Mars) once again returns as the voice of the Devil.

4)Smith and Jones. Far out Sci-fi concept with Judoon on the moon.

5)Human Nature/Family of Blood. The Doctor must become human and forget he’s a Time Lord to escape a predator species. But as a human, he creates a new life and actually becomes happy. When his happiness is torn asunder, these aliens have done the worst thing imaginable. They’ve angered the Time Lord.

6)Blink. One of the most popular stories of the new era of DW, that introduces the Weeping Angels. It’s one of the best, scariest eps ever and the Doctor is barely in it. Brilliant.

7)Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. This scary reveal of the omnivores who live in shadows, the Vashta Narada, also introduce a very important figure in the Doctor’s life. His wife, River Song. A shame he doesn’t know her yet.

8)Midnight. Just watch it.

9)Turn Left. Powerful masterpiece where Donna Nobel is the most important woman in the universe. Does she have to die to save it? Catherine Tate is magnificent. 

10)Stolen Earth/Journey’s End. This is an all star outing, a reunion and an ending, chock full of thrills, chills, Daleks, Davros, and unbelievable cliffhangers.

11)Waters of Mars. Brilliant suspense as the Doctor breaks the rules of time and it costs him. See what happens because he’s the Time Lord, Victorius. 

Honorable mentions:

*Tooth and Claw- beautifully directed and action packed with Queen Victoria and a werewolf.

*School Reunion – the return of Sarah Jane Smith. ‘Nuff said.

*Love and Monsters – quirky, heartwarming Doctor lite ep.

*Army of Ghosts/Doomsday- big finale notable for major surprises, suspense and a big confrontation for the first time in 45 years.

*Utopia – worth watching for Derek Jacobi’s portrayal of Prof. Yana.

*Partners in Crime, a funny, engaging romp with the Doctor/Donna.

*The Fires of Pompeii- notable for not only the grand adventure but also featuring future eleventh Doctor companion Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), AND future 12th Doctor Peter Capaldi!

*Planet of the Ood – good story and excellent performance by Catherine Tate as Donna.

While polling the family for possible blog content, my daughter had some ideas. One of which was reviewing certain foods. Now, they’re currently ordering a beef log or some kind of meat log from a place called Enzo’s I believe. The whole bit here is that I’ll write up the pre and post log thoughts. Frankly, I think Theresa’s just starving.

As I type this on Friday evening, awaiting the log drop, I find I have no preconceived notions on how this will be or if it’ll be any good. Theresa said it was amazing but then again, I don’t know how hungry she was the last time she had it. 

To hold myself over an hour ago, I had a slice of tomato with a chunk of fresh mozzarella, seasoning and basil on it. THAT was excellent. 

Now… I wait for the log. 

Intermission

So we had the beef log. Basically beef rolled up in a pastry, seasoned indiscriminately with garlic or garlic salt, sliced off into squares and the whole thing came delivered in a pizza box with a couple containers of Au jus. 

The beef was tasty yet not distinctive and I think it works best in tandem with the bread wrapped around it yet it gives moisture to the bread. I rate it… 6.8 out of 10.

Moisture.

My wife says the Au jus helps it along but I’m on the fence about Au jus.

I instinctively recoil from Au jus because in the past, I didn’t like my bread soggy. I didn’t embrace the moisture.

Moisture.

But the last couple times we had beef sandwiches, you know I actually find that I liked adding more juice to the sandwiches, so maybe I should stop recoiling from Au jus and just dive in.

Moisture.

But I ended up having four pieces through the evening (2 in 2 sittings), and although it seemed to be plenty moist enough, you’d think I would have at least tried some Au jus sauce. 

But actually, I do know why. If you take a container of Au jus with you and your sandwich, that’s a dipping/spilling hazard. Tactically, it would have been fine for the two pieces at the kitchen table, but not when I was transporting the sandwiches back to the front room to watch the John Mulaney. I’m not really a Big Dipper anyway.

Speaking of Big Dipper, have you sought out stuff with Neil deGrasse Tyson yet, like Cosmos? 

No? Okay, well you suck then and you don’t know what you’re missing. 

I *should* do a blog just on John Mulaney because the guy is frankly hilarious. Former writer on SNL, he’s got three hour long stand up specials on Netflix and during two of them, I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. He did “New Kid in Town” from 2012 which is very funny but Comeback kid (2015) and Kid Gorgeous (2018) are even better. Boom. There’s a blog.

When you watch the specials, why not have a big beef log from Enzo’s, with Au jus on the side? I guess they have a meatball version too. Whoduthunkit? Enzo’s!

Moist.

If, during this year long selection of daily tidbits, I can help even one person be just a bit more well informed about something, or add something to anyone’s life, maybe make someone laugh or think or just give over something positive to chew on in this screwy, insane world we’re squatting on, then I feel that it will be an endeavor worth doing. So in case you haven’t introduced yourself to Neil deGrasse Tyson, allow me. American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator. 

Neil (as I’ll refer to him as if he and I go way back), is the very best science friend you or I will ever have. 

But some of you might say hey, what about Bill Nye? Isn’t he our bestest science friend? Oh, hey, him and Neil? Tight as ticks, whatever the hell that means but I bet they could explain it together in a sciency fashion. They’ve worked together a ton on a show called Startalk where Neil and other notable personalities talk about the wonders of science. Neil’s all over the police if you look him up.

In 2014, Neil picked up the reigns of the show “Cosmos”, paying homage to the Carl Sagan original from decades ago. Seek it out and watch it. Take the journey. Please. I may have to rewatch it myself as it’s been a while. It’s a fantastic look at our world and yes, the cosmos. 

There’s a reason Stephen Colbert hangs out with Neil so much. He’s not only brilliant but he’s funny, charming, relatable, informative and likable. 

Think back to when you were in high school. Maybe there was *one* teacher that stood apart from the others. There may have been a subject in which you didn’t do well. Maybe you found it boring as hell and were failing. Then the new teacher started. You may not have liked that subject but THIS teacher turned you around on the whole thing. This teacher was passionate and made it come alive and gave you an incredible gift of knowledge. GAVE you that passion.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is that teacher. 

Now, I mentioned in the last blog entry that Neil was a guest on a YouTube channel called “Hot Ones” and the interviewer was about to ask Neil the standard question about — in the grand, cosmic scale of things– how insignificant we are in the whole universe.

But Neil looked at it, and the universe, and us, from a different perspective.

He pointed out that there were four basic elements that make up human beings. Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Carbon. 

He explained that if you went across the cosmos, through all the solar systems, to galaxies, to a myriad number of planets, to the far end of the universe, you’d generally find, albeit in different levels and combinations, that so so so many different things out there are ALSO made up of Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Carbon elements.

So, it’s not that we’re all so small and insignificant in the big, scary old universe…

…it’s that we *are* the universe.

 And the universe is us. 

“Hot Ones” is a fairly simple production where a celebrity sits down at a table opposite host Sean Evans and they eat ten chicken wings, each one hotter than the last. Each wing is coated in a progressively hotter sauce registering from a meager 10,000 or so on The Scoville scale, with the first wing, all the way up to a devastating 2,000,000 on wing #10 and “the last dab”. 

You might say “But what ho, Rick– why on earth would these celebrities subject themselves to a type of edible torture?”

Why do celebs go on most shows? They have something to plug. But also, there is a challenge here that some people are just plain old curious about. Others realize too late that they’ve made a horrible mistake, and don’t want to back out in the middle of the fiery gauntlet… kinda puts your name and face in the hall of shame to be thoroughly mocked forever if you wimp out. Of the hundred or so celebs that have come in, only a handful have wimped out, and I *think* they’re all guys. Sorry, Ricky Gervais. Whereas Charlize Theron was in pain by the end but kicked some major ass, even complimenting the tastiness of the XXX Last Dab sauce made by the show itself, the last and hottest of the bunch– that of the 2,000,000 Scoville heat.

Most celebs do pretty well in the early going, through the first four or five sauces before the heat starts to kick in. Some sauces are sneaky, and the heat hits a full minute after consumption. Insidious but entertaining. 

The shows been on for four years or so, a few seasons a year. In the early days, the low level sauces would be Sriracha and Tabasco but through the years, they’ve tweaked the line up, bringing in new and varied bottles of liquid rage. By the time the average guest got through wings five, six or seven, they’d usually be in a fair amount of distress and would hit some type of liquid to put out the fire, be it something they might bring with them or the milk and/or water made available on the table.

Chef Gordon Ramsey brought an amusing bundle of stuff with him to try and tame the fire as tears ran down his cheeks. Lemon juice, Pepto, glazed doughnuts, you name it. Did any if it work? You’ll have to judge for yourself. 

Sometimes it’s a matter of how you consume the wings, whether you take dainty nibbles of vegan wings like Jeff Goldblum, or clean the entire wings off the bones like Jack Black. Either way, the heats gonna get you. 

and either way? Paul Rudd is a delight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWVHses2GCY

Host Evans eats along with every celebrity every time. While you eventually have to hope his iron constitution holds out, he puts on a brave face for his guests and also interviews them as the show goes along. 

Things always take a turn though, at wing #8, with the hot sauce called “Da Bomb”. A brutal coating registering 135,000 on the Scoville scale. A sauce that doesn’t have any redeemable quality as far as taste, because it has none. All it brings is the heat and misery. Even sauces 9 and 10, rated 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 Scovilles respectively, are deadly but at least have taste. Some say they’re decent at that!

Bottom line, its wild to see different people react to this fiery food hazard. You see celebrities at their most vulnerable and the shit can get real. There are a lot of very entertaining episodes, most of them are around 25 minutes total and almost always worth it. And while you may see a hall of shamer like Ricky Gervais go down in flames, you can also see iron man Neil deGrasse Tyson handle the wings of death like a true champ, a phoenix rising from the ashes.

Lots of fun to go around.

I ended tonight’s Hot Ones binge with the Neil deGrasse Tyson ep. I’ve always liked Neil. One of the many things I admire about….. wait…..

I feel a tangential blog topic skip continuation coming!

TO

BE

CONTINUED!

I was *going* to list my top ten favorite kaiju but then I realized I barely know the names of ten. So I’ll just ramble on about some of them. 

Probably my favorite is our pal Godzilla. The lizard god with an important message about the dangers of Atomic Warfare. 

Even though I’m no Godzilla expert, I like to think I’ve seen all his good films, as well as his stinkers. Perhaps two of the best are:

*The unedited original production from 1954, which does indeed warn us about the harmful effects of radiation, coming only some ten years after Hiroshima.

*Shin Godzilla (2016), which pays homage to the original, while giving us perhaps the most monstrous and deadly version of the lizard god. 

In both productions, there’s sufficient intrigue going on with the human characters to be of interest and that’s key. Shin actually shows us the interesting bits of the bureaucracy behind a kaiju attack. 

Those are the two I think I’d recommend first to anyone who’s craving a little lizard love. The 2014 American production isn’t bad, and has some wonderful effects when it comes to the monster fights. The other American version with Matthew Broderick around the turn of the century– don’t bother. 

Then of course, you have the plethora of movies from the ’60’s and ’70’s with the rubber suits, model towns and sometimes really goofy action. These did give us some interesting characters like Ghidrah, the three headed dragon monster, Mothra, the giant moth and many others. Some goofy fun there.

Amidst these rubber giants was Gamera, the intergalactic flying, spinning turtle and friend to all children. I recommend all Gamera movies. There had to have been at least a half dozen if not more. Or hell, just check out the MST3K versions. Always worth it. That goes for the Godzilla ones too.

2008 gave us one of the most terrifying kaiju in Cloverfield. This was a brilliant film that actually pulled off a found footage look for an entire film. The hand cam POV added sense of realism to the proceedings that is incredibly eerie. *Highly* recommended. It spawned a loosely tangential sequel starting John Goodman (10 Cloverfield Lane, 2016) but also an exclusive Netflix movie, “The Cloverfield Paradox” in 2018. Interesting sci-fi film that gives us a backhanded reason *why* earth has had, does have and will have kaiju visiting us. Worth watching.

In the last couple years, they’ve started a new kaiju shared universe, a MonsterVerse, that started with the ’14 Godzilla flick, then Kong: Skull Island in 2017 and then Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 2019. The title match in this new MonsterVerse will take place later this year with Godzilla vs Kong. I’m actually pretty excited about this one. I watched KSI and it was very well done. Lot of star power in there too. I’ve just seen GKOTM in preparation for the championship bout. Pretty good, with a good realization of the monsters! I don’t usually go to the theater–even before the pandemic– but GVK might just be worth it. 

I guess I never really thought of King Kong as a Kaiju but he is monstrously large (bigger than ever now) and can terrorize people, so… yeah, I suppose so. I think I can say with 100% certainty that GVK will be a better movie than their last battle in 1963, “King Kong vs Godzilla”. The less said, the better. That was a Japanese production, but why it took so long for a rematch…. well then again, the original was so campy, so goofy, yeah, I guess I can see why it took 57 years.

The only other high recommend from the Kaiju community would be Pacific Rim (2013). Definitely near the top of the list, giant machines (jaegers) fighting giant kaiju. What’s not to like? The sequel, from what I hear. Just go buy the first one, you won’t be sorry.

So, if you want some more quality lockdown viewing, a scrumptious cinematic repast, may I suggest the kaiju? It pairs well with a dry sake.

Bond #25*, No Time To Die will be released in November, probably, if COVID-19 is on the ropes by then (no idea). 

Couple things:

*Ever since someone pointed out that the movie’s title logo had the exact same font as the Love Boat… that’s all I see, unfortunately.

*Five Bond films for Craig in 15 years. I’ll state right now that I really wanted him to equal the seven Bond films that both Connery and Moore did. If they stuck with the new Bond film every other year pace that they used to, Craig would have had EIGHT by now! Ah well. 

*I’ll be sorry to see him go. My wife will REALLY be sorry to see him go. 

*They are calling this the 25th Bond film, which is the official number but it’s also crap. Never Say Never Again, back in the early ’80’s, may have been a somewhat lackluster redo of Thunderball, but it had Connery, which automatically catapults the movie–warts and all, past most of the Moore entries and at least half of the Dalton and Brosnan films. Yeah, yeah, the Broccolis didn’t produce it, I don’t care. The Broccoli’s had a pretty spotty track record starting after Goldfinger, all the way up through Die Another Day. So yeah, NSNA counts in my book. 

Now as for The Love Bond– I mean No Time To Die, I’ve heard that:

*Phoebe Waller Bridge (Fleabag) joined the writing team.

*They had to switch directors early on.

*Danny Boyle, the 1st director did NOT want to kill off Bond, as is the alleged plan.

*Hey, I heard they want to kill off Bond at the end.

Mind you, none of that matters to me as long as it’s a good movie. Hopefully much better than Spectre. I was not wild about Spectre. It was alright and had a few nods to  ’60’s Bond. I’d watch it again and I might even like more on a third viewing. But I wasn’t crazy about Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) being the mastermind pulling all the strings behind everything in the Craig films. Nor him knowing Bond when they were younger. I don’t know… something about all that seemed to have a “come out of nowhere feel” to it.

Then there was Bond’s love interest, the evil Mr. White’s daughter, Madeliene (Lea Seydoux). Okay. All the women he’s danced around with through the films and the years and this is the woman he falls for AND quits MI6 for? True, he did fall for Vesper and was ready to quit and be with her too, but Vesper was interesting and seemingly more magnetic. Madeleine seems to be about the least interesting woman Bond has ever run into. And she also seems to be half his age. In the end, I guess I just don’t buy the relationship. Doesn’t feel real, just like most of the Blofeld stuff.

Now, in the new film, Captain Stubing–sorry, Bond, has retired to be with White’s daughter and there’s a new 007, Nomi (Lashana Lynch). Of course everything goes wrong and Bond has to be called back in to save the day–and probably die trying. Things aren’t what they seem, Blofeld is making trouble and Rami Malek, late of Bohemian Rhapsody and Mr. Robot is a new villain with creepy bug eyes. I guess there’s a new love interest for Bond as well but that seems a bit premature. Isn’t he still with White’s  daughter? I don’t know. He quit for her, so…

And this whole thing about him dying at the end… could all be BS but Boyle did quit over it. And you know that the franchise will continue. If COURSE it’ll continue. They won’t let any other franchise die EVER (Aliens, Terminator, Die Hard, Rocky, Predator, Harry Potter, the list goes on) and a series like Bond is designed to keep going like the Energizer bunny anyway. 

But maybe this is all part of the Broccolis finishing off the last few bits of trim in the corner they painted themselves into. 

When Craig started in Casino Royale, they did a hard reboot on the character of Bond, showing him at the start of his 007 career. They went out of their way to tie his films all together to show he’s the one, true, actual Bond and there was never any Bond before him within this world. It all started with Casino Royale.

In the pre-Craig Bond films, they kept a loose history of the backstory so that this was the same Bond we saw in previous incarnations. The kind of thing that was laid out at the beginning of Moore’s For Your Eyes Only, when Moore’s Bond laid flowers on his wife’s grave, referring to Dian Rigg’s character in On Her Majesties Secret Service, which starred George Lazenby — technically two Bonds earlier. 

So the producers starting all over with Casino Royale was a new twist and a refreshing change. Things had gotten very very stale over the decades with the same formula, puns, double entendres, etc., so CR was an amazing breath of fresh air. Seeing this all new, intense, superior Bond, it was easy to buy into this new incarnation. We would end up seeing his entire career. It did seem odd that after only CR and then Quantum of Solace, that we started Skyfall with Hillary and everyone else referring to him as a tired old man fit for retirement. Short career! Speaking of careers, I did find it odd that they showed us the beginning of Bond’s time as 007, yet we still had Judi Dench in there as M, as she was for Brosnan. That seemed a weird extension. Anyway. 

So the grand plan seemed to be showing us the entire career of James Bond, so if they did kill him at the end of this movie’s cruise (see what I did there?), I guess it would make a kind of sense. No more Bond. His story is at an end.

But the problem as I saw it, was what would they do after Craig? As I said before, they won’t stop making Bonds. But as excellent a jumping on point as Casino Royale was… it seems like No Time to Die could be a really easy jumping OFF point. 

Back in the dinosaur days, when we as Bond fans transitioned from Connery to Lazenby to Connery to Moore to Connery to Moore to Dalton to Brosnan, it was really no big deal once you got used to the notion that it was supposed to be the same character, different actor. But now, you’ve got a separate Bond with a separate story. A story which, for the better part of a generation, that’s the only story, the only Bond they’ve ever known. And a really really good one at that.

So when the inevitable next Bond film comes out, if you’re the producers, do you show the very start of his career again? A whole new hard reboot again? And hope that a rehash will do as well as Casino Royale? Hope that people will buy in again?

Or do you go back to the old ways and just cast a new Bond and pretend the Craig era didn’t happen and Bond just does his thing? That maybe he’s the same character as the last Bond– well not the last Bond, the one that died but the Bond before the last Bond, the one who didn’t die, the one from 20 years…. earlier. Good luck to the Broccolis. 

As this new film was being made, having considered the quandary I mention above, and considering the new 007 Nomi being introduced, I thought maybe they had an ingenious plan. Maybe they were going to see how things played out with Nomi. If the audiences love her, really really love her, well then, the next 007 film could be just that, a new 007 film and not a Bond film. Just go with the new female 007. Easy peasy. It would only be if the audience did NOT like Nomi, would the producers have to go back to the drawing board. 

At least, that’s what I assumed the ingenious plan to be. But I’ve also heard rumblings that the movie has not done well with test audiences and they had to do some substantial reshoots and rewriting. Don’t know, I’ve only heard rumblings. I don’t even know what the alleged audiences were allegedly complaining about. 

It’s funny though because every time I talk about the ingenious way they could make 007 a woman, there are always those that start moaning “Bond can’t be a woman!” Then I have to clarify that I’m just saying that it’d be 007 that’s a woman, not Bond. It would be the height of stupidity to turn Bond into a woman, when you’ve got other excellent female spy characters out there already like Black Widow and Atomic Blonde. But 007 can be anyone. 

But they never ask me, because the thing IS.