3/26/1: I'm sure this happens to anybody who considers themselves a writer. This is the problem of my best stuff never actually making it to the page. I'll be walking around, just thinking and amazing phrases come to mind. When I try to recreate that once I'm home and trying to write it down, it just somehow all comes apart. The main theme is still there, but it's changed, the words are different and in the wrong order. What sounded great a few hours ago in my head, now reads like crap. And although I don't consider myself anywhere near being an illustrator, it's 10 times worse there. When I actually sit down and draw (a very rare occurance), I can see these great pictures in my head, every stroke and color, but once I put the pen to paper it looks like a hyperactive 5 year old with a broken crayon. Every artist is his own worst critic, but it can be especially harsh when you're a devout pessimist like me. I don't know why I'm telling you this? I guess just with the hopes that somebody else out there is like, "Yeah, me too, damnit!"

3/19/1: What the hell is wrong with people? Exit Wounds made 19 million dollars this past weekend. Steven freaking Segal!! I can't believe that many suckers shelled out good money to see this damn flick. Don't people remember how much of a burn-out this guy is. People must have gone for DMX, you know because rappers are always in such great films, look at Ice-T's distinguished career. Segal's movies sucked in the 80's, I haven't seen anything of his since Under Siege 2: Electric Bugaloo, but I know that his later movies suck even worse.

However during the 90's he did make a movie with the greatest title ever, Fire Down Below. He's kickin' ass while learning to deal with gonorrhea, every time he kicks someone, he has his own excruciating pain Down Below to deal with. He's hunting down the man that originally gave his wife this horrible disease, so he can snap his neck with a quick twist. It's a horrible struggle for him to live like this, should he kick ass and just deal with the pain or should he visit a clinic? It's a touching drama, with Segal in a power-house role.

2/20/1: Way back on 8/11/00 I wrote about my recollections of a cartoon called Turbo Teen. I recently recieved some information about this wacky show. AgentX505 writes:

Bret Matthews, also known as Turbo Teen, was combined with his 1984 Chevy Camero by a merging ray created by Dr. Chase. Whenever he became hot or stressed out, he'd turn into the car. He would only revert to his human self when he was cooled down, either by water or after giving himself some time to calm down. With his girlfriend Pattie and his best friend Alex, he used his ability to fight crime, often crossing paths with an evil dude named Dark Rider, who basically wanted to own the world. The show (sadly) only lasted one season, but was definately pretty cool. Also check out the Turbo Teen Website.

Thanks for the info. This makes me wish that the Cartoon Network would show re-runs of these old cartoons. They need a Cartoon Network 2, where they show nothing but defunct cartoons that aren't the so called classics like The Flintstones. (And I can only take so many re-runs of Scooby Doo.) I want to see shows I haven't seen in forever, stuff like The Transformers (of course) and the copy-cat Go-Bots, G.I. Joe, The Smurfs and its retarded twin The Snorks, He-Man, old Space Ghost, Inspector Gadget, Captain Caveman, Hong Kong Fuey, Herculoids and countless others. Looking around the web I just found these pretty cool sites: 80's Cartoons and 80's Cartoon Theme Songs

12/27/00: Now a few of you may have figured out that I'm a child of the 80's. Calling myself Optimus Prime, devoting a director section to John Hughes, just about anything from the 80's just brings mist to my eyes. (Ahh... parachute pants where have you gone... sniff.) You may find this disturbing, hell I find it a little disturbing myself. I was a huge fan of breakdancing, I was known to bust out the cardboard every once and a while, and try a few knee spins. I never got much further than that, but I sure appreciated what I was seeing on TV. Without a doubt the greatest movie ever produced on the subject was Breakin' and it's equally good sequel Breakin' 2: Electric Bugaloo. (I love that byline, I call every sequel that. "I'm dying to see Star Wars II: Electric Bugaloo.") I found this cool Breakin' site devoted to greatness that these films achieved. Turbo was by far my favorite, although Ozone and Special K were no chumps. I miss the days when I could turn on HBO and follow along with their adventures. Either of these films or BMX Bandits, played 24/7 on HBO in 1985. This gives me an idea, not to original, but I think it's about time I devote a section to great 80's movies. They must be movies that are entirely 80's, clothes, hair, music and subject matter.

10/6/00 - It's been quite a while since I've written in this section. I felt I should say something, try to keep people visiting this page. Not that there are many people visiting this site yet. (Hi Mom.) Today I'm going to talk about movie trailers. What brought this on, is the amazing trailer for Unbreakable, the new movie from M. Night Shyamalan the writer director of The Sixth Sense. This is a nearly perfect movie trailer. It gives away almost nothing, only teases you with the fact that Bruce Willis has been in a major train wreck, and that he's escaped without a scratch, that he's Unbreakable. Nothing more than that is needed, I'm now desperate to find out the why's and how's. What is he going to do with this new found strength? I guarantee you this movie will be a huge hit, largely based on that this will probably be a great film, but this trailer will also bring a ton of people. Please don't release another trailer showing me what happens. I'll have to cover my eyes and ears.

I'm not sure, but I heard that director Night cut this trailer himself, which makes perfect sense to me. Why don't more directors cut their own trailers? I know that I would want to. They've spent the last 2 years of their life making this film, and they let an outside party decide what audiences are going to see first. The most recent example of a horrible trailer is What Lies Beneath, it gave away every single twist and turn in the film, besides the very last one. The only reason I saw it was because it was a Robert Zemeckis film. It was a pretty bad movie, but I think I would have enjoyed it a hell of a lot more if I didn't already know everything. It just pisses me off when Hollywood does this. Stop! Take a look at the trailers for Unbreakable and Sixth Sense, these are perfect examples of what film trailers should be. Remember your supposed to tease the audience, not give it away.

8/11/00 - Obviously I'm a big fan of 80's cartoons, seeing how I've taken to calling myself Optimus Prime. I spent much of my youth watching every single cartoon that was on. Saturday morning couldn't come quick enough for me. I was up at the crack of dawn, and in front of the TV set for hours. One show that recently came back into my memory is Turbo Teen. Man what a concept for a show, a teenager who turns into a sports car when he gets upset. Weird stuff. Anyways, that's about all I remember about the show. If anybody remembers anything about this show, or knows a site that contains info on it, please email me.

8/8/00 - This is something to go along with yesterdays post about suspension of disbelief. There is something about Superman that always bugged me. He's an alien, Earth's yellow sun gives him super powers, he can fly, he's faster than a bullet, nearly invincible, and he can even turn back time. I'm fine with all that. However, I just can't bring myself to believe that no one recognizes him as Clark Kent. Like glasses, and combing his hair slightly different makes him a completely different person.

Talking about glasses made me think of another stupid movie cliche. Why does wearing glasses make you an ugly person? All through 80's teen films and probably most recently with She's All That, all it takes for a beautiful woman to become ugly is to just put on a pair of glasses. Then of course there is some kind of deal where they take off their glasses, maybe put on a little make-up, and suddenly they're gorgeous and popular. Come on, I thought the chick was hot the whole movie. Why didn't anybody else?

8/7/00 -These are my very first thoughts put down on this site. But unfortunately many of you may not want to read this right now. It has heavy spoilers for the movie Hollow Man, including the ending. So read on if you've seen it, or if you don't care to see it.

I'm all about suspension of disbelief in films. Sci-Fi being my favorite genre, I have to let the film-makers tell me what the rules are in their universe. Now in Hollow Man, I was jazzed to see an update of the invisible man movies, with some top notch f/x. Seeing how it's directed by one of my favorite directors Paul Verhoeven, I thought I'd be treated to a pretty damn good film.

I was wrong. For this film I can believe that you can make a man invisible, no problem. I can even ignore the fact that once invisible you would not be able to see. (Light needs to reflect off your retinas, with your retinas being invisible, no sight.) We're set up that this is the normal everyday world, except for the fact that Kevin Bacon and his team have discovered a way to make animals and humans invisible.

Once invisible, insane, and now near the end of the film, Kevin seems to become invulnerable to pain or death. You can't see him, but that doesn't mean you can't kill him! Let's see, first he's blasted by a flame thrower and set on fire for a few minutes, normally this would kill a person, or at least incapacitate them. He gets up, is then bashed in the head with a crowbar, also usually results in death or possibly knocked silly for a while. (In movies, usually one bare-fisted punch will knock a guy out.) Ok, so he gets up yet again, and manages to put that same crowbar into a electricity panel, he's shocked with a few thousand volts or whatever. Dead you should be dead! But somehow he still has the strength to pull himself from an incredible fireball that engulfs the entire laboratory. And of course lays in wait, until the exact moment that the screenwriter feels that would be most surprising, to attack our heros again. Even though all three of these people are only a few feet above a raging inferno, none of them even seem to notice the heat.(Heat rises.) It takes Kevin to actually fall back into the flames to finally "die". I expected him to still be alive at this rate, but the movie is finally over.