I'm sitting at work looking online and trying to find anybody online that had a problem with the ERTL X-Wing Star fighter, and I couldn't. Everybody says that it's a beautiful kit. I think they are stupid. I know, harsh. There may have been a problem with my kit. The mold that made it may have been on it's last leg before blowing out and the bottom half got jacked up. Hell, as far as I know, it may have been the top half that was bad. It's really hard to tell when all of the little parts fit on both halves just fine but the two main parts of the fuselage just don't go together. And it wasn't just a little discrepancy, we're talking a major difference in size. The outside walls of the upper half were about a 2mm to the INSIDE of the inside walls of the lower half on both sides. Taking that into account with the fact that I got this kit second hand, it had already been worked on (very, very little), and a couple of engine parts and landing gear flaps were missing, I chucked the thing in the dumpster. Now I want to buy a new one, but I'm afraid I'm going to run into the same sizing issue in the fuselage. I like building models, but I can't stand fixing production mistakes before I can build a kit.
Note: My ERTL TIE Interceptor kit is the same way, so I doubt it was a one time thing.
As for my Robocop cruiser build, it's going fine. I've got the main body done... meaning it's been painted flat black and the OCP logos placed on the doors. There was next to no work to be done on the body. The sprues came off very cleanly, and the only parts needing to be added are the trunk lid flair and the mirrors, so no big deal. I've got all of the engine details sanded and primed, waiting for their detail paint and assembly. The only trouble I've run into (other than me not wanting to assemble the engine but having to...) is that I've discovered that my wife is now intolerant to the smell of paint. Great. I'm not painting outside at the end of November, and my windows don't open for ventilation. My paint times are going to be reduced to when she leaves for work, followed by several hours of drying time with an air freshened room before she comes home to work. So I'm going to have to set up the days paint plan the night before she goes to work and paint as soon as she leaves so the smell will dissipate a bit.
I also just purchased a 1:24 scale Whelen Edge lightbar on eBay for 4 bucks. I was looking into getting one of those kits that uses very small LEDs to light the lightbar, but they are just too expensive for what they are. They are uber bright, but at 45 bucks for a lightbar, I would want the flash patterns to be accurate. The Edge bar has 6 LEDs in the housing powered by a 9v battery. It wouldn't be too hard to hide a 9v battery in the car, paint the wires black and run them up the C-post to the roof. The wires also include a quick connect feature, so I could hide the battery in a display stand and run the wires through the bottom of the car to the stand it's self. The only issue I have is that the 6 LEDs flash randomly in no distinct flash pattern, and that would bug the hell out of me. So I purchased a static bar for this kit. Maybe someday somebody will design a light board tiny enough for this application and powerful enough to operate a pre-programmed flash pattern. Time will tell.
I have been able to watch a few good movies in the last few weeks. My wife and I rented Up the other day. Very good movie, lots of humor, but also a lot of drama for a Disney Pixar film. Within the first 10 minutes of the film my wife was in tears. But there was a lot more funny than sad. Damn well better be. Who wants to go to the movie and go home feeling sad and depressed? Like with My Girl. And Street Fighter.
Ghost of Girlfriends Past was wonderful. Yes, this geek can watch chick flicks with little to no problem. Unless it's Sex in the Shitty. I mean City. If my kids grow up to become people like the characters in that show I'm going to rip off my legs and beat myself to death with them. GoGP was great though, and had a lot to offer for both men and women. The women will love the on-again-off-again love story between the two main characters, and the men will love that the male lead is a chauvinistic pig. The running comedy will of course be enjoyed by all.
I was never a huge fan of Star Trek, but OH MY GOD that movie was excellent!! It immediately made me want to go out and buy the first season of the original series, or Star Trek TOS as us geeks would say. Excellent character development for the entire crew, some great effects and sound, the movie score was perfect... The cast and crew have a lot to be proud of with this movie.
I started watching The Vampire Diaries on the CW. Well, let me rephrase this... I started watching the new CW series The Vampire Diaries by downloading it from Limewire. I’m at work every night a show I like is on TV, so I pretty much always have to download illegal copies online in order to watch. What do I think of the show? It’s what I like to call “eeh...”. It really has no original thought behind it. From the first 5 minutes I was feeling like I was watching the bastard child of Twilight and True Blood. Since I like both of the later mentioned series, I can’t complain too much. I would have liked something a little more original though. However the relationship between the shows male vampire protagonist and his vampire brother antagonist/protagonist combo is the reason to watch. If they would have ran with the relationship between these two and scrapped the rest of the show for an original story idea, it would have been much better.
Season 9 of Smallville is great. Duh.
I’m currently reading Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I just finished The Terminator, and that book was great. I’m a huge fan of the Terminator franchise, and the books really expand on information that was not in the movies for whatever reason. Not only do you get more information that better structures the existing story and makes it make a little more sense, but there is also a lot of extra stuff that totally screws with your mind with the whole time-displacement-alternate-realities thing. For instance...
*****SPOILERS*****
The Terminator doesn’t just kill the different Sarah Connors and leave as you see in the movie. The files in the future are not too detailed, but it does know that Sarah Connor has a pin in her leg from a fracture, so it uses that for a positive ID. It’s not just systematically killing all of them, it starts at the top of the list and works it’s way down. It kills one, slices her leg open looking for the pin, gets no positive ID, and moves on to the next. Now for the mind trip... What Skynet didn’t know is that the fracture of the leg occurred later in her life. Like the end of the movie when Reese blows the crap out of the T-800 and it blows Sarah down the stairs and impales her leg with shrapnel. Wow. A machine from the future is sent to the past to kill a woman and uses information about a leg fracture to ID her, not knowing that the Terminator it’s self is what caused the fracture that Skynet knows about. If Skynet hadn’t sent the Terminator, she would have never had the pin... what a paradox. And that is just one of many.
As for Terminator 2, it’s just as good as the original novel, and it’s written by the same author, but if you have seen Terminator 2’s special edition, then you know all of the extra stuff that wasn’t in the original theatrical release. The only addition is a future scene with John sending back... shit... hold on...
*****SPOILERS*****
sending back Reese for the first story and the Terminator for the second.
As for games, I’m currently working my way through Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. It’s ok. Seeing the force powers at full strength is pretty damn cool, and the script is a very good tie in. Unfortunately, to me anyway, it’s the actual game play that suffers. This is one of the few games that the enemies hit you while you’re down. I guess I can’t complain about that as it adds a bit more realism to the game, but come on! When you get used to playing games that the enemy knocks you down and then step back to let you get up and organize yourself before attacking again, then suddenly you play a game where you have full health, the guy knocks you down, kicks you a few times and you die, that’s kind of unfair and shitty. Not to mention that you are supposed to be a Dark Jedi/Jedi, and you get your ass handed to you by a bunch of random space critters. Anything more powerful than a Jawa or a Stormtrooper (which are the same strength... funny...) and it will kick your butt. Lame. And when you do get to fighting, the mechanics get old. There are several different types of attacks you can do, but the execution and the on screen movements make it feel almost like a fighting game on the SNES. I like the game, but for a game on a next gen system, it leaves a little to be desired.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game kicks ass! Now, I’m a huge Ghostbusters fan, so I’m biased. But, that’s not saying much as the other GB games out there are on par with a turd sandwich. The outside case looks great. The filling sucks. But GB:TVG is very much the exception. The control is excellent, the voice acting is superb, the graphics are beautiful, and the overall story is great. Not to say that there aren’t any flaws. My biggest gripe, as mentioned as a joke in my first blog, are the cherubs. They just suck. Most of the other ghosts or possessed items in the game are easy enough to tackle once you figure out the trick. Not the cherubs. Even after you figure out the trick you’re still probably going to have your ass handed to you several times before you defeat them. Then you go straight from them to the main boss battle, only to find that there is no trick. He pops up, you blast him, he goes away. He pops up, you blast him, he goes away. You do that like 6 times and you win. Game over. Why were the cherubs so hard? Pisses me off.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is outstanding. Again, great story, graphics, blah blah blah... The fighting mechanics, while very simplistic, look VERY good onscreen. The only issue I have with the game are the villains that you fight. I’ve never really cared for Killer Croc or Baine, and I would have preferred that some of the characters that you get an homage to only were actually in game. But that’s just personal taste.
Well, that would be enough rambling for a day. At some point I plan on having a little bit of structure to this blog, but for now I’m just trying to get people up to speed as to where I’m at with stuff in general. Future blogs will be updates on prop and model buildings that are ongoing, full reviews of movies or games that I have just seen or finished. I’m also going to see if posting images is possible so that you don’t have to just go by my descriptions of things. Tomorrow I will be finishing Star Wars The Force Unleashed and working some more on Robo’s car, so expect a small update on Sunday about that. Since tomorrow will be the start of me building the engine block on the car, expect to read many angry rants and a few more expletives. Until then, may the force be with you.
See what I did there? I said “goodbye” with a geeky movie quote. Looser.
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