Random Reads: Star Wars Books!

All right... the time has come. I am officially getting ready to delete the content from Really Rather Random Guy (dot blogspot dot com) and in preparing for that, I wanted to import a bunch of the content that I know will then be lost forever, by bringing the posts over here to Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks (dot blogspot dot com). So, with that in mind, I thought I would preface these entries with the fact that they are indeed OLD blog posts from an OLD, now DEFUNCT blog, and cross my fingers and hope that folks will still want to read them.

This post was originally published back on February 19th, 2014.

A real blink-and-you'll-miss-it post tonight kids! Here's a handful of Star Wars books I've picked up secondhand:

Here are a couple of highly educational books starring C-3PO and R2-D2. I always find it exceptionally weird when they use fictional characters from other galaxies to teach kids about things from the here-and-now. I mean, I get that they're using characters that appeal to kids... and in a backwards sort of way it does make sense that the droids from Star Wars would be the experts on both robotics and space travel... but they seem a little over-qualified right? Like Earth robotics and space travel both seem a little beneath them when you compare them to protocol droids and hyper-drives. Both are a pretty fun flip-through however, as the ideas behind both robotics and space have come pretty far since these books were put out. 

Next, this pair of novels I picked up at Scottie's Books. I picked these both up for half the cover price (which was originally 1.95). I've never been a huge fan of the ideas behind the "expanded universe" for Star Wars, and these two novels make the second time I've really gone outside of my comfort zone and picked up books based on the original trilogy. They look goofy enough to enjoy, and the price was right, so I figured, "why not?"

Finally, we have a book that I almost didn't buy: Star Wars A More Wretched Hive: The Mos Eisley Cantina. At first glance I almost just dismissed this as a part of the drek that came out around the re-release of the (remastered) Original Trilogy in the late 90's. And in fact, this one is from 1997 and features a few of the "improvements" that George Lucas shoe-horned into the film. But then I noticed two things: 1) It's about Mos Eisley, which is quite possibly one of the absolute best things about the original Star Wars (even with the alterations). and 2) IT IS A SCRATCH AND SNIFF BOOK. And boy it does NOT disappoint. If you've ever wondered what a wookie's "strong, swampy odor" is like, or what the "sharp electrical scent" of a lightsaber might smell like right after it slices off Ponda Baba's arm, well then this book is for you! Also included? The general odor of the Cantina from outside, a frothy fruit beverage from the bar' "The only pleasant smell in the whole place!", Greedo's breath (!), the exhaust of THE one-and-only Millenium Falcon, and of course, Jabba the Hutt's morbidly-obese-shut-in-corpse-from-SE7EN body odor. 

Gosh, next to that I have very little to say about the kid's book version of the Ewok's complete ruination of the final film. (Actually, I'm not an Ewok hater by an means. I was totally on the Wickett bandwagon as a kid.) Ummm... it was nice? Both of these books ran me .99 cents.

League Post: My Life in 1X1

All right... the time has come. I am officially getting ready to delete the content from Really Rather Random Guy (dot blogspot dot com) and in preparing for that, I wanted to import a bunch of the content that I know will then be lost forever, by bringing the posts over here to Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks (dot blogspot dot com). So, with that in mind, I thought I would preface these entries with the fact that they are indeed OLD blog posts from an OLD, now DEFUNCT blog, and cross my fingers and hope that folks will still want to read them.

I should also point out that the "League of Extraordinary Bloggers" is also OLD and DEFUNCT. This post was originally published back on March 29th, 2014.

Wow, I've been out of the blogging loop for a little while now... since the last post on here is from a League post... the week before last. 

I can't even begin to tell you all that's been happening here in Really Rather Random Land... but suffice it to say I've barely had time to catch my breath. But enough about all that for now. I'm here to write about this week's League of Extraordinary Bloggers topic! And as you can see above the topic is an interesting one. We have a photo challenge this week!

Arrange items that describe you within a 12″ x 12″ space and take a picture. 

So here you have it. Now... full disclosure... this is not EXACTLY a square foot. The surface I grabbed to set everything up on was slightly shorter than a foot up and down and slightly longer side-to-side... so it's not a true square foot... but I was in a hurry so you'll have to forgive me for being close-but-not-quite. 

Some of the highlights:

1. Anything Halloween or Horror related. You'll find Jack Skellington, Sam from Trick R' Treat, Garfield from his Halloween TV special, and various other little Devils, skeleton pirates, zombies, and Horror Icons in the mix. I am such a big kid when it comes to Halloween and Horror, both for similar but sometimes different reasons. Halloween is all about darkness and light melting together like orange candle wax, blurring identities and swirling danger and fun together like autumn leaves on the wind. Horror is all about tension and relief, shock and electricity, and reminding yourself that you're alive. The best horror and the best Halloweens are a perfect balance of wry humor and fear and the sense that when it's all over you'll still be (mostly...) safe and sound. 

2. Anything Comic book or Super-Hero related. Imaginext Harley Quinn is a new (and beautiful) acquisition in my collection, and you'll also find a custom-painted Red Lantern Dex-Starr done by Reis O'Brien (of the now OLD and DEFUNCT Lair of the Dork Horde blog) a Super-Hero Squad Iron Man figurine, and of course one of my all-time favorite and personally iconic issues of Uncanny X-Men, #234. Comic books saved me as a child. I rode out some of the hardest, loneliest, horrific and painful times of my childhood with my nose (and the rest of my face... and let's face it my brain) buried in a comic book. They allowed me to celebrate my otherness, my misfit nature in a way that no other medium did at the time. Comics play out in your mind like reading a book does, but it also bolsters the imagination with visuals that support and enhance the experience. 

3. Saturday Morning Cartoons! Well... cartoons in general. You'll see some classic in there, like Velma from Scooby-Doo, Egon from Real Ghostbusters, Darkwing Duck, Finn from Adventure Time, Lil' Leo from TMNT, Scrat from Ice Age, and Emmet from the recent LEGO movie. Bert from Sesame Street is in there, and I lovingly include Garfield in some of my warmest childhood cartoon memories too. Animation is sooo important to me, as is anything created with a child's imagination in mind. 

4. Toys! So many toys are represented here, (too many to talk about ever single one) including my burgeoning love of LEGOs, my fondness for old action figures and mini-figures from my youth, and pretty much any cool, plastic representation of any character I have loved. Cheap toys, expensive toys, bootleg toys, licensed toys, vintage toys, brand new toys, it does not matter... I just LOVE toys. You may notice I have included every single one of the old gang that I used to play with almost exclusively, including Petey Graffiti, Chicky Baby, a green LEGO man, a yellow Ghostbusters Ghost, a gray and purple robot, and a blue MUSCLE man... their story can be read here. They were six of my absolute favorite toys of all time. Fisher-Price Little People, Construx, Adventure People, Battle Beasts, Dino Riders, Funko Minis, Imaginext figures, Mini-Mates, cereal premiums, fast food premiums... they're all represented. 

5. Books, science fiction, childhood, nostalgia, Goodwill... you name it. I have a couple of examples of Star Wars toys in there, one fairly old, one relatively new. California Raisins which were an obsession that branched out to many other food-related mascots... I even have ol' Ronald McDonald in the mix as well as a mini PEZ dispenser, childhood obesity be damned. Petey Graffiti is in there to represent a dual love of the toy itself but also Garbage Pail Kids in general, which I collected like an ADDICT as a child. I have a flyer from a Goodwill store (you guys do know I like shopping at Goodwill, right?) and while not my favorite book from the Borderlands/Bordertown series, definitely my favorite cover from that series... which is quite possibly my favorite book series of all time. 

This foot by foot picture is a snapshot of the geek me. There are lots of other square feet I could fill with my family, or my job, or the secret wishes that I make in the night of what I wish my life could be. But one square foot can't hold all of that, so I just went with the geeky stuff. 

Let's see what the other members of the League have squared away:

- D.I. Treasures

- AEIOU and Sometimes Why 

- Cool & Collected

- Achievements in Gaming

- Happy Haunted Sunshine House

- Stunt Zombie

- Jathniel

- The Nerd Nook

I guess it's hip to be square! Anyway... I'll be back soon! Keep your peepers peeled for more randomness right here!

Random Reads: The Borderlands / Bordertown Series

All right... the time has come. I am officially getting ready to delete the content from Really Rather Random Guy (dot blogspot dot com) and in preparing for that, I wanted to import a bunch of the content that I know will then be lost forever, by bringing the posts over here to Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks (dot blogspot dot com). So, with that in mind, I thought I would preface these entries with the fact that they are indeed OLD blog posts from an OLD now (or soon to be, depending on when you're reading this) DEFUNCT blog, and cross my fingers and hope that folks will still want to read them.

This post was originally published online back in February 2nd, 2014. 

Today I want to take a post and talk about what is potentially one of my absolute favorite book series of all times. It has a convoluted, tangled history, and honestly, it's kind of hard to figure out all of the books that are even IN the series without a guide-map of some sort. Sounds AWESOME so far, right? 

Well, what I'm talking about is the Borderland/Bordertown Series that was created by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold back in 1986. It started out as a series of anthology books with contributors like Charles De Lint and Ellen Cushner. It expanded into a handful of novels by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull, and then a revival of the series happened in 2011 when a new anthology was put out with contributors like Neil Gaiman and  Holly Black.

The series was all based around the idea that there exists a place where our mundane, technology-driven Earth and the magic-based Elfland touch and merge, creating a border between the two worlds. In this borderland there is Bordertown, where humans and Elves mingle. Magic and technology can function in varying degrees, sporadically, unpredictably, and in unexpected ways. The town has a structure somewhat similar to most urban cities... with the haves and the have-nots divvied up into their respective neigborhoods. But what makes Bordertown special is how it draws runaways from both sides of the Border like the Pied Piper. These kids and other lost souls usually end up in the SoHo district. Because of the huge variance in the folks who live in Bordertown, the possibilities for the types of characters that can be introduced, and therefore the types of stories that can be told, are virtually limitless. The elves we're talking about are not the Keebler or Santa's variety, or cutesy winged little pixies. These are snooty, high-born elves that cannot be characterized as frail by any measure of the word. There are various different attitudes on both the human and elven sides of the coin, from heated gang warfare to lovers-not-fighters who just want everyone to get along. 

You'd never know what kinds of stories are inside this book based on the cover art.
While I love it, I can't help but feel like the Mad Max vibe of this and the next cover image
are a bit wasted on these anthologies. I think if I were looking for the kind of stories
this cover seems to advertise... I might be a bit disappointed when I finally read Borderland.

I discovered the Bordertown series for the first time at Goodwill, but only two of them, and the rest I had to track down online later on. For the purposes of this post I'm showing them in order, but I read these things ALL out of order the first time, and honestly it worked pretty well anyway. There are recurring characters that show up throughout the stories, as the various different authors build on each others stories and borrow each other's characters. Bordertown is a community with a handful of very prominent residents, so this only makes sense. The true first book in the series is the one pictured above, Borderland. It contains 4 novellas that introduce some of Bordertown's MOST famous, including a hero named Stick, a thief named Gray, and a handful of others. It also pretty well sets the tone for the Bordertown books, which is to say urban fantasy, stories of runaways experiencing the world, and stories heavily drenched in rock and roll. There's a real feel of post-apocalyptic story-telling to the books as well, that have left many fans wondering what the state of the world outside of Bordertown actually is... or if the nature of Bordertown itself is what makes life so rough there. The first two books were put out around 1985 and 1986, and they have that distinct feel of 80's youth culture to them.

These two book covers are straight out of my childhood, by the way.
When I had discovered the Bordertown books as an adult and was looking for more of them
I found pictures of the cover art online and realized I DISTINCTLY remembered
seeing the covers to these books in my grammar school Library when I was a kid.
They were nothing that interested me back then... or so I thought. 

There are many stories centered on the homeless kids of Bordertown living and surviving together. Some stories are inspiring while others are gut-wrenching. The first couple of books really seem to focus on the fantasy elements and sort of skim over some of the uglier aspects. Books later in the series take the opportunity to really focus on what life for homeless kids, both human and elfin, might entail. The fact that these stories take place in a town where magic can literally happen around every corner seems to make them even more poignant. The Elves of Bordertown are sometimes friendly, but many of them have been banished there and hate humans with a passion. Elves are not the only magical beings hanging around, but they are the most common. In the first two books alone we meet a were-cat and a demon-possessed young woman, but believe it or not, they pale in comparison to some of the sheer weirdness that transpires between human and elven characters just living their day-to-day lives. 

This artwork is still a bit misleading. Honestly, looking at it I'm inclined to think this is
more a futuristic Blade Runner or Fifth Element style adventure tale...
Of which it is definitely neither.

Life on the Border is the first book in the series to have more than just 4 stories in it, and is also the first book published in the 90's. The anthology juices really get flowing as the new storytellers start to join in and build on the Bordertown canon and mythos. We get a glimpse of the skater culture in Bordertown and more elements like mythological figures and movie characters who've literally stepped off the silver screen come to play in Bordertown. They play with the narrative a bit here as well, having a framing story around all the other tales that gives us the first-hand experiences of a girl who is exploring Bordertown for the first time. There is rust and grime and heart-ache and comradery and enchantment woven into every story in one way or another. These books really get addictive.  

NOT in love with this cover art... in fact, it almost prevented me from buying it.
But the endorsement from Lloyd Alexander actually did encourage me to look past
and not judge this book by... well you know.

Now. THIS was the first book I read from this series. I found both of Will Shetterly's books at Goodwill for a couple of bucks apiece, and I have NO IDEA what drew me to them. It was just one of those impulse buys, that when you look back at it in retrospect, doesn't feel like it was random or impulse at all. Elsewhere is quite possibly one of my top 10 favorite reads of all time, and it (along with its sequel, below) made me completely RAVENOUS for all things Bordertown. I think I would STILL recommend reading this book first to anyone wanting to know what this series is all about. It tells the story of how a young man named Ron comes to Bordertown, and the community he finds there and the life he carves out for himself. The world is so perfectly realized in this book that you feel like you can effortlessly visualize every detail. The people, the local customs, the harsh reality of Ron's new living arrangements, they all feel like you're experiencing them in person. And because Ron's desires and motivations are all ones we can empathize with easily, it makes the story seem all that more plausible, even when there are elves lounging around. 

Not much else to say about this one, still not a huge fan of the art style here,
possibly even less so than the Elsewhere cover art. These are not the original covers
to these books though. Originally published back in 1991, these are reprints from 2004.

NeverNever is the sequel to Elsewhere and I can't talk too much about it without giving away the pretty shocking ending to the preceding book. Suffice it to say that Ron returns for another story, and he goes on to become a prominent, and recognizable character in the Bordertown stories after this. The one thing that genuinely irritates me about the series is that Shetterly literally takes stories he wrote in the earlier books and writes them directly into these two novels. The problem is that when he does so he actually contradicts things that happened in the earlier stories, such as omitting characters and in general mucking up the history, timeline, and continuity of the series. These are pretty minor, ignorable problems to be honest, and are not terribly harmful to the overall experience... but still... it niggles at me. 

Even though this book came out in '94
the cover design just screams 80's.
The title is printed in a metallic silver and was
a nightmare to photograph so you could actually read it

Emma Bull's Finder is another full-length novel, and shares many of the characters from the Will Shetterly stories, which is not surprising, since Emma Bull is Will Shetterly's wife. This book focuses on a guy named Orient, who has a sort of pseudo-psychic ability that allows him to "find" things. He is drawn into a murder investigation (Bordertown does have its own version of Police and Detectives, though they are much less structured than out in the World) and his entire world is turned upside down. We get a pretty great noir crime story here in an urban fantasy environment, which I find very refreshing. I love the bittersweet but perfect ending of this one. 

Interesting that they went so sort of abstract with the cover this time around.
No figures, no punks, no elves or guns or motorcycles.
Just a dreamy, almost Arabian-Nights looking city.

Next and nearly last we have The Essential Bordertown which was the last Terri Windling edited anthology, put out in 1998. Some of the usual suspects showed back up to contribute, including Charles De Lint and Ellen Cushner. It's a good collection of stories, none of them terribly memorable in comparison to some of the earlier stuff, but still pretty solid. I know the absolute most disgusting story in all of the Bordertown stories appears in this book, in "Socks" which is a story about a girl with cursed feet... and I will leave it at that. So this was pretty much the dying of the light for the Bordertown series until just a couple of years ago when this came out:

Ahhh... here we go. A motorcycle trapped in vines! That's more like it. 

This new collection was put out 13 years later, near the end of 2011 and was the last book I bought at our local bookstore, Mr. Paperback, before it finally closed its doors in 2012. This time around, all the usual suspects from anthologies pas showed up to contribute, along with some newer faces to the series, like Neil Gaiman and Jane Yolen. Turns out they account for the time gap by saying that time moves differently in Bordertown and that while the way to Bordertown has been completely closed off for the last 13 years in our world, time has only passed about a week in Bordertown. It's one of those convenient plot devices that actually kind of makes sense and works eerily well when dealing with stories that take place so close to elfland. So now we have a Bordertown that is just learning about wikipedia for the first time, and is dealing with the fact that the world outside of Bordertown has progressed 13 years while they haven't changed at all. It's pretty great. It's a beautiful continuation of the series, and has me hoping we'll see more in the future at some point.

So... that's all I got in me for today. I applaud your determination if you read this entire post, and I applaud you even more if you actually took anything useful away from it. I genuinely cannot think of a book series I am more excited to recommend to people than this one. It is criminally under-read, and more people should know about it. That's pretty much all I need to say about it.

I'll be back with more random awesomeness soon enough, so keep your peepers peeled here!

Countdown to Halloween Day 31: It's Here! It's Here! Final Thoughts...

Well, this is it folks! The day has arrived. And as with every year, there is a certain amount of sadness that comes with it, especially after so much build-up... but I think I'm ready for it (this bigger, more mainstream part of it anyway) to be done with as well. Halloween kind of started late July, early August for me with my Halloween Read Pile. Then September was spent trying to get ahead of the curve blogging-wise by getting my first dozen or so entries written before the countdown even began. 

I've been binge-watching horror movies since about mid-September, and listening to almost nothing but Halloween music or Halloween themed podcasts since around the same time. Just this past week I've been kind of desperately trying to check the last few movies and things I want to ingest before the holiday is over. There will be things that definitely get left off the list. And I'm going to have to be okay with that. 

Sunday will be spent packing up Halloween decor and cleaning up... getting ready for the next season's decorations (they won't come out just yet... but SOON) 

We still have Trick or Treating tonight, and a visit from the Great Pumpkin to look forward to... and then after that, it will be looking forward to next year. But before I kiss it completely goodbye, let's look at some of the festivities I've enjoyed so far: 

September and October bedtime stories are always Halloween themed. This is a selection of some of our very favorite Halloween stories for this time of year. There are more favorites, but I tried to narrow it down to the top 12-14 or so. "The Bones of Fred McPhee" and "Scary, Scary Halloween" both by Eve Bunting still have to be some of my absolute favorite reads for this time of year.

Here's the Halloween Read Pile in it's entirety. All 31 books. You might count only 30 in this picture, but there is one more book that is actually tucked in, between Bruce Coville's "Book of Ghosts" and "SCARY!" the Three Investigator's in "The Mystery of Phantom Lake". It's just too far back to be seen in this shot. But I spent every spare moment not spent blogging, watching horror movies or TV shows, or spending actual human time with my family, reading the books in this pile. 

There is always that thrill of seeing the Halloween sections of all your favorite stores going up... and for me, one of the true signs that the season is beginning in earnest is finding the Halloween section up and ready to be picked through at Goodwill! I managed 13 different Goodwill Finds posts this season!

The morning of Halloween we spent some time watching a double feature of "Monster House" and "Ernest Scared Stupid," which made me sooo pleased. I was worried they would be added to the "not this season..." list. 

I got to try the famed Halloween Whopper at Burger King, as well as a pumpkin spice milkshake. I have to say I did not hate the Whopper. And yes, I experienced the same after-effects that everyone else was reporting as well. 

I made Halloween themed cereals a big part of the celebration this year. 6 different Halloween cereals in all were purchased and consumed. You can see the Frankensteined-together bowl of both Franken Berry and Count Chocula. 

Halloween Crunch, orange Krave, Apple Jacks with Skeleton Marshmallows, and Pumpkin Spice Mini Wheats: All pretty much wins in my book.

My wife and I enjoyed some Caramel Apple shots this past October as well. Yay for sweet grown-up drinks in superhero shot glasses! 

My wife and I were invited to an actual grown-up Halloween party this year! We got costumes just for the party, separate from what we'd be wearing on the Big Night itself. This is us all done up together. 

My wife did her very best to reproduce an Elvira costume. It's not like, 100% accurate, but man did she do an excellent job! She really had a lot fo fun putting this together!!! 

Me, I'm her pet Creature. She leads me along by my chain and keeps me in line.

The Mistress of the Dark, the Queen of Screams herself everyone!

This is the "costume" I spent most of my time in at the party. The mask and gloves would not allow me to drink or eat, and the rest of the get-up was just enough to roast me... so I went with a minimalist look for the rest of the evening, after our big entrance.

Elvira gets me... devilish?

The party was beautifully decorated...

And some of the make-up and some of the costumes were just incredible.

I was driving so my wife got to try a Zombie Brain Shot. Apparently "very tasty".

Skull sisters!

Pumpkin puke chip dip!

The least impressed Catwoman in the world.

The easiest to-care-for fish tank in the world! Overall the party was a lot of fun and we had a blast getting spooky with our friends. Now on to more childish things...

The decor around the Geek Cave, and the house in general doesn't ALL come from Goodwill. Sam from Trick R' Treat had a really fun time meeting this new Pumpkin King Funko Pop! toy that I got for my Birthday!

 This Dia de Muertos couple came from Walgreens and will most likely be making their home in the cave until next Halloween.

I found some Zapps kettle-cooked Voodoo potato chips earlier in the season which always hits the spot! 

I still haven't sat down for a full viewing of Halloween III: Season of the Witch this season... but it got so much love online this season that I felt like I had to post my own homage to it on instagram.

LEGO blind bags were fun this season, with an all-monster crew. These were the only two figures I Wanted, and they were the only two I got!!! This is sort of a historical achievement for me. 

Sam from Trick R' Treat finally met Bill Cypher from Gravity Falls. They're plotting something I'm sure... But at least it wasn't the Summerween Trickster.

Then the entire Gravity Falls crew met the entire Scooby Doo crew!

I just had SO much fun taking HAlloween-y style pictures of all the toys in the cave!

Gravity falls again... this time with the Monsters from Monsters Vs. Aliens.

And the Scooby gang solving the mystery of the most famous slashers and the stabbed pumpkin... That's really the beauty of the Geek Cave though... I keep Halloween alive in here all year long. Here are the updated decorations for this year:

This is the bit above my desk. Skully the vintage cardboard cutout and Midnight the black cat are permanent residents, as are the collection of McDonald's trick or treat pails. Scooby Doo get's some special attention here as well. 

This is the set up to the left of my desk, covering the window. Drac here is another vintage decoration, and he is joined by some of my mask collection and a couple of Mars Candy Halloween pails. Plus my Halloween cereal love is on display here as well. 

The Halloween/Horror shelf has both moved and expanded. This is the full wide-shot of the shelf. I took two half pictures below to show off some of the details closer up, which you can see below.

Here's the left end. Lot's of skeleton and pumpkin love on this end. Trick R' Treat and Nightmare Before Christmas in spades. I keep this up all year round remember. I love looking at these things! 

 Slashers and monsters tend to take up more of the space on the right end of the shelf.

And finally, this is my little shrine to Halloween right on my desk itself! This is the space I save for the real heavy hitters. The items I associate the most with the holiday. This is one of my favorite spots to let my eyes wander to whenever I'm sitting in the cave.

And FINALLY... SO I can get it all in one LAST Halloween post and have a clean break for November: Trick or Treating pictures!

I went as the Mad Hatter this year.

This was to fit an Alice in Wonderland theme...

But also because the Mad Hatter is a Batman villain!

My other son went as Michael Jackson, specifically from Thriller. He LOVE Thriller.

While we were on the prowl we saw a LOT of great costumes:

And overall, I think all of our kids had a really great time trick or treating.

 When we got home we found that the Great Pumpkin had left goodies for everyone:

And we did "The Big Count" before sending Michael Jackson and Batman off to bed.

And now I'm off to watch "Zombieland" with the family. Happy Halloween!

I hope you all have had as great a season as I have, and I'll see you in November!

I'll be back soon with more Goosebump-Raising Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Haunting Hunting.