Books N' More from Brian Lapsley

Hey everybody! time for yet another incredibly overdue thank you to someone who sent me something fantastic in the mail! This time around it's from Brian Lapsley of Awake Oh Sleeper fame. He is a blogger, podcaster, and artist extraordinaire. AND he is an incredibly generous soul who has gifted me with far more than he should have up to this point. 

I have some serious catching up to do. 

But for now, let's see what Brian sent me in the last parcel of goodies (and one more at the item that he sent me separately because he knew how thrilled I would be to own it...) shall we? 

This package was heavy with BOOKS! And not just any books... these are all adaptations of movies! OR... books that have been adapted into movies. Either way. Movies or... TV shows as you can see from the book above. This is a Star Trek novel "Yesterday's Son". Spock discovers his own son-- living 5000 years in the past! And I thought my family had problems! HAH!

Ahem. Moving on.

Next we have perennial favorite, "Jurassic Park" by Michael Crichton. This is a case of book first movie second. But I've never read this, and I'm quite looking forward to it.

Now, "Four Past Midnight" I have read before. It's an interesting case. "Secret Window, Secret Garden" is the story adapted into a film here, "Secret Window" (and another story from this book was also adapted into a TV mini-series "The Langoliers" but the less said about THAT the better...). I have always thought that Secret Window was a weird one to choose to adapt as it was arguably one of the weaker stories in the collection in my opinion. Now "The Library Policeman"? That one was FANTASTIC and it doesn't seem like it would have been that hard to make into a movie at all. Where is my Library Policeman film you guys???

The novelization of Tim Burton's Batman film is always a favorite. I already own a copy of this one, but it is beat. So this much nicer copy is a welcome replacement. I read this as a kid because I bought and ingested anything and everything to do with Batman around this film. And I thought my family had problems! HAH!

Wait... Uhhh... moving on.

I... there are no words. This movie hurt me DEEPLY. And now I own a novelization of it. So... I'm going to read it at some point and see if the book improves on any of the stuff I didn't like about the movie (Actually, I feel like I need to go back and watch the movie again at some point... just to see if I've softened on it at all.)

And finally, THIS GUY was sent to me at a different point in time. This was ridiculously generous of Brian to give me as this is the Loot-Crate exclusive Groot Funko Pop! with a glow-in-the-dark hand and that beautiful mossy detail paint. This thing is genuinely a prized possession of mine now, and I can't thank Brian enough for him. I am OBSESSED with the Guardians of the Galaxy film, and there was just no other way I would have gotten my hands on this piece of PURE MAGIC since I am not a Loot-Crate subscriber. Oh man... I am still reeling from this one you guys.

I want to shoot one last big THANK YOU out to Brian Lapsley, and remind folks to check out his blog over at Awake Oh Sleeper. He is also one of the hosts of the Nerds of the Roundtable so be sure to check that out too!

All right kids, that's all I've got for tonight. I'll be back soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies... so until then, Happy Hunting!

Payday Friday: Goodwill Finds!

So payday Friday happened on May 23rd. For those of you not "in the know" I almost always stop off at Goodwill on my way home on Payday Fridays. (I also stop off on non-payday Fridays, some Wednesdays, sometimes Saturdays, and any other day of the week... given the opportunity.) Here's a look at what I picked up on my way home from work when I stopped off at Goodwill:

Some books (there's ALWAYS books...) but also a couple of semi-fun grab-bags this time around. All of the books in this post cost me .99 cent apiece. Let's take a closer look shall we?

First up from the kid's book department we have The DUNE Storybook from 1984. I have a terrible confession to make: I have never seen this movie! I have STILL not read the book/s and I ONLY picked this book up because I knew it was from the 80's and I couldn't just leave it there. But I WILL see this movie... I just don't know how soon. Then we have a Little Golden Book that I very distinctly remember owning when I was a kid, Tweety Plays Catch the Puddy Tat, which obviously starred Sylvester and Tweety. It was memorable for this moment: 

Which TERRIFIED me. I also distinctly recall wondering why the witch's skin was green but the nose was ruddy pink. Also, I know Tweety is a bird, and is only pretending to be a witch here, but how exactly is he flying? 

Next up a couple of fun CYOA finds... first up, the very first Choose Your Own Adventure story: The Cave of Time albeit the 19th printing. I don't mind though this copy is from 1986 and will still play through just as well in its 19th printing as its first. I would like to find one with the original cover artwork at some point, but again, that's not really all that important to me. And even though I'm not much of a Star Trek fan, I can't hide the fact that I TOTALLY GEEKED OUT when I found this "Which Way Book" starring the crew of the Enterprise in Voyage to Adventure. 

The first of my two grab-bags cost me 1.99 and only had these two items in them. But they're enough! These are toys from Safari Ltd, one of those toy companies that specializes in solid plastic figures in lines such as dinosaurs, jungle animals, and fantasy creatures. Here we have their example of a griffin and a "lucky dragon" which looks endlessly familiar... Anyway, these types of toys usually run for around 10 to 15 dollars... so getting these for about a buck apiece is pretty awesome. 

Ironically, the next grab-bag had way more in it, and only cost me .99 cents. I'm going to completely ignore the Little People furniture, because it's not of the type I collect, the Kung-Fu panda toy because I already own it, and the orange maraca. Let's focus on the other stuff. 

I have already owned two of these Oscar the Grouch Garbage 'Delivery' trucks in the past, and sent one of those off to a buddy. Still, I'm glad to bring another one home. I'll be finding him a good owner in the near future, I'm sure. The blue and pink fellow next to him is a Moosel figure from the Wuzzles line back in 1985. I really liked the wuzzles as a kid, but I never owned any of the toys, so this is a sort of retroactive geek-out. 

The other two items of note from this particular grab-bag are Finn from the recent Adventure Time McDonald's Happy Meals premiums, and Gary from Spongebob, also a Happy Meal toy, from back in 2012. I wanted to get more of the Adventure Time toys when they came out, but I only ended up with a couple of them. I'm still on the look-out for a bendy Jake figure too. Getting to add this sword-wielding Fin to my collection is the next best thing. I am a pretty big fan of Spongebob, regardless of how much people seem to have grown tired of it. I still find the show funny, classic-yet-innovative, and mind-bending. Spongebob is one of the forebears of the entire trend of cool animated shows (like Adventure Time!) that we see nowadays, and I appreciate him for it. This is a roller-blading Gary with a sweat-band... so I'm pretty pleased. 

My final find of the day was this old Monopoly game from 1946 or so (had to do some research online for this one). I am NOT a huge Monopoly fan, but the siren call of this ancient boardgame would just not be ignored. I actually paid 6.99 for this, which is the most I've paid for any one thing at Goodwill in a very long time. 

I examined it in the store and yet didn't notice that the game-board itself was not included. Don't know how I overlooked that. I think this was one of those rare occasions that I tricked myself into thinking I was buying something that was "worth something" other than to just myself. This is the sort of thing that ALWAYS happens when I let this type of thinking influence my buying at Goodwill. I still really like the fact that I have such an old edition of the game, but I don't think I'm going to hang onto it for long. You can see this old version of the game came with wooden character pawns instead of the metal ones we use today (this is legit, these are not just random pieces someone included in the game before donating it... Research.) I think the jade-green dice included are from some other game, but other than the dice and THE BOARD ITSELF, this game is pretty neat and complete. 

Well, that's it for now kids! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! So until then, Happy Hunting!  

A Random Handful of Goodwill Goodies: Science Fiction Books

So today I'm tossing a bunch of different books under the Random Handful banner. This time around it's Science Fiction as the theme.

I actually found book three of the Star Wars trilogy for .99 cents at Goodwill BEFORE I posted about the Empire Strikes back novelization here! At the time I was still on the hunt for book #2... but if you haven't read that earlier post, spoiler alert: I got it. 

Honestly, I've never been a huge fan of Hellboy. I like the movies, and I've found all of the trade paperbacks of the Hellboy comics series second-hand, or on the cheap at Mardens... so I HAVE almost all of them... but I just haven't gotten into them yet. Hell, I even have an action figure from the animated series that I also have never seen. That doesn't stop me from continuing to pick up Hellboy books whenever I see them in hopes of someday loving them. So I got this Hellboy Novel, "The Lost Army" at Goodwill for .99 cents. 

Ehhh... I don't know if you can EXACTLY classify this one as "sci-fi" but it comes pretty close... Right? It tells the tale of a middle-school megalomaniac super-genius who puts his goals of world domination on hold for a bit while he tries to win an election at his school, just to prove a point to his father. It turns out to be harder than he thought. Hilarity ensues. I really like the concept behind this book, and I hope it turns out to be a good read. 

You can see Mardens price tags on the front of this book, but I did indeed pick it up at Goodwill. I probably overpaid however, because at Goodwill I suspect these were on clearance for .50 cents and I paid .99. C'est la vie. I am actually interested in reading a novelization of Nu-Trek. 

Garth Nix is hands down one of the authors I am most excited to track down and read more of. I love his Abhorsen series, and the Keys to the Kingdom series, and recommend them highly. I've tracked down almost all the books in the Seventh Tower series, as well as his book Ragwitch, though I haven't read any of those yet. Add another to the pile! .99 cents. 

I've just been meaning to read this ever since I read Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I picked it up for no other reason than that. .99 cents. 

I actually thought that I had bought this book, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, at one point, but when I went looking for it, discovered I didn't actually own it at all... Jaime Hood over at Shezcrafti threatened to revoke my Geek Membership once if I didn't read this book at some point. I tend to take her threats more seriously than some... So the very next time I saw it at Goodwill I picked it up. Haven't read it yet... but it's only a matter of time now. .99 cents.

I had already seen a ton of super-positive reviews for Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl" online before I discovered it at Goodwill. I picked it up for 1.99 and added it to my read pile. I guess it's a novel about the seedy side of bio-engineered slaves. Like that could have a seedy side. Described as "bio-punk" this book is extremely high-concept with a complete reinvention of how the world works bio-technologically in the 23rd century. It's another one my fingers are itching to turn the pages in. Steady fingers. Your time will come. 

Picked this one up the same day as The Windup Girl (and a couple of other books I'll talk about during my upcoming Halloween Countdown... it was a good day for good Sci-Fi). Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter team up to bring us "The Long Earth" I was pretty much sold as soon as I saw Pratchett's name on the cover, and considering this is a collaboration, and a non-Disc-World book, I was intrigued. The book deals with alternate Earths, and travel between them. It deals with a pair of exploratory protagonists and the other Earths they explore. It deals with the way the world would react to the fact that there are suddenly millions of other Earths to expand out onto... and the sorts of dangers that might dwell out among those millions of potential worlds that would in turn discover us. I got this one for 1.99 as well. 

Well that's it boys and girls! A Random Handful of Sci-Fi books I've picked up at Goodwill. I hope you enjoyed reading about my hopes to read them as much as I enjoyed writing about hoping to read them! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Mommy... Why am I different? Why don't I like Star Trek?

It's League of Extraordinary Bloggers time again! This week we've escaped from out deserted island and and we're going boldly where no man has gone before:

Star Trek.

Now... I seriously risk putting any geek cred I may actually have on the line with this particular post.

Confession time: I'm just not that big a fan of Star Trek. Sorry guys. I don't HATE it but I've never been a fan. Like... at all.

Yep. That's the reaction I usually get.

So what the hell am I going to write about? 

I think I'm going to write about 5 things I like better than Star Trek, and why. Yeah... that's it. Let's try that. So I'm going to list some stuff on here in no particular order, and compare them to Star Trek and explain why I like them better than Trek. It's not that I'm particular into hating on Trek, it's just... not my bag, you know? 

5. Star Wars 

So this seems like low-hanging fruit. For decades the battle lines have been drawn between War and Trek. But the simple matter is that Star Wars is more about action and adventure, good vs. evil, and the creative elements that make up a space-opera epic. These are the things that draw me in more than the relatively less action-oriented Trek stories. Of course, for a very long time the Star Wars universe was also significantly  smaller and easier to digest than that of Star Trek because of the smaller volume of movies vs. TV episodes. For me, less intimidation = more enjoyment.

4. Firefly

Yes, like many drooling fanboys all over the world, I am a rabid Firefly fan. And yes, there's room for both Star Trek and Firefly in many a geek's heart... but for me, Firefly tells a very similar style of genre-bending high-concept, deep-thought space exploring story (sans aliens) except that instead of starring a bunch of stuffy Federation officers, the show stars smugglers and whores, which I find infinitely more interesting. 

3. Starship Troopers

If I really WANT to watch an excellent story about space involving a militarized group interacting with alien life-forms... I'll go for this movie. Again, it's all about the action, the adventure, and the craziness. But at its core it has a great story to tell as well, and there's a hidden deeper meaning, as all sci-fi should have. Plus giant killer bugs of several different shapes and sizes. And yes, I realize that Star Trek is on a mission of peace and exploration and yadda-yadda-yadda. KILL ALL BUGS!!!

2. Galaxy Quest

 

How is it that a meta-style PARODY of Star Trek is infinitely more interesting and attention grabbing than Star Trek!?!? Galaxy Quest manages to do what very few parody movies can: It genuinely entertains the viewer as a relevant entry in the genre it is actively spoofing. Filled with in-jokes and asides to people who are aware of Star Trek (fans and detractors alike...) Galaxy Quest still functions and succeeds as a genuinely exciting science fiction action flick. "And what you fail to realize is my ship... is dragging mines!" Awesome.

1. Nu-Trek

Oh c'mon. You don't REALLY count the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies as classic or even N.G. Trek do you? I certainly don't. You know why? Because they draw influence from all of the other 4 items on this list. Yes. Even Galaxy Quest! J.J. Abrams got rid of a lot of the ponderous elements that I didn't enjoy about any of the Treks that have come before, television, movie, or otherwise. I know there are tons of Star Trek Fans that will argue that Star Trek is more cerebral, more high-concept, more... high brow in general. But I find that attitude kind of snooty. I love that Abrams has incorporated more action and adventure in an otherwise stale franchise. He's also made the cast more human, more funny, more conversational, and by changing up the history of the characters and the worlds in the canon, he's let it be known that all bets are off and ANYTHING can happen. It's fresh, it's wild, it's new, and it makes me actually like the idea of exploring the worlds where no man has gone before. I have seen and own the first film, but I haven't yet seen Into Darkness... and I can't wait!!! 

Let's see what the other League Members are saying about the good ol' Trek this week (Surprisingly, NOT all of these Geek blogs are singing the hossanas of the almighty Trek... much as I did not...) 

- Fortune and Glory (Days) goes all Kre-O on us. 

- AEIOU and Sometimes Why talks about a read-along comic from his youth. 

- Thirtyish Year Old Boy seems confused if he's writing about Star Trek or Star Wars.

At this point I want to pause and note that all three of the previous blogs are self-professed "NOT Trek guys". Please continue: 

- Infinite Hollywood Goes boldly where NO man should have gone before. It's painful to watch.  

- Nerd Rage Against the Machine is NOT about the fan-service. 

- Geek Life Balance is Spoiling it Up on the new movie... so click carefully. 

- The Lair of the Dork Horde displays some TRULY AWESOME Snoopy/Trek crossover toys. 

- doubledumbassonyou talks about his model Trek behavior. (And There's a whole Trek week going on over there, so check it out). 

- Diary of a Dorkette geeks out about her Deanna Troi action figure. 

- And Team Hellions fully expects shit for his post (even more than I'm going to get, I'd bet!)

So that's it for tonight folks!!! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies!!! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Payday Friday... Bumped to Saturday

 So Payday Friday got pushed off to Saturday this week... not insomuch that I got paid on Saturday... just that I didn't get to Goodwill until Saturday morning. It was absolutely NOT the most exciting trip I've ever made to Goodwill, but there were a handful of highlights.

First a handful of Little Golden Books made it home. None of these are vintage, but let me explain:

I've decided that any Pixar properties in Golden Book Format (as long as it is a straight movie adaptation for the most part) will be coming home. I love the in-house style they use for the Pixar Golden books. It looks retro and stylish and is bursting with color... and well, it's Pixar. So Toy Story made it into my purchase for .99 cents. 

These are interesting because they are Chick-Fil-A premiums. Now, I am no huge fan of Chick-Fil-A with their recent public shenanigans. I don't believe that brands should pretend to be people with opinions on political, social, religious, or personal affairs. BUT I found it interesting that a fast food franchise had decided to distribute Little Golden books as premiums, even if they're nothing terribly old. 

There are 7 in the set, though sad to say I could only dig up 2 looking through the books at Goodwill. I would have loved to have brought home Rumpelstiltskin or The Nutcracker... or the whole set of 7. At .99 cents apiece, I wouldn't have minded. 

Here's a Choose Your Own Adventure from 2007 updating a book from the 80's with some big full color illustrations. It was also .99 cents. 

It's fun for me as a collector, seeing some of the stuff they did with the series to try and keep it current. 

Here's a collection of Star Trek stories from 1976 The New Voyages. I'm not a huge Star Trek fan, but thought this looked interesting. I have enough of an appreciation of the series to enjoy this collection. For .99 cents I didn't feel the risk was too great. 

The crown jewel of this trip was this pair of Great Muppet Caper glasses from McDonalds, circa 1981. I always cruise the glassware aisle in the specific hope of finding glasses like these. My Holy Grail would be a set of Goonies glasses, but I'll settle for any character glasses really, including the original McDonald-Land gang. I've taken three different shots so you guys can see all the way around them. These were .99 cents apiece. 

So that's it for this week's haul. With my Goodwil discount card, I got out for under seven dollars. Not my most exciting discoveries, but I got to add to a couple of my book collections, and found a couple of really nice vintage McDonalds Glasses. Not bad in the end. 

I'll be back soon with more Goodwill Goodies. Until then, Happy Hunting!