Random Reads: Starlog Magazines from 1984!!!

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 7th, 2014.

I've mentioned Scottie's Books on more than one occasion in the past, and almost never fail to find something fun when I go in there. A few weeks ago I stopped in and found a couple of issues of Starlog magazine for a few dollars apiece. 

Back in the day I was never a fan of Starlog as I associated it too much with Fangoria which scared me so badly as a child that it made me physically ill to even see on the newsstand. That last sentence probably sounds like an exaggeration, but I assure you it was not. I was shocked when I googled it to find out that it actually only went out of print in 2009 which feels way too recent. 

Since I normally wouldn't have been interested in Starlog in the past, I didn't even pick these up when I initially saw them, and then finally I saw the word "Gremlins" on the covers of both magazines, and that pretty much did it for me. Upon closer examination I saw features inckuding Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, The Neverending Story, Cloak and Dagger, Muppets Take Manhatten, and the Last Starfighter. And this was all just from a cursory scan of the covers. (Completely ignoring the Buckaroo Bonzai and Conan the Destroyer photos on the covers) I didn't even open the poly-bags on these until I got them home. 

Now, I'm going about this a bit bass-ackwardsly because I'm actually featuring shots of issue #86 first (with the cover shot of Buckaroo) and then I'm going to get to #85 second. Honestly, I don't even have a particularly good reason for that. But look at the fold out poster in the front of issue #86! Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom! or, as the kids nowadays are wont to call it, "STARLOG Science Fiction Classic #20". And check out the facing-page ad! A Star Trek III tabletop paper-and-dice game that is "a simulation of Starship combat in the final frontier" which I highly doubt could possibly be as intense as they are hoping you'll think it is. 

You guys... YOU GUYS. A Cloak & Dagger article! Now admittedly, it's a pretty light piece, being a plot synopsis, list of actors in the film, and a mention of the inspirations and creative team behind the movie... but YOU GUYS. Once upon a time, people could just go out and buy magazines with articles about Cloak & Dagger in them??? I want to go to there. 

Then this. "Dan O'Herlihy: Full-time actor, part-time iguana." Actually, the other issue I picked up had a Starfighter article in it as well, but in a crushing moment of disappointment I realized that the issue had somehow been printed without a page #59/60! It was a pretty in-depth article, too! In fact, page 59 was the second half of an article about Robert Zemeckis trying to turn "The Shadow" into a feature film... in 1984!!! Instead we got the Alec Baldwin version (which I am actually a fan of) 10 years later. But I can't help but wonder... Anyway... Yeah... Dan O'Herlihy. Moving on. 

There was a pretty great feature on the special effects behind the Rancor... This stuff has probably been archived and bandied about by die-hard-hardcore Star Wars fans for decades now, but did that awesome concept art up in the top left corner! 

An interview/focus piece on "nebbish, ner, & famous hoser" Rick Moranis! I love the caption under his photo: "Moranis as nebbish in Ghostbusters". Which pretty much sums it in the weirdest way possible. I like how the photo also seems to be Moranis in a very out-of-character moment. No trace of Tully in there at all, even though he's obviously in costume. 

And article about "The Brother from Another Planet" Someone honestly tell me if this was worth watching. I think it's on Netflix right now. That's... all I've got to say about this. 

GREMLINS!!!! That is all. 

Aaand an article on the Neverending story. I can rest in peace now. 

Okay, so onto issue #85 (With Conan on the cover and tragically missing a VITAL page...) here we have a very nice gatefold Bladerunner poster or as it is known more commonly, "STARLOG Science Fiction Classic #19".

Not surprisingly, there was a big Conan the Destroyer article. With lots of greasy half-naked people flex-posing. This didn't really do a lot for me (also, I hope, not surprisingly). 

Aaand then I pooped my pants. In this article, Jim Henson is talking about a little film called "Labyrinth" which they are currently developing with Brian Froud. None of the cast members have been cast at this time. It boggles (Hoggle!!!) the mind to think back on a time when Labyrinth was still just... just... an IDEA. 

There was a Harlan Ellison article that would not have made sense to me before I started watching Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated with my boys. As Harlan Ellison has just always looked like this to me:

And nothing like this:

Because Harlan Ellison is EXACTLY the kind of Scooby-Doo celebrity guest
that the kids these days are going to feel is relevant.
(I know, this one was for the adults... but still, weird, right?)

The article is all about Harlan Ellison's effect on the sci-fi landscape, not just as an author, but as an editor, as a personality, as an educator, and as a bona fide creative genius celebrity madman. It was a nice read. 

MORE Gremlins!!! This time focusing on Joe Dante instead of Chris Columbus. 

And to wrap it all up, a nice Ivan Reitman piece with lots of focus on Ghostbusters. Phew! 

All in all, I never knew what a great treasure trove of old pop-culture goodness a couple old issues of Starlog could be... but I will definitely be keeping my eyes peeled for more copies in the wild from now on!!!

That's it for tonight kids, but I'll be randomly popping up on here in the future, so keep your peepers peeled! 

Father's Day Flea Market Finds: GEEKING OUT!!!

Welcome to Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks! This is the blog where I talk about geeky stuff I've picked up secondhand and then wax poetic about nostalgia or the pure love I have for purely ridiculous things. This post will be no different than most, as I have some pretty exciting stuff to talk about. 

And timely as ever, I would like to talk about Fathers' Day... FROM LAST YEAR. Yes that's right folks... I am just finally getting around to blogging some stuff I picked up very nearly a whole year ago. 

For Fathers' Day last year, my wife took me out on a shopping spree. We hit some Goodwills, and a few other places on our way out to a town called Rockland here in Maine. We even stopped off at a Flea Market, which are kind of few and far between here in Maine, and I am sooo glad we did! 

Let's take a look at what I brought home! 

I was really excited to find these Return of the Jedi Burger King glasses in such great shape! The only one I'm missing now is the battle scene between Luke and Darth while the Emperor watches. Love these things! I spent many a summer drinking out of glasses just like these as a kid. I think my most vivid memories are of the Ewok glass. Man I LOVED Ewoks as a kid.

There was also this complete set of The Empire Strikes Back glasses too! I like these ones even more. They. Are. GORGEOUS. I am a Boba Fett fan in theory. I know he doesn't really do much blah-blah-blah whatever. I love the design of his suit and his helmet. I love the design of this glass. And seeing him side by side with Darth Vader makes this one of my absolute prized possessions.

This was a really interesting find. I had never heard of the "Spirits of the Earth" storyline by Charles Vess. I still haven't actually sat down and read this book.. but it is so naggingly familiar to me that I can't help but assume I've read it before, so long ago that I'd all but forgotten about it. Apparently Spider-Man is in Scotland for this tale, and he is battling the Scottish branch of the Hellfire club. I am a fan of Vess's work on books like Neil Gaiman's Stardust, and the bits of the Sandman he did were just stunning... and I know he did "The Cry of the Wendigo," a back-up story in Amazing Spider-Man #277 which I loved, so I expect no less from this book.

This was another exciting find for me as it was a book that I DEFINITELY owned as a kid. This was published as a part of the media blitz surrounding the release of Tim Burton's Batman in 1989. Love this book! It is a semi-detailed history of Batman's first fifty years. Lots of history, lots of pictures, lots of cool details inside. Again, I haven't sat down to re-read this bad boy yet, but I can't wait to!

Of all the things I found at the flea-market, it was this guy that made me the most excited! I know he's filthy, and I know he's not complete... but I LOVE HIM. The AT-AT walker, to me is one of the most iconic Star Wars vehicles of all time. I picked up the AT-AT, the seven Burger King glasses, and the two bucks for 15 bucks total.

It was later that same day that I found these "Star Wars Kids" magazines at Goodwill.

I lucked out because they had the half-price color (the green price tags) so I got them all for .50 cents! I would have usually posted these in a Goodwill post, but felt it appropriate to share them along with all the other Star Wars stuff I found on the same day. (There's my boy Greedo!)

I think I'm going to have to do a more in-depth look at these magazines sometime in the future. They're from a happier time before the the words "Prequel Trilogy" were even a thing.

I also visited a used bookstore while I was out for Father's Dayand thought I'd quickly toss those finds in here as well. It was an eventful day. I mostly found books dealing with some of my favorite newspaper comic characters, collected in book form. There was this, "The Indispensible Calvin and Hobbes" which pretty much finishes off my Calvin and Hobbes collection.

I found the third and final Outland collection, "One Last Little Peak," which also finishes off my Outland collection. (I'm a huge Berkeley Breathed fan)

And I found my first copy of "A Garfield Christmas" which is adapted from the Christmas special of the same name. I later found another copy at Goodwill, but I was SUPER psyched to find this one on this particular day. Next to the Garfield Halloween special, this is one of my very favorite holiday specials of all time.

And finally I found a copy of Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man". I've been looking for this one for quite some time now and I was pretty pleased to find it in paperback for such a cheap price. I've recently become something of a Ray Bradbury nut and this was one of the few books of his that I don't already own. So yay me!

Well that's it kiddos! I'll be back with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies soon enough... so until then, Happy Hunting!

Halloween Countdown Day 21: A Trip to the Bangor Goodwill

Halloween is sliding into single-digits-away territory, and I still have some posts to show you about recent Halloween finds. Today I want to show off some stuff I brought home from the Bangor store a few weeks back. 

First up there was this lot. Goodwill has been LOUSY with hanging metal jack-o'-lanterns lately, and I wanted to pick up a handful to hang from the porch roof. Here you can see a couple of them flanking a tiny Halloween tree complete with ornaments that I also picked up.

I featured the cover of this copy of H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau in my recent spooky pulp-covers post. But I also picked it up because I genuinely want to read the story at some point. The odds of the next book, Bites being read is going to go up extremely high extremely soon because it is the next book in my Halloween read-pile. As I may have mentioned before, September and October are my Halloween-read-pile months, and I am trying to squeeze as many anthologies into the mix as I can. I've had great luck so far (mostly) and I hope to get at least this one more book read before Halloween gets here!

A couple of fun Halloween-y gaming books here in the form of Scooby-Doo Mad Libs (I love that there are "Ridiculously simple directions inside"), and a book of Spooky Mazes!

I don't usually go nuts over Halloween craft books for the most part, because so many of them often turn out to just be patterns upon patterns for sewing your own bat wings or Princess dresses. But this one has a nice blend of crafts that look genuinely cool for Halloween.

A Halloween Mask For Monster was a cute little Halloween book that got my boys laughing ridiculously hard when they saw the following pictures:

I personally side with the monsters in the book and find these masks utterly skin-crawling. In the end Monster finds ALL the masks too scary and just goes as himself. But he's living in a world full of monsters he's just that kid with no costume... and according to the Swinging Neckbreakers: No Costume? No Candy. I would turn that kid away empty handed.

One of the best treasures I picked up was this set of Thrills & Chills Magazine from Scholastic back in 1994. I plan on dedicating an entire post to these things... so keep an eye peeled!

Clive Barker's The Thief of Always is not a specifically "Halloween" book in and of itself, but there are Halloween elements to it (as well as several other Holidays) and tells an eerily similar tale to Neil Gaiman's Coraline which is also an amazing book (I am quietly compiling next year's Halloween read-pile, which I believe will contain both of these).

Barker both wrote and illustrated his story of children who are tempted away to the "Holiday House" where they wake to Christmas presents, go on Easter Egg Hunts, eat Thanksgiving Dinner and then go Trick-or-Treating every single day they stay there. But there is a sinister motive behind this children's paradise... as there always must be.

Next, to the distinctly NON-Halloween items I found during this trip, I picked up yet more old cassette tapes for my burgeoning collection. Both Whitney Houston's self-titled album and Lionel Ritchie's "Dancing on the Ceiling" are old favorites of mine, though I would never have admitted that back in highschool.

I found a couple more of Prince's albums on tape as well, which I will never NOT buy. "Around the World in a Day" and "The Love Symbol Album" are now permanent members of my collection.

And what an odd couple we have here! The best of Sam Cooke is pretty much an ingrained part of my high school soundtrack. Almost every single song on this album is a good one. And I was OBSESSED with Counting Crows, and mainly the "August and Everything After" album though I continued listening to them up to when "Hard Candy," their fourth album came out, which I also liked. I still occasionally listen to Counting Crows although I feel like I should be listing it as a guilty pleasure? But I don't care. Fake dreads or not, I like the music.

I found this foursome of Choose Your Own Adventure books, Dinosaur Island, Master of Martial Arts, Earthquake!, and Superbike. All great additions to the collection, and with a story about a Super bicycle waiting for me to read/play it... how can I go wrong?

A couple of novelizations in Virtuosity and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which I already owned but this is an older copy with photos inside the cover... so it has replaced my original copy). Virtuosity is the first movie I ever remember seeing Russell Crowe in. I remember vaguely liking it? Now I kind of want to track the movie down again and see how ridiculous it is by today's standards.

A Ducktales book! The Great Lost Treasure Hunt makes it sound like the Treasure HUNT is lost, not the treasure... Right? Right?

And this Big Book of Muppet Stories is from the very early 90's but includes all kinds of goodies, including a Muppet Babies story or two!

Finally, a foursome of Little Golden Books round out the haul, with appearances by Peter Pan and Wendy, Donald Duck in Disneyland, The Happy Golden Alphabet, and Hansel and Gretel.

That's it for tonight kids! I'll be back with more Gothic Goodwill Goodies soon enough though! Until then, Happy Haunting!

The Cool & Collected Magazine Kick-Starter! Support it!!!

Just wanted to take a moment and promote Brian Adams's cool-as-heck kick-starter and passion-project: The Cool & Collected print magazine! 

Brian's been blogging forever, and he is responsible for organizing the League of Extraordinary Bloggers, so I have so much respect and admiration for him and his dream project here! It looks like a collector's dream come true quite frankly, and I can't wait to see it become a reality! Please make a quick stop over to his Kick-Starter page today:

Brian talks a bunch more about the project over on his blog, here and here. Go check it out!