Month: July 2004

  • Los Mensajeros de la Muerte!


    from Luchas 2000 magazine – June issue

    The Messengers of Death are Signo Jr., Profecía and Emisario. (The Sign, The Prophet, & The Emissary) Click on the image to see the full page.

    Eddie:  Signo Jr. is now my all-time favorite luchador.  I don’t know if this guy can actually wrestle, but who cares with that outfit!  And hey, is Profecía the anti-Mr.Unknown?  That upside down ? must surely mean he’s anti knowledge, no?

    Lucha Libre and Bullfighting Photo Gallery.  

    Blogs, Bandwidth and Banjos – an excellent article on blogs.

    The most common insult towards personal weblogs are that they’re all about what you ate for lunch, what you did over the weekend, etc. And to the vast majority of people, what I ate for lunch doesn’t matter; but to a small select group of family and friends, they’ll probably be interested in knowing that I had a really good dinner, or a really good lunch, or hearing about a trip I took. The personal weblog is content-driven, not audience-driven; it’s not about trying to write content that pleases a mass audience — it’s about finding an audience that wants to read what you write. - Mena Trott

    Two excellent blogging tools – blogjet (30-day trial version) and wbloggar (free) which are unfortunately not compatible with xanga, but still very useful for composing posts offline.

    How to use The I-Ching calculator (via growabrain)

    1. Concentrate soulfully on the question which is besieging you.
    2. Write It Down.
    3. Ponder It.
    4. Enjoy the Silence.
    5. Achieve Inner Harmony and Tranquility.
    6. Push the RED Button

  • Fotografía y Lucha Libre (Spanish) is the companion website to what looks like a must-have photography book found on eBay.

    Recently:

    Random images from ¡Mucha Lucha! - HERE (login: mucha/lucha)

    Currently playing/watching: Risiko 100 CD + DVD

  • James Jarvis‘ “In-Crowd” figures are awesome. We love that all the characters have very simple and similar shapes and proportions yet each individual character is distinct and funny.

    Examples: The World of Pain Kubrick Set, The Forever Sensible Motorcycle Club and Ages of Metal. The Punk Is Not Dead series (below) is my favorite.

    Elsewhere… there is some quirky stuff at Japan’s Roughtoyz. Here are pics of the best ones: The Kabemito series (what’s up with these tortoises?)

    …and two King Hoo figures (Monkeys with horns on their foreheads?)

    As you can see, I have a fascination with vinyl figures that come in themed sets. Well I guess most of them do – which is part of their appeal … Like  Biddies oldschool hip hop characters, and these Euro Ci-Cup Ci-Boys. We wouldn’t attempt to collect them all, though they are inspiring to look at and make great gifts.

    Via Cool Tools >> BugMeNot  (Who wants to share their online subscription to Animation Magazine? )

    GeekMan action figure

    Photos of Akihabara (Tokyo) at CaffeineNicotine. There’s a square watermelon!

    Magic WiFi Bike. If only wireless internet was freely available, everywhere.

    Memo to Self: July 31st. at the AFI - Len Glasser Spectacular

    FM Transmitters…

    A couple of weeks ago we bought ourselves a Si-Link FM Transmitter so we could play our Nomad in the car. (Eddie has put together several playlists for roadtrips). At first it was like magic - the music was coming out of the car radio while the mp3 player sat in the back seat. Problem though -  it’s near impossible find a noise-free FM channel to transmit to. Ten minutes later we’re listening to mash-ups or loud static.

    According to Joel,  he has no problems with his iTrip. He gets crystal clear sound anytime, anywhere in L.A. Turns out that his gadget has more FM channels than ours which only has 4.

    So maybe we should’ve chosen this Belkin Tunecast 2 FM Transmitter instead? (FM channels 88.1 MHz-107.9 MHz )  Before I head over to eBay, has anyone used this in L.A.? Any  recommendations? 

  • The best merchandise ever!

        

    Keith picked these up at Lucha Va Voom last week:  RIKOCHET and EL REY kid-size wrestling masks! (And might we add, if not already obvious, these are non-WB authorized products which makes them all the more special)  Liz tells me they are either from Tijuana or Mexico City. *update: They are from Mexico City.

    The mask designs are clearly off-model but we don’t care. We are just so thrilled to see that ¡Mucha Lucha!‘s FIRST EVER commercial wrestling masks have come direct from Mexico (the land of lucha libre!) which is a great compliment to the show. And what’s more, they resemble real lucha hoods! (unlike these). 

    Has anyone seen these ML masks around L.A. or South of the Border? If you have, please email us! We’d love to get some more.

    * Legit ML merchandise can be purchased here

  • Museum of Western Heritage

    So this is what we did on America’s Birthday (after watching Portugal defeated by Greece in the Euro 2004) We had a very American experience…

    The inside of the Autry museum was dimly-lit and I had to be sneaky because photography wasn’t allowed so these pics aren’t of the greatest quality. But I think you get the idea. I wanted to take some snaps to share with Tony, Eddie’s brother ( and Melbourne, Australia’s biggest John Wayne fan) Happy Birthday Tony!

            
          
             

    Images – row by row:

    1. Entrance to the museum (in Griffith Park)
    2. Eddie and statue of Gene Autry the singing cowboy
    3. Cowboy stuff: saddles, bridles, holsters, you name it. This museum has it all!
    4. Downstairs is a gigantic mural with Cowboys and…
    5. … Indians, of course. There is also a great exhibition of paintings by George Catlin on at the moment.
    6. Hopalong Cassidy toy from way back when
    7. Eddie Dean‘s guitar – the carvings are amazing (very kitsch!)
    8. Colt pistols in the Colt Gallery (There were lots and lots of pistols)
    9. Coast Grain character with somewhat large udders
    10. Penny-pressing machine – Stick a penny into the slot. For 50 cents, have it pressed into an oval shaped souvenir.
    11. Elmer Sneezewood ventriloquist doll
    12. Spurs.
    13. A cool toy in the Museum Store.
    14. More Colt pistols
    15. Nathan on horseback!
    16. Lone Ranger kids’ turntable

    Some other things that caught our eye besides the opulent costumes and large range of vintage firearms: Hopi Katsina dolls, Inuit snow goggles, rustic interiors by Thomas Molesworth, and a magnificent red velvet armchair made with shiny black buffalo horns.

    Eddie: You know you’re in an LA Museum when a good portion of the ground floor was devoted to the Cowboy in film/television!  There were some very cool props (John Wayne’s shirt…man, was he a BIG guy!), movie posters, and some great short documentaries on the TV screens positioned around the exhibits.  The Cisco Kid, Lone Ranger, and a heavy bias towards the singing cowboys (well, it was the Gene Autry Museum after all), but sadly…NO DAVEY CROCKETT!!!  Damn…I would have killed for a real coonskin cap from the gift shop.

    P.S. We are pretty exhausted. I don’t think we’ll be seeking out the fireworks tonight (we can hear them right now!) Just staying home and chilling out…

  • Time to clean our apartment. It’s a pigsty.

    Might go to the GR2 opening tonight… Tomorrow – Euro2004 Final match; Gene Autry Museum, and fireworks… Happy 4th of July! everyone

    Wondering if we should extend our hotel booking in San Diego for another night… There are some cool things happening at Comic-con . Jerry Beck writes:

    I’ll be part of a panel/tribute to Bob Clampett with Mark Evanier and other special guests. I’m hoping to show a part of a Bob Clampett documentary that will be included as bonus material on Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume 2. So come by and get a sneak preview. I will be moderating a spotlight on Sid Jacobson on Friday July 23rd at 3:00pm. Sid was the man behind Harvey Comics from 1954 till 1994 – 40 years of friendly ghosts, devil kids and muscle-bound ducks! Don’t miss this! And I’ll be running an all new edition of THE WORST CARTOONS EVER on Saturday night. Will Super President, Mighty Mr. Titan and Johnny Cypher In Dimension Zero return in all new episodes? Find out on Saturday July 24th.

    The most recent post at Exclamation Mark has some awesome links – eg, George Barris’ cars, temple of rats, giant clams and more!


    George Barris’ Dragula!

    Eddie: Channel-surfing this Saturday morning, I spotted a trailer for the new ‘Thunderbirds Are Go’ movie.  You ready for this?  It’s live action, and features a group of blow-waved, blemish-free, adolescents as the ‘next generation’ of the Tracy family.  Kinda of like Spy Kids with big flying machines.  You can just picture the development meetings that took place in putting this thing together…hideous, totally hideous.  A prime example of what John K. calls ‘Super-Bastardization’ at work… (Link: Original Thunderbirds series)

    More later, back to the cleaning!

  • First up, some Mucha Lucha news:

    • Several ¡Mucha Lucha! stories are going to be released as Tokyopop Cinemanga books this year!
    • The special ML Blue Demon Jr episode we mentioned earlier is currently being storyboarded.  Think Los Campeones Justicieros (Champions of Justice) meets the Three Mascaritas.The word on the street is that the man himself could be in L.A. late next month (yes, here in Sherman Oaks!) for the voice recording session. 

    Arthur De Pin’s Flash animation shorts are great. The Annecy award-winner La Révolution des Crabes is showing here with English subtitles. Click on the ‘SHORT’ link. (via Cartoon Brew)

    Bill Clinton has a blog. (This can’t be for real. Could he not have done better than blogspot?)

    Links to Illustrators: Steve Mack,  Scott Thigpen , Paige Pooler

    A story about a Didgeridoo Vs Skunk. (via Blogging L.A.)

    Oddio Overplay is cool.


    Pretty cool! @ The Dome cinema, Sunset Blvd

    People are crazy about premieres in this town. Spiderman 2 opened last night and today the Arclight parking lot was packed. Look at all those people. Interestingly, we seem to have the opposite attitude towards movie premieres in Australia. Most people know that the cinemas are going to be crowded (therefore uncomfortable) so they wait a couple of days or even weeks. Why the rush? But since we’re in LA, we’re going with the hype. We’ll probably see the movie tomorrow night…

    We’re going to Atlanta! (our first time!) Lisa has invited us to the Labor Day Weekend Drive Invasion Festival at the Starlight Six: movies, rock n roll bands and carshows. Of course we’ll also be arranging meetings with Cartoon Network bigshots, and visiting Abdullah the Butcher’s House of Ribs & Chinese Food. (… though I am not sure that I would trust the Chinese food)

    This 4th of July weekend, we’ve planned to visit L.A.’s Gene Autry Museum with a group of friends.

    Unlike the Mort family, I have never been crazy about Westerns (which I never got into as a kid). I don’t know much about cowboys and had never even heard of Gene Autry… Time for some cultural education!