hail miz blue for finding these pre-shadow linkies!

[scottobear]

Here, make a sugarpaste hatching chick for Easter.

Stuff to look at - odd advertisements, packaging, cookbook covers, and (definitely my favorite) the Spanish board game "El Juego de la Oca". Olé!

The Romanian tourism board is actually planning a Dracula-based theme park in Transylvania, set to open later this year. Is nothing sacred, or, um, the evil opposite of sacred, anymore?

A gallery of beautiful panoramic photography by members of the International Association of Panoramic Photographs, including one of Lolowai Bay, Vanautu that I wanted to point out as Vanautu is the island James Michener wrote about in Tales of the South Pacific. However, this particular shot of an old car is my favorite. It's yellowish tint and flat, dry land remind me of something out of a Steinbeck novel.

Darkstar is a multimedia CD-ROM "game" that is more like a movie than anything else. At all times, the resolution will be ultra-hirez with special effects that better most film projects, not to mention other computer "games". The environment is completely interactive as the player encounters strange rooms, and a few time-hole generated "ghosts", remnants of the past. There is none of the "bitmapped" looking play, and it is NOT a shoot-em-up game. It's an explorable world with a complex story that you are thrust into stone-cold. It's like Myst or Riven, but less puzzle, more story. And more action... from the MST3k guys... tarpo, why didn't I hear about this from you?

Ever since I was a little bear, I've had a major jones on for the cliffhanger pulps of the '30s & '40s, featuring characters like Doc Savage & The Shadow. Something about them... the stories, the characters, the aesthetic pushes my gee-whiz buttons in a big, big way.

It's full of pulp goodness & pseudo-science weirdness. And it has a lot of similar qualities with another geeky love of mine, the comics written by Warren Ellis & others, published by Wildstorm Comics, all set in the same universe. The writers of these comics... The Authority, The Monarchy, The Establishment, & especially Planetary... have a great sense of the history of comics, as well as what makes superhero comics good.

It's a fun genre to work with... dreaming up ideas about a secret history of the world, in which daredevils, adventurers, explorers, mentalists, and people with inexplicable super powers all work secretly to influence the development of humanity. A world of shadowy conspiracies, weird science, alien incursions, & evolution. A world of mystery, wonder, & strangeness. Not so unlike our own, if you believe that sort of thing.

Comments

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

i'm gonna try making that sugar-paste chick. or maybe i'll try making a different little creature with that recipe.

i checked out record albums of the shadow from the library when i was a teeny bopper. good stuff. are we talking about the same character? there's only one "The Shadow knowwwws", right? did you ever listen to the CBS Mystery Theater on the radio when you were growing up?

Re:

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

Hee... I bet you could make a keen Bear or Elliephant!

Yup! I have about 5 cd's *full* of old time radio episodes of the shadow, in mp3 format. "The Seed of Evil bears Bitter Fruit!"

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

Have I told you how cool you are, lately?

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

i think you would really like "cbs radio mystery theater" a lot. it came on the radio in the 70's. i would turn out the lights..crawl into bed and listen to it when i was a kid. since i was just a kidlet, i was usually covered with my blanket from head to toe and creeped out.

there are a bunch of webpages with downloads of the show on the web...& you can find more episodes to download if you use some sort of gnotella type program.

or you can listen to it right this minute here: http://www.live365.com/stations/234488

too bad they don't have stuff like this on the radio anymore. :(

Re:

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

how wonderful! :) I'm tuned in now.

I listen to OTR live all the time. I suspect that you and I both were digging it at the same time.

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

hehe.. no..well, at least somebody thinks so. :0)
& i hope you know how coolio i think you are, too!

Re:

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

Aww, thanks!

Sugarpaste critters for us all!

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

isn't it? i'm listening, too. i'm addicted. i can get things done while listening rather than boobing out in front of the tube.

there might be other old timey radio shows on live365.com, but i haven't checked yet.

Re:

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

do a search on OTR... about 5 or so stations will always pop up. I went on a huge "dragnet" and "the six shooter" phase recently.

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

just found a few. very cool, listening to this kind of stuff makes my work days go faster. i haven't heard "the six shooter" - maybe i'll come across it. this is the kind of stuff where you could turn the lights off, and you and your sweetie could listen to. :0)

Re:

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

it's Jimmy Stewart doing the "wandering do-gooder" routine through the old west. :)

oh, most certainly...I'd love to dig under the covers and huddle up with my sweetheart, listening to keen old stories.

[tarpo.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I posted it at some point in the MST3k community.. maybe not in my regular journal though..

ain't it a cool thing though? Its going to be hard to play it and see all the cast of the show not as the cast of the show.. but hey.. misties will buy it just cause of who is in it.. it can suck ass for all we care.. heh

Re:

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I'm not in the MST community... looks swell, though. Joel's really hit or miss, but Trace and Frank are pretty spot-on.