12.19.2017

Cloud City Phantom

The lack of Lando in the new Star Wars and comments about race in another facebook post triggered an old memory. This is absolutely true.
I had two Star Wars Bespin Guard action figures, one was white and one was black (not African-American, as neither of those places exist in that galaxy). They both had the same mustache as Lando, as this was regulation in Cloud City. As far as I know, they were the only figures Kenner made that were the exactly the same, except for their race.
One time when I was playing with my figures, I placed the black guard, gun in hand, on the Death Star elevator shaft near the tractor beam controls. While I was turned away, the gun flew out of his hand and hit me in the face. Scared the shit out of me. I never played with that figure again. I swear he didn't like me.

UPDATE: My memory seems to have played tricks on me. In researching images for this post (my figures were in storage), I found that only the white guard had the Lando 'stache. I'm leaving the above as written, though, because I find my childhood memories to be more fascinating as memories than actual fact because it's the memories that I've lived with for my whole life. 

10.03.2017

Shirtless shoeless man with tattoos spotted outside the former Circus of Books porn den turned hipster marijuana dispensary. Not sketchy at all. I love LA!

9.22.2017

Where yeohman has gone before







































I've been rewatching a lot of the original Star Trek episodes lately, and I think I have developed a crush on Yeohman Tamura. She was played by the actress Miko Mayama and only appeared in one episode.

Before she went on a voyage of discovery in outer space, she was "discovered" by Burt Reynolds, as this post on her IMDB page states. Hollywood had already discovered her as by the time they met, she had already been on Star Trek and about 10 other TV shows.
According to Burt Reynolds autobiography, "But Enough About Me", Miko Mayama started as a Kabuki Theater player. They met when he stopped in Japan on his way to the Philippines to do the movie, "Impasse." Miko moved with Reynolds to the United States and learned to speak English by watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. Her first words to him in English were, "What's Up, Doc?" They lived together for 4 years before he left her for Dinah Shore.

Embed from Getty Images

Read the whole excerpt from Reynold's book here:



In 1973 she appeared in the Blaxplotation film "That Man Bolt." In this scene, Bolt, played by Fred Williamson, checks out the woman who wooed Burt with bunny talk.

9.01.2017

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8.20.2017

The Great American Blindness Challenge 2017

Braincelljupiter stares at the eclipse in Madras, Oregon




















First I noticed my shadow looked 3D and colors started to become saturated. I felt like I was wearing sunglasses. It felt like I was going blind. It got cold. Then darkness started closing in from the distance. Mount Jefferson on the horizon disappeared. I got colder. Then it was night. People gasped and cheered. Totality. For a little more than two minutes I stared at the fingers of the sun. A man nearby told his toddler daughter, "you have to remember this." And when it was over she said she wanted to do it again. I felt the same way. Do it again. Make me feel small. Remind me we are floating and rotating in the blackness of space. Remind me of how we only exist because of your warmth and the distance you keep from us.

8.19.2017

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