HAPPY THANKGIVING!

Come on kids! Christmas treats!

Christmas is barreling at us like a train and bringing with it some old favorites.

Christmas trees for the girls, and bloody spearheads for Bart!

Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes! Now, I'm a Hostess-man, myself, but around late November these puppies are "it". Add a hot mug of cider and the Chipmunks Christmas Special and all will be right with the universe.



Speaking of mug, Target has some cool Star Wars mugs in their Christmas setup. Stormtroopers, Vader and Boba Fett, for $6.99 each. Cider just tastes better out of a clone skull.
And Winter Oreos are back with red frosting. Eater beware. Your toilet bowl will look like a paint-by-number after dining on there tasty treats.
DR.G
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Some fun toy finds from the last couple of weeks

Scored the Wal-Mart Masterpiece Starscream in G1 colors. Pure awesome.

Target has been kicking ass with the various holiday Mr. Potato Heads at $4.99. And why are they $9.99 at Toys R Us?

But in TRU's defense, they are carrying this excellent Rankin-Bass Christmas specials figures for $7.99. Snagged a Frosty and a Santa and wet back for Rodolph the next day.

Finally, Futurama toys hitting specialty retailers at $15-20 a pop. Waaaay too expensive, but they are also waaaay too cool to pass up. I wish someone like Playmates would have done these like the Simpsons figures for $5-6.

Zoidberg vs Frosty in a no holds barred death-match. Two men enter! One man leave!

Geektarded goes MAME-Tarded

I apologize for the lack of updates over the last 2 weeks. Things should be back to normal starting this week and poorly written entries will be flowing like fine Grapeade.

The reason for the hiatus was a very noble one. No, not curing Dog-Cancer or busting up steel monopolies. But building a MAME arcade. Basically you gut or build and arcade cabinet, toss in a PC and a monitor, buy or build some controls and then spend countless hours playing Bad Dudes and NARC.

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Since spare time has been an issue lately, I planned to try and find an old, beat up cabinet and totally redo it instead of trying to build one. And, when I can across this gorgeous 1982 Donkey Kong Jr (btw, one of my all time favorite games as kid), I knew this as the way to go.

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Look at that side art. Looks like new.

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There was very little work that had to be done to the cabinet, since the monitor and board had already been removed.

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The real work was setting up the PC, controller (kick-ass Arcade joystick from X-Arcade) and MAME software. Much cursing and drinking.

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The hollowed innards
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I had loads of bugs to figures out and there's still some tweaking, but all-in-all, it's pretty awesome.
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The finished product.

Alien vs Predator gonna getcha!

If you got the money and time, it's a must do. Check with your local arcades, used game shops, etc if you want to save on shipping one of these things cross-country, Otherwise, eBay has tons of old arcade hardware to choose from.

Joystick by http://www.x-arcade.com/

Vintage arcade artwork to download http://www.localarcade.com/

MAME and ROMS http://www.romnation.net/ http://romhustler.net/

Dr. G

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Geektarded celebrity sightings

The Shirt Tails put on a show at"Worlds of Fun" in Kansas City.

A rare public appearance by Yogi Bear at Shepherd Mall, Oklahoma City, around 1982.

Local Oklahoma City celebrity, Ho-Ho the Clown, November 1982. I have the fondest of memories of the Ho-Ho Show on KOCO-TV (the ABC affiliate). Gotta love that tiny party sombrero. Who wants Pac-Mac cake?

Here's a brief bio from Wikipedia of Ed Birchall who played Ho-Ho all those years:

Edward Patrick Birchall (1923-1988), was known to generations of Oklahomans as HO-HO the Clown. Mr. Birchall was born on July 16, 1923 in Colchester, Connecticut and served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. A lover of the circus, he performed as a freelance clown before being hired as an entertainer who by KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City. There, he starred in a local children's television show named after him, which typically featured an array of firefighters, police officers, zoo animals, visiting circus clowns, and other guests, as well as Pokey the Puppet, played by Bill Howard, the station's long-time stage manager wearing a sock-puppet on his arm. HoHo was all over the TV schedule, for much of the 1960's he was on six days a week. Various titles were "HoHo's Showboat", "Lunch With HoHo", "Good Morning HoHo", and "HoHo's Showplace". The show survived for 29 years, long after the station was acquired by Gannett, airing in its last years without commercials to fulfill the station's public service requirements. He was a frequent visitor to children's wards at local hospitals, providing a kind of medicine the doctors could not. He also appeared at restaurants, charity events, parades, and children's parties, from which he derived most of his income. Mr. Birchall was a diminutive and slightly round man of cheerful spirit and hippie inclinations. Friends remember him as behaving much the same in real life as on his show. He lived in Bethany, Oklahoma for most of his life, and suffered declining health leading to his death in the hospital at age 64 from a heart attack while undergoing treatment for cancer. His popularity was so great that it took three funeral services to accommodate all of his well-wishers, the first of which was attended by an honor guard of professional clown friends and carried live by KOCO-TV.

Worlds collided in the fall of 1983 when He-Man and Skeletor traveled from Eternia to the "Toys Plus" toy store at 84th and Center in Omaha, Ne. We can only assume He-Man's melting leg syndrome is due to some sort of time portal lag.

World's Lamest: Tales from the Quarter Box #1

What if... Wolverine had battled...Conan the Barbarian? From the depths of bad early 90s Marvel Comics comes a tale no one really asked for. "What If Wolverine had duked it out with America' favorite grizzly bear-panties wearing barbarian, Conan?" That right Conan. One can only assume Wolvie had all ready fought G.I. Joe, the Madballs, Robocop or any other licensed characters Marvel had at the time for this cross-over to see the light of day. Or in this case, the darkness of the quarter box.

We open with the X-men fighting the Shi'Ar Guard from the classic "Dark Phoenix" story in #137. Behind the scenes is Marvel's resident thumb-up-his-ass voyeur, The Watcher. He looks like he probably smells a bit like milk and cat litter and his giant head makes you want to hit him in the mouth. But I digress; the Watcher is here to spin a fairly boring yarn where Wolverine is transported to Conan-Land during the Phoenix battle.

Wolverine strikes a pose for no apparent reason while dinosaurs eat people.

What follows is 32 pages of nodding-off action and fractured Middle Earth talk. Wolverine rescues folks from the noon-time dinosaur attack, fights Red Sonja and they almost knock loin cloths (Red has sworn to bed-down with whoever bests her in poorly drawn battle). Meanwhile Conan cuts a deal with Wizzo the Wizard; if he kills a rival priest, Wizzo will resurrect Conan's dead girlfriend.

Our lovable hatchet-face Logan beats up women.

Paths are crossed and Wolvie and Conan fight it out at the rival priest's temple. Conan nearly decapitates Wolverine and leaves him or dead. Wolverine comes back to life brain damaged and feral from the lack of oxygen. Conan and Wolvie fight yet again. This time, Wolvie hacks off Conan's bowling hand, they both battle a demon and Conan gets drop-kicked to X-Men land during the Dark Phoenix battle.

Conan's famous werewolf impersonation cracks up Wolverine.

Wolverine, trapped in Middle Earth, lives happily ever after as a king. With Red Sonja by his side, and a lack of Level +4 Dragon Scale Condoms, we can only assume that they will have numerous hairy, red-headed children that say "Bub" a lot.

Baby Huey has a headache "this big!"

But what of the one-handed Conan? What zany Marvel-esque adventures await him? None. The dunderhead thinks Jean Grey is Red Sonja, goes nuts and kills the Shi'Ar and X-Men. Thus the Phoenix goes ka-blooy and wipes out the entire Marvel Universe, including the Popples, Dakota North and Police Academy.

What if? Vol. 2 #16...ass-soup.

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DR.G

The Halloween that pretty much wasn't

Halloween 2007, we hardly knew ye. You came and went like a Ninja-Frankenstein.

And your cousin, Thanksgiving-Bot 5000, has been destroyed by an early Christmas shopping season. Seriously, how did November 1st, suddenly become the new shopping launch date and Thanksgiving reduced to that pesky meal you eat after looking at the Black Friday ads?

Any-whooo, it was so busy this last week at the Geektarded Labs, that our poor pumpkin didn't even get carved. Poor bastard. That's why I'm taking Monday off and declaring it Halloween II: The Quickening. That pumpkin will fulfill it's destiny and become a jack-o-lantern and some horror movies and Charlie Brown will be watched.

I did manage to witness Target's 75% off Halloween frenzy on Sunday morning. Kinda fun to watch soccer moms go ape-shit for bags of M&Ms and motorized wiggling rubber wolf-boys. For the most part, I don't like shopping post-holiday item sales. It sort of feels like going to an estate sale for someone that just died, that's being run by their next of kin. Depressingly-creepy.

Luckily, I'm a whore for a good deal, so personal feelings be damned. $1.99 Transformers treat basket and light sabers are where it's at!

And to show my Christmas-Love, despite the fever arriving 3 weeks too early, good Ole' Charlie Brown came home with me too. Check out Chuck with his hat and zombie-tree!

Don't worry kiddies, there are still plenty of Halloween frights to enjoy. Just check out Silver Spoons dad, Joel Higgens, all shirtless and hairy from this old TV Guide ad for "First Affair". Gruesome!


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DR.G