On this week’s episode, I’m celebrating my nearly life-long Star Wars fandom! From the days of watching the movies on cable to earning a few bucks from one of my favorite franchises, this one covers it all!
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On this week’s episode of The High Five Podcast, you get to hear about the movies I dug after cleaning out my Amazon Video queue and going all the way back to the beginning of that list!
In the episode I mention both Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and Vertigo Visions: Phantom Stranger. Follow those links if you want to read my thoughts on those stories! Oh and if you’re curious about It’s All Connected 2020, you can check it out here. It was a lot of fun and I hope to integrate this year’s version into the podcast down the line!
On this week’s High Five Podcast I’m joined by not one, but two very special guests: my kids! On this one, the three of us discuss our favorite TV show watching experiences of last year. It might sound a little funky because it was recorded differently than the others, but I hope you’ll enjoy our takes on some of the best shows for families around!
Hi gang, as you can tell from the title here, I’m launching a brand new podcast called The High Five. The idea is that I love pop culture so much and want to get the word out to as many people as possible, so I’m creating High Five lists each week that celebrate the worlds of film, TV, comics, books, toys, music and even other podcasts!
To kick things off, I’m doing a series of episodes looking back on the very bad year that was 2020 with an eye towards some of the great media I put into my brain. This first one gets into my favorite comic and book reading experiences of the year. You might notice a lack of horror titles and that’s because I’m going to do a whole separate list focusing on just that genre for most of these categories because I absorb so much of it.
I hope you enjoy the episode. If you’re looking for a rundown of what I talked about, hit the jump and see the comics and books as well as some other helpful links!
Continue reading The High Five Podcast Episode 1 – My Favorite Comics & Books Of 2020Happy New Year everyone. I decided to celebrate by compiling a series of lists celebrating my favorite films and shows of 2017. Sounds like pretty standard stuff, right? Yup, totally. However, these lists will include not just new films from last year, but new-to-me ones that I enjoyed. This one celebrates the glory of big screen blockbusters, most of which I saw on the small screen because, you know, kids.
First off, I’d just like to reiterate how much I enjoyed Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla (2014) and San Andreas (2015) from director Gary Peyton. I had a great time watching both of those movies earlier this year and highly recommend checking them out if you’re looking for big budget disaster fare. I also had a silly amount of fun watching Vin Diesel in 2015’s The Last Witch Hunter helmed by Breck Eisner. I think this will make a great weekend movie tune-in type of movie.
Continue reading My Favorite Blockbuster “Discoveries” Of 2017
There are roughly a thousand things I love about this Kenner Star Wars spot. First off, that’s Christian Slater on the left and Christmas Story and Death Valley star Peter Billingsley on the right. Second, I’ve had some of the action figures in this commercial since I can remember remembering things like Hoth Han and IG-88. Third, I’ve always seen and been enamored with that Darth Vader carrying case, but never realized that it actually featured the names of the characters and designated spots. Fourth, it’s hilarious to me that, of all the amazing characters on display as the camera pans by, AT-AT Driver and the medical droid get shout outs from young Master Slater. Okay, so maybe there were only five things I love about this commercial, but it’s still a great watch.
I still think it’s amazing that, back in the 80s, it was standard practice to simultaneously launch a comic book along with a cartoon/toy line. These days, comic book characters are bigger than ever, but I’m not so sure that reflects back on the medium itself, but back then it was assumed that kids would want to plunk down the money they didn’t spend on toys on a monthly comic to fill out the story.
Just today, I wrote a post for Marvel.com about the tie-in comic for Star Wars Droids as part of my weekly Star Wars Spotlight column. While researching, I was reminded that the Kenner toys based on this short-lived cartoon were actually pretty rare so this will probably the most I ever see of them. It’s too bad because those vehicles sure look cool!
Over the past few weeks, my wife and I have shown our daughter the three original Star Wars movies. She’s gotten pretty into them which is an awesome thing for me as a longtime fan of those movies. With the movies on my mind, it made sense to dive into anold school Kenner ad for this week’s TCT.
I’ve always wanted an AT-AT, though I was mostly thinking of the modern one. I have seen this original Kenner one at a few flea markets here and there, but had no idea it had that many action features. I love it! How can you not?
You might have noticed a lack of Casting Internets posts lately. That’s less because I kept forgetting to do them and more because I haven’t been going through my Pocket app for ,well, most of this year. Anyway, here’s a bunch of stories from the past few months that tickled my fancy. 
I’m pretty excited about Johnny Manziel heading to the Browns. They’re not my main team, but I have a special place in my heart for them because my mom’s from there and my grandma was a fan her whole life. (via ESPN)
Rivers Cuomo called Rolling Stone to talk about his love of Nirvana and how the band changed his brain. Fun read for Weezer fans, especially the ones who’ve been hearing for years that he converted Kurt Cobain’s songs into an equation and then wrote his own songs with that formula.
I’m not much of a Buzz Feed fan, but I really dug Kate Aurthur’s interview with Real World San Francisco‘s Rachel about her time on the show.
I don’t know if I’ll ever have time to go through this entire post of on StarWars.com about Ralph McQuarrie’s Star Wars art, but maybe you will!
My buddy Jesse sent me this link to Jason Heller’s AV Club piece on punk in the 90s because he talks about that band Schleprock I reviewed a while back. Even without that, it’s a really solid read on a subgenera of music I still love.
Esquire‘s Jennifer M. Wood talked to director Walter Hill about his classic The Warriors. As you might expect, this is a thing I love.
I’m a big fan of Michael Ruhlman and Anthony Bourdain, so when the former interviewed the latter about modern chefs on his blog, I was interested. Personally, I like how conflicted Bourdain is about things like authenticity. It points to the fact that these issues are trickier than some might otherwise present.
Jimmy Page told Rolling Stone that he’s going to start working on his second-ever solo album. Also, I fully support the idea of a Jimmy Page/Jeff Beck tour. Yardbirds Revisited?
I almost skipped over this Kenner Star Wars Power Of The Force commercial as a TCT entry. Sure, it’s a rad toy that I wish I had, but overall the spot didn’t inspire much of a post. And then you get to that last part. “A new Star Wars movie is coming next summer and a new Jedi master can be yours.” Holy crap, remember how exciting it was thinking about the Prequels? I’m not a Prequel hater, but before the first one debuted there was so much wonder about what those movies would be like.
I actually don’t remember this deal to get Mace Windu ahead of the film. It’s possible I wasn’t still collecting Star Wars toys at the time because I’m fairly sure I was done with them by the time the Prequels came out. Still, I’d like to add a Sam Jackson Jedi to my collection at some point.
unitedmonkee.com 