Unchained and out on the Mean Street(s) again.

In the wake of some recent (mediocre) tuneage from the yet-again reunited VH/DLR combo, I feel the need to post the following old school masterpiece for your sonic pleasure:



Yep, another long delay between posts, and then on top of that it's another music-related post. I simply haven't gamed in quite some time, or really even dorked around with anything game-related (minis, modules, books, etc). Life: it is what it is. Maybe I should make it a point to bust out the old polys with my boy sometime during this extended weekend. Maybe? Nah. Definitely! As Chris Knight once declared...

"It's a moral imperative!"

Annnnnyway, this classic VH album was in heavy rotation on my boombox, back when I was first introduced to, IMO, the best version of D&D to ever grace the (border)lands: Moldvay's Basic box set.

Pure and utter coolness.

OK, wait a sec. This is starting to get kinda gaming-related; I better stop. LOL - Seriously, gotta go. Have a great one folks. Gonna listen to the jams, while I try to get through this seemingly never-ending Friday at work. Hopefully you'll have a dungeon crawl happening soon, and if so maybe you'll choose to have this amazing *record* as the soundtrack to your maniacal monster killin' and tempestuous treasure lootin'. It sure worked wonders for us back in '81.

They'd be so much cooler with some VH on the boombox.

'11 = '81: a music related post which you may or may not dig

I don't usually post about music (which is weird, 'cuz it's a serious passion of mine), but today I felt like doing just that.

If you don't dig this kind of music, it's cool - you don't have to. But I like tons of different genres of music - from jazz to metal; soul to synthpop - and I sure do love me some old school synthpop.

These cats have been doing it for a lonnnnnnnng time, and it seems they are pretty much back in'81 with this new stuff. Which I like.

1981:




2011:




I decided to post the clean MTV version of "Girls on Film" simply because I don't know for sure the age range of the potential audience here, and the original (official) version gets pretty racy in some parts - and even shows boobies! Oh dear. Anyway, in an effort to keep it somewhat clean here, I went with the censored one. If you want to see the naughty parts, then you'll just have to get your Google-Fu on. It's out there. Or so I've heard. Word on the street. A friend of mine told me he saw it. LOL

Annnnnnnyway... Back in the day, when we rolled the polys on the dining room table, I will admit there really wasn't much Coltrane or Sam Cooke on the "tape player" (although I love them both). But there sure was plenty of Dio, Maiden, and AC/DC - mixed right in with some tracks by The Police, U2, and The Fixx. See our soundtrack was often MTV (or tuneage they would eventually play), and it was almost always on in the background. So along with those acts I just mentioned, you can bet there was a fair share of Duran Duran.

Now I could try to make it seem fitting, like say playing "Hungry Like the Wolf" during a Ravenloft session, or "Planet Earth" during some Gamma World or Star Frontiers. No? How about playing "New Religion" during a crawl through B4 - The Lost City? Still no? LOL - OK, I'll stop.

Although I don't personally know your musical tastes, I sure know mine. And I must say that IMO, new Duran² is pretty much old Duran². And that is pretty much good².

My 5 y.o. Daughter's Mixed Media Cthulhu

Apparently R'lyeh is actually located in the deep end of our backyard pool. Who knew?

She said he was sad (note the tears) because the shark just bit his toes.

Should I be worried? Should I be proud? Or maybe both?

Regardless, I couldn't help but think of this AWESOME video gem I ran across on teh interwebz:




Maybe I should scale back on the Lovecraft bedtime stories. Hmmn....

"Now I lay me down to sleeeeeeeep..."

Nah.


Or should I not let her keep checking this out from the school library?

Required reading for DND101 - Intro to Sweetness and Badassedness.

I limited wish they allowed that. But again... Nah.


However, it just might be time to break out the dice & minis and the mat & markers again.

Yep!


BTW, I have to say this twisted... err... gifted artistic trait definitely runs in the family.

Wonder Wife, Aquadude, Taz, a dragon or something... oh, and that guy from KISS?

IMO, Halloween is the coolest of all the holidays. So we usually live it up while it lasts. This year my wife decided to make use of a borrowed Wonder Woman costume (free = good). So, purposefully avoiding the typical Superman, Batman, and new to the fold this year (due to the film, of course), Green Lantern, I decided to try quite arguably the lamest Super Friend of them all... Aquadork.

Burrrrrrrrrnnn...!

Who'da thought it'd be so hard to find green tights?!? Jeesh! Anyone got a spare pair?

After some fiendish searching, I found a suitable replacement. A pair of green thermals at a Goodwill-ish store: $2... Sold! Two rows over, a too-short, nearly half-shirt, orange top: $3? Sure. Some funky belt up near the checkout: $1? OK. My daughters stuffed sea-horse toy: $0. Hey, I bought it to begin with, right? Oh, and a cardboard cutout uppercase "A" (And yes, I went with the actual letter, not just the more common "carrot sign" - as I figured some of the other party-goers might need all the help they could get).

Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice... Aquadude explains "Look WW, all we need are some tasty waves and a cool buzz, and we'll be fine."

And yes, my wife rocks - flat out RAWKS! So much so, that randomly throughout the night I found myself singing, "You're a wonder, Wonder Woman....!"

OK, now let's talk a second about the hair, shall we? Upon seeing this above nightmarish pose, a friend of mine declared it "reminds me of that show The Greatest American Hero. And it sure does. Doesn't it?

"No, I went like *this*."

See, I have 4 wigs (a meager collection, but hey, I'm working on it), and this was the closest one to Aquadweeb's hair. I like to think that it's sort of a beach-bum, surfer-dude version of the swimmingly.... uhm... swimmer. Now, I do have a much better nu-wave one, a mullet one, and a '70s David Cassidy type (also doubles as a pretty solid Han Solo 'do), but yeah, I guess The Greatest American Hero perm it was.

All in all, it was a successful Halloween par-tay, and I for one can admit that one of my oldest schoolboy fantasies finally came true. Come on fellas, don't tell me you watched Lynda Carter back in the '70s for the plots. Right?

"Up here, bud."

Okie doke, back to whatever it was I was talking about. Right, OK so our kiddos opted for some fun costumes this year too. Here we see "Taz" and either a dragon, a dinosaur, an alligator, or "Yoshi" - depending on which day you ask her. She was "Belle" (of Disney fame) for an earlier neighborhood party, but then decided to get her dragon on for the real deal. Like I was about to stop her.

Proposed cover art for a possible new RPG:
"Dust Devils & Dragons"

With the big night approaching, I needed to figure out what I was going to wear out with them when they went trick-or-treating. I didn't really want to don the Aquabro getup in the cold. I probably would've frozen my ... uhm... gills off!

So, as a last minute alternate costume, I threw together a bunch of previous Halloweens' crap and went with this look:

Juxtaposers.

I successfully frightened several small children, a few dogs, and even one grown man. And I'm fairly certain that a few folks had their eye on me, presuming I was some psycho child-stalker or something. But the craziest reaction was when several different neighborhood trick-or-treaters said, "Hey, it's the guy from KISS!" - Silly kids. So much to learn. Hopefully their folks' will let them watch VH-1 Classic someday.

The casket opens...

It turns out, I'm still alive. But yeah... I guess it's been a little while, eh? I've simply been caught up in life's other stuff and things. Thought I'd pop in for a brief visit on the b-day of one of screen's old school boogie-men.

"The spider spinning his web for the unwary fly."

Happy Birthday to Bela Lugosi. Not the best actor, by any stretch of the imagination (nowhere near the chops of horror greats Cushing, Lee, Price, Rains, etc), but his portrayal of the Count in 1931's Dracula still creeps me out to this day. And I'm a grown man. Well, sorta.



So there it is, I guess kinda "back in '31." See ya soon.

"*Charmed*, I'm sure."