JsARCLIGHT

Happy Holidays to everyone out there... especially to our American troops serving overseas who cannot be with their loved ones this holiday season and may be in harm's way... same goes for all the law enforcement and emergency service folks keeping us safe on the job right now.

My current fav is the new 1/48 Hikaru VF-1J... that sucker is a work of ART! MEAT MITTS, BAY-BEE!

I don't know... I'm still a jaded SW fan but I like that design. It sort of speaks to the point of the ships moving away from the sleek, artistic, hand-crafted "classic" style and more towards the mass-produced, cold and emotionless fleet vehicles of the Empire. The blue and white Anakin fighter from the cartoon is still too stylized to convey the transformation of the "Army of the Republic" into the "Army of the Empire". Then again, by the time this movie comes about (timeline speaking) the older ships may all have been blowed up real good in the clone wars leaving the new mass-produced models to take their place? ... and when it comes to plausibility, we are talking about the same show with laser swords, magic power weilding samurai-esque warriors, robot armies, fake cripple ninja masters, bad acting and lots and lots of lucrative commercial tie-ins?

[Luke Skywalker voice] That's not true! That's Impossible! [/Luke Skywalker voice]

(pokes head into thread) (ducks chair and thrown beer bottles) I still support Max. MAX FOR PRESIDENT! (runs for his life)

I've been on tons of different moderated message boards in my internet life and "a-hole" mods are just one of the commonly "encountered" things. We all have bad days, we all have quirky senses of humor that other people just don't "get" and we all have snapped someone's head off for something. It's the internet... It's not going to get any nicer. I myself would rather read people's honest responses to me than a bunch of sheltered, two-faced politically correct responses. Until someone invents the Compu-Mod 9000 that will police topics and respond in a pleasant phone company computer voice to all issues and problems we are saddled with human beings at the controls... My advice: Grow a thicker skin and just ignore all the posts you see as "hostile"... mods and members alike make the odd comment from time to time that is guarateed to not sit right with everyone. If the mods somehow had the ability to please everyone all of the time then they would leave this message board and enter politics. Now just imagine Moderator Max behind the podium of a presidential debate calling the other cannidate a dickhead. I'd vote for him.

California... tumbles into the sea That'll be the day I go back to Annandale... ... seriously though, here is hoping all you Kali Kids are OK out there. And just remember, earthquakes are just nature's way of saying "Move to the midwest turkey!"

People called me a paranoid gun brandishing nut... but I just want to reinforce what Graham said. Almost every state in the US has laws against "undue force" and "weapon brandishing" that apply to citizens. Here in Missouri where I live, "brandishing" (which has been interpreted by local judges as liberally as simply showing the item in view of others in an outdoor area) anything that looks like or is a weapon outside of a specially designated area like a shooting range or paintball park is ILLEGAL. Several people have been arrested (mainly stupid kids) for using/showing/threatening people/etc. with paintball and airsoft guns in the area in the last few years. The cops, and especially the courts, see the act of using paintball and airsoft guns on equal grounds as using real guns and you will wind up before the man faster than poop through a goose. On the subject of using ACTUAL firearms in your defence, get this: it is ILLEGAL in Missouri to use a firearm to defend property. That means if you shoot someone stealing your car, YOU go to jail. The only way you can legally brandish and discharge a firearm into another human being in this state (and many others) is if that person is threatening you with DEATH or SEVERE HARM. Several people involved in shootings in this area have attempted what has come to be called "the empty handed argument" in which they tried to claim defense in shooting someone who was unarmed claiming they were in fear of their life at the time... Most of those people ended up standing tall before the man. COPS can claim the empty handed defense as they are trained to respond to situations like that and judges tend to favor the officer's judgement of the situation... but a trigger happy "untrained" civilian is more likely to get charged with manslaughter if that corpse they just pumped full of lead was not holding a weapon of some sort... and those bullet holes better be in the front of that body (yes, some chump locally tried to claim defense when he shot some guy in the back... when said guy was running away from him). I myself am paranoid... everyone who owns a nice car, nice things and lives in a nice place is paranoid on some level that someone or something is out to get them at some time. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I live in fear cowering in the corner thinking the entire criminal underworld is waiting outside to kill and rob me... and I also do not peer out my blinds just waiting for the day I can pump a magazine of hollowpoints into some perp. Life is precious, even in the most depraved and misguided of people and the only right you have to take that from someone is if they give you no other choice. Some of us prefer to be on the defense, we own guns and are not afraid to use them if the situation falls apart to the level they are needed... others choose to be victims and let things happen. There is an old saying: the difference between a anti-gun person and a pro-gun person is one good mugging (I've been robbed before at knifepoint at school in Chicago, I know what I'm talking about here). But I digress... Back to the topic at hand: Figure out who this person or persons is in a way that does not get you tossed in jail and that does not cost you tons of money. Peeking out of blinds or hiding in your car (without weapons if you see fit... yeah, without) and find out... then tell us... so I can go back to peeking out my blinds to see if they come to my house.

I buy VF-1's because they are neat, they go in my display cases. I myslef don't "play" with my toys outside of taking them out of the box and putting them in the case. To me they are nothing more than fancy display pieces. You don't play with model kits and I think of most of my toy collection as model kits, something to be looked at. ... then again I never was a big "toy" kid when I was younger. I usually put my really nice toys on the shelf and looked at them rather than playing with them. My sucky toys got the business end of a BB gun in the back yard or the 'splodie end of a Black Cat. I was one of those weird kids that played with soccer balls, footballs, baseballs and my bike outside... the whole "action figure" and "inside toy" thing was very foriegn to me outside of one or two pieces (I had a vast collection of those Star Wars Micro things when they first came out). I never really got into action figures until I was much older and then it was mainly for the "adult collector" thing rather than the "let's go down to the basement and play with our Star Wars men" thing. Now all the toys I own are either behind glass or locked away out of sight somewhere.

I think I'm going to start posting the words I'M JUST KIDDING in front of everything I post from now on. Seriously... find out who is doing it, thank them and figure out what the deal is.

Who wants to know? Who do you work for, man? The GOVERNMENT! I knew it! (grabs his crazy right wing militia newsletters, throws them in the fireplace and starts eating his social security card) ... Who am I kidding? I live in ultra richboy snob-ass Clayton. The closest I will get to a using a firearm in self defense is on a video game.

My advice: 1) lock doors 2) load pistol 3) put pistol in belt 4) turn off all lights in house 5) wait... ... Naaahhhh, I'm just kidding... *checks chamber in his Glock and peeks out blinds*

A strange tidbit of legal info on the real Ghostbusters if anyone is interested: And we Macross fans think we are alone in our little world of cartoon litigation...

Filmation added a lot of stuff for the animated version like the talking car, Futura the woman from the future and a lot of other gizmos and gadgets (like the "suit up" sequence) that only animation could do. The old TV show (1974 to 1976 I think) was just two dumb guys wearing leftover prop clothes, a guy in an ape suit wearing a hat and some very, very, very horrid special effects.

I'm just wondering when they will get back to the roots of the Ghostbusters... Ahh, the days of Jake, Eddie and Tracy the Ape... back when Ghostbusters was pure and simple without the potty talk and special effects...

I'll try my hand at this, but some of my answers may be dubious at best... #1 - looks like a Bandai/Hasbro 1/55 gunpod but on second glance it looks like the gunpod that comes with the Robotech Veritech toy that action figures fit in #2 - looks like the front leg armor piece from one of the Dougram toys that had the metal internal skeletons, they only made like two or three versions of those and I'm unsure which it is from... or if it is even that... #3 - Obviously some sort of GU-11 Gunpod, but of what line and make are beyond me #4 - No idea, don't recognise it. Could be a Transformers weapon. #5 - No idea, don't recognise it. Could be a Transformers weapon. #6 - Can't make out what it is too well, no idea. #7 - Gunpod from one of the smaller Gakken Alpha toys #8 - Gunpod from one of the smaller Orguss Takatoku toys or possibly one of their Convertors counterparts #9 - Again obviously a GU-11 gunpod but the make and line are not coming to me #10 - everyone else nailed it, that is the gun from the Matchbox/Harmony Gold Scott Bernard figure #11 - yet another GU-11... again, no clue what make or model

Any coin-op in the Aladin's Castle at the mall near my old home in Nevada between 1982 and 1986. Those are the days that I remember fondly, when games could do no wrong. They were simple plumbers fighting apes... little ships getting kidnaped and rescued so you could have two little ships... cussing orange pipe-snooted hopping things... inflatable underground dwelling creatures... and all the genres where born in the arcades of the '80s... from Pac Man, Dig Dug and Centipede to Double Dragon, Operation Wolf and NARC... Sigh... those were the days...

I just hope they actually have all the limb lopin' and death... that is what SW needs in my opinion, more brutal death. After all, this is the movie in which the Jedi die out, the empire comes about, the republic goes into the toilet and everyone but Obi-Wan, Yoda, the twins and the droids is expected to buy it. Star Wars has a nice history of killing off all the characters you want to see dead in the last movie of the trilogy (Jabba, Boba Fett, the Emperor, Vader, a bunch of Ewoks...) in very anticlimactic ways though... so we'll see when it comes out.

Oh sweet jesus... one of my prayers got answered! (now goes to see if my other prayers got answered... but several Hollywood people still live and my toilet has not yet turned to gold)

I was never a fan of the original but I watched both parts of this one. I liked it some but not enough to watch more episodes... The way the ending sort of "fell on it's face" with the cliffhanger makes me think that if the ratings and feedback are good Sci-Fi will make a series out of it. I think that is what they were planning all along but they made the pilot as a miniseries to test the waters first... but if they wait too long some of the cast may not return due to other commitments. Wait, what am I saying? That whole cast will most likely jump at a chance to get some more money. I voted that it was OK, middle of the road, lukewarm... It did not impress me but it did not fill me with loathing and disgust either.

And Luke crashes everything he flies... And Han gets blue balled... And Chewie gets an obnoxious backpack... And Boba Fett only says two lines and misses every shot he takes... Ah, Empire.

EMPIRE Luke looses a hand, Han gets 'jacked, C3P0 gets blowed up real good, Vader gets his evil on and the rebels get a general pasting at Hoth. Dark side all the way. If the last movie is as dark as Empire then I may actually like it a lot.

I have an honest question here: What does everyone see in the original Battlestar Galactica that they don't see (and somehow hate) in this new one? I watched the original BS: Galactica back in the '80s when it was on TV and I didn't think much of it then and still don't think much of it now. Sure it was the only thing on that was Sci-fi aside from Buck Rodgers (which was another terrible '80s show that everyone likes) so I'm chalking this up to "Star Wars syndrome" in that everyone is thinking of the original show with a patina of fond childhood memories and not remembering how terrible and stupid it was... I mean for god's sake it got cancelled... it had more reused stock footage and plot holes than Robotech. In my mind it isn't like they can screw the show up any more than the original one so I'll watch a few more episodes until I tire of it... which will most likely be tonight as it moves at a snail's pace with less action than nuns see in a convent. Now before my poop gets jumped by the crazies, I don't like this new one either... but I don't have a burning hatred of it and wish it dead. I see it for what it is, which is about the same thing as the original. Need I remind you all that BS: Galactica went downhill like a fat man on a greased sled after the first season? Anyone remember Battlestar "Conquest of the Earth"? Remember Wolfman Jack and the flying motorcycles? If anything it is on par with the current Sci-fi TV shows on the tube: it is shallow, poorly written, cg'ed out the wazzoo with glaring mis-mathces with the real props, it reeks of "rip off" from several "bigger name" sources and it is staffed by B actors (including a bloated and rather sick looking Costello from Miami Vice) who are most likely crossing their fingers that their paychecks clear the bank. I bet Sci-fi will run the bajebus out of it like "Taken" until they come up with some other terrible mini series to take it's place (anyone up for a remake of Kidd Video?)...

I'll be 34 in January.... sniff... sniff...

OK, I was indifferent to it. I talked with Ali Sama and was quite negative on it but he got me to want to see it so I sat down when it was rebroadcast (like six times) and watched the first episode. Despite several major issues with the show I did not find myself hating it. It was just as poorly written and acted as the original and the "horrendous" cast changes did not bother me that much... after all, Dirk Bennedict was practically a woman anyway. The things I liked about it were that they at least suppied some backstory to things. The original Galactica's backstory was that there was this group of no-goodniks called the Cylons who get Baltar to turncoat for them and they nuke the 12 colonies forcing them to go look for their long lost sister colony Earth. The new show at least made up a lot of "excuses" for why things happen the way they do. Things I found myslef not liking about the new show are as follows: The actors chosen for the roles are good enough but most of the acting is either heavyhanded melodrama (the crew chief) or wooden barely acting acting (the XO). The main cast seems to be assembled from out of work B actors and new faces. The special effects done by computer are nice but the practical effects have this weird "we made them from cardboard and eggcrate with some cowboy paste" look to them. I'll most likely try to watch the next episode tonight and see where this thing goes... as if we don't know already. Then again I just want to see what they do with the old things... such as the reappearance of Dagget, those weird bee people on the party planet and if the Cylons (who now appear to be terminator-ish) actually have a big brained Imperious Leader alien at the helm. To sum it up: I sort of liked it and sort of didn't. After all, it is a modern reworking of a terrible '80s Sci-Fi show in which the original had all the failings the new one has (bad acting, worse writing, cheesy SFX and goofy plot devices). At least Rick Springfield was not in this pilot.