First off, we have to get some ‘Obituaries’ out of the way & ohhhh fuck, so many important people (Only to us BlackTime people because the mainstream is too ignorant to care) have passed away these past days. So here we go.
-Florence Henderson, you’ll know her as the mom from ‘The Brady Bunch’ with the 60’s pixie haircut & mother to three girls (Or was it four). That Brady bunch, they were the first family to have six children & not be called welfare whores because 1960‘s. Most of you may of thought of ‘The Brady Bunch an unfunny show with the creepy intro. Seriously, all those heads trapped in small squares in an intro sequence limbo, it’s scary, but back to the point here; The Brady Bunch is seen today as a cheesy, not really funny sitcom. Though I agree, the show actually did something that was considered taboo at the time. Get ready for this crazy news, IT SHOWED TWO PEOPLE IN THE SAME BED!!!! Oh my lord, the entertainment industry has lost it’s morals!!!! Yup, Florence Henderson in a somewhat revealing nighty in the same bed with a man as they both read books before sleep. That slut! (Lord rest her soul) I kid, but that was the real reaction. I watch that show now & I believe the dad (Forgot his name, I don’t watch Brady Bunch regularly) didn’t marry her because he thought he’d make a great dad for six children. As someone who watched Brady Bunch before going to classes back in High School, she was someone I recognized (Not in person, I’m not that popular) so she will be truly missed. Also, as a final note, cousin Oliver was not the most annoying character in that show, Peter is, that buck toothed fuck face.
Up next on our list of sadness is someone nobody names (Except us movie nerds) Curtis Hanson, director of ‘L.A Confidential’ died at age 71. A movie that was snubbed at the Oscars all because everyone was gaga over that harlequin romance film about the two pale people, the boat & an iceberg. Not only was that his best film, but he also directed one all of you may know too well ‘8 Mile’. That movie where Eminem goes on stage & sings: “I like m&ms, you like m&ms, yo girl likes m&ms. Emenemenem&m!” & the black people in the audience were like: “White boy can spit fire!” That movie ended racism, then ‘Meet The Blacks’ came out & began racism again. Speaking of race, he also co-wrote a very controversial movie called ‘White Dog’. A friend told me about it & its about a white supremacist man who teaches his white husky dog to hate colored people & it runs around attacking colored people. Then a rich woman finds the dog & teaches him to not be racist, but instead of attacking colored people it begins attacking white people. I really want to see it. Seeing his filmography on Google (Or at least the movies he’s had a hand in) I see a lot of cinematic gold & schlock. Once you make schlock there’s no going back to the gold, yet he looks like a director who is the exception to the rule. He will be missed, would of loved if he made another period piece crime thriller like ‘L.A Confidential’. As someone who likes pulp inspired media, that movie was pretty much a ‘Crime Stories’ pulp through & through.
On that same note of film, he is considered the Clint Eastwood of movies down in Mexico. Starred in over 300 movies throughout his life & pretty much lived through the changes that happened in Mexican cinema. Mario Almada had passed at the age of 94 & it’s kind of a shame because he was one of the old guard that loved to star in mostly action/ western oriented films. An addendum within an addendum, he’s the guy I talked about in that Vice documentary where they talk about Narco cinema. He’s pretty much lived through the years as that guy who would star in those kinds of film & he’s one of those guys that would give you a crash course in how films are made through the years. He’s been in films from when they were real films till today where it’s all these so-called ‘Filmmakers’ who don’t really hold a candle to the films he’s starred decades ago. I say this because most Mexican films today are soo micro budgeted & poorly written, they don’t live up to the films he’s made in the past when Exploitation films were big. There was one awesome movie I saw of his where he & his wife & daughter take a trip down south of Mexico to a forest near Guatemala. Then come these commandos who decide to fuck around with Mario & his family until they leave him for dead & kidnap his wife & daughter for (You pretty much guessed it) rape. Then he wakes up in a hospital trying to make sense out of it all, the Mexican cops can’t do anything & at the same time there’s a villager in Guatemala who’s being fucked with because he’s indigenous & of course that’s a label of being fucked with because humans suck. So then Mario Almada goes to Guatemala to take them out, befriends the indigenous man & they both take out these rapist militants one by one with a Machete & a crossbow. I wish I knew the title, that one was an awesome fucking movie that sadly can’t be made today because then some micro budgeted, so-called ‘Artiste’ will fuck it up with their Final Cut Pro computer effects, slow & padded pacing & shitty writing. Mexican exploitation films suck now & Mario Almada was the last saving grace for anything that was released recently. He will be missed.
And this one hits me (As well as most of you probably will) personally. It’s safe to assume we read comics, if not then it will still hit you if you’re a fan of that AMC ‘Preacher’ show, despite it not being really too faithful to the comics. Co-creator & artist behind the ‘Preacher’ series, Steve Dillon, had passed at the age of 54. It hits me mainly because I would go to the flea market looking for more issues of Preacher. It wasn’t in early high school when reading an issue floured me. The art was good, but the writing made the art just all the more brilliant. That’s a comic people today won’t want to publish because of its gritty, gruesome & politically incorrect writing. The comic I first got has a rant by the main character talking about how political correctness has ruined the country & it’s all hate filled & funny, but that rant ends with him saying: “Man, I really need to get laid.” That made me laugh & that’s the monologue that sold me on the series. Oh man, that’s an artist who will truly be missed.
And lastly, you know we were gonna go here, Fidel Castro. I’m not Cuban so this isn’t something that affects me personally, but I know a lot of Cubans who are partying their asses off! At the same time there are those who are really hurt by this & weird enough to say, I can see why. They were brown nosers who believed in his cause & lived through his oppression thinking he’s got the plan. Not only that, but some of them see him as a godsend after being approved to go to America in the early 80’s when Regan was accepting a number of Cuban immigrants. So I guess they saw him as that guy at gunpoint who spared them. All in all I’ll just go ahead & say this, Who else is next on the death wheel of oppressors? I hope it’s the republican party & maybe even Hilary Clinton. So if you’re sad that he’s dead, go ahead, cry. If you’re happy that he’s dead, go ahead, party. I’m surprised I haven’t seen any scuffles or riots break out from Little Havana in Florida. Let’s say Obama died, I bet your ass there would be people crying or people cheering out in the streets & they’d be beating each other up like this was the apocalypse. Yet here are Cubans celebrating, mourning & not even touching each other.
That’s all for the obituaries. Hopefully these following days the right people (Cough Mike Pence) will die a horrible & gruesome death. So let’s get in to the lighter stuff, as light as someone from a place called BlackTime E-Press can be.
ANGELS AND DEVILS
So some time ago I wrote about this soap opera my mom exposed me to when I was a kid
(Refrence: http://blacktimepress.weebly.com/blogababble/cartels-ar-teh-s-ucc-everyones-a-fucking-martyr-true-story-bruv-trashy-soap-operas )
So this soap opera was called ‘Mujer: Casos De La Vida Real’ & it was one of the most sleazy, fucked up, yet hilariously produced soap opera anthologies I’ve ever experienced in my life. In that blog entry I talked about episodes where an in-law pays thugs to rape her daughter in-law so she can break up her son’s relationship, then there was the typically scandalous, as a interracial couple, episode on internet porn starring a Mexican actor who’s mostly known for starring in sex comedies. I see his face, yet I still don’t know his name & it’s pissing me off! Anyway, along with my mom enjoying the show, my neighbor’s mom (She had like 20 kids) enjoyed the show, but she took it very seriously. I remember once I was being babysat by her (This was when neighbors used to be cool people) & she was watching that show in her woodgrain, circa 1970’s tv set. I remember me & my friend were on the carpet playing Pokemon cards or some card game. Then his mom tells us to quiet down & follows it up by saying “Pay attention, this is a true story, watch the TV.” The TV showed a guy screaming from fear by a guy in red tights, red face paint & 99cent store horns on his head while waving his pitchfork. Dude played the Quija board & now a cheap Mexican devil is haunting him. That was pretty fucking hilarious & goofy. On that same token, sometime ago there was an episode where a woman plans to buy a Ouija board, is warned by a 99cent store angel, ignores his call & is subject to a blackout in her home (During a rain storm. Oh no, El Diablo!!) where she gets ‘Woked up AF’ and is visited by that angel again & she follows his every command. That episode ended with the woman being a slave to the angel & it was pretty sad, yet it was sold as a “She has found god & now she’s living the life of a good Catholic or Christian or whatever.” It was schlock for Mexican housewives, thus bringing me to my question: How the hell does a show go from ‘Alright, rape!!!’ to ‘Jesus is the answer’ from 0 to 20? What a fucked up tonal shift, I do say so myself. To top off every episode of that series ends with a lesson being shoved down our throats by Silvia Pinal (A classic Mexican actress), because yeah, us Mexicans are soooo stoopid, I had no idea selling your children for crack was a bad thing. TEH MOR YOO KNO!!!!!
GIT OVRRR HEAR!!!!
This was the most popular Blogbabble entry I did, mainly due to the fact that most of the people on my Facebook feed got a nice orgasm of nostalgia from talking about the card games that made our childhoods.
(Reference: http://blacktimepress.weebly.com/blogababble/blogababble-the-trading-card-game )
So I talked a lot about card games that we remembered from our childhoods, the big ones being YuGiOh, Pokemon, maybe Digimon & Magic: The Gathering. I forgot to mention this in the entry, but did you know there was a card game based off of Mortal Kombat? Yeah, but before I talk about that, I want to talk about the card game I made way back when. So back in the days of being a kid I remember me & a couple of friends lying around in the carpet & making our own card games. Most of my friends would be copying their YuGiOh cards in paper, but I was more of a mastermind by making a card game out of the first two Mortal Kombat games. At that time my friend was playing the hell out of Mortal Kombat & Mortal Kombat II on the SNES & that game (Even in the 2000’s) was still effective with it‘s 2D digitized graphics & gore. So I decided to make a card game out of the characters & would draw the character models out of memory. I remember making a Kung Lao card, a Jax card, a Liu Kang card, a Goro card & of course I made Liu Kang the strongest card because that was my go-to character whenever (once in a full moon) my friend would actually let me play his SNES (That greedy fat fuck). The card game kind of played like the DragonBall Z CCG but without the energy level maintenance. So a character would start off with a set of life points & each turn each player would choose an attack & whoever dies first would send a card from the other character’s deck into the graveyard. It would continue until someone runs out of cards. Each character would had a set of moves & I remember Liu Kang’s moves all too well. The left uppercut, right uppercut (Whoopie!!!), bycicle kick & the fireball, they each had their own stats as to how much damage it would deal. Looking back it was a pretty cool game that nobody wanted to play so the cards were either thrown away by mom or disintegrated. All the cards were drawn in pencil in cut up pages from a composition notebook. Part of me wished I still had them so I can scan them & see if people would dig it.
Then comes the card game published by the ‘Epic Battles’ system that was released in the mid-2000’s. Never played the game, but from the booster pack I bought (From a 99cent store, because of course I’d buy it for a dollar) it looks like a game that would be slow & monotnous after a while. I’m being biased & I’m not ashamed of it, my Mortal Kombat game was better & much more fast paced than yours!
Despite that, there was yet another Mortal Kombat game that was published by Brady Games (The same folks who publish those strategy guides & still publish strategy guides for video games today, even though the internet has pretty much taken away the necessity for strategy guides) in 1995. This card game I’m unfamiliar with , but it looks like the sets are going for cheap on Ebay, so there you go.
That Epic Battles mortal kombat was dumb because it focused on the MK games that were out at the time like ‘Mortal Kombat: Deception’ and ‘Mortal Kombat: Armageddon’. Both games aren’t bad, but I would of preferred a card game based on all the MK games that were made, including that buggy as hell ‘Mortal Kombat Advance’ for the GameBoy Advance.
My bias still stands, I made the best MK card game ever.
Who knows, I might make the card game again, but not with MK because then Ed Boon & John Tobias will probably kick the shit out of me, in court. Especially Ed Boon, he created & does the voice of Scorpion, now that’s some scary shit there. Imagine walking your dog out at night & out of nowhere hearing “GET OVER HERE!!!” & out from the shadows emerges Ed Boon with an axe.
This year’s Halloween installment was one where I delved into the Halloweens I spent & all the fears I had when I was a kid. From UFO’s to that episode of ‘The X Files’ where they crossed over with an episode of ‘Cops’. I forgot to talk about a cookie jar my parents used to have back in the 90‘s.
My dad used to watch a lot of stuff back in the 90’s (Oh I‘ll soon write about the syndicated TV shows of that era soon). The 90’s was a less stressful time when workers actually had the time off on weekends instead of now when everyone works, even on holidays. So dad, mom (While we were too young) me & my older sister would be watching some movie on TV, mostly aired on KTLA or UPN. There was a time when my parents showed us the first ‘Troll’ movie. I’m not talking about that one that recently came out, I’m talking the one that came out years before ‘Troll 2’. I’m talking the first film & I don’t remember that film being labeled as a ‘Horror’ film. Yes, this is that movie that spawned the character of ‘Harry Potter’. I’m not joshing you, the main character’s name is Harry Potter & the family’s name is the Potters. Explain yourself, J.K Rowling!! I guess my parents loved that movie, which is the reason why we had a mushroom cookie jar with a face. Similar to one of the creatures in that film which was a fungi mushroom with eyes & lips. That cookie jar was dread for me, mainly because I always thought it moved or was capable of moving.
I didn’t have nightmare of that thing, but I never forgot that damn mushroom cookie jar. Every time I craved a cookie, it was like facing off against a dementor or something. It looked like something a Japanese family would of owned along with an Oni statuette in the late 70‘s. That shit was creepy, but now I would love to own that thing. I don’t know if my parents sold it or if we (Because as kid we are stupid) broke it. Knowing my parents I don’t think they even know what I’m talking about.
Tropes, good god I can’t believe we’re going back to talking about that. So I talked a lot on this blog ( http://blacktimepress.weebly.com/blogababble/cliched-chiqle ) about tropes & the kinds of tropes that piss me off in any storytelling medium from books to movies & TV shows. There was one I forgot to talk about & this genre of film is pretty near & dear to me & that is the ‘The American Dream’ story. So there are a bunch of popular & well done films about the subject from ‘American Me’ , ‘Mi Familia’, ‘Once Upon A Time in America‘, ‘Godfather Part II’ & Even ‘An American Tail’. The genre takes a rags to riches ideal & puts it in a realistic, almost relatable context. The problem is not that people stopped believing in the American dream, it’s part of the percentage of why these kinds of stories don’t hit, but because it’s become a fucking dead horse trope. A few months ago I watched a movie (Subtly titled, wank wank) ‘The Price Of The American Dream’ which is about a Mexican family living in California among gang violence. That movie was a pile of diarrhea shit in both filmmaking & story way. The characters are archetypes taken from every single movie where people arrive to America & America changes them! You got the one character who wants to better themselves with an education & is ignored between the new culture & the old culture who calls them a sellout. You got the mom who struggles in America, the dad who bitches about how it was better back where they came from, even though he came to America because he couldn’t find work where they were. Then you get the gang banger subplot. Oh little Jaimie is infatuated with the cholos, Jaimie is now part of the cholo, AMERICA RUINDED MY FAMILY! The film even resorts to taking queues from other gang films like ‘Boyz ‘N’ The Hood’. We‘re all familiar with that twist, Ricky gets shot brutally & you find out later that Ricky got accepted to UCLA college. They do that in this film, but its done in such a way as you can tell they didn’t have money for blood squibs, or even red food coloring. That whole scene lingers for like 10 minutes of people act crying & a dead kid (Who also sucks at acting dead. I could see his chest moving!). It was a terrible film trying to be ‘deep’ and ‘emotional’ and also trying to be socially aware & it sucked at doing all of that. I will give it credit, it was a bilingual film, some scenes have characters speaking Spanish & some scenes with characters speaking English which doesn‘t deter from the performances the few actors & actresses maintain. So I’m pretty sure all of you can find a copy (Bootleg it, don’t give those filmmakers money) easily without resorting to going to alleyways downtown. They even made a sequel (Why? I don’t fucking know.) directed by Michael Amundsen, editor for ‘Witness’ where Han Solo is Amish & ‘Midnight Run’, that Robert DeNiro flick where he has to deal with an annoying bounty. Both classic films & I highly recommend them for your next movie night. Is ’Price of the American Dream II’ (AKA: Lean Like A Gang Banger. Because ’Lean Like A Cholo’ sounded too ethnic I guess) any good? It’s not as terrible as the first film (still a bad film), but it’s unintentionally funny. There’s a scene where some random car passes by a party, shoots a few cholos & a bunch of cholos decide to chase that car. In one of theee most awkward & funny scenes is when they’re chasing this car, the passenger window lowers & out comes a dude’s ass (Or maybe it was a woman’s ass. It wasn’t hairy so I’m putting my money that it was a chick’s ass & It looked nice. Then again dudes can have non-hairy butts. Why’s this world full of traps?). That ass was cash, regardless of gender & my ribs were hurting when I saw this. I kept rewinding & playing that scene until it got old. It ain’t old yet! The first film can suck a fuck, the sequel can suck a lollipop because it was funneh & actually well acted!!!! That second film is leaps & bounds beyond that first film. That first film was directed by some cholo who thought his movie was going to change the world.
In a world where Jennifer Aniston isn’t the last woman on earth, there are plenty of other pretty famous women out there who not only are gorgeous, but they make an impression on screen as well as off screen! KPOP idols are more memorable than her, even though all of them all sound & look the same (Nothing racist, Korean pop is very homogenous. No diversity among the pop stars.) Then again, does sexiest woman alive have to be film actresses? No, I’m not choosing comic book characters. Though if superheroes were inclusive, I’m torn between ‘She-Hulk’ and ‘Power Girl’. I have a thing for leotards.
So I’m gonna spend the rest of this paragraph naming ladies who deserve to be named ‘Sexiest Woman of the Year’. It’s stupid & doesn’t really matter, but I’m pissed that Jennifer Aniston keeps being handed this title. After talking politics & real current affairs this whole year, I’m entitled to talk stupid things such as this. Here we go, Dita Von T---………………………………............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................<Names cannot be mentioned for fear of being sued by either Jewish people or scientologists in Hollywood. Please send $300 to the BlackTime E-Press email address listed at the end of this blog & you‘ll receive a digital transcript featuring the list of women who are sexier than Jennifer Aniston. Act now & you‘ll also receive a complementary JPEG of a glass filled with water. A $99 dollar value, yours free. Don‘t wait, send in your money…Today.>……………………………................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... and that one British woman from the cooking channel. The british one with the big boobs, but not because she has big boobs but because she eats a lot & that‘s pretty cute. I don’t know her name, but she should be Sexiest Woman Alive. Hope you enjoyed that list. I’ll never write about this ever again.
That’s it for this installment of Blogababble, I hope to stay in touch with everything & be able to write about it as soon as possible because writing these addendums was hard. Every year since I began this blog I would end the year with a ‘Best/ Worst’ list, but since the worst outdoes the best, I won’t be doing it this year. Not only that but I’m busy with other projects, along with trying to find a way to upload those ‘Adventures in Pancakes’ comics. I love my scanner, that’s why I’ve been using it as much as I can by uploading comic panels & weird advertisements. I’ve got plans. On December 23rd, the final installment of TWLITCOGAD (The Woman Lost in the City of Gods & Devils) will be up. Will Agatha be able to continue her battle to find the killer with one leg or will she fail in the process? Find out in the finale on December 23rd. All of the chapters can be found here:
http://blacktimepress.weebly.com/blacktime-original-series
I’d like to thank all the fine people who have taken the time out of their busy schedule to either read my crazy rantings or read my fiction. Without you guys, I’d pretty much be talking to a brick wall, which was how it feels like I’m doing right now. WHY YOU NO TALK BACK? WHY DO YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES WHEN WE MAKE LOVE?!!!! I know I say this a lot, but I feel like without this page, without this blog, without this outlet I’d be just another idiot who is easily forgotten. My opinions would still be silent & I’d be wasting hours either playing video games or working at Walmart, being shat on by the American public. The internet has given me a purpose & some exposure. I’m hoping to get either a ‘TV Tropes’ or a ‘Encyclopedia Dramatica’ page. Ohhh please give ‘Blogababble’ an Encyclopedia Dramatica page. Pwetty please. I will give you the horn of a dead unicorn if you do it. I’m not gay, but I’ll do anything you desire….AAAANNNYYYTTTHHHIIINNGGG! Except butt stuff! …. I can make you see heaven.
So to all of you, I thank you & expect a hell of a year from all of us at ‘BlackTime E-Press’. Expect a lot of Blogbabble this coming year. You bet your ass I’m going to have a lot to say about this coming year & that’s not really a good thing.
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