SteveMandich.com Blog
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Hot Jack o' Lantern Action
Tonight I carved those freak conjoined siamese pumpkin twins I mentioned a few posts down -- not too shabby, if I do say so myself.
If I could have just one Halloween wish this year, it would be that people stop writing "Hallowe'en."
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Labels: Halloween
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Dave's Appetite for Destruction
As a teenager, my favorite TV show was Late Night with David Letterman, and my favorite bits were the remote segments when Dave destroyed everyday objects in imaginative fashion. First, he had a steamroller run over a bowling trophy, a can of Crisco, and some other stuff...
Then he exploded various inflatables like inner tubes and volleyballs with an air compressor (though I can't find video of that)... Moving on, he dropped watermelons, a boombox, and Cookie Puss off an abandoned five-story building in New Rochelle, New York...
Finally, he visited a Clifton, New Jersey machine shop with an 80-ton hydraulic press. Watch him crush a bowling ball, a canned ham, and Mr. Potato Head...
Since his 1993 move to CBS, Dave still delights in seeing stuff fall from the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater and smash on the sidewalk below, but now he lets his stagehands do the damage while he simply watches the live feed from his desk. It just ain't the same.
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Labels: David Letterman, TV
Evel Knievel + Halloween = Scare Cycles!
After Ideal shitcanned Evel in 1977 for beating up Sheldon Saltman with a baseball bat, the toy company sought a replacement figure on which to base their popular "Gyro-Powered" motorcycle toys. They settled on three: Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Grim Reaper (or somebody like him -- why not the Wolfman, or the Mummy?).
In any case, Ideal rolled out the Scare Cycles line in 1978, featuring the Frankencycle (driven by a Fonzie-like Frankenstein)...
...the Dracucycle (with Dracula splayed across a coffin)...
...and Boneshaker (a three-wheeler piloted by the Grim Reaper guy)...
The Frankencycle had glow-in-the-dark parts and a "Haunted House Winder," and I suppose the others did too. Read more here, and if you understand Japanese, here.
Then Ideal shitcanned the monsters for their 1982 line of Gyro-Powered Team America motorcycle toys, which I might write about around Independence Day.
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Labels: Evel Knievel, Halloween
Monday, October 18, 2010
I Gotta Bunch of Updates, You Guys
I felt like I've been neglecting SteveMandich.com for most of the year, so now I'm in the process of updating a bunch of stuff on there... Among the new additions are 24 Bigfoot on Film titles, 30 Knievel Rock songs, two 2010 Robbie Knievel Timeline dates, a couple items on Bigfoot Is Real, and one new addition to Knievel Injuries... Plus, Super Ichiro Crazy is again up to speed, now that his 2010 season is in the books.
Elsewhere, there's still a trickle of posts over at Quatchi Watch, and I made a new Flickr set of Seattle Mariners media guides (pictured above).
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Labels: Baseball, Bigfoot, Evel Knievel, Ichiro, Quatchi, Robbie Knievel, Seattle Mariners
Sunday, October 17, 2010
At the Pumpkin Patch!
After today's trip to Carpinito Brothers, we now have ten pumpkins in the house (eleven, if you count both halves of the freak conjoined siamese pumpkin twins I found -- looks kinda like this).
We passed on the vampire corn maze.
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Labels: Halloween