Daniel J. Hogan's Blog

Horrible news movie fans, special effects/monster master Stan Winston died of cancer last night. It is a sad day for movie fans around the world, I know I'm seriously saddened this because I'm a big fan of Stan's work. Finding out he had a hand in any film made it 100x more watchable to me. I loved the quality of creatures Stan and his crew were able crank out. They did the effects for Aliens, Predator, and Terminator to name a few. Oh and of course, Monster Squad.

As a fan of traditional effects instead of the over-use of CGI, this really is a downer. Kind of makes you wonder if there will ever be someone like Stan (or the other effects wizards of his generation) ever again. I hope so. I know I'm not the only one who enjoys a quality made creature costume.

Sigh. I should watch Predator or Terminator tonight in tribute. Right after I pour a 40 on the curb.

Kind of ironic that I watched Godzilla: Final Wars last night too. That was chuck full of great monster costumes, it was a fun movie and very ridiculous (but in a good way).

So last weekend while Up North, I decided to start growing a beard. I haven't tried growing anything in about eight years, so I figured I was due for another shot (my last attempt was freshman year of college with a horrible goatee-thing).

Now, my genetic make-up is rather ill-suited for such a task--but you wouldn't think so, given blanket of hair that covers my extremities. I sort of got an odd combination of the facial hair growing traits from my parents: I inherited my mother's side's ability to grow facial hair quickly (that'd be the Sicilian side) and inherited my father's side's inability to grow thick facial hair and the tendency for hair to grow in random patches. This makes for an interesting challenge: I can grow stuff, but it is patchy and doesn't fill out that well.

But, throwing caution to the wind I decided to give it a week just to see what would happen. Big Mistake.

I seem to have no problem growing hair on my chin and lower jaw area, but under the nose is a horse of a different color. It doesn't fill in and I look (and feel) like a teenager clinging onto his first ever lameo mustache. This was the reason I went with a goatee in college (and part of senior year in high school...which was forever captured in time thanks to my passport photo. Oy.)

By the middle of the week I had managed to cultivate something that passed as beard, but it was driving me crazy. It was irritating me, itching all the time and felt like it was sucking the life out of me. And the muggy 80+ degree weather didn't help either. I was irritable all week and miserable and couldn't figure out why.

Then it hit me. It was the beard. It was making me uncomfortable and I just wasn't aware of it. I was a different person, moodier, snippy and bitter. LIke Peter Parker finally realizing his black costume was evil, I quickly decided last night I had to rid myself of this vile growth. I smote the hairy beast with my trusty razor, and I've felt worlds better ever since.

This Kids in the Hall skit sums up perfectly what I was going through:

Oh why couldn't it had been more like this?:

I (finally) had the chance to do some cooking tonight and I was fairly happy with the results:


Chicken tacos, with a side of refried beans, tomatoes and an nicely chilled Oberon. Yummy! Although the taco seasoning packet I picked up was a bit lacking. That's what I get for buying the Mild I s'pose. Thankfully I had hot sauce on hand to remedy that. I realized while taking this picture that my food pretty much matches my place mat. Neat.

I got this great DVD from Netflix today, GoLion: King of Beasts. It is the Japanese show that was re-edited into Voltron here in the States. I was skeptical at first because some of those shows don't hold up too well or aren't that interesting. Well, this wasn't the case here. They cut A LOT out and changed a bunch to make this show into Voltron.

Biggest changes (so far, only seen the first episode):
GoLion (aka Voltron) was a going around fighting anyone and anything in the galaxy and eventually had the nerve to take on the goddess of the universe, so she split him apart into five lion robots. In Voltron, the main villain's evil witch turned into this goddess and then separated Voltron.

The main heroes start out as slaves of the main villain, and when they returned to Earth (where they were captured) from a mission in space, the planet had been destroyed by World War III after the "east and west' used their nukes against each other. in Voltron, the Earth government sent them out on a mission and then they were captured.

Way more violence. Way more fighting. Lots of darker stuff. Swearing!

This is like finding out GoBots was edited from the Terminator movies or something. This is some crazy--but good--stuff. I really like watching the original series when it comes to these crossover series, it is neat to see just how much they are chopped up and changed. 

Tomorrow is going to be a pretty amazing day: I'm seeing Indiana Jones in the morning with Lovely Assistant and later that night I'm going Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals! Woooo! Let's Go Red Wings! (and a special thanks to my buddy Jon for getting me a ticket)

AND to kick off this awesome weekend, Lovely Assistant and I are going to Famous Dave's for dinner tonight. Hmmm, BBQ. We ate there last weekend at Motor City Comic Con and loved it (NOTE: not going back to the same one). I'm usually not one for chain resturants but Famous Dave's is a tasty exception, along with Red Robin.  I'm a sucker for good BBQ (and good burgers).

On the subject of writing related news, I'm almost done with the revision of my short story, Slow and Steady. Lovely Assistant checked the spelling and grammar last night, so after those many changes are made I'm gonna send it off to Jay at Comics Obscura so he can decide if he wants to adapt it into a comic. I'm excited.

And I  sent Michael a list of what drawings I want for the first ten chapters of The Magic of Eyri. I think I did a good job at keeping my requests simple. I'm looking forward to what he comes up with, I'm sure it'll be nothing less  than amazing. These will be for the long promised 2nd Edition (or Special Edition, whatever I end up calling it) and the serializing of it on magicofeyri.com

I came to the rescue this afternoon at my local comic book shop. I was scanning the racks for the latest issue of B.P.R.D.: 1946 when I overheard a pair of young teens asking one of the employees about the value of their Magic: The Gathering cards. One claimed that he had been told a few of his cards were worth in excess of $50, perhaps even way more.

The problem was that neither of the kids nor the employee could tell which set/edition the cards were from, which affects the value of the card. For those who don't know, some Magic cards are reprinted in different sets with the original sets being the most valuable. The early sets didn't have much in the way of identification, but Wizards of the Coast quickly figured out a system--hence expansion sets and reprint sets having little icons.

Anyway, back to the story. I walked over to the counter and offered my two cents worth. I looked at the card and quickly recognized it as a Revised Edition, Force of Nature, which much to the kids' disappointment was only worth about $1.75. Discouraged, the kids left the store and the employee thanked me for me help.

I use to play Magic a lot about ten years ago, but I probably haven't touched a deck in the past five years (give or take). Once I got to college I stopped playing as much, aside from a game here or there with friends for sheer nostalgic value. I just couldn't keep up with all the sets and all the wacky rule changes. I'm sure all of my painstakingly fine tuned decks are verboten in tournament play now. I used to play in tournaments back in the day, and I even won a couple (or placed pretty high). There was a Media Play store about 20 minutes from home that had weekly (or bi-weekly, can't remember) Magic nights on Fridays.

Yeah, so my Friday nights in middle-school/high school were spent playing Magic, watching X-Files or playing Mario Kart 64 or Golden Eye at a friend's house. I was (was?) such a geek.

The other issue I had with Magic as I got older was that I didn't like having to dump a bunch of money into it all the time--and there was the ever present complaint of having to play against people who would just buy the super-rare cards worth hundreds of dollars so they could easily win. I hated that. I really liked playing sealed deck/draft tournaments--you were given a brand new starter deck and a couple of boaster packs and had to make a working deck out of it. Those were a lot of fun, because some of the people I played against who'd just buy the super rare/game breaker cards didn't know much about strategy or how to work with less.

I still enjoy the game and think it is fun, even though I haven't played it in a long time. Where's my Red/Green Erhnam Djinn deck?