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NEWS AND VIEWS - AUGUST 2023
WRITING NEWS Finally got some writing done this month -- I'm about 9,000 words into the new Sam Fortune novel, Sam Fortune and the Hazards of the Game. This is going to be a pretty short novel, I think -- my outline only runs nine chapters (some of those chapters are very overstuffed, though, and will probably be broken up). I'm hoping to finish it by the end of the year, if not sooner, so I can start work on that big Signalverse crossover. Still waiting on the cover art for Galatea and the Dupe. I've also started work on a new edition of The Complete Guide to the Signalverse, which I'm planning to release in late 2024 or early 2025. This new edition will include at least sixty new character entries, a new short story, new write-up's on some noteworthy events in the history of the Signalverse (the Big Bash at Big Sig, the False Chronology incident), diary entries from the journal of explorer/adventurer Burton Questmann (a character we'll learn more about in the upcoming Signalverse crossover), and hopefully some actual artwork. * * * * * * * * TWINS About twenty years ago my buddy Ant stumbled across a Cantopop group called Twins (a duo consisting of Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung). This was long before YouTube, so I think he must have discovered their songs through Kazaa or maybe WinMX or something like that. Intrigued (he thought they had a unique sound), he bought some of their albums and some of the movies they had starred in (The Twins Effect, Summer Breeze of Love, My Wife is 18, later House of Fury) and he showed them to me, and, well, the two of us just basically fell in love with these girls. We were big, big fans. How big? Ant flew to Hong Kong to see them in concert twice (and I probably would've gone with him if I had had the money). When they came to the U.S. in 2007, we got tickets to see them perform at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, and then a week later, we flew to Atlantic City to see them again at the Trump Taj Mahal. In 2017 we went to see them a third time in Reno. We spent thousands of dollars on those trips. Ant was a little more obsessed with the duo than I was. He eventually amassed a huge collection of Twins movies, albums, and merchandise (he had just gotten his first real job, so he could afford to waste his money on this stuff). He bought toys, photobooks, posters, pillows, pool floaties, mousepads, VCD's, shirts, and so on, and even hired artists to turn everyday items into bootleg Twins merch: Ant owns a pair of Converse shoes and a Sega Dreamcast with Twins designs on them. 
To this day I'm not exactly sure what it was about this group that we found so appealing. I mean, obviously they were super cute, and they had some good songs, and they had a kind of warm, friendly wholesomeness that we liked, but it's pretty weird to spend thousands of dollars on concerts and toys and VCD's and stuff, you know? I guess it might have had something to do with the fact that they were a Hong Kong act that very few people outside of China had ever heard of -- Ant and I are both elitist snobs; when it comes to pop culture, the more obscure something is, the more we tend to like it. I should also note that neither of us speak Cantonese, although we did make some half-hearted attempts to study it back in the day (the only Chinese words I can remember now are the words for "purple" and "aspirin"...go figure). The grammar didn't seem too difficult, but those tones were just impossible for me to figure out. Anyway, we actually ended up meeting them twice. Well, sort of. In 2007, in San Francisco, we went to a "meet and greet" the day before the concert and got some posters signed at the ABC Seafood Restaurant. Because we were the only white people in sight, we were even interviewed by a reporter from Ming Pao San Francisco (which is now defunct). We thought it was pretty funny. 
We didn't really get a chance to talk to them at the signing -- their mobbed-up security goons immediately hustled us off the platform -- but ten years later, in 2017, in Reno, they actually started talking to us from the stage, right in the middle of the concert! Once again, we were the only white people in the audience, and about a foot taller than everyone else, and the only ones not singing along, so we stuck out like sore thumbs. "Do you understand our songs?" they asked us in English. And I was like, "Kind of." It was a pretty weird experience, suddenly becoming the center of attention at this huge concert, but again, I thought it was funny, and I thought I acquitted myself pretty well under the circumstances. You can see part of the exchange towards the end of this video: I guess I still consider myself a Twins fan, but English-language Twins fandom in the U.S. basically disintegrated after the Edison Chen scandal in 2008 (when some naughty pictures of Gillian ended up online) and I don't really know what they're up to now, or even if they're still together. If they ever put on another concert in the States, though...yeah, I'd probably go, just for old time's sake. * * * * * * * * MORE FROM MY (BROKEN) TOY COLLECTION A couple years ago I wrote a piece about the various action figures I used to play with when I was a kid, most of which ended up broken, disfigured, or dismembered -- I was pretty hard on my action figures. Unlike a lot of people, though, I actually kept most of my childhood toys, and earlier this month I went through them again, and did some more research to try to figure out which toylines some of them belonged to. Here's what I found: 
This guy is Oddball, a "Renegade Monster" Gobot that I got at a Wendy's in Colorado around 1985-1986. I didn't really know anything about Gobots at the time, but I liked this little guy. His "transformation" is very simple -- the two halves of his body come apart and his head turns around. 
I probably got this angry-looking fellow at a garage sale somewhere, back in the 80's. I knew he wasn't a M.U.S.C.L.E., because he had a more rubbery, eraser-like texture, but that was all I knew about him, until I did a little research and discovered he belonged to the Diener "Space Creatures" line (he's a Horned Cyclops, apparently). 
These two are Hulk Hogan (obviously) and Andre the Giant (less obviously). They have little clips on their backs -- I guess the idea was you'd wear these on your lapel to signify your support for one wrestler or the other. Mine are a little bit beat up (Andre's clip is broken and Hulk's face is mangled) but these two are actually fairly collectible. If I had them in their original packaging I might get $100 or $150 bucks for them. 
This guy is Burnheart, from Tonka's Super Naturals line. I used to play with this one all the time when I was a kid; he was one of my favorite figures (he was usually the leader of the bad guys). He's in surprisingly good shape, and I even have all of his accessories. These figures were pretty robust. I also have a Ghostling from that same toyline, but his robe is chewed up and he's missing an arm, and in kind of grungy condition overall. 
Next up is a Fisher Price Movie Viewer with two movies (Lonesome Ghosts and a Cookie Monster short), which have definitely seen better days. These were interesting toys -- you stuck the cartridge in the back of the viewer and then turned a crank and looked into a little viewfinder to play the film, which were usually about twenty or thirty seconds long if you cranked them at a normal speed. I'm pretty sure we had at least one more movie, but it must have got wrecked or something. 
These guys are Army Ants. I've got just these three, and none of them have their rubbery, detachable gasters -- these things popped right off and were very easy to lose. Possibly because of that, intact Army Ants are extremely collectible and, like Battle Beasts, fetch very high prices on eBay. 
This is a "Galaxy Warrior" vehicle, made in Hong Kong. It's one of those toys where the wheels create some kind of friction when they turn, which generates little sparks which you can see on the back of it (after a few days of use the gears wear down and the sparks no longer appear). They're not exactly rare and not particularly interesting, but hey. 
And lastly, here's some weird suction-cup aliens that must have come together in a three-pack. Two of them are damaged and they're all very dirty, and I have no idea if they were part of some kind of toyline or what, but I've always kind of liked these little guys. I probably got them back in the 80's. |