Wallet-Sized George Photos.
Got some mail today! <3
Mail from Snapfish. If you’ve been paying any attention to Dino Drac, you know what this is. And I couldn’t be more excited.
Four bucks and four days later, I have wallet-sized photos of George the Gremlin. Read More…
New Feature: Casino Games, for the SMS.
Mentioning it here for the RSS-only crowd, but also because I don’t know how many people keep an eye on that enormous features banner on the main page. There’s a new one up, about Casino Games, an old title for the Sega Master System. Read it!
But I still don’t want these tiny blog updates ushering you to bigger non-blog updates to go to waste, so let’s get some use out of this one.
First, here’s a photo of a Centurions eraser, a Transformers head and a packet of Sea-Monkey food.
I wasn’t sure where else to put it.
Next, let’s make this a survey.
In the comments, it’s time for you to confess.
Name a movie or a TV episode that seriously made you cry.
Not just “sad.” I mean real tears. The more embarrassing the better.
I’ll get the ball rolling. It was the second made-for-television Ewok movie, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.
I’m dead serious. Ugh. That part when Cindel left Endor with Wilford Brimley, and she waves that sad goodbye to Wicket. I’m talking crazy tears. Physical, uncontrollable sobbing. I was like twenty years old, too. I’d already seen that stupid Ewok movie a hundred times without issue, but on that one weird occasion, Cindel and Wicket did me in.
Your turn. Top that shit.
BFCDAW #1: Troll 2 Fan Art.
Even as Dinosaur Dracula was still under construction, I knew I’d run into issues balancing my professional life with the site. I hoped it wouldn’t happen ten minutes after launching, but it wasn’t a huge surprise when it did.
I vowed to incorporate my workday into Dino Drac’s content. Had grand visions of spending my lunch hour scouring the streets of New York for interesting things to take photos of and write about, because surely, there are plenty of interesting things in New York to take photos of and write about.
Problem is, I don’t really get a “lunch hour.” I don’t know many people who do. And, frankly, it’s going to take a special set of circumstances or some really good pills to persuade me to spend those rare moments of calm running up and down 34th Street, looking for guys in giant hamburger costumes to snap pictures of.
But I still think it’s important to “work work” into the site, somehow. Even if it’s in entirely stupid ways. It’s with those feelings that I not-so-proudly present the first entry in my hot new series.
Let’s call it, Bullshit Filler Content Devised At Work.
This is Bullshit Filler Content Devised At Work #1.
It’s about my attempt to squeeze in time for Troll 2 fan art.
It was a good day to try it. I had my own room, so at least in theory, nobody would catch me recreating one of the Troll 2 goblins on a legal pad, using a Sharpie, highlighter and some dry erase board markers.
My inspiration came from this fansite, since they had a great image of my favorite Troll 2 goblin. Not sure what his (her?) name is, but here’s the monster:
Troll 2 is famously bad, but I’ve grown to enjoy it in a completely non-ironic way. It isn’t a horror movie I can watch a thousand times in a row (hi there, Friday the 13th Part 2), but it still has everything I like from these sorts of films: Wacky monsters, great deaths, and errant houseflies entering the frame at the absolute worst times to do so.
The goblin costumes were terrible, but weirdly effective. The fact that they were so chintzy actually made them creepy, and if you watch Troll 2 with the volume muted, I’d almost be willing to claim that it’s a sincerely scary movie. Almost.
Anyway, that guy up there? He’s the greatest. The hair. That slimy slobber. Two completely different eyeballs. If I was going to make goblin fan art with office supplies, this was the goblin to choose. Read More…
Berry Blue Jell-O Recipes.
Berry Blue Jell-O arrived in 1992, and the fanfare — at least in my imagined version of things — was enormous.
Here were raspberries and blueberries, finally putting aside their differences to take over the planet. This was perhaps the first signal of the “blue candy” craze that would stain the nation throughout the ‘90s.
I don’t know what the truth was, but we had our rumors. In my neighborhood, the story was that a ban on blue food dye had finally been lifted, freeing confectioners to make everything look like sea water from a tropical hotel brochure.
True or not, the story seemed to fit. All through the ‘90s, everything was coming out blue. Blue M&Ms and blue Blow Pops were the kings of this burgeoning fad, but it didn’t end there. Not by a long shot. Even foods that made no sense being blue, became blue.
For a time, every kid I knew spent their days wandering around with blue-tinted tongues. It was weird and great.
And this? This is something Jell-O calls the Star Spangled Snack. Found the recipe in a Berry Blue promo booklet from its debut year. As soon as I saw the Star Spangled Snack, I knew I had to make it. It isn’t electric sex gleaming in the window, but it is electric blue Jell-O gleaming on a wooden plank.
How to do it, and it’s real easy:
Make red Jell-O. Make blue Jell-O. Cut into half-inch squares. Create a layer with the red squares. Add a second layer of Cool Whip. Third layer of blue squares. Top with another dollop of Cool Whip, adorned with a sugar-sprinkled marshmallow.
The end result? Something that photographs better than a Baby Pygmy Marmoset, trained to give cameramen a thumbs-up. Read More…