February 26, 2019

What I Loved in the 80’s-Toys and Games (repost)


This article is a very special one for me. It’s the very first article I ever posted on Manic Expression. I am sure if I had not done that, and stayed on TGWTG, I would have stopped doing this a loooonnnngg time ago. Certainly when they switched web sites and all their old stuff was deleted! But instead Les worked with me on my concerns, and here I still am. 7 YEARS LATER!! So to celebrate I decided to repost this by changing a few things. Mostly, making it more of a focus on authentic 80’s toys. I mean, they still have action figures today so that isn’t really decade specific. Plus I’ve talked about the various franchises elsewhere. I fixed the pictures which are long gone, and I also took away an insult toward video games of today that I had made which was really unfair. Video games today are AMAZING and I just came off as an old person saying “In my day we didn’t have these things…” I guess wisdom does come with age.

February 24, 2019

Top 6 Favorite Leonard Nimoy Moments in Star Trek


Almost four years ago now Leonard Nimoy passed away. Man does tine fly. At the time I did s tribute where I discussed my favorite roles of his outside Star Trek. A year later I discussed five Spock moments in Star Trek which were…less than great. But what are the best Spock moments from Star Trek? As you know Nimoy made that character one of the best loved characters ever, and his scenes were almost always well done whether we was taking command of the Enterprise or having a casual conversation with Kirk.
 
 


 



Here are my six favorite Spock moments, from just the original series :



#6.The Naked Time
I always seem to bring this scene up but it’s one of the best acted moments in the series. We see, for the first time in the series, the real struggle between his Vulcan and human side.



February 18, 2019

A Look at Batmania-Merchandise and Memorabilia

February 16, 2019

Top 10 Favorite Batman Theatrical Movies

Oh boy, talk about setting myself up for an argument! As we approach the 80th anniversary of the caped crusader I decided to have some fun and rank the theatrical movies. It’s amazing how many there have been, poor Superman was really left in the dust as far as movies are concerned. I’ve discussed most of these in detail separately but never tried to rank them.




February 11, 2019

Ten Favorite Valentine’s Day Sitcom Episodes

I mentioned on New Year’s Eve that I had neglected to touch on the holiday themed TV shows that were around. An even bigger over site was Valentines Day. For whatever reason, I haven’t talked about that yet Could be because I hate the holiday. Nevertheless there are toms of these episodes out there. Usually involving a romance that goes bad. And while I have no love for that holiday, I do enjoy watching these episodes on the 14th of each February.


February 9, 2019

Top 10 Favorite Super Villain Designs (comic books)


Well after the other day it was only fair to look at villains. However, the criteria has to be a little different. As I said before, we love superheroes and their awesome costumes. Villains though aren’t known for their costumes as much. Oh sure there are exceptions, but most of the memorable villains we love to dress up as are from outside comics. Yes Darth Vader, Pennywise, and every Disney villain all make fine costumes but you don’t often see comic book villains.


February 7, 2019

Top 10 Favorite Superhero Costumes (comic books)


I’ve talked a lot about my favorite superhero characters, but for fun what if we forget all about silly stuff like characterization and powers, and just focus on the costumes. When we’re kids first seeing comics for the first time, that’s the first thing we notice. I’m pretty sure when I wanted to dress up as Superman for Halloween at age 5 I didn’t care very much about his personal relationships with Lois or anything. So here is a quick rundown of my favorite super hero costumes, based on just the costumes and nothing else to do with the character.



February 2, 2019

Ten Great Forgotten TV Show Openings

It’s funny how some TV themes/openings become so well known that they become iconic. Others, not so much. And it’s not because the show was awful or they were bad theme songs. In fact quite the contrary. It’s could be a case of  the show itself never reaching that status level where the opening was something that everyone knew. For instance, who remember this :



The theme to “It’s a Living’ is fantastic…but who remember it? Or the show for that matter? It lasted a year on network TV before finding life in syndication.




Another reason for this could be because the opening was trimmed down. For instance :



Notice how that was a little longer than you may remember it? That’s because the long version isn’t used a lot, it’s easier to trim it for ad time. I LOVED this Leon Redbone theme for this show. But even trimmed I bet most remember it. The same can be said for the trimmed version of the Friends theme, even without the opening of the song I'm sure most people still remember that one. Some shows, not quite as lucky. When the theme gets trimmed often it gets forgotten




Here are a few more great openings to good shows which aren’t as memorable as they should be.




Head of the Class
 I loved the theme to this show, and man was I amazed to find out that there is a full length one! Yeah the theme we see most common edits out the kids so we just have Charlie struggling to get to work. I love the longer opening;s music too, it's one of my favorite themes ever. That no one sees.