Universal Dork

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  • Vision Quest: Portland’s Finest Free Comix!

    Issue number five just dropped of Portland Oregon’s FREE comic newspaper! Vision Quest is a collaborative effort put together by local comix writers and artists and it’s a great change from all of the mainstream stuff out there flooding the market. It’s got a real feel to it as well, black & white, hand drawn ink on paper quality that will likely bring you back to the good ol’ days of self published comic books and zines of the nineties.

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    It’s a ton of fun too as each issue showcases 30 plus full page bursts of old school comic strip mayhem. You never really know what to expect within it’s pages either, stating on the cover it’s recommended for mature readers so it’s not quite the comic book either for your kid. You get a fine collage of the all of the local talent here in Portland and beyond & yeah it’s free and can be found all around town. Cool artists like Alex Chiu, Tim Root, Erin Nations, Liz Yerby to name a few are featured in issue five and some of the artists are veterans in the underground & local comic scene.

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    Tim Goodyear (Teenage Dinosaur / Video Tonfa), one of the publishers and contributors elaborated on the  inspiration behind it saying “Vision quest is a boiler plate we got from The Intruder up in Seattle. I have been bummed on the commercial structure of comics for a long time and have tried many times to get comics to folks with out all the barriers that are in place. Ian Sundahl asked me how The intruder paper was structured and I told him what Max Clotfelter had told me. He asked if I’d want to do that here, I said I wasn’t sure. 6 or 8 months later he asked me again and I said yes. It’s been great. I love it.”

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    With regards to submissions to be included in Vision Quest, Goodyear advises that “people should write to us at Visionquestcomix@gmail.com – people should look at the paper and they should make the comic that they want. Not everything fits, whether it be math or tone or outside our interests. Hand lettering is a big key.” 

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    Check this shit out around town here and I’m certain copies can be acquired via the Vision Quest email! 

  • X-Men Apocalypse: The Origin of The X-Men’s Famous Hairdos!!

    I checked out ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ today, a movie I was super excited for as I was a huge fan of ‘Days of Future Past’ and the other Singer X-Men movies. I’m sorry to say that for some reason this latest installment is a big bloated mess that sadly misses the mark by a boatload. I loved that the last movie was set in the 1970’s & was so stoked on the idea of this one taking place in the 1980’s. However, aside from some cool vintage wardrobe and a Ms. Pac-man video game there wasn’t much else in this one that for me really brought me back to that great era of the X-Men comic books.

    There was simply just too many damn characters running around, the story was missing heart and the special effects were just too much of a cartoony CG mess to convince me that the Earth was in any serious danger. I had high hopes forthe movies antagonist Apocalypse too and didn’t even mind his look, which most people were in a frenzy about from the start. However, Apocalypse as a villain was just way too hokey to be taken seriously and yeah he really did look a bit ridiculous I must admit.  

    And Talk about a villain who takes himself way too seriously, jeez, he seemed more like an overdramatic cartoon version of the legendary villain. We’re really not given that much character development here for anyone, everything that happens happens way too coincidentally including the origin of people’s hairstyles! It seems Apocalypse is not only responsible for huge amounts of global chaos but also for Storm’s white hair & ALSO Professor X’s bald ass head!! (more…)

  • Lucid Dreaming: The Secret to Having Superhuman Powers Every Night!

    You wanna have superhuman strength? You wanna fly high above buildings? You wanna have the indestructible claws of Wolverine? Well I’m gonna let you in on a little secret-you CAN have superhuman powers every night with a little commitment and perseverance. Now of course there is a slight catch, you’ve got to get serious about your dreams! But not just any old regular dream, learn to ‘Lucid Dream‘ every night. I’ve spent some of my nights transforming into The Incredible Hulk and smashing up whole cities, I’ve flown high in the sky with birds like Superman and I’ve also popped those adamantium claws Wolverine made famous from my knuckles. It was unbelievable, but it’s all true and I chose to do it all myself while fully conscious!

    First though let me explain, ever since I was in my late teens I began to have lucid dreams and in the past year began to get more serious about it all. This here is the key to all this madness. So to anyone out there who doesn’t know what a lucid dream is  let me give you a proper definition,

    “A lucid dream is any dream during which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming. During lucid dreaming, the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over the dream, dream characters, narrative, and environment.”

    Chances are you may have already had dreams like this in the past and didn’t quite realize it was something special or maybe you’ve never even realized this was possible? Remember ‘Dreamscape’ with Dennis Quaid? Or ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors’? Well it’s just like that except it’s easy to kick Freddy’s ass in a real lucid dream. And truth be told anyone can be a lucid dreamer all it takes is a little practice and focus. Also keep in mind a vivid dream is not a lucid dream. But a lucid dream is a vivid dream. Let me be clear here, once you experience your first real lucid dream you’re likely to never really be the same again.

    Even more so, recently I’ve begun to focus on lucid dreaming a bit every day of my life. I’ve now begun to be able to control my dreams, create dream characters and really do anything that my mind can dream up quite often. Some of these lucid dreams are just as real as anything you can experience in the waking world, it all really depends on how seriously you want to delve into it. One thing I can guarantee is that it’s most definitely worth the effort. In many ways it might change the way you see life and reality altogether. (more…)

  • Comic Book Cover of the Week: Daredevil & Black Widow in Rare Form!

    Here’s a look at one heck of a great cover by the master Barry Windsor Smith way back from 1985 with Daredevil #217! This has always been a favorite of mine and there’s just no denying that Barry’s unique style rivals any current artist. Anytime in the 80’s that he was involved you just knew you were going to get something memorable. This particular cover is no exception to the rule, Barry gives us an epic cover with Daredevil & The Back Widow swinging high up in the skyscrapers  giving our ol’ pal Spidey a run for his money for pure perfection in acrobatic form!

     

  • The Night Watchmen vs The Ghostbusters!

    I just saw this cool little trailer for the a new horror comedy called The Night Watchmen which seems like a helluva great gruesome time. Despite the fact that there’s a new trailer for The Ghostbusters reboot that just dropped recently to me a smaller flick like The Night Watchmen thus far captures the vibe of a  Ghostbusters movie than this latest reboot.

    I know that  there’s a lot of negative press out there already about The Ghostbusters and though I really want to be excited something about it feels incredibly forced.

    It’s not the fact that the cast are all women either as many seem to like to claim is causing all the negative hype . Perhaps it’d made more sense to have at least a couple of the  original Ghostbusters pass the torch. It would have been cool to have Dan Akroyd & Ernie Hudson be a part of the movie as the last two Ghostbusters standing who need to hire some new recruits once the supernatural start to stir in the city again.

    Instead we get another bland  reboot that thus far doesn’t look like it’s got much of a personality of it’s own. It also feels more like a sequel to the recent Goosebumps movie in it’s way of bad CGI effects that in 2016 somehow still don’t improve on the original movies. Anyway check out this new Night Watchmen trailer as a horde of vampires led by an undead clown attack the after hours employees of a boring ol’ office building..

     

     

  • The Best of VHS Box Art: Evilspeak!!

    I recently checked out an awesome early 80’s flick called ‘Evilspeak’ starring everybody’s favorite awkward actor Clint Howard who’s the younger brother of superstar director Ron Howard. Evilspeak delivers all the goods besides having Clint Howard in the lead it’s got some gruesome fx, a truly unique story and some pretty cool sets. It’s also got a swarm of possessed pigs that are more than willing to carry out the evil deeds of the devil! So track this one down if you get the chance, it’s totally worth it. Now one last thing obviously this one had got going for was the incredible VHS box cover art! One of my faves…

    Well I also realized that this artist C. Winston Taylor is responsible for many of my favorite movie posters and box art of the 1970’s and 80’s in fact it turns out that he did the cover art for one of the other blogs I did recently for the movie Mutant Hunt! Also check out the blog post on with more details on his artwork on another cool ass blog I dig: Camera Viscera!!

  • Rock the F*#k Out With Jason on this Friday The 13th!!

    Hey you! Here’s a couple songs to celebrate this unofficial holiday of Friday the 13th!! It’s the second best spooky holiday to Halloween for cryin’ out loud so it’s time get serious about celebrating!

    One of my favorite modern videos indeed does feature Jason in quite an awesome way-if you haven’t already check out The Menzingers “I Don’t Wanna be an Asshole Anymore” as Jason tries his best to clean up his act!

    Oh but wait you want a more classic era? Let’s not forget good ol’ Alice Cooper’s classic “He’s Back”! This is the perfect song to jam after a few beers tonight!! Just to don’t get too drunk cuz Jason just might getcha!!

     

     

     

     

  • wiFree : The Future of the World as We Know It?!

    There’s a cool little project of grand proportions that recently came to my attention that could change the world as we know it! This cool Kickstarter campaign intends to pose some big questions about the future of our modern society and the radical change technology casts upon our world. wiFree will be a short film offered to everyone on the internet for free upon it’s completion, now that’s something we can all get behind!

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    The short will tackle some questions about modern technology and the human gods that deliver it all to us. Most fascinating is premise, where a Steve Jobs type character dying of a terminal illness decides to unleash ground breaking new product that would provide free energy to the people of the world. Sounds wonderful huh? Well guess what, a situation like that might be the biggest threat to the giant corporations who’re behind the curtain of our pulling the strings of our elected officials. wiFree presents a grand conspiracy to silence real change for the betterment of the planet by those trusted govern  over us. (more…)

  • New Music & Comic Book Adventures from…..The Monkees?!

    I’ve always been a huge fan of The Monkees and now they’ve released a brand new song that will be on their upcoming album “Good Times”. Of course I’m still sad about the passing of Davy Jones, my personal favorite Monkee, but the good news is this new album WILL feature and old unreleased track that Neil Diamond wrote for the band in the 1960’s with Davy Jones on lead Vocals. It’ll feature some new instrumentation and harmonies by Micky Dolenz & Tork. Also the album cover too is a good sign that we’ll be getting some classic vintage style songs from the boys.

    The album will also feature a brand new song by Michael Nesmith! So all four of the original Monkees will be present in some way shape or form. In the mean time here’s a cool new track, written by Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, I’m pleased to hear that this new album will recreating their classic 60’s sound. This little video is cool as well as it follows an old classic comic book adventure of the band!   

     

    If that’s not good enough they’ve released another song from the album written by Andy Partridge from XTC!!

     

     

  • Before ‘It Follows’ was ‘The Myth of the American Sleepover’!

    I had to take a quick moment here to mention a cool little indie flick back from 2010 that really slipped almost completely under the radar for most everyone. “The Myth of the American Sleepover” was directed by David Robert Mitchell who’s much more well known for his colossal hit  horror flick from last year “It Follows”. Easily one of the best horror major movies of the last five years it got me wondering if the director maybe had anything else under his belt? One quick search on Netflix brought me to his first feature film.

    Clearly Mitchell has got some serious talent and his first film is equally impressive but in very different and oddly familiar ways. Yeah The Myth of the American Sleepover actually kinda feels like It Follows minus the dismal horror. It’s a great coming of age flick with a full heart but equally oddly awkward teenage characters. It’s really a story about four teenagers again in Detroit looking for romance and action on the last weekend of summer.

    You’re not going to find any cookie cutter characters here either, these kids act just like real teens and much like in It Follows the time period in the whole thing takes place is nearly impossible to peg down. Something i really dig. The movie brought back the feel of many of my own personal experiences as a teenager, I could almost picture myself running around town the same night as the kids in the movie. Another aspect the movie shared with It Follows was the odd almost dreamlike quality to it all. It’s hard to explain but this one has that same trance like feel which made It Follows such a gem.It also shares a couple of the same actors. And lastly the director must love the big indoor school swimming pools at night setting because I think these teens were at the same one in the finale of It Follows….hmm…. 

    “Myth” feels like it’s somehow set in the same universe as it’s creepy younger brother. If you’re a fan of stuff like Freaks and Geeks, Richard Linklater flicks and are looking for something a little different most definitely check out The Myth of the American Sleepover. I’m really curious what David Robert Mitchell has up his sleeve next!