Category Archives: Uncategorized

Save Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum!

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Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum is an insanely cool collection of vintage and antique animatronics, pinball machines, arcade cabinets, penny-arcades, nickelodeons, and a million other creepy-cool-crazy old coin-op contraptions from yesteryear. It’s a one-of-a-kind exhibit and I love that it’s right here in Michigan. Here are a couple local news stories that sum up this delightful slice of mechanized whimsy and automated buffoonery:

If that sounds cool to you, please consider signing the petition on change.org. As a fellow believer in the positive power of silliness, I’ll end with a quote from the late founder of the Marvelous Mechanical Museum:

“Wouldn’t the world be better off if we took nonsense more seriously?”

Marvin Yagoda

Mario Kart 8 – Booster Course Pack Wave 6 Speculation/Obsessing

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Work was slow today so naturally my mind drifted to Mario Kart. I’ve always loved the Mario Kart games, but for my money Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the new gold standard for the entire kart-racing genre. It just FEELS SO GOOD to drive these goofy little contraptions around and blow up your friends in psychedelic cartoon worlds.

Booster Course Pack Wave 5 just dropped this week and I’m loving this shit. Squeaky Clean Sprint?! KAMEK?!

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This unholy union?!

Of course as awesome as this stuff is, I can’t help but think about that one last wave of goodies we’re getting at the end of the year. At the very least we know we’re getting two new drivers and 8 new-old courses (with 1 or 2 possibly being brand new), but at this point Nintendo hasn’t announced any specifics.

It’s fun to guess and speculate though! Since we’re only guaranteed 2 new drivers (and there’s a smaller pool to pull from), I started there.

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“Separating the Art from the Ectoplasm”

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The Ghostbusters are called in to deal with one of the most famous and thematically-appropriate ghosts: the restless spirit of the massively influential innovator of literary horror, H.P. Lovecraft.

EXT. THE QUAD, MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY – NIGHT

The gaseous, glowing ghost of H.P. LOVECRAFT looms over all four Ghostbusters, stretching and twisting to impossible proportions, tentacles and antennae slithering out of him like growing shadows. A dry, howling, unnatural wind swirls through the Quad.

LOVECRAFT
CHATTERING INTERBREEDERS! FOUL, GUFFAWING APES! I WILL CLEANSE–

VENKMAN
Yeesh, who knew Poe was such a dick?

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Ghostbusters: Franchise Rights

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This is a weird stream of consciousness thing that is both me critically reflecting on Ghostbusters in 2023, and also sort of reinventing it with a proposed infomercial. Why this all rushed into my head this afternoon I’ll never know.

“Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters” is a catchy lyric and a fun in-universe slogan for the freelance ghost catchers, but it’s also a truncated set-up and punchline. “Uh oh I have [crazy problem x]! I know, I’ll call [crazy problem x]busters!” It’s a goof on what crazy times we live in, and how New York City really is the city that has EVERYTHING. As time goes on, the problems of the world get stranger and more unpredictable–new problems mean new solutions that can be sold for a premium… enter the Ghostbusters. 

I started playing around with the set-up and punchline of Ghostbusters. Movies and TV shows about exorcisms and spiritual combat with the supernatural have been consistently HOT for the last 10 or 15 years. The Conjuring and Insidious movie series both come to mind. Even still, nobody else besides the Ghostbusters are out there doing Secular Humanist ghost removal. What if you’re not Catholic? What if it turns out that there aren’t as many rabbis trained to fight dybbuks as the movies would have you think? What if an exorcism is just too damned expensive? 

Who ya gonna call?  Ghostbusters!

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