Stony Curtis Is Extinct.

Better known for his movie roles, トニー カーティス (Tony Curtis) entered into the world of animation when he guested on The Flintstones as Stoney Curtis. 

Stony Curtis: Nice place you have here, Mrs. Flintstone.
Wilma: Oh, my, nothing really.
Fred: What?
Wilma: Oh, would you care for some hors d'oeuvres? (rings a bell) Oh, Yvette!
Fred: Yvette? Who's Yvette?
(Betty appears dressed as a maid and using a French accent)
Betty: Oui, Madame. You called?
Wilma: Yes. Will you please serve the hors d'oeuvres?
Betty: Oui, Madame.
Fred: What's going on here? That's not Yvette, that's Betty.
Wilma: You're confused, Frederick. Betty is the upstairs maid.
Fred: Upstairs maid? We don't have an upstairs maid! WE DON'T EVEN HAVE AN UPSTAIRS!

Papa to Jamie Lee, Tony passed away today at the age of 85. Let's take a look at a few of his more interesting roles.

I'm Spartacus and so's my wife!

I'd never seen the Persuaders before I came to Japan. I guess it never got picked up over in Canada. I was lucky enough to see most of the episodes when they ran them on SuperChannel over here. I love it, I just discovered that the Japanese title is ダンディ2 or Dandy 2 !

I recently saw him in The Vikings, and enjoyed it as much then as I did 30 years ago.

It's been awhile, but I've seen this a few times. Here's Tony as Cary Grant in SLIH. He started shagging Marilyn during this movie. WooHoo!

I haven't seen Operation Petticoat in years, but this preview brought it all back.

He rarely portrayed creepy, but he did it well in The Boston Strangler which I saw last year for the first time.

I saw the first Bad News Bears movie with Matthau but I'd never seen the 2nd nor 3rd sequel when they went with Tony to Japan. Unfortunately, there is no footage of it on YouTube. Consider yourself fortunate.

Speaking of movies I've never seen, You Can't Win 'em All costarred Charles Bronson and appears to be called アドベンチャー (Adventure) in Japanese! You can now watch it on YouTube, see how long you can last before giving up on it.

Finally, Tony never ventured into the Horror genre too often but when he did it was memorable in an unmemorable movie, The Manitou!

RIP Tony, we shall miss your philandering ways!

Happy Fake Birthday!

I flamboyantly flogged my phony festive foundation on Facebook and fortunately found a few friends follow-up.

Yes, once again, it's St. Michael's Day which means that it's the anniversary of my fake birthday. Click that link to learn all about my childhood woes regarding my birthday and the date upon which it was celebrated while aged 6-12 (Michaelmas.)

To celebrate today, let's take a look at some of the stuff on YouTube that glorifies my angelic namesake...
Let's start with a Symphonic Impression of St. Michael by Ottorino Resphigi (no I don't know him either, but watch the clip, you might learn something.)

Watch me kick some Lucifer butt with a flaming sword!

Wow, a speed painting of Archangel Michael (with questionable music.)

Finally, in preparation for Friday's Countdown to Halloween, (a month-long-all-Halloweenie-daily-post extravaganza), here is Michael kicking some Angel but in Legion!

Can You Dig It?

I knew that you could. I dug through a box of dinosaurs and look and what emerged. Most of these are from choco-eggs, others came in little boxes with a candy. Where ever I acquired them, they do look pretty cool!
These 4 came courtesy of a promo for King Kong back in the day.

Forgive me if I don't know the names of all these guys, I'd have to look them up somewhere. So here are the results of my archaeological dig.

Those last two are tough to assemble when you can't find the instructions!
Stay tuned, more choco-egg goodies to come!

The Eagles Have Landed.

The season has pretty much finished and Rob & I caught the last regular season game of the year, apart from a few rain-delay games. They played arch-rivals Softbank Hawks tonight, who were playing for First place in their division. The Rakuten Eagles have been out of it since August, not their best season at all.

Regardless, we got to see the Eagles win 8-3 including 2 home runs landing about 40 feet to either side of us. Here are some highlights of the game (sort of.)

But the real highlight of the evening was the denouement when the Hawks were presented with their First place trophy. Only a handful of people had left and the entire stadium (15,000 strong) gave a 20-minute standing ovation and cheer for their opponent cheering on their rivals as they enter the playoffs. This kind of respect is something that is never seen across the pond. Astounding end to the evening. 

Here are some pics of my absolute favourite part of the game, the releasing of the blown up condoms!
Scratch that: Stupid blogger is giving me a hard time downloading pics right now, so I'll add them tomorrow. I'm too sleepy to bother with it tonight! Oh, it seems to be working again. Here are the pics...
Nope. Scratch that again. Still having a hard time uploading MY pics. Trying to resolve. Getting a stupid "server rejected" message. Trying to resolve. Did some research, I had to switch to my infrequently used Mozilla to upload them but it seems to have worked!
SO: Here are some pics of my absolute favourite part of the game, the releasing of the blown up condoms!

Finally, I picked up a couple of really cheap souvenirs for 100 yen a pop (regularly 7X that much). A couple of mechanical pencils and an eraser of pitcher, Hisashi.
Update: I found an article on the game with more info and a better picture of the Hawks.