The Smithee 17 Screen, originally uploaded by Tancread.

ALMOST LEGAL

So I am completely lame and have not posted much about ORIGINS. I play some fun games including “Kobolds Ate My Baby/Midnight Massacre” and a game of “Morrow Project“. These were all good but the highlight of the weekend was for me the “17th annual Smithee Awards” Yes the Smitthee’s are now almost legal. God knows when they hit 21 we can all drink enough to forget the incredibly BAD movies they had this year. For a complete listing look HERE. You can see all the movies they have done but 2008 was a really tough year.
For those of you who don’t know about the Smithee’s, here is a quick summary.

Once upon a time there was a very ill pyschotherapist, we will call him Bob. His real name is Bryan Cassidy. Along with Greg Pearson, a man known for his ability to produce a purple notebook at a moments notice, they came up with an award show of the Worst of the worst.

Being lazy I will let the Official Smithee FAQ finish this part of the story… Just remember Bacon is your friend.

So how did this whole thing start?

Bryan Cassidy and Greg Pearson were avid role-playing gamers living and going to graduate school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1991, Bryan discovered a new game from Stellar Games called It Came From The Late, Late, Late Show, in which the players take on the roles of Actors taking on the roles of characters in a B-movie. Already interested in schlock, Bryan began Directing many different highly successful “films” such as Mars Needs Sheep, The Second Husband of the Bride of Frankenstein, BUGZ, Invasion of the Intestine Eaters from Planet Xeno, and Vengeance of the Sea Chimps, to name but a few.

Concurrent with the gaming sessions were occasional (tri-weekly?) Cast Parties, when all the players would simply sit around watching gut-wrenchingly awful videos (for reference) and eating junk food. It was around this time that it occurred to Bryan and Greg (one of the game troupe’s main stars) how great it would be if there were only a way to distill the best parts (i.e., worst parts) of these kinds of movies and compare them. Sort of a training film for B-movie actors. Hey–how about some kind of an awards ceremony?

Being just crazy enough to try it and using the Late Show rulebook as an inspiration, Bryan and Greg came up with 19 categories where movies tended to be Bad. They started to collect horrible videos and bugged their audio/visually-connected friends to help them edit the worst parts (i.e., best parts) together. After one or four all-nighters in late May, 1992, it transformed into an evening of friends, unhealthy snacks, and the most hilarious parts of the most hideous films we could stand.

That turned out so well, we were compelled to do it again the following year, though some claim that they never fully recovered from the first. Like some mutant hell-beast, the Smithee Awards™ have been growing out of control ever since.

So these sick pups came up with the best idea ever. Distill down the time it takes me to watch all sorts of movies and find the few that are soooo bad I have to say “WOW that crap is BAD” Now I can go to Columbus OH every year and get that done for me. Its like TIVO on steroids, except TIVO doesn’t usually include 300 some people sitting in a room together. And if it did why the hell would you have TIVO?

But I digress (surprised?). So our man Bryan…opps I mean Bob, leads us through 19 categories of the worst parts of some of the worst movies ever made. These Categories include:

THE MOST LUDICROUS PREMISE AWARD™, THE OBLIVIOUS AWARD™, THE “WANNA RUN THAT BY ME AGAIN?” AWARD™, THE “LET’S UP THE RATING TO ‘R’” AWARD™, THE “ALAS, POOR YORICK”AWARD™,
THE DEUS EX MACHINA AWARD™, THE STUPIDEST-LOOKING MONSTER AWARD™, THE WORST SCIENCE AWARD™, THE BEST ONE-LINER AWARD™, THE WORST COVER COPY AWARD™, THE “CUTTING BUTTER WITH A CHAINSAW” AWARD™, THE INANE DIALOGUE AWARD™, THE “WHOOPS!” AWARD™ (THE WORST EDITING AWARD™), THE “WHAT?!” AWARD™, THE ACTING APPROPRIATELY STUPID AWARD™, THE WORST SPECIAL EFFECT AWARD™, THE CRUMMIEST ENDING AWARD™
THE WORST ACTING AWARD™, THE WORST PICTURE AWARD™.

Spend a little time at the Smithee site to get a feel for each category.

I need to mention a few of the movies from this years awards.

Nemesis 4: Death Angel was up for several categories, including “Wanna Run That By Me Again?”, “Let’s Up The Rating To ‘R’”(winner), Worst Special Effect(winner), Crummiest Ending. This movie, which I found for sale on e-bay for 29 bucks for a VHS copy, really does fit the categories it was in. Oh MY GOD this was atrocious!!! I noted that in the comments on IMDB that some really needs Byran Cassidy’s help, and I quote

Nemesis 4 was simply made to showcase Sue Price’s beautiful naked body. The film succeeds marvelously, showcasing her nude body as much as possible. This film also succeeds in showing how beautiful female bodybuilders are. My only question was why didn’t they do this in the previous two sequels with our dear Sue. If you are a Sue Price as I am, you’ll love this movie.

Here is a person that can find that glass half full of Dysentery. Especially the “Up the Rating to ‘R’ section, I think the best way to summarize the movie was made by someone in the audience, “I CAN NEVER UNWATCH THAT!”. But if you have a masochistic bend for bad movies, please do watch this. Just tell me beforehand.

Metallica (Captive Planet) was the one movie I feel like I NEED to see because its bad, not it the kind of Nemesis 4 way, but more of a “I just had a brain damaging accident, I feel like I should make a movie now”. This one got in the categories of “Inane Dialogue”(Winner), “Whoops”(Winner), “Worst Special Effect”, “Worst Picture”(Winner). I must say, being a child of the B movie era, this movie left me with a minor eye twitch but in a good way. It wasn’t a slasher fest, it wasn’t epic, it was a bad “B” spaghetti SciFi movie.

I did like the IMDB comment for this one also

Even weirder is the sequence about three quarters through the movie in which three scenes that should have been at the start of the flick turn up in no apparent order (Though this may just be on the DVD copy I own -part of a 20 movie box set called Space Quest) when we see the gambler hero in the casino, the auction where “Sol 3″ is bought by the Alien, and a scene in the Human control room where the High Command take a break from their “who has the gayest moustache” contest long enough to realize that the Earth is utterly screwed.

The Smithee Awards make going to Ohio like a real vacation. I was truly bad this year and didn’t get into the games I normally get into. Procrastinating got pushed off until too late. But being able to see these little gems of cinematic cholera make driving through West Virginia worth while.

I need to go lay down for a while. My brain hurts.

Thanks for Gleeful Gecko and his amazing photographamatizer, it was like a road trip with rocks.

-later
gg

Not sure if I like it yet but the new site theme on the Grumpy Gecko Blog is a little more gecko-ish feel to it. Not a Tokay gecko, mind you, which would go back to that blue-ish theme.

But since I have been staring at the blog (Not writting anything mind you) it occured to me I could change it.

Staring you may ask. Why? Because I twisted my ankle and now I needed to sit with my foot up. That was Sunday night. I have also been dealing with the post traumatic stress of smacking Garrett’s face flat into the mud when my ankle went. Today, 4 days later, the image of his head bouncing off the ground, has stopped haunting me. Could be that my ankle is feeling better, could be that my memory is crappy, could be a built in mechanism humans have to cope.

Strangely enough, all I wanted to do was go hang out at the Royal Mile and drink and forget. More strange is that with all the oppertunities to do that, a bag of ice and Alleve have won out. I haven’t been plesant to be around…ok so not so out of the ordinary.

Havent been on WoW for a couple days because I am now a Guild Master!!! Nothing makes me not want to play more than responsiblity to play. Besides the fact that the 2 people who started the guild REALLY need to work out whatever issues they have with each other and I now feel like I am being their…I dont know…intermediate? translator? messenger boy?
I dont like seeing friends bickering but they need to work it out amongst themselves. They have each others phone number…

I do really want to say that Samantha was absolutely great when I busted my ankle. She was helpful, she asked people for ice, she sat with me, and she checked on Garrett. She is an all around great kid. Stacey is great too. She didnt push me from a moving car when I was pissed about everything. She didnt push me out of a moving house when I was ranting with my foot up, pissing and moaning about crap I have no control over. She is THE BEST!

And Garrett, my boy, is truely an amazing kid. After he calmed down, the stream of consciousness started flowing like it hadn’t even had a break. I got a call yesterday that he “collided with another child on the playground” and loosened a tooth. Garrett told me the story on the phone, but he doesnt believe in talking into the phone, speaking off into the ether is good enough for him. Later that night I understood that “collided with another child on the playground” is school nurse speak for “your child busted himself up, dont sue the school”. But this morning, Garrett was rambling on about everything from planets to annoying the cats to Rhea doing something…. But no Herbert and Densecat…. sigh

peace and arthritisis grease

No not really but I am sure the people who link through every few days (Carol) I thought I would shake up their day (Leta). So there.

I wish I could get myself worked up to rant about something but I cant. When Daylight savings time hit, IT hit me. What is ‘IT’? The abbreviation stands for Information Technology, but that wasnt IT. No, ‘IT’ is the overwhelming sorrow around this time of year, from Kidney stones to portable liquid oxygen tanks. From stuff that I should just get the hell over but for some reason Daylights savings time came and hit me hard. Emo much? I wonder if there was an overabundance of black make-up’d video blogs around then?

Then Garrett and I were cruzing You Tube and found this:

This was SOOOO Garrett that I was laughing. But he was laughing even more. And so like a little slap in the face I felt a lot better. Almost enough to write this up in the blog.

I am down 35 pounds since June 1. Lets see how well I survive the holidays.

Peace and ho ho holiday grease

One decade ago at 9:17 AM, a Saturday, a sort of cloudy day, life changed. Was it the fact that I got to see internal organs, that I had gotten no sleep the night before? Those are all part of it. It was the birth of Samantha Jane Ke’Aloha Buckley at Shady Grove Hospital in Gaithersburg MD.

HAPPY 10th BIRTHDAY SAMANTHA

Along with her cousin Charles, born one week earlier, and my Goddaughter Taylor born 3 days after, they have lived the bumpy road that is childhood and done darn well for herself. She is in double digits now. Absolutely amazing. People always say “Oh wait till she gets to be….” , I normally smile and say “I just have to survive till next week.” But for her,and Garrett and Stacey, I hope to survive a long time.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAMANTHA JANR KE’ALOHA BUCKLEY!!!

Fudoshin