Sunday, March 28, 2010

My Favorite Dennis Hopper Flick- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II

At the age of 75 and near death from cancer, Dennis Hopper was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame...long overdue if you ask me...but then again Hopper has always been a rebel, a man who goes against the grain. Well what am i babbling about? Well what is Old Man Robb's favorite Dennis Hopper flick? Well i might hear it over this one, but like i care...

My favorite Dennis Hopper flick is...

Drumroll...or should i say...start your Chainsaw's...

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II...



Yes back in 1987 i rented this awesome sequel to Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" from the Dairy Bar next to Lloyd's in the Passage...rented it along with a re-rent of the original "My Bloody Valentine" another of Old Man Robb's favs... anywho...it was Texas Chainsaw time as i got to see the return of Leatherface!!!! A real disappointment is that the VHS was the heavily censored Media edition of the movie...the original Canadian release of TCM II was missing omg like some 9 minutes of the movie i swear.. but anyways what was on the screen was pretty damn cool.

I remember liking Dennis Hopper's character "Lefty" a Texas ranger..yes like Walker..but dressed like JR Ewing and being calm and collected...until reminded of what Leatherface's clan did to his brother's kids back in 74...Hopper's character goes to a chainsaw store, buys some saws and then find's Leatherface's kickin hangout...from there on in we are witness to Hopper screaming like a madman "Its the Devil's playground" "Bring it all down!..Bury the devil!" as he saws Leatherface's pad apart and then confronts the clan and has a pretty badass chainsaw duel with Leatherface...just see it to believe it folks...

I've heard Hopper hated the flick...understandable as many people who were in horror flicks usually disown those roles later on in their careers...for many people the defining Hopper role was Easy Rider or perhaps Apocolypse Now...for Old Man Robb in the teen years..it was Hopper's portrayal as Lieutenant Lefty Enright that my favorite role of this great actor...also liked him alot in Hoosers with Gene Hackman which is another 80s gem i must uncover and watch someday...

PS- Always loved the original movie poster for this flick...its a parody of the Breakfest Club..something i never caught onto till years later...silly Old Man Robb...

Ghosts of Now...

Hello people what is a happening? What the heck is with the frickin snow? If there was more i would build something like this...


Well i went to go see the Harlem Globetrotters the other night, it was a fun time..i think the Metro Centre was half full so it wasn't like some 25 years ago where it would have been an instant sell out eh? I had a good time watching with Craig and his son, my only bitch would be about the merchandising booth and where they decided to set it up, it was set up on the court as you will see in one of the pics, what you do not see is that fans were lining up DURING THE GAME! They keep these aisles clear during a hockey game so why should this be any different? Oh because they set their merchandising booths on the floor...why not in the hallway? That hasa been good enough for hockey, wrestling, concerts etc at the Metro Centre...that is my little bitch about that...




Before the game started i wanted to go to Bubbles Mansion before the game, but i guess i arrived on the wrong day as Bubbles Mansion has now closed down...im hearing one of the major reasons is the banning by the government of cheap $1 drinks, the banning of the drinks lead to a rapid decline in business, even though you would not know it before the start of the GnR concert last month...really too bad..Hooters burns down, Bubbles gone back to the Sackville River looking for shopping carts...thought about going to the Mid-Town, but it was packed, went to Little New York and that was ok...oh well to find a new cool place to go before events in Hfx...didn't seem like a hell of a lot of choices and for Halifax that is not too cool...





So how goes this on the education front? Well another 80% (A-) and i am now finishing the end of Chapter Six....i do believe that i will be all finished by the end of May as i am allowed till mid June. Old Man Robb has been thinking about the summertime believe it or not true believers...well what am i thinking? Well here it is in a nutshell..i am thinking about checking into scholarships in Canada...i am now the big 3-9 and i think a summer away from home would do me a world of good...i have been checking out Scholarships Canada and where do you all think i would love to spend that summer away? Give ya a hint...



Be thinking...go back to the big A, grab some funds, find someone subletting their place for the summer and grab some courses...someday i want to get into education, grab a science, grab some more of my 3 part ESL course and see how it goes...just say the heck with it and spend the summer where really i would like to be, no offense Middleton, but spending the summer mowing the lawn, drinking suds and well just waisting time is not something i really wanna do, if my 3-part course is done on time, then it shall be December when it is done and i am able to apply for jobs in the TESL market and this time i would like to be able to teach in Canada or at least North America...its all do-able...it is all very do-able, all i have to do is go do it...

Of course there ware still those who do not believe...why not? Why have someone pigeon-holed? Other people who babble about me behind my back because they lack balls are just uneducated dumbasses, people who had every opportunity handed to them pretty much on a silver platter, no but that was not as good enough as hanging out with a bunch of losers and not wanting to go work, no dreams, no imagination whatsoever, just be a greedy bum, stealing from other people...karma will get you everytime..Karma will be the punishment for your deeds and don't say that i did not tell you so...



Was thinking about something i have driven by zillions of times in Windsor the other day, i had no idea that Windsor had the oldest standing hockey arena in not just Nova Scotia, but all of frickin Canada!?!?!?!?!?The Stannus Street Rink was built in the last 1800s and is still standing, sadly today it is being used as storage for a local car dealership...now think about this for a second...you have the oldest rink in Canada, still standing and all it is being used for is storage??!!?!? You have the Hall of Fame, even though its never opened on Sundays when the MOST tourists are around, i remember last summer meeting six tourists from Minnesota and telling them ya its not opened today to which they shook their heads and left...you have the pond where hockey was first claimed to be played and yet you do nothing with this historic building you have right in front of you..i know i might be talking out of my ass here...but man... restore that thing for the tourists! And get the HoF some better hours! 

 

By the way, the Axemen dinner is on Thursday, June 24th and this year's special guest is former Islanders great Denis Potvin, would be nice if they took Mr Potvin to somewhere in the community for a meet and greet with some of the old school hockey fans like they did with Gordie Howe back in 2007, the past two years with Darryl Sittler and Jean Beliveau they have not done this and i find that a little bit unfair to the fans who want to meet their hockey heroes and do not want to pay $$$$ to go to a dinner...





Anyways folks i have to get on with me day, might go to check out some Axewomen hockey action tonight, its free so i might just check it out.. working all weekend..have a good one folks!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Revenge of The Shogun Women in 3D....


I must share with readers...well if i have any readers how badly i would like to see this cheesy looking 3-D fest...which leads me to another question..how come there does not seem to be any retro movie nights in Halifax or anywhere else for that matter around here? Take for example the Acadia Cinema...i think they are missing out on a certain part of the population who love cheese, grindhouse movies that used to lovingly play the drive-ins and sleeze theatres of twenty and thirty years ago.. then VHS and straight to video hit... but seriously i have been noticing these revial theatres, esp in the States such as the Alamo Drafthouse which has located in Texas and other places and this group called Exhumed Films which i believe operates either out of New Jersey or Philly, anyways i would love to see some of the classics and not so classics back on the screen..advertise, use the internet, put up flyers, take a DIY attitude and the folks will come...i stole this from the Alamo's Facebook group for their showing of "Revenge of the Shogun Women in 3-D"

"REVENGE OF THE SHOGUN WOMEN is one of the few 3D kung fu movies. Like most films of the 3D mini-boom in the late '70s and early '80s, it really goes all out to throw things at you. The mind boggles. That means you can be sitting comfortably in your theater chair and at the same time besieged by flying hands, feet, knees, forearms, nunchakus, throwing stars, swords, staffs, garden implements, hammers, fans, flails, whips, needles, spears, hooks, arrows, tridents and more. Do you think you can handle all that? If not, better stay home!  If you've never seen a 3-D movie... why not see the best?"

Monday, March 22, 2010

Maniac Monday

Hello folks! Well Old Man Robb is one year older, but not a day over 29...the big 4-0 is happening in another 11 months and 23 days...so lots of time to get old...older...jeesh....what else is new? Well Wednesday is when i go see the fabulous Harlem Globetrotters in Halifax @ the Metro Centre..should be a good time..Craig is meeing me and bringing his little fella, maybe i will go to Bubbles Mansion before the game, get the Grocery Cart meal Craig ordered and couldn't finish..or just head to Pizza Corner...



My course is going same old same old, i am now on Module Six which deals with Teaching Pronunciation....did i even spell it right? I liked that i was asked about what kind of problems i myself had with pronunciation and i found that my own difficulties with pronounciation came in early grades, having a hard time distinguishing between my constanants and my vowels and generally getting them confused. What is an adjective? What is a synonym? What i had to do was alot of extra work, my school paired me with a resource teacher and two to three times a week i sat with this lady and we did repeated language drills such as repetition, reading words over and over again, discovering the meaning of the words, writing the words on the board in front of my instructor and then doing the same drills time and time again.

What i do like is that i was asked to respond to why do i think much pronunciation teaching appears to be ineffective? It is because teachers in many cases are limited by time in the classroom to concentrate on individual student needs. Other times teachers have to deal with a curriculum that is handed down to them, this is the way you are going to teach and how you will teach. The one's who suffer are the students because of restraints placed on the teacher. There are students are have a high level of fluency and others with a low level of fluency and these contributing factors that were stated previously combine to alienate students. The solution is to have two different classes with different levels, one with higher levels and another with lower levels, this perhaps can give time alloted for those students with language needs, while the other can concentrate on higher levels with a better understanding of the language.

Just a reminder that the drive-in located in Coldbrook is opening the week of May 9th, i do not know what is playing, but just the nostalgia factor, some of the fun stuff i have had their with friends over the years, hmmmm fav memory? The time me and Barry went to go see Batman and then went home and the Top Hat..aka the FLopper had burnt down! Was it set intentionally? No clue...plus doing the Godzilla shadow puppets in front of the projector is always fun as well...my creepiest drive-in memory is when me and Barry went to the abandoned drive-in located on Dodge Road and it had been abandoned for some five years and so this was around 1995-96...we walked in..abandoned canteen, speakers laying everywhere..a flyer promoting "Adult Sundays" where they would show XXX stuff on  Sunday nights and reels of FIRST BLOOD laying on the canteen floor...creepy stuff...





Oh yes my old friend Justin snapped this pic of me with a Peter Criss ski-mask on around Christmas time in New Minas... lovely eh? No i was not singing Beth...

Speaking of basketball, the Axemen basketball team lost on the 12th to Dalhousie 76-75 in Sydney..must have been a heck of a game..maybe next year guys...speaking of Axemen sports, this weekend is the final tournament for the Acadia Women's Hockey team and it is free to attend the games all weekend. UNB, UCB and Sainte Anne's University will be playing as well..here is the schedule...

Friday March 26

Acadia vs USA - 4:00- 5:30pm
UNB vs CBU - 5:30-7pm
Acadia vs UNB 8-9:30pm
USA vs CBU 9:30- 11:00pm

Saturday March 27
CBU vs Acadia - 8:00-9:30am
UNB vs USA 9:30-11:00am
4 vs 3 12:00-1:30pm - Consolation Game
2 vs 1 1:30-3:00pm - Championship Game


Oh..for all my Bruin loving friends..yes i realize that there are some of them..the Boston Bruin oldtimers are coming to the Fabulous Forum in Halifax on April 25th at 1 PM and they will be playing against a group of Halifax Selects, including ex- Hab Stephane Richer, representing the Bruins will be Ray Bourque, Rick Middleton, Terry O'Reilly, Brad Park, Reggie Lemelin, Ken Linesman and others...lots of other stuff at the Forum coming up...The Maritime Tattoo Festival is from May 22nd to May 24th, i don't have any tattoo...maybe come out looking like Motley Crue or something.. the circus is on June 11th and 12th...lots of stuff...


Anyways folks...that is all for now!

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth



One of my favorite cheesy flicks of all time, i remember going through a phase where i rented anything with Bruce Lee's name mentioned on it and found this doozy on VHS at the store formerly known as Andrew's back around 1992.....Bruce as played by Bruce Li... you would think ol Bruce was in scraps every day of his life! Much more entertaining than "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story"...

Friday, March 19, 2010

One Year Later...

Well it's Old Man Robb's birthday..well it was four days ago...so what has all happened since March 15th of last year? Check out the pics...there are lots...from March 2009 to March 2010...






























That's All Folks! See ya next year at the BIG 40....