I'm on Facebook

Tomorrow night I'm heading to Philadelphia for my very first Philadelphia Flyers home game. It's going to feel so good to scratch this one off the old bucket list, to say that I'm a fan of this sports team is likely the largest understatement of all time. I just have to decide which of my 5 jerseys I'm going to wear. After a night in Philly, I will board a greyhound headed toward New York, New York where I will be spending the next three days visiting my brother, and letting him show me the sights of the city he calls home. See, he's the one of us who "made" it, and left the rest of us behind down here in the sticks for a career in the big city. I will be doing absolutely everything in my power to embarrass the shit out of him in front of his new yankee friends, because really, what are big brother's for?

I'm telling you all this because I won't be updating the blog here for the next few days, and I know life just isn't worth living without your daily dose of Tales From the Batcave. So, if you haven't already, why not give the official Tales From the Batcave facebook page a "like"? I will likely be updating it from my phone throughout the weekend. Trust me, seeing Philly and NY through the mostly drunken eyes of Mister Bones is probably going to be entertaining. This completes our shameless self-promotion for the day.

Infinite Playlist - Pretty on the Outside

From Bullet for my Valentine taken from their album entitled "Fever". Enjoy!

Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance

My outright loathing of the first Ghost Rider movie is well noted, on both the interwebs and in spoken word. I think it's best at this point to just say that and move on. No need to open that can of worms again, I hated absolutely everything about it. With that in mind, I made my very best attempt to go into Spirit of Vengeance with as open of a mind as possible, because despite the fact that Nicolas Cage is still Johnny Blaze and I knew I was going to hate his performance (if you can actually call what he does in anything a "performance"), I genuinely like the Ghost Rider character and I think he could be transitioned from comics to big screen successfully. Maybe, just maybe this new writer/director duo got it right? I hope? Maybe?

Confession, and this should come as no surprise, I only saw Ghost Rider once, so if there was any plot outside of telling some rednecked-up white trash version the Rider's origin, I don't really remember it. This time around, the plot centers on a young boy named Daniel who is being chased with his mother by the minions of the Devil. Turns out Daniel was born of a deal that his mother had made, and being the son of the Devil brings with it certain obligations. Ghost Rider must do everything he can to ensure the safety of the boy to stop the coming of the Anti-Christ before he can destroy Earth.

Little bit better on the plot this time, I have to give it that. Also, just as the first movie, when the Rider is on screen, he looks badass. Unfortunately, that's as far as my praise goes. Nicolas Cage makes the unexplained change from "white trash, cartoon loving, jellybean chomping redneck Elvis impersonator" Johnny Blaze to the all-new and slightly improved "Completely batshit fucking crazy" Johnny Blaze. Neither of these is even close to being an accurate portrayal of the character, and just as expected Cage does everything in his power to ruin this movie for me. Again, as with the first movie, the villains are boring and while they do their best I never got the feeling for a second that any one of them could be a real threat to the Rider. Turns out Euro-trash with guided missiles aren't much of a threat to the Spirit of Vengeance and his chains. The Devil is even a pussy in this movie.

The effects are the real star of this movie, particularly on Ghost Rider himself. They've really nailed the look of the character (unfortunately his personality, and persona however are still laughably off). Sadly, we hardly ever really get any good Ghost Rider action sequences, and when we do they're too short. I think I counted three times when he was actually on screen and doing something. You know when you see a trailer and get that feeling that you've seen all the good stuff? Yeah, that's absolutely true with Spirit of Vengeance. It even goes so far as to show you the ENDING in the trailer. That part in the trailer where you see him throw a guy way up in the air with his chain before slamming him back down? That's the Devil, and the "big showdown" at the end there.

All things considered, I can't honestly say this was in any way worse than the first Ghost Rider flick, unfortunately I can't say I enjoyed it much better either. I can't help but feel like there's potential for a great Ghost Rider movie somewhere out there, but it's going to take a complete revamp of the franchise at this point. It's almost like Marvel has skipped the first two Burton's and gone straight to the Schumaker's. In any event, it's going to take a Christopher Nolan-level turn around before I'll consider shelling out money for another one of these atrocities.

Impostors Life

Gotham City Impostors arrived a couple of weeks ago, and I have found myself hopelessly caught in it's web of awesome. I can't resist this game. I think about it at work, I play it as soon as I get home, I wake up early to play it, it owns me. Those of you who game with me know that this is rare, especially for a game that forces me to play with the public. But this game is so good, even getting cursed out by 11 year olds doesn't infuriate me the way it does in lesser games like the Halos and Call of Duties of the world. That's right, Gotham City Impostors is better than Call of Duty, I said it. Although I may be a little biased. This post is just going to be a random assortment of CGI related goodness. No real point here, other than to show off a little of my latest game-related obsession. 

This first video is the official trailer. No gameplay shown here, but it give you a good idea as to what the game is about and the sense of humor it employs.

Next videos are little animated shorts that DC did for the game. Again, no gameplay but these are a fun watch. I would love to see more, or even an animated feature at some point. You listening DC?

Finally a look at some gameplay as well as a bit of the intro portion of the game that shows you the ropes on how to play, and how each of the different type of gadgets work. I'm partial to the grappling hook myself.

This last video is a look at the FREE downloadable content that was released yesterday. As you can see, a new map, as well as new weapons and new stuff to outfit your character with. The customization is one of the coolest part of this game, and believe me when I tell you I am ALL over the ninja gear.

And finally a little sketch I did last week while I was looking around for images from the game online. I love the little cartoons that pop up during the loading screens and whatnot. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of pics of them online, mostly just this little guy. Don't judge too much, this literally took me about 10 minutes. But anyway, here he is...

Mister Bones' Top 5

Let's do a top 5 shall we? It's been a while, and if the "popular posts" header over there on my right is any indication these are some of my most read posts for some reason beknownst only to the internet gods. Anyway, bad guys, I've almost always rooted for the bad guys. They almost always have the best costumes, best toys, best leaders, best everything. With that in mind, here are the top 5 evil organizations I would join today, no questions asked, were they real.

Top 5 Evil Organizations You Can Sign Me Up For

5. Umbrella Corporation (Resident Evil) - How cool are these guys? Bio experiments creating all kinds of fucked up monsters and shit, even at times going so far as to turn themselves into nearly indestructible walking death machines. The Tyrant, Nemesis, Lickers, Hunters, and the list goes on and on. I already work in the medical field, with the right benefits package, the Umbrella Corporation is only the logical step in my career path. Just call me Mister Wesker.

4. Cobra (GI Joe) - Whether you're a supporter of Destro, that douchebag Serpentor, or the supreme badass Cobra Commander, one thing you gotta admit is that it's MUCH better to be a Cobra than a Joe. What a collection of lame-asses those guys are. Even if I don't get my own cool code name and specialty like Storm Shadow or Major Bludd, I'm still down to be a Viper or Crimson Guardsman, hell I'll even take Techno-Viper if it means I'm not Footloose or Quick Kick.

3. Helghast (Killzone) - For my number three pick, I have to admit I'm being completely shallow. This one is ALL about that uniform. How sick would I look rocking one of those? Dude. I'm not sure exactly what age you get to enlist on Helghan, but I'm thinking I would be one of those guys who lied about their age to get in early. In fact, as I'm sitting here typing this I'm wondering if maybe I couldn't actually find a replica somewhere online. I would never take it off.

2. Decepticons (Transformers) - Tell me ONE thing that isn't named "Optimus Prime" that makes being an Autobot more badass than a Decepticon? You can't. Better logo, better shit to transform into, and a complete and total lack of concern about the puny humans who get in the way of their quest to acquire the precious energon needed to return back to Cybertron and straight up run shit. That's the kind of thinking I can get on board with. I even know what I would transform into, a jet black Range Rover equipped with missiles, mini guns, tactical nukes, and a never ending supply of Jolly Ranchers. The name "Rangimus Rovertron" would only be spoken in frightened whispers by trembling Autobots all over the galaxy. All hail Megatron!

1. Empire (Star Wars) - Yeah, ok which side are YOU gonna choose? The galactic Empire with all the cool ships and vehicles, repping the Dark Side of the Force, throwing lightning all over the place and choking bitches from across the room with our thumbs and index fingers....OR a ragtag bunch of "rebels" who can push shit across the room and makeout with their sisters? Thought so. Whether I'm a Storm Trooper or a Sith Lord, I'm Dark Side for life. Still undecided? Let me help make your mind up for you...

Welcome to the Dark Side.

There you go, my top favorite evil organizations. A few quick honorable mention shout-outs for the Cobra Kai, Marvel's undead ninja badasses The Hand, Spaceballs, the Pyramid Head worshiping Order from Silent Hill, Hail Hydra!, and last but most certainly not least...LOS LOCOS! Major props to anyone other than my brother who gets that last reference. All hail Megatron! For Helghan! Strike first, strike hard, no mercy sir! COOOOOBBBBRRRRAAAA!!!!!

Batman's Night Out

What's better than regular Batman? Canadian Batman!

Happy Birthday Jacob!

My little man is growing up way too fast. Already 8 years old, and it feels like barely any time has passed since the day I brought him home from the hospital. Lots of things have changed since then, but in my eyes he's still the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. Your dad loves you kid, happy birthday.

Episode IV: A New Hero

A Batman 1989/Star Wars mash-up? Damn you Ript...you win this time...

Friday Night Drive-In

Not a movie this week, but something just as good! Unless you've been living under a rock the last couple of weeks, you've undoubtedly become aware that AMC's The Walking Dead has made it's triumphant return from a mid-season break. On the off chance that you missed last week's episode, I thought I'd post it in it's entirety so you can get all caught up and ready for Sunday's brand new episode. Who's looking out for ya? Of course if you haven't seen ANY of season 2 so far, DO NOT WATCH THIS as a major plot point will be totally spoiled for you. You've been warned. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday to ME!

Busy, busy, busy this week. I've got plans for every day all the way through Monday. Still, never too busy to take a second to publicly and shamelessly wish myself a happy birthday at the Batcave here. Hope you all enjoy my birthday as much as I do, especially those of you with whom I have plans to share some of it with. That feeling the rest of you are burning up inside with as you're reading this? That's called "jealousy", and really, aren't you better than that? Chin up old chum, there's always next year...

Infinite Playlist - 1000 Lies

From Texas in July off their album "One Reality". Enjoy!

Comic Book Men

Last night AMC premiered it's newest show Comic Book Men. In what can only  be described as sheer brilliance, they're even running it directly following The Walking Dead, which as we all know is based on a comic book of the same name. That's right, a COMIC BOOK, not "the series of graphic novels" as the credits to the show declare. Fuck that shit, I can't even believe Kirkman is cool with that line being in there, but that's a whole other argument for a whole other day. Anyway, Comic Book Men is a show about Kevin Smith's famous "Jay and Bob's Secret Stash" comic book store in Red Bank, New Jersey, and stars Smith himself alongside his friends who actually run the store. Kevin plays a minor role, basically existing only as a bit of a narrator as a member of the group as they record their podcast, talking about comics and the things that have happened in the store that day/week.

Little bit of a side note, and some personal history about myself and Secret Stash, when I was getting married and my ex and I were doing all that oh so fun planning and such, I only had two small requests. One, I did NOT want Lynrd Skynrd's Sweet Home Alabama played at the reception as just because that's where I'm from does not mean I love that song, the fact of the matter is I hate it, and two, being that the honeymoon was in Pennsylvania in the mountains, and it was likely to be the closest I was ever going to get to Red Bank, I wanted to take a day and go to the Secret Stash. As it turns out, Sweet Home Alabama did get played because to people who aren't from Alabama, playing it whenever people who are from Alabama are present, it becomes hilarious. And yep, you guessed it, my trip to Red Bank got shot down before it was ever given much consideration. Apparently going that far to a comic book store was out of the question. Is there any wonder why this person is now my ex?

Back on topic, I'm always skeptical about shows like this which feature "my people". We comic book readers are more often that not portrayed in a not so glamorous fashion to say the least. I had hopes though that with Kevin Smith being involved, knowing he has seen the exact same thing over the years, maybe this show would be different. The result lies unfortunately on both sides of the fence for me. I was pretty disappointed that less than five minutes in these guys are already talking about which female comic characters they want to bang. Seriously guys? After that though, the show turns out to be somewhat of a clone of all the pawn shop type shows that are all the rage these days. I don't watch any of those, but being that this is a comic shop, and the things people are bringing in to sell are almost all comic book related, I ended up enjoying it. It's not the greatest thing every by any means, but I'll keep watching. I've embedded the first episode below from AMC's website, give it a look. Recommended for comic book fans, and most Kevin Smith fans will find at least a little something to like as well.

Evil Lives

Man Nowhere Bad is determined to see me fail in my "no more t-shirts in 2012" campaign! Gotta love a patriotic Jason. There's only a couple of days left to grab this one, so hop to it if it tickles your fancy like it does mine.

I'm in Crysis 2!

Check this shit out! I almost fell off the couch when I heard it. Yes, it's spelled wrong, but still. If I only liked Crysis before, I truly love it now, haha.

From Crysis Wiki: 

"Mitchell Reeves lies dead on the loading platform with two of his homeys, twitching under the ministrations of a pair of ticks."—AlcatrazMitchell Reeves was a C.E.L.L. soldier that was killed by Ceph in the mission Dark Heart of Crysis 2.According to Hargreave, he was the best of his men aside from Tara Strickland. Dead bodies of his squad members are scattered about Dark Heart. Alcatraz can find three surviving members of the squad in alien-infested subway, but they are usually overrun by Ceph Stalkers. Reeves and his team are equipped with SCAR, M12 Novas, Marshalls, DSG-1s, AY-69s, and one X-43 MIKE.

Friday Night Drive-In

The infected have over-run the Drive-In!!! Don't call em zombies though, they're just REALLY sick. Anyway, big fan of the 28 Days movies, this one of course being the sequel to 28 Days Later. I still think Days is the superior of the two, but I dig Weeks, it stands on it's own. Short and sweet this week, enjoy the movie!

Step 1: Kill the Infected. Step 2: Containment. If containment fails, then Step 3: Extermination.

Random Screen Grab

Lego Captain America

Cold Sweat

We've all fallen for the awesome trailer trick before. If you're into movies at all, at some point and time, you're going to see a trailer that looks absolutely amazing, and you're going to make seeing that particular movie your new mission in life. Sometimes the flick ends up being everything you hoped it would be, sometimes even more than you'd hoped....but every now and then you sit down to watch the movie and right away you realize things aren't playing out like you'd hoped, and before you know it the movie is over and you're just left with yet another of life's disappointments. Maybe it was the movie, maybe it was you, maybe you just didn't get it, but whatever the case, the end result is the same, disappointment. Case in point, Cold Sweat. I saw the trailer and loved it, in fact I was probably looking forward to seeing it  more than anything else I'm currently keeping an eye on. I finally got a chance to check it out this weekend, and well, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, I didn't really like it.

It's almost impossible to really talk about this movie without giving away spoilers, as the trailer does very little to give you an idea as to what exactly is going on. I'm going to attempt to go into as little detail plot-wise as possible, but I will have to give away a little bit of the overall goings-on. Cold Sweat ends up being yet another torture flick, only one with a plot so ridiculous that I honestly can't believe anybody ever thought this was a good idea. Again, maybe I just didn't get it. I've said plenty of times before, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer.  Basically, fed up with the youth today, two elderly ex-political extremists are using the internet to lure people to their house, where they use acid, nitro-glycerine, and other methods to torture them. Why do they torture them? Because apparently the average young person's vocabulary only includes around 200 words. That's the only explanation we get as to why they're doing what they're doing.

When Cold Sweat begins, Roman and a friend of his have tracked his ex-girlfriend down, looking for an explanation as to why she ended their relationship. She had apparently been chatting with someone on the internet, and ended things with her Roman in the hopes of pursuing a budding internet relationship. As it turns out, you guessed it, the person she had been chatting with was really one of the old guys, and when she arrived at the house, she was taken down to the basement and slathered in a healthy coating of nitro-glycerine. Probably for her lack of vocabulary or some nonsense such as that. So our hero Roman risks life and limb to rescue this person who had every intention of breaking his heart and leaving him for some stranger she met online. Dude's a better person than I am.

Ridiculously stupid plot aside, there were a couple of things I actually liked about the movie, don't want to be completely negative here. There was some decent cinematography on display. I liked a couple of shots, particularly a slow motion look at what happens when a bottle of nitro gets tossed through the air and makes contact with someone's chest in a small hallway with three or four other people standing around. It was gloriously messy. I also liked when they found all the other women who had been victims of the torture, although they had a really limited screen time, they ended up being my favorite part of the movie. What can I say? I'm a sucker for cellar dwellers.

Otherwise though, Cold Sweat didn't really do anything for me. Normally when I sit down with a Dark Sky Films release, I feel pretty confident that I'm in good hands, this time I was pretty let down. They can't all be winners I guess. With so many superior flicks out there in the genre, it's hard to recommend Cold Sweat to anyone other than the most devoted of torture porn addicts. The rest of us may as well keep walking.

Friday Night Drive-In

Remakes, we've all had this discussion countless times before, and there's no need for me to talk about them yet again here. Let's just say, I'm not totally against them, and on occasion I even end up liking the remake as much as or better than the original. In the case of tonight's Drive-In pick, I ended up liking it just as much as the original.

Alex Aja's a personal favorite of mine, and has been since the first time I saw Haute Tension. I was really excited when I heard that he was going to remake Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, which I had seen and enjoyed. Turns out Aja was more than capable, and he ended up making on hell of a movie that stands just fine on it's own, regardless of remake status. I love this movie for several reasons, but the one that really sells me on it is Doug. I fuckin love this guy. I guess I can relate to the love he feels for his baby, which leads to him taking on the mutants living in the hills all by himself to get her back. I'd totally fight an entire army of mutants for either one of my kids, wouldn't think twice about it. Anyway, sit back and prepare yourself for some good old fashioned mutant on family violence! Enjoy The Hills Have Eyes.

Mister, will you play with us?

Fright Rags Sale

Woke up after my date night with the Twisted Twins to some awesome news, Fright Rags has several designs on sale for up to 50% off. As an early birthday present to myself I ordered a couple, even though one of my resolutions was to stop buying t-shirts. At only $10 each, there was no way I could pass up a shirt from one of my favorite movies from last year, Hobo With a Shotgun, and even though I'm admittedly not the biggest Hatchet   fan on Earth, I've proclaimed my love for the art on the Fright Rags Hatchet shirt before, so it's on it's way to my mailbox as well.

Super-neato artwork there, can't wait to get them. Other notable $10 stuff worth a look is their infamous Zombie vs Shark, as well as Fright Night, Blood Diner, and Critters designs. Also, for all you ladies out there, the entire women's line of shirts is on sale for 30% off. Only while supplies last, so if you're interested in something, better get that order in before your size is gone.