On the side… On the back… On the front… No Glibs, it’s not that kind of three way we’re talking about. This particular THREE WAY is a “Contour” watch made by Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster Pennsylvania for only two years – 1938 and 1939. It was a massive market failure and as a result is one the more highly desirable watches made by Hamilton because of its scarcity. The watch sold so poorly that Hamilton bought back all remaining stock from its retailers, removed the movements to re-use them in more popular case styles and recycled the Contour cases.
The New THREE-WAY “Contour”
So called “driver’s watches” that could be worn on the side of the wrist became trendy in the late 1930s. The Contour was Hamilton’s answer this trend. Hamilton watches were arguably one of the best mass produced watches of the time. Many would say they are better than anything almost anything of the period except for some limited production Swiss watches. In terms of massed produced watches the American brands were generally superior to the mass produced Swiss watches of the same time.
For whatever reason it’s also the watch that my maternal grandfather wore. I’m not sure if he liked the style or simply got a deal on a watch that didn’t sell especially well. Sadly, I never got the chance to ask him about this particular watch as I found it when cleaning out a closest in the basement after he died. Fortunately, I was close to my grandfather and we did talk about many other things.
Restored Hamilton Contour – Click for Full Size Image
When I found the watch it was missing its band and buckle as well as its stem and crown. It also had a cracked crystal. Luckily as a Hamilton collector I had an original stem and crown in my parts collection. For a band I used a period correct pigskin band with a period correct gold filled buckle. I was able to order a replacement plastic crystal that you see in my photos from a parts house. However, later a fellow collector sent me a new old stock original mineral glass crystal after he found out I was restoring a family piece.
The movement in the watch is a Caliber 980 – a 14/0 size tonneau shaped movement that is about 19mm or 0.73 inches in length. The 980 was commonly used in Hamilton’s gold filled cased watches.
Hamilton 980 Movement
This is the original and correct movement to my grandfather’s watch. However, for Hamilton’s higher end and solid gold movements they also made a more highly finished version of this movement called the 982. Functionally it’s identical to the 980, but has more jeweling and finishing. It is one of my absolute favorite Hamilton movements.
Hamilton 982 Movement
In the old days watchmakers would inscribe the inside of the case every time the watch was brought in for service. These cases are far from dust proof and the lubricants of the time also evaporated relatively quickly. As a result watches of the period needed to be serviced every 2 to 4 years. Here is the case back of the watch.
Contour Case Back
And here is a close up of the service marks:
Service Marks – Click for Full Size Image
It appears the watch was serviced from 1939 through 1955. Each watchmaker had a different code and style for service marks so it is difficult to be 100% sure. Today we don’t scar a watch like this. We use a Sharpie to note the date that we last serviced the watch and remove it with solvent when we clean the watch again. With modern synthetic lubricants and gentle usage of the watch you can easily get a decade or more between services.
The case is gold filled which means it is made of brass with thin sheets of gold applied to either side of the brass and bonded to it under high pressure. The thicker the gold the longer it will last, but it almost always wears through on the high spots and the edges of the case. After a decade or so of usage by my grandfather the corners on the top of the case have worn through. There is no way to repair it. Folks have tried to electroplate the cases, but it generally doesn’t work well. It’s a problem with watches from this era as many case styles were only available in gold filled. Here is how the case is constructed:
Case BackFront of CaseUnderside of Case
The dial of the watch is made with sterling silver and has solid gold applied numerals. I’ve never gotten a good answer as to what karat gold the numerals are. The consensus is 18K. The hands are gold plated. The dial is one of the most fragile parts of the watch. There are firms that specialize in restoring dials, but collectors prefer originality if at all possible. Best I can tell this dial is original, but during routine service of the day it wasn’t uncommon for the dial to be sent out for repair as part of a general service.
Contour Dial
Values for Contours in good condition are anywhere between $500 and $1,000 US. Needless to say for me, the watch is priceless and is basically the only watch in my collection that I wouldn’t sell.
A few months ago a few other Glibs suggested I check out Comixology Unlimited when I incorrectly complained that there was no good comic books subscription service. Turns out, there is a pretty ok comic books subscription service. After subscribing for a few months, here are my thoughts and a list of books I enjoyed reading.
ComiXology, an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary, is a revolutionary, cloud-based digital comics service. With content from over 125 publishers as well as thousands of independent creators from around the world, comiXology provides an unrivaled library of comic books, graphic novels, manga and bandes dessinées. The company’s first-in-class innovations include the exclusive Guided View technology which provides an immersive and cinematic reading experience and a monthly subscription service. ComiXology is based in New York City, with operations in Seattle and Los Angeles.
Comixology Unlimited is a $5.99 a month service that allows you to read an unlimited number of comic books from a limited catalog of books. And that’s the nut. If there’s stuff in there you want to read, it’s a good price that lets you drink from the fire hose. If it is $5.99 for access to crap you don’t want, it is a waste of time and money.
The reading experience took a while to get used to, but that’s mostly my fault. I’m reading on a Google Pixel 2, which has a 5 inch screen. Trying to fit a full page on this isn’t going to happen. I’ve found that you can read in landscape mode with the page set to screen width and scroll down, and that works pretty well for most pages. But if there is a big splash screen or something interesting in the lay out, it’s a bit of a hassle.
The Comixology app tries to solve this with something called a Guided View, where you are transitioned from panel to panel. Again, this is ok, but fails to give you an overview of the whole page. I found that this is really important for me, so I didn’t use Guided View for a long time. But last week I decided to see if I could get it work. Under settings, there’s an option to show the whole page on enter (or exit if you want,) and I found that gives me the experience I like. I can see the whole page and then it feels like I”m zooming in on the panels. Between that and aggressively rotating my phone between landscape and portrait orientation, I’ve got to say that the reading experience is pretty great.
The Guided View with my preferred settings is “better than free,” that is, I’d pay for this even if I got PDF’s of the books for free. The ability to whip out my phone and read a few pages while waiting at the bus, standing in line at the bank, or when my kids are trying to talk to me at dinner is nice and I’m glad to have it.
The selection is really the life taker or heart breaker of this service. So what did I find? Lots of good, and a little bad, as long as you have a reasonable expectation. I knew that the publishers wouldn’t want to cannibalize new sales, so I expected to only find old stuff. By and large, that’s been true, so I’m happy with that. Some publishers, and I’m looking at you Dynamite, only like to put the first trade of a series on Unlimited to entice you to pay the per-book price to buy the rest of the series. More on that later.
So you’ll have to look at the Unlimited catalog for yourself to see if it has enough to get you to shell out six bucks a month. For me, there is more than enough to keep me entertained. Marvel and DC have taken all their goodwill with me and lit it on fire Not the SJW stuff – that’s always been a part of the big 2 publishing houses. It’s the stories. I have no interest in reading books that are going to last two years, maybe, and that are going to get jerked around to fit the latest and greatest cash grab event. But the backlog from the big 2 and indies is large enough to keep me going for a long, long time. Here’s some good stuff on Unlimited that I’ve been reading:
Super Dinosaur!!! This book is a wonderful, earnest story about a kid-genius and his best pal that happens to be a dinosaur. Lots of awesome stuff happens and it’s all innocent, crazy fun from a guy that we know can write serious, brooding stories like the Walking Dead and Invincible. But this is a book for your inner seven year old. I didn’t even write those exclamation points, they just showed up on their own.
Atomic Robo & The Fightin’ Scientists of Tesladyne The honest to God, true life documentary story of that one time Nicola Tesla invented a nuclear powered robot in 1932 that went on all sorts of zany pulp adventures. HP Lovecraft shows up. An insane dinosaur mad-scientist shows up. Carl Sagan shows up. There are lightning guns. There are cowboys. More fun for your seven year old self.
Rebels The honest to God, true life documentary story about Seth Abbot and the Green Mountain Boys. Ok, this historical fiction is actually about real people. There are no lightning guns or dinosaurs. This isn’t a story for my seven year old self. But I love the Revolution. Its fascinating, and I think every American should buy into the myth of America. And oh look, its written by a guy who calls himself an almost-socialist (before it was cool to do so) who also thinks that the Revolution was fascinating and that a myth that every American should buy into.
Lumberjanes Yeah yeah, it’s a book by SJWs for SJWs and it passes the Bechdel Test. I don’t care. This is a good book. A bunch of girls at summer camp solve a bunch of Scooby-Doo level supernatural mysteries. The characters are fun, the story telling is tight, the jokes are plentiful, and the politics are on the back burner if they are in there at all.
Hellboy Man, what can I say about Hellboy if you don’t already know about him? Ok, here’s the premise – Hellboy is a demon born on earth due to a WWII occultist’s summoning. He is prophesied to bring about armageddon. And.. he’s got the personality of a blue-collar dude that just want to live a normal, humble life. But he’s stuck working for the government as a paranormal investigator. He’s a wonderful, lovable character living in a world of geek-porn. There are Nazi’s, Rasputin, his best friend is a fish-man, his lady-friend keeps setting things on fire with her brain, etc. And the story is long, but the author has balls and is actually telling the story of the end of days that Hellboy was prophesied to bring about.
Valiant Everything (the new one) I came of age reading Jim Shooter era Marvel and Chris Claremont X-Men, were writers has years to weave dangling plot strands into a complete tapestry. I watched Terra break Beast Boy’s heart and I watched Nathan Summers fly off into the future only to come back years later as Clint Eastwood. The new Valiant is telling those same kinds of stories with slow-burning arcs and identifiable, consistent personalities. I’m in Act Four of the reading order, and so far everything has been on Unlimited.
Magnus, Robot Fighter (the new one, no newer than that, the Dynamite one) Magnus is cool – he punches robots. But now he’s infused with Super Dad Powers, which, as a Dad, I approve of. I really, really enjoyed the first trade, but it is the only one on Unlimited. They want me to pay for the other trades… well, the problem is my BATANA is to just pick up another book I really like from Unlimited so that’s not going to happen. Too bad. Maybe I’ll blow $5 on the next trade at some point, but I don’t think I will. Too many fish in the sea.
Usagi Yojimbo Don’t let the fact that it’s a bunny fool you, this is a great samurai epic. Usagi is one of the great comic book characters of all time. Love. Duty. Pain. Sacrifice. Loss. Intrigue. It has everything you could ever want in a samurai story.
Incredible Hulk Epic Collection: Man Or Monster? Some of the old Marvel titles are really hit or miss. Pro Tip – don’t go reading old Iron Man stories. But early Hulk was a lot of fun. There are a fair number of silver age collections, and I enjoyed re-reading this one.
So there you have it. Comixology Unlimited – Try it for the 1 month free trial, and you should know within a week or two if it is right for you.
I’ve noticed that Glibs seem to enjoy the finer things in life and finely made things. So I figured I’d combine the two here. Now that SP has given us the ability to edit in WordPress it seemed an opportune time to share some pictures of an old hobby. Before work responsibilities and old age in the form of poor eyesight and loss of dexterity caught up with me I used to collect and repair vintage watches. I specialized in the Hamilton brand. This allowed me to become familiar with their various movements and to acquire parts for repair.
The Hamilton Watch Company had its genesis as an American watch design and manufacturing company, which incorporated in 1892 and produced its first watch in 1893.
After its formation, the Hamilton Watch Company went on to manufacture and market pocket watches and wristwatches, ending American manufacture in 1969. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, the Hamilton Watch Company became a diversified conglomerate itself and was subsequently integrated into the Swatch group.
I don’t collect anything made after 1969 and their acquisition by the Swiss. After that point their watches used Swiss movements. Interestingly enough, variations of those Swiss movements are still in use today in many Swiss made mechanical watches.
Hamilton 12 size pocket-watch
This is a Hamilton 12 size gentleman’s pocket watch. For pretty much everyone who has no idea what that means it is 39.79 mm or 1.567 inches in diameter. That’s the width of the movement inside the watch not including the case or the crown.
This particular example is a Grade 922 movement made in 1927. Approximate total production was 14,000 units and they were made from 1924 to 1936.
Smaller pocket watches like this generally don’t have much appeal to American watch collectors. They prefer “railroad watches” which is a whole topic into itself. However, this watch is an exception. It meets all of the criteria for a so called “railroad watch” with the exception of the size – it is too small to be classified as such.
The case is 14K yellow gold, the dial is stirling silver and the hands are blued steel. It’s a beautiful timepiece. But what I find most interesting about it are the parts that very few people see. The entire watch is is engine turned or what for American and some German watches is known as damascening.
Here is a picture of the assembled movement in the watch:
And now for the interesting bits! This is the “plate” on which the watch is assembled.
Top Plate
Notice all the wonderful engine turning.
Here is the other side known as the bottom plate which is actually the hands side of the watch:
Bottom Plate
The bridges go across the top plate:
Bridges
Those are “genuine synthetic” rubies set in gold that give watches their “number of jewels”. In this case 23 jewels and the watch is manually adjusted to keep time in 5 positions.
These are gears of the watch known in the trade as the “wheels”:
Gold Wheels
Watch wheels are almost exclusively made from brass, but in this case they are made from real gold. The reason for the material choice was partly because of the metal’s softness, but mostly because of aesthetics.
Here is the heart of the watch – the balance wheel:
Balance Wheel
This is an old fashioned, blue steel spring, split bi-metallic balance wheel. The screws on the outside are there to balance the wheel. Naturally they are gold as well! Because the wheel is made from two different metals the diameter will change as the temperature changes. This is how the watch keeps accurate time when the temperature changes.
Modern mechanical watches are laser balanced and use a proprietary white metal alloy hairspring that compensates for temperature. The balance wheel in your modern Rolex is a solid piece.
Here’s a beauty shot of the the assembled movement out of the case:
Hamilton 922 Movement
And here is the sterling silver dial which is interestingly stamped “Switzerland” on the back:
Swiss Dial
And finally the cased watch. Notice this has essentially two “backs”. It has a hinged dust cover for the just the movement itself and another cover for the back of the watch. And naturally they are both made out of 14K gold!
Case and Dust Cover
As I don’t often wear suits to work anymore I don’t carry this watch much anymore. I guess I’ll have to find an excuse to wear it again.
I’ve been on a bit of an article hiatus since my laptop died. I have a desktop (which I’m on right now), but I built it 8 years ago from the clearance section of NewEgg, and it sounds like it’s about to die. In the last 12 months, we’ve had 3 computers go, and this’ll be the 4th once it kicks the bucket…. fun times.
Anyway, I know that y’all are just dying for some Trashy insight, so I’m gonna try to make the concepts of this article come together. This is mostly a “look at the cool razors I have” post, but I’ll try to shoehorn libertarianism in there somehow. I love these stream of consciousness articles because it doesn’t involve any planning!
I started my post-pubescent life like most other men and women. I got a free version of the latest Gillette razor in the mail, and I ran that trial pack of blades until they weren’t even sharp enough to cut tissue paper.
This showed up in adolescent trashy’s mailbox
I heard the common refrain from everybody. “They’ll give you the handle for free, but they’ll gouge you on the blades.” Turns out they were right. Gillette had a virtual monopoly, with Schick in a distant second, so they could charge anything they wanted for their blades. Add in a small psychological ploy to rely on consumers’ sunk cost fallacy, and you’re set for life.
There were three problems that cropped up. First, I was a broke high school/college student, so I was running the blades until they started to rust. Second, the shaves were absolute shit. Third, the shaves were a chore. Slather on the disgusting canned foam, scrape 5 dull blades across your face, have razor burn for 2 days. My skin is a bit sensitive, so a poor shave meant a couple days of sore face. How did I cope? By growing a beard. Yes, in high school, I had mutton chops and a circle beard because I hated shaving.
This seems like a good time to go on a social/libertarian tangent. There’s something about products like this that irk me, and I’m not entirely sure why. You have people with 1000 different needs from their razors, and you offer the same blades and the same orientation with the same lotion bar at the top. It strikes me like the perfectly beautiful, but completely tasteless tomatoes you can get at the grocery store. Sometimes, giving up choice in favor of the lowest common denominator results in absolute shit product, and that’s what the modern cartridge razor has become. If your cartridge razor works well for you, count yourself lucky. The cool thing about the free market is that you don’t have to follow the fickle trends of the masses. You don’t get stuck with the Comrade 4 blade because Supreme Leader Bernie decides that nobody needs 32 kinds of razors. You’re free to experiment with different types of product, both from now and from the past.
Back when razor makers were artisans
Speaking of the past, those guys really knew how to shave back then. It was a small luxury to get to shave, and it’s something that I have found immensely enjoyable, both from a “gotta do it, so might as well enjoy it” standpoint and from a “hobby that connects me to the past” standpoint. I shave with a 1957 Gillette Super Speed.
It cost me roughly $15 on ebay, and my razor blades cost a few pennies each and last me 5 or 6 shaves before they dull. Both men and women used to shave with safety razors like this.
Let’s dive into the hobby aspect of this stuff, and some of the nuances will start to come out. You’ll quickly understand why a single blade type at a single preset angle isn’t preferred.
At a macro level, we’re talking about wet shaving. Just as a quick disclaimer in case some woman happens to stumble across this site (because we know there are no female liberatarians) and wonders what the hell is going on… I’m talking about shaving one’s face, but my understanding is that it translates fine to doing legs, too. Wet shaving means that there is water involved. You don’t just slather canned goop on your face and start scraping. You don’t fire up some gizmo and hope it gets close enough that you look like you actually shaved today. Wet shaving is about preparing your face to get a close shave with comfortable results. In broad generalities, there are three phases to a wet shave: skin preparation, shaving, and skin protection. You prepare your skin to be lubricated enough to allow a razor and a blade to glide across your face without catching on the skin. You also prepare your stubble to be as erect as possible so that you lop it all off when you pass the blade through each hair.
As an aside, one reason why irritation is so common with cartridge blades is because the multiple blades act to pull the hair up out of the follicle and trim it below the skin line, resulting in irritation and a higher chance of ingrown hairs. It’s a very “close” shave, but it’s really too close.
You will find that most traditional forms of shaving involve a single blade, thus reducing the likelihood of such . . . uncomfortable . . . consequences. There are four types of shaving. Cartridge blade razor (including disposables), electric trimmer, safety razor, and straight razor. The bolded ones are the ones closest associated with wet shaving. Yes, you can wet shave with a cartridge razor, but you’re only getting partial benefits in that situation.
Some of the guys who make custom straight razors do some great work!
I’m sure we’ve got some straight razor folks here in Glibertopia, but I’m not really experienced with them. Besides the barber cleaning up the back of my neck with one, and the rare barbershop shave (which is shit once you figure out how to properly wield a safety or straight razor), I’ve never really even seen one in person.
However, the principles between safety razors and straight razors are much the same. The muscle memory is different and the stakes are higher with straights, but the process involves lubing up your face, holding the blade at a certain angle, and dragging it across your whiskers.
I’m big on connections to the past. Things may be “better” in the present, but often the consumerist impulses of today result in bland mass-produced products. There’s nothing beautiful about the latest Fusion razor. It’s an uninspired amalgamation of neon plastic and chromed plastic. However, I’ve seen some straight razors and safety razors that are works of art! Craftsmen made the shaving tools of old. Assembly lines stamp out today’s shaving tools.
There’s something about using a 60 year old work of art to do a mundane hygiene task that makes it less humdrum. When you add in the other components of a wet shave, it adds a small luxury to your morning. Back in the day, men didn’t mind taking a minute and enjoying their morning routine.
Pre-Shave
Before starting your shave, it’s important to prepare. Preparation is as important as execution in wet shaving, because your razor doesn’t have training wheels anymore. You can push pretty damn hard with a cartridge razor and not be worse for the wear. Safety razors reduce the chance of slicing your face open in comparison to a straight razor, but both types of blade are very unforgiving to mistakes.
There are two types of pre-shave preparation. 1) Skin preparation, and 2) Mapping your beard.
Skin Preparation
It is important to do two things to your skin prior to shaving. You need to lubricate your skin so that the razor glides along and doesn’t get stuck. You also need to get your hair follicles to stand up as much as possible to get a close shave. There’s a simple way to do both… hop in a warm shower. Many people shave in the shower to get the maximum benefit of the warm water. I’ve never found it particularly attractive an idea, but you do you. If you didn’t just hop out of the shower, a warm, wet washcloth to the face will do the trick. If your skin tends to be dry, or if you’re a beginner prone to making mistakes, you can use a pre-shave oil or a pre-shave cream to supplement the warm water. It also adds a pleasant aroma to the beginning of your shave. Like I said, small luxuries.
In the pic, I have one of each. There’s a Truefitt and Hill pre-shave oil with a citrus scent. Next to it is a Proraso pre-shave cream with a menthol finish. I don’t really use them very much any more. Occasionally I’ll use the oil because it is the closest to real-deal citrus as I’ve ever found in a citrus scent.
Anyway, you take a sparing amount and rub it into your skin, and all of a sudden you’ve got a slippery face.
Mapping your beard
Unlike a cartridge shave, where the blades are equal opportunity offenders, single blades are quite sensitive to the grain of your beard. If you go with the grain, it’s the least uncomfortable and it’s the least close shave. If you go against the grain, it’s the most uncomfortable and the closest shave. Usually people will do 2 or 3 passes in order to get a close and comfortable shave. For example, they may do a with the grain pass, a cross-grain pass, and an against the grain pass. If you properly do three passes like that, your face will feel like a baby’s ass.
The thing is that the grain doesn’t just go in one direction. Just like your hair on your head, your beard has whorls and direction changes and all sorts of unique challenges. For example, my left cheek grain goes down, but my right cheek goes backward. Knowing which way the whiskers go helps you avoid accidentally going against the grain in some areas on the first pass.
Lathering Up
You can see in the above picture the two brushes that look like huge weird makeup brushes. I’m not sharing the bathroom with Mrs. trshmnstr, so they’re not hers. Those are my shave brushes. They’re made from badger hair. Yes, they literally pluck hairs from badgers to make these brushes. You can also get boar hair brushes or synthetic brushes (think paintbrush bristles). I’ve never used either of those, but I like my badger brushes. The one on the right is a normal badger hair brush. It has enough resistance to stand up to vigorously rubbing your face, but the hairs aren’t irritating. The one on the left with the frosted tips is a silvertip badger brush. These are premium brushes due to the nature of the silver tipped hairs. The hairs stand up enough to be able to make a good shaving lather, but they’re quite soft at the tips, making for the perfect balance.
The purpose of a brush is simple, you load it up with shaving cream and you apply the shaving cream to your face. I should be more precise. You can use shaving cream (roughly the consistency of toothpaste) or shaving soap (a hockey puck shaped bar of specially formulated soap). This is where wet shaving completely leaves normal shaving behind.
You can see in this next photo a few shaving soaps. On the left is TSE Texas Leather Tallow Shaving Soap (yes, tallow as in animal fat… the best shave soaps are made with tallow), which literally smells like my cowboy boots. In the middle is Proraso Green, which has the same menthol hit like the pre-shave cream. On the right is Gentleman John Sandalwood Soap, which is my current go-to for everyday shaving. The left two soaps are a little bit creamier and aren’t really in puck form, so I use them directly from their containers. The Gentleman John didn’t come with a container, so it’s in my shave bowl.
There are two primary ways of lathering up, face lathering and bowl lathering. They’re both perfectly legitimate, but they yield different types of lather. The face lather tends to be more of a wet, slick lather, whereas the bowl lather tends to be fluffier and drier. Depending on your preference for lather, you can choose the appropriate technique.
Face Lathering
Face lathering is my go-to. It’s easier when you don’t have a ton of space, because you don’t need additional bowls and you don’t make a foamy mess all over the counter. Face lathering is two steps: loading the brush and lathering. First, to prep for the shave, you need to add a few drops of water to the soap to “bloom” the soap (meaning that the soap absorbs some of the water and the top layer softens up. Also, I like to leave the brush in warm water while I shower. If that’s not an option, just run some hot water over the bristles, because the brush will absorb some water. Then, give the brush a single shake (you want to get rid of some water, but not all), and start swirling the bristles over the soap puck. The soap will begin to foam, but you’re only loading the bristles with the soap, so you don’t want to go too long.
Once the brush is loaded, you proceed to swirl the brush on your cheeks until a foamy lather builds. Once the lather builds, you can paint it on other parts of your face until you have built up a nice slick, cushiony lather on all the places you’ll be shaving.
Bowl Lathering
Bowl lathering is very similar, but instead of taking the loaded brush to your face, you put it into a bowl and start swirling. Because of the fact that the bowl doesn’t have any moisture in it (as compared to your lubricated face), the lather tends to dry out, which makes it fluffier. Once you have a good lather built, you can just paint it on your face with the brush.
Want an added touch of luxury? Pour some hot water into a shave scuttle and heat up your lather while you make it!
Shaving
I’ve written an entire article’s worth of info, but we haven’t even cut a single whisker yet. In reality, once you get a hang of things, the pre-shave portion takes 2-3 minutes at most. Now it’s time to choose a razor and blades (for the safety razors). As mentioned above, my experience is with safety razors, so that’s what I’ll talk about.
Razors come in all different shapes and sizes, but there are three most important attributes: weight, balance, and aggressiveness. The key to shaving with a single blade razor is to avoid pressing. The blade should glide over your face, and even the slightest pressure can make for a bad shave. As such, the right weight razor keeps you from having to exert pressure to get the razor to cut. Too light, and your blade will skip right off your face. Too heavy, and you have very little control and feel as you cut. Balance also influences the control and feel. A well balanced razor can be held by two fingers and you can almost feel every whisker yield to the blade. Aggressiveness is about matching your style and skin sensitivity to how much the razor tries to take off on each pass. Some folks like really aggressive razors. Some (like me) like less aggressive razors. It’s all about getting a close cut without causing razor burn. Certain safety razors have adjustable aggressiveness. You twist a selector, and the blade bends to a different angle, reducing or increasing aggressiveness.
The blades themselves are also seen as aggressive or not. Feather blades have a reputation for aggressiveness, but I happen to like them in my Gillette Super Speed because it mellows their aggressiveness. Others are less aggressive. Most likely these differences are due to minute differences in the manufacturing tolerances, despite the fact that the blade’s form factor has been standardized for 80 years.
One of the great things about shaving with a safety razor is that besides the initial investment in the razor (about $10 for each of mine on ebay), the blades are super cheap. I’ve gotten deals under 10 cents per blade, and each blade usually lasts 5 or 6 shaves, if not more. However, like any other hobby, you can get lost in all of the options and spend hundreds of dollars on shave equipment. There are some rare vintage razors that go for over $100.
Shaving is very much an exercise in muscle memory. It’s quite similar to knife sharpening in that you need to find a proper angle, hold it at that angle, and make smooth strokes. You know it’s right when you can hear the blade cutting the whiskers. It’s a soothing sound. Unlike what you’ve likely learned shaving with a cartridge razor, it’s not about pushing down and dragging across half of your face. That will end with blood everywhere. With a safety or straight razor, it’s about smooth short strokes with almost no pressure. You only exert enough pressure to keep the blade from skipping when it hits the next whisker. I’ve found that when in doubt, you’re using too much pressure. The goal is to “reduce” the hair rather than “eliminate” the hair. This is why you do two or three passes. The first pass takes the stubble down lower, the second even lower, and the third down to the skin.
Also, this is a literal razor blade. Razor blades cut you if you drag them sideways along your skin. Your short smooth strokes should be directly perpendicular to the blade’s edge. Turning corners is an advanced move for when you stop cutting yourself.
After a bit of practice, you start to be able to feel when a blade is getting dull. Before then, replace your blade on a regular basis. Usually 5 or 6 shaves is about as much as you can get out of a blade. If you have an old house, there may even be a blade depository in your bathroom. It dumps all the used blades into your wall for the contractor to find when you decide to remodel the bathroom.
Finishing Up
After you shave and wipe off the excess lather, you’re not quite done yet. Your face is in an “open” state due to the warm water, the lather, and the razor. One refreshing way to close up your pores is to splash your face with cool water. If you have a couple tiny nicks that are thinking about bleeding, sometimes this step will convince them not to bleed.
Once you’ve rinsed your face with cool water, it’s time to apply after-product. This is purely optional, but I find that my face thanks me. I have extremely dry skin, so this is the perfect time to add some moisture and avoid redness, cracked skin, etc. In come two categories of after-shave. In front is Clubman Pinaud, which is a traditional Home Alone aftershave. It’s alcohol based, and it’ll let you know if you nicked yourself. To me, this is the smell of a barbershop, and it lingers with you for the rest of the day.
Behind the Clubman is some Tea Tree leave-in conditioner. I forget who recommended it to me, but this stuff is the absolute best at moisturizing my face. I just rub it in like lotion, and my dry skin issues go away within a couple hours. It doesn’t linger like Clubman, but you can still smell it a couple hours later.
Also, while you’re cleaning up, rinse out your brush and get as much water out as you can. I hang mine alongside my razor to air dry the rest of the way. I also leave the soap container open to air dry.
But what if you got a boo boo? Bleeding is a part of learning to shave, and it sucks. Rather than sticking toilet paper to your face or bleeding everywhere, get yourself a styptic pencil or an alum block. They both contain chemicals that help your blood clot up and stop the bleeding. They aren’t magic, so don’t start rubbing your jugular while you’re bleeding out, but they’ve stopped cuts where the blood was dripping down my chin before.
I’ve never found out the right way to clean the styptic pencil. I usually rinse it off under the faucet, but the pencil doesn’t play well with water.
All of this to say, nobody needs 32 different kinds of razors. In Progtopia, we’re all gonna be stuck with shitty off-brand disposables and silly-string for shaving cream.
Easter weekend is also the weekend of KinkFest. KinkFest is one of the largest west coast gatherings of people into Kink, BDSM, and related sadomasochistic pursuits. In some ways, KinkFest is like any other convention. A large group of people in a giant hall, attending lectures, perusing vendor booths, and socializing. Where it departs, obviously, is the subject matter. The classes usually involve demonstrations that can get you arrested in some places or are interactive and intended to teach a new skill. And the socializing involves leather and latex and cross-dressers and rope and beatings and all kinds of fun, fucked-up shit. Well, not literal shit. The dungeon doesn’t allow scat, thankfully, nor piss play or Roman play.
This year was KinkFest XX. The Portland Leather Alliance has been putting on the event for 20 years. It’s grown to 1500 people attending and takes up the largest space at the Expo Center in Portland, OR. It’s an all-volunteer run effort. And we bring in presenters from around the country and even internationally. It’s 3 days of debauchery, education, and friendship, and I kind of look forward to it every year. Sorry, no actual pictures as cameras aren’t allowed during the event, and the official photos haven’t been posted yet. I’ve included a few shots I’ve taken that are relevant but hopefully SFW.
Education
One of the fun things about KinkFest is that you have attendees who are new and jumping feet first into the deep end and old heads like myself who’ve been involved for decades. The classes cover a wide range. From the relatively vanilla-like classes on anal sex, giving head, or having multiple partners, to basic kink-related things like flogging and how to process pain, to more advanced topics like full-time total power exchange, medical play, and other types of edge play. Here’s the worskshop list from this year.
Edge play is usually play that carries with it higher risks or is pushing close to the limits of the players involved. What that entails varies by kinkster, and it is like Justice Stewart’s definition of porn: you know it when you see it. Some of the more common types are play using knives, needles, and increasingly race and misogyny play.
Backside of a takate kote chest harness. Jute rope
The Kink scene has always fetishized consent for a couple-few reasons. The first is that knowing that all parties directly involved are consenting is the difference between play time and abuse. It may also be the only difference between getting your rocks off and going to prison. In some jurisdictions, even that wouldn’t help, so trust is paramount when you’re doing some of the things we do. Having trust in your partner to stop when you use your safe word, to not push too far, or not take advantage when you are helpless means that negotiations and consent are important. Third, because we are playing with things that are dangerous and carries physical, emotional, and psychological risks, having some security by emphasizing discussion and agreement is important to people in the scene. There is a focus from the older crowd on autonomy, and the idea that you can’t exchange power if you don’t have power to start with, where negotiations are the means for doing so.
This does lead to some entryism by SJW types. But most people aren’t much impressed by them. Part of the point of kink is risk and ambiguity and playing with those things. People do need to learn etiquette around a dungeon. The rules are different. In some ways they are looser than in a nightclub or normal situation. You’re going to see people doing and wearing (or not wearing) things you’d never see in public. In other ways they are more stringent. The biggest one is don’t touch other people or their things (which may mean other people) without asking or being invited to do so. There are other protocols like not talking to people at a play station who are having a scene or standing too close. Generally speaking, people into kink recognize individual autonomy and have developed etiquette around supporting it.
Vendors
Violet wand for shockingly good times.
Like any other con, there are vendors at KinkFest. Vendors selling leather vests and outfits and cuffs and collars. Toys for impact from wooden paddles to acrylic canes. Electro play toys like violet wands and tasers. And of course, rope, rope, rope for bondage and suspensions. There are floggers and whips and latex outfits. Oh, and dildos. Every shape, size and description you can think of. There’s even one vendor called InHerTube that makes special dildos and harnesses that attach to the thigh, or the end of your boot. The vendor hall makes a good spot to wander around, people watch, and socialize with friends. Or to arrange a scene that night in the dungeon, featuring the toys one just purchased. Some of the vendors are truly talented at the things they make.
Dungeon
The dungeon at KinkFest may be the best in the country. To start off with, it is 36,000 sq ft. That space is divided into individual 10′ by 10′ play stations. Each station has some sort of furniture in it: St. Andrews Cross, spanking benches, bondage chairs, massage tables, pagodas, cages, medical tables or simply thick floor mats. The center piece this year was a giant truss structure laid out in four squares with hard points for doing rope bondage. It covered, by my estimation, about 2500 sq ft of space. The whole dungeon has a professional sound and light setup to help set the mood. And it honestly looks like something out of a movie. Some of the extras maybe weren’t as telegenic.
There were some amazing scenes that took place. My favorite was probably an alien probing scene. At least from a spectator’s perspective. There was also the car wash. A couple of nubile young ladies in transparent latex with sponges and water who would wriggle all over their subject and give them a washing. Whip alley is always fun. It’s a 40′ by 20′ section closed off by chain link that has space for two whip scenes. Hearing the bullwhips crack and pop over the sounds of the crowd and music can be startling to some, but it’s part of the atmosphere to me. It goes nicely with the screams, and surprisingly the more common laughter.
And that’s what brings me to the libertarian bit in this piece. It isn’t all just titty-lation (hi Q!). The Kink scene can be a microcosm of spontaneous order, self-policing, private property, and self-ownership. The entire KinkFest phenomenon refutes the ideas people have about why small government couldn’t work. It absolutely works.
The entire affair is organized by volunteers. The core staff put in 20+ hour weeks for 9 months and don’t get paid a dime. They perceive a need and they do it because they want to see it happen. It is a direct counter-argument to the idea that feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless wouldn’t happen without government. People donate so that shit gets done. This includes people spending hours to build dungeon furniture then giving it to the organization. Or specialized skills like professional riggers who donate their time to get things done. Same for the promotion and lining up vendors.
Impact toys, Rope bondage, and the beginnings of some bruises on a bottom.
The volunteers, usually younger members of the community, who help carry it all off give up part of their time enjoying the convention in exchange for free admission. This is a fair exchange of value for those who couldn’t pay the entry fees that are used to pay for the bits that aren’t done by volunteers. Nonetheless, the volunteers earn their keep. It’s also interesting in that if someone volunteers, gets in free, but doesn’t keep up their end of the bargain, they get banned from next year. This deals effectively with the freeloader problem.
Risky things happen in the dungeon. People wear their bruises and welts and even lacerations with pride. Yet the policing is done by a volunteer crew whose focus is on making sure the rules are followed and people are having a good time. The Dungeon Monitors are a model for private police. They are mostly focused on facilitating play in a way that reduces risk as much as possible. They only interfere when called on, or when there is a genuine threat to life and limb. And even then, they are trained in de-escalation and using their words instead of violence. Despite 1500 people all doing fucked-up shit, they rarely must intervene. They wind up offering council or telling people where supplies are like cleaning stuff, first aid, etc. They occasionally must do some dispute resolution over who has dibs on a piece of equipment. But even that’s rare. Because people police themselves.
People and their property are also sacrosanct. Despite all the degeneracy on display, asking first is ingrained and important. Yes, there are yahoos that are new that don’t understand and make mistakes. They are usually quickly identified and corrected. And yes, there are predatory types that look for vulnerable victims to assault, but by and large, those people stay away from the organized group events. Because, again, they get identified. I’d wager one is less likely to be made uncomfortable by a stranger groping you or trying to corner you or to wind up having unwanted violence done to you at a kink event than at a normal bar or concert. It isn’t perfect, but it puts the lie to the idea that without government you can’t have people getting along peacefully or that corporate action requires coercion.
Rope and knife
Another note on property. Most players who have been at it a while have large toy bags. This can be anything from a backpack to rolling suitcases stuffed with stuff. To keep from turning the dungeon into an airport, large shelves are setup near the entrance. People leave their stuff unattended for long stretches of time while playing voyeur or looking for just the right playmate. And return to find their toys unmolested. Some of those toy bags have thousands of dollars in equipment in them. My rope kit alone is probably close to a thousand bucks worth of jute and hardware. Toys rarely go missing. And on the few occasions where they have, it’s usually a case of someone picking up what they thought was their own toy but was someone else’s and it is promptly returned.
That’s not to say there aren’t problems with SJWs, as mentioned. There are, especially online, a contingent of the usual intersectional feminists who want to make any accusation of violating someone’s consent an automatic blackballing of the accused. They use all the language SJWs use in campus kangaroo courts and make big posts on Fetlife, the kink equivalent of Facebook. But fortunately, they don’t have much power in the flesh and blood world. Even more interesting, the vocal ones are learning a hard lesson that the #metoo movement is learning: experienced tops with the more exotic and in demand skills are being much more selective in who they play with for the simple expedient of wanting to guard their reputations. The gender and pronoun thing is something of a big deal. But my experience is that most of those folks are polite in requesting you use their name and pronouns. Those that would like to be able to force you, power is so decentralized, it is hard to coerce people.
One of the saddest things to me is that so many kinksters don’t see that. In their private lives they live and play by libertarian ideas. But they can’t make the leap to seeing it as a strong basis for politics. The left politics are almost reflexive and without thought. I think because many people into kink have negative experience with religious and political conservatives they lean the opposite direction in politics. And there’s a larger contingent than the general population of people who are dysfunctional and therefore want their gimmedats. I try to talk to people about it, and I’ve made some inroads with a few. But cutting through all the accumulated derp is slow going. There are some things you can’t beat out of people.
Impact toys: Carbon fiber cain, hawaiian hardwood hairbrush paddle, rope fist baton, rubber paddle (for vegan play partners), tigerwood paddle, riding crop, small acrylic cane, three floggers.My dungeon/playspace. Instead of typical furniture I have hardpoints for suspension.Diamond Pattern chest harness in jute.One of my first suspensions. Four point side suspension with hemp rope.
Hello boils and ghouls, it’s your old pal the Cryptkeeper here…no wait, that’s not my name. Sorry, sometimes I get caught up in the moment.
Though I gave up the regular movie review beat, I still thought I’d bang out an article like I did last year on our experiences at TFW. To celebrate, one of the below links will go to a hardcore porn site – the rest are safe. This is your NSFW warning. You’ll never know which one it is until you try. C’mon, don’t be a pussy.
This one will be a bit different in content, since many of you would have already read my post on this from last year, and thus are already familiar with the context. For those of you who are new to the site within the past year, or didn’t read my previous write-up, in brief, TFW is the southwest’s largest horror convention, and my wife & I spend the weekend there every year.
Like last year, I’ll have a few images in the text, but most all the photos will be at the bottom of the article. It’s mostly just pics of costumes & the stuff we bought, because almost all the celebrities this year charged extra for photos with them, and the few times I tried a creepshot, it came out terribly. The other photos are mostly terrible as well due to the fact that this is literally the only time of the year I ever take photos of anything, so please understand and forgive. The only ones I really regret it on are two cosplay photos of Tippi Hedren & Spawn, which were both good costumes but when I reviewed the pics afterward, you can barely see them due to bad backlighting. It was too crowded during the main hours to take shots, so I tried to snag a lot of them in the hotel lobby. Also as before, I had trouble formatting them into a row, so you’ll have to forgive me & simply scroll down the photos in a line at the end.
The guest lineup this year was fabulous. They had all of the original cenobites (minus the chick from the first film, because she never does any conventions, ever – so the guest in her place was the chick from the second movie, which was still a good horror film). To round that group out, we had a *very* special treat – Mr. Clive Barker. He doesn’t do a lot of these kinds of things, so we were overjoyed. In addition to his prolific painting and film work, if you haven’t read any of his fiction, I highly recommend it. His Books of Blood is one of my favorite collected works of short stories ever. If you dig fantasy/horror short fiction, check it out, seriously.
Also making appearances were Ron Perlman, Adrienne Barbeau, Billy Zane, Phil Fondacaro, Tommy Flanagan, Brad Dourif, Tom Savini, Matthew Lillard, all the kids from the new IT movie, Charles Band and a shit-load of people from the various Friday the 13th films. The Friday night party was themed Camp Crystal Lake, so they were heavy on those guests (as this is the 13th year of TFW). Since I’m honestly not crazy about that film series outside of the first two movies & a few creative kills, I didn’t much care about their presence. If you don’t recognize the names of anyone just listed, check the links – I promise you’ll recognize them or at least have heard of their work.
The weekend got started off right, with Adrienne Barbeau flying in Thurs. night to attend a screening of Escape from New York at the Texas Theater, and do a Q&A afterward. The print they used was fantastic, better than my dvd, and Adrienne was an engaging speaker. She said she has done so much voicework that she has frankly forgotten most of it, and only recalls that she took some particular job once every year when some check shows up for $0.96 and has “Judge Dredd” written on the memo line (she was uncredited as the voice of the computer in that film). She tossed that out as the example, but said she just gets checks for tiny amounts every day for random old things she did. I thought this must be a strange thing, to go to your mailbox every day and be like, “Huh, I got 8 checks in the mail totaling $5.72.”
So the next day the spousal unit & I took a half-day off of work & rolled into the convention in mid afternoon, though it doesn’t open until 6. On the plus side, in their fruit-infused water jug up front, the fruit was cut into the shape of skulls.
Skull-melons“White people are fucking weird”. Also, wood.Stupid
Also amusingly, the little cute Asian girls they have working there had to wear wound makeup and have silly horror accessories, like this photo of an attractive young lady with scissors sticking out of her head. I’ve often wondered what they think about that, because the racial breakdown of the con attendees is about 70% white, 25% hispanic, and the rest is miscellaneous. Like seriously, my wife is one of maybe 20 Asian people there actually attending, and I can always count the numbers of black folks on my fingers. I have no idea why that is, but it’s true. Less amusing was the eyeroll-inducing naming of the food on the menu. I mean come on, Trembling Turkey? Blood-Dripping Buffalo Wings? And what the fuck happened to the Southwest Shrimp Cocktail, didn’t warrant a new name because it’s already so awful?
The convention started off poorly – it was so fucking crowded that Friday night, I panicked. This thing frankly outgrew the convention space last year, and this year was worse. We try to do signature hunting on Fri. night & Sun., when it’s less crowded. Well we spent an hour in line for Clive Barker, only to be told that he was leaving to do his scheduled photo shoot & wouldn’t return to the signature line that night due to feeling poorly.
Yay
So the first hour was a waste, but it kind of worked out. If you recall last year, we purchased a crocheted Count Orlock. Well the same vendor was there and she had a big crocheted xenomorph, but only one of them. She told us it had been a right bitch to make, and she was never going to make another one, so we pounced on it. If we hadn’t been forced to do a little browsing on Friday evening, I’m certain someone else would have bought it & then I’d have had to have killed my wife and myself, and possibly my extended family as well.
5 of the 6 sides are now signed – four cenobites & Clive Barker
We did get the rest of the cenobites, Adrienne, and Billy Zane that night. A few anecdotes – the cenobites, despite being English and therefore you’d think reserved, will talk your ear off, even if you’re actively trying to exit the conversation. Nicholas Vince, who played Chatterer, was dressed in nice proper business-formal attire, except for some weird Pinhead Hello Kitty cufflinks, and to his delight my wife was the first to notice them that evening. Of course it’s because she’s fucking Asian, so she saw the Hello Kitty shit immediately somehow. Also, Barbie Wilde, the female cenobite, was selling her horror fiction books, and apparently is a very nasty-minded girl. Everything was a sexual innuendo or reference, and we all had a good laugh when, midway through our conversation, we could hear someone in another row (a worker, we believe, trying to repair something in a guest’s booth) said, “Damnit, I thought sitting in this chair would make it easier, but I think I was having more success on my knees.” Barbie, my wife and I all just looked at each other for a second before bursting out laughing. The photo you see is of the nice mahogany & etched brass puzzlebox we purchased to collect all their signatures on.
Also true fact: Billy Zane was just a leeeetle-bit of a dick. The best line in Zoolander pertains to him; “You should listen to your friend Billy Zane – he’s a cool dude”. Well we purposefully waited until there wasn’t anyone in his line, so that we wouldn’t be holding anybody up, and I asked him, “Hey, I know this is a bit unorthodox, but could you possibly sign this, ‘You should listen to me – I’m a cool dude’?” He smiled and kind of laughingly said, “Absolutely not”, then just stared at us. We thought he was joking for a second, because he said it kind of jovially, but then he said, “So…you just want me to make this out to the two of you or what?” So we said sure, and that was that. I mean hey, celebrities don’t owe me anything, I know that. But perhaps a, “Sorry man I don’t do personalizations to that extent” could be used instead of, “Hahaha NO”. Anyway he seemed nice enough in every other way, so maybe he’s just sick of that request. He was in a tracksuit & cowboy hat, and so looked kind of like a Russian gangster.
Phil Fondacaro’s line was short enough I was able to chat with him a bit. I asked him if it was just an outsider’s perception, or if there really were fewer opportunities for physically different actors like himself & Warwick Davis, with the advent of digital effects. He said absolutely, but it’s something of a mixed blessing because as he’s gotten older, and especially for someone who is physically limited to begin with, it’s a relief to not have to wear all the latex and costuming that he used to. A lot of the stuff that’s added in post now were the most cumbersome things to wear and act in, so the digital revolution isn’t all bad from his perspective. Of course the photo I got signed was of him as Vohnkar! And if you don’t get that reference, you’re no true child of the 80s.
Saturday was given to drinking, shopping, and making merry. It still sucked, because I had to wake my ass up at 7:30 to get in line for Clive Barker. Keep in mind the convention didn’t open until 11. So over three hours I sat there, but was 10th in line and so assured a chance to meet the great artist. Still, it left me a bit depleted for the remainder of the day.
We learned our lesson from previous years, and brought some beers, a bottle of bourbon (Larceny, which was very good for being as affordable as it was), and a bottle of Fireball. The hotel doesn’t care as long as you don’t get belligerently drunk – like David Arquette from a few years back. We were there and we saw bizarre things from a man still supposedly on the wagon. At least he drunkenly bought me a beer while we were both waiting at the bar. Anyway I attached a bunch of photos of all the shit we bought below, and some of the costumes we encountered.
That evening we spent a bit of time in the karaoke party, & went to a screening of Takashi Miike‘s live action adaptation of the manga, As the Gods Will. Now granted I wasn’t exactly sober, or anything even really resembling sober, by the time I saw this thing, but I still have no fucking clue what was going on. A weird doll was playing red-light, green-light with a class of students, and when it caught them moving their heads exploded, then the survivors went to their gym & dressed as mice and a giant maneki-neko was eating them, and it just got stranger from there. We finished out the night hanging out with all our friends on the patio, and there was a dude giving away free cigars for some reason, so that went well with the last of my bourbon (yes, the bottle was killed, with the able assistance of a couple of our friends).
Sunday was recovery day, so we went to the Ron Perlman panel. He’s a fun speaker – extremely foul-mouthed and self-deprecating. We snagged his signature and called it a weekend. As of the time of my writing this (Monday evening), yesterday was the saddest day of our year. This is our biggest event, and we get to spend it with a lot of great friends, and get a lot of great merchandise and add to our already ludicrous collection of autographs. Monsters everywhere, blood and guts, toys, movies, games, it just doesn’t get any better for the dedicated horror fan. And now it’s a whole other year until it comes around again. Oh well, less than six months to Halloween.
Love this shirt. I put this in just to trigger Old Man With Candy. “You all know me, know how I earn a living.” Great scene.This film stars a resident of Bronson, Missouri.Good costume tandem.I had no idea what the fuck this midget/child was dressed as.Sadly, they just don’t make movies like this anymore.This was sitting next to the coffee at the breakfast buffet.American Werewolf in London. Fucking awesome.A good group effortThis is some monster from an anime I don’t watch, but he did a good job with it.Oddly enough we were in the market for a new shower curtain, so we picked this up.I purchased this shirt to use as evidence because it has an unauthorized use of my likeness.A Game of Thrones Super Friends print. The Wonder Twins are Jaime & Cersei. Check out how their Wonder Twin powers activate.A bunch of little Aliens figurines we boughtMy wife bought this shirt. I was so pleased with her, I gave her the gift of the penis that very night.Remember Mad Balls? I remember Mad Balls. Now they’ve come back in the general wave of nostalgia, and there are Aliens Mad Balls.Great Spawn costume. You can’t see it well, but the eyes do glow bright green.For some fucking reason, there was a ton of Halloween III merch everywhere. I have no idea why, nobody likes that movie. Or I guess it’s trendy to claim to like it.The maid from the first season of American Horror Story. Also, wood.Of course I bought this shirt.A pretty good female Pennywise. Also, wood.Sloth loves inkAndrew Lincoln stealthily infiltrated the conventionHottie Ash. Also, wood.I liked this shirt.Creepy random guy. It’d be great if he just showed up like that and didn’t know there was a horror convention going on.Oh you *know* I bought this movie.Succubus. Also, wood.I liked how the only part of her costume that glows is one little strip right beneath her eyes. Wood knot, however.Well she normally wouldn’t have bought a denim vest, but the damned thing fit like it had been tailor made for her, so fuck it, the wife picked this up.Mutilated Disney princesses. Wood knot, to both.It’s really a shame you can’t see this properly, because she really does have like four or five birds attached to this thing attacking her. Wood knot.This was a great heavenly Pinhead costume. The insert glowing heart really sold it. Kudos to this guy.The whole Game of Thrones Super Friends.Sadly, did not buy this movie.If you can tell what that creature with the one large yellow eye is at the bottom of the poster, I’ll buy you a cookie if we ever meet. *HINT* It was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid.It’s like the fuckers are purpose-designing posters to try and get me to leave my current job and apply with them.I appreciated that he did the whole costume head from the first movie. Very few Captain Spauldings go through that extra effort.Hard to see, but she has a super realistic werewolf baby. Wood knot.I have no fucking clue what this is supposed to be.Mexican Deadpool being eaten by a guy in a big inflatable dinosaur skeleton costume. I should have also gotten a head shot of Mexican Deadpool for you – he had a sombrero & a big mustache. Such problematic, so appropriation.What the fuck is this I can’t evenOh look, The Shining. Wood knot.A representative from Dark Hour Haunted House in Plano, TX.Loved this idea – it’s Jason as he appeared in the NES game. Clever. Sadly, I had no rocks to throw at him, to keep try and act out the game.I liked the work this guy did on his head piece.A kid dressed as something from Five Nights At Freddy’s.Don’t know what the character is from, butt wood.Some anime, I’m sure. Wood.I thought this to be a clever way to do something different from the dozen bloody-soaked Carries walking around.The less said about this, the better.Wood knot.Silent Hill. Respectively, from the left, wood, knot knot knot.Star Trek…spiders? WTF is this even…?I thought about buying this for those days I feel like identifying as female.Great shirt – I had to zoom a lot to get it, so if you can’t tell, it’s our two protagonists from “They Live”. If you haven’t seen that movie, you’re a disgrace of a human being.There were a lot of IT costumes about. This was one of like, fifty.Hmm – from the left: wood knot, knot, wood, knot.It seems strange and grimly hilarious to me that a horror convention chooses depression as it’s charity of choice.The family that slays together…And of course you can’t even go to a fucking FFA convention anymore without there being multiple Deadpools.
After barely surviving the immediate fallout of the government shutdown, Baby Trshmnstr and I braved the post-apocalyptic wasteland to see if the Starbucks gift cards still worked. On the way, we passed by ground zero, one of the hardest hit places in the world by this tragedy… a National Park. Specifically, Manassas Battlefield National Park.
Blood stained these grounds a century and a half ago, and we honor the loss, but this park will now have new historic meaning as the Bull Run ran red with the life essence of the millions who have died because of the government shutdown.
I originally thought that I had captured an image of a valiant National Park Officer shielding the gawkers and rubberneckers from the unimaginable horror that lies beyond the main entrance. Upon further inspection, it was an evil libertarian trying to pillage the piled up bodies for gold and for survivors to put to work in their salt mines. Thank God for the gate blocking their way! Some heroic government employee must have put it in place prior to dying from lack of funding.
The evil libertarians are at the gate!!! They’ve failed to get in, but they’ve succeeded at blocking my picture of the gate!!
We trudged on: me, the less than loyal dog, and the only-partially-aware baby. Oh, to view this horror from the eyes of a babe! What a punishment! A sentence worse than death: to grow up and live a shell of a life surrounded by death and rot! And all because the damn Republicans shut down the government!
We continued to what was once the field hospital, where the wounded were once brought to be hacked up or to be released into the sweetness of death. However, through the wanton cruelty of the Trump, the casualties of today’s Civil War weren’t even given a chance. Only a few straggling survivors were able to make it to the field hospital to revive the building to its most glorified use. The well that once was polluted with the severed appendages and disfigured tissue of battlefield casualties is quietly empty today, the few survivors too disoriented and delirious from the mass gore and violence of the GOP assault.
Oh, the poor survivors! Nowhere to go, no civilization to return to! They’re left, like the beasts of the plains, to die nameless and without dignity in this new dystopian reality!!
We finally passed by what was once a gathering place for schoolchildren and other lovers of learning to gaily frolic from historical monument to historical monument. Horses would gallop by and athletes would perfect their fitness in a small utopia built up on government land. Now, all that is left at this alternate entrance to the park is a bevy of burnt out automobiles, husks left from a happier time.
As we drove past this monument to unspeakable violence, choking back tears and vomit, it struck me how this park would look in a far away future, once this turmoil has passed. Much like the neatly lined cannons and artillery pieces that adorn Henry Hill not more than half a mile from this place, a future monument to this oh so frivolous act of hatred will show these destroyed cars lined in neat rows, scorched by the hatred of this nation’s Hitler.
Why is there sometimes a perverse beauty in violent death? What draws the eye to such destruction?
I part with a single thought. As I gaze into the cruel face of government shutdown, I see that the struggle is finished. I love Big Brother.
Fan editing is a fairly simple concept, it is taking an existing film and using video editing software to alter the film in some way. It rose to prominence in 2000 when a video called ‘The Phantom Edit’ started making its rounds around Hollywood. This was a re-edited version of ‘Star Wars The Phantom Menace’, and as internet technology grew this video was made available to people across the country. As video editing software became more ubiquitous more people took on fan editing as a pastime and began sharing their work across the internet.
But wait, back-up, let me start earlier. When I began as a young film maker I didn’t have access to the best equipment. This was the early 90s and I didn’t come from a very well off family. When I started I had only a 1987 VHS camera that I borrowed from my aunt. Since I didn’t have any friends who were also interested in film making, my early attempts were mostly stop motion with Fisher Price Little People. I edited these in-camera; meaning I would push ‘record’, wait for the mechanism to engage, count to five, push ‘stop’, move the characters and then repeat until I was done.
Later on, in the mid 90s, my brother-in-law had a Hi-8 camera I could borrow, and by then I had a few other kids who were interested in acting for me. This was a time of great anticipation; ‘Star Wars The Phantom Menace’ was coming, the first trailers had debuted. So, naturally we made a Star Wars Fan Film. It was simple and crude, but I upped my editing game to what is called ‘linear editing’. This is basically two VCRs hooked together, or in this case the Hi-8 camera fed into a VCR. In linear editing you play the cut you want on the first machine while recording on the second. Slow, sloppy and not very fun. This cut of the fan film was lost over time.
When I made my way to film school in the early 2000s, a new way of editing was making its way from the echelons of Hollywood to the lower classes. This was ‘non-linear editing’ (NLE), or what we know of today as editing software. This was made possible by the advancement of digital video, where it became cheaper and easier to import video onto a computer system. The gold standard was (and mostly still is in the industry) Final Cut Pro. My film school had a whole new lab of Macs to learn on, but the underclassmen didn’t get much time on this new equipment. Instead we spent our time in the dark dingy recesses of a building in a true editing suite, where we would cut actual film by hand and splice it together with tape. We weren’t even allowed to use the automated machines, we used hand cranks. Before I was allotted much time on the NLE system I had to drop out of school for a whole host of reasons, but by this time the price of computers and digital cameras had come down enough that when I returned home I had equipment and could begin.
Part Two: The Mouse
Once at home and working a full time job I had money to buy equipment, and now more friends interested in participating. I now had the lowest end NLE program, Windows Movie Maker, and decent digital video camera. Thus I began a spree of shooting and editing films. I got better equipment, worked on techniques and eventually enrolled in a new school closer to home. It is around this time that I did my first ‘fan edit’. I put it in quotes because I didn’t really change anything about the film. You see, my favorite film of all time is ‘Fight Club’. I have literally watched it over a thousand times. Most of these times I had put it on to help me fall asleep, I suffer from insomnia quite often, but this film lulls me to a soothing sleep. There were some problems with that though. There are certain points in the film where the loud noises would wake me up once I had finally fallen asleep. Then the movie would end and go back to the DVD menu, the music of which would also wake me up. It is for those reasons I ripped the movie onto my computer and, well, I just quieted down those loud parts and put it on a DVD with no menu music. That was it. But it was a step.
It was around this time that news of ‘The Phantom Edit’ finally worked its way to me across the internet. It had never occurred to me before that I could do that myself, I don’t know why. Other than that first small foray I had never thought about changing the work of someone else to better fit my vision. Sure I knew what parts of movies I would have cut had I been working on them, but it had never crossed my mind to do it after the fact. Thus began experimentation. I started out with that very same film ‘Star Wars The Phantom Menace’, a film I saw many flaws in but also some virtues. Gone were midichlorians. Gone were a vast array of fart jokes. Gone were stupid kid lines. This first cut was clunky, but showed promise. I began tinkering with the next few films in the series. Gone is Anakin’s whining about sand. Gone was so much of what I hated.
There is a saying that if it were up to the film maker a movie would never be finished. You always see something you want to tinker with. George Lucas has proven this himself with all his fiddling with the original trilogy. I am the same way. Every time I watch my work (either my original work or fan edits) I always see something I can improve. I also like to try new techniques each time I do an edit. For this reason for a long time the three prequel movies were the only fan edits I did, because it is always an on-going effort, every few years I redo the edits to try and make them work better. As a matter of fact in preparation of this article I found new changes I wanted to make to one of the films. And also, for the most part if I like a film I don’t feel the need to tinker with it. It is only the cases where I see something that I love buried in a pile of shit that I invest myself to try to bring my vision of another person’s work to life. I’m a grown man with a life size R2-D2, if I see something Star Wars related that I think I can make it entertaining to myself, I’ll do it. Alas, alas the new trilogy…
Mostly what I tried to do was align the prequel trilogy with the original trilogy, along with removing some of the bad performances and childish jokes where I could. As I mentioned above, this included getting rid of references to midichlorians, but also a few other things like the fact Anakin was ‘already a great pilot’ when Obi-Wan met him. So gone is the kid hero accidentally saving the day, now he is just a good pilot strong in the force. Truly Anakin should have been at least in his early teens, but that is not something I have the power to fix. My approach also meant cutting things others may not agree need be cut, like Yoda using a light saber. My feeling from the original films was Yoda represented the more pacifist side of the Jedi. As I had to piece together a more cohesive story while cutting out so much, I also reinstated a few deleted scenes, which aren’t great but I felt moved the characters forward better. Alas, just as I do not have the power to change Anakin’s age in the first film, I also had no control over the video quality of these deleted scenes where I could find them so they are mostly glaring in there inclusion, but I feel make for a better film.
Also, as I said I like to try new techniques, sometimes I don’t do them as well as I would like, but they serve their purpose in terms of the story. There is also the saying attributed to Shakespeare, ‘brevity is the soul of wit‘. This is usually only applied to comedy, however, I’ve found it works with most things in film. The more common saying now is ‘less is more’. And this is why many action sequences become boring and stale. So contrary to what many people many think, cutting the length of an action sequence can cause it to have a greater impact on the viewer. The action sequences in the prequel trilogy are terribly bloated. I have tightened those.
A more recent case was ‘Man of Steel’ and ‘Batman V Superman’. I love Batman, and I really like Superman. When I watched ‘Man of Steel’ there were some parts I liked, but no way to connect them into a truly entertaining narrative. I had higher hopes for ‘Batman V Superman’, but the film itself was a mess. However, in the way the story was laid out, a grand vision emerged in my mind. The connections between the two movies were clear in my head and I began writing a cohesive narrative within my brain. So, when ‘Batman V Super: Dawn of Justice: Ultimate Edition’ was released on blu-ray I set to work combining the two lackluster films into one cohesive story. I worked on it for months, going back and forth on where to place scenes, watching and re-watching to see how it flowed as a whole. Finally I finished it. My masterpiece. And then, it sat there on my computer along with multiple cuts of Star Wars movies.
You see, fan editing exists on the legal outskirts of ‘fair use’ laws. As long as you own copies of the movies you edit and don’t try to make a profit off of it you are technically in the clear. When you share it with a friend, it gets murkier. When you put it out on the internet for anyone to see murkier still. As many of you, I take caution in all legal matters. Thus, to this point I’ve only shared these works with a few close friends. I don’t have many people I know who will take six hours to watch and critique my Star Wars edits. Even fewer interested in seeing a 3 hour long Batman V Superman mash-up. But, as the writing of this article betrays, this is something I enjoy very much and I would like to share with others. So, for the first time ever I’m publicly sharing these works.
I claim no ownership over the contents, they are merely a vessel for my own thoughts on the content.
Only watch them if you own a legal copy of the films represented.
And finally, the one I’m sure you all want to see the most, that fan film I made in the 90s. No, you won’t get to see me in it, I was behind the camera. This also isn’t the cut I did back then, I found the original hi-8 cassette a few years back and cut it together, leaving in all the stupid mistakes and not polishing it up any. There really isn’t a plot, just a few kids that wanted to make a movie.
Razors come in all different shapes and sizes, but there are three most important attributes: weight, balance, and aggressiveness. The key to shaving with a single blade razor is to avoid pressing. The blade should glide over your face, and even the slightest pressure can make for a bad shave. As such, the right weight razor keeps you from having to exert pressure to get the razor to cut. Too light, and your blade will skip right off your face. Too heavy, and you have very little control and feel as you cut. Balance also influences the control and feel. A well balanced razor can be held by two fingers and you can almost feel every whisker yield to the blade. Aggressiveness is about matching your style and skin sensitivity to how much the razor tries to take off on each pass. Some folks like really aggressive razors. Some (like me) like less aggressive razors. It’s all about getting a close cut without causing razor burn. Certain safety razors have adjustable aggressiveness. You twist a selector, and the blade bends to a different angle, reducing or increasing aggressiveness.
There is a saying that if it were up to the film maker a movie would never be finished. You always see something you want to tinker with. George Lucas has proven this himself with all his fiddling with the original trilogy. I am the same way. Every time I watch my work (either my original work or fan edits) I always see something I can improve. I also like to try new techniques each time I do an edit. For this reason for a long time the three prequel movies were the only fan edits I did, because it is always an on-going effort, every few years I redo the edits to try and make them work better. As a matter of fact in preparation of this article I found new changes I wanted to make to one of the films. And also, for the most part if I like a film I don’t feel the need to tinker with it. It is only the cases where I see something that I love buried in a pile of shit that I invest myself to try to bring my vision of another person’s work to life. I’m a grown man with a life size R2-D2, if I see something Star Wars related that I think I can make it entertaining to myself, I’ll do it. Alas, alas the new trilogy…