The Corner Penthouse

Today was a very sad day for me and my family. We had to put our beloved family dog, Scooter, to sleep. Since earlier this year, she has been getting rather vicious, showing her teeth and (occasionally) trying to bite anyone who pets her. She nipped my arm back in June, but things got worse last week. On Sunday, November 27th, she severely bit my father on the hand, requiring him to go to the hospital to get the wound stitched up. The photo you see above was taken minutes before Animal Control came to take her away today.

I had mentioned her abnormal behavior to her vet at the Oceanside Veterinary Hospital (in Oceanside, New York) when we brought Scooter in for her yearly vaccinations this past July/August. (Although she's been going to that clinic for years, this vet has only been seeing her since last year, I believe.) The vet didn't seem too interested in completely diagnosing these new symptoms, attributing it to poor eyesight (cataracts) and loss of hearing. Yes, it's true that Scooter was an old dog (fifteen years old), and that her health was failing her. She had arthritis in her back left thigh (which made it hard for her to get up off the floor, climb stairs, and walk) and a large benign lump on her left shoulder/side (and smaller lumps on her tail by the base and on her stomach). However, to say that she's getting vicious with us because she's having trouble recognizing us is asinine. I could stand across the room and look at her and she'd get vicious when my eyes met hers, but not if I looked elsewhere (though in the past month she'd gotten so worse that she'd get vicious to an area where no one was standing). Hard to attribute that (originally) to poor eyesight. Even more asinine is that the vet didn't do anything for Scooter to help her, and more importantly, help us in dealing with her. Surely there's some type of medicine to help in this case. There has to be a more sound reason for why a dog would, all of a sudden, get vicious with family members whom she has known and lived with for all fifteen years of her life. Some people we've spoken to have said it was Dementia. Not the vet of course, but friends and neighbors.

Scooter was born on my sister's eighth birthday. She was given to us in May 1990 by a then-client of my mother's, whose dog had a litter of puppies. My mom didn't want Scooter, as we already had a three-year-old female dog named Mickey (named after the Walt Disney creation Mickey Mouse). Although my mom kept saying no, eventually she relented, and carried little Scooter home with her in a box on the public buses. We decided to name her Scooter in honor of the then-recently-deceased Jim Henson, whose Muppet Show featured a character named Scooter.

Although they were fine at first, as Scooter got older, she started to get into fights with Mickey. In early-to-mid June 1999, it got so bad that Mickey was lying near-dead on our porch. In late June, Mickey was stolen from us by a friend who we had called to help us with her, seeing as how the Nassau County Police were absolutely useless when she was lying in a bloody mess on the porch. We never saw Mickey again after that, but we know that she's long since passed away by now.

Mickey and Scooter are now reunited up in Heaven, where I hope they are co-existing peacefully.


[Edit, 12/15/2005: My sister's tribute page can be found here]

I've been eagerly waiting for Tales From The Crypt to come to DVD in season sets. Unfortunately, there were a few bad decisions that kinda ruins the Season 1 and Season 2 sets for me.

(1) Who's brilliant idea was it to put the security sticker BEHIND the plastic disc holder and right on top of a photo printed on paperboard? Not only was it hard to get off without breaking the case, but the sticker glue ripped off part of the photo.

(2) Each episode is INCOMPLETE, as each episode does not have it's own series intro/title sequence (which featured the journey through the house accompanied by the Danny Elfman theme). They had only one intro/title sequence for all six episodes (at the start of the disc), and they even ruined that with a "Kill Intro" graphic overlay and having it go right into the menu (technically that intro is part of the menu). There is plenty of room for each episode to have it's own intro/title, as they didn't have to cram all six episodes onto Disc 1. They could have put episodes 1-4 on Disc 1, and episodes 4 & 5 on Disc 2, along with the two Disc 2 bonus features (which only total an hour or so).

If you're curious as to why the episodes on Seasons 1 and 2 are missing the title sequence, read this article.

Tales from the Crypt - Missing intro - Studio Explains
Posted by Gord Lacey (8/27/2005)

Some fans were upset with the first season release of Tales from the Crypt because the episodes didn't feature the standard intro to the series; a journey into the creepy house, down the stairs and then an encounter with the Crypt Keeper.

I called Warner Bros to ask about season 2, and whether we'll see the intro returned to the episodes. The second season will not have the intro, so I asked why. The removal of the intro was a specific request from the producers of the series for the season 1 set. Warner went back and asked about season 2, and the producers still wish to have it removed; no further explanation could be obtained.

The intro isn't missing from the set completely; it's featured in the menu for the disc. The intro is the same for each episode as well.

(source)

What the hell were the producers thinking! Why on Earth would they make such an odd request? What benefit could they have from not having the intro at the start of each episode? The same theme and almost all of the same footage appears under the end credits, so it can't be because they don't want to pay Danny Elfman for his theme music.

The series of videotapes released by HBO Home Video and Time-Life in the mid-1990s, featured an intro/title sequence on EACH of the three episodes contained on each tape. If it was done before, there's no reason it can't be done now.

Thankfully, enough fans complained to Warner Bros. to make the producers see the error of their ways. These two problems are now only resigned to Season 1 and Season 2. For Season 3 and onward the crappy Digipak packaging was replaced with slim cases in an outer sleeve, and each episode has its own series intro/title sequence - though it's missing the first two seconds showing the text "Home Box Office Presents" (white text on a black screen) over the low whisperings of the theme song.

I'm very disappointed by the cheap packaging used for this Moonlighting - Seasons 1 & 2 DVD set. The last plastic disc page fell out as I opened the factory-sealed item. Obviously the glue wasn't strong enough to hold it to the cardboard. I had to use lots of super glue to fix it. I really hope that Lion's Gate uses better packaging for future Moonlighting sets.

[2016 NOTE: When I originally wrote this review back in 2005, the "Ghost Hunters" show was in its infancy, and they actually did attempt to disprove things. The show was not the joke it would later become, which caused me to stop watching many years ago.]

As a fan of the Ghostbusters movies and animated series, and having an interest in the paranormal, I was very interested to see this episode. I was really curious as to how Penn & Teller would try to prove that ghosts/spirits don't exist, when there is lots of hard evidence to the contrary.

First, I was expecting some sort of Ghostbusters reference, especially since that was the episode title. I thought maybe we'd see Penn & Teller wearing Ghostbusters jumpsuits/uniforms or something. I was highly disappointed to find that they mentioned the word/name "ghostbusters" 8 times total, and that was it. None of it was in reference to the movie, but to the "job" itself.

As for this particular episode, I thought it was a little shortsighted of Penn & Teller to simply dismiss all paranormal studies based on the two (count 'em, TWO) groups they got on the show. I wonder if they tried to get any famous paranormal investigators on the show, but couldn't. You know, the ones you frequently see on shows like Sightings, or the two guys from Ghost Hunters. It's very well possible that they just happened to get the worst two groups in the paranormal investigator community. There are no doubt frauds in that community (as in any group of people). Maybe they just happened to get two of them.

There's a famous haunting that (I believe) was shown on Sightings called the "Heartland Ghost" (a tv movie was made based on it). It was about an entity that was leaving actual physical cuts on this guy. They filmed it while it was happening, and the cuts just appeared out of thin air. Why didn't Penn & Teller try to disprove that case? What about any of the other famous hauntings commonly shown on the ghost specials that pop up around Halloween? Winchester House? Hotel del Coronado?

Normally, I agree wholeheartedly on the topics Penn & Teller cover. I mean, really, anyone with common sense knows that the Virgin Mary doesn't REALLY appear in a grilled cheese sandwich. But for this topic, they left so many things out, that they would need much more than a half-hour, and would need to deal with famous cases, in order to prove to me that the entire "world of the paranormal" is fake.

I highly suggest avoiding this particular episode and watching *any* episode of Ghost Hunters instead. Those guys thoroughly investigate supposed hauntings, using science and experimentation, and more often than not, they deem places to NOT be haunted.

If you're interested in seeing this episode for yourself, it is available on The Complete Third Season DVD set.

The Scratch & Sniff options on the Rugrats! Go Wild DVD relate to the "Odorama" stunt used during the film's original theatrical release. Special numbered cards, each representing a particular smell, were available with kids' meals at participating Burger King restaurants from 6/2/2003 to 6/29/2003, and separately at Blockbuster Video stores from 6/15/2003 until supplies ran out.


Participants picked up the cards, then took them to the local movie theater showing the film. When a particular number flashed on the screen, viewers scratched off the scent that had that particular number on it. Numbers flashing in red mean that the viewer should find the corresponding number on their card (glow-in-the-dark for their convenience), and be ready to scratch-and-sniff when the on-screen number turns green.

Sadly, Paramount Home Video decided not to include the cards with the DVD release. So unless you got a card when the film was originally theatrically released, you're out of luck.

Here are the numbers, DVD time codes of when the numbers first appear on screen, and description of the scent.

1 - 05:31 - strawberry
2 - 11:42 - peanut butter
3 - 22:41 - a flower
4 - 39:05 - smelly feet
5 - 48:50 - root beer float
6 - 62:58 - fish

If you didn't already guess, "Really Naughty Dots: Fun for Adults Only" (RND) and "Really Really Naughty Dots: Explicit Fun for Adults Only" (RRND), both by Eddison Sadd, are connect-the-dots book with the revealed pictures being of guys and girls in rather naughty adult situations (read: having sex). There are 30 puzzles total in each book. Each one has a pun title and caption (adding to the fun). In RND, puzzle #25 contains the least amount of dots (230), while puzzle #8 contains the most (450). In RRND, puzzle #8 contains the least amount of dots (113), while puzzle #17 contains the most (307).

From what I understand, all of the books in the Naughty Dots series were originally released in England many years before they were published in America. I've never seen the original versions, but I hope the layout was better than these. In both books, almost all of the puzzles are spread across two pages, which means that you'll be drawings lots of lines across the inner spine of the book. I don't need to tell you how annoying this is. Connect-the-dot puzzles should always be on one page, not two. To add insult to injury, a few puzzles have dots right on the inner spine which are impossible to connect (so you'll just have to draw your lines as close to them as you can).

On the plus side, the puzzles are very detailed and contain a lot of dots. Often you won't know what the image is supposed to be until you've connected almost all of the dots. The puzzles do have partial photos to give you a hint as to what the revealed image will look like. In some puzzles, there are photos of nipples, with you connecting the dots to draw in the breasts around them. I liked this idea of using photos mixed into the puzzles, but I think that there should have been a section in the back of the book with the complete photographs of the puzzle images.

Before I wrap this up, I should probably take a second to tell you that in RND, puzzle #3 contains two #208 dots (the second one is supposed to be #209). Also, in RRND, puzzle #12 contains a number 136 but there is no dot for it because it shouldn't be there. Also, the woman's hand in puzzle #18 looks strange. So be on the lookout for those quirks.

Overall, the puzzles were fun to do (aside from the two-page annoyance), and I enjoyed these books very much.

Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, also known as G.L.O.W., was a women's professional wrestling promotion that aired in syndication from 1986–1990, with the majority of the action taking place at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. The show was ultra-cheesy, feature colorful (and highly stereotyped) characters and over-the-top comedy sketches. G.L.O.W. has gotten a bit of a revival over the past decade, culminating in a documentary and a scripted Netflix series this Summer starring Alison Brie.

Three volumes of episodes were released on VHS back in the 1980s by Today Home Entertainment, and were subsequently re-released on DVD by Allied Artists in the 2000s. All three DVDs contain the same slideshow and promo bonus features. I will be taking a quick look at all of them, starting with Vol. 1 - Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling - DVD, VHS - which runs 58 minutes and features the following matches:

1. TAG TEAM: Royal Hawaiian & Spanish Red vs. California Doll & Americana
2. TAG TEAM: Sara & Mabel vs. Salt & Pepper
3. TAG TEAM: Hollywood & Vine vs. Tina Ferrari (WWF's Ivory) & Ashley
4. BATTLE FOR THE G.L.O.W. CROWN: Matilda the Hun vs. Tammy Jones

There are two minor portions at the start and end of the program from the original VHS that were edited out of the DVD. (1) Seven seconds of music on a black screen before the first visual. It's the first seven seconds of the song that's already playing as the show on the DVD begins. (2) The INI logo at the very end.

Except for these two minor portions, nothing else was edited out. The F word was used twice and racial slurs were used once (all left intact from the original VHS release).

There are two minor defects that weren't in the VHS: At 21.59 is a slight defect that is not in the original videotape. Also, at 56.16 is a minor edit that is not in the original video tape. During the end credits Tina Ferrari interview, about 21 frames (less than a second) is cut. It sounds like it was done because the audio on the master they used to make the DVD was bad at that spot. Tina's complete line is: "I like a man... that you can have a little control over." The "..." represents a one second pause in her words.


Vol. 2 - The Saga Continues - DVD, VHS - runs 58 minutes and features the following matches:

1. SINGLES: Olympia vs. Jungle Woman (with Nature Boy at ringside)
2. GRUDGE MATCH: Spanish Red vs. Americana
3. TAG TEAM: Corporal Kelly & Attache vs. The Southern Belles Scarlett & Terror
4. TAG TEAM: Heavy Metal Sisters Chain Saw & Spike vs. The Cheerleaders Debbie Debuante & Susie Spirit
5. THE RUSSIAN: Ninotchka vs. Little Feather (with special appearance by Ebony)
6. THE TERRORIST: Palestina (from Syria) vs. Sally, The Farmer's Daughter (from Nebraska)
7. THE HANDICAP, TWO WRESTLERS AGAINST ONE: Hollywood & Vine vs. Mt. Fiji (350 lbs.)
8. SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCES: Jackie Stallone manager of the good girls & Matilda The Hun

The picture is a bit darker than the original videotape, the audio was turned up a bit too loud, and there are faint picture rolls throughout that were not in the tape. All minor video and audio defects were in the original VHS release.


Vol. 3 - Fans Beware - DVD, VHS - runs 58 minutes and features the following matches:

1. TRIPLE FEATURE: Spanish Red & Jungle Woman (with Nature Boy) vs. The Cheerleaders Suzy Spirit & Debbie Debutante (with special appearance by Tina Ferrari) (1 fall, 20 min time limit)
2. TEXAS BAR ROOM BRAWL, ANYTHING GOES: Dallas (The Texan Cowgirl) vs. Ninotchka (The Russian Colonel) (no time limit, no rules, no pin-falls, fighting both in and out of ring)
3. STREET FIGHT, LOSERS CLOTHES COME OFF: California Doll, Farmers Daughter, Tina & Ashley vs. Hollywood & Vine with The Soul Patrol (Envy & Adore from Chicago) (8 ladies in the ring at the same time, $16,000 and champagne to the winning team) (no time limit, no rules, no disqualifications, no pin-falls, weapons?) (see David McLane assaulted and disrobed)
4. SINGLE FEATURE MATCH: Dementia (Mgr: Aunt Kittie) vs. Little Egypt "The Desert Flower"

The following vignettes are also included:

1. G.L.O.W Rap - David McLane & The GLOW Girls
2. The Spanish Kitchen
3. California Dolls - "Points to Ponder"
4. Drs. Fiel and Grope - Gynecology/Plastic Surgery/Psychiatry
5. Asking Ashley
6. Tips From Tina
7. The Farmer's Daughter's Letters Home
8. Easy as K.G.B. with Colonel Ninotchka
9. Card Playing with Matilda the Hun
10. Children of the Night
11. Morning Coffee
12. Mt. Fuji's Dream
13. And Many, Many More

Nothing has been edited out. Everything from the original videotape release is include here.

I bought the Digital Concepts 89379 3.1MP Digital Camera because I needed one solely for taking photos of the items I sell on the internet. I didn't want to spend a lot of money (read: over $100) on a digital camera, so when I saw this at Wal-Mart for $60, and saw that it had a built-in flash, I figured that this would do the trick. Even though it's a cheap camera, I figured that it should be able to handle such a simple and undemanding task as taking photos indoors of various little and big items. Boy was I wrong.

This camera takes VERY POOR picture indoors, even though it has a built-in flash. In fact, the flash makes the pictures worse. Pictures taken with the flash appear all washed out.

Unless you hold the camera incredibly steady, you risk having shaky pictures. Half the photos I took were shaky, even though I held the camera as still and steady as possible. The camera has a hole on the bottom where a tripod can be inserted. I highly suggest you use one, if at all possible.

It consumes battery power at a fast rate. I put new batteries in it and within a few hours it started complaining that the battery was low. When it prompts "Low Battery," it doesn't let you use the flash (how annoying!). It uses 3 AAA batteries, but has no adapter for house current, so you're forced to feed it more batteries. It even uses up battery power when you're not using it at all. I had a set of 3 brand new AAA batteries sitting in it for two weeks, while the camera was just sitting in it's opened packaging. When I went to use it again, first I saw defects in the preview screen, then eventually the camera would keep shutting off as soon as I would turn it on. Thus I was required to put another set of three brand new AAA batteries in it.

It has a 16MB built-in flash memory which requires a constant electric current to store your photos. Should the camera lose power (for instance if the batteries die or are removed), all stored pictures will be lost. Sakar recommends always downloading your photos to your computer as soon as possible to prevent unintentional data loss. I recommend not buying this camera unless you have a SD card or buy one along with the camera (luckily I did). The SD card supercedes the built-in memory, so all photos are saved onto the card instead, where they will not be lost because of the power supply.


The package comes with the camera, instruction manual (which is easy to understand, if somewhat poorly written), drivers disc (with PhoTags software), USB wire (to connect the camera to your computer), and a hand strap. Although the manual tells you first that the PhoTags software is needed to transfer the photos to your computer, if you continue reading you'll learn that it isn't. In fact, you can use the camera without installing PhoTags at all. The driver installation is located on the CD at: \drivers\setup.exe. Once installed, when you connect your camera to your PC, it will appear as another drive on your computer (two drives if you have a SD card in it). Then you can just copy, move, and delete the photos on it from Windows Explorer or whatever way you normally work with your computer files. I don't know if it's just me, but I found that Windows kept reinstalling the drivers every time I connected the camera to it. That got very annoying real quick, especially when once it made me get out my Windows 2000 CD.

You *might* need PhoTags to use the camera as a webcam, but then again, you can probably find some other software on the internet (maybe for free) that will let you do that as well (and maybe even better).

In case you're wondering, PhoTags is a rather useless program to organize photos (to a certain degree), add text and captions to them (which can be turned on and off using "Active Captions" technology - software required on the computers of anyone you send your photos to), make minor corrections (such as red eye removal), and do simple photo print projects (calendars, greetings cards, postcards, etc.). Two of the photo projects are non-existant: Album Creator and Video CD Creator. When you click on either of them, you are taken to the PhoTags website where you are prompted to buy the full version for $10 to add these two features.

Although I didn't expect to get a top-of-the-line digital camera for $60, I did expect to get something that would take decent photos indoors. I guess I'll have to keep looking.

I'm not going to comment on the episodes found on the SpongeBob SquarePants - Sponge Buddies/Nautical Nonsense DVD because almost all of them can be found on the Season 1 & Season 2 box sets, which is how you're better off seeing them (at least they're in order and paired together with the proper companion episodes). Instead I will be focusing on the bonus features. Not the Violent Femmes music video, because that too can be found on the Season 1 box set, but on the cast and crew interviews that make up the rest of the bonus features. I love the interviews and the "in studio" voice recording re-enactments, but I *HATE* how EVERY piece of this great footage is ruined because someone thought it would be a great idea to cover up almost the entire screen with a bubble graphic frame. You can only see the video through a small round part of the middle of your tv screen, and even then it isn't clear as there's a bubble "shine" over it. I'd love for Paramount/Nick to include all of the original, non-bubblefied footage on the season 3 box set, even though most of the episodes are for seasons 1 and 2.

How can this be the "complete" 2nd season when the two alternate versions of "Shanghaied" are missing? Paramount/Viacom/Nick included the Patrick and Squidward ending versions on the "Sea Stories" DVD, but yet left them out as bonus features on this set. I'd like to know why. Double-dipping, I suppose. They've done that with almost all of the 13 (as of this writing) unnecessary individual releases, some of which contain bonus materials not found on the season sets.

Speaking of bonus materials, this set has very little of them, especially when compared to season 1. Since they already have a lot of bonus materials in the vault from the individual releases, it wouldn't have been a lot of trouble to include them in this set. Again, double-dipping, I guess, provides the answer.