Off the Top of My Head #6: Gangnam Style

On November 21, 2012November 21, 2012 By James CastroIn Random FunLeave a comment

I’m the last person in the world who gets into latest trends. I’ve essentially been the same since about 1996 in terms of style, musical tastes, and interests. That being said some fads are catchy.
I came late to the “Gangnam Style” craze. It kept showing up in parodies, videos, and feeds on all my frequently visited sites and I was curious. Needless to say it was pretty confusing and all the typical questions popped into my head such as, “What the-?” “Huh?” and “Why-?” But when I saw the real video it all became clear. It’s a hilarious track, the video is full of pop-satire, and, of course, it’s extremely catchy.

So when I went to the wedding of some friends and Gangnam Style came on it was hard not to do the dance, even if it was just on the sidelines. The groom cut loose on the dance floor, and when my date to the wedding, the fairer half of RevPub, shoved me out on the dance floor I had two choices:

1.) I could slink back into the shadows and appear as a “punk” in the eyes of all in attendance.

2.) I could do my best to NOT be out-danced in public!

I went with the latter. And the impromptu routine the groom and I concocted on the spot got lots of praise from everyone present!

Here’s a video taken at the event:

More than anything it was a LOT of fun, and goes to show, trends may seem a little silly, but if you can’t beat ’em…join ’em. You might just have good time.

Veterans Day Event: The Korean War and The Vietnam War

On November 15, 2012November 15, 2012 By James CastroIn ProjectsLeave a comment

Sunday was Veterans Day in the United States (originally “Armistice Day” for those who don’t know their World War I history!) and for the first time I got to participate actively in the creation of an event to celebrate the holiday. At my previous job I was the chair of an exhibits committee, which created visual exhibits in the lobby of the building consisting of materials from our collections. For the last exhibit I was to ever be involved in, I chose to honor two specific individuals, David Brock a veteran of the Korean War, and Christopher Ammons a veteran of the Vietnam War and tell the story of their war, through their eyes on our exhibits panels.

I had previously worked with the Mr. Ammons, and another staff member worked with Mr. Brock, so we divided up the work and installed the exhibit.

The physical exhibit was finished on November 7 and we held an official opening event on November 9; inviting both Mr. Brock and Mr. Ammons to the event, as well as the secretary of state and the commissioner of Veterans’ Affairs.

This event turned out better than I’d hoped. Mr. Brock and Mr. Ammons were both blown away, not only to have been featured in an exhibit, but also for the reception they received from the crowd on hand.

A colleague told me he felt that Mr. Brock, who hadn’t spoken about his Korean War experience much, if at all, since his return from service, “left his war at the exhibit,” finally being able to unburden himself of the memories. I was later told that Mr. Ammons said the experience was the, “best day of my life,” as he was being driven back to his home.

For those of us who attended the opening with them it was important to remember that everyone who served in those wars served for their own reasons, and what they experienced only they could really know. I was ecstatic to have had a hand in being able to shed some light on the stories of these two individuals and honoring their service was long overdue.

Though it was the last thing I did before leaving that job, it was the best thing I ever did in that position and I was thankful for the opportunity.

A brief slideshow of the exhibit is featured below, along with links to the material selected for a digital archives page of the Vietnam War Veteran. Detailed pictures, along with photos of the event and a video of the event will be coming soon!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A news article featuring Mr. Brock appeared on the front page of his local newspaper! Link located here.

Link to more of Mr. Ammons’ Photographs located here.

Lil Horsemen Original Art

On November 7, 2012November 7, 2012 By James CastroIn Art, ProjectsLeave a comment

Thanks to everyone who read RevPub’s very first publication, Lil Horsemen #1: How Death and War Postponed the Apocalypse. I thought I’d share some of the art that went into the creation of the book. All the character art was pencil-drawn and the first issue consisted of more than 55 individual character drawings and dozens of computer-rendered pieces. Seeing as how this is a relatively simple story, it makes me wonder how my more ambitious stories will go!
Here are a couple of my favorites. In the next couple of weeks, while I’m in the planning stages of Issue #2 I’ll post some more of my favorite original pencils from this issue. I absolutely love the way the final issue came out, but I still like to look at the original pencils and see how it all started.
Skirmish ready for a fight!

And Grimmy-Fu!

Lil Horsemen #1: How Death and War Postponed the Apocalypse

On October 31, 2012December 9, 2012 By James CastroIn Art, Projects2 Comments

The two team members of Revenant Publications are proud to present the FIRST issue of our FIRST official publication!
The interface allows you to zoom in, flip pages, and enjoy it better than if it was printed on full glossy paper!

It was a great experience to produce this first issue, and I couldn’t have done it without, Raven Petty, my Revenant Publications partner. Thanks for being my muse and motivation 🙂

And to…

Misty Bach

Brandon Combs

Kathy Lauder

Ron Peaks

Isaiah Petty

Joey Petty

Braxton Shoop

Todd Spainhour

Brad Trombley

Michael Wardlow

Zach West

…without your support and encouragement this project wouldn’t be what it was.

And to all our RevPub readers. I hope this is the beginning of great things!

Horror Movies and Real Life

On October 24, 2012October 24, 2012 By James CastroIn Random Fun, Short Stories1 Comment

We’ve all seen Scream and hopefully everyone has read “15 Signs of a Horror Movie Fan” written by the fairer half of RevPub. We all know the rules for surviving a horror movie and have all had those, “I’d never do THAT if I was in that situation” moments watching a slasher film.

I’ve been in a few moments that made me think maybe I was that idiot character dropping the weapon and turning my back instead of pummeling my momentarily weakened pursuer into sausage filler. I’ve tempted fate by saying, “What’s the worst that could happen?” and I’ve been with a friend exploring the supposedly haunted second floor of my office when she yelled out “HELLO?!” and I responded, “Are you crazy?! Have you seen ANY horror movie ever?!” But there was one incident where I really failed the “How to Survive a Horror Movie” test.

I was dog-sitting for a co-worker in his home in a rural area. I went early in the morning and early in the evening to ensure he got his food at regular intervals and got to go on regularly timed run-arounds and walks. I let him out the back door when I noticed a deep gouge in the grass. Almost like something huge, heavy, and long had sat there for a long time. I leaned down, with the dog still on the leash, and saw the depression in the grass was about 10 inches wide and stretched from the back door all the way to the side of the house, around the corner and out of sight; probably some 20-30 feet in full length. I took two slow steps and reached down to find long strands of shed snake skin strewn about within the trench.

Not thinking, I tugged the leash and said, “C’mon, boy let’s see where this leads” and started around the corner following what could only be described as the path of a MASSIVE snake. As I pulled the leash the dog whined slightly and reluctantly followed. I said, “C’mon…!” and dragged him along the giant snake path. As we rounded the corner and I brushed leaf-heavy branches out of my view I said to myself, “What are you doing… You’ve just become the idiot in a pre-title sequence to an AWFUL horror movie…” Realizing my stupidity I turned around, took the dog on his walk around his regular path and took him back inside.

In retrospect it was likely the place where one of those large, black, plastic drainage tubes laid and the snake skin was just there by chance.

The Horror Movie expert in me, however, feels I narrowly survived being eaten by a massive super-python that night. And only the dog was smart enough to try to avoid it.

Have you ever been in a horror movie-type situation? Did you act as you always thought you would, or did you become a bad Friday 13th stereotype like I did on this one occasion?

If you answered the latter, don’t worry; even if it did briefly seem like you were about to become a slasher film statistic remember that someone has to survive long enough to frustrate and beat the bad guy right? Just because you made a mistake 20 minutes after the title card, doesn’t mean you won’t survive to see the franchise psycho off for this particular installment! Let’s just hope we all survive the first 15 minutes of the sequel!

Someone does have to be that “final girl” (I’m looking at you Raven) I just hope I’m there for the credit crawl…

Monster Therapy — Because maybe they can only truly understand each other…

Story of the Month: The Ghost in the Machine

On October 18, 2012October 18, 2012 By James CastroIn Short Stories, Story of the Month4 Comments

The Ghost in the Machine

Over the past decade movies about haunted technology have become popular. From radios to TVs and from cameras to cell phones, it seems everything can be haunted and wreak havoc on the lives of the living. This has always been one of my least favorite genres of horror movie for some reason, partially because it shows our over-attachment to our data devices, but I suppose in actuality there’s no principle difference between a haunted house and a haunted Handycam.

I never gave much thought to these kinds of “haunting” until…

Back around 2005 or so the fairer half of RevPub had a computer problem. She had an aging computer and the modem suddenly stopped working. This was back in the days when PCs were still white boxes and modems contained numbers like “28.8” and “56k.” Having recently replaced the modem in my own PC (which bucked the trend and was GRAY) I felt confident I could replace the modem in hers as well. I took the PC to my house, bought a cheap replacement modem, and installed it. Turning the computer on, I immediately got a hardware error. After going through all the options my limited computer hardware ability could handle, I called my friend Mike (an actual expert) to help.

He brought one of his computer shells to see if it was the modem, the slot, or the whole PC that was the problem. He also brought other spare parts and far more experience fixing PCs with white text on a black screen. We went through several attempts, and various options, all while watching Mythbusters on DVD. We only had one keyboard, so he plugged it into his computer, checked settings, and plugged it into the broken one to try to get the settings to work on that one. We did this several times and hit dead end, after dead end. It made me feel better that I had failed, since he was having bad luck with it too. He suddenly had a flash of inspiration, sat up, picked the keyboard up, and began typing commands. Immediately his commands began to appear on the screen of the stricken computer. As white text filled the black screen as the system began to respond. We plugged in the modem and, SURPRISE, it worked perfectly.

Mike began to disconnect the keyboard to plug into the other PC to begin to shut it down. I saw him reach to unplug it. Sit down. Stand up and look at it, then sit down again.

Perplexed and a bit freaked out. He turned to me and said, “I don’t know why that worked…” Quizzically I asked, “Why?” happy to see the work was finally done.

He still seemed pretty shaken when he responded, “The keyboard was plugged into the other PC the whole time…”

Now my logical side kicked in. Maybe he was playing a joke? No the keyboard was definitely plugged into the other PC and I hadn’t left the room. Maybe the afflicted PC had reset itself? No his DOS commands were appearing on screen.

We exchanged a “What the…” look. And the only thing that broke our silence was my announcement, “I want that thing out of my house right now.” He agreed, we packed up, I moved the possessed computer to the trunk of my car and informed the lovelier half of this company that her PC was repaired, ready to return, and was likely and object of pure evil. She took it back and used it for years…without incident.

To this day it’s one of the strangest events I’ve ever witnessed. Two relatively fearless individuals were completely creeped out by a PC that seemed to either be possessed by the machine spirit (emperor protect) or self-aware enough to fix itself. Either way I was glad to have it out of my house!

When I told Mike I would be using this story on this blog he responded in typical Mike fashion by saying:

“That sh*t freaks me out.”

For one time I will shed my stoicism and concede…yeah that sh*t freaks me out too…