Star Wednesday: Chewbacca Bandolier Strap

Kenner was truly a marketing genius, realizing early on that kids buying action figures would also need things to hold, store, and transport action figures. In the late 70s and early 80s, Kenner made several different types and styles of carrying cases for kids. The earliest cases were essentially little vinyl briefcases that held two dozen action figures. Then there were those large plastic sculpted busts of Darth Vader and C-3P0 that opened up and held even more figures. Kenner made lots of different storage cases, some more successful than others. One of the oddest ones they produced was this… (read more)

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The Ghosts of Pizza Inn

There was a time not so many years ago when my work friends and I used to go lunch together almost every single day. Increased job duties, the introduction of teleworking, and conflicting meeting schedules have mostly put an end to those frequent outings. These days, getting three or four of us together for lunch involves blocking out time on calendars, coordinating schedules, and a lot of finger-crossing. I really miss those days when we could all just hop in a car and go somewhere for lunch. One of our frequent lunch destinations was the Pizza Inn on the corner… (read more)

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Swimming in Unsolved Mysteries

In my 2017 media review I mentioned that I’ve been watching a lot of Unsolved Mysteries. I didn’t expect someone to ask me, “what’s that?” Unsolved Mysteries was a television show that debuted in 1987 on NBC and ran there for ten years before moving to CBS for another two. Lifetime picked the show up from 2001-2002, and it was relaunched on Spike from 2008-2010. According to Wikipedia there were 580 episodes in all, although many of the Spike TV episodes simply recycled segments from earlier seasons. While later seasons tweaked the formula slightly, the bulk of the show’s episodes… (read more)

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No Disassemble

Mason O'Hara

It’s 6:30 p.m., Saturday night. The sun set about an hour ago. It’s dark, 45 degrees outside, and Mason is lying in the driveway, installing the new car radio antenna his grandpa bought him for Christmas. I can’t help but remember all the hours Andy, Jeff and I spent wiring things into my cars. My Mustang didn’t have any rear speakers until I bought a set of Jensen 6x9s from Walmart. For the backseat of my Firebird we built a lopsided speaker box using the wrong type of wood to hold two used speakers I bought from the flea market.… (read more)

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My Year in Review: A Look Back at 2017

Rob O'Hara, Susan O'Hara in casino

2017 was another great year for the O’Haras. Morgan turned 12, Mason turned 16, and Susan and I both turned 44. The country experienced an eclipse, Susan officiated her first wedding, we discovered not one but two snakes in our house, I found a ton of vintage VHS tapes containing tons of treasure, I bought a six-foot dragon skeleton to go with Mick Rib, I met Guy Hutchinson in person for the first time, we discovered an interesting Asian food market full of super hot Ramen noodles and live turtles, and Mason walked a 5K. (A bunch of crazy stuff… (read more)

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New Ride: 2017 Ford Flex

“I’m bored. You wanna go buy a car today?” “Okay.” Okay, so it didn’t happen exactly like that, but it was pretty close. The Ford Flex has been on my radar ever since I sold my Scion XB a few years ago. After I got the Subaru WRX STi, owning a Flex went on the back burner. When I sold the Subaru a couple of months ago, I put the money in the bank and it’s been sitting there ever since, waiting for the right car to pop up. The Flex comes in a variety of colors and trim levels,… (read more)

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What I Watched and Read in 2017

For the second year in a row, I maintained a list of everything I watched and read throughout the entire year. While you are welcome to read the entire list, I thought I would go back through the list and make some observations. MOVIES According to my list, I watched 125 movies in 2017. Of those, 20 were movies I had seen before (those are the titles that appear in italics on the list). I didn’t list any movies I didn’t watch from start to finish, and surely forgot to enter some, so the actual number is likely higher. Still,… (read more)

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Star Wednesday: Christmas Figurines

Most of my Star Wars figure are on display year round. I rarely shuffle them around; where they sit is where they sit. The one exception to this are my Star Wars holiday figurines. I can’t recall many examples of Star Wars characters being used out of context (save for M&M’s line of Star Wars figures), so it’s a little odd to see Yoda and R2-D2 wearing Santa hats — especially since, as we all know, they don’t even celebrate Christmas. They celebrate Life Day. The Yoda figure in this picture is based on a 1981 painting by Ralph McQuarrie,… (read more)

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The Protector of Christmas

I suppose when you do anything 44 times, the magic starts to wear off. When you’re a kid, everything about Christmas is exciting. The lights, the songs, the cookies and candy canes, the presents, the television specials, the rituals… everything is so new and exhilarating. I was the kid who laid in bed every year the night before Christmas with his stomach in knots, staring at the clock for hours at a time and watching the minutes tick by, one by one, until it was time to wake up and see what Santa had brought. Nothing was more exciting to… (read more)

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The Last Jedi Family

(This post is spoiler free and does not discuss the plot of The Last Jedi.) Last Thursday at 9:30 p.m., a time when most kids are winding down and preparing for bed, ours were with us at Penn Square Mall, waiting for the 10 p.m. showing of Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi to begin. Roughly 30 minutes of trailers, combined with a run time of 152 minutes (the longest Star Wars film to date), put us back in the parking lot around 1 a.m., and back home half an hour after that. On a school night. Except for the… (read more)

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