Finally we have a metal band with a dark-skinned girl as lead singer! The band is called Straight Line Stitch. They are from Knoxville, TN. Their singer is Alexis Brown. She sings in a clean angellic voice as well as a metal screaming style.

Hear some samples at their MySpace here.

Here is a video:

There should be more bands like this. Alexis Brown is a great inspiration to girls everywhere.

New Jersey’s Keansburg Amusement Park is home to many vintage games and rides. I was lucky enough to go to Keansburg Amusement Park and explore the park. Click photos for larger.

Spook House

Amusement Park nerds like myself know that Pretzel built the best old-fashioned dark rides. Spook House is the oldest operating Pretzel dark ride. It still has it’s original cars from 1928!

The car enters immediate darkness where you twist and turn past monsters and alligators and other such fun things. The sound effects are all done in the floor with a cymbal and a wooden box. At one point, it appears that you are about to crash into another car, but it is just an optical illusion.

Here is the front of the Spook House:

Here is a close up of the monster that guards the front of the ride:

Punch Belly

This game seems pretty straightforward.

Vintage Video Games

I spoke to the gentleman who was fixing the games and he proudly told me that these are from the 1940s!

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Safari Ride

Note the animal head in the center – safari.

Pharaoh’s Fury

This one is obviously a newer ride, but I thought it was amusing. :D

Finally, for those of you not from Jersey, here is what real New Jersey pizza looks like. the food at Keansburg looked really great!

I met this little one at the New York Ren Faire a few weeks ago.

Easily, BEST EVAR.

The woman told me that she raised her from when she was a hatchling. The little duck kept wandering about and getting into trouble. It seemed that all her mother could do was to keep up with her!

Click for larger:

I have a few pictures from our trip to Otakon.

Notice the plastic boxes in the background of this picture. We were so packed into my little car that I had a backpack sitting where my legs were supposed to go in the car. @_@

Thanks to Bryan Prindiville and his wife Sarah who let us stay with them!

Click here to see the rest.

Normally I take more pictures, but we we so busy this time around!

They finally leaked a clip of the Buffy Animated Series!

This series was to take place sometime during season 1 of Buffy. They made this promo in 2001 and it should have been aired on Fox Kids. Unfortunately, Fox Kids got cancelled. Homeless, this show faced the problem of being too expensive and too adult in nature for most kids programming blocks. No prime time slot wanted to air a cartoon.

Joss Whedon wanted to make sure the show was of a certain quality level, so a compromise could not be reached. He declared the show officially dead in 2005, but you can see a sample of what it would be like here:

Buffy is not voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar. She is voiced by the video game voice actress. Most of the other characters are voiced by the original actors, though.

Honestly, I am not sure what I think of the show from this clip. I really like the idea of a Buffy animated show, but this just seems a bit of “HELLO SPUNKY BANTER OMG.” for me. However, knowing that Joss Whedon wrote some episodes, I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that it would have been good. It’s a shame that narrow definitions of what can be shown, cheapness, and product placement rule the day when it come to TV programming. Perhaps this is another great show that just never got a chance…