Dime Store Reads: Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

“The electric things have their life too.”

First published in the late 1960’s, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is an odd book that plays straight for the most part but wanders into disjointed realms (on purpose) at times. I picked this book up for three bucks at a local Dollar General store. Having heard about the book for years and both of the films that were inspired by it (Blade Runner (1982) and 2017’s Blade Runner 2049), I decided to see what all the fuss was about.

I’ve never seen either of the films that this book is based upon nor have I read the book until just recently. I have to admit that I really enjoyed the book, especially its dystopian setting and the bleakness of the entire read. The story focuses on a bounty hunter named Rick Deckard who is tasked with eliminating six android adversaries. The six androids are new Nexus-6 models that are almost impossible to distinguish from humans. The androids murdered their owners on Mars and escaped to Earth in the hopes of blending into society. As the story goes along, Deckard encounters an android that makes him question his motives for “retiring” the murderous models, teams up with a fellow bounty hunter that may or may not be an android himself, and goes on the hunt for a live animal for his wife, Iran.

Without giving too much away, I was very intrigued by the story involving Resch, the bounty hunter that begins to doubt his own humanity as a result of a massive fabrication made by the androids. When Deckard begins working with him, it gave me a lot of insight into Deckard’s true feelings. I also enjoyed the androids, particularly Pris Stratton and Luba Luft. Luft proves to be quite prepared to keep herself alive and she does a fine job of holding off Deckard for the most part. Pris uses a “chickenhead” named John Isidore to hide herself and two other androids. Isidore is called a chickenhead because that term is used to describe humans who have slowed mental capabilities or other deficiencies due to the effects of radiation following World War Terminus.

The story reveals how humans are losing their own humanity, resorting to following a religion known as Mercerism, which uses virtual reality to trigger empathy within people. It involves an old guy getting hammered by rocks and eventually leads to Deckard and Isidore both experiencing virtual reality bizarreness, but you’ll have to read the book to catch what’s happening and define it for yourself. Humans also use Penfield Mood Boxes to literally dial up an emotional state, encouragement, denial, and more. Again, this shows how humans are losing their humanity and, in reality, the androids are probably more human than….humans.

This book makes you think and I quite enjoyed reading it. Deckard isn’t necessarily the nicest of guys and I actually preferred the android moments more than his own. I recommend checking this book out. It’s definitely worth a read. It’s also convinced me to watch both of the Blade Runner flicks. When I do get a chance to see them, I’ll be sure to blog about them here.

Thanks for checking out my post. I’m currently reading a book about fan fiction therapy and…..it’s a task. I’ll be sure to let all of you know how good or bad it is very soon!

A New Marvel Film, Short Film Fun, And More…..

“Okay, see you…..in September!”

Today is Simu Liu’s birthday. Fans of Kim’s Convenience (available in the United States on Netflix) already know Liu as Jung, the elder Kim sibling who has a strained relationship with his father in the series. For the rest of the world, Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will most likely be their introduction to the actor.

Simu Liu (rear, left) with the stellar cast of Kim’s Convenience. L to R: Andrea Bang, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Andrew Phung, Jean Yoon, and Nicole Power.

I can’t wait for this film to hit in September. Shang-Chi offers us a chance to see Marvel spread its wings a bit and take a chance on a character that few outside of the comic book shop have ever heard about in pop culture. I know that I’m in the minority when I say this, but Marvel has pretty much been on autopilot with their films, with strategic releases of lesser known character flicks like Captain Marvel, Ant-Man, and Black Panther book-ended by bigger films or with those characters introduced in movies anchored by characters like Captain America and Iron Man. Shang-Chi is pretty much walking into theaters solo, much like the first Iron Man flick did so many years ago. Hopefully Shang-Chi will breathe new life into a stale MCU. Be sure to check out the teaser trailer here.

In other news, I spent most of my Saturday in Sulphur, LA at the Henning Cultural Center. I attended the Calcasieu Parish Short Film Festival. I watched a ton of excellent short films and even got to assist with the awards ceremony at the end of the event. Kudos go out to Patrick Bennett, director of the festival, and Thom Trahan and Kat Godsey, executive director and assistant director, respectively, of the Brimstone Museum and Henning Cultural Center. Not only did they put on an excellent event, they did so without two important buildings. The Brimstone Museum was completely destroyed by Hurricane Laura last year and the annex building (which usually houses many of the events on site, including the film festival) received extensive damage. Neither were available to be used for the festival. The Henning House came out of Hurricane Laura in relatively good shape, and was the sole building available for use. It proved to be a great setting for the event.

In other news, CONVENTIONS ARE MAKING A COMEBACK! I’m hoping to attend Day Ga Com in May this year. If I do get to go, it will be the first convention that I’ve attended in over a year! The guest list looks pretty awesome and they’re going to have wrestling going on as well, so I really want to go. Louisiana Comic Con is returning in August as well. Earlier this year I was offered the chance to put on a panel for a virtual version of CyPhaCon, but due to having to deal with the loss of my home during Hurricane Laura and a ton of other things, I did not turn in a panel for the event. I didn’t feel that I had enough time to prepare something that would be enjoyable for virtual attendees. That being said, I did turn in a panel for Louisiana Comic Con and I hope that my panel is selected for presentation.

Louisiana Comic Con has released the names of a few of this year’s guests, my favorite being Doug Jones of Hellboy and Star Trek Discovery fame. He’s been in a ton of films and television shows including Pan’s Labyrinth, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and Hocus Pocus. Plus, he’s a great guest. I met him a few years ago at a Wizard World show in New Orleans.

In other news, I’m currently reading Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Look for my review in the near future. It will be a part of my Dimestore Reads series. Dollar General has surprised me with some of their book selections lately, and there are a couple more reviews around the corner from that store coming soon!

Thanks for checking out this quick post. More toy, film, and book reviews are on the way!

Star Wars The Black Series: Bo-Katan Kryze

“…Mandalorians are stronger together.”

I really like Hasbro’s The Black Series line of Star Wars figures. I’ve purchased quite a few over the years but always try to limit myself to characters that I love and/or figures that look wonderful. Recently, Hasbro has unleashed a number of new figures on collectors, many of which come from Disney’s wildly successful The Mandalorian series. To be quite honest, there aren’t many of the figures from this series that I want to purchase, but one figure, Bo-Katan Kryze, caught my eye.

Why did I choose to pick up a Bo-Katan figure? For the simple fact that I really enjoyed the character on Star Wars: The Clone Wars and was glad to see her return in a live action series. Katee Sackhoff’s portrayal of the character on the animated Clone Wars was flawless, and her live action delivery very good as well. I’d love to meet her one day and get a photo and autograph.

As far as the figure goes, it’s excellent. Sackhoff’s likeness is captured extremely well and her armor looks wonderful. The figure comes with Bo-Katan’s iconic Nite Owl helmet, complete with Mandalorian markings and movable rangefinder, and her armor is scored by scratches, burns, and other battle damage marks.

The helmet is removable and I have had a long debate as to whether or not I should display the figure with or without her helmet. Her included blasters can be holstered or held in her hands. Her jetpack looks great as well.

The figure features the standard multi points of articulation that allow her to be posed in a number of ways. Unlike many other armored figures in the line over the years, Bo-Katan’s articulation isn’t hindered too much by shoulder pads, shin guards, or anything else.

I don’t plan on getting any of the other figures from The Mandalorian at the moment. It’s nothing personal, I just don’t have the shelf space or funds to justify buying tons of figures that I really don’t want. Bo-Katan is a must-have for fans of the character, though. It’s a great figure in a very long line of excellent figures released by Hasbro.

Thanks for reading my post. I have to apologize for the somewhat blurry photos. I recently received a new ring light and this was my first attempt at using it. I hope to have a new phone in the next few months and hopefully that will remedy my blurry photos. Oh, and if you’re a photographer, I’d love to hear some tips on using a phone camera for pictures. I know that it’s not ideal, but it’s all that I have at the moment.

Godzilla Vs. Kong

“Hell….It Goes To Hell.”

Yep, things go to a special kind of Hell during Godzilla Vs. Kong (2021). Don’t get my words wrong here, I’m quoting a humorous part of the film in my heading, but a lot of things do fall apart, get smashed, burn, get hacked up, and ripped to shreds throughout this film. It’s exactly what one would expect from an all-out brawl featuring the two most famous titans in monster history. This film was loud, fun, stupid at times, and everything you need for a couple of hours to get away from reality.

In the movie, something provokes Godzilla to attack Apex Cybernetics in Pensacola, FL. The attack, which catches the entire world off guard, triggers in motion a series of events that leads to Apex sending an elite squad and King Kong on a journey to find a power source strong enough to use in a weapon to defeat Godzilla. The big lizard has other plans, though, and tries to stop King Kong thanks to an apparent longstanding rivalry between the families of the titans. The duo square off in two massive battles, but something happens during the second battle that throws everybody’s (titan and human) plans into disarray. When the dust settles, who is the final monster standing? Who is the real enemy? You’ll have to watch Godzilla Vs. Kong in order to find out.

Below is a spoiler-fueled review, so stop right now if you haven’t seen the film yet. If you have seen the film, carry on and be sure to tell me in the comments what you thought of the film. For those of you who haven’t seen it, my recommendation is to see this film, preferably on

This movie was fun. It’s loaded with a ton of Easter eggs that call back to previous films in the franchise and the classic 1962 film, King Kong Vs. Godzilla. The movie is essentially three slug fests sprinkled with a minute amount of human interactions and plenty of action and new creatures. If you’ve seen the film, you know that it can be extremely loud, extremely dumb, and extremely exciting, sometimes all at the same time.

The film features some very solid special effects. I especially loved the battle in Hong Kong. The neon city looks brilliant and is the perfect playground for two (and eventually three) titans to pound one another in while the humans looked on helplessly. The first battle between Godzilla and King Kong was more fun than I was expecting and the second battle, especially the grand finale where King Kong gets to show off his fury, blew me away. The big face off between King Kong and Mechagodzilla had me cheering out loud. I loved seeing King Kong beat down the giant robot.

The adventure to and in Hollow Earth was the low point for me in the film. I enjoyed it, I just wish that it would have been edited down just a little bit because despite all of the amazing creatures, the fight with the warbats, and the battle in Kong’s throne room, the sequence felt a little out of place. I do look forward to more films that take place in Hollow Earth and I hope that Godzilla finds his way down there eventually as well.

If anybody dislikes this film because the science is unbelievable, they are an idiot. If you have to justify the science in a movie that features giant monsters and robots, worlds within our planet’s core, or a big lizard can nuke breathe his way to the center of the planet, you have missed the point of a film that features such things. This movie is meant to be fun and that is exactly what it is from beginning to end. The science doesn’t have to make sense. The plot just needs enough meat on its bones to bring the two titans together so that we can watch them try to destroy one another. Heck, you could even argue that Mechagodzilla could be tossed into the next film instead of being used so quickly in this one.

As far as the human cast goes, they did a good enough job to get us to fight night. The standouts for me were Kaylee Hottle as Jia, Kong’s deaf companion who gets him on a level that no other human does, and Brian Tyree Henry as Bernie, the podcasting conspiracy theory Apex employee who figures out (with a little help from Madison and Joshua), that Apex is planning to unleash Mechagodzilla on the world and are using Kong in order to get the power that they need to pump the metal monster full of power. I enjoyed seeing Madison (Millie Bobbie Brown) and her dad, Dr. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) return even though they weren’t necessarily needed to make the movie work. Rebecca Hall, Shun Oguri, Julian Dennison, Eiza Gonzalez, and the rest of the cast also did great jobs.

I loved the “big axe down the throat of Godzilla” homage to a similar scene involving Kong jamming a tree down Godzilla’s throat in the original film featuring this duo. I also loved how at one point in the Hong Kong battle that the two titans were moving about the buildings in a way very reminiscent of the classic Godzilla films featuring miniatures of the city. I don’t know if that particular moment was intentional, but it reminded me of those old movies. Other highlights included Mechagodzilla sneaking up behind Walter Simmons (Demian Bichir) and killing him mid epic speech, Kong’s literal crushing of Simmons’ daughter (Gonzalez) and her crew mates aboard one of the H.E.A.V. vehicles, and Mechagodzilla splitting one of the Skullcrawlers in half. I loved the use of the Godzilla Spike Axe by Kong, the atomic breath of Godzilla boring through the planet, and so much more.

Was the film perfect? Absolutely not, but it was a ton of fun. It’s exactly what you’d want from a film featuring giant kaiju that blast radiation and swing giant power axes at one another. The action was fast and loud and in the end nobody really cared about any of the humans in the film. People watch this movie to see the big guys beat each other up and this film delivers that in spades.

I hope that you enjoyed my review of this film. Tell me your thoughts on the movie in the comment section. What did you like? What did you hate? Are you ready for another monster movie? Thanks for reading my post. See you again real soon.