The Thirteenth Hour Podcast

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #446: Thoughts on Game Design and Ideas on a Homebrew Tomb Raider Card Game

https://archive.org/download/podcast-446/Podcast%20446.mp3

In a much earlier post, I wrote a bit about an unfinished pixelart Tomb Raider game I’d started.  I recently wondered if it would be possible to finish that story (which involved Lara questing after the captured imperial regalia of Japan) but not as a video game.  Given my recent experience making a Rocketeer card game, I wondered if I could do something similar but aim for upping the complexity a bit using some of the ideas I’d thought of from the Rocketeer vs. the Third Reich game that didn’t quite make it in there.  At the very least, I would be able to finally use some of the sprites I made for the game as the art for the cards:

– though the Lara animations have come in handy in all the other times I’ve needed something similar, it would nice to finally use them for somewhat of their intended purpose.

– I figured that Lara could get a cloak at some point that would make her less visible, making her less able to be seen by enemies.  In the Rocketeer card game, Cliff had a rocket pack he could use to avoid combat and get to places, so what if Lara had some sort of detectability statistic that determined how much noise or visibility she possessed?

– I also wondered if Lara could acquire various weapons as she went through the the journey, just like the video games that inspired it.  She would start with pistols, but if she found ones with more abilities, like fully automatic fire, she could use those instead.  I could also give each weapon some stats for its use to determine how its handling would affect the likely of it actually hitting what Lara was shooting at, to account for things like recoil.  On each card, I could include the instructions of how to roll to account for these differences.  For the sake of simplicity, I might assume that all weapons use the same ammunition so there’s one ammo stat to keep track of.

– Lara could start out with her use basic acrobatic abilities, but she could level those abilities up over the game to do additional things, like going from a backflip to a backflip with more height, covering more distance, or adding in a half twist to land in the opposite direction.

– I also wanted Lara to have an unarmed attack that could more silent and not use any ammunition.  She might be able to level that up as well to increase its power or cover more distance, e.g. with a jump.

Say tuned!  Maybe this game and its accompanying story will finally get finished after all these years!

Thanks for listening!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well.  For example, the hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is now done and available on Etsy!

There is also a growing collection of Thirteenth Hour stickers on The Thirteenth Hour Studio store on Redbubble!

Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #445 – Making Earrings with Shrinky Dinks and Like a Hood Ornament #56: Disney Heroes and More

https://archive.org/download/podcast-445/Podcast%20445.mp3

This past week, I made a pair of shrinky dink earrings for my wife for Valentine’s Day.  My kids wanted to make earrings using necklace beads, Perler beads, and resin baubles, so while they made the designs, I did the fiddly part of attaching the bits to the metal earring loops (you can buy earring making kits online for not much money).  I’ve made shrinky dinks before using #6 plastic, so I wanted to see if I could make the dangly bits (I’m sure there’s a name for that) as a shrink dink and then attach it to the earring loops.  I decided to use the infinity sign from the inside jacket of The Thirteenth Hour as the design since I knew it would scale down well, and it means “forever” :).  

Here’s my first attempt …

This one turned out to be too dark.  The colors will dark as they shrink.  

These turned out okay, but they were a little bigger than I had intended (and were darker – holding them up to the light, you can see the different colors, but otherwise, they look black).

So I decided to try a few more times.  Here is the #6 plastic again with the design scratched in.

The colors may look very light when you put them on, and that’s fine.  They will darken!

I used Sharpie markers.  They worked well.

In the oven – 350 degrees F x 8-10 min.  The parchment paper is there to keep the shrinky dinks from folding over on themselves and gluing the halves of themselves together.  More about this in Episode 380.

They’ve shrunk down now by about half their original size.

Here they are!

For the Rocketeer part of this episode, I thought I’d share what the GI Joe articulation style figures of the Rocketeer look like now. 

I just need to figure out how to put the accessories inside.

Lastly, I recently found a free mobile game that has the Rocketeer inside – Disney Heroes.    It’s one of the few games out there with the Rocketeer as a playable character – in this case, an arena style rpg battle game with other Disney characters.  I have included a few pictures and videos below in case you wanted to give it a try.  Though the game itself is +/- in my opinion, I really like the animations they did!  I hope they get used for other things in the future.

Found a game with the #Rocketeer – Disney Heroes.

They also included some mini quests in the game that are specific to the movie, which I thought was a nice touch. 

Thanks for listening!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well.  For example, the hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is now done and available on Etsy!

There is also a growing collection of Thirteenth Hour stickers on The Thirteenth Hour Studio store on Redbubble!

Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #444: Ringing in the Year of the Dragon

https://archive.org/download/podcast-444/Podcast%20444.mp3

This week’s episode is all about dragons.  2024 is here per the lunar calendar, and it’s the year of the dragon.  Interestingly enough, dragons have different mythologies depending on where you live on Earth – in the West, they are often depicted as fierce, aggressive, fire breathing creatures, the evidence of which you can see in many stories that are derived from western European tales.  But in the East, dragons are often viewed as wise, gentle, and cultured creatures.  So you will often see dragons in those traditions paired with tigers in a kind of yin/yang duality with the tiger being the aggressive one.

You can find examples of that symbolism in Eastern martial arts as well as in Asian media – e.g. the 80s manga/anime Crying Freeman uses the tiger/dragon motif continually in its two main characters (Yo and Emu, later in the series renamed with the Chinese surnames Long (龍) and Hu (虎) – “Dragon” and “Tiger,” respectively.  You can see them below (as for what happened to their clothes, well, suffice to say, the characters in this show are capable of superhuman feats due to an unlikely combination of hypnosis + acupuncture + kung fu + nudity (not always in a good way … it’s kind of hard to explain, nor can I say I entirely understand it, but there you go, a prime cut of teenage hormones on steroids).

A little more child friendly – if you’ve ever seen the animated Rankin/Bass movie from 1982, The Flight of Dragons, it actually has both types of dragons (plus a bunch of others) in a fantasy yarn that seems like the sort of thing folks who enjoyed reading Tolkien in college in the 60s got nostalgic for and wanted to create for their kids.  And, I thank thee.  We taped it off the TV when I was a kid, so I wanted it continuously.

A lot of these ideas ended up congealing together when I added dragons into my own books.  I’m reading from a section of The Thirteenth Hour as well during this episode.  In the world of the books, dragons aren’t inherently good or bad, they just are, like another animal, though they do brush up against humans and defend their territory as other animals would.  While not a central part of the books, they do come up quite a few times, affecting the lives of Logan and Aurora, the protagonists.  Dragons are responsible for the deaths of Logan’s parents, a memory that haunts his childhood nightmares.  Aurora later takes on a dragon herself, an act of bravado she later comes to regret, as it leaves her with a wound whose scar she carries for the rest of her life. 

And at the point of the story that I read, both characters, who grew up together and went their separate ways, have reunited and sing a ballad they knew as children called, ironically, enough, “Dragons’ Eyes.”

Before we wrap up, I wanted to leave you with a preview of an episode coming out in a few months.  I recently had a chance to talk with Alexka Chan, archeologist, painter, and author or an upcoming memoir called In the Garden Behind the Moon. 

It’s a tale about her coming to grips with the loss of her parents, especially her father, a larger than life figure, and how myth and story helped not only smooth the grieving process but also created a renewed sense of wonder in life itself.  Sprinkled through the book are traditional Chinese paintings, something she started doing later in life and continued to help rekindle her sense of equanimity as her father was nearing the end of his days.  The paintings are really wonderful, and I asked if she wanted to share any dragons for the new year.  She sent over a few to share:

We’ll hear more from Alexka in May, when her book releases, but until then, you can find about her paintings and books on Alexka’s website, Rising Phoenix Arts as well as on social media:

Instagram

Facebook

Tiktok

Thanks for listening!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well.  For example, the hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is now done and available on Etsy!

There is also a growing collection of Thirteenth Hour stickers on The Thirteenth Hour Studio store on Redbubble!

Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #443: Welcome My Brother, Jeremy, as we talk about Mortal Kombat (1995)

https://archive.org/download/podcast-443/Podcast%20443.mp3

This week, my brother and I are watching the 1995 film, Mortal Kombat, based on the video games from the early 90s.  I somehow missed this one when I was a kid, despite the fact I started martial arts training around then and was hungry for anything in that realm.  However, if you were alive at the time, it was pretty hard to have missed the games and the theme song written done by the Immortals:

The movie really could be distilled down to a series of fights linked together by some kind of confusing story of a tournament that has been going on for ages between this world and some of other one, but really, I doubt anyone watched it for the plot.  If you can’t find the film, you can go on youtube and type in “Mortal Kombat 1995 fights” and find just about all of them.  Here’s one of the ones we talked about on the episode:

As an aside, the main character’s brother in the film is played by none other than Stephen Ho, a frequent guest on Conan.  Again, if you go on youtube, you can find years of these clips.  They are all hilarious:

Speaking of cast members, a number of the actors on this film, famous martial artists in their own right, were also in WMAC Masters, a weekend morning show for kids that sort of replicated Mortal Kombat but for a younger audience.  You can watch them online now at:

Check out Jeremy‘s work over at Pixel Grotto, CBR.com, and Classic Batman Panels on IG. If you are of the DnD persuasion, his articles on DnD Beyond may be right up your alley, and you can view his entire portfolio here.  You can also check out his latest book, where he is a co-author: Pathfinder Adventure Path: No Breath to Cry.  Thanks, Jeremy, for coming on the show!  

And, as an aside, the hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is available on Etsy!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well. 

Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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ynth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #442 and Like a Hood Ornament #55: Reading an Excerpt from “The Rocketeer vs. the Third Reich”

https://archive.org/download/podcast-442/Podcast%20442.mp3

This week, I’m reading an excerpt from a Rocketeer choose your own adventure style short story I wrote that I’ve mentioned here before.  It’s done, and I’ve been looking for beta readers to give it a once over to make sure all the moving parts of the story (since there were multiple story lines).  You can find the story here on the platform Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/360143474-the-rocketeer-vs-the-third-reich-where-you-determine-the-ending

Edit (5/30/24): this story is no longer on Wattpad but can be found as an interactive text based game on itch.io.

We will be reading from the first few segments of the story in this podcast.

In other news, I was recently guest on the show of fellow author and podcaster, Melinda Kucsera, Fantasy, Lore, and More discussing Empty Hands.  You can listen / watch here: https://melindakucsera.com/2024/01/28/fantasy-lore-more-empty-hands/

Speaking of podcasts, you can listen to podcasts like Melinda’s or this one on the platform Fountain and support the show.  You also get paid in Bitcoin to listen.  Here’s the link to listen to The Thirteenth Hour podcast on Fountain.  

Thanks for listening!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well.  For example, the hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is now done and available on Etsy!

There is also a growing collection of Thirteenth Hour stickers on The Thirteenth Hour Studio store on Redbubble!

Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #441 and Like a Hood Ornament #54: A Preview of The Rocketeer vs. the Third Reich Card Game

https://archive.org/download/podcast-441/Podcast%20441.mp3

This week, I’m talking about a Rocketeer card game that is a supplement to the Rocketeer choose your own adventure story that I recently finished, itself the backstory to the game I’ve been working on in GDevelop5.  This is my first attempt to make a card game, and it was quite a bit of fun.  While the full thing will be released with the story after some more play testing, I wanted to talk about it here a bit first.  The story follows the basic premise of the story, where the Rocketeer must traverse a German castle in WW2 to rescue his friend, Peevy, who has been captured by the Third Reich (who wants to make their own rocket troopers).  I used the pixelart that I designed for the game as the card art as well as an analog version of some of the game play mechanics that I had not yet worked out, like how to handle health, fuel, and ammunition.

The game is played as the Rocketeer advances one card at a time closer to Peevy, uncovering cards that might contain scalable parts of the castle, enemy soldiers, and powerups.

Some of the cards are parts if the castle wall, and you have the option of climbing or flying to the next vantage point:

How the game starts:

In this case, the next enemy is a German rocket trooper, and you have 3/4 of a tank left, which you can keep track of on paper or by turning the care to match the amount depicted on each side of the card.

The game ends when you have progressed, card by card, to Peevy. 

Here are the rules as they stand now:

-Needed: Two 6-sided dice. A piece of paper and pencil to jot down your inventory may also help.
-Start with the Rocketeer and Peevy cards.
-Shuffle the rest of the deck and randomly draw at least 8 cards and place them face down in a line. More cards = a longer game.
-Put the Rocketeer card at the start and Peevy at the other end.
-The rest of the deck will be your draw pile.
-The object of the game is to make it to Peevy. To do so, you as the Rocketeer will climb or fly over the castle to where Peevy is being kept captive while either avoiding or defeating enemy soldiers.
-You start the game with 12 HEALTH (100%), 4 FUEL (100%), & 10 rounds of AMMUNITION.
-Start playing by uncovering the first card in the line.
-If that card is a wall piece, it means you can either climb or fly to it. Roll to see if you can climb. If you roll < 7, you can’t climb. However, you can fly there if you have enough fuel. If you don’t, take your chances by drawing another card and placing it over the first one.
-Each flight or succesful climb advances you one card closer to Peevy.
-Your rocketpack holds enough fuel for 4 turns (unless you use up all your fuel at once, thus advancing 4 spaces).
-While you may encounter extra fuel when you uncover a card, it is best to use your fuel supply wisely. To keep track of how much fuel you have, you can turn the Rocketeer card so that the fuel tank indicating your amount faces Peevy.
-If you encounter an enemy, you can avoid a confrontation by flying away (assuming you have enough fuel), or you can choose to fight.
-Combat is turn based. First, determine enemy health via a dice roll. When your attacks have exceeded half the enemy’s health, you have defeated the enemy. (E.g. if enemy HEALTH = 8, once your attacks exceed 4 damage, you have defeated the enemy and can advance one card up.) Next, roll for both the Rocketeer (and the enemy. The high roller gets to attack first.
-The Rocketeer can use either hand to hand techniques (punches or kicks) or his pistol (which requires AMMUNITION). You can do one unarmed technique or fire one bullet per turn. Unarmed techniques are not as powerful, but are necessary if you have no bullets or wish to conserve them> . Your attacks are considered hits if you roll a 7 or above. Rolling a 6 or below is considered a miss, meaning it’s now the enemy’s turn. If you decide midway through the battle that discretion is the better part of valor, you use your next turn to fly away if you have enough fuel.
-Each time you are hit, subtract the amount of damage (eg -4) from your health. If you get to zero, the game is over unless you a health pack to heal yourself.
-Speaking of which, some cards are power ups, giving you additional bullets or health. There are also a few that add to your luck. Should you encounter any of these cards on your journey, keep them and then advance to the next card. Use them as you see fit.
-When you reach Peevy, you have won the game.

For younger children:
-If you wish to play with younger children, there are a few options to make the game simpler. Although it is designed for one person to play solo, a parent can also function as the game master to help with keep track of stats and rolls.
-If parents wish to remove most of the combat aspects of the game, remove the ammunition cards from the deck prior to playing. Combat now becomes essentially symbolic and the only statistics to keep track of are fuel and health. When the player encounters an enemy, instead of rolling to see who goes first, the high roller is the winner of the confrontation. If the Rocketeer loses (i.e. gets a low roll), then subtract the number of the roll from the Rocketeer’s total health. At zero, the game is over. The player can still choose to avoid combat entirely by flying away.

Thanks for listening!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well.  For example, the hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is now done and available on Etsy!

There is also a growing collection of Thirteenth Hour stickers on The Thirteenth Hour Studio store on Redbubble!

Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #440: Welcome My Brother, Jeremy, as talk about Priest (2011)

https://archive.org/download/podcast-440/Podcast%20440.mp3

This week, my brother and I are watching the 2011 film, Priest – Jeremy had seen the film previously on an airplane (great plane movie, by the way), and it was my first time viewing it.  Very fun little movie that is a good, stylish follow up to our last outing (Robin Hood 2018).  Here’s the trailer (which basically encapsulates the film in 2 minutes): 

Check out Jeremy‘s work over at Pixel Grotto, CBR.com, and Classic Batman Panels on IG. If you are of the DnD persuasion, his articles on DnD Beyond may be right up your alley, and you can view his entire portfolio here.  You can also check out his latest book, where he is a co-author: Pathfinder Adventure Path: No Breath to Cry.  Thanks, Jeremy, for coming on the show!  

And, as an aside, the hunter action figure (also a cloaked figure, like the Priests in this film) from A Shadow in the Moonlight is available on Etsy!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well. 

Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

ynth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #439: Making Figures from Fodder

https://archive.org/download/podcast-439/Podcast%20439.mp3

This week’s episode is all about making something out of what some might see as nothing.  Whenever you make resin toys, there are always some left overs or parts that don’t quite fill correctly.  Air bubbles get in the way, parts don’t fill completely, or pieces break.  But – that does not mean they’re useless.  I generally put these pieces aside with the idea that someday, I’ll be able to fix them.  This episode a number of such projects.

Take these resin Aurora minis, for example.  They all had issues in casting, mostly due to the wrong resin being used, resulting in highly detailed areas, like the face, not fully forming.  So I recast that area but putting some resin in the mold and plopping the figure on top.  I will later paint these so you shouldn’t be able to tell.

This Rocketeer mini actually does not move, though the pieces he came from were cast with the intention that they would.  So I fixed what I could and glued it all together.  With a bit more finishing to remove the rough spots and maybe another coat of paint, it should make a fine ornament.

I never thought I’d get more casts out of the Beverly Switzler mold.  But I was able to eck out a few more.  They require a lot of finishing but I was surprised at how well the mold still held up despite it being pretty broken.  This piece needs a bit more finishing, but I suspect after a coat of paint, it should also make a nice ornament.

These Logan and Aurora minis were all experiments in using various kinds of resin that didn’t work very well.  I decided to paint them all in full color.  The Logans are done.  The Auroras just need a bit more work.  They may make nice ornaments as well.

Speaking of Logan, this piece was modified from a 3D printed mini from Hero Forge.  I sculpted on hair, a hood/scarf, the tunic, and the pants.

These figures were cobbled together from broken pieces from the making of the 5 POA Thirteenth Hour resin figures.  I decided to thread a dowel in between the limbs to connect them together.   There is a video showing this on Patreon which is open to everyone:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/companion-video-96079997

More detail on what the inside looks like.  Not as complex as what I had done before but the outward effect is similar.

In the final finishing, I just need to cover up these joint pegs.

These should also make nice ornaments after some more finishing.

Thanks for listening!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well.  For example, the hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is now done and available on Etsy!

There is also a growing collection of Thirteenth Hour stickers on The Thirteenth Hour Studio store on Redbubble!

Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #438: Welcome to 2024! Goals, Incremental Changes, Fairytales of New York, and More.

https://archive.org/download/podcast-438/Podcast%20438.mp3

This week’s episode, the first of 2024, released on New Year’s Day, is to not only ring in the New Year but also to talk about goals and the process of making and attaining them.  Are you a New Year’s resolution person?  As mentioned in the podcast, I do enjoy the process but don’t wait until New Year’s to do it.  However, I really like the fact that for at least a few weeks out of the year, society is collectively involved in some kind of positive betterment of themselves and their world.  I know some people are more cynical about it, but hey, something is better than nothing. 

I think that is why the song, “Fairytale of New York” is my favorite Christmas song.  It’s not exactly a happy song … but then the winter holidays are not always happy times for everyone.  But it ends on a more hopeful note, with hopes and dreams for a better year to come.  I love that message.  It’s one of the core parts of The Thirteenth Hour, and it’s probably why I like the films that inspired it, like The Neverending Story, The Last Starfighter, and The Rocketeer, because they’re basically self contained fairy tales with a fundamental belief that tomorrow can be better than today.   I wish the same for you this year!

Thanks for listening, and best wishes in 2024.

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well.  For example, the hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is now done and available on Etsy!

There is also a growing collection of Thirteenth Hour stickers on The Thirteenth Hour Studio store on Redbubble!

Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #437: Welcome Back Adam Crohn for the Christmas 2023 Episode on Jingle All The Way (1996)!

https://archive.org/download/podcast-437/Podcast%20437.mp3

In this week’s episode, my buddy and friend of the show, Adam Crohn returns back to the show for the Christmas episode as we talk about the 1996 movie,  with Sinbad and Arnold Schwarzeneggar.  It was my first time watching it, and it was a hoot.  In the spirit of the season and the film, I asked Adam if he could send in any old photos he had from his childhood Christmases:

If you look closely, you’ll see some 80s gems in the pics!  Bonus points if you can spot the LJN Dungeons and Dragons figures.

He also sent along some Turboman photos and his list of Xmas movies in case you needed any suggestions.  And for those Rocketeer fans out there, if you look at Turboman’s rocketpack, the central fan on the pack looks very much like the Cirrus X-3 design from the 1991 Rocketeer movie.

We also talk some about malls we grew up with.  I was able to find a few pictures of the mall in northern NJ that I remember going to – it had a KB Toys (my favorite part) but also this really cool indoor waterfall/staircarse/artificial cliff, just like something out of a Frank Lloyd Wright structure.  I was only able to find one picture below (from here) since I think it was torn down during a renovation, but structures like this, plus a number of other little “island” with indoor trees made you feel like you were walking through an indoor forest, especially at night.

Thanks, Adam for coming on the show.  Check out his illustrations over at ACDrawstuff as well as his main page at ACToythanks. 

Thanks for listening, and happy holidays!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well.  For example, the hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is now done and available on Etsy!

There is also a growing collection of Thirteenth Hour stickers on The Thirteenth Hour Studio store on Redbubble!

Check out this collaboration with past show guest Jeff Finley on handpan: 

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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