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This week, I'm reading the second part of the twenty first chapter of the Peter David penned movie novelization of the 1991 Rocketeer film. This part of the film picks up on the gondola of the zepplin, and you can watch the segment in the film (at least partly) here. One thing I always wondered as a kid was that if you shot a flare at something, would it actually ricochet like it does in the movie. If you search on Youtube, you can find a number of video of people doing exactly this, so yes, it probably would, and like in the movie, it may, in fact, do more damage to the shooter than the the target.
Three upcoming events this week!
1.) The release party for Once Upon a Dream is tonight! 6/9/25 at 5 PM EST. Join me a free, exclusive listening party to celebrate the upcoming release of Once Upon a Dream, the retro 80s synthpop/new wave album I've been working on for the past seven years or so. We'll be listening to the album (runtime is a little over an hour) and talking about how it was made. Looking forward to sharing it with you! RSVP here!
2.) Modern Dads of Martial Arts, published by Whistlekick, is coming out on 6/10/25. This is a collection of thirteen essays written by martial artist dads. Just in time for Father's Day. I have an essay in it. I loved reading the whole thing (read it in pre-production). I honestly think aspects of martial arts can help make us better versions of ourselves, and in the case of us guys, better husbands, fathers, and human beings.
3.) Once Upon a Dream releases on 6/13/25! It will be out digitally first, but CDs and tapes are on their way.
Thanks for listening!
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This week, I'm reading the first part of the twenty first chapter of the Peter David penned movie novelization of the 1991 Rocketeer film. Before we get to the reading, there are a few noteworthy announcements:
-I finished a set of breaking training cards to help add an element of randomization to solo dance practices. Those are available on itch.io and are free to print out. I will make a physical version of the cards and an instructional video in the coming weeks but to anyone that might find them useful, they are available now. I ended up using animations that were originally made for a breaking game I tried to make about 20 years ago.
-Speaking of animation, I made a pixelart animation for the song "Forward" to go with the release of Once Upon a Dream (6/13/25). That video is available here.
This week's reading of the Rocketeer chapter accompanies the section of the film where things come to a climax over the skies of the Griffith Observatory. You can watch the exciting shootout here.
Pictures from the show notes are all available at https://13thhr.wordpress.com/2025/06/02/the-thirteenth-hour-podcast-512-and-like-a-hood-ornament-78-reading-the-rocketeer-movie-novelization-chapter-21-part-1/
Thanks for listening!
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Don't forget that the original hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is available on Etsy!
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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK8lTEQoc_g
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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Synth 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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This week, I'm reading the twentieth chapter of the Peter David penned movie novelization of the 1991 Rocketeer film. There's a whole bunch of prereading announcements that occur prior to this (about 22 min in; it's not a long chapter). This chapter takes place in Griffith Observatory, which is a real life location you can visit should you ever find yourself in Los Angeles. I was there a number of years ago, at night, and it did look pretty much the same as it had in the film about ten years prior. This section has some cool dialogue between Eddie Valentine and Neville Sinclair as well as a great shot of the Rocketeer flying in and landing in a very controlled way. For a guy who nearly killed himself trying to land it just a short time before (a day or two at most), Cliff sure got the hang of it! Thanks for listening!
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https://13thhr.wordpress.com/2025/05/26/the-thirteenth-hour-podcast-511-and-like-a-hood-ornament-77-reading-the-rocketeer-movie-novelization-chapter-20/
This week, I had the honor of speaking to Scott Holcomb, who was Hideo Takamini in the 1986 film, Spacecamp, one of my favorite films, and one I watched over and over as a kid (not seen it? I was not able to find it streaming anywhere, but you can find it on Youtube, e.g. here). I stumbled on Scott's contact info when I was making the first wave of Spacecamp Lego minifigures as a fundraiser for Spacecamp scholarships. I have since decided to make a second wave (since I gave away and sold all the others I made and wanted to keep at least one!) but this time, added Hideo Takamini as a bonus figure. More of this project in the next week or so. That said, I was really stoked to talk to Scott.
Aside from geeking out about Spacecamp as a movie, there's something more serious I always really wanted to ask someone about. Problem was, I never could quite put my finger on how to articulate it as a kid. But it had to do with something that always kind of bothered me about the film, even in childhood (and I say that as megafan who made my parents borrow the VHS tape from the local grocery store again and again for months until my father finally found me my own copy). There was this scenario in the beginning of the film where one of the characters, Kevin Donaldson (Tate Donovan) switches ID badges with Hideo Takamini (Scott Holcomb) in order to be on the same team as another camper, Kathryn Fairly (Lea Thompson). It happens in the blink of an eye, but even as a kid, it made me wonder. Why did the writers stick in a ruse like that? Why not just have Kathryn and Kevin be on the same team to begin with? I guess the point was to set up romantic tension right from the beginning, this being a teen movie and all, but did they really need to do it at someone else's expense? Why pick on the Asian guy with glasses? Did we (I say this as an Asian guy who wore very similar aviator glasses to Hideo Takamini's as a kid) really need further reminders we weren't one of the cool kids? This always kind of bothered me, though it took me until adulthood to finally be able to formulate my thoughts on it articulately, and we dig into it in the episode.
... more at https://13thhr.wordpress.com/2025/05/19/the-thirteenth-hour-podcast-510-welcome-scott-holcomb-from-spacecamp-1986/
... All that said, it was great to be able to talk to Scott about all this. We managed to squeeze the conversation in his work day (Scott is a science teacher), and I'm glad we did! Thanks, Scott, for coming on the show and helping young people discover more about themselves and their world through science. We need it more today than ever!
If you are a Spacecamp alum, Scott wanted me to make sure to let folks know about the yearly summer reunion in Huntsville (this year, 7/11-7/12). I am planning to have my Spacecamp Lego figures done before then, where they will be donated for a silent auction to help raise money for camp scholarships.
You can learn more about the US Space and Rocket Foundation here. You can make donations to support the camp and its work under the "give" tab on that page.
Thanks for listening!
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This past two weeks, I have had the honor of speaking to Sahbunim Jamie Webster, who played himself (and the character of Great Wolf) in the mid 90s martial arts show, WMAC Masters. Sahbunim (abbreviated here as SBN) is the Korean term for master instructor at a martial arts school, and the Webster Martial Arts academies have been serving the Northern Alabama region since 1973, when SBN Jamie's father, opened the first martial arts school in the area. We had a great conversation about many topics - martial arts history, WMAC Masters, breaking, toy collecting and more, and it was long enough that for the sake of editing, I broke it into two episodes. You can find part one here.
A lot of today's episode is about collecting. WMAC Masters, similar to a lot of other children's programs of the era, was created with the idea of selling toys. The company producing the show, Saban, had the toys made through its manufacturing partner, Bandai, and while you can still find the figures around today, since the show only went 2 seasons (26 episodes), there were probably more figures that would have been made had the show been around longer. I never had any as a kid, since I was a teenager when the show aired and didn't really play with action figures by that time, but I did pick up a Great Wolf figure on ebay for this interview.
Jamie also sent me a number of pictures from his own extensive collections, which he describes in the episode.
See them here: https://13thhr.wordpress.com/2025/05/12/the-thirteenth-hour-podcast-509-welcome-sahbunim-jamie-webster-great-wolf-from-wmac-masters-part-2/
Jamie has an extensive collection of WMAC Masters memorabilia as well, and it just feels right that a star of the show would have one of the largest, if not the largest collections of show stuff ever. If you visit the links below, you can see him talking about his costume (which he still has) and more.
A few related books:
If you are interested in the show, to my knowledge there was never a "making of" book created when it came out, but author Kristopher Landis wrote an extensive behind the scenes book called Quest for the Dragon Star you can find here. Highly recommended! SBN Jamie has quotes featured in a number of the segments.
I recently also wrote a segment for a book being published by whistlekick's books division. I wrote about watching WMAC Masters as a teenager, seeing SBN Jamie doing windmills, and how that spurred me on a years long quest to be able to do the same. The show was such an inspiring thing to have as a kid since it was positive and full or actual martial artists I read about in magazine who were more or less playing themselves and saying and doing things good martial arts instructors would do (at least in season one). Anyhow, that segment is part of a book called Modern Dads of Martial Arts, Vol 1, and is coming out 6/10/25. There actually was a mom edition (Happy Mother's Day all you moms out there) that released last year called Modern Moms of Martial Arts, Vol 1. Check them out!
If you have not see WMAC Masters, you can find all the episodes uploaded to Youtube here. They were never released on DVD, to my knowledge, so these are, I believe episodes that a kind soul likely taped off the TV and then digitized and eventually uploaded.
You can learn more about SBN Jamie and his schools here:
-The Webster Martial Arts Academy of Decatur
-The Webster Martial Arts Academy of Madison
-Tiktok
-Youtube
Thanks for being on the show, SBN Jamie, and thanks for listening!
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This week, I had the honor of speaking to Sahbunim Jamie Webster, who played himself (and the character of Great Wolf) in the mid 90s martial arts show, WMAC Masters. Sahbunim (abbreviated here as SBN) is the Korean term for master instructor at a martial arts school, and the Webster Martial Arts academies have been serving the Northern Alabama region since 1973, when SBN Jamie's father, opened the first martial arts school in the area. We had a great conversation about many topics - martial arts history, WMAC Masters, breaking, toy collecting and more, and it was long enough that for the sake of editing, I broke it into two episodes.
I was in high school by the time WMAC Masters aired and had been doing martial arts for just a few years. Though I was a little beyond watching cartoons on weekend mornings by then, I do remember getting up to try to watch episodes of WMAC Masters, since they were one of the few sources of martial arts I could find on network television (unless there was the Chuck Norris or Van Damme movie or the odd kung fu film playing on this random Spanish language channel that had them sometimes). SBN Jamie was a Native American character on the show called Great Wolf, who, besides being a pretty swell martial artist and acrobat, was also a breakdancer. He did windmills on the show a number of times. I talked about how seeing him on the show was one of the reasons I wanted to learn how to do the move on a previous episode, so when I stumbled across his school contact info, I had to reach out to thank him. We get to talk all about mills and other acrobatics on this episode!
If you have not see WMAC Masters, you can find all the episodes uploaded to Youtube here. They were never released on DVD, to my knowledge, so these are, I believe episodes that a kind soul likely taped off the TV and then digitized and eventually uploaded.
You can learn more about SBN Jamie and his schools here:
-The Webster Martial Arts Academy of Decatur
-The Webster Martial Arts Academy of Madison
-Tiktok
-Youtube
Stay tuned for part 2 next week!
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This week, I'm reading the nineteenth chapter of the Peter David penned movie novelization of the 1991 Rocketeer film. This chapter takes place in the study of Howard Hughes, the inventor of the Cirrus X-3 rocketpack in the world of the film (in Dave Steven's original story, it was his unnamed analogue of Doc Savage). In this scene, you can see what's in Cliff's pockets, a Dave Stevens cameo as an ill-fated German rocketeer, an animated film featuring German rocket troopers, and references to the Spruce Goose (the Hughes H-4, a gargantuan - 218 ft long with a 319 ft wingspan - wooden flying boat meant to ferry men and equipment across the Atlantic during WW2). Interestingly enough, the book has Cliff hang glide from Howard Hughes' study all the way to the Chaplin airfield (which was actually filmed in Santa Maria, CA, some 150+ miles northwest)! Presumably, the airfield in the movie was not actually in Santa Maria. That said, there is a museum there, the Santa Maria Museum of Flight, that has a number of remaining props used in the film, as it was the real life hangar used in the film (check out this clip for some very thorough detective work of filming locations).
Although it aired on Disney Channel around the time the movie was released, Rocketeer: Excitement in the Air (both a featurette on the film as well as a documentary on manned flight hosted by Billy Campbell) has some shots of the real life Spruce Goose as well as some shots of its maiden (and only) flight as well as some info on Howard Hughes. It's well worth a watch!
Thanks for listening!
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https://13thhr.wordpress.com/2025/04/28/the-thirteenth-hour-podcast-507-and-like-a-hood-ornament-76-reading-the-rocketeer-movie-novelization-chapter-19/
This week, my brother and I are watching the 1981 movie, Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge, a composite of two 1979 episodes of The Amazing Spider-Man where Peter Parker ends up in pre-handover Hong Kong protecting an influential Chinese diplomat. As far as we could tell, the live action Spider-Man show did not have that much to do with the comics and take a more realistic view of what a man in a spidersuit, albeit one with special powers, could realistically accomplish. The series is not available on Disney+, unlike many of the other Marvel properties, but you can watch the two year run (1977-1979) on Youtube for free. The last two episodes ("The Chinese Web") of the series (there are 13 total) form this movie, which oddly enough was only released internationally.
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 as well as an upcoming exploration TTRPG with Three Sail Studios, Mappa Mundi. Thanks, Jeremy, for coming on the show!
Don't forget that the original 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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK8lTEQoc_g
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 synth 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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This week, I'm reading the eighteenth chapter of the Peter David penned movie novelization of the 1991 Rocketeer film. This short chapter takes place in the Bulldog Diner and features a scene where Cliff falls down a ladder from the attic after he is startled by Patsy, the daughter of the proprietress, Millie, and in the censored version we'd taped off the Disney channel when I was a kid, they actually dubbed over the work "heck," so instead of "you scared the living ... heck out of me!" it became "you scared the living daylights out of me!" It's funny, when I think of that scene, it's still the censored version I hear in my head :)
In other news, I have been getting Once Upon a Dream reading for production (6/13/25 is the release). In the process, I made a "study mix" from some of the instrumental tracks. If you click here, you can listen to it on Youtube.
Thanks for listening!
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https://13thhr.wordpress.com/2025/04/21/the-thirteenth-hour-podcast-505-and-like-a-hood-ornament-75-reading-the-rocketeer-movie-novelization-chapter-18/
This week, I'm reading the seventeenth chapter of the Peter David penned movie novelization of the 1991 Rocketeer film. This chapter takes place in Neville Sinclair's home, where he's kidnapped her, though she ends up figuring out how to get the upper hand, at least temporarily. I don't remember if I usually fast forwarded through this part as a kid, but I think I usually wanted to since I always through Neville was such a creep (and this scene certainly hits different in 2025), but I have to admire Jenny's resourcefulness. There was very limited merchandise put out for the Rocketeer, but I don't believe Jenny got any, which is a shame. I have always thought that she should have her own action figure as well, and perhaps I will make one. I have some possible figures I could use.
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From the publisher's feed