I'm off to Spooky Empire's Screamfest here in Orlando this weekend. I'm not a super huge horror fan, so I'm not as psyched about going as a lot of folks might be. It's going to be a work weekend for me, as I'll be covering the convention for www.Fandomania.com and www.Mechazilla.com. I'll also be doing interviews with whatever guests I can grab for my podcast.

Among the notables that I'll be trying to talk with:

Malcolm McDowell
Elvira
Angus Scrimm
William Forsythe
Jason Mewes
Dana Snyder
Steve and Tango from Ghost Hunters
Tom Savini

There are a ton of other guests coming, so hopefully I'll end up with some good audio. I was looking forward to meeting Clive Barker, George Romero, Shawnee Smith, and Missi Pyle, but all of them suddenly canceled a week or two ago.

This is, without question, the most awesome cake I've seen in a long, long time. Everything you see there is edible, including the LEGO figures, which actually are made from sugar. It's gorgeous, but there's no way I could bring myself to eat it or even to watch somebody cut into this thing.

There are more photos and info here:

http://fandomania.com/lego-batman-video-game-cake/

I have a brand new copy of Saint's Row 2 on the way to me for $39.71. Here's how I did it:

I had it in my rental queue at Gamefly and made sure I had an open slot in my rentals (I'm on the two-games-at-a-time plan) on Sunday. Last night (Monday) I received the notice that Saint's Row 2 had shipped to me. So I went to Gamefly and hit "Keep It." Because I've been a Gamefly member for more than 12 months, I get 10% off any game purchases, even if they're games that have *just* released. Every 3 months I get a $5 off coupon, and I'd saved this one for just this instance.

$46.99 - Gamefly "Keep It" price
+$2.42 - Tax
+$0.00 - Shipping
-$4.70 - Loyalty level 3 (10% off)
-$5.00 - Coupon
=====
$39.71 - Total

That's not half bad, compared to $59.99 plus tax at standard retail. It's shipped from Tampa,...

I just got a look at this new 12" Harvey Dent figure, and it's pretty amazing. Not only does it come with swappable heads (Harvey and Two-Face), but it also comes with swappable jackets (intact and half-burned). This is being made by Hot Toys, the same company that is making the ginormous 12" scale Batmobile.

Anybody here a fan of Eureka? Cinemedia has provided me with some CD soundtracks from the TV show, and I'm running a contest this week to give one of them away. You can check out the details here:

http://fandomania.com/contest-eureka-soundtrack-cd/

The soundtrack has music by Bear McCreary, who is incredibly awesome and also does the music for Battlestar Galactica.

I just added some supreme awesomeness to my Star Wars collection in the form of this statue by Gentle Giant. I did a full writeup about it at Mechazilla but wanted to share a few pics here as well. I mostly got it because I'm a big Christopher Lee / Count Dooku fan, but Asajj Ventress ended up being the coolest thing about this collectible.

I got super busy with work over the last while and fell out of practice blogging here. I'll give it another shot and hopefully stick with it this time.

Last week my sixth XBox 360 gave up the ghost. I was able to get a pretty fast replacement from Microsoft, as the new system arrived today. When I called to report the death, I had asked the agent I spoke with if there would be any way the replacement system could have the HDMI output this time (as I've been running on non-HDMI Premium systems since the 360's launch). The agent told me I could, but when the package arrived today, it was a standard old Premium with only component outs. I called up MYXBOX again, told them my plight, and got passed around a few times before finally speaking with a supervisor who told me Microsoft's policy will not allow them to ship out a system of a different class than the one they receive in. Blah, whatever. To compensate me for the trouble, they offered me my choice of some accessories. I...

After the megaton of comic books I picked up last week, this week was thankfully a little slower. Here's what I grabbed:

• Black Panther - I normally don't buy this one but got this issue due to the Secret Invasion crossover.
• Ms. Marvel - Note the awesomely hot cover by Greg Horn.
• Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four
• Star Wars: Rebellion
• Thor
• WildCATS - How many times have they relaunched this series? This is like the fourth Wildcats #1 I've bought.

Also, I am sent review comics each week to cover on my Fandomania blog. The pile of review copies is getting pretty huge, so I've decided to start running weekly contests to give away all the extra copies I have lying around. You can see the details and enter here: Fandomania.

This week I had a pretty big comic book haul. Here's what I picked up today:

Avengers Initiative
Daredevil
Hack Slash
Madame Xanadu
Marvel Comics Presents
New Avengers
New Warriors
Secret History of the Authority: Hawksmoor
She-Hulk
Skrulls!
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars Legacy
Thunderbolts
Ultimate X-Men
Uncanny X-Men
X-Files (2 covers)
X-Men Legacy

I'm having to pick up some comics I don't normally follow, just to get the whole Secret Invasion storyline. Curse you, Marvel! And unlike the Civil War and House of M tie-ins, the Secret Invasion tie-ins actually move the plot forward more than the main Secret Invasion series does.

I cover a lot of new toy and collectible news on my Mechazilla blog, and every once in a while there's an announcement so bizarre that I just have to share it elsewhere as well. So feast your eyes on this: Gangsta Babies, the newest action figure line announced by Mezco Toyz. Photos of all four babies are here:

http://mechazilla.com/mezco-toyz-gangsta-babies/

Here's the batch of comics I picked up this week:

100 Bullets
Captain Britain and MI13
Hack Slash
Invincible Iron Man
Secret Invasion
Ultimate Origins
Young X-Men

Anybody else following Secret Invasion, and what do you think of it?

My weekly column for FilmSchoolRejects has just gone live, and it's a list of the coolest Hellboy collectibles on the market. Check it out if you're into Hellboy or are looking forward to the new movie!

On my blog at www.Mechazilla.com, I often do Collector Spotlights where I interview a collector and feature photos of their toys and statues. Since Hellboy II is coming out on Friday, this week I spotlighted Mack, a guy with a really cool Hellboy collection. Check out the article for pics of all his goodies.

Mack's Hellboy Collection at Mechazilla

Hot Toys is an awesome toy company out of Hong Kong that produces some of the highest quality action figures on the market. They've just announced a couple of new pieces that seemed worth mentioning:

She-Predator Machiko 12" Figure

and

1/4 Scale Alien Bust

Both of these look pretty awesome. So far they're just being released in Asia, but I'm sure somebody will eventually be importing them to the US and elsewhere.

I picked up the newest statue in Gentle Giant's Star Wars animated series yesterday, Emperor Palpatine. I took some photos of him and posted a full review up on my blog at Mechazilla.

These maquettes really are cool collectibles, and I'm kicking myself for not getting all of them from the beginning. Some of the older ones, like Padme and Asajj Ventress, are going for lots of money on eBay now, making them pretty hard for me to justify. I've managed to get all of the classic trilogy statues so far, though, so my shelves haven't exactly been going bare.

What do you think of Palpatine? Personally, I didn't like his look in the Clone Wars cartoon, and that's the look they used for this statue. I think the pose and body are awesome, but that snaggly-ass face creeps me out.

My winding-down routine before bed each night has been jumping into some GTA Race action on XBox Live for the past few weeks. I'm used to hearing the usual racist and homophobic remarks, but tonight's verbal exchanges completely threw me. It was a race with maybe 12 or 13 players, and I'm thoroughly convinced that at least half of them were high.

About a minute into the race, they started discussing evolution and the existence of a higher power. One guy emphatically insisted, "There's something bigger, man, I know it. I'm not sayin' it's God, but I guarantee you there's something bigger." Granted, another player retorted with, "It's my cock!" but the rest of the talkers actually joined into a big conversation about religion, which then turned to politics and the merits of Obama vs McCain vs Colin Powell. By the end of it, they were discussing the Illuminati and secret...

I've decided to try out this new CAG blog thing, so here's an introductory post. I'm Prophet Five on XBox 360, and I've been into gaming since I was but a wee lad pushing pixels around on my Intellivision. These days I'm into the 360, sometimes (but rarely) the Wii, and some PC games. On the PC, I love Civ 4, and I also tend to give all the new MMO's a try when they come out. I'm now messing around with Age of Conan and still have my Lord of the Rings Online account.

Outside of gaming, I'm 30 and live next to Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida. I've been working online for the past ten years running an e-commerce collectibles site. Earlier this year I started a couple of blogs, one at http://www.Mechazilla.com where I post about toys and statues, and another at http://www.Fandomania.com where I post about all sorts of gaming / movie / TV / comics news and reviews. I also am a writer at http://www.FilmSchoolRejects.com where I do a weekly Collector's Corner feature....