Ivo Tobin Is Real!

So, I got an email message the other day. It read, "My name is Ivo Tobin and I found your comic by websearching my name. I can't imagine there are a lot of us in the world..."

I think that Ivo is correct as, up until he wrote to me, I firmly believed that I had invented his name. You see, as I was fishing around for an appropriate name for an undead bad guy, I decided to combine two references from the movie Ghost Busters. The first was Ivo Shander, the mad architect who created the building that Sigourney Weaver's character Dana lives in. The second was the book Tobin's Spirit Guide, a tome that Dan Akroyd's character Ray refers to.

When I explained all of this to the Ivo who wrote me, he explained that his name was also a combination. His parents apparently named him after Ivo Pogorelich, a Yugoslavian pianist of some renown whom they happened to see in concert while he was still a passenger in his mom. And Tobin was pulled from a baby naming book. Not that they pulled his last name from a baby book. Tobin is his middle name and I have merely withheld the information that he has a last name so as not to breach his privacy. Because, I would never breach anybody's privacy.

Anyway, the Ivo who wrote me concluded by saying, "...I kind of think I should get a free copy."

Ivo, I agree and one of these days I'll be sending you your very own autographed copy of The Helm.

Any other Helm-named real life humans out there? Write me and maybe I'll send you your very own copy.

Real Genius, Val Kilmer, Hansen and Tinted Windows

So, Real Genius is a great movie.

If you haven't seen it, you should. Val Kilmer is in it, but he's not the main character. The main character is this dweeby guy named Mitch Taylor (played by Gabriel Jarret) and Val plays his sort of deranged mentor, Chris Knight. You wouldn't think it to look at him in the movie, but Gabriel Jarret actually grew up to be kind of good looking. Check it out on IMDB if you don't believe me. You know who else is in the movie? William Atherton. You may remember him as the jerky Walter Peck from Ghost Busters. You know, the guy that orders the ghost storage device shut down. The guy about whom Peter Venkman (Bill Murray's character) says to the mayor, "Yes it's true...This man has no dick."

Anyway, that's not the point.

The point is that Real Genius is a great movie. And Val Kilmer is really good in it. Actually, he's so good in it that it makes me feel like he's never really lived up to the potential he displayed in this 1985 classic directed by Martha Coolidge. I know Val Kilmer follows this blog, so, sorry man. I loved you in True Romance. And Top Secret (although that was actually before Real Genius.) Anyway, I would have liked to have seen more movies with the Real Genius Val Kilmer and less movies with The Doors Val Kilmer. Again, sorry Val.

You know what else? Deborah Foreman is in Real Genius. It's just a cameo, but she's in there. She has one really great line, "Can you hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your penis?" You remember Deborah Foreman. She starred in Valley Girl. And she was also in the movie My Chauffer. If you haven't seen that one, check it out. I should probably offer a disclaimer at this point and note that I haven't seen My Chauffer in about twenty years, so it may not be as good as I remember. That happens sometimes. Like with the movie The Blue Rose, aka The Thief of Baghdad. But that's another story. Deborah Foreman should have been a bigger star.

Oh, and one final thing. That song MMMBop, by Hansen? That's a pretty good song. I don't care how saccharine those guys come off. I like it. Everyone just made fun of me when I played it in the office when explaining who was in the band Tinted Windows, but so what.