I know this is a generalization, and I'm sure there are some female demolition specialists, but....

I wonder why, for the most part, girls don't like blowing things up?

Although I do love to watch a controlled explosion, like an old building coming down. That is awesome!

It isn't just boys being boys Maggers. Men will be boys too.

Somebody said it once; "The only difference between a boy and a man is how much his toys cost."

Racing cars, aerobatic planes, guns, I don't know. I tend to think a lot of guys just like really loud noises.

Maybe it's just a "guy thing" . . . mostly.

Ken V.

I have absolutely no idea why we did this when I was kid but we used to cover M80s in glue and roll them in BBs. Light it and run. Yikes! :o

Disclaimer: Do not try this at home.

RIK

I have absolutely no idea why we did this when I was kid but we used to cover M80s in glue and roll them in BBs. Light it and run. Yikes! :o

Disclaimer: Do not try this at home.

RIK

Yikes is right!

When I was about 13, a friend and I pulled the bullets out of a bunch of .22's, cut apart a couple of shotgun shells, opened an entire pack of firecrackers, and mixed all the various powders together. We then poured it all into the center of the rather large Sunday Denver Post newspaper, slipped in a bunch of firecracker fuses Scotch taped end to end, folded up the paper and bound it all up with some fine wire we found. We put it into a small hole in the ground, lit the fuse and ran.

We only did this once as we were made to clean all the confetti from the neighbors yards.

Not one speck of paper landed in our yard, and I'm still scratching my head over that.

Ken V.

Great review, Paul. You should do more!

Have you ever seen Teenage Zombies? I highly recommend you check it out if you like absolutely terrible movies. It is bee-ay-dee bad.

Lisa

Of the I was a Teenage... series. Foremost in memory was I was a Teenage Zombie. All zombies are mindless, eating creatures except for this teenager who is completely normal except for his sudden skin color change and lack of a pulse. I don't remember a lot except that one of the zombies looked a lot like Ron Jeremy...

Suddenly, I'm reminded of a movie where a guy had a symbiote attached to his head that would give him a constant high so long as he killed people and ate their brains. It was in the 80's, but I can't remember the name.

One nasty prank a guy did at work years back was to dip a guys brown bag into LN2 and freeze his lunch solid.

Now that's my idea of funny. We had a whole bunch of those bouncy super balls in the gift shop at the time, and we'd freeze those, then watch them hit the ground with a "clack". We also used to freak people out by pouring it on our hands. You wouldn't want to cup it, of course, but if you just let it run off the back of your hand, the layer of evaporating nitrogen would insulate your skin from the stuff that was still liquid, and you'd be fine. Just no sustained contact!

This next one's a little tamer than some posted above (especially the BB one! Yowza!). My uncle used to live on a cul-de-sac in the late '70s and early '80s, and for July 4th he'd bring boxes and boxes of fireworks back from Mexico. One of the grand events of the evening was when he'd lay gun powder in a line from one side of the street to the other, then lay hundreds of firecrackers down with their fuses touching the powder. That was a fun one to see go off.

Blake

Of the I was a Teenage... series. Foremost in memory was I was a Teenage Zombie. All zombies are mindless, eating creatures except for this teenager who is completely normal except for his sudden skin color change and lack of a pulse. I don't remember a lot except that one of the zombies looked a lot like Ron Jeremy...

No, it's not "I was a Teenage Zombie." It's a different movie from the 50s.

Lisa

In the "Fun and Possibly Dangerous Things to Do" category, I'd have to add liquid nitrogen. It's not an explosive, of course, but there is a way to get a similar effect. I used to work at a planetarium, and we had a whole bunch of the stuff for a science exhibit we had at the time. We discovered that if you take an empty plastic container -- say, one of those nice, thick ones designed to hold motor oil; it should be really strong -- and pour just a little bit of the liquid nitrogen in it and seal it, the nitrogen evaporates so fast that the pressure inside increases dramatically, causing the container to explode quite loudly in a few seconds. We used to seal the container and throw it in a nearby dumpster for a nice, loud echo effect. I'm amazed campus police never showed up.

Standard disclaimer: Don't try this at home, blah blah blah....

Blake

I saw something similar to this on "Mr. Wizard" one time and can't believe he was showing kids how to do this. I may be wrong on exactly how he did this...
He boiled(??) the oxygen out of some water, poured it into a lead ball and capped it off. He then lowered the ball into a bucket containing dry ice and alcohol. A few seconds later and WHAMMO!! The lead ball split in 1/2 and dented the bucket. All I could think was, " How many kids watched this and took it to extremes?"

I have absolutely no idea why we did this when I was kid but we used to cover M80s in glue and roll them in BBs. Light it and run. Yikes! :o

Disclaimer: Do not try this at home.

RIK

:eek: That is one thing we didn't do!! we just shot each other with the BB guns instead. Never at the face though!! Usually at the ass for the total effect of hilarity.

Yikes is right!

When I was about 13, a friend and I pulled the bullets out of a bunch of .22's, cut apart a couple of shotgun shells, opened an entire pack of firecrackers, and mixed all the various powders together. We then poured it all into the center of the rather large Sunday Denver Post newspaper, slipped in a bunch of firecracker fuses Scotch taped end to end, folded up the paper and bound it all up with some fine wire we found. We put it into a small hole in the ground, lit the fuse and ran.

We only did this once as we were made to clean all the confetti from the neighbors yards.

Not one speck of paper landed in our yard, and I'm still scratching my head over that.

Ken V.

I have 2 friends who did the same but used a bit of garden hose instead of a paper. The explosion was far more intense than expected and Jason's parents easily heard it since they were just in the back yard. Needless to say they got into MAJOR trouble. At least Jason was smart enough to throw the thing instead of holding it like Rick dared him to (thinking it would be like a Roman candle).

I remember watching the disembodied brains chasing people around when I was a kid on the Saturday morning horror movie show here in Phoenix. It scared me as a kid, when I saw it again later it caused me to snort beer out my nose I was laughing so hard.

I just looked up "Fiend Without a Face" in Gene Warren's encyclopedic guide to horror films of the 1950s, "Keep Watching the Skies!"

I was surprised to read the film was based on a short story by Amelia Reynolds Long ("The Thought Monster") that originally appeared in Weird Tales (of course, they published quite a few stinkers in their time). Forrest J. Ackerman was Long's agent and sold the story to the producer.

The screenwriter, Herbert J. Leder also produced, wrote and directed a couple of B-movies known to those of us who spent too much time reading "Famous Monsters of Filmland" when young: "The Frozen Dead" (frozen Nazi soldiers) and "It!" (a remake of the Golem story with Roddy McDowell). Leder, who died in 1983, was a popular film and media teacher at Jersey City State College (another Jersey boy!).

The stop-motion effects were done by a German special effects firm headed by a man who sounds like a member of the Junkwaffel: Baron Florenz Von Nordhoff.

Gene quotes a disapproving review of the flick which appeared in Parents magazine at the time of release, which is pretty funny in itself:

"If wishes ever do become horses no one would seriously object, especially beggars who may ride them. But in this fantastic opus, thought becomes a disgusting mass of brain...the film mixes international relations and science fiction irresponsibly." (???)