#frank malone

[quotesonquotes]

"As we grow older, maintaining good health becomes more than just an option; it becomes a necessity."

Frank Malone, What to Eat Over 50

[emmynominees]

martin landau as frank malone in season three of without a trace

primetime emmy award nominee for outstanding guest actor in a drama series

[dodger-sister]

For Martin Landau. He was an award-winning actor whose career spanned stage, movie and TV. But what I’ll remember him for was his small guest stint on Without A Trace as Jack’s dad. The character was suffering from early stage dementia and organ failure and Jack wanted him to fight. He had to have the talk, the one I expect to have to give someday, the “I know you love me so do this for me and let me go” talk. It hit me, hard. It was moving. He was nominated for an Emmy for that role.

At any rate, I’ve heard what actors want is to have one moment where they change someone’s life with their stories. It didn’t so much change my life, as help me feel like I was being given permission to one day, when it really does get too much, when my body has failed and my liver is going, to just let go.

Thank you, Mr. Landau. Rest now.

[ghostconch]

Story Time: The Disturbing Truth About Funko Pops

You know you have one in your home.

It is now an unavoidable fact that if you are a fan of something, you have a small plastic man woman or creature represented cartoonishly in colored vinyl from the Funko company.

It’s alright, fads come and go. Remember Beanie Babies? TY. Remember Pokemon Cards? POGs? There are so many of these things that come and go without so much as a wisp of the wind. One day cool, then next worth much less that retail value. Forgotten. Dusty.

I’m here to tell you the awful gruesome truth about Funko Pops. They serve a different purpose. 

In 1998, Frank Malone, founder of the Funko company, as conceived by Mike Becker, thought of the company as a way to mass produce bobble-heads, figures, and other low-tech toys and bring them forward into a new high-tech world. The first product produced was a replica of Bob’s Big Boy, famed food chain mascot. Since they have shifted focus onto the ever popular vinyl figures as well as similar offshoots and even clothing.

The thing Malone failed to mention, completely by intention, was that he was on a mission. In order to maintain a balance in the peace of this world, each Funko product, right up until this very year in fact has held a dark secret. 

In 2005, Funko now headed by Brian Mariotti, bits of the story were brought forth. Mariotti had no trouble transitioning as head owner of the Funko corporation, save this one strange clause: Never. Stop. Spreading.

Found in a sealed envelope of the desk where he would now conduct business, three simple words, scrawled in rusty red ink across what appeared to be a single index card. Brushing it off he thought nothing of it, a simple office prank, something strange, but fun in the spirit of the monstrous toy company. It wasn’t until four nights later that the packages began arriving both at his private home and even to his office directly. Boxes unmarked other than the address of either place and nothing more. Inside each box were sets of medium sized jars of a greyish-white sand, very fine in consistency. Days wore on and the packages kept coming. More and more of these jars would arrive until it became too much to bear for Brian, both mentally and in terms of storage space. 

Thinking perhaps it was some misdirected production material, he called for the jars to be collected and shipped to the factories where the ever popular figures were being produced. Each vinyl figure has been molded and painted with some small amount of the mysterious clay-like powder substance. 

You know that feeling you sometimes get that someone might be watching you? Or perhaps waiting outside your bedroom door for some nefarious purpose? They claim that sometimes the feeling of eyes on a person can be prompted by the simplest things, a chill in the air, a certain unrecognizable frequency, or the presence of a doll. Glaring, unblinking, a doll can instill fear in even the most unphasable. Uncanny Valley, life imitated too closely.

In 1998, Frank Malone needed a way out. Being a man of great ingenuity, he saw fit to hide in plain sight. After taking what he could from all available sources of income, he began to produce fun and amusing toys, banking on both nostalgia and pop culture memetics, he began to create what is now arguably the largest toy corporation in America. The vicious habit he had to hide became too much to bear. When one dabbles in the dark arts, there is often an absence of forethought; the mirror reflects in two directions. Falling on hard times, Malone took to the streets, looking for candidates no one could possibly miss. Vagrants, lost children, even a smattering of animals both sheltered and stray. One by one he would bring them into the basement in order to feed his dark mirror, in ritual he would slaughter them humanely as possible, and then quickly burn the fresh sacrifice in order to transcend it directly to the next world, all the while, his power and influence growing, slowly, until finally it became too much for him to bear and he had to sell the company, fading into obscurity. By allowing the ash of those sent away to remain, Malone found himself growing weaker and weaker, the ritual gives, but it also takes. Malone set out to disperse his evidence, to stave off the power and so he began to expand his business further, mixing the departed into each of his colorful, vibrant and joyful toys that are still so loved to this day.

Brian Mariotti, unwittingly carrying on the tradition by dispersing the jars to the factories, has seen a rise in success. He is feeling the surge of a successful business fill him with power, pride and a general sense of happiness in bringing people nostalgic joy, but just as the mysterious jars keep arriving, they are also diminishing, each package contains less and less of the mysterious “material”. Mariotti, unsure of where it’s coming from has, if only in his mind, linked the upward trending of the Funko corporation to the content of these jars. Once they stop coming, once there is nothing left of the sacrifices of Frank Malone, what can Brian do but carry on in the Funko tradition?

[thegoodghosts]