Lindsey from “Doomsday Castle” on Nat Geo

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I had the opportunity to meet and photograph the lovely Lindsey, one of the three daughters from the family featured on "Doomsday Castle," National Geographic Channel’s new summer series airing on Tuesday nights. Check out our preview of the new series here, and enjoy the exclusive photoset we created as Lindsey poses with her crossbow at the castle. Also, check back as we'll be publishing more exclusive photosets of her sisters well.

  

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R.I.P. Larry Hagman

Who shot J.R.? Is was one of the great mysteries in TV history, as ultimate badass and villain J.R. Ewing was shot at the end of season 2 on “Dallas.” Larry Hagman created a very memorable character in J.R., but it sounds like he was a pretty interesting guy himself.

The popularity of “Dallas” made Hagman one of the best-paid actors in television and earned him a fortune that even a Ewing would have coveted. He lost some of it, however, in bad oil investments before turning to real estate.

“I have an apartment in New York, a ranch in Santa Fe, a castle in Ojai outside of L.A., a beach house in Malibu and thinking of buying a place in Santa Monica,” Hagman said in a Chicago Tribune interview.

An updated “Dallas” series began in June 2012 on the TNT network with Hagman reprising his J.R. role with original cast members Gray, who played J.R.’s wife, and Patrick Duffy, who was his brother Bobby. The show was to focus on the sons of J.R. and Bobby.

Hagman had a wide eccentric streak. When he first met actress Lauren Bacall, he licked her arm because he had been told she did not like to be touched and he was known for leading parades on the Malibu beach and showing up at a grocery store in a gorilla suit. Above his Malibu home flew a flag with the credo “Vita Celebratio Est (Life Is a Celebration)” and he lived hard for many years.

In 1967, rock musician David Crosby turned him on to LSD, which Hagman said took away his fear of death, and Jack Nicholson introduced him to marijuana because Nicholson thought he was drinking too much.

Read the entire obituary. It sounds like he was one of a kind and he’ll be missed.

  

Our holiday gift guide is live

holiday gift guide

Get ready for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the holiday shopping season with our annual holiday gift guide. You’ll find sections for Gadgets, Games, Guy Stuff, things for her, Movies, TV, Stocking Stuffers and things for the home.

  

New Series ‘Bid & Destroy’ premieres on Nat Geo Channel

Premiering this Wednesday on the Nat Geo Channel, “Bid & Destroy” combines the thrill of finding lost treasures with the demolition and destruction of homes and businesses with wild results that are amazing to see! This new 12-part series, produced by the guys behind “Pawn Stars,” begins this Wednesday, October 10th at 9:00 and 9:30pm ET/PT for a double stack of episodes.

Set in New England, this crazy series showcases the wacky crew of Danley Demolition as they go on modern day treasure hunts inside condemned homes and buildings just before they demolish them with the “claw and destroy” technique. The company bids on demolition jobs and then effectively owns all the contents of the home/building that will be torn down, so they have a limited period of time to scour the place for valuables. The posse tending to this modern day scavenger hunt is led by Brian “Cowboy” Gurry, one of the co-owners of Danley Demolition. These guys have a near mystical ability to find what everyone seems to have lost once in their life, like wallets with money, jewelry, and family valuables along with forgotten treasures like sports memorabilia and even the miscellaneous safe or forgotten muscle car or two. Gurry told us that many people love to hide money and valuables and then forget about them, which explains why he’ll check every book he finds in a house for money stuffed inside, often with great success.

The intrigue surrounding the search for hidden treasure is then combined with the fun of watching home and buildings get torn apart. The great production quality includes wild camera angles complete with remote GoPro mini video cameras inside homes as they are being destroyed, giving the audience a hair raising perspective and view to the awesome power and destruction that goes on the act of complete demolition like never filmed before!

To get a “hands on” experience of what it would be like to really have the ability or tear through a building with the touch of a button, Nat Geo invited us to Las Vegas to operate some heavy machinery and building destroying excavator equipment at Dig This, the heavy equipment playground located just off the Strip. As you can see from the photos above, they had several full scale Cat brand excavators and bulldozers available for us to try out. After taking the requisite breathalyzer test, (BAC +.06 is a no – no), we climbed into the huge yellow machines. Fortunately my sushi and saki hi jinks from the night before were long behind me and I passed with flying colors! The destructive powers of these machines shocked me at first, but soon I was chucking around 2,000 pound tires like they were tot-sized life preservers at the neighborhood kiddie pool. Brian Gurry was on hand to relate some of his experiences with us on how the heavy equipment we were using applied to building demolition, and his comments on how a somewhat larger version of the Cat excavator I was using could easily chomp straight through the lobby of the Mandalay Bay casino and go out the other side were quite revealing!

We had the opportunity to spend some time with Brian as he explained how the business worked and his techniques for finding hidden value in old buildings, and with 25 years experience in home demolition he has some great stories. The proverbial needle in the haystack is Brian’s specialty, and he gave use a few tips that anyone can use to find hidden valuables. We at Bullz-Eye were so impressed we following up with some features like top ten ways to find lost things in your home or hotel based on Brian’s advice.

We think you’re going to love watching Brian and his somewhat maniacal crew of seek and destroy excavator and bulldozer operating misfits. The personalities make the new series very watchable along with all the fun looking for hidden treasures and then ripping buildings down. Brian’s casual demeanor and humorous banter on camera with his nephew Eric added greatly to the show. All initial 12 episodes promise to be winners, and the two screeners showcased for us this week were no exception. Check out “Bid & Destroy” tomorrow night on Nat Geo.

  

Boardwalk Empire Finale: We Waited All Season For This?

**SPOILER ALERT**

Last night’s season 2 finale of “Boardwalk Empire” has generated some strong reactions from fans, as Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt) was killed at the end of the episode by Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi). The plot twist rivaled the death of Ned Stark in HBO’s “Game of Thrones” as one of the bigger TV surprises of 2011, though in this case the twist seemed forced and out of place.

Many fans are upset, as Jimmy was a popular character. He was a tortured soul who was an integral part of the storyline through the first two seasons. That said, I’m not bothered that the writers decided to kill him off, but I wasn’t very impressed with the way they got to this point.

Season 2 revolved around the many troubles faced by Nucky Thompson. Nothing was going right for him, and Jimmy joined forces with his father with the encouragement of his bizarre mother (Gretchen Mol) to try to take back control of Atlantic City from Nucky. From the beginning it was clear that Jimmy wasn’t cut out to be a boss. He was indecisive and didn’t have much business sense. Next to characters like Al Capone (brilliantly played by Stephen Graham) and Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza), Jimmy looked like a naive kid as he bumbled his way through a bunch of failed deals. When it came time to kill off Nucky, Jimmy didn’t have the stomach for it, though he reluctantly went along with the plan when pressed by the real gangsters and Nucky’s brother Eli.

Yet Jimmy and fellow war vet Richard Harrow (Jack Huston) never hesitated to use violence violence against others, like scalping a foul-mouthed rich guy who ridiculed Jimmy and struck him in the face with his cane as his business ventures went south. Jimmy was an enforcer, not a leader.

But there was something deeper going on, as Jimmy was fighting all sorts of demons, from his troubled childhood to his relationship with his mother to his experiences in the war. The writers tried to convey this throughout the season, and frankly it wasn’t very fun to watch. You wanted to root for Jimmy, but the wild swings in his behavior made little sense.

All of this strange behavior became easier to understand in one of the final episodes when we had a long flashback to Jimmy’s time at Princeton. The episode seemed like a waste of time until we saw the scene where Jimmy’s mother has sex with him at the end of a drunken night for both of them. Gretchen Mol’s character was always a little creepy and this took the bizarre relationship to another level. Jimmy then quits Princeton and joins the army, and the war experience finished him off on an emotional level.

Yet this entire setup leads to a moment where Jimmy lets Nucky kill him without a fight as explained by showrunner Terence Winter in a recent interview:

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