Once the oil drains out I will remove the oil pan as well....but I guess I should expect the bottom to look as good as the top if this truly is a reman??? 


Usually means everything except the head gaskets. One of those while you have it out things.
Cool! That should pretty well tell you if the motor needs gone through or not. My bet is everything will come out within spec and you can just clean it, put new gaskets on, paint it and call it good! BTW, my .02c, if you keep the aluminum intake, paint it orange to match the rest of the motor. An aluminum intake on a blazer will really take away from the "original" look. But if you like that look than keep it aluminum! Depends what your end goals are for the engine compartment i suppose.
I will definitely paint it...what was on there originally?
anything wrong with the aluminum intake? Should I think about putting a cast iron one on there?
The aluminum one will be better than a cast iron one.
And depending which intake it is, it will look very close to stock to most peopl if its painted orange like the rest of the engine.
you need a different coupler on the female side.
Any hardware or autoparts store should have them, the one on the LD tester is the most common style.