The Mid May Update

05.16.2016

I've been quiet for the better part of a month. As such, it's time to play catch-up.

Last week I journeyed to Nashville and saw Pentatonix with Dr Blondie. I haven't been to a concert since Prince (and that's likely been 10 years), mush less a mostly acapella concert. There were 3 acts - the opener was a 17 year old kid. He had a real name, but that's the part I remember. The next group was Us the Duo, a husband and wife team. Lastly was PTX themselves.

I don't know why I found this the most interesting, but for each performer before each song they would say "the name of this song is __________, and it's about ___________." I have no idea why that stuck out in my head, except it felt like the way I was taught to write a paper in high school - minimum of 5 paragraphs; 1st paragraph into saying what you're going to say, 3 paragraphs of content, last paragraph summarizing what you said; a paragraph has 4 sentences - 1st sentence says what you're going to say, minimum 2 sentences of content, final sentence summarizes what you said. I haven't written that kind of paper in 30 years and yet those instructions have stayed with me.

Work office wall decoration continues, especially since we're getting ever closer to moving since our lease extension is nearing an end. The Nick Fury poster on the right I've had since the early 90's. I bought it from the Tattooed Lady Comics, which was the only place I could find it (in the days before the internet). It had been thumb-tacked up on walls a couple of times before I got it, and I may have added a couple of holes afterward. Overall it's held up well for 20+ years.

Underneath those 2 posters are pages from a Star Wars picture-a-day calendar Gina got me for Christmas. There was a 2-week run of retro styled vacation destination pictures which I thought looked pretty cool. I've seen some of them for sale as posters, but I already had these pictures in calendar form! Thanks to Hobby Lobby's sale schedule for frames and mat board I was able to whip up a passable display (just don't look too close, you know how I am with straight lines).

In the mid-90's, while going to Athens State, I discovered a Taco Bell kids meal was a perfect snack for a college kid. Even better, they had Tick toys packaged in with the food, and I loved me some Tick. The above has been on favored work desks off and on ever since. Yet another thing that I don't know how or why I've kept up with for 20 years, but now my little spinning Tick keeps me company while he guards my monitors from evil.

Permalink action figures/toys random road trip

Lego Fri... Thursday Night

09.15.2012

Instead of opting for Lego Friday Night, this week had Lego Thursday Night, which actually started with unbagging all of the pieces on Monday. Since the Lego Batmobile was a 1000+ piece behemoth I opted to take some extra time and lay everything out where I could find it. This turned into a necessity once I got started because I was having fun reading the instructions. Pictures of black Legos on top of black Legos are hard to read for an old man like me.

After taking 2 days to lay out everything where I hoped I could find it, I got to the crux of snapping everything together on Thursday. I was multi-tasking by watching laundry at the same time, and I had season 5 of Big Bang Theory playing on TV. Multi-tasking supreme! It took a while to put the Batmobile together, not just because there were so many pieces, but I kept getting lost in the instructions. Lego instructions have no words and are just pictures of Legos as you layer them on top of each other. The Batmobile is so big that at times I had no idea where the new pieces were supposed to go. Eventually everything came together, although I still managed a handful of leftover pieces.

I'm not sure which Lego will be on tap for next Friday (or Thursday if the week goes like this one). I may skip a Friday and take a gander and some of the new boardgames I'm suddenly been acquiring.

Permalink action figures/toys

Yo... Damn.

07.13.2009

I've been looking forward to the new GI Joe movie, and I'll admit that I was really looking forward more to the toys than to the movie. Yes, I'm 40, but I don't act it. Having fulfilled my dream of having a Stormtrooper Army, I now want a Cobra Legion to either join forces with the Empire, or battle the Empire for galactic domination. The old Cobra Troops were always a little cartoony, so I was hoping that the movie Cobras would be a little more... cool? This weekend Jerry and I happened to find ourselves in the a Toys R Us and I looked to see if the new Joe toys were out. The first batch is out, but it's not living up to my expectations.

Here's a look at what the Cobra troops from the movie look like:

It seems they're going for a true reptilian feel for the Cobra troops. Not what I was hoping for. The closest for what I envisioned are Destro's MARS Troopers:

Unfortunately, outside of an eBay auction from China, these are only available in 3-packs at $25+ each. They're not really cool enough to warrant that price tag from me.

In my dissapointment, I saw some picks of figures from different series. The Cobra Trooper from the Resolute series caught my eye:

This is more along the lines of what I was hoping for! All I ever saw from Resolute were some boxed sets of 5 figures along with a Cobra Commander and Cobra Paratrooper. Actually, I may have picked up the Cobra Commander. Although the trooper keeps the blue color scheme of old, it looks less cartoony than the deep blue of the original figures. Maybe this is the route to take for my Cobra Legion?

I can man my legion online in one fell swoop if I really want to go that route. How many Cobra Troopers would balance out 75 Stormtroopers?

Permalink action figures/toys

Early Birthday Loot

03.03.2009

I have toys. Lots and lots of toys. Video games, wrestling figures, comics, board games. I could have more, in fact I used to have more, but over the years I've tried to cull down what I get and keep to those things that I actually use, or as in the case of 70 Stormtrooper figures, things that look really cool.

In the ResGen days we used to play games like Warhammer and Frag, and it was cool because JD would make the most awesomest maps to play on. Awesomest may not be a proper word, but it really gets across the awesomnisity of the maps. One of the things that got me hooked on Heroquest is the map-tiles. They're just cool.

I've seen different mods for Heroscape tiles to make them more realistic. For the Star Wars Miniatures game, there are sites specializing in paper models and scenery to give it the 3D feel. All of these are cool, and I've tried a couple of them, but I don't really have the time/focus/energy to do these things well, or well enough to play with afterward.

On of the sites that's been around for a while that I've drooled over is Dwarven Forge. They offer prebuilt/molded, hand painted terrain for 28mm games - 28mm is the standard for most of the miniature games I play (D&D, Star Wars, even Heroscape). After playing Robo Rally Saturday I started thinking about our next game to play, and Frag is a front runner. Although Frag comes with paper maps, JD printed a base map on a vinyl printer, then constructed walls and elevated walkways which made the game... awesomelier than ever. Dwarven Forge has a sci-fi set that Frag would work with...

My birthday is coming up, and that would make a really cool present for myself. So I loaded up the online cart and purchased myself some Dwarven Forgeness. Much to my shock, the order I placed on Sunday arrived on Tuesday.

I think we're probably set for the next game, but it's hard to not place another order. And even then I have to make sure I don't get carried away on the Fantasy side of their wares.

Permalink action figures/toys boardgames

Tow Wheeze

06.19.2008

Not too long ago, Lord Ford asked if I had any pics of my wrestling figures accessable via the itnerweb. When I told him I didn't he seemed a bit put off. I had tried to fake a panoramic pic to get all the figs into 1 picture, but the results were always... off. Well, professionality be damned, I don't want to dissapoint Lord Ford!

As best as I can tell, I have around 300 figures. I'm not bored enough to count them all, but they average 5 figures deep and I counted roughly 60 on the front row. I thought I would have 120, maybe 150, but 300?!?!?

The figures go back years and years, and cover more than just Vince's WWF/E. There's some WCW figures, some TNA, even some of the original ECW figures. The worse of the lot, quality wise, were the early WCW figures. Chris "erased from the history books" Benoit had a horrible figure. In fact, it has the same body as Dean Malenko.

I still pick up the odd figure now and then, but I try not to duplicate wrestlers I already have. That's hard enough, and taken to limiting most of what I look at to the WWE Legends figures. That's probably good as I'm running out of shelf space.

Permalink action figures/toys