Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Goodbye 2013!

Look at that, another year come and gone. I know I said I'd blog more but honestly I'm quite shocked I managed to blog even once a month! I'm trying to change that, honestly.

But before I digress into excuses yet again, lemme show you the highlights of my year.

First of all, Christmas stuff!


Look at them DVDs. I'm particularly fond of the MST3K 25th Anniversary set. I also got the Evil Edition of Scott Pilgrim #3 to go with the Evil Editions of books 1, 2, and 4. Seriously, I was able to get #4 at NYCC, but not #3 for whatever reason. In any case, it's finally in my hands.


I also got new bedding. That was a surprise.


And here's my boon of the past few weeks, Scribblenauts Unmasked, given to me by my best friend Steve. If you haven't played one of those games, essentially you try to solve puzzles by typing in ANY word, and using the objects you summon to do so. This particular sequel also adds in roughly 98% of the DC Comics catalogue to boot, allowing to call on just about every hero or villain they have to help you.

Seriously, CALENDAR MAN is in this game.


Calendar Man. Seriously. Because you can pretty much do anything with whatever you want, this game is a total time suck. As in, I start playing and suddenly two hours disappear on me. I'm getting better with that since I'm almost at the end of the game.

I also got this sweet TARDIS keychain


It goes with the TARDIS mug, both of which were given by a true friend of mine. And speaking of which, I went to a Doctor Who convention last month. It was a tiny startup con in a small hotel, but I had a great time, and this was the highlight: 


Meeting Sylvester McCoy aka the Seventh Doctor and Radagast The Brown from the Hobbit movies. He was pretty awesome to meet, too. Such a nice guy. Also, saw this: 


I can't for the life of me remember what that is, but it's freaky. Odd that I SHOULD know it, but I keep forgetting when I take my eyes off the picture.

What was I talking about? Oh right, since this was the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who (give or take 15 years of no new footage aside from a few specials and a movie), we got a New Doctor to replace Matt Smith.


Actually, we got two new Doctors this year!


And we got to revisit a few old favorites.





That last one blew my mind when I watched Day of The Doctor. Moffat is one son of a bitch, I tell you what. On the topic of revisiting Doctors, I spent both LI Who Con and NYCC filling up this poster with as many Who signatures as possible: 


We have Peter Davison (5th Doctor), Colin Baker (6th Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (7th Doctor), Nicolas Briggs (voice of the Daleks), Frazier Hines (Jaine McCrimmon) and John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness). Now Peter Davison I got at last year's NYCC, and you have no idea how long I had to wait for John Barrowman.

Okay, it was 2 1/2 hours. That was insane, yet totally worth it. I also got to meet: 


Rob Paulsen (Yakko, Pinky of Pinky & The Brain, original Raphael, currently Donatello, Carl Wheezer, the list goes on)


Billy West (Fry, Zoidberg, Stimpy, Prof. Farnsworth, Zapp Brannigan, Doug Funnie, Roger Klotz, etc) that's what a Fangasm looks like, folks.

I got him and John DiMaggio (not pictured, sadly) to sign my Futurama DVD


Freaking awesome. You don't know the meaning of that word until you hear Billy say "Why not Zoidberg?" to you in Zoidberg's voice.


Doc Hammer & Jackson Publick from the Venture Bros. I got really lucky and won a lottery for a private autograph session, of which I used it to have them sign this DVD: 


Again, a long wait for my turn, but worth every second. They were totally nice and cool, and even mentioned how awesome my Mr. Sparkle shirt was. I was a puddle.

This was a great double feature:


William Shatner and Patrick Stewart on the same print! Shatner wasn't all that special, he only gave you more than a hello if you were a lady, but if you were he'd give you that famous Shatner Flirt. 

Patrick Stewart on the other hand gave me a better story. You see, he only had enough time to sign autographs for three hours on Sunday, so you'd know he'd be mobbed as quickly as possible. Thanks to my special VIP pass, I was able to skip the holding pen they stuck the regular people in and went right for the autograph line. It turns out I was 20th in line, which was a hell of a lot better than the literal mile-long line that started behind me. Not counting the 20 minutes that Patrick was late, I only had to wait ten minutes. Again, much better than the HOURS the rest if the peons has to wait.

So when it's finally my turn, having spent the last hour and a half thinking about what to say to him, I just blurt out " Commander Worf's head looks like a fanny!" (My favorite moment of his from Family Guy). His response?

Nothing. No awkward chuckle as I was expecting. not even a thank you, nothing. But still, I was happy too meet him and I disappeared into the crowd like everyone before me. I figured he'd heard that line so many times it no longer registers with him, but that's what I've been telling myself.

But by far my highlight for the con, and my entire year was meeting Stan The Man Lee.


Since the photo op sessions had to move as quickly as possible, I was probably with him for all of two minutes. But it's two minutes that I'll treasure forever.

It was like being quickly shuffled in front of a curtain, and behind that curtain was God himself, and you only had enough time to say one sentence to him. 

My sentence? "Hi Stan Lee!" But it probably wasn't even that, it was most likely a few moments of heavy breathing followed by some fidgeting and an awkward "hi," but he gave me a "Hey, how ya doin?" back, and before I knew it, I had to be on my way. So yeah, meeting God. He just turned 91, so see him while you can! I'm lucky I was able to get that bobblehead in that picture with him.

During this time I picked up Pokemon X, and my nosedive into the franchise began anew. I finally have all 18 starters in my collection:


It was a pain in the ass considering Pokemon Bank (the program that let's you transfer old Pokemon into the new games) was only up in Japan for about two days total. That's what happens when every Pokemon player on earth is online at the sake time, you're gonna crash the servers.

The Tepig in particular came from Rowsdower himself!

Overall I consider my 2013 as the Year of Renewal. In addition to the new bedding, Pokemon game and the New Doctor, I also got


New phone! A spiffy iPhone 5 with a sweet Stonecutters case! It's an incredible piece of hardware, I wrote this very post from it!


A mug that I can finally call "My Mug." Me and Troy and Abed have been enjoying Futurama. I can't believe it's over. Again.


New tv! My old fat tv finally died on me , so I finally upgraded to a sweet flat screen! It's playing a Yogi Bear cartoon with an, um, Japanese character named Yo-Yo. I know what you're thinking, and yes he spoke stuff like "A number one" and "Jerrystone Pahk" and he knew Kung Fu.

There's no racism like high-definition racism, I guess. These old cartoons look like I'm looking at the actual cels, it's so incredible.

I also got a new car, as detailed in this entry. Here it is again for those that need a refresher:


It no longer looks that nice, sadly. Not even a month after this picture was taken, some idiot dented one of the doors with a shopping cart when I wasn't around.

Also, I saw a duck!


And he came back!


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