Tuesday, June 30, 2015

A Few More Items Crossed Off The Bucket List

Man this month was full of surprises. A few months back, I mentioned my "I'd Never Think I'd Ever Get To Do This" bucket list when I met the Soup Nazi. That was great and all, and this past month I got to cross a few more things off that list! I'd give you guys the full list, but since it's full of stuff I'd never think I'd get to do, its stuff that I never think to put on that list until it happens. 

But anyway...

I got to be a Power Ranger! (Kinda)


I'll admit that this had been on my regular Bucket List for most of my life, but at 28 years old I realized that I had let that dream fade away after I realized that I was now only 5 years older than the people who actually play the Power Rangers.

But imagine my shock that four of the original MMPR team was going to be at Eternal-Con this year. Well three and a half, Karan Ashley was the second Yellow Ranger, but it still counts. I'll go into detail with that con at a later date, but as you see above, I got to do the morphing pose with them! And I'm holding a vintage morpher in my hands, not that overpriced cool looking Legacy version. My face seems to simultaneously say "I look ridiculous in front of some childhood icons" and "best $140 I ever spent." This took all of two minutes, but this was a pretty damn good two minutes.

I was briefly Turd Ferguson!


This is all thanks to SNL: The Exhibit (site is here http://snltheexhibition.com), a thirty dollar museum dedicated to the forty years of Saturday Night Live's history. The exhibit details the process of creating a single show, from the pitch, to the writing, to the acting, to what happens behind the scenes when the show finally goes on. The only thing this place was missing was the part when someone like me goes online and says "What the hell are they thinking?! Worst episode ever!"

You can visit various sets, like Wayne's World 


The home base of the original cast 


And as you can guess from above, the Celebrity Jeopardy set.


Well, part of the set. The real set was in a different part of the exhibit.



In that section, you have a podium from the Black Jeopardy set, plus the tricked out podium used by Burt Reynolds, er, Turd Ferguson during the 40th Anniversary Show (since it recently happened, there's a lot of 40th Anniversary representation in here). And yes, you can take pictures with all of it. That picture made me the envy of everyone around the age of 25.

And that's not all, there's a whole exhibit on props from all your favorite fake commercials.


Colon Blow and Uncle Jemima's Madh Liqour!



Little Chocolate Donuts, with the Bass-O-Matic!



And my personal favorite, the Nerf Crotchbat! While it saddens me that these were all sitting in a prop closet for decades, I'm very happy that they were kept at all, and they're a part of a real museum where they belong. There's wear and tear on all these things, ensuring you that these are all the real deal. Although I'm not so sure about Little Chocolate Donuts, I'm pretty sure that the Box Tops logo wasn't around during the seventies.

Oh yeah, there's costumes too. From King Tut to Laser Cats to Mr. Robinson to Astronaut Jones, just about all your favorites got representation here.



Even Master Thespian's outfit is here! It sits on a rack with a Five Timer's Club robe, the Coffee Talk outfits, Brian Fellow's duds, and even...ugh, Garth and Kat. Yeah, there's a bit of Kristen Wiig's presence around here, but she's no more in the spotlight than anyone else. 

The exhibit ends with a wall of pictures of every single cast member. The original cast is on top while the current folks line the bottom.



See if you can spot Gilbert Gottfried! Don't worry, I already did that for you: 



Top left corner, third from the left.

If you're in the NYC area within the next few months I highly recommend checking it out!

I saw the Pez Dispenser from Seinfeld!



Holy crap, I never thought I'd see the day when I could see THE Tweety Bird Pez dispenser from that Seinfeld episode "The Pez Dispenser" up close!

Well, it wasn't the ONLY Seinfeld relic that was on display in Manhattan last week. Hulu set up an entire recreation of Jerry Seinfeld's apartment.







Holy crap!! It's like I'm on the tv! I got to sit on the couch! Pretend to toss George's toupee out the window! I even got to snoop in Jerry's fridge!



Empty. Kramer must've gotten to it first.

It's been a while since I watched Seinfeld on a regular basis and I don't know if this is the exact set, but I assure you that this was 99.99% close enough to the real thing. There's Junior Mints strewn everywhere and the computer in the corner was a PC...until super fans complained and they brought in an old fashioned Mac, just like 90's Yuppie Jerry intended.



And if you ever wondered what was on Jerry's bookcase, let me show you:





Sim City! Sadly it's not the real box, but none of us could tell anyway so screw you. I'm glad they stuck real movies in there because if they stuck VHS copies of some of their fake movies like Chunnel on there they would be missing one fake VHS box.

And here's Jerry's CD collection:



Nice detail with Big Willie Style. It's the one where Jerry got jiggy with it!

And among other Seinfeld relics, they had Fusilli Jerry!


Again, not sure if this was the real thing. This was just sitting there while other Seinfeld props were sitting behind a velvet rope or behind glass. Like so:



God I love that. If you were able to catch this last weekend, you were one of the many lucky ones. And if you didn't, well, you got me to see it for you! Hell, I didn't even know this was going on until the day before I went to see it!

So all in all, I had a pretty good June. Let's hope July doesn't suck.