So...what did I do this April?
Nothing much, really. Well, STUFF did happen. Easter happened, people died, some people went crazy.
I saw the Mario Galaxy movie, at least. My verdict? I liked it more than the first one. The first one had a better story, this one had more action. And way fewer random needle drops! But this was relentless. I read a review that called it "made for the Youtube Shorts generation" and I couldn't get it out of my head. A thing happens, they go to the next thing, repeat until the credits pop up. Nothing gets to breathe and lots of characters are just...there. Bowser in particular has an inconsistent arc.
But it's a treat for folks like me that love the deep cuts of Mario lore. So many times I was like Leo DiCaprio pointing at the screen to see this thing or that thing remembered, let alone on a big screen in HD. I wish we weren't spoiled on Star Fox or the SMB 2 villains, but they looked gorgeous. There were a few other cool cameos and Easter Eggs I won't spoil, but it's been out for almost a month, you probably know what they are by now.
No Wario, Waluigi, or the Koopalings, though. They're like the only major Mario characters that haven't shown up yet. They must be saving them for the next movie.
And if you're aware of Frinkiac, the site where you can look up Simpsons screenshots and make gifs out of them, someone recently made one for King of The Hill
Boompane and Spanakopedia, respectively, have been godsends for the meme community. But while Frinkiac worked with static images, you could make actual clips with these sites. With audio. And (just about) every episode of those shows are on there, even the Hulu reboot season for King of The Hill. That...kinda technically makes them pirate sites. Even if the clips can't be longer than a minute. So enjoy them while you can, folks.
And we were watching a Super Champion on Jeopardy!
Jamie Ding was on a 31 game streak, and was finally knocked out this past Monday. He came close to losing a few times, like in a really good one last week with Patrick. But his buzzer game was one of the strongest I'd ever seen, and a lot of his episodes looked like this Far Side comic.
Greg, the guy who beat him was a chess champion who was faster than Jamie was. Although to do so he needed a "buzz first, think later" approach. It was successful at beating Jamie at his own game, but the rest of the games he played this week, to buzz in and have a brain fart almost every single time while keeping the rest of us in suspense was...not at all frustrating to watch. It happens to the best of us, but every time? He was knocked out today by someone who was able to grab the Daily Doubles from him.
Weird Al sums it up better than I do:
And then I did have one great pickup this month:
A new cel! I've been wanting a Scooby-Doo cel forever, but they're usually pricey as hell. Old series, iconic series, iconic characters? Good luck paying for less than triple digits.
But this one I got an actual good deal on. It's from 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. Most cheap cels from this show that pop up on eBay either have half of a character, or they're really tiny, or it's some no name extra, or it's Flim Flam. I found one that has most of Scooby (he's missing his tail), and all of Flim Flam. Well, it's no Vincent van Ghoul, but I couldn't pass this opportunity up.
The background is a reproduction, and it's not even from the original scene. It originally looked like this:
I don't blame the seller for including a background that made the characters pop better. This particular cel is from episode 3, "Scoobra Cadabra," where for some reason they disguise themselves as used car salesmen in this scene.
The frame pops up at around 1:37 in the video.
Oh! And one of my Seattle cousins sent me this care package out of the blue
All cool stuff from the Funko HQ store in Everett, Washington. You might recall that I visited it during my Seattle trip last year.
And one of my other cousins that lives in Arizona took her family to Disneyland a few weeks ago and sent me this guidemap in the mail that I wasn't expecting at all.
You have no idea how happy I am that Disneyland still makes these. And it checks off a lot of my boxes: Disney theme parks. Guidemaps. Anniversary promotion (still in the middle of the 70th anniversary!). And Bluey!
Don't know what I did to deserve these gifts, but I welcome them.
