June is Done!

Well, another June has come and gone, and frankly, even with the stress I've been under lately, this month's gone better than the last couple of Junes.

No one (I know) died, and nothing was broken nor did any real misfortune plague me. There's still a few hours left of the month, I shouldn't jinx myself.

But first, some big news!

Baja Blast is back! In bottle form! It's pretty much the only flavor of Mountain Dew I like, and since I refuse to go to Taco Bell after they discontinued the Cool Ranch Dorito Taco, I gotta wait until these bad babies hit store shelves. As of right now, I can only find them at gas stations, and only certain ones, and attempts to buy in bulk and ration them had failed. Seriously, I bought two because there was a buy two deal to drink one then, and save the other for another day, and guess what I did? Drink them both that same day. I couldn't help myself! I kept turning down Pepsi Blue because these two sodas aren't available in the same places.

Oh yeah, Pepsi Blue is back, too. I thought I mentioned it before on here, but turns out I hadn't.

I hadn't had the stuff in over fifteen years, but wouldn't you know it, it's still great! It tastes exactly the same: Blue. I said back in the day that it was like drinking a blue raspberry Airhead, and suffice it to say Pepsi had not changed it at all.

I've realized that I have a difference in preference for these two sodas. I have to be in a certain mood to crave Pepsi Blue; whereas if I'm not careful, Baja Blast has the potential to replace water in my diet. I used to date someone who let that happen to her, and I can say from the experience that Mountain Dew addiction is real and not pleasant to deal with.

I also finally tried Burger King's entry in the Fast Food Chicken Sandwich War. This is the Ch'King sandwich, and of course it's the spicy kind.

This lunch got me to start thinking. This whole spicy chicken craze didn't start with everyone trying to copy Chik-Fil-A to try to sap their customers away.

"It's just as good as Chik-Fil-A, only eating this one means you don't support a (openly) homophobic company!" I'd imagine the marketing people were thinking.

No, every single one of these chains are trying to ape the success of Popeye's,  They're trying to replicate the massive demand and sales the sandwich got, but no other place has come close to realizing why Popeye's got all the attention. The secret is that they struck gold with the taste of its spices and breading of its regular chicken, but in sandwich form. It's as simple as that. And also because they were the first ones out of the gate, with the rest of the industry playing catch up.

Burger King has come the closest to replicating that sandwich, right down to the style of the bun and the pickles. All in all, I liked it, but I could tell it was a cheap imitator of the Popeye's sandwich, and if you have a Popeye's nearby, I suggest you head there. Not to say that this was a bad sandwich at all! There was something a bit off. I could only briefly taste the spices, and the flavor of the breading and the bun reminded me too much of Popeye's.

And finally, Conan O'Brien bid farewell to late night tv for the third time. He might just be going to HBO Max, but this is truly an end to an era. I can truly say that my awful sleep schedule can be blamed on staying up to watch his show at 12:30 at night during High School. Oh, at first I'd just watch Letterman, but since I wasn't going to sleep anyway, I might as well check out that guy that danced with Bart Simpson.

What I found amongst the celebrity interviews and performances by bands no one's heard of (yet always had the biggest audience reaction) were absurd, odd sketches by equally odd characters. Conan wasn't afraid to be weird, and nearly thirty years on, he still finds ways to show that off. 

Case in point, my favorite remote of his during the TBS era was when he visited the American Girl Doll Store.

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It only took a few minutes before Conan's headcanon with his doll became that she lived in Nazi Germany and was a raging alcoholic. Only Conan. My early (and let's face it, current) attempts at comedy was trying to pull off even a tenth of what he does.

Thanks, Conan. Thonan.

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AuGHOST 2020

 August was mostly crap, lets be honest here.

But something that kept me sane was participating in the AuGHOST drawing challenge once again.

One prompt a day, one ghost to go along with it. I also did it last year and the year before. I'll be honest, I almost didn't do it this year since it's, you know, drawing for 31 days. I was also low on art supplies, I ran out of room in the little notebook I'd been drawing in. But one Michael's run later and I came home with an actual sketchbook and a few packs of fancy markers. Not the REALLY fancy ones, but they got the job done. And no more lines on the drawings, either! I'm moving up in the world.

I've been under a lot of stress lately (but who hasn't?), but it turns out that drawing relaxed me. Maybe its because all of my concentration was focused on putting shapes on the page? Either way, I should doodle more often.

With that out of the way, let me show you this year's ghosts!

1) Bright

My thought going into this was to draw Homer Simpson wearing Henry Kissinger's glasses from memory.

But he came out looking more like George Costanza, or Colin Robinson from What We Do in The Shadows. This was my first attempt in the new style, and didn't quite realize that the markers smudged. That's drawing left handed for you.

2) Wax

One of a few "this looked better in my head." It was my first time playing around with shadows. I pictured the ghost being a candle, but I thought it was cooler if the flame was in its mouth and not on top of the head.

3) Confine

Wow Ghost was promised a nice cask of Amontillado, but things didn't turn out as well as he hoped it would be.

4) Lure

Everyone knows ghosts LOVE free bird seed! 

(Yes, that's supposed to be bird seed. Grayscale is weird)

5) Watery

"Get him a red hat and a Speedo." My first thought for this prompt was "Life Aquatic." Didn't come out as well as I'd hoped, kinda forgot what Bill Murray's beard looked like.

6) Ornate

Look at him with his lil Burger King crown. Gonna admit it, but this was my favorite ghost I ever drew. Crown aside, he's just a perfect drawing and I spent the rest of the month trying to recapture that.

7) Time

Time is certainly a flat circle here. Was thinking of the classic Mickey Mouse watch for this one.

8) Electric

Creepy. Kooky. Mysterious. Spooky. Altogether ooky.

Pretty good facsimile to Uncle Fester, if I must say.

9) Well

That's a weird hand...thing reaching out of that well. It was this or I tried to draw Ghost Ronald Reagan (he DID say "well" a lot.)

10) Scattered

Smothered and covered!

11) Puppet

Ghost muppet! I didn't like how the mouth came out, though. I panicked.

12) Roast

Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do!

13) Airy

"Say, did somebody say...box kits?"
"No!"

I liked how this came out. I might be spatially impaired, drawing a box kite is a lot harder than you'd think.

14) Grounded

What did ghostie do?!

15) Cryptic

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!

16) Entwined

This came about when I realized that 2020 didn't seem to have any recurring ghosts, like Wow Ghost was for 2018, and Hatchet Ghost was for 2019. This was tryouts to see if Box Kite Ghost or Bright Ghost were able to be kept around. Turns out glasses are easier to draw than a box kite.

17) Opera

It's not over until the fat ghostie sings!

18) Old Fashioned

"Whuts all this, then?!" I liked the idea of drawing an old fashioned Bobby cop. Anything else I could think of for this one, like an old wind-up toy, or Dave Thomas from Wendy's seemed harder to draw. Just drawing the hat was tough enough.

19) Garden

See, here's Bright Ghost again who is suddenly Seymour in this drawing. I didn't feel confident enough to draw Audrey II, so I just drew Petey Piranha from Super Mario Sunshine instead. This was another one of my favorite drawings this time around.

20) Beheaded

Ah, the sad, sad tale of Hatchet Ghost. In 2019, he was just this weird ghost with a weird looking hatchet. Then he cut off his arm. Then somehow he cut off his other arm. Then he got his eye scratched out by a cat. Then he got caught in the Ghostbuster's ghost trap. Then somehow he lost a chunk out of his bottom. And now he's lost his head.

21) Telepathic

Ghostie thinks he's Aquaman or something. I think that's supposed to be a fishbowl, but looks more like some sort of bag.

22) Knot

"Not only is it not bad it's knot bread!" This ghost is enjoying a Pretzel Wagon pretzel, like all the movie stars are talking about!

23) Crow

or rather "Croooooow!" I was thinking whether do draw a ghost dressed as The Crow, or one dressed as Crow T Robot from MST3K, then decided to just do both. I gotta say, one came out better than the other one. This version of Crow T looks more like the one who caught on fire. Sorry, Crow.

24) Project

This bit's just not the same without Patrick Swayze.

25) Weathered

I certainly drew out my emotions on the page, there. That was certainly my mood this time a week ago. What a year this month has been.

26) Gory

On top of losing his head, now Hatchet Ghost has to deal with a spear in his chest.

27) Jaunty

This one's evoking a certain singing frog (he only performs when no one else is watching).

Fun fact, that's the second attempt at this prompt. The first one looked like this:

I liked how the upper half came out better here, but then I panicked when I was drawing the lower half. That's supposed to be a leg.

28) Guardian

Don't make him tap the sign.

29) Frost

He's a lil chilly, but he's got a scarf on. I like how this one came out.

30) Egg

Another on the list of "this looked better in my head. I was trying to evoke Sheldon from Garfield & Friends.

At least I have something in common with Rob Liefeld: We can't draw feet.

31) Cosmic

And finally, we have Cosmic. Wow Ghost has the Infinity Gauntlet, we're all fucked. You might be creeped out by this, but it certainly puts a smile on his face. Since it's the last entry, I decided to go all out with the colors. It's the most I've used in a single drawing so far.

I hope you all liked looking at my drawings! Be sure to look up the "#AuGHOST" and "#AuGHOST2020" tags on Twitter and Instagram for more pictures from way better artists than me. See you all in September!

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We Are Eight

Hard to believe that this blog is now eight years old.

Look at him, he's grown so much. So what have I been up to since my last entry? 

Well for one thing, I finally got some of my pesky wisdom teeth taken out last week.

I'll spare you from what the actual teeth looked like, but they weren't pretty. I only got the two teeth in the right side of my mouth taken out but I have to say I feel much better now they're out. This was something vibe been putting off for years, Lower Righty's been giving me pain for ages ever since it fractured some time ago. Yeah, it's been hurting so bad there were times where I was planning on taking it out a la Tom Hanks in Cast Away. You know, that bit with the ice skate? That was me for a while. But anyway it's gone now and the spot where the tooth was is only slightly sore. That's a win, I guess.

I also visited the "new" Nintendo NY store in Manhattan. Well, it's pretty much the same Nintendo World store that's been there, but with a better layout. They've added big tvs to demo the WiiUs, so people can watch you suck at Mario Kart 8 on a screen that can be seen from the Today Show studio. It's a big change since this store opened up when Gamecubes were the console they were showing off, so this was quite an upgrade.

This was cool / I want it. I've seen Master Swords before, but that's a Master Swird you can actually cut someone with and sadly I have to add it to my "crazy crap I'd buy if I won the lottery" list.

The Nintendo Museum they have on the top floor got some new display cases, this one themed around Super Mario Maker. These are the actual layouts from the original Super Mario Bros. From all my time playing Mario Maker, making these simple, yet iconic level designs is a lot harder than it looks.

A better look at a few levels designs, these are from Super Mario 3. Slopes are tough to implement, I guess.

I want to steal this and hang it on my wall, and I know damn well I wasn't the only one there that was contemplating sneaking back in after hours.

And of course Pokemon has its own corner of the store, this being one of their many plush displays. All of the Pokemon you see here were modeled after Beanie Babies, with normal and sleeping variants. What excites me was that almost all the Eeveelutions had representations here, save for Umbreon and Eevee itself. Vaporeon is my favorite, so of course I was excited to see that they were the most popular. Yeah, the Slowpokes and Charmanders were almost gone but screw it, Vaporeon's getting love and of course I picked up both versions.

I don't know how much this giant Substitute cost, but I wasn't willing to lug it around the city for a few hours, plus the train ride home. I know I've seen weirder things around the city, but I didn't feel like carrying anything that day.

And of all things, Kirby had a pretty impressive display, getting the same amount of floor space reserved for the likes of popular, yet nerdy games like Splatoon and Animal Crossing. Kirby, being a round pink ball, lends himself quite well to plush dolls, so seeing plush of ANY character aside from him and popular characters like King Dedede and Meta Knight is a rare sight. Sure there was a Waddle Dee but Chef Kawasaki here is just so esoteric of a character (appeared as a miniboss in ONE game and its remake, in addition to a minor role in the Kirby anime) that I decided to buy it on the spot, even before I got to the Vaporeons.

Here's some old Game & Watches. They're a mainstay at the displays in this store, but I've never seen a few of these before. They look like weird, mutant calculators but they play simple monochrome games. But apparently these two are Super Game & Watches and they play their games in color. Since these are from the early 80s, I'm gonna guess that color was green.

Back during Valentine's Day, I spent the day as I always spend that day: feeling bad about myself. But even that gets old after a few hours so I went down to the local Dairy Queen and got their Singles Blizzard. If I remember right, it was peanut butter ice cream that had caramel and fudge and loneliness. It turned out to taste much better than I hoped, and since it was Valentine's Day, getting my hopes up by ice cream would definitely be the highlight of not only that day, but the entire month. 

And speaking of food being a highlight of the day, I managed to snag the lone strawberry glazed doughnut at a work meeting. There's always one in every assortment and it's usually snatched up before I ever get to the box. Since I've got a good 15 years on most of the other people I work with, I was the only one who cared about it. Either way, it made that meeting glide by, nevermind that the sugar from the doughnuts I ate exceeded the amount of doughnuts I usually eat, which is zero, was probably what caused it.

And now I'm going to counter the good food with...this. This is Burger King's Buttery XL Cheeseburger. Remember the Good Morning Burger from the Simpsons?

Well, even though they promised rich, creamery butter, the reality was that it was just a weird, wide burger BK made to fit on a chicken sandwich bun. It says it was buttery, but it was more like it was coated with globs of what I hoped was mayo, so I can't really say that there was any false advertising going on here. All in all, it was pretty good, butter or not.

I know that I said that I reached Peak Stuff and that still reigns true, but I couldn't resist getting John Oliver's Funko Pop. If you haven't seen Last Week Tonight, I strongly urge you to do so. With all the shows the Daily Show  has been responsible for siring the past few years, this is the one I feel is the closest to recapturing the Jon Stewart-era greatness. Samantha Bee's Full Frontal and Colbert's Late Show are steadily getting better, too, but Last Week Tonight has been firing from all cylinders from Day 1, the latest Best Thing is their coverage on Donald Drumpf.
.

Oh yeah, I ended up buying about four more over the past month, most of them variants of BMO from Adventure Time. There's like 7 versions of him and the only one I'm missing is the Glow In The Dark one from a few Comic Cons ago.  It's the only one that's worth over $100 and I'm hesitant to pull the trigger on it right now. I'm hoping for some eBay miracle or something.

Until then, I'm done with these Pop things for now. Until I browse eBay at 2am again so...expect to see me update on another new pile of stuff next month.

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