AuGHOST

This past month, my twitter buddy Sommerjam along with David Pietandrea set up a daily drawing challenge called AuGHOST.

Obviously it’s centered around ghosts, with a different prompt every day. I’ve been wanting to try my hand at drawing, even though I’m not all that good at it. I figured ghosts were easy to draw, and I’m happy to say that I made it through the whole month and completed 31 different drawings!
Here now are each of those drawings, in one blog entry purely for posterity. Crude evidence of eraser marks and all.

1. Massive

My first serious attempt at drawing something! And also my first serious attempt to draw a really beefy arm and a fist.

I ended up loving that little ghost that’s just says "Wow." You’ll be seeing more of him later.

2. Cheap

For this one, I was thinking "a Funko Pop on clearance is pretty cheap, right?"

I based it off of the Funko Pop of the Blue Ghost from PAC-Man.

It’s ironically the most valuable of that set.

3. Jar

When is a ghost’s door not a ghost’s door? When it’s ajar!

...let’s move on.

4. Hold

One of my early favorites. Also features my Very Serious Attempt at drawing the classic Garfield phone from everyone’s childhood.

I wanted one so badly but never did. For the best, I never had anyone to talk to anyway.

5. Voracious

This looked better in my head. A giant ghost that was pretty much a mouth with teeth sucking up the PAC-Man fruit was definitely one of my more unique looking ghosts. It ended up looking like a frog without its hind legs. And with teeth.

The fruit next to the key is supposed to be an apple, but it was originally grapes until I realized there were no grapes in any of those games.

6. Delete

This is more "erase" than "delete" but you get the idea. This was also like the third attempt at taking a picture of it, and the eraser dust changed every time.

7. Clover

This was one of the first drawings I sketched out, it seemed so obvious. Could’ve been better, but I like it.

8. Crime

Hey, who took the cookies?! Was it YOU?

At the last minute, I gave the ghost eyes where it was originally just eyes and I don’t like how it came out.

9. Guilty

A little political commentary for this one. When I sketched it out, Day 9 Ghost hadn’t blatantly admitted to it on twitter yet...

10. Cook

This ghost just wanted to stay in on a Friday night and microwave some popcorn. Not a fan of how I drew the popcorn bag, but loving the tongue.

11. Inject

Wait a sec...is that the ghost from Day 1? What’s it injecting?! Is that how its arm got so beefy?

12. Screw

A little old school cartoon throwback for this one. I really like how this one came out.

13. Familiar

"Oh my god, this ghost is my exact double!"

I really regret giving Fancy Ghost a mouth, his mustache did all the heavy lifting by itself.

14. Flippant

"Why do your ghosts look like condoms?"

This was based on an actual Instagram comment left on one of the earlier pictures. I couldn’t un-see it and it really put me in a bad mood for the next few days. It’s why almost every ghost from this point forward look much different. Don’t read the comments, folks.

15. Clingy

You feed a stray dog one of your Scooby Snax and it follows you around forever. Literally.

Normally you’d be happy to have a dog with you for all eternity, but this was during my sad phase, so this ghost was sad, too.

16. Blush

"Me? Surely you mean the ghost behind me, right?"

That ghost is me whenever someone talks to me. Nobody talks to me, so I assume they’re talking to someone else.

This was also the only picture I started over from scratch since I didn’t like how the original version came out after I inked it.

17. Scandal

"The Fake Boo York Times is being unfair to my good friend, the Day 1 Ghost. GHOST WITCH HUNT!" The Day 9 Ghost tweeted earlier this morning.

Totally one of my favorites, even if I couldn’t draw a newspaper as well as I thought I could. I think at this point I just started inserting the "Bystander Ghost"  (or the Wow Ghost) anywhere I could. This is probably my favorite usage of him.

18. Damp

Your dustpan, I mean umbrella turning inside out during a rainstorm is the worst, isn’t it?

19. Three

"Ghost...Ghost...aww, lemon!"

I saw "three" and my mind immediately jumped to a slot machine. Did you know that you could just watch people playing slot machines on YouTube?

You’d think this was stupidest thing ever, but it’s not! I got mesmerized by these videos for a couple of days, and it’s much cheaper than playing these things yourself.

20. Spot

Here is my Very Serious Attempt at drawing the classic Charlie Brown Ghost from memory.

Obviously I’m no Charles Schulz. Speaking of which, I drew this entry on Snoopy’s birthday:

I think Charlie Brown Ghost is just upset that he looks like one of those old school Playskool Little People Toys.

21. Fire

I don’t know what Day 1 Ghost is being fired from, but obviously that news report from Day 17 made the Day 9 Ghost look bad. Let’s say he was the Secretary or Agriculture.

22. Lick

This demon fish ghost thing is imitating its favorite scene from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

My headcanon says that this drawing is a closeup of the Day 9 Ghost.

23. Check

Ghost Santa is making his list and checking it twice!

It dawned on me too late to add famous pop culture ghosts to his list, so I just fit as many as I could. Did I miss any? And how do you get on Ghost Santa’s nice list?

In any case, I like how Ghost Santa came out. I don’t know whether to be proud or frightened that he comes off as a bit creepy.

24. Parcel

Abu (A-Boo?) Dhabi is not just a place you send annoyingly cute kittens, but also disgraced ghosts that took steroids.

25. Plain

I saw this prompt and thought "what’s more plain than a bagel?"

This Ghost is NOT a doughnut, and he’ll give you such a haunting if you accuse him of being one.

26. Spark

Pictured is me getting inspiration for ideas for these prompts. Again, I thought I knew how to draw lightbulbs, but I obviously need more practice.

27. Slide

This ghost just wants to have a fun time.

28. Early

They say to draw your feelings, and this is my sincere self portrait of myself every morning. I don’t even drink coffee, but this ghost needed a mug with a funny saying on it.

29. Shallow

This ghost has something to say to you.

30. Bucket

I don’t know whether it’s the bucket that’s haunted or it just fell on this ghost’s head, but either way the ghost crudely drew a face on it to compensate.

I really like how this came out, but I thought maybe I should’ve drawn the bucket as one of those McBoo pails Mcdonald's used to give out every year.

I thought a regular bucket gets the job done. It’s also the only drawing that I used a marker on, and it bled out through to the next page, so I had to start the next one over from scratch.

31. Victory

And finally we come to the end, with Victory! You’re almost there, Ghost! You can do it! He’s even being cheered on by the recurring ghost characters, too. In retrospect I should’ve drawn the 31 on the ghost and not the finish line, but I still like this one.

Yeah, Bucket’s drawing bleeding out turned out to be a blessing in disguise, since the original idea was for the ghost to fall flat on its face just before crossing the finish line. Luckily I decided to make the final product more positive. That, and I couldn’t figure out how to draw the ghost falling on its face well anyway.

Before I go, I need to show this picture drawn my friend Ryan Mead for today’s entry.

I tagged him way at the beginning of the month and he’d been drawing along with me ever since. For the Victory entry, he decided to add the Wow Ghost to it, and I’m honestly touched by it. Seems I’m not the only one who loves him.

I hope you all enjoyed my attempts at art this month, I had a lot of fun with it. I truly envy anyone who could draw well, especially if they do it for a living. I’ll keep it to a hobby for now, but I finally gave myself some discipline and managed to get around to doing something I’ve been putting off for ages.

Check out the #AuGHOST tag on Twitter and Instagram for entries by other find folks more talented than I.

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Let's Talk About The Banana Splits

One of my favorite shows from my childhood was The Banana Splits Show.

For those not in the know, it was a variety show that was produced by Hanna-Barbera back in 1968 that starred the titular group as a fictional rock band doing funny skits and fooling around in their clubhouse. You had Fleegle the dog (Paul Winchell), Bingo the ape (Daws Butler), Drooper the lion (Allan Melvin), and Snorky the elephant (he only honked). After Beatlemania, fake rock/pop bands were all the rage like the Archies, The Monkees, and the like and Hanna-Barbera wanted their own slice of the pie. And like most fake bands, how they sounded when they talked vs how they sung were wildly different.

Here's a music video of one of their songs.

And here's a video of some of their sketches:

See? The kids of the 60s were easily fooled, I guess. If the style of the costumes and sets seemed familiar, they were made by Sid Marty Krofft in their first TV gig. The show only ran for 31 episodes, and would've continued on if the Kroffts weren't offered a better deal to start their own show. HR Pufnstuf was made in its place and the rest was Krofft history.

Since it turns 50 years old this year, it's admittedly before my time, but I used to see it in the early mornings on TV back when I was young. I want to say it was on TBS? I know it didn't see it on Cartoon Network since my house never got it until at least 1996. The sets, the costumes, the colors really hit a bunch of my buttons and I couldn't get enough of them. It was a long stretch of time before I rediscovered them on Boomerang around, jeez, seven years ago? And it was worth the wait, it was like waiting for the bus for summer camp all over again.

But you can never forget that famous theme song:

I love that intro so much. They're just dicking around an amusement park, it's every kids dream. The first season they're running around Six Flags Over Texas (the OG!), but the second season they were doing stuff in the now-defunct Coney Island in Ohio:

The second season also made Snorky furry for some reason. But like most things concerning the Kroffts, we don't tend to ask what led to their creative decisions. And like everyone else, I wanted one of those Banana Buggies for myself.

And since that theme song is stuck in your head, I can't let that go by without mentioning the time Liz Phair covered it for Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits, one of my favorite albums ever.

And even earlier by The Dickies.

Amazing to see people who have only learned about this show through Kick Ass.

Each episode had a variety of segments. You usually had a few short segments with the Banana Splits themselves, but they also had a live-action serial called Danger Island:

It was about a group of explorers fending off pirates with the help of a native man named Chongo. ("Uh-oh, Chongo!" was the famous catch phrase of the show) Notably starring Jan Michael Vincent and directed by a before-he-was-famous Richard Donner, this was usually the best segment in the show.

And depending on the episode, the cartoon you saw were either The Three Musketeers

or The Arabian Knights.

They were pretty much the same cartoon, but in different settings. A team of heroes, an animal sidekick and some kids fighting bad guys. In syndicated runs, some of these segments (usually Danger Island) would be replaced by shorts from the Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show. The Boomerang cuts thankfully restored everything.

In addition to those segments, sometimes you saw really bizarre ones like Hold The Bus.

I can't explain that, either. All I know is that it's one of the oldest videos on all of youtube.

In 1972 they starred in The Banana Splits in Hocus Pocus Park, their only full-length adventure.

After YEARS of looking for it, someone uploaded the whole thing to youtube and I immediately had to watch it. It was mostly animated with live-action wraparounds and sadly what you see above is only the live-action parts. I'm gonna cut to the chase, that's the best part as the rest of the movie is a boring, plodding mess.

The plot is that a little girl the Banana Splits were giving a tour to was kidnapped by a witch that lived in a cartoon forest and the band rushes in to rescue her. There's lots of arguing and dumb puns and schemes that go nowhere. The two henchmen that try to fend off the Splits end up teaming up with them, rescue the girl, and then they hold a concert. The end.

Lot of great faces though. Like this one with Drooper:

And these:

Good thing I managed to screen cap as much as I could, as I'm afraid it's lost to the ether again.

I was warned that I wasn't going to like it, and I didn't listen and I hate that I didn't listen. It's still worth watching not because it's the only time the Banana Splits have been animated, but all of the early Kings Island footage is frankly incredible. There's not a lot of good footage of theme parks before the 90s with all the advances of camcorder technology, and the footage in that cut of the movie is as crisp as you can find it.

They've had a few attempts at revivals over the years, like some shorts that aired on Boomerang several years ago:

Plus this really creepy video from Web Premiere Toons that was made during the early days of internet videos where we had to watch on a dialup connection.

The video cuts off before the audio does and I'm honestly scared by it.

And just last year, they teamed up with the Suicide Squad of all things in a comic.

I'll tell you, that story is NUTS and certainly worth the read. They're just as dumb and corny as you remember, but now they're realistic animals and they're packing heat.

How much do I love the Banana Splits despite much of it being not that good?

I currently have a poster of this hanging over my couch. Yes ladies, I'm single.

And I managed to pick up two of Funko's Dorbz Ridez of Fleegle and Drooper (my favorites) from New York Comic Con a few years ago. Since all four of them were limited to 300 pieces each, it’s gonna be kind of a hassle to get Bingo and Snorky’s since those two were never released outside of San Diego Comic Con and their going rate is around $60 each.

And that's all a buildup to my latest mail call:

Banana Splits Funko Pops!! Ever since the Dorbz were made I’d been begging Funko to make pops of these and this year they finally delivered! When SDCC came around, they announced these guys and I was so excited...until I saw that they were limited to 4000 pieces each, with a small portion of that being released to their online store...which tends to sell out their exclusives within minutes. If I know my math, 4000 is a lot more than 300 and even though exclusives with that large of a run tend to not go for much money on the secondary market, I already resigned myself to paying far more than their original $15 price tag for each of them. These were going to be another one of my white whales, like the Frankenberry pop turned into.

But as luck would have it, I was on the Funko shop on the first day of comic con, thinking the sale list that was leaked to collectors was fake, there they were available to buy. There were not many things I have done in my life as fast as I bought these, folks. I know consumerism is the devil and I almost gave myself a heart attack over literal stuff, but I managed to beat everyone to the punch. Hell, I went to a toy show the next weekend and I talked to vendors that were pretty mad that they missed it and I got to rub it in their faces.

I'll confess that Bingo was never my favorite, but his pop won me over. It look fantastic and his big grin is what draws me in. When people tell you that Funko Pops look bland and ugly, I advise you to point to these guys. These are three inches of sculpted art, and I'm sticking to that.

The main problem I have is that the writing has been consistently terrible for these guys. I know that it's not high art and aimed at kids, but it could seriously better. Like if they were given the Pee-Wee's Playhouse or the Aquabats Super Show approach of tongue in cheek surrealism, the Banana Splits could be great again! Cartoon Network clearly has the costumes still lying around somewhere, and since reboots are all the rage lately, I feel like it could be done!

And it can be like the old show, where they have different segments. Like, a cartoon, an adventure serial, some fake commercials or music videos, and some Banana Splits shenanigans. I might be an audience of one for this, but I'd be front row center watching every day! Who's with me?

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Still a Toys R Us Kid

We've all seen the news: Toys R Us officially closed for business (at least in the states) yesterday, June 29th, 2018.

I think we've all seen the famous picture by now and whoever took this picture lacks a soul. I'm sure they had good intentions, and I know that TRU is planning a comeback, but they knew this was gonna go viral.

This is the one I went to on Thursday, in Carle Place. My attitude since then was like Milhouse right here:

So what was left in that giant store with one day left in business?

Not much, I'm afraid. Literal crap in baskets. This is the only picture I took inside because the rest of the store looked this empty, and also it was too depressing. If anyone wanted the Duck Dynasty game for PS4, the store still had half a dozen copies in what was left of the video game section.

I did, however, not leave the store empty handed.

I don't even know if I actually have this amiibo (not likely), but I liberated it from the store for two bucks and change.

Someone asked me if I walked away with this poster, but I'm sure that some employee already had dibs on it. I'd like this to go to someone who actually worked for the company. If this store had handbaskets with the logo on them, they were long gone, not to mention I wasn't able to haul one of the shopping carts home with me.

My childhood store was this one, in Massapequa.

So many memories in that store. I know I bought my SNES there, among many, many other toys.

The last toy I bought there was this Funko Pop of Sprocket from Fraggle Rock, knowing (correctly) that I wouldn't get a chance to get one once the actual clearance sales started. It sucks knowing that TRU is one less trusted Funko retailer, and that its exclusives (usually the Teen Titans Go line) have either become commons or went off to other companies. Also, yeah, it's stacked with a few of the rarer Pops that I have, be jealous.

But enough of the depressing present. Let's look back at some fond memories, shall we?

Remember Geoffrey Money? Yes kids, before gift cards were the norm, Toys R Us gift certificates came in the form of actual dollar bills. To teach kids how actual money worked, we were given this fake money that was only good at one store to spend at our leisure. Every birthday and Christmas I looked forward to getting cards stuffed with these, and I swore off any relatives that decided to get me something else instead (that weren't already toys or the like, of course). I was seriously bummed when this got phased out, but I know it was for the best. If you lost even one of the bills, there was no getting it back. I wish I saved at least one of them for posterity, though. I can always assume a trip to eBay would indulge me, but I'm afraid to look what the asking price is for one these days.

On that note, Kids R Us used to be a thing, too. I don't have much nostalgia or a lot of fond childhood memories for this place. For those not in the know, this was Toys R Us' foray into kids clothing stores, and were usually situated near other Toys R Us, much like how Babies R Us stores were usually nearby to the mothership.

Because if there's nothing kids love more than toys, it's being forced to shop for clothes with mom! It could really explain why most of them closed down in the late nineties, with the last of them shuttering in 2004. Before empty storefronts were as depressingly common as they are now, my association with dead stores were Kids R Uses that closed twenty years ago and still remain empty to this day. Well, it's not true. Out of the The two I knew of, one stayed vacant for years before Circuit City took it over, and when THAT closed, it stayed empty again until an Aldis moved in about three years back; the other was under a Bally's Fitness and when it closed in the late 90s, stayed empty until the gym finally took it over about a year or two ago. Both were host to Spirit Halloween stores on and off for a few years, but seeing nothing in that space for most of your life really stays with you.

Before Geoffrey became that cartoony giraffe, he used to look like this:

He's got my vote. Geoffrey actually had a number of looks over the years.

The 1988-1999 versions are what I remember the most. I was not a fan of that freaky live-action giraffe. All I remember from that era is this one commercial:

And Geoffrey used to have a family!

In case you're wondering, the wife is Gigi, the son is Geoffrey Jr., and the daughter is Baby Gee. They got phased out over the nineties, but most old stores still had them plastered everywhere well into the last decade. Newer versions of Geoffrey made him a swinging bachelor, the fools.

And who could forget how you bought video games back in the day? You took a slip for whatever you wanted, then brought it over to the window in the corner of the store and then the guy went through that dungeon and brought out your copy of Donkey Kong Country. I was both scared and really intrigued by that little window.  It's a shame that the video game section became open air by the time I could drive myself to these places. You could actually SEE all those games behind the glass case, but it wasn't the same.

And I REALLY miss when aisles looked like this. The 80s/early 90s was a magical time, long before three toy companies owned everything and kids actually BOUGHT toys. It's so stuffed with toys, I love it! It's a shame I can't find any pictures of the old school Transformers section, but it looked exactly like this.

Farewell, Toys R Us. We'll always have the commercials.

The reason why I refused to grow up was I always wanted to remain a Toys R Us kid. I may be growing older, but I'll always be a Toys R Us kid...

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Absolute Units

Starting earlier this year, you might've seen folks describe big ol' things as "an absolute unit." I myself, can't get enough of the term.

The meme technically starts here, back in December, and this guy definitely earned that term. The English definitely have a better way with words than we do, eh?

But THIS is when I believe the term officially entered the lexicon. It's also my favorite variant of these. There's fluffy, and then there's...this. It's like if a cloud could kick your ass.

And of course they dug up the source like any good museum would:

"Black Welsh Mountain" certainly has a ring to it.

And this really represents the four elements: Air (Ram), Fire (Tiger), Earth (Raccoon), and Water (Seal). I don't know what it is about really fat or really buff animals, but I'm just really delighted by this.

Or just really tiny. Or any Bearded Dragon, really.

They introduced Alolan Form Exeggutor to Pokemon Go the other day and this is seriously what it looks like when you encounter one. Its Pokedex entry doesn't even show its head!

And speaking of Pokemon Go, I managed to catch this absolute unit during this month's community day. I managed to catch eight(!) shiny Charmander, but this was the only one good enough to evolve. June's community day is gonna be Larvitar (yay), but it'll be on the day I'll be at a convention (boo).

You might've seen this picture of a really buff cat making the rounds the past few days, and I seriously can't take my eyes off of it. Fat cats are common, but one like this makes we want to know its backstory. It reminds me more of a clip art picture of a bulldog.

You joke, but this clip art was my high school's mascot. I'm not kidding, this is the official one.

And finally we end on this nonsense. I caught this just earlier tonight while watching the National Spelling Bee finals. We finally managed to find a single word for "absolute unit" and it's of course German in origin. I couldn't for the life of you tell you what this word actually means (it's a medical term of some kind), I just had to rush to take a picture of this and share it all over the internet.

When the spelling bee is down to the last two spellers, it delves into the obscure pages of the dictionary and starts the "okay, you clearly made that one up" round. The past few years have had finals go on forever, and from 2014-16 there were ties. Scripps wanted to go to bed early this time and pretty much ended the competition right here. This was the VERY FIRST WORD in the round, and Naysa of course messed it up, allowing the winning word to be this:

From the pronunciation, I wouldn't have guessed that spelling in a million years (I assumed a Q was in there somewhere), but if you asked anyone watching, he was pretty much given the equivalent of "apple." PRONOUNCER SAYS WORD doesn't help at all, either.

You got hosed in favor of a kid on his last year of being eligible, Naysa. I hope you continue to kick much absolute unit ass later on.

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