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!

Follow Me on Twitter!

Follow Me on Instagram!
"Like" Beaming For Bunnies on Facebook!
"Like" my Simpsons Quote of The Day Facebook Page!

Some New Stuff!

July is done, and somehow it was just as stressful as June!

Granted, I didn't get any new flat tires this month, so that was a plus. Not a big plus, but a plus nonetheless.

First thing's first: I got yet another cel in the mail this month.

This one is great. It's a cel from that one Fruity Pebbles commercial where Barney pretended to be a rapper.

The pose in the cel appears about three seconds in. For you youngins out there, there was a period in the late 80's and early 90's where every type of media was legally required to feature someone rapping, and cereal commercials were no exception.

Sesame Street got in the act, too. And it seems that both Barney and Cookie Monster took their fashion choice from Run DMC. The boys had taste.

I'm not gonna lie, this is probably the most well known Fruity Pebbles commercial after the Christmas one.

Barney FINALLY got to have a bowl of cereal! Kids today have no idea how monumental this was.

From that, let's move on to snacks.

I finally found some of the new Dunkaroos! I missed this the first go around as I wasn't much of a snacker back in the day. I'm still not, but I had to indulge just this once.

My verdict is...it's fine. Not bad, but nothing too special, either. If you wanted to dip tiny wafers into cupcake frosting, this is the treat for you. I honestly expected more out of the two bucks I paid for it, and THAT felt like highway robbery.

Besides all that, July wasn't much of anything to note. We still got the Covid lingering around, and there's not much else to do or go to. I've lost my patience for this month ages ago, and the sooner I get done talking about this July, the sooner we can all move on.

If there's an August, I'll check in with you guys again.

Follow Me on Twitter!

Follow Me on Instagram!
"Like" Beaming For Bunnies on Facebook!
"Like" my Simpsons Quote of The Day Facebook Page!

The Great Muppet Mural

June is over. Thank God.

This month started with giant nails in my tires.

My mom's, too.

Thanks to some drunken idiot from a party next door that got too loud. Can you blame my parents for wanting them to quiet down? This was at 10:30 at night on a SUNDAY. We all had work the next day. And we got rewarded with nails meant for cement embedded in our tires. I caught one the next morning just laying in front of one of my tires.

I unfortunately didn't catch the other one until it was too late. That was a fun trip to the shop. And it turns out that my other tires were rotting so I had to get THEM replaced, too.

It didn't get much better after that, frankly.

I wanted to talk about other things, like finally completing the Smash Amiibo collection with Isabelle finally showing up after preordering it from Best Buy months ago.

Well, Joker and Hero got announced, but it'll be a while before they're released. Until then, I have them all.

I also wanted to show off two (former) Carvel stands on Long Island.

Marshall's in Massapequa. Right next door to All American, to boot. That place was NOT observing social distancing at all.

And Marvel Ice Cream in Long Beach. Thanos sale, half off!

Some day I'll go inside them. I just happened to pass it the other day.

I also wanted to talk about how I almost bought this cel from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.

It was pretty cheap but there was a bidding war going on for it so I didn't engage. Such a shame, too, because you don't find a genuine Kennedy pose every day.

Or how I DID buy this production (not cel) drawing of Dick Dastardly and Muttley. It was made for The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera ride at Universal and it was a real trip to find it. I had NEVER seen even a cel from it until now. I had to snatch it.

The paper it was on was bigger than I expected, and the drawing much smaller.

Here's the main ride in its entirety. It looks like the exact shot shows up around three minutes in.

I honestly didn't think there were cels, since most of the ride is CGI. Fun fact: Don Bluth's company handled the animation, and it certainly shows. The CGI doesn't look as cutting edge as it did in 1990, but the animation as a whole held up pretty well.

But today I'd like to show you how June ended for me.

So this odd looking Muppet mural has been in my basement since before my family moved in. And I've lived here for roughly 32 years.

Well, today my family realized that one of the pipes in a room on the other side of the basement was leaking. Don't worry, it wasn't anything too serious, a lot of stuff had to be moved around and the only thing that was wrecked was a package of paper towels.

But my dad yanked out the insulation in the wall under the pipe and discovered that the mural was bigger than we thought.

That is what I assume is Miss Piggy in a carpenter outfit. The colors really pop because I'm pretty sure that this was the first time she's seen the light of day in around 30 years. Gonna admit, this one's gonna haunt me for a while.

I tried to pry open some insulation next to Piggy and found this:

It's kinda hard to make out, but I'm assuming that this is supposed to be Fozzie. For one, it's brown, and he's the only major muppet that isn't represented in this. It's really odd since a stairwell separates the two rooms here, so this must've been painted before it was added. That's odd in itself because the only other way in and out of the basement is through one of those passageways that open up out of the ground.

Like that, really.

And here's proof that I didn't just swipe all of this from Reddit or something, as if my hand in the third picture wasn't proof enough.

So...is my house cursed? Half of my timeline says yes, the other says no.

If I survive, I'll see you all in July.

Follow Me on Twitter!

Follow Me on Instagram!
"Like" Beaming For Bunnies on Facebook!
"Like" my Simpsons Quote of The Day Facebook Page!

It's Gonna Be June!

Somehow the world has gotten worse since the last time I posted here. But fret not, I'm still here and so are you.

I mentioned last month that I bought a few things off of eBay that hadn't arrived yet at the time I wrote that entry, but now I'm ready to show them off to you.

First up, this Carl Yastrzemski trading card. Why THIS of all things? Like all things in my life, you can trace this back to The Simpsons.

In the episode "Three Men and A Comic Book" way back in season 2, Milhouse tries to buy this specific card from Comic Book Guy. Turns out "Carl Yastrzemski with the big sideburns" described quite a few different cards, and I scoured eBay for a while for the closest approximation of it. A few were worth quite a bit of money.

This one was worth thirty bucks in 1991, but I got this one for about four dollars. Maybe because it isn't graded? It's just in a few sleeves, seems like an actual grade raises the value quite a bit.

It also features probably my favorite fun fact for any sports player. So...normal. I tried researching just WHY or WHEN Yaz was the director of a bank, but any google searches turned up empty.

In one week, we lost three solid contenders for "Greatest of All Time" status: Little Richard, Jerry Stiller, and Fred Willard. You know me and my love of celebrity autographs, so I scoured eBay as soon as I heard the news about Jerry Stiller to buy one of his signatures before his price inevitably skyrocketed.

I knew that Little Richard already commanded a hefty price when he was alive, so I figured that Frank Costanza himself would be a little more reasonable. And he was. They say that a personalized autograph decreases the value, but I say that's what makes it authentic. I don't know who Roy was, but I thank him for getting this, which is now in my hands.

And now a compilation of my favorite Frank Costanza moments:

Of course I did the same thing when I heard about Fred Willard.

That man was in just about everything, and was most often the best part of anything he was in. He was a master improviser whose voice had the ability to make anything sound hilarious. This specific picture is from his appearance in A Mighty Wind, an all-around great movie. It's probably not as well known as some of Christopher Guests' other movies like Best in Show or This is Spinal Tap, but he is incredible in it.

I personally love his performance in "Best in Show."

To this day I can't watch the National Dog Show without thinking "and in some countries these dogs are eaten" or Fred asking how much weight he could bench press.

I haven't seen much of "I Think You Should Leave" (blame my lack of a Netflix account), but he did an absolutely banger of a sketch that I've been watching over and over for the past few weeks.

God, he's the only person who could make me laugh at "my condolences."

I was wondering where I saw that giant instrument before, and then I remembered this video making the rounds about a month or so back:

It's called an American Fotoplayer and it's a crazy piano/organ/one man band instrument that used to be in silent movie theaters to score screwball comedies to. There's not many left around, and this one is just sitting in this man's house.

He's made videos of him explaining how it works, and playing other songs that may seem more familiar, like this one:

Speaking of which, I need to also get HBO Max, I hear those new Looney Tunes cartoons are quite good.

This isn't where I thought this entry would end up when I started writing it, but here we are. See you guys in June if the world is still intact by then.

Follow Me on Twitter!

Follow Me on Instagram!
"Like" Beaming For Bunnies on Facebook!
"Like" my Simpsons Quote of The Day Facebook Page!