Endgames and Other Stuff

How about that Avengers: Endgame, eh?

image created by @brotherzee

Without going into too much detail, I thought this ruled. I've always been more of a DC guy, but I've been eating up just about everything Marvel's been spitting out into theaters for the past ten years. I've only missed Hulk's and the two Ant Man movies, but I've seen every other movie in the MCU. And boy, not only did Endgame stand pretty freaking well as its own movie, not just a damn good sequel to Infinity War, but a legitimate culmination of 21 previous stories without getting bogged down with the story it was trying to tell. Seriously, every other MCU movie gets a nod in some way, some subtle (watch for the kid from Iron Man 3), while others are giant plot points (the dozens of Thor: The Dark World fans will be happy). I do wish I at least saw Ant Man & The Wasp, elements from that movie play a big part in the story, but I honestly didn't feel lost at all.

In terms of its scale, imagine the third Lord of The Rings movie, you know, with that giant battle at the end and everything? Like that, but with superheroes. Hell, remember when the INKLING of an Avengers movie got everyone excited? Endgame was just on a whole other level. Forgive me if this is the most minor of spoilers, but it's probably easier to list who ISN'T in this movie. All I wanted out of this movie was to see Korg again. I got to see Korg again. I am a happy man.

There's some shots in this movie so full of pure comic book audacity that if I were to show them to the 2008 version of me that just saw the first Iron Man, I'd think future me was just making up bullshit. Speaking of shots, I'm glad I ended up splurging for an IMAX screening because this flick is absolutely gorgeous and it needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

With that out of the way, here are some other actual spoilers, but devoid of any context.

You have been warned.
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Some of these I may have cribbed from the Simpsons Films twitter, but whoever runs that page is a genius, and I'll freely admit to borrowing from the best.

Coincidentally enough, I talked about Infinity War here this time last year, and I said I put money down on Hawkeye being the one to save the universe in the end. Well, I was close enough? Also, we still never got to see Thor and T'Challa formally meet each other, and judging by where Thor goes in the end, it looks like that's not happening anytime soon.

With that out of the way, this past month I bought yet ANOTHER cel from the Cricket Gallery.

Yes, this authentic cel of Dr. Stupid from Ren & Stimpy! I can't really find footage of it right now, but I'm pretty sure it's from the specific short where he tells you that the reason why you have to go to school is because your parents are aliens. That's always been the one that stuck with me ever since childhood because, hey, the man's got a point.

But I was wondering why I got a cel from an iconic short for pretty much a steal. (You might remember the Izzy cel in last month's post, it cost a little over $140). Once I had it in my hands, I was able to get a better look at it.

There we go. That's the problem, it doesn't look as well preserved as any of the other cels I have, even the other Ren & Stimpy one I have.

This iconic Happy Helmet cel came from Bob Camp's personal collection, so I knew it was given the love and care it deserved before I brought it home and put a frame around it. From what I've read about cels, there's really nothing you could do to truly preserve them, they'll all eventually crumble into dust. All you can do is put it under as much glass as possible and hope for the best.

A few years back at NYCC, I saw that Bob Camp had a much better Dr Stupid cel for sale, but I passed on it because I didn't have the money at the time, and I've been kicking myself about it ever since. But now I'm happy that I now have a Stimpy to go with the Ren.

I have weird hobbies, but if you're still reading this after however long I've been doing this, you should know that about me by now.

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Birthday gift!

My birthday came and went. Nothing too eventful, really. You might turn 32 once, but it's pretty unremarkable when you think about it.

But I did buy a gift for myself, and I think it's pretty neat.

Behold! It's an animation cel, but not from anything mainstream or well-known. Quite the opposite, really.

This is a cel from "Izzy's Quest for Olympic Gold," a TV special starring Izzy the Whatisit, the infamous mascot of the 1996 summer Olympics.

I've talked about Izzy and his mascot brethren before, about a decade ago in fact. He and his species lived in a world inside of the Olympic Torch, and the special was about Izzy needing to earn the five Olympic rings from good sportsmanship to leave his world to go to Earth to participate in the Olympics. This aired a few times during a single weekend on TNT in 1995, and then never seen again. I remember watching it during one of those airings, and I spent the next ten years more or less telling myself that I imagined it.

Like, there were no other reruns, no home video releases, not even any clips of the special are on Youtube or any of the other sketchier streaming sites where you'd find other obscure cartoons from the 90s.

What you do find, however, are clips and playthroughs of video games starring Izzy.

Izzy's Quest For The Olympic Rings was a pretty blatant Sonic ripoff released for the Genesis and SNES.

While Izzy's Adventure was an educational PC game.

Every once in a while, production art and cels from this special surface online. A few weeks back, I was browsing The Cricket Gallery's site (the official distributors for the cels, as they told me), and I came across it by chance. I don't know just how sought after cels from this is, but I knew I couldn't pass it up.

So I paid way more than I think I should have, and voila, I now have concrete evidence of this special's existence! A quick google search shows that only about four or five other cels have been spotted online (usually through ebay), so I'm quite excited to be part of this small club.

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Eleven!

Can you believe it, folks? This humble little blog turned 11 years old this week!

So...11 isn't really THAT important of a milestone. It certainly isn't TEN, anyway. But hell, I never expected to keep this up for eleven years! Especially since blogs as a whole are pretty much a dying medium these days anyway. All my good stuff has been posted on Twitter or Instagram for however long I've been on THOSE platforms.

I just want to say thank you for everyone who's been reading this tiny corner of the internet that I feel doesn't really add anything new anymore. This is still my own personal piece of the pie, and I'm glad that there's someone out there interested in what I have to say.

Until the next time I think of something to post here, enjoy these pictures of the major Elevens of pop culture:

Eleven from Stranger Things.

and of course the Eleventh Doctor of Doctor Who. Matt Smith was the first Doctor I watched, so that makes him MY doctor.

I got to meet him at NYCC a few years back, and he's totally awesome in person, exactly how I expected him to be. Just wanted to put that out there.

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National Gorilla Suit Day!

Yes, you heard it right! It’s January 31st, so that means that today is one of the greatest days of all:

NATIONAL GORILLA SUIT DAY!

What's National Gorilla Suit Day, you ask?

The holiday was created by Don Martin in 1963 as a story in his book "Don Martin Bounces Back."

This particular book was gifted to me by my friend Ryan for Christmas. He's a great guy, and since he's a fellow lover of the day, he knew this book would be right up my alley.

In this story, Fester Bestertester keeps complaining that National Gorilla Suit Day is nothing more than a conspiracy created by the owners of gorilla suit companies to make everyone buy more gorilla suits.

And gorillas keep showing up at Fester's door in their suits and proceed to beat the everloving crap out of him.

And since there's one panel per page, this gag goes on for 56 pages.

You'd think this would get too repetitive and dull, but it doesn't! Don Martin got a lot of mileage out of this one gag. Fester complains, someone enters the room, they zip down and reveal that they're a gorilla, they beat Fester up, they leave. Repeat. And it doesn't stop. Sometimes the gorilla is in a balloon. Sometimes the gorilla is a lawyer. Sometimes the gorilla IS ANOTHER GORILLA. The man was a master of timing and weird sound effects, and this is one of my favorite works of his. There's a few other stories in this book, but they're not as long or as funny, but I definitely recommend it.

Why is it on January 31st? That was thanks to Mark Evanier, who just decided that it should be celebrated on this day because the date itself is never specified in the story. That's one of his banners up at the top, there.

And according to this 1979 calendar, National Gorilla Suit Day fell on March 5th.

I wish I could go into more detail about all this, but there's not much info on Mark's site about it, because he deleted almost every reference to it in 2007 at the request of Don's widow since she was promoting a new Don Martin collection that had the story in it. Which is really weird in itself, when you think about it, it's always been one of the weirdest enforcements of copyright I've ever seen. His estate owns the rights to all of his non-MAD works and sure, it's understandable. But Mark's been in the business for years and was really close to the MAD magazine staff, and his blog essentially gave it free promotion.

Regardless, folks like Ryan and I keep the spirit alive and celebrate anyway, legal reasons be damned. Again, this could all be another conspiracy by the Gorilla Suit companies to make the public believe that there aren't any gorilla suits anywhere to buy.

I'll just leave you with my favorite gorilla suits of pop culture:

Oot Greet, everyone! See you all next month!

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Goodbye 2018

Another year is about to leave us, and I can frankly rank this one as "okay." I’ve had a few losses, not many gains (but some), and the week after Christmas is always weird.
In lieu of any end of the year wrap up nonsense, let me just tell you all what’s happened since the last time I posted.

Went to Wintercon and met Sean Astin! He was awesome. I’m to his right. My friend Mike is to my right, while my other friend Danny is to Sean’s left.

While the room was a bit small (the casino its held in cut the room in half before last year’s con), I had a great time. You can always feel the vibe of any convention or event like this, and I’ve always enjoyed Wintercon’s vibe.

I managed to find one of the comics on my bucket list: Avengers 239, the issue where the team goes on Late Night with David Letterman. I’m also trying to find Marvel Team-Up 74, where Spider-Man teams up with the Not Ready For Prime Time Players.

It’s not an expensive comic, so it’s pretty doable. I managed to get a bunch of my Bucket List comics this year, like a copy of Archie Meets The Punisher, and an intact copy of Life With Arche #78. I'll consider myself done when I get a copy of this one. As you can see, I love the delightfully weird comics, especially crossovers.

I had to take a picture of this one because I’m 12.

This is me with Tsugutoshi Komada, the suit actor for Jet Jaguar. Jet Jaguar was Toho’s answer to Ultraman, and most notably appeared in Godzilla vs Megalon, made famous on MST3K. Again, totally nice guy.

And here’s me with Colin Cantwell, who is responsible for creating the concept art & models for what wood become THE aesthetic for Star Wars. We’re posing with a print of his original design for the X-Wing, and it all started from there. He would follow it with the Y-Wing, the Star Destroyer, the Death Star, the Millennium Falcon, and the TIE Fighter. Amazingly cool to see, and cool to talk to the man himself.

Smash Bros Ultimate is here and man, was it worth the hype. Some might find the adventure mode a bit repetitive (platforming elements are replaced by Spirit Battles, where hundreds of characters from Nintendo’s vast history are fought in battles themed to them), and there’s not many new stages (but lots of returning ones; most of the 3DS stages are here, plus several not seen since Melee!), but it’s a hell of a lot of fun. I’ll be playing this for the foreseeable future.

Finally got to try McDonald’s Szechuan sauce! I bought a pack of it back in June at Eternal Con and I figured this past week was the special occasion I was saving it for.

Well, it was certainly tangy and brown.

I used dinosaur chicken nuggets as my test subjects because I’m an adult. My friend Steve described it as a combo of bbq sauce and sweet & sour and I couldn’t agree more. I’m not a fan of either teriyaki or sweet & sour sauce, so I thought that this was okay at best. I’m glad I tried it, but it’s nothing worth freaking out over.

And last bit not least: Christmas! I had a pretty low key holiday this year, nothing big. The cat definitely had a good day.

I got lots of gift cards this year! A good chunk of the eShop card went to Smash Bros DLC.

My scratch off ticket advent calendar netted me twelve bucks this year.

My favorite barbecue sauce, cleverly hidden in a wine box.

I mostly got clothes this Christmas since I’m now in my thirties and I was due for a new pair of everything. These are my new pair of regular shoes and work boots.

The Thirteenth Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver to go with the others I have.

And a new portfolio book to keep my bigger prints.

My internet friend Goobian snagged this for me off my amazon wishlist. It replaces the VHS I’ve held on to for years since WB took its sweet time releasing it on a format relevant in the past ten years.

And finally, my Reddit Secret Santa came through this year! Prime Wars Punch/Counterpunch was an Amazon exclusive (and nets big bucks after it sold out), while the Doom Patrol collection came from taking about how I love weird, silly silver age DC. I got paired with a comic reader this time, and it really showed.

I hope you folks had a good 2018, and I hope to see you in 2019!

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Thankful 2018!

Well folks, Thanksgiving has come and gone yet again. I'm still here, and you're still here, and that's what should be important, right?

I still have my life, a house, a job, friends. It's the same things I'm thankful for every year, but I'm thankful for all of those. They're constants, and don't take them for granted, because I sure don't.

I'm thankful for the brief pauses in life that allow me to escape stress for a few hours. Going to conventions, playing stuff on my Switch (Smash Bros Ultimate drops in one week!), meeting up with friends, listening to podcasts on long drives, watching stuff like The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers and The Good Place, writing these blog entries. I'm thankful for those, too.

Let's be thankful for this giant cow (actually a steer):

Cows are pretty big to begin with, then THIS one comes along. I did an entry about Absolute Units a few months back, and this cow more than earned a spot on that list.

It looks photoshopped, but that thing is real, and it is a BEAST. Here's another shot of it:

Maybe it's because I live on Long Island and I have to drive an hour out of my way to see any, but I still get really excited when I see real, living cows just standing around. "Cows!" I say. I do the same thing with horses (and don't laugh, so do you).

I'm thankful for the people I still talk to, and used to talk to, and hopefully will start talking to again.

I'm thankful for you. Thank you for reading, and continuing to read this little slice of the internet I've carved out for myself just a little over ten years ago. It's still crazy to think about.

Christmas is next month, and that's something to look forward to. See you folks then.

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