If the memes are to be believed, George Jetson was born in the world somewhere today.
That means flying cars and apartment buildings that can rise above the clouds can't be too far behind! And I should finally find out what a sprocket is.
(personally, I prefer Harvey Birdman's canon that it was set in 2002 rather than 2062)
But enough about that, too many legends have been dying lately!
I mean, just today we lost Bill Russell, Nichelle Nichols, and Pat Carroll!
I don't need to go into what kind of legends Bill Russell and Nichelle Nichols were. They were both trailblazers in their own right.
Pat Carroll was best known for voicing Ursula from The Little Mermaid.
"Poor, Unfortunate Souls" is a classic villain song, that's for sure.
But to me, she'll always be Grandma Arbuckle from the Garfield Christmas and Thanksgiving specials.
And that's on top of losing in the last month: Paul Sorvino, James Caan, Bernard Cribbins, Paul Coker, Jr, David Warner, and Larry Storch.
Paul Coker Jr. was one of MAD Magazine's Usual Gang of Idiots, but he's far more well known for being the character designer behind all of the Rankin-Bass Christmas specials every year. Yes, he even designed my favorites Snow Miser and Heat Miser.
Above is a signed postcard my friend rwmead sent out for me as a Christmas gift, because he knew I eat this stuff up.
David Warner was a character actor best known for being in Tron, Time Bandits, Time After Time, Titanic (lotta T movies), but to me he'll always be The Lobe from Freakazoid.
Posted above is a four minute long parody of the title song from "Hello Dolly" with the Lobe in Barbara Streisand's role from the episode "Dexter's Date." David Warner tries his best to sing, but dammit, you gotta admire the commitment. Why was it in the episode? Simple: because no one told the creators they couldn't do it. And that's why Freakazoid remains one of my favorite shows of all time.
And that leaves us with the great Larry Storch.
I met him back in 2018(!) and he was a real nice guy. He's best known for playing Col. Agarn on F Troop, and for being the reason why anyone says "Judy, Judy, Judy" when impersonating Cary Grant.
But he also had a prolific voice over career in the 60s and 70s.
He was one of the Groovy Goolies, the first voice of The Joker, Professor Whoopee from Tennessee Tuxedo, and Cool Cat, the last major Looney Tunes character from the classic era. As much as you can call the Seven Arts era "classic, that is."
He was also an original Ghost Buster, co-starring his F Troop castmate Forrest Tucker, and Tracy the Gorilla ("trained" by Bob Burns).
It's the end of the month, and it's been a pretty rough week. For me, for friends, for the country.
I feel like I'm going crazy and there's no way to stop it.
At least we have weird memes to keep us going.
I got addicted to that weird dall-e AI image generator thing and lemme tell you, I found some solid winners. I think this was my favorite one I made.
This one was my second favorite.
Revel in how much it disturbs you.
This one was the first one to legit scare me, and do you know why? Center picture.
This thing somehow knew enough about My Hero Academia that putting in a vague, yet specific prompt of the main character on trial to include Bakugou.
I was also surprised that it recognized "Gaben." I made one about Gaben being fat, but you REALLY don't want to see that one.
I'm at least glad it understood Alex Trebek being the true host of Jeopardy.
Tried to make a recreation of the old Gilbert Gottfried standby of Cesar Romero's obsession with orange wedges and found this monstrosity.
And here's one of the first ones of these I made.
I think this is that Graggle I keep hearing about. I have no idea what that goop at the bottom of that pic is supposed to be, but it ain't a rake.
Green hair Sideshow Bob writing something down, next to what looks more like a ramp than a rake.
I wanna say this looks like Sideshow Bob at a dentist office?
And finally, I just went and found this one. This program is able to pull off inanimate objects much better, but you can still tell it's all fake.
This may not be the future of art, but if anything it's good to see a theoretical mockup of art people like me are too either too shy or too poor to ask an actual artist to draw. And it's all done in relative seconds!
If you want to make your own, you can just go here. There's also the REAL version that only real artists can access right now, and that one's even more convincing, but still fake. God help us all.
Well, my blood re-test came back as "still alive"! The important numbers managed to go down to safe levels (or safe-ish), so that's a win in my book!
I celebrated by going into NYC on Sunday and finally trying out Ichiran Ramen.
It's a NYC location of a popular chain of ramen shops in Japan, and I've been itching to try it for ages but couldn't until now. Mostly due to the long lines it always has.
This time I managed to get there just before it opened at noon, but still had to wait an hour to get in.
A look at the menu. They only serve ONE type of ramen, a tonkotsu (a pork-based broth). But you can customize it any way you want: how salty or garlicky it is, if you want pork, how firm you want the noodles to be, etc. I'm not TOO familiar with ramen, but I liked what I've had over the years. It's noodle soup, it's pretty universal in terms of food standards. I'm also not one for a lot of bells and whistles that you typically find in ramen dishes, so I went rather basic. Just pork, noodles, scallions, and spice.
And here it is! Yes, it smelled and tasted just as good as it looked. It was certainly worth the wait. Next time I'll up the spice level, I can barely feel a level 3. This was just a test run just to see how spicy it really was. See that red sauce? Every dollop is another level, and that's what three looks like. I've seen people order level 10 and it's more sauce than broth at that point.
Either way, make sure you don't get that broth in your eyes, as that happened to me a few times while eating it. I made the mistake of eating the noodles when they were fresh and really hot, which actually burned some of my lower lip. I'll spare you what it looks like, it got kinda gross. But absolutely worth the pain. Again, something to fix for next time.
If there's a negative it's that they only give you two slices of pork with your order, just so you'll buy the refill. Which totally worked on me, because it was really good. The same with getting extra noodles, and I'm really glad that's an option since I got sad once I finished them and still had plenty of soup left over. Yeah, it's not cheap, but this is NYC after all.
Look at me, I'm a regular Naruto or whatever his name was! I only know that he liked ramen and had a really raspy voice, and that he's really popular with people born after 1992. It's tough using chopsticks as a lefty, but I was really impressed with myself with how easy I was able to handle things with it.
As good as this was, I keep hearing that the ones in Japan are even better than this, and I can believe it.
Just watch this video of a guy eating Osaka Ichiran:
I don't like watching people eat...except for the Strictly Dumpling guy. Thanks to the magic of HD cameras, everything he eats also looks amazing. Hell, he's most of the reason I went here in the first place.
The other cool part is that everyone gets their own booth, and you're served through that window there. It's great with people with social anxiety and like eating by themselves like me.
And with that out of the way, some other cool things I saw and did this month:
The new Pokemon TCG set Astral Radiance came out (mostly based on the Legends Arceus game), and I snagged some good hits! I never pulled a black and gold card before, and these two cards came out of the same pack! I bought ten packs from the Pokemon Center site and I got some other nice hits:
Once again I'd say I'm gonna retire from pack opening, but buying more booster boxes is seriously tempting. Thankfully, I haven't given in. Yet.
I also caught the Bob's Burgers movie last week! I haven't been back in a movie theater in ages, but I had to make an exception for the Belchers on the big screen. I loved it, but I might be biased because I love the show. Instead of going "big" by doing big stupid movie tropes like the family goes on a road trip and meet characters we'll never see again, the movie felt more like a 90 minute episode. But it was a GOOD 90 minute episode of Bob's Burgers, with some great songs and fantastic animation. And frankly, that's all I could ever hope for.
Slight spoiler alert, but I really loved that the villain WASN'T some flat character created for the movie, it was somebody already established! They don't give Tina a new love interest that's totally boring, either. They keep it to Jimmy Jr. If you like Bob's Burgers the show, you're gonna like Bob's Burgers the movie.
The Cradle of Aviation Museum had their first Cradle-Con since the covid mess started and I had a good time! But the highlight was their hall of vintage arcade cabinets, which included a working cabinet of Computer Space. It was the very first arcade game, and it was quite primitive and hard to control. Imagine asteroids but harder to control. But at least I can say I finally played it.
They had all the classics, including the Simpsons beat em up game, Moonwalker, Centipede, even more "modern" hits like Marvel vs Capcom 2. They also had every version of Donkey Kong. I've NEVER seen an arcade cabinet of Donkey Kong 3 before. In that one, you play as Stanley the Bugman, trying to spray gas on bugs Donkey Kong keeps throwing at you.
That'll do it for this month. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna get me a New York slice.
It's Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis's birthday! He was born on this day in 1923! I never got to meet the guy, but I did find this autographed picture at a con a few years back.
What's happened to me since we last spoke? Well, I'm still around, still trying to get the good health numbers up, and the bad numbers down. It's honestly refreshing to not feel constant heartburn, or thinking my heart was ready to explode at any given moment despite my vitals feeling normal.
I think I've been starting to get the hang over this "finally eating healthier" thing. What I need to do is start exercising on a regular basis, but if you know me any way, you'd know that's probably not gonna happen.
I clean up well, don't I? Don't get used to this getup, it was for a wedding. And not just any wedding, my first one outside of the family, and even THEN I was only ten years old.
I had a great time! Good food, good people, even good dancing.
Did I mention the party favors were burgers from All American?! For those not in the know, it's a fast food stand on Long Island that loads of people swear by, myself included. I had no idea this was even an option, this certainly set a high bar for weddings this point forward.
In case you were wondering just how long my friends had their wedding pushed back, DJ (who passed in 2019) was supposed to be the best man. But he was certainly there in spirit, I think wherever he is, he was watching us all having a good time.
But before I bum myself out again, I'm proud to announce that the DJ Schiulaz Memorial Scholarship, which I helped start, has reached its $25,000 goal! We had five years to raise that money, and we pulled it off in less than ten months! It's amazing news all around.
There's lots more I want to talk about, like the sudden losses of Gilbert Gottfried and Neal Adams, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll just post some mementos in my collection:
I never got to meet the great Gilbert Gottfried, but I did listen to his podcast for the past eight years, and that's more or less the next best thing. You feel like you got to know the guy, which might explain why this celebrity death hit me pretty harder than usual. The Amazing Colossal Podcast was one of five I regularly listen to, and I'm pretty sad that it'll never be the same again.
I'd ask why he had to leave us, but I know what he would've said: because Chico needed the money.
I snagged this pic off of eBay. I don't know if this is a genuine Gilbert, but the guy who listed it swore it was, so that's what I'm going with.
I never got a picture with Neal Adams, but I did sneak this picture OF him back in 2017. Being a legendary comic artist, he was a NYCC staple and a few years ago I finally mustered up the courage to go up to his booth. He's got a reputation for being pretty grumpy, but if you're aware of what he went through in his career, he had a very justifiable reason to be one.
He was more than happy to sign this print of the infamous "Speedy is a junkie" cover for me. I think he was glad that I wasn't one of those weirdos that only went up to him to sign a stack of comics. No, I'm just a shy nerd that gets intimidated easily. Knowing that he'll never do so again, I probably should have gotten him to sign ONE, but I like having these prints.
It's the day Ron Swanson had 91 meetings scheduled because April didn't think that date existed. Ahh, mid 00's comedy.
But in any case, last week was my 35th trip around the sun, and I still don't quite know what to make of that.
Getting random pains, gotta lower the triglyceride level, feeling the existential dread that you wasted your twenties and you still haven't started a family, let alone moved out of the house. That...this is all there is to it. Yep, the mid thirties has it all.
But I have Kirby. We all still have Kirby!
I picked up Kirby & The Forgotten Land last week, and I'm just gonna say it, it's one of the all time best Kirby games. They manage to translate Kirby's world, and especially his powers, to three dimensions incredibly well. The ability evolutions are a great mechanic as well, each new upgrade is mostly a power-up, but there's drawbacks, too. The upgrades that hit harder move slower, or the ones that move faster are harder to control. You know the deal.
It's weird to think that this might be one of the few Kirby games without the Stone ability. Certain Mouthful modes pretty much replace it, like you can inhale stairs or a car, and you can plow through almost anything. It's all incredibly cute, and of course frustrating on the harder missions. The game itself goes by pretty quickly, but there's big levels to make up for it. And unless you're really good or lucky, getting 100% completion mainly involved replaying levels until you rescue all the Waddle Dees.
I haven't beaten the game yet as of this writing, but I just KNOW that new little critter buddy is an evil nightmare beast. They've done that twist a few times, it's pretty inevitable.
Also, hidden HAL room in the third level of the first world!
Also, Batman '66 returned to MeTV and the world got a little better. It started right at the beginning, introducing the Batusi to the world.
Frank Gorshin's Riddler was the first villain of the show, and he remains the best actor to fill the ? suit. Until then, The Riddler was a D-tier villain in the comics until Frank Gorshin's cackling, boundless energy brought him to life. It's a completely ridiculous outfit, but he manages to make it work.
I just posted this one because I wasn't expecting the funniest line in the episode. Sixties slang was strange.
See you all in April, folks. I'll still be here, sitting on the couch and contemplating existence.
