But that also means that last week was my 36th birthday!
While I'm more fond of multiples of five, 36 is a good, even number. I don't like the idea of being in my MID-Thirties, but so far so good. My hair is starting to grow gray.
And like I said last month, birthdays means presents!
I pre-ordered this Masterpiece Skyfire months ago, and it just so happened to arrive as a late birthday gift to myself.
I don't usually splurge for Masterpiece, and this one wasn't cheap. But a show-accurate, well-articulated figure of Skyfire is something I've wanted to exist since I was six years old, and it's finally a reality.
My first impression? Holy Moses, is this thing big. They say this is the biggest Masterpiece figure so far, and I believe it.
Here he is posed with a minifig of Optimus that came with him. He also came with tiny figures of Jazz and Wheeljack to pose in his open compartments. You see, in the show, he was big enough to fit the regular characters in his cockpit, and I love that they included that here.
He also comes with removable chest plates. You see, in his first episode, he switches allegiances from Decepticon to Autobot by switching out the insignia on his chest.
And as you can see,
It's pretty inconsistent.
And just for fun, here he is posed with my G1 Jetfire.
He also comes with three alternate faces. Two different expressions besides the neutral one, plus a mask that evokes the original figure. The new version is definitely not a repainted Macross figure, but all in all, a great addition to the collection.
And in an impulse eBay buy on my birthday, I got in this signed picture of Dabney Coleman. Blame the Daily Simpsons Thursday Simpsons stream for that one. He was streaming an episode of Drexell's Class (his sitcom from 1991) after the episode and I wondered how much a signed picture of him went for these days.
Well, this one was pretty cheap, compared to the rest of the stuff I found. No Drexell's Class stuff. Hell, not even anything from 9 to 5. It was either stuff from Cloak & Dagger or some other movies I'd never heard of.
I found out that he voiced Principal Prickley from Recess, if there was any other reason to love him.
Last week, I also went back to NYC to try Ichiran again. Turns out the best time to go was on a Tuesday afternoon. I don't think I waited more than ten minutes to get in.
Just look at that beautiful bowl! They brought back their classic round bowls this time. When I went almost a year ago, they served their ramen in square bowls.
Even sprang for the fancy pork this time. It was all really good.
I managed to up the spicy sauce this time. I barely felt a level 3, this was level 6. I definitely felt that one, my eyes couldn't stop watering. It definitely cleaned out the sinuses.
After that, I stopped by the NY Public Library to catch their exhibit on rare books.
Most notably, a Gutenberg Bible.
Charles Dickens's writing desk
and of course, the original Winnie The Pooh dolls. They were moved from their home in the Children's Library, which I sadly discovered had been converted into a coat check.
Then I stopped by Nintendo NY and saw big Mario shoes.
And then stopped at the Times Square Disney Store and found Oswald merch! It was all thanks to that Disney 100 promotion they're doing.
There was a bunch more stuff, but people were in the way of the pictures and I didn't want to be awkward.
That about covers the month of March, folks. See you in April!
It's the last week of February, that means it's the blog's birthday!
Yes, that's right, this little patch of the internet NOT run by a psychotic billionaire turns 15!
And because it's a birthday, I brought presents!
Depression and eBay don't mix, kids, but it will get you a picture signed by Gumby creator Art Clokey. Internet buddy cuteordeath pointed me in that direction, and I had to snag it.
It's a picture of the core cast, dedicated so some luggage store. It's got real Tom Landry Hat energy and I love it.
Oh, and the sellers included this bonus Gumby, to boot.
And then I got this in the mail today:
My friend who sends out for celebrity autographs came through for Joe Mantegna, Fat Tony himself! This is clean as hell, I was not expecting this today.
And finally, now for something I was expecting today:
A new addition to my cel collection! Why THIS cel from The Smurfs, of all things? What's the story behind this one?
I'm glad you asked, readers! If you're like me and watched a lot of Boomerang roughly a decade ago, this promo is most likely seared into your brain:
They seemed to play that at every. single. ad break. So when a cel from it popped up on eBay last week, I had to snag it.
It comes from the episode "Bigmouth Smurf" from the show's fourth season. It was about Gargamel turning big dumb brute Bigmouth into a Smurf, so he could let the big guy loose on the Smurf village and destroy it with his oafishness. If you can believe it, plots got much weirder (and dumber) than this.
It's the end of January once again, so you know what that means!
NATIONAL GORILLA SUIT DAY!!
I figure that since this month would have been Larry Storch's 100th birthday, today would be a nice time to pay tribute to one of his former co-stars.
Tracy The Gorilla from Filmation's The Ghost Busters!
Yes, predating the more famous movie by quite a few years, this sitcom ran for a single season back in 1975 and starred Larry Storch (Eddie Spencer) and Forrest Tucker (Jake Kong).
Tracy himself was "trained" by Bob Burns, but we all know that's just showbiz talk for being in the suit.
In a sense, the show was pretty much a low budget Scooby-Doo by way of actors from F-Troop and a gorilla sidekick. The boys get an assignment to go hunt down a guy in a monster costume, they zap it away, mild laughs would be had. Repeat.
It was for this reason was why that other Ghostbusters Saturday morning show had to call itself "The REAL Ghostbusters."
By the way, Filmation Ghostbusters also had a Saturday morning cartoon in 1986, to compete with the other one.
It had a slightly better budget, and it looks as well as it could for 1986 Filmation standards.
This version starred the sons of Spencer and Kong, along with Tracy and a girl from the future named Futura as they battled Prime Evil and his horde of ghost henchmen/action figures.
It also ran for a single season, sadly. But back then "one season" lasted 65 episodes.
But we'll always have the toys. Tracy still stands watch over my figure collection to this day.
2023 is right around the corner, it's almost here!
What's better is that 2023 is the year of the Rabbit, which is what I was born under! 1987 Baby right here. Don't remind me what age I turn next year.
As far as years go, I'd rank 2022 as "not the worst." I'm still here, some people aren't, I'd call this year a draw. I had stress, and I made a few changes in my life.
I (mostly) changed my diet, got a new(ish) car, got a new suit, got my feet checked out, my new entertainment center was set up. Overall, an improvement over last year.
This time last year we said goodbye to Betty White. In the past few days alone, we lost:
Pele
Barbara Walters
Former Pope Benedict XVI
And Don West.
I never saw TNA Impact Wrestling, but I knew that guy was familiar. He's the guy that hawked Beanie Babies on the Shop At Home Channel back in the 90s!
I never bought from that. I was too young and I knew those prices were a ripoff, but I couldn't get enough of those.
Let's see what I got for Christmas, shall we?
First off, this shiny new laptop, direct from Black Friday! It's much, much faster than the old one, and it makes posting these entries much less of a headache.
It'd been slowing down for ages, but back around Halloween the desktop screen started restarting itself and I couldn't fix it. So, it was time for an upgrade. The computer starts up under ten seconds! It's wild.
That was mostly my Christmas gift for the year. But I DID get some goodies on the day itself. I got a new bottle of my bbq sauce again, I was really hyped for that. And you know you're in your thirties when you're excited to get socks and toothpaste. The leather thing is a little garbage pouch for my car.
Then came my annual pile of scratch-off tickets that I scratch off on Christmas Day. I won ten bucks.
And there were quite a few "gifts to myself" this year. I got some new portfolio books, new shoes and some new pants. But this was the highlight. Not only is this "The Illustrated Al," the big graphic novel of comic adaptations of Weird Al Yankovic songs, it's the variant cover they only gave out to comic shops for Comic Shop Day! I managed to snag the last copy at my LCS. Can't wait to dig in to this one.
I hope you all have a happy and safe New Year. Do you have any resolutions?
Me? Make it to 2023, for one.
Be more punctual. I can hustle myself to make a 7am train, but not to leave my house before 8am to go to work. I need to work on that.
Write more. I actually got a fanfic off the ground! You can read it here, if you're into Steven Universe/My Hero Academia crossovers.
Be kinder. I feel like I already am, but I could always improve on that.
What am I thankful for this year? Well, the usual: I'm still alive, my parents are still with me, I've got a job, and a roof over my head. Can't ask for more than that.
But in the span of a week, I and fellow 90s kids lost two of our childhood heroes:
Kevin Conroy, the long time voice of Batman (taken at NYCC in 2014)
and Jason David Frank, the Green Ranger from the OG Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. (taken at Big Apple Con in 2021)
Losing Kevin Conroy to cancer was bad enough, but JDF was a suicide that came out of nowhere. It still feels unreal that it happened.
I was at Anime NYC at the time, and everyone was refreshing the feeds because there was nothing official for hours, the only indication that the news might've been true was that Johnny Yong Bosch (Adam the black ranger on MMPR) was at that con and abruptly canceled his appearance on that Sunday.
I was on line for Cherami Leigh (probably best known for voicing Lucy on Fairy Tail), and she told me herself that it was official.
But I've had time to ruminate and grieve. Let's look at some other stuff I saw that weekend!
I was several yards away from Adam Savage!
Do you like Spy x Family? It was one of the big anime this year! You could barely walk without tripping over something from this one, be it artwork, merch, photo ops, and especially cosplayers. There were so many cosplayers from this, especially Yor and Anya. I've been reading the manga, it's really good.
And one of the other big hits of the year: Chainsaw Man! The cosplay was easier to pull off. Dress shirt, tie, dress pants, little red devil horns. Done.
From what I've gathered from what little I've seen from this one, it's a show directed at people that want to be stepped on.
And there were quite a few people there who were offering to make that dream a reality.
See?
Yeah, no shortage of horny at this convention.
Just as I was about to leave for the night, I found a girl holding this sign for people to write their hot anime takes on.
Of course I had to add my contribution. I stand by that, I tell you what.
If you want to see the rest of the pictures, here's the album for Saturday, and Sunday.
It’s Halloween once again, time to play the official anthem of the holiday!
Never fails to get you in the mood.
We were actually swarmed with kids today! That hasn’t happened in forever.
This is all that’s left after ten bags of candy and a bag of pretzels. And it’s all mine!
So of course I ate it all by now. Worth it.
But onto the main event. It’s October, so you know what that means:
The McRib came back!!
With all the talk about adult happy meals and the return of the McBoo Halloween pails, the return of the McRib flew under everyone’s radar!
And if the marketing is correct, apparently it’s on a farewell tour?! Or at least until pork prices stabilize again. We’ve gone years between appearances, I know we’ll be seeing each other again someday.
In any case, it’s still as nommy and gooey as it’s always been. But hurry, each McRib could be our last! But that was always the case before, too.
But I digress. For the first time since 2019, I went back to NY Comic Con!
All in all, I had a really good time! It’s the most chaotic four days of the year, and I’m glad it’s pretty much back to normal now.
I gotta show you some of the people I met!
First and foremost, horror host Svengoolie, who just recently celebrated 40 years on the job! He’s rarely out of Chicago and I jumped at the chance to finally meet him. He was great.
And later I met Sventoonie, the other horror host of MeTV. He’s a persona of Toony The Tuna from Toon in With Me, the channel’s great weekday morning cartoon block.
I ended up meeting him and host Bill Leff on Sunday. They loved the Ecto Cooler pin on my lanyard out of everything I got to chat with them about.
And here’s Bryan O’Halleran, Dante from the Clerks movies! He was just chilling at a booth in a far corner of the show floor. How it was meant to be, really. I told him that Clerks III made me cry: (Not gonna spoil it, but Kevin Smith knows how to tug on the heartstrings when he wants to).
Here’s some artwork people ahead of me in line gave to him. That sketch was drawn while we were all waiting for him. You know, the schedule said that he would start signing at 11am, but it turns out that he was in a panel until 11:30 and didn’t show up until noon. No one was told about this.
And here’s me with Rodger Bumpass, the guy who voiced Squidward. His line was way, way shorter than Tom Kenny’s.
I was gonna get an Invader Zim picture to sign, but I couldn’t pass up this one the moment I saw it.
And here’s Tyler Hoechlin, Superman from Superman & Lois. He’s the second oSuperman I’ve met (the other being Brandon Routh), and he’s definitely someone worthy of playing the part.
And people I got photo ops with:
Brendan Fraser!
Danhausen!
And Steve from Blue’s Clues! They all loved my shirt.
And that’s not even everyone! Those are just the ones I got pictures with. I also managed to meet Sonny Strait, Ian Sinclair, Josh Keaton, Tara Sands, Christina Vee, and Trina Nishimura.
