Miskatonic Valley!

Hey all. So it's been a dog's age since I've been in here, but I've been busy with silly little things like marriages and such. But that's all complete now.

Anywho, this isn't a normal blog. I've been fiddling with another CUUSOO project [I believe I've mentioned the site before]. This one's more complicated, though, because it's a board game. And board games usually have rules. So here they are.

Almost looks real, don't it?

Fan Expo 2012, or, I forgot I had a Blog

Hey! Remember that I had a blog? I didn't. Hey, I was busy over the last little while, so I have an excuse. But I was reminded, and so I figure, hey, why not get back on the horse or off the wagon or whatever it is, and do up a good ol' fashioned long-winded recap of the biggest event yet this year, the Fan Expo.

As I said at the end of my last blog on the subject, my costume this year was to be Cthulhu for President. And while maybe I coulda spent the last year recounting the great amount of work that went into making the mask itself [which might have been... two entries on here], you'll just have to trust me that it was a lot of thought combined with a few minutes of work. But the mask isn't until Saturday, and this is a four day affair. So we have to pace ourselves.

Despite what I just said, I'm not gonna go over things day by day. Instead, I will discuss things in chapters and headings, using charts and graphs. Or perhaps instead of that, I'll use unflattering pictures of minor celebrities taken at a sub-convention last February.

John Connor is waiting for the actual content of this blog to begin.

I call it Special Drink

Hello again.

So I was gonna go on about this, or blather about that. It was gonna have something to do with being sad that Comminuty is being killed off, and how we've been trying other sitcoms to fill the void, but how Happy Endings is trying too hard to be funny, Modern Family is trying too hard to be not funny, and Whitney is crap in a hat. Parks and Recreation is still a beacon in the dark times, so we're sorta clinging to that. I had a real good analogy as to why Parks and Rec works and why I find Modern Family confounding and befuddling, but, again, I sorta feel a little too lazy to type it out. You'll just have to trust me when I tell you that it was so compelling an argument that you'd definitely change your mind. Oh, and Louis! Mondays are the new Thursday.

And before I forget, Lego Advent day 24, just 'cause I should really complete things.

Six Seasons and a Movie: A week and a half of Melons and Collies.

In today's exciting episode:

It'll all make sense in the end.

Movie Review MADNESS!

Advent Calender recap WEEK THREE!

The fastest Kijiji Transaction of all time!




 All that and even more bad news! Stay tuned.

Advember Week Two

Another week has passed, so I should probably keep on top of charting the exciting progress that is the toy calendar this year. So I will do that.

I think normally I'd relate to you some manner of anecdote about something interesting I did in the past week, but it's been a pretty mellow time. Which is sort of ironic, in that me and the D actually went over to peoples' houses and did things, which is weird for borderline hermits like us, so arguably I'd have more to talk about. But that's sorta not the case. For the record: I'm still a big fan of guacamole, and my opinion on fake cheese remains the same.

Vacation's over! Back to WORK!

Hi, everyone! How are you? I'm awaiting the TV repairman to come and replace the screen on my TV [apparently they still repair things?] so I've got a few moments to, you know, get back in the business. If you haven't noticed, I've been gone for about 2 months. I guess I just sorta had other things going on. Like laziness. Lots and lots of laziness.

Well that's not true. Dree and I went to Boston, the saddle of America [or whatever], which is a lovely town, rich in history and ankle-busting sidewalks. I'll get photos up here soon, but they were done with my old black and white film camera, which, besides costing around 38 hundred dollars to develop, also leaves you with these weird pieces of paper that I can't figure out how to insert into the computer. Give me some time and I'll get those done right. But it may take a while.

That's sorta all of that, really. Anyway, to celebrate year 2 of the blog, I've renamed it yet again. This one feels better. At least for the next 6 months or so, till I change it again.

And with no segue at all, let us transition into the real reason I dusted off the blogspot: 

LEGO Advent Calendar 2011.

Fan Expo 2011: Recapitulation

The Fan Expo is kind of a big deal. If you don't know what it is, look it up. It's sort of Nerd Christmas and Nerd New Years rolled into one weekend for all the basement dwellers in the area, in that it's super exciting and awesome and also frustrating and terrible. Or not, as the case may be?

Last year was legendary in its awfulness. The thing was moved to a smaller hall due to bad scheduling, which combined with the unexpected astronomical growth of attendance, and the generally mishandled entry/re-entry system, made it a festival of waiting in line more than anything else. And people bitched. Oh... did they bitch. But even at the best of times, people at this thing are gonna bitch. It's the Bitch Expo. Waiting in line, you can sorta tell who's a veteran and who isn't by the relative amount of bitching they're doing.

Regardless, this year's entry system was vastly superior to last year's. Yeah, there were lines. Of course there's gonna be, but hey, sometimes if you're in the line at the right time you get this happening to you:

Freddy is easily distracted, and Bishop is easily confused.

Yeah, there's me and my brother in line behind the ribbon-cutting ceremony. So that's sorta rad. It might also be the only official photo we have with celebrities. On account of, you know, our general overall cheapness.

Learn to waste time like me: Kre-O Prowl Instructions

So per popular request [I actually had a comment], I've done what I could to document how to build your less-than-stellar Prowl into my perhaps-better-than-official Prowl.

I've never tried to take photos of this nature before, so forgive me if the whole thing is a confusing, jumbled mess. You may also note, if you're super-observant, that I put a sticker in a different place, which helps sell the somewhat unconvincing junk-gun a bit more than it might otherwise. And, by all means, feel free to free-ball and change this up at any point. I won't be insulted.

More Kre-O: Prowlin' Around

I'm not gonna turn this into some sort of toy review blog or whatever. There are plenty of others that do it better, if you're really after that sort of thing.

But I was out and about and I saw another Kre-O set on the shelf, and, well, being the hopeless addict I am, I snapped it up. I did say I'd keep giving this line a try, right? I think I did.

Anyway, so the set is Prowl, who is this guy:

That's a quote from the show.

He's the resident Transformo-cop, and all-around swell dude. I guess. For a fan of this stuff, I know remarkably little.

Anyway, so here's what the Kre-O set looks like, more or less, as officially built:

Tall drink o' water, ain't ye?

And right there you can see some of the major issues with the robot. Let's start at the start, however.

Kre-O: The Perfect Storm?

I've heard that the last two toys boys stop playing with as they grow up, at least in North America, are LEGO and Transformers. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because each are more technically advanced and interactive than most other toys you could come across, and are therefor slightly more rewarding for the kid. Maybe it's because LEGO has that special European mystique and Transformers has a movie with boobs and guns in it. Either way, they both stick around, and have stuck around, and continue to stick around for large portions of adults. I myself suffer from this two-headed addiction, appealing simultaneously to my unceasing need to fidget and my happy memories of youth.

This review will be aided by Warpath and Jimmy the Squid.

So when I saw that Kre-Os were a thing, I sorta plotzed. LEGO and Transformers blended into a single heady broth of plastic meaning? Too good to be true. [Yeah, it's happened before, but Built-To-Rule was, as far as toys go, barf-inducing.] These things had all the weight of the years of TF character and history piled up on top of them, on a foundation of LEGO-like constructible fiddliness.

Let's get some things out of the way first: Is this, I dunno, unfair of Hasbro to be doing? Are they making themselves into a lowly clone brand by ripping off LEGO engineering? Will the quality ever be able to compare to the impossibly high standards that LEGO and its fans have set [standards that LEGO itself doesn't seem to meet all that often anymore]? And do the damn things transform?

Simple answers: no on all counts. Sort of. The parts are made by Oxford, which, sure, is a not-LEGO company and has that taint about it, but it's certainly one of the higher-regarded brands among those able to acknowledge such things. And, really, there's a surprising number of elements that are not standard LEGO designs. [Some definitely are, and some that aren't probably shouldn't be, but take it as it is.] The quality is fine. Not perfect, not even great. I'll go with good. And they don't easily switch from vehicle to robot, although, really, technically they do transform. It just takes a long time.

The start of something I'm unlikely to finish!

I had the pleasure of working on Nightmare on Elm Street 3 yesterday, and an episode of Community today. So I've been both busy and in a good mood, neither of which really move me to write anything down in the interweb. So here I was without anything much to be angry about and only one childish photo to post. And that's no good. No good at all.

Endlessly clever.

Aside: See Hanna if you get the chance. Honestly, it's friggin' fantastic. And don't take my word for it; the three old ladies behind us loved it too.


Anyway, back to this: I got inspired by the last thing I blogged about, the whole comic book I'm still somewhat gray on whether I can talk about or not. So I thought.... hows about I make an entirely new comic, on here? I mean, I got, like, three other corkers in the vault, ready to be thrust upon the unexpecting public. I could, you know, use one of those, and my LEGO photo thing, and, you know... meld 'em or whatever. How much work, really, would it take?

Sweet Legitimization

As I wait for work to download, as well as twiddle my thumbs until the FedEx guy delivers a wonderful shipment of LEGO I recently purchased in a small fit of madness, I got an email from my dad that I'm taking as a sign that he has now officially blessed this current infantile obsession as an A-OK thing. So, hey, that's neat!

He sent this, from an as-yet-unidentified magazine:

It's, like, a commentary, man.

 

 

 

I looked up Jan Vormann on the internets, and here's another, better and more mature blog from almost exactly a year ago talking about the same dude, and if you're super-psyched about this sorta thing, here's his project's official website.

Dree and I are planning to go to New York again, and one of the main things I was concerned about [if I had to invent something to be concerned about] is that this trip didn't as yet really have a hook. We went mad with pop culture last time, hunting down locations and such. Would we just do that again? No, no we won't. I will now go hunting for LEGO in nature. Expect a full report on it in... about five months.

Something to think about!

Winter's more or less over. Weather's getting nicer. I saw the Summerhill Market guy cooking burgers for the first time this season. They are, and I'll go on record with this, one of the better and cheaper burgers you're gonna find in this town. I get fat in the summer.

But it reminded me of something better demonstrated through the following photoplay.

 A Cautionary Tale

There's a reason Dree won't have street meat anymore.

Happy Spring, everybody.

A Merry Christmas Parable

Christmas is a scant few days away, and my shopping is almost complete. There are a few outstanding issues with stupid-ass [company name withheld to maintain surprise] that need to be resolved for me to really rest easy, but such is life. What's Christmas without some ulcers, right? Anyway, seems the blizzards are keeping work from sending me emails, so I've had another plum cherry day of sitting on my flattening ass, listening to 102.1 The Edge playing the same 4 songs over and over [and over] (and over). So I thought I'd tell you all a story. Hopefully you'll learn a valuable lesson about the true meaning of Christmas.

Someone's got a case of the Mondays!

Hello again, and welcome to December. Today is Monday, and it's cold as a witch's teet out there. I'm hiding in the apartment so as to keep all my digits. It's also snowing, which is welcome because snow is good, and this is, like, the 2 week [if you're lucky] period where snow is cute. I'm a big snow fan, but that junk gets old but quick.

In any case, here's a story: I was all prepped and ready to go to a place called Snakes and Lattes this weekend. Dree and I learned about it during a temporary paralysis which left us watching the Polish show on CityTV. If the clever name was too obtuse for you, it's a coffee place that is also a games enclave in the Annex [really Koreatown, but the edges are rather nebulous]. Either way, the interview was all this-and-that and what-have-you, when this popped up on the screen:

I'd reached the point where I was sure I'd made this game up.

I dunno about you, but this game is kind of a big deal. It's a game I had in the halcyon days of my youth, when summers were filled with WOIO and Big Chuck and Lil' John and The Fall Guy, and whatever other nostalgic stuff I can come up with. I can't even remember if the game was any good, I just know I loved the pants off of it and it disappeared at some point. Probably during that damn yardsale.

But yeah, I really wanna play this game again, is what I'm saying. And apparently this place has a copy, and so I decided to go.

Things to do in Toronto when you're poor

So okay, the title's misleading, because I will not be discussing things to do in Toronto when you're poor. That's all sizzle, and I will be providing no steak. I also have no clear idea of where I'm gonna go with this, so it may get a little meandery. Let's get the important stuff out of the way first.

Lego Advent Calendar day 24: When it all makes sense.

When did Santa drive a train? Maybe it's a European thing.

The 24th came packed with a larger than average baggy, which contained Santa [clothed, this time. What a gentleman.] and the engine of the tiny little train he's carrying his comically oversized toys in. It's nice. It's... final. Although I'm not sure what to do with more than one Santa figure.

That's about all of the toy talk for today. Another hot update: I don't know how many of the 2 of you reading still happen to have outstanding OSAP loans, but I got a letter today and the nice people in the government said "You know what, Will? We like you. Let's forget about a bit of your bill." I didn't know this was an option, but hell! I'll take it. It was a pleasant surprise, I'll tell you that much. Oh hey! I just saw a segue, and I'm gonna take it. Right after this unrelated thing:

Maybe this'll be a weekly thing

This is a two part blahg!

Part I

So good news is that I started getting work again. Work is money and money is happy so that sorta stuff works out well.

Bad news is that I started getting work again, and this particular work is sort of a black hole of questionable value, and work means not really looking for better work, which is arguably worse at this juncture than no work at all. But hey, the rent monster needs to be fed so I can't complain for the time being.

More work also means less sitting and thinking and writing those things down. So less of these. Which, depending on your opinion, is good or bad. It's a bit of a wash, really.

Either way, I finally [finally] got that thing in the mail I'd mentioned a few posts back, and it got me pretty excited. Yeah, if you were holding your breath in anticipation, it's Lego-related [I'm not really this monomaniacal in real life, honest]. Here's a picture of the box:

Yes, nerd, it's a Lego set.

Glee isn't a very good show, and other cutting-edge opinions.

I was home alone last night, and it was Tuesday. And Tuesday plus home alone tends to equal Glee. It's a guilty pleasure of sorts. Actually, it's a guilty... guilt? It's generally unpleasurable, so I dunno. It's sort of like some sort of non-addictive drug, that makes you feel ill and you don't like taking it, but if it's on a table you'll have some just 'cause there's nothing better to do and you instantly regret it. Ah, yeah, like at the last fancy dinner party you were at, and there was that cheese tray with the 'expensive' cheese that looked well and good but smelled vaguely of basement ass, and you ate it and said to yourself, "Damn, this tastes like an ass in a basement," and while you circle the crowd to find your friend and tell them about the cheese and its subterranean ass-funk, you pass round the snack table again and say, "Hey, look, cheese."

Money ain't gonna make itself, yo!

I was stalling on blogging for the past few days for two separate, equally important reasons:

1] I'm sitting on my thumbs, waiting quite impatiently for Canada Post to deliver a package I'd ordered some time ago. It seems apropos of me to talk about it, seeing as how it fits in with the apparent theme I've forced upon this cyberjournal.

B] I had nothing to say.

I think someone probably said at some point that creativity or whatever breeds, like, creativity or whatever. Didn't they? Sounds like something someone would say. Anyway, I think, conversely, that lack of productivity is sucking my desire to be productive. Part of the point of the blog* thing was to keep me from being pulled into the sucker-hole of general unemployed apathy. But... yeah. That's clearly not what anyone** came here to read.

They wanna know one thing: What I feel about Lego Advent Calendars.

Let's talk about New York

So I was in New York about a month ago. It was a vacation, and we were only there for a few short days, but it was a hell of a trip. If I started getting payed for work again, I'd go back toot sweet. I really mean it. If you're reading this, you should stop and book a ticket. Stay in Brooklyn.

I've been reminded of this because my pictures came back from developing. Apparently no one at Shopper's Drug Mart knows what black and white film is, though, because I stumped the whole lot of them with my outlandish requests. I'm sure some of them were concerned that I'd never heard of colour film. Regardless, New York is a city that looks sexy as hell in black and white, so I ponied up the 70 dollar development fee [imagine!] to do it up right. Here's a few specific ones I enjoy.

This is whatever street is north of Wall Street. I'm bad with directions.