The birthday haul, 2014

Happy birthday, me!  Why thanks, Blogger, I really appreciate it.  How did you know?  Why, it's simple: at this time every year, I post pictures of some of the cool things that I get, and I make some half-hearted joke about how incredibly old I am getting.  So why should this year be any different?  Let's pull up a walker and take a peek at Jeff's birthday things!

We start with the above picture of my requisite Dairy Queen birthday cake, adorned with green roses and the word "Pants".  Classic!  This will live on in the annals of great birthday cake sayings.  Yes, it's a Franks and Beans reference, thanks for noticing.

Amazon was a busy site/warehouse/depository/future site of human enslavement the week before my birthday, as many of my gifts were droned in from the company.  First up on the list, the first two volumes of the early '90s Swamp Thing series!  Apparently, the episode bundling went like this: season one - 13 episodes.  Season two - 13 episodes.  Season three - 50 episodes.  Fifty!  That's Hollywood for ya (I have no idea what that means).  So with these two volumes, I picked up seasons one, two and half of season three.  It should be fun to check this show out.

Next on the list is the critically acclaimed "Heck" graphic novel from Tick alum Zander Cannon.  I've heard nothing but great things about this since it hit the shelves a few months ago and I'm excited to check it out.

I also got the latest collection of the slightly more well known Walking Dead.  If you've only watched the show, don't stare at the cover too long.

I finally got a Pirates shirt that I can wear outside of my house.  It's a nice, soft shirt with that "distressed" look that is so popular these days.  I credit the shirt with the Bucs' early 4-2 start.

The next two items are gifts my wife (who has a birthday just a little while after mine) got, but I like them so much I'm including them on my own list.  The first is the Blu-Ray collection of Firefly.  Amazon had a huge sale on all Joss Whedon properties, so why not get a different version of a series you already own?  We've got to prove, if to no one else other than ourselves, that the show is still popular and should be revived, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

Also included in my wife's gifts that I will use as if they were my own is this silicon Firefly ice cube tray!  Just pour some water in and get mini, temporary replicas of Serenity.

The detail on the ice cubes is really amazing, even if it doesn't come out in this picture as well as it could.  The trays can also work for Jell-O molds or chocolate, which would be better if there weren't just six molds.  I suppose that I could just buy three more of these...and maybe I will.

Larry came over, great guy that he is, and blew my mind with this present - it's Optimal Optimus from Beast Wars!  Because of events too embarrassing to recollect here, I missed out on my opportunity to buy this toy when it was first out in stores, and I've regretted it ever since.  Larry was diligent enough to buy a figure that is complete, which is a big deal as many figures out there today are missing numerous parts.  This is because Optimus's arm plates are made to fly off (battle damage) and he shoots clear missiles, both of which would be very easy to misplace in the 15 or so years since this figure was first produced and sold.

Look how happy with this post-transformed figure!  It was a challenge to figure it out but it was a lot of fun.  If anyone on your (YOUR!) list has a birthday coming up, you could do worse than the items on this post.  And of course, I'm happy to spend this next trip around the sun with you, faithful readers.  Every damn one of you.

Shameless Shutterfly Promotion

A few months ago, around Christmas, my brother-in-law brought home a book from Shutterfly with pictures of his wedding.  A couple weeks later, my sister showed off one from her recent ski trip to Colorado.  Realizing that I must do what everyone else is doing, no matter what it is or how much it costs, I decided to give Shutterfly a try and put together a book of my own.  I decided that the subject of this book should reflect the event of which I have the most pictures, and that subject is overwhelmingly - even more so than my own wedding - Comic-Con.  So I took advantage of Shutterfly's President's Day sale and created a book filled with images of the oh-so-enjoyable 2012 Comic-Con.  Why not the 2013 Comic-Con?  Because that's not how things work.

A few days ago I got the printed book in the mail and I was so happy with the result that I decided to post an almost altogether meaningless blog post about it, and here we are.  The end result was a professional-looking product filled with pictures of me and the things that I like.  Because of this, I'd recommend Shutterfly's printing services to, heck, just about anyone.

At the top, you see the cover with a picture I took of the San Diego convention center.

Here's the spine of the book!  It's me.  How subtle.

And here's the back cover.  I imagine the subject of the book is pretty hard to miss.

I wanted to take a few pictures of the inside of the book to give an example of how things turned out. Then I realized that I was just taking pictures of pictures and it all seemed kind of silly.  But then I just kept taking the pictures, and here we are.

As we can see, there are a lot of images here.  The book ended up being 52 pages and it cost a little more than 40 bucks.  This was after I got a nice President's Day discount and after the book qualified for free shipping.  So I suppose that one lesson to take from this is if you decide to order a book of your own, wait for some good deals.

Larry ended up in a number of these pictures as he was, you know, there in 2012.

Oh, and here's a big collage of Jet Boy and Jet Girl pictures.  I will never stop showing these to people.

The layout options are many and varied.  I usually ended up throwing all of the many costume pictures I took in these huge jumbles that, actually, don't look too bad.

And, yes, the Full House house got its own dedicated page.  Of course it did.

Shutterfly's web address is...let's see...what is it, now...oh, www.shutterfly.com.  Simple enough.  I'm very happy with my 2012 Comic-Con album.  In the future, we may see books for 2013, 2014 and, heck, maybe even 2006 while we're at it.  It's like a monster that's got out of its cage.  It can't be contained.

2014's first (and greatest) installment of RANDOM NOTES! (Teddy and the Yeti, Toonseum, Hero Initiative art, Pac Man, Beast Wars, Franks and Beans and MORE!)

Well, hello there.  It's been a while but it's time to wind The Yeti Speaks! blog back up with a heaping helping of RANDOM NOTES!  In all caps.  Let's get started!

- I got a nice Christmas card from friend of the blog and one of my favorite artists, Karin Rindevall!  The card contained a nice greeting from Teddy and the Yeti.  Thank, Karin!

- I backed the Kickstarter Campaign for Chipolo...which is basically a tag that links to your phone.  If you lose stuff, and it's within a certain range, you can find tagged items by looking for them on your mobile device.  I had the opportunity to label the different tags...and I went the obvious route.

- I took another trip to Pittsburgh's Toonseum recently and had a nice time.  Here are a few pictures from the jaunt!

I might have shown this picture before (from my last trip), but I love that Mark Schultz dinosaur with the Pirate hat.  Classy.

A fun surprise was seeing a page from one of my favorite issues of "What If...?" on display.  Despite this page being filled with Captain America, it was a Fantastic Four-centric issue.  The angry cap in the last panel really spooked me as a kid.

If only I had animation and comic art to possibly contribute to a future Toonseum gallery...such as...*cough*...this newly framed animation cel of the Thing from the 1960s FF cartoon!

The Thing artwork isn't the only item I had framed.  I also got my ticket sheet from the 2006 MLB All Star Game under glass.  It's been a long time coming and I think it looks really nice.  I had to buy partial season tickets for two years just to get the opportunity to buy All Star Game tickets.  It was a fun time, though, for sure.

- I got a few items of original art in the mail.  The first is a series of rough sketches from Pittsburgh's own Tom Scioli!  The image on the right is a Brian Hitch-inspired team shot of the Fantastic Four.  The image on the left, I assume, is a goof, but still pretty cool.  There were three more equally cool FF images included in this art buy.

- I recently renewed my Hero Initiative membership for 2014.  Included in my "thank you" package was an original sketch card - and just my luck, it was the Thing by Marvel Two-in-One artist Alan Kupperberg!  What a find.

- A few weeks ago, I posted about the closing of California, PA-area comic shop Evil Genius.  Since the store was closing, I had to haul away my Ms. Pac Man arcade cabinet, but lucky for me, I didn't have to toss it in the river.  The game is now sitting comfortably in McMurray at Pittsburgh Comics!  It was a trial, of course, getting it there (just because the game is not particularly light), but I hope to house it there for years to come.  If you visit Pittsburgh Comics, be sure to say hello.  To the video game cabinet.

- As I was taking the game from Evil Genius, I made one last find and picked up this early '90s-era Marvel comic box.  On the very top is a nice image of the Fantastic Four.  The box itself has certainly seen some use, but I managed to reshape it fairly well once I got it home, and now it holds all of my comic convention programs and related material.

Oh, and here's a picture of my cat sitting in it.

- I got this Avengers-themed card for Valentine's Day, which includes all of the movie Avengers...and the Falcon.  The message is interesting..."Hope your day is a HIT!"  Nothing says "I love you" better than a metaphor for being punched.

- In case anyone was wondering if I still make comics, here's a panel from the upcoming "Naked Man at the Edge of Time" one-shot.  Pencils by Kurt Belcher, inks by Alan Gallo.  I'm still considering whether or not this will be colored or just grayscaled.

- Keen readers of the recent Thunderbolts #20.NOW (what a weird numbering system) will notice this veiled "Weird Al" Yankovic reference.  I wonder what the third song is.

- Hey, let's list some links to cool comic book-related websites.  The first is for the Longbox Graveyard, which took the time to review and rank every single issue of Marvel Two-in-One, which is no easy feat.

It also brought us this image of the Thing saying "It's clobberin' time!" in Spanish:

Our second link is of the ever-popular "I Love the Yeti" site, which recently updated the Yeti timeline...

If you look at the very end of the "00s" line, you'll see the Teddy and the Yeti version of the Yeti.

Henry, if you're reading this, keep up the good work, and also take a look at this Garbage Pail Kids yeti...

Our last link goes to Multiversity Comics, for writing a very interesting and thought-provoking article titled "Comics and the Diminishing Role of Artists in a Visual Medium", linked here without comment.

- One of the many commercials to air during the blowout that was Super Bowl XLVIII was a trailer for the new Transformers movie.  Transformers 2 was so bad that I've given up on watching any further installments in the series, but the trailer was interesting in that it included mechanical dinosaur Transformers.  This is probably just an adaptation of the G1 dinobots, but wouldn't it be cool if it was instead a reference to Beast Wars?  Yes, it would be cool.  Very cool.

- Here's an image that has been sitting on my desktop for far too long.  It's the Fantastic Four as Angry Birds.  Great.

- Your friend (and mine), Larry, went to the Royal Rumble a few weeks ago...and sat next to Ben Roethlisberger of your team (and mine), the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Here's video evidence.

- Speaking of Larry, there's some new content on the Franks and Beans website.  You should check it out, because...it's Franks and Beans, guys.  That should be enough of a reason.

Tobacco is Whacko (if you're a teen); NYCC 2013; Franks and Beans and more RANDOM NOTES!

We're back with another installment of "Random Notes!", the regular blog feature that cleans off my desktop of pictures and ideas that I feel like sharing with the Internets.  This is a long-running feature, dating all the way back to 1995, when this blog was hosted by GeoCities.  Fun fact: in 1995, it took seven days to upload a picture, and I passed the time in between typing in the cheat code to the original Sim City!  We've come a long way.

- Our first feature, coincidentally, comes from the '90s as well.  It's one of those comic book ads that I'll always remember...and hate.  At first glance, it seems like a perfectly reasonable and well-meaning advertisement, an anti-tobacco message that pushes back against the significant deleterious influence of big corporations.  The slogan rhymes, so why not, right?  But for some reason, the company that produced this ad decided to add the caveat "if you're a teen".  As if to say, "the minute you turn 20, bam!  Off you go to get your smokes."  So, smoking is okay if you're an adult?

That seems like such a cop-out.  Why would an anti-smoking ad qualify its message in this way?  The fine print reveals that it's produced by Lorillard, a TOBACCO COMPANY.  #$&^&*#%@!!!  A little more research reveals that the Lorillard tobacco company is based out of...McMURRAY, PA!  #&@^$&#%@&!!!!

Ridiculous.  These were terrible comic book advertisements that now seem like backhanded ads for the very thing it was supposedly warning against.  This must be like discovering that the Matrix is real.

- In less infuriating news, I recently got approved for a professional badge to the 2013 New York Comic Con!  That's exciting stuff.  It'll be the first time I've been to the show since 2010, when I went in a different capacity.  I believe that the FUBAR booth will be making an appearance on the floor, so look for me to spend a lot of time there.

- The "Man of Steel" movie is just around the corner, and the promotional push is in full swing.  Wal-Mart seems to be a big sponsor (I wonder if Ma Kent will be shown eating Great Value cereal?) as there's Superman-related merchandise littered throughout the stores.  Among the strangest tie-ins I've seen: Superman pizza!  I guess it's not exactly called "Superman Pizza", but what else would you say when asked to describe this item?  The pepperoni should be dyed red, blue and yellow.

- I've never been drawn to digital comics; I have nothing against them, I just prefer the archaic paper comics that I've always read.  But Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin's "The Private Eye" pulled me in.  I'm a big fan of both creators and this digital comic does not fail to deliver.  It's a fantastic futuristic thriller and I couldn't recommend it more.  If you haven't read this yet, do yourself a favor at go to http://panelsyndicate.com.  I can't wait for the third issue to be released.

- A little while ago, I showed pictures of the Sideshow Tick statue that I bought.  I stumbled upon this image fairly at random recently, and it's obvious that it's a design for the statue.  Really cool!

- Last night, "Weird Al" Yankovic came to Washington, PA, on the newest leg of the Alpocalypse tour. It was a great show!  And it allowed me the chance to debut the newest shirt in the line, as modeled by Larry:

How nice!  The art on this shirt is by Pietro, and I got them printed up at Commonwealth Press in Pittsburgh.  We got a number of compliments on the shirt at the show.  I'm planning on doing a little website renovation over the next few weeks, and part of that will be, I think, opening up an Etsy shop for items that don't necessarily belong in the Teddy and the Yeti camp.

- Speaking of Larry, he's doing a lot of great things with his hobby/obsession, the Dukes of Hazzard.  Last week, I drove out with him past Columbus, Ohio to pick up a door to a '69 Charger General Lee!  If you haven't looked at his blog lately, make sure you check it out before he becomes all famous and people just think you're a bandwagon fan: http://dukescollector.blogspot.com

- I'm a fan of Beast Wars: Transformers.  And if you've ever seen the show, then you are, too.  Here's a great image!  From Twitter!  From Beast Wars Megatron!  You should follow this on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BWMegatron



- Lastly, here's the newest episode of Franks and Beans, in which I grow a beard and Larry and I talk about stuff.  It's episode 60: the Joke!

That's it for this installment of "Random Notes", sure to live on into the 22nd century, passed on from generation to generation like a precious family heirloom.