The birthday haul, 2016

Well, it's that time of year once again where I show off some of the stuff I have. I guess I do that more than once a year. I'm okay with this. Anyway, my birthday has come and gone as it seems to do, and I got some neat things. So you get to see them! But first, check out this sketch of The Tick and Arthur from Rob Croonenborghs! I thought that this was pretty cool.

First up on the docket is the Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot hardcover collection from Dark Horse Comics. I'm excited to break into this as I've actually never read the story before and it's, if you can believe it, one of Frank Miller's stranger co-creations. I wonder if the '90s cartoon is out on DVD? Hmm...four seconds of Amazon research tells me that it isn't. I wonder why?

It was recently announced that "Weird Al" Yankovic would be the new co-host and band leader of IFC's "Comedy Bang! Bang!" beginning in season five. This means, of course, that it's time for me to catch up on the series so far, and I got the first two seasons that I'm pouring through. It really is a fantastic program. It's weird and irreverent and it suits my sense of humor just fine.

Also in the stack is a book all about old comic book ads, "Mail-Order Mysteries"! It shows the actual products behind many of the more ubiquitous ads that showed up in comics. It does not disappoint and seems oddly tailor-made to me specifically.

Lastly you'll see "Save the Cat", a book on screenwriting for jerks like me who will one day probably sell out and write a screenplay. If I haven't already.

Next up, we've got some more DVDs, including the second volume of the Conan the Adventurer series, the complete Planet of the Apes tv series, and the first season of very Clone High alumni heavy "The Last Man on Earth".

Just as I predicted, I'm getting sucked into the amiibo fad and now I own two. I keep telling myself that I'm stopping with Pac Man. Who knows if this is true? I also picked up a new audiobook set in the "Ender's Game" universe. "Ender's Game" was such an incredible book and everything afterwards just slowly and unfortunately went downhill. I guess I'm still trying to recapture that initial wonder.

Oh, and I spent all of last month stalking Larry with a fake Twitter profile before revealing it to him with a birthday cake from (of course) Dairy Queen. Revenge isn't the only thing that's best served cold. Ice cream cake is. Because it's made of ice cream. You get it.

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.

Ye olde photo dump

I recently traded in my old phone (from a carrier that no longer exists, if that tells you anything) for a new iPhone, and I'm really happy with pretty much everything about it.  I can check my e-mail constantly, play Pac Man, keep up on the Pirates and their 20th consecutive losing season...oh, and it also makes phone calls (quaint)!

One of the things I like most about the phone is the camera.  It's an eight megapixel and it's very convenient.  Of course, every time I look at the thumbnails, I see a handful of pictures I should really just delete, but darn it, I'm saving them for the blog to show at some point.  I figure that I've got enough that I should just show them all at once (and finally do some spring cleaning in the camera roll).

At the very top of this page you'll find the official Comic-Con magazine, mailed out a couple months ago.  It's a neat preview of this year's show...and judging by the cover, I'd imagine that the new Spider-Man movie might have a big presence there.  It's pretty cool.

It was my birthday recently, and once again, Google eerily wished me well on the day.  It's a cute gesture, but really, does anyone else get a little weirded out by the fact that Google seemingly goes out of its way to make this personal note?  Thanks in any case, Google.

I just polished off the last piece of birthday cake from Dairy Queen.  I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but the price of an ice cream cake is exactly $20.99.  No one else finds this funny, but I do.

On an recent trip to Bridgeville, PA's Impossible Dreams comics, I took a picture of the store.  You're welcome, Google images!

I was browsing through Evil Genius Comics in California, PA, when someone brought in a box of old comics they bought at a garage sale.  There were some nice books in the collection, though most of them were in pretty bad shape, including this copy of Incredible Hulk #180, which has the first appearance of Wolverine in it.  It's only a cameo, but it still goes for a good bit of money in good condition.  The guys who work there were nice enough to let me take a picture with it.  I was going for "flippant".  How'd I do?

I was directed to the blog TMNT Master, which has turned out to be a site that sucks up large chunks of my time.  It's just mesmerizing.  So when I saw the sign that said "the shredder is dead!" at work, I had to add an image of my own to complete the picture.  If someone would like to make those at TMNT Master aware of this, I'd be okay with that.  Very okay.  Extremely okay.  You get the idea.

This isn't a picture I took, just a random image I found online.  And it's hilarious.  It looks like Rick is on the phone and the horse is taking a break between shots.  Fantastic.

There we go.  My phone thanks you for the following post.  Now I can delete all of these pictures.  Well, the TMNT one probably stays.

Birthday Swag, 2012

Another birthday has come and gone (my...17th...), and there's an annual tradition around these parts - one where I takes pictures of the cool stuff I got and everyone else oohs and aahs because I'm such a lucky guy.  So let's get to it!  Right at the top is a guitar pick with the Thing on it!  Here's a fun fact: there's a company that makes display cases for guitar picks.  Also, I have one.  Also, the Thing is on the  pick.  It's pretty cool.

Some DVDs!  New Adventure Time and the 24/7 Penguins special from 2010/11.

This above shirt is from Larry, and I'm pretty intimidating in it.  It's a Future Foundation shirt...specifically with the symbol the Thing wears.  This is the most obscure Thing shirt I've got, and I love it for that reason.

I stopped and bought another couple Marvel Treasury editions on the way to visit my parents for some birthday dinner.  Look, it's the Thing dressed up as Santa Claus!  Someone at Marvel must have thought that Ben Grimm as Santa was hilarious, because he's been depicted this way quite a few times over the years.

This last image wasn't, well, a birthday gift from anyone other than myself.  It wasn't a birthday gift at all, actually, but I got it in the mail the day before my birthday so it goes up on the blog regardless.  Check out this great print with a retrospective of Al's career so far.

There were a couple other things that didn't get pictures taken of them, so they will remain a mystery perhaps forever, or perhaps until I decide I want to take pictures of them.  All in all a great day.  Next up: an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen with a confusing, obscure quote written in icing.  Can't wait.

Birthday swag, part 2

Yesterday was my birthday, and as is tradition in my family, my wife went to Ye Ol' Dairy Queen to get an ice cream cake for me.  Here's an interesting tidbit - Dairy Queen ice cream cakes aren't cakes at all, just ice cream and icing shaped to LOOK like a cake.  What jokers, those guys at the DQ.  Anyway, another tradition (using the word as loosely as possible, I guess) we have is to confuse the decorators there as much possible, and all signs point to this year as being a rousing success.  It took a few tries for my wife to get the icing chef to understand that she was saying "it's clobberin' time", and perhaps even longer for them to understand that she was serious in that I actually wanted the Thing's catch phrase on a cake.

This stands in stark contrast to last year's birthday, when we went for something completely different:

Yes!  My cake said "Beast Wars", which really confused the hell out of them at the store.  Looking at this picture now for the first time in, oh, a year, I see that I decided to wear the exact same shirt for my last two birthdays, completely unintentionally.  Perhaps it's just my birthday shirt.  Also, Larry was there.

Anyway, I managed to snag quite a few cool items for the big day, among which were The Walking Dead season 1 DVD, Venture Bros. volume 4 part 2 DVD, and the new Tick action figure from Shocker Toys:

It's pretty cool.

And in another sign that Google is slowly taking over the world, the search engine greeted me with this message when I went to the site yesterday:

That's just weird.  Thoughtful, but weird.

Birthday swag

The past few weeks have been, in a word, busy.  It's midterm time at school, my brother-in-law got married, I sent Teddy and the Yeti #3 off to the printer (forgot to mention that, huh?), filmed another episode of Franks and Beans, and what's my reward for all of this?  Apparently lots and lots of comic book related presents, courtesy family and friends.  Oh, and it was my birthday, too.

Among the awesome things I got are those pictured above.  My buddy Larry got me a Marvels hardcover, a Fantastic Four plug &; play video game and (as a gag, I assure you), the first issue of the Madballs comic series from Marvel's Star Comics imprint.  They've started to reissue Madballs since their heyday in the 1980s and, as I had a bunch of the originals, I plan on getting some of the new ones.  But I haven't yet.  But I will.  Maybe.

I also managed to snag the next book in Scott McCloud's instructional series, Reinventing Comics, and a Time Capsule backup for the Mac.  Now I can actually save my progress and not kill myself if the computer ever crashes and I lose all of my comic book work for the last three years!

My wife got me Funko's Thing bobblehead, which is AWESOME, a "Weird Al is my homeboy" shirt (which has nothing to do with comics but I'm showing it anyway), and a yeti keychain that you can see below:

The key ring comes off to make it like an action figure.  I'm not sure which way I'll use it yet.  Finally, Batman: Year 100 came in the mail on Saturday, which rounded out quite the haul for me on my...uh...19th birthday.  Right.

Oh, and I got an ice cream cake that had "Beast Wars" written on it.  Dairy Queen was pretty confused about that one.

It's amazing - sometimes I write things other than comics.

Sometimes, in fact, I write a blog about comics. And sometimes, just sometimes, I write (in traditional bloggish fashion) about food on my friend Lauren's themed website. The site is called "The Grouchy Gastronome", and the author pretty much exclusively blogs about food that she hates or makes her mad in some form or another. It's like a therapy session with Denny's as the mediator.

In any case, my friend was kind enough to write a blurb promoting Teddy and the Yeti, so I'm returning the favor by advertising her site to my millions and millions of readers. I've got a blog up there right now about Dairy Queen ice cream or some such noise, which is reason enough to check it out, though the other entries are okay, too...I guess.

The website is www.thegrouchygastronome.com, and it's definitely worth a few minutes of your time. SO DO IT!