Rish and Marshal had me on as a guest again for their Delusions of Grandeur podcast. I was tasked to watch the second of the made-for-TV Ewok movies called Ewoks: The Battle For Endor, and then we discussed what we'd seen.
If you want to hear what we had to say, subscribe to the podcast or hit play below.
Jeez, it takes forever for paint to dry in humidity.
I waited for days for this thing to finally dry. I guess that tells you how miserably humid it's been here.
Another shelf I finished this weekend. It’s been a productive weekend. I have one divider that I’m waiting to dry, and then after that only one shelf and I’ve finished the whole south wall. Then it’s on to the “Wall of Voodoo” on the north wall. I’m going to finish this crap y’all! It may be the first productive thing I’ve done in 2021.
Lady Jaye is more of a real American hero than the rest of the Joes. She's out there struggling through those hard days with the G.I. Joe team, fighting off Cobra, digging the foxholes, lugging those big duffle bags around, and she does it all with a smile. On top of that, she's dealing with Chemo, and she keeps on going all the same.
Just kidding. Apparently, Hasbro wanted her to have two different looks, one with her hat on and one with her hat off. Rather than do two separate heads, they gave her removable hair. She's just trying to decide if she wants to wear her hat or not today.
When I was with Rish Outfield, we stopped for a little toy hunting on our way to the Salt Flats. They had these G.I. Joe metal figures on sale for $3. I couldn't resist, so I grabbed one and we went to get in line.
Somebody...or many somebodies...must have been sick that day, however, because they seemed to have a serious lack of cashiers. The lines stretched unconscionably far, even at the self-checkout. Rish and I looked at what we had in our hands to buy, and decided that it was completely not worth it.
This turned out to be a blessing for me, because today I found those same figures at Ross for $2.
I grabbed them happily. I think I'm going to need them for some of the smaller shelf sections that I'm having to make on my Wall of Voodoo.
I'm stoked to finally get the whole family of the Incredibles actually in scale with one another...although maybe not, Dash looks a little small. What do you think?
Oh, and special thanks to Rish for getting me Elastigirl and Jack-Jack.
I still owe him another dollar for that one.
When the year began, I made a few goals (I don't think I ever posted anything about that here, which might be why I've achieved none of them yet). They were things that I've wanted to do for a long time, and the idea was to make myself work on them. Instead, I settled into depressed lethargy, and did nothing all year long.
I can't say why, but over the last few weeks, I've decided to start working on one of my goals which is putting together the Wall of Voodoo. I did a post on just what the Wall of Voodoo is in 2019, if you're curious, you can check it out to learn more and see the progress that I'd reached before this recent bit of motivation I've had.
I really can't explain it, but I've been thinking about building it at all hours. Any moment of free time I have, I want to work on it. I've started mostly on the other side of the room, though, the bookshelf side. I had a lot of little gaps that I wanted to fill in with toys. Here's what I've done recently:
I built all these dividers to frame in the books and then throw up a bunch of toys.
Rish Outfield made some goals at the start of the year, and one of them was to visit the Salt Flats in western Utah/eastern Nevada. The Salt Flats are somewhat near where Rish lives, and yet, in all this time, he's never gone to check it out.
Hence the goal. Which is one of the goals that he had been ignoring for most of the year. After all, who would want to drive all the way out there by themselves? But, since I was in town, I could alleviate the boredom. Rish enjoys road trips when they're not solo. So, I figured I could help him achieve one of his goals, and off we went.
Here we are:
It was like being on a sunny ski slope as far as the brightness goes. If we took our sunglasses off, our eyes would start to water quickly, and you couldn't see anything.
It's a pretty place though. Check out my pictures that I took.
Pretty nice, though all those pictures look pretty similar, right?
Rish brought along some Star Wars toys, and we took some pictures that looked like they could have been taken on Hoth.
Okay, that last picture might not be all that realistic, but it's still fun. This one is even more fun.
Too bad the focus isn't right, so the forced perspective doesn't quite work.
It was so hard to see anything in our phone screens that most of the pictures we took were horribly framed. I threw all those pictures out, however. Rish did save this silly behind the scenes picture of me trying to get shots of the toys.
There were many people who were taking their cars down onto the salt and driving on it, which of course makes sense considering that the Bonneville Salt Flats is where they do all the land speed records stuff.
Rish really wanted to, and he was driving so why would I tell him no? We went down onto the salt and drove all over the place.
That was pretty cool, and even though I'd been to the Salt Flats before, I had never gone driving on them, so it was a new experience for me too.
Rish fulfilled a goal, and we all had a good time.
Rish and I managed to get together the other day, so we took a trip to a desolate place. It was pretty neat. Ever been?
Went to visit Rish Outfield this past week, and while we were doing our usual shopping for toys we came across this. Since Rish does all his podcasts with Marshal Latham now, maybe I found my new podcast co-host. Big Ankylosaurus?
WE ARE BROTHERS!!
Got these guys at the grocery store that I used to go to when I lived near Rish Outfield. I kept up on the Pez dispensers much better when I frequented that place, because they were always getting new ones, and they sold them for a reasonable price too. Check 'em out.
Of course, I've had a Spider-man forever, but Venom is new. I got a new Spider-man, so I could keep it next to Venom. Of course, I don't have a place to put them yet. Gotta make a spot on the Wall of Voodoo for them. Get to work, ya bum.
Have you seen this trend?
Apparently some guy on TikTok did this to a LeBron James figure and made a video about it, and now everybody's copycatting him.
Space Jam sucks, and so does LeBron, so I don't really care, personally, though I would never steal something, especially not at these industrial levels they're taking it to. So, yeah, I condemn it and everything.
However, what's worse is that everybody has already taken all of the LeBron heads, so the shithead copycats are branching out to find something else to destroy.
Messed around this morning with repainting a little Castle Grayskull that I have. It was actually just a cheap case that a mini-figure came inside of.
What do you think of how it turned out?
I've had these Happy Meal toys of Mr. Incredible and his son Dash for a very long time, but I've never been happy with them. The scale is off. Dash's head is about three times the size of his dad's head. And I didn't have any of the other members of the Parr family either.
At first, I assumed they were just another line of random characters that would never give me all the characters I wanted. Instead we'd get a Mr. Incredible, a Frozone, a Syndrome, and maybe a Dash.
I was sad to see that you could get the whole crew from Monsters Inc. and from Wall-E, but not from The Incredibles. And I bought those Monsters Inc. guys. I was stoked to finally get Mike and Sully in the proper scale ratio.
I would have bought the Wall-E ones too, except I already have a set of Wall-E and Eve that are almost the same size.
I didn't even consider getting the Mr. Incredible, because I was certain they'd never get the whole family out before Mattel got distracted and moved on to some other line.
But then I saw these figures start to show up in the stores:
Dash? Jack-Jack? Most surprisingly, Elasti-girl? They were actually going to do the whole family? It really looked like that's what was going on. I needed to get these guys, but I had waited too long. Now Mr. Incredible wasn't in every single store like he had been a month ago.
Well, I set to work, getting the figures from various stores and online sites as well. I could tell I was super close when this box came in the mail.
Dash from Amazon, Mr. Incredible from Walmart, Violet from Target, and some Jack-Jacks that were packed in with the other figures.
All I need now is Elasti-girl. Weirdly, she is the one that is hard to find now. Rish tells me he has found one, though, and will have it waiting for me when I come to visit him next week.
They're a little hard to get to stand, especially Violet because she has such tiny feet, but I've managed to get them all to stand for the time being. Don't they look great?
And every few months or so, I can switch out Jack-Jack for a different version to keep it fresh. Can't wait to see Rish and get that last piece of the puzzle.
Jason Sanford is publishing his first novel. It has a familiar title you might recognize if you're a fan of the Dunesteef.
Get 20% off if you order through Apex Books. Order the trade paperback you'll receive a signed bookplate of the cover jacket. If you liked the story back in the day, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the full length book. Get yours today. I did.
