Anklecast 56 - Do Over (Part One) Over On Patreon

 

It's the first part of my novella called "Do Over," in which a man who has reached the end of his rope gets the chance to go back and try again, and possibly avoid the mistakes that he's made in the past...or does he?

Afterward, Rish and I talk about some of the things we would like to go back and change if we had the chance to do so, and we open it up to the audience. Please comment and tell us about what you'd like to change in your past if only a strange ball of swirling light opened up for you and spat you out fifteen years in the past.

The Pez-alorean

This has happened to me a few times over the years, but not for quite a while now. Today, Little Anklevich had his friend over to play. The kid showed up with a present...not for Little, but for me. What? That's weird. Did you ever get your friend's dad a random present before?

Well, there's reason behind it. The present was a set of Pez dispensers. Yes, for many years I've had a collection of Pez dispensers that I display portions of on my toy shelves.

One of the sets I usually have displayed are my Star Wars Pez.

So, Little's friend could see that I had Star Wars Pez dispensers and which ones I had (this isn't all of them, by the way, just the bad guys).

So, when he was out with his dad, they must have been shopping at a store like Ross, and saw the box with the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda Pez dispensers. He knew I didn't have, and that I'd like it, so he convinced his dad to buy it for me, and since it was at Ross, his dad had no reason to say no, because it was super cheap.

I thought it was pretty cute to be getting a present from my 11-year-old son's friend. I put it up in a slot on my shelves.

Because he was right. I did want it. I think I almost bought it one time before when I saw the set at Ross, but, as often happens at Ross, the line was way too long to wait in for such a simple purchase. When the line gets that long, it has to be something I want so bad I'm willing to wait a half hour just for the honor of buying...and I guess this Pez dispenser set didn't quite rise to that level.

However, thanks to the thoughtfulness of a little boy, I managed to end up with it anyway. I guess this friend is a keeper. I'll have to let my son keep hanging out with him.

Dud of the Galaxy

I've been collecting the four-inch scale Guardians of the Galaxy figures to put on my four-inch scale space station that I've been planning on creating. I got the set with Cosmo and Groot (and baby Rocket). And another time, I got the Star-Lord, Drax, and Mantis figures. 

The one available figure that I hadn't purchased was Rocket Raccoon. The only way you could pick him up was if you bought the Bowie, the Guardian's spaceship. They wanted $35 for that thing, and it looked crappy, so I wasn't going to bother. If I ever saw it on a good enough sale though...

And I expected it to get to that sale, because I didn't think anybody would buy it. I was right. I saw it go to half off a week ago, but that was still $18, so I waited some more. Then it dropped all the way down to $10.50

And that's about what I paid for the single figures when they were full price, so I decided to go for it.

The Rocket figure is pretty good. I can't complain. It's as if I paid regular price for a figure I wanted.

Now, I've got them all, and they'll look great on my space station...when I make it.

The ship itself is as crappy as I thought it was.

It's not a very good design for a spaceship to  begin with. It looks very strange, but then they tried to make it into a toy with a play feature, and turned it to complete garbage. The middle part...the main cabin of the ship...detaches and can fly free of the rest of the ship.

But it's tiny. That main cabin part of the ship is only big enough to fit one four-inch scale figure. And it fits them like a coffin, not like a cockpit. They have to lay down on their backs inside. I guess it could work as an escape pod or something, but certainly not as the main cabin for a giant spaceship that is supposed to house the entirety of the Guardians of the Galaxy.

I was thinking that maybe I could use the ship in my 1/72 scale space station, but it's not good enough for that. The ship isn't even complete. It's not even hollow, it's doesn't have a back. It's like a facade.

Which might work in an old western movie, since you won't see the back side of the facade, but you can see the missing parts of this ship from any angle.

Such crap. I can't believe that any self-respecting toy company would put out such garbage, let alone the biggest toy company in the world. All I can say is that I hope they lost a ton of money trying to sell such a turd to the buying public. Screw this crap. At least I got it for 75% off. I probably should have waited until they dropped the price to 90% though.

What I suspect that I will do with this turd is cut it up and use it to create some of the facades of Ankletown since that's all they gave us was a facade anyway. It could work all right for something like that. The main cabin thing may survive as an escape pod or something. I saw that Empire Toy Works did that with his. I'll probably copy his example.

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72hr Fast & BBBE Carnivore | To Keep Fasting Or Not? | Journey to One-derland | Week 8 Roundup

I started out the week with the intent to do a 72 hour fast. Did that intent continue through to a successful fast or did something happen to change my mind and change my protocol? Find out in this exciting episode of Big Anklevich on Health.

By the way, it is a literal miracle that this cursed video ever made it out. Everything that could have gone wrong in the post-production process did, so I apologize if there's any errors in it. Let me know if you see anything that I can fix.

Falcon

I think I said I wouldn't buy anything more until I started making buildings for my space station...I guess I lied, because I have this to show you.

That is the Micro Galaxy Squadron Millennium Falcon. It's the same toyline that I've bought ships from before. I've been wanting to pick up this Falcon, but I swore I wouldn't buy it unless I ever saw it on a really good sale, because they wanted $45 for this little ship. I mean, it's only a little bit bigger than my hand. It's made to be in scale with figures that are one inch tall. I wasn't gonna spend full price on that.

I didn't have to, though, because I found it on sale for $18 the other day. I scooped it right up when I saw that, and added it to my collection of ships that are 1/72 scale. It'll be able to be on the same space station that I make for the Lightyear ships that I have.

Although, I don't think it's quite in scale with them. The lightyear ships are actually a little bigger than 1/72, and this thing is actually a little smaller than 1/72. A website that I looked up said that this Falcon is actually in 1/136 scale...so about half as big as it should be in relation to the figures that it comes with. Should be fine, however, because I suspect I'll never put the figures next to it in a way that will make you want to compare the sizes.

It is funny, however, because I have a Millennium Falcon hanging up in my study. I bought it about seven years ago when I was at a Walmart with Rish Outfield. It was a snap-together model kit that had been put out for the Force Awakens movie. I didn't know what size it was, but when I did the math to figure out if it was 1/72, I found it to be too small for that. When I got this Falcon, I compared the two and...

If you can't tell, they are pretty much identical in size. Looks like they just enlarged the cockpit a little to make it so that you can fit the figures inside it. My guess is that the ship I had originally was 1/144--the standard model size--and that's why the 1/136 one looks almost identical. I suppose I didn't need to buy that new Falcon after all. Looks like I already had one.

I also just recently got the Lightyear ship that Emperor Zurg flew around in. It was a lot bigger than I thought it would be, and when I put it next to the Falcon...

Yeah, they're pretty much the same size too. There may come a day far in the future when I decide that I have to have all the ships be the actual correct scale, and then I might go out and buy model kits that are actually sized correctly, but that day will not be soon. For now, I'm gonna be happy with this.

Harrison Ford's Grimace

It was Harrison Ford's birthday the other day, the annual holiday that Rish Outfield always celebrates. I try to get him a present each year on that day, although I'm almost always late. Anyway, Harrison Ford's birthday was creeping up on me this year, and I hadn't gotten Rish anything yet. 

I pretty much buy him some sort of nerdy T-shirt every year, and this year was no exception, but I was keen to make it better than usual. You see, I could do whatever I wanted for this year's shirt. My daughter got a Cricut vinyl cutter last year, and she announced to me that she could make shirts using iron-on vinyl a little while ago. When I discovered this, I started taking advantage of this great possibility.

I had her make me a Blink-182 shirt, a Glacier National Park shirt, a shirt based on the new Utah state flag, and a Foo Fighters shirt.

I thought it would be really cool to do an original shirt that Rish would really appreciate, something more personal than even any of those designs I had my daughter make for me. Something that he couldn't get anywhere else.

My first idea was to make him a podcaster shirt. I remember once, back in 2012 or 2013, whenever the last time we went to the New Media Expo in Las Vegas, we got a shirt that said PODCASTER on its chest from Libsyn, because we ran our feed through their service. It was a really cool shirt that I loved, and I believe Rish was a fan of his too...then again, maybe he wasn't...I couldn't remember for sure, but I thought he did. I could make him a podcaster shirt with my own design. The first idea I came up with was this:

Then I thought, "Would he like this? Does this suck? Is this a shirt that he would ever wear?" I was thinking that he probably wouldn't. Maybe he'd like it, but probably not. I should probably think of something else.

Then I was listening to his Patreon address for July, and he talked about his love for Grimace and how much he appreciates the new TikTok meme where people try the Grimace birthday shake, and then it flashes to them dead on the ground with purple shake oozing out of their mouths. 

Rish and I both have long had a love for Grimace, and particularly the comical idea of Grimace being a profoundly evil character. Once, we planned out an entire student film that we wanted to shoot at the McDonaldland Playplace based on the urban legend of a kid being bitten by rattlesnakes that lived in the ball pit. The ending was based on the finale of Friday the 13th, where the girl is floating on the placid Crystal Lake and then Jason jumps out of the water to sink the boat and pull her down with him. Our ending would just be with a child in the ball pit Grimace jumping out of the balls to pull the kid down to the bottom.

Anyway, I realized I needed to make Rish a Grimace shirt. At first I looked to see what Grimace shirts were available out there, and none of them were very inspiring. I asked my daughter if she could draw a Grimace picture for the T-shirt design, and she took it as a challenge. I told her about the Grimace shake TikToks, and showed her a few of them, and that was enough to set her on the right path.

I went out to find a purple shirt to use, and a few days later, she came to me with three different designs.

Our favorite was the first one, but the second one...a close second, seemed like it would work better on the purple shirt. My daughter was out of black vinyl, though, so we had to run to Walmart last minute to pick some up. While we were there, we found a shirt that would work great with the other design, our favorite design. So, we bought that shirt too.

We made both designs, but the black on purple one didn't look as good. The contrast wasn't high enough, so it was really hard to see just what you were looking at. On top of that, while ironing the design, my daughter messed up, and munched two of the letters.

By process of elimination, therefore, we decided on the other design, which was our favorite to begin with anyway. I packaged it up and sent it off, and it arrived something like a week after Harrison Ford's birthday. I was on the phone with Rish, by chance, when he opened the package, so I got to hear his reaction, and luckily, he liked it.

Turns out that he's been looking for an evil Grimace shirt ever since seeing those TikTok videos. Luckily for us, he had yet to pull the trigger and buy one of his own. So, here you go, the man himself in his one of a kind, specially designed T-shirt.

Happy Harrison Ford's birthday, Rish Outfield. Many happy returns.

Happy Pioneer Day

 

Zurg

I've been gathering tons of ships from the Lightyear movie over the past months to put up on a space station that I want to create in a 1/72 scale. It looks like those ships will fit in perfectly.

There's one ship that they put out in that scale that I never bought, because I've never once seen it in stores, but today, I was at Ross and found it at a great price.

Not sure if I like it, though. I think I'm going to repaint it...probably...to make it work better with the other ships I have. The purple is just too much. If I do, I'll probably paint it white, and then it'll fit in much better with Star Wars ships. Then again, maybe I should leave it, because the whole idea is to have ships from various films all occupying the same space station, so maybe I'll leave it that ugly purple and green.

A Couch to 5K Video Celebration

It's been four weeks (five really, if you count the week where I was out with a really bad sunburn), and I've reached the end of the Couch to 5K program. Here's a little ode to the joy of training your body to do something it couldn't do when you started!

ADF & Carnivore | Can I Repeat The Woosh Week? | Journey to One-derland | Week 7 Roundup

I've changed up my fasting protocol every week so far, but this time around, I just decided to repeat the same ADF that I did last week. So, how did it go? Was I able to repeat the woosh week? Or did things come crashing down around my ear? Also, how is Marshal doing in all of this? How is his Road to 55 going for him? Find out the answers to all of those questions and more on this weeks Journey to One-derland!

I Made It to 5K

If you've been following my Big Anklevich on Health videos (and I know that most of you don't), you might have heard about how I am following a program called Couch to 5K to get myself in to shape for running. It looks like this:

So, I started out slow, and then I started to grow. It was tough, and I often wanted to quit, but I've been a runner before, so I knew that I could do it. I just had to stick to it.

Before you know it, I had worked my way through the whole program and I was a day away from running the 5K. That was when my wife's sister's family was in town visiting us. We took them to New Braunfels to tube down the Comal River. While we were there, I got a horrible sunburn, and when the day came to run the 5K, I had to wimp out.

The sunburn was really bad, particularly in my armpits, which is a spot that doesn't get a lot of sun, but that day I laid on my back with my arms behind my head for most of the time, so they got it good. Moving my arms hurt something fierce, so I decided to delay the 5K one week, and just rest that day.

Well, that one week is up. Today was my day, I was to the last green square on that chart: RUN 5K! So, that's what I went out and did today.

It was kind of anti-climactic. It was just like every other day running, really, except that I went longer than I usually do. In the past, I've done actual organized 5K races, and that would have been a much better culmination of the process, but here in Houston, they don't even bother to put on races in the summer. No one would come. It's just too hot.

I'm not really sure how I did compared to other runs either, because I changed my distance calculation from miles to kilometers just for today. My average pace is usually kept in miles, but today it was in kilometers.

I tried to work it out to miles per hour pace, and if I did it correctly, then my pace was pretty terrible, but it usually is. Of course it's only going to get worse if I run much longer than I usually do.

I did get some congrats from my Runkeeper app that I use to track this stuff. At the end of runs that are noteworthy it will give me little award things. Today I got an award for running my longest run:

A new personal record! I also got this award which makes me chuckle:

My fastest 5K! Wow! Also my only 5K...at least that Runkeeper knows about. I've done 5K countless times before, and I'm pretty sure that most of them were better than today's run, but that's okay. I'm ramping up. Eventually I'll get there.

Now it's time to move on to the next part of the process, 5K to 10K. I'm moving straight into that training on Tuesday. I won't be able to run the 10K as a race as well, because the training should end on August 27th, which is usually the worst part of the summer down here. So, still no organized races.

Doesn't matter though, 5K wasn't my final goal and neither is 10K. I'm not even shooting for a half-marathon (although there may be one I could run in when I get to that point in my training). I've done all those things before. 

On my bucket list that I made when I was a 20-year-old, I wrote: Run a Marathon. That's what I'm finally going to get around to finishing. In 2013, I tried to get to that point, but I only made it as far as the half-marathon, and then I got lazy and didn't keep my training up for the marathon. This time, barring any injury, I'm going for it. I'm going to make it.

The Houston Marathon is in January, and that's what I am shooting for. So, in the end, I will get to run in a race, and it will be the biggest one around these parts. I am determined to finally achieve what I started and mark it off my list forever.

ADF & Carnivore | A Woosh Week? | Journey to One-derland | Week 6 Roundup

I've had a few slow weeks in a row, and I was getting a little perturbed about it last week. It was starting to wear on my resolve. Did it continue this week? Or did things change? And is it better that they did? Or do I need to find a new way to keep track of my progress that doesn't involve a scale?

Guardians

I think that I swore that I wouldn't buy anything more until I built at least one building for my space station...but I guess that I lied, because the other day while I was out looking for toys, I gave in and purchased the Guardians of the Galaxy 3-pack that has Groot, Cosmo, and Baby Rocket

I guess that's more of a 2 1/2-pack, really, because the Rocket figure is barely an accessory. That Groot only came with two of the four guns he's holding. The other two I pulled out of my overflowing accessories container for the picture. The big one may be a little much for him.

The thing is, I probably shouldn't have bought the figures, because the very next time I went to Target, I found that they'd put all of their summer movie flop figures on clearance. Several of the figures that I've bought in the last while are suddenly going for half off. That 3-pack (or 2 1/2-pack) is not on sale yet, but the single pack figures of the GotG are. I saw Drax selling for $5.

All the stuff from the Flash movie is on sale too, including that Batwing that I bought a few months back. I could have gotten it for $10 now. A good thing, though, is that the really crappy GotG ship is on sale for half off too. They only want $17 for it. I think I'll let it drop another level, then I'll get it. It's the only way you can get the Rocket Raccoon figure...I mean, the real one, not this goofy Baby Rocket pack-in.

Oh, and I made sure to save my receipt for this 3-pack. If it goes to half off, I'll buy it, then return the one I got for half off with my full price receipt, thus negating my inability to wait until the price dropped.

OMAD & Carnivore : Will Every Week Be Great? - The Journey to One-derland - Week 5 Roundup

OMAD this week, but I'm not so sure that was enough to keep any momentum going...wait, did I have momentum? Anyway, the week was a little frustrating, but how much of that frustration did I bring on myself, and how much was due to an actual lack of progress?

Pastime

Went to my first Astros game of the season today. It was a pretty fun game, a decent amount of offense to cheer for (which isn't always the case this season), and a good finish because the Astros won.

Also, they had a giveaway for the first 10,000 fans or so. A free replica championship ring. That was pretty awesome too.

I'll put that up on my shelves in my study to join all the toys and other things that clutter up my backgrounds in my videos.

Happy Fourth of July

We went to the beach for the Fourth. It was much more crowded than it usually is when we come. I guess that's what you can expect on a day like today, though.

And I wore my world famous cats and fireworks shirt.

We stayed there all day long, and into the evening. There was a parade at six, and then the family went up the street to our favorite restaurant on the Seawall. I stayed on the beach, though, since I had started fasting already for the next two days. We finished off the day with fireworks on the beach.

It was really beautiful and even calming to watch the fireworks show there on the beach with the waves lapping on the shore beside us, and the lovely cool breeze blowing the oppressive heat inland.

However, I don’t think it was worth the three hours it took to get back home afterward, two of which were spent just trying to get off Galveston Island with the 150,000 others who came there for the 4th as well. Yikes what a mess that was. Probably a once in a lifetime experience, because I never want to deal with that traffic again.

The Countdown Is Over, We Made It!

Okay, happy Fourth of July, everybody! It's here, and it's the last day of my countdown. Here's the last of the pictures of my toys on my holiday-themed shelves. 

This guy is called...crap, I can't remember. I ought to look it up...thank you Google Image Search, this guy is called Civil Warrior. I don't know a single thing about him, other than that he looks like a robot Captain America.

This one here is my regular, on-the-shelf-every-day-of-the-year Captain America. This is the guy that replaced my Face-Off Captain America in that role. I talked about that earlier in the parade of posts that I've done on my 4th of July toys. This guy is admittedly a cooler version of that same classic-style Captain America that I wanted on my Avengers shelf.

And our final picture is this. First in war, first in peace, and first...with a hand-cranked mini gun? Here is the Bioshock Infinite George Washington Heavy Hitter Patriot figure. I don't know anything about Bioshock Infinite. I believe that it is a post-apocalyptic video game, and this character is a robot from a Disneyland-like theme park's Hall of Presidents-like attraction that has short circuited and gone rogue, and you have to try to survive getting past them.

There's also a Benjamin Franklin version of this same thing, but I didn't manage to buy it while the figures were still cheap, and now they're going for around $75, so I probably never will get the other one. On top of that, these figures are notoriously fragile. My figure has broken several times, and I've had to glue things back onto it like crazy, so this one may not last much longer either.

Anyway, he's one of my favorites. I love the idea of a crazed Hall of Presidents animatronic stalking people like it's straight out of Westworld.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody!

Countdown To The 4th, Day 12

Okay, this time we have a Titan Heroes of a venomized...or I suppose venomizing Captain America. He's being overwhelmed by the symbiote. I made the symbiote stuff that's going up the flag...it looks pretty crappy though. It's just a trash bag that's been cut up, and it sadly looks like it.

Then there's this Infinity War Captain America that I got on sale a year or so ago, and he's pretty awesome, though I wish he had a regular shield. It would fit the holiday better.

And this final one is Stargirl and S.T.R.I.P.E. They are two DC characters that are generally lesser know, although they did one of those CW TV shows recently for them. I don't think it lasted very long though. I never saw any of the episodes, so I don't know if it was any good.

Countdown To The 4th, Day 11

Today we have these guys that I posted about a few weeks ago. They come with American flags, so I figured it was only fitting to put them up for the 4th.

Next, is this figure here. This is an Image Comics character called Super Patriot. He's kind of lame, to be honest. The figure has no knees or elbows, and I have a hard time making him even stand. However, he hasn't been diving off the shelf like many of the other figures I have that are much more poseable, so there's that...

And, I'm going to throw on a third picture today so I can manage to get them all in before time runs out. This is my 12-inch Marvel Legends Icons figure of Captain America and his girlfriend, Barbie. You knew that Barbie was dating Cap, right? She's even wearing her flag swimsuit to show her support for him. What a great girlfriend.

Canada Day

It's kind of funny to post this in the middle of a countdown to July 4th, but happy Canada Day!

My wife's sister and her family are here to visit us, and we decided that it would be fun to have a little bit of a Canada Day party and barbecue, so I got my Canada flag out, and hung it from my pole in the front yard. We also did temporary tattoos that she brought in her suitcase from the Dollarama.

And some bunting tied to our hammock stand from the Dollarama as well.

I made burgers, and we all chowed down.

And we even set off some little fireworks like sparklers and a couple of fountains.

They were readily available at the fireworks stands just up the street. Do people celebrate Canada Day with fireworks usually? Or are we just imposing our American celebration onto this Canadian holiday with this? I don't know. I think we've done sparklers and the like every time I've ever been in Canada on Canada Day though.

Anyway, happy Canada Day from Houston, y'all. Hope you had a lovely July 1st just like we did.