Monday, January 18, 2010

everyone loves the stang






I've been given to believe that one of you likes the Arnold Stang.



Sunday, January 17, 2010

water sports



From sloth unleashed. The guy is playing with a Tomy Waterfuls Ring Toss toy. I know, because I had one just like it. Looks like he's doing pretty well, too.

That 18-inch long thing on the coffee table in front of him is apparently an ash tray. People may have smoked a lot in the 1970s. I'm just speculatin' here.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Skeezix Visits Nina

I thought for the longest time that I had imagined the whole thing.


My dad, born in 1927, kept a ton of his toys from his childhood. One toy was a board game called "Skeezix Visits Nina". He let me play with his toys and I distinctly remember finding this game, realizing it was missing pieces, and drawing on the inside of the box to make it into a different kind of game. Probably pinball-based. I was very into pinball at the time. It was a time before video games.

In the late 90s I mentioned the game to Dad and how now, as an adult, I regretted writing in it. I said it was probably worth money and he nodded and joked a little about how writing in it must have killed the value.

Then in 2005 when both parents were gone and I had to clean out the house, the game was nowhere to be found. I really wanted to see that game again, too. So I came home and looked the game up online. Nothing.

For 4 years, nothing. Not a peep about the game anywhere on the Internets. I started to think I had imagined the whole thing, because the Internet is the repository of all human knowledge.

Until this guy listed one on eBay recently. (Link goes to the Italian version of eBay, the only one I could still find cached). His was complete and didn't have any writing so it wasn't the one we had -- which was a possibility since the seller lives not too far from where my parents lived -- but it's the only one I've seen since my dad's.

EDIT: I forgot to mention you can find the game on BoardGameGeek now, too. Same pics as the auction.

The game was boring, by the way. It had a spinner (missing in ours) and a board that was just paper glued to the inside of the bottom of the box. The board was a single path with a few little special spots along the way. You spun, moved your SweeTart-shaped piece along that many spaces, and if you landed on a special spot you followed instructions. First one to Nina's house won.

For very very low values of "win". I still wish I had this game again, though.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Futurama: 7 Damned? 7 Damned WHAT?


I've been meaning to post this somewhere for 2 years.

In the Futurama episode "Roswell That Ends Well", at about 19:50 into the episode the ship flies through an Army building, a hangar I guess. The retro windows on some of the Army buildings are made up of a bunch of small bluish squares of glass. In this scene, though, the glass spells something out:



That's the 600 px wide version, click here for the 900 px wide one.

It obviously says "7 DAMNED" or, at the least "7 DAMN". Until I grabbed this cap I couldn't see the last 2 letters, but now that I enlarge it they seem like "ED" to me:




I thought the commentary would address this, but it didn't. There's nothing on Google about this, either. Surely I'm not the first one to see this.

EDIT: Light bulb! There are 7 windows in this bit, or "7 DAMNED" windows. Were they hard to animate? Did someone at the studio get bored? We will probably never know.

Friday, January 8, 2010

catbox fishcoin

I'm trying to figure out why I don't own this.


Monday, January 4, 2010

Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen



Great storyboard art from my favorite Ren & Stimpy episode, "Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen." Which you can see here because I am your friend:




I need to post here more.