Augie Bytes

So here I am waiting for a report to run at work and I have a decision to make. Take a few minutes to write up a quick post to my ever-neglected blog, or clean my desk. It’s obvious by the fact that you’re reading this that my desk remains cluttered…

I’ve been torn recently because this blog has a split personality. I love talking about geeky things like toys, comics, etc, but I also love updating friends and family on what’s going on with everyday life and sharing family pictures. Unfortunately, I don’t’ think many of my family members are interested in the latest U.B.Funkeys figure I found or what comic I just enjoyed reading. On the flip, I don’t think the people finding my site by searching on Custom Invader Zim Figures are all that pumped to see a gallery on my kids bowling.

I think what I’m going to do is free the two from their bonds. Augiewan.com will remain my more personal “family & friends” oriented blog and theSpeakeasy.com (a domain I’ve wanted to utilize for quite a few years now) will become my “geek” blog. Sound good? Speak now or forever hold your peace!

OK, so I forgot about this post I started and now it’s time to go home. So here are a few proud pics of my evolving new office…

First, a shot of one wall in my ever-evolving office. Proudly displayed in the middle is my Invader Zim poster. Below is my small Green Bay Packers display. GO PACK! To the right you can see some figures which include Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy characters, Edward Scissorhands, and Smiley Bone in a cow suit. To the left we have some of the guys from Cartoon Planet and Rogue from the X-Men movie.

And lastly, we have my brand spankin’ new white board, just hung on the wall today. Tomorrow, I leave on a training trip so I needed to leave something on the board. I think Zim fills it nicely…

Booyah, and have a nice day…

I just love gadgets and my new phone (supplied by my wonderful new employer) is a gadget and a half!

So here I am getting ready to head home for the day and I just thought I’d snap a couple pics with my phone. So here they are and not too shabby quality for a stinking phone!

A couple of the Funkeys I’ve purchased recently. It’s a fairly new computer game / vinyl collectibles line. I love the way they look and I figure my kids will probably get a kick out of playing the game. I want more!

A shot of my cluttered Hasbro “chunkies” figures. A mash of both Transformers and Marvel characters. I’m a bit obsessed with these as well. Yes, I’m a dork…

I’m usually not one for reading movie reviews. Most of the time, I find that instead of being honest about what they personally thought of a specific movie, the critics tend to be too concerned with what their readers will think of them. So they spout off about the artistic breakthrough of some horribly tedious movie and then bash on movies that were simply meant to be (as contemptible as it may seem) entertaining.

But during my lunch break a few days ago, I sat down at a local coffee shop and there on the table was a section of the New York Times with a large review of the new Transformers movie. At least that’s what it implied with the large robot image with the subtitle reading “Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots…” Since I’ve been curious how the Transformers movie will be received, I decided to go for it.

Unfortunately, what I proceeded to read was not a movie review at all. No, what I read from Manohla Dargis was a jumbled mess that started as a brief historical review of the Transformers line and a few common facts about the movie, a grade-school level “boys are stupid” review of the summer action movie genre as a whole, and a list of people who worked on the Transformers movie with mentions of the other things they had worked on that she didn’t particularly like either. She then complained about things like female leads having large breasts and obvious product placements as though those aren’t common fixtures of most Hollywood movies and she was stunned to see them here.

In fact, based on the absolute lack of any detail as to the actual movie outside what anyone could have found in previous write-ups and in the trailer, I have a hard time believing that she didn’t have at least the majority of the review written before she ever saw the movie.

I personally don’t care if she disdains the very thought of a big-budget action movie being made, but that’s not what a movie critic is supped to let us know. A good critic should be able to cross the lines of genre prejudice, and watch each movie for what it is. Transformers may very well be a horrible waste of film, but I want to know that based on the notion that the critic actually opened there mind to who and what the movie was made for.

I have no idea what I’ll think of it myself, so I’ll at least add a comment to this article once I see it. For reference, I’m not a huge fan of summer action movies myself in general, though I do like some. I think a lot of them are indeed a waste of film including everything else Michael Bay has even directed. Some of my favorite movies include The Spanish Prisoner, Much Ado About Nothing, The Sound of Music, The Fifth Element, The Princess Bride, Adventures in Babysitting, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Gattica, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Men in Black, and just about everthing Pixar has ever created. I like cartoons, mysteries, documentaries, musicals, sci-fi, you name it. They all contain good and bad movies and I refuse to listen to those who would bash an entire genre.

Rant over…

The day I found out that Palisades was picking up the Invader Zim license was a very good day in my life. (I’m very easy to please) The sun was shining… The birds were singing… At least in my head they were.

Alternately, the day I found out that Palisades was going out of business after only producing 2 waves of my prized figures was very bad day. Up to that point, I had hunted down all the variants (which were plentiful through the Hot Topic chain) and purchased the exclusives from the Walk of Doom and Germs. I even had the box set of wave 1 with variant paint jobs and/or heads. Yes, I have lots of Zims, GIRs, and Dibs!

I decided that I needed to carry on the line. I had dabbled in sculpting a few years back when I made some custom HeroClix figures of Invader Zim, The Flaming Carrot, and The Maxx. I had to try! So based on some supply advise I had heard, I picked up some Sculpey modeling clay and gave it a whirl.

My first creation was Eric the Blob. I thought he turned out pretty good and looked even better once I painted him. Here are some nice fuzzy pictures for you to squint at. Click them for larger views…

After that, I decided (for some unknown masochistic reason) to try something a bit harder. Tak from Tak the Hideous New Girl was my choice in her human disguise. Skinny, lanky, big head, odd shapes, and all. I almost threw it at the wall a few times, but when I was done I was again very pleased and even decided to add in Mimi, her SIR unit. Again, click for larger views…

So there you have it! I made these two a few months ago now and REALLY need to get back to it. I was dabbling with the idea of making some non-Zim figures, but I’ve decided to stick with what’s been working for me. So to all 3 of you who read this, please do either or both of the following. Tell me what you think of these two. Tell me what character(s) I should focus on next.

Bring it on!

I did a bad thing. I was on eBay the other day, and thought to myself, “Oh look, my favorite searches!” Yes it was the feature I had used so many times years back when I was looking for many of my 80’s nostalgia. I clicked and there it was. The search term I had blocked from my mind for the past few years. Yes, “M.U.S.C.L.E.” was the term and I began to drool.

Those wonderful little pink guys that helped me through so many afternoons of playtime were back in my mind. So I searched. Scads of them and they weren’t selling for the rediculous prices they had been during the late 90’s/early 2000’s. It was on!

So yeah, I won a couple auctions yesterday. I’m going to wait until I get those two shipments to see if all the warm fuzzy feelings come back. I expect that they will. And I expect that (like all things I start purchasing) my internal completionist monster will wake up and force me to hunt down the rest. Of course my sons will be happy about this too, because I’ll likely give them the extras I’ll be getting.

Fun for me, fun for them. Everyone wins! Well, except the pocketbook…