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Let’s Trade Cards (Part 5)!

Saturday, September 11th, 2021

I never imagined that box of random trading card packs I received for my birthday would last six months but here we are. Let’s open the final six packs…

Thunderbirds (2004) was a forgettable live-action remake of the classic 1960s marionette series (directed by Jonathan Frakes!) but the card set confusingly calls it Thunderbirds Are Go which was actually the name of the 1960s film, 1982 Japanese anime series and 2010 _and_ 2015 TV remakes. These cards are about as uninspired as you can imagine: just movie stills with no chase cards. I bet this set was in the budget bin upon release!

When you think of topics of interest to trading card collectors, does The Royal Family (1993) come to mind? This is a somewhat irreverent set showcasing pictures of everyone’s favourite monarchy, with a focus on Diana who was of course still alive when these came out. The cards are fairly well done, with lots of info on the back, and apparently the set features a ‘secret’ scratch off card with a ‘slightly risqué’ picture of Sarah Ferguson on it!

I wouldn’t call Generation Extreme (1994) cards non-sports, but whoever packed the box does so oh well. This is a terminally boring set with photos of ‘extreme sports dudes’ from the oh-so cool early 1990s. Remember when this stuff was all over MTV? I suppose these cards were of interest to the guys featured on them, but for everyone else this set is just recycling material.

Fun fact: I’ve always loved the song Iron Lion Zion posthumously released by Bob Marley but I’ve never known much about the guy himself. This set from 1996 attempts to remedy that, with an encyclopedic amount of info about the man and his life and beautifully produced cards. The set has loads of chase cards as well, including embossed cards and fantasy art versions of the singer painted by Ken Kelly! I was impressed with these cards and I imagine a Marley fan would have been over the moon.

Ah yes, the beloved film Bingo (1991)! I’ve never heard of it, and I doubt many have. Weirdly these are wax-packed (like early 1980s sets) despite being released in 1991, and most of the images on the cards I got are studio shots of the dog in weird outfits/poses. This is an awful set, that I doubt ever had an audience.

Back in the pre-copyright strike glory days of the internet I watched several entire series on YouTube. One of them was the 1970 British series UFO about a covert government agency tasked with stopping an alien invasion. This was – still is – ahead of it’s time and in my opinion remains one of the best sci-fi tv series ever made. This card set from 2004 includes beautifully produced cards on thick card stock and seems to be a precursor of the higher-end collectors series of today. Of all the packs I opened in this box, this is the one I wish I had more of!

And that’s it: every pack has now been opened and showcased here. And yet in the six months it has taken I have obtained a few more packs of cards from other series. Who knows, maybe I’ll continue this series at some point in the future?

Posted in Miscellaneous, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

Chitocerium

Monday, September 6th, 2021

It’s time for a new model kit. I don’t often do posts about kits these days, but this one is unusual:

It’s a tiny cat kit! This is one of several kits in a new line called Chitocerium, which apparently means ‘the protectors of the gates between worlds’. Yes it’s silly, but the kits are cool.

This kit is small and inexpensive (about $10) and all the pieces fit in the palm of your hand. It’s an easy one to build, but sandpapering down the flash was a little tricky due to the tiny scale. This segment for instance was made from 5 different pieces:

About a quarter of the total pieces in the kits are tails! There’s 8 to choose from; which one would you pick:

It took me only about ten minutes to assemble, and is very small but can be posed in many familiar cat poses. It’s an extraordinary kit for its size. Here it is next to a LEGO minifig;

As the box suggests this comes in two colours, and the line also includes some extraordinary figure kits of android girls (one of which I have). Given that this is a line from a company (Good Smile) not necessarily known for plastic model kits, I’m impressed.

Posted in Cats, Miscellaneous, Models, Otaku | Comments Closed

Ten Things We Saw At The Fair

Sunday, August 22nd, 2021

We went to Altamont fair the other day. It was fun, especially since things are getting like 2020 all over again and activities like this may be diminishing. Here’s a selection of what we saw:

There are some cages scattered around the fairgrounds that usually hold small animals or birds. This year they were empty, except for this one that had a velociraptor reminding us to wear a mask. We did. Most didn’t (which was ok, since the fair is almost entirely outdoors).

I saw this fellow taking a ride in an old truck in the automotive museum. A timely inclusion, given the situation? It’s not easy to see in the photo but someone had cleverly added red lights to his eyes, making him look ever-so-slightly sinister.

I always like the art contests, and this year there were many weird and wonderful entries worthy of this blog. But this saucy one caught our eye the most, both because it was life-sized and because I myself had recently created Marilyn art. The glass door was a few inches away from her, and I peeked behind. What did I see? I’ll never say 🙂

Speaking of art, this embroidery was an entry in the ‘craft’ section. What did you see when you first looked at it? Look again…

While there weren’t as many animals as previous years, there was still a lot of the usual farmland assortment to visit. This guy is a ‘Beatrix Potter’ sheep, so named because the author kept a flock of over 1000 that she bequeathed to England upon her death. I learned they’re a very handsome breed, and their hardy nature makes them well suited to the Scottish highlands.

The army was recruiting as always, and this year they brought some of their bigger guns to show off. This was one of three tanks, and there were several cannons and vehicles as well. This is of course an old and obsolete model, and I was surprised by how small and ramshackle it looked close up.

We had eaten before we went, but it was fiendishly hot and we had to get a drink. Needless to say I couldn’t resist a cinnamon donut from the same seller, and I’m glad I tried them since they were fantastic! We went back and bought a half dozen more 🙂

The police were recruiting as well, and they had this 9 meter wall to climb. I surprised myself by deciding to do it. They put me in a harness and up I scampered. The only real difficulty was the arthritis in my right hand which made holding the grips a little difficult, but overall it was easier than I expected. Pushing off and falling down on the auto-rappelling rope at the end was scarier than actually climbing.

Speaking of heat, here’s a couple of lemurs in the little zoo for kids. As you can see they’re both in a near-comatose state of heat exhaustion. Take a good look at the face of the guy on the right:

I should have tossed him a frosty beverage!

And lastly – as ever – the rides! I could watch them all day. I’m too prone to dizziness to ride most of them these days, but we went on the rollercoaster and I would have done the Ferris wheel if KLS wouldn’t have had to wait in the heat. The fair was very busy when we were there and the midway was full of people. It was a nice sight after this last one-and-a-half years.

Let’s hope next time the fair is in town, we may be able to leave our masks at home.

Posted in Blog, Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »

Rain Of Frogs

Monday, August 16th, 2021

I sent Bernard fifty frog postcards at the same time!

I started by numbering them all. The cards were, of course, unique:

I then hand-addressed and stamped all fifty:

At first I was unsure what to write on each of them, but a quick amazon search gave a handy alternate solution:

The (exactly fifty!) frog stickers were then applied, and I wrote the lyrics to Rainbow Connection across all fifty cards:

This took some time as you may imagine, and the cost was about $40 for the cards, stamps and stickers. Given Bernard only paid $20, he got quite a deal.

“Paid?”, you ask? This was part of a deal i offered him: 50 frogs for $20. I never mentioned it was postcards (or indeed any details at all), but he gladly accepted regardless 🙂

I sent them all on the same day from a variety of post offices and mailboxes. Four days later he received 43 in the mail, and I expect the remaining 7 will arrive today. I hear they were a hit with him and Lakshmi. Overall I deem Operation Rain of Frogs to be a grand success!

I’ve still got a few frogs – and many toads – left. If you want one, indicate as much in the comments!

Posted in Animals, Art, Blog, Family, Miscellaneous, Postcards, Stamps | 2 Comments »

Portrait Contest: Results!

Sunday, August 8th, 2021

It’s time for the portrait contest results. If you’ve forgotten, the first half can be seen here. After the first five topics, Bernard was ahead 3-2!

The contest has now concluded. Let’s see how the judges voted on the remaining five…

Queen Elizabeth II

This was Lakshmi’s choice, and it was a subject I had considered selecting myself. Bernard’s is to the left, mine on the right. I went with a young Queen from 1952 and was quite proud of the texturing I got on her hair and the metallic look of the crown achieved only using a grey marker.

But… the judges apparently forgot the young Queen, and Bernard’s win of 3.5 to 1.5 (one judge gave a tie) was accompanied with some comments that only his pic looked like the Queen! Did these people forget the Queen’s coronation was almost 70 years ago?!? Lesson learned: create contemporary portraits only 🙂

Ronald McDonald

The famous clown (he is a real person isn’t he?) was my next pic. This was a risky one since there’s not many variations of his look but… Bernard’s pic (on the right)… well I’ll quote a judge here: “Do I really have to say which one is best?”

I won this one 5-0, which was timely since Bernard’s lead had become significant. After 7 subjects, the score was Bernard 4, me 3.

Barrack Obama

This was Bernard’s choice, and it was an obvious one I had been avoiding since I knew I didn’t have the right markers for his skin tone! He’s also a very handsome man with a strongly symmetric face, which means it would be very easy to create a portrait that didn’t look like him. But Obama it was, and I did my best!

Bernard’s is on the left, and mine on the right. The judges commented on the difficulty of judging this one, and ultimately gave me the win (3.5 to 1.5, with another tied judge) because Bernard’s “looks too old” or “has a weird chin“! One judge commented that neither looked like Obama. Regardless, the contest was now tied!

At this point I was making the observation that Bernard, on average, was strong with faces but weak with heads and hair, whereas I was the latter. Look at all the entries and see if you agree! One judge who is an artistic prodigy herself (JK) created this composite Obama from both our portraits to illustrate our respected strengths:

It looks more like him than either of ours doesn’t it?!?

Albert Einstein

My final choice was a bad one. I should have chosen Gene Simmons, or David Bowie (which I deferred since I assumed he would be Bernard’s last). But for some weird reason I went with Einstein, and he was a real challenge to draw.

Mine is on the left, Bernard’s on the right. The judges gave Bernard the win in another 3.5 to 1.5 split, although the comments weirdly praised mine more (one said “Your hair and shading is better but I choose right“)! By now I had gotten used to the arbitrary decisions of the judges, and even though I question whether Bernard’s actually looks like Einstein I concede mine was weaker and expected a greater blowout in the scores.

Nine subjects completed and the score is Bernard has 5 wins over my 4. I had to win the last one to tie!

Marilyn Monroe

Bernard’s final choice was not Bowie. Instead, surprisingly, he chose Marilyn! And she was easily the hardest of the entire contest. This was magnified by the pressure on me to win.

My entry was the right, Bernard’s the left. He went with realism, me with a stylistic approach. The only problem: neither of them look like Marilyn Monroe! Four of the five judges said this, and commented how their decision was therefore based on artistic style. Two judges (and myself) commented how Bernard’s strongly resembled someone other than Marilyn (although we can’t quite place who), and two admired the bold colours of my piece.

Perhaps unsurprisingly considering these responses, the vote was a complete tie: 2.5 points each! The first tie in the contest was the last entry, and both our non-Marilyns were deemed equal 🙂

Incidentally I can now reveal that I actually made four Marilyn’s, rejecting each of them until I found one I liked. I knew my stylistic choice would work against the judges, but I greatly preferred it to the previous three, which were these:

I wonder how the judges would have liked the above?

Final Results!

Ten portraits done and judged. Fifty individual votes! It’s time for the results. And they are…

Bernard won, with 5.5 wins to my 4.5!

Looking at total points, of the 50 available, the final tally was Bernard 26.5 to my 23.5. That means that ultimately the final decision came down to only 1.5 votes out of 50! That’s extremely close 🙂

Looking back at all the portraits now, it’s obvious that our skills increased as the contest went on, and many times I felt I was presenting the judges with a difficult choice! Alas they were only human; it’s obvious Bernard’s Elvis win was a flagrant mockery of the (then) rules and my Queen was much better than his. But at the same time he claims his Obama was the better and (I suspect) will say the same about his ~~Margot Robbie~~ Marilyn.

I’m packing up Bernard’s prize right now – which is a quality item indeed – and wondering if we’ll ever do this again. And if we do, what we should draw. Any ideas?

Posted in Art, Blog, Celebrity, Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »

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