STARTING OUT THE NEW YEAR 2011

It has been a while since my last post when I got addicted to my Donkey Kong game and got distracted from my blog.
This time my absence was based on a few reasons.
1.) I got a new computer and had to transfer all of my files to the new one (this took a lot more time than I'd expected).
2.) I got a case of the winter "blahs" which took away a lot of my motivation.
3.) I got addicted to yet another damn video game.

I bought a Playstation at a garage sale last summer for a dollar and had it sitting around until early December I decided to order one of my favorite old games Spyro the Dragon. I had a lot of fun replaying it again.



I had a really great holiday season and not only bought my family some great stuff, but got a few neat things for myself.

My dad gave me a $25 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble which was nice because I can always find so many cool books there that I wish I had.

I was scouring the discount and sale books when I came across "The Completely Mad Don Martin" which is Mad artist Don Martin's complete work in two large hardbound books. I saw this years ago for $150 but of course could not afford it at the time. It was marked 50% the discounted price of $25 which came out to $13. I couldn't believe I got such an excellent deal ($13 for a $150 book set). It's a large and entertaining read, I'm only 1/4 of the way through it.



I was lucky during the holidays to win a Ebay auction for a full box of Gross Bears pins which were illustrated by my favorite artist Tom Bunk in 1985. They are tough to find in general but even harder to find an original box full.

I stuck the box up on a shelf in my studio along with a new Donkey Kong figure to remind me how much enjoyment I got playing that damn game.



As far as the pins themselves, I mounted them on a board for display by my computer.





I also got myself a few Garbage Pail Kids items from my favorite card dealer Marchant Cards. They are the company I buy most of my old trading cards from. They had some excellent holiday sales and I got 3 GPK 3-d wall plaks for $4 a piece (cheap). They are 3-dimensional and have fake wooden frames.



I also ordered some other trading card crap from Marchant Cards including a full box of Trash Can Trolls from 1992. I actually remember buying these from the store when they first came out and how much they reminded me of the old GPKs. I had a full set but it was real nice to finally get a hold of the box which has fluffy troll hair on it and came in four colors.



I put it up on a shelf with my two-headed Norfin troll.



I also lucked out recently when I came across a nice bookshelf that someone had chucked to the curb. I needed one real bad for my Mad collection which had grown and threatened to collapse my old bookshelf which had began to buckle under the weight. I drug it home and it is just the size I needed.



Last of all, I finally completed my Diener space aliens/monster eraser collection. I've been trying to find them all for a while and acquired a whole bunch of other Diener erasers in the process. I've done a couple previous posts on these before but the monsters/aliens were always the ones I hoped to find the most. I filled my whole display.



One of my New Years resolutions is to blog frequently and now my only problem is what to post first. I've got a whole bunch of stuff to share, it's just a matter of where to start first.

A FEW GARAGE SALE FINDS

A few garage sale finds I forgot to post.



This is a Fisher Price movie viewer from 1985. You put these long yellow cartridges into it and crank the lever to watch a short cartoon. It's kind of fun because the speed of the animation frames is determined by how fast you turn the lever. Also if you turn it backwards you can watch it in reverse. I had one of these a few years ago with a bunch of cartridges but I gave it to my little brother as a gift so it was nice to run across another one. (The cartridge in it is Gummi Bears).



A bunch of Diener erasers. Grapes, strawberry, blue heart, apple, fireman, rat, and three yellow milk bottles.



A Frosted Flakes Tony the Tiger bank. No date on it, might be worth a little bit?

COOL BEANS 10-10

Just a few recent things I've been meaning to blog about.

This last weekend I went to "The Worlds Biggest Garage Sale" which probably isn't really the worlds BIGGEST garage sale because that would be ridiculous, but I like it and I go to it every year anyway.

This year they held it at the local cattle congress fairgrounds (yeah, I'm from Iowa) and my sister was one of the people who helped organize and run the event. She said they opened the doors at 7:30 am and there would be a long line of people waiting to get in so I should try and get there early.
I woke up at about 6:00 am so I could be good and ready. Sure enough by the time I got there a large hoard of people had already formed a line. I could see my sister in the doorway of the east entrance where she said she would be stamping peoples hands. It costs a buck to get in.
There was about 300 people waiting to go in the door. I overheard a couple people mention that there was another entrance around back so I followed them around the building and got right in.
I've got an exceptional ability to scour a large flea market quickly for stuff I like so it only took me about twenty minutes to make my rounds through the different vendors. The local comic shop had a large booth and since they recognized me I had to stop and chit-chat with them for a few minutes.
There wasn't a whole lot of antiques and old collectibles this year, it seemed to be a lot of stuff that was from the last 20 years and kind of disappointing. I guess they try and cater to what they feel Iowans would dig so the vendors bring out all their Nascar, wrestling figures and collectables, baseball cards, country records, and crafty stuff.
I always scan the whole place before I buy anything. By the time I was finished I had found very little I was interested in.
I ended up paying a quarter for a blue dinosaur Diener eraser that I dug out of a bag of rubber dinosaurs and five Mad magazines I talked the vendor down to $1.00 each. I already had two of them in my collection but they were in good condition so I just got them all.

Here's my loot:




Mad Super Special #8 1972


Mad Super Special March 1994


Mad Sex and Dating November 1993

This one has one of my favorite Spy Vs Spy Vs Spy cartoons where the third female spy outsmarts the other two.




Mad Collectors Series January 1993

I remember my mom bought me this issue when I was a kid and home sick with the flu. I must have read it cover-cover a dozen times that day.


Mad Collectors Series 11 August 1995

This one was a good find too because it still had the poster in it illustrated by John Pound. He's they guy that painted all the early Garbage Pail Kids.



Overall it was worth the dollar to get in and I got to see my sister.

I've also been meaning to post these awesome sketch cards that G.P.K. artist and pal Brent Engstrom mailed to me and my kids. He started doing these really cool sketches on the peeled off backs from old GPK cards. He did two of those for each of us and also a colored sketch of us as Garbage Pail Kids. Freaking awesome!!



He drew me up as "Cleaved Steve". I commented, "That's all I need is another scar on my head."

He also drew me up "Sewer Sue" and "Nasty Nick"





He sketched my son Jack as "Jack Frost"



He also did the GPK "Jack Frost" and "Jack-O-Lantern" for him.





For my daughter Sam he drew her as "Snooty Samantha"



Brent also sketched her "Snooty Sam" and "Soft-Boiled Sam".





Once again, these are freaking amazing. Thanks a bunch Brent.



Another thing I wanted to post is that I finally got around to stopping by my local Target to see what they had for the new Wacky Packages series 7 stuff. I was hoping to find the blister packs so I could get the bonus cards but didn't find any. I was surprised to see that they had the mini cereal box sets which I ordered off the Topps website because I didn't think they were released in stores? (see previous WP series 7 post). I did find the Garbage Pail Kids silly bands though. For some reason they saw Garbage Pail Gang which is weird ( In Australia the cards are called "The Garbage Gang"). The bands which are rubber bands that kids wear on their wrists and when removed retain some specific shape (ex: dog, flower, car...) they are currently a big fad for kids and come in all different styles and colors. They even have scented and glow-in-the-dark bands. The Garbage Pail Gang ones are shaped like poop, fart blast, garbage cans, etc... too bad they didn't make them smell. I've been wearing the poop one for the last couple days. I'm just a big kid. Samantha said her school banned silly bands because they were a distraction and some kids were putting them around their necks.





That reminds me, there is a funny spoof of silly bandz in the latest issue of Mad:


Mad #506 December 2010



Made me laugh.

Last of all, before I hit the hay I wanted to share something neat. The great Wacky Package/Garbage Pail Kid artist Jay Lynch had mentioned on Facebook that he ran across a box of old personalized pens he had left over and he said if anyone wanted to mail him a self-addressed stamped envelope he would send you one. I guess he has about 500? So of course I mailed him a letter and I'll post something when it comes. I drew him up an envelope based on an old Wacky Packages card. Here's the pics:






Done nerding out, time for bed.

GARAGE SALE FINDS AND MESSIN' WITH YOUR MINDS

How can I be so busy doing practically nothing? The world will never know...

I finally finished up my "Paper Mario" project and I thought I'd share the finished figures. They must have taken me about 9-10 hours altogether to complete.



I decided to go overboard and do four of them at once. It took a lot more work than it looks.

I thought about making them stomping on a koopa but ended up making mushrooms for them to hold. the mushrooms are separate pieces and can be removed or switched around.



I'll probably sell these ones if anyone is interested. They look a lot cooler up close.



Working on those distracted me from my non-3D artwork for a bit. I still plan on posting scans of my college artwork for part 3 of my "art share" but I ended up writing a relatively long short story about my favorite summer art courses and it got a little out of control.

I've been picking through the local garage sales on the weekends and found some neat stuff. Here are some of the more notable finds:



I found an original Rubik's cube still in the container with instructions included (25 cents).



One of my favorite finds, a mechanical monkey with cymbals that works great. It squeaks, bobs back and forth, and clangs the cymbals. ($1.00)



As you may have seen in previous posts I collect Diener erasers so I was happier than a pig in shit when I ran across these two McDonalds premiums. ($2.00)



I also spent about an hour at one particular sale digging through boxes of old matchbooks picking out my favorite ones to use in future matchbook art.

($1.00)

I spent a blistering afternoon with my son Jack at a truck show/flea market digging through people's antiques and collectibles only to find one small figure I wanted. We paid $6.00 to get in and left drenched from head to toe in sweat. We had some good father/son time though.

I was hoping we could play together with my last garage sale find. I'm kind of curious about it and I want YOU my blog reader to help me out a bit.

This is the Amazing Kreskin's ESP game made in 1967 by Milton Bradley. I got this in great condition for $1.00.



This game includes lots of fun tests to see if you have extra-sensory perception (ESP). There are score cards where you can rate yourself and friends to see if you can pick up mental messages from others by using randomly picked cards with colors/symbols. There is also a pendulum that you dangle over a board to ask questions. The pendulum mysteriously sways and rotates to point out the answers (kind of like my Milton Bradley Ouija board except you don't get possessed by demons).



I'm pretty familiar with the Amazing Kreskin in fact in one of my previous blog posts I shared an autographed photo he mailed me.



He signed it "To Steve, ESPecially yours" Kreskin.
I'm not going to go into detail about his fame or abilities so if you want to know who he is, let's just say he was the David Blaine or John Edwards of the sixties. If you don't know who they are visit the Wikipedia.

I played around with the tests quite a bit...



I read my copy of Kreskin's book...



and now I think I'm ready to send you a message with ESP!! I'm pretty sure I can send you a message through the computer screen if you just look deep into my eyes. Below is the photo, you will see that in front of me is a large cardboard screen from the game. There is a row of symbols and a row of colored dots. I want you to pick one of the colored dots from the card after looking into my eyes for ten seconds. Pick whichever one you are drawn to the most. After you pick your color you can scroll down further and see the one I was thinking of.

Allright... ready... let's give this a shot...



Now scroll down through the headache inducing illusions to see if it worked...








If this worked make sure you post a comment here or on Facebook to let me know. If not, you are weak minded and an imbecile and it's all your fault.

I actually cheated a little, see if you can figure out my trick.