One of those Nights…

It’s a cold, lonely night

And I’m stuck in the past again

Lost in memories

Of what I thought could have been

Can’t stop replaying

All the things I should have said to you

Everything I felt back then

You know it all still holds true

♫

It never was

I know it never will be

No matter what I say

No matter what I wanna see

But I still lose all my senses

Rehashing our brief passing

And all the times you smiled at me

Make my lonely heart

Still want to believe

♫

And I guess life goes on

Even when you can’t let the past go

No amount of pain

Can halt time’s unending flow

I cling to fading shadows

In the dying light

Of another sleepless night

♫

I know I never had a chance

But I’m sorry I never tried

And when I’m at my weakest

It kills me deep inside

I keep chasing something

I know was never there

But when I’m missing you

The signs are everywhere

♫

And I guess life goes on

Even when you can’t let the past go

No amount of pain

Can halt time’s unending flow

I cling to fading shadows

In the dying light

of another sleepless night

♫

And I guess life goes on

Even when you can’t let the past go

No amount of pain

Can halt time’s unending flow

I cling to fading shadows

In the dying light

of another sleepless night

♫

Just another damn sleepless night…

My only eBay Purchase of 2015 so Far

That’s right, most of my money has gone to COMC this year, with a little to loose retail packs of 2015 Topps and a couple repack boxes.  I’ve only bought one thing on eBay in 2015, and it wasn’t even a card.  It was this:

Raven comic book backing board sketch by Jose L. Rodrigues..

I picked up this great addition to my Raven art and sketch card collection for a whole $9.99 (shipping was free, but it was nicely protected) back in January.  As the caption states, this fantastic piece is drawn on the non-glossy side of a comic book backing board.  Looks good at the end of my sketch card binder with the rest of my larger Raven art. 🙂

Random aside: I’m considering drawing something on the other blank backing board that was in with this to protect it and sending it back to the seller, lol.  Maybe they can try to sell it too.

Haha, anyway, that’s it for this post.  Thanks for stopping by!

Take my hand, with all your might… ♫

30 Day Anime Challenge: Day Three

Day Three wants to know your favorite male character.

First up, some honorable mentions to, amongst others, Inuyasha‘s lecherous itinerant monk with a black hole in his hand, Miroku, the titular Kenshin, as well as Sanosuke, from Rurouni Kenshin, Kawabara and Kurama, Yusuke and Hiei’s far more interesting sidekicks from YuYu Hakusho, Cowboy Bebop‘s fantastic Jet Black, and crack shot Daisuke Jigen from Lupin III.  Now onto my actual choices.

More Patlabor love!

Captain Kiichi Goto of Patlabor franchise fame is my number one choice.  He heads up the ragtag band of delightful weirdos that make up Section 2, Unit 2 of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police department.  He’s chill to a fault, but also sneaky brilliant and playfully devious.  It’d probably suck to work for him, but he’s damn great to watch.

D’aww..

My second choice is Haku from Naruto, partially because I have a severe weakness for androgyness-ness, but mostly because he was just a damn good character that got killed off way too soon.  The are very, very few good characters in Naruto, and pretty much every single one of them get the shaft in one way or another.  Haku was nominally an antagonist and was subsequently killed off at the climax of the very first major story arc.  Freakin’ DAMMIT. 😡

Now I’m just upset.  But thanks for stopping by anyway.

See you Space Cowboy..

A Pretty Great Repack Box

After I returned my bike, I planned to just get something cheap to break the fiddy dollar bill I got in return so I could re-deposit half of it.  My first four packs of 2015 Topps weren’t very good though, and the dupes were already starting to pile up.  So I bit the bullet and grabbed pretty much the only other thing of interest to me that Target had: a $20, 20-pack (plus bonus) repack box that was almost completely devoid of junkwax.

Here’s the breakdown:

One 1991 Score

Three 2012 Panini Triple Play

One 2013 Bowman Platinum

Three 2014 Topps Series One 8-card blaster packs

Two 2014 Topps Series One 12-card retail packs

Four 2014 Topps Heritage

One 2014 Topps Heritage Jumbo rack pack (20 cards)

One 2014 Gypsy Queen

Three 2014 Topps Series Two 12-card retail packs

One 2014 Allen & Ginter

Bonus Item- Three loose 2014 Topps MLB Chipz

It sounds like a pretty lame bonus, but it turned out to be significantly better than expected.  Take a looksie, won’t you?

Poker chips are a somehow apt metaphor for pack-bustin’..

Turns out that gold-bordered glow-in-the-dark Tulo is actually pretty rare and reasonably valuable.  A run through the very few sold listings had them going for $5-20 a pop (with Jeters in $50 range), depending on the player.  The only two gold borders up for the bidding at the time were a Travis d’Arnaud Gold/Glow-in-the-Dark and Jose Reyes Gold/Blue, which sold for $13.01 and the opening bid of $9.99, respectively.  So this seemingly silly, innocuous bonus item was probably the hit of the box.  But this little repack had more going for it than just the bonus.  Much more, as you will see below.

Every once in a while, the gamble pays off..

Hit #1!  Yeah, there’s more on the way.

Flagship inserts..

Seein’ red..

Great name, one of only three Cubs, Bonifacio is #’ed 1282/2014, and Keppinger is 228/2014..

Topps Series One proved much more interesting than Series Two even without the sweet Zack Wheeler relic.  Better inserts, and the Target Red parallels aren’t something I see much of, even if there weren’t any huge stars.  Cosart, JD, and the series dos Hoz aren’t too bad though, and everyone is at least pictured (Cosart became a Marlin at the trade deadline) on teams that should trade easy enough.

Princert, Altuve base mini, Cuddyer SP, Choice RC..

GQ was meh, as it usually is.  But I never buy it anymore, so it was nice to find a pack in there.  It’s a meh that tastes a whole lot better when it costs $1 than when it costs $3.

Alen Hanson Top Prospects, Gary Brown base, Richie Shaffer chrome..

Bowman Platinum is the shiny version flipside to GQ’s old-timey style pointlessness, but it has been fairly forthcoming with the marginal prospect autographs & such for me, especially in 2012.  I don’t buy at full price anymore either, but it also makes for decent repack filler.

Mercifully, the only junkwax..

 

1991 Score wasn’t terrible, as junkwax goes.  A RC of a solid player who had nice, lengthy career that included a couple monster seasons and a stint with the Cubs & a couple late career Hall-of-Famers is the best you can really hope for in a pack like this.

Heritage base..

My resemblance to Holmberg is kinda uncanny..

The repack was heavily weighted towards Heritage, which is another product I’d never normally buy on its own, but am quite happy to get in numbers in a repack.  Despite my snarking to liven up the uneventful rack pack in my first post in ages over at APtbNL, that’s probably what ultimately made me decide to keep the repack while I was wandering around Target desperately trying to find something cheaper.  The McCutchen is fantastic.

Heritage inserts/SPs/parallels..

Outside of the red Yadi (my only complaint about this box is all the damn Cardinals inserts!), there wasn’t really anything all that special in there.  Just low level inserts & a trio of highly trade-able SPs.  I’d already pulled my hits before I got to them though, so it’s cool.

From the rack pack..

Quite possibly my only keeper from the entire box came out of the rack pack, so that helped too.

Captain Marvel Jr. insert and Giancarlo base mini..

Finally, main event time.  Allen & Ginter is consistently the best, most fun product Topps puts out every year (though 2014 had some legit competition for once, in the form of Finest and Stadium Club).  I’ve pulled a few hits & some rarer minis & other such nonsense (sea monkey card, flower card, World’s Biggest Mini SP) over the years, but the following, while not all that extraordinary, might still be my best pull to date.  Easily top-3.  Feast your eyes…

Kipnis Everdeen..

This Jason Kipnis is the first auto I’ve pulled out of retail in seven years of buying Allen & Ginter packs & blasters, and it is a beaut.  The funny thing about this outstanding repack box is that I had just started carrying that Prosperity Bean TJ sent in my Nerd Week prize pack that very morning.  Maybe it’s legit, maybe I’m just a superstitious and cowardly lot, I dunno.  I’m mostly just happy to have pulled some nice stuff out of a repack after the disaster that was January’s Greatest Chase repack/turd.

Anyway, that pretty much wraps up this post.  Let me know if anything strikes your fancy, and thanks for stopping by.

30 Day Anime Challenge: Day Two

Day Two wants to know the favorite anime you’ve watched so far.  This… this is a toughie.  There are two series that are basically 1a and 1b, and a two more that are very, very close.  So I’m just gonna cop-out and speak the praises of all of them (get used to that, btw), since I’m not sure that any of them are particularly popular stateside.  I watched them all in the mid-to-late aughts, back when I had digital cable.  All but the one I’ll discuss first were up in the high numbers, the International Channel/AZN, Encore (mainly Encore Action), G4, and the like.  Feels good, man.

Yeah!

Anyway, first up is Coyote Ragtime Show.  I saw this one on the Anime Network On Demand back in the day, and as far as anime series go, it watches like a damn good popcorn flick.  It’s a short, fast-paced joyride that gets from point A to point B quickly and never feels the need to stop and sniff its own farts along the way.  If it helps, think of it as Outlaw Star‘s uncomplicated, fun-loving country cousin (with higher production values).

Abenobashi’s merry band of weirdos..

Moving on from analogies that are bizarre even by my standards, we have Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi.  This is another shorter series.  If I recall correctly, it kinda blows its own premise at the end, but it’s still a whole lotta dimension-hopping fun, looks nice, and has tons of heart (arguably the reason for the screw the rules ending).  You’ll be seeing this one again on down the line.

Tokyo Metropolitan Police Section 2, Division 2..

Now we’re at the ones that are 1a or 1b, depending on the day.  We’ll start with the entirety of the Patlabor series.  Love both the serious, darker movies and the lighter, goofier series, and you’ll be seeing it pop up with a fair amount of regularity over the course of my challenge.  Basically, it is the most realistic, down-to-earth mecha anime ever made.  The movies exist in their own continuity, and the plots go progressively more grandiose, as movie versions of things are wont to do, but they’re still more-or-less grounded in their version of reality.  Err, maybe not Wasted XIII.

Your Vandread pilots..

Finally, we’ll close it out with mecha space opera-ish harem adventure series Vandread.  Some elements of the series may call to mind (mainly old school) Battlestar Galactica.  Like all of my choices, this series is arguably here more for its heart and sense of fun than its brains.  Not that any of them are dumb, it’s just the the fun and heart are more important than any pretensions they might have.

To me, it’s important that one not lose their sense of humor or wonder to the inevitable cynicism being of an above average intelligence causes.  I guess that’s pretty much the unifying theme of my life, and my choices in entertainment tend to reflect that.

Thanks for stopping by!

See you Space Cowboy…

What Turning 30 Means…

Warning, incoming rant..

In the wii hours of the morning on February 9th, 2015, I will officially turn 30 years old.  It’s a milestone year, and nice, round numbers are typically thought of as a good time for reflection.  The word reflect itself calls to mind something quiet, thoughtful, and personal.  It’s really hard though, to keep it calm and cool when reflecting on the first 30 years of my life.

Whaddya mean smile? This *is* my happy face..

The barely functional walking disaster you see before you has come a long way just to get to “barely functional walking disaster”, as a few of you who have traded with me over the years can probably attest.  There’s no sense of accomplishment that comes with the knowledge that you’ve done as much as you have to get to where you are when you still feel this wrecked.  I might be in a nominally better place than I was in some ways, but ultimately, all I see is what hasn’t changed, what hasn’t been accomplished.

I’m still in the exact same circumstances I started in, and I still don’t know how to get out of them.  I still live in the same godforsaken place.  I’m still basically unemployable.  I still can’t hold up my end of a conversation in real life.  I’m still a fat, lazy slob.  I’ve still never been in a relationship.  The stability of my mental health and well-being that makes up the sum of all of the above is still a very clearly dubious thing.  It’s horrible and it sucks.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up.  It’s just frustrating to look back and ruminate on how sideways a person’s life can go without even having a bad upbringing or the discovery of a predilection for illicit substances along the way (besides shiny cardboard, of course).  Just being some combination of bipolar/borderline/aspergery can screw a person up just as bad as trauma and drug abuse.  I feel a million times more guilty about it too, because it’s hard to explain when you have no specific trauma or addiction you can point out to people to explain why you are the way you are.

I’m just a fucked up weirdo who happens to be self-aware enough to realize it, but not smart, or maybe schooled is more accurate, enough to explain it or make sense of it.

It just doesn’t feel good to feel like you’ve let down every single person that’s ever cared about you and/or saw potential in you.  Isn’t that a fun thing to feel whenever you can’t distract yourself hard enough?  I don’t know if, if somehow I managed to accomplish all the dreams I’ve ever had, that I could ever make it up to everybody I’ve let down in my first 30 years.

The truth is, I’m just scared.  Afraid to fail, afraid to succeed.  I don’t trust myself.  I don’t believe in myself.  I feel like a giant fraud, and I’m afraid I’ll never stop seeing/feeling/living life this way.

Griffey commission..

Here’s a handy case-in-point.  This is the sketch card commission I did for The Junior Junkie.  He said he loved it and plans to give it a place of honor in his collection, but all I can see is how much unexpected difficulty I had with it, and the resulting mistakes I made in trying to get it looking right.

When I look back, the failure is all I see.  Failed potential, wasted talent, all the dreams I’ve let fall by the wayside because I’m too scared and lazy and damaged and stupid and hopeless to even take the first step.  There’s nothing about me I see that anybody could ever find worthwhile in me…

I think what might scare most in this very moment though, is that while I’m writing this at 30 years old, and I fear that I might not having anything positive to change about it, or add to it, by the time I revisit it on the morning of my 40th birthday.

#DirtyThirty

30 Day Anime Challenge: Day One

 

Day One wants to know what is the very first anime you watched.  To the best of my knowledge, that would be none other than the ultra-cheeseball classic, Speed Racer!

Here he comes..

It was so great and terrible and wonderful and parody-able and had one of the greatest theme songs ever made… Buuuut, I also didn’t know that was anime at the time.  The first anime I really recall knowing was anime would be G-Force.  Apparently it was pretty terrible, and not so much in the good Speed Racer way, but I was super into it when I was 9-10 years old.

These freakin’ guys..

Both have seen multiple revivals in various mediums over the years (G-Force was sort of one itself), some better than others, but for good or for ill, these incarnations of two venerable classics are where my anime roots lie.

Thanks for stopping by!

See you space cowboy…

 

30 Day Anime Challenge: Overview

Paul got me doing this fun thing on the twitters, even though I haven’t watched much anime in awhile.  So I thought I’d take it to the blog to elaborate on my choices, and just reminisce.  Here’s how it goes.

The Challenge is on..

I won’t do these posts every day, and I’ll try to sneak a few card, and art (if applicable), posts in there to mix things up a bit, but I’ll eventually cover the vast majority of the days here on the ol’ blog.  Look for Day One’s post over the weekend, and if you want sneak peaks, keep an eye on my twitter to see my choices in advance.

Thanks for stopping by, and feel free to leave your answers in the comments!  Maybe I’ll do a contest/giveaway at the end of this.

Oh oh, here we go! ♫