Author: Scott

A Thing About Image Captions

In the process of frantically wrapping up the year in review/hobby goals stuff overnight, I forgot to talk about a thing I’ve started working on.

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve added more thorough image captions to newer posts on this site (and while I honestly may not get to it all, I have intentions of doing this with my older posts over time, as well). If you haven’t noticed it yet, yes, it’s a thing I’m doing intentionally. This is a work in progress, and one I’m honestly finding to be pretty challenging, but I think it’s worthwhile work, not just for me and my site, but for all of us.

Somehow, I made it decades into my time on the Internet without thinking enough about how my posts, which are occasionally very visual in nature, were severely under-serving visually impaired people. This was a mistake, and I’m sorry that I made it. I’m far from alone in making this mistake, but that doesn’t mean I, or any of us, should just keep making it.

So, recently, I’ve started looking into best practices for captioning images for the visually impaired. This is still a work in progress, without a ton of agreement on a style guide that I’ve been able to find. (If you know of one that’s largely agreed upon, please let me know.)

With that in mind, I’m reading the things I can find on the subject, and am doing my best. On my best days, I’m not great at brevity, so I’m still working on being both concise and descriptive. If you do a lot of this work and have suggestions, please let me know.

If there’s anyone wondering how something like this applies to baseball cards, for instance: I grew up hearing stories about my great-grandfather (my mom’s grandfather), who lived with my mom’s family, and had lost his sight somewhere along the way. He was a big Brooklyn Dodgers fan, but he’d listen to any game on the radio or TV. I don’t know whether he had much exposure to baseball cards, even with younger grand-kids in the house, but given that he was a fan, the information on those cards was just as relevant to him as it is to anyone sighted. If Red Barber and Vin Scully could describe things about the game to him, then I can certainly try my best to do the same for everyone else.

More recently and personally, my eyesight has been deteriorating, most likely as a result of the head injuries I’ve sustained. My last concussion changed my prescription significantly. I can’t read most ingredient lists on food packages, or most card backs, without eyeglasses at this point. (Topps needs to start thinking about big, legible numbers on their cards soon, because their customer base is aging rapidly.) I’ve been pretty fortunate, in that I made it to my 40s without these issues, but it’s still frustrating to lose the ability to do things.

I try not to be a person who only cares about a thing if it’s happening to me, or to someone I know. Above, I noted that I should’ve been doing this work all along, regardless of how well I or anyone else I know can see. Sometimes, these anecdotes help other people understand experiences they may not have had, though, so I’m sharing. In a perfect world, people would do things to help people who need assistance because it’s part of being a decent person and a member of a functioning society. Alas, the world isn’t perfect, and plenty of us aren’t taught to do the right thing on stuff like this (absolutely my experience). So, if me talking about my great-grandfather listening to Dodger games or my not being able to read card backs leads to us making the Internet a better place in some small way, awesome.

This news about captioning also means that this site will transform in some other ways. I’m probably going to opt for shorter posts moving forward, with fewer images. In fairness, the amount of information, especially visual information I’ve included in some of my posts has been excessive at times. (No one *really* needed to see my entire 1971 Topps set, fronts and backs, in a single post.) This may also mean more posts from me, as I’ll be compartmentalizing information a bit more. We’ll see how all of that goes.

In the meantime, if you have thoughts about this subject (and please, be kind, not just to me, but in general), please let me know in the comments, or email me.

My Year in Hobbies 2019: The Wrap-Up, and 2020 Hobby Goals

OK, we’re here!

First, some stats without much context:

Comic Book Series Cancelled On Me: 9 (at least)

First-Run Movies Watched: 8

Series of Television Shows Binge-Watched: 12

Games of MobilityWare Multiplayer Solitaire played: roughly 4000

Mego-scale action figures acquired: 11

Trading Card Sets Completed or Acquired Complete: at least 4 (1951 Topps Ringside, 1989 Topps Senior League Baseball, 1992 Topps Stadium Club Baseball, 2008 Topps Football)

Video Games 100% Completed: 1 (No Man’s Sky, at least before the Beyond expansion. I’m way behind now, but hopefully will get back to it soon)

States Traveled To/Through: 7

Other Countries Traveled To/Through: 0 (first time since 2016, though my next foreign country could be a while, given what’s going on…)

Live Pro Wrestling Events Attended: 3

Live Pro Wrestling Events I Saw Lance Archer Wrestle At: 2

Live Pro Wrestling Events I Saw Orange Cassidy Wrestle At: 2

Live Pro Wrestling Events I Saw Kris Statlander Wrestle At: 2

So, how’d I do in 2019? I’m still here in 2020, at least for the moment, and you’re presumably still here, too, if you can read this, so let’s start right there. If I’m writing this, and you’re reading it, perhaps we don’t know what the future holds for us, but we’re here, now, and hopefully that doesn’t suck for you. I’m OK with it.

I was in bad, bad shape at the beginning of the year, because I somehow managed to give myself a severe concussion and a small skull fracture on my wedding day, as some of you may know. I’m furious at how on-brand that is (I have unfortunately had a ton of head injuries, especially for a non-athlete). I saw a lot of doctors last year, including three different neurologists and a vestibular therapist, who mostly had me play Wii Fit for the balance exercises (but it did help).

As I write this in April of 2020, just under 18 months from my wedding day, I’m feeling better than I did for most of 2019, though I didn’t really start to until December. I’m hoping that I continue to improve, I’m hoping that I don’t hit my head in any serious way ever again (it’d be a really bad thing at this point), and I’m of course hoping that none of the other things that are going on here in 2020 end up messing me up.

That probably looks more like general information than hobby-centric information, but it does help to be coherent, remember things, not have the room spinning and so forth if you’re pursuing a hobby, just as it helps to be able to spend time around other human beings and touch things that they’ve touched to do so. (This is going to color a LOT of 2020 in hobbies, but we’ll get back to that.) I just wanted to update my status, and talk a bit about the process.

I’ve actually had 2 years in a row where I’ve had serious health problems (2018 started with a serious flu and then a bunch of respiratory stuff which I’m coming to the conclusion was at least aggravated by allergies, if not caused by them entirely), and that can slow a person down a LOT. It has, too.

It’s also made me think a bunch about What Will Happen To My Stuff Once I’m Gone. Some of it, my spouse will want, and some of it, I’ve willed to people, but a lot of it is “just stuff”, no matter how cool I may think it is, and without me to love it and share it with people who happen to get to see it, it’s a burden on my loved ones. Unfortunately, right now, I think it’s a pretty bad time to be a seller of physical goods (there we go with 2020 intruding on the 2019 talk), so until I hear otherwise, any attempts to downsize are probably on the shelf.

I can say that, at least for the moment, I am feeling better and making better health choices than I have in quite a while (or am at least starting to), and hopefully that leads to me sticking around for a long time in relatively good health, but these are really uncertain times.

Onto some actual hobby talk!

Just As A Reminder: I started writing about my 2020 hobby goals by clarifying what goes where. That’s still current, I think.

Trading Cards: I decided (and this has been building for years) that I’m really not that excited about new and recent physical trading cards (baseball, in particular) anymore in 2019, so it’s looking like 2020 may be my last year of trying to collect new baseball sets (which are the only new sets I’m still building). It’s a nice, round number, 2020. It’s a year where we all may have a real hard time getting product anyway, because the world’s on fire. It seems like a million years ago now, but there’s also that small matter of issues with the integrity of the game of baseball that came up over this winter, issues that made me not so thrilled about two of my player collections (Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman; thankfully, I’ve not invested a lot of money in either, but I was enjoying watching them play before this all came to light, and I don’t know that I’ll be able to continue doing that whenever/if baseball resumes).

I just think it’ll be easier for me to have a cutoff point, for space reasons, for “not just trading away old cards for new ones” reasons (though I’ve been pretty successful at building Topps sets I couldn’t afford to keep up with over the past few years by doing this), and for “maybe I should focus on older cards” reasons. I started 2020, so I will work toward finishing the sets I’ve started or have an interest in (Topps, Heritage, Allen & Ginter, Stadium Club, and Donruss, if they’re all made available; physical comic books have been disrupted, so it stands to reason that baseball cards could be, too), but from there, I think I’m just going to collect players I collect, and work on finishing the older sets, once we’re able to shop and trade normally again, if we are. If physical cards are still a thing, I’ll probably buy a few packs here and there, just to do it, and trade off what I’m not excited about. I reserve the right to change my mind if there ends up being an amazing set of cards in the future, but I’ll be able to focus on that better than I would if I keep just putting in time on this stuff for completism’s sake, too.

With that said, I finished the biggest physical card set I’ve ever built in 2019 (1992 Stadium Club Baseball), and as I said above, I made some really nice strides on the past few years’ card sets in trades by shipping off some older bulk cards for the newer stuff . I didn’t get a ton of cards in 2019, but I got some really fun stuff, and I completed a card set from 1951, so I guess I did OK.

I should mention here that, since I am differentiating “physical” cards, 2020 Topps Bunt has been the most fun I’ve had in years with any of the Topps digital products, and also that I’ve been collecting New Japan Pro-Wrestling digital wrestling cards in their NJPW Collection app. Topps rolled out digital cards in a few other licenses since I was last paying attention, and when I catch my breath from whatever’s going on right now, I’ll be poking at those, too. Digital cards could end up being a way for me to feel like I’m in touch with the hobby during the downtime between now and when it’s safer to touch other human beings’ belongings again.

Comic Books: It’s a weird time to be a comic book collector. As I type this, there is no new physical comic book distribution happening in the United States for the first time in the history of the business, and it’s been hanging on by a thread for years now, because of mismanagement both by the comic companies and the distributor that has a near-monopoly on the comics market. Where back issues are concerned, the comic books I collect can be close to worthless forever, until someone licenses a property for a TV series, and then I can’t get my hands on them at all because of speculators. I love comics, but comics don’t always love me. With that said, I made solid strides toward finishing, yes, finishing the collection I started as a kid, and even if new physical comic book sales don’t happen all that often anymore moving forward, I will hopefully get to complete a library that 10 year old me would be proud of in the relatively near future.

Video Games: I got and played some video games that I absolutely love in 2019 (Stardew Valley comes to mind), and played deeper into No Man’s Sky, which is one of the best games of all time in my view. With that said, I’m playing video games less than I’d like to be, and I want to work on that in 2020. I have a few new ones to work on (Coffee Talk and Untitled Goose Game), a few other newer games I have my eyes on, and I pretty huge back catalog of games. I’ve been thinking of downsizing some here, too, and eventually I will, but again, not a great time to be trying to sell physical objects, so I’ll just try to play what I have more often, see what I enjoy playing, and eventually, put the games I don’t enjoy or haven’t been playing in the hands of people who’ll enjoy them more, ideally without some of the regret I have over selling things too soon or under duress (Panzer Dragoon Saga, anyone?). I’ll also continue seeing how high I can make my online Solitaire ranking, because that’s fun.

Tabletop and Other Games: Will there be a fantasy baseball (or real baseball) season this year? Will my D&D group be in the same room with one another any time soon? These are tough questions to answer. As for fantasy baseball, 2 out of 3 of my leagues drafted teams a week and a half ago, so we’re ready to go if MLB is. The other league will draft when an announcement of a start time is made. The DM of my D&D group and I have been talking a little about remote play, and hopefully once he finishes a project he’s working on at the moment, we can all give that a try (which would also widen the base of available players we may have to play with).

Internet: I expect that there’ll be a lot of this. The past few weeks have been kinda Wild West, with people embracing new platforms and then sharply turning on them in some cases (hi, Zoom). Where the one I talk about here the most (Second Life) is concerned, I’m still there, and Heck is, too, but it’s been pretty quiet since the fall. There’s been an uptick in activity since the quarantines started, unsurprisingly, but I’m not sure where my little club fits into all of that. It’s tough for me, because my sleep issues make it difficult for me to schedule events there. Right before the shit hit the fan, Vegetal Planet closed, as well, so there’s a vroum Short-sized hole in the grid that no one’s figured out how to fill yet. We’ll see what’s what. I did have a better than average year at Heck in 2019, with a few busy months, new DJs at the club and so forth, but it’s tough to maintain momentum on stuff like that, especially on a platform that people think died years ago, and one that Twitch banned from streaming years ago.

Live Events and Travel: At least I got some of this in during 2019, because it’s gonna be dire for a while. There are bigger priorities (really, bigger than any of what I’ve been talking about here), like simple survival, but I’m going to miss going out and doing stuff, even though I often struggle with not wanting to go out and do stuff. I hope we’re all back to it soon. I’ll think back on 2019 things like seeing a sunset at the Gulf of Mexico, standing in front of Salvador Dali paintings, meeting Tomohiro Ishii, getting to see Julia Michaels, Wand, Massive Attack, Choir Boy, P-Funk and Fishbone, and even just visiting new-to-me book shops or hitting the flea markets in the meantime.

Toys: Mego were firing on all cylinders as 2019 began, and then around mid-year, their distribution got weird, and I haven’t been able to get the figures I’ve wanted from them since. It’s been disappointing. I did get some other cool action figures during 2019 (lots of DC Directs), but I was in a holding pattern for a while before COVID-19 showed up, and I predict that I’ll remain that way for a while. Bigger fish to fry right now, of course, but it’s still sad when you can’t do fun stuff. Even if everything returned to “normal” tomorrow, I don’t know that I’d run into much in the way of toys I love that I can afford at the moment.

TV and Movies: I watched a bunch of fun stuff, and I’m continuing to do so. I’ll be talking about that over at my other website from here out. I covered a bunch during this Year in Review thing, but I decided midway through writing it that, unless I’m talking about physical artifacts (Blu-Rays, etc.), the place for that is over there.

Overall: While I complained about it a bunch as it was happening, and went through some hard times during the year, 2019 was a pretty good time, relative to this present moment. 2020 is a weird and scary time. I hope it becomes less of a weird and scary time soon. I hope you all stay healthy and safe, and I hope that we all stay in touch, find ways to stay connected to the hobbies we love during the downtime, and make our way back to something resembling normalcy as soon as we can. When the goal for the current year is just to physically survive and stay in good health, the other stuff becomes a really distant second, but that doesn’t make us love it any less, I don’t think. Be well, and like I said, please stay in touch. I wanna know that y’all are doin’ OK, or be able to offer whatever support I can if you’re not. Take care, until then!

My Year in Hobbies 2019: December!

December 2019:

I visited NJ during December, and while I was there, I stopped by Bell Works, the former Bell Labs Holmdel Complex, to see how things had progressed in the few years since I saw it in its very early stages back in 2015. It’s coming along well, as a few restaurants have opened, a number of businesses have moved in, the Holmdel Public Library has a branch, and a bunch of public sitting areas have been installed in the main corridors. I’m enjoying seeing this legendary, historic building be converted into something new that the general public has some access to, and I’m looking forward to seeing where things go from here.

People mill about the front lobby of Bell Works, the former Bell Labs Holmdel Complex in Holmdel, NJ.
People mill about the front lobby of Bell Works, the former Bell Labs Holmdel Complex in Holmdel, NJ. The lobby is beige and graphite, neo-futuristic space encased in glass, designed by Eero Saarinen in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Whether it’s for nostalgia’s sake or because they haven’t gotten around to replacing it yet, the original mustard yellow carpet is still installed in the center sitting area of the lobby.
One corridor of Bell Works in Holmdel, NJ. The ceiling is made of glass panels, allowing light into the space. Along the side of the corridor, offices line the space for 6 floors. Planters are visible in the distance on the ground floor, near sitting areas.
One corridor of Bell Works in Holmdel, NJ. The ceiling is made of glass panels, allowing light into the space. Along the side of the corridor, offices line the space for 6 floors. Planters are visible in the distance on the ground floor, near sitting areas.
Another corridor of Bell Works in Holmdel, NJ, which ends at an entrance with a 6 story glass wall and glass elevators. Artificial turf covers the ground on a sitting/walking area. Along the side of the corridor, offices go up to the 6th floor.
Another corridor of Bell Works in Holmdel, NJ, which ends at an entrance with a 6 story glass wall and glass elevators. Artificial turf covers the ground on a sitting/walking area. Along the side of the corridor, offices go up to the 6th floor.
A 1949 Bowman Carl Furillo baseball card. Carl Furillo, a man with white skin and dark hair, wears a white Brooklyn Dodgers uniform with blue trim and a blue baseball cap with the letter B on the front of it, as well as a dark-colored undershirt. Carl's swinging a baseball bat, though only the hilt of the bat is visible. The card is only in partial color, as it was printed in greyscale with the blue highlights on the uniform, against a red background with beige trim.
A 1949 Bowman Carl Furillo baseball card. Carl Furillo, a man with white skin and dark hair, wears a white Brooklyn Dodgers uniform with blue trim and a blue baseball cap with the letter B on the front of it, as well as a dark-colored undershirt. Carl’s swinging a baseball bat, though only the hilt of the bat is visible. The card is only in partial color, as it was printed in greyscale with the blue highlights on the uniform, against a red background with beige trim.

How’s it going, Carl?

Toward the very end of the year, I found a nice deal on a ’49 Bowman Carl Furillo rookie card. It presents pretty well, and I paid for it near-entirely with COMC sales. Definitely one of the highlights of my Brooklyn Dodgers collection now.

First-run movies watched in December 2019 (2): Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Parasite.

The Star Wars movie was a lot of fun as long as I didn’t think about it at all. I haven’t had a chance to watch it again since I saw it in the theater, but I’m curious as to how it’ll do with me now that I have thought about it, and now that I’ve heard from the maker of every hot take on Earth about what they liked and disliked about it.

Parasite, which was the annual “go to the movies on December 25th” movie for our household, and which we kinda chose on a whim because it was that or Cats (though we still need to see Cats), was stunning. Knocked the wind out of our theater, particularly because it seemed like the patrons were the type of people satirized and attacked in the film. Deserved the hell out of the Best Picture Oscar that it got. Not a perfect film (it’s ambitious, and it doesn’t hit all of its marks), but a great film nonetheless.

And that was 2019.

Back soon, hopefully, for the 2019 wrap-up and 2020 goals post (which will likely be a very different post than it was when I started this series). Thanks for your patience on this series, as it’s taken me forever to get this far.

My Year in Hobbies 2019: November!

I will get to the end of this goddamned year.

November 2019:

The Child from the television series The Mandalorian, a small green alien with long ears and wide black eyes, wearing a beige robe, sips a mug of soup.
The Child, from the television series The Mandalorian, a small green alien with long ears and wide black eyes, wearing a beige robe, sips a mug of soup.

I could really just sum up the rest of this year with this image. I’ll say more, though. While The Mandalorian was a lot of fun and one of the biggest water cooler TV shows of the past decade, one of my favorite things on Disney+ was The Imagineering Story, the multi-part documentary on the history of the Disney parks. Even as someone who’s never been to any of them, and never had a ton of interest, it made me want to spend tons of money and travel around the world to visit all of them. I don’t know how realistic that will be moving forward, because life’s gotten weird since November, but I really enjoyed the series, almost as much as I did The Mandalorian.

The Multiplayer Wins leaderboard for MobilityWare Solitaire for iOS, with me appearing in 400th place.
The Multiplayer Wins leaderboard for MobilityWare Solitaire for iOS, with me appearing in 400th place.

Yep, this took a lot of work, and it isn’t getting any easier. As of this writing, I’m in 369th place, after 962 more wins.

The Skullship Santa Muerte (blue and pink spaceship, shaped like a skull), from the comic book Space Riders, flies through a psychedelic space scene. Art by Alexis Ziritt.
The Skullship Santa Muerte (blue and pink spaceship, shaped like a skull), from the comic book Space Riders, flies through a psychedelic space scene. Art by Alexis Ziritt.

I discovered Space Riders way later than I should have, but I’m glad I did. It’s like Monster Magnet meets Superjail in space. There are 2 volumes of the story completed (trade paperbacks are available here), and a third volume of the story is in progress, but there’s that whole thing right now with Diamond Comics not distributing any physical comics, so it could be a while before it wraps up. I’m pretty sure it’ll be worth the wait.

First-run movies watched in November 2019 (1): The Irishman. Once I got past Robert DeNiro with blue eyes (OK, I never really got past that…it was more unnerving than the rest of the de-aging stuff), I found it to be an enjoyable couple of hours. It’s not Scorsese’s, or DeNiro’s or Pacino’s best work (though it may be Joe Pesci’s, and he was robbed of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar here), but it kept me in it, and it’s a mob movie with these guys involved, so, as a longtime resident of New Jersey, I was obligated to watch it. I will say that, having watched some old news footage of Jimmy Hoffa after I watched the film, I figured out that Pacino wasn’t playing Pacino in this, as he often does, nor was he playing Jimmy Hoffa. Pacino was playing Pacino playing Jimmy Hoffa. It was like he went Method on how he thinks he, himself, would’ve played Jimmy Hoffa, and did that.

Comic books cancelled or ending in November 2019 (2): The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (Marvel Comics) and Ironheart (Marvel Comics). I’m still not over Squirrel Girl ending, and I probably never will be, but I’m glad I got to live in a time when it was being made. It’s that good. There was no possible satisfying ending to a book I didn’t want to see an ending for, but Ryan North did the best he could. Ironheart was a solid book for its year run, but lost me a little bit in the last arc, as it veered in a direction I didn’t expect it to, and didn’t love. (It was still in “solid like” territory, but wasn’t quite as good as it’d started off being.)

One more month, then a wrap-up, then we deal with whatever 2020 is throwing at us (and if you’re just joining us, that’s kind of a lot).

My Year in Hobbies 2019: October!

October 2019:

Professional wrestler Kris Statlander, a woman with white skin and brown hair, wearing powder blue wrestling gear with purple trim and "KS" written on her tank top, yells for the crowd at a Beyond Wrestling show in Worcester, MA.
Professional wrestler Kris Statlander, a woman with white skin and brown hair, wearing powder blue wrestling gear with purple trim and “KS” written on her tank top, yells for the crowd at a Beyond Wrestling show in Worcester, MA.

What’s up, Kris Statlander?

I started out the month at the Season 2 premiere of Beyond Wrestling‘s “Uncharted Territory” TV series, which airs on Internet Wrestling Television. Yes, I really was this close to the action, as everyone who wants to be is at Beyond events. (I could’ve actually been even closer, but I grabbed a second row seat instead of a first row seat so I didn’t end up with any flying human beings in my lap.)

Beyond is one of the best independent professional wrestling promotions in the world, and chances are, if you’ve watched WWE, AEW, New Japan Pro-Wrestling, Ring of Honor, Impact, MLW or any of the other somewhat major wrestling promotions over the past decade, you’ve seen a whole bunch of Beyond alumni. Their shows are available on the aforementioned IWTV streaming service, which is some of the most fun you can have watching television and only $10 a month. I don’t work for Beyond or IWTV, but with the future of every small business in jeopardy right now (along with, well, everything and everyone else), I have to represent for them, because a great chunk of my last year has been spent enjoying their offerings. Please consider signing up for IWTV, buying some merch from Beyond on their site, or hitting an event (if and when events happen again) if you’ve ever got the means.

Here are a few more pictures from the Beyond show I went to…

Professional wrestler Lance Archer, a shirtless man with white skin and a red "murderhawk" hairstyle, stands at the back end of a wrestling ring and prepares to attack fellow pro wrestler Josh Briggs, a man with white skin and brown hair in black wrestling trunks and various knee and shoulder braces, laying prone at the front of the wrestling ring, at a Beyond Wrestling show in Worcester, MA.
Professional wrestler Lance Archer, a shirtless man with white skin and a red “murderhawk” hairstyle, stands at the back end of a wrestling ring and prepares to attack fellow pro wrestler Josh Briggs, a man with white skin and brown hair in black wrestling trunks and various knee and shoulder braces, laying prone at the front of the wrestling ring, at a Beyond Wrestling show in Worcester, MA.

Hey, remember Lance Archer from the New Japan show in September? He came to Beyond a few days later, too! This is him getting ready to maul Josh Briggs (and he did).

Professional wrestler Orange Cassidy, a man with white skin, red hair, and brown aviator sunglasses, wearing a light blue jean jacket and a white t-shirt, looks directly at the camera from a distance in front of a maroon curtain at a Beyond Wrestling show in Worcester, MA, as a photographer to his right tries to get a picture of him.
Professional wrestler Orange Cassidy, a man with white skin, red hair, and brown aviator sunglasses, wearing a light blue jean jacket and a white t-shirt, looks directly at the camera from a distance in front of a maroon curtain at a Beyond Wrestling show in Worcester, MA, as a photographer to his right tries to get a picture of him.

Orange Cassidy totally caught me taking a picture of him when he walked through the curtain. He’s doing better after his encounter with The Boogeyman, though he’s had a few run-ins with PAC and the Lucha Bros recently that haven’t been great for him.

Assuming life is anywhere near normal for the foreseeable future, you can see Kris Statlander, Lance Archer and Orange Cassidy on All Elite Wrestling‘s shows these days. (See what I mean about everyone passing through Beyond?) They run Wednesday nights on TNT in the States, and on YouTube.

I visited Keene, New Hampshire for the first time in October, and can heartily recommend both Bull Moose (a small regional chain of entertainment media stores packed with things I like to spend money on) and The Toadstool Bookshop, if you’re in the area. Both are great places to browse, and both will probably need your business when things open back up. (Notice a new, recurring theme here?) Keene, in general, is like a lot of mid-sized New England towns with a Main Street, fun to walk around. Enjoyed my time there. Almost ready to forgive the place for the Pumpkin Festival Riot of 2014 and the town’s handling of it.

a plastic and rubber bendable action figure of a white skeleton lays on a scanner bed.
a plastic and rubber bendable action figure of a white skeleton lays on a scanner bed.

It took me a couple of years, but I finally got ahold of one of the Mego-scale skeletons that they sell at Target around Halloween. I’d get a picture of it with the usual group shot, but we’re running late here, so this is the skeleton on a scanner bed, which looks kinda weird and cool.

I got, and played a fair amount of Stardew Valley for Playstation 4, but I wanna start over, as I totally had no idea what I was doing before I kinda backed my character into a corner. If you like games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing, but also like them to be a little less…Nintendo…this is a great game for that.

On the last flea market trip of the year, I saw this beauty of a Soundesign stereo…

A beige 1980s-era Soundesign stereo system sits on a flea market table.
A beige 1980s-era Soundesign stereo system sits on a flea market table.

No, I didn’t buy it. From my past experience owning a Soundesign (my first stereo was one), albeit one that wasn’t quite as beige, I was afraid to even touch it (those cassette deck buttons will snap on you as soon as look at you).

I did buy this on that trip, though…

A copy of Lou Reed's "Transformer" album plays on a turntable, with the album cover (featuring a black and white picture of Lou Reed, wearing makeup, and holding a guitar while standing at a microphone) standing on top of the turntable cover.
A copy of Lou Reed’s “Transformer” album plays on a turntable, with the album cover (featuring a black and white picture of Lou Reed, wearing makeup, and holding a guitar while standing at a microphone) standing on top of the turntable cover.

Lou was a mess, but he was one of the greatest messes.

Television seasons binge-watched in October 2019 (2): The End Of The Fucking World Season 2 (enjoyable television based on Charles Forsman‘s comics; Chuck and TEOTFW show-runner Jonathan Entwistle have Chuck’s I Am Not OK With This on Netflix now, too…), Scott Kelly: A Year In Space (this was an amazing thing to watch, even if it was done like a pretty hardcore NASA propaganda film).

First-run movies watched in August 2019 (1): El Camino (fun little TV movie, but they need to give Huell Babineaux his own spin-off now).