Howdy!
Those of you who follow me on teh Twittahs already know that I’m still kickin’ around, and hopefully, I haven’t worried the rest of you much.
Weird times still, of course, and not great ones. I hope you’re all doing OK. If we haven’t talked in a while, feel free to fill me in on stuff in the comments (those of you who I talk to regularly can do that too, if you like, but good or bad, I know about at least some of what’s up with you already).
Keeping busy with a bunch of my hobbies, and eventually, you’ll hear about stuff and see pictures. We’re doing a bunch of renovation stuff in my house, though, so it’s gonna be another minute.
On the trading card front (how most of you who are still following me started following me), I’m still pretty likely done with set-building on new Topps cards, though I went 2 factory sets deeper than I was planning to (I’ve got ’21 and ’22), because the ’22 design is the last one that Fanatics had no input on or influence over. (I’ll probably grab an Update set at the end of the month, too, but that should be the last of it until I move the goalposts again.) I was weak and grabbed (and overpaid for) one of those ’60 Topps design Pro Debut Bo Jackson Memphis Chicks cards, because come on, but that’s probably gonna be about the extent of new card purchases, basically “Ooh, that’s pretty, FINE, I’ll get it”.
I finished Brooklyn Dodgers team sets for ’53 Bowman Black and White, ’54 Bowman and ’55 Bowman since we spoke last, and I’m close (if down to the tough ones: Koufax, Drysdale and the team card) on ’57 Topps Dodgers, too. I’ve put together an entire album of all of the Senior Professional Baseball Association sets, which was fun. I’m working on the master set of Pro Set Superstars MusiCards and Yo! MTV Raps cards, and I’m close there (and need to get back to Gavin about that). I’ve been working more on non-sports of late than anything.
Toys, I got…a few more…Mego-scale figures, and some other things. You’ll see soon, hopefully.
Comics, ditto. I’m close to done buying new big-two-companies comics, though, too. I’m buying maybe a third of what I was a few years ago. I have enough to read for a while, and I don’t like how they handle their properties anymore.
Video games, I’ve got a Playstation 5 which I enjoy but don’t play often enough (Stray is amazing, though, so good, I beat the game twice in a row the night I got it), a Retro Freak which I enjoy but also don’t play enough, and I’ve beefed up my Atari 2600 collection a bunch (even replacing Swordquest: Waterworld and Mr. Do’s Castle, which I’d gotten rid of ages ago).
I’ve filled in my CD collection a bunch (the biggest things are probably completing the Siouxsie and the Banshees and Skinny Puppy studio album collections and the Bobbie Gentry box set), but haven’t done a ton with vinyl since it became much, much more dangerous for me to crate-dig.
I’ve been framing posters. After my bedroom’s painted and the rest of my house is sorted a bit more, I’ll show y’all what I’ve got.
I got some more musical instruments which I need to use more often.
I’m watching a ton of movies and TV. I watched 513 out of 514 episodes of Peyton Place (episode 390 is quasi-lost media at the moment), and it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in both very good and very bad ways. I’m working on 3 other series right now, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Cheers and Dark Shadows. We’re in the middle of our annual October movie thing in my house, though we’re not watching a movie tonight because there’s some painting going on in the living room.
So far:
No pictures again, and not many links (Y’all know how to look stuff up…be curious and enterprising!) but I think that’s enough to let y’all know I continue to exist. I don’t know how often I’ll update here, but I’ll try to get a post with pics in before the end of the year. I’m way more prolific here, but “here” requires an invite because the public and quasi-public Internet is kind of a drag these days. Feel free to ask for one.
Hopefully you will be coming back one of these days. Peyton Place isn’t on most peoples radar, so I’m kind of curious what inspired you to watch it?
I had been hearing for my entire life about how, for a period of time, Peyton Place as the biggest thing ever, and then it just vanished. Think of it like if The Sopranos, however you feel about the show, disappeared, in terms of cultural impact. That was enough for me, and it’s a damn shame it’s disappeared as thoroughly as it has, because it’s the blueprint for American television drama (both the good and the bad). If it isn’t being done, college courses should be taught on the show.
As for “coming back” or not, I am pretty active in a venue that isn’t this one (39 posts this year, down from 101 last year and close to 200 on Substack from August 2020-January 2021 which I still need to move to the “new” site, but I’m still covering the bases, and I’ve been dealing with some stuff, as we all have in some way or another; by comparison, there have been 7 posts here in that time span), sometimes talking about the same things I talk about here. If you’d like to be there, let me know via email. I won’t be abandoning this site any time soon, because too much of my identity on resale sites is tied up in it, and because I think there’s value to the older posts, for me and for other people, but I also don’t know that I’m likely to use this site a bunch for the foreseeable future. At least some of my card collecting is a wrap or close to it, I haven’t been to a flea market in 3 years (with no end in sight to that) or any kind of collectibles show in longer than that, I’m kept quite busy by real life and by the other site, and yeah, there are my other collections and hobbies, too, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have complicated feelings in a bunch of different directions about just doing “hey, look at this stuff I have” posts for the general public (or doing anything public-facing; my desire to be a public person has diminished dramatically in the past decade, though I do like writing things for my friends to read) in late 2022, so that’s also a part of why it’s been quiet here.