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Author Topic: What happened?  (Read 16057 times)

Tattoo Shane

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What happened?
« Reply #24 on: April 15, 2006, 01:50:20 PM »

Quote from: ""AlleyViper""
It sounds like we'll have to organize a road trip next year from Alberta. That would be nice, I've never actually been to Ontario.  :shifty:


Not a bad idea. But we should probably try to get all the Alberta collectors together here in Alberta first before we start planning a big road trip. ;)
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
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Raptor

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« Reply #25 on: April 15, 2006, 03:47:49 PM »

I waited a while, perhaps to catch up on sleep to post this. The weekend was a bit of a blur, and I was hoping that the pics Beav posted would help me sort it all out.

It was a bit of a watershed weekend in the hobby for me. I actually got to show Joe fans my customs and my collection setup, and I really felt energized and validated in my choices. I felt that I was among peers, in a way that I don?t normally get to feel about my hobby.

Scramble and Tank Girl came down, and were as usual a blast to hang out with. They are the perfect houseguests, and are welcome under my roof any time. My regret is that I didn?t get to play the card game with them, so we?ll just have to start playing on the board again. ;-)  Ryan is a scream and Tina is a good sport. They are the kind of people that I would hang out with even if I had nothing in common with them. As it turns out though, we have so much in common that Scrams (or me) were never at a loss for words. I think even Viperlord found it tough to get a word in edgewise. Tina looked at my mini dio shelf (the contents of which some of you would recognize from the winter cranks contest) and ?got? it immediately. I?m reasonably sure that the hit Ikea on the way home. A collecting and displaying a toy collection is an intensely personal thing for me and having someone else get what I was trying to accomplish really made me feel good about the hobby.  Thank you guys for all the stuff we traded, especially the stories. ;-)

Then Beav and his wife dropped by. I am so glad that he called the previous night so that I could get use to his really weird voice. ;-) (Abaawut?) Actually, his voice is positively normal compared to his wife?s who speaks with a Scottish accent when Canadians were the last to speak, and with a Kintukian accent when Americans speak. She?s a great sport as well, and really interesting to boot. I won?t get into details, but I now know why Beav does the site - he owes the internet a huge favor.  Beav I?d never met before, and I was really interested in seeing who this guy was. At first he seemed downright bashful, but by sneaking him booze in everything from his tacos to his morning tea, we loosened him up some. Speaking of booze, he brough up a honeyed Wild Turkey that my wife has take to drinking neat - it?s that damned smooth. By doing so he assured himself a place under our roof whenever he?s in town.

Beav?s seriously a nice guy, who copes well with chaos, and has the same insecurities about his customs that the rest of us have. He also took a minute to sit down and look at my customs display, and that was compliment enough. This dude was a god of the Joeluminati, and he also ?got? what I was doing.

We ate tacos flavored with Guinness(use Ortega mix and ? of a cup of Guinness for best results), and Camp 31 Chicken. It was a good feed.   We talked until it was time to go get Viperlord.

I don?t really drive that fast, but I did notice Tank Girl cringing in the back seat. Anyway we made good time to the airport, which is good, because we kept Viperlord waiting so long he got into someone else?s car by mistake.  I didn?t even hear his voice (over Scramble and I talking) for the first half hour, but as it turns out, he?s a mountain of happiness and damned funny to boot. He hit his first Tim Hortons within 20 minutes of landing on Canadian turf, ensuring he remains an honorary Canadian citizen for life.

Do not drink the hortons hot smoothie. It sucks, no matter what Scramble tells you. Scramble could drink liquefied sugar and stir in a sweet and low?

I can?t for the life of me remember what we talked about, but we were having so much fun we had to retire to the basement to keep from waking the baby. (Babies and strong men fear Scramble?s voice.)  I got to learn a lot more about these people, and that they were all charismatic and interesting. For people who had met in person less than three times or not at all, we talked like old friends for hours.

I took Viperlord to Ed?s for midnight. Ed was happy to have him, and really cool about me showing up out of the blue, 5 minuets after midnight when I hadn?t even checked in.

I went home, Beav and the wife went to the Hotel (Sorry Cabanajack, you know what for?) and scramble crashed in my basement dreaming about redecorating his place with joes.

The baby cried all night. 2 hours of sleep total. This may explain some of my behavior in the rest of the story.

Beav dropped by with his wife for breakfast. We had the aforementioned Frangelico omelet, garnished with vodka sausages with balsamic fig glaze.  Beav drank Orangina. Basically Beav won?t drink anything unless it?s odd or imported. Beav proposed marriage, so I?m thinking the breakfast was good.

We mounted up, and went to Bountyhunter toys. I love watching people go into Bountyhunter toys for the first time. The place is smaller than you?d imagine, but it?s chock full of toy goodness. You can?t even look at any one thing without catching something else cool out of the corner of your eye. Beav handed off the piper?s pit to BHT?s wife (who was minding the store) and it almost sold right then. Luckily BHT?s wife kenw had badly BHT wanted it, because as it turns out, BHT loves Roddy Piper with an obsession that borders on the requirement of a restraining order.

Beav hit the $2 bin with a vengeance. There were some people that I new and others were trickling in. Honestly it?s impossible to concentrate in there, as BHT knows from trying to carry on a conversation with me while I?m in there. We decided to walk across the street to the bowling alley, under which the magic would happen.

After arriving and setting up my customs, I realized that I?d forgotten my create a wrestler, and went home to get it, stranding Beav in the bottom of a bowling alley with no one he knew. Interesting that I almost didn?t wrestle at all.

I picked up a bunch of MOC Argentine figures to open, some on the spot, and I had Loop and beav open them right there. It was a blast.

While I was gone, Loop came and put out a sign that would pretty much sum up how the rest of the meet would go. It said ? ?Everything in the box is free ? For serious!?. It had already been thouroughly raided by the time I got there, and I still managed to pull no less than 20 figures out of it, including some JVC I didn?t have, some Gashapon figures, PTE figs, and all sorts of other cools stuff. I missed out on perfect V1 cobra officers with mint logos and other army builders. Loop gave away the majority of his collection, for free and for keeps.

After looking at his customs, I realized why. Unburdening himself of all these figures let him concentrate on his custom collection. He would never have the biggest or best collection. He couldn?t have waged giant dio battles, with his men, nor did he want to.  But what he could do was sculpt heads and torsos that were one of a kind, and better than what Hasbro?s sculptors were able to put out. He?d taken the leap, and realized (though he would never articulate it this way) that he?d surpassed Hasbro?s ability to make toys, and could have a collection of figures that were both beautiful and exactly what he wanted.

The customs table overflowith, including a selection of Beav?s best work, a few samples of my mass produced customs and dye based work, Loops aformentioned amazing setup of zombies and celebrity impersonators, and Morgardee?s amazing work. Oh, Morgardee and I still disagree about his use of enamels, but his work is flat out amazing. His painting has become really controlled, to the point where he did a fivepack of Urban Rain custom joes that looked as good as Master collectors. Still no idea how he pulled that off. His skull faced figure was flat out art - perfect parts and paint. But more than that, the talk of the customs table was his 6? viper based on an ultimate muscle mold. A lot of people commented to me on the perfect sculpting and coloring.

The create a wrestler contest was pretty awesome. Scramble, BHT and Jon S. All contributed Create A Wrestlers to Raw Vs. Smackdown that looked dead on like Joes. Creating a Raptor eluded BHT (though I suspect that he wasn?t really trying that hard) so I had to pick up the reigns. I spent about 10 hours learning the game and creating my wrestler. I didn?t think I had a hope in hell. I didn?t see all the fights, but some weird things happened. Morgardee?s cage match consistaed mostly of him throwing people off the top of the cage, then foolishly listening to BHT council him to jump off, and landing on his throat on the rig barrier. He did this multiple times. Unintentionally though, he got back at BHT ? Don?t screw with karma mike. Morgardee accidently sabotaged the control settings on BHT?s controller, and Jon (wielding Jinx) managed to beat him in what would have been a fairly close match. I got matched up against Pete, who may have never played the game before the moment that we picked up the controller. (He still managed to whup me a bit before I 619?d him)  I?m not sure who Scramble beat, but he did well because I didn?t see him till the finals. I took on John, and while I didn?t get spanked, he did manage to kick, punch and counter almost everything I threw at him. I dropped jinx on her head a few times, and gave her the 619, and amazingly took the win. I laughed so hard (out of confusion more than anything else) that everyone looked at me like I was insane. The final match pitted me against Scramble, which would have been a fair match had Scramble not been so much better than I was. We fought in the cage, or at least on the cage. I accidentaly exited the cage, and while trying to get back in, climbed it.   Scramble charged up on top of the cage, and we fought, until we both fell off. I went back up, he went back up, and cheesily I kicked him off. Then he climbed it again, and fell off without my help. Having learned his lesion he refused to come up to fight me. I didn?t know how to get down. After some instruction We figured it out, and I managed to get back in the ring. We fought, and I even did some sort of weird baseball slide/out of the ring attack. It looked really cool, though I had ho idea how I did it. I got scrams back into the ring, and it was the 619 all over again. Somehow, I walked away with a giant trophy that I have no idea what I?m going to do with. When you?re built like me, a trophy case is pretty much not on our radar.

To add to the free table madness, Pete brought in his yearly donation of extra figures. The free table once again went insane. I gave him a couple of JVC eels, and pulled no less than 25 figures and a huge zip lock full of accessories out of the pile. I wasn?t the only one, everyone found something they were looking for. It was like an insane flock of seagulls on a large McDonald?s fries.

And that wasn?t all. Several boxes of vehicles appeared on the tables, and were picked through. I think I saw a somewhat complete BUGG come out of one box. Beav and I started customizing vehicles, and he took all the parts he needed home to make a kick ass piece of armor. There was so much on the free table that people were still picking up useful stuff hours later.

There were a number of door prizes. Some were kind of interesting. Beav should model his Part hats and slightly used light brite slides. I got the colorforms kit. But there were figures, comics, and the most coveted of all, the customs figures from Loop.

After most of the novelties were given away, I was surprised by how many people bought extra tickets to win the customs. I was less surprised by that, when I saw something I missed ? Loop?s prototype Jack Bauer. Jon S. Won it, and I emotionally blackmailed him into trading it to me for a customs to be named later. I really treasure that piece, and it went right into the display case as soon as I got home. Beav won my Superhero team, and seemd to be happy for it, so I take that as a compliment.

Now you?d think that the free table would be enough, but that wasn?t the only freebies I got. I couldn?t go 20 minutes without giving me free stuff. Condor Knight gave me a huge bag of parts, and Deadshot (I hope it was you, I was in a bit of a fog) gave me some figures for customizing. Viperlord gave me the three good figures from the Viper Lockdown set, a bunch of Mars Heroes, and more. Loop, have me some JvC ninjas to finish off my ninja collection.  I bought the BATS transport from Stealth Viper for about cost, and traded Scramble for my first dragonfly. I still haven?t gone through everything that I got.

There were a lot of rarities on the tables, including some way out there Action force figures and vehicles. Way out of my price range, but I?d never seen anything like them.

When it came time to start shutting down, we made our way to Kelsie?s (sp?) for dinner. We took this way out of the way way to get there, which resulted in another treat. We got to visit BHT?s private toy room. I entered, and despite the fact that he threatened me with a lightsaber, I pressed on. Seriously I?m not sure why I was threatened by a lightsaber, but I felt like I was under attack. Baybe I was a jedi in a former life.

BHT?s toy room, unfortunately suffers from the same design flaw that the store does. There is just too much cool shit in it to take in at once, and no place to stand to get a full view of it. ;-)

You are surrounded on all sides by perfectly placed, exquisitely maintained perfect toys of all types and sizes. There is an unholy shrine to Roddy Piper, and of course the Joe cabinets, containing each Joe and Cobra in the run in perfect off of card condition, lined up with military precision. Of course Raptor is in the top row, a he should be. But no matter what you collect, from Joes, to die cast vehicles, to marvel legends, to movie maniacs, to star wars, you could easily find some reason to spend hours just looking at the stuff. I have something called JOE-ADD which makes it hard for me to carry on a conversation in a room full of cool stuff. The thing that will strike you the most, if you  ever get invited to see it, is that this is an adult toy collection. It?s not toys on a shelf ? it?s a measured and designed clean space for displaying toys and the toys in it were collected for a purpose, not obtained on a whim. I think that the pictures, and the reality have really influenced me on how I collect and present my collection.    

Dinner was good, from the chicken wing flame off of Beav and BHT, and the on the spot customization. My only regret is that I didn?t get to spend as much time with Jon and Pete talking joes as I did at the lat meet. I barely got to talk to pete at all other than to offer my predictions about the MC set, and take piles of his extra joes. I can?t recap the conversation, but it was great fun. Beav was so emotional about leaving that he attempted to kill me by covering my mouth and nose, so that the moment would never have to end for me. Those Kintukians with their weird customs.

After a late night, and an early morning, Stealth woke me up early in the morning to take Viperlord back to the airport. To thank me, he gave me Xevoz, which is all the thanks that I ever needed. ;-) I got home and slept until Scramble and Tank girl took off, and we gave each other things (Dude, I still need those bat attachments?) and said goodbye.

My final impressions are that Scramble is a hilarious guy. He should really get into writing or something. Tank Girl and Beav?s wife (along with my own) proved without a doubt that ?Joewives? are some of the most tolerant people on earth. Beav is a nice guy, if a little reserved at first, but his personal reservations can be easily overcome with friendship and alcohol. Viperlord is a man who works hard, collects hard, and plays hard. He?s salt of the earth, and the kind of guy that would buy a kid a toy because it was just the right thing to do. Morgardee is growing as a customizer, and has a great sense of humor. Loop has transitioned from a customizer to an artist, and I can?t wait to see what a year of improvement does for his contribution to the customizing world next year. BHT is as committed to the development and participation in the community as he is to the business. Inviting other Joe fans to your home to see your collection doesn?t drive the bottom line, but it does show how dedicated you are to your friends who share a common interest. Pete and Ed know more about Joes than anyone I ever will know, and may start the Joe version of Antiques Roadshow together. The Hamilton Toy community Hal et all, are great. Vendors that seek you out to give you freebies and unhesitatingly donate door prizes without even getting ?credit? for it  are pretty amazing.  Most of you I?d met before, but all of you, even the ones that I?ve only met through the web, I felt at ease with.

And with about 50 people, this meet has really grown since the 4 people that showed for the first one. Having a kick ass exclusive figure didn?t hurt that. ;-)  Apologies for anyone I missed, and to anyone who gave me free things that I didn?t thank. There was just so much that I can?t have helped but miss something.

Unfortunately I?ve forgotten most of the good quotables (I waited too long) can anyone help me out with them?
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BHMike

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What happened?
« Reply #26 on: April 16, 2006, 01:28:31 PM »

That is the most detailed write up I have ever seen.

I plan on re-doing some of this site, with your permission Raps, I'd like to include that as the 2006 write up.
LMK
MIke
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Raptor

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What happened?
« Reply #27 on: April 16, 2006, 07:39:55 PM »

Will you fix all the spelling mistakes?   :D

That's just my experience, but I wanted to give credit to everyone and everything. That's why it took a week. Thank god for 4 day weekends.

-  :chicken:
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sniper

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What happened?
« Reply #28 on: April 26, 2006, 11:56:54 PM »

Does anyone have a photo of Loop's Jack Bauer custom?  Judging by the customs in the available shots it must have been impressive.
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Raptor

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What happened?
« Reply #29 on: April 27, 2006, 08:38:47 AM »

http://www.jasonloo.com/hazrock/

Click on the third pic down from the left for full pics. Like all his work, it's pretty great stuff. He's the "Angry Jack" version... you can almost imagine him pulling the wires out of a 1:18 scale lamp to torture someone for information.

-  :chicken:
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