AJ's Journal

6:21pm: comic con!
This is taken from my wordpress journal. If you just want to read it there with proper formatting and positioning.. check it oot at

http://fu-manchu.com/morbidaj/journal/

If not, read on!

Lauren is out in San Francisco visiting her mom, she had booked a trip out there before the emergency trip from a few weeks back, and instead scheduled to go out on Saturday for a few days. BYE. SEE YA.

This left me with a conundrum. I have many household projects (products) that I need to get to, but who am I kidding. The weekend is for relaxing and fun.

Luckily the Kansas City Planet Comic Con was scheduled to take place. I have visited this con a few times since I first started visiting Kansas City, and it is "ok" in comparison to the Toronto Comic Con, or what I can only imagine the San Diego Comic Con. Oh yes, I also have been to a NYC comic con.

So yes.. Kansas City comic con. First prepare to be raped by the price to get in.. $15.00! But I was looking for something fun to do, and this fit the bill. I also could run into some of my fellow Star Wars/Toy collecting buddies who were all attending as well.

The special guests for this years convention were; Chewbacca, Erin Gray, the bad kryptonian woman from Superman 2, a black guy from the original Battlestar Gallactica, the voice of cartoon yoda , and a bunch of comic book artists. Exciting!

Oh! also for some reason at Comic Conventions in recent years, they have invited old Playboy playmates. We are talking 1998 at the most recent. These chicks must make money off the lonely/horny as there was always a line. The only Playboy chicks I know are Pamela Anderson, Victoria Selvsted (playmate of the year) and uhhh.. Anna Nicole? (note the pics I took were all "secret" aka.. I wasnt aiming). The chick on the left was in Playboy a while ago. The dude she was posing with looked exited. I bet he had a boner.

The girls all looked bored. Hey honey.. try to at least look happy to see us. We are paying your rent. Look at this chick on the right. She was on the phone (maybe with her manager?.. "Phil.. What the F**k have you got me here for? You booked me in Kansas City? Kansas F**king City.. No one is paying my $20 for my autograph. One gentleman wanted me to touch his "wee-wee". This is BULLSH*T Phil.. I want out.. I WANT OUT."). She looked angry everytime I passed her taking secret photos. Here is her IMDB info. Hey.. who am I to judge. Have you seen my IMDB page? I dont have one.

They all charge extra for an autograph/picture, so it is not part of the 15$ entry fee. None the less, this year was actually not bad when it came to "fun things to look at". Lots of toy dealers compared to years past, and I even found a few treats. The local paper had ran a story about that "damn recession" and how they were still putting on a comic con despite these "tough economic times". We all know how I feel about these unproductive buzz words, so I was surprised and happy that the place was PACKED with visitors.

You could have pre ordered a comic con pass online, and gotten into a special line that by passed all the people that showed up that day to pay.. I had taken out some cash, so I used the cash only line.. and got in quicker than the weenies who had prepaid. Cash is king.

So what kind of treats did I find? Well lots of dealers had Doctor Who toys and bootleg dvds. I didnt buy them, but it was nice to see them out in full force. The bootleg DVDs were another thing.. I guess the guy had downloaded all the episodes, and made his own DVDs. I have all the episodes downloaded as well, but I am not a "stupid bootleg ___" . No one was buying them anyway.. because hey.. we are in Kansas. Doctor.. Who?!

I found one booth that was dedicated to vintage movie posters. One thing that caught my eye (tickled my 2000) was the re release Amsel "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" folded 27 x 41 - 1 sheet. I have been searching for this poster for some time.. and have set a limit of 45$ for buying one on Ebay. I have been outbid every time I have tried. 45$ is my limit on vintage posters. I paid that much for my "Strange Brew" poster back in 2000, and come on. Its a piece of paper. That's a shit load of money.. and that is my limit.

Imagine my delight when I saw that this poster was only $25.00. A "convention special price".. or so said the sticker. Turns out his dealer guy had bought out a warehouse and had a stack of these vintage gems! Wow. I bought one...

I asked the dealer if he had a "Sixteen Candles" poster, as Lauren has been looking for one. Sure enough the guy had one (and from what I have heard, these are pretty rare)... he wanted $80.00 for it. HOLY. Its a piece of paper. I asked if that was the best he could offer. He said since I bought the Raiders poster, and would pay with cash.. he would "let it go" for $70.00. No. I told him I would check with Lauren as to what she wanted to do.

My plan was hatched that I would come back in a day and offer him $50. Hey there is a "recession" on, and these are "tough economic times". Its a piece of paper, and $50 is a fair deal no? Well.. wait until later in the story to find out what happened.

So.. I went on my merry way. The only other toy related item I saw was the "She-Predator" Machiko. I once had this item on pre-order with Sideshow, but ended up canceling it.. as it woul have cost about 150$ after shipping and tax. Dude at a booth had one for 125$. I could have talked him down to 120$ as well. I didnt buy it, and thought Id come back the next day (today.. Sunday) and perhaps grab it.

So what about the convention guests? Well I have seen Chewbacca at a few shows over the years. He is a great big tall English guy.. with long hair.. and BIG HANDS. The only one to be exited about is Erin Gray. I loved her when I was little (she was in Buck Rogers, and also was on Silver Spoons!). She has aged very well, and from her IMDB birthday.. she is 59 years young.

Hey.. I am a guy. Can we be frank? It was WEE BIT NIPPLY in the convention center when it came to Erin Gray. It was cold outside, and Kansas City was under a winter weather warning. If you were Erin Gray, would you forget to wear a bra? Yes! you would. I took several peaks, and was titillated. At one point, Erin's handler told her to put a shole on to wear. Or so goes the story I heard from my collecting buddies. One dude had his daughter taking pictures, and she managed to take this very perverse/pornographic picture of Erin. Was she about to Sneeze? or was she excited to be posting for photos with KC dweebs for $20 a pop. Would she offer hugs?

I once paid $20 for a Linda Blair autograph in Toronto a few years ago.. and that included a hug. She is busty, so it made it worth while for me. Unlucky for me, I was with dear brother Sid, and his camera skills "suck to bag". No picture exists of me and Linda Blair hugging.

So today rolls around and I set up my plan. I place $5o in cash in my wallet.. and put the rest of my cash in my pocket. This is a good "Toy show/Comic Show" technique.. as you can wheel and deal better when you pull out your wallet and remove "all of your cash" to see if you can entice the dealer to give up the goods.

Get to the poster guy table, re introduce myself.. he remembers. This is key. He remembers me from yesterday..and that we discussed the Sixteen Candles poster. I reminded him he offered it at 70, but would he take 50 as that was all I had on me. He fumbled around in his pile of posters and then "remembered" that he had "just sold it". Oh that is a good one. So instead of saying, no I do not want to take that deal, he makes up a bullshit story about already selling it. Who else would want this poster in a one day period. Was he telling me a FIB? I think so. He forgot he sold a piece of paper for 80$ (ill assume) but remembers a guy from the previous day?

He gave me his "business card" so I could get in touch with him.. and he would try to hook me up with it.

Nah, I will just wait and get one on ebay. On a side note he was also putting down ebay, saying it is "full of fakes". I collect movie posters and have never come across a 27x41 reprint. They always reproduce them at 27x40 and keep them rolled. The older posters were 27x41 and came folded.

I could be wrong. (I could be right). I could be black.. I could be white! (you are white dude).

But the adventure is not over there folks. Half Price Books is a chain of used book stores in the midwest/south and let me tell you.. it is one of my favorite stores to visit. Treasure Hunting is what you do when you visit HFB. This weekend they were having a 50% off any 1 item.. so I have been out scouting for what this item would be for me.

After the comic con, I hit up the first Half Price Books. What treasure did I find? Well how about MEATBALLS on CED!. What is CED? It is basically a vinyl video disc in a cartridge.. a failed format from the early 80's. Do I have a CED player? No. Do I now own MEATBALLS on CED? YES.

I also found 5 vintage VAN magazines. Scott Hill from Fu Manchu sent me a few pictures/issues of this magazine back in the late 90s for me to use on the Fu website.. I think I even borrowed some from Dave. Who am I to turn half off the original cover price of 2.25. One issue even has some naked chicks in it. Pretty racy for a regular magazines. These are all issues from 1980.

I still had my 50% off coupon, so I saved the best for last. I stopped buying DVDs more or less a few years ago, but love Seinfeld. I have Seasons 1-4 on DVD, so when I found Season 5 (used) for 15$, I felt this was a good purchase to spend my 50% on. 8$ later (with tax) I now have Season 5 on dvd. Another set of VHS tapes can be retired.

Last but not least, I obtained a rare copy of the "Gotcha!" soundtrack on vinyl. 99 cents! What a deal. My Gotcha memorabilia collection continues to grow! its only a matter of time before I own Anthony Edwards. If you want to be a successful collector of something and not go broke, pick something you like that no one else does. I can own multiple Gotcha items (I even have the Press Kit and British Lobby Card set) for basically 5$ an item.. It really is one of the best movies ever made.

5:41pm: movin on up
Well I have been checking out various blogs over the past little while and thinking about making some sort of change. Last week I was thinking perhaps blogspot? since a few friends are using this, and it seems to have some cool features etc.. but then I heard about wordpress. Its something you own, and can be hosted on your own servers, using your own databases (if you have such access.. which I do). Anyway, I downloaded the software.. uploaded it to the fu manchu server, and biggidy bam, it was up and running.

I found a program that captured all of my livejournal posts, and exported those into XML based on year (since the default livejournal export tool only does it monthly -- I may have free time, but I get bored quick).

Anyway, I imported my stuff into wordpress from livejournal in all of 5 mins!

And here she is...

http://fu-manchu.com/morbidaj/journal/

currently the only thing that is taking shit loads of time is going through old posts and adding tags/categories. This is something I thought would have been fun in livejournal, but I never figured out (or perhaps livejournal doesnt offer this).

Anyway.. there seems to be rumblings among the blog weenies that livejournal is up to no good and will be pulling something soon. Its probably all lies (after all, livejournal once required you to have someone hook you up with a code to get in.. thats how I got in.. via Laurie aka Littledeath!) but who knows.

So my word press thing is up to date, and I am on January of 2003 regarding tags/categories. Its taking forever, but I think in the long run it will be a good thing. If I am looking to check on all my posts that involve "slacking off", I will be set. What about directv related posts? again.. a bunch.

I also think wordpress offers the ability to automatically update livejournal once I make a post there.

Hopefully wordpress will get me back into writing funny stories, because the last few months I have been too wrapped up in daily drama to take the time to update my "journal". It really is a valuable thing to have access to when you start aging and forgetting things.

Let me know what you think.

also - whats the deal with not being able to go through old posts on ones friends list? it gives me like the last 20 posts. that sucks. what if you are slack and way behind! lame.

8:46pm: A Job
All is well again in the world..
after 6 long weeks of sitting around working to find work I have found a new job
Its really cool
Fin

9:25am: apply to site
In order to apply for this job, you must create a profile with us. If you have already created a profile, you may simply login to begin your application.

This is one of the biggest piss offs of a job hunt. You have your resume and profile up on careerbuilder lets say.. and you find a job on there.. and hit "apply" only to be taken to another site that wants you to fill out the same f-ing information yet again.. complete with job experience and history. what a waste of time.. but sadly if you dont play.. you arent in the game.

5:15pm: Craigslist fun
You know, on the surface Craigslist looks like a great place to find some good deals and get your "wee-wee" touched (if you are into that scene). I have been searching for months now for a display case. You know the kind.. most cool collectible stores have glass display cases where anything inside looks 100 times better than it would sitting on your entertainment center. I have so far been unlucky in this. Why?

( more rants here )

8:38am: COO ROO COO COO COO COOO COOO COOOOO!
Good day, Im like back eh?
where did I go you ask?

For the past 10 years or so I have been collecting Bob and Doug McKenzie brother related material since I am an avid B & D fan along with loving their movie "Strange Brew". I now have one of the biggest collection of material around (or as far as I know)

I heard about a special documentary that the CBC was putting together back in February on the anniversary of Strange Brew (the 2-4 anniversary) and the producers were looking for "fans" of the brothers. I emailed about my collection and have been going back and forth with them since then.

The contact escalated early last week where i Was asked to put together a video of myself and my collection showcasing what I had, and why I collected it. I did my best and polished off my grade 11 video editing skills and sent off the dvd mpeg to the producers. Next thing I know I was asked to fly up with my collection to Toronto where the producers were putting together the special so that they could film myself and my collection in High Def. Beauty! They didnt have to ask twice, so I coordinated the trip with my brother since the weekend so happened to fall on mothers day, what a perfect surprise. We found a last minute deal that would allow Lauren to come with so it really was perfect.

My mom was more than surprised.. we managed to sneak up behind my parents in the driveway in our rental car, and I mean what can you say.. she had no idea, and there you have her son who lives 1700 miles away in the driveway! good times. The next day I did my filming and it took about 3 hours or so to be interviewed, filmed, and questioned. Lauren was my make up assistant and did a great job too (im oily)

This documentary was all but finished before I flew up, and I believe at the request of Dave Thomas himself, he wanted parts of my collection and myself to be included in the documentary. I do not know how much footage of my actual interview will be used in the final cut, but have been told my collectibles are definitely in them. The rest of my interview footage is apparently being used for a special feature on the upcoming special edition DVD of Strange Brew. The special is set to air tonight at 9 on CBC.

Next update: Aj and Lauren meet The Amazing Race's own Phil in Toronto.

2:38pm: In Sorte Diaboli
Holy crap! its been a busy last few weeks.

For those of you not in the "SECRET F'n CLUB" I had 2 previous posts that were pretty funny.. but not for certain eyes. I encourage you to join the "SECRET F'n CLUB".

This year is flying by and Im pretty sure its due to me getting up at 6am now. When you dont fully wake up until 10am, its easy for time to fly by and now its already May.

Like everyone else Ive been busy wasting time on facebook since early February which has been fun. Its nice to go a stalking through various people and check out their friends.. and track down people that dont have their accounts locked down to friends only. All the cliques from highschool got right back together.. only now they are leading less than exciting lives (in my opinion anyway) being accountants or special ed teachers or insert mundane job here. No one seems to have left the nest either (the nest being Toronto).. not that its a bad thing to stay in Toronto.. but the worlds a big place.

OK the above was written around 9am today.. and now its 8:53 PM. Busy day at work as usual.. I got home and did some damage control on my yard.. why?

Last week during the rainy days I noted that water was pooling near my backyard side house foundation.. and the sump pump was going off non stop. I have learned all this kinda crap the hard way since I do not have anyone that is able to help me (nor do I wish to pay some knob to come and do it when I can do it)

I bought 20 bags of soil from the Home Depots and got started last Sunday diigging out vines and weeds from the foundation.. and then replacing it with the fresh soil that I laid down with a slight incline to help direct the water away from the foundation. Beauty plan eh?

Besides the rain, the other problem my house has is the gutters. The people that owned the house 10 years ago installed the gutters themselves. This you see is a bad idea. Why? because they didnt know what they were doing.

I wanted to buy some gutter covers to block leaves from falling into the gutters. These wont work with mine because the gutters were installed wrong.

My neighbour put up brand new $2,000 gutters on his house last year and they work like a charm. Rain hits the roof, and it goes into the gutters and out the bottom. What a concept!

With my house - rain hits the roof, and goes toward the gutters, but as there is no drip edge, 10% of the rain drips behind the gutters and runs down the house facsia board which damages the wood.

If lots of leaves or seeds have been falling, the gutters are plugged (even though I have a mesh bulb thingie that is supposed to block particles from getting stuck in the downspout) then the rain just overflows, hits the ground and pools. Ill go up onto the roof and clear out the spouts, and use gutter sealer to close up any spaces.

I used to love the rain and thunderstorms, but now I just go outside and swear. "Mother F'er" is my favorite.

So yea, I built up the ground so that water would at least pool away from the foundation. So far so good. They will need to be replaced anyway, and this time Ill do it right (mike holmes style)

11:15am: HOLY CRAP
Lauren just scored FRONT ROW CENTER TICKETS FOR RUSH IN AUGUST!!

WAAHHHH

WEEIIIRRRRNNNHHHHH (tom sawyer sound effects)

12:09pm: so-so Friday
Isnt this supposed to be a day off? Im pretty sure it still is in Canada.

Nothing like reading depressing climate change stuff first thing in the morning.

Makes helping people fix their websites kinda pointless.

Oh well, at least we are collectively up shit creek and not just me. I dont like being left out.

If things really do hit the fan there really wont be much that is worth anything beyond food, fuel and weapons.

No one will be trading me for my toys or dvds or metal tshirts. Its a tad scary.

Some dude here in the office was just talking about seeing "An Inconvienient Truth" and was telling a lady here about it.. both hadnt heard of it before nor knew about how screwed the planet is.

But enough about that!

Gas is up to 2.69 which is good in the Vibe.. I get about 33 MPG. Its only a matter of time before people give up their huge ass pick up trucks . This shouldnt be a problem because none of them haul lumber or tools.

http://news.sympatico.msn.ctv.ca/TopStories/ContentPosting.aspx?feedname=CTV-TOPSTORIES_V2&newsitemid=CTVNews%2f20070403%2fclimate_changeA_070406&showbyline=True

yay! we are screwed.

9:14pm: angel of music... toobaa teebee.. angel of tee-neeeeee
Its gotten ..

haha thats as far as I got for todays post. I wrote the above around 930am, and its now 912 pm. I had some great BBQ, introduced Lolo to some Veronica "Shes an F'n Detective" Mars, and completed wave 1 of the Star Wars 30th anniversary figures (damn you concept stormtrooper!)

8:02pm: I havent laughed this hard in a while
THE FUNNIEST CANNIBAL CORPSE VIDEO EVER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2PzagXsD0Y

I have tears coming down my face

7:47pm: mike tyson punchout LIVE
http://youtube.com/watch?v=krctdpioFu0

holy crap these guys are fun! (and asian)

8:12pm: "he shit his pants and it went down his leg and out the bottom of his pant leg"
What a week what a week..

5:21pm: ..this scumbag is not going back to steal money
My water heater exploded yesterday while I was out shopping.. luckily I had planned on this happening eventually so none of AJ Industry Holdings Inc stock was damaged. Phew.

9:54am: Grim Reaper 4 Ever
http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/garmin/26722/

I love Heavy Metal.

This is my pick for best super bowl ad for today. I wont be watching the super bowl of course.. I will be visiting far off Target stores in search of fun.

Big Game/ Big Deal

8:50am: megs party
Too much Salsa...
Headache, but fun
Yaphett Kotto showed up, and we bet against the home town, that ended up losing "the big game".