Doodle of the Day

I have a new computer. Windows 7 doesn't like my monitor. I will digitise these doodles once I have Illustrator installed.

Dunny Collection So Far

From left to right: Devilrobots, Aya Kakeda, TADO, TADO, Peskimo, Mori Chack

Ian Beale

"I borrowed this tash from Pat Butcher!"

If, like me, you have one of those job type things, then you'll probably be celebrating the season to be merry and moneyless with your colleagues. I made the Secret Santa selection process a little more interesting this year by having co-workers choose from cutout Eastenders characters that had secret numbers written on the back. I ended up with my favourite character, Patrick Trueman, while some unlucky soul was paired with the wonderful weasel known as Ian Beale. There is no real reason for me to post this other than to share Ian Beale's long lost moustache with the world*.


*1 or possibly 2 people that read this blog.

I had help with the decorations yesterday

Christmas is officially here

This is the proof:

Ramen Pals

Yesterday I went Christmas/bed shopping in London. Regent Street was crazy busy, the roads were closed to vehicles but it was still absolutely teeming with manic shoppers. I met up with James Barnett, Ashley and Oscar for mediocre ramen and fun times.

Barbarism Begins At Home

Guildford can get pretty rowdy on a Saturday night, but I wasn't prepared for what happened at the weekend. After a few rounds of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars and washing down some chocolate orange cookies with half a litre of fiery ginger beer, my friends and I headed into Guildford. Being the non-drinker, I drove with a car load of friends and parked up in the highstreet. This was about 10:30pm, so the night was still young and most of the lout population were busy downing sambuca shots to reduce the already low number of brain cells floating in their thick heads. Or so I thought.

We were walking down a shopping street on the way to Wetherspoons, I gazed lovingly at the Apple retailer as I stroked the bulging pocket of my drainpipe jeans, the home to my new iPhone 3GS. I usually have my wits about me, but that evening I was just a little too relaxed and was paying more attention to my purple shoes than anything else around me. I knew two people were approaching our direction, but I didn't think anything of it. I should have though, for a second later one of the men had lunged towards me and hit me square and hard in the chest with his shoulder. I fell to the floor like a sack of limbs, I didn't even see the face of my attacker as he and his companion walked a few paces before stopping to see what would happen next. This was a surreal moment, it was silent, I picked myself up off the floor, slightly shocked I glanced to see who had attacked me. I still don't remember their faces, but I acknowledged that they were of the dodgy type so I made the decision to not take action. Instead I told my friends that it wasn't worth any more trouble and I started to walk away in a daze.

"Will, here are your glasses". I hadn't even noticed that my specs had flown off my face in true geek fashion and landed on the pavement. I carried on walking, as did my friends, we didn't hear from the two thugs so I was sure they had too walked away. It wasn't until Monday that I realised my glasses had actually been scratched, a trip to Specsavers confirmed the worst, it would cost £69 to replace the lenses. So not only had I been attacked, but my favourite glasses had been ruined by some brainless, meat-headed, alcohol fuelled barbarian who decided to relieve his pent-up idiot aggression on someone who hadn't even laid eyes upon his brutish, square face.

And what did he prove? Nothing. I'm still sure I made the right decision by walking away. People like that only do these things to get a rise out of people, their lives are so painfully dull that they turn to violence to liven up their evenings.

Like Miyagi-san used to say in the Karate Kid, "fighting is never good".

Happy Halloween

A bit early, I know, but I'm busy this weekend.

I actually took this two weeks ago in Japan...shhh

kidrobot is coming to London

Next month, 1800 hours Thursday 19th November to be precise, kidrobot are throwing an opening party at their new store in London. What's particularly awesome about this news is that one of my favourite designers, TADO, will be attending the event. TADO are a British design duo who specialise in super cute character designs for toys and other nice things that I like to buy. Recently I bought their amazing imagining of Tokyo in print form, titled 'SUGOI!'. As soon as I find a nice frame suitable for 594 × 841mm of colourful goodness, then it shall hang on my wall.

17-85mm IS USM Sadface :(

My favourite lens is broken. I need to send it away for repairs. Get well soon 17-85mm.

Yoko - Nendoroid & Revoltech

Robert Pattinson is my James Dean

Little Boots

Turns out I was sitting behind Little Boots on the flight back from Tokyo. I could tell the group of 6 young trendy-types were a band of some sort when they first sat down in the seats in front and behind me. I don't really keep up with the music world these days, so I didn't recognise her or any of her bandmates, I actually found them quite annoying. I thought they were very loud and ignorant, so I wasn't looking forward to the next 12 hours I would have to spend with them thousands of feet in the air. They must have been pretty tired though as they kept quiet, leaving me to watch Moon and Year One in peace.

It wasn't until I was queing up alongside them in Customs when we got to Heathrow that my curiostity got the best of me and I asked who they were. The lanky fellow with a keyboard was closest so I asked if "you guys are all in a band", to which he replied "yeah" so I continued with "oh, so you've been playing in Tokyo?". They had been in Japan for around a month and by the sounds of it, it had been quite an exhausting stint. Each of them had various festival admission wristbands dangling from their limbs and luggage, on one of them I saw 'Little Boots' scribbled, so I guessed that's who they were. I asked Mr Yamaha and he confirmed it, "This little girl here", he said, pointing at the singer, "and we're the band".

I'm not a fan of Little Boots so I wasn't all that bothered. My only exposure to Little Boots prior to sitting behind her on a Virgin Atlantic flight was in one of those pesky Spotify adverts that so rudely interrupt Sacred Heart by Cass McCombs or Get Innocuous! by LCD Soundsystem - that's all I'm listening to these days.

Special Note: Little Boots had grey hair. She reminded me of Sophie from Howl's Moving Castle. Maybe she was inspired by Miyazaki while visiting Japan.

Book-Off

Book-Off could quite possibly be the best shop ever. Found in Japan, Book-Off sells used manga, books, CDs, DVDs and games for extremely reasonable prices. Pictured below is the loot from my visit on Saturday. Perhaps the best buy was the Full Metal Alchemist Soundtrack CD & DVD set sitting at the front - only 900 yen. Book-off can be found all over Japan, the store I visited was in Tama-shi and is the only Book-Off store in Tokyo that contains the brilliant B-Hobby - a treasure trove of old and new toys at super low prices. I got overexcited and started loading my basket with old Star Wars toys, a boxed-as-new speeder bike with scout trooper was just 300 yen. I realised though that there was no way I could take it all home so I had to put some stuff back.

Welcoming Party

A few toys were waiting for me when I arrived in Japan, I mentioned them in my previous post. Here they are in all their embarrassing Otaku nerdery.

I like toys

Awaking at 7am on a Saturday morning is not pleasant. At least it made the weekend feel longer. After taking 500 photos of people in Gorilla suits running through London, I headed to the very busy Oxford Circus tube station to meet the world famous Steve Hogarty. We headed down Regent Street to find playlounge, a small, bustling and colourful toy shop that had been begging me to come visit for some time. I love designer toys, but they do make my bank account groan, so I purchased a very sensible total of four toys. One Droplet by Crazy Label and three Cactus Pups by Tokidoki. See that little grey monkey up there? See his cute face? Well he's also wearing a nappy which multiplies his cuteness by at least tenfold.

My toy buying spree did not end there. That evening I went to Doc18's Toy Boot Sale Blog and bought one of his Gloomy Dunnys, it will look especially nice with the three small gatchapon Gloomys sitting on my desk at work. Today I ordered Nendoroid Yoko and Danboard Amazon Box from Amazon Japan which should be waiting for me when I arrive in Tokyo later this week.

Oh yes, Tokyo, I forgot to tell you. I'm attending a wedding and will be in Tokyo for 10 days. I'm hoping to stop by Book Off in Tama, the Pokemon Center in Hamamatsuchō, some Otaku toy stores and the fabled Super Potato in Akihabara and of course stop by my favourite Curry Udon place in Shibuya. I'll hope to blog at least once while I'm out there but knowing me I'll be too busy catching up on my sleep.

I didn't expect to write this much, I only wanted to show you the photo of my new toys. Oh well, makes up for the months of silence on here I suppose.

Sighted

Me and my cat (and my brother)

Something is squeezing my skull

Click to make it bigger...

MY JOURNAL

Life is short. Who can tell me I can't have what I want?

Turning 21

I'm now an official adult now that I am 21 years of age. I threw a small party the weekend after my birthday to celebrate. The theme - Pirates. With an eBay Jack Sparrow costume, some fake tan and a real beard I think I pulled off a pretty convincing pirate.

New set of wheels

Enjoi Foster Whales 7.7" Deck

Royal Evolution Raw Trucks

Flip Sidecuts Pink 53mm Wheels

Bones Reds Bearings

Zoo York Bolts

Mob Griptape

Dinner from last night

So busy

I'm sorry blog, I have neglected you. Truth is I haven't had much time to write about things recently but you can sure expect an update about my travels to Japan. I leave next week, Yen at the ready.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll post a blog every couple of days while I'm out there. We'll see...

Watchmans

Waiting outside the restrooms of the Odeon, Guildford, I overheard a phone conversation:

"...we're at the Guildford Odeon. We're seeing Watchmans, or something or other. It's about...something or other..."

The film the lady was referring to, was Watchmen. Directed by Zack Snyder and based on the 80s comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. I heard of Watchmen completely through word of mouth, or be that, word of podcast. I've been known to overwhelm myself with hours of video game and 'geek culture' podcasts each week and it's only natural that Watchmen would be brought up in conversation with its pending cinema release. I'm usually quite susceptible when it comes to things like this so when I came across the comic book conveniently placed (for the consumer within me) in HMV I picked up a copy. That was last weekend, I finished reading Friday morning and that afternoon I went to see the movie.

The first twenty minutes of the movie were strangely emotional. Seeing the characters I had earlier seen in ink on paper, moving as living, breathing, real people on a huge cinema screen was oddly exciting. I thought this quite strange to have such a feeling, especially since I had watched the trailers for this movie over and over. It's when the story really started to kick in that I found myself slightly pulled out of that experience however.

It's hard to judge a movie that's so closely based on a book, especially one that I had finished reading a few hours before. I knew the plot, I knew each scene, so it was hard to tell if the movie was good or not straight away. There were some changes made to the movie, of course I expected changes for a motion picture, but the violent and gratuitous nature of them seemed less meaningful than in the comic book. The ending was changed, which was probably a wise decision considering the far-fetched nature of the turn of events in the comic book. I think this much better suited the big screen.

I've had a few days to think about it now and I think Watchmen is a great movie. The actor playing Rorschach put on a particularly pleasing performance and the recreation of the Watchmen universe created by Moore and Gibbons over twenty years ago was faithful and highly enjoyable. I would normally recommend reading the source material before seeing a film adaption, but in this case I don't deem it entirely necessary. I think a fresh perspective on the Watchmen movie would be perfectly healthy.

I don't have the authority to give the film a grade or score. Instead, I give you my estimated dong to boob ratio of 10:1

Skate history blog delayed

I give you this for the time being

So about that skateboarding blog...

My absence from this blog is soul crushing, I know. I'm working on a post at the moment: my skateboarding history, although it's taking far longer to write than I had thought so it will probably be the weekend by the time I actually finish. Until then, I give you my possible future set-up. I'm going to buy a new skateboard when I get back from Japan and this is what I've decided on so far:

Someone has been watching Jerry Hsu videos right? I liked those trucks instantly, before I had even heard of Hsu, gotta get a deck to match right? Not sure which bearings I'm going to go with. Budget is £20, thinking Bones Reds or something... any suggestions? I will try post my skateboarding history sometime this weekend. Until then, over and out.