what rough beast…

so the bastard started his next project.

the Dom is proving to be strikingly easy to build thusfar.

which means I'll have more time to think about paint.

paint that I've already discovered comes out of corian when you use a standard cleaner.

whoops

—the bastard

…on gunpla

the bastard has taken to doing his builds slowly these days.

take this real grade I finished building this week.

I've been really savoring taking my time on these things.

even though sometimes its actually due to circumstances beyond my control, I like to know something small is waiting for me when some quiet time happens.

took me 4 months to complete this one. took me almost a year to build the last one.

I think the Dom I got for Christmas will eat some time too.

ridiculous hobbies are ridiculous.

—the bastard

this weak in anime

the bastard

frikkin' loves

gundam unicorn!

never have i followed a series that takes so long to produce. 

never have i followed a series that continues to deliver the goods.

and never will a series leave me waiting around with baited breath for the next installment.

the bastard will be sad when it's done

—the bastard

assertions…

as defined by wikipedia, 'gunpla' can be best described as 'the practice of building Gundam models, rather than the models themselves.'

this is what the bastard foes with his spare time.

I'm sure if people hung around with me, my hobby would be hanging around with people.

but people don't hang around me so I build robots and hang around them.

in my last place, I had no room for the robots and even less so when we were selling the apartment.

you know because people get frightened when they go apartment hunting and find otaku in the place.

it just stinks up the joint.

lately the wife allotted me some space for my gunpla so I've been mucking about building some models.

I started one before we moved out and finished it tonight. he's a companion piece to one I had built a year ago in my office.

what?!? I wanted to unwind during my lunch hour.

anyway, I realize that could never properly display any large number of my collection as they number in the over 75 category and are in various states of repair.

I may do a rotating exhibition given the chance but until that day arrives the bastard is content to use the space allotted for whatever.




besides, I have a new one to start on whenever I get started on it.

not to mention whatever I'll inevitably pick up at comic con this year.

shit. I have to find my flip camera for that.


—the bastard

the bastard TOTALLY needs to get back to the gunpla

tonight the bastard dug up a freebie he got when he picked up a copy of dengeki magazine.

1/810 ideon model that isn't all that challenging.

the bastard is just trying to make space.

I may be winding up black f91 after the boy goes home next week so I can deal with his absence.

until it becomes my norm again.

but I had done a little business with the builder last week and he had something for me to build.

something for the boy to build.

something for me. a match for my real grade.

getting a free model totally takes the sting out of pro Bono work for good friends.

and while I could use some pay work, I like doing the work anyway.

stretches the brain once in a bit.

that and the robots. I've been building for damn near 30 years and I have yet to learn ANY Japanese yet.

I should.

I'd like to go there one day.

I'd like to ride across the country too on a motorcycle.

see if I can get either done.

until then… it's gunpla

—the bastard

this weak in anime...

watched episode 3 of gundam unicorn.

these things air once every 3-4 months and each one is a masterpiece of animation.

i saw some fantastic death scenes in this one. 

top ten list death scenes worthy.

i'll write that down one day.

along with my top 5 steaks.

and top 10 mistakes i made in my life.

—the bastard

…the white ogre

the bastard actually started working on the ogre a few weeks ago after my bout with the 1/144 real grade.

aside from putting the hands together, this won't be too too hard to build.

however it's the paint job that'll be the challenge.

but the bastard is confident that between a screw, a candle, and a bachelors in fine art, he can figure out how to make this thing look like it's been though the ringer.

—the bastard

…on the beast

so the bastard has come into some robots.

this is through an ongoing job I'm doing for the builder.

which reminds him, I have to learn more about web.

I've never been much of a reader. I've been more of a doer. it's a terrible personal failing I know so I may very well just get a damn book anyway.

but I digress.

I came across these models from the builder and he threw in the latest model as a bonus. it's called real grade.

it's 1/144 sized, which makes it approximately 6 inches tall at completion but it has more parts than most 12 inch master grades.

it is supposed to be representative of a realistic robot in the gundam ethos but I think it was essentially designed my a crew of sadists over at whatever company designs gundam models.

sadists! no one with hands like mine needs to be building something so small and so intricate.

three hours across two evenings to build two feet and part of a leg.

8 more to finish both legs and the torso.

alternating plates of white and off white for added realism.

it's awful.

but it's fun.

and so I'm a masochist.

oh well,

sure beats a sharp stick in the eye.

—the bastard

this weak in anime

only you can prevent fansubs.

only you.

—the bastard

more things the bastard bought at a Japanese big box store

for your consideration…






…ultraman lemonade

the bastard bought this because it looked like a robot. the builder told me what it's contents were.

I will leave all urine related discussion about the contents of this can of lemonade to the mad Russian.

because it's a goddam gimme.

—the bastard

…on new builds

the bastard has stupid hobbies.

he plays in traffic.

kicks old ladies.

robs liquor stores.

and he builds robots.

aren't you happy you asked?

i put together a logo for the builder's website and he's paying me in robots

I look at it like this,

at best, when I'm done, I've done 250-300 dollars work in the short run and a poor bastard like me can't pay much in the way of bills on that.

but,

building 250-300 dollars of robots can at least entertain me through this crap economy .

now if only there wasn't misprints in the all Japanese directions.

oh well

go to hell.

—the bastard

…on traveling without moving

I have this old friend.

and he's indirectly responsible for every this weak in anime installment the bastard has ever put on this blog.

because he's part and parcel responsible for getting me into anime,

and building models,

and eating something else with noodles that isn't fucking spaghetti.

anyways,

I'm doing a job for him, the builder and he invited me out for noodles yesterday to discuss business and visit a little pocket of japan that is across the river in edgewater new jersey.

and the ramen was rock solid.

and it was PACKED with Japanese people there just to buy shit for their house.

you wanna make sushi?

go down aisle 5 and get a frikkin brick of tuna.

want some noodles for yer home?

we got three aisle of what you're looking for.

it's essentially a big box store of Japanese things for you the consumer.

and there was a fair going on in the parking lot too, so there was no shortage of people in traditional garb and one or two gothic lolitas or Asian guys in pompadors.

did I mention the ramen was good?

—the bastard

…and now the circle is complete

now the boy has caught the bastard's robot problem from him.

because robots are strong.

and once they get their metal claws on you,

there's no breaking free

—the bastard

this weak in anime

...special best lucky hopeful edition


this afternoon i was watching a little anime on my lunch hour.

and the trustie had told me about this series heroman that was going to be airing this spring brought to us by bones studio.

bones has brought the bastard via the internets two series i really enjoyed called resperctively eureka seven which has one of my top 5 greatest moments in anime (television really) and xam'd lost memories.

i'm currently watching soul eater which is proving to be worth my while and goes well with a glass of bourbon during the bastard's evening downtime.


now the kicker is this. stan lee was working with bones on this deries and it SO has his markings on it.

nerdy kid gets powers (or perhaps the giant robo idea of a boy and his robot).

girl likes nerd.

girls jock brother beats up on nerdy kid.

with great power comes great responsibility.

sound familiar?


oh and it also has stan lee's famous cameo in it.

did i mention a boy and his robot.

either way, this is some hopeful, feel good shit. it's kind of innocent as well.

i had an awful experience last summer watching last exile with my son, as there was so many key characters surrounded by death and violence that the boy had begun to worry about his own mortality.

this is something i can show him and walk away feeling good that i can impart my love of anime on my son without giving him a complex about death.

good stuff.

—the bastard

...on otakuology part two

...oldies but goodies.


this isn't the first model i ever built.

the first one i ever built was the title character of the mobile suit gundam series.

and he looked like this.

only dirty and covered with sawdust because i worked in my parents unfinished basement on models when i was a boy.

i used some old assed testors paint which went on like spackle but, it was what i could afford on a junior high school kid's salary.

and it was before i found a store in my neighborhood that carried better paints.

the unfortunate thing with gundam was this. it was my first piece and i had never put anything together but WW II airplanes (my brother and my dad worked on this b-29 in the living room and i helped by, gluing the propellors on wrong) and i globbed the paint on,

and got my fingerprints all over it,

and glue,

and crap.

so it never looked good but, i loved it and played all the time with it. because it was a robot too and that was cool when i was 11. when i was older, i tried to fix the paint on it but using thinner and it destroyrd the plastic. and i was sad about it. but i was a teenager by then so, i wasn't that sad about it.

i think that when you're older, you lament lost things from your past more than you did at the time of loss because it is only when you're older that you realize the permanence of things lost. like innocence, you'll never get it back.

and that stings.

later on during junior high, ray and i would order from a place in massachusetts called the cosmic connection, which is long gone.

and

ray and i ordered this 1/144 of full armor gundam, which didn't appear in TOS. it was more of a suit from a manga side story.

SIDEBAR: mobile suit gundam has been putting out manga about the tv shows mythos as long as they have been putting together tv series. in fact unicorn gundam which will be airing in 6 episodes over the next year or came from manga. what is manga you ask? boy, did you come to the wrong place shiteyes.

anyway, cosmic was carrying this suit and ray and i bought two. it was kind of like book of the month club, with robots. that said, it's the earliest living example of stuff i did. i have older kits that i did later. some of which are 30 years old but, i didn't buy them until later on in life.

i wonder if aside from enriching my time on this ball, if this crap does nothing more than collect dust. most of them have collect cigarette tar as well. it's a dirty business

—the bastard

...on otakuology part one:

a return to geekery: den'an zon and vigna ghina


when the bastard had gotten out of college in 1993, he was still working at a grocery store that he was exiled to in early 1992 as the management was trying to push every decent paid part timer into quitting by sending them to inconvenient places. robbo was the smarter of us when he told management to fuck off. the bastard had decided to ride out his exile until the end of college. by the summer of 1994, he was still there. now truth to tell. in the time i was working at store 5 in forest hills, i made the place my own and used it as the jump off for many drunken escapades when i had a car to get me there and back.

QUICK SIDEBAR: i used to drive a 1974 ford maverick. it was quit when i bought it off of dean thriller in early 1992 for 200 bucks and by the time graduation was coming around, the maverick was falling apart. i mean it ran. their ain't a thing on god's green earth that can kill a straight 6 engine in my book. it's just that my old blue shit box that belonged to a murdered cop and that i kept a beer tap on the shifter of was rotting around that straight 6. by april of 1993 before my graduation from college, the maverick was starting to smoke and i grew weary of changing out the valve cover gasket on the engine and the driver side fender was starting to curl up like a piece of parchment and i made a deal with her.

"hey jerk, get me through the end of college and i'll give ya a respectable burial."
the maverick agreed as it didn't expire until june 30th of 1993. we took the old girl up to roy rogers one last time before i took her to the junk yeard, got a bucket of fried chicken and all the way back to the house, we tore everything we could out of her and threw it out the windows. seat covers and dash items and whatever we could. i kept the beer tap though.


anyway, by the fall of 1993, i had lost all hope from the transit grind of coming up from queens village to go to this fresh hell everyday but i always walked by this comic shop that is gone now called little nemos.

by and large i would pop by to pick up an issue of heavy metal to the bus ride home but one day, i saw in the corner boxes that reminded me of my past.

and it was here where i found den'an zon, vigna ghina, and berga dalas.


these three were from a series called gundam f91. which is a sequel series from the franchise known as mobile suit gundam which i've been watching on and off since about 1980. when i moved out of my parent's house in 1996, i put all of these pieces of my geeky past in a box with bubblewrap and they sat forgotten in the rafters of my parents garage along with 40 other models i built since i was 12.

but i dug them out.

and i've been restoring them. these are the first, i cleaned up. actually, i worked on three in the last two days but berga dalas has suffered some damage in the last 14 years and will require some extra work but these came out of storage relatively unscathed. so i cleaned them up and started detailing them.

i have a bunch more, and i'll put them up from time to time but just so you know, these were the first i built after a long hiatus in which i wanted to not be into anime and building. where i preferred to be the guy my people went to when they wanted me to sneak them into bars underage. not the guy with an art degree who couldn't find a job so he kept on working at a crappy grocery store until he was sick of it and kept going back. these little trinkets helped me out one awful fall into winter where i had no where to go but up. seems silly? fuck you.

—the bastard

PS: if there's a story, i'll tell it

...on digging

now the bastard has had a talk with you about his robot problem before.

but I decided to spend this weekend playing archaeologist.

or in this case otakuologist.

dinner was at my parents om Saturday and like any good son, the bastard has left the vast multitude of his worldy possessions scattered across queens for the CIA to find them.

but,

we had discussed the robot problem over appetizers of cured meats and cans of bitburget courtesy of the mofo.

and my mother had told me that she knows they are in the garage but she knew not where.

so I went out there with a frosty can in hand.

QUICK SIDEBAR: now the mofo came over with an 8 pack in his arm of this fine fine brew on Saturday and while the bastard had drank it recently in the esteemed company of the chairman along with free brats, I was quite pleased that you can buy one pint cans. in 8 packs.

anyway, I went up into the rafters of my garage to investigate, and in a box that was conveniently marked "models", were my models.

well preserved

in bubblewrap

I never remembered ever being so diligent about anything.

the box reeked of gasoline

and the paint jobs were the paint jobs of a 12 year old.

so, I made a decision. I was going to restore them all.

it must be 30 of them.

and I may document them for lack of better material.

so there.

—the bastard