poke it with a stick. odds and ends

burn, baby, burn

2010-02-22T17:48:00.001-08:00

many years a go my car was broken in to and the bad guys took off with my cd case. i had about two hundred cds in there and i was pissed! since it happened at my parents house while i was in town, their insurance company actually covered the theft. unfortunately, they only paid pack a buck or two per cd, so there was no way i was going to be able to replace the whole collection. instead i used the money that i got for the insurance and got this cd burner instead! i figured that i shouldnt feel bad about burning a cd since i had already payed for it, right? i was a good boy and only burned the cds that i had already purchased, that way i wasnt doing anthing illegal. i already had a computer but this was before every computer came with a cd burner built in, so the only way to burn cds was through this external burner. it worked pretty well and served its purpose, but i have long since gotten rid of the apple computer it was purchased for and have since gotten a computer with a burner built in, so this thing is no longer useful. thanks for helping replace my cds, though! it was actually pretty easy to find almost all my cds, i just went around to every room in the dorm and asked my fellow college students if i could borrow their cd for a little while! the one disc that i was never able to find though, was david bowie's 'hours'. any help?

heroes in a half shell

2009-12-02T18:16:00.000-08:00

over the years i have collected many toys, and sold almost as many in garage sales. some how the immediate cash flow was worth getting rid of so many toys that made me so happy. i used to have tons and tons of teenage mutant ninja turtles stuff! i had dozens of figures, i even had a really cool pizza shooter tank thingy! over time all of them have gone the way of the bargain bin garage sale. all except the original turtles themselves. i could never quite convince myself to give up these originals. and now, i'm glad i never did!
i spent so much time playing with these guys. if i wasnt playing with them, i was using my imagination pretending to be them! leonardo was always my favorite- he had two swords, after all!

alan jackson concert bill

2009-12-02T17:59:00.000-08:00

growing up we used to listen to country. i would say that my parents forced us to, but i really liked it! papa and i always had our favorites (papa was actually my favorite, so i just liked whatever he liked...), and one of those favorites was alan jackson. when we were at the hight of our country music loving days, alan jackson actually came to michigan to play a concert. he was about as popular as elvis, so he was filling up the palace in detroit. thats where the pistons play, it can hold 23,000 people, and i think this particular show was actually sold out! we went with my cousin and best friend at the time jeff, along with papa's best friend at the time, my uncle ted. the drive down was miserable- it was one of the worst snowstorms in years, and we were on a long trip going straight through it! it took about twice as long as it was supposed to to get there, but we arrived on time and were ready for some concert fun! i dont think i had ever gone to a real concert before, so i was pumped. we got to our seats and my dad was angry- we had seats in the upper deck, near the back. he thought the seats were terrible, we actually had to use binoculars (which he had brought) in order to see alan very well. i didnt give that a second thought, i just figured this is how concerts are supposed to be. jeff and i had a blast, we sang along with all the songs and took turns using the binoculars. we had an amazing time, i dont think i stopped talking about the fun of that concert for two weeks after we went!

car pens

2009-12-02T17:54:00.000-08:00

these came in a wendy's kids meal. they are just pens with caps in the shape of cars. i remember getting them and thinking 'aw, how lame- its not even from a movie or anything!', but then it turned out that they were tons of fun! the wheels on the cars actually turned better than some matchbox cars i've had! i loved the fact that i had two of them, that way i could always play with them like they were in a race or something. i would always imagine while i played with them that they were really fast cars, but when the caps came off, then they could turn into 'turbo' cars that could rocket into the air and could fly. ah, the imagination of youth!

tube light

2009-03-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

this thing is kind of strange. its a desk light, but when closed you can't really tell what it is, it just looks like a white tube. i dont remember where i got it from originally, but i always thought it was kind of cool. i thought it was something i had in my dorm room in college and it seemed like somehting i would have gotten when rex and i lived together. we always

seemed to accumulate the strangest things! my one faint memory of this item lead me to give it to rex instead of just throwing it away.

when i gave it to him he didn't recognize it though. oops! i guess my vague memory of it is actually wrong. oh well, he liked it and took it anyway.

old time

2009-03-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

i got this clock as a gift from someone who meant a lot to me. when i used to live in utah i had it sitting out on a shelf in the living room. one day i came home and saw in the trash with the face broken off. i never asked sean what happened, but i assume he or rachael bumped it and it fell and broke. they figured it did was broken, so they threw it away. i got it working again, but had to set the faceplate on it because it wouldnt go back on right. since then it died for good, but i've still been holding on to it. i guess there is some deeper meaning there about the person who gave it to me... finally i did what i should have done all those years ago: i returned it to the trash and left it there.

buzz

2009-02-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

when the simpsons movie came out there were a ton of cool movie tie ins at 7-eleven, among them was a six pack of buzz cola. i didn't open them up when i got them to see what it tasted like, i was hoping to hold on to them as a collectors item. unfortunately, one of the cans had a different idea. one of the cans sprung a leak or something, because all the stuff that it had been sitting on were now sticky. in the trash with you, buzz cola!

pack man

2009-02-15T08:11:00.001-08:00

i got this when i was pretty little from a flea market. i am not really sure why i got it, but its probably just because it has pac-man on it. its a small toy backpack (about three inches tall). i used to love filling it with stuff and then strapping it on to my big action figures and pretending they were going on a hike.

drumsticks

2009-02-15T08:04:00.000-08:00

i always love to go to concerts, and i've been to quite a few. for some reason i often seem to leave with one memento of the event: a drum stick. i don't intend to get one from a show, but they always seem to come my way. one of them is from a newsboys show my friends and i went to back in high school, another is from the band stavesacre when my cousins and i went to see them at an old club in grand rapids that used to be called 'the underground'. i got a third one when i went to see mxpx in minnisota when i was in college. i cant remember where the fourth one came from, but i'm sure it was thrown in my direction during one of the other shows i've been to. its almost like i'm a drumstick magnet or something...

africa

2009-02-15T07:58:00.000-08:00

in college i was in charge of a dorm building. one of the RAs who i worked with was a guy named OT. he was from kenya originally. one time during the year his mom and sister came to visit him, it was the first time they had ever come to america. they came and checked out the campus and really loved it. they also brought gifts for some of his friends. they gave me this wall hanging of traditional african art.

driver license

2009-02-15T05:59:00.000-08:00

ah, my first license! what a chubby looking kid, huh? if you are wondering, thats why i choose to have facial hair...
i remember the day i turned 16. my cousin jeff and i made a promise months before: when we each turn 16 we would go out to eat at damon's together (damon's isn't around anymore, but it was like a bw3 with really great ribs). so when i turned 16 we hopped in my cutlass sierra and hit the road! we had the blackhawk cd blasting (we were both into country music at the time, for some reason i can't recall). we drove out from sandy pines to damon's and had our first night out driving without any parents! good times. jeff, staying true to his word, picked me up about 8 months later when he got his license and we feasted again.

olympic pins

2009-01-24T16:28:00.000-08:00

i was living in salt lake city in 2002 when the winter olympics were there, and boy was it amazing! one of the most unusual and unexpected parts of the olympic craziness was the olympic pins. i had no idea that there were so many people obsessed with collecting pins from the olympics! all around the city there were thousands of little shops and flea market type areas where people would trade and sell little pins that in some way were olympic related. i actually came across many people who said that they traveled from all over the world to be there. not for the games, but for the pins! they had pins for everything- from actual stuff related to the olympics, to stuff that had nothing to do with the olympics. i remember seeing a pin that was just an image of green jello with the olympic logo on it- and everyone wanted one! even my school produced a couple of them. what did our school have to do with the olympics? nothing! but we got pins anyway!
it was truly strange to be among so many people with such a strange obsession.

chop suey

2009-01-24T16:23:00.000-08:00

my friend from college, trixi, loved china. she went there at one point during college and loved it! after we graduated she ended up moving and teaching english there. she stayed for several years before returning to the states, but i think part of her heart is still over there...
anyway, after coming back once she gave me these authentic chop sticks. i have actually used them on many occasions- the work quite well!

star wars trilogy

2009-01-24T16:13:00.000-08:00

way back in 1994 the local movie theater, studio 28, had a special star wars trilogy showing. this was long before the prequel trilogy came out, long before the rerelease of the three movies was even imagined. for the 15th anniversary of the original movie, all three were being shown again, back to back! my friends and i were ecstatic! we were really into those movies at the time, and here was a chance to see them all three on the big screen!

it was only fifteen dollars to see all three of them and it came with unlimited pop and popcorn for the day, and one game on their virtual reality machines- now thats what i call a deal!!! it was really fun to spend the entire day at the theater with the guys, and the virtual reality game was so cutting edge at the time! it had a helmet that you put on and you could look around and see a really simple landscape, we tried to kill the flying dragons before they got us, but i sucked at it, so my game didn't last too long.

bang!

2009-01-19T13:03:00.000-08:00

my dad used to be really in to guns (he has a habit of changing his hobbies quite suddenly). he had an ever rotating collection of riffles and handguns. we would often go out to the shooting range and fire off some bullets for an afternoon. instead of buying new bullets each time, my dad got into loading his own. he had some really strange gizmos that he set up, and with the simple pulling of a lever, you could take a shell insert a primer, put a measured amount of gunpowder in it, and then seal it all up with a bullet! i remember spending many hours downstairs putting the used shells in the cleaner, filling up the powder container, pouring primers into its canisters, and loading up the shells. it was a really fun time because it was something my dad really enjoyed and we could participate in the making of the bullets (and shooting them, of course!).
now that i think about it, maybe his sudden changing of hobbies away from guns was so unexpected. i think it was right after the time we went out to the range and i shot my leg...

go team!

2009-01-19T12:59:00.000-08:00

back when i used to hang out with scott and rachel a lot, scott gave me this. why? i couldn't tell ya. i'm not even sure what school that is from. my guess would be arizona state university, but that's just because i know his sister lives in arizona. i don't collect shot glasses at all, and i'm pretty sure scott knew that, but he gave it to me anyway. well thanks, i guess...

holocaust museum

2009-01-19T12:49:00.000-08:00

in high school i went on a trip to washington d.c. while there we went to the holocaust museum, which was fairly new back then. it's a museum dedicated to sharing the stories of the holocaust victims and survivors. it was a very moving visit, and included a bunch of interesting information on what happened. what sticks with me the most was the display of hitler's plans for holding the olympics in germany and showing the domination of the aryan race. one shocking picture that i remember vividly from that trip was a photo of a huge pile of shoes that were taken from every jew who was entered into the prison camps.

this was a little 'identification card' that shared the story of an individual who did not survive the concentration camps.

dordt id

2009-01-19T12:45:00.000-08:00

these are three of my old student id cards from when i was at dordt. we would need them all the time for meals, you just swipe and eat! we would need them sometimes for different school events too, that way we could get the student discount. the one pictured on top was from my freshman year, and boy does it look silly! that was before i started growing my goatee, i'm sure you can understand now why i refuse to shave it off, right? for some reason i never got a picture retaken for the following years, so even when i had a huge beard and foot long hair, i still looked like this squeaky clean kid in the yearbook!

congrats grad

2009-01-19T12:42:00.000-08:00

ah yes, the ol' graduation cap. one of those things that can only be worn once and if you try and wear it at any other time you are considered a freak. who thought of these things, really? a square piece of cardboard on top of your head? really?!? this one is from when i graduated from high school. maybe i should wear it out in public...

world cup

2009-01-19T12:15:00.000-08:00

another random keychain (shoot, i thought i had gotten through all those a while ago...). this one is commemorating the world cup in korea and was another gift from one of my korean students when i used to teach in salt lake city.

good hair

2009-01-19T12:10:00.000-08:00

this was another art piece i made for sculpture class. i had long hair at the time, which always influences how i would draw other people's hair. i must have subconsiously been influenced by a couple musicians, because this thing looks like a mix between michael jackson and 70's era bowie...

open wide

2009-01-19T12:06:00.001-08:00

in college i earned a degree in art. for my art classes i would often have to make different pieces. in sculpture class we were given an assignment to create a face. i was going through a phase in my drawings where i would always draw people yelling, and this is the sculptural rendering of those screams. its quite strange, but i rather like it

pins

2009-01-19T12:01:00.000-08:00

each year my friends and i go to the comic book convention in chicago (i think i've been to seven or so of them by now). at the different booths they always give out free stuff, sometimes its posters or postcards, and sometimes its pins. here are a bunch of the different pins i've accumulated over the years i've gone. sometimes the pins are pretty cool, like the spawn one or the 'iron giant' one, other times they are really lame, like the potato saying 'ow, my eye!'... i never did figure out anything to do with them.

roar

2009-01-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

when i was in fifth or sixth grade my parents took us to chicago for the weekend. it seemed like so far away back then, like a different world. one of the places we went was the museum of natural history. always looking for a souvenir, i spotted a strange machine that would make plastic moldings of a dinosaur. just slip in a dollar and you could see it pour and squeeze the plastic into the shape of a t. rex! my dad and i thought this was quite cool!

change is good

2009-01-11T13:28:00.000-08:00

my grandpa always loved to give us stuff. one of the things he always got for us was a mint set of coins. each year he would have the newly minted set of u.s. coins for us to collect. i have about 8 or 9 sets. i'm not a coin collector (neither was he, which makes the annual gift kind of unusual), but i think these sets are really cool!

icons

2009-01-11T13:23:00.000-08:00

back when i used to teach art in utah i came across this packet of 24 icon pictures of the life of christ. they were taken from different events in his life and illustrated in a pre-renaissance style of art. to me, they looked kind of lame. one of the assignments i gave to my students was to reimagine one of the images and draw it in a different way. it was a pretty cool assignment that got the kids thinking about art, interpretation, and christ. not too bad!

my card

2009-01-11T13:19:00.000-08:00

when i was growing up my dad's job was always a mystery to me. he would try and explain it, but i never quite got it. he works at steelcase, an office furniture company. that part i understood. he didn't work on any of the machines, or put anything together, so i didn't understand what he did. once he gave me this business card and i thought it was so cool- now i know what he does! he was a training consultant for operator certification and training for the seating business unit. so, what exactly is that?!?

gift tag

2009-01-11T13:14:00.000-08:00

my brother chad has always been known for his terrible present wrapping at christmas. it started off as him just being bad at it, but it turned into him intentionally wrapping them terribly. one christmas he put tags on his presents, but didnt bother to write words on them, just a squiggle. i'm not sure how this helped him figure out who's gift was who's, but he always got it right! the best gift he gave was one year he wrapped up a box of my mom, she opened it up and it was empty except for a little slip of paper that said 'you gits nuffin!' after the uproarious laughter died down, he explained that he ordered her something online, it just hadn't arrived yet.

buck knife

2009-01-11T13:09:00.001-08:00

growing up every summer at the sandy pines camping resort was always a lot of fun. for a while there my uncle and aunt had a place out there too. my cousin jeff and i would always hang out together. once a month they had a flea market out there. jeff and i always loved to go and check it out. i would want to stop and check out the booths with movies or comics, and he liked to check out the booths with sports stuff or ball caps. there were always the random junk booths too, which we both loved to ruffle through. for some reason we were both obsessed with knives (like most middle school boys...), so when ever we would come across one we would want to get it. this one was a heavy silver knife with a silver sheath that had a buck on it. he and i both gazed at it longingly. we pooled our money together and bought it! i'm not entirely sure why i ended up with it other than the fact that i was a pretty bossy kid, and jeff was a bit of a pushover...

tapes

2009-01-11T12:37:00.000-08:00

ah, got to love outdated technology, huh? back in the day tapes were the cutting edge, there was no such thing as a cd or mp3s back then. this is a collection of different kinds of tapes, one is a cassette single, which bands used to release, it had their single on one side, and then the b side had another song from their album or an unreleased song. they used to sell them for fifty cents or a dollar at the music store. another one of the cassettes here is a mixtape. i remember many hours being spent making assorted mixtapes. some were compilations from other cds, some had songs taped right from the radio, and i even remember recording sound from the tv! i used to record different cartoon theme songs that i liked and wanted to learn the words to, like 'animaniacs', and 'bill and ted's excellent adventures'! another cassette is a mini-tape. i remember my dad used to have a mini-tape recorder for work, and i just thought it was the coolest thing ever! im not entirely sure why i have one, since i havent actually seen a mini-tape player in about 15 years... the last cassette is a professional quality recording tape. this one came from my college days as a radio dj. my friend robb and i used to have a radio show on the campus radio station. one of the times we were supposed to be on we werent going to be able to make it, so we recorded it in advance and just had them play it when our time came up. there was a basketball game the night it was to be broadcast, and i remember robb and i having great fun talking about it as if it were happening when we were recording it. it seemed funny at the time...

backstage pass

2009-01-11T11:04:00.000-08:00

in college a few buddies of mine and i put on a music festival. it was called 'fire & ice' and this was the backstage passes we had for those who were in charge of running it. and featured about 20 bands on two stages, it started around 1:00pm, and went till about 11:00pm. it was a big day, and we were actually able to get a few nationally known artists to come and play. they weren't really big bands, but they were known among the christian college scene. the headliners were all star united, along with silage, rich young ruler, everybody duck, eric champion, common children, and the normals. there were a bunch of other bands who were local to the area, or just local to the college. it was a really great time and an amazing show. as one of the people behind the festival, i got to spend some time with the different bands. almost all of them were really cool with only one or two exceptions *cough* all star united *cough*. the best part, by far though, was hearing and getting to know the band 'the normals'. they were amazing, and went on to put out two more incredible albums. their lead singer, andrew osenga, is still making some truly moving music. it was a ton of work and took a lot of time to set up, but it was all worth it just to meet the guys from the normals!

ooooooh!

2009-01-10T07:12:00.000-08:00

back when i worked at the family fare grocery store, i was good friends with mike, the guy who worked in the general merch department. he was in charge of all the beauty products, and a ton of other odds and ends in the store. he was also the guy who would order any movies that the store would carry. sometimes he would get a cool cardboard display that went with them. when toy story came out on tape, there was an awesome display case that it came with, it had little cardboard cutouts of all the different characters from the movie. i asked him if i could have it after all the movies were sold, and he said sure. i brought the whole thing home and set it up in my bedroom (much to the disgust of my mom...). i had it up for a few weeks, but it was just too big, so i threw it out. but i did keep this one little cutout of my favorite character- the alien!

who watches the watches?

2009-01-10T07:07:00.000-08:00

i am, by nature, a collector. one thing that i collected, for a short time, was watches. i've had a ton of them over the years, and here are some of the most memorable, everything from mickey to star trek! most of them i never wore, but i still loved to collect them.

i am the pumpkin king!

2009-01-10T06:57:00.000-08:00

one of my absolutely favorite movies growing up was 'nightmare before christmas'. i would watch it all the time, i had the soundtrack and can still sing along with all the words, and have seen it in the theater 4 times (twice in the past couple years when it is rereleased each season in 3-D). the movie is just so much fun!
back when it first came out, burger king did a promotional deal with the film and sold these cool watches. i loved this one so much that i made sure to keep its original box and packaging! its even still got the bubble wrap it came with...

tickle. amy.

2009-01-10T06:43:00.000-08:00

sometimes bad movies can be good. case in point: congo. the movie is really lame, its about a gorilla who talks through sign language being returned to the wild where they come across a lost city that is defended by killer silver monkeys. its even worse than it sounds, if that is possible...
but on the other hand, its soo good!!! and at the time it came out i was pretty young and had recently read and loved the book. the film is nowhere near as good as the book, but i totally loved it anyway! i saw it twice in the theater and even dragged my dad along once (sorry dad...). in connection with the film release, burger king was selling watches based on the movie. i'm always a sucker for movie merch, so i had to get it. again, i'm pretty sure i never wore it, but it was proudly displayed on the wall of my bedroom. how my mom allowed me to put so much junk up on the walls i'll never know...

lost time

2008-12-15T18:36:00.000-08:00

back in the day burger king used to sell watches that were tied into movie promotions. at the time i was really into watches, so i picked one up almost every time they offered them. this particular one was for the movie 'jurassic park: the lost world'. the 'special feature' of this watch was that the face was filled with water and had dino bones floating around in it. wow, quite special! about as lame as the movie itself... i dont think i ever wore it, but i did display it in my room with the rest of my watch collection.

mickey watches

2008-12-15T18:31:00.000-08:00

my dad has always loved watches. slowly but surely i grew to enjoy them as well, but i had to be convinced of their coolness. what finally convinced me? mickey mouse. for a long time i would only wear mickey watches, so i accrued quite a collection of them. these four are the only remaining ones that i have. each of them were worn for quite a while- the one on the left even played 'its a small world after all'!
i guess my fascination didnt last very long, because i havent worn a watch, even a mickey one, in about 8 years...

boldly go

2008-12-06T05:13:00.000-08:00

now, i must admit something: i was a trekkie. when i was growing up i really loved star trek. my dad enjoyed it, so he would watch it every once in a while, and my friend adam and i were really into it. we actually attended a star trek convention. actually, two of them.
one year my parents surprised me with this watch, they had gotten it out of a catalog, special order! it kept the time, and the seconds were counted out by an enterprise flying around the face of the watch! oh, and the best part: it had a button you could press and it would play the original star trek tv theme! i wore it often.
sorry to break hearts ladies, but i am off the market...

roger, roger.

2008-12-06T05:06:00.000-08:00

another thing i collected for a while was watches. this particular one a couple friends and i spotted at the mall and thought it was terribly stupid. its from star wars: the phantom menace, and its the head of a droid. you push a little button at the bottom and the droid head pops up to reveal the time. there were a couple other ones as well, all of them equally retarded. we saw them and laughed about how dumb they were. then we saw that they were price reduced and we laughed again- 'they're so lame, no one would buy them!' we had such fun mocking them that we realized that we would, in fact, have to buy them! they were only like a buck fifty, so we each got them and wore them for the rest of the day, laughing hysterically every time we would ask each other what time it was.

fire and ice commerical

2008-12-06T04:52:00.000-08:00

back in college a buddy of mine, joe, and i organized a music festival. strange, i know, but we were involved in the campus radio club, and that lead us to get involved with some strange things... well, we had originally created it to be an event to just get a couple campus bands to play, but it kind of snowballed into a full-out 12 hour festival which included a dozen bands, some of which were on a national tour and stopped by Dordt to perform. our festival was called 'fire and ice', and among the bands that performed were endorphine, the normals (with lead singer andrew osenga), silage, rich young ruler, eric champion, and many more.
at the local radio station they were willing to play a commercial we cut for the music festival. this strange looking thing is an old school loop cartridge. you could pop this thing into the machine and it would run its 30 second spot, and it wouldnt have to be rewound for the next play.

audio a

2008-12-06T04:39:00.000-08:00

this is a little cardboard cutout of the band audio adrenaline. back in high school i was really in to this band. actually, this was the band that first got me interested in music! up until this point i mostly just listened to what my parents listened to, not really having much interest in finding bands of my own. at the time my parents listened to country music and i would blindly listen to whatever they had on. the only thing i liked on my own was disney animated soundtracks.
a couple of the guys had gone to see audio adrenaline in concert and came back with one of their cds. they were over at my house and popped it in and i instantly fell in love! it was back when their first cd was out and i loved the fact that they had a couple silly songs like 'dc10'. soon after i convinced my mom to buy me the cd, and i followed them for the following 10 years. i got this foot tall cardboard cut-out at one of their concerts. my friends and i went to go see them as often as possible- i think we ended up seeing them six or seven times!
as their sound changed so did i. they went from silly pop to rock to folk, then back to rock. i stuck with them for most of it, but after underdog i lost interest. they were a band that changed its sound ever album, depending on what was popular. after underdog my tastes in music began to branch away from the popular and so we amicably parted ways. since then they have broken up, but i still look back on those concerts and albums and remember how much they impacted my taste in music and impacted me and my friends. good times...

key chain collection

2008-11-10T16:04:00.000-08:00

i am a collector at heart. i have many collections, among them is my collection of key chains. the fun of key chains is that each of them has a story. below i have taken this opportunity to remember each of their stories and share them. all the key chain posts can be found here.

gettysburg

2008-11-10T15:56:00.000-08:00

growing up i always had a keen interest in the civil war. it may have stemmed from the ken burns documentary that was always playing on pbs whenever they did fundraising. every time it was on my dad and i were glued to the screen. over the years my dad and i always talked about going to gettysburg and checking it out, but we soon forgot about it until pbs reminded us each winter.
finally, one summer while i was in college, we did it- we took a four day trip to go see the wonder that is gettysburg! this key chain was purchased at one of the souvenir shops in town. while there we walked the field, took the sightseeing tour, walked cemetery and seminary ridges, scaled little round top, and took it all that there was to see! we were in heaven!!! when we got back from the trip we immediately rewatched the movie gettysburg (which was filmed at the actual battlefield) and kept saying 'oh, we were there!'. i still look back at that trip and remember it as one of the funnest times ive ever had with my dad!

wakko

2008-11-10T15:53:00.000-08:00

this is a key chain of wakko, one of the characters from animaniacs. i used this key chain for many years, until the chain part finally broke off! animaniacs was my absolute favorite show when i was growing up- i would watch it every single day when i got home from school. the guys and i would spend countless hours talking about it and trying to reinact some of the best parts. there are actually a couple bits that i committed to memory and can still recite word for word to this day. 'hoyle! how'd you, with the going...'

film

2008-11-10T15:50:00.000-08:00

another key chain from our trip to clearwater, florida. this one is shaped like a roll of film (film, children, is what we used to use before there was such a thing as digital cameras. strange, huh?) you could pull out the 'film' from the roll and it was filled with photos of nifty touristy stuff from around that area, you know, buildings and bridges and stuff.

bang!

2008-11-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

oh, this one was totally rad! i dont remember where i got this one, but i remember playing with it a lot! its only about two inches long, but the trigger and hammer actually work. i remember going over to my cousin jeff's house, he had one too, and we would go and get caps to put into the gun. what worked best though, were those red rolls that would have little paper bubbles of gun powder. we would tear them off and put them under the hammer and scare people with them all the time! i think my aunt or my mom took them away from us at one point, but we found them and got them back so as to cause more mayhem another day!

eagle rock

2008-11-10T15:42:00.000-08:00

this key chain i got during our family vacation up to the upper peninsula. i must have really dug eagles at the time.

2001

2008-11-10T15:40:00.000-08:00

i dont quite remember where i got this key chain from, but it is a graduation key chain that features a cross and the year that i graduated from dordt college. ah 2001, truly a space odyssey...

peachy

2008-11-10T15:36:00.000-08:00

another key chain i got on the way down to florida. i guess i was just starting out my collection and figured i'd get a key chain from every state i went through. i think i got this one because i thought the southern accent i would hear from gas station workers and waitresses was hilarious, or strange. i have since become much more open minded and understanding, now i realize its hilarious and strange.

spruce goose

2008-11-09T07:15:00.000-08:00

one of the class trips i went on with students while i taught in salt lake city was to the island of catalina in california. it was a great time, we stayed on the island in a learning center campground. we went boating and snorkeling and learned all about different marine biology.
the place where we got on a boat to get to the island is right where the queen mary boat is docked, and the hanger that used to house the infamous spruce goose! the huge wooden plane is gone, but they still have key chains...

license place

2008-11-09T07:13:00.000-08:00

i think i got this one to show my michigan pride, and so i didnt forget my name...

country singers

2008-11-09T07:08:00.000-08:00

when i was growing up my parents listened to country, i was all about it as well. we even went to a couple country concerts. my uncle, cousin, dad and i even went to go see alan jackson at the palace in auburn hills. it was a great time. thats where i got the key chain. the other key chain is of john barry, who i never saw in concert. im guessing my parents or sister did and got that one for me. i dont really listen to country music anymore, but i will say that john barry's rendition of 'oh holy night' is still the very best version i have ever heard.

old kent

2008-11-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

when i got my first car this was the chain that was on the keys. in case you dont know, old kent was a bank chain that used to exist in grand rapids. i know its just a bank, but for some reason i have a sentimental fondness for it. growing up its where my parents would bank. i have many memories of going over to that bank with my mom, she depositing checks, or going through the drive-thru and getting a sucker. and memories of counting coins with my dad on the counter and rolling them up. he and i would then drive over to the bank in his rusted out green truck (which always smelled of leather work gloves), and bringing in fistfulls of rolled change. ahh, im wistful just thinking about it... darn you fifth third for buying them out and relegating my beautiful memories of youth to the past!

world cup

2008-11-09T06:57:00.000-08:00

here is another gift from my korean students from when i taught in salt lake city. all of them were really in to soccer, especially because the world cup was in korea and japan that year! one of my students, juno, actually flew back home for a weekend because his dad had tickets to one of the games. he brought back this key chain for me.

penny

2008-11-09T06:55:00.000-08:00

good thing i got me this lucky penny from tennessee- its come in handy so many times... or something.

nibble bob

2008-11-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

my favorite class in high school had to be speech class. most people hated it, but i totally loved it! one of our speech assignments was to sell a product. i usually went above and beyond with my speeches, and this one was no different. i figured i would create my own products to sell rather then come up with a pitch for an existing line. i had created the character nibble bob a year or two before, so i made a whole line of products based on him! i spent many hours taking pictures from the internet of famous celebrities and altering their clothing to incorporate the face of nibble bob. i also made a couple products to show- i made took one of my baseball caps and painted nibble bob onto it, i made a bandanna with his face on it, i created a video case for a nibble bob movie, and accompanying cd soundtrack. i also created this key chain with nibble bob's likeness on it.
i think we were allotted three to five minutes for our presentation, and mine took about 15... dont worry, i already know i'm a total nerd.

jars of clay

2008-11-09T06:42:00.000-08:00

when the band jars of clay first came out i was really in to them (to be honest, i'm still really in to them...). at one point when i was still in high school they came to play at calvin college, and a bunch of friends and i went to see them. we had a great time, and they were awesome! i still remember the opening band as well, the samples, because they were so terrible! one of the things that was so fun about the jars of clay concert was that they had a violin player during the show, and he played an electric violin made of glass with a neon light in it! i've since gone to see them a couple more times, and they just keep getting better and better.

spawn

2008-11-09T06:40:00.000-08:00

i cant remember where exactly i got this one from, but it is a key chain of a skull from the 'spawn' comic book. i was really obsessed with that comic for a few years, and would buy anything spawn related that i came across! i actually used this one on my keys for a couple years, that's why its broken and so well worn! i still think it looks really rad...

smithsonian

2008-11-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

in my senior year of high school i was in the advance placement government class. i had already taken government class in the fall semester, but in the spring semester i could take the a.p. class and get college credit and skip a political science class- sounds good to me! and another bonus with taking this class: a trip to washington d.c. about 12 kids from my high school went on the program called 'close-up'. it was a great time, we spent five days checking out washington d.c. and going to all the cool places there. one of the places we went was the smithsonian institute. they had a really cool exhibit on flight, and a fun 'star wars' one where they had a ton of the actual costumes from the good trilogy.

clearwater

2008-11-09T06:27:00.000-08:00

on one of our trips to florida i picked up these two keychains. i remember hanging out in the touristy area in clearwater. i was probably 11, and my mom and dad were ready to go back to the hotel, but i wanted to wander around a bit longer. i told them i would find my way back by myself and they, for some reason, trusted me on my own. the town had a busing system and i figured i could find my way back, i knew what bus stop i needed to get off on, so i thought i would be fine. after about an hour and a half on the bus, it still hadnt come to the stop i remembered... finally, after two hours on the bus, it pulled up in front of the hotel, and boy were my parents mad! they were so worried about me! i hadnt given it a second thought, i knew i would eventually make it to the right place, and i got a nice long scenic trip out of the deal too!

lighthouse

2008-11-09T06:24:00.000-08:00

another key chain from our family trip to the upper peninsula. this one is from a lighthouse we visited in leland, michigan. we didnt actually get to go up in it because it was closed, but it was a really beautiful area and worth the visit anyway.

sledge-o-matic

2008-10-23T12:15:00.000-07:00

my dad always loved gallagher. he is a comedian who was really popular in the 80's and was best known for his 'sledge-o-matic', a giant sledge hammer what he would use to squash watermelons and other things.
i remember watching a bunch of his comedy specials on comedy central and liking them. he was mostly known for doing humor about the difference between the sexes, poking fun at the english language (an example: 'why do we call them buildings when they are already built?').
once he was touring around our town, so my mom and dad went to go see him. i dont remember if they were in the splash zone (squashing watermelons tends to be a bit messy...), but they had a great time. they came back with this key chain for me, a small version of the 'sledge-o-matic'.

michigan deer

2008-10-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

not quite sure when i got this one, but i think it accurately portrays my love for both hunting and outdoor activities.

please note the distinct sarcasm of that last sentence.

busch gardens ride

2008-10-23T12:06:00.000-07:00

another key chain from our visit to busch gardens in florida. ive run out of fun memories from this trip. oh wait! i just thought of one! i doesnt have anything to do with the key chain, but i remember there being a cool ride that i really liked. it was one of those rides that you are put into a room with a moving floor and it tilts and turns along with the video on the screen so it feels like your flying around. i dont remember what the theme for this ride was, but it was the first ride like it that i had ever been on and i just totally loved it! i think my dad needed to sit down for a while after we got done...

pop mart

2008-10-07T16:37:00.000-07:00

back in high school my friend sean got tickets to go see u2 in chicago. one of his brothers wasnt able to go, so he offered it to me! it was during their 'pop mart' tour in support of their 'pop' album, which to this day i still consider their best (i know, i am in a very small minority on this one...) i asked my mom and dad if i could go and was told no. can you imagine?!? i had the chance to see u2 live, and i couldnt go! oh, cruel world! i would rank this as one of the biggest missed opportunities of my life!
sean found somebody else to go, but felt so bad for me that he brought back this key chain for me. every time i see this key chain it taunts me with what might have been...

cypress gardens

2008-10-07T16:35:00.000-07:00

another keychain from florida. i must have run my parents wallet dry with these things! i guess i got this one so i would remember my name... those synchronized water skiers sure are amazing looking, huh?

nashville cutter

2008-10-07T16:32:00.000-07:00

another purchase from one of our trips to florida. i got this one in nashville. its a pouch with a few random knives and a nail cutter. the nail cutter wasnt in the pouch because i think this is the one that i still use all the time to cut my nails...

cedar point

2008-10-04T00:02:00.000-07:00

one vacation my family would often go on was a trip down to cedar point. this was always a blast, we would go with my aunt, uncle, and two cousins. we would often go there at the beginning of the spring, the first weekend they were open. it meant that it was a bit chillier than later in the summer, but it also meant that an average wait for a coaster was about five minutes. certainly a fair trade off! usually it was a day trip where we would get up really early and head down there, and drive back that night after the park had closed. cedar point is amazingly fun, it is just jam packed with roller coasters and fun theme lands. one of the roller coasters is the 'blue streak', which is this super old wooden coaster that looks like it could fall apart at any moment. its kind of a wussy ride with quite small hills. because it doesnt really stack up at all versus the newer coasters, it was always imperative that we go on that one first- if we went later it would seem lame in comparison, so out of respect, we would hit that one first! they had a ton of amazing rides, on this particular trip the newest coaster was called 'the raptor', it is one of those where your feet get to dangle below you. and it is amazing!!! my cousin jeff and i went on it as much as we could. the best time we went on it was at the end of the night, the sun was setting and the sky was filled with beautiful pinks and purples, and we had finally scored the front seats. we were terrified, but thats what made it so great!

face it

2008-10-03T23:54:00.000-07:00

i grew up in the calvinist christian reformed church tradition. this particular denomination has a youth convention each year as a place to get together and get to know other crc kids from around the country, get away from home for a week, go to seminars about interesting God stuff, and just generally reenergize a passion for christ. my brother and sister went on to it once or twice, so when i was old enough i was really pumped to go too. by the time i was in high school we no longer attended a crc church, but i was still able to go through my friend nathans youth group.
i went twice: once to the event in san diago, and once to the convention when it was in indiana. a bunch of buddies would always go too, and we had a blast each year! there were fun classes and worship meetings. in general, it was just a blast to be able to be with friends nonstop for five days! this particular key chain was actually for the following year, but it reminds me of all the fun we had the years we went.

kumba

2008-09-28T12:55:00.000-07:00

another key chain from the family visit to busch gardens in florida. this one is the animal used to represent the roller coaster called 'kumba'. we had a great time here, i remember loving all the rides and the animals they had around. if i remember correctly, though, i think my favorite attraction was the air conditioning...

mackinac bridge

2008-09-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

on the trip we took with my family and uncle and aunt, we stopped at the mackinac bridge on our way to the upper peninsula. right next to the bridge is an old military fort that my dad and i got to tour together. it was cool to see the wooden fort walls and the cannons they used to use to keep the bypass into lake michigan safe. the bridge itself was really impressive as well.

snoopy

2008-09-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

another key chain from the family visit to mall of america. this mall was amazing- it had six floors with tons of shops on each, it had a movie theater on the seventh floor, and it had a small amusement park right in the center of the mall! at the time the park had a 'peanuts' theme, and even had a snoopy roller coaster in doors. my dad and i even got to go on it! at one of the booths inside the park i got this cool snoopy key chain.

dont bother me

2008-09-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

while in utah i taught at a school that had quite a few foreign students. almost all of them had come from south korea. i tried my best to make them welcome and i always enjoyed having them in class- they always had the craziest sense of humor! i must have done something right, because when ever they would return from a visit home, or when they would leave at the end of the year they would always give me stuff from korea. this is one of the gifts i received. its a key chain thats kind of strange: its got a korean symbol on it and around the symbol is says 'dont bother me'. i guessing its one of those things where they love anything that has english on it, no matter what it says... also, for some reason, there is a string with strange beads and red things that look like peppers. those crazy koreans...

los angeles

2008-09-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

im not entirely sure how i got this one. i think its from when my dad had to go to l.a. for a business trip and he brought it home for me. ive been to l.a. before, but only this past year, so i know i didnt get it for myself. hmm...

busch gardens

2008-09-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

another key chain from my familys visit to busch gardens. this one is one of those key chains that has a picture in it. when we first entered the park there were photographers near the entrance who worked for the park and they would ask us to take a photo, and by the time you leave the park at the end of the day they would develop it and put it in this key chain and you could buy it if you wanted. we wanted. i really have to find a way to get that picture out and scan it so i can post it too because it is so bad! we all look so funny in it! my mom is wearing a fanny pack, my sister has bangs that go a mile high, and i look like the kid from 'two and a half men'!
priceless!

olympic mascots

2008-09-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

this is a rubber key chain of the three mascots: powder, coal, and copper, used for the 2002 salt lake city winter olympics. i have some great memories of the olympics while i was there. at the time i volunteered at a christian coffee shop that was down town. every night during the olympics were crazy! we always had a line out the door, from when we opened at 8:00am until we closed at 2:00am! walking down the streets during those two weeks was as close as ive ever seen to what new york city is like- there were thousands of people walking around and at any given time you could hear six different languages being spoken! truly a once in a lifetime experience.

oh, canada

2008-09-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

another family vacation we went on was up to canada! i remember thinking it was the coolest thing ever, we were leaving not just our state, but our whole country! now i was an international traveler!
we went to wheels inn in ontario. it was the coolest- they had an indoor waterpark and everything! i remember my parents telling me that they had an indoor pool that you could swim in, and it was connected to an outdoor pool! this just blew my mind. 'so i can get in the pool inside and get out of the pool outside?!?' i couldnt quite wrap my brain around this one. when we got there the pool wasnt as amazing as i had built it upto in my mind, but we still had a great time!

great smoky mountains

2008-09-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

man, i sure got a lot of these on our trips to florida, huh? im thinking thats around when i first started this collection...
this one is from the great smoky mountains of tennessee. we never actually went to the smoky mountains, but that didnt seem to stop me from getting this at a gas station.

shark and gator

2008-09-28T09:37:00.000-07:00

another key chain from our florida trip. im not entirely sure why i picked this one up, but its a shark and an alligator chatting it up on the beach. the shark is saying 'i sure love tourists, they taste great!' the gator responds 'theyre less filling!'
hilarious, huh? didnt think so.

nashville chain

2008-09-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

another souvenir from our florida trip. we headed through tennessee along the way, even stopping in nashville to check things out. ive been back there a couple times, and it is really a cool town! i dont remember much from this visit, but this key chain proves i was there!

wooden elephant

2008-09-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

on our trip to florida we went to busch gardens for a day. we rode the rides and enjoyed the animals- they even had the budweiser clydesdale horses there! one of the sections of the park was dedicated to animals from africa, and its there that i saw this cute little elephant carved from wood.

kentucky duffel

2008-09-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

a wonderful example of my poor taste in key chains...

for years my parents would promise us that we would go to florida, and finally, they made good. we headed down to go see my grandparents who had a winter place down there. on the way we went through many different states, and i tried to get a key chain from each of them. at one of the gas fill ups along they way we stopped in kentucky and i picked up this gem: a black leather duffel bag key chain with pink trim. im sorry, i have no explanation why. it just is.

tehquamenon camera

2008-09-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

another great vacation we went on was up to the upper peninsula of michgian. the whole family went with my uncle, aunt, and my cousins jeff and kelly. we went up through traverse city and the mackinac bridge. one of the places we checked out was the tahquamenon falls, a cool state park with some really beautiful waterfalls.
i thought this was one of the coolest key chains they had, you can look through the eye hole and see photos of the falls. the photo button even works and it slides ahead to another picture. there are about 8 total photos to see in this key chain, and all of them are really beautiful.

mall of america

2008-09-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

the summer after my sisters senior year of high school we took a special family vacation. my parents wanted to go on one last trip before she moved off to college. it was great, they wanted it to be a surprise, so they didnt tell jill anything about where we were going. the morning of the trip we all packed into the car, jill still unsuspecting of what was ahead. we started driving, and arrived at the airport- she was so confused! then we checked in to get our tickets and she saw that we were going to minneapolis- and she was still confused! thats when my mom and dad told her what was planned: we were going to the mall of america! she almost fainted she was so excited. she loved to shop- and now we were going to the biggest mall in the world! she was on cloud nine! we had an amazing time and stayed for about four days. my parents gave her an envelope full of money and told her it was hers to spend how ever she wanted. now thats a dream come true for any young girl, huh? they gave me an envelope too, so i wasnt too jealous...
we had an amazing time there! it was a great trip and such a great way to spend one last vacation together.

indy racing

2008-09-28T08:58:00.001-07:00

when i was about 12 my dad, uncle, and cousin jeff went to the races. we went for the day to michigan international speedway and watched an indy car race. ive never been a car guy, but we had a good time there anyway. it was a summer day that was terribly hot, i remember sitting in the stands and just dripping sweat. the race itself wasnt very interesting, the cars would just zip by, and then a minute later, they would zip by again. lame. there werent even that many crashes! i remember walking around the merch tables checking out all there was to see. my dad had given me some money, and jeffs dad gave him some, so we parused all the different booths looking for just the right souveneers. for some reason this particular key chain caught my eye.
after going to this event it solidified my views of racing as a sport: it isnt one.

steelcase truck

2008-09-28T08:43:00.001-07:00

my dad has worked at steelcase all my life, his father had worked there for fifteen years before him too. it is a top of the line office furnature maker. i remember when i was growing up going over to my grammas house where she had a huge steelcase truck toy that was about two feet long. when ever we would go over there it was the first thing i would rush to get. when i was about six it was the coolest thing in the world- a toy of the place my dad worked! in high school i still looked back fondly at that truck. my parents were looking for some new office chairs for their desks at home, so we went to the steelcase employee store. and there, sitting on one of the shelves was that same giant toy truck! at this point i was too old to play with it like i used to, but i did get this littler version to put on the shelf in my room. its only about 6 inches long, but every time i look at it i remember the great times i had growing up in my grammas house.

rubics cube

2008-09-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

the whole rubics cube thing always interested me. i remember getting the regular cube once from gemmon's, a hardware store that my dad and mom would always drag me to. in middle school there was a bit of a resurgence in its popularity among my friends, i remember nathan kuperus was really fascinated by them. we would spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the sides. he was pretty good and could get multiple sides at once. i always remained a novice and could only ever get one side at a time. a few years later i remember coming across another version of the cube, but this time it was cut at different angles and had lopsided bits to try and figure out! i am even worse at this one. every once in a while i will still pull these out and give them a go, making absolutely no improvement, then frustratedly throwing them back into the storage bin i found them in.

reindeer

2008-09-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

im not entirely sure where this came from. for some reason i think it might have been from a fast food joint as a christmas toy with a kids meal. its basically a beenie baby reindeer before there was such a thing as a beenie baby. im not sure why, but i really loved this thing! i would spend hours on end playing with it, trying to get it to stand, throwing it up in the air and catching it. i was pretty young, so i must have been easily ammused. this was not actually my original reindeer, i think this one is actually my sisters. my original one somehow got ripped. one of its legs got ripped and the little plastic beans poored out. i was so sad, so i made a splint for his leg out of cardboard and rubberbands. i was a strange child...

money clip

2008-09-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

for a while my dad used to use a money clip instead of a wallet. one of the clips he used was this one, which had an etching of a couple guys playing golf. he had gotten a new one, so i asked him what he was going to do with his old one. he hadnt thought about it. so i asked him for it. i never ended up using it myself, i was too attached to my old makeshift wallet to ever trade it in, but i kept it anyway...

gumball mascots

2008-09-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

the second year i lived in salt lake city, utah, they hosted the winter olympics. they had three mascots they had created for the games, and i received these creations from someone. they are gumballs with colored sugar icing in the shape of each of the mascots. strange, i know. they were too cute to ever eat, and now i think they are too hard to even attempt it.

ornament

2008-09-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

back when i lived in salt lake city i had made many good friends, among them was a girl named jessica, she was a ballet dancer, and a real sweetheart. i always liked to spend time with her, she and i were very different and i always loved to hang out with her because she always had a different perspective on things. my second (and last) christmas there she gave me this christmas tree ornament that she had made herself. i was very thankful, but i have never actually used it yet! since i live alone and am always in michigan with my family, i have never actually put up a christmas tree in my own place, so i have no place to put ornaments! but ive still got it, waiting for the day when i set up a tree of my own...

edward scissorhands and crow

2008-09-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

among my (many) obsessions growing up were these two movies: 'edward scissorhands', and 'the crow'. im not entirely sure why i was obsessed with them, but i was.
i saw edward scissorhands when it game out on tape and i really loved it, i even got my dad to watch it! i remember many times day dreaming about what it might be like to have scissorhands, i think i might have even gone so far as to make a fake pair out of cardboard and playing around in the backyard imagining i was trimming the bushes into different animal shapes.
my fascination with the crow is a little harder to explain. the movie was rated R, so my mom refused to let me see it, but for some reason i was still obsessed with it. i think it might have stemmed from the fact that at the time it came out i was just starting to explore the world of comics beyond superheroes, and i remember paging through a few issues of 'the crow' comic book and really being entranced. im sure some of my interest in the movie was also brought on by the death of the actor brandon lee during the filming of it. i must have had some morbid curiosity to see it that i just couldnt let go of. years later mcfarlane toys made figures of these two characters, which i obviously had to buy. the figures i still have, and they came with these weird looking mini poster holders. i guess they were so that you could display them behind the figure? i dont know, but i kept them anyway...

cutting boards

2008-09-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

in my old room at my parents house i used to love putting up pictures of things i liked. i would put up posters of movies or bands or comic books i thought were cool. i would also get the magazine 'wizard' every month. it is a magazine devoted to comic books, and it always had the coolest pictures in it. i would really love those pictures and would want to put those up too. the only problem was that those pictures were too small. being the industrious young lad i was, i didnt let that stop me! after i had read the magazine i would pull out an exacto knife and cut out all the pictures i loved and put them on the wall individually with a small ring of tape on the back. my mom wasnt too keen on this idea. after much persuading, she said i could put up the little pictures in the closet if i wanted, as long as i could shut the closet door and no one else had to see them. no problem! i spend many many hours in my room on my drawing desk cutting out little pictures that i liked and plastering my closet with them! no matter how small the image, i could cut it out- i became quite a whiz with that exacto knife.
by the time i headed off to college, i had every single inch of that closet covered with images- i had even gone so far as covering the ceiling with pictures as well! these two heavy stock paper boards were what i would slip under the pages while i cut out the different images.

x-men figures

2008-09-27T13:02:00.000-07:00

i always loved action figures, and i really loved comic books, so it was a dream come true when they started making action figures of x-men characters! at the time i really thought they looked great. whenever we would go to the store i would try and get my mom to buy me a new one, shes a bit of a push over, so i had a ton of them!
pictured here are cable, one of my favorite characters at the time; longshot; magneto, who had real magnets in his body; cyclops, which i won from fox (explained here); wolverine; and on the back are two characters who i have no idea who they are... these guys always came with the craziest accessories, which were always fun to play with, but the one thing that annoyed me was that most of the accessories would only fit the hands of that particular character and none others. that always struck me as poor designing...

micro machines

2008-09-27T12:56:00.001-07:00

one of my favorite toys growing up was micro machines. all they were was just littler matchbox cars, but for some reason i really loved them. i know these things are still being sold in stores now, but they were a ton cooler back then. they used to be a lot smaller then they make them now, they were about the size of a penny, and surprisingly detailed.
i would play with these things for hours! i had a couple play sets to mess around on, so they kept me busy for hours. there was even a time when my friend joel and i would build play sets of our own. we would spend hours and days building race tracks out of paper and tape for these things to whiz around in.
one really fun thing about my micro machines is that i still have most of them, and my little nephew jackson plays with them now, so they are still being enjoyed!

fox kids club

2008-09-27T12:48:00.000-07:00

back in the day the local fox affiliate did a great job of enticing children to participate in different promotional offers. one of the things they did was the 'fox kids club', which was what they called their animation block each afternoon and saturday morning.
i was really into it because a friend of mine, adam, used to work for fox and was a host of a live action kids show that they would play on saturday mornings called 'fast forward'. i went with him a couple times to the taping of the show and was in the audience for the show and actually saw myself on tv a time or two! to an eleven year old, this is truly amazing.
because of my love for all that stuff, i figured i should join the club. they always had giveaways and other fun kid stuff around town. you could save some money or get free stuff at the movie theater and other places if you showed your kids club card. one of these giveaways i actually won- at the time the x-men cartoon was new and you could win all kinds of x-men related stuff if you sent in your name. a couple months later i received a cyclops action figure in the mail! it was the greatest thing ever: i got toys for free!!! how can you beat that?

transformer

2008-09-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

this is my first transformer, or at least whats left of him... i remember getting this for christmas. my brother got one that year too, i got the cop car, and he got the race car. we both loved getting them, and for me, this started my life long love of all things transformers!
this one is from back in the day, back when they used to make the outsides out of metal instead of cheap plastic like they do now.
almost all the transformers at the time had one transforming move in common: the waist swivel. almost all the vehicles included twisting the top half around and making it face the other way. it was a cool twist, but unfortunately, it made the middle of the figure very weak and easy to break, as is evident by what remains of this poor toy...

an explanation

2008-09-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

im a bit of a pack rat. always have been. if i ever come across something that i think is cool i keep it. if i have anything with even a hint of sentimental attachment, i keep it. i keep everything. that creates a problem though- i'm out of room to keep this stuff!

in an effort to de-clutter my house, and break myself of this pack rat mentality, ive decided to do something about it. most of the stuff i keep i have stories attached to, and holding on to the thing allows me to remember the story. so, instead of keeping the thing, i figured i could take a picture of it and tell the story. that way im still able to periodically go back and reminisce, but without taking up my closet space. some of the things talked about here i have still kept, others are in a trash heap somewhere. either way, they are a part of my story, and i'd like to share that story here.