Fairies - painted for war!

The first thing that we did was repaint them. I was going to leave one set unpainted, paint one set in dark/goth coloring and one set in alternate colors. After painting 25mm figs, painting the larger figures was quite easy. I’m using the cheap Apple Barrel brand acrylic paints. A little paint can really make the same sculpts look vastly different.





With the upsized figs, you can use other figures to represent pixies and they are in scale to the ones shown in the rulebook. (smurfs)
You have to watch the sets. Disney has come out with a newer set with all the fairies flying with a cloud. You may prefer it but I like the older set better.

They're magically delicious

Fairy Meat - by Kenzer



It’s a fun game http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/650 . There are no dice – they use a deck of cards instead. The books do give you figures that you can assemble and use but you can also use 25mm figures.
The idea is that you can play anywhere as the 25mm figs are 1:1 scale. We’ve played it at Wincon with the fae fighting around a picnic table.



With the Disney Fairys line though, the possibilities of upscaling increase. They came out with PVC figurines that are about 3-4 inches tall and come in a set of eight figures.


We picked up a set for G and then picked up a few extra sets for use with Fairy Meat.

Broccoli, celery, . . .

VegiTales seems to have gone bankrupt. They are still pushing out movies though. The story seems a bit muddled but you can check these out:
http://www.philvischer.com/?p=38
http://www.philvischer.com/?p=72

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Idea_Productions

http://bigidea.com/index.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeggieTales

For those who haven’t heard of VeggieTales, they are a cartoon series touting ‘Sunday morning values, Saturday morning fun’. One of our friends had turned us on to them and we had picked up a bunch of them. Based on the list above, we’re missing a bunch still.

Hellboy 2

We saw Hellboy 2 at Polo Park. Even after telling the manager twice that the movie was out of focus, it still remained slightly out of focus. They did correct it a bit, but all the subtitles and location names still had a ghost image like an old TV slightly off the channel – this was very noticeable in the credits. The stale popcorn didn’t win us over either.

The movie itself was pretty good. I liked the first film better. This was more of the same – sort of the same problem MIB had with MIB 2. All were good fun, but since the sequels weren’t as fresh as the first films, they came off as slightly less.
Both were based on comic book series as well.

Pop / soda - mix

Depending on where and when you grew up, carbonated beverages were referred to by different names. Some called them pop, some called them soda, some even called them soda pop.
If you knew serious drinkers, it was referred to as mix – as in “Have some pop but don’t drink all the mix” – meaning that one could drink the grape and orange but would get squinty-eyed looks if you had too much Coke or 7-up.

When we grew up, it was referred to as pop. We didn’t have it as often as some. I also remember drinking orange drink made from McDonald’s syrup. It came in big plastic jugs and you would mix it with water.

We also had Pic-a-Pop in all the various flavors. This was a local bottler who had drinks in a rainbow of various flavors in returnable bottles – in Ontario they had The Pop Shoppe. These came in both the small and larger bottles and orange plastic trays to carry them. I recall the little metal toppers they had to reseal to bottles with the rubber inserts and how we used to play with them as ‘the button’. They did knock-offs of the standards (Pop-up), and some odd flavors (moonshine) but I really liked their grape and root beer. Lime, cherry, black cherry, cream soda were other flavors out the 40 or so they had. They were nice in that you paid by the tray but could mix and match flavors to make up your tray.

Scissors beat Paper

One of the reasons I love the web:



(for those who cannot see, it is Winston Churchill giving the V for Victory symbol on one side and Adolph Hilter giving the Heil salute one the other).

FOCUS!

More and more lately, I’ve been noticing how badly out-of-focus movies are at the movie theatres. I’m not sure why this is becoming more common. I understand that they don’t have projectionists watching each movie to ensure it’s in perfect focus. I know that the projectors are supposed to be computer controlled to match the settings from the studio.
Yet, time and time again the picture is slightly out of focus. The preceding ads are a bit fuzzy but we hope the picture itself will be clear – but it often isn’t. It’s not my eyes – hang around to the end of the film to try to read the credits – quite often we can’t. Telling the staff doesn’t seem to help either.

Theatres complain that people aren’t going to the movies anymore. With large screen TVs and even regular DVDs, the picture at home is often much better than it is at the theatre. I like going to see the big films on the big screen, but it’s becoming less and less worthwhile if I can see the picture more clearly at home. I like getting the large bag or tub of buttered popcorn, but if it’s stale it again pushes me to just wait for the movies at home where I can ensure the freshness of the snacks.