All the crap I did while I wasn’t blogging.

So yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve posted any­thing. Six­teen days, to be exact. The past few weeks have been a blur of work (of both the kind that pays the bills and the kind that doesn’t), sleep, and time with fam­ily, punc­tu­ated by a busi­ness trip to NYC, the ful­fill­ment of one of my biggest gamer fan­girl dreams ( more on that in the next post ), and a few very spe­cial days spent with Michael, the new guy in my life. I’ve been mean­ing to men­tion him on this blog, so that time might as well be now. This past week­end was only our sec­ond time see­ing each other because he lives three states away. The story of how we met is quite a geeky one; maybe one of these days I’ll share it with you. But for now we’re just try­ing to make this long dis­tance thing work, and I won’t lie–it ain’t easy.

While it’s true I’ve been extra busy with work and side projects on top of per­sonal stuff that has kept me from blog­ging, I can’t say I didn’t wel­come the break. I des­per­ately needed some time away to recharge my bat­ter­ies and expe­ri­ence some of the things I’d been miss­ing. While I prob­a­bly could have snuck in a few blog posts dur­ing my lim­ited down­time over the past cou­ple of weeks, I decided to say “fuck it” and go play video games or watch movies or TV shows instead.

Look at all this crap.

Just so it wasn’t a total loss in terms of con­tent for this blog, here’s a list of every­thing I watched, played, or lis­tened to, accom­pa­nied by some ran­dom thoughts on each.

Movies

Spring Break­ers (2013)

Michael and I went to go see this on Easter Sun­day. I can’t think of a bet­ter way to cel­e­brate the res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus Christ than a movie about drugs, mur­der and tits. Spring Break­ers was, well, not quite what I was expect­ing. But then again, nobody knows what to expect from a Har­mony Korine movie any­way. This is the same guy that gave us Kids and Gummo , two movies which aren’t even half as coher­ent as this one. Aside from every­thing look­ing like a candy-coated ver­sion of Nat­ural Born Killers and all the point­less rep­e­ti­tion (“Spring Break…Spring Break…Spring Break For­ever!”) I found myself enjoy­ing it, thanks in no small part to James Franco. He’s eas­ily the best thing about this movie, and the sole rea­son I would watch it again.

Moti­va­tional Growth (2013)

Now I have seen some bat­shit crazy movies, and this one is right up there with the best of them. I was intro­duced to Moti­va­tional Growth by way of The Good­will Geek , who got in touch with writer/director Don Thacker about let­ting us weirdos in the Cult Film Club get our grubby lit­tle hands on it, and he was gra­cious enough to com­ply. It’s a hard movie to watch (Poop! Vomit! Adipocere!), and an even harder one to describe (Talk­ing Mold Mon­ster!), but I do know that I liked it. I did, how­ever, have to get up and take a shower imme­di­ately after­ward to scrub my body free of the on-screen filth I felt sure was per­me­at­ing through my mon­i­tor, spread­ing into my hair and under my fin­ger­nails. My co-host Shawn and I both sucked on this movie like a mold-covered teat and com­pared notes, so don’t be sur­prised if this ends up on Cult Flim Club somehow.

TV Shows

The Walk­ing Dead, Sea­son 3 Finale

I wasn’t able to watch it live, but despite hav­ing a job that requires me to be on the inter­net pretty much all day long, by some mir­a­cle I man­aged to avoid spoil­ers until I could catch up on DVR. I’m not one of those ass­holes who goes around ruin­ing things for other peo­ple, so I won’t tell you who dies (because this is The Walk­ing Dead , so you know some­body major dies, right?) but I will say this: I’m happy to see that per­son go. I’ve wanted him/her dead since Sea­son 1. If that makes me cold, so be it. Ain’t nobody got time for diplo­macy dur­ing the zom­bie apocalypse.

Game of Thrones, Sea­son 3 Premiere

Game of Thrones is back on! Game of Thrones  is back on!  Game of Thrones  is back on! I was start­ing to get sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety, how about you? The fact that Sea­son 3’s pre­miere coin­cided with The Walk­ing Dead Sea­son 3 finale was a geek­strav­a­ganza of such epic pro­por­tions, it was almost too much to handle.

Enlight­ened, Sea­sons 1–2

Against my bet­ter judge­ment, I decided to watch Enlight­ened , a show I knew HBO had already can­celled . While it’s frus­trat­ing to know I’ll never truly get to know how Amy Jellico’s jour­ney of enlight­en­ment ends, I don’t regret hav­ing watched this show. Laura Dern is a bril­liant, under­rated actress so I knew her per­for­mance alone would be worth it. What ended up sur­pris­ing me is how much I loved the rest of the char­ac­ters, espe­cially the peanut gallery of quirky char­ac­ters that make up Amy’s co-workers at Abad­don Indus­tries. I would watch a whole spin­off star­ring Dougie and his right­eous hair about his failed exploits try­ing to pick up babes.

Girls, Sea­son 2

Due to it’s love/hate (but mostly hate) rela­tion­ship with audi­ences, a fact I haven’t adver­tised too heav­ily around here is that I am a fan of HBO’s  Girls . At first my inter­est in the show was born purely of curios­ity, hav­ing been sucked into the adver­tis­ing hype sur­round­ing its series pre­miere and sub­se­quent, often hys­ter­i­cal press in the gos­sip blogs. But this is HBO, and HBO doesn’t put out bad shows. Though I can’t say I relate much to any of the main characters–four spoiled twenty-somethings try­ing to become adults and make it  in New York City–I’m fas­ci­nated just watch­ing them try, and the usual train wrecks that result. It helps that Girls  is gen­er­ously pep­pered with gra­tu­itous sex (again, this is HBO after all), hilar­i­ously awk­ward social  sit­u­a­tions and “I can’t believe they just went there” top­ics of con­ver­sa­tion. Can some­one tell me why peo­ple hate Lena Dun­ham so much?

Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, Sea­son 8

Thank God for HBO Go. On a recent bus trip up to New York City, it saved me from com­pletely los­ing my shit and stab­bing the other pas­sen­gers. Megabus packs you in like sar­dines, but at least they give you free Wi-Fi. I’ve long been a fan of  Curb Your Enthu­si­asm and all the riotously funny, mis­un­der­stood sit­u­a­tions Larry David finds him­self in, but I hadn’t yet watched any of Sea­son 8. Yes, a show that takes place in NYC while on my way to NYC. That’s how I roll. I was able to knock out a size­able chunk of the sea­son on my way to and from Man­hat­tan, head­phones cranked as loud as they would go, which was nec­es­sary to drown out all the ass­hat­tery sur­round­ing me.

The Killing, Sea­sons 1–2

Back when The Killing first pre­miered on AMC, I watched the first one or two episodes then for some rea­son or another lost inter­est. I’m glad I gave it a sec­ond chance because now I am  hooked.  I breezed through the entire first sea­son (even re-watching those intial episodes) in just a cou­ple of nights, and now I’m halfway through the sec­ond. I still don’t know who Rose Larsen’s killer is, but I’m get­ting closer and cloer. I can taste it. (Trans­la­tion: if you spoil this for me, I will fuck­ing cut you. ) Also, if I’m being totally hon­est, I have a pretty big crush on Detec­tive Holder.

Games

Pro­fes­sor Lay­ton and the Mir­a­cle Mask

I’ve played all of the Pro­fes­sor Lay­ton games to date, this being my first one for 3DS. Though I bought this game a few months ago  back when I got my 3DS  (the best self-Christmas gift ever), I didn’t fin­ish it until last week. My total play­time to com­plete the main sto­ry­line and puz­zles was about 12 hours. The 3D aspect added some cool ele­ments to the puz­zles here and there, but for the most part I kept the 3D turned off, save for the cutscenes where it really popped. Pro­fes­sor Lay­ton games always have inter­est­ing mys­ter­ies, and  Mir­a­cle Mask was no excep­tion. It was, how­ever, a lit­tle too pre­dictable for my lik­ing. Either that or I’ve just played so many of these games I know too well what to expect.

Ridicu­lous Fishing

‘Tis no finer bath­room gam­ing in all the land. Ridicu­lous Fish­ing is eas­ily the best $2.99 I spent for my iPhone. With its 8-bit aes­thet­ics and addic­tive game­play, I didn’t think it was pos­si­ble to enjoy a fish­ing game this much, which goes some­thing like this:

Step 1.   Cast lure, avoid­ing obsta­cles on your way down.

Step 2.   Hook as many fish as you can and blow the shit out of ‘em with your gun.

Step 3.  ?????

Step 4. Profit.

As you rack up points and money, you can pur­chase addi­tional fish­ing gear that will increase your skill and abil­i­ties. If you thought it was fun blow­ing up fish with a Shot­gun, just wait ’til you get the Bazooka. Or the Chain­saw Lure. I am  all about the Chain­saw Lure.

Music

Maniac (2012) Orig­i­nal Motion Pic­ture Soundtrack

Another shout-out to Shawn Robare to thank him for point­ing me to the sound­track for Maniac,  the 2012 hor­ror film remake star­ring Eli­jah Wood. I haven’t yet seen the movie but the sound­track was enough to make me pro­mote it to the top of my watchlist–and there are a lot of other movies on my watch­list, to say the least. Dark, heavy 80s-esque synth? You got my attention.

Elec­tric Six

Is this not the best music video you’ve ever seen? Tell me it’s not. You can’t do it because that’s impossible.

The Pol­ish Ambassador

I’m not sure what I love more–this guy’s music, or his ridicu­lously cheesy videos.

</crap>

Sorry to blow a prover­bial load of awe­some all over your face like this, but it’s been welling up inside me for over two weeks. I hope you haven’t missed me too much.

Listen to me fail at 80s TV Trivia! [UnderScoopFire Podcast #57]

Last week I was a guest on the Under­Scoop­Fire pod­cast for the first (and quite pos­si­bly last!) edi­tion of What’s.. The.. SCOOP?!! — the 80’s TV Trivia game show hosted by Howie Decker’s charis­matic alter-ego, Dick Decker.  I’m one of three lovely con­tes­tants, along with internet-famous “blerd” (that’s “black nerd”) William Bruce West and Mr. Seri­ous him­self,  Corey Chap­man .

(Click the TV to lis­ten to the episode!)

It’s astound­ing how lit­tle I actu­ally know about 80s TV, as I find out in this pod­cast. But to be fair, hardly any of the shows I actu­ally watched back in the day came up as my ques­tions. I mean, where was Charles in Charge !? Where was Facts of Life !?  Also, I should point out that Will  is a Pop Cul­ture Kung Fu MASTER, so I was up against some pretty stiff com­pe­ti­tion, but I think I held my own pretty well. My sav­ing grace was Roseanne , Care Bears , Saved by the Bell , and those sweet, sweet multiple-choice ques­tions.

Hey, at least I didn’t come in dead-last! And for that I think a cel­e­bra­tory dance is in order:

Three ways to play:

– OR –

Lis­ten or down­load directly on the Under­Scoop­Fire website.

Sneak Peek @ ShezCrafti 3.0 & Some Announcement-y Type Stuff

Sup, guys?

Updates have been a lit­tle thin the past few days, but it’s because I’ve been work­ing on a revamped ver­sion of ShezCrafti. I’ve had this same design for over 2 years now, and I feel I’m ready for a change, even if just mostly cosmetic.

Retro-tastic!

My Face­book friends have already seen this because it’s my new cover photo, but here’s a sneak peek at the direc­tion I’m going in:

(Click to make bigger-er)

I want the site to look more “me,” if that makes sense. This retro-tastic col­lage of some of my favorite things is a step in that direc­tion, and the frame­work for what I’m design­ing for the blog.

Re: “30-something going on 12.”

You might have also noticed in the past month or so that my tagline changed from, “A gamer, geek, and girl who doesn’t get out much” to what you see above. While that whole “doesn’t get out much” part is still true (you know…because I’m 31, work 2 jobs, live alone with my cat, and love Ninja Turtles–GET AT ME, FELLAS), I decided to go with some­thing just a lit­tle less pathetic-sounding that spoke more to my inner child, and why I often blog about stu­pid crap from back in the day like Sally Struthers infomer­cials and Corey Feldman’s Michael Jack­son phase . The late 80s and early 90s were the hap­pi­est, most care­free years of my child­hood, and I want to devote a lit­tle more time around here to re-capturing them. I need that right now.

RunJumpFire

Also, start­ing in March, I’m head­ing to another cas­tle as co-editor and con­trib­u­tor of a soon-to-launch gam­ing site called Run­Jump­Fire  along with my long-time Twit­ter friend & fel­low gamer, Mark Stevens of Retroblique . Basi­cally I want to tone down the amount of video game-y stuff on ShezCrafti (since you guys mostly don’t care about that any­way, accord­ing to the crick­ets that can be heard on those posts) and instead save that type of con­tent for Run­Jump­Fire. (Which, by the way, we’re still wel­com­ing new writ­ers if any­one out there wants in. Shoot me an email .) I’m not going to  totally do away with video game-related posts here, but any­thing more sub­stan­tial than just a game pre­view or quick & dirty lists ( like this one ) will end up over there.

Cult Film Club

Oh! Don’t for­get, I’m also co-hosting the Cult Film Club pod­cast now, along with Shawn Robare of Branded in the 80s and Pax­ton Hol­ley of Cav­al­cade of Awe­some . We tackle a dif­fer­ent cult film every month (like The Wraith !) and then embar­rass our­selves by pre­tend­ing to sound smart while dis­cussing it. No, wait–I’m the only one who does that. Sorry. But seri­ously, folks, it’s a fun show, and the three of us have a lot of fun doing it. SHAMELESS PLUG INCOMING: Please check out the pod­cast , Like us on Face­book , and con­sider join­ing the club ! And be sure to tell all your friends–especially if they have crappy taste in movies, just like us!

Peace Out

Well, I guess that’s about it for now. If you come to this site in the next week or so (or when­ever I get around to it) and it looks dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent, now you’ll know why.

Play me out, Young MC.

Just a quick post-Christmas update…

As you may have guessed, I did  not get the one thing I really wanted for Christ­mas . That’s all I’ll say about it. Time to pick up the pieces and move the hell on. But as it turns out, get­ting dumped right before Christ­mas is not the only thing that can ruin your hol­i­day. You can also have the flu!

In addi­tion to some cool, geeky gifts from fam­ily and friends (which I plan to do a post about at some point), Santa gave me another present this year: a debil­i­tat­ing strain of influenza com­plete with fever, chills, and all-over body aches that, after pass­ing through four dif­fer­ent mem­bers of my fam­ily, has mutated into this mon­ster beast of a flu/cold/stomach virus com­bi­na­tion that is now work­ing its charms on me.

And here I thought I was being so care­ful, wash­ing my hands a lot, not eat­ing or drink­ing after any­one and fol­low­ing other well-meaning and prac­ti­cal but use­less advice. But I guess when you spend Christ­mas in a house full of sick people–exchanging gifts as well as germs–getting sick your­self is inevitable. But hey, on the plus side, I learned how to make my family’s tra­di­tional, secret recipe Red Vel­vet Cake this year, since my mom was too sick (and by “too sick” I mean only slightly less sick than myself) to do it. That’s some­thing, I guess.

I want to be sure and thank all my League, Dork Horde and Twit­ter friends who sent Christ­mas gifts, cards, and gen­eral well wishes and humor­ous attempts at life advice my way. You can expect a proper thank you on this blog in the near future, as soon as I’m feel­ing more up to it (read: not feel­ing like death).

I sup­pose you can also expect this site to be around quite a while longer. I was fully pre­pared to delete myself from the inter­net in order to work things out with my now ex –boyfriend (god, that’s going to take some get­ting used to) but now I guess it doesn’t mat­ter. So if you con­sider your­self a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor who enjoys all the EXTREMELY IMPORTANT STUFF AND THINGS I write about, yay for you! And thanks for stick­ing with me.

My dream job is to do nothing.

This week’s assign­ment from The League  was an inter­est­ing one:

If money was not a con­cern and you could choose any career path, what would be your ulti­mate dream job? 

Well, first of all, there’s a false assump­tion here that I would  want  to have this thing called “a job” if I didn’t have to. If money was not a con­cern, I would hap­pily live out my days play­ing video games, watch­ing movies, read­ing books, etc. etc. and get out even less than I do now. That’s right, I would do nothing.

But, if I have  to give an answer (and you know how seri­ously I take these League assign­ments, so I will), my first incli­na­tion would be to say I’d pur­sue some­thing cre­ative, whether it’s writ­ing a novel or screen­play, direct­ing a film, or rekin­dling my long-held dream of design­ing a video game–specifically a point-and-click adven­ture game just like my per­sonal gam­ing hero, Jane Jensen .

But my prob­lem, as always, is the fear that once it becomes my  job to do these things, I’ll cease being pas­sion­ate about them. That’s kind of the bitch about cre­ative endeav­ors. Once things like con­tracts and money and dead­lines and oblig­a­tions and other people’s opin­ions are involved, I’m almost pos­i­tive I will lose inter­est. I often won­der what amaz­ing films, books and games would exist if the tal­ent behind such works had absolute cre­ative power and unlim­ited resources. Then again, I look at guys like George Lucas and start to re-think this position.

What’s your ulti­mate dream job?

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was to pre­tend that money was no con­cern and pur­sue a career we’re pas­sion­ate about. Here’s what my fel­low Lea­guers said:

Adamo­tomy wants to do some­thing involv­ing management…and golf?
For­tune and Glory Days wishes he could be a toy hunter . Or an archae­ol­o­gist! They’re the same thing, really.
That Fig­ures wants to explore space. SPACE, bitches!
Lair of the Dork Horde already has his dream job. And yeah, we’re all jeal­ous.
Flash­lights are Some­thing to Eat wishes he could work at and indie record store , like in High Fidelity .
The Man Who Stares At Toys wants to write a book on the his­tory of toys!  Fit­ting.
Hench Girl’s dream job is very spe­cific: to be a  Well-Heeled Exec­u­tive of a Sleazy Com­pany  I admire that kind of brazenness.

Merry Geekmas! Come get your presents!

Yeah, you heard me. Presents!

Thanks­giv­ing may be over, but I’m feel­ing espe­cially thank­ful right now, in this moment. In the span of a sin­gle month, I sur­vived a hur­ri­cane, lost my job AND my car died on the same day (that’s what this post  was all about, by the way–thanks to every­one who sent words of sup­port and encour­age­ment my way) only to gain a new job mere weeks later , get my car fully repaired, helped start up a new pod­cast , made guest appear­ances on two other awe­some pod­casts ( here & here ), and offi­cially  joined The Dork Horde . And of course on top of all that, the hol­i­day sea­son is in full swing and my halls are nowhere near fin­ished being decked.

I’ve been insanely busy and the post­ing qual­ity and fre­quency around here prob­a­bly reflects that, but I feel over­whelm­ingly grate­ful to not only have been able to turn my sit­u­a­tion around, but to have come out of it swinging–and I’m pos­i­tive it’s all because this blog exists. So, not to get all sappy and stuff, but I want you reg­u­lar read­ers, com­menters, and toy-pushing enablers to know how much your online cama­raderie means to me.

Blah, blah blah–where’s my present?

If you’re in The League, The Dork Horde, a Twit­ter friend, a Cult Film Club devo­tee,  or just a “fan” of ShezCrafti.com (which feels weird to say), I WANT TO GIVE YOU A GIFT. (That is, if you feel com­fort­able giv­ing your mail­ing address to a 31-year-old who loves video games and Ninja Tur­tles.) It’s not going to be some­thing extrav­a­gant, obvi­ously, but it will be some­thing small, cool, geeky, and above all,  heartfelt.

So, please  send me an email  with the sub­ject “Merry Geek­mas!” and include your mail­ing address if you’d like to get on my gift list. I don’t expect any­thing in return, nor will I be upset if you re-gift what I send you, but you might get some funny looks if you do (there, con­sider that your hint).

Update 12/17/12
Sorry, the dead­line to get on my gift lift has passed!
But you can still send me your address if you’d like this year’s Christ­mas card.

Oh, right–and since this post is also serv­ing as this week’s League Assign­ment , here’s my “some­thing festive”:

More hol­i­day spirit from around The League!

This week’s League assign­ment was to “write or pho­to­graph some­thing fes­tive and pop cul­ture ori­ented.” Okay, so I cheated a lit­tle bit with the comic scan, but since I’m not done dec­o­rat­ing my house yet, there isn’t much else to show right now. BUT! Do check out all the fes­tive & merry things my fel­low Lea­guers posted:

• Cool and Col­lected — OMG  S.L.U.G. Zom­bies’ Santa Claws
• Good­will Hunt­ing 4 Geeks — Geeky Christ­mas Orna­ments
• Adamo­tomy — TMNT Christ­mas Sweater  (yes, it’s glorious)
• Infi­nite Hol­ly­wood — It’s the Gam­era Christ­mas Spec­tac­u­lar!
• For­tune & Glory Days — these cool Super­hero Christ­mas Orna­ments
• Green Plas­tic Squirt Gun — shares his Top 10 Fond­est Christ­mas Gift Mem­o­ries
• Of Fly­ing Mon­keys and Ewoks Oh My! — Christ­mas Movies & TV Spe­cials
• Ran­dom Nerd­ness — is host­ing his own Christ­mas spe­cial in pod­cast format!
• The Man Who Stares At Toys — starts the new Kick Justin Tim­ber­lake in the Balls  hol­i­day tradition
• That Fig­ures — I don’t even know WTF this is sup­posed to be …
• Lair of the Dork Horde — shares an awe­some Christ­mas orna­ment and mem­ory
• Dou­ble Dum­b­ass On You — is cel­e­brat­ing A Very Starfleet Christ­mas
• 3B’s Toy Hive — knows it’s all about the Christ­mas Tree Cakes

I’m in a good Dubmood today.

I know this is a lame update, but I had a good day. So good, in fact, I’ve had zero time to even think about com­ing up with some­thing bet­ter to post, so instead you’re get­ting this: one of my favorite chip­tunes albums by Dub­mood , which is a “Best Of” com­pi­la­tion of his crackscene music–the kind of stuff you often hear when using key­gens and installing pirated soft­ware. Not that I would know any­thing about that.

It’s rel­e­vant since both this music and the good news I got today = #WINNING. More on that sit­u­a­tion as it develops.

ShezCrafti Joins The Dork Horde

After a rig­or­ous appli­ca­tion process that involved cre­at­ing a mask out of an old black t-shirt and pos­ing for a geeky photo, I’m proud to announce ShezCrafti is now an offi­cial mem­ber of The Dork Horde ! (Inci­den­tally I’m also the first female to join the ranks.)  As the supreme Lord of Dork­ness and founder of The Dork Horde,  Reis O’Brien  heads up a great com­mu­nity that brings together blog­gers who have been rec­og­nized as ambas­sadors of geek culture.

ShezCrafti
Mem­ber: #00021
Rank: Hordyte
Guardian of: Gam­ing & Movies
Spe­cial­iza­tion: Head Pro­fes­sor of Ninja Tur­tle Lore
and Hater of Candy Corn

Since a bunch of Dork Horde mem­bers are also in The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers , I’m already pretty famil­iar with my dorky brethren and visit many of their blogs quite fre­quently. Really, I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to join their ranks, other than epic pro­cras­ti­na­tion. Or maybe deep down I was afraid Reis wouldn’t let in any candy corn haters; the fear of rejec­tion and all that. What­ever the case, I’m hon­ored to have been accepted and I’m look­ing for­ward to get­ting to know my fel­low Dorks bet­ter and read­ing all the awe­some stuff they post.

FOR THE HORDE!

Defeat does not exist in this dojo.

But every now and then I have days like today, when my karate’s no good here (or any­where). For reals, it was THE WORST. I’m not feel­ing very in the Hal­loween spirit tonight so I’m skip­ping this evening’s count­down post. I’ll try to make it up tomor­row or some­thing. Tonight I just want to veg and not do a damn thing. I’m even con­sid­er­ing going to bed early.

Life. It has swept my leg.

Speaking of The Great Pumpkin…

…I want to thank my per­sonal Great Pump­kin for send­ing this awe­some box of Hal­loween good­ies my way:

I have two things I want to say to you:

1. I know who you are . The candy corn was a dead giveaway.
2. You did good, kid. My eyes lit up when I saw all those mum­mies! The squishy, eye-popping one is my favorite. A+ for tak­ing notes.

I have been munch­ing on caramel apple taffy (you can see it’s already half gone in the pic­ture) and read­ing my new col­lec­tion of books and poems. The mum­mies will look right at home on a shelf with my other wrapped undead friends, illu­mi­nated by the soft glow of my mummy string lights.

Thank you, again, for all of this great stuff. It made my week! I tried to pay it for­ward in the gift I sent my own patcher.

Always a bridesmaid…

Just a quick update to let you guys know I’ll be away this week­end to attend my cousin’s wed­ding, and there­fore posts around here will be a lit­tle thin. How­ever, through the magic of WordPress’s “Sched­ule Post” func­tion, the 31 DVDs of Hal­loween count­down will con­tinue as planned–I just may not be around to respond to all those com­ments I know you’re just dying to leave. I’m a brides­maid, so I kind of have to go.

I have three thoughts about this wedding:

1. I’m so, SO happy for my cousin, who I know is going to be a stun­ningly gor­geous bride, and hon­ored to be a part of her spe­cial day (and other sen­ti­ments that sound like they were writ­ten on a Hall­mark card).
2. I am ter­ri­fied about hav­ing to wear a frilly pur­ple dress and high heels. I really hope I don’t fuck this up.
3. Because I love my cousin so much, I will for­give her for mak­ing me miss Nick’s  Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles this Sat­ur­day morning.

I also want to take this oppor­tu­nity to con­grat­u­late fel­low Lea­guer Kevin Hel­lions, who is also get­ting mar­ried tomor­row .

Love is in the air. And stuff.

ShezCrafti Then & Now: The State of the Site

The League is mix­ing things up yet again this week with a topic that steps out­side our reg­u­larly sched­uled pop cul­ture pro­gram­ming. Go grab your­self a snack or something–I sug­gest these –and set­tle in, because this is going to be a long post.

Write a “State of the Site” for your web site. How’s it going? What excit­ing things have hap­pened this past year?  Where do you want your site to be in a year’s time? 

I found this topic to be more than a lit­tle chal­leng­ing. This web­site  is me, so quite a bit of my per­son­al­ity and per­sonal his­tory is inter­twined with the state of ShezCrafti.com, and it’s never easy to write about your­self. Also, I don’t really have any grandiose plans, ambi­tions, or visions of world dom­i­na­tion for ShezCrafti and there­fore it’s dif­fi­cult for me to look at my site from the per­spec­tive of whether or not it’s a suc­cess. Hell, I don’t even run any ads here.

As a per­sonal blog, ShezCrafti is sim­ply a place for me to geek out about what­ever it is I hap­pen to be geek­ing out over on any given day–usually that’s video games, ter­ri­ble movies, TV shows, comics, music, 80’s & 90’s pop cul­ture, and yeah, Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles. I use this site as a way to col­lect, share and orga­nize all the geeky/stupid/random things I care about as well as a means to “offi­cially” put new things I’m excited about on my radar. Occa­sion­ally I’ll have a coher­ent thought, humor­ous anec­dote,  or some­thing insight­ful to say about what­ever it is that I’m shar­ing and the words I write will res­onate with a ran­dom vis­i­tor and they’ll go out of their way to leave me a com­ment. I like it when that hap­pens. But as far as suc­cess met­rics go, you could say I’ve set the bar pretty low.

But before I get into what I’ve been up to lately and how this past year has gone, I’d like to take some time to reflect back on the his­tory of this site and how it came to be–for posterity’s sake, as well as your poten­tial amusement.

Please, please, a moment to reflect.

Cre­ation: The Late ‘90s

The mythol­ogy of ShezCrafti’s ori­gin is one that is deeply rich and steeped in lore.

Pic­ture it. AOL. 1998.  That was the year before I grad­u­ated high school, and a time when Amer­ica Online was the nation’s pri­mary means of access­ing the inter­net. It was also the year the Beastie Boys dropped their bomb-ass album Hello Nasty!  on us which I used to lis­ten to non-stop and it con­tributed heav­ily to the defin­i­tive sound­track to my senior year .

As I men­tion on my About page because I do get asked rather fre­quently what this name means, I was once very obsessed with the Beastie Boys. “She’s Crafty” is my favorite song by them, so that’s what I chose for the all-important, personality-defining AOL screen name that would become leg­endary among the 312 priv­i­leged peo­ple on my Buddy List.

And then: TRAGEDY STRUCK. “She­sCrafty” was already taken–by some­one whom I sus­pect is a much less cool and deserv­ing individual–and so I had to spell it retard­edly, and thus ShezCrafti was born. That’s my legacy, folks. And as Howie from Under­Scoop­Fire once told me, I own it.

Late Antiq­uity: 2001 — 2004 (ish)

You may be sur­prised to learn that ShezCrafti.com actu­ally began life some­time back in 2001 as ShezCrafti.net, a crappy, self-centric per­sonal home­page I was host­ing on Yahoo Geoc­i­ties (lol!) as a way to keep in touch with friends, write blog posts about things prob­a­bly only 5 other peo­ple in the uni­verse cared about, and col­lect all the stu­pid, ran­dom crap I had stum­bled upon on the inter­net; you know, clas­sic time-wasters like All Your Base and the  Ham­ster Dance. The con­cept of “blog­ging” wasn’t nearly as pop­u­lar back then as it is today, and blogs were gen­er­ally asso­ci­ated with Live­Jour­nal and sim­i­lar sites.  This was back before social net­work­ing had offi­cially become “a thing,” before MySpace and Face­book existed, before Twit­ter, before “the cloud”, even before Word­Press which is the plat­form mak­ing it pos­si­ble for you to read these very words.

Dur­ing my col­lege years, the orig­i­nal ShezCrafti site was some­thing of a weird cre­ative out­let, as well as a way for me to prac­tice HTML and learn CSS. But mostly it was an excuse to dick around on the inter­net while pre­tend­ing like I was doing some­thing impor­tant or some­thing that any­one out­side of my close cir­cle of friends gave two shits about.

Through the mir­a­cle of The Way­back Machine, I was able to cob­ble together this screen­shot for you:

As you can see, I was going through my cru­cial anime phase and evi­dently I pre­ferred a mono­chro­matic color scheme. “Life. Stuff. What­ever.” I was  deep . I’ve cho­sen to blur out some of the stu­pid things I wrote because read­ing it ten years later just makes me want to gag. (It’s also a sober­ing reminder that the things you put on the inter­net have a ten­dency to live for­ever.) I have no idea who I was or what I was think­ing when I wrote or shared most of this stuff, and my life today resem­bles noth­ing of that girl’s. Hilar­i­ously, though, I also dis­cov­ered that my old Guest­book (remem­ber those things?) is STILL func­tional . That was worth look­ing up my 21-year-old inter­net self for.

The Dark Ages: 2004 — 2007 (ish)

Dur­ing this period I wasn’t very active online, if at all. For two years the role of ShezCrafti was played by an unhap­pily mar­ried woman whose career was in flux and didn’t have much to offer cre­atively. This was also around the time she became addicted to World of War­craft and as is typ­i­cal of most WoW addicts, the pro­duc­tiv­ity lev­els for most other aspects of her life reached an all-time low. I com­pletely let ShezCrafti.net go and even­tu­ally Yahoo took it down. The *crick­ets* were deafening.

The Renais­sance: 2008 — 2011 (ish)

After going through a divorce, land­ing an awe­some new job, and liv­ing on my own for the first time, I began to get back in touch with myself and sort of re-discover all the things I was once inter­ested in that I had been miss­ing. My cre­ative muse returned and I started doing free­lance web design & devel­op­ment work on the side not because I needed to, but because it was some­thing I’m gen­uinely inter­ested in. After build­ing sev­eral sites and Word­Press blogs for other peo­ple, I thought, hey, why not do this for myself? I had got­ten the itch to start doing some­thing cre­ative again, but I wasn’t sure what. I was inspired by pop cul­ture sites like X-Entertainment and The Surf­ing Pizza , but I didn’t nec­es­sar­ily want or have the moti­va­tion to write a col­lec­tion of lengthy, nos­tal­gic per­sonal essays, as much as I enjoyed read­ing theirs. I also wanted to write about video games in some capac­ity, since I am a gamer and do play them quite a bit and make an effort to keep up with all the lat­est gam­ing news. I just knew I wanted to do some­thing,  anything.

And so it was that I launched ShezCrafti.com in Novem­ber of 2008, not really know­ing what the hell I was doing or what I was get­ting myself into.  This was my first post.  In it, I attempt to explain why I started this site and what read­ers could expect from me, not that I had any idea what that would be at the time this was writ­ten. There’s also a great pic­ture of 5-year-old me pet­ting a goat. (Yeah, I don’t know either.)

Today

Although this web­site in its cur­rent form has been around since 2008, it wasn’t until February/March of this year that I began blog­ging with any sort of reg­u­lar­ity. After get­ting a third notice that my domain was up for renewal, I made it a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion of mine to get back in the habit of post­ing reg­u­larly with the goal of trans­form­ing this site into some­thing that was valu­able  to me;  oth­er­wise I didn’t see the point of keep­ing it around. That’s when I switched gears and estab­lished the fol­low­ing “rules” for ShezCrafti:

• Write only about the things I gen­uinely care about and feel like writ­ing about. No other oblig­a­tions need apply.
• Not every post has to be a mas­ter­piece or even well-written, though I do try. This saves me from get­ting too hung up on the impos­si­bly high stan­dards I some­times set for myself. (Believe it or not, I do have stan­dards some­times, you guys.)
• Above all, I have to be hav­ing fun.

So far these rules seem to be work­ing out, and it’s been very free­ing to aban­don for­mal­i­ties and sim­ply blog for myself and not worry too much about what any­one else thinks. Fol­low­ing this path has led me to meet­ing some awe­some new inter­net friends and other blog­gers with whom I have a lot in com­mon, even if there’s thou­sands of phys­i­cal miles between us.

The biggest step for­ward for ShezCrafti, how­ever, was join­ing The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers back in June, which is headed up by the super awe­some Brian of Cool and Col­lected . I had stum­bled upon a cou­ple of League-related posts over at Branded In The 80s and Flash­lights Are Some­thing To Eat and knew right away I wanted to be a part of this crazy crew. I mean  how could I NOT want to par­tic­i­pate in group blog­ging top­ics like “When I Was 12″, “Kurt Rus­sell is Awe­some” and “Why 1984 is Pos­si­bly the Great­est Year in Pop Cul­ture His­tory”? I don’t mean to brag, but I’m an expert on those topics.

Since join­ing The League I’ve met and con­nected with even more amaz­ing blog­gers, and have even come out of my shell a lit­tle bit to par­tic­i­pate in a few pod­casts, write guest posts, and in gen­eral join in all the geeky pop cul­ture cama­raderie that seems to sur­round The League. I look for­ward every day to read­ing and com­ment­ing on all of the great things they post. I orig­i­nally planned to give a shout-out to a few of my favorite fel­low Lea­guers in this para­graph, but as I started mak­ing the list it quickly spi­raled out of con­trol. There’s just too many awe­some sites and peo­ple in The League, and there’s no way I could give them the indi­vid­ual level of praise and atten­tion they deserve, so I’ll just leave this here as it applies to all of you:

The Future

I have no idea where ShezCrafti will be even in a year’s time, and I won’t pre­tend like I have lofty goals or ambi­tions for this site beyond just hav­ing a nerdy cor­ner of the inter­net to call home and con­nect­ing with like-minded blog­gers.  And for right now, I’m 100% OK with that.

What state are you in?

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week The League was tasked with writ­ing a “State of the Site” address for our web­sites. Here’s what some of my fel­low Lea­guers had to say:

• Redis­cover the 80s just cel­e­brated the site’s 1st birthday!
• The Good­will Geek may be new at blog­ging but he’s already one of my League favorites.
• The Crooked Ninja Tur­tle Gang  is another new favorite League site of mine, and not just because of its name­sake; honest.
• Things are going great for Mon­ster Café Saltillo ‘s new blog AND busi­ness. Rawr!
• The Man Who Stares at Toys  wants to make some improve­ments, but I already think he does a great job.

Reddit > ShezCrafti

So appar­ently over this past week­end some­one sub­mit­ted a humorous/NSFW post I did a few months back to Red­dit which directed a bunch of traf­fic my way and effec­tively killed ShezCrafti.com this morning.

Thanks ran­dom Red­di­tor, who­ever you are! That’s what I get for includ­ing “porn” and “Harry Pot­ter” in the same blog post. But now I’m (obvi­ously) back up and run­ning thanks to my friend/savior/ex-Wow guildie/hero Shawn who, for some rea­son, con­tin­ues to tol­er­ate me and gives me free hosting.

What this means for you reg­u­lars who keep com­ing back here to read all the stu­pid crap I post:

• I now return you to my regularly-scheduled stu­pid crap.
• My planned Hal­loween Count­down post(s) for today will be a bit delayed.
• Yes, I can be a bit of a perv some­times. I’m sorry you had to find out this way.

Here’s a some­thing to make up for all the pre­cious time we lost together:

And so it begins. [Countdown to Halloween 2012]

It is now past mid­night on the first of Octo­ber, which means the Count­down to Hal­loween has offi­cially started! As if on cue, the fall weather has arrived here in north­ern Mary­land almost overnight; I had to put on a sweat­shirt today from the chill. Last night I got my first whiff of that unmis­tak­able scent that’s in the air this time of year–something like burn­ing embers, dead leaves and damp earth. I wish I could bot­tle that scent.

The Countdown

You may have already seen a cou­ple of Halloween-related posts around here, but those were just a warm up. From here on out until Octo­ber 31st, there’ll be at least one Halloween-themed post from me each day. The Count­down is, after all, a month-long Hal­loween blog­ging chal­lenge. There’ll still be plenty of non-Halloween posts, too, because not even my favorite hol­i­day can com­pletely derail me from my typ­i­cal geeky repertoire–and I fully expect there to be a good amount of over­lap between my interests.

I’ve got a lot of great Hal­loween ideas, to-do’s, fun-tivities (a word I totally just made up!) reviews, lists, and other cool things I want to show you. The chal­lenge now is to find the time to write about them all (and in some cases get cre­ative and make stuff ) in what is already a very busy month for me. To be quite hon­est, I’m a lit­tle ner­vous about the com­mit­ment, as this is the first marathon blog­ging chal­lenge I’ve ever taken on. On the other hand, I’m also really look­ing for­ward to see what my fel­low Cryp­t­keep­ers will be post­ing dur­ing the Countdown–especially those of you in The League –and I’m thank­ful for the cama­raderie and shared chal­lenge, which should help to keep us all moti­vated and in the Hal­loween spirit.

I’m ready, Octo­ber. Bring it on!

This Is Halloween

Because I can’t think of a more appro­pri­ate song to kick off the season.

P.S. — 31 Days ‘Til Halloween

What are you asking The Great Pumpkin for this year?

Friend of ShezCrafti.com, fel­low Lea­guer, and all-around nice guy Dex over at AEIOU…and Some­times Why is doing some­thing really cool for Hal­loween this year–hosting a Halloween-themed ver­sion of Secret Santa! He’s call­ing it The Great Pump­kin Gift Exchange  and here’s how you can get in on it:

The Great Pump­kin Gift Exchange

Click here for full details and the sign-up form.

What is it?

You’re famil­iar with Secret Santa? Well, this is an online Hal­loween ver­sion. Peo­ple that sign up will act on behalf of the Great Pump­kin and send a gift to another ran­domly assigned par­tic­i­pant, hence­forth called “patch­ers” because they are wait­ing in the pump­kin patch for you, their Great Pumpkin!

How it works:

You sign up and get ran­domly assigned a patcher. You’ll be sent their info and have until 10/20 to send them a gift. Another per­son will get your info and send you a gift. Every­one gets their gifts and much Hal­loween hap­pi­ness ensues.

Gift Guidelines:

The min­i­mum cost will be $10 USD, not includ­ing ship­ping. There is no max­i­mum but don’t expect a life-size Head­less Horse­man to show up at your door. You don’t have to spend the entire amount on a sin­gle item. Bargain/dollar stores can have some cool stuff and give you more bang for your buck.

In addi­tion to your gift, Dex is ask­ing that you also include a lit­tle “touch of magic.” What this is, is up to each Great Pump­kin, but could be any­thing from a signed note let­ting your patcher know who you are to lit­tle toys to a small Trick or Treat bag with treats. Doesn’t have to be any­thing big, get creative!

Wish List?

There is a sec­tion on the sign up form to list things you’d like to receive. Try to list at least four or five things to give your Great Pump­kin some­thing to work with. You could list favorite imagery (witches, pump­kins , etc),  favorite mon­sters or even favorite candy (please don’t send $10 worth of candy!) Some Great Pump­kins may be artsy peo­ple, it may be help­ful to men­tion if you wouldn’t mind get­ting a hand­made gift in case they want to send some­thing unique. Feel free to also list some things you would  not  like to get.

Impor­tant Dates:

Sign up dead­line will be 11:59pm EST on 10/6. Patcher info will be sent after the cut off. Ship­ping dead­line will be 10/20 to ensure patch­ers will have time to enjoy the gift in season.

Spread the word!

Please share the link to this page any­where you want: blogs, Tum­blr, Face­book, Twit­ter, laser engrave the moon. The more peo­ple we have, the bet­ter it will be for everyone!

It’s my party and I’ll play with Ninja Turtle toys if I want to.

So, I turned 31 today. I was kinda hop­ing the day would fly under most people’s radar because get­ting old sucks and I’ve never enjoyed being fussed over. It’s bad enough that there’s manda­tory cake and singing at my office when­ever it’s someone’s birth­day (although we do get a day off as a birth­day gift, which is pretty great). Plus, the older I get the more glar­ing it becomes that I’m just a child pre­tend­ing to be an adult. I’d much pre­fer to bury myself in video games and Ninja Tur­tle car­toons and let the day pass by with­out any fanfare…except Face­book makes that nearly impossible–but thanks for the birth­day wishes, everyone!

And then there was this mes­sage from fel­low Lea­guer Team Hel­lions on Twitter:

Whoa! Its @shezcrafti birth­day! That explains why the TMNT aisle was empty.

— Kevin Hel­lions (@TeamHellions) Sep­tem­ber 22, 2012

Oh Kevin, you so silly! You don’t know how true that is. Last night my boyfriend sur­prised me with a cou­ple of awe­some early birth­day gifts:

Awe­some Gift #1 — Power Sound FX Turtles

These guys are about two-thirds big­ger than the basic Nick Tur­tles fig­ures and shout out bat­tle cries like “HIIIIYAAAA!!” and “BRING IT!” when you pull their arms and legs. As far as I can tell, the voices are all con­tributed by the same actors who voice each Tur­tle on the new show. I’m a lit­tle bummed that Raph doesn’t have the notch miss­ing from his shell, however.

Their faces are also much more detailed–for exam­ple, they have painted-on eyes as opposed to the all white eyes that the basic fig­ures have. One of the unique things about the new show is that the Tur­tles have all been designed with dif­fer­ent eye colors–Leo’s are blue, Mikey’s are blue, Raph’s are green and Donnie’s are brown. I like that you can see that on these toys.

Although I do think Donatello looks mildly constipated:

Minor com­plaints aside, these are awe­some toys that’ll be right at home with my now “seri­ous” Nick­elodeon TMNT col­lec­tion. Now I just need Power Sound FX Shred­der! Yes, I need him.

Awe­some Gift #2 — Sewer Spin­nin’ Skateboard

The Sewer Spin­nin’ Skate­board was the only vehi­cle I didn’t have yet, so this worked out well. I’d say my boyfriend did pretty good for not know­ing jack about the Tur­tles or what all I had in my col­lec­tion already. The decals, par­tic­u­larly the wheel stick­ers, were kind of a pain to peel off del­i­cately (but nowhere nearly as dif­fi­cult as what I had to go through for the Shell­raiser) but other than that, no problems.

Mikey seemed pretty happy with the final result.

Ninja Tur­tles + Cup­cakes, but not Ninja Tur­tle Cupcakes.

The Tur­tles decided to throw an impromptu cup­cake party for me! Really, cup­cakes are the only pos­si­ble thing I can think of that makes Ninja Tur­tle toys even better.

Here’s what I’m guess­ing is hap­pen­ing in this picture:

• Leonardo, ever the valiant war­rior, is proudly pro­tect­ing my cup­cakes with his mighty katanas.
• Raphael, always eager to show off, is demon­strat­ing his sig­na­ture Statue of Lib­erty move.
• Donatello has sci­en­tif­i­cally ana­lyzed my cup­cakes and decided the ratio of sprin­kles to cup­cake was insufficient.
• Michae­lan­gelo, mean­while, is attempt­ing to sneak off with one unnoticed.

Happy birth­day to me and stuff.

Video Game Hoarders Intervention Extreme Makeover Home Edition

Look at the top of this page, you guys. Every­thing you need to know about me is summed up in those three statements:

• I’m a gamer
• I’m a geek
• I’m a girl who doesn’t get out much

The fact is, my life is just not that inter­est­ing. On top of that, I’m an intro­vert and I don’t like (most) people–you guys are cool, though. So when I saw that this week’s League assign­ment was to star in our own real­ity TV show , by far the most daunt­ing League assign­ment to date for me, I did what I always do when I want to ignore some­thing: go play video games.

But while I was buried in ICO  this week­end, it occurred to me that video games could be the one aspect of my life that has real­ity TV show potential.

The Ele­va­tor Pitch

My real­ity show would be a com­bi­na­tion of Hoard­ers , Inter­ven­tion , and Extreme Makeover Home Edi­tion , except for gamers.

Why the Honey Boo Boo ref­er­ence? For ratings.

She’d ran­domly appear once per episode and say retarded things like this:

But First…

I want to give you a pho­to­graphic glimpse into my gam­ing life, so you know where I’m com­ing from.

Thank­fully, I look noth­ing like any­one from the Honey Boo Boo show:

At least I hope I don’t. You’d tell me if I did, right?

Any­way, mov­ing on…

So this is my liv­ing room, the place where I do most of my gam­ing. (Look, I even tidied up for you guys.) Directly across from the TV, is my spot, which I guard more fiercely than Shel­don from the Big Bang The­ory. That’s a 60″ 3D HDTV. My phi­los­o­phy on TVs is that they can never be big enough. I would own the 85″ ver­sion of this TV if I had the room for it. Play­ing games on this thing is glorious.

From casual glances around my home, you’d never know I was a gamer. I live in a town­house, so I don’t have much room to dis­play my col­lec­tion and most of my stor­age is hid­den. Start open­ing my cab­i­nets, how­ever, and you’ll find all kinds of video game stuff stashed away.

Like my Xbox 360…

…my PS3…

..and my Wii. Not to men­tion a whole crapload of Wii add-ons like Motion Plus, wheels, nunchucks, and clas­sic controllers.

And then there’s all my retro gam­ing con­soles, which are stored in pull-out plas­tic crates up in my office/rec room. I would love to have all of these hooked up simul­ta­ne­ously, but it’s just not real­is­tic to do that yet. If I have a desire to play an old game, I’ll just hook up the sys­tem I want to play it on and return it to the crate when I’m done.

I’m lazy about this, though, so often I’ll have at least one old con­sole lay­ing around that I haven’t got­ten around to putting away yet.

Also in the bow­els of my col­lec­tion you’ll find almost every iter­a­tion of the Game Boy since the orig­i­nal. I don’t know why I hold on to these things; I guess I just have a hard time let­ting go; my game sys­tems are like my chil­dren. I still play my Nin­tendo DS reg­u­larly, which I don’t see chang­ing any­time soon unless I break down and get a 3DS.

My other gam­ing hand­helds are a PSP (which I rarely use and only keep around for cer­tain games) and my new iPad which is loaded up with all kinds of retro gam­ing goodness.

The major prob­lem with hav­ing all this gam­ing stuff is hav­ing to store it . I have at least two con­trollers for every system…

…but then there’s stuff like this which is much big­ger and bulkier:

Ever tried to hide a Rock Band drum set? It’s not easy.

Then there’s the issue of stor­ing the games them­selves. Right now, most of my old games–LOTS and LOTS of games!–are in boxes.

About the Show

A video game show com­bin­ing Hoard­ers, Inter­ven­tion, and Extreme Makeover Home Edi­tion might seem pretty odd at first, but hear me out.

Any­one who has too many video games, either because you’re an avid col­lec­tor, or you just feel com­pelled to buy them, will be able to relate to the Hoard­ers aspect of the show. As I go from room to room show­ing view­ers my game stash, a pro­fes­sional psy­chi­a­trist will probe me with dif­fi­cult ques­tions like, “Why do you keep buy­ing games that you’ll never com­pletely fin­ish?” and “Why are there new games on your shelf but no gro­ceries in the fridge?” I face these strug­gles on a daily basis.

The Inter­ven­tion part hap­pens after­ward, when I’m con­fronted by friends and fam­ily I’ve been ignor­ing for weeks because I’ve deemed Skyrim more impor­tant. “We haven’t seen you for weeks! ” they’ll say. “How do we know you’re not dead?” And at that point I would cry, hum­bled by their out­pour­ing of con­cern, and then direct them to my Twit­ter feed.

To lighten things back up, we move into the Extreme Makeover Home Edi­tion part of the show. As I men­tioned above, stor­age for all of my gam­ing stuff is becom­ing a real prob­lem, and keep­ing my games stashed away in boxes means I’m not get­ting as much enjoy­ment out of them as I should be. I want to have a place where I can eas­ily access my entire col­lec­tion and proudly dis­play it all. The good news is that I have a base­ment! The bad news is that it’s unfin­ished. How­ever, if it was all fixed up, it would be the per­fect game lair. Trust me, I have big plans for it. And so the lat­ter part of my real­ity show would be devoted to trans­form­ing my base­ment into the ulti­mate video game and media room. When my friends and fam­ily even­tu­ally see how awe­some it is, they’ll all be jeal­ous and start being super nice to me so that I’ll invite them over more.

So there you have it–a three-part real­ity show in which I’m shamed, hum­bled, and ulti­mately redeemed by the excess of video games in my life. If you don’t like it, hey, that’s cool. I’m sure it’ll be can­celled after one episode anyway.

Real­ity TV Shows Star­ring The League of Extra­or­di­nary Bloggers

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week tele­vi­sion exec­u­tives have deter­mined that I, and my fel­low League mem­bers , lead amaz­ing lives and have pegged us as the next big real­ity TV stars . Here’re the real­ity shows I’d watch:

• Cold Slither Pod­cast loves video games too!
• Cool and Col­lected wants to know what’s in the box.
• Mon­ster Cafe Saltillo actu­ally does lead an amaz­ing life. How ’bout that?
• Of Fly­ing Mon­keys and Ewoks, Oh My!  is crazy and dis­turb­ing. I like that.
• That Fig­ures gets all MST3K with Netflix.
• Ran­dom Nerd­ness is a secret agent. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone.
• Team Hel­lions wants a show about run­ning a comic book shop with his soon-to-be-wife.

What’s with the all the Halloween stuff around here?

You may have noticed that I’ve given this site a not-so-subtle tem­po­rary Hal­loween makeover. I know it’s still early Sep­tem­ber, but I’m one of those over-enthusiastic weirdos who dec­o­rates early for Hal­loween and doesn’t take any­thing down until I start get­ting dirty looks from the neigh­bors.  Hal­loween is my favorite hol­i­day and wait­ing until Octo­ber sim­ply won’t do.

I hope you like what I’ve done with the theme. I didn’t want to devi­ate too much from my usual 8-bit Nin­tendo theme, so there’s a Boo Did­dley, a cute lit­tle ghost from the Mario games lurk­ing about some­where on this blog. See if you can spot him!

I am a Cryp­t­keeper (and so can you!)

This year ShezCrafti.com is par­tic­i­pat­ing in Count­down to Hal­loween , an annual month-long, group blog­ging marathon cel­e­brat­ing all things Hal­loween. The goal is to post some­thing Halloween-related at least once every day in Octo­ber. I plan to get started a lit­tle early, post­ing a few Hal­loween things here and there lead­ing up to Octo­ber when I’ll be in full-on Hal­loween mode.

There’s already a bunch of great blogs par­tic­i­pat­ing in this year’s Countdown–look out for those “Cryp­t­keeper 2012″ badges like the one in my side­bar to know who we are. The badges are like lit pump­kins on the doorsteps of friendly houses when you’re trick-or-treating (unlike those lame-ass peo­ple who turn off their lights and pre­tend they’re not home). If you’ve got a blog, why not join in the fun?

An Awesome Welcome Home Package from The League

Spend­ing eight hours in a cramped car dri­ving  back from vaca­tion  is not my idea of a fun day. I woke up this morn­ing to a sunny, per­fect beach day in Murell’s Inlet, South Car­olina and had to tear myself away to get on the road early, if I had any hope of get­ting home at a decent hour. Long road trips home after vaca­tion are the worst , espe­cially when you’re leav­ing behind beau­ti­ful weather. All you can think about is how short it was, and stress about all the crap you have to do when you get home. By the time I reached Bal­ti­more, I was in a pretty suck-tastic mood.

When I finally got home, there were a bunch of pack­ages on my doorstep. Look­ing a lit­tle closer, I saw they were all from mem­bers of The League which put an instant smile on my face and made me for­get how tired and cranky I was. I wasted no time tear­ing into them.

Pack­age #1, from Tupa’s Treasures

The first pack­age was a big box full of awe­some retro stuff from Christo­pher Tupa, the tal­ented artist and blog­ger behind  Tupa’s Trea­sures . Chris sent me an intrigu­ing email a week or so ago say­ing he found “some­thing I might like” that he wanted to send me.

Well Chris, you have def­i­nitely done that and then some! In fact, I’m hav­ing trou­ble fig­ur­ing out what the orig­i­nal “some­thing” is, as pretty much every­thing in this pack­age is a trea­sure. Here’s what was inside:

• Six Guns and Shurikens , a TMNT paper­back book from 1990. This took me back to 5th grade right away. I used to have this book, along with a few other TMNT paper­backs that I ordered from my ele­men­tary school’s book fair once upon a time. Flip­ping through the pages was like recov­er­ing a lost relic from my past.
• TMNT Ther­mos with my favorite Tur­tle, Raphael on the front! I saw this posted on Chris’s blog a few weeks ago , which he scored for a quar­ter at a yard sale.
• Inva­sion of the Punk Frogs , a VHS of episode 13 from Sea­son 2 of the orig­i­nal 1987 TMNT car­toon. I can’t even imag­ine how much shelf space you’d need to col­lect the entire 80’s TMNT car­toon on single-episode VHS tapes.
• TMNT toy bike ; I’m actu­ally not sure which TMNT toy line the bike is from, but it totally fits my new Nick­elodeon Tur­tles fig­ures. Does any­one out there know?
• New Kids on the Block paper­back book — another relic from my past! I never had this book, but my friend/frenemy across the street did. She was obsessed with NKOTB and we used to get into stu­pid fights about what was cooler: TMNT or NKOTB. Obvi­ously I was the one who was correct.
• The Last Starfighter movie novel. I had no idea a nov­el­iza­tion of that movie existed until I saw this thing  on Chris’s blog . It’s one of my favorite cheesy 80’s sci-fi movies and I can’t wait to read it.
• A stack of Garbage Pail Kids stick­ers. Yes! I don’t have that many GPKs any­more but would love to start col­lect­ing again. These are a nice head start.

My favorite item, how­ever, is this water­color of Raphael that Chris drew and painted him­self:

I love Chris’s car­toony, col­or­ful style which I fell in love with when I saw the super-cute Pop Cul­ture Road Trip sou­venir map he designed for The League. I’d love to see what a whole group shot of the TMNT would look like. (Do you take com­mis­sions, Chris??)

He also included this adorable lit­tle printed art book­let called “Ode to Spring” which is lit­er­ally too cute for words:

Chris, you have com­pletely over­whelmed me with how much awe­some you packed into this box. I don’t know what I did to deserve such a nice sur­prise in the mail, but thank you, thank you, thank you! This made my day.

Pack­age #2, from Top Hat Sasquatch

Mov­ing on to the soft, squishy pack­age I got from Tommy Day of  Top Hat Sasquatch , I knew right away it must have been the kick­ass THS t-shirt I ordered.

Fea­tur­ing orig­i­nal Alex Deli­gian­nis art­work of the sophis­ti­cated ‘Squatch him­self, its high brow design makes it appro­pri­ate for all occa­sions when an extra touch of class is needed–weddings, black tie events, job inter­views, state dinners…

As an added bonus, there were 8-bit THS stick­ers, but­tons, and a TMNT goodie bag full of retro trad­ing cards! The Tur­tles lunch bag was a nice touch and really brought back some mem­o­ries; I prob­a­bly haven’t seen one of those things in over twenty years! My Dad used to pack all my lunches in them, and would write funny things inside of drawn-on speech bubbles.

I can’t wait to wear the shirt to work and answer the inevitable ques­tions peo­ple will ask about it. (“Why yes, that is a fancy sasquatch in a top hat blow­ing bub­bles from a pipe!”) Thank you, Tommy, for the wear­able work of art and con­ver­sa­tion starter!

Pack­age #3, from Branded in the 80s

Last but not least, I received this per­sonal mix­tape (err…mix CD?) from Shawn Robare of Branded in the 80s . (To be hon­est, this has prob­a­bly been chill­ing in my mail­box for a week or more, but I didn’t open it until today. Even when I’m not on vaca­tion, I’m lazy about check­ing the mail.)

This disc is the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of a recent League assignment–to cre­ate our own per­sonal  high school mix­tape –which Shawn opted to give away for free to any­one who wanted a copy (ana­log piracy!) because he’s old school like that.

It’s an eclec­tic mix of all the songs Shawn was jam­ming to back in the early ‘90s, and includes Ween, Weezer, The Rentals, Weird Al, and even some tracks from the ani­mated Trans­form­ers and X-Men movies. My favorite track on it, how­ever, is “Girl­friend” by Matthew Sweet. I’ll never for­get the first time I saw that music video and thought how cool it was to have Japan­ese ani­ma­tion in it.

Shawn, thank you for going the extra mile (as you always do!) and tak­ing the time to mix, burn, and mail these CDs out. I really enjoyed your “liner notes” and it was fun tak­ing an audi­ble jour­ney into your past. One of the best ways to get to know some­one is through their music, and your high school mix­tape just con­firms what I already sus­pected: you were one of the cool kids.

I’m like totally on vacation, you guys.

Hey ya’ll!

Just let­tin’ ya’ll know I’m on a much-needed vaca­tion as of today, and won’t be back until next Sun­day. I won’t be in Florida like the Ninja Tur­tles, but I will be on a beach…in South Car­olina. (That’s close enough, right? They have palm trees there.) I guess that’s why the South­ern drawl is start­ing to creep out, as most of my fam­ily either lives down South or is from the South. It’s a won­der I can talk nor­mally at all! Though to be fair, some­times they give me shit about my Baltimorese.

Any­way, I may or may not be post­ing con­sis­tently over the next week, if at all. I know, I know, HOW WILL YOU LIVE?? I will have my arse­nal of gad­gets on me and the beach house I’m stay­ing at sup­pos­edly has Wi-Fi (which is always a crap­shoot), but I do want to try to relax and actu­ally enjoy myself, so please for­give me if I don’t make the effort.

In the mean­time I’ll leave you with a cou­ple of “beachy” posts of recent past:

• Movie Mon­tage Mon­day: Life’s a Beach!
• My Top 10 Favorite Car­toon Sharks
• I’d Go “Over­board” for Kurt Rus­sell
• Do you believe in mer­maids? Ani­mal Planet does.
• My Top 10 Beach and Ocean-Themed Retro Games
• Have you ever played Echo the Dol­phin on weed?