My first card of 2012

Ok, a quick note on the New York Times autism My Little Pony screw up that's gone viral. You see, what... what had happen... is the author of the piece was interviewing the girl in the story on her way to school. The girl was listening to Pony electronic dance music on her iPod on the way and one of the songs included Fluttershy going 'yay'. This could describe about 63.7% of all Pony remixes, but here's a possible candidate for the song in question. In the interview that morning, Winter Wrap Up was discussed including Twilight Sparkle's role in the episode. THE PROBLEM: the author wrote down Fluttershy's name but not Twilight Sparkle's in her notes. So when The article was written and it was time to name the nerdy pony trying to fit in, Fluttershy's name was in the notes so Fluttershy's name was used. Tiny mistake. Could have happened to anyone. Kinda like when the Times left out the "don't" in the Iraq WMDs story that one time. I find it interesting that a Pony remix song is the cause of the whole mess since I've got well over five gigs of this shit on my hard drive and MP3 player right now. Kottke.org links to some Pony music in their article on the story but if you want good MLP dubstep forget Skrillex, Alex S. is the real thing.


Dubstep is nice and all, but I prefer Pony trance, techno and weird glitchy stuff.

Ok, enough ponies. You want cards! Have I shown off a single baseball card all year? A real one from a licensed company? Or even unlicensed! One that wasn't completely defaced that is? No! I haven't! THIS CHANGES NOW. Here's my first card acquired in 2012.

Topps206 Mini card of Casey Kotchman. Kotchman has become one of those players that cause fans of a certain team to turn pale and twitch involuntarily when hearing his name. Like Ernie Broglio. Or Larry Andersen. Or Ivan DeJesus. Maybe even Doyle Alexander but I have a different feeling when I hear his name. Casey's the dude the Braves got in return for Mark Teixeira because they were too chicken to risk offering him arbitration in the offseason so they could get draft picks when Tex inevitably signed with the Yankees for 70 bazillion dollars. Picks the Angels were able to turn into Mike Trout. Oh yeah, the other dude we got in the trade, Steven Marek, just signed with the Blue Jays. Guuuuuuuuh. Did I mention that the slew of prospects we gave up to get Tex from Texas were a big reason they were in the World Series the past two years? Ok, I winced slightly when I saw this card come out of an envelope from Adam this afternoon. There is a happy ending though....

CYCLE! Me likey Cycle backs. Me No Likey that Topps always short prints the crap out of them. Numbered to 99! What's the point of a Casey Kotchman card numbered to 99? The number 29 is significant though... It's the number of games Casey played for Boston in 2009. After the Braves traded him for Adam LaRoche. Who if we kept as our first baseman instead of trading him away to the Pirates for Mike Gonzalez in 2007, we never would have needed Teixeira in the first place. GUUUUUUUUUUUUH. Mike Gonzalez is another one of those names. I've had a few Red Sox cards set aside for Adam for a few weeks but I haven't mailed them off because I haven't gotten around to creating his sketch card yet. The Holidays threw my procrastination schedule all off. I'm sure to get to it this weekend, as long as the Pony Madness of a new episode tomorrow doesn't derail me again.

To cap off this post here's some Boards of Canada, who along with Ponies and Baseball is my other big Obsession right now. Happy Cycling!

Dangit, I coulda had a blaster - part 2

After squandering my chance to get a Lineage blaster with that pile of vintage stuff I posted yesterday I had the audacity to do it again with a few trips to the CD Warehouse for some cheep tunes. I could be ripping open a blaster of Bowman Platinum right now, but I'm typing out this post and listening to some music instead. How foolish I am. Here's three 'gently used' discs that I actually paid money for instead of just torrenting like a normal person because sometimes you just want to hold the goddamn album in your hands.  Yes, I'm old. Absolutely none of these I walked into the shop hoping or expecting to find, but I was pleasantly surprised nonetheless.

Not gonna lie. I discovered this band through ponies. I've discovered a shitload of bands through ponies, including Boards of Canada which is one of the bands I have been desperately searching for in my music shopping. I've actually found two CDs by them in my travels: a 3 song EP of a John Peel session, and a live album (bootleg?) I forget the name of that I just couldn't pull the trigger on because you can hear people talking during the show. Actually I had heard Boards of Canada before someone improved/ruined one of their songs with pony giggles, I just didn't start listening to them for hours on end until ponies. MGMT I had never heard of before. Well, I had probably heard of them, but I certainly didn't pay attention to them and I never would have stopped dead in my tracks when I saw their album up on the shelf. I suck at describing music, so I'll just say there's a lot of guitars and electronic stuff in their music, something I'm really into right now. There's also a good remix of Electric Feel by Justice, another band I've been looking for in my music hunts lately. Here's the non-pony version of Time to Pretend.

The sketchy cover sold me on A Sunny Day In Glasgow's debut album. No, really, drawing is relevant to my interests, so I picked up the album when I saw sketches on the cover. Basic marketing, folks. Of course  if there were nekkid wimmin on the cover it probably would have sold more copies, but that's neither here notr there. The cover worked at least this one time. I got Autumn, Again by these guys last year when it was free on Amazon and enjoyed it so I figured I'd check it out. More electronic, more guitars and female vocals to boot. This sucker's right in my wheelhouse. It's a bit... eclectic. And not as chill as Boards of Canada. But I like 'em dammit, even if no one else has ever heard of them. Here's Things Only I Can See. Well, click on it and you can see it too.



Ok, I'm gonna catch hell for the next one but I DON'T CARE.

Yes, I bought an album from a band called The Unicorns.

Twilight is apparently a fan

FINE, I HAVE A PROBLEM. I KNOW THIS. I'm a tad magical horse crazy at the moment, but seriously this album is really, really good. Oddly enough, I did not find this band through ponies. I think it was through Erasure, actually. Which has kind of formed a theory in my head that [adult swim] helped pave the road for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic's popularity with slacker male cartoon addicts with their game Robot Unicorn Attack as a favor to Lauren Faust. A twitchy, silly unicorn game as a sort of John the Baptist heralding the upcoming pony cult. But I digress. This album is really really really good. They only did one full-length CD (and a couple of EPs) before breaking up, but this shit is goooooood. I really suck at writing about music (I can dance like a mother%ucker about architecture though) but I'll give it a shot by comparing it to other stuff I like. It's kinda got the energy of Franz Ferdinand with the loose goofiness of Dead Milkmen with just a touch of Modest Mouse depression for flavor. Does that make any sense? Of course it doesn't. Just listen to the actual music.



Yes, yes, yes. The song is about Unicorns. BUT IT'S GOOD. I don't care, I'll like it if I want to.

So there's my musical purchases for the past couple of months. All three were just under twenny bux. So waddya think? I should have just gotten a Value Box and one of those 100 card junk wax racks, shouldn't I?

(nah)

Sketch Card #5 - '75 Billy Koufax

Hey, I just detected a disturbance in the force... Like... someone was calling out... Like I was being... summoned. My pony-sense is tingling! Did someone mention PURPLE PONIES?!?!

Why, it was Night Owl! Night Owl is apparently a fan o' ponies just like Captain Canuck. I'm not going to draw him a pony though because he already got this:

The concept was easy: It's Night Owl so it's gotta be a Dodger. His favorite set is '75 Topps. Lotsa pretty colors in '75 Topps. Who's the subject? Ron Cey is his favorite player but Cey already has a card in the '75 set. Hmmmm... Kershaw? Nah, let's do an old timer. Jackie? Drysdale? Let's do Koufax. Topps has a thing for him right now. Koufax rookie card on a '75 Topps design. Done.

The whole thing was drawn over three days. I did the border first, then the back, and finally got the courage to draw Sandy last. I had started messing with colored pencils at this point but I'm still too chicken to do pictures of actual people in anything other than black and white. I don't quite have a handle on color theory yet. Purple ponies, I got that. I copied Al Downing's border for the card because the world needs more pink borders on baseball cards. The yellow and pink on the border worked out ok but the blue in the Dodgers name at the top got a little dark due to mixing with the regular pencil. I'm not even gonna comment on the lettering and lines in the border. I've dug out my old ruler and triangles from High School since this drawing. Sandy himself turned out good enough, although those eyes creep me out a little. I tried really hard on those, but I got some drawing advice that basically said "there's a time to just give up and walk away" and I hit my limit with those peepers.

The back is loosely based on the Bio box and cartoon on the back of '75 Topps cards. Once again, a ruler would have been useful. I was feeling Halloweeny in October so Owlie got a FrankenCard cartoon and a whole lot of poorly lettered text further obscured by some pink crosshatching to mimic the unreadability of the original design. I think I pulled an Ed Wood though, and made it so bad it looks kinda good.

Before I started in on sketching Koufax on the actual card, I did a trial run on this sketch page. I did this one a lot more quickly then the one on the actual card and labeled it "Koufax Practice". Once I was done I labeled various parts of the drawing based on how I felt about them.
Eyes: good
Nose: Meh
Mouth: not bad
Ears: Derp.
Other commentary includes "Goddam I hate drawing caps". And I do, I am never ever happy with how a cap comes out. I also tried to figure out how Sandy's head was shaped which was useful in drawing the final product. Overall, I think this was a help as I probably improved on everything in the final product. Except the eyes. There's just something freaky about Sandy's eyes on the actual card that I can't quite figure out.

Koufax was probably the fourth or fifth thing drawn on that sketch page. I started out with a trial run of the "Twilight Starlin" sketch card up in the top left. That monstrosity above Koufax is me getting stuck on what to draw and scribbling out Pinkie Pie in an unconscious homage to Finland's Coat of Arms. (without the sword, Pinkie's a pacifist) Thank Humon comics for putting that idea in my head. Twilight Sparkle is appropriately horrified and above her is a test run for the Frankenstein on the back incorporated into an equation I'm puzzling over. That's for another post though. Down below is a self portrait of me going off the rails again. This happens more often than I'd like to admit. The last thing drawn to fill up the page was a two minute sketch of Richard Nixon off an Upper deck insert card. It probably took slightly longer than two minutes, but certainly didn't go over three. I don't know why I think drawing fast is a particularly useful skill but hey, it's fun. I also don't know why I enjoy drawing ponies and old wrinkly dudes, but... um, there's probably some deep psychological issues there. Best not to talk about it. Hey, here's some Billy Madison to serve as a distraction!


(damn, that drawing really does look like Billy Madison)

Sketch Card #4 - Twilight Starlin

"Go check out Cardboard Junkie - There might not be something about ponies on it today"

LOL NOPE

A pony a day keeps the sanity away, and with crap like this going on, who needs sanity?

Here's the 4th sketch card sent out to the peeps. Also first pony.

Chicago Cubs shortstop Twilight Starlin. No I don't know how horses could possibly play baseball. Kickball I could see. Twilight just has that bat to break some opponents' kneecaps. Hey, that kind of thing just kinda happens in Chicago. Horses have kneecaps, right?

Ok, how did this Blasphemy of Nature come about? When ponies first invaded my free time I had an idea to combine them with baseball to make both poniez and hardball 20% cooler. Or immeasurably worse, one or the other. So, cartoons where baseball players become ponified seemed like a good idea. The 2011 Heritage Starlin Castro card inspired me to put the Cub at short on my pony team. I had a short list of  ideas for drawings but didn't actually get around to drawing any of them.

Then I foolishly bought a rack pack of Bowman Platinum pretty much because Freddie Freeman was on the wrapper. 2012 Bowman Platinum will have Julio Teheran on the wrapper and I'll do it all again because Topps knows I'm a schmuck. I posted the pack rip here (interestingly enough, this is the very first appearance of a pony on the blog) and blogger Tom mentioned he liked the Cubs cards. So I packed 'em up, added a small pile of feelthy Cubs to get them out of my house and finally drew a ponified ballplayer on a sketch card to send along. The back:

What do, indeed? The Braves don't have a shortstop at all, pony or otherwise. We'll give you Prado for Twilight and a filly to be named later. This card was apparently a big hit with Tom and one of the throw in Cubs is going toward a table project he's got in the works. I want pictures when that's done! I'm pretty sure Tom sent something back but my trade piles are so disorganized that it will have to wait for later. Thanks Tom, enjoy teh ponay!