Pony and a bag 'o Chipz

VEEEEEEEDEEEEO



U WATCH NAO

It's been a while since I posted ponies

tl;dr version of this long ass post: I vent and ramble on about ponies in a cryptic manner so as not to offend the spoiler nazis and if you don't care about ponies, you need to close the tab now. Not even kidding, run far away while you can. No? Well, you've been warned.

Well, this season has been... interesting. I've been holding my tongue for a while but the season finale is today and I may as well put this out here now. So, what's happened with Season Three of My Little Pony? It's past 1am, I'm insomniacking again and I'm kind of incoherent so I'll just give you a bullet list summing up my thoughts on Season 3.

• I desperately needed Ponies in October to deaden the sting of the baseball playoffs and distract me from the stupid election last year. The Season Premiere date was the first weekend after the election, on November 10th. Thanks for nothing, Hub.
• Despite being a two-part episode with a brand new villain and new songs and a heroic quest in a long lost Empire of Equestria the major topic of discussion after the episode aired was Nickelodeon's Gak.
• While it's the worst of the two-part episode it's still really dang good. There are a couple of songs and a few great moments. It suffers from a villain who doesn't do a whole hell of a lot and having the misfortune of being the first episode after the brilliant Season 2 finale. 
• And when I say the villain does not do a lot, I mean he is pretty much the Darth Maul of the series. Cool, menacing character who is simply not given enough screen time and doesn't do much other than be defeated when he does show up.
• Episode 3, despite focusing on the pony that alternates with the one at the top of this post as my favorite on the show, in my opinion is easily the SINGLE WORST EPISODE OF THE ENTIRE FRANCHISE.
• Yes, I am including all previous generations and I am saying it is worse than the episode from G3.5 that gave us this and I'm not even kidding.
• And it's not even the entire episode that sucks, most of it is good. It's the last 5 minutes where things get completely horrifying. So bad it damn near put me off the show. If you know what I'm talking about and think I'm crazy, we can discuss it later. I utterly loathe the ending, however, and no one will be able to sway me from this opinion ever. 
• The following week we got a Cutie Mark Crusaders episode which was so good it redeemed the season for me. Brand new character, good story with good jokes and nifty references told well and there was even a ridiculously catchy song in there to boot. One of my favorites of the season. 
• Episode 5 featured my favorite minor character. If episode 4 had sucked, I never would have watched it because I was somewhat terrified that the show would ruin said character. Luckily, that episode was good and this episode was perfect. I can already say with some confidence that no matter what happens today, this will be my favorite episode from Season 3. 
• If you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, the episode list is here for your reference, and honestly maybe you need to skip this post unless you want to get sucked into the whole Pony Madness debacle. 
• Up next was another CMC episode, this time finally giving focus to our favorite filly Pegasus. This was another excellent episode with a completely unexpected appearance from another of my favorite minor characters. 
• I'm really ambivalent about episode 7. On one hand it was excellent at adding real depth to one of the main characters on the show. On the other hand it so thoroughly butchered the ending that it overshadowed the moral of the story. 
• The problem with the ending wouldn't have been so bad had the script to the original ending that was ultimately cut not been leaked. This would have been a perfect ending for that story and was not used for God knows what reason, ultimately highlighting every single problem the episode had. 
• Again, this is all my opinion here, but literally two seconds of screen time turned what was an unsteady but pretty good episode into a sloppy mess. Which I wouldn't have even known if the alternate ending had not been leaked. 
• About this time I started to get a bad feeling that Hasbro was about to put an end to the series. This is not the case, as Season 4 is definitely in production, but the combination of a short 13-episode season to hit the 65 needed for syndication along with seeing an episode that neatly wrapped up the destiny of a main character gave me that feeling that this season was it. Wrong as I was, it still lessened my enjoyment of the show from this point on. 
• The next episode featured a long-neglected main character, had some neat gags, another odd but catchy song and had lots of cameos from previous episodes. Pretty darn good episode. 
• It was also SAD AS HELL if you read between the lines. While a popular pastime within the fandom, I do not watch ponies so I can have feels. I want funny cute ponies being nice to each other while acting ridiculous. No feels. I can read bad fanfic if I want feels. 
• Yes, I'm a 40 year old man publicly using the word 'feels'. Seriously, this is not the right post for you if you are questioning this. There are over 9000 blogs in that sidebar, pick one and come back tomorrow for more silly things about trading cards. 
• Episode 9. This episode sucked. But it was a Spike episode and they always suck. There were some really good gags, but the overall plot of the episode was such an old, overused trope that it probably wouldn't have worked even if it had not been a sucky Spike episode. 
• I've been trying to avoid spoilers here but I HAVE to get this off my chest.
• The antagonist in episode 9 is a pack of ravenous Timber Wolves, magical creatures made of wood. 
• Apparently old, dead, brittle, dry discarded wood such as you would find on the floor of your average enchanted forest. 
• Spike is a dragon. 
• Who motherbucking breathes FIRE.
• WHAT WAS THE FRIGGING PROBLEM HERE?!?!??!!??!!!
• After this episode there was a two week hiatus until the next one. Since the Spike episode was instantly forgettable, I got to dwell on the sadness of the previous one for a month before there was new pony. 
• Episode 10. Utterly Brilliant. Like Ep. 5, this could have been screwed up so horrendously but it was executed perfectly. The pony at the top of this post was awesome as usual. John De Lancie reprised his role and was magnificent. The script was tight and excellent. It was also written by the same guy who did my least favorite episode this season so that was a nice surprise. In the long run it may ultimately end up turning out to be my favorite from this season.
• Episodes 11 and 12 are pretty clever actually. They show the events of a single day from the perspectives of different characters. The plots aren't intricately intertwined or anything but they do share a couple of scenes. Kinda neat for a show whose entire existence ultimately depends on how many plastic pony toys it sells. 
• One half of this defacto two-part episode is another Spike episode. Surprise! This episode doesn't suck! That's because it's not actually a Spike episode at all, he gets the spotlight for about 17 seconds before the Cutie Mark Crusaders come to bail him out.
• The CMC are the big winners this season. Every episode where they play a major role is excellent. If Hasbro decides that they need to sell more fillies and decree that Season 4 will focus solely on them, I won't even mind that much. 
• That won't happen though, because there's a new toy coming out that costs fifty smackers that will be driving the marketing for the forseeable future. I'll talk about that in a minute. 
• Episode 12 has yet another threadbare overused trope for a plot, but in this case it pulls it off well. The jokes are good, there's some good character growth, a certain pony who was woefully neglected this season has a small but significant role and Hasbro got to show off their new toy line and pretty pink princess pony one more time. All in all, a solid episode. 
• Despite the fact that most episodes this season have been very good (and if you take away the endings of two episodes, they are all good except the obligatory lousy Spike ep) the fanbase has been in a completely insane uproar for the past two weeks solid. This is due to a number of factors all converging at the same time:
• Bronies were rightfully worried that the series would end once it hit enough episodes for syndication. The airwaves are littered with cult shows that were cut off before their time and cartoons are almost always cut off at this point. While evidence for a season 4 was pretty overwhelming at this point, it wasn't formally announced until this week, and that was in a magazine article. So to start off, we already have some existential angst amongst the fandom.
• Next, a bunch of episodes were purged from YouTube. This was no big deal as it happens every so often. The fact that YouTube is now selling episodes on a special pay channel makes it even more obvious. Unfortunately some fan parodies were purged along with the actual episodes by the copyright bots. Anger ensued.
• Lots of fan-made pony games are out there, fulling a vast void that was only recently filled by a cute but unplayable Farmville clone that popped up late last year. There was a very slick pony fighting style game that was in development for almost 2 years that was just about to be ready. In a move that should have been quite obvious, a cease and desist was ordered and the game was shut down. Many fans are absolutely incensed about this, even though it should have been painfully obvious that Hasbro was never ever going to let this game see the light of day.
• A spin off series was announced. Basically the ponies travel through a magic portal and become human high-school age girls. The art looks pretty much like your average cartoon targeting little girls. So of course the fanbase who defied conventional wisdom and enthusiastically embraced a cartoon that is essentially an advertisement for toys for little girls, immediately decried this move as the Worst Thing Ever and refuse to give the show even the slightest chance of succeeding. 
• These things pale in comparison to the last thing that is "rustling jimmies" in the parlance of our times. Something happens in today's episode that has come as a bit of a shock to many people. This video sums the whole mess up pretty well:

So yeah, that's been the past few weeks in the life of a pony fan except not as uproariously funny. And yes, that is going to be the new toy I mentioned earlier, brand new wings and all.  Today's episode was written by my favorite writer on the series so it will probably be excellent and all the uproar will be replaced by applause come 11:00am today. Ok, maybe there will be some complaining about the long wait until next season. There seems to be a lot of complaining right now which is the prime reason why this post is a hell of a lot more negative than I would have liked. Ponies are awesome, but a small but vocal part of the fanbase is not making things very fun at the moment.

 As you can tell, I'm kinda ready for baseball. Don't worry, ponies won't be leaving the blog forever, there's still a comic series to get us through the long offseason and Enterplay Series 2 hits stores in April. Dang, I still need to find the last card to complete my Series 1 set, don't I?

UPDATE: Everything's going to be just fine.

May Card Show top 10 in Poetry - #9 Colt l'Orange

Moar bad haiku today!

1964 Topps Rusty Staub Rookie Cup

Look! it's a pony!
Le Grand Orange as a Colt
Collect every horse.

(I know Colt .45
is a reference to a gun
let me have my fun)

He played for Durham?
not often does one transform
from Bull into Colt

Pack o' Stickahs

This year I've become one of those 'troublemaker' collectors who is not buying new product. I'm not specifically boycotting anything, I'm just not buying new wax. It's getting difficult, especially now that Heritage is out. I can already tell right now that Allen & Ginter is going to break me. And oh crap... Gypsy Queen is going to be out soon too. I'm boned.

I do have one last trick up my sleeve. In addition to some unopened wax I stashed late last year in case of card emergency I have one outlet for my 2012 card cravings. 2012 Topps Stickers. Some of you are likely protesting right now. "How can you say you're not buying 2012 product if you're buying packs of stickers?" Here's my reasoning on this:

1) I have no earthly idea where or how I would ever find it but in 2009 or 2010 when Panini was back in the game with sticker albums I made an offhand comment on someone's blog that if Topps were to do another baseball sticker album I'd forsake the flagship and just collect that exclusively. Well they did, and I feel somewhat obligated to fulfill my promise even if I can't find the original comment.

2) They're not trading cards, they're stickers. Fundamentally different product. Even when Fleer put out their full sized sticker cards back in the '80's I always saw stickers as a separate entity than cards. Like baseball coins or rub-offs or tattoos. They're in that nebulous category of "worthless kid stuff" in a subset of "oddball ephemera" and that's exactly what I need in my life right now.

3) They ain't but a buck a pack. And collectors gonna collect. Don't force me to buy pony blind bags.

I am also rationing them out and only allowing myself to open a pack every time I complete a painting. So far I've opened three packs. I have 4 other paintings in various stages of completion and a handful of sketch cards to work on so I'll probably have to make a Target run soon for more packs. Here's the second pack I opened, the first one is in a video I haven't posted on YouTube yet.

Brandon Phillips just got a ginormous contract from the Reds. Brandon is one of those players I really like despite playing on a Braves rival so I'm happy for him, but between him and Votto the Reds' payroll has about a buck and a half left over for their entire rotation.

Dexter is another damn good player. Wanna know who is going to be the next breakout star? Read the AJC Braves blog and watch to see which player the genetic defectives in the peanut gallery are screaming that the Braves need to trade for right this instant this year. Carl Crawford, Matt Kemp, Jacoby Ellsbury, Dexter Fowler. These are all players from past years that the bloggers obsessed over. I'd tell you who the current fixation is on that board but the trolls and psychopaths have so thoroughly poisoned the blog that it's far less stressful to just hit myself in the knee with a hammer repeatedly rather than read that mess.

I'm still extremely bitter that I can watch pretty much every Cubs game on my bare bones cable package while I get maybe 35 Braves games on Peachtree TV. I can't even give Major League Baseball my money for their MLB.TV package because of stupid blackout rules. I'm really beginning to question why I care about baseball at all.

"We're only making plans for Nyjer..."

"WoooOOOOoooh"

Bad news: my first duplicate sticker in 2012.
Good news: the other one was torn out of the sticker album and was pretty much trashed when I tried to separate it from Ryan Zimmerman's sticker.

Longoria's home run last September pretty much talked me off the ledge after the Braves' flop. I'm still bummed they didn't go further in the postseason.

My first mascot from the set. Wait... No way. It can't be.

Oh God, it is.

First Pony pulled in 2012. Seriously folks, I just can't get away from them anymore. I've given up even trying and have simply accepted my fate.

Finishing up with a couple of non-foil logo cards. Some are not happy with this development, but I like the simplicity. Plus: Rainbow fishy logo.

ADDED VALUE:

So one thing I do as an aspiring Arteeest is work on my gesture sketching. Basically I look at a subject and try to sketch their pose as quickly and as accurately as possible. Normally I sketch nekkid people over on this site (NSFW if you click the 'get drawing' button) but after I opened this pack up I decided to sketch out the poses on these cards instead. Here's the result.

I really like sketching with charcoal pencil. I love the dark lines and it forces me to really think about what I'm doing because once I draw with charcoal, there's no going back. The faces all ended up dreadful, but I was more concerned with the poses. I am disappointed that I'm still drawing Salad Fingers when I do hands though.

These two turned out pretty ok although I am not sure how with a Cub and a Brewer on the same page the paper doesn't just burst into flames.

As you can see I'm getting sloppier and sloppier. There wasn't really enough room for both players on this page. While Evan may lamelt the loss of his left arm, I'm sure he's glad I also didn't bother to draw Mike's bat.

And if you didn't see this coming a mile away, you really haven't been paying attention.

Quickie LCS post

I shoulda been in bed 15 minutes ago, I have to be up again in less than 6 hours and I'm gonna be busy pretty much all day tomorrow. May as well write a post! On Saturday I went to the Braves' Open House at Turner Field with my son. I took a ton of crappy pics with my cell phone that I'm trying to get organized so I can share them this week. Opening Day's almost here! Gotta get ready! But I am most certainly not ready, so here's a few cards I picked up at the card shop before we went to the Ted instead. Here are the cards in the order I found them:

Hank's last card as a Brave in well loved condition. I needed this for both my main and team sets so I'll pick these suckas up all the live long day. This one cost a buck. Remember all those lottery tickets you bought last week? You could have bought this for the price of one of them tickets.

I have made it very clear that I am All In on J-Hey whether he ends up being the second coming of Willie McCovey or Brad Komminsk Part Deux. Even if he flops completely my extensive Michael Vick collection is assurance that I will still look upon my Heyward cards with fondness no matter what happens. This means I will gladly overpay for weird incomprehensible parallels in sets I despise as long as it has Jason on the front. Can you tell what the heck parallel this is? You get a +1 on your Card Nerdiness stat if you know!

I didn't think to bring my card lists with me so I scrounged the '65 box was hoping to find some cheap cards that I might not have. This .45 cost .50 so I snagged it and hoped for the best. I already had it. Not a total loss though, it could be the start of a Colt collection.

After the '65s I muddled through the '66s just because. The '66 high numbers are a colossal pain in the rump for a team collector. I still have not found that goddamn Chi Chi Olivo card anywhere for under $30. What is the deal with Chi Chi Olivo??? While passing up yet another Chi Chi card, I stumbled upon this one here. I had no idea this was even in the set and it sure wasn't ever on my '66 needs list. Good 'ol Topps and their Multi-team rookie cards. They didn't even know what to put in the team banner on the top left corner and just left it blank. 1966 Topps is a pretty bootleg design to begin with and this card might be the bootleggiest. If it weren't for that Braves cap, I'd swear this was an unlicensed card.

Ya knew there'd be a pony. Ya had to know. I practically telegraphed it with the Colt card up above. Two reasons I bought this card: I thought I needed it for my Goodwin set (I didn't) and the purple highlights in Smarty's mane make him look like Twilight Sparkle's brother.

Ok last one for today. I will always pick up an original Star Wars sticker out of a 50 cents box. ALWAYS. Especially if it is an X-wing. I need another one of these stickers so I can stick this one to my car.

There was one other thing I picked up, but I'm gonna save that for a video. Nope, it's not a wax pack either. You'l just have to be patient.

Mailday from Slangon

I sent his cards so I can open his package. Besides, where do you think all these Mets are coming from?



And if you're too damn lazy to watch the video here's the goods:

(seriously, what the hell is that cutie mark supposed to be???)