News, Views Etc . . . News and Views!

I don't know what happened to September, I was sure we still had a week to go, by which I mean on Friday the 29th I was thinking it was about the 22nd or 23rd; someone stole a week from my life . . . bastard!

Also; on Friday last, we had pretty-much 'had' the conkers, and a few sweet chestnuts were starting to fall on the way into town, but it was still basically late-summer, today - 72 hours later - there's leaves everywhere and it's nearly Christmas! It would appear that at midnight on Saturday all the leaves remembered they hadn't paid rent for October and just took-off!

But is it Giant?

Nothing much toy-related here today, but there are new posts over on the small scale Hong Kong piracy Blog, each looking at one of the three little boxed sets from DFC/MTC which were issued back in the 1980's.

Barbie

Also a bit of news for those whose interest in toys extends to something broader than 50-60 millimetre soldiers; Channel4 here in the UK are showing Barbie: The Most Famous Doll in the World tomorrow night (Tuesday 3rd) at 9.15, it's staring Mary I-can't-save-the-high-street-after-all Portas, so it may well turn-out to be all of a Mattel-edited 'fluff and nonsense' screen-filler -  with little on Bild Lilly and nothing on Marx or the Lam/Seltzer Gina doll - but it promises to visit the Mattel factory, follow the design process, attend a Barbie convention and look at social issues here in the UK so should have something of interest, and it's nice to see toys on the telly for once!

3rd Best Month Ever

Because I lost a week somewhere (bastard!) the 'first/second week of October' thing was way out, and the Blog actually tipped the two-million hits sometime on the afternoon of the thirtieth! I was in the Library at about 3pm and it had 198-hits to go, so around 4 o'clock/teatime I reckon, if that was you (singular) thanks! While if you (plural) keep coming, I'll keep posting!

The funny thing is, it took nearly eight years to get the first million up, and just over a year to get the second but I think it will be less than 12-months to the third, from June's million-point to mid-December last year the total had only risen about 250,000, so the Blog's seen around 750,000-hits in 9 months! However as I know a similar Blog got their three-million up ages ago, I'm not getting ideas above my station!

I'd like to thank my family, because even though they're not involved, you always start by thanking them, I'd like to thank Miss Nash, Mrs Uprichard, Mrs Polity and Mike Richardson (my art teachers at various schools!) for letting me muck-about and 'express myself', I'd like to thank you, the viewing public for voting with your left-clicks - Ooops, I'm welling-up here, what would Gwyneth do now? - I'd like to thank everyone I've ever slept with, because when you see the futility of most human existence it's only the hope or possibility of more sex at some point in the future which keeps you going.

I'd like to thank Paul Morehead at Plastic Warrior for encouraging me out of private, lone-collecting (the natural state of most collectors) into more public participation, PTS, Plastic Warrior, Paul McKenna, Andy Harfield and Peter Bergner for the shows (in the order I first attended!), John Begg and Adrian Little for support, encouragement and opportunity, Trevor Rudkin for a ton of stuff over the years and everyone who's ever been named as a contributor to the Blog.

I'd like to thank Pope John Paul II [not], President the Dead Kennedy's, King Crimson, the Beatles and the Stones, the Monkeys (who were Monkees and arguably better than the Beatles), Francis Ford Coppola, Harry Harrison and The Stainless Steel Rat, Susan George, AC/DC and Deep Purple (in fact; all the colours - Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Pink Floyd &etc), Dan Dare (the Eagle one), Judge Dredd (the 70's one), Flash Gordon (the silly one with Brian Blessed), the kid whose brother gave me all his Airfix blue ACW artillery in 1960-something, Donald Lehmkule, Brian Woodruffe, Tangerine Dream, Peardrax (in fact; all the fruit...yeah, even Bananarama), Mariella Frostrup, Punch, Private Eye, The Blues Brothers, Berlin, the smaller Channel Islands, Kenya, Enio Morriconi, the American Civil War, Asimov, Clarke, Huxley, the various Priests (authors; not effing clerics), The Hairdresser's Husband, Philip Glass, Vitalic - Poison Lips (Captain Flash Remix), Arms and Armour Press, Bellona, Almark, Ian Allen and MAP, Ramses II, Akhenaton, Brazil, Bowie (before he became a knob), Charlton Hesston (before he became a git), barrels (wooden), elephants, Autumn, gull's eggs, a galaxy long ago and far away, and another where no man had boldly gone to split-infinitives, Tribbles, Dimetrodon, Mohammad Ali, Janis Joplin, 1970's French Porn comedies, rock-pools, Clint Eastwood, Charlotte Rampling, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Jenny Agutter, Celtic knot-work, fossils, most trees (not spiky, bastard-bush ones in Africa, they probably stole my last bit of September too; the bastards), The Man with Two Brains, De Sade, Kafka, Orwell, Vonnegut (all the depressives - they tell it like it was, is and always bloody will be), Mouse, Kelley and psychedelia, the Beach Boys, Susan Sarandon, The Simpsons, rhubarb crumble, Futurama, apple crumble South Park, plum crumble, the Hooters - All You Zombies, and Donald & Keifer Sutherland. I'd like to thank Rutger Hauer in Heaven & Hell, pancakes with sugar & lemon, crepes with hot chocolate-sauce, Catch-22 (book or film), Christmas-tree baubles, Rommel, Michael Caine, Art Nouveau and the Arts & Craft movement, anyone called Napoleon but not called Bonaparte (there's a Solo one), Prisoner, Z-cars, The Goodies, The Year of Living Dangerously, Bernard Fall, Daleks, Lego (but only before about 1997), Forbidden Planet (the animated movie), Forbidden Planet (the shop, but only before about 1997), Jerry-cans, Rubber Jigglers, Ray Bradbury, Abseiling, the ceremonial uniforms of South American Dictatorships, Raglan Castle, Schlöss Neuschwanstein, jam doughnuts, Santiago Calatrava, Rodney Matthews, gooseberry-fool, JRR Hobbit-man, ration-pack Mars Bars (not high-street ones), Lord of War and Nick Cage, oatmeal blocks with greengage jam from a tube, the SR71 Blackbird, chocolate trifle, Stuttgart, Munich, Baden Württemberg, the Black Forest, the Bodensee, Weingarten, Steibis and the Donautal (basically; everything German, south of Kassel), Bob Marley, insects (except camel-spiders), daffodils, peanut-butter, The Wire (telly not cold-war), Silent Running, old 1950's Volvo's, Dad's Army, Hadrian's Wall, old 1970's Volvo's, skinny-dipping, cacti, (not at the same time), old 1960's...yeah - just 'Volvo's'. I'd like to thank the British for 1000 years of annoying the French, mapping pens, Burger King's cinnamon-apple slice (discontinued in '92; bastards), Trading Places, Action Man (not GI Joe), Hurricanes, Vulcan V-Bombers, Britten-Norman Trilanders (yellow ones), Tom & Jerry, aircraft carriers, MTB's, fog-horns, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, snow, snowmen, skiing, Massey Furguson, The Primrose Café at Eastleigh, M4 Heston Services Northbound, armoured cars, the South Downs Way, Led Zepplin, Pepperami, English canals, Welsh streams, stepping-stones, Irish coffee and Highland toffee. I'd like to thank Ford Transit vans, American military 6x6 trucks, shortbread, a Harley Davidson Sturgis in midnight-pumpkin, raspberry Ruffles, Lucky Bags, Tootie-Fruities (like Skittles but BETTER), chemistry-sets and microscopes, black socks with coloured toes, Neil Young, Land-Rovers, Austin Gypsies, Chelsea Bridge, plain-chocolate Bounties, the Bayeux Tapestry, big cats, little cats, kittens , cheetahs, aliens that look like kittens but eat your soul in your sleep, Kew Gardens, sloe gin, Advocatt, Advocart, Addvocat egg-nog, Guinness, Sauterne, canoeing, Manu Chao & Noir Desir  - Le Vent Nous Portera, Roger Dean,  special-fried rice, variegated-holly hedges, the GPMG and Chinooks (not at the same time), Mon Cherie in Charlottenberg, Leonard Cohan and the other one with the gravelly voice (Judas!), Azaleas, Eli Wallach, Sigourney Weaver, the Great Pyramids at Giza, Blade Runner, Big-O, Heavy Metal magazine, Asterix and Tintin, toadstools, Peter Rabbit, glow-in the dark stars on the ceiling, hedgehogs, roast lamb with all the trimmings, Nazareth - Morning Dew, the Morris Minor estate, Aphrodite's Child, Pooh-sticks, dandelions, Stonehenge, Tusker's larger, Phauenbrau, Easyrider T-shirts, Nutella, Marmite, Twister ice-lollies . . .

Best Month Ever - from the 17th!

 . . . but most of all - I'd like to thank the kind folks of the Penn State Toy Soldier Mafia, and in particular the jabbering-fuck; Paul Stadinger and his cock-wackin' monkey-lizard; Erwin Sell, because without their intervention last December and their various entertaining, misguided, lunatic intermissions since, the blog would only be sitting on around 1,450,000-hits today, so - thanks y'awll!