The REAL Reason to get the SI Swimsuit Issue

Why get the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue? (OK so I'm a month late and a dollar short)

*2012 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue

Kate Upton cover model

• Nope its not the sexy models in skimpy bikinis even though there are plenty of them in here.
• Nope its not the latest end of the season Football news, which seems to be missing.
• Not even the spring training Baseball season ending injuries which again seems to be missing.
• Nope it isn't March Madness. Besides that's college not pro sports although the fans act like they are. Why not start paying them? Not there? What you talkin' 'bout Willis?

It's the commercials er the ads.

Like this one for M&M's - 'Nuff said (er Hef Said)

BTW: The Jimmy Kimmel one? Scary.

*I got this issue from work. The guy who sorts the mail (well one of the two guys I guess) gave it to me. It was addressed to an employee that is no longer with the company. For obvious reasons I edited out the mailing address after scanning the cover.

Fryday Fourtoon: Numba Thwee

 FRYDAY FOURTOON


"You will have many friends when you need them."

Daily Numbers: 2 4 1
Lotto Six #'s: 4 32 13 11 14 12





*Fortunes and Lottery Numbers just posted for entertainment purposes only.

Of Quarters and Vending Machines

A few weeks back (I wanted to mention it closer to when it happened but I was lazy with scanning of things) I went to get my usual Diet Dr. Pepper from the Pepsi machine in the break room/kitchenette at work. The thing costs $1.25 (down from several months and another vender back when it was $1.35). So I do my usual ritual of making sure the corners of the dollar are as unfolded as much as possible put it into the dollar feeder and then plunk my quarter into the coin slot. Well it did go plunk right into the coin return bin. The machine didn't take my quarter, so I put it in again. Plunk same thing it didn't like this quarter for some reason. I look at the quarter and don't see anything wrong with it just an ordinary quarter, so I fished out another quarter from my pocket and plunked that one in and the machine liked it fine and dandy and I finally got rewarded with my Diet Doctor Pepper. So the quarter?

This is it!

A nice 48 year old quarter from 1964 from before I was born. So why did the machine not like this quarter? Well it turns out that 1964 was the last year that the US Mint made quarters using approx. 90% Silver 10% Copper. Starting the next year 1965 they changed to 75% Copper and 25% Nickel. Modern vending machines are mostly calibrated to only accept the newer combination of metals. I didn't know that until searching on why my quarter wasn't accepted. I thought they just used weight/size to determine which coin, but apparently they have a tiny mineralagist in the machine with an electronic microscope testing the mineral integrity of each coin as it speeds down the slot.

I guess this is a good way to find older coins, or at least to test the age of the vending machine.

Fryday Fourtoon: Numba Two

FRYDAY FOURTOON

I've decided to try to make this a regular feature (or semi-regular). I won't scan each and every fortune, I just wanted to scan that first one with the spelling error cause it was fun. But I will post a random fortune from fortune cookies I've gotten over the last few take-outs or deliveries when I remember to save the fortune to be able to quote. So for this week the Fryday Fourtoon is:

"A smooth long journey!

Great Expectations!"

*Fortunes and Lottery Numbers just posted for entertainment purposes only.

DVD Update: Leap February 2012

FEBRUARY 2012

NO new DVDs this month. Also I didn't watch any. At the beginning of the month I didn't watch anything because I watched other stuff or didn't watch at all, then when I wanted to watch something... First the DVD rental from Netflix I wanted to watch didn't work in my regular player, but it seems to work in the computer DVD drive. Then I discovered that my regular player just doesn't want to function properly at all. The red stand-by light stays on, none of the buttons work on the remote or the machine, yet sometimes my TV screen shows the start-up splash screen for the player. Sometimes the red light turns to orange but not green UGH. Sigh it needs repair or replacing. I have another player that isn't hooked up that I haven't used in almost 4 years since I've been in my apartment. The reason is the little player I had been using was a brand that could be made region free (I temporarily forget what they call that DVD tricking) the one that is not hooked up doesn't do that trick.

Maybe it is time to get a new player that can be wired to be region free.

Fryday Fourtoon

Take a good look at that fortune from a real fortune cookie I had about a week ago. The fortune for the cookie shown still wrapped was something else ("A wise man knows everything, a shrewd one everybody"). In case your monitor is too small or you are looking at this on your iPhone the fortune reads:

"You will be showered with good luch."

Talk about your misfortunes or your misspelling. Um I think they meant to say "luck" or maybe forgot the "n" for "Lunch"? That cookie did follow a good portion of Hunan Chicken. So it was either good luck or good lunch, well dinner actually.





*Fortunes and Lottery Numbers just posted for entertainment purposes only.

Finally S.W.A.T. Season 2 DVD Coming

Just got word from tvshowsondvd website that the long awaited Final Season 2 of the television Action Cop show S.W.A.T. (Special Weapons And Tactics Team) will be coming to DVD on 22 May 2012. It is about frackin' time. It was way back in 2003 the year the S.W.A.T. movie starring Samuel L. Jackson and L.L. Cool J with Colin Farrell and Michelle Rodriguez was released and brought out on DVD that Season 1 of the show was released by Sony. Why they couldn't have released Season 2 shortly after I have no idea. Oh wait it was supposedly because there was little interest and sales for Season One weren't high enough. Season Two will be released by Shout! Factory the same folks who finally released the Max Headroom series on DVD. The SRP for this 6 disc season set is $44.99 which is pretty typical a bit high but worth it. I prefer to pay between $20 - $30 for television show seasons but I have gone as high as $45 from time to time. The Original show starred Steve Forrest as the leader of an L.A. based S.W.A.T. team. It also starred Robert Urich as the cocky ladies man. The series ran from 1975-76 so the look and feel of the show is a bit dated by the 2010's/20Teens standards.

UPDATE: tvshowsondvd now has a pic of the cover art.

Super Bowl 46

CONGRATULATIONS New York Giants!

SUPER BOWL XLVI (46) was an exciting game to watch, especially the final 5 minutes or so. The game was kept close through out. The game could have gone either way and both teams missed some scoring opportunities and dropped passes that would have been huge plays that would have led to a score.

As for the commercials. I think one of the best was the second Coca-Cola Polar Bears, where the one goes out of the cave to get a coke and has to run past and play football against the other bears on the frozen pond. The Matthew Broderick Honda commercial was OK for a nostalgic trip down Hollywood's Memory Lane but wasn't THAT exciting and didn't need the extra attention it got pre-game during the week. The sexy Fiat commercial was also pretty good, where the geeky guy with a cup of coffee sees a hot babe that turns out he's looking at the car and fantasizing about the babe. There were a few others that were pretty good, but those I think were the highlights.

UPDATE: I can't believe I forgot to mention these two cool commercials:  The Elton John Pepsi commercial with him as King (or was it Queen?) where a girl sings R-E-S-P-E-C-T and asks for Pepsi for all and sends Elton into his Dungeon (as he had a previous character) and sitting in the cell is Flavor Flav. And one of the coolest M&Ms commercials with the candy characters they have ever had. A Brown shelled female M&M says that she hates when idiots think she is out of her shell, then the Red M&M guy sees her and says "Oh it's one of THESE Parties" and he rips off his shell.

Book Update: January 2012 Books

JANUARY 2012 BOOKS

I got a large number of books this month so I will not post individual covers for all of them. I got 3 of them from the Quality Paperback Book Club, 1 from Goodreads in the first giveaway that I won (I have entered many giveaways there but this was the first time I won one, it helped that the author was giving away 25 copies) and the rest from Ebay.

HARDY BOYS MYSTERIES: 

Many know that the author of these books Franklin W. Dixon was actually a group of authors for the publishing company, but that is a story that has been told before by others and can easily be found by a web search.These first four books I got from one seller on Ebay for and average of $3.00 a piece (some auctions and some fixed price I think) they were ordered in December and I think originally shipped in late December/early January but the post office failed to leave one of those little "orange" pick up slips. Fortunately you can still pick up packages showing you valid photo ID to prove you are who you say you are and you are authorized to pick up mail for your address. I got it 10 days after they had originally tried to deliver it.

USPS "Orange" pick-up slip

Hardy Boys #1 The Tower Treasure

So since I'm trying to rebuild my collection from my childhood, or at least some of the highlights I got the hardback copies of these books. They are the 1960s or early to mid 1970s versions at the newest. I don't plan on getting any newer printings unless the original publication was later for those later numbers. Anyway the Series library numbers I got are 1, 4, 15, 16. These editions are numbered only on the spine, later editions put the number on the front cover. Later still they added a "flashlight" banner to the top of the front cover. I found an excellent identification website The Hardy Boys Unofficial Home Page that can help you determine which edition you may have. It might not be perfect but it helped me tons.  Anyway the titles of what I got:

Hardy Boys #16 A Figure in Hiding

01 - The Tower Treasure

04 - The Missing Chums

15 - The Sinister Sign Post

16 - A Figure In Hiding

With the exception of "number one" I had previously owned the others, I even had two different editions of number 16.

Next I had gotten three books from QPB:

Evidence of the Afterlife by Jeffrey Long, MD with Paul Perry
The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer 

The Vikings: A History by Robert Ferguson - When I first saw this book in the catalog I thought I already had it because I have a hardback edition of another book titled Vikings by Magnus Magnusson that has a similar cover.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E

Next I am building a library of television-tie-in books from a TV series I barely saw as a kid. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. which starred Robert Vaughn, David McCallum (who plays "Duckie" on NCIS), and Leo G. Carroll. The trick to this series is I also plan on getting the UK versions of some of the books which have a different numbering system and sadly didn't publish as many of them there. I am concentrating on getting the US editions first then perhaps as I can find them get the UK ones. There is an excellent website (from a guy in the UK that has a bunch of series listed on his home page) to see the covers of all these books The Man From UNCLE Books Gallery

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.  (later printings listed it as #1 and titled "The Thousand Coffins Affair" this edition only has that title on the inside) by Michael Avallone

02 - The Doomsday Affair by Harry Whittington
03 - The Copenhagen Affair by John Oram
04 - The Dagger Affair by David McDaniel
05 - The Mad Scientist Affair by John T. Phillifent
06 - The Vampire Affair by David McDaniel
07 - The Radioactive Camel Affair by Peter Leslie
08 - The Monster Wheel Affair by David McDaniel
09 - The Diving Dames Affair by Peter Leslie

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Affair of the Goldrunners' Gold by Brandon Keith

The book I got as a freebie from the Goodreads giveaway by the author is a Sci-fi story Death Drop by Sean Allen. That is about all I know about it right now. I moved it to the top of my "to-be-read" list. When I am finished with it I will post a review there as soon as I can. Oh and it was signed "All my best" by the author..

 The last minute addition is just a small one, well a big one a big little one actually. Journey To The Center Of The Earth - The Fiery Foe by Paul S. Newman a "Big Little Book". When I was a kid my brother had a copy of this book. I'm not sure if he snagged it years ago upon move out of the family home or if my mom had put it into a giveaway box years later. I think it was the former. Anyway this copy I got from Ebay for $8 (the shipping was free) it is in very good condition but has that really musty old book smell. I might try that putting it in a plastic container with an unscented clothes dryer sheet to see if that trick works I don't want to try the kitty litter trick as I have no cats and would feel strange buying kitty litter. LOL.

DVD Update - January 2012

JANUARY 2012 - DVD UPDATE

For January it looks like I just have two DVDs and I didn't spend a single dime on them. I got them from a "yankee" gift exchange party.

Leatherheads (2008)

I've only seen bits and pieces of this movie. It is one of those dramatic "feel good" sports movies where a group of ragtag players end up beating the odds and making history. I'm not sure if this is based on a specific historical events or just based on the early days of football in general.

Time Bandits (1981)

 This is a comedy/adventure classic from the demented directing of Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame. I forget how many times I've seen this film the basic story is about a 10 year old boy who gets mixed up with a band of time traveling thieving dwarfs who have stolen a cosmic map from the Supreme Being (aka: God) to collect historical wealth.