Hey

I was going to make this post a few days ago, but distracted by sleeping. Here is what I've been up to lately. On Thursday afternoon I headed down to Chinatown in search of some Pokemon crap. Logan is into Pokemon, so I thought I'd see if they had anything cool. Back in the day when Pokemon-mania was in full swing you couldn't walk five feet without tripping over some Pokemon crap in Chinatown, now...NOTHING!

Since I was there I figured I should at least get something since I went all the way down there. At this little snack/candy store I picked a can of Qoo and some weird Japanese seaweed snacks. At the front of the store they had boxes of seawood snacks and for some reason I still don't understand I wanted some. The boxes hadn't been unpacked yet, so the guy had to go through them to get what I wanted. I felt kinda bad making him do all that work, so I said I'd take two bags. They had five flavors; spicy, wasabi, original, thai, and something I can't remember, but I ended up getting original and wasabi. Unfortunately, later when I got home I tried the original and it was horrible. I took one bite and instantly hated them. I still forced myself to eat a few strips, but after that the bag went in the garbage. I still have the unopened bag of wasabi flavor, so if anyone wants it, it's all yours.

That's the wasabi flavor and you can tell it's hot because there is smoke (or steam?) coming out of the dude's ears.

While looking for the Pokemon stuff I looked at these two toys stores and found some cool Japanese toys, but they were pretty expensive. The toys are a few years old and unavailable pretty much everywhere, but still "mark it down"! At the one place I think I may go back to pick up the Kamen Rider Todoroki figure from Bandai. It's pretty poseable and he comes rocking out with his guitar.

I might have to go back and pick this guy up. I'm sure it'll still be there covered in dust, so there is no hurry.

I also had to check out the movie stores. I went to Far East Video (or is it Go East Video??) which I usually buy from. Most movies are $6 each or 3 for $12, so I went for 3. I got this Vietnamese martial arts flick called The Rebel, some Japanese movie, and Speed Racer. Yeah, they bootlegs of Speed Racer. I'm sure nobody is gonna care if they sell bootlegs of the newest Twins movie, but once you start selling bootlegs of North American movies you might be in trouble. I didn't see Speed Racer in the theater and buying it for $4 is cheaper than renting it, so I figured why not. All I gotta say is the monkey stole the show! Just fast forward to the monkey scenes and you're golden. The rest of the movie was a fast, blurry, brightly colored and over the top cartoon. I guess it was okay.

Thursday night I was flipping through the channels on TV and caught something quickly on the local news about a movie costume sale in Calgary. I was intrigued, so I googled it and found out a wardrobe place for movies and TV in Calgary called Momentum Design was having a sale. They have done wardrobe on such big time Hollywood pictures as Hellboy, Blade II, and Fantastic Four. Fast forward to Saturday and we drove out to Springbank to their warehouse which is actually right across the street from Calaway Park.

There were quite a few people there and they had a lot of stuff, but not all of it was for sale. The roof was probably 75 tall and one half of the inside had racks of clothes going right to the ceiling. We didn't buy anything, but only because we couldn't afford anything. Most stuff was pretty boring, but there were a few standout items. The classic red Mountie uniform, a mint green tuxedo, the Mars Discovery Force suit, and the Nazi Bear outfit. The Mountie and green tuxedo are pretty self explanatory. The Mar Discovery Force suit was this one piece snowsuit looking thing probably from the late 70's or early 80's. It was red with yellow trim on it and the patch on the front that said "Mars Discovery Force" and basically it was straight out FUGLY. They had a kids sized version that was green and some little kid was trying it on and he actually liked it! Sorry kid, but if you wear that, you are going to be ridiculed and beat on.

I was hoping to find a big monkey suit, but had no such luck. I was close when I saw what I thought was a bear suit, but upon closer inspection noticed it had pants and sleeves with Nazi symbols on them. The bear part of the suit was the furry back and bear head. It was pretty bizarre, I mean a Nazi bear? It's a Jewish hiker's worst nightmare! Unfortunately, they didn't list what movies/TV shows anything had been used in, but I really whated to know what the Mar Discovery Force and Nazi Bear suits were from. Too bad they cost like $175, but when you think about it when else are you gonna find a Nazi Bear suit.

They did have some "big name" costume on display like Ron Perlman's Hellboy wardrobe, Wesley Snipes' Blade stuff, and Samuel L. Jackson's rags from Resurrecting the Champ. They also had some b-star wardrobe like James Van Der Beek and Ashton Kutcher's cowboy stuff from Texas Rangers. Did that go straight to video? Anway, sorry for the lack of pictures. I took my camera, but you were allowed to take pictures. If you did, they'd sick the Nazi bears on you.