Friday, January 06, 2006

Rosebowl Cont'd...


How can we cheer up the USC Trojans after their miserable defeat at the hands of the Mighty Longhorns of the University of Texas?

With SONG AND DANCE.

Thanks to RHPT for the link.

Also, from Reed-o...

Up is down, black is white...

Thursday, January 05, 2006

COMIC NERDS, AHOY!!!!

So, you may say to yourself: How does The League spend a week off from work?

Leaguers, the answer isn't pretty, but it is simple.

The League spent last week inventorying our vast and growing comic collection.

The reason for this are two-fold:

a) We can have a record for insurance purposes
b) We can also use the nifty database at ComicPriceGuide.com to SELL our comics.

Now, the key word here is, of course, SELL. The League swore once upon a star that we would never, ever sell our comics. And then one day, not so very long ago, The League sat back, took a breath and realized that the closet we use to store our comics is full. Now, when we put comics in their neat little nylon baggies with the acid free backing board, we get a good look at what's there. But we also only do this about once every 5-7 months. This means twice a year we get a harsh reminder that we have a lot of comics we really don't think we need anymore.

The Inventory:

Now here's the deal. I'm not done. I haven't yet got everything in the database, and I haven't got 95% of my trade collections in there.

I figure I'm 90-95% done with the actual comic books, at least knowing what I have, but I need to re-org some stuff. Why is Ultimates in with some fo my indie stuff? I don't know. I put it there a few years ago and it never moved.

Here's the numbers

long boxes: 14
short boxes: 9
long boxes, empty and waiting to be filled: 1
Uncanny X-Men: 172 issues (roughly 14 years worth)
Batman: 118 issues
JLA: 111 issues
Detective Comics: 109 issues
Action Comics: 82 issues
JSA: 80 issues
DC Comics: 3356
Marvel Comics: 1056
Total Number of comics: 4723


EVERYTHING MUST GO

The game plan now is three fold:

a) sell a lot of comics to my store so I can get "store credit". This would essentially enable me to trade old comics for new comics. Now, I've been told that with the volume of comics I'm talking about trading, these guys will probably only want to allow me to use credit on 1/2 of each purchase, but I figure that ain't all bad. They're still running a business, and I'm still trying milk that store credit as far as it will go.

b) What they don't want (I gave my store manager a spreadsheet of Marvel stuff I'm unloading. ComicPriceGuide.com exports to Excel, handily enough) I will try to sell on ComicPriceGuide.com

c) I will also talk to my insurance agent about adding my comic collection to my home insurance. If our house goes up in flames, I'm gonna be out a lot of comics/ a lot of money.

The nice aspect of all of this is that I can move into a bit more of a cyclical pattern with comics. I can still get new comics, but I can off-set the cost of the new stuff by unloading old stuff. Honestly, the way they collect everything into trades these days, I'd just as soon have the collections as the floppy comics. If I can get money enough from selling the comics to buy the collection, groovy.

Anyway, I'm getting rid of my Amazing Spider-Man stuff, I think. That feels like a major, major step. I really need to find that stuff in collections soon if I'm going to unload it. I've apparently got some odd, key issues that are worth a lot of dough to someone else. I just want the dough.

Some final thoughts on all this

The whole thing has a really strange feeling to it. I've had some of these comics since I was in middle or even elementary school. But I also know I only look at them when I open the boxes. There's no real good reason to hang onto them.

Comics pop out at me as being from certain phases in my life. Invisibles? Shade? First years of undergrad. My issues of X-men around 210? Early middle-school. JLA? End of undergrad. Spider-Man: Death of Kraven? Roadtrip across the U.S. when I was 11 or so.

One other funny thing I noticed... I'm a quitter. I would pick up a series, read it for a while, miss a single issues, buy another two issues, miss an issue, buy one more, and then quit reading the series. I see a rough pattern like this with a LOT of comics. I try to remember why I quit reading the series, and only some series can I remember making the conscious decision that I was DONE with that series (I can't even recall quitting reading Uncanny X-Men, but I did quit several year ago).

Anyhoo, that's what I've been up to.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006



UT WINS THE ROSE BOWL!!!!!

Shit. We just won the @#$%ing Rose Bowl. I can't @#$%ing believe it.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
All the live long day.
The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
You can not get away.
Do not think you can escape them
At night or early in the morn-
The Eyes of Texas are upon you
'Till Gabriel blows his horn.


Wow. I will never, ever forget this one.

Oh, and one more time!

Texas Fight, Texas Fight, And it's goodbye to A&M.
Texas Fight, Texas Fight, And we'll put over one more win.
Texas Fight, Texas Fight, For it's Texas that we love best.
Hail, Hail, The gang's all here, And it's good-bye to all the rest!

Yea Orange! Yea White!
Yea Longhorns! Fight! Fight! Fight!
Texas Fight! Texas Fight, Yea Texas Fight!
Texas Fight! Texas Fight, Yea Texas Fight!

Screw you ESPN for spending all week talking like USC had this game in the bag. Wait, we're getting a Wheaties box! Heck, yeah!

Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Peabo.... Dan... I hate you bastards for having tickets and getting to be there.

Golly, what a game. I almost threw-up on that last drive.

Wuff.

GO HORNS!!!

Oh, and I am naming my first born child Vincent Young Steans. Yes, I am. Or maybe my dog.
You Are Pecan Pie Soda

Sweet, but totally nuts
Wow. After the coverage today... Wow.

***morning update****

My intitial inclination was just to remove my quick post from last night before bedtime.

Well, as we all know by now, it was NOT 12 miners who survived the mining accident in West Virginia. It was 1 miner of the 13 who survived.

I was, like everyone else, elated upon hearing that 12 of the miners had survived and were just awaiting evacuation.

There are a lot of dangerous jobs that we take for granted, people who crawl into holes miles into the planet to bring back the resources we need to make this planet run. When you work in an office with an elevator and the biggest problem in your day is that nobody started the coffee, it's hard to imagine that day-after-day, exactly these kinds of threats hang over so many people's heads. Each time these people head off to work, it's a risk, and you know these guys don't earn any CEO wages.

Anyway, The League's thoughts are in West Virginia this morning.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

ROLLERGIRLS ROLLS AWAY WITH THE LEAGUE'S HEART

The League has a new favorite show. A&E's Rollergirls.

Remember when A&E was the channel that showed orchestras and Yo-Yo Ma talking about what sort of string he used? Yeah, I didn't watch that, either.

But I am going to watch Rollergirls.

Featuring a wide array of Austin slackers who have found their calling as the stars of Texas Roller Derby, the show follows the adventures of several women as they prepare for a week's match. (curiously, there's a completely different league under the name "Texas Rollergirls". Go figure.)

After suffering through "Real World: Austin" (aka Real World: two square blocks of downtown Austin) it was fun to see people actually walking around town near familiar landmarks and being the sort of 20 and 30-something slackers the town is crawling with (cough... STEANSO... cough).

One odd bit about Austin that you certainly don't find in Phoenix is that Austinites tend to find completely useless past-times in which they strive to overachieve. Be it the Spam toss at Spam-o-rama, or building a massive kite for kite fest or becoming champion of a disc golf league, folks in Austin tend to get easily distracted (The League was a black belt in TKD in Austin. Yeah, seriously.). This distraction may include forming two completely different all-girl roller derby leagues.

In Phoenix you pretty much play golf and put TV's in your SUV.




Anyhoo, I'm in for the next few episodes. I used to watch Rollerderby on cable in the 90's, so it's fun to see both the games and the goings-on behind the scenes.

You know, once again, this post seems most appropriate for Nanostalgia.com. Ah, well. Too late.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Retrocrush.com presents the 100 Most Annoying Things of 2005

The League is deeply jealous of Retrocrush's list.
Sitting through these movies must be torture...

Maybe this should be on Nanostalgia.com, but what's up with all the torture going on in movies, TV, etc... ?

Maybe I've seen too many commercials for films like Saw, Hostel and Wolf Creek lately, but the latest trend isn't crazy, unstoppable killing machines (Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger), serial killers (Hannibal Lecter, etc...), or even slightly sympanthetic killers (Norman Bates).

The latest trend, as near as I can tell, is for folks to end up getting tortured for 90-120 minutes.

After watching years of Fear Factor (now, apparently, in syndication) , Dog Eat Dog and Ally McBeal, maybe we're all used to torturing ourselves with movies and TV.

I dunno. I guess that's what the kids like these days, and maybe it's not too far of a cry from House on Haunted Hill or some of those other Price movies.

Opinions?
The League shouts "Bulls$%^!!!!" a great number of times.

Congratulations to the referees in tonight's Suns/ Knicks game. They really won that game for the Knicks.

I've only rarely seen such one-sided game calling. 3 Suns players were fouled out before the first of three OT's and 1 more fouled out in, I believe, the second OT (but that was Burke, so I'm not really sure how much of a conspiracy that one was).

Apparently, when in NY, putting your hands up when someone else shoots constitutes a foul. Also, there is no such thing as an offensive foul in NYC. Ever.

41 fouls on The Suns, 27 on the Knicks?

That was truly awful, awful reffing. The Knicks didn't deserve that win.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

2006: a Year in Review

I've only been awake for about thirty minutes, but I think we've had enough of 2006 to make some calls on how this year went.

Movie of the year: the few seconds of Narnia they showed in a clip on Headline News.

Song of the Year: Polyphonic Spree's "It's the Sun". For some reason that's what was in my head when I woke up.

Meal of the Year: "Muffin Tops Cereal"by Malt o' Meal and a cup of official Ruta Maya coffee sent by cousin Susan from Austin.

Cat of the Year: Jeff