Geek Prom!

On Saturday April 18th Jen and I attended geek prom. Geek Prom has been a local annual event, barring the year it was in St.Paul, since 2002 and Jen and I have wanted to go since we moved here in 2003. Unfortunately for us this is the first year our schedules allowed us to make it. It's billed as:

... a somewhat formal dance for adult misfits age 18 and older...For those who were too geeky to attend their high school prom, it's a chance to finally be accepted. For those who were too cool to properly enjoy their high school prom, it's an opportunity to finally let that inner-geek out..
We initially has some anxiety about what we planned to wear for such a prestigious event as the dress code is quite strict:

Plan on wearing something festive: out-of-style formal wear, superhero outfits, futuristic ensembles designed for casual space travel, or uniforms from any marching band, Girl Scout troop or other such geek activity.

I couldn't find my old girl scout regalia, a great tragedy as I'd attained the glorious rank of Sr. girl scout in high school after 10 years of dutiful cookie selling. So we next considered cosplaying, but had trouble figuring out who/what we wanted to be. So, we decided to be ourselves and choose outfits that greatly accentuate our collective geekdom. Which apparently worked because we were both finalists for the title of geek queen 2009. I even made it to first runner up queen. I can't complain though as the queen was dressed as Arwen from LOTR and I wasn't that committed to being a geek. However, should the other queen be unable to fulfill her duties, I AM THERE! Well I don't think it quite works that way but I did get a gift certificate for a free pizza, CD of local music and $20 worth of cheese (or smoked fish) from a local shop. Which for me is actually better than being queen because I have a horrible love for all things cheesy.

Of course I have to share our awesome outfits starting with Mine:

From the bottom right:

1) A chain mail bracelet because every proper geek has some chain mail hanging around. This one was made for me by a dear friend.

2) A Nintendo Choker made by me about a year ago using glass beads and Japanese cell phone charms. It includes Mario, Luigi, Toad, and a goomba.

3) My corsage. We went with a green theme to pseudo-match my zelda shirt, not truly match because we all know true geeks aren't worried about silly things like color matching! I made this out of old St. Patrick's day fake flowers and polymer clay triforce I made myself.

4) Blooper earrings. I also made these from Japanese cell phone charms.

5.) Mario Lunch box I used as a purse. What could possibly be geekier than Mario and Luigi "playing" Zelda on a lunch box? Though I'm honestly concerned that Mario seems unable to properly hold the controller.

6) A silly green headband with a bow in totally the wrong spot to ever be attractive.





A detailed shot of the corsage so you can see the triforce more clearly. It isn't lumpy in person the flash was just really unkind to the gold paint:









I made what I think to be a brilliant last minute change to incorporate the Nintendo and Pac Man fuzzy dice into my hair even though it meant Jennifer had to go fetch the pac man set out of the car half dressed. This picture of me unfortunately isn't terribly attractive, but it's one of the few in which both dice are visible. It also shows my awesome promo only Zelda tee. Oh and the handsome fellow with me is a resin caribou. He's really photogenic notice how he managed to avoid the red eye and awkward, unattractive head angle I'm suffering from.







Next up Jen's accessories:


From the bottom right:

1) Sailor Moon watch. Jen's the primary sailor moon fan

2) Light saber keychain. It gets double geek points because it's promo item for the Jedi academy video game. Oh and it lights up and flashes for when you feel like being in a geeky rave.

3) Boutonniere made from the same fake flowers as my corsage and using the same sort of blooper charm as my earrings.

4) Silly glittery green hat with vintage Donkey Kong patch attached

5) In a separate picture because I had already attached the pins to lapel of her jacket in advance, 11 vintage enamel Nintendo pinbacks from the late eighties and early nineties.

Also in this shot Pokemon Ponyta dog tags and her "welcome to a warp zone" shirt which are integral parts of her outfit and not too easy to see in full shots.

I missed getting her chain mail bracelet in almost any of the shots but she has one as well.
I'll leave it for Jen to find a perfect full body shot of herself to post. Of course that's making the huge assumption that she will ever post...

Geek prom ended up not being quite what I expected but still a lot of fun. We were a little too shy to participate in the fantastic events like spaz dancing, the talent show, or the spelling bee. We're looking forward to next year when we'll hopefully be more comfortable and participate more. Though I honestly doubt I'll be able to spell by then....Dragon Port Games actually had some interesting stuff set up and we would have been happy to play Settlers of Catan if we'd managed to find people to play with. Unfortunately, like the true geeks we are, we were too socially awkward to talk to other people. Not to mention we first learned to play settlers a complete douchebag who kept changing how the rules worked because he "forgot" so now we really have no idea which set of rules are the correct ones which would make an already socially awkward situation worse. Hopefully one day well find some awesome people to play with and learn all the correct rules with no douchebaggery involved.
In any case even though we weren't terribly involved with the planned events, it was held at the aquarium so we had time to look at all the fun things the aquarium had to offer. We looked at all the different fish and spent an embarrassing amount of time making fishy faces at them. We also watched otters frolic and the bald eagle look majestic. The exhibits we spent the most time at were a giant water table where you could send toy boats through the series of locks and dams found on the great lakes and the freshwater stingray touching pool. As you can see Jen was a fan of this cute spotted fellow.Unfortunately as it was held at night a lot of the animals were sleeping so we couldn't look as closely at some of them as we'd have liked.

As a whole Geek Prom was a fantastic experience and one that I hope we can make an annual ritual. I highly suggest anyone in the region with an interest in pure geekery make it a point to attend.

~ Stephanie, who was almost prom queen

Buzzlegum

In my last post I talked about our late addiction to Viva Pinata, I should take this opportunity to point out I mean the original and not trouble in paradise. In any case, one of favorite pinatas is the big fat adorable buzzlegum! We were linked to the Squishables site for a totally unrelated reason, my love of cephalpods, and found this:


It's like the cutest re-imagining of the buzzlegum ever AND it's handmade fair trade AND it's only $28. We'd be ordering our own right now if we didn't have to do that silly thing called paying the mortgage, but if someone wants to buy something awesome from our shop to help fund it we totally promise to love it and hug and take geeky pictures with it. In fact until next week you can use the BIGBEE discount code to get 15% of your order. Or just go order your own because it's one of the cutest things I've ever seen and everyone should probably own one.

~Stephanie

Cel update, our addiction to viva pinata and Freezepop

This is actually old news now but, I added new cels to our gallery! Well honestly not so new as we've had them sitting around for quite some time we just couldn't share them, luckily though the scanner issue has been fixed and we can scan merrily. While of course all our additions are fantastic there are a few highlights which are as follows:

A large pan cel of Sonia from Midnight Panther.

I've always loved Sonia's character design and I missed out on this cel (or one like it) several years early so I was absolutely thrilled to get my hands on this one. I have to admit though that I'm pretty apathetic towards the story of Midnight Panther. I don't know if it's better in manga form but the ova is really only worth watching for the lovely character designs. As like most H anime, the artwork is lovely even in spite of the storyline being pretty blah.

Next highlight is:

Miruru from Tenshi Ni Narumon

Everybody loves a cat girl and we're no exception! Miruru has a wonderful character design and Tenshi Ni Narumon or I'm gonna be an Angel as (half) released in the US, has some of the most detailed and beautiful art of any anime series so it's always a treat to add her to our collection. It was was her look of being battered and beaten but not defeated is what really drew us to this shot. I have to admit that I haven't finished watching TNN yet, I do so wish it had finished being released on DVD here, so I don't know what's happening here hopefully knowing will make us love it more. I screwed up the resizing on this one so it's a lot smaller than our others scans, eventually I'll correct it.

Next one and the last one I'm going to blather on about is:

Vega/ Balrog, my first pixel love, from the Street fighter II V series


I absolutely love Street Fighter. When I was a wee lass there were these magical places known as arcades young people use to favor. In this magical land for the paltry price of a quarter or two or the equivalency in the local currency of the arcade, the token, you could be transformed into a world renowned fighter and be transported to various beautiful locations all the way around the globe in a stunning haze of bright colors, lights and sounds. With a knowledgeable flick of the arcade stick and the mash of the buttons you could fell the greatest warriors, Japan, Thailand, Russia, the US and others had to offer. Hours of my time effort and hard earned cash went into this Magical Street fighter II machine, I was always the one token girl, Chun Li and I always got hung up on the most beautiful of all fighters, Vega. Oh Vega (called balrog in the Japanese release) the most arrogant of beauties occupying the rarefied space women love so much of being decidedly androgynous with his long hair, dancers body and grace but with enough machismo to intimidate all but the most self assured man. His speed and "girly" fighting style always made it seem almost like a "mirror match" which every digital fighter knows is the hardest to win. Though he'd often defeat me I almost didn't mind as it'd give me another look at those beautiful pixels which gave me a peek at the lovely face behind the mask./end gushing fangirling
The cel itself is from the street fighter II V series which wasn't bad and wasn't good. It just was. I enjoyed it more than I probably should have but wouldn't recommend it for someone who isn't a street fighter fan. It does have a good thing going for it though, Vega looks closest to his original design in that one. I love his cocky expression in this shot it was a wonderful and thoughtful present from Jen.

Overall we updated 10 or 11 cels in various series and they can all be seen in our gallery. There are several beauties I didn't touch on in there so go check em' out. :) Also, we're working on a super secret specialized cel gallery right now as well, it's still lacking in additions but I made the awesome layout. Get a sneak peek here.

Next up, we're late to the party as we didn't get a 360 until RE5 came out with the snazzy LE red console, but viva pinata is so amazingly addictive. It's totally monster rancher all over again but with less ridiculous fighting and more emphasis on nurturing your adorable little pinatas. We've been alternating turns and are both a little bit stuck right now but looking for all the variants and trying to lure new pinatas into the garden is still proving fun. I've already put several hours into it though it's a little mystifying how it can be so much fun when it's basically just constantly working at something. I guess it's like animal crossing in that way. I wonder what it says about modern society when we put off real world chores and work to do it virtually? something to consider....

Last and certainly not least we saw Freezepop Saturday night! They were at the Triple Rock Bar in Minneapolis. If you're not a freezepop fan they're a synthpop band that's been featured in many video games over the years including: Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, Karaoke Revolution, DDR, Rock Band and others I'm just not remembering right now. Jen's been a big fan of them for the last 7 or 8 years and this is the second time they've toured near enough for us to go check them out. This time we were center stage and close enough to touch them at any point. Jen got a singed CD and a hug and a couple moments with Sean on the documentary tape. We'll see if it makes the final cut. :) If you're not a freezepop fan you should really check them out. Their myspace has some fun tracks but my favorites aren't there :( But, the internet should yield some results for: science genius girl, I am not you gameboy and freezepop forever. Go take a listen. Also, the games listed above are also pretty fantastic as well, FreQuency is one of my favorite rhythm games ever!

I've got orders to pack and send (THANKS!) so that's all for now. If I have more time I'll add some pretty pictures of the signed freezepop CD later.

It's later so here's the picture. :) If I'm really industrious I'll eventually add in pics of the singed purse from last year so we can compare Sean's Kitty drawings.



~Stephanie


Don't forget to stop by our shop fro cels for sale and other goodies:

Game Collection Update

Some minor additions to our collection of video games and gaming memorbillia. First off 3 FACTORY SEALED Atari 2600 games. These even still have their original price tags from the early 80's! Defender was originally $34.99 and Vangaurd was originally $29.99. :)



We're torn about these because we don't normally collect factory sealed items because we like to open them. But these have been sealed from over 2 decades so we might be more convinced to keep them they way they are. Obviously though we don't need two copies of defender so one will probably end up in our shop in the near future if we can keep from opening the other.

The second addition requires a little preface. We absolutely love thrifting we generally find all sorts of fun treasures thrifting but not often additions to our primary collections. However, our town just opened up a brand new savers this week so we decided to stop in and scored these:



Guides from Oddworld: Abe's exodus (PS1), Gargoyles (Sega Genesis), Star Ocean:Second Story (PS1) and the best of How to win at nintendo games! I remeber ordering those type of nintendo paperbacks via book order forms back in elementary school and actually thought we had them all so it was super exciting to get a new one! It was a freebie because we'd purchased several books.The other guides were only $2 each! Woot!

That's all for now it's been a busy week because my brother who is an awesome hardcore gamer as well has been visiting and we've been doing hardcore vintage gaming. We beat Vegas Stakes, made progress in Out Of This World SNES version(I'm starting to wonder if beating that one is even possible), We beat Friday the 13th (well actually the September the 27th hacked rom of it) and he jumped the river in Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular* and that doesn't count all the hours of gaming we did that didn't really net results I can blather on about. However he leaves tomorrow so I should have some time to take pictures of some older stuff and gush about it here.

*If you've never played this game you have no idea how difficult this is but I've had that game since it came out in 1990 and have seen the stupid river jumped/have jumped it maybe 4 times total. It is ridiculously precise and frustrating. Though honestly the whole game is something that you'd never touch as a modern gamer except that you remember playing it as a kid. Nostalgia seems to put a positive/passable haze over games that are absolute crap. But, that's a rant for another time.


ETA: my brother's screenshot of jumping the river to prove that it can in fact be done.


~Stephanie

April's Coupon Code and Collection update

So first order of business is that it's a new month and every month we make a new coupon code with a different percentage off your total order as a thank you for not only shopping at our store but for checking out our blog. So here it is, use code AprilBlog to get 10% off your total order hope you can use it and get something fabulous. :)

Also I had initially planned on taking some photos of our older collection elements first but, we just got a new shipment from our deputy service today with an cute little addition to our collection, a full set of PGSM dolls!



They need a bit of TLC but they're absolutely adorable! We got a few other things but the others were mostly cels which will eventually be put in our rubberslug gallery (once I've got a working scanner again). Hopefully tjhere will be moreupdates with more pictures sometime in the near future. ^_^

~Stephanie

Oh! I'm in the process of updating our store today so by tomorrow it should have lots of new goodies! And FYI, I'm realizing that a lot of my shipping costs are off because I made the listings when i was unfamilar with the sore software. I'm in the process of fixing it now but if you place and order and the shipping is way off I'll be happy to refund you.