Sopantooth by the numbers

I follow 367 blogs.  That seems like a lot but I’d say probably only 50 of them are at least semi-active.  I know that it’s main character syndrome (or some other term that’s less trendy and doesn’t make me cringe to “say” it) but I feel like I often start following a blog and then a few months later the author gives up on blogging.  I assume in reality what’s happening is that most blogs only last a few months so anytime anyone starts reading one there’s a good chance it’s going to cease shortly thereafter.  Never tell me the odds. 

It would be more than 367 but for the first few months when I moved my blog to wordpress I would go through my follow list and prune out the ones that weren’t active anymore.  Then I decided to leave them because sometimes people come back years later and start posting again so why not? 

Another thing that seems to happen “a lot” is I read a blog post about D&D or TTRPGs or something else that I enjoy, I follow that blog, and then I find out that was the one and only time they mention that subject and mostly the blog is actually something I don’t care about.  I generally keep those on the roster too because while I don’t normally care about reading about parenting or camping or fishing every now sometimes I’m surprised by how interesting it is. 

I only follow a couple fiction blogs because that’s all I want to read on regular basis and I don’t follow when I don’t have time to want to actually read them.  Which doesn’t really make sense because maybe I could come back to the later, and also it’s not like I generally give the writer feedback (assuming they even want it) so it kind of doesn’t matter if I actually read it or not to the blogger.

Most of my follows are gaming and D&D stuff, there’s a wrestling chunk and then there’s a few about writing and a few review sites. 

Then there’s a couple toy (collectibles!) sites I follow, which is kind of what I want to talk about (as much as I ever have a topic). 

There was a GI Joe convention in town last week.  11^th annual I learned and this year was all about the Dreadnoks!  Everyone’s favorite Australian biker gang that are also Deep South swamp people of some kind whose leader is a shape changing assassin ninja who seems to have nothing in common with them in the least.  Their headquarters is in New Jersey of course. 

I didn’t go to this gathering because I am not a GI Joe collector, but I could have been one.  You know?  I really liked GI Joes.  If I hadn’t gotten into gaming collecting Joes probably would have been the thing I did that I was mildly embarrassed by. 

I played with GI Joes 12-18 months after it was no longer acceptable, which is a shift that happened somewhere around age 12 I think.  I was pretty much 12-18 months behind most curves when it came to “growing up”.  At least part of that was though that at that point I was exclusively using my Joes to fantasy book a wrestling league and that’s a powerful draw for (some) wrestling people.  WWF (at the time) came out with a ring that was not to scale AT ALL for their wrestling dolls (action figures!) but was the perfect size for GI Joe. 

The problem with my GI Joe wrestling federation was that I had a chronic lack of credible babyfaces.  Dial-Tone was one of the only good guys who won the world championship and his reign was short.  Storm Shadow was more of a tweener, which I assume is where the idea for Stone Cold Steve Austin came from.  You owe me millions of dollars WWE!  Spearhead challenged for the big belt a few times but he was more of a tag team specialist. 

The other thing that we did sometimes before my buddies turned their back on the Real American Hero was he’d draft the Joes for a football league.  My buddy La Barba Grande always built his team around the power running game a strong linebacker play, but I always won the championship with my high-powered offense and fancy plays.  This isn’t the 50s anymore LBG, you got to get the ball down the field!  Three yards and a cloud of dust don’t rate no more.

I sold all my Joes for a buttload of cash when I was in college which I don’t regret.  A few years ago for half a second I got a wild hair about “collecting” a sub-set of Joes.  For a while there every series had a different “snow guy” and I considered getting them as my “thing” but then I was all like “why?”  I already have too much crap sitting around my house.  I’m not anti-stuff, I like stuff, but I’ve decided to generally cool it with all the stuff.  I admit that I kind of roll my eyes when people throw out the line about spending money on “experiences” not things but I get it. 

I think I’ve mentioned this before one of the other times when I was rambling about GI Joes, but as much as I liked watching and reading about other people collecting them what I really like is learning about semi-shoddy GI Joe knock-offs.  Remco American Defense is my favorite, but yesterday when I was farting around online I found out about Lanard Toys The Corps! which has to be the most extensive GI Joe rip-off (competitor?) that exists.  There is tons of The Corps! stuff.  And it’s been around since the 80’s, I don’t know how I didn’t know about it already. 

Basically The Corps! dudes are just like Joes only 20% crappier and 75% cheaper, which is a pretty good ratio when it comes to knock off styuff.  Also, the Lanard Toy people don’t give a fuck.  What do I mean by that?  Later in the GI Joe run they did tie ins with Jurrassic Park and things like that and the SERIOUS GI Joe collectors were outraged!  The Corps! on the other hand did a whole series where everyone was riding dinosaurs and also there were mecha suits because why the hell not?  They have no reputation to uphold. 

It’s very unlikely that I’ll ever buy any The Corps! toys because why would I, but I did enjoy checking them out for a couple hours.  I’m glad they exist.