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I’ve always admired the works of the mysterious Dr. Grordbort (aka Greg Broadmore) that WETA produces, but given their significant pricetags, I’ve never had a chance to admire them in person. How can you not fall a bit in love with such a stylish, intricate collection of steampunk-y rayguns? I love steampunk rayguns so much that I started building my own.

Finally, the Grordbort collection has made an addition to appeal to those fantasy raygun enthusiasts who might not have an extra 700-or-so dollars lying around for a ten pound weapon of targeted annihilation. For around 100 bucks, you can now own the Righteous Bison – a sizeable, powerful raygun if ever there was one, and at just over one pound, ideal for portability and costuming purposes.

The Bison is rather enormous, and includes a space-age fin that breaks the traditional steampunk aesthetic rather beautifully. While made of lightweight plastic, it’s amazingly durable and doesn’t have the delicate parts that would make the other rayguns inappropriate for heavy usage. The plastic surfaces are painted smartly enough to disguise them, making them nearly indistinguishable from the hardcore metal parts of its predecessors. It’s almost surprising when you lift it up and it’s so manageable, but retains a comfortable heft. Slight rusting, fake rivets and dimpling make it all quite realistic.

It has a very comfortable grip, also, and a trigger that actually can be pulled and springs back into place. While this is the only moving part, there are a few other pieces that look movable – enough to lend the raygun a little bit more reality.

Interestingly, the grip uses a symbol representing an atom, which again pushes past the usual bounds of steampunk into deeper science fiction territory. Theoretically, steampunk is an imaginary world that’s based on the loose premise that the wonders of the atom are eschewed for Newtonian physics – or at least that’s my understanding of it. I love that this (as well as the idea of a ‘particle smasher’) breaks these fictional boundaries to create an even stranger amalgamation of narratives. But copper piping and valves? Definitely steampunk.

As someone who spent this Halloween as a steampunk (complete with tux vest augmented with bolts for buttons and 1920s goggles), I approve. As someone who collects fantasy guns (Hellboy’s Samaritan & Buck Rogers’ Atomic Disintegrator both have respected places in my collection), I also approve. And as someone who builds rayguns in his spare time, I approve a third time.

Now, I only hope to modify some kind of hanging plate holder into something which I can hang from the wall to display this. The box is nice, but it’s immense. Hanging this next to the skulls and impala horns that I already proudly display would be an awesome juxtaposition.

Violence is not sexy. Imaginary violence against invading alien marauders is. Wearing a peacock feather in your top hat while you do it pretty much can’t be topped. This awesome raygun, dripping with pseudoscience, is ideal for this situation. Check out some more photos in the gallery, and then buy the heck out of one. Come back tomorrow for some more exploration into the world of Grordbort – this time in fun size!

I was checking through some old paper downstairs and came across a wonderful post card. It featured a scene I remember well; the Ponce de Leon Monument and Circle in St. Augustine, Florida. There are old cars in the circle but the thing that jogged my memory and brought a smile was the horse-drawn carriage.

Our daughters were 6 and 7 when we first took them to Florida and stayed in St. Augustine for 3 nights. (The first few days were in Orlando.) We took a carriage ride around the city and while parents sometimes over-react to the possibility of a runaway horse, this time there was no need for concern. This horse was sway-backed and definitely an oldie. The driver’s name was Freddie, the horse, ironically, was called Lightning. Freddie told us his papa had driven the carriages before him and it seemed natural to ‘follow in his hoof-prints.’ Freddie also shared with us a bit of his own history and told us he had been born in “ought-7.” This was the early 70s, and in retrospect, he was not really that old. But at the time, he seemed ancient. He told us stories about the city but to be honest, not much of that stuck. I just remember the girls in the carriage, smiling and listening to his slow, southern drawl. They asked a few questions about old Lightning’s past but Freddie did not know too much. He had been in some parades he recalled and owned by a wealthy family and probably had a pretty good life, or so Freddie said. The tour was over an hour long but it seemed to fly by. The kids wanted pictures with them, those must be somewhere in the attic. May be time to get some of those out of storage!

Seeing this old penny postcard also reminded me of the seafood restaurant we’d gone to on this trip. It, too, was in St. Augustine, and as I recall, we were seated at a window table. The view was wonderful and the food so good! It was only my second time having shrimp. Being from the mid-west, it was not made at home and not until my prom did I taste these delightful morsels. The girls had “kiddie – plates”, supposedly smaller portions for a minimal cost. But they got shrimp, fish and scallops, plus fries and cole slaw. Although they were ravenous from a day in the sun, they could not possibly finish it all and dad and I were glad to help. I especially enjoyed the scallops and from that day on, they have become one of my all-time favorites.

We enjoyed our first trip to Florida and were very award of the danger of being in the sun too much. But our 2^nd last day there, we rented a little rowboat and went fishing in a small bay. We made the mistake of leaving our suntan lotion in the car. But we were not too worried since it was overcast. Boy, was that a mistake! We all got a bad sunburn. Hubby had to run to a late-night pharmacy to get some lotion to spread on our arms, faces and legs. It helped but none of us slept much that night. We learned a lot from that experience and were much more cautious on our next trip.

Now who would think that finding an old postcard could bring back so many fond memories? But it sure did. I know there are a lot of old postcard lovers out there and imagine many of those collections started by one picked up on a family vacation. What a fun, and inexpensive, collectible.

Aside from those dead presidents jingling around in your pockets, the U.S. Mint produces a large number of coins purely for collectors and speculators.  The tough economy and rising prices of precious metals has resulted in a shortage of gold planchets, causing the mint to restrict gold coin mintings.  The problem is that these gold coins are created by order of Congress, and the Mint is obligated under law to produce the coins on its schedule.  There had even been talk about skipping 2009 for the Buffalo Gold Coin, but that wouldn’t fly under the Mint’s rules.  So, after a delay, today is the first day you can order the 2009  American Buffalo gold coins.

This gold coin has a diameter of about 1-1/4″ and 1/10″ thick, which puts it at slightly larger than the Kennedy half-dollar.  The law ordering the coin specifies that it is, in fact, legal tender, with a face-value of $50.   Don’t plan on spending it at 7-11 any time soon, though: the coin is one ounce of .999 gold, which places its value at well over $1,000 at current prices.  The initial price of the coin hasn’t been announced yet, one source expects over $1,300, but gold coin pricing varies according to a schedule, so future prices may change.  Last year, the Mint had released fractional-value versions of the Buffalo, as they’ve done with the Gold Eagle, but this year only the 1-ounce version is available.  The coin will come in two versions, a rougher-looking bullion version (seen above), and the highly-polished proof version.

You do, no doubt, recognize the coin’s design.   The American Buffalo uses the design James Earle Fraser first created for the Indian Head Nickel in 1911; Fraser’s design was a grand departure from the decidedly non-Indian style of previous coins, preferring the Rooseveltian natural style similar to Bela Lyon Pratt’s gold Indian coin.  The law which orders the Gold Buffalo specifically requests the Fraser nickel design, but allows for the director of the Mint to change the design after the first year – the design, however, has happily remained the same since 2006.   Because all precious-metal are minted at the West Point Mint, these Gold Buffalos will bear the rare “W” mint identifier.   Although this isn’t a new design, as a work of art the Gold Buffalo is a gorgeous coin, and an ideal partner for this year’s high-relief Saint-Gaudens coin, provided you’ve got room for two full ounces of gold in your 2009 collection.

There’s really no better way to describe the Plastic Man cartoon from 1979 than to give a brief plot synopsis of one particularly memorable scene` :

Plastic Man and his two completely hapless, powerless sidekicks are launched out of torpedo tubes into the undersea depths by a hyperintelligent pirate scallop who calls himself ‘The Clam’ (because scallops were more fun to draw, I guess), and are immediately caught by a giant squid. Because Plastic Man had just been sprayed by a plastic hardening spray, he is powerless – though all three characters can talk freely underwater and seem to be in no danger of drowning. Suddenly, the blonde girl remembers that she has a bottle of hot sauce in her shoe, which she extends Inspector Gadget-style to Plastic Man, who then drinks it with a straw (still underwater). This somehow negates the effects of the hardening spray completely and they are all rescued.

When you get this wacky, you’re not even talking about charming Silver Age weirdness anymore. You’re talking about writers who threw darts at index cards and grocery fliers and just wrote what stuck. Hanna Barbera is guilty of producing some exceptionally schizophrenic cartoons during their lifetime, but this is probably the most egregious I’ve ever witnessed – and I recall watching this at 6 AM when I was 5 years old and a very early riser.

To the best of my knowledge, Plastic Man’s criminal history or source of his powers isn’t explored, nor is his connection to the rest to the DC Comics universe. Instead, he’s saddled with a girl named Penny who is constantly fawning over him (who he later has a baby with), and a Hawaiian guy named Hula-Hula who can’t make a single statement without throwing the word ‘pineapple’ into it at random. Honestly, it’s borderline racist, but the whole cartoon is an amazing surrealist package of what-the-hell.

The villains are hilariously bizarre, even though they’re rarely funny themselves. Disco Mummy, Half-Ape (who is half man, half ape split perfectly down the middle), and a gang of tiny gangsters are just a few of the insane bad guys that Plastic Man battles against, and which would be perfect fodder for a modern revisitation of the series.

But wait : they produced a pilot for just such a thing in 2006. It’s completely ‘Freakazoid’ meets ‘Ren and Stimpy’, and just the kind of kinetic action that Plastic Man needs. It’s included here, but it’s obvious why it fell flat, despite the even more obvious potential for being something greater. Note that the bonus features are on discs one and two, and not all on disc four as the DVD notes describe.

It’s absolutely a nice set, but calling it ‘complete’ is a misnomer, as there are plenty of later episodes with the Plastic Man family that are left out. If you know your late-70s Hanna Barbera cartoons, you know what to expect – gaping plot holes, fuzzy animation, and general nonsense. And that’s probably exactly why you like them to begin with. The set can be purchased for around $30.

I want to share two antique shopping locations in Wisconsin that I have visited several times in recent months and have enjoyed the return trips as much as the first time. My frequent readers will remember my desire to share places I find while traveling that meet a high set of standards including a friendly, helpful staff, clean uncluttered booths and isles with items well marked, contemporary items at a minimum and reproductions either marked or not allowed. Many of these stores have age requirements that disallow new goods.

One place that garners lots of visitors almost all year long is the Lake Geneva area of Wisconsin just North of the Illinois border and a quick jaunt up highway US 12.  Located West and South of the lake is the quaint, small town of Walworth and like many little towns it has a town square at the junction of Highways 67 and 14. With brilliant insight on the part of owners, John and Roberta Hunt, the mall is called “On The Square Antique Mall” (Phone 262-275-9858). For all you brewery collectors, John Hunt was the mellow voice singing on commercials for Hamms, Schlitz and Pabst along with Wrigley’s Gum.

The mall consists of three floors filled with very nice antiques, good variety from furniture to buttons and something for every collector. Opened about twenty years ago the store has been at its present location for ten. Each booth invites you to walk in and explore, and cases are filled with specialty collections that fascinate, even if they are not on your want list.

This must be my eighth time at the store, and each visit we are warmly greeted by Lynne and the staff, and we always manage to leave with a couple of bags full of great items. Lynne adds to the ambiance wearing different antique hats from her collection of over two hundred and costumes of the period. On this occasion Lynne was in costume for the Halloween Madness Sale, and how could I resist photographing her in this outfit.

 Interstate I-90 going West from Chicago will lead you past some interesting antique shopping on your way to the Wisconsin Dells or further north for summer fun or winter skiing and snowmobiling. As you pass Madison, may I suggest a stop for one of the better new antique malls we have discovered in the past few years. Just a quick side trip off the freeway at Hwy. 18 west, you will be delighted with the Odana Antiques and Fine Arts Center located at 6201 Odana Rd. (Phone 608-278-7892)  This establishment meets our expectations for a quality mall. I have managed to make three trips and have found improvement in the offerings from the dealers displaying their wares at this location. We were greeted as we entered by Sue, the owner, and staff Sharon at left, Amy on the right. Always busy when we visit, the mall features a great mix of antiques, furniture and decorative items in an upscale setting. Here too, the booths are well maintained to keep your interest as you stroll from booth to display case and on to the next booth. The staff is very attentive, assisting customers looking for special things for their collections or decorating needs.

I must recommend that you allot enough time for a visit to Odana Antiques; the store is large and we had to take a lunch break at a local restaurant before we finished our visit. Oh, we did purchase many fine antiques, and will be back again soon.

If you plan a visit to one of these establishments, please call ahead to confirm hours of operation.  If you have a favorite antique shop to share with other readers, please leave the name address and phone number, in a reply below.