Lately, I’ve been reaching back into my younger years and reclaiming some of the basic building blocks that led me towards being a generally creative person. Of course, this literally refers to reclaiming actual wooden building blocks, but also such wonders as the Etch-A-Sketch (I went out and bought a new one), the Galt Toys Tack-On Picture Board, and the most wonderful of all building toys, the Lego.

None of the Legos that I had as a kid are still around, but we had a TON. They were inherited from a family of 6 uncles and aunts, before the era when Legos started getting fancy hinges and blocks that weren’t strictly squares (and an occasional slanted roof tile), so we were pretty fundamental in our constructions. We lost the use of the Legos for a long period when one of our brighter uncles decided to adopt a pet mouse and build playthings for it out of out Lego supply. Later, the mouse found a new home, and we got our Legos back - complete with mousy evidence wedged in their crevices and gnawed off of the corners. I think that we lost a bit of interest in them when snapping two pieces together also required prying mouse droppings out from the connections. The Lego supply found its way out of the house and to some undisclosed location - but they were getting pretty ragged anyhow, as indestructible as they are.

Sure, Legos were neat, but my only interaction with them for the past decade or so came in the form of a few small Star Wars Lego sets that I’ve lost to the recesses of the closet, and a little customized Lego that I painted up of my girlfriend. It wasn’t until I saw this original Iron Man custom Lego creation that I realized again the potential of the building blocks.

As someone who looks at everything in the world around me as things that I can scavenge for parts that I can use in art projects, I was hilariously blind to Legos, which already came completely ready to assemble into whatever the heck I felt like. In a quest for spare parts, I pretty much missed the neon, flashing, screaming ‘SPARE PARTS’ sign over the ol’ Lego depot.

Lego did a great job in building up their own nerd cred by expanding their line brick by brick, introducing the technical & programmable Mindstorms sets, and even venturing into action figure territory with their Bionicle line. They publish a free monthly magazine, and they have a subscribable Lego ‘Brickmaster’ Collectors Club that’ll send you six exclusive sets, one every 2 months, for a price of 40 bucks. A Lego set that you can’t get anywhere else pretty much spells AWESOME to me, and I’m a new subscriber. Anything that adds bricks to a limitless collection is fine by me.

So, I’m a reborn Legoholic, and this year, the Times Square Toys ‘R’ Us is calling my name during ToyFair. Upstairs, they have a fill-your-own-bag of Legos section, with a vast selection of Legos spread all around you like a rainbow of throat-destroying candy. Did you know that you can also buy Legos by the Brick in Lego’s online shop? You name the shape, and they’ll bag it up and ship it to you. To make this function even more amazing than it already is, they’ve created a Digital Designer program, totally free to use, which allows you to design a fully 3D Lego model of your choice using a huge variety of bricks in a huge variety of colors… and then you can click on a button and have the parts sent to you. Of course, you’re charged for each individual brick, but you can make whatever the heck you want, test it on a screen, and then have the fun of building it in person without going through the hassle of picking through a dozen Lego sets to scavenge for appropriate pieces.

I needed to kinda cleanse my soul after a rough weekend, and in the process of also cleaning my room, I found a few old Lego sets I picked up for various reasons & never assembled. Until very recently, I’ve had a purist approach to Legos. You build what’s on the box, and you keep the parts from different sets far apart. In the interest of creation and expansion, I’ve abandoned this attitude, realizing that if I keep the instruction manuals from all of these sets, I’ll be golden if I ever want to build them again. Sure, I might have to dig a little more, but the blueprints are the most important part. And if I want to remain a little bit OCD about it, I can store all of the pieces for any given set in a single Ziploc bag, which can then go into the collective tub of Legos.

I dug out my Batman vs. Catwoman set, which I purchased because it had a Lego Batman in it for my Batman collection, and I also dug out my Mutant Squid, which I purchased because it’s a mutant squid. One doesn’t need any more reason than that. And then I went on eBay and sought out huge mixed lots of pieces, and within an hour, I had over 2000 pieces from various auctions ordered and paid for, from basic blocks to aircraft parts to other odds and ends. If I wanted 100 yellow Lego flowers, there’s an auction for that. eBay is rich with very specific parts auctions for very fair prices. In fact, the individual pieces seem to sell even better than the big sets, and the minifigures are worth their weight in gold, with a single tiny Chewbacca going for almost ten bucks at times.

Waiting for the mail was never a strength of mine, and I went out and bought an $11 ‘Lego Creator’ set, which is Lego’s line of ‘moderately complex’ models that avoid using any super-specialized pieces. Of course, if the box has a picture of a spider on it, I’m the guy who builds a devil robot wielding a mace instead. And that’s just the beginning. The transience of Lego designs, the need to take something apart to make something new, has almost been made painless by the advent of being able to digitally chronicle them, and even digitally duplicate them (and save the schematics) in Lego Digital Designer.

Sure, Lego has all kinds of collectible Skeleton Warriors and Dragons and Exo-Squad and Bionicle and Knights, but they’re all just bricks. In this way, there’s not a single Lego set that doesn’t have an appeal.

Which just made collecting a lot more expensive.

Somehow, over the past decade or so, cephalopods have slowly but surely plodded over and engulfed my life. While my preoccupation with them is both more casual and scientific than, say, my preoccupation with Green Arrow, it’s still one of those driving forces that pilots me from one suction-cupped appendage to another.

I’m not sure where it started, though it just may trace its origins back to a can of Wel-Pac California squid that I’d found for not much more than a dollar at a strange Asian market in my college town. I’m not one to pass up anything for a dollar, so I brought it home, and it’s served as both companion and mascot for the past 5 years. Its creepy red label and unappetizingly rendered whole squid are reminders that… well, reminders that there are whole squid trapped within the can.

But I must correct myself. I think that the origins of my cephalophelia find themselves rooted in my frequent excursions to Japanese restaurants with my first girlfriend, back in high school. So charmed was I with the baby octopus that we’d been served that I took it home with me in a small cup and preserved it in the freezer, completely fascinated by its biology and forcing it to star in any number of lurid, naked octopus photographs.

As a result, a plethora of jiggly, eight-legged creatures find their way into my paintings and drawings, and I find myself inexorably drawn to nearly all things octoped, from rubber toys to lamps to clothing, and all of those little trinkets that friends give me when they immediately synonymize ‘octopus’ with ‘Collin and what’s wrong with him’.

The urban vinyl world skirts my obsession, giving my a fair number of anthropomorphic squid to display around my room. I’ve unconsciously collected a fair number of Doctor Octopus action figures, even if he’s a relatively poor excuse for an octopus-man and shares almost no unique attributes with a true octopus, like ink jets and the innate ability to lay down a funky dance groove.

I went on a date with an aspiring mime once, and we decided to go to the Museum of Natural History in New York City. The best part of the date was the enormous squid vs. whale diorama that was darkly hidden under the stairs, donated (as the placard read) ‘for the delight of the children’. My mime-date and I never saw each other again, and the war-torn, plastic whale probably had more charm anyhow. Mimes aren’t known for their conversational skills.

This love of cephalopods also led to an attraction to the writings of H. P. Lovecraft and his abject terror and disgust with all creatures aquatic, most prominently displayed in his creation of Cthulhu, the tentacle-faced elder god monster. While there are a fair number of dedicated Lovecraft vendors located throughout the internet and comic conventions, there’s no such reliable source for all things octopus. One is forced to accumulate items through unusual tag sale discoveries and random encounters, which is usually the most exciting and absorbing way to collect things anyhow.

Gifts of tiny glass octopi and the odd trinket comprise most of a relatively small, unfocussed collection that has formed more of a ‘lifestyle choice’ than a ‘hobby’. It’s hard to keep certain specimens of your collection around when they’re so damned delicious.