High School VI (Or: “Punishment”)

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When I was in Western Civilization class in 9th or 10th grade (I thought it was a little jarring when suddenly “Social Studies” abruptly branched into more specialized classes in high school), I kept some little toys at-hand on my desk.

I can’t remember precisely what toys I had there (they took up a growing area of my desk over the course of the year), but I think a wind-up Lenny Binoculars was there from the 1995 Burger King Kids Club “Toy Story” promo (they would happily sell you the toys without a Kids Meal, as I don’t consume Burger King fare). I believe I kept the little RC car from the previous promo at my desk too. I didn’t fly them around and make noises or anything crazy, but it was comforting and helped me focus to have objects to touch and manipulate occasionally.

At some point during the school year, my teacher, Mr. Gillespie, turned to me in my front row seat and said that if I was going to “play with” my toys at my desk, he’d move up another student and I could sit in the back row and “play” all I wanted. I was a little dumbfounded, but moved back.

It’s only many years later in retrospect that I realize he was trying to punish and shame me.

Little Tortures (or: “Dabid Can’t Sleep”)

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I couldn’t sleep last night. Not because I was worried/excited about anything or because my brain couldn’t calm down. But because there were little wrinkles in the bedsheets. See, when the sheets haven’t been pulled 100% fully taut on the mattress in a while, they start to loosen ever so slightly and these tiny little fabric creases form that send my nerves into overdrive.

I’ve learned not to complain about this often openly, lest I be taunted for being “delicate” like The Princess and the Pea. I know most people haven’t experienced this level of hypersensitivity and probably can’t relate, but little bedsheet crinkles have become one of my many lifelong adversaries.

My eternal battle with sensitivities doesn’t stop with wrinkles, though. If there’s a singular grain of grit, a crumb or anything else on the bed, it’s like a tiny dagger on my skin. And I would be lying if I pretended I hadn’t told my wife on multiple occasions that she needed to stop breathing because the noise was preventing me from falling asleep.

Growing up and going to college, I spent many sleepless nights trying to contort into positions where I couldn’t feel the springs of the bed through the mattress. No matter how sweltering it may be, I always wear a shirt to bed to dampen the feel of the bed on my skin. I also need a fan running constantly at night to cover up the inconsistencies of wind or raindrops outside.

So if you happen to talk to me in the morning and discover I’m grouchy or not fully with it, it may not be that I was up super late devising Pokémon movesets or obsessively reading about some fascinating new toy line—it may just be that I couldn’t sleep because of benign-looking little spikes impaling my body and keeping me awake all night.

These sensitivities are a big hindrance in the waking hours of my everyday life, too. I used to cut the tags off all my shirts so I couldn’t feel them “scratching” my back, I generally won’t wear long pants (AKA non-shorts) because I don’t like the fabric feeling constrictive on my body, and oscillating fans that move on and off my skin intermittently every few seconds make me want to hurl the fan through a window.

Our first DVD player had a little red dot-sized light that lit up whenever it was in use. I couldn’t handle that pinprick of light, so I’d pile anything I could in front of it to block it out fully: candles, action figures, matchboxes… whatever. Losing most of my sight has helped with this sensitivity to lights a lot (the sugary silver lining to a shit sandwich), but my touch sensitivity has either gotten worse than ever or I’m just noticing it a lot more now.

Despite how much my life has suffered as a result of losing the majority of my sight, I can’t help but wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off if some of my other sense hadn’t diminished as well.

Florida II (Or: “Cows Type; Dabid Flounders”)

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During graduate school, I became aware of a 2000 children’s’ book titled “Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type”. After reading the short little picture book, I immediately fixated on it, determining that I wanted to utilize it in my classes when I would eventually land my first middle school teaching job.

“Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type” is a book in which cows learn language and writing skills and utilize them as a method of civil disobedience in order to better their own status and conditions in the world. A short and simple narrative with a plethora of meaningful content for discussion buried underneath the surface, I thought reading it with my classes would perfectly set the tone for an empowering year of coursework with adolescent students.

Shockingly, this turned out to be a mistake.

Click Clack Moo Cows That Type Book Cover Art

The 13-year-old kids in my first independently-managed 7th grade English Language Arts classes immediately disdained the kid’s book—and me. The students weren’t interested in a deeper analysis of the tale at all; they asserted that they were too old for a “dumb kiddie book” and held the attitude that anyone who enjoyed reading a book of that sort (like me) must be a stupid baby.

This was conceived as an introductory lesson that would cleanly demonstrate the power and utility of written language skills, but the students took it as being childish and beneath them. It’s taken me 15 years to come to terms with and really understand why this transpired, but I think I finally do now. I was completely mind-blind to the reality that these 7th graders might respond to my carefully considered lesson in a different way than I had envisioned, and thus was caught utterly off-guard with a disastrous start to the academic year.

This disappointment—on my first or second day as a professional teacher—was my first major inkling that I might somehow be in over my head with this position. There would be ample more evidence to come of just how unprepared I was to manage a classroom of real, breathing children who wouldn’t necessarily dance to the beats that i foresaw.

A Day in the Life (or: “Dabid Does The Laundry”)

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There haven’t been any new entries posted here in a while, but I swear it’s not primarily because I’m being lazy or unmotivated. I’ve actually gotten inspired and started a multitude of entries on my phone or computer, but then I get distracted mid-entry and don’t go back to them. It’s challenging to find wherever I started writing, and more difficult still because I don’t have the patience to try to reread what I’ve already written, as the words disappear as my eyes move over them (having low vision sucks).

I’ve always had a hard time staying on-task except when being totally obsessed with what I’m doing, but it’s definitely gotten worse since my accident (which I’ll be referring to my stroke quadrilogy now, until I decide otherwise).

I think a chronicle of my day yesterday, as narrated by past me, illustrates this point to some degree:

Morning

My main goal was to do the laundry this morning, but I was having a hard time getting out of bed amidst the quiet. Eventually I managed to rouse myself and turned on the TV for background noise and went back to the bedroom to get the laundry, but saw that the donation box across from it was overfilled and spilling on the floor. Thus, I went to get a trash bag to empty some of the excess donatables into. Once in the kitchen, I saw out the window that it was cloudy outside and ideal lighting for taking review photos for my websites.

And so, I went to my stack of unreviewed action figures, grabbed one to photograph, and then started to head outside. The news caught my attention so I sat down to watch the TV for a bit. I got back up to take Figure photos, but had the epiphany I should shoot a 5-minute unboxing video first.

My office is a perpetual disaster zone, so I needed to remove a bunch of shipping boxes from the floor and table to make room. I plugged in the necessary lamp to the USB port on my computer to power it, and looking at my computer realized I should do one of my two daily eye training vision therapy sessions. After completing the session, I moved over to the unboxing table to record the video and discovered I’d need to mute the TV in the other room. I went to the other room, watched a few minutes of TV, and saw it was past time for lunch.

I set a pot of water on the burner and went back to record the unboxing in the now-accessible room with lamp lighting. I sat down and realized I never muted the TV. Back to the TV. Back to the video.

Unboxing completed, but needing the usual editing and minor polish. Wandering into the living room to begin the editing process, I hear the water boiling in the kitchen that I’d forgotten About and set some pasta cooking. I unmute the TV and sit down to wait for the pasta to cook.

Afternoon

Apathy noodles finish cooking, and I noticed it’s gotten sunny out and is no longer suitable for photos. I walk past the bedroom door, see the laundry basket, and decide I’d better take it down to the laundry room ASAP or else I never will. First load of laundry washing.

Walking back upstairs, I check the time on my 🍎 ⌚️ and note I’m well behind on my daily movement calories. I get my sneakers and prepare to go outside for laps in the neighborhood (I can’t drive anymore with my vision being what it is post-accident), but open the front door and see the elderly women who live across the street out walking. They habitually try to greet me or talk to me when I’m out at the same time as them, so I decide to avoid that by going out later instead.

Add sauce to pasta, set it microwaving for a minute and a half. At this point, I get a surprise alert from my phone some little vinyl figures sold on eBay, and realize I’ll have to blind-hunt for them and also a shipping box. Remember noodles in microwave. Eat noodles.

Still too sunny outside for photography, and laundry load 1 still washing.

Late Afternoon

Only a couple hours until my wife gets home from work, so I need to get in gear and get chores in the house done. Wash pots and pans from lunch and the night before. Go to put dishes away from the dishwasher and discover the latch on the detergent compartment stuck when last run and everything is still dirty. Begin rerunning dishwasher.

Notice giant trash bag of donatables on the bedroom floor I filled earlier. Take it out to my car so it may actually travel to the donation drop off and is out of the house. See there’s no old ladies out because it’s 90 degrees-ish now and decide to do that walk. Put on my shoes and realize I need to dry that first batch of laundry.

While going downstairs to set laundry drying, I almost stumble on a pile of boxes and remember I need to package that eBay sale. I spot an Amazon box that’s the right size, but it’s still full. I bring it back up, open and photograph it’s awesome Contents, which reminds me I still need to take review photos of that action figure from this morning. The lighting still works, so I do that, set the figure back inside and then go for my walk while my shoes are on.

I manage about 1.66 miles and 4500-ish steps before one of my nemesis old ladies appears and I flee back into the house. I’ll have to do the other half of today’s fitness requirements later to close my rings.

It’s too quiet in the house, as the TV turned off due to inactivity. I turn it back on, then package, measure and weigh the eBay item. I go back to my office to make the label and decide to do my other daily vision therapy session while I’m there.

Once that’s done, my wife’s work day is over, so I need to start making dinner while she comes home. Unload completed dishes in dishwasher. Make dinner.

I think I hear my wife coming up the hill, so I go down to hold the door for her. It’s not her—it’s some sales guy trying to sell us new windows. I try to tell him no, but he’s pushy and schedules an estimate for tomorrow. Future Dabid’s problem. Back to cooking. I’m on the clock here.

Evening

Have dinner, then walk remaining 40 minutes in swampy outside humidity to complete daily exercise with 11,0000+ steps and 700+ movement calories.

. Bring up mail from mailbox and rip up refinancing junk. At this point, I’m utterly exhausted.

Grind in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond for a bit; remember to do today’s Wordle while there’s still time remaining on it.

I go into storage and gather another half dozen items to take eBay photos for.

Night

Listen to about an hour of audiobook with my wife before she goes to bed. 21 hours of “The Way of Kings” down, 24 hours remaining.

Schedule USPS pickup for tomorrow for that eBay item I packaged earlier, since I can’t drive to the post office anymore.

Work through a few episodes of backlog of The Office and Simpsons Season 32 while mindlessly leveling Pokémon.

Continue reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes on my phone (it’s too hard to see text in a book now) as part of my studies of classic literature.

Set package outside the front door for USPS to pick up in the morning. Remember that I never made it downstairs to dry that first batch of laundry. Set that half drying and the other half washing. It’s after midnight now. I can finish the laundry tomorrow.

Greasy Brain Bag (Or: “Dabid Has A Dream”)

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Generally I don’t have any dreams when I’m sleeping, so when I had one this week that was coherent enough for me to recall it when I awoke, I quickly related it to my wife so that it would be firm in my mind for documentation. The term “my mind” is extra-appropriate in this instance, as the central subject of my dream was in fact my actual brain.

A lab wanted to examine my brain, so my wife and best friend removed it for me to drop it off there. This might sound difficult, but it turned out to be a relatively simple removal. If you’ve ever seen Doctor Strange or Avengers Endgame where The Ancient One can just kind of “power shove” your astral form out of your physical body, it was like that. Except with the “push” being to my face, and with just my fully physical brain somehow popping out of the back of my head. Just go with it.

Anyway, Brainless Dabid was seemed to be functioning just fine for quite some time. Super Smash Bros. was being played (I’m not sure which one, but I think Brawl or later), which should have been a flag to me that I was within a dream or something, since I can’t play Smash anymore since I lost most of my vision.

At some point, the lab called my wife to let her know they were done examining my brain and I really needed to get it reinserted into my head before it expired. I asked my wife and best friend if they could just pop it back in themselves, but they insisted it should probably be done at a hospital.

We went and picked up my brain at the lab, where it was handed back to us in a crumpled white paper bag. If you’ve ever gotten a nearly translucent white paper bag with patches of grease covering regions of it, like from a bakery or what-not, it was like that (with a good amount of brain matter deft to it–like a dense chunk of cake or something) . One of those clear plastic clamshells used at grocery stores and such may have been more hygienic for my brain, but whatever.

Anyway, we all went over to the hospital, which was a bit labyrinthine, so we had to wander for a bit while searching for the proper place to have a brain put back in to one’s head.

I overheard some nurse talking about how they needed to keep a baby elephant alive for the procedure (I assumed they were talking about mine, but my family didn’t seem to agree).

We eventually found a nurse, and realizing they were going to have to lift off the top of my head to reinsert my brain, I explained I was going to need to be heavily sedated. The nurse warned that I was gonna be “naWWWWW-seous!” after they put my head back on.

And then I woke up. I don’t know exactly how to interpret this dream, but I figured it was crucial that I chronicle it regardless.

What could it mean?

The World’s Worst Vegetarian (or: “Dabid and Food”)

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I have a confession to make: I am a vegetarian. You may have guessed that already based off my whack-job theory of how to save penguins that this blog is titled for, but if not, there it is.

When I was about 7 years old, my brain made the connection between “chicken” the animal and the “chicken” humans eat and realized what was going on. From literally that moment of horrific epiphany onward, I’ve never eaten another animal in my life.

Maybe it was the fact that I raised myself holding cartoon animals as role models and internalizing their lessons about life and morals, or maybe it’s just that most of my friends growing up were stuffed animals, but the idea of eating some other creature remotely like myself instantly traumatized me.

I try to always tell the truth whenever possible, but I learned early on not to be upfront about disclosing being a vegetarian, because that tends to be a loaded word that rubs people the wrong way. For whatever reason, it’s my experience that when I tell someone I don’t eat meat, they want me to justify myself and explain my values. And, well, I just don’t like to argue about something personal like values.

I’ve had some success in the past telling people who press me on it that eating animals violates my sense of justice, but I think it’s actually more that the notion of it just makes me really sad.

When television presents anthropomorphic pigs and ducks and rabbits to a kid as exemplar bringers of life lessons, it’s hard to conceive of them as lower beings meant to be killed and consumed for unnecessary purposes.

My brother-in-law used to profess how much he loved ducks, so it’s a deep incongruity to me that he’s able to go into restaurants and enjoy eating one. This is the sort of thing about being human I don’t think I’ll ever comprehend.

I try not to tell people I’m a vegetarian unless I have to. I’m not “ashamed” of it exactly, but my impression is that oftentimes people seem to think that they’re being judged or looked down upon when they find out someone else (ie me) is a vegetarian.

Even so, I don’t really get where that belief comes from. I’ve never in my life told anyone they were wrong for eating meat or that they shouldn’t, and I like to think I’m about as non-threatening presence as exists.

But still, there seems to be a palpable shift in others’ aura or attitudes whenever my sordid status as a non-meat-eater for 30+ years comes to light.

If I’m not trying to force my dietary views on others, I don’t get why they want to argue or push their perspectives on me. I can cook up a Boca Burger without feeling superior to anyone else—I wish everyone could accept that without thinking I want to debate them on their viewpoints or the merits of eating meat.

At some point, I think it permeated the public consciousness that every vegetarian was like a fractionally small group of militant PETA nutjobs, and because people are easily swayed to hate those who are different, this was easy and convenient to accept. But thinking every non-meat-eater is a holier-than-thou psycho is akin to thinking every person who identifies as a Republican is a MAGA hat-wearing white supremacist. It’s just not realistic.

It’s implausible to me why anyone would think not eating meat would make me feel “better” than anyone else. Having these feelings that make me a vegetarian aren’t easy and it isn’t fun. It’s a burden. Another barrier that separates me from other people.

It’s not being able to split a pizza with my best friend, not being able to eat at a club or work event if what’s provided isn’t suitable, and being “that person” acquaintances ask where it’s appropriate to go to eat at because of my “dietary restrictions”.

As far as my actual diet goes, I’ve been called “the worst vegetarian on Earth” by multiple people over the years, which I think is sort of weird since I never professed to eat healthily or nutritiously— I just said that I didn’t eat animals.

Growing up, I’d happily subsist on candy, macaroni and cheese, potato chips, crackers and anything similarly full of cheese, starch or sugar I could get my hands on.

As long as I kept my mouth shut and was cheap to feed my parents didn’t really care, and “healthy” was much less of a concern to me than foods having an offensive flavor or texture (like onions).

Once I went off to college and had better access to a variety of foods, my diet minimally evolved.

So what do I actually eat as an adult? As a general rule, if an entree is not something you’d find on a kids’ menu (or the veggie equivalent), I won’t eat it. So thumbs up to grilled cheese, fries, veggie burgers (with just ketchup and no other junk on them) and cheese pizza, but thumbs down to salads, pizzas with “toppings”, wraps, vegetable sandwiches, chili, etc. Baked goods and desserts are workable as well. (I also have a profound weakness for “limited edition” junk foods and sodas, but that’s neither here nor there.)

So, in conclusion: No, I don’t eat animals, nor do I eat healthily. Yes, being vegetarian sucks, but it’s what I’m wired to be nonetheless. And no, I don’t want to talk about it any further. So leave me alone to eat a ludicrous amount of Skittles and continue cheering for the roadrunner to elude the coyote and live another day.

Self-Checkout (or: “Dabid vs. Small Talk”

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Suffering through checkout is the worst part of any shopping trip. The judgmental nature of a clerk quizzically assessing why I need to purchase $320 worth of Marvel Legends action figures in one go doesn’t really bother me ( I need to make certain to get the whole waves while I can to ensure I have all the parts to complete the series’ Build-A-Figures—Duh!), but having to endure a few moments of forced social niceties sure as fuck does [I went back and forth for hours thinking about the usage of the objectionable word “fuck” here, but I think utilizing a little harsh written language in this scenario gives appropriate emphasis to my feeling regarding these types of interactions, and is thus the correct usage for such language].

My best friend/brother (I promoted him to brother in a YouTube unboxing video, so it’s legal) feels strongly about using the checkout lanes with actual employees, so I try to acquiesce to his wishes whenever we’re on a comics/toy/grocery run. I think I understand his moral values about wanting to support those workers’ jobs by using human-run rather than automated lanes, but hell if my blood pressure doesn’t spike every time some disinterested schmuck is forced to ask how I am and propriety requires me to choke out a robotic response that’s meaningless to all involved.

Consequently, I think self-checkout lanes are one of the great renaissances of our time. When used, no longer do I have to avoid eye contact with some kid or grandma trying to make “small talk” with me, nor do I have to be alert for rare instances where I’m oblivious to being “flirted” to. I can put my own Pokémon cards into a shopping bag without bending the pack or tossing them down too recklessly (risking damaging them).

I don’t want to sound like a sociopath or anything—I generally don’t have anything against (or for) hardworking employees. It’s just that whether it be calling for a pizza or a necessary doctor’s appointment, I’d rather bash my head into the wall than have to have that requisite interpersonal interaction. Having to communicate with another person sucks, and it’s particularly nightmarish having to interpret what others are really meaning by what they say or if they care at all. Add in complicating elements like oral “tones” and “body language” and the whole thing becomes even more of a Hellscape.

One of the cardinal sins of telling a story is to tell and not show, but I think I’m guilty of that here. I’ve been d so pall-encompassed by these difficulties all my life that it’s hard to recollect specific anecdotes .

Let me just let it be said that in the majority of the tens of thousands of times I’ve ventured into retail stores in my life, if an employee comes to ask me if I need help with anything or have any questions, I immediately leave the store. Even if I did need help or would have bought something, I feel too uncomfortable and just abandon ship. No Beanie Baby, Funko POP or Pikachu-colored anything is worth that kind of duress.

So yes, I am happy to pay rising prices for my toys and action figures, Target. Just please—please—keep those self-checkout lanes functioning.

Skidmore I (Dabid’s First Roommate)

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Anxious to escape from my young life as fully as possible, my senior year of high school came and I applied to a number of far-away schools with journalism programs that seemed impressive to my teenage brain, such as The University of Rochester, The University of Chicago and Oberlin College.

But ultimately, I ended up going to a Tier I liberal arts school named Skidmore College (affectionately nicknamed by students as “Smokemore”, due to being the #1marijuana-smoking school in the country at that time, but I wouldn’t be aware of or understand the meaning of that moniker for a long time).

Truthfully, I’d never heard of Skidmore in my life until a high school guidance counselor recommended it to me in my senior year, saying that it would be a good match for me because of my extracurricular activities, headlined by being president of my school’s animal rights coalition (no, really—we called it a coalition).

Skidmore was one of a couple schools I was accepted to, but it was the only college at which I qualified for scholarships that would cover my full education, room and board, and then some (about a quarter million dollars’ worth)—so that was where I went. Having never worked so much as a part-time job at that point and having parents that had literally not put even a penny into any kind of college fund for me, four fully-paid years of education with money left over on the side sounded pretty dang alluring to me.

Enrolling at Skidmore came along with a requisite I feared and dreaded: a mandatory first year in the dorms with a roommate. Having zero siblings and never even being permitted to have or attend a sleepover (not that I would have wanted to anyway), I had no clue what sharing a single room living space with another human would be like.

I determined that the best way to prep my impending roommate for a school year in close proximity to me would be to compile and send him a list of topics that fell within my sphere of knowledge (things like The Simpsons, WWE and Days of our Lives). I believe the school gave us the E-Mails for our roommates as a means to try to break the proverbial “ice”, but I think all my efforts to provide safe subjects for discussion did was successfully freak my unlucky roommate out.

Wanting to have first crack at settling in and setting up my first dorm room before my roommate even arrived on campus, I signed up for a one-week volunteer program for incoming freshmen that would allow me to move in a week earlier than other students in my class.

Unfortunately, Skidmore had apparently seen that ploy before and had other ideas. My assigned roommate was also signed up to take part in the program, and managed to arrive even earlier than I.

My first-ever roommate, Nate W., was not exactly a match made in Heaven for me. Nate was a hardcore athlete, and he wanted no TV, lights or noise after 8PM most nights because he had to get up at like 5AM or 6AM or some other ungodly hour for something called “rowing practice” in order to increase his endurance.

Despite his being underage, Nate’s parents set up a mini fridge for him and stocked it up with beer it would be a violation of the rules for him to utilize. It was also an unexpected and scandalous experience for me waking up one morning and having there be a third person in our room: some random girl in Nate’s bed.

Clearly, this first cohabitation experience was not going to end well.

It didn’t. I returned after my first college Christmas break to find half our room—Nate’s half—cleared out and abandoned. Nate had requested a room change without telling me and had already moved on to his new home before I even knew that was a possibility. I never liked Nate and was always uncomfortable around him, but even I felt a little rejected having had my first roommate silently abandon me.

In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have tortured him by playing dozens of episodes of the soap opera Passions (wherein the main cast was being sucked into Hell during one night of their time that took place over months of real-time) while he was in the room, despite Nate’s vocal objections. Oh well. I guess his endurance wasn’t so great after all.

Shortpacked (or: “Dabid Hunts Grampa Simpson”)

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A shocking revelation came to my attention earlier this week: my best friend of over two decades somehow didn’t know what the word “shortpacked “ referred to. This word is so basic and commonplace to my vocabulary that I was absolutely astonished someone so close to me could be unfamiliar with it.

No, I’m not talking about “Shortpacked!”, the wildly inconsistent and frequently unfunny David Willis webcomic about collecting that I spent far too many minutes of my life reading, but in fact the terminology for a toy or figure from a set that is contained in the least quantity in a sealed shipping case assortment.

Shortpacked figures are something I thought about almost every day of my life from childhood through adulthood, as I was pretty much always on the hunt from my youth onward for the “rare” action figures from one series or another.

“Shortpacking” is a practice that occurs because manufacturers recognize that not all characters will be equally popular or marketable to the same extent, despite there still being sufficient interest to produce and sell these characters for a profit.

To prevent characters with a more “limited” appeal (such as random Mos Eisley Cantina aliens like Hem Dazon and Kitik Keed’kak in a Star Wars assortment) from clogging up the toy pegs in retail stores and thus lessening the chances of the retailer ordering more cases, toy companies will often choose to include these “hardcore fans only” figures in much smaller quantities than marquee characters (like Darth Vader).

Because the most ardent fans of a toy line tend to want to “collect them all”, these lesser-produced characters often almost paradoxically end up being the most sought after and fastest-selling figures in a lineup (making them favored targets of both fans and scalpers).

Thus, I spent many liters of gas on countless toy runs driving around looking for action figures of Grampa Simpson and finding only piles of Bart Simpson instead. (Playmates Toys misjudged their audience and falsely assumed Bart would be four times as popular as Grampa, so Bart was stupidly packed at four-per-case.)

(There’s a famous urban myth that Waylon Smithers was shortpacked in this same Simpsons toy line by Plsymates Toys, with the alleged reason being that it was because of Smithers’ sexual orientation, but that’s untrue–the figure was just slightly delayed and shipped even-packed at 2-per-case once he started to ship. After shortpacking Lisa Simpson, Grampa Simpson and Mr. Burns in Series 1 led to huge aftermarket prices for those characters and unhappy collectors, Playmates Toys went to an even-packing strategy for future assortments wherein there was rarely any shortpacked character. Hence, Smithers was not one-per-case as Grampa, Lisa and Mr. Burns had been.

Playmates Toys The Simpsons Grampa Simpsons Figure Series 1

Smithers was still tough to find, though, at least somewhat due to these controversial rumors increasing demand and also the fact that retail stores didn’t necessarily reorder a large quantity of restocks of World of Springfield Series 2, the set Smithers was a part of. I found my Smithers at the Saratoga Sorings Wilton Mall KB Toys in 2000, the only one I ever saw at retail. Smithers was the hardest figure in the whole line for me to find, as it took me months to find him–I found Grampa relatively quickly in comparison.)

These quests brought a spirit of life and adventure to toy hunting odysseys that has largely been lost in the modern internet age, wherein major toy manufacturers generally allow online retailers to order whatever quantities they want of individual figures, rather than being totally beholden to predetermined case assortments and ratios.

This fundamental shift has definitely changed the collecting landscape in a way that benefits the half-blind Dabid of today, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the thrills and disappointments of hitting dozens of stores each week in hopes of securing that rare Jean Grey figure amongst a pile of slow-selling Wolverines.

The Fever (Or: “Dabid Reviews ‘Gremlins 2: The New Batch’”)

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There’s a particular psychological phenomenon that has happened to me throughout my life that I’m not sure others experience in themanner that I do. I call it “The Fever”.

In essence, I am overcome by The Fever when my mind fixates on some particular specialized interest—usually brought about by some newly revealed or released toy/collectible—and I can no longer function except in ways that help feed the breadth of my knowledge of or interest in whatever my brain has fixated upon collecting.

The Fever cannot be reasoned with, circumvented or fought against. It can only be extinguished by being allowed to run its natural course until abatement, which can be anywhere from minutes to years.

From playing tedious LEGO video games to add enthusiasm to purchasing LEGO Indiana Jones sets(inspired by movies I’d never seen at the time) to reading thousands of old Marvel comics to learn about the significance of characters I’m happily buying expensive resin Bowen statues of to watching 80s He-Man and She-Ra cartoons in the modern day to justify buying “ultimate” retro-styled figures based on shows I never watched, The Fever is an “ailment” that has helped me to expand my knowledge within my sphere of interests to virtually unrivaled capacities.

My most recent bout of The Fever occurred while I was out hunting for the new NECA Gargoyles figures of Bronx and Demona at Target. This quest brought me to the specialty collectibles section on the back wall at Target, which is an area filled with various collector-aimed (and often pricey) items from a plethora of brands.

There was no sign of Demona and/or Bronx, but while slowly scanning the shelves (which takes a while since I’m largely blind now), something else by NECA called an “Ultimate Gamer Gremlin” caught my eye. While I had only seen the original Gremlins movie once in my life and never the sequel, seeing this excellently executed action figure immediately caused me to become overwhelmed with a need to know everything about this franchise—and toy line—that I had previously ignored.

It turns out that NECA has been pushing out Gremlins figures for the better part of two decades now, but not being enamored with ugly/creepy/horror toys, I was oblivious to the many, many NECA Gremlins collectibles released.

After doing as much internet research on the toys as possible, my next destination was an Amazon site search for any Making Of books or novelizations that could explain the property to me textually. None are in print or available on Kindle. So I had to fall back on what I didn’t want to do: actually attempting to watch the movies.

When your brain primarily only processes motion as a shadowy blur and you can no longer see the left hand side of the screen at all, trying to take in what is happening in a film is not the relaxing recreational activity it once was. So watching movies is no longer my preferred choice for fueling my collecting-related obsessions.

Having previously viewed the first Gremlins about 15 years ago and the sequel never, I opted to first stream Gremlins 2: The New Batch, a critically panned and fan-despised sequel.

Opening with a bonafide Looney Tunes cartoon, it turned out that the film was in fact all-out insanity with a barely coherent plot. Upon finishing the movie, my wife declared it one of the worst things we’d ever seen… but I wasn’t so sure.

While I couldn’t necessarily discern what was going on on-screen to the same extent as my wife, I felt like there was definitely something there in this film. That the director had made deliberate choices to subvert what viewers wanted and to throw it into their faces.

While the original movie is iconic and beloved, it’s also a pointless romp with nothing to say—suitable material for this admittedly needless follow-up to parody and make into a full-blown mockery. As a self-hating sequel made with the clear intent to satirize itself, the Gremlins “franchise” and sequels as a whole, I view this movie as a rousing triumph.

The bold decision to include such absurdities as a Vegetable Gremlin, Bat Gremlin, Spider Monster Gremlin and sex-changed Lady Gremlin (her name is Greta, according to her first official action figure ever, which was released this past winter) makes this film quite a bit more toy-etic than its predecessor.

Coupling these wild varieties of Gremlins with bombastic scenes such as the Gremlins attacking a film critic who blasted the first movie and a segment with Hulk Hogan threatening the Gremlins speaking directly to the audience made for a movie experience like none I’d had before

The human characters are milquetoast and poorly written, but I think that kind of works for the type of story being told here: an unnecessary one that directly calls out within itself that profit and merchandising is its sole motivation.

As a whole, the sheer lunacy factor of Gremlins II and its own self-hatred make it a movie I’m glad to have experienced. Taken as a serious movie in a vacuum, my grade for Gremlins 2 would have to be an ‘F-‘, but as a parody/satire it earns a conditional ‘A’ from me.

And thankfully, I managed to do enough reflection and research to stall out The Fever long enough that it ran its course before I spent a fortune buying random Gremlins merch. (Although I’d totally still buy a NECA Bat Gremlin if it didn’t cost an unbelievable $200+ on the aftermarket.)