If you saw The Office last week, you saw Pam’s art project was an ASCII Dwight. Now you too can get your very own to print and enjoy at your own cubicle. If you missed the season premiere last week, that was entitled “Weight Loss,” you can go watch it now! It was a fantastic episode and lots more entertaining than a normal day at your office, unless you’re lucky enough to work at a candy and fireworks testing factory.

The Extra-Terrestrial and his Decepticon chum Soundwave. This print and other great Scott C. pieces will be released this Friday, September 26th at 12PM PST at Gallery1988 San Francisco. They’ll be limited edition of 100, signed and numbered, and selling for $50. I really enjoy these playful pieces and especially enjoyed his artwork at this past iam8bit show in August. I bet that since Soundwave hasn’t been hanging out with the Transformers lately, he joined The Surreal Life and met E.T. They hang out, talk about the old days, while enjoying their slushies and tunes.

Anyone else get excited watching the opening for Heroes Season 3? That was one excellent season premiere! If you were gave up last season, it’s time to return - they’re back on track. If they continue at this level of goodness, this will be an excellent season. The writing and the acting were not super, but it was enjoyable. What did you think about the Heroes opener episode(s)?

*It was cool that William Katt of The Greatest American Hero guest starred. I think he did a swell job. It’d be cool to see him back in his red hero suit again!

Back in the 80s, when the Atari 2600 came out, these were my favorite literature. Combine two of my all time favorite hobbies - comics and games and you’ve got yourself a literary masterpiece. I literally demolished these mini-comics, having read through them countless times, they wore away and were lost to the ages. It wasn’t until I happened across Atari Age, who amazingly has all these old gaming mini-comics including Atari Force, Swordquest and Yars’ Revenge!

Note: My fav was Centipede and the littlest elf Oliver, who turned his insect friends into mushrooms. No thanks to that mean old hypnotizing wizard.

If you liked this post, you might also like this one about classic computing magazines.

I’ll attempt to do this post without mentioning the actual stuff used in this ad, similar buzz words or any of it’s nicknames, like that of a certain a soda company. (Their company is named after the plant, because they once used a significant amount of it in their drink.) I don’t want this site to be a search haven for the stuff. Remember kids - don’t do drugs, build log cabins.

I’ve had a black and white version of this old ad in my collection for quite awhile. It wasn’t until I recently noticed that a color version of it was available just about everywhere online. This amazing plant, which was sold in various forms, was used and marketed as a instantaneous cure for whatever ailed you - as did many medicines of the time. But back in the late 1800’s, U.S. companies actually manufactured it for you to purchase at your neighborhood drugstore.

Fast forward a few decades and the laws have changed. No longer can little Janie or Johnny use it to help them build what appears to be a cabin from sticks, pain free. Now they must endure what ails them, like good little troopers (with misshapened heads), while they toil away building that little log cabin (for their family to live in).

Note: I was reminded to do this post about toothache drops because I’ve got to go to the dentist tomorrow - thankfully it’s only for a normal cleaning.

He-Man.org has pictures of the new Masters of the Universe Classic Stratos figure and it looks like the original Stratos figure only cooler. There’s also pics of Mer-Man with his two variable heads! These new figures look great and I’m especially liking the new Skeletor. (He was one of my favorite characters, next to Webstor.) It’s too bad that these new figures won’t be out for a few months though, but I’m patient.

The Stratos character in the cartoon was one of the cooler characters in the show. I think he was like one of the only guys that could fly on his own. Since he appeared regularly alongside Ram-Man, I imagine being able to fly away from any unwanted, ramming would be useful. (Ram-Man always creeped me out a bit.)

(via Topless Robot)

Dan Goodsell has created a cute piece of artwork showing of his World of Mr Toast characters. The whole gang’s included like Mr Toast, Lemonhead, Shaky Bacon, Joe the Egg, Sr Cork, Clem Lemon, Drunken Carrot and many more. It’s kind of neat seeing all of these cool characters together in one place. Artwork like that deserves to be emblazoned on a t-shirt, don’t you think?

Tattooed Pickle is no where to be seen though…

Super Mario Rescues The Princess - I’m not sure if people think Family Guy is still cool, but I still enjoy the show. The shows’ creator, Seth MacFarlane, is making YouTube shorts that are sponsored by fast food giant Burger King. One of the first episodes is a parody of Super Mario Bros. and it’s pretty funny. These cartoon shorts are called Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, which will be poking fun at pop culture. There’ll be a total of 50 shorts that are created specifically for the web. Wil Wheaton will be appearing in future episodes, so keep an eye out for him.

Be constructive with chaos. The Chaos Tower educational learning toy can be constructed to be over 6 feet tall or 5 feet wide. With over 500 pieces, Chaos offers infinite building possibilities and unlimited expansion potential. Kids can move it easily, whether it’s fully or partially assembled. A big plus is that no tools are required for assembly and a complete AC powered motor is standard with every kit. Recommend for ages 8 and up.

Bring on the chaos and bring on the fun.

In the upcoming one-shot, October issue of Monster Size Hulk #1, the Green Goliath battles the Frankenstein monster. With Halloween upon us, this will make a cool comic to collect. Between the Hulk and Frankenstein, my money’s on the Hulk. But with the relative similarities between two, I could see them just swapping stories.

Spore is out today for Mac and PC and I just got back from the store with my copy. This was even after noticing that not all the reviews are positive, but I’m going into it with an open mind. I know that the delay in releasing this game has greatly helped fuel anticipation over its release and I’m sure it’ll sell at least moderately well. With it’s amazing combination of art, science and technology it hasn’t forgotten the fun. Be sure to buy your copy of the game and let me know what you think about it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go coax my wriggling, evolving critter out of some primordial waters. Who knew evolution would be so much fun?

Mass Attack - Just create weights to balance the scales. It’s much more addictive than it sounds! Even if you’re not a physics major or taking a class in Newtonian mechanics, you’ll still enjoy this brain bending game. If you’re not throughly satisfied with the game, you will receive a full refund of the time you’ve invested - *if you’ve figured out how to build a flux capacitor first. (You should have paid more attention on the chapter about time travel in your Quantum mechanics class.)

It looks like Dan Goodsell’s Monster Toast is ready for Halloween and the Monster Rally Show at Gallery 1988 San Francisco in October 2008. I’ve not heard much about this show yet, but I’d imagine it’s monster themed. (Boo!) I also thought his Vampire Toast was cool too, but this Monster Toast looks a lot scarier. (Although I see he’s just a little scaredy cat.)

This is my 1000th blog post! It’s a milestone! This is also the third anniversary of the site, which all began back in September of 2005. To commemorate this special occasion I’ll give you some stats. The site has:

• received 170,000 spam comments (all of which have been DENIED)
• 1,500 comments from wonderful people
• averaged 330 posts/year = nearly one a day since the beginning
• a majority of traffic from the US, followed by the UK, Mexico, Australia and then Canada
• averaged 30,000 unique views/month in 2008
• x-men, gi joe, and steampunk as the most popular search queries
• kept me very busy over the last three years
• not completely driven me crazy
• introduced me to many cool, creative and fun people

I’d like to give you the reader a big THANKS for visiting Old Man Musings and a special thanks to the frequent commenters that continue to keep things flowing. Stayed tuned - I’ve got some neat new ideas coming up.