justin bieber

I must confess something’s disturbing me a lot at 12:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning. India has just got to the final of an extreme humdinger of a tournament called the ICC Twenty20 World Cup. I’m bleary eyed but a colleague’s messages over the course of the tournament have kept me immensely engrossed. For starters, he’s predicted correctly, every result of every major match in the tournament even before the matches had got underway. He’s suggesting big money, sponsors, Asian influence and the inevitable dirty word - “Match-Fixing.” Today, when when Symonds & Hayden were cruising towards 188 in the semi-final , I got a message from him saying. “Too much Naatak, India is winning this… ”. Another message from another colleague, “Is this fixed?” The verdict on the final is that Pakistan is winning it. I don’t know. And I don’t want to know!

Now we take it to where it all began. The whole designer toy craze that we all know and love now was started with this figure: Kid Hunter by Bounty Hunter! Bounty Hunter started in 1995 in the Harajuku district of Tokyo as a store with a punk sensibility selling various things from clothing to older toys that owner Hikaru Iwanaga would pick up on frequent trips to the United States (Spawn toys, Star Wars, old cereal mascots...). Iwanaga says that the name Bounty Hunter pays homage to the Star Wars character Boba Fett and also that the name comes from the actual hunting of these things (the bounty). In the upcoming Toypunks documentary ( www.toypunks.com ), Iwanaga talks about discovering toys and punk rock music when he was growing up, comparing the two as similar experiences. Be it a talking GI Joe or the Sex Pistols, it all blew him away. He was very interested in the punk rock music and lifestyle as well as the American commercial culture such as cereal mascots. As the shop expand...

Over the past couple months, I have built up what I feel is a well-rounded little Bounty Hunter collection. I sold off quite a bit of stuff (pretty much the rest of my Western collection save a few pieces) to fund it, and I am very glad I did now that I have everything in hand. When I first got into Japanese vinyl, I have to admit I didn't get into these. Granted, I didn't give them much of a look as I was into solely the monsters and blobs and horrors that are new and vintage kaiju, but at a time when my tastes had moved from Western to Eastern style toys, these Bounty Hunter toys that really seem like a fusion of both styles did not speak to me. After the initial dust settled and the kaiju buying spree slowed, I found my collection moving toward more cohesive little cells... aided by the separated shelved in the Detolf. I had the vinyl wrestlers anchored by some sweet vintage Tiger Mask figures. I had the strange beasts that I craved initially... now moving toward more s...

Last night I unexpectedly found myself questioning this incredible new hobby of mine. Never did I think that something like collecting toys could actually be very damaging. It started with a conversation on skullbrain.org about Kidrobot and their quality control issues lately. It was argued that quality checks can be difficult due to the factories that make them being in remote locations in China where no one speaks english and the workers are essentially unskilled laborers. I raised the question why there are no factories opened in North America to solve problems such as this. The answer was (besides the obvious cheaper foreign labor issue) that the materials used in production, including both the vinyl and the paints/dyes violate laws set by the Environmental Protection Agency. So now my concern had moved completely from the quality conversation to "Is my hobby here promoting the destruction of some environment?" I was told that the softer grades of vinyl used in making...

Most of my photos here are linked to Photobucket, but the organization there leaves something to be desired. I have this Flickr account that was not really getting used all that much, so I am keeping an album on there of my dirty little habit you so faithfully read about. Clickr

¡Viva la raza! El Pollo Fiebre (Chicken Fever) Ultimo is a collaboration between Sinbad Toys, Rong Zi and Kaiju-Taro. It was released along with another Chicken Fever (Uno Dos Tres Version) in late April this year. At first I didn't know what to think of Chicken Fever. I was very new to the Eastern vinyl collecting world (I still am in so many ways), and I had never seen this figure before. There were teaser banners on kaiju-taro for what appeared to be a lucha libre themed toy coming out. I was very excited to see what was happening, but when I saw that it was a mutant chicken, well, color me unimpressed. I was coming into this with little or no knowledge of Japanese fight figures or of the existing Chicken Fever sculpt. Here I was all excited that I may be able to get in on an exclusive monster toy from kaiju-taro and it would be a luchador! And it was a chicken all along. I was wanting Godzilla type beasts or melting skeletons or something like that. Well, fast forward a fe...

It always seems to me that the modern marvels of cell phones, computers, credit cards, online bookings, DTH or music system are always conspiring against me. It’s almost like each of them have been selected as snipers to be used in the second edition of Reservoir Dogs to harass me to the extent of beating the shit out of my mental faculties. Wiser people before me have suggested that examples prove theories better so here are a few: 1. I’m currently expecting to get an amount of Rs. 1832 to be refunded to my Credit Card account. The transaction took place in February. 2. I recently reversed a purchase of Rs. 13649 on my Debit Card because of some shoddy customer service at an Essar-Virgin Mobile Store. It’s supposed to take effect in the next 48 hours. 3. My mobile charger conked off 2 weeks back and I’d to spoil 3 hours running from store to store on a Sunday morning hunting for the innocuous looking instrument 4. At any point of time, my broadband modem might just hang. It has some ...