Today, the second in a series of figurine orders that I made on Hobbylink Japan came in the mail today. This time around, the figure is part of Wave's "Beach Queens" series of figurines.

For those who aren't aware of this, the "Beach Queen" series is a series of figurines by Wave that depicts female characters from various anime titles in their swimwear. When it comes to this series, I've ordered three of these figurines (all from different anime titles, BTW). Today, the first of the three came in the form of Itsuki Kannagi from Sora Kake Girl.

What can I say, of the episodes of the show that I've seen so far (I have to drop it for now, but hope to pick it up on DVD if it does get released in America), Sora Kake Girl definitely seems to be a fun series. As for the choice of figurine, given her curves, Itsuki was the obvious choice. Sure, Wave also released a limited edition figure of her in the "disguise" she dons when she poses as a student at the main character's school. However, I prefer Itsuki in her regular form than in her disguise form.

As usual, here's a picture of the figure:



With that out of the way, I'm now waiting for next month, when THREE more figures are supposed to ship to me from Japan.

It's caption time again, but before I reveal the image for this weeks competition, here is the winning caption from last week:


For the second week in a row, the winning caption comes from Ayana Mudou, but this time he had a lot of competition from the large number of fantastic captions submitted, and the large number of edits to one caption in particular.


Just like always, please post a caption to go with the following image. There is no prize, except the knowledge that you are better at putting words into the mouths of anime characters than your peers.

Here is this week's image:

Edit: Change of plans, I've decided that Yutaka needs to be joined by Minami.





So on the side, I've been working on Lucky Star avatars. I don't want to post them all in the same entry as I think it would be too large. Thus I'm splitting them up by character.

The very first character that will be taken care of is Kobayakawa Yutaka because her birthday comes up December 10. So I'm being nice to her. Whether I get around to the others is another story.







Kobayakawa Yutaka

























































































Iwasaki Minami











Yutaka/Minami
























And there you go. I may or may not update this later.


Oh, and apparently her birthday is December 20th according to the manga. It's also not the only instance where the anime and manga have it different. Misao is October 7th in the anime and July 20th in the manga....

Well, it took quite a bit longer than expected, but the ninth edition of Kampfer avatars is ready. Granted I think I can blame myself partially for how long it took due to being in a kind of overkill mode.


Actually some of the avatars have me asking myself "Did I really avatar-ize that?" The answer is apparently yes... Maybe the series provides extra motivation?


The fun part is a good portion of the avatars are Akane. This is true both before the trimming process and after. Decide for yourself what that means.


In any case, here are the way too many/not enough avatars of Akane and some other girls as well.










Group































Natsuru





































Shizuku







































Kaede
































































Mikoto
















































































Hitomi












































Ryouka




























Sayaka


































Akane













































































































































And there you go.

Not to steal away any of Buckeye's thunder for he posted an excellent list of the 2009 Sports Turkeys of the year, but I feel that I should go ahead and post my own list of who I believe deserved to be branded as turkeys for the 2009 sports season. So without futher ado, here are my top 10 Turkeys of the Year:

10. The StreakMaster
Although I love playing ESPN's Streak for the Cash (of which I decided to stop playing just before Thanksgiving), there were numerous issues with the overall flow of the game, such as taking too long to unlock matchups that concluded and not getting the gametimes correct on the board. Plus some of the props were difficult to understand and somewhat confusing, especially with some of the soccer and football props. I also felt that the Streak 7 round was far too long, and nearly took away most of the enthusiasm that the game generated in its first two rounds. Hopefully those issues will be retified when the next round begins.

9. Larry Dolan and Mark Shapiro, Cleveland Indians

They make my list simply because they traded the Indians' two best players - pitcher Cliff Lee and catcher Victor Martinez - for practically nothing. Shapiro gets notification for not doing a better job of getting top-tier prospecs for both Lee and Martinez, and Dolan get noted for being too stingy in signing the club options on both of them. In addition, Dolan should've fired Eric Wedge much sooner then the last week of the season.

8. Martin Hansson



7. Larry Johnson



6. Elizabeth Lambert



5. The Pittsburgh Pirates



4. Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez

Two of baseball's megastars were busted for drug use. In Ramirez's case, he was suspended for 50 games for having an abnormally high artifical testosterone level, in which he claimed that it was the inavertent result of a legal non-steroid perscrpition. It was later revealed that the perscription was for hCG, which is commonly used to restore testosterone levels depleted by steroid use. In A-Rod's case, his name was leaked from a confidential list of 104 Major Leagues who failed tests for performance enhancers in 2003. He later confessed to using the enhancer suplied by his "cousin".

3. Charlie Weis



2. The Cleveland Browns

The once-proud franchise hasn't done much of anything since their return from hiatus in 1999 (only two winning seasons and one playoff appearance since their return), and this might go down as the franchise's worst season ever. Outside of not being competitve in most of their games, head coacn Eric Mangini succeeded in turning the Browns into laughingstocks - waffling as to who his starting quarterback will be, his hand-picked GM was fired mid-season (though I believe that Mangini orchestrated the firing) and accusing the Lions of faking injuires to slow down his no-huddle offense, among other crap that he's done that are too numerous to mention. Owner Randy Lerner is expected to hire a consultant to help him run the franchise, and I hope he does it soon (and it better be Mike Holmgren) He has consultants running the operations at Aston Villa and that franchise went from an run-of-the-mill EPL team into a contender in a few short years. It's time he does the same thing with the Browns.

1. Steve Phillips



Honorable Mentioned:

• Chicago Cubs outfielder Milton Bradley for confrontations with umpires, fans, and manager Lou Pinellia that resulted in him getting suspended for the rest of the season. In other words, he's among the sports turkeys just for being himself :devil:.
• The New Jersey Nets for starting the 2009-2010 NBA season 0-14 (at the time of this blog post).
• Oregon RB LeGarrette Blount for punching a Boise State player after Oregon's 19-8 loss to the Broncos.
• Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams for giving the Stone Cold Salute to Bills fans.
• Former Indians manager Eric Wedge for not having a clue as to how to manage or even stick with a set lineup for more than two games.
• New York Rangers coach John Tortorella for going berserk against Washington Capitals fans during Game 5 of their playoff series - squirting water at them, throwing water bottles, and even lunging at the crowd with a hockey stick in hand.

The following is a log of the events that took place during my experience of the annual event that is known as Black Friday.

1:00AM: My mother and I officially got up and got dressed to prepare for the early morning sale at Best Buy that I planned to attend.

1:30AM: My mother and I arrived at Best Buy, with us having to wait in line in weather that is cold, very windy, and filled with rain for numerous hours.

4:00AM: The Best Buy that we went to began passing out papers needed to get some of the doorbuster or computer-related items. During this time, my mother and I picked up claim papers for two computers and a digital photo picture frame that my brother wanted.

5:00AM: Best Buy opens for business. While my mother got in line to get the computers (which had a wait of two hours), I was busy looking round the store, and along with picking up the picture frame, I also picked up a Blu-Ray player (I'm currently unsure if I'll give it to either my father or my younger brother for Xmas), Xmas gifts for my dad and younger brother, and a few video games and Blu-Ray discs for me.

7:15AM: Following Best Buy, my next stop was the mall. While I was at the mall, I looked around various stores. As for purchases, I picked up the first two seasons of the Boondocks at FYE, and at Sears, I picked up something that I believe will come in handy next convention season: a digital video recorder (and an 8 GB SD card for it).

8:05AM: A brief stop at Borders to check to see if the store has gotten volume 2 of the Lucky Star manga yet (the answer is still no).

8:30AM: Returned home from my first trip out on Black Friday. After my father and I unloaded all the stuff that my mom and I picked up at Best Buy (with me taking out of the bag some of the gifts that I got Dad, so he wouldn't see what I got him), I went to bed to take a 2 1/2 hour nap.

2:15PM: With my father needing to go to the mall to pick up a gun for a hunting trip, I accompanied him for my second trip to the mall. This time around, I stopped at Funcoland to pick up a wireless keypad for the PS3 and a case that can carry 8 PSP games.

4:00PM: Went to Target to look for any deals when it comes to video games and DVD's. In the end, I picked up Red Faction: Guerrilla for $20.