Movie Bars and Toy Robots

dropoffservice

So I have this problem with sports bars.  Mainly, its that I get super bored when I look up and see nine different televisions playing sports and maybe one more sporting that reality show with PlayBoy bunnies.  I like to go out and have a couple beers and catch up with friends, but when there is a lull or when I just want something to look at sports doesn’t cut it with me.  I just never got into it, sue me.  So I was pleasantly surprised when I went to “Drop Off Service” this past weekend that played, get this, Turner Classic Movies with the caption on.  If you are sitting at the bar, you can’t really see the screen, but there are lots of little tables and booths around the place and I found it to be something a little different and refreshing.  Plus, it managed to be a real conversation starter.  That and their meat pies.  It was relaxing and with enough open space to not fight through a crowd and the bartenders were friendly and top of everything. It sells about 20 beers or so.   It’s definitely one of the better bars I have been to in a long long while.

I also managed to wander into a little store called Toy Tokyo.  This place was like heaven, if heaven were full of 80’s toys, anime figurines and tons and tons of wind up toy robots!  There was an entire case of just these tin toys and pretty much anything else robot related right next to some Gumby-esque Futurama figurines.  It was a dangerous place for me to be because I began calculating how much I could buy immediately.  I did end up walking out with a small chrome wind up robot that is very reminiscent of “The Forbidden Planet” which now has a nice place on my bookshelf.

If you’re anywhere near these two places, definitely stop in and take a look around.

Drop Off Service

211 Avenue A

at 13th St.

(212) 260-2914

http://dropoffservicenyc.com

Toy Tokyo

91 second avenue  ground floor, new york, NY 10003 (212) 673-5424

http://toytokyo.com/

Robots Everywhere

smosh.com

So I have been sitting here all week long trying to write this blog about my obsession with robots.

I have them on shirts, socks, underwear.  I make them out of legos and boxes.  I have ornaments for my Christmas tree and salt and pepper shakers.  Maybe this could be blamed on growing up on Transformers (not the new stuff!) and Voltron, with occasional bouts of Johnny Five, KITT and Jinx from the movie “Space Camp.” (Yes, I went there with KITT)  We can’t of course can’t forget about R2D2, C3P0, the Terminator and Robocop.  This of course moved on to the Iron Giant,  Bender, Wall-e, Daleks, Cybermen (yea yea semantics)…

I was thinking about this because with valentines day coming up, Target has all these robots in the dollar section.  They did last year too. Sometimes its hard to find these things as they seem to be not as popular, so I stock up this time of year.

I kept stalling because I wasn’t sure how far I wanted to delve into this.    I’m sure that I am anthropomorphizing them and if I am, to what extent?  Don’t get me wrong, I find Wall-E adorable but I hated the movie “Robots”.  They were too human, to the point that the entire movie made no sense to me at all.

I am not sure it has anything to do with my asian heritage and just the general love of them.   Japan has the massive Gundum robot and Korea is set to open a theme park based around robots within the next few years.  Generally, asian culture has embraced robots in every day life more readily than others have.

Sciene fiction and even some fantasy has embraced robots or clockwork mechanics as common in the genres, both visually and in the written form.  When I was younger and reading, I had stumbled into a story called “The Eternal Enemy” by Christopher Pike.   The first chapter can be read on Amazon.com:  http://www.amazon.com/Eternal-Enemy-Christopher-Pike/dp/0671745093

It is the story of a typical teenage girl who buys a VCR that can record the future and what wasn’t so obvious at the time was it had robots involved in the story line.  I loved this story even years later when I discovered Isaac Asimov. This story had become my introduction to learning about being human.  When I try to explain it, it never comes out right, but when I was young, it was one of my favorite books.

Fudgethatsugar.com  has a good cartoon of his books. (which I had started reading around age 8 or 9).  I’m only going to post the link as it contains a spoiler:  http://fudgethatsugar.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/3-secret-teen-robot-vampires-by-christopher-pike/

I know this obsession isn’t uncommon as shared by robotaday.com and dieselsweeties.com but I am not sure if anyone other than a few people close to me are aware of this.

What are you obsessed with or collect?

(this may or not be a picture of my dining table)