This week’s League assignment is sort of Valentine’s centric.  Brain asked us to write a stream-of-consciousness piece about what we love.  I love a lot of stuff, and it’s not all equally (obviously), but in an attempt to go completely from the hip I’m going to list the first 77 things that come to mind (minus the obvious stuff like family, pets, and really personal junk.)  So prepare yourself for the stupidity that is peeling back my scalp and pouring my brain out into a heart shaped bowl.  I love…

#1 – 29 year-old hugging toy robots, specifically Robo Force…

#2 – Burnt Cheez-Its…

#3 – Eating Easy Cheese directly from the can…

#4 – The free kid’s stickers at Trader Joes…

#5 – Trader Joes Crunchy Cookie Butter…

#6 – Trapper Keepers…

#7 – Pentel Quicker Clicker 0.9 lead mechanical pencils…

#8 – Watching the Tri/Star Pegasus logo at the start of 80s flicks…

#9 – Johnny Lee Miller in Hackers…

#10 – The sound of Indiana Jones’ whip cracking to let me know that it’s time to turn the page in my read-along record and storybook set…

#11 – K.I.T.T.’s shiny black hubcaps…

#12 – Helen Slater’s Neoprene batching suit in The Legend of Bille Jean…

#13 – Joan Jett being gruff to Michael J. Fox in Light of Day…

#14 – Jason Bateman’s smarmy grinning in Silver Spoons episodes…

#15 – Fisher Price Adventure People, specifically the Robot Guy and Gal…

#16 – The goofy simplistic art style on the wax wrappers from trading cards…

#17 – The solid color border hugging Topps die-cut character stickers from the 70s & 80s…

#18 – Velcro Wallets…

#19 – John Pound’s art…

#20 – The smell emanating from most Chinese restaurants in the parking lot at night…

#21 – Hearing the voices of the various Kids in the Hall troupe in my head when a skit randomly pops into my consciousness…

#22 – The sound skateboard wheels make on asphalt…

#23 – The way the fur feels on my 30 year-old Wicket plush when I put him aside when getting into bed at night…

#24 – Hot Pink…

#25 – Listening to John Carpenter soundtracks when driving back from my friends house around midnight…

#26 – Starting off every road trip with Holiday Road from National Lampoon’s Vacation…

#27 – Examining all the Cereal, snack food, frozen and soda aisles in grocery stores in other areas/states to see if they have different stuff from the ones I’m used to…

#28 – Looking down and seeing the Tattoo I designed for the memory of my sister every day…

#29 – Making lists…

#30 – Updating the lists I make…

#31 – Annotating the lists I make…

#32 – The feeling I get in my stomach when the lights go down in the movie theater for the trailers to start…

#33 – Eating Dim Sum with a crap ton of people and having to finish all the sticky rice because no one else wanted it…

#34 – Good Indian food buffets…

#35 – Off-Brand cereal mascots…

#36 – Separating and ordering collections of trading cards/stickers…

#37 – Hearing Josh Baskin saying “Need It, Need It, Got it…” in my head compulsively when flipping through my Garbage Pail Kids collection…

#38 – Buying awesome pop culture shirts from my friend’s one year-old daughter, especially the boy’s shirts that I know her mom rolls her eyes at…

#39 – Spotting that first huge container of Pumpkins around the 2nd week of September…

#40 – Those 10 silent minutes before recording a podcast when I sit down in Branded HQ (my office at home) and just stare at all the junk on the walls…

#41 – Skee Ball…

#42 – Hearing Spanish covers of my favorite punk songs at the local Mexican restaurant…

#43 – David Bowie’s Hunky Dory album…

#44 – The memory of how hard it used to be to pull a fruit roll up off the plastic backing back in the 80s and how I would stick it all in my mouth and chew until it stopped tasting like grape…

#45 – Chewing on the old bubbly Lego space set tires while endlessly trying to build Airwolf out of my available Lego bricks…

#46 – Making and sending care packages to friends…

#47 – Finding, but not buying, pop culture character glasses in antique shops…

#48 – Stupid perverted conversations…

#49 – When John Cusack pretends to draw in 80s films and the drawings become animated…

#50 – The bike dance in Rad…

#51 – The sound Link’s sword makes in Legend of Zelda II when it shoots out a blast…

#52 – The sound of punching opponents in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out…

#53 – The skipitybob music during the menu and in-between segments of Super Mario Brothers II…

#54 – Inserting picture discs into a Viewmaster…

#55 – When building a sand castle on the east coast beaches of Florida, if you dig deep enough for the wetter sand and you find tiny little clams…

#56 – Ordering a Shirley Temple in a seafood restaurant…

#57 – Drinking olive and pickle juice…

#58 – The humming whir of Airwolf’s engines and those first pulse pounding synth beats during the opening theme music…

#59 – Sitting down on the slightly damp boat bench in either It’s A Small World or Pirates of the Caribbean at Disney World…

#60 – That time we asked to sit in the pilot’s cabin of the monorail at Disney…

#61 – The Keys to the Kingdom tour of Disney World and the part where we get to go into the Haunted Mansion through the service entrance…

#62 – Knowing that somewhere out there in the world there are probably still Star Wars figures with the copper touch-up paint from my parent’s old Mazda 626 on the bottoms of their feet to make them for ours (so I wouldn’t trade them with friends…)

#63 – Stuffing little pieces of paper in the holes on the top of a cassette tape so you can record over it…

#64 – Obsessively getting 100+ lives in Super Mario Bros and then turning off the game…

#65 – Playing Galaga at a stand-up arcade cabinet in a pizza place…

#66 – Mixing my own preserves into plain yogurt…

#67 – Finding that 3-chambered peanut and proclaiming to the closest friend “Look what I did!”…

#68 – Eating peanuts with the shells on…

#69 – Good sushi…

#70 – The Time for Timer mascot singing about a wagon wheel of cheese…

#71 – Flipping through 30 year-old magazines looking for interesting advertisements…

#72 – My VW Golf…

#73 – Jolly Rancher Watermelon flavor…

#74 – Transformers the Movie (1986)…

#75 – The white noise that old video transferred from VHS makes on youtube videos…

#76 – Talking about movies…

#77 – The number seven, duh…

If enjoyed this list, then you might want to check out these other League Members…

Reis, Lair of the Dork Horde, loves the smell of old paper backs and graphic novels

Fiji Mermaid, Sideshow Cinema, loves the Predator

The Goodwill Geek, Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks, loves Bubba Ho-Tep

Hobgoblin238, Monster Cafe, loves a messy hot fudge sundae