New: Chimaera Figure

As you might imagine, this guy took some time to do. He's enormous- 15" to 17" long, depending on which head you measure from- with a wingspan over a foot in length. The price is fair; building polycephalic monsters (that's the right term, right?) is always a crazefest- especially polycephalic (maybe it is the wrong term, but I'm on a roll) monsters with wings- which have to be built before the body is finished. And because I'm sort of a stickler for biology, I like to make sure the transition from lion chest to goat butt is pretty seamless.

And yet, after all of that, this might be like the tenth Chimaera I've built (not all of them this big), just because they're such fun to do. Sell, my pet. Sell.

It was something we had been promising to do for the longest time, and my wife and I finally fulfilled it: we went to the opera together- La Boheme, specifically. I think this was my first time; maybe I fell asleep during one at grade school- no recollection. Mrs. Gil-Monster stated that La Boheme was one of the main influences for the film Moulin Rouge, which didn't serve to alleviate my apprehensions as much as it did remind me that preceding "Watch Moulin Rouge again" on the list is "Pour scorpions down the front of my jeans" as well as "Tattoo the Periodic Table of the Elements on my gums with a soldering iron".

You know La Boheme's damage. Starving Bohemian artists try to stay warm on Christmas Eve. One of them convinces a neighboring waif to fall in love with him, and everybody everywhere is blissful until it's dropped that Mimi the waif is fatally afflicted with deus ex machinitis. Yes. La Boheme is aggressively and unapologetically plotless. (Why ...yes. The toy vendor was integral. Sure.) But still- it was still a beautiful and rich performance. The actors were all quite physical in their singing- apart from Mimi (yes I know she's supposed to be sick but sick people shouldn't be belting their lungs out anyway; gesture, woman!)

"I hate Bohemians", I thought in the final act as the four artists pranced about their flat, mimicking tittering women and fencing with paintbrushes. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't moved as the curtains fell for the final time.

So is my wife, by the way. "Feh! I do not 'cry' at the OPERA!" she said before the lights dimmed.