Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
LEGO: A Love Story
Hi. I'm posting a copy of this book review to each of my four blogs. However, if you read more than one of my blogs, I'm including a unique paragraph to the end on each blog noting specifics of the book relevant to the topic of that blog.
Review: A couple of years ago, I remember hearing on one of the LEGO forums about Jonathan Bender, a journalist who was planning on spending a year exploring the AFOL community as part of a writing project. He started a blog, Brick Bender, to document his journey. I read a few entries, but there are so many different blogs and websites out there that I kind of forgot about it. Recently, though, this exploration came to fruition in a new book, LEGO: A Love Story.
The result is a highly enjoyable book. Jonathan follows the journey that many of us took. He remembers playing with LEGO as a kid, but then goes into a long dark age. Little things remind him of his hobby, and eventually he digs his old bricks out of his parents' basement. He nervously buys new LEGO for himself, afraid that others might learn of his purchase. Then he starts building MOCs. He connects with the community, and is initially nervous that his MOCs won't measure up to the amazing models he sees.
Along the way, Jonathan met up with a great number of people from the AFOL community. One of the first things I noticed when flipping through the book was that it has a great index, and, yes, I looked myself up. To my utter surprise, delight, and honor, there I was. On page 106 he quotes something I posted on Lugnet several years ago about vignettes. But I'm a minor player, of course. He talks to a great number of the major players in the AFOL world, from bloggers to fest organizers, to current and former LEGO employees. He also researches the LEGO company and the growth of the fan community, with a lot of the major events along the way. He travels to several fan events like Brick World, Brick Bash, Brick Show, and BrickCon (hmm, see a pattern in fan fest names?) and gets behind the scenes tours at the Toy and Plastic Brick Museum, Legoland California, and the homeland itself, LEGO headquarters in Billund. And he invites us all along for the ride.
There are several audiences for this book. If you are just interested in the hobby as an outsider, particularly if you are, say, the spouse of an AFOL, he gives a great insight into these crazy people and their plastic brick masterpieces. If you are just coming out of your own dark age, you can learn a ton about the hobby and the people in it. If you're someone who's been in the hobby for years, it's like going to a reunion, where you encounter old friends and share great memories.
Are there shortcomings in this book? Yes, of course. No book can hope to be a comprehensive view of such a large and diverse community. I saw a couple of small errors, and places where I remember events a little differently than he reports. It felt in places like he gave a larger weight to some individuals because he got to know them personally, while other very important members of the community were missed, especially those outside the US. I do wish that he'd spent more time on the evolution of the on-line side of the Legoverse. He has a good picture of the growth from Usenet newsgroups to Lugnet. But as he reports, Lugnet is pretty dead these days, and he doesn't really go into the way that other, more specific forums grew out of Lugnet, or the variety of blogs (other than the Brothers Brick, which he rightly points out as the most important LEGO blog) and Flickr groups. The other thing I really felt the book needed was more pictures. There are black and white photos at the start of each chapter, and eight pages of glossy color photos in the center, but with such a visual medium you could have put photos on almost every page. As a pretty active AFOL I remember a lot of the different MOCs he mentions, but someone less involved in the hobby would benefit from photos of these. I want to reread the book with Jonathan's blog open in front of me, so that I can go back and forth and see his photos along with the events he describes.
The book is intensely personal. In addition to inviting us in to his own feelings as he becomes an AFOL - the fun of discovery, the nervousness about others learning about his hobby, the fear that his efforts would not be accepted by other AFOLs - he invites us deeper. We get to see him building LEGO with his dad as a child, and then again reconnecting through LEGO as an adult. Even more personally, we get his and his wife's fears that they may never have children of their own. I'm not afraid to admit that my eyes were tearing up at the emotional climax in the last few pages. This is ultimately a book about love. Yes, we all share a love for little plastic bricks, but in the end it is about love between people - the lasting friendships built up between community members, the love of a husband and wife, the love of a parent and child. That's what makes this hobby so special, and that's what this book celebrates.
MinilandBricks specific material: In the course of his travels through the Legoverse, Jonathan gets to visit Legoland Billund and Legoland California, and in both cases the highlight is Miniland. He gets to talk with people like Gary McIntyre, who takes him over the fence where he walks the streets of tiny San Francisco and is sorely tempted to hide a Miniland copy of himself. He also speaks with Mariann Asanuma, one of our co-bloggers here at MinilandBricks. These were built only a couple of months ago, so long after the book was finished, but here are Jon and his wife as Minilanders.
Review: A couple of years ago, I remember hearing on one of the LEGO forums about Jonathan Bender, a journalist who was planning on spending a year exploring the AFOL community as part of a writing project. He started a blog, Brick Bender, to document his journey. I read a few entries, but there are so many different blogs and websites out there that I kind of forgot about it. Recently, though, this exploration came to fruition in a new book, LEGO: A Love Story.
The result is a highly enjoyable book. Jonathan follows the journey that many of us took. He remembers playing with LEGO as a kid, but then goes into a long dark age. Little things remind him of his hobby, and eventually he digs his old bricks out of his parents' basement. He nervously buys new LEGO for himself, afraid that others might learn of his purchase. Then he starts building MOCs. He connects with the community, and is initially nervous that his MOCs won't measure up to the amazing models he sees.
Along the way, Jonathan met up with a great number of people from the AFOL community. One of the first things I noticed when flipping through the book was that it has a great index, and, yes, I looked myself up. To my utter surprise, delight, and honor, there I was. On page 106 he quotes something I posted on Lugnet several years ago about vignettes. But I'm a minor player, of course. He talks to a great number of the major players in the AFOL world, from bloggers to fest organizers, to current and former LEGO employees. He also researches the LEGO company and the growth of the fan community, with a lot of the major events along the way. He travels to several fan events like Brick World, Brick Bash, Brick Show, and BrickCon (hmm, see a pattern in fan fest names?) and gets behind the scenes tours at the Toy and Plastic Brick Museum, Legoland California, and the homeland itself, LEGO headquarters in Billund. And he invites us all along for the ride.
There are several audiences for this book. If you are just interested in the hobby as an outsider, particularly if you are, say, the spouse of an AFOL, he gives a great insight into these crazy people and their plastic brick masterpieces. If you are just coming out of your own dark age, you can learn a ton about the hobby and the people in it. If you're someone who's been in the hobby for years, it's like going to a reunion, where you encounter old friends and share great memories.
Are there shortcomings in this book? Yes, of course. No book can hope to be a comprehensive view of such a large and diverse community. I saw a couple of small errors, and places where I remember events a little differently than he reports. It felt in places like he gave a larger weight to some individuals because he got to know them personally, while other very important members of the community were missed, especially those outside the US. I do wish that he'd spent more time on the evolution of the on-line side of the Legoverse. He has a good picture of the growth from Usenet newsgroups to Lugnet. But as he reports, Lugnet is pretty dead these days, and he doesn't really go into the way that other, more specific forums grew out of Lugnet, or the variety of blogs (other than the Brothers Brick, which he rightly points out as the most important LEGO blog) and Flickr groups. The other thing I really felt the book needed was more pictures. There are black and white photos at the start of each chapter, and eight pages of glossy color photos in the center, but with such a visual medium you could have put photos on almost every page. As a pretty active AFOL I remember a lot of the different MOCs he mentions, but someone less involved in the hobby would benefit from photos of these. I want to reread the book with Jonathan's blog open in front of me, so that I can go back and forth and see his photos along with the events he describes.
The book is intensely personal. In addition to inviting us in to his own feelings as he becomes an AFOL - the fun of discovery, the nervousness about others learning about his hobby, the fear that his efforts would not be accepted by other AFOLs - he invites us deeper. We get to see him building LEGO with his dad as a child, and then again reconnecting through LEGO as an adult. Even more personally, we get his and his wife's fears that they may never have children of their own. I'm not afraid to admit that my eyes were tearing up at the emotional climax in the last few pages. This is ultimately a book about love. Yes, we all share a love for little plastic bricks, but in the end it is about love between people - the lasting friendships built up between community members, the love of a husband and wife, the love of a parent and child. That's what makes this hobby so special, and that's what this book celebrates.
MinilandBricks specific material: In the course of his travels through the Legoverse, Jonathan gets to visit Legoland Billund and Legoland California, and in both cases the highlight is Miniland. He gets to talk with people like Gary McIntyre, who takes him over the fence where he walks the streets of tiny San Francisco and is sorely tempted to hide a Miniland copy of himself. He also speaks with Mariann Asanuma, one of our co-bloggers here at MinilandBricks. These were built only a couple of months ago, so long after the book was finished, but here are Jon and his wife as Minilanders.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
A is for Awesome
Lego 911 built this great Model A virtually. I hope that someday soon A is for ABS, as I'd love to see this actually built.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Waste Management Garbage Truck
Although the cab is a tad small for a Miniland person to actually sit in it, this Waste Management garbage truck that I was commissioned to make is very close to Miniland scale. You can read more about it on my Model Building Secrets blog.
Technorati tags: LEGO Miniland
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Eurobricks Billund
Eurobricks recently held an event at Legoland Billund and Holodoc took the chance to check out Miniland.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Netherminilands
In early June, LEGO is hosting a Tallest LEGO Tower event in Limmen, in the Netherlands. Robert of Amazing Brick Creations was commissioned to build a giant Dutch girl minifig to be built as part of this event, and he's also created a minland version of her. You can buy it as a commemorative kit or download the instructions on his site.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Legoland California
As noted by a commenter the other day and also on Fascinating LEGO Model of the Day, you can also use Google Maps StreetView to visit Legoland California.
View Larger Map
BTW, I once again took the code to embed that from FLMotD.
View Larger Map
BTW, I once again took the code to embed that from FLMotD.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Miniland Impossible
Now I've got the theme music running through my head, driven by Crazy Texan's Miniland Impossible. Regardless of your feelings about Tom Cruise vs Peter Graves, this is a cool Miniland Vig.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Visit Miniland from home
This is so cool! All credit goes to Fascinating LEGO Model of the Day for this. Google Maps has added a street - er - walking path view to Legoland Windsor. So you can sit at your computer and mouse around the park, zooming in to look at all the details. I think I've just figured out what I'll be doing for the next several hours.
View Larger Map
I completely copied the code for embedding the viewer from Fascinating LEGO Model of the Day. It seems to work for me, but if not for you you can follow the link to the Google Map page and use it there.
View Larger Map
I completely copied the code for embedding the viewer from Fascinating LEGO Model of the Day. It seems to work for me, but if not for you you can follow the link to the Google Map page and use it there.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
They tried to make me go to rehab, I said "No, I'm LEGO"
Justin Ramsden presents Amy Winehouse. Check out the two little minilanders next to the large bust (well, if you're a minor, don't check out the one too closely).
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Behind the scenes at Legoland
Gary McIntire, aka MrGSnot, is a Model Designer at Legoland California. On his desk, he's got this business card holder based on the recent waterpark addition to the park. He also made this cake topper for a colleague who got married. Finally, we get a peek at his workbench, where you can see works-in-progress to design new models and refurbish old ones for the park.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Cows hate cold hands
MinilandBricks is happy to welcome the newest LEGO community site, Classic-Cattle, devoted to all things LEGO and bovine. Christoph Schweiger took a picture of this milkmaid at an official LEGO store.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Brandenburger Tor
We don't often see a successful mixing of minifig and miniland scales. I was looking through some old galleries from 1000SteineLand 2006, a gathering of AFOLs in Berlin, and noticed this great Brandenburg Gate. Why feature it here? Look more closely at the statue of Victoria in her chariot. Unfortunately, I do not remember the builder. If someone knows, could they leave a comment?
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