T-shirt #303 - Space Ghost with Red Collar

T-shirt #303 - Space Ghost with Red Collar



I originally posted this blog entry the day before my birthday. I am completing it a few days later, which allows me to have photos and videos from the day I originally posted it.

Birthdays have always been special in the Tower household. My mother always put on quite an elaborate show in celebration of our birthdays growing up and then into adulthood, so that we would feel extra special and loved. Not that we had any doubt that we were extra special and loved. And by "we" here I mean my sister and me and my father.

Unfortunately, I do not have any digital copies of any of my childhood birthday celebrations, though this should come along some time in the next year or two.

Our family has always celebrated birthdays in a way that makes me feel very special. I have photos and videos from several birthdays on this page. The photos of me in the featured shirt come from my 44th birthday in 2006. Farther below, you will find a video and a picture of my cake from my 2007 birthday as well as time lapse videos from my current 2014 birthday.

Also, in addition, to being about birthdays, today is also about SPACE GHOST.

So far, I have written about SPACE GHOST twice though not in much depth. Given that I am behind schedule, I am unlikely to deliver much depth today either.

T-shirt #69 SPACE GHOST COAST-TO-COAST BLUE

T-shirt #169 SPACE GHOST COAST-TO-COAST BROWN

T-shirt #69 features a nice picture of me with my parents from May of 2013.

I also wrote the following text.


I love capes.

Space Ghost has a cape.

I love Space Ghost.

This blog (the whole project not just this entry) is a unique vehicle for self-inventory, for making categories, for reflection. More on this process as I proceed. Maybe it will inspire others for similar reflection and self-inventory. Maybe some of the entries will remind people of pop culture icons long forgotten or make others ask: "who the Hell is Space Ghost?"

SPACE GHOST COMIC. There have been a few comics featuring Space Ghost. I have at least one more Space Ghost shirt, so I will have another chance to catalogue and review. I like this one by Joe Kelly and Ariel Olivetti very much.

Would there have been a Buzz Lightyear without a Space Ghost?

For T-shirt #169 (do you like the unintended and random number connection between 69 and 169), I explored many topics, including mail call. I discussed the parlor trick CD that came in the mail (a Kickstarter I had funded), The Parlour Trick, fun with Ernest Cline author of Ready Player One--one of my favorite books of last year and maybe of all time--a call to stop the killing in Syria, and a review of the awful City of Bones book. Not much on Space Ghost.

But today... maybe a bit more on Space Ghost once I get rolling and all.

BIRTHDAYS AT MY HOUSE

Birthdays at my house were always like national holidays. Normal activity ceased and everything focused on the birthday boy or girl. My mother set impossibly high standards for how to make someone's day super special, a standard I strive to meet with my wife and kids and rarely live up to.

Since my mother's coma and meningitis, we have all carried on trying to make birthdays extra special events for everyone in the family, but none of us could match the special care and thoughtfulness of my mother, Marjorie.

SPECIAL CAKE

One element of special birthdays was our special cake. We always received a specially baked cake, our favorite, baked with care by our mother and then decorated with great artistic talent by our father.

I only have one example of the many examples currently in a digital form (see above). There's a cake of my favorite superhero of the time: NOVA. I would guess that to be from around 1976-78 as the Nova comic was published during those years. I would guess that it might be my cake from 1977.

My father works very great with frosting. I hope in time to get more of his cakes on the Internet as they were truly amazing works of art.

In the photos of more recent birthdays, we did away with the special cake decorations. In the photos of me from 2006, in the Space Ghost shirt, it looks like I am leaning over a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting: a cake known in our family as the "wacky cake." The 2007 cake is my father's favorite, pineapple-upside down cake with frosting. My father loves frosting. This year's cake (seen in pictures below) is my favorite cake, known as the lemon "poke" cake because holes are poked in the cake and a lemon juice (from real lemons) mixture is poured in. The cake is baked with lemon jello to make it more spongy.

BIG CANDLES and CANDLE TRAIN

Added 1401.28: I came across this photo above of the Daredevil cake. I had forgotten the big candles and the candle train that accompanied our birthday celebrations. There was a large white candle with our ages printed along the side. The idea was to burn just that year's worth at each birthday celebration. There was also a candle with a clown face (seen above right, just barely), which we burned to the point that there was little left of the candle. At the bottom of the photo, you can barely see the tips of a small train with cars made of wood, linked together with metal eyelets: one train car for each year. Once was passed the age of the original wooden train cars, my mother bought plastic ones, but ultimately, we had to give up the train as she could not find more cars to add. I still liked using it, even if there was not a car for each year (which by now would fill the damn table). Also, I like noting my mother's care with all these elements. I believe the candles are sitting on either circles of cardboard wrapped in foil or inverted plates wrapped in foil. The cake sits on an inverted metal pan or pan lid wrapped in foil. These preparations are further evidence of the boundless spirit of my mother's love for us and for being a mother.

NUTCUPS

As a way to make our birthday even more special, my mother would assemble "nut cups," which contained our favorite (chosen by us) nuts and candies. I am partial to cashews and fruity candies, though I do like whoppers as well (malt balls).

You can see an example of the nut cup next to the Nova cake in the picture as well as how we carried on the tradition (my sister in this case) in the photos of me in my Space Ghost short from 2006. See? There's a nut cup next to me.

Very sweet. Literally and figuratively.

I think this is a tradition to which we need to return.

DECORATIONS

Our homes was decorated extensively for birthdays, which is a bit challenging as my birthday is not long after Christmas. Crepe paper streamers, balloons, special cardboards on the walls (featuring our favorite cartoon characters) as well as matching paper tablecloth, napkins, plates, and nut cups bought especially for birthdays in the birthday celebration section of the store or at the Hallmark or Birthday specialty store. This attention to what we liked and the theme of our birthday carried on into our adult hood. The year my mother came down with the meningitis (2000), I turned 38 years old, and I am not ashamed to say I still had a birthday with all these trimmings hosted by her and my father still decorated a cake.

MY MOTHER'S WRAPPING

My mother's wrapping of presents was a work of art. She carefully chose special paper, which she hunted for in stores year around on her frequent shopping trips. She would add bows, ribbons, special cardboard cutouts of our favorite cartoon characters or of Santa Claus and others ate Christmas. Each present bore a tag, even on our birthdays when the presents were all for us. The tags also had special things written in them, but most often: "To Christopher With Love Mommy and Daddy."


UNWRAPPED GIFT PICTURES

Sometime after the event of the day, though sometime later that same day, but not always, we would pose for pictures with our gifts as seen above and to the left. As you can see, when my sister was young, she posed too even when it was not her birthday because she got presents, too! Yes, so she would not feel left out (and the same for me with her birthday), she would receive a few small presents on my birthday so she would have something to open. I was treated to the same on her birthday.

THE LIST OF GIFTS

In addition to posing for pictures with our gifts, which has morphed in our adult years to just pictures of us with the gifts after we unwrap the packages, we would write down or our mother would write down for us (when we were young) what we got as gifts. My mother wanted these lists as records. She wanted to avoid repeating gifts the following year. She wanted to use the list as a budget guide for the following year. She wanted to keep the list to consult in case she got a good idea, so she could repeat it the following year, such as our elaborate and thoughtfully appointed stationary boxes, filled with stamps, special sticky note pads, pens, folders, bookmarks, and other office supplies and school supplies, again, for which she shopped throughout the year and stashed her purchases. I think my mother also just liked having the lists as keepsakes. I still make lists of my gifts because I know she wants me to and for many of the same reasons. It's nice to be able to look back at the lists years later. They have come in handy while creating this blog. I have been meaning to type the lists from the last few years into computer files.

WRITING IN BOOKS

My mother liked to write in the books we received as gifts as another record keeping and keepsake measure. I shared one such note in T-shirt #119 that appeared in my Doctor Strange book. I re-present it here.



DESSERT TO SCHOOL

Around the time of our birthday, our mother would make a load of treats and bring them, herself, to school to share with our classes. This got me beaten up, so it was good she stopped this practice just around junior high.

PARTIES

We did have parties as kids, though neither my sister nor I were possessed with large numbers of friends. Though we both can remember a year or two with parties and large numbers of kids, our best times were with a friend or two over as guests for play dates around the time of our birthday.

However, for my 18th birthday, my parents hosted an elaborate event in which we had a quest of live action role playing for myself and nearly a dozen of my friends. Yes, I was and I am a geek.

I can never capture in text how wonderful my parents were as parents and how much they showered us with love and special treatment. I am probably spoiled rotten, but I have come to realize just how special all this treatment was and I do not expect it. I am honored and blessed by whatever I am given, and I cherish the memories of my idyllic childhood. I try to share this special treatment now, with my family, though I cannot live up to my mother's standard of excellence, but I can try. Because the true gift is giving and the true love is seeing how you make other people happy. This is what my parents taught me. I am not spoiled. I am blessed. And I much prefer giving than receiving.

PHOTO LOG OF BIRTHDAYS

Comments will precede the photos.

Blowing out candles on my 2014 cake. I no longer need to wish for what I always used to wish for. I have it. I am loved, and I am blessed.

Posing with gifts from 2014. A Battlestar Galactica patch for my geeky shirt creation.

Yes, those are shaving cakes. I still lather up in a cup and brush the lather on my face: old school. And no aerosol cans to dispose of.

You're going to get some shirt previews. In the next, WONDER GIRL! Not to be mistaken for WONDER WOMAN. No, that's Donna Troy's.

Get ready for some METAL MEN content. That's the shirt for the Iron robot.

Birthday at Pattiwood, my parents new condo with my wife, Ivan, my Mom and Dad, plus my sister Lori and her husband Noel. Getting ready to blow out those candles.

Get ready for some METAL MEN content. That's the shirt for the Gold robot.

My mother is laughing in the next photo as my sister distributes cake but not BECAUSE my sister is distributing cake. :-)

RECOGNIZE the next one? Famous comic book sorcerer. I already mentioned him in this blog. :-)

Now, we stop back to 2006 and the birthday that I received and immediately donned the Space Ghost short.  But first the Quickdraw McGraw Bobblehead and some pint glass that I cannot identify in the picture. Underdog perhaps?

More with the Bobbleheads! Baba Looey and Quickdraw McGraw! And yes, I am saving those bows for re-use.

BOOKS!! There's Boondocks if you can spot it, and several others that relate to my writing: Parallel Universes, a couple of books on magic, and one on cataclysmic and prehistoric meteor strikes that pummeled the planet.

SPACE GHOST COMICS!! These are not mine. I got this picture off the Internet, but I do own all of these.

ABOUT SPACE GHOST

Reprinted from T-shirt #101 - the Jetsons.

Space Ghost is a top my Top Ten favorite Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Also, note Quickdraw in the honorable mentions, so hence the bobbleheads.

I am also mad for the Herculoids, but I have no shirt to feature them. I am adding a Herculoids video to this HUGE blog just because. So there.

TOP TEN LIST OF FAVORITE HANNA-BARBERA PRODUCTIONS

1. Space Ghost
2. Jonny Quest
3. Atom Ant
4. The Herculoids
5. The Jetsons
6. Fantastic Four
7. Wacky Races
8. Super Friends
9. Birdman and Galaxy Trio
10. Moby Dick and the Mighty Mightor

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Yogi Bear, QuickDraw McGraw, Top Cat, Scooby Doo, Hong Kong Phooey, Harlem Globetrotters, and Josie and the Pussycats.

SPACE GHOST RESOURCES

SPACE GHOST WIKI

SPACE GHOST FAQ

SPACE GHOST COMIC VINE

SPACE GHOST REDDIT

SPACE GHOST TUMBLR

SPACE GHOST GALLERY NERD LUNCH

SPACE GHOST FAN FICTION

SPACE GHOST COMIC REVIEW - BASEMENT REJECTS

SPACE GHOST TRIBUTE - ALEX TOTH

SPACE GHOST TOONPEDIA


I am not sure I need much more to create a Space Ghost love letter. Between all the art, the links, and the videos, you should see the love. It's vibrant. Check out Space Ghost for yourself if you don't know anything about him. He's awesome.

Now where's my Space Ghost pint glass. Time for a BREW.

SPACE GHOST VIDEOS

The original Space Ghost opening

SPACE SPECTRE (1981)

"THE OVENS OF MOLTOR"





Space Ghost Episode 2 - Gargoyloids 






Space Ghost Episode 3 (Nightmare Planet)






and because I don't have a Herculoids shirt... alas alack.

The original Herculoids cartoon






































MY BIRTHDAY VIDEOS Some special videos. Not too exciting here unless you know me. But I did post them to You Tube. First the 2007 birthday. Then 2014 in time lapse and finally some gaming from earlier this month in time lapse. Whew. This is a lot of content. I am tired.

My Birthday 2007 Tower Family Space Ghost Shirt

My Birthday in Time Lapse 1401.18 

My Birthday in Time Lapse 1401.18 - pt.2

Gaming in celebration of my birthday 1401.05

COVER GALLERIES

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 62 shirts remaining - chris tower - first published - 1401.18 - 20:56
final publication - 1401.21 - 19:58

T-shirt #273 - U2 - Vertigo

T-shirt #273 - U2 - Vertigo

I am feeling a little guilty. I have not yet made a list of favorite bands. Recently, I made a list of favorite women musical artists. But I had not yet made the list of favorite bands of all time. I made a partial list in T-shirt #238 - The Clash, but it was incomplete. In that list, I did not even mention U2.

Now, granted, I was making a list of greatest bands of all time in a more empirical way in the Clash post, not a list of MY favorite bands, which are really two different things. I would put the Beatles in a top five best bands of all time list, no question, but I would not put them in my personal top five favorites.

Favorites are a very subjective thing. And I think I throw the word favorite around too easily on this blog. Can I really have as many favorites as I claim to have favorites? Doesn't the number diminish the specialness? In other words, the more favorites I claim to have, the less special each becomes. Ultimately, the list could grow so large that I have to make a list of favorite favorites and another list of leftovers: just regular favorites.

TOP TEN FAVORITE BANDS
... okay, actually the top thirteen and a secondary list of many.

U2 is definitely a favorite band, but would it make my top ten? I don't think so. Here's a quick list of absolute top ten bands:

The Jam, Cocteau Twins, 10,000 Maniacs, The Indigo Girls, Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Everything But the Girl, King Crimson, Radiohead, Stereolab, Spyro Gyra, Sigur Rós, The Clash.
Okay, that's thirteen. But I was going by iTunes playlists and most frequent listening stats. And there's a secondary list, and this is where you will find U2:

Kraftwerk, The Innocence Mission, Japan, Talking Heads, U2, REM, The Art of Noise, Genesis, Hooverphonic, DEVO, Simon and Garfunkel, Haircut 100, They Might Be Giants, New Order, Joy Division, The Style Council, Cabaret Voltaire, Lush, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, The Pixies.

And I am still leaving out many great bands and groups of artists who function like bands, such as Aphex Twin and most especially Machine Love (note the link to my entry on them in my other blog). I have given Machine Love some LOVE on my pages before, but in 273 posts, I am not sure where.

I would say this is a pretty good start to the favorite bands list. Though not a top ten, those thirteen bands are those I have listened to most often over the years. Though great and frequently in my rotation, U2 falls into a secondary category of favorites that I adore but for one reason or another were not as constantly played as first thirteen. I also think it's worth noting that of the thirteen "favorites," I have blog posts specifically dedicated to nine of those thirteen top bands, and I have plans for posts with three more of them.

All that said, though U2 is not in that top thirteen bands, I do love U2 and have a long history of loving them and listening to them.

This shirt comes from seeing the Vertigo tour in 2005 at the United Center in Chicago. I have to say it was one of the best concerts I have ever seen. The concert was uplifting and powerfully moving with slow, quiet moments and all the pomp and circumstance of a big name rock band. I had seen U2 early in the band's career, and I had not wanted to see them once they hit it big, and so I had passed on many opportunities on their previous tours. I only relented because a, then, friend of mine wanted to see them. I was not disappointed. This concert was amazing.


I figure I do not need to write much about U2. Most people know the band. If you happen to have lived on another planet for the last 30 years, start your research with this U2 WIKIPEDIA.

SUDDENLY I WANT AN iPOD

Around the time U2 put out the album containing the hit song "Vertigo," they also used it for the first advertisement campaign that they endorsed: Apple's iPod. I am not sure if I have mentioned my thing woth commercials on the blog yet, but I mute commercials. I really cannot stand commercials on television, thus the unavoidable ones that the marketing manipulators are trying to sneak in on us drive my crazy. Anyway, I almost never have a TV on unless I am doing something else, and so while I am working or reading or whatever, I mute commercials. Thus, not only does a commercial need to be in frequent rotation on one or all of the channels I watch to penetrate my wall of resistance, but it also has to be catchy. Thus, with U2's promotion of Apple's iPod, it took many weeks but soon I found myself affected by the insidious powers of the commercial even as I tried to resist. Granted, a digital music player is something I would naturally want to own anyway, but I found that my desire for an iPod was heightened if not solely created by these commercials and their ubiquity. Definitely, a lot of this infection and its virulence had to with U2 and the power "Vertigo."

MY FIRST U2 CONCERT

I saw my first U2 concert in 1983 as the band toured with its third album War. And even though "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Year's Day" were hits, not very many people packed the small Detroit Grand Circus Theater, which was later the State and currently the Filmore Theater. When the band came out, everyone in the audience rushed the stage, and so my, then, girlfriend of the time and I had a whole row to ourselves in which to spread out and dance.

It was a very good concert, and I heard some of my favorite songs from October, but it was not better or even close to as good as the 2005 Vertigo tour show I saw in Chicago.

THE RULE OF FIRST LISTENING (well, almost a rule)

U2 provided me with a rule that is not always true but is often enough true that I am calling it a rule and one of the many RULES OF CHRIS (see category).

More often than not, the first album one discovers for a band becomes and is always the favorite thereafter. I found this to be true with David Bowie, Talking Heads, and Laurie Anderson. I have also found this to be true with U2. I did not discover the band until its second album, October, was out. This album is far and away my favorite, dwarfing even Joshua Tree, which many people would count as their favorite.

A friend of mine in college, whose nickname was Madge or sometimes Maggot, had seen U2 when it tured with its first album Boy. She saw the band perform in a roller rink in Detroit. For her,  Boy was her favorite. But that was the first one she heard. For me, I first heard October, and so it was my favorite.

There are bands that break this rule. I probably would argue that Animals is my favorite Pink Floyd album and Central Reservation my favorite Beth Orton album, but these are exceptions to the rule, and they do not make the rule any less true.

MY WIFE'S CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH BONO

I know I will get the details of this story wrong, so I plan to update it. But my wife loves to share that she jumped on stage during a U2 concert and got Bono's sweat on her. I don't remember much more than that, so I will wait to ask her about the story again and update this part.

A WEEKEND WITH RATTLE AND HUM

Back in 1988, I took a group of students from my English 105 class to Chicago. We went to museums and the Hard Rock Cafe and had a great time. I have to say, it was one of the best weekends of my life. Definitely top five. The documentary about U2, Rattle and Hum, debuted that weekend and we went to see the movie and treated it like a concert, dancing and grooving to the music and secretly drinking beer. This one guy who was with us smuggled in 15 beers on his person without the means of a bag or small ice chest. Amazing. I thought I had a digital version of a picture from that weekend. Again, another thing to update. The blog oozes and grows in an amorphous blob like way.

These are just a few of my U2 experiences. I have listened to U2 for many years and enjoy the band's music a great deal. One of my favorite musicians, Brian Eno, produced some of their best albums. U2 is also responsible for introducing me to other producers of theirs, such as Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite. I do not love all of U2's albums. I am not fond of Pop at all. I HATED Unforgettable Fire, when I first heard it, but now I love it. I also hated Achtung Baby when I first heard it. Though I do not like all of it, "One" is now one of my favorite songs of all time, not just U2 songs, but songs by anyone.

U2 has been a part of my life for over 30 years, and my life is richer because of my experiences with the band. To close, I am presenting just a few videos of my favorite U2 songs. I will try to restrict myself to five, but this is not easy.

U2 VIDEOS

U2 Tomorrow

U2 Shadows and tall trees

Mary J. Blige, U2 - One

U2 - A Sort Of Homecoming Live

Here's a cheat, including two of my favorites all together in one live video.

U2 - Elevation - Beautiful day - Until the end of the world Live From Boston 2001

Okay, it's really tough to stop at five videos. I may share a U2 playlist another time.

COUNTDOWN TO THE END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 92 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first published 1312.19 - 18:55
FINAL publication - 1312.20 - 15:43