T-shirt #98: Optic Nerve

T-shirt #98: Optic Nerve

Exciting happenings in magic bloggy land. First off, Grading Robot (aka, me) finished final grades for the Dread Forge, better known as the Grinding Wheel, better known as School that keeps in my cheese fries, better known as the steady paycheck that keeps me flipping-burger busy. So that's done. Though I have more grading to do before this week is over, I am no longer in high speed robot mode. Thank Eclipse. All hail the Grand Poobah of the chaotic realms.

Can you tell that I have been up since 5 a.m., have had too much coffee, and too little sleep? Is is that obvious?

The other exciting news is today's blog post feature. NEW OPTIC NERVE!!!

What is Optic Nerve you ask?

I know some alleged comic book fans who work in comic book stores who do not know what is this thing I speak of when I speak the title Optic Nerve. A few months ago, I was lauding the beauty and grace and wonder that is Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve in Fanfare, my local comic shop, and not only had my dear friend the comic vendor never heard of it, but Fanfare did not stock any of the graphic novels (let alone ALL OF THEM as they should) because [a] they do not sell; and [b] I am the only one who has ever ordered them.

For shame.

Here are two pictures of me with one of the graphic novels: Sleepwalk and Other Stories (1997) and my Optic Nerve T-shirt.

I was thrilled when I did my comic order last week and discovered, on page 303 of the June Previews, a solicitation from Drawn and Quarterly Publications for the next OPTIC NERVE comic book (#13, collect them all). D&Q smartly re-issued all the awesome Tomine books and available issues of the comic, though I do not need them as I own them all.







ALSO, Tomine announced the new Optic Nerve on his web site: Optic Nerve #13.

Is my excitement obvious enough?

If my blog does anything, I hope it inspires even just one person to READ OPTIC NERVE!!! If I inpsire two or more then posting all this work without Tomine's permission has been totally worth it.

Readers of the New Yorker may recognize Tomine's art from the many covers he has drawn (see an example in the final image of today;s entry). These covers and his other illustrations were recently collected: New York Drawings.

Here's an article about Tomine and his first New Yorker cover from The Thought Fox, a great blog about Books and Culture hosted by Faber & Faber publishers.

I love my Optic Nerve T-shirt.

Sigh.




If I were to list my favorite artists outside mainstream, superhero comics, Adrian Tomine tops the list.

How to describe the work of Adrian Tomine and Optic Nerve? I am not sure I can do the work its due justice. Or maybe Grading Robot's batteries are too low to properly power Tower the Blogging Robot.

However, I do like this content: the Optic Nerve "stories [often] follow various socially awkward guys and girls through relationships, beatings, voyeurism, and other assorted plot lines. What seems to connect Tomine's stories throughout is the way in which each story is unnerving, some more than others...Other than being quirky, all of his characters can be characterized as being "outsiders", [sic] people who by choice or no choice exist at the fringes of our society... Each story, in some way, leaves you lingering (in a good way), mulling over the plot line and outcome of the story. I suppose what makes Tomine so intriguing is that each story is accessible to the reader, even the more extreme ones like "Pink Frosting" are, in reality, perfectly plausible in our reality" (The Graphical Neophyte, 2009).

This blogger has not blogged since 2009, but she does a very good job of capturing what makes Tomine such an excellent artist and storyteller.

There's even an Optic Nerve Wiki.

I love my Optic Nerve T-shirt.

Sigh.

my first Optic Nerve mini comic

I discovered Tomine and Optic Nerve back in its earliest days when it was still sold as mini-comics back in the early 1990s (pre-1995). I found a picture of one of these minis online and a page from my favorite ever Tomine story, which I will include here with all love and respect for the artist.

page from my favorite Tomine story

BUY OPTIC NERVE!

Is that too subtle?

Optic Nerve comics and collected graphic novels make great gifts.

Adrian Tomine's work is touching and beautiful. It is emotionally moving. I like to think that Adrian Tomine and I would be friends if we knew each other. He writes the kinds of stories that I was writing in college and would still write today if I was not doing others types of things. He and I seem to care about the same things.

I would like to think that Adrian Tomine might stumble across my blog somehow. Probably not likely, but it would be neat. If you are Adrain Tomine, and you are reading this (and cursing me for posting your art work without permission), I want to thank you. You have enriched my life in profound ways. I have read your works many, many times. Your books and comics are among my most treasured possessions, not for the owning, but for the viewing and reading and the feelings they all convey. Thank you, Adrian, for making my life and the lives of others (the world) a richer place. (Yeah, I know. I'm a dork and corny, but I can't help it when I get on a roll.)

OTHER NIFTY LINKS AND RESOURCES

Adrian Tomine Wiki

Adrian Tomine Tumblr

Tumblr dedicated to Adrian Tomine

Tomine-What Goes Into Creating a Cover

Paris Review Interview with Tomine

BUY Tomine art

Tomine on Fame, obscurity, craft, and drawing for the New Yorker

The RUMPUS: Spotlight on Tomine

Time's Summer Blonde review

Mother Jones: The Real Adrian Tomine

The Ephemerist on Tomine

The Casual Optimist - an illustration from March 12 2013

Review of 32 Stories - original mini-comics by Tomine

- chris tower - 1306.27 - 11:09

T-shirt #97 - KRAFTWERK

T-shirt #97 - KRAFTWERK - What albums do you listen to the most?

Grading Robot is still under the gun, hammered and harried, and so another short-ish posting.

Okay, it was not really shortish, looking back. But the original concept intended it to be short.

UPDATE as of 1401.13, at work on a post about Cocteau Twins, I had to update this post. I dropped Indigo Girls from my top ten and inserted a Cocteau Twins album, which is surely more accurate. I might question having a Kraftwerk album in my top ten, and I think I only included it because this is a Kraftwerk shirt. Still, it's reasonably accurate. I listened to the Trans Europe Express album a lot. I added some more Cocteau Twins albums in the later lists but held off from adding all of them, though they do all rank on the most listened to albums over many of these choices. But I wanted some variety.

I already wrote about Grading Robot and Kraftwerk in T-shirt #36 and how I saw them in concert in 2005. So, I am not going to expound on the joys of Kraftwerk or electronic music today. Grading robot must be robotic.


But today seems like a good day to make a list. This is the list of  the albums that I have listened to most often in my life. Is this the same as favorites? Maybe. Not examining that question right now.

I am not ranking this list because it would take longer, though the first album may be the number one most listened to album. I am going to sort the list into tiers and provide a few explanations.

I made a first attempt at this list with T-shirt #35.

The main rule for this list is that I can only choose full albums that I have listened to in their entirety over and over and over. Listening to individual songs, select tracks, does not count.

I am going to forgo the italics for the titles in the list for ease and speed of recording this data.

I have no method of counting, so this list has been assembled by memory alone. Here's the first ten that occurred to me. These may not be the MOST listened to albums. They were just the first ten that came to mind.

TOP TIER - first ten

• Vangelis - The Soundtrack to Blade Runner
• Brian Eno & David Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
• David Bowie - Low
• Laurie Anderson - Mister Heartbreak
• Cocteau Twins - VictoriaLand
• Pink Floyd - Animals
• Donald Fagen - Morph the Cat
• King Crimson - Discipline
• 10,000 Maniacs - The Wishing Chair
• Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express

I would say that it's accurate that the soundtrack to Blade Runner has been the main music that I have listened to the most in my life--as I described in T-shirt #61.

As I wrote, I did not rank these albums, but once I purchased a five disc changer, the Donald Fagen (of Steely Dan) solo album Morph the Cat became a daily listen. Literally, for almost three years, I listened to that album EVERY DAY. So by sheer repetitions alone--though it's only been out since 2006--I have listened to it hundreds of times. In fact, I decided to put it on right now. Ahhhh, bliss.

Other albums were in rotation at different times. I remember a couple of years of listening to Laurie Anderson's Mister Heartbreak every day, though probably not quite EVERY DAY like with Fagen's album.

People who know me will not be surprised to see Bowie in this list. Though despite the album I listened to first (Scary Monsters) and the album that made me fall in love with him (Ziggy Stardust), over the years, I have found myself going back over and over to Low more than any other album. Same with the choices for the Indigo Girls, 10,000 Maniacs, King Crimson, and Pink Floyd in this first ten (remember, may not be a top ten).

Though I chose another Kraftwerk T-shirt for the number of times I have listened to Trans Europe Express,  I got the idea for this post when I put on Eno and Byrne's seminal masterpiece My Life in the Bush of the Ghosts yesterday in the car.

TOP TIER - second ten (okay eleven...)

• Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas
• Indigo Girls - All That We Let In
• Tracey Thorn - Out of the Woods
• Brian Eno - Another Day on Earth
• Sade - Love Deluxe
• St. Germain - Boulevard
• Portishead - Dummy
• Stereolab - Dots and Loops
• Radiohead - Kid A
• Steely Dan - Aja
• The Jam - All Mod Cons

Many of these albums were in constant rotation even before I got the five disc changer, and they could just sit in the player, repeating, for weeks at a time. 

Both the Brian Eno album and the Tracey Thorn album were on a daily rotation during work for a year or more.

TOP TIER - the remainder

• Talking Heads - Remain in Light
• Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll
• Tori Amos - The Beekeeper
• The Breeders - The Last Splash
• REM - Reckoning
• Indigo Girls - Rites of Passage
• Roxy Music - Avalon
• Kate Bush - The Dreaming
• Joni Mitchell - Mingus
• Suzanne Vega - Suzanne Vega
• Bjork - Homogenic
• Rickie Lee Jones - The Magazine
• Martha and the Muffins - This is the Ice Age
• Innocence Mission - Innocence Mission
• Machine Love - Supermarket Vamps
• Style Council - Our Favourite Shop
• William Orbit - Hello Waveforms
• Genesis - Trick of the Tail
• Peter Gabriel - Security
• Sigur Rós - ( )
• David Sylvian and Robert Fripp - Gone to Earth
• Robin Guthrie - Angel Falls/ Carousel
• Cocteau Twins etc. - Moon and the Melodies
• Milt Jackson Quartet (1955)
• Suzanne Ciani - Pianissimo III
• David Sanborn - Close-Up
• Spyro Gyra - The Deep End

I am sure that there are more albums that I would put in a top tier of most listened to albums if I put more thought into it making this list, but, like the first twenty, these are the first ones that I popped into my mind as I took little breaks from being grading robot yesterday to assemble the list. It was a nice diversion.

If you do not know some of these albums, I recommend them all (obviously). Long suffering Tori fans should listen to The Beekeper, as I might argue that it's her best, or at least prettiest. I am a fan of soft jazz. Sometimes, I will load up all the Sanborn and Spyro Gyra and spend days listening. However, these two are the ones I have probably come back to most often, even though Spyro Gyra's The Deep End came out in 2004. Some people may complain that soft jazz is very close to muzak. I don't care. When I am hard at work and must concentrate, these days, I prefer SILENCE, but when I need to fill space with background sound, I go for pretty, melodic, and lyric free music. Among the best for this kind of music from the list are William Orbit's Hello Waveforms and everything by a great San Francisco based electronic jazz group called Machine Love.

I know I have mentioned Machine Love on this blog somewhere. If there was a handy search function (I guess I could use Google but I am lazy....nah, nada), anyway, I did a whole blog entry about this great group in my other blog.

Machine Love is my WISH TANK and I am Lost in Transport: Hyper-sleeping

SECOND TIER

• Erykah Badu - Baduism
• Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
• Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
• The Clash - London Calling
• Devo - Are We Not Men?
• Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
• Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
• Gary Numan - Telekon
• Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
• Ani DiFranco - Revelling/Reckoning
• Beth Orton - Central Reservation
• Lori Carson - Everything I Touch Runs Wild
• Liz Story - Speechless
• Joy Divison - Closer
• Joni Mitchell - Hejira
• Joni Mitchell - The Missing of Summer Lawns
• Joe Jackson - Night and Day
• Japan - Tin Drum
• Jane Siberry - The Speckless Sky
• Haircut 100 - Pelican West
• Everything But the Girl - Everything But the Girl
• CSN&Y - Déjà Vu
• The Buggles - Living in the Plastic Age
• Bryan Ferry - Bete Noire
• U2 - October
• OMD - Architecture and Morality
• Thievery Corporation - The Mirror Conspiracy
• Straight Ahead - Look Straight Ahead
• Spirit - Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus
• The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
• The Jam - Setting Sons
• The Style Council - Confessions of a Pop Group
• The Style Council - Cafe Blue
• Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
• Rickie Lee Jones - Flying Cowboys
• Rickie Lee Jones - Pirates
• The Psychedelic Furs - The Psychedelic Furs
• The Police - Synchronicity
• The Pixies - Doolittle
• Paul Simon - Graceland
• New Order - Power, Corruption, and Lies 

I know. The list is getting rather long. But I also know that some of my readers like lists and may go trolling for new music or old music that they have forgotten existed.

Enjoy.

Back to Grading Robotics.

- chris tower - 1306.26 - 8:59

PS: Today is my father's birthday. He is turning 78. This blows my mind. Happy Birthday Dad. Thanks for being so kind and patient as I inflicted so many of these albums on the walls and rooms of our house (or outside as we worked) over the years.

T-shirt #96 - The House of Secrets

T-shirt #96 - The House of Secrets or why my T-shirt is cooler than yours


Another short post as the hammer time for Grading Robot continues.

I bought this shirt because I thought it was cool. Unlike the normal purchase process, my initial reaction for this shirt was not one of "oooooh, I MUST have that shirt to wear with the pride of my fan love" but rather "that's a cool shirt even though I am not reading that book."

I am not going to go into depth about House of Secrets, but here's a quick primer. The Silver Age House of Secrets ran originally from 1956-1966. After a three year hiatus, it returned in 1969 and ran until 1978 with great artists like Neal Adams (mentioned in T-shirt #43 and T-shirt #83), Bernie Wrightson, and Michael Kaluta working on stories for the comic. I was not a huge fan of this run, but I do own many issues and enjoy the work of all three of these great artists and many others who worked on the comic back then. The series was revived in 1996 by DC's Vertigo imprint written by Steven T. Seagle and art (mostly) by Teddy Kristiansen. I read some of it, but I did not keep up with it religiously. It's good stuff and on my list to read in trade paperbacks when I have time.

But that's not why I bought the T-shirt. I just bought the T-shirt because I liked the image and the text, and I liked the "cool" the shirt provides as if I am part of a secret brain trust (which I am). I also love the shirt as a well-made piece of clothing. I consider this one of my "dressy" T-shirts as this one is still in mint condition after 17 years (I bought it in 1996), and the collar is still tight.

I have written about why we wear T-shirts before on this blog (most notably in T-shirt #83, T-shirt #77, and T-shirt #87). I have realized that this blog will continue to explore this idea throughout the remaining 269 days. Why? Why do we wear the shirts we wear?

Or maybe a more interesting question is this one: "Do other people select T-shirts for the reasons that I select T-shirts?"

I will explore this question more in the weeks and months to come.

- chris tower - 1306.25 - 8:30

T-shirt #95 - KUDL 2013: Superheroes

T-shirt #95 - KUDL 2013: Six Degrees of Ultimate

Attention readers! Tower must be a serious grading robot for the next few days and so the blog's entries will be brief. Final grades for my most time consuming school are due Thursday morning, and I have several obstructions to working on them in the week, one of which is KUDL tonight.

As promised each Monday will feature a different KUDL--or at least an ultimate--shirt. Here's the 2013 shirt (in the light blue and pink). I plan to feature this shirt again, so I will not expound too much. But I will say that 2013 may be the best year of KUDL yet and that my team is simply AWESOME. We are known as Funktion Junktion, which I think is a brilliant team name.

Here's a photo that Bruce "Fris" Johnson made happen on June 17th, 2013 after our nightly KUDL games. It's meant to be a "six generations of Ultimate at Kalamazoo College" photo with the youngest and recent K students on the left and moving up the scale to feature the oldest alumni on the far right.

From Left to Right: Meredith Edwards, Morgan Mariama Mahdavi, Woody Tauke, Adam Smith, Jacob Meyers, Stu Gulliver, me (Chris Tower), and Bruce "Fris" Johnson

Look at those lovely people. There's some pride in both Ultimate and Kalamazoo College!

- chris tower - 1306.24 - 8:08

T-shirt #94: Batman: The 1960s TV Show

T-shirt #94: Batman: KAPOW! Holy T-shirt, Batman!

"To the bat poles, Robin!"

"Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed!"

"Holy Bargain Basements, Batman!!"

The Batman television series that ran from 1966-1968 and then in syndication for many years forged the cornerstone of my personality, my sense of humor, and my ideas about popular culture.

I owned many of the toys (seen in today's blog entry). I dressed as Batman not only for Halloween but for playtime in a cape my mother made for me.

Even better, my house had bat poles.

When my father designed our West Gull Lake Drive house, he added a 43-foot sliding pole (37 feet from the  floor of the fourth floor to the basement floor). The house was finished in 1979 and where I lived (except for my years in college) until 2003, and then again with my wife and kids from 2009 to 2011. I have added pictures here. For 26 years of my life, I could say "to the Bat Poles, Robin" and actually take the slide. I miss that house. I miss the bat pole. My father used the Tower room as his office for most of the years we lived there, though originally (for the first year or three) it was a TV room. From 2009-2011, I made my office on the fourth floor or the "Tower" room. When the washer or dryer buzzed or my wife came home, I could skip the stairs and shoot down the bat pole. Such, a great life.

To examine the importance of the Batman TV show I present the top ten reasons that I loved the show. These may work for you, too, if like me, you grew up with this show.

TOP TEN REASONS TO LOVE THE BATMAN TV SHOW (circa 1966)

1. BATMAN THEME SONG
2. "HOLY EXPLETIVE, BATMAN!"
3. CATWOMAN
4. EVERYTHING NAMED BAT - BAT GADGETS - THE BAT POLES
5. THE SECRET ENTRANCES & OTHER COOL STUFF
6. BAT GIRL
7. THE VILLAINS (& cliffhangers)
8. SCALING THE BUILDINGS
9. THE TOYS - MERCHANDISING
10. BATMAN AND ROBIN (CAPES ARE COOL)

NO RANKINGS: I did not rank this list. I cannot put these things in an order. What would really be number one? Maybe if you are a faithful reader and are reading this, you can give me your thoughts on appropriate rankings.

TOP TEN REASONS TO LOVE THE BATMAN TV SHOW (circa 1966)

EXPOSITIONS AND RHETORIC

1. BATMAN THEME SONG

Written by Neal Hefti, the song captured the Zeitgeist of the times with its guitar hook bringing together soy film scores  (such as James Bond films) and surf music. I remember frugging out hard to the song every time the show came on the air. I would flail about the room like a spazz. Come on, I was only four years old when this show debuted. But between its original run and syndication, and then later covers by bands such as  the Who and the Jam, I have always had this song in my life.

It is definitely one of the best theme songs in TV history/

READ MORE: Bat Theme Wikipedia

Old Batman TV Show Theme Song

2. "HOLY EXPLETIVE, BATMAN!"

Of course, someone has collected all of Robin's sayings at an Internet site. Such resources. Back in "the day," we would have to do this ourselves. I have partial lists of these and McCoy's "I'm a doctor not a..." in my journals.

"Holy Bargain Basements, Batman!" is one of the best.

Robin's wacky sayings have been collected here: Holy Smokes, Batman!

3. CATWOMAN

Okay, I am just going to write this one statement and leave it alone without further embellishment.

Julie Newmar's Catwoman had a profound effect on my views about sexuality, femininity, and my attractions to women.

This video is an interesting tribute. Give it a look. Some fans wrote their own song, which seems dedicated to Newmar's Catwoman. Though other actresses played Catwoman in the original TV Series and the movie, and those these actresses (Lee Meriwether and Eartha Kitt), it is really no contest. Julie Newmar was the best.

Something Wild - Julie Newmar as Catwoman

Since the TV show, two actresses (Michelle Pfeiffer and Anne Hathaway) have played Catwoman in the movies, and both have done a very good job.  But I promised not to elaborate. I will let the pictures and the video speak for themselves. Okay, one other thing, during these formative years, my views about women and sexuality were also affected by Batgirl (see upcoming item below) and the women of Star Trek.
















































For more of Julie Newmar without the over-dubbed song:

Scat! Darn Catwoman

4. EVERYTHING NAMED BAT - BAT GADGETS - THE BAT POLES - Secret Entrances etc.

 As I mentioned before, we had bat poles at my house in Richland. The "bat pole" is pictured here. In the first photo, I tried to capture its length with what it looked like before you hopped on to slide down it. In the second photo, I shot the top of the pole where one hopped on in the "Tower" room, the fourth floor of the house. When I was younger, in the house before this one (the West Gull Lake Drive house), in the 7070 Hazelwood house, I always talked about having a trap door in my room and either a rope ladder to my "secret room" in the basement or just a bat pole behind a secret door in a bookcase, very much like the set up in the Wayne Manor of the Batman TV series.  Obviously, these influences are clear. Bat poles, the secret bookcase, the trip switch in the bust of Shakespeare, the secret entrance to the Bat Cave covered by the detour sign. All these things were what I wanted in my own house some day. I think it's great that my father architect decided to install a bat pole in our house in 1979. Everything named "Bat" was also a very powerful motif from the show. The idea was simple enough that it was easily imitated by children playing everywhere. If you're a super hero like Batman, and you invent cool gizmos and gadgets, you're going to name them all with the "Bat" brand: Bat Phone, Bat Signal, Batmobile, Bat Helicopter, Batarang, and my personal favorite: the Bat Shark Repellent. This is a link to the serious Batman gadgets, with more emphasis on the recent Dark Knight films. BATMAN GADGETS But there are sites devoted to the old show, too, such as THE BAT BLOG or for those who like chat: THE 1966 BATMAN MESSAGE BOARD Supposedly, the good people of the message board created a video of all the gadgets. Drill into the site if you want to know more. There's also a good list of gadgets in the BATMOBILE in the BATMAN WIKIA. The original Batmobile was auctioned off in January of 2013. Read about it here. How cool to have one's name on everything. Kind of like "Tower Room" and "Tower House" and "Tower Phone" and...


  5. DEATH TRAPS AND CLIFFHANGERS The original Batman TV shows were very formulaic. Often Batman and/or Robin were caught in a death trap at the end of the episode. The cliffhangers would often be resolved in the next episode. This motif kept viewers watching and arranging their days and nights to catch the next episode at "the same bat time and same bat channel." Comic books often use the same idea to keep people reading.


  6. BAT GIRL You know what I wrote about Catwoman? Ditto Batgirl. Yvonne Craig who played Batgirl also played the green skinned Orion Slave girl in the original Star Trek episode "Whom the Gods Destroy." But with Batgirl, the comic book company and TV show created a crime fighting girlfriend for Robin. How cool would it be to have a crime fighting girlfriend?

The Secret Origins of BATGIRL

Great video collecting Batgirl clips for the third season of the Batman TV show.

 


7. THE VILLAINS  The Batman show featured all sorts of wonderful villains with great performers playing them. In addition to the great Julie Newmar as Catwoman, there were the others for the big four: The Joker (Cesar Romero), the Penguin (Burgess Meredith), and the Riddler (Frank Gorshin and John Astin). There were many other greats who appeared on the show, such as Milton Berle, Michael Rennie, Anne Baxter, Joan Collins, Eli Wallach, Tallulah Bankhead, Art Carney, Roddy McDowell, Liberace, Shelley Winters, Vincent Price, and so many more. Life is always interesting with such interesting people in it. This is also true of the next item.

  8. SCALING THE BUILDINGS - CAMEOS Of course, someone has collected all the window cameos. Hilarious!!

The Complete 14 Batman Window Cameos

9. THE TOYS - MERCHANDISING

Also, my picture.

You should not be surprised to learn that I own(owned) many of the Bat toys, such as a "full size" cardboard Bat Cave play box pictured here with some other kid (pictures of me with mine are still locked away in the Tower vault).

This is a picture of my toys. CLOSE UP.

I still have the Bat Cave playset pictured here, which is currently on display as a cool pop culture artifact in my step-son's bedroom. I shared pictures of myself with the Bat Phone. I also own the Bat Utility Belt pictured here on the entry elsewhere, though I am not sure where it is, though I kept the bat cuffs hanging from a light fixture for many years. This kid in the photo with the Bat Cave could have been me. I played with Bat toys for countless hours as a child. The Batman and Robin figures feature wonderful detail in the way they are painted. I am sad that the uniform emblems have worn away. 10. BATMAN AND ROBIN (CAPES ARE COOL) The toys in the play set show Batman's plastic cape and its cool curve that makes my point well. But the capes are cool as the flow and fly. My mother made me a Batman cape and I used a small yellow baby blanket when I wanted to be Robin. I still have the bat cape somewhere. I was Batman many times for Halloween. MORE BATMAN TV SHOW RESOURCES BATMAN 1966 WIKI BATMAN 1966 IMDB A GREAT FAN SITE: Bat Mania BATMAN 1966 YOU TUBE CHANNEL Note - there are many videos of these shows on You Tube because for a long time since there were no commercial releases of the episodes. For instance, this appears to be the first episode.

Batman (1966) S01E01 Hi Diddle Riddle

DC is doing a 1966 Batman comic and then there will be new TOYS. They are already solicited.

Do you have great love for this old show? Leave a comment.

- chris tower - 1306.23 - 11:24

T-shirt #93: Free Katie

T-shirt #93: Free Katie

This shirt was a gift from my friend Christine Doré given the semester that we worked together, she serving as my teaching assistant in my sections of WMS:100 at Western Michigan University (for that story: GO HERE and dial back).

Often I would give gifts to the TAs and they would give gifts to me, especially after the Fall semester, given the proximity of Christmas.



I feel free to confess this now: I had a crush on Katie Holmes (in so far as anyone can have a crush on someone he has never met and has only seen playing another character in a television show).










I watched DAWSON'S CREEK primarily because Katie Holmes was amazingly smart, cool, and beautiful: in sum, adorable. And DAWSON was clearly an IDIOT, which is the quick summary of that show: "Dawson's Creek: a show about how stupid Dawson is and how not stupid Pacey is (and a few other characters and their stories)." Great show if you like episodic, sudsy-style weekly melodrama for teens with a hip vibe and smart mouthed teensters spouting rapid fire dialogue for which the WB became well known (see my other faves such as Gilmore Girls, Felicity, Veronica Mars, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer).




ANYWAY.............................

So there was this whole Winona Ryder thing in which she had allegedly shop-lifted from a Saks store in Beverly Hills. She was taken into custody and was found to be in possession of  items she had not paid for and addictive narcotics for which she did not have  a prescription. An L.A. gift shop owner started a fun T-shirt campaign with these "Free Winona" T-shirts.

I had been discussing with Christine how I wanted a "Free Winona" T-shirt but had missed out on getting one right around the time that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes started seeing each other (and soon got married). So, Christine got me this "Free Katie" T-shirt (which is around 2005).

Lo and behold, there's a FREE KATIE website.

Yes, I was also surprised. But why should I be?

There was a whole campaign to "free Katie" for the clutches of culty evil and "love." And there's many fan sites and blogs and images and a wealth of material at the touch of the fingertips on the keypad.

There's everything on the Internet. It's a good thing Al Gore invented it.

Funny, also, this:

Awkward! Katie Holmes is left embarrassed after she meets fans wearing 'Free Katie' T-shirts

Apparently, there are other styles of "Free Katie" shirts as seen in that article from 2012.


My crush on Katie Holmes is now just a distant memory as falling in love with my wife and getting married has changed everything. I still think Katie Holmes is attractive, smart, cool, and bad at choosing men for relationships. But the ardent crush on her TV persona (or any of her movie personas)  faded long ago.

Still, the shirt is funny. Or at least, I think it's funny.

RESOURCES ABOUT FREE WINONA

HIP NEW RALLYING CRY: "Free Winona!"

FREE WINONA TUMBLR



I used to keep a top ten list of celebrity women that I found most attractive and with whom I would most like to "spend time" if I had the opportunity (which I never would). I don't really keep this list anymore now that I am married. My wife trumps all such lists. And I am not just saying that because I know I should say it. I actually mean it. But given that this blog is about making lists, I have decided to share the top ten list of women who had most often held places on this list, but in an effort to de-emphasize this list, I will list horizontally rather than vertically: Ashley Judd, Lauren Graham, Katie Holmes, Eliza Dushku, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Sadé, Erykah Badu, Susan Sarandon, Morena Baccarin, and Gong Li.

Do you sense a theme here? All these women (except Sarandon) share one common trait. Others had made the list in years past: Diane Sawyer, Tia Carrere, Gillian Anderson, Elizabeth McGovern, Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega, Kate Bush, MIA, Dana Delaney, Polly Draper and others. Winona Ryder made the list at some point. And when Alanis Morrisette sung about being jilted, I wondered if I could be the kind of guy that would make her happy. Going farther back, my attractions are peopled with women such as Julie Newmar and Yvonne Craig (as both will be featured in an upcoming blog post). There were others, such as
Ava Gardner, Jennifer Jones, Susan Dey, Jane Seymour, Barbara Bach, Raquel Welch, Lara Parker, Diana Rigg, and Maureen McCormick.

But I do not actively keep this list anymore. I can acknowledge that Zoe Saldana is super awesome as Uhura; I am not immune. But the passion of the interest has changed since I fell heels over head for my wife and got married. But I can still appreciate beauty in a kind of distanced and abstract way.

On a somewhat unrelated note yet related to this blog: Yesterday, my wife told me it was National T-shirt Day/ I can find no confirmation this using Al Gore's Internet. Puzzling that.

- chris tower - 1306.22 - 8:58

T-shirt#92: Mad Magazine

T-shirt #92: "Some think I am MAD..." AT Fanfare

Today's shirt features the Mad Magazine logo.

I buy my comics and assorted other merchandise at
FANFARE Sports and Entertainment.





I had these candid shots taken in Fanfare by Andrew (Thanks Andrew! I just learned his name.)

I have been buying comics and related merchandise from Fanfare since 1984. Next year will mark the 30th year of my purchasing history! Is that something of which I should be proud? (Because I am proud.)

Featured in the photos are long-time manager Bill Artis (on my right; your left) and associate manager Jeffery Johnson (my left; your right), who is a writer and a member of a writer's group to which we both belong. Bill is about the biggest Superman fan I have ever met. He even likes the art of Curt Swan, which I think is quite amazing as I think Swan makes Superman looks fat, like he has a spare tire. Inexplicably, even though Bill (not Swan or Superman) has lived in Michigan all his life, he is a fan of ATLANTA sports teams. I heckle him about these two things all the time.

Jefferey is a huge Spider-Man fan, which should be obvious due to his "Amazing" apparel. Jeffery is a very excellent writer and has agreed, kindly, to share his work with me so we can discuss it both in the writer's group and apart from it. I do not know if Jeffery has any interest in sports, but we often discuss Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead in addition to various comic books that we're reading. Since Jeffery works at FANFARE, he gets to read comics FOR FREE, which I consider a tremendous benefit.

Jeffery also has been posting videos about his life, which he calls "Game of Triplets" because of his babies.

GAME OF TRIPLETS.

I am thankful to live in a town with an excellent, independent, locally-owned, direct-sales comic shop like Fanfare. Owner Tom Fleming (who I may coerce to be pictured in the future along with the other Fanfare employees) has savvy business sense and has built Fanfare from a tiny hole in the wall housed in the studio of a defunct radio station to a thriving powerhouse in the local economy.

I am also thankful for the community that exists at Fanfare. Though I do not take advantage of the weekly gaming opportunities that Fanfare provides for its customer base, I do delight in having conversations with the employees and have forged strong friendships (at least on the pop culture and semi-personal level) with many of these wonderful folks. I hope they enjoy chatting with me as much as I enjoy chatting with them as I visit (at least once a week) for my comic book crack hit: "And through the years, we all will be together, as the fates allow..." (I know, it's corny, but I am very fond of my peeps at Fanfare).

MAD MAGAZINE: Obviously, I am a huge fan. I own a few shirts that depict Mad or EC, its original company. Mad Magazine is now published by DC Entertainment.  So, in short, this is a subject to which I will return.

Like with so many things from the 1970s and my childhood, I was (and am) mad for Mad Magazine. I read it avidly throughout my childhood (probably around 1970 through 1980). Like many things, I moved away from it once I went to college but later re-discovered it. My childhood years were strongly influenced by the monthly magazine itself and the collected paperbacks published in the '70s. Though I do not own all the paperbacks, I own several (and like my interest in collecting the Doc Savage Bantam novels, I may need to collect the Mad Magazine paperbacks as well, though I am leery of accumulating too much more stuff, but there are not that many paperbacks in this set).

Since marrying my wife and joining this family, I gift a subscription of Mad Magazine to my step-son Ivan each year for his birthday. Do I gift this because Ivan really likes Mad or because I do? Who likes it more? It is difficult to say.

I may not enjoy its sarcastic humor and parodies as much as I did when I was younger. But I still enjoy it, if only for the way the humor reminds me of a time in my life when I felt that Mad Magazine was THE BEST THING EVER.

Here's a new feature, in case I am not generating enough content already...

WEEKLY COMIC BOOK STACK

Each week, after I go to Fanfare and buy my comic books for the week, which I order by the month two months in advance from a catalogue (the Previews Catalog from the Diamond Distribution Company) of all solicitations available to the store, I put the comics in the order I wish to read them. Comics on which I have not kept up fall deeper in the stack with the others that are accumulating down there. For the week starting June 19th, these back-logged titles included Ultimates and, even though I adore it, Fables as well as the former Batman and Robin title, which is now, this week, Batman and Batgirl. I also dropped the Lobo: 100 Bullets mini-series issue #1 deep in the stack because I am not too excited about it, but I did buy it.

Since this blog is dedicated to lists and categories, dedicated to self-inventory and reflection as well as a historical record for posterity, I decided to list these weekly comics in the order I have arranged them for reading. This occupation will reveal what I am reading (which will draw ire or at least comments from some of the peanut gallery) as well as what I have favored as the top of the stack reflects the comics I am most eager to read. Unlike some people (ahem - Joshua Upson), I do not (cannot) save my favorites for last. I would never read my favorites each week if I saved them, due to the stacking up of titles in my back log. As for this week's read, so far, I only managed to read the top two as of last night.

COMIC BOOKS FOR JUNE 19TH

Age of Ultron - Book #10
New Avengers #7
Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #24
Fantastic Four #9
The Superior Spider-Man #12
Avengers #14
Thunderbolts #11
Uncanny Avengers #9
Legion of Superheroes #21
Max Brooks - The Extinction Parade #1
Mara #5
Mind the Gap #11

This week I also bought this Galactus Bottle Opener pictured here. I mean, come on. How could I NOT buy this? And it has magnets for easy refrigerator hanging!

More to come on the subject of Mad Magazine but that's all for now.

- chris tower - 1306.21 - 11:56