T-shirt #55: Thunderbirds

T-shirt #55: Thunderbirds Are Go!

Back in the day--which one of my friends tells me was a Tuesday--we fans of the geeky genres (SF, fantasy, comic books, horror, etc.) were starved for material. I am not sure that people who were born since 1980 "grok" what it was really like to be a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, anymore than I "grok" what being a kid in the 1940s and 1950s was like. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, there were a dearth of options for TV shows with science fiction or otherwise fantastic themes, especially in the live-action arena. Granted, there are many notable examples: Star Trek, Land of the Giants, Time Tunnel, Planet of the Apes, Dark Shadows among many others. Later, we enjoyed shows I already mentioned like The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man, and shows I have yet to mention but will soon, such as Battlestar Galactica. And yes, these are abbreviated lists. I am omitting several good examples (Green Hornet and Batman, for instance). Still, I think it's a well-established fact that compared to today (even compared to the 2000s or 1990s), there are so many more options to satisfy the geek urge to see live-action depictions of SF, fantasy, horror, super-hero, or similar genre types TV shows (and I have not even touched on the animated world as that's another can of worms) that my statement stands: people born since 1980 do not truly understand what it was like back in the day, how starved we felt.

What's my point? We would pretty much watch anything no matter how bad it was. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think any of the shows I listed on my list were "bad." Or maybe it's just that I have a fondness for them all born of nostalgia. And, to some extent, the classic shows of the '60s and '70s have enjoyed resurgent fame due to the more sophisticated kids of today who have an appreciation for the cheesy '70s shows. These shows have become legends, touted by media of today (YouTube, the Internet, various TV shows) and their parents. Yesterday, my step son, when learning that Marvel is working on a new Hulk TV show, said: "if it doesn't have Lou Ferrigno, I am not interested." You would expect that would be something that I would say having grown up watching Ferrigno in my formative years. But my step son is cool (so is my step-daughter but that's a story for another time).

Today, many of these iconic TV shows of the past just do not measure up according to most of today's media consumers. How many parents have tried to share a beloved artifact of the 1960s or 1970s with a child of today (or a child of the recent yesterdays) and have it gone unappreciated or have it outright insulted with invective like "stupid" or "this is crap." Not everyone born since 1980 has an appreciation for what has gone before, which is not criticism. I am not trying to take some moral high ground that anyone "should" appreciate these artifacts of another era gone by. It is what it is. Not everyone is like my step-son. But this issue of appreciation for the past and adoration of the past based on nostalgia relates to the subject of my shirt today.

Thunderbirds is one such relic that may not stand the test of time and be appreciated by the media-savvy consumers of today. My love for it may be inseparable from my nostalgic adoration for it. Do I love it because it is truly a wonderful program for the time period, or do I love it because it came out in the late 1960s and was syndicated thereafter, and it was part of my formative years, and there was not much else on TV to watch at the time. After all, I owned a Thunderbirds coloring book. I am deeply invested. The images stir fond memories of childhood games and imagining what it would be like to have a hanger with my own spaceship in it.

Despite a 2004 film directed by STNG's Jonathan Frakes, Thunderbirds is not one of the most well-known or most loved relics of 1960s SF television, and it's not even arguably live action as it used puppets. Thunderbirds is well described in the Wikipedia page for anyone interested in really investigating it further. Simply, it was a British SF program, later syndicated in America and the subject of two films, produced from 1965-1966. It depicted the adventures of an International Rescue squad, who operated in secret from its hidden island headquarters. Set 100 years in the future, the Thunderbirds piloted sleek spacecraft and wore cool, color-coded uniforms. Special effects were well executed for the time period, and the characters were all depicted by marionette puppets with a "new" method called "Supermarionation."

The shirt brings back fond memories of watching Thunderbirds in black and white, unable to see the color as we did not yet own a color TV. It's also a yellow shirt, continuing my theme of yellow shirts for spring, though this theme will soon end as I only have so many such shirts. This shirt is my favorite among the small set of yellow shirts I own.

I hope the questions I have posed today provokes some interesting thoughts about the power of nostalgia, appreciation for media of another era, and how starved we were for any SF TV back then.

"Thunderbirds are GO!"

- chris tower - 1305.15 - 8:14

T-shirt #54 - They Might Be Giants

T-shirt #54 - They Might Be Giants

Hello again. I just returned from having breakfast with my good friend Chris Dilley, General Manager of the People's Food Co-op of Kalamazoo and all around good guy. We're pals. We do self-care together by hanging out for breakfast, seeing geeky guy movies our wives might not like, or playing games with other geeky-minded, nerd types (guys who may not self-identify as nerds or geeks, but really, who are we kidding, right?).

Getting dressed to meet Chris for breakfast at Kalamazoo's Crow's Nest, I decided to select a shirt and feature it on the blog. I mean, what else is the blog for?

I have already featured a People's Food Co-op shirt, and besides, Chris is more than his job. So, flipping through shirts in my closet, I chose this one because I am still sharing yellow/gold colored shirts which is my favorite color for spring, I figured Chris probably likes They Might Be Giants (TMBG) as much as I do, and TMBG has a great song about friends and big cities which immediately leapt to my mind (not sure why other than the friendship angle) when I thought of Chris Dilley (the song being "New York City" from the band's 1996 release Factory Showroom).


Friendship. Smart geeky people. They Might Be Giants. What else do we need today?




RANDOM DATA

• I have seen TMBG twice in concert. The second time was in Grand Rapids at the Intersection  before the public smoking ban passed, and I could barely breathe and did not enjoy the show as much because of the venue. The first time was at Irving Place in New York City two days before New Year's Eve for the first of three shows TMBG played in what was probably 2002 or 2003. I may update this part of the blog entry when I can find my ticket stub. I save all my ticket stubs in a notebook. Yes, I am well aware that I am quite incurably insane.
• Oh Wait!! I think there's a third time from back in the early 1990s. I must consult my book. I have no shirt from that era, but I have a vague memory of driving to Ann Arbor to see them with some friends.
• The Wikipedia page for They Might Be Giants is actually quite well done and extensive. There's an unofficial site that well address the New York City song: The Unofficial TMBG site. 
• The band They Might Be Giants is named after one of my favorite films, They Might Be Giants, starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward. Copies are hard to come by, and I am not sure if it's available as a streaming option, but it's a great film. Well worth a viewing. It's also about friendship, among other things.
• I discovered TMBG in 1988 with the release of Lincoln. I listened obsessively and soon knew all the words to every song; a practice that continued with Flood (1990) and many other releases. It's what you do if you're a TMBG fan, which I will explore in the next item.
• DO NOT JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER: Back in the early 1990s, because it was after the release of Flood, I was at a fraternity party at Indiana University because my friend Tom went to law school there (see T-shirt #40), and we were dragged to this party by some girls we liked. I have always been very anti-fraternity and found myself being very judgmental of these people as stupid, beer-guzzling, superficial, shallow jocks and preps. And then something magical happened. Someone put on the album Flood. Everyone (and I do mean everyone) started singing along. They ALL knew ALL the words by heart. They were ALL articulate and precise with their diction. I had a difficult time thinking of them as shallow or superficial since we shared a love for this album by TMBG, which I considered a band for smart people in my misanthropic stupidity (for more epiphanies about misanthropy, see, again,  T-shirt #40).
• Friendship - not just for smart geeky people. And as the shirt illustrates, drunkenness is not just for supposedly shallow and superficial frat boys.

- chris tower - 1305.14 - 10:37

T-shirt #53: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

T-shirt #53: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Last week Marvel Comics and ABC announced that the Joss Whedon produced television series entitled Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been picked up as a regular series for the Fall.



My oft-referenced writer Charles Skaggs shared  this news at his fine blog DAMN Good Coffee...and HOT!


This is very exciting news for many reasons.

First and foremost, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be helmed by fan favorite, and one of my personal favorite creators, Joss Whedon. I plan to give Joss more love on this blog. I have the shirts.






UPDATING ON 1307.18 - agents of shileders "TEASTER" video

LINK HERE

via POP CULTURE SAFARI!

Also, few Marvel comics characters have been the subject of live action television shows. Most people know the 1970s show The Incredible Hulk with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. Around the same time, though not as well known, The Amazing Spider-Man TV show ran from 1977-1979. Before that the only continuing live action TV appearances of Marvel heroes came with Spider-Man on The Electric Company from 1974-1977. With the exception of a few minor series and the syndicated show Mutant X, there have been no ongoing, live-action television shows about Marvel heroes. Thus, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a very special milestone for Marvel Comics and fans of Marvel Comics, especially since it's a spin-off from the successful Avengers movie, which was also well-loved by fans (and shepherded by Joss Whedon). Though Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. does not feature any super heroes in its initial cast, it would be surprising if there are no cameo appearances, especially of heroes not currently involved in the movie franchises. Though I suspect that future characters to be featured in film may show up in the Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. program. Ant man, anyone?

The news seems timely in a personal way as my family and I watched the film Zero Dark Thirty yesterday, a special intelligence and espionage tale of the pursuit and killing of Osama bin Laden. This is a side note that may only be interesting to me, but it did play a role in my choosing of the shirt for today. Then again, I would have chosen the shirt back on Saturday when Skaggs posted the news about Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but after searching my house for my S.H.I.E.L.D. shirt, I realized it must still be at my parents. I have since retrieved it after a visit to bring a gift to my mother for Mother's Day. But back to the subject of S.H.I.E.L.D.

S.H.I.E.L.D. has developed over the years in Marvel comics. According to Wikipedia: "S.H.I.E.L.D. is a fictional espionage and law-enforcement agency in the Marvel Comics Universe. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in Strange Tales #135 (Aug. 1965), it often deals with superhuman threats.
The acronym originally stood for Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division. It was changed in 1991 to Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate. Within the various films set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as in the animated series The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the acronym stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division" ("S.H.I.E.L.D." Wikipedia, 2013).

Though S.H.I.E.L.D. was invented by Stan "the Man" Lee and Jack "The King" Kirby, in my mind and heart, it is forever associated with the beautiful comic art and storytelling of the ingenious Jim Steranko, who is another artist that really should be part of my top favorites. I am surely going to have to revise my list again.

Steranko served as Kirby's immediate successor on Strange Tales chronicling the stories of S.H.I.E.L.D. Steranko added a fine art aesthetic to comic book art, melding the best of comics (Kirby, Wally Wood) with Pop Art and Surrealism (as his Salvador Dali cover swipe makes clear). Steranko's work was heavily influenced also by the Bond movies and Bond girls that became prominent in the 1960s. Also, Steranko is famous in comics circles for his definitive (and for a long time the only) history of comic books. Read about Steranko if interested on Wikipedia or at this cool blog devoted to Steranko: Existentialist Man.


I will not be surprised if Joss Whedon (who is awesome and a genius) is as big a fan of Steranko as I am (and as are many, many rabid comic fans) and plans to give his Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. program a Steranko/Kirby flair.

Sign me up.

- chris tower - 1305.13 - 9:35

T-shirt #52: My Family - Happy Mother's Day!

T-shirt #52: My Family - Happy Mother's Day!

I do not have a T-shirt with just a picture of my wife. But I do happen to have this T-shirt with a picture of our family, featuring the image we used for our New Year's card.

Pictured here in a photo taken in December are (working left to right) me, Liesel holding Satchel, Ivan, and Piper.



When I ordered the cards, VistaPrint gave me the option to order a T-shirt with the image. The company sent me two shirts, actually, so I gave the other one to Ivan. I love that Ivan is wearing a Dead Kennedy's hoodie.












I feel like I won the world's greatest lottery. I am blessed with many riches because of meeting and marrying my wife, Liesel. She is an amazing human being: a wonderful mother, wife, partner, and friend. She has given me not only a great marriage but a wonderful family with two kids that I love very much (and now a puppy, too). Our cat Vespers is not pictured.

I hope that I am able to give Liesel and her kids even a single iota of the happiness that she and her kids have given me.

Today, I celebrate Liesel along with all the mothers in the world (including my own mother: Hi Mom!).


Here's one of my favorite pictures of Liesel. Doesn't she look happy?

Happy Mother's Day everyone.

- chris tower - 1305.12 - 10:26

T-shirt #51: One Love; One God

T-shirt #51: One Love; One God

I considered just posting pictures without text as a change of pace for today's shirt.

But as a writer, I am not sure I can be silent. Maybe I will try this in a future blog post. Though I am not sure I am going to have a better shirt for which it's worth letting the picture carry the meaning than this one.

As it is, I am not going to write much, both due to necessity and because the image really does speak volumes and much more eloquently than I can.

I will share the following anecdote.

A few years back, there was an incident at Western Michigan University (WMU). I do not recall the details (and they really do not matter), but it was a hateful incident, a case of discrimination. The WMU president wrote a letter to the university to promote "tolerance." This struck me as the wrong message. If I am not part of the majority, I do not want to be tolerated.
I want to be accepted.
CO-EXIST.

Love, right?

One Love.

One.

- chris tower - 1305.11 - 14:13

PS: Too much? Too subtle? Not subtle enough?

T-shirt #50 - Star Wars: The Rebel Alliance

T-shirt #50 - "That's no moon..."

A friend recently reminded me of that excellent quote from Star Wars in regards to the Death Star, which at first is mistaken for a moon.


Thinking of this moment in the film makes me want to watch Star Wars again.



And in a way, I have been. Studying it, actually.


I am teaching a mythology course right now, and in last night's subject matter, we were focused on heroes and the hero cycle, connecting to the excellent mythological analysis of Joseph Campbell and the great book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. These two subjects are linked. Star Wars makes for a great example of the great mythological hero saga.

I first discovered The Hero with a Thousand Faces in one my first college courses, a religion class, at Kalamazoo College. This is where I was introduced to the ideology of Carl Jung. I learned about archetypes, like the shadow, and animus and anima. I learned about the process of individuation. But most of all, I learned about the Collective Unconscious.

I did not make the connection at the time between Jung's Collective Unconscious and the Force from Star Wars. I am not sure when this came together for me. But now the documentation can be found on You Tube. Lucas clearly was attuned to the same material. If Jung were alive today, he would see the direct parallels between the Force and his idea of the Collective Unconscious.

We're all connected. Everything is connected.


It's important for me to remember the Force today, to remember that we're all connected, because I am still not feeling very well. There's your newsy journal update for the day. But no details. They're unpleasant.
Instead enjoy this great song (if you like ambient, floaty, electronic), and remember: "we are all connected, everything, every energy, every being is all connected."

- chris tower - 1305.10 - 18:32

Magic Sound Fabric - We Are All Connected

T-shirt #49: Hawkman

T-shirt #49: Hawkman or Wings are Cool

Super-heroes with wings = cool.

The Angel, the Falcon, Dawnstar, Birdman, Man-Bat, Bumblebee, Red Raven, and Stingray among others.

And Hawkman.

Wings are cooler than big capes, though big capes are a close second (Doctor Strange and Batman being two of the coolest cape-wearers... though some people would add SPAWN to this list).

These loves, like a love for capes, all originate in childhood play. Toys with wings are very cool because flight simulation play is a very natural tendency, especially for boys. Freud linked flight dreams with sex, but then Freud linked everything with sex. There may be something to Freud's theories, but I think they may be outmoded. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I spent a lot of time simulating flight, thinking about flight and even wearing capes. (Big surprise.) I do not consider these cape wearing play times to be based in sex fantasies. These were flight fantasies. I wanted to fly. Besides, the futurists and science fiction writers promised that by 2013 (and possibly much sooner), we would all have our own jet packs and flying cars.


WHERE'S MY DAMN JET PACK?

So, this all brings me to Hawkman. Today, I am wearing my Hawkman shirt, ordered before I started this blog but purchased since the blog began. And though the picture does not represent the color well, it is a very gorgeous golden color, another yellow-gold shirt for spring.

I am not sure that I am ready to make a top ten or top twenty superhero list yet (though this kind of categorization is partly what this blog is all about), but I am ready to make a distinction about my love for certain Silver Age DC heroes. Loving Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman is kind of taken for granted. I really loved the secondary heroes who were featured less often, such as The Flash (T-shirt #20),  Deadman  (T-shirt #43), The Atom, Adam Strange, Elongated Man, Phantom Stranger, Red Tornado, the Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Hawkman.

Several of these heroes enjoyed their own titles (Aquaman, Phantom Stranger, Flash, The Atom) while others were paired in companion books (Hawkman/Atom, Green Arrow/Green Lantern) while others languished in special appearances only.

Part of what makes DC comics confusing for many readers is the mixed up history. For a long time, Marvel was more linear and simplified by comparison, though this is no longer true. Hawkman is a good case study in DC's ongoing continuity entanglements with its characters as there are multiple versions of Hawkman to choose from. The good news is that they all have wings. And wings are cool.

Hawkman started out as Carter Hall debuting in Flash Comics #1 in 1940. American archeologist Carter Hall is the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian Prince Khufu killed with his consort Chay-Ara (Shiera Sanders, aka Hawkgirl) by the priest Hath-Set.
Later, when DC rebooted its Golden Age characters in the Silver Age in the early 1960s, Hawkman becomes Katar Hol, an imperial prince from the planet Thanagar who becomes a member of the the planet's Hawk-Police that leads him (and his wife/partner, Shayera Thol, aka Hawkgirl and later, more appropriately, Hawkwoman) to earth tracking a Thanagarian criminal. Katar underwent another reboot in 1989 with the prestige series Hawkworld by Timothy Truman, followed by the Hawkman volume 3 series that ran until 1996. DC has once again rebooted Hawkman with the New 52. Hawkman is now just Carter Hall, but it has yet to be established if he is an alien Thanagarian or a reincarnated Egyptian.

My first introduction to Hawkman came in the early issues of Justice League and then Hawkman #24, published in February/March 1968, featuring two stories among my favorites from those early comics: "The Robot Raiders from Planet Midnight" (isn't that the best title ever?) and "The Man Who Grew Wings."

I am reading the current Hawkman comics, even though I am not enjoying them as much as most of the other New 52 titles. Still, Hawkman has wings. And wings are cool.

FINAL NOTE: The toy comes from the excellent series Kingdom Come created by Mark Waid and Alex Ross and published by DC Comics in 1996. According to Wikipedia: "Hawkman: Now a literal 'hawk-man', he has become a guardian of nature, though also referred to as an ecological terrorist. The story does not specify which version of Hawkman this is, apart from "combining the spirit of the old with the otherworldly flesh of the new", which suggests Carter Hall in the body of the post-Zero Hour "Hawkgod". He is killed in the nuclear blast" ("Kingdom Come (comics)," Wikipedia, 2013).

Did I mention that wings are cool?

- chris tower - thinking about flying - 1305.09 - 9:12

One drawing courtesy of Elvin Ching/ ZeroPointFive

Art by Elvin Ching



Loaded backwards in time - edited 2004.14 from a picture taken 1308.18

Me leaving hospital after prostate removal surgery. Sunday 2013, August 18th