This blog should be sub-titled: a journal of my life in geek.
I get my geek on with things about which I am geeky: comic books, Baseball, Ultimate, science fiction, my favorite bands, books I have read and loved, and Jungian psychology to name some of the most frequently traversed subjects.
I began this project simply as a way to count my T-shirts. I own a lot of T-shirts. But how many do I have? Do I have 365? We shall find out.
When I started this blog, I thought about how each T-shirt means something to me. I bought it for a reason, after all. I set myself the task to post an entry about a new T-shirt every day as a way to simply write something every day, a warm up for writing fiction, which is my passion. Writing is like exercise. Warm ups are good for exercise. But after completing a month of blogging about T-shirts, I have learned that this blog serves as a journal; it documents my life in geek, sort of a tour of my interests in pop culture. The blog serves as a tool for self-inventory, for assessment and analysis of self and the origins of self, for stepping through the process of individuation in catalogues, lists, and ranks.
The blog also made me aware that I have some serious gaps in my T-shirt ownership, and I am in the process of collecting some new T-shirts for several of the great popular culture icons that I truly love. Stay tuned.
I was also a bit surprised that people checked out my blog and continue to check it, read it, and even comment on it. I am very appreciative of this readership. Please feel free to share your thoughts in my comments section. I will respond.
Also, please note that I have moved the original introductory text to the side bar. And now, I present to you the most recent entry of 365 T-shirts: a journal of my life in geek. Thank you for reading.
(Second Update - 1310.24. First Update - 1306.05 Originally Posted - 1304.25.)
Today's shirt is similar to ones you will see frequently in the hiatus, and I think this one is the best of the lot.
This shirt comes from my father's company, TPTA (Tower, Pinkster, Titus, and Associates) and its annual participation in a local corporate Olympics competition. I do not recall ever participating myself, but there were always extra T-shirts, and I got one (or sometimes two or three).
During the hiatus, I have decided to spread out what will be a longer essay on "Why T-shirts?" which is a topic that I have not really explored yet. I plan to start this exploration tomorrow with one item at a time.
As for today, I want to share one thing.
I started re-reading Stephen King's On Writing today as an audio book. This may be my third time through, maybe even fourth. I have lost track.
I am experiencing the book as an audio book, which is narrated by Stephen King. I like that he has done his own narration here. Not only is it a personal touch, since, after all, he wrote the book in first person, HIS voice, but also King has the chops to pull it off and make it work. Not all authors have the right voice, tone, inflection, and diction to make this kind of thing work. Neil Gaiman sounds good on audio as does Orson Scott Card. I am sure others do, too, but I have not heard too many.
I am not very far into the book yet, so I am likely to have some more observations to share before I am done with it. But one thing struck me. In his "Second Foreword," King claims that "most books about writing are filled with bullshit." He goes on to recommend Strunk and White's Elements of Style, which is never far from my desk, because "there is ... no detectable bullshit in that book." King tells his reader that he went with a shorter book for On Writing to strive for less bullshit (though not as short as Elements of Style).
As I revealed something in yesterday's blog entry that I have historically kept close to the vest if not outright lied about to cover my own shame and regret, I have a renewed determination and commitment to a "no bullshit" rule on this blog. I know I can go on at length and can be quite self-involved, but that's part of The Blog Journey. In fact, "no bullshit," which is my wife's number one motto, may take a place in the developing Rules of Chris.
As a side note, I have Rober McKee's Story in the bathroom and I am chipping away at it for the third time, too. Can you tell that I am gearing up for the actual "writing" (fiction) come the end of the blog year?
Yup.
No bullshit.
HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.
COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 58 shirts remaining
- chris tower - first published - 1401.22 - 21:26
final publication - 1401.23 - 7:52
Today's shirt comes from a trip to England in 1986 (see photos) and a visit to Oxford University. It is a companion to the shirt from T-shirt #148, which I was as pajamas. Scheduled for August 16th, 2013, T-shirt #148 has the distinction of being the shirt I posted the day of of my prostate surgery.
Today will be short and carried (mostly) by the photos with the exception of the hiatus text.
I spent most of the day working on T-shirt #303. I imagine readers checking my blog periodically and watching the incomplete entries grow, as I work on them as time allows. If this is true, please let me know in a comment.
It is worth noting that I think one of the shirts, this one and the one in T-shirt #303, may have belonged to my mother, who does not really wear T-shirts. But I am not sure if this is a "true fact" or not.
Aren't all facts true?
That's what makes them facts.
Though not from our European trip, I will throw in a picture of me and my mother from 2012 just because.
You may recognize the shirt in the photo as T-shirt #14. I just came across this photo to add to the mix.
In the next photo, you may recognize that rocky thing in the background as Stonehenge. This is 1986 as we toured England. I am amused at how I dressed back then.
In the next photo, we are not in England anymore. We are in France. I was supposed to stay behind and live in France for a few months, but when I could not connect with friends I had made in college, I bailed on that plan and returned home with my family. This is the first time I have publicly admitted that truth. But we are dedicated to "true facts" today. Gosh, did I ever like those little round glasses.
HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.
COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 59 shirts remaining
Today's shirt looks just like the shirt for T-shirt #165 because it is an identical copy like all the shirts in print run with no print errors.
As I have discussed before (T-shirt #168), I have PLAY and NO PLAY shirts. In other words, one that can be soiled in the often messy playing of Ultimate, and one that I wish to keep nice and unsoiled as often soils do not wash free of the fabric.
The long and short of what I am trying to tell you is that I have two of these shirts from the Michigan 2002 Sectionals Tournament, a shirt I helped design and guided through to the print and sale stages. In my previous post, I gave Kent Elliott design credit formerly and the printing (and final layouts) were done by Artwear Apparel of Kalamazoo. HIATUS
I am taking a partial hiatus from the blog, but I want to explain what that means.
There is no real "hiatus" from this blog. I dedicated myself to one post ever day for 365 days without interruption or break. And so far, I have not missed a day.
But what that means, "not missing a day, " is that some days I have posted incomplete blog entries. You may not realize this is happening if you follow me on Google Plus, Twitter, or Facebook. I do not post to any of those social media sites until I have finished an entry completely. But I do publish the unfinished work to the blog.
Before this month, I was at most one day behind, and I usually finished the unfinished entry early the next day. But this month, I have fallen several days behind, and I have needed multiple days to finish entries that I have already posted. As I type these very words, I am two days behind, with T-shirt #304 from Sunday January 19th (my birthday) and T-shirt #303 from Saturday January 18th still unfinished.
Now some of you may be wondering why I do not just wait and publish when I have the entry done. Well, if I have not been clear before, I can have no skip days. Also, I sometimes have an entry planned, and I have nothing else ready to go. Other times, I intend to finish the entry soon. It's only recently that I have been multiple days and multiple entries behind. So, there can be no skip days. I have to post something, and I do always post SOMETHING. I have never published a blank page. And so, I publish what I have, and I make readers wait for the finished product. I apologize if this screws with your sense of order in the cosmos.
some of the new stuff
Birthday gifts stacked
yes, shaving cakes
There is a "publish back in time" button. Okay, not really. But Blogger has a "schedule to publish" feature. One day, I discovered how to use it like a time machine. I was working on a blog entry I had not finished. And to get the "save" button, I reverted the entry to draft, which "unpublishes" it. (Is my use quotation marks growing annoying?) Since I was a day or two late with the entry, when I re-published it, the date was for the current day and NOT the day I had originally published the entry, which is not how I thought it would work.
I was devastated. I might have just screwed up my consecutive days of T-shirt publication. And then, I wondered about the schedule feature. What if I scheduled the entry to publish, but I scheduled it to publish the day before? Guess what? You can do that. Or at least I did that one time. Unless I have lost track, I have no skip days, though I have made errors in the consecutive numbering of the shirts, though this is something I can fix more easily.
I have not used the "back in time" publishing since. I do not wish to tempt fate.
Also, while I am on the subject, I learned how the schedule feature worked after it failed to work as I thought it did. I scheduled the post to publish during my surgery. Later that day, when I was awake enough, I checked and the post had not published. I did not understand. But eventually I figured out that I had to click publish, like I normally do, and Blogger will release the post at the scheduled time. Makes sense, right? I am sure there is a help page that says as much somewhere that I did not read.
So with all that long-winded explanation out of the way, which may be only interesting to me, I have standard hiatus text that I plan to post in all of the forthcoming shirts that I considered hiatus shirts (I also made a category).
HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.
JUST FOR FUN, here's a few comic book covers that I have saved in my downloads folder. Because what's a 365 T-shirt blog entry without comic books?
If you want to know more about the comics, click the links! Isn't that a great blog?
COVER GALLERY
There are several entries in which I have "borrowed" images shared originally on the wonderful blog PENCIL INK: Vintage Comic Book Art & Artists 1940s-1990s by a Blogger user known only as Teddy, as explained HERE. All the covers here are attributed with the links to the pages in which he shared them. If you love comics as much as I do, then add his page to your reader, subscribe, or whatever you do to keep track of blogs you like. Thanks Pencil Ink blogger. Your blog rocks!!
UPDATE 1401.28: So far this entry holds the record for longest incomplete. I posted it originally on the 19th of January and now it's the 28th of January. Despite declaring a hiatus from really long blog entries, I have not saved enough time to finish it yet. I am working on it now. I will update this note once I am complete. One problem is that there is so much I can put in this one. But I have to remember that you, dear reader, probably don't know what's missing. And I do not need to pack in ALL OF MY magic-related content in this one blog entry.
OFFICIAL INCOMPLETE BOILERPLATE TEXT: Thank you for coming to my blog. If you have been here before, you know why I post unfinished blog entries. If you are new to the blog, and came here by an Internet search or some other nefarious means, you may be wondering why someone would post something incomplete to the Internet. The shirt (ha ha.... leaving in that typo: I meant "short") answer is that I must post something every day because of the goal I set for myself when I began 365 T-shirts in March of 2013. And though there is a way to post backwards in time thanks to Blogger's scheduler utility, I would rather post an incomplete entry when the daily chaos of work, family, and the universe prohibits me from completing the blog entry for that day. Sometimes, I need a few days to complete the entry, and readers who check may see a work in progress slowly bloom.
In other words, more tomorrow. Thanks for checking.
T-shirt #304 - Abbott's Magic Company
The picture above comes from Christmas 1975. I can be seen in the photo (in my Captain America PJs) experimenting with a magic trick that I had received as a gift. I do not remember the gift very well, and I am not sure where the trick has got to. It did not become one of my regulars as seen in the pictures below.
Today is my birthday.
I was planning to catch up today as the last blog entry I completed was Thursday January 16th, which I finalized last night (Saturday the 18th). But since it's my birthday, I am giving myself permission to only work on the blog for a while and leave it incomplete once it's time for me to officially celebrate my birthday, which I will do by lounging on the couch with my puppy while reading comic books and watching football.
Today's shirt features The Abbott's Magic Company of Colon, Michigan, which I wrote about here:
I used to perform magic as a semi-part-time professional. I re-connected with the magic world this past summer as I fulfilled a "bucket list" item shortly before my prostate surgery, in which I attended a day of a magic convention (with my step-son Ivan) and took a ride up the Kal- Haven trail (with my pal Chris Dilley) as explained in those three T-shirt posts linked above (134-136).
I have many plans for topics I want to explore in regards to magic, but I cannot get them all in one blog entry.
The next picture, directly left, shows me with my magic table, which serves as both a storage cabinet and a performance space. More on that in the text below.
In this first picture, I can be seen holding a top hat, which you would think I could have found easily and purchased at some magic shoppe. But in the mid-to-late 1970s when I did the majority of my performing, there were none to be found. Eventually I located a hat in a theatre costume shop and begged the costumer to let me buy it.
Many of my favorite magical "illusions" (dogs do tricks; magicians do illusions) sit on the table. From left to right, there's a standard Abbott's die box, a lotus jar, the Blarney Die, Dissecto is the big one with the yellow blade in the handle, a crystal box in front of that with a chick pan on top, a Genii Tube in red and yellow, and the Cube in a Tube, which I am about to describe. Though I will describe the genesis of the magic table in forthcoming text, I do want to point out the table cover with the gold fringe, classic magician fare that my aunt made for me, a special order organized and supervised by my mother. My parents were extremely supportive of my magic endeavors. This illusion is known as the Cube in a Tube.
Though Abbott's still sells it (see link), it is about five times more expensive than when I bought it. I remember mine selling for $45 in the late 1970s.
I like the Cube in a Tube illusion because of it's visual impact and how it ends with something that can be held and examined by an audience member.
The magician begins by showing the square die cube, a wooden piece painted black with white dots. This die is placed in a red square box. A metal tube is pounded into the box with a wooden hammer. The magician lifts away the box to reveal just the tube. When the tube is lifted (as in the picture), the cube has been "tubed," the die is now a wooden cylinder that an audience member can examine.
Awesome, right?
It's quick and can be performed silently because the visual impact is so clear and dramatic. This is one of my favorites.
I became interested in magic around 1973 or 1974. I am not sure what started it. There were magic sets advertised on television. There were ads for magic shops in my comic books. But probably the thing that closed the deal was the annual Christmas catalogues. My sister and I always started our Christmas lists by scouring the annual catalogues from Sears, JC Penney, and Montgomery Ward. I know I started my magical interests with a magic set sold by one of these companies. The magic advertisements and TV commercials probably only stoked the fires of my passion for magic.
There was also a magician (as there often is), but I am not sure if I had the magic set before or after I met the magician. I think I already had the magic set when we were staying at the Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island for a convention my father needed to attend, and I met Robert Downey (no relation to the actor), who was performing magic at the hotel.
After these two influences inspired me, I discovered that the "Magic Capitol of the World" was about an hour's drive (not even) from my house. The great Abbott's Magic Company called Colon, Michigan its home and annually hosted the Abbott's Magic Get-Together as magicians from all over the world flocked to the little town of Colon for many events, the best of which were the nightly performances in the Colon high school.
Abbott's published a HUGE book sized catalogue that became my new shopping spree and holiday list making enterprise.
I do not perform magic so much anymore. It's very stressful. If an actor flubs his or her lines in a live show, it's often no big deal. Sometimes the audience does not even notice. The actor can cover or someone else covers for the actor if needed.
With magic, if a magician makes an error, flubs the prestidigitation part of the magical illusion, the mistake ruins the effect, the "magic" is lost, and the performer may as well quit because the willing suspension of disbelief that kept the audience engaged has left the building.
Audiences of senior citizens tend to be very forgiving, especially those in nursing homes, anything to break up the monotony, and some of them are not fully "home" anyway. But children and drunk people are especially vicious. Blow an illusion around them, and you're goose is cooked.
Other stuff
Dissecto
Blarney Die
My magic table
........... still under construction.
to be finished SOON.
COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 61 shirts remaining
- chris tower - first published - 1401.19 - 15:38
final publication - date - time
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 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.
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 #307 - TPTA Corporate Olympics 1995.jpg)
I am not very far into the book yet, so I am likely to have some more observations to share before I am done with it. But one thing struck me. In his "Second Foreword," King claims that "most books about writing are filled with bullshit." He goes on to recommend Strunk and White's Elements of Style, which is never far from my desk, because "there is ... no detectable bullshit in that book." King tells his reader that he went with a shorter book for On Writing to strive for less bullshit (though not as short as Elements of Style).
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