Category Archives: Random

Comic Land, 1948 (in color)

ComicLand_allcolor_sm

Thanks to Bob Beerbohm, Robert Moubert’s thread on the ByrneRobotics forum, the incredible Grand Comics Database, the Pocket Books section at Cover Browser and some colorizing hints from Mads Madsen, I’m happy to present to you “Comic Land, 1948 (in color)”

Kali scene – Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)

Just a quick note to accompany this clip of Ray Harryhausen’s work.

Being able to see moving images of the fantastic was a rare thing for the general populace before VHS rentals became ubiquitous. These wild visions would show up regularly on broadcast television, either late at night, or during  the weekends, but by regularly, I mean you could see a particular movie twice a year if you were lucky. Or you might be able to catch them in a midnight movie, or a revival house. Organizations could rent 16mm prints of movies and show them, so sometimes you’d get lucky at summer camp or a school auditorium on a rainy day. (I know devotees would collect 16mm prints, too, and 8mm reels were available, but I’m talking about the non-collector, non-devotee type. Not everyone owned a movie projector.) Cable TV was only starting out.

So, when I went to The Ritz one night with some friends to see, um, Marianne Faithful?, Adrian Sherwood’s Tackhead?, sorry can’t remember. I was absolutely transfixed by the video DJ-ing that was going on pre-show.

One of the clips shown was Kali.

Fantastic!

I Bought A PC

ZEOS_invoice24 September 1990 – ZEOS 386sx-16, 2MB RAM
Thanks to a loan from my dad, and advice from my pal Sean Cruz at work.

 

Numbers+Vision: 2012 US Presidential Election Cartogram

I saw a few graphics shared on Facebook yesterday, where folks had colored each US state and, impressively, each US county, using percentages of red (Romney) and blue (Obama) corresponding to the percentage of the popular vote for each candidate.

While interesting, I don’t like that kind of presentation because it mixes geography with population. Showing, for example, big ol’ sparsely populated Montana, Idaho, and the Dakotas colored according to votes, but not showing their population skews interpretation of the image.

So, I took the Electoral Vote Cartogram by ChrisnHouston on Wikimedia Commons and did the same as mentioned above, using percentages for each state from MSNBC’s and Fox News’ websites. It’s a little rough around the edges, but I thought it’d be fun to post it.

I also put a similarly colored full US electoral cartogram at the lower right reflecting the color of the total popular vote, as well as three squares showing 100% red, 50% red 50% blue, and 100% blue.

I’ve had a whole ‘nother Fluffernutter

Yes, I’d put Marshmallow Fluff and Skippy smooth peanut butter between two slices of TasTee Bread (Wonder Bread was rarely in our house)…

and have a Fluffernutter

Not that we had Fluff all the time, but when it was in the house, it was in order to have Fluffernutters. Would there have been any other reason? Check the link to go to a page that includes an audio file of an old-school Fluffernutter commercial.

My point in writing this?  I have realized that for a few years now, probably 35 years or more since I last had a Fluffernutter, that I have been indulging in a modern variant.

Multi(usually 12)-Grain sliced bread with organic ground-by-me-in-the-local-shop-so-it’s-chunky/crunchy peanut butter and… wait for it…  organic fig preserves.

It EVOKES the Fluffernutter in the crunchy, fiber-y manner that I prefer these days. Depending on the style of the preserve, the fig can also remind us that the Fig Newton is a very processed snack treat.

Newark to Jersey City unique East Coast Greenway pedestrian/bicycle right of way

Just a few photos of the short walk/bike path that connects Raymond Boulevard and a Doremus Avenue surface ramp (I guess that’s what it’d be called). The short trail goes under both the ramp of the Raymond Boulevard exit from the Pulaski Skyway and the ramp of Exit 15E from the NJ Turnpike.

Trail alongside Raymond Boulevard

Trail turns under NJ Turnpike exit ramp

Trail heads toward Route 1&9 ramp

Trail emerges onto surface Doremus Ave ramp

The Button Shirt

Wow, the place here looks like a tornado hit it. We set up the Kirby Museum “convention table” at Maxwell’s this past weekend for the Hoboken Artists Studio Tour. Great time all around, especially being able to lunch with family at Hoboken’s Pilsnerhaus Biergarten. After having brought everything back home, I just had to take a stab at some real, bold expelling and reorganizing of objects.

This effort lead me to reduce the number of shoes in my closet. A long time coming, and now done, eyeball reports an almost 50% reduction of shoe volume. Wow.

But what’s in this plastic “Casey’s” bag on the bottom of the closet with the shoes? Buttons?

Uh, no.

It’s my button shirt.

A Golden Grahams “Have a Golden Day” t-shirt, a gift from my maternal Grandmother, Florence (she’s featured in an earlier blog entry), who loved Golden Grahams cereal, and, I suppose, saved up enough proofs-of-purchase, or whatever, to obtain this shirt for her grandson. I have a memory of a phone conversation with her asking me if I would like the shirt.

I remember I’d had a random collection of buttons back in the late ’80s, and one day my friend Alice G. mentioned that our pal Charlie C. had a t-shirt on which he put all his buttons. Not a bad idea, I thought. Soon after that, I had this shirt hanging on the inside of one of my closet doors at 1105 Washington St. I added to it regularly.

Two apartments and almost twenty years later, here it is.

Highlights:

  • Pornographic Betty Boop button purchased during an early visit to Greenwich Village in a shop on W 3rd St. near Village Comics. O boy!
  • Welcome to Macy’s – I worked at the Macy’s in Roosevelt Field during the spring and summer of 1981.
  • Beat Colgate buttons bought in Syracuse, which I wore on my graduation gown when receiving my diploma. The President laughed when we shook hands.
  • Two Ira Karasick for Mayor buttons (1993)
  • “Thank You For Shopping At Modell’s” – Modell’s is mentioned in an earlier entry and comments. Ken, could this have been yours?
  • “It’s Coming, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” – I was just talking about this button with my cousin Kathy yesterday at the Pilsnerhaus.
  • Hudson County Juror
  • San Diego Comic Con 1992 Press badge with “Mondo 2000” and “Boing Boing” typed above my name. Thanks to Andrew Mayer and Jack Kirby.
  • Howard the Duck For President. “Get Down America!”

I could go on. Click on the image to see more details. I would love to hear from you.