Birdman

   No, not me, despite my last rant. Birdman was a winged superhero character of the mid-to-late 60s, just one of the goofy types I've modeled my homespun toy works after. He had a pair of big blue wings and a yellow jumpsuit, derived his superpower energy from the sun; his sidekick was a big, purple bird, Avenger, and every leap to adventure was accompanied by the bold yell of his name, 'Birrrrrrd-MAN!!!' Any kid could be Birdman- or any of the HB superheroes who shared that habit -simply by running around the house yelling like that, great for kids, for parents maddening, I imagine.

   Anyway, son boy and I were driving around the other day and somehow Birdman became the subject until we were laughing until we practically peed our pants joking about his weakness when deprived of sunlight- 'Anybody's grandma could beat Birdman! All she has to do is throw her shawl over him and without sunlight he's powerless!' 'So, forget lasers and robots, all a super-villain needed was a supply of big black trash bags to cut him off from sunlight...' 'Yeah, and what if Birdman came around eating all the bird food from the neighborhood feeders? He'd be hanging upside down, clawing at the suet bricks, watching nervously for neighborhood cats...' 'And if he's really like a bird, he'd just go wherever, right in midair. There'd be huge white plops on windshields all over town. Gross! It'd probably break the windshield!' 'Yeah, he and Avenger would make a game of it, looking for convertibles...' And so on...

   Funny stuff. Maybe Cartoon Network needs some material for their bumpers between commercials, just give us a call. We'll work cheap.

That darn cat!

   I'm nobody's badass or neighborhood terror but, boy, I'd like to be today. I'd be knocking on some doors and giving somebody a stern talking-to about restraining their wayward pest- er, pets.

   After watching the bird feeders in the front yard for weeks for signs of acclimation by the neighborhood avian population, we were finally getting a pretty regular little crowd of tiny feathered pals stopping by. I guess it takes a while for word to get around. It was great sneaking a peek out the front window to check them out on the feeders, flitting about like they knew just what they were doing. But, where birds congregate cats inevitably follow, it seems. And today's trip to the mailbox concluded with the discovery of a handful of blue feathers in the front garden, quite obviously torn from the flailing body of a local blue jay. At least one can only hope that was the case, that he managed to make a succesful escape with his life if not all his feathers from the claws of one of the dozen or so free-wheeling felines who traverse the development at will, eyeing their tasty winged adversaries and crapping wherever they please.

   I always liked dogs better, I'll tell ya. Cats are far too independent, at times even scornful, of the hand that feeds and for an animal generally under five pounds, that's just too much to put up with. Especially when you're the one paying the feeding and veterinary bills. Maybe that's the problem, maybe nobody's feeding them regularly because they spend a lot of time browsing the trash cans up and down the street too. And yet they never seem to find their way into the trash truck and then get carted off to the landfill, too bad.

   If it were summertime I'd run the hose through the house and wait by the open window to soak them good as they lay in wait for their unsuspecting prey. As it is, sub-zero temps tonight with the wind chill, I'm reduced to listening for their mewling and caterwauling and throwing the door open and shooing and shaking my fist at them as they run away home. Y'know, you can put up plastic owls and actually keep mice away but I suppose the cat is too clever a creature to fall for a plastic canine. Curses! Well, I'm sure the battle has just begun...!

 

What's new?

   Well, I've been collecting pop culture junk since I guess I was twelve or thirteen- okay, okay, I was probably closer to... uh, fifteen -and started displaying my Mego Star Trek dolls more often than playing with them. Of course, I'd had 'collections' since the age of five, when television's Batman became the coolest thing on the planet but I'm talking about gathering artifacts and memorabilia not for their play value but rather for the stirring of sentiment. Sentiment not only for fictional characters but for time and place and sensory elevation associated with those sweet sentiments. That and the pleasure of the 'chase' and the 'deal'. (Some of my best 'finds': A Jetsons ramp walker with George and Astro, a yard sale steal at 75 cents. Likewise a Quisp cereal ceramic bank. My last two bits, literally, at the end of a long, hot Saturday traversing the county. Three, count 'em, three Ben Cooper playsuits, The Addams Family Morticia and Lurch and Lost In Space astronaut. The fellow at the antique store was just bringing them in to add to his wares when I spied them and waylaid him at the checkout counter. Dirt cheap he sold them, seven dollars each, and they are ooohhh-so-hard-to-come-by. Like the proverbial hen's teeth or needles in the haystack. But I digress...)

   As an intermittently diligent collector and archivist, I've been storing away any number of posters for some time, some have been rolled up for years counting backward two, even three former addresses on their mailing labels. It's embarassing to think of oneself as a friend of TV fiction and yet your little storage and display enclave features but a paltry three or four glossy 8 x 10s as wall decoration. No matter that every horizontal surface is cluttered with little plastic men of every description along with the boxes they came in and the dust they gather like moss on a rolling stone. The vertical surfaces need love too! But, while I kept buying this and that (The latest a big, old three color litho print poster with a giant drawing of "Duncan Renaldo, TV Adventure Star, The Cisco Kid", advertising his personal appearance at... Well, actually it's blank as it was never used, simply stored away until it passed into the possession of his son, Jeremy. Who had it duly notarized in Bexar County, Texas, to the effect that indeed it is the real article and not a reprint, cool! ) with plans of hanging my own little Louvre of Lost Television, I continued to be too miserly to spring what I perceived as the inflated, overrated price for framery. Combined with the awareness of how 'teenage' it would look to hang 'em all by thumb tacks, the walls continued to suffer in silence.

   Thus it was a fortuitous stop the other night at Lancaster's Rag Shop, a swell fabric and arts and crafts emporium, to find a selection of big, big pitcher frames slashed pricewise by half. Flush with a little moolah, I grabbed one I thought would surely fit the new Cisco Kid poster and brought it to it's new home. Turned out to be a little on the large side length-wise so I rooted out an even bigger black-and-white of Kirk, Spock and the USS Enterprise and, after a goodly struggle to unroll it after better than half a decade's storage, it fit nicely. Long story short,(imagine the long version of this story!?!) inspired and pleased by the wall covering Star Trek imagery, I decided to bite the half-price bullet and raced back to Ye Olde Rag Shop this afternoon, anxious to beat the beginnings of the forecast six to ten inches of snow, and stocked up on frames for The Cisco Kid as well as several vintage Bonanza postings. Mostly aluminum but one rather ornamental gilt wood frame to fit the Ponderosa map, just like the one Ben Cartwright had over his desk at the Ponderosa.

   So that's what's new: Cisco- in all his bold red, yellow and black glory -and Ben, Hoss and Little Joe, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock all enjoy their very own wall space. Keeping an eye on the proceedings in the toy laboratory. Looking out from behind plexiglas... Watching... silently...

...Uh, it's a little creepy...

This day in history...

When I held a regular day job one of my favorite luchtime activities was the newspaper crossword. Chuck Shepard's 'News Of The Weird' was a favorite too. And 'This Day In History'. Kinda neat to see highlights from years and decades past noted on a daily basis, gives one a sense of place in the stream of time, I suppose, to think about people and events that happened this very day this long ago or that year or place.

Courtesy of www.history.net are just two noteworthy items for today, February 4th, a day like any other day:

1889 Harry Longabaugh is released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, "the Sundance Kid." 1986 The U.S. Post Office issues a commemorative stamp featuring Sojourner Truth.

Born on this day:

1902 Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic. 1913 Rosa Lee Parks, civil rights activist.

Interesting, eh? Three outta four ain't bad because, I confess, I have no clue who Sojourner Truth is. Or was. Subject for some research, I suppose. If I was on a TV game show and had to hazard a guess, I'd say... hmmm... 'Who is a former slave who fought in the Civil War, Alex?' Or a Women's Temperance Union leader? Something along those lines. But that's just blowin' smoke, as it were.

Now, the Sundance Kid I've actually seen in the movie, looks a lot like Robert Redford, who also played Jeremiah Johnson, one of my 1970s 'Feature for A Sunday Afternoon' TV  favorites. Anyway, by no means an exhaustive investigation into historical events of significance for this day. Just a little forgettable trivia which just might help next time you're watching Jeopardy!, so, 'You're welcome.'

Tense moments

Or as I like to call it, 'Showdown at Turkey Hill':

 We stopped tonight on the way home from some errands in town at the local convenience store. I finish pumping the gas and park out front while my wyfe pays for the gas and gets milk. Some girl pulls up in a Jeep next to me with, I assume, her boyfriend in the passenger seat. I'm looking at her mostly, then he looks over and I keep smiling like the good natured goof that I am, and then he starts smiling this crooked smile back at me.
   I'm not sure what he's getting at- he might be sleepy or he might be drunk or he might be slightly retarded, I can't tell -so I smile back and give him a 'thumbs up', y'know, that meaningless friendly gesture, practically guaranteed to defuse most any uncertain situation between total strangers. They're yapping between themselves and then the guy looks over again and puts his finger to his head, cocks his thumb and makes a gun firing motion, like he's gonna shoot himself!
   I was just dumbfounded but I think, 'Well, he can't be thinking anything good with a motion like that....!' Then I thought, whatever his mindset it looks like it's up to me to act like a sane person and smooth it over or at least let him know there's no evil intentions on my part. So I get out and stand up on my side of the car, he rolls the window down and I asked him, 'Are you okay?' And he says, rather surly like, 'Whatta ya mean?!?' And I said, 'Well, when somebody makes a motion like a gun to their head, maybe they've got problems or something's really wrong? What I mean is, are you okay?'
    And he 's a little surprised, I think. I'm sure he expected some sort of churlish threat, a curse word or both. He says, 'Yeah... I'm okay....I just don't like it when men smile at me...'
    And then his girlfriend pipes up, 'And he ain't queer.'
    I said, 'Well, that makes two of us.'
    And my wyfe came along, got in the car and we left.
    What a world, eh?
    They'd have both liked it better if I looked at them all hateful like, I guess. Or made like they were invisible. Or like I was. No wonder people get shot to death, who likes people smiling at them?!? Hopefully they never get jobs as WalMart greeters... Or postal employees.