Settling in

For a long winter's nap, I wish. Weather seems to have moderated toward the wintry side all at once. On the plus side I won't have a lot of driving to do in the real messy weather and not much to shovel either. Of course, I can foresee some neighborly pitching in within the little community here given my preponderance of 'free time'. And the new kitten is settling in too. Coconut is now official, Coco being the short name of choice although she gets called everything but in the course of a days she spends alternating between bouts of sleepily lolling smack dab in the middle of every piece of furniture in the house- especially the middle sofa cushion where she takes the afternoon sun -and darting crazily from on end to the other chasing her tail or more often her toys- a balled-up plastic shopping bag which elicits all manner of gymnastics as she bats and claws at the crinkly lumpus, a balled-up piece of tin foil wound with a length of bright red yarn which usually ends up coiled tightly around the wooden leg of a dining room chair and an orange fuzzy felt mouse with feathers for a tail. She actually spent the better part of an hour playing fetch with the latter last night, unbelieveable as it may seem. I've never known a cat to fetch anyway, always seemed to be rather aloof creatures in not downright indolent and certainly disdainful of any demeaningly repetitive diversions as chasing after thrown objects for the amusement of their simple-minded food-givers and litter-pan-cleaners.

In other news, my spouse had a little misadventure all her own last week, displaying all the symptoms of a serious cardiac event. Four paramedics and one police officer responded to my 911 call and crowded into our itty bitty living space checking blood pressure and administering oxygen. Then they checked my wife. Seriously, it was quite a jolt of reality and not a little upsetting. So we followed as she took an ambulance ride and spent  the night and the next day in hospital being scanned and tested and poked and prodded and examined and re-tested and re-scanned. Ulitmately there was found nary a sign of physiological defect as a cause of nor untoward result from the whole episode with the exception of elevated cholseterol levels which will necessitate some changes in diet and exercise habits. I'm quite sure that when her six-week followup with the family physician rolls around I'll be dragged along kicking and screaming for some overdue testing of my own. Yay. Most days I just don't care enough about what's going on physically to change my habits leftover from a misspent and decidedly more active youth. Breakfast: Oatmeal or McDonald's Steak, Egg and Cheese Bagel? Dinner: Grilled skinless chicken breast or a Whopper and fries and a Dr. Pepper? Hmmmm... "I am the very model for a modern major fast food chain!", I always say. Actually I just made that up. Catchy, if derivative. I'm sure Subway will be calling tomorrow... Or not.

Aaah, phoo... look at the time. Seems like you get up at eight or nine, write some checks, get a few emails answered, leave a few more unanswered, check the snail mail, run to the grocery store for a few things, make breakfast for lunch,  tweak a few crafty homespun playthings, watch an episode of Bonanza, take a walk around the block, chit chat with some friends dropping in to check on the wife, play a few games of Boggle and >tick,tock< it's two o'clock... Where does the time go?

Well, tomorrow's another day. We all hope so anyway...

Cats on the desktop

Right smack dab in the middle of my great desk/workspace organization process yesterday, the wife shows up with a few friends in tow. And a cat. The friends got an eyeful of the pretty much floor-to-ceiling stacks of toymaking odds and ends, stuff strewn from one end of the room to the other and the cat...

Well, the cat's a teensy little fellow with the softest plush fur, rather long-haired with Siamese sort of coloring and see-through blue eyes. I am not excited about having an animal in such close quarters... but he- actually it's a she is hard to resist.

Of course, the first time I held her she got excited and leaped all four little paws onto my already scattered desktop, spilling the plastic container of dirty gray brush-cleaning water over everything within a foot or so. At least she didn't trample anything in soft clay or wet rubber while making her hasty exit!

Should make for some interesting adventures as she settles in, the little scamp. Not 100% on her name yet, Cocoanut, Cocoa, Puddin', GoGo, Zippy. All bandied about as possibilities. I suggested what seemed to me at least more practical appellations like 'Get Outta Here!', 'Get Offa There!' and, my favorite, 'Poo on Paws'...

Maybe I'm over-thinking it...

 

Chaos on the desktop

Hey, I know it's been deathly silent here lately; these half-baked musings have taken a backseat to my toy production, trying to inject some 'life' into that endeavor by creating new stuff, streamling processes and upgrading some 'standard' offerings. As I like to say 'More fun than humans should be allowed to have!'

Anyway, today's project- in addition to finishing the front half of a vintage-comic-book-style Green Goblin mask for the Dr. Evil doll(not Mike Myers' fruity villain, fer crying out loud! The original Dr. Evil is an old blue-skinned, bug-eyed alien figure, arch enemy of toy superhero, Captain Action!>fanfare<) -is organizing the chaotic mess that my desk/work area has become. There are so many doll parts, paint bottles, latex jars, half-finished doll boots, plastic castings, rubber molds, assorted tools, scrap papers, more tools, more molds, more paint, more lumps of clay...

There's no room anymore to spread out my drawing pads to work on the now-delayed( by my easily side-tracked, attention deficient, creative genius current 'wild hair'- which is, of course, the old wild hair, just somewhat re-invigorated)super-secret 2D art projects... and the scanner if I did have room to sit down and draw... well, I know it's under these stacks of boxes, papers, doll parts, craft bins, prototype Captain Action space helmet, comics- some guy keeps sending me piles of comics...! -and another box of who knows what dragged back from the 'remote studio'... somewhere...

I've got to make some sense of this area to begin with so I can drag out the drawing stuff again- and so the room can be organized somewhat- or at least passable -when the cable guy shows up tomorrow afternoon to plug us in. Yes, after an extended period of non-cable, snowy, grainy, broadcast quality TV viewing, we're going for the wire again. The guy showed up at the door, ostensibly checking in on a previous customer at this address, and had a swell offer for 'free this and that' and 'no commitment' and so forth. My spouse made the critical error of leaving the decision to me, the confirmed TV-holic from way back... Already my mind is awash in sweet expectant dreams of vintage TV Land programming, old movies on AMC , The History Channel, Biography, aaahhhhh....

At any rate, I don't want the installer tripping, falling, crushing a new mask sculpture and breaking a lamp and pulling over molds full of wet multi-colored latex on his way down, cracking his bean on a table corner, waking up in the hospital with a battery of lawyers at his bedside determined to sue me out of existence...!

Oh, man... just thinking about it makes me tired... I think I need a nap!

Filler

...or powerful ponderance(is that really a word? I don't think so...), you decide.

Asked about my personal tastes or 'favorites' by a fellow pop culture geek, I began to respond this way:

"I'm waiting for your top-11 lists.   Books,TV,Comics,Toys.."
 

Hmmm, let's see...

Comics:
 1) Batman - Natcherly! First of all, it's the suit. The idea of wearing a cape and looking that good in tights has always done it for me. The hood with ears, the mask, the gloves. That's stylin', baby! Despite the many incarnations- light-hearted and 'duly deputized agent of the law' or darkly menacing -unbelieveable stories(in the 50s the stories were sci-fi influenced, way out stuff!)and the changes time has wrought- Who was the Einstein that decided Robin should grow up? My two cents: Comic reality should be Never-Never Land. Batman doesn't get older, therefore Robin doesn't get older! Much less move out, go to college, change his super-identity, get replaced by another brazen youth and another and another...  -Anyway, the nerve of that guy, showing up in that crazy purple and blue getup, swinging from a Bat-rope while pretty much blinded by a mask...?!? Well, is there anybody who wouldn't wanna try it?
    I can't say for sure whether I'd read the comics before seeing the TV show so I don't know if I can separate one from the other. Thus all the other TV accoutrements have to factor into the equation for me- The Batmobile, Wayne Manor, the cave, the secret identity, Robin's quick-witted exclamations. Too many grabby suppositions in one place for a kid to resist!
    Later on the noble aspiration of avenging his parents' death added a new dimension to the Caped Crusader for me, who couldn't empathize with that kind of trauma?... Still, I prefer the surface value over the 'driven' aspects of the character. What can I say, I'm just not a 'deep' comics sort of fella.

 2) Tarzan - Any version but especially Joe Kubert's DC run. His Tarzan was elegant and primitive all at once. Rough hewn and refined, cruel and compassionate. We're accustomed to seeing Tarzan 'in the flesh' with all the movies and TV adaptations- Ron Ely and Mike Henry being my personal favorites -but Kubert's art really put skin on Burroughs' bone.
   It was recently commented somewhere- I can't recall where I heard it or read it -that Burroughs tale was inspired in part by the then-fairly-current Darwinian theories of adaptation of species which, of course, led directly to the predominance of today's evolutionary thinking.
    Good grief! It seems obvious, of course, but I always thought it was just fun stuff about wearing a loincloth in the jungle, swinging from vines and yelling at the top of your lungs!

 3) Swamp Thing (1-10) - Yeah, it was sometimes slightly 70s overblown auteurism but with it's muck-encrusted hero and a parade of far-out antagonists it aimed for the same sort of once-removed commentary on the human condition that Star Trek achieved by removing it's heroes to the future. Plus it guest-starred Batman in one issue!
   I like to say "Berni Wrightson made all his characters 'repulsively beautiful'." Actually I just now made that up...
    I lost interest after he left- I still remember the keen disappointment of that abrupt switch despite the art of Alfredo Alacala, a fine draftsman whose drawings I usually enjoyed immensely! -and on the rare occasion that I picked up a ST comic, just couldn't get enthralled without the 'attractive monstrousness' of his drawings. Plus the creature became some sort of elemental uber-being later on. Not nearly so interesting to me as the somewhat pathetic and tortured- not to mention heartbroken -Alec Holland, victim of change. 

Did I say I'm not a 'deep' comics sort of fella?!?

 4) That's only three?!? I don't know if I have eleven favorites....! Ay-yi-yi...

So that was that. Now that  think about it I can go on to:

TV Shows? That's easier.

 1) Batman 2) Star Trek 3) Bonanza 4)... Well, okay, maybe it's not so easy... Who really quantifies or prioritizes this kinda stuff anyway?!? Except magazine or TV people who get paid to crunch the numbers and tell their audience what's number 100 and count down to number one...!

After number three it's just a mess of shows I like: The Big Valley, Andy Griffith, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Wild, Wild West, Adventures of Superman, The Rifleman, Zorro, The Cisco Kid. And I'd like to see The Six Million Dollar Man again. That was big for me as a youngster. Batman in regular clothes, I guess. With robot arms.That's twelve...

Movies, in no particular order: Fantastic Voyage, Batman(again with Batman!), The Cowboys, Hidalgo, Cool Hand Luke, The Shawshank Redemption, Unforgiven, The Shootist, Jeremiah Johnson, Forrest Gump.

Books: John Jakes' North and South trilogy, any John Grisham but esp. The Rainmaker(although I liked the book I had to read it again after seeing the film. When the father, played by Red West- better known as Elvis' bodyguard and Wild, Wild West stunt player -silently displays the picture of his dead son in the courtroom... if that don't rip your heart out, well, you need to get checked. And fast....), I like James Patterson mysteries too and O. Henry's short stories; I can go back and read them every coupla years because, like the movies, I digest them and forget 'em.

Otherwise, I confess, I'm not as well read as I like to suggest by my attemps o' clever phraseology. Shakespeare I know only by his bust on Batman's desk! (Again with the Batman...) And a school field trip to the Skinni Mini theater in... tenth grade, wazzit? Mr. Dave Brubaker's English Lit class walked over the tree-lined streets of Millersville from our high school- a real trip for me, I lived out in the middle of nowhere and never saw more of that college town than was revealed by the daily route of my school bus! -to that pint-sized venue to watch Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting's butt in Romeo and Juliet. What an adventure!

Toys: Captain Action, Johnny West, Soaky bottles(guess whooo?!?), gum cards- I don't have a big collection anymore, used to have all the original Batman cards. One day long ago while making the rounds of local yard sales my wife got my attention while I diligently searched for toy goods to sell or trade, 'Look at these.', she said. I glanced quickly at a stack of cards, wrapped in a rubber band, sealed in a sandwich bag, 'Hmmm, what is it... James Bond...?' The first card was a guy in a suit jacket, hair slicked back... and I went back to the table of goods I was looking over. 'No! Look at them!', she insisted. I did. First card in the 'Real Photos' set, commonly referred to as 'Bat-Laffs' due to the captioned backs, is Adam West as Bruce Wayne in a suit jacket, hair slicked back... Holy Heart Failure! It was great find, missing about eight, maybe ten cards out of 55, if I recall. Plus some duplicates so I could trade for what was missing. -do you consider them 'toys' though? I do. What else? Coloring books. Arcade cards. I guess my Star Trek props would be considered 'toys' even though some are 'high end' they're still just glorified noisemakers! I've got an Enterprise model too that makes noises and lights up. That'll keep any child of forty-something entertained for a good long while.

   And there are the little plastic, uh, Batman... figures... My mom used to order one every year out of the Wilton catalog because I'd invariably dig a Batcave in the dirt embankment behind our house, it would cave in, trappping Batman under tons of dirt and rock, I'd get called in for supper and forget about him for a while and whence I returned, he was gone. This happened more than once so I'm starting to think my little brother- The fiend! -may have been digging them out, tying them to bottle rockets and launching them into space or just melting them down with matches, one or the other.

Boy, I'm getting off the track a little, I theenk. Besides, it's getting to be that time when my coach turns into a pumpkin. Or I go over and play Boggle for two hours, counting down the number of hours of sleep I'll get if I play just one more game... no, wait, just one more...