When Nick Cardy ruled the world

How could you be 10 and *not* buy these books?

Desert Island DVD's

A Thin Man marathon is on TCM right now and if I had known I would have taken the night off.

It is a great regret that my only chance to see The Thin Man on the big screen was thwarted when I attended a funeral.

If you've never seen one rent it, buy it, download it, whatever you kids do today. It's a lot of fun.

Missed friends

I miss my Apple ImageWriter II. And I'll tell you why. Because it worked! You pressed the print button and it went and went. I once wanted to print out a 250-page novel. I pressed the print button, went to work, and when I came back, I had my novel waiting for me.

Compare this to any inkjet printer. Try to print out a one-page Google map and it's a three-day ordeal. You get cryptic error messages, paper jams, and you run out of cyan halfway through the job.

I did try using a converter cable and GIMP software to make my OSX Mac print on the Imagewriter with mixed results (words looked good, images came out upside down!).

Apple please please. Make a magic plug-in and bring your orphans back home.

Classics of Western Literature Part 1

I saw Phil Seuling talk at one of his conventions in Philadelphia, and he said the Golden Age of Comics wasn't the 1930s, or 40s,  it was the first year you started reading comic books. JLA #112 is probably one of the first books I bought and it was just amazing. Beautiful Nick Cardy cover. Dick Dillin and Dick Giordano doing the main story. And reprints of the JLA, the Seven Soldiers of Victory and a Starman story. I had just started getting acquainted with the DC universe, I had catching up to do and the reprints were just what I needed. 100 pages of pure magic for 60 cents. Was there ever a better bargain in the world?

I begged my dad to write a check so I could subscribe.

And I got my first issue, (#117) in which, the page count was cut to 32 pages, Frank McLaughlin replaced Dick Giordano on inks, Mike Grell did the cover. I would get twice as many issues but, the Golden Age for me was officially over.

Dressed up

Christmas time of course makes me think of Dave Berg cartoons from his reprint books of cartoons from Mad. I was 10 or so in the early '70s when these books came out, and these comics were from the early '60s. When he drew cartoons that took place at Christmas or New Year's parties, the men wore tuxedos with thin lapels and had these short haircuts, and the women wore these strapless ball gowns.

And all I could think of was: This is what life's going to be like when I'm a grownup.

The Christmas and New Year's parties I've been to since then have been awfully disappointing. I thought they would be something out of Mad Men, but no, just people in jeans and sweaters. Maybe I hang out with the wrong crowd.

Movie review: The Help

Three reasons this movie isn't nearly as good as critics say it is.

1) It's two hours of white people being mean to black people. That's the total extent of the plot.

2) There's a revenge scenario that is so gross I'm sure even the Farrelly Brothers would reject it.

3) The message the producers think they're sending out is: It's a tragedy that the only job black women could get in the '50 was being a maid. The message they're inadvertently sending out is: It's a tragedy that the only job a black actress can get today is playing a maid.

Anyone can cast a black woman as a maid, Hollywood's been doing it for 100 years! I'll tell you who should get the Oscar, the producers of "Columbiana."