Today is January 31, and you know what that means… It’s National Gorilla Suit Day. This would be as appropriate a time as any to mention that I recently picked up The Completely MAD Don Martin, an exhaustive two-volume compendium of every cartoon every published in MAD Magazine by the late, great Don Martin, the [...]
Archive for January 2010
Gorilla the golden west
January 31, 2010Comic Art Friday: A quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore
January 29, 2010Here’s an interesting historical fact: 165 years ago today — January 29, 1845 — Edgar Allan Poe’s immortal poem The Raven was published for the first time under its author’s byline, in the New York Evening Mirror. Considered by many — your Uncle Swan included — to be among the greatest American poetic works, The [...]
A slice of Rye
January 28, 2010J.D. Salinger is dead. At least, we think he is. I frame the above observation in this way because, as anyone knows who knows anything at all about the elusive author of The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger spent more than a half-century shrouding himself in mystery. The man who penned the 20th century’s seminal [...]
Irony of the Day: Your lottery number is up
January 27, 2010From the Don’t Count Your Chickens Before You Eat All the Eggs Department… A 47-year-old woman who recently won $8,000 in the Ohio Lottery was struck and killed by a passing car as she left the bar where she was celebrating her windfall. I wonder how much a cemetery plot and casket cost in Ohio? [...]
Comic Art Friday: Tony, Tony, Tony
January 22, 2010I’ve always been as much a student of comic book history as I am a connoisseur of comics themselves. Indeed, given the state of modern comics, I get far more enjoyment from reading about the great comics and creators of times past than from the often execrable product being churned out today. (Don’t get me [...]
Postscript… with a bullet
January 20, 2010It’s indicative how stunned I was by the death of novelist Robert B. Parker that I neglected to mention in my memorial post the most personal element of my Parker experience… I actually met the man once. This would have been, I believe, in the fall of 1982. Parker was on a tour promoting Ceremony, [...]
The final bullet
January 19, 2010Books live forever. Authors, sadly, do not. Robert B. Parker has been my favorite novelist since 1977, when I checked out Mortal Stakes, the third novel in his now-legendary series of books featuring the one-named private detective Spenser, from the Novato High School library and immediately fell in love. (In a purely platonic and literary [...]
Silver threads
January 19, 2010On this date 25 years ago — a chilly, overcast January day here in Wine Country — KJ and I were wed. What’s the secret of being married for 25 years? No secret, really. It’s the same as with anything. If you keep doing something without quitting, eventually you’ll have done it for a quarter-century. [...]
Globetrotting
January 18, 2010Yes, the clatter of keys you heard during last night’s Golden Globe Awards telecast was indeed yours truly typing notes. What follows represents my more cogent observations. (Lucky for you I edit out the blather.) Ricky Gervais as host: Fail. Ye gods, man — penis jokes and endless plugs for your own DVD box set? [...]
That’s why he’s the King
January 18, 2010Truer words were never uttered… “The time is always right to do what is right.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Thanks for everything, Dr. King.
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