His Screams Were Awful

Jumbo Comics #95 (January 1947).

Reverse Evolution

The Transformation of Henry Limpet

The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964).

Kissing Dolls

Flipping through some old comics a few days ago and came across this advertisement for novelty "kissing" dolls. Shocking!

It appears the Comics Code Authority wasn't as strict in their oversight about the content of comic books when it came to advertisements. Not very surprising since the same board had no problem letting a comic book run ads for Raquel Welch inflatable love pillows.

Original from Love Romances #103 (August 1963).

And the winner for Creepiest or Most Disturbing Art on a Comic Book Cover Ever goes to...

"YOUNG LOVE #74 from way back in June 1969!"

(clap clap clap clap clap)

"With us today is artist Nick Cardy, who drew what is overwhelmingly the most awkward cover scene ever to grace a comic book! It's a real work of art, folks! The nubile, emotionally distraught daughter with her breasts in her Father's lap, the pensive, thousand-yard stare of the father into the distance, legs crossed, arms frozen as if he was too embarrassed to move for fear of the discovery of a terrible, embarrassing secret. A true classic and I'm squirming just looking at it. How ever did you do it, Nick?"

"It wasn't easy. Presenting raw sexual imagery as something innocent and pure is a heck of a balancing act. Like most of my fellow artists in the biz we had a lot of experience sneaking questionable content past the CCA censors but the editor kept rejecting the preliminary sketches I sent him. He'd say: 'Too innocent! Not sexy enough! Too sexy, want to get me fired? Not enough innuendo! Too MUCH innuendo!' The cost of mailing all the artwork was nearly my ruin. We didn't have the internet back then. Human messengers actually risked life and limb running through busy New York streets to deliver the artwork on time! Some died, even, I'm told."

"But it was totally worth it! You had some stiff competition considering you were up against every comic published in the 1990s. All that hard work really paid off!"

"Yeah, I finally nailed the cover but I had to think about baseball a lot."

"Nick Cardy, folks!"

(clap clap clap clap clap)

The Bane of Toastmasters

Here is the Schoolhouse Rock educational video from 1975 that ensured that no one of my generation will ever be able to recite the Preamble of the Unites States Constitution without unintentionally speak-singing it.

Vocals by Lynn Ahrens

I can't tell how many times I have heard someone stretch out the words when saying the phrase "The-uuhhhh-uh-uhhh United States of...America." Such is the power of the insidious meme.

Happy July 4th!

Not Enough Explosions If You Ask Me

On principle I dislike the 1980s Transformers and GI Joe cartoons. Not because they were in reality little more than infomercials pushing a line of cheap toys but because the makers intentionally stifled creativity. A kid was handed a set of toys complete with canonical back story and told to play. There were the good guys and the ugly, evil, weaselly, terrorist bad guys. The toys were specifically designed to leave little room for the imagination. Any kid I knew who had those toys typically became bored with them in about five minutes.

The original GI Joe toys were patriotic heroes, sure, but that is as far as it went. You bought a Joe and then as the owner you did with it what you wanted, put him into whatever scenario you could think of during play. Since every kid in the neighborhood had one it was just a matter of deciding who would be the "losing" side when it was time to go home for dinner when the streetlights came on. Sometimes my doll wasn't even a soldier. On occasion he'd be wrapped in foil and frozen in a block of ice that I allowed to slowly melt in the backyard over a day or two. The idea was that my Joe was an astronaut who crash landed on a mysterious, hostile alien planet and had to use his wits to survive after he came out of suspended animation. I didn't read a lot of Dick and Jane as a kid. The majority of my reading was from old SF novels and pulp adventure stories.

Not that kids of the 80s and later don't do with their toys whatever they want, but in that era the option was designed out and since the figures had little or no articulation there was no naturally organic way to play with them other than in the way the maker intended. One aspect of toys that is the bane of anyone manufacturing one is that often the child will get hours of fun not from the plaything itself but from the cardboard box it arrived in. Companies know this and dream of the day a toy will fascinate a child as much as the discarded packaging. Companies have also over the last several decades continually designed themselves farther and farther away from the concept of a toy that will continually capture the imagination and dollars from the parental pockets.

That said I don't really dislike the Transformers films. They are far enough away from the original idea of the cartoon series to interest a new audience while not totally alienating the old one. I liked the second film more than the first in spite of the ill-considered inclusion of the Ghetto-Bots and the blatant exploitation of females, but then the creative team was unashamedly going right for the core demographic of young males. From what I saw of most of the audience they were thoroughly enjoying every scene with Megan Fox, the blond Megan Fox clone and wise-cracking robots blowing stuff up. The story, such as it was, made sense and continued ideas put forth in the initial film. I'm one of those who are pretty happy to get any science fiction films at all and since the best SF on television right now seems to be contained in commercials for cars and juice box drinks I was pretty satisfied with the movie as a whole. There was enough there to allow a viewer to read into scenes and expect there is a wider universe to the Transformers saga without having to explain and spell out each and every little thing like the audience is full of six year old children who don't get a sight gag in an old Warner Bros. cartoon unless it is repeated two to three times.

Many critics have blasted Michael Bay for making a film that is nothing but explosions, breasts and possibly exploding breasts. But then what one expect a war between giant robots with no regard for the human ants under their feet to look like? I left the theater surprised there were only a million explosions instead of a gajillion.

19 Again

I don't think Nicolas Cage looked this young even when he was that young.

That Nic was de-aged and incidentally made to resemble a Star Trek: The Next Generation-era Will Wheaton in the ad for the upcoming DVD of the recent film Knowing was ridiculously obvious. I can only speculate it was done because it was thought teens probably won't impulse-buy a movie featuring someone old enough to be their father. This image really amounts to false advertising and falls in line with my assertion that if someone has to misrepresent the product to make a sale, then the product isn't worth buying. That the ad appeared in comic books presumably for the young adult market makes Knowing even that much more telling.

This image accompanied another similar ad for the film Push, which features for the most part hot, young attractive people. The comparison between the two images of young and old characters probably made the marketing guys twitch a bit.

Advertisement for upcoming DVD release of the 2009 movie Knowing, from various comic books released this week.

Bunty's Cut-Out Wardrobe of Death

From Bunty #166 (March 1961) & Strange Adventures #128 (May 1961).

That makes my head ache watching it

The Last Dinosaur (1977).

The Last Dinosaur

Once you get past the hilariously awful opening scene there's a tune performed by song stylist Nancy Wilson to be heard. It is likewise terrible 70s cheese but that is not due to any fault of Nancy, who was professional enough to make sure she put some of her wild talent into even the poorest source material. A canceled United States theatrical release, The Last Dinosaur was edited down for the time allotted by the network and premiered as an ABC television movie in February of 1977.

A used Ass Dealer and two Popes walk into a bar

Modern Man magazine (1967).

Once you go Dvorak you never go back

Weird Tales - The Unusual Romance of Ferdinand Pratt (September 1940).

Fun and Games

A little backstory.

The Zombie With the Electronic Brain

I don't know how this specimen of the shambling dead got a sentient, all-powerful Silver Age thinking machine fused to its noggin, but I can't imagine it is now much of a threat to humanity (unless the computer is Atomic, that is). Zombies are slow enough as it is and the Electronic Brain must surely interfere with being all bitey.

Body Identified As Missing Park Ranger

For the uninitiated, the Land of the Lost was a children's television show that debuted in 1974 that in 2009 had a bad movie made from it. The show was about the adventures of a family trapped in a pocket universe full of dinosaurs, rednecks, ape-men and humanoid, predatory lizards called Sleestak. As they searched for a way home the main characters of Rick Marshall, Will and Holly struggled to survive against their environment, aggressive aliens and other denizens who wished them harm. The humans and Enik, the evolved and time-lost leader of the hostile Sleestak, often worked at cross purposes as each wittingly or otherwise sabotaged the efforts of the other to return to their respective worlds.

In one early episode Enik manages to create a portal into the human world and reveals it to Rick Marshall. The portal was useless to the exiles, however, as it opened into a region at an altitude high above the Earth and could not be shifted to ground level. Rick bemoaned the fact that had they parachutes the entire family could have gone home at that time. A recurring plot device of the series would be the Marshall family (usually the bickering kids) screwing around in the Pylons trying to find a way home, typically meeting with disastrous results culminating in a fine lesson learned by all.

The start of Season Three finds a change to the cast of the show. Having not learned anything about haphazardly messing around with the pylons in the previous two seasons, Rick Marshall is gone. By accidentally opening a passage to Earth, Rick is pulled and thrown violently through the portal, spinning out of the Land of the Lost and into the air high above the Grand Canyon. Horribly, as is evident in accompanying video, the background image seen through the portal was similar to the one shown by Enik to Rick previously, depicting a distant horizon far, far beneath the portal. Oopsie.

It is totally fan-fic, but I mocked up the article below because I imagined what the sad, terrible fate of Rick Marshall would have been, sans parachute, when he emerged like a ballistic shell from a warp in space into his world with nothing but the mile-deep chasm of the Grand Canyon below him.

Click to make tabloid sized!

I'm just here for the Sleestaks

Spoiler Alert! There are none. If you have seen the trailers then you have already seen the 'best' the 2009 film The Land of the Lost has to offer.

Since I am such a big fanatic of the original 1970s Land of the Lost television show I know that several people are expecting some angry, unhinged rant about the new movie along lines familiar to those who visit Star Trek forums regarding the reboot film. Other than a few humorous and not so serious gags aside I'm going to have to disappoint. As a fan of science fiction I know what I wanted to see in a LotL movie and the recent entry that opened this week to nearly universally poor reviews and a flat box office was definitely not it.

Simply put, it was not a very good film.

One of the creative problems barring success when adapting television shows to the cinema is the limitations of the broadcast format. Even the shortest story arc can be contained within a short time span of a half hour to an hour because their is a certain freedom to long form story telling that will gradually reveal over weeks. Some shows adapt easily to the big screen and the limited amount of time in which to tell a story and some do not. Star Trek was able to carry that television sensibility to the theaters with some success. There was enough interest from the existing audience of fans to keep the franchise afloat. Recently, faced with the reality of audience indifference the Trek brand was forced to retool the concept and and discard the television format, breathing new life into the Star Trek universe.

The original 1970s children's television show The Land of the Lost is one of those shows that was admittedly limited by the realities of television. However in spite of the Saturday morning budget and inexpensive special effects what made the show somewhat of a success and a small cult favorite were the stories.

The original series always played the science fiction elements as straight and even with the primitive green screen effects and sometimes over-the-top acting it worked, mainly due to the series being high-concept and high budget in soirit if nothing else. This is what the 2009 big screen treatment of The Land of the Lost is missing. In the attempt to distance the product from its "cheesy" origins and start over the film was retooled. However unlike Star Trek the re-imagined Land of the Lost will not share in the critical and financial success of the Roddenberry creation. The Land of the Lost is something of a squandered opportunity. Most films plan for at least a sequel or at most a trilogy over several years exploiting the desire of the audience to see more of the characters or events they care about. This is what brings people back to a television show week after week (and what proves troublesome when giving a serialized show the cinema treatment). The Land of the Lost franchise as it was presented in 2009 will very likely not create many financial opportunities in the future.

The story is particularly troublesome as while it is not complex, it may have been too much for the Director to handle. Often during the film often a character will say or do something in the beginning of a scene which is abandoned halfway through or forgotten about in the next sentence. It is particularly glaringly obvious during the Library of Skulls scene and may have a lot to do with the alleged comedy bits, notably focusing on Will Ferrell. Primarily, what was a problem was the mediocre comedic direction taken by the film. Had the Land of the Lost remained closer to its children's television origins and scared the pants off of the audience then it could have had the opportunity to spawn at least a sequel. There is ample proof that "Hard SF" can be successful at the box office, Star Trek and Batman being two recent examples. What is exceptionally disappointing is that under the right direction Will Ferrell has shown he can act a serious part, as he did a fine dramatic though absurdist role in Stranger Than Fiction. Like Adam Sandler and many other comedians they do their best work when their star power is reigned in and the film does not depend upon their one-liners or wacky facial expressions to carry it.

With a movie that is all about inter-dimensional travel many of the special effects were uninspired. This may have been an intentional homage to the limited budget sets and effects of the 1970s show but it seems odd that the production design would go that way when everything else about the film attempted some creative distance from the source material. There are plenty of references to the original series but they came off as trying too hard and like the humor felt forced into the scenes.

Visually the Sleestak are pretty much the main reason to even see the film or for that matter to watch the original show. Their back story was sad and inspired, another element of the serious tone of the original series that the film discarded. The giant, humanoid predatory lizards were upgraded and the charm of the 1970s series was not abandoned and they have a few new creepy features courtesy of improved prosthetic technology and CGI. Were it not for the frightening reveal of the rows of dentata this movie could have been aimed at more of a family audience with greater success, much like Journey to the Center of the Earth. One of the clues that the film would be a flop was that no action figures were released to any stores in my area and that is a sign that marketing and retailers have little confidence in the success of the film translating into store sales. Another is the lame attempt to create a new catch-phrase in the public consciousness by forcing a stupid joke down our throats by using a familiar daytime talk show host.

It isn't even that what made the film a failure is that it went with a comedic approach though it is clear I would have preferred the more serious style of Science Fiction. Any script whether it be dramatic, surreal or full of toilet jokes could be a critical and financial success if it was good and well-executed. Doctor Who and Red Dwarf are excellent entries in that style. The 2009 Land of the Lost movie is just bad and a very poor effort. It appears clear that the entire production was tailored for whatever Will Ferrell thought would work in a skit. But rejected SNL vignettes do not a movie make.

Look for the DVD to be out on the store shelves by August if not by the end of July. The original ending to the film including the cameos by Kathy Coleman and Wesley Eure that ended up being discarded in the final cut should be included in the release.

via Dr. Zaius

Holly Loves Cha-Ka.

OM NOM NOIR

Nugget (February 1956).

Spider-Band on the Run

The image to the left is a hat tip to Bully and his pal John for the most recent books I received from him published by the fine peoples at Fanatagraphics.

One of Bully's fun features is the Separated at Birth series, where he shows us the comic book covers that were inspired by various other sources. He doesn't editorialize them and lets the reader decide what was homage or swipe. I knocked this together showing the similarities between the 1973 Wings album Band on the Run to the Marvel Treasury Edition #18 reprint collection. Make sure you check out all of Bully's Separated At Birth series, including his coverage of the great John Byrne' homages of the great John Byrne.

Connective Tissue by Bob Fingerman and You'll Never Know by C. Tyler: The illustrated novel Connective Tissue looks like Bob Fingerman's take on Naked Lunch and You'll Never Know is an autobiographical story of a family. Bob Fingerman is currently making waves at Dark Horse Comics. They are both on the pile to read next.

The Brinkley Girls: I need to adjust my tin foil hat because I think my deepest thoughts are being broadcast to Bully and John. How else could he know to send me this? The Brinkley Girls is exactly the kind of book I enjoy and it is full of great art from a bygone era. Nell Brinkley is an artist and illustrator who became a sensation for her full page artistic narratives and she and her work became iconic of the American Flapper era. Colorful, romantic and finely detailed art was her trademark style. In little time her creations (based upon herself, it seems) supplanted the Gibson Girls and became popular enough to have the Ziegfeld Follies use her work as a theme in the shows. The image of the Brinkley Girl also became a standard of fashion as the Brinkley characters were far more fun and open then the rather staid Gibson Girls. The business side of the Nell Brinkley output is also a story of marketing a good product and tying it in to popular culture media to great success.

You can get The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons 1913-1940 at Fantagraphics.

Thanks, guys!

Who Stalks Ann?

An entire generation of young girls thought this type of image was romantic. Boys learned how to behave partly from their exposure of things like this in the media. Pop-culture is not a How To guide.

Young Miss (September 1946).

Dinosaurs Cavort

Here's an interesting short article about stop-motion model animation from Starlog #8 (September 1977) featuring the work done on the 1974 series Land of the Lost.

Four days left to the premiere of the 2009 big screen treatment. I am as filled with dread as I am interest.

Click the slideshow below to take you to the photo set or toggle the full screen button to read the article.

I could be wrong

...And pterodactyls could fly out of my butt. I guess I'll find out in about 5 days.

It all makes sense now

Noticed this for the first time today in the credits for Season 3 of the 70s television show Land of the Lost.

The actor who portrayed the troublesome leader of the militant and hostile Sleestak in Land of the Lost is named Jon Locke. On the show LOST the likewise problematic new leader of the Others is named John Locke.

Coincidence?

Sure. I think the final season will be one big reveal culminating in the Marshall family leading the survivors home.

South of Pulitzer

Nugget (February 1956).

Specism

Why didn't the chimpanzee rate a utility belt? He was the chief science officer.

ARK II cast from Starlog #8 (September 1977).

Palm Beach Nights

1925 was a very good year.

The New Eve (May 1925).

Impure Woman

I can see this painted on the side of a van.

From Bible Readings for the Home (Pacific Press Publishing Associates, 1963).

The Question Must Be Asked: Is Our Children Watching?

I have only ever seen this rare Wally Wood illustration for an article about Saturday morning television as a poor-register photocopy in books and old fanzines. I liked it enough to snag a pristine copy for myself and scan the art and the article. The art is classic Wally Wood and enjoyably cartoonish. The resolute and unafraid Mouse standing his ground against a tidal wave of Super-Heroes is a great sight-gag. The article is one typical of the era though a bit late in coming. It is from the perspective of the generation that is just beginning to become aware what the teens and college students already knew for several years, that comic books were not for children anymore.

Click the picture to give yourself some giant Wood.

The accompanying article complains mostly about the violence in the new generation of cartoons featuring the "weirdies", the Super-Heroes. While the piece does mention both sides of the argument about the effects of violence on children it comes down in favor of the classic and presumably more kid-friendly characters from animation. The author seems to have forgotten how incredibly violent the old cartoons were. They were astonishingly brutal even with the heavy editing that was performed prior to network broadcast to ensure all the explosions and maiming of bunnies at the hands of crazed opera singers were not shown and all the horror occurred between scenes or off-screen.

Additionally, the heroes practiced a morality that the funny animal characters never did. More often than not the anthropomorphic critters are portrayed as amoral, homicidal manipulators and every bit as immoral as the villains the super-heroes battle. At the time of this article some groups may have been of the opinion that a rodent setting off a stick of dynamite in a cat's mouth in order to steal a piece of cheese was harmless, but using a fist made of stone to stop Dr. Doom from conquering the planet was irredeemably damaging to the psyche of children.

Here is the entire hand-wringing article:

TV Guide ( March 23-29 1968).

Virginia Is For Prudes

I enjoy reading the letters pages and editorials of comic books and magazines. While a letter page does not have the immediate feedback of the internet forum of today it does allow insight into what the publishers are focusing on. The limitations of space forces them to discard the snark and cherry pick for good or ill the items they don't want to acknowledge or keep the ones that would fit their goals. One exception to the letter pages would be those accompanying anything written by Kirkman. I'd like more story and less chat in his books.

On occasion you come across a gem or two among the dross like the the insights of a young fan who would become a force in comics years later or the ignorant bleats of the racist. Those are always interesting. For example, from way back in 1977 here is the letter that was sent in by one reader complaining about the illustrations that accompanied the classic Fredric Browne SF story Arena.

A few words of caution, don't stare too long at the art below because you might catch the "sexual problems" the reader warned about.
Painting by Boris Vallejo, ink drawing by Rene from Starlog #4 (March 1977).

Letter published in Starlog #6 (June 1977).

Tessie

Tessie the Typist #19 (December 1948).

A Month in Review

I'm kinda at wits end about data storage options. This is the second back up drive that crashed and wiped out all the stuff I've saved this year. Short of burning everything in ever-increasingly dis-organized volumes to CD I have no idea what I'm going to do. My backup drive failed, then another and now a flash drive I bought so I could carry stuff between two computers also crashed out. I just bought it. I'm sort of angry about it and some rare stuff is lost forever. I could duplicate some of the art I made but that would be a chore the second time around and not in the least bit enjoyable. I'm most upset over losing very detailed drafts of the apocalyptic tale Sacrilege Lands and Realms Apart, a short story of elder gods infesting San Diego. When the hard drive crashed I was glad I had the documents saved on the flash. Then that one quit working within a week. Rating: ☆

At the start of the month I was at work when a good citizen came into the store and let me know that some kids idling their car next to the outside produce stands were loading up watermelons into the vehicle. I looked out the window and saw that was indeed the case. I also noticed there was no license plate on the front of the car. I went outside to send them off. While walking towards the car I noticed they had no license plate on the back of the car, either. Apparently they had removed them prior to coming onto the property to steal stuff. Often when a shoplifter gets out of the store we just get the license plate of the car, make a police report and send off the video to the detective assigned to the case. The owner of the car will eventually get pulled over and there will be a warrant out for them. A lot of the time they are career criminals and we get a call asking if we want to press charges. We always do.

I was walking toward the kids when they jumped into the car and started shouting, yelling that I was out of luck in trying to identify them to the police. They all found great amusement in this fact and called me names like 'bee-yotch' and impugned my gender preferences. The car started to accelerate away so I took a couple of steps towards it and kicked the passenger side door really hard. The car screeched to a halt and I kicked the door again, this time denting it severely. The driver went absolutely bonkers and started screaming through the open passenger window about what I did to the car. I thought that took some nerve. I told him to have his Daddy call me about the dent and I'll fill him in about how it happened. Then I said, being awesomely cool: "How do you like those melons?" He screamed some curse words and drove off. I decided to call it even. Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Saw Terminator Salvation this week and while I didn't outright hate it I agree that it would have been much better had it gone with one of the alternate screenplays where Christian Bale did not play John Connor. I also think the decision to cancel Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles over the execrable Dollhouse was directly linked to the expected box office prospects of the film. I speculate that it was common knowledge that there would be little future and revenue for the film past the opening weekend. Since the television show ratings would not be getting a boost from Salvation, the decision was made to cancel Chronicles rather than renew it and be on the hook for all the production money. I have little doubt if there was positive buzz in the studios that Salvation would be a huge smash then Chronicles would have been renewed for at least one more season. Rating: ☆☆

Bully sent two books which I enjoyed immensely.

Even the most uninitiated who know of the Superman character are aware that he has been around in print for longer than they have been alive. Many people think he was the first superhero. Well, they are wrong. Supermen, The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 is a fine companion piece to the Fletcher Hanks collection from 2007. The book showcases a number of characters that were around long before Superman jumped over his first skyscraper. All the comic book heroes were continuations of if not descendants of the Pulp Heroes of previous decades. Comic books, back then, where the replacement for the failing market and the more mature content of pulp magazines were being attacked by politicians and parents. Easy to read sequential pictures replaced text and a whole new and younger market was exploited. The book is a fine collection of early comic books and is a must-have for those interested in pulp heroes and the infant comic book industry.

Boody. The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers was the other book I received. This collection of Sparky Watts and Babe tales put together by Craig Yoe is just what the title claims: Bizarre. Rogers combined surrealism, zany excess, 'Lil Abner and super heroics to create his stories. What's missing from the volume though is the apocalyptic tale of Sparky Watts that started all the renewed interest in Rogers when it appeared on blogs a year or so ago. The volume is well-represented otherwise, particularly with the Babe stories, but the end of the world arc is really too good not to have been included. You can get Supermen, The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 and Boody. The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers at Fanatagraphics. Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Halfway through two weeks vacation. Did I need it. The last time I was on 'vacation' was a few years ago when I was looking for work. That wasn't a very restful time. This time around I'm taking it easy and getting stuff I enjoy done. Reading, watching movies, getting caught up on things. Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

I've been spending a lot of time wandering around used book stores and thrift shops looking for old books. Found a few nice ones that I scanned and posted some of the images over the last few days. Southern California really isn't the best resource for what I'm looking for. Most of the houses and families have not been around that long compared to other parts of the country. On the other coast boxes of books, records and other cool ephemera will be in some attic for 60 years or more and will eventually make it to a garage sale.

In Southern California the pickings are far more slim and neat stuff will often get thrown out rather than dragged from home to home until it sells at a yard sale. The other aspect of this area is that quite often people are aware of what their old stuff is worth and won't part with it unless they get top dollar. Not that I'm looking to make a steal or rip someone off, I don't care about that. The problem with people wanting 50 bucks for an old book is that there really isn't much market for it. It isn't even that there is a speculation boom. Typically some owner looks up a book on the internet and see it's worth $100 someplace and they want that much for it, regardless of the condition or whether they can actually sell it or not. Travel north a bit and there are plenty of garage sales you can find cool stuff at without taking out a loan. I just look for neat stuff to purchase at a reasonable price. I've got some family camping up north this month and they usually find good stuff to bring back. Rating: ☆☆☆

My son got a notice to serve on a jury a few weeks back and went in today. He didn't get picked so he won't be called for a year at least. Personally, I despise jury duty. I'm not in a job where I get paid if I am not working. Serving on a jury means no paycheck which means not paying the bills which means I lose my car and then have no job. I went through that in Maryland and I'm not ever being in a position where that happens again. Juries also scare me. The prospect of being tried by a 'jury of my peers' keeps me on the straight and narrow. I'm terrified that I will get arrested in some Kafkaesque nightmare of a situation and going to trial. Not being wealthy I'm totally screwed if that happens. My peers are probably rampaging dumbasses. I imagine I'll get the chair because my jury will consist of twelve wingnuts who would consult the bible for their jury instructions and pray for guidance in the best way to make me pay for my sins so my eternal soul can be saved. Rating: Zero stars.

Please ignore the hot pink and black rubber (that melts in the heat of a closed car and gets sticky blobs all over) 2 Fast 2 Furious steering wheel cover that came free with the car and check out those tire tracks on the road ahead. The off-ramp I'm driving down is leaving the 805 above Mission Valley towards Interstate 8. On the other side of that mound of iceplant the tracks lead through is a drop of about 100 feet. That must have sucked to go flying off the edge. Hope everything was okay. Rating: ☆☆☆ (For schadenfreude).

Up To Eleven

Childcraft: The How and Why Library, vol. 8, How Things Work (1964). Art by John M. Bolt Jr.