2011-2012 school year: suspenders are… cool?

This one’s been drawn for awhile, but I decided to sit on it until Halloween so I could share my costume with y’all. The old bald guy character appeared in this comic a few weeks ago.

chalkboard drawings: halloween edition, part three

thrift store finds: the spirit’s casebook of true haunted houses & ghosts

(Thrift Store Finds is a mostly-weekly “column” of sorts where I discuss some of the cool books I’ve happened upon in my neighborhood St. Vincent DePaul store. Please don’t mistake me for an expert on any of the books I am writing about… I’m just a fan of a bargain.)

With Halloween but two days away, I thought it would be a good time to look at a creepy paperback I came across recently.

The Spirit’s Casebook of True Haunted Houses & Ghosts by Will Eisner. Published by Tempo Books in1976. I picked this up for fifty cents.

odds and ends

A grad school friend of mine sent me this link to Thirty Books Everyone Should Read Before They’re Thirty. I’ve never seen one of these list-articles I’ve ever entirely agreed with, but as I turned 30 this year, I thought this rated a look a look.

According to my own reading and the link above, I have read 21 of the 30 books worth reading before one turns 30. Of those nine misses, four of them (The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine, The Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin, and The Prince by Machiavelli) are all books I’ve read bits and pieces of in various college classes. It may not count, but goshdarnit, it should.

As with any “list” type article, there’s tons of room for debate. I would argue that The Wizard of Oz belongs on this list over The Wind in the Willows… but seeing as that’s exactly the type of conversation these things should inspire, I was glad of it.

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Last night, a couple of friends and I went and saw Ghostbusters on the big screen. The movie’s been rereleased and has been playing in select theaters throughout October.

If you read this blog for two weeks, you can be assured a reference to Ghostbusters. It’s a cornerstone of my childhood and I’ve easily seen the movie over 100 times on video, HBO, basic cable, and God only knows where else… but I have never seen it in theaters! In these woeful financial times, I was a little reticent about ponying up $10 bucks to rewatch a movie I know by heart… but I was pleasantly surprised!

Honestly, it was like seeing a whole different movie. The subtleties of the main actors’ work played SO much better projected on a huge screen. Even the smaller laughs were bigger. The next time I hear about a movie I love being rereleased, I’m not going to rationalize myself out of going to see it with owning it on DVD. Movies are meant to be seen that big.

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One final link: If you’re a child of the mid 1980’s/1990’s, I highly recommend going over to X-Entertainment and getting yourself in the mood for Halloween with the Halloween Countdown. Every year, Matt Caracappa spends the month of October gleefully pouring over the memories, the marketing, and the fun of Halloween in a daily blog which is required reading. X-Entertainment gives Christmas the same treatment and it’s become a yearly tradition for me.

2011-2012 school year: sick day

Look, I love my family. They’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I was miserable before I had them in my life.

….BUT. Sick days used to be amazing. I’ll be honest: I used to take sick days when I wasn’t even all that sick! Sleeping in, watching daytime TV, napping? Yeah, that stuff doesn’t happen when I take a sick day now.

2011-2012 school year: germs

I’ve done OK with getting sick in recent years, but I gotta admit… I was knocked flat on my back last week. Yuck.

Also, this is my 600th post!

2011-2012 school year- twee

 

 

2011-2012 school year: who’s miller?

I might as well have said “Everybody can wang chung tonight, Seth’s done!”

I was lucky enough to acquire an iPad last year, primarily for classroom use. I haven’t figured out a great way to use it beyond simple classroom management… but in that area, it’s been a boon. Going over grades with students used to take an entire period; now it takes about ten minutes. I pull up ProgressBook (our school’s online grading program), hand the iPad to the kids, and let them look.

The iPad would be an interesting tool to use if I had a classroom set… but I’m not holding my breath on that one. I’m told our district received VCRs in all the classrooms in the early 2000’s.

chalkboard drawings: halloween edition, part two

We’re still in Halloween week. I spent two days of this particular week in the computer lab of our school. More on that later… here are the chalkboard drawings!

thrift store finds: a fantastic four tie

This week’s thrift store find: A novelty tie! A GEEKY novelty tie!

A Fantastic Four tie! Got it for a buck.

Here’s the strange thing about this tie- with ALL the amazing covers the tie makers could have chosen to represent as a piece of neckwear featuring the Fantastic Four, the cover represented here is Fantastic Four #334, one of the least remarkable FF covers I’ve ever seen.

Oh, the cover is drawn by Walt Simonson, so it’s a beautiful interpretation of the characters… but not exactly iconic. The characters are just kind of… standing there. I don’t demand excitement in action in all my graphic ties (though it obviously helps in some cases).

Fantastic Four #334 was a part of Marvel’s big Acts of Vengeance crossover in the late 1980’s. In this big company-wide story, Thor’s brother Loki comes up with the brilliant idea of sending all the various super villans of the Marvel Universe up against heroes they had never fought before, thinking the tactical advantage would bring them success. Even by the standards of the time, this crossover was weak tea.

At any rate, the crossover explains why you can see all sorts of third tier supervillians in the background of this tie. most prominently featured are The Shocker at the tip of the tie and… The Beetle.

That’s right, ol’ Abner Jenkins gets more tie real estate than The Invisible Woman. What a world.