The boys are both enrolled in three or four separate summer reading programs: two through various local libraries and two through local businesses. Aside from plastic fish, the kids have earned coupons to IHOP and $5 dollar gift certificates to Half-Price Books.
My friend Kelly sent this terrific package full of soon-to-be reviewed Thrift Store Finds and R.L. Stine books. You’re the best!
A couple of new comics about my kids before I go into pre-school hibernation. I go back to my classroom VERY early compared with most other schools. I’ll be back in the swing of things before the end of August. I know, I know.
You might recognize the bin of toys from this comic a few weeks ago.
…and you WILL recognize the theme song to Animaniacs. Or art least, you should. One of the best cartoons of the 1990’s, I’ve shown the boys a couple of episodes of the show and it’s safe to say they are obsessed.
That’s fair enough, because I was obsessed with Animaniacs when I was a kid. The show’s mix of satire and classic Warner Brothers gags completely won me over. To be fair, there were a couple of less enjoyable segments in the show (I’m still not a Hip-Hippos fan) but SO many good ones.
For almost my entire life, my family’s been vacationing down at the New Jersey shore. We mainly encamped around the Point Pleasant/Seaside Heights/Lavalette area until a few years ago, when MTV started filming Jersey Shore in the same areas. Suddenly, the prices on hotel rooms, restaurants, and boardwalk fun tripled thanks to the show and it’s fans. We moved our vacations to Long Beach Island three years ago and haven’t looked back. LBI is a little more laid back than our previous tourist spots, but with a two and four year old in tow, laid back is kind of what we’re looking for.
The house we rented for the week was pretty fantastic and also a weird commentary on the nature of LBI. It was, essentially, two houses- an older style main house with a full kitchen and dining room… and then a more modern styled apartment/loft area above the garage. The two areas were connected by a bridge/hallway which both Elliot and Henry had good times running up and down, over and over again.
Spent a lot of time on the beach… and a lot of time at the island’s arcade. No summer trip to New Jersey is complete without some skeeball!
The only annoying thing about the trip was this strange sunburn I got on my kneecaps… and nowhere else. Those of you who have been trolling this site, waiting for pictures of my bare kneecaps can die happy.
Final picture for now- I was excited to find the island’s pharmacy carried a small selection of magazines and comic books… but I mean, it was a SMALL offering. I immediately snapped up Superman Family Adventures for Henry- he liked the first issue and loved this one even more. It’s all about Bizarro!
I expect updates to resume next week. Hope everyone’s enjoying summer!
Hey folks!
Sorry for the lack of posting in the past week. We’re on our yearly family vacation right now. Comics will resume sometime in the next two weeks. Until then, you can find me on Tumblr, or I started a fancy-pants Instagram account, where I add hip looking filters to pictures of me drinking Jamba Juice. My username is capearce81.
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Once a month, we take a look at some crazy-ass gimmick comic book companies used to get idiots (read: ME) to buy comic books in the 1990’s. Last month we looked at The Guardians of the Galaxy… this month, we’re taking a gander at Superman #75, published in 1992 by DC Comics.
I’m excited about this one because it involves me opening up my copy of the comic for the first time EVER. I bought this sucker TWENTY years ago. Let’s tear into it!
Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV is an interesting, somewhat lacking book in the vein of oral histories like Please Kill Me or Live from New York. I’ve always felt one of the most interesting things about using that format to retell a story is how, occasionally, there will be conflict in the way people remember events occurring. No such thing happens in Top of the Rock; all parties interviewed are effusive in their praise of NBC’s long-lived “Must See TV” era and by extension, Littlefield himself.
I thought this was a shame, as Top of the Rock does do a decent job documenting the highs – under Littlefield’s tenure, NBC was a juggernaut of broadcast television, with hit after hit including Friends, Seinfeld, and ER. It was the last great gasp of network television’s dominance as watercolor fodder, before the increased power of the cable networks and technological advancements lessened NBC and its’ competitors grip on American viewers. Much time is spent on the genesis of Will and Grace, a pet project of Littelfield’s which featured the first gay male lead character on a situation comedy.
All of these stories are highlighted by insight from the people who were intimately involved with the shows themselves; while some of these stories have been told multiple times before, I found the section about ER to be pretty rich with new information detailing the difficult conception and birth of that series.
I think Top of the Rock would have been a stronger book if Littlefield and co-author T.R. Pearson had been a bit more frank about the bad practices which were born out of NBC’s dominance, especially the channel’s somewhat lazy attitude with filling their Thursday time slots after powerhouses Friends and Seinfeld with NBC owned laffers which didn’t hit the mark. For as much as you’ll read about Mad about You and Frasier here, there’s little about bland sitcoms like Caroline in the City, The Single Guy, Suddenly Susan. NBC could pretty much air a test pattern after Seinfeld and win the night and it’s widely held they didn’t take this opportunity and run with it.
…however, with that in mind, I do understand that Top of the Rock is something of a victory lap for Littlefield and perhaps leaving those things out is acceptable. I hold a lot of affection for this time in television history and there’s no denying that Warren Littlefield helped shaped that time.
Also, I definitely learned that Jeff Zucker is history’s greatest monster thanks to this book. Sorry Hitler.
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I’ve decided to correct a blind spot in my geeky literature intake and read Dune by Frank Herbert.
Despite my love of science fiction in movies and on television, I have never been a big fan of sci-fi literature outside of the biggies. I was the same way with fantasy novels; while I loved reading The Lord of the Rings when I was in high school, I never got bit by the bug that seems to get most Tolkien fans interested in the aisles upon aisles of fantasy paperbacks in our bookstore. So it went with sci-fi. I thought Dune would be a good entry into science fiction because it’s a classic and despite being around for almost 50 years, I knew precious little about it.
My sum total of knowledge of Dune before starting to read it:
1. It takes place on a sand planet.
2. There are sand worms, like in the movie Beetlejuice.
3. David Lynch made a Dune movie; I never saw it.
…and that’s it! Considering it’s legacy, I thought that spoke pretty well for the book’s ability to surprise me. I’m about a fifth of the way through it and smooth sailing so far.
Hope everyone here in America had a good Fourth of July… apologies for not posting yesterday, but I was too busy celebrating my country by swimming in a pool. America!
Elliot’s recently gotten into The Boxcar Children; this comic comes from the second book in the series, Surprise Island, where Gertrude Chandler Warner was slowly morphing the series into something closer to The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. Warner has Violet Alden learn to play the violin, which for some reason really fascinated Elliot.
Teachable Moments 