Chalkboard drawings: The “Hogwarts” edition

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom’s chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. See the rest here.

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Chalkboard Drawings: The “Battle of Hogwarts” edition

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom’s chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. See the rest here.

In honor of The Battle of Hogwarts, this was Harry Potter week on the chalkboard. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of Monday’s drawing… but I bet you can guess who it was.

Chalkboard Drawings: The “boy wizard” edition

 

 

odds and ends: my halloween decorations

Last year, I showed off all my Christmas toys and decorations… so this year, I thought I’d do the same with my Halloween stuff!

I love the Universal Studios Monsters and this is my shelf dedicated to them. The three busts came with a special edition of Universal’s Legacy Collection of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and The Wolfman. They’re absolutely gorgeous and while two of these go into storage the other 11 months of the year, ol’ Frankie stays out year-round.

I’ve been keeping up with the Universal Monsters Minimates for the last few years, more ore less. I buy the heavies, as you can see here… but it’s an impressive collection Art Asylum  has put together. The only biggie I’m missing from years’ past is The Bride of Frankenstein and of course, this year’s offerings: The Mummy and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

I’ve gotten a couple of good deals on LEGOs in the past few months, the best being this huge version of Hogwarts! Although it’s not precisely “Halloween” I still think it’s a nice fit as a decoration. I decided to throw the Ghostbusters and Doctor Who in here because… why not?

When I was in college, my girlfriend and I collected these Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror Happy Meal toys. They’re surprisingly durable; although they’re almost 10 years old now, most of the light up features in these bad boys still work! I’m always meaning to add to this collection; I’d like some more of the Simpsons clan… but I guess that’s something to think about for next year.

I could use a couple more Nightmare Before Christmas toys in this display, although the ones I have, I love. Even the Jack Skellington is a favorite, even though his legs constantly separate from his hips. The Mer-woman and Igor I picked up last year for $4 bucks apiece online.

Windup toys are a small collection I have that have snuck up on me. I bought one for myself when I was living in Brooklyn. Before I knew it, I had more than two dozen. They’d end up in my Christmas stocking, or as a gift from a student. My favorites of these are the Halloween/monster windups my mother ends up finding and sending to us every year.

Elliot and Henry LOVE these, so they’re on a lower shelf. They can play with them whenever they feels like it.

chalkboard photo posts: randomness

The big plan for the chalkboard drawings this year was to do theme weeks. This lasted until this past week, when I just did whatever. I got close to a theme at sone point, but it just didn’t happen.

I blame gettin’ sick on Friday.

odds and ends

As is likely clear from my weekly trolling of all our local thrift stores, one big vice that I have is books. I love books. Love to own ’em, love to have ’em, and I really love  fancy-pants special editions of my favorites books, comics, and stories.

Behold one fancy collection that I will have to somehow live my life without owning:

The Bone 20th Anniversary Full Color One Volume Collector’s Box Set. It comes with an art print signed by Bone creator Jeff Smith. It comes with three pewter figures of the Bone cousins. It comes with a 22k gold-plated recreation of Phoney Bone’s gold coins. It comes with a facsimile of Bone #1 in black and white. It comes with a DVD documentary.

Oh, it also comes with one of my favorite comic stories ever, in hardcover with a beautiful new coloring job… presented in a handsome red case.

Cost: $350 dollars… although Cartoon Books is offering a version for $1,000 dollars wherein Smith will draw and Hammaker will watercolor a sketch for you. I honestly prefer Bone in B&W as that is how I originally encountered the story, but you cannot argue with how beautiful Steve Hammaker’s work is. Plus, I LOVE that Phoney Bone coin.

Alas and alack… I think I’ll probably use that money to feed and clothe my children. I will content myself with the original One Volume edition, which proudly sits on the shelves of both my classroom and my own private collection.

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I was excited to read Horribly Heartbroken at Hogwarts this week, a sort-of travelogue by cartoonist Lucy Knisley and her studio mate Laura Renick-Reinhart.

I’ve become a fan of Knisley’s work in the past year, especially her contribution to Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign. It inspired me to write my own comic in response!

HHH found its’ beginnings in a rather unique fashion- Knisley and Renick-Reinhart opened a Kickstarter project to fund a trip to Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure, with the goal of visiting the new Harry Potter theme park in Orlando, Florida. The deal was this: if the readers would fund their trip, they’d get to read the comic about the trip. The ladies’ project was a resounding success- they asked for $2,500 dollars… they got over $7,000. Had I been in a position to donate at the time, I certainly would have… but I’ve contented myself with resting on other’s laurels and buying a PDF of the comic after the fact.

As far as the comic pertains to the more lofty stated goal of the strip (connecting their recent break-up woes with significant others to their love of Harry Potter), I thought HHH missed the mark. There are some interesting swipes at the thesis; in particular, I liked the observation Lucy makes about dealing with her logical-thinking ex-boyfriend versus her more emotional travel companion. Still, by and large the “heartbroken” stuff felt shoehorned into the comic and wasn’t my favorite part of the 25 page book.

From the perspective of a travelogue, I enjoyed Horribly Heartbroken at Hogwarts immensely. Part of the goal of this project seemed to be glorying in all things Potter and the authors carry that off with style. I, for one would jump at the chance to pay for Knisley and Renick-Reinhart to take another trip in the future, if it means more comics like this. Ladies, if you’re ever interested in a sequel, I will gladly fund your trip to visit the places in England and Scotland where the Harry Potter movies were filmed.

Download the comic for $3 dollars!

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Finally, I wanted to share this with all of you. A few months ago, I told you all about my son Elliot’s love of Ralph Consentino’s Batman: The Story of the Dark Knight, to the point where he has the book memorized and will quote it for you in odd places. I got in touch with Ralph and he generously sent Elliot a lovely drawing of the Dark Knight himself.

Ellen is the manager of an art gallery/framing studio and she decided to have both Ralph’s drawing and my own sketch framed… and here’s the result:

A beautiful job, if I do say so myself. I wanted to thank Ralph again here on the blog- it was a genuine thrill for Elliot… and myself!

odds and ends

Happy Black Friday, if you care about that sort of thing! In general, I don’t. One of the luxuries of being poor is that you don’t have to worry about camping out at 3 AM to spend money you don’t have on things you don’t need. I will admit that in recent years, I have ventured out on the day after Thanksgiving, but entirely motivated by having small children who wake up at the crack of dawn regardless of what day of the month it is.

Befitting my financial stature, Elliot and I usually go and wait outside Half Price Books on Black Friday. We have a HPB within five minutes of our house so getting there is no hardship. Elliot’s an early riser, so there’s no problem there. Half Price Books Black Friday sale isn’t a crazy doorbuster (20% off and a $5 dollar gift card to the first 100 shoppers) but you can shop secure in the comfort that people who wake up early to go to a used bookstore aren’t usually the type of folks who will trample you to death over a DVD player or riot over a GPS.

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Ellen and I have been enjoying AMC’s The Walking Dead in the past few weeks. If you know my wife, you know how remarkable that statement is. I’m a fan of a good zombie apocalypse, but they are not Ellen’s cuppa. When we started dating, I made her watch Dawn of the Dead (the Romero version, duh!), and she submitted to it with style and aplomb, despite her tastes running more toward Merchant Ivory productions. The Walking Dead has been fun for the both of us.

I’m a fan of the comic on which the show is based and have been reading it since 2003, I think. I have a copy of the first trade in my classroom’s lending library (on the restricted shelf, naturally) and it’s easily one of the most popular graphic novel collections I own. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: If someone can figure out how to write a YOUNG ADULT zombie book, they’d be millionaires. Kids love the inherent creepiness of the genre. I think the bloody trappings may preclude acceptance as a part of the YA ouevere, but I swear man… if you can run with it, it’s money on the table.

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Believe it or not, I may get to go to the movies this weekend! When you have two young children in your care, organizing a trip to the movies is something akin to planning a military operation… but it seems as if we have a babysitter lined up and the wife and I (and some other friends) will be going to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 sometime this weekend.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the HP movie series in the past few weeks. I’m a fan of the books and the movies and I’m looking forward to seeing the series out in grand style. For Potter-philes more hardcore than myself, they must be looking at these two movies as one of the last great gasps of Harry Potter fandom, in a global sense. No more waiting in lines at midnight to get some sort of Harry Potter fix, the story’s been told in print and on film.

Of course, there will be more Harry Potter. At some point, Hollywood is going to realize that there’s still gold in them thar hills and go about “remaking” and “reimagining” Hogwarts for new generations, no matter your opinion of how good these flicks are. I also have every faith that author J.K. Rowling will at some point return to her best-loved creations; she’s alluded to it enough times with reporters (and Oprah, a few months ago). For the time being however, Deathly Hallows closes the door on the whole world and I’m excited to get to see it on the big screen.

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For those of you who have been waiting, I’m going to post Part Four of my “It Gets Better” comic on Monday. Being a holiday weekend, I thought it was better to post the comic on a day when people are near their computers than over the weekend when most are either (a) passed out from overeating, (b)watching football, or (c) shopping. It’s coming though.