Influential Appearances

Here are the close-up images and brief notes for the final cards of my decked-out desktop.

Bizarro #1 wants to know why he didn't see a doorbell.

Somebody ratted the Wolf Man's bouffant, it looks like!

We sure liked watching Magnum, PI in the 80s.  The fun was increased when our oldest came along.  When the theme music came on, Matthew went into what he called his Crazy Dance, which involved spinning around, wiping out, and bouncing off the furniture.  Wish I had a home movie of that!

Chris Reeve was a great Superman.  Too bad the corporate suits shoehorned him into the third and fourth movies, yuk!

Of course you all know Mazeppa hisself!?!?

Joni Mitchell's voice, songs, and oddball guitar stylings shot me through the heart in the Seventies, and beyond.

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it!

See you on Monday!

  

The Bottom But Not of the Barrel!

Here are half the card on the bottom row of my laptop desktop, with notes.

The combination of studied anarchy, elucidation, joyful ethnic humor, and the wonderful Margaret Dumont (not pictured) make the Brothers Marx some of my idols.

Franz Liszt wrote music passionate and/or rational.  He's also my idol for his stupendous piano transcriptions of the Beethoven Symphonies, played revelatorily by Cyprien Katsaris. 

Who could fail to be charmed and inspired by this Neal Adams depiction of Supergirl, from the cover of Action #373.

Mr Waverly, the head of the New York HQ of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.

Two robots everybody should know!

Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog stood for goodness and rightness, especially against Crabby Appleton.

See you on Thursday for the final installment of this tour of these formative impressers on my character!

  

The End of Row Three

Here are the next cards of the third hand of four.

Watchmen introduced me to a layered fictional world of superheroes and super misfits.  Rorschach stood out to me for his uncompromising aspects.  Not his psychotic ones.

Underdog may have been a parody, but his goodness sure ran true for me!  Of course, I usually was more like Shoeshine Boy -- the lovable part, anyway!

For me, the album Brain Salad Surgery is a classic album of prog rock, plus a classic look towards a future partially true now.  "Load your program -- I am your self," the computer warns.

Old chum, let's celebrate rightness and resist evilness!

I say it's duck season, and I say -- FIRE!

This view of John Wayne is from The Quiet Man, a wonderfully told tale of regrets, love, and getting back at a bully.

See you on Monday!

 

Cards 27-33

Or, more images of things I love!

Being around a pretty girl always makes me act like Max.

Yup, I watched the Beatles cartoon show on ABC on Saturday mornings.  The only storyline I specifically remember involved their meeting a vampire girl.  One of the songs excerpted in the sequence was "Chains," I believe.

The Munsters were clunkier than the Addamses, but still lotsa fun.

Irascible, judgmental, driven -- a perfect example of fallible humanity.

If you love devilish violin music, you know all about Niccolò Paganini, writer of 24 demonic caprices and other fun stuff, all written to showcase his viruosity.

Why yes, this spy is indeed much more suave than the doouble-zero guy.

Well, their music slaps me silly, inspires me, and still provokes folks to stupefaction (and sometimes mockery).

Well, my friends, I'll see you Thursday.  Come on back!

 

Halfway Through!

Here are cards 21-26 of my desktop hands.

Good ole Aich-Pee-Ell -- you gotta love him for widening your vocabulary, if for nothing else!

Another character who appealed to adolescent feelings of exclusion.

I relish the thunderous power of Wagner's music, and his insights into the corruptibility of people.

See?  They CAN'T be the same guy!

Red Skelton in his persona of Freddie the Freeloader.

And another of them thar Men from U.N.C.L.E.  Solo was suave, Kuryakin was cool, baby!

See you on Monday, fellow pop-culturites!

  

Adventures Wide and Deep

Here's the first part of the second row of the desktop image I crafted from things which warped my younger self ... for the better, I promise!

Talk about adventure!  The cast of Jonny Quest lived it every week.

I was always enthralled by WC Fields' world-weariness, and his sly asides.  It ain't a fit night out for man nor beast!  foof

Dick Ward's Robin was just as eager as I would have been, even with the avuncular Batman he worked with.

I loved Poe's self-conscious sense of poor-little-me, evinced by so many of his lost-love, destroyed-dreams narratives.  He could construct a gim-crack poem like "The Raven," AND justify it with such inspired folderol as "The Philosophy of Composition."

Another person whose creativity and constructive talents leave me stupefied.

Mighty Mouse can save my day ANY day!

If you don't recognize her on sight, this is "my" Emily, hight Dickinson.  Her ability to construct poems of seeming simplicity which nevertheless echo throughout my heart is unparalleled.  I am content to remain a nobody with her.

See you Thursday, fellow nobodies!

  

Trust Me ... I Know What I'm Doing

Yup, that's the catchphrase of Sledge Hammer, the first of this instalment of cards for my desktop.

This outrageous 1986-88 cop satire was so over the top that it dug a hole on the other side.

An All-American Family we all wish to emulate!

This here is Gary Cooper in High Noon, as a great heroic character who must defend himself from a bad guy's revenge after his so-called friends turn tail.

This fellow had a big influence on wanting to stay up late as a youth.

I really liked this version of Supergirl.

I DO believe in spooks, I DO believe in spooks!

Well, that's the first row of four hands.  The beginning of row number two on Monday.

February Brings Things I Love!

Yep, this month we're gonna take a trip to the past. I've previously showed the desktop image I created for my laptop PARD (Pretty Awesome 'Ritin' Device).  Well, a year or or so ago, ole PARD gave up the ghost and I got a new laptop, appropriately named BUDDY, for our late bestest dog.

Here we are going to give you a good look at each of the cards in this 52-card deck of favorites.

Fantastic Theatre played old sci-fi and monster movies on weekend nights in the Tulsa, OK area.  The host was the urbane(to us kids) Peter Hardt.  A page about Fantastic Theatre here.

Of course, George Reeves as Superman had a huge impact on our middle-America lives.  He was super but approachable, and had a bit of a paunch that in no way interfered with Super Stuff.

As we hit the ages when we wanted to rebel against all authority, 1967's Number Six, The Prisoner, was there to prove that resistance was possible, even though ultimately useless ... kind of like doing a synchronized pencil drop in study hall!

The upright Captain Kirk showed the decisiveness we adolescent boys wished to emulate.  He saw a pretty girl and knew just what to say to get her to talk back. 

One of my oldest friends was the Frankenstein Monster, alive in a world he didn't ask to be born in.  He started out only wanting knowledge and friendship, and look what happened to him!  (We can always do that OTHER adolescent tactic and blame the society or the parent!)

What pre-teen wouldn't love to strut down the street to applause, being cheered for just WHO THEY ARE?!!!?  Plus a wiser older brother or cousin to show you the ropes.

When I watched the imported broadcasts of The Avengers, I couldn't really follow every little thing.  I understood that they were the good guys.  He said smart-aleck comments the way I wish I could.  She wore tight clothes which were probably terribly uncomfortable, but were eye candy for twelve-year-olds.  Even more interestingly, she was a full partner and did lots of the karate-hai-yah stuff.

Well, that's the first patch of things that warped me into the beautiful mess I am today, kids!  Do you too have memories of these icons, or others?  See you Thursday!