Animal Love

Yup, Valentine makers of the Sixties made sure that we kiddies thought that furry folk were just as amorous and monogamous as we were supposed to be!

Now get out of here before you shed all over the rug!  See you Monday.

  

Kindergarten's Guarded Love

That is, for Valentine's 1962, we five-or-six-year-olds were directed to give a Valentine to each classmate. Whether we loved 'em, or loathed them, or even knew anything about 'em.

For example, the above Valentine.  I don't remember if this particular Danny was in my Kindergarten class, or even a neighbor from down the street.  But by golly, Valentine giving was the thing society said to do, so we did it.

Likewise, Patty & Mike were siblings two doors down who were older (Patty) and younger (Mike) than I.  We knew each other too well from scraped knees and my teasing them, to want to get too affectionate.  Maybe nostalgia will remove my sharp edges in their memories ...

See you Thursday!

  

Welcome Back to MY SIXTIES VALENTINE!

... And although that moniker aptly describes any valentine I sent or received nowadays, I'm referring to the golden-aged-innocence of the 1960s.  If you were five or ten years old, the era was magical.  If you were a teenager, it was a potential hell of war, oppression, and paranoia.  I'm thankful to have emerged from the Sixties optimistic!

One of our grade-school community-building practices was Valentine's Day.  Your parents bought a big ol' bundle and you dealt 'em out like cards into each person's sack or envelope.  Your teacher had previously sent home a list with the names of all your classmembers.

Oftentimes Mom helped write the cards, which is how sometimes we would up with mushy, smoochy-type Valentines from a member of our own sex.

Every Monday and Thursday in February, here on the Super Blog we'll share some from my Kindergarten and First Grade in Bartlesville, OK.  The teachers were Mrs Grace Pickell (kindergarten class in their home) and Mrs West (1st Grade at Will Rogers Elementary).

Above is the pouch for First Grade.

And a couple of the treasures from that envelope.

Insert your favorite "aww, shucks!" here, and come back on Monday!

  

Unknown in 1982

This article is from the December 1982 issue of Video Review.

After reading this article, you will agree with me that its title is somewhat disingenuous.  Most of the titles are episodes of TV shows, not "movies."  I've only seen a couple of these, mainly the Night Gallery segments and Duel.

See you on Thursday with the commencement of this year's MY SIXTIES VALENTINE, more flashes from the grade-school past!

  

More Lives Nowadays

In 1989, Tulsa's Philbrook Museum had a display titled "Superman: Many Lives, Many Worlds." Some of the materials I snatched are these two pages:

I think the art for this coloring page is by artist José Luis García-López.

The idea for the above image was to draw your own comic-book page.

Here's a 2009 post with other items from that exhibit.  See you Monday!

 

A Battle in Cleveland!

Here's some coverage about how Cleveland, OH saluted its prminence as the birthplace of Superman.

It's from the August 1, 1988 issue of Amazing Heroes.  See you Thursday!

  

OKC Memories: Shadows on the Starwinds

 

This here's a brief mention of an OKC "lifestyle" store which I encountered as a student at Oklahoma City University in the mid-1970s.  It was on N Classen Blvd, called "House of Shadows."  While I appreciated its selection of blacklight posters, candles, and such, I didn't much like the sorta negative vibe implied by its name.

Sometime around 1980 it rebranded as "Starwind," and widened its selection to cover a lot of New -Agey topics like UFOs and Bigfoot.  I bought a few books and cassettes of music I'd heard on Music from the Hearts of Space on KCSC.

The above receipt from 1992 was for Michael Sterns's majestic cassette Encounter.

Here's from when I bought Jerome Clark's Unexplained! and a couple of other things.

Do you have any memories of Starwind?  I believe it closed in the mid-1990s.

See you Monday!

  

More Headline Blindness!

I been cruising through Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp books. This he-man terrorist-hater is rough and tough, like John Wayne Toilet Paper.

Alas, I came across some primo goofos in the 2007 novel Act of Treason.

Above is the very first freakin’ page! The second word should, of course, be “motorcade.”

Above is page 65, in which someone is “olding” court instead of holding court. Maybe only geriatric types were invited?

Above is page 79, which misspells “retsina” as “restina.”

In my opinion, the mistake’s location is part of its getting past the proofreaders. Sometimes the bigger the font, the easier it is to miss a misspelling. See here for earlier examples of Headline Blindness. Talk to you on Thursday!

  

Back to School, and Here's My Schedule!

I came across this blank postcard while running thrift stores.

I'm guessing this hails from the 1970s, but the level of naivete suggests the paternal 1950s to me.

This document reminds me of early postcard-type applications for in-store credit cards.  They similarly advised you to write down pertinent personal info in writing on a tiny scrap of paper and send it in the mail, where countless eyes would peruse everything needed to appropriate your legal self.  A post about this is here.

  

This Just In: Aliens Are Waste-Layers!

According to money-maker-from-the-paranormal Brad Steiger, ancient India's texts like the Bhagavad Gita contain fairly literal description of daring young aliens in their flying machines!

This breathless report was harvested from the August 21, 1990 National Enquirer.

  

Watch Out for 'Em

This article is from the June 15, 1986 issue of Amazing Heroes.

Note that this otherwise in-depth article calls the series "The Watchmen."  Do you think that someone at DC thought the title should've begun with a definite article, and not be one word?

See you on Monday, fellow Actioneers!  I leave it entirely in your hands.

  

Pucker Up, Don't Blow

For the past few decades I've been accumulating (among other things) bookmarks of many castes, including many fibrous rectangles not created as bookmarks.

Recently I tracked down the provenance of this one.

Turns out that there was a 1934 pamphlet, published in all seriousness, on this topic.  Someone came across it at a garage sale or some such, and pitched it as a camp classic, looking for those who went to the 1974 flick The Great Gatsby, no doubt.

The book was mentioned in the March 20, 1977 New York Times.  The text below:

Osculation. If you were a kid hellbent on becoming a man back in the 1930s, you had a problem: How should you go about exchanging a few goodnight kisses with your date with all the finesse of a Clark Gable taking on a Joan Crawford? The movies offered you few tips, for in those days the Hays Office kept the cameras from peering too close. You might, as thousands of other Depression‐Age kids did, see an ad in a pulp magazine and write to the Franklin Publishing Co. of Philadelphia for a copy of “The Art of Kissing” by one Hugh Morris.

 

Last year Dave Wagner, a Madison, Wis., newspaperman, came across a yellowed copy of the 1936 book at a garage sale. Convinced that “the kisses of love, the only kisses worth considering,” are now on “the endangered list of American customs,” he persuaded Doubleday to reissue it in paperback, with not one word changed, embellished with 45 art deco‐style drawings by Emanuel Schongut.

 

The new edition contains all the step‐by‐step directions a young man—or young woman, for that matter—needs to know to indulge in one of the most pleasant rites of courtship. The publisher categorizes the book as “humor” for its earnestly erudite discussions of kissing games, the French soul kiss, the vacuum kiss, the dancing kiss, the surprise kiss. Feminists may have stronger words for its pronouncements that man “must he the aggressor ... taller than the woman ... for he must give the impression of being his woman’s superior, (mentally and physically).”

 

The book’s republication will be celebrated during lunchtime next Friday at Doubleday’s store on Third Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets. Everyone who buys a copy (at $1.95) will be rewarded with a kiss by one of the two models (male and female) engaged for the occasion. To arms, Americans, to preserve one of our most cherished rites!

... And here's the reissue's cover.  Happy mucous-membrane meetings, fellow smoochers!  See you Thursday.

   

How Big Was It?

You tell me.

This article's from the January 7, 2022 Tulsa World.  PS as far as I know, the boneheaded idea to sell Bigfoot Hunting Licenses never made it into law.

See you next year!

What You Wanted for Christmas

Forty years ago, anyway.

Did a lot of you campers yearn for tech treats like this one?  I had to settle for a single knife-switch splitter, plus a simple signal duper (one input to two outputs).

This ad was in the November 1982 issue of Video Review mag, which I read semi-religiously.