Author: DOuG pRATt
POW! ZAP!
For decades I resented seeing “POW!” and “ZAP!” on every newspaper and magazine article about comic books. The blame belonged to Sixties Pop Art and its offspring, the Batman TV show — a show I loved, and that I can honestly say changed my life, by transforming me overnight from a casual reader of comic books into a hard-core fan. And now, well, I guess I’m old enough to embrace the silliness of POW! and ZAP!, especially because it’s no longer the norm, thanks to comics having gone mainstream and movies having set a very different tone for the genre. (ZAP! was also the title of the raunchy underground comic that made Robert Crumb a cartooning star.)
tastewar says of this article on Wired, about the Sixties Batman TV show finally coming to home video, “This seems to me like the kind of story that would be right up your alley.” And indeed it is. The article gives a good overview of the hassles behind the holdup all these years — a legal tangle that, curiously, didn’t prevent the feature-length movie version of the show from being released. The good thing about the delay is that it means the latest video restoration technology was used and the set is available on Blu-ray as well as DVD. I am crossing my Bat Fingers that Santa will give me the complete Batman TV series on Blu-ray, when he comes at the same Bat-Time, down the same Bat-Chimney that he does every year.
The Car Talk Guys
This weekend there will be a new installment of “Car Talk”, with Ray celebrating the life of his late brother Tommy.
Click to his brother’s Clack
Tom and Ray Magliozzi, aka Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, are Boston originals. The best comedy duo of brothers since the Smothers, Tom and Ray also happened to fix cars, and they started the Good News Garage in Cambridge before hosting “Car Talk” on WBUR (Boston University Radio), leading to the show being picked up by NPR. The garage was originally a DIY business, and my brother used to go there to learn how to work on his VW Bug.
I genuinely loved listening to “Car Talk”. I realize that some people of a more serious bent didn’t always appreciate the banter and kidding around that Tom and Ray loved to indulge, but I delighted in it and I always looked forward to the Puzzler and, especially, Stump the Chumps. Sadly, Tom Magliozzi has passed away.
24-track tricks
Now that I’m in a late-1970’s frame of mind, here is Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”…
… how it was made…
… and some recent comments from Chris Stein.
Robert Douglas Hunter, the Master of Still Life
I am much too late in noting the passing of the superb Boston artist Robert Douglas Hunter. I suppose he may have had an equal somewhere in the genre of still life painting, but no one could have been better than Hunter, who complemented the solidity of his objects with a uniquely delicate sheen. Unlike others who specialize in still life paintings, Hunter’s arrangements, his perfect highlights in the otherwise subdued lighting, and that unmistakable patina, are instantly recognizable to anyone with even a casual familiarity with his work.