Revisting Age Eleven
When I was eleven years old my mother split up with her second husband. It was ugly. I'll spare you the details. In order to escape the daily stress of watching my parents literally and metaphorically battle with each other, I sought refuge in the usual place: popular culture.
I obsessively read the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, going so far as to visit his headquarters in Tarzana, California, and getting to meet his nephew, Danton. I especially dug Tarzan. There was something about the orphaned outsider apeman trying to find his place in two societies--the jungle, "civilized" society--and not quite fitting in that really got to me. I was also a big fan of the DC comic book adaptions drawn by Joe Kubert. I loved the dynamic sketch-looking style of his lean muscular Tarzan (I also liked the Neal Adams-illustrated covers of the Ballantine editions, but Kubert's Tarzan was the one for me).
I mention all this because I just purchased a very nice hardcover edition of Volume One of Tarzan: The Joe Kubert Years. All those issues of Kubert's Tarzan in lovingly restored beautiful color, published by Dark Horse. Cashing in on childhood nostalgia? You bet!
I've already recently collected the Dark Horse reprints of the Barry Windsor Smith years of the Marvel Conan the Barbarian comics--another favorite of my eleven year-old self.
So, add that to my rewatching of Baretta (yes, another favorite of eleven year-old me), my recent rereading of some Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, repurchasing of old The Who vinyl and, ahem, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, and this blankety-blank year-old man is ready to relive eleven years old without the accompanying trauma!
Report from the alphabetical listening project: Songs I Love to Sing! by Helen Humes. Here's a 1950's recording by the Basie "girl" singer, arranged by Marty Paich. A groovy, swinging affair. Featuring Ben Webster and Art Pepper. Humes, at times, sounds like a more bluesy Ella Fitzgerald. You gotta play it at your next retro cocktail party, although the music is as fresh as can be.
I'm just finishing up Richard Price's Freedomland. It got off to a slow start--there's a lot of narrative strands--but it really kicks ass once it gets going. More Richard Price to come, for sure.
I obsessively read the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, going so far as to visit his headquarters in Tarzana, California, and getting to meet his nephew, Danton. I especially dug Tarzan. There was something about the orphaned outsider apeman trying to find his place in two societies--the jungle, "civilized" society--and not quite fitting in that really got to me. I was also a big fan of the DC comic book adaptions drawn by Joe Kubert. I loved the dynamic sketch-looking style of his lean muscular Tarzan (I also liked the Neal Adams-illustrated covers of the Ballantine editions, but Kubert's Tarzan was the one for me).
I mention all this because I just purchased a very nice hardcover edition of Volume One of Tarzan: The Joe Kubert Years. All those issues of Kubert's Tarzan in lovingly restored beautiful color, published by Dark Horse. Cashing in on childhood nostalgia? You bet!
I've already recently collected the Dark Horse reprints of the Barry Windsor Smith years of the Marvel Conan the Barbarian comics--another favorite of my eleven year-old self.
So, add that to my rewatching of Baretta (yes, another favorite of eleven year-old me), my recent rereading of some Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, repurchasing of old The Who vinyl and, ahem, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, and this blankety-blank year-old man is ready to relive eleven years old without the accompanying trauma!
Report from the alphabetical listening project: Songs I Love to Sing! by Helen Humes. Here's a 1950's recording by the Basie "girl" singer, arranged by Marty Paich. A groovy, swinging affair. Featuring Ben Webster and Art Pepper. Humes, at times, sounds like a more bluesy Ella Fitzgerald. You gotta play it at your next retro cocktail party, although the music is as fresh as can be.
I'm just finishing up Richard Price's Freedomland. It got off to a slow start--there's a lot of narrative strands--but it really kicks ass once it gets going. More Richard Price to come, for sure.
posted by ken at 6:47 PM
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