See, Your Tuesday Is Already Better Than You Know...

Hallelujah! We've averted another potential catastrophe!

James Cameron unveiled the coffins, and the world did not end.

I need say no more.

Some of you frequenting this blog may recall

I didn't have much use for Neil LaBute's atrocious remake of The Wicker Man,

and despite the promise of an "alternative ending not seen in theaters!", I've had no desire whatsoever to revisit LaBute's atrocity on DVD. The only way to revisit the film, or sample its hilarity, is to do what CCS student Penina Gal does, and laugh heartily every single day at

this hilarious condensation of The Wicker Man remake highlights, including footage not in the theatrical cut I saw (the ludicrous bees-over-the-head sequence: "Not my eyes!")

The beehive-over-the-head bit is truly ludicrous.

I was still zonked with this cold yesterday, though by about 4 PM I was doing much better. Still in the zone earlier in the day, I caught The Number 23 matinee in Lebanon, and wasn't particularly impressed. Full review to follow as part of the ongoing Cine-Ketchup column, but suffice to say it's essentially a Hollywood

revamp of Lance Weiler's Head Trauma,

with family ties attached for optimum loss/redemption options in the final act.

Having completed prep for Peter Money and my big CCS Wednesday field trip (completing said final prep with Marge's help at our dining room table, studiously avoiding dining), Marge and I also darted out last night at her urgent request (she had a rough day at work yesterday) to see The Snake Pit (1947) at Bruce Posner's Cine-Salon screening series at the Hanover Library, and that was big fun. If nothing else, it put Marge's tough work day in stark relief as being a lot better than having a nervous breakdown over and over and waking up after repeated shock treatments to find months had passed and -- well, you get the idea. Marge claims not to know the function of horror movies, but whenever she needs a weepie like this one, it's clear she does understand fully, she just refuses to engage. Anyhoot, Olivia deHaviland's performance still engages, even if the sanitized view of big-city asylums (the 20th Century Fox madhouse still shocked audiences of its day; Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies exposed the real conditions of such institutions two decades later) and streamlined Hollywood take on psychiatry pitch into the risible when seen today.

I awoke this morning not wearing a water balloon filled with A-number-one snot on my neck, so the cold is at last passing.

On to Marge.

No playing hooky today -- full day of work, off I go!

A Peek at the New Digs

I'm usually up by 5:30 AM -- but I was so fried from this week, and from the fourth drive up to and back from Burlington in a week, that I conked until almost 10:30 AM this morn. We drove home last night in falling and blowing snow the entire way, and I managed the drive comfortably until we were 40 miles north of White River Junction -- by then, I was just too exhausted to safely continue driving. Fortunately, Marge was wide awake and happy to take over, and we were definitely through the worst of the snow, so she drove the final stretch of I-89 and the 15 minutes of I-91 home. I barely stayed awake that final haul; had I been driving alone, I would have pulled over more than once to rub snow on my face to keep myself wide awake.

So, Marge is safely home from her trip to visit our grandchildren in Texas, and I savored our first night and (today) day together since last week.

Still, got some work done. Just wrapped up part one of the multi-chapter interview with Bryan Talbot (links to be posted here soon!), and finally have some time to post -- sorry I missed my usual AM arrival.

Photos today -- this is the shelving done thus far on our new home by David Gabriel, who (along with his brother Mike) completed this chunk of the renovations needed for my collection and library about a month ago. We're eagerly looking forward to Dave's return, as the construction of the basement library/office begins at last.

Dave and Mike did a stellar job; Dave not only fulfilled my hopes for the viewing room shelving (which, thankfully, houses all my DVDs -- finally, the library in easy reach, and in a single room!), he consistently improved upon and enhanced every aspect of the project.



Walking you around the viewing room, the first evening after Dave and Mike had finished their work on this space, you can see here the door to the room and the first bank of shelves. These extend from floor to ceiling, across the span of the interior wall and around the top of the back window --



-- which is framed on its other side by another bank of shelves.

Standing at the window, this is the view of the shelving that Dave constructed on the interior wall to the right of the window. Note the angled roofline cutting into the room; Dave's shelving perfectly follows that form, wrapping around to the inside area, and continuing alongside the door -- which is across the room from the entryway we began this room tour with.

(This door, BTW, presently opens up to the unfinished room over our garage. This will be, by summer, by writing/mailing/office space, once it's finished.)

The two doors leaning against room door are from the closet (which we'll be getting to soon enough). At this stage, the double-sliding-doors have been removed -- ostensibly for Dave and Mike's easier access to the closet work area, but these hanging doors may remain off. Time will tell.

Note, too, the small rounded corner shelving Dave created for that corner beneath the angled interior wall. This was Dave's idea, and I dig it -- it provides some shelf space for my monster figures and movie collectibles (like my drive-in speaker!), as well as one of the surround-sound speakers for the final viewing room set-up.

We've removed the two detached closet hanging doors from this shot: that's the same interior door (facing the entry door, across the room) you saw in the last photo.

This angle gives you a good view of the bank of shelving to the right of the interior door, which is the first portion I racked as I began unpacking after Dave and Mike's work was done, and I was free to begin setting up the room. All my animation collection neatly fits this space, including my beloved collection of King Kong, Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen films.

Now, this is a little difficult to describe here, but if you continue looking to the right of these shelves, there's another angled wall that cuts down into the room. That angle runs the length of the wall (which is directly opposite the window, which is visible in the first and second photos I've shown you here).

That leaves precious little space for shelving, further compromised by the heating baseboard extending across almost half the length of that end of the room.

However, Dave did make optimum use of what little wall we do have to work with beneath that angled interior wall. This shot doesn't give you as clear an orientation to the layout of the room as the previous shots do, but it's the best we could get at this time.

This floor-to-beginning-of-the-angled-wall bank of shelves on the left leads into the full floor-to-ceiling set on the immediate right, which run up alongside the narrow strip of wall on the left of the wide closet doorway.

As you can see, ample shelving space, all perfectly designed for optimum racking of DVDs, with enough clearance throughout for vhs tapes and many DVD boxed sets.

Dave's efficient use of all available space, including the areas dealing with the angle-cut of the inside wall, provides a space pleasing to the eye and useful for tucking and storing odds and ends -- including remotes, etc. -- that are coming in very handy. The warmth of the wood (which Mike polyurethaned, two coats) contrasts the blue walls perfectly, and the entire room now has an expansive warmth, thanks to the woodwork, that's really comfortable to spend time with. Nice!

I should also mention, before we get to Dave's final completion of the interior closet shelving, that this was the only room of our new home we had to paint. For the original (and only preceding) owners, this was apparently the bedroom of their two little girls. It was a truly hideous patchwork of violet and pale green walls -- perhaps color-coded for the girls? -- and clearly had to go.

Marge chose this eye-soothing hue of blue, which wasn't as oppressive as the dark blue I had chosen for our Marlboro home's basement viewing room (which never, ever provided sufficient space for the sprawl of my equipment and collection, and was hardly usable in our five years there). This worked out well, and Dave began work within two days of my completing the spackling, sanding and repaint job on the walls.

Okay, back to the photo tour of the viewing room:

This is the entryway to the closet, which also showcases the shelving Dave completed for the narrow wall extending out from the right closet doorway frame. So, what you're seeing here is a portion of the interior of the closet (with the hanging doors removed, natch) and the floor-to-ceiling shelving running up along the wall outside the closet doorway -- and on to the entry door we began this photo tour with.


Here's a tighter shot of the shelves to the right of the closet door frame.

The three display shelves to the left of the entry door were Dave's idea, too. Having seen some of my monster models, which I've nowhere to put just yet, Dave asked if I'd like space to display two or three of them in this otherwise unused space by the door frame. Like all Dave's suggestions, this was a good one, and also provides a handy shelf -- directly across the room from the rounded shelves in the opposite bend-of-the-wall, visible in the third photo above -- for another of the surround-sound speakers.

Good call, Dave -- and excellent execution!



Here's the best angle we could manage to photograph the closet interior -- again, floor-to-ceiling shelving. This was a particularly tight area for Dave and Mike to work within, but per usual, they did a fantastic job. It's perfect.

These shelves are sized not for DVDs, but for larger components of the video collection: the floor shelving is designed for laserdiscs (they all fit!), the rest for big-box videos from the early years of the 1980s video market, those glorious oversized color vids from the likes of Gorgon Video, Wizard, and the rest.

Many of the titles released on vhs in the big-box format have never been issued in other any form, and for some -- like the original Herschell Gordon Lewis and Andy Milligan vhs releases, and curios like the Spectreman series -- the boxes themselves are artifacts of a key era of exploitation cinema and video that has long passed. I treasure them as much as my poster and pressbook collection. So, at my request, Dave designed and constructed this interior closet shelving to accommodate as much of this part of the ol' collection as possible.


This was the best we could do, photographing the deep interior of the inner closet shelving. It's almost impossible to get a camera into the confines of this area with enough visibility to capture what it's like inside. It's a wide, deep closet, ideal for my needs -- and it was mighty tough for Marge to give up!

Fortunately, the rest of the house has so much quality closet space, Marge has more than enough. So, this worked out fine for me.

I can't wait to complete the set up of the viewing room, and hopefully savor it for years to come. I'm beginning the setup process this weekend, and hope to watch my first movie here by next weekend.

As you can see from this little photo tour, David Gabriel has done an extraordinary job for us.

There's still much to do, work that will carry on into the summer: an unfinished room over our garage that will become my office, mailing room and writing studio; the entire basement, which is unfinished and will become my sorely-needed library for books, magazine, comics and the collection; and Marge's screened-in back deck porch, which we'll get to once the ground thaws, dries and spring is here.

But that's a long way off just now.

Have a great weekend, one and all, and see you here as time permits...

More CCS opener weekend impressions:

It was remarkable how many people -- and what a diversity of people! -- passed through the CCS doors on Saturday. It was a blast to meet so many of them while doing sketches for 'em, all the while looking up and over at the other lines standing at the sketch stations.

One gent wearing glasses came over and leaned in toward me, introducing himself as Jacob Jarvela's father [note: in the original post, I mistakingly named this fellow as James Kochalka's father!] Jim and asking me if Forrest J. Ackerman and Famous Monsters of Filmland had played any part in my growing up. "You know it!" I replied, and we ended up talking about his own affection for FM and his visiting the Ackermansion in its glory days, before the lack of interest in it becoming a museum and the auctions eroding the Ackerman collection. I mentioned my visiting Ray Harryhausen's London home in London back in the early 1990s, and when I told Jim about Mr. Harryhausen showing me his Gustave Dore first editions collection, building up to the revelation of an original oil painting by Dore, Jim paused and said, "I just had a shiver go up my spine."

Robyn Chapman is already one of the anchors at CCS, though I expect she might shrug or blush that off just now. Amid Robyn coordinating many of the CCS opening day tasks, all while clicking as many photos as she could, I bustled in Saturday with a trio of folders with handout material for my first class tomorrow afternoon. Just what she needed: another distraction. Robyn accepted it without hesitation and made sure we went over everything before Marj and I left for the evening. Bless you, Robyn!

Yesterday afternoon, CCS board member Bayle Drubel and her husband Richard hosted a big-fun BBQ shindig at their beautiful home in Hanover. It was a motly crew of CCS faculty, board members and students from all walks of life, there with families, high energy, and appetites. We converged at CCS at 4 PM, and I brought in the laserdisc player Alan Goldstein donated to CCS and a heap of laserdiscs for the CCS library from Alan's and my own collection, and I got to meet and chat with a few more of the students (forgive me, folks, it will take me time to match names and faces). John from Ludlow arrived in his pickup with his brother, whom I met, and Alexis in his pickup ended up being our 'point man' in the caravan of vehicles en route to Hanover. Marj and I drove Sam and Ross -- two CCS students from Massachusetts and West Virginia, respectively -- to and from the BBQ, dropping 'em off at the venerable Coolidge Inn upon our homeward-bound pass through White River. To think, some months ago, this is the lobby I walked into for the CCS fundraiser where I met Alison Bechdel and where Art Spiegelman spoke -- now, some of the students are living here. It's all real now; it's more real this morning, as they're ending their first class ever on the first day ever.

Bayle and Richard were incredibly personable and generous hosts, and their multi-tiered back yard gardens provided a memorable arena for the first CCS blowout. Or, I should say, second -- some of the students were still bleary-eyed from their own partying the night before, and that's the important first blow-out, where the real bonds and lasting energy happens. Anyhoot, this was the first blow-out we got to indulge in, and it rolled from a little after 4 until 6:30, the day before school starts. As James said, "A great way to kick off our first year." We got to chat with some of the Board members and a few students (including one from Holland!), chow down on hot dogs and/or burgers, and wander Richard's splendid gardens, which the Drubel's cultivated in a mere four years (according to Richard, it was all brush, brambles, and dirt when they moved in). The little kids loved it, and were soon rolling down the lawn at the base of the gardens, down toward the Dartmouth pond while students, faculty, and friends of same played frisbee and Sam soaked in the warm waters of the pool on tier two or three, down from the house.

Richard was a fascinating man, first talking about comic strip favorites (and bringing down the local paper to show me the return of Berke Breathed and Opus to the color Sunday pages) before conversation eased into talk of plants and his garden. I rather teasingly replied to his talk of how obsessive garden-and-plant lovers could be with a question about sundews (tiny carnivorous plants that once grew along the pond my kids grew up with on Lower Dover Road in Marlboro), and Richard knew exactly what I was referring to. No carnivorous plants in Richard's garden, but no telling what grows in the greenhouses we passed on our way out to the cars at the end of the BBQ...

Marj and I ended up sitting at the peak of the grassy hill that inclines down to the pond, where kids little and big were rolling with glee. The little ones, of course, could do so with impunity; it was comical to see older bodies trying for the same pleasures discovering head-to-neck-to-shoulder distances proving no longer condusive to the graceful rolling of childhood, or the post-roll dizzy rattling their pins.

The pond, it seems, is not the most alluring body of water to be found in NH. Bayle grimaced as she described the carp-kill that had to be removed from the pond a couple years earlier, while I watched what must have been trout breaking the surface to scarf down the late-afternoon insect cusine flitting over the surface. The pond is a fixture of Darmouth winters -- a preferred skating surface, and also home to some sort of polar-bear-like ritual involving Dartmouth students chopping through the ice to swim in the winter waters -- and a wedding gathering at the Dartmouth Outing Club at the end of the pond two or three houses away were serenading all with a lively mix of music blaring. This led to dancing by the cattails at the edge of the pond, as Richard told Marj and I the Outing Club is also the site for an annual Jewish ritual involving the casting out of sins via bread thrown onto the water. That means the fish are growing fat on sin at least once a year, which is already feeding a story idea for down the road... another unexpected dividend from yesterday's gathering.

There was much, much more, but that's all I care to share right now. It was a great day, all in all, and I can't wait for tomorrow -- my first day of teaching. Will let you all know how it goes....

So, the Center for Cartoon Studies opened yesterday at 1:58 PM, and a grand and glorious day it was, too.

The drive for Marj and I from our home to the CCS doors is about a 90 minute haul. It couldn't have been a more beautiful day -- sunny, cool, mild -- and though it's still late summer, there were a number of maples along interstate 91 beginning to show their colors. The characteristic first-bloom of autumn: radiant orange leaves at the uppermost tips of top branches, punctuated by the occasional raptor overlooking the roadside, eyeing possible game. The hawks and falcons are out on days like yesterday and today, hunting even at midday. Still, about 25 minutes shy of White River Junction and the CCS, I caught a glimpse of my odometer when it hit one of those rare mileage palindromes: 133331.

We drove into White River about a half-hour before the scheduled 2 PM opening, and Marj got her first look at the CCS operation. Marj was mighty impressed, though the crowd of new faces and names was a bit overwhelming. For me, many of these faces and a few names are already familiar, including a few of the students, one of whom (John Nicolls from Ludlow, VT) I first met at the 24 Hour Comic Marathon in Brattleboro a couple of weekends ago. One student made a point of telling me she'd read "Moving Day" on the blog, and that was gratifying -- hope it provides some link between her own experience this week, month, year and my own in '76.

James Sturm and Michelle Ollie have been hard at work all summer with the help of numerous contractors, sponsors, and a number of interns, including Robyn and Allie, who were both at the opening; Robyn is working at CCS for this first year, but Allie popped in to savor the event though she's back at college seeing through her senior year at Smith. They've completely renovated the old Colodny "Surprise" Department Store -- the word "Surprise" is indeed on the original awning that stills shields the front door and display windows -- which had never housed a surprise like yesterday's. But first, Michelle and James had to shoo us all out of the building onto the sidewalk for the ribbon-cutting ritual and opening festivities.

James Kochalka's son happily tugged the ribbon down before it was due to be sheared, but no worries: Michelle and a little scotchtape took care of that. With CCS-t-shirt wearing students, a lot of faculty and staff, visiting dignitaries, fans (and faithful donators to the CCS library like Tom Laurent, who drove up from Western MA to be there), and curious WRJ citizens crowding the sidewalk, James climbed atop a milk crate (alas, no soapbox) and declared: "It's 1:58, but what the hell," and launched into a short, sweet speech. The ribbon was cut, and James Kochalka mounted the crate to debut the official CCS school song, which was roundly cheered and will no doubt be sung in the hallowed halls of CCS for eons to come.

After much huzzahing and gnashing of teeth, we tottered back inside and manned our respective stations. Guests could sample a generous spread of food, snacks, and drinks, and each were given an official CCS sketch board with a series of blanks in the bottom left-hand corner where they could choose the subject of their sketch: "Dog," "Alien," "Stick figure," etc. Students and some faculty were seated in the main classroom area at tables, with the respective subjects posted, and guests could then go up and get their sketch completed right before their eyes. It was a two-hour sketching marathon; I joined one of the students I'd met earlier this summer, Elizabeth (Chasalow), at the "Alien" table, and we drew tons of aliens of all shapes, sizes, textures, and dispositions. It was quickly established that my aliens tended to be vicious and toothy (no surprise there), at which point I established the entry line to all guests who approached me, "Would you like your alien benevolent or malevolent?" Elizabeth's were all benevolent, given her nature, while mine ran the gamut. One family with two little ones, Emma and her younger brother Ben, were eager to get their alien sketches toward the end of the afternoon. Ben's dad assumed he'd want a benevolent alien, but when I asked "scary or friendly?", Ben scrunched up his face and bellowed, "SCARYYYYY!" Emma got a sketch with both benevolent and malevolent aliens at repose, and all seemed pleased with their booty.

James and Michelle had also set up a "Finishes" table -- where students added blue and gray tones to the sketches -- and another student manned a "Quality Control" table where each sketch was rubber-stamped with the red CCS logo, thus marking it as an official harvest from CCS, Day One.

My favorite moment nobody else saw: At the end of the day, we all blundered around outside in a haze of adrenalin and exhaustion. The littlest kids, though, were wired. Peter Money, poet and CCS faculty member, hunkered down on the sidewalk to entertain James Sturm and Rachel Gross's daughter (who had been drawing chalk aliens on the board behind Elizabeth and I earlier) with a poem. She stopped for a moment, paying rapt attention to Peter, than dashed away with a laugh.

OK, now we're off to the CCS BBQ!